#(white clients) and of course they’re dirty as hell as always | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ilguna · 3 years

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Redamancy - Chapter Eight (f.o)

summary: it’s time to forgive and repair.

warnings; swearing, murder, HEAVY GORE, mentions of FORCED PROSTITUTION.

wc; 12k

NOTES; I give reader a last name to fit the world.

–

If it weren’t for the irritating sun rays landing right on your face and into your eyes, you’d bask in this warm feeling forever. It’s like receiving an embrace from spring, herself. Bright sunlight, tolerable temperatures, bees, flowers, sundresses, picnics and comfortable afternoons in the park with your family. You can’t count how many good memories you have from grass fields and playgrounds in District Four.

Watching Alyssum run around the park, making friends and being a kid while she can is the most satisfying part. You can watch her for hours, lose yourself in her carelessness. Your sister hasn’t got a worry in the world to think about, it makes you envy her. A nice house, warm meals, a loving family. None of you are perfect, but you try to be for her.

There’s a lot she’s going to be missing out on already when it comes to parents. She has you, Reed and Mox to fill those roles for her. You’d like to say she can’t miss something she’s never experienced, you’d be lying, though. You miss a regular teenage life that you never got to live, thanks to the Hunger Games. The Capitol is always ruining something, even if they’re not actively trying.

Which brings you back to reality. As much as you’d like to lay here in the soft blankets and keep to your warm spot on the bed, you’ve got to get moving. If the sun is in your eyes already, it only means that your time is up when it comes to sleeping. Like a natural alarm clock, only somehow more annoying, even if it’s not loud and in your face.

You turn onto your back, slowly opening your eyes. You’re met with a white ceiling, smooth and crack-free. Back home in your room, your ceiling has plenty of cracks. When you don’t feel like getting up immediately, you’ll play a game with yourself. See which ones will start on one side of the room and make it to the other. You’ve gotten good at it, and confidently say that there’s a few that go beyond that, they go to the windowsill.

With a gentle sigh, you sit up on the bed, turned toward the window, stretching your arms above your head. It feels good to get the blood pumping through your arms and shoulders again. You can’t really help it when the stretch extends down to your legs. A low moan leaves your lips, and stops dead in your throat when your thighs begin to hurt.

You hum, standing on your feet. It hurts at first, but the more you move around the room, the better you begin to feel. You stare out of the window for a couple of seconds to see that the Capitol is already alive. It’s definitely past noon at this point. So much for a rotating schedule with Finnick, you’ve already ruined it.

You look over the room you’re in, which definitely isn’t your own. It’s Finnick’s, with the bamboo bed frame, white sheets and the hammock across his room. You used to hear him say how much he enjoyed your room over his, something about the ceiling to floor windows that you have. Takes up an entire wall, gives you a great view of the city. Better than the tiny windows he has lining the wall.

The clock says that it’s a little after two. You two really have got to start moving before you miss out on anything inside of the arena. Not to mention, poor Gloss is sitting down there alone. He hasn’t had a friend to sit with since six this morning. A whole eight hours can be boring as hell, and quite frankly, lonely. He might have resorted talking to the sponsors, at this point.

Finnick is still sleeping on the bed, of course. His back is turned to the sun, explaining why he hasn’t woken up just yet. It’s not going to stay that way for very long. You’d leave him sleeping up here if it weren’t for the fact that it’s entertaining to see him hungover. It’s not often you get to see him like that, and you’re not really willing to pass up an opportunity. Plus, you might as well keep him around as company so it doesn’t get awkward later.

Before you wake him up, you find and put on your bra. He got to see all of you last night, there’s no reason to continue to walk around shirtless. You pick up your pants, and tank top, as your shoes are kicked off by the door. You begin to pull on your jeans, having to bounce slightly to pull them up all the way, when Finnick rolls over.

He groans, throwing his arm over his face to keep the sun from getting in his face. You’re satisfied to see that he’s about to get the same unpleasant wakening that you got, until you realize that his arm completely blocks out the light. What a shame, you were looking forward to watching him come to life like a zombie.

“Hey,” your voice is soft, not really wanting to disturb the peace. He doesn’t seem to hear you, or maybe you’re too quiet. You speak a little louder, “We should probably get down to the betting room, check on our tributes.”

Finnick freezes, and then jolts upright. His wide eyes land on you easily, face twisting as he slowly thinks over the scene in front of him. You pull on your tank top, raising your eyebrows as you wait for him to come to the conclusion himself. After a couple more seconds, he hums out a small tune and falls back onto his pillows, closing his eyes.

“I thought I was still at a client’s house for a second.” he breathes.

“Good morning,” you muse, “How are you feeling?”

“Besides the pounding headache, my back’s pretty messed up.” his eyes open, giving you a sly smirk. You grab one of his shoes, which aren’t as close to the door as yours are, and chuck it at him. Finnick laughs loudly, catching the shoe before it makes a hole in the wall, “I’m fine, considering that I finished half of your drink last night on top of mine.”

“One of us had to be responsible, and I figured that you wouldn’t want to be the one.”

“The next time we go out, I’m going to make you loosen up.” Finnick says.

“If you’re calling me uptight, I’ll shove a stick up your ass so you can see how it feels.” you lean against the wall.

He rolls his eyes, getting out of bed. He’s got a pair of boxers on, so he’s not completely naked either, “How are you feeling?”

“Well rested, actually. Your bed is pretty comfortable.”

“You’re welcome to sleep here any time.” Finnick says, kicking yesterday’s jeans into the corner, as well as the shirt.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” you snort, collecting your shoes, “I’m going to take a shower and get ready. I’ll see you in the dining room.”

“Sure.”

You leave his room, shutting the door behind you. In your own, you quickly change and throw the dirty clothes off to the side for easy collecting when the avoxes come around later. It’s not as hot inside of the Tribute Center as it was yesterday, but the heat is still apparent enough to be one of the first things on your mind. You settle for a pair of shorts, sandals and a white tank top.

You throw the pile of clothes onto the bathroom countertop. The door whooshes shut behind you, sending a cold breeze of air straight to your back. Much like yesterday, you turn the shower water to cold, just on the verge of being warm. You decide to skip getting your hair wet, since you don’t really have time to mess around. It’s a quick wash with sweet smelling soaps before you’re out again.

As you’re drying yourself with the cyan blue towel, you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. And with what you see the first time briefly, you have to go back to check that you saw correctly. A scowl appears on your face when you get closer, fingers gently brushing against your collarbone. Little dark marks litter your skin.

You press your lips together, staring for a couple of seconds longer. You have no choice, you have to cover these up. So, you pull on your clothes and get to work with the makeup, trying to find colors that’ll cancel out the hickey colors. You spend a good ten minutes blending, color correcting, and starting over when it’s too obvious. When you’re finally done, you can still tell that they’re there, but it won’t be the first thing anyone sees when they look at you.

You’d just wear a regular shirt if it weren’t for the fact that you’re already sweating with the tanktop on. You put on the sandals on your way out, making sure your ring is secured on your hand. Finnick is already sitting at the dining room table when you get out there, hair wet and he’s dressed in pink and white.

“Took you long enough.” he says, stabbing his fork into a pancake piece and placing it in his mouth.

You glare as you sit down on the chair, “I had a problem. Actually, you gave me a couple of problems and I solved them.”

His face twists, eyeing you now, trying to find the difference. When a plate of pancakes is served in front of you, plate hot to the touch, you cut up the pancakes, slightly amused by his determination to try and prove you wrong. Does he really think that he’ll be able to? You’ve gone through this plenty of times before with Anchor.

Finnick shrugs, “Whatever you say.”

At least now you have insurance that you did a good job. Finnick might be some type of moronic but that doesn’t mean he misses details. It’s the small things that you have to look out for. Another skill that you need when you’re mentoring, another thing to add to the list that you’ve gotten good at after these years. From what you remember, Finnick’s not too bad at it, himself.

The avox turns on the tv without either of you asking, but you thank him anyway. As you go for fruits instead of syrup this morning, you catch up on the arena with Finnick. Sanguin is in the cornucopia, a fire going in front of her. She’s got some sort of animal skewered using her sword, roasting it over the fire. She looks pissed, staring into the fire, letting the flames flicker in her eyes.

You’d like to say that she finally lost her mind, but she lost it a long time ago. Way before Bauhinia. Maybe while she was being strategically trained to think that the other tributes in the arena were animals? Or maybe when she volunteered for the Hunger Games like it would be a walk in the park? It’s hard to say exactly, there’s a lot of moments in these past few weeks where she could’ve gone wrong.

At any rate, she’s got enough water to last her a while. You can confidently say that she won’t be leaving the cornucopia unless it’s to get more food. There’s no way that the sponsors are going to cough up any money just for her to eat. Especially when she’s supposed to be trained for the arena. She should know how to hunt and gather. Besides, you’re sure that Gloss would want them to wait until it’s something important, like that healing cream. Even then, it took a couple of people to pitch in. The prices are getting amped up, it’s harder to pay for things now.

You have a feeling that she’s sitting down there for a reason, instead of going off and trying to hunt down any other tributes. She’s healed by now, you watched her put more healing cream on her body last night before she decided to call it a night. Which means that this morning, the entire wound has got to be gone. She’s still going to be sore when moving around, but that’s an obvious nuisance. She technically should be able to work through it.

So, if she’s not interested in hunting Tekla, that means she’s waiting for Annie to come out of the village. And you’d say that’s a pretty big problem, except for the fact that it’s not. Annie’s got plenty of food and water from her raid on the career backpacks and whatever Marsh was holding before he died. If she doesn’t want to, she won’t have to leave the house unless it’s for some sort of Capitol-generated emergency.

After yesterday, you can’t see them doing something like that. You don’t even think that both tributes dying were intentional. They like to watch the last couple of teens fight it out, since they’re the ones that are either: one, completely trained for the arena and know how to take another tribute out with a simple tree branch and a rock. Or, they’re completely lucky and know how to blend into their surroundings and stay there until the Capitol is forced to step in. They only do it when there’s been several days without any interaction between tributes and the Capitol citizens are starting to riot.

Those tributes are the ones that can go days without food. Water, not so much, but they’ll find a source nearby and stick with it as long as they can without getting suspicious. It’s not an impressive feat to go days without eating, it just goes to show the horrible living conditions inside of the other districts. Fortunately, your family hit rock bottom, but you never had to keep digging.

As for Annie, she’s still looking pretty dead inside of her house. She’s moved to a different corner that gives her a better look to see. It looks like she’ll doze off for a second before jerking upright, hand tightening around her sword. You saw her sleep last night, it was the whole reason why you and Finnick decided it was acceptable to leave the betting room in the first place. With the peace of mind of knowing that Annie was finally getting the rest she needed.

When you were at the bar, you didn’t really keep track of what was going on inside of the arena. Which, looking back on it, probably wasn’t a brilliant idea in the first place. If there was an emergency with Annie, knowing as soon as possible would’ve hypothetically saved her life. But you also just wanted one moment for yourself, with Finnick and a drink. It wasn’t much to ask for, and you’re sure that it was well-deserved. If it wasn’t, Annie would be dead in a ditch right now.

To some extent, she might as well be. While Sanguin is fueled with hate-fire right now--literally. Annie looks like her soul has been ripped out of her body. She’s pale, the previous kind girl light in her eyes is gone. She looks like a corpse, freshly pulled out of the coffin. You wish you’ve seen this before, because maybe that would make it easier to understand why she isn’t grieving like normal. Normally, tributes cry for hours, sometimes days until they have to pull it together to win. Annie is just… she’s completely lifeless. Actually, she looks like she’s given up with trying to survive inside of the arena. Which is a dangerous mindset to adapt, especially now.

Just two more tributes to burn through, all she has to do is hold on. Let Sanguin and Tekla fight it out, hope that one kills the other, and the one gets severely injured enough to bleed out and die. It would make the whole thing a lot easier on her, you know that. The last thing she’d probably need on her plate right now, is another death. She’s already got two genuinely impressive ones--taking out the male careers? You’re the only other person who has done that in the past five years. And she’s witnessed the death that would affect her, and it’s taking its toll already. It’s been two days.

Well, as long as Annie stays where she is, eats, drinks and sleeps when she needs to, she won’t have to worry about anything. However, this idea also goes for Sanguin, on the assumption that Tekla isn’t bold enough to go ahead and attack her uninvited. Sanguin’s also set for days--if she has extra food stored somewhere in the case of emergencies.

The only person that might get bored and start causing havoc is Tekla. She’s in the woods by herself, in a patch of grass unguarded by trees. She lays in the sun with her eyes closed, hands laced behind her head. Looking exactly like she did on the first couple of days inside of the arena. This time, she has a good reason to be carefree. Before, she had more than ten other tributes to worry about, all fighting to go home. Now it’s down to two others. It should be a walk in the park, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s being put up against two careers.

You wonder what her odds look like right now. They hadn’t changed last night, not even after she killed Seven boy. But now that it officially looks like she’s going to make it to one of the final fights and be crowned victor, she’s gotta have moved up. District Nine hasn’t had a victor in a long, long time. Their last one was a guy, and he’s the first male to be put into the mentor spot. If you remember correctly, there’s only five victors in Nine, which means that four of them are female.

Figures that their new potential victor would be a girl, right?

It looks like you don’t really have anything to worry about arena-wise. Really, if you wanted to, you could just stay inside of the apartment. With half-alive Annie, vengeful Sanguin and cheerful Tekla, it’s safe to say that today’s a free day. Things could change, but that’s just your prediction. The only reason you’d have to go down to the betting room is to show up for Gloss, but he doesn’t really matter, does he? You can just go and see him tomorrow.

“You’ve got a look on your face.” Finnick says, your eyes find him to see that he’s staring.

“So?” you stab a strawberry and place it in your mouth, resisting the momentary sour expression before the sweetness takes over.

“It’s your indecisive look.”

Now, your face twists, “I do not have an indecisive look--”

He laughs, “It’s unmistakable! You get the look when you’re thinking over something important.”

“Like a decision?” you ask, trying to be serious, but you end up laughing.

He seems to let it go for a moment, until he’s looking at you again, “What was it?”

You shrug, “I was just thinking that we wouldn’t have to go down to the betting room if we didn’t want to. The silence in the arena gives us a couple of liberties that we wouldn’t have on a normal day.”

“Oh, so you do have a relaxed side.” Finnick thoroughly enjoys the face you make, raising your fist as a threat to punch him in the arm again. You wonder how far he can push you before you finally give him a nasty bruise, “And you also woke me up for nothing.”

“Technically you woke yourself, I just spoke.” you shrug, “Can I get some more coffee?”

“Might as well go back to bed while I can, then.” Finnick says, but he doesn’t move from where he’s sitting.

You wait, receive your coffee, and let him stare at you for a little while, “What are you waiting for?”

“It wouldn’t be responsible--” he mocks the word in your voice, “--to go back to bed, wouldn’t it?”

You glare, “Finnick, you have the night shift, anyway. Stay awake, go back to bed, get drunk at The Victory Speech, have dinner with Gloss, I don’t give a shit.”

“You seem like you want me to go away.” he says, “I think I’ll stick with you, then.”

“Fine by me.” you scoop up your coffee mug, taking it with you when you go downstairs to sit on the couch. You pull out a coaster to not ruin the pristine glass table.

There’s not much to watch the tributes do at all. Sanguin roasts her food, and you think she ends up daydreaming some, because she burns the bottom side of the meat. Doesn’t even wrinkle her nose or look fazed when she bites straight into that part, even when it disintegrates in her mouth the more she chews. After she’s done eating, she moves to the back of the cornucopia, hiding behind a stack of boxes to take a nap.

Annie turns her knife over in her hand, spinning it between her fingers before she knicks herself one too many times. After that, she settles for pulling out a line of rope from her backpack, tying and untying knots. It’s a common hobby that people use to soothe anxiety and pass time when there’s nothing else to do. Doesn’t surprise you that she’s resorted to this. Although, you do begin to worry slightly when you watch her jump at the slightest of sounds and nearly get up every single time to check.

You’d say it’s a reasonable response, thinking that Sanguin is after her. But the house creaks the same way every time, lets out the same groan each time the wind blows too hard. It’s not like they’re new sounds. She should’ve picked up on this by now, realized that there’s no need to get ready to hurry into battle. Watching her grab her knife, lean forward, and listen for any other sounds over and over begins to make you feel antsy.

“There’s something wrong with Annie.” Finnick says.

You hum, “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“What do you think it is?”

You shake your head, “Still working on that idea.”

“Anything you’ve seen before?”

“If I have, I don’t remember.” You lean back into the couch, “Let’s just wait and see how bad it gets.”

And the truth is, it gets worse, because it can always get worse. The good news is that you’ve figured out how to help her, on top of figuring out the problem in the first place. The bad news is that it requires a sponsor. And like you said earlier, all the prices have gone up. Getting one now would be a nightmare, but you have to try anyway.

As you go down to the betting room with Finnick, you think it over.

Annie is suffering from paranoia. She’s obviously shell-shocked from watching Marsh die, otherwise she would be acting normally. You guess that allowing two tributes that have known each other for a handful of years, go inside of the arena together wasn’t the brightest idea. But it’s not like you could control it. You don’t think that they even planned for it to happen, it was just a coincidence.

This is just one part of the problem, watching Marsh die. She also might be feeling guilty because she didn’t try harder to keep him from going. It makes the most sense. She tried to convince him to stay, but the second he showed resistance, she caved and followed. Guilt like this will haunt someone forever. If she wins, she’ll be stuck with thinking that Marsh could’ve gone a better way.

You know this, because you carry around a considerable amount of guilt, too.

The last part, concerning Annie, is the fact that she hasn’t slept in a while. Paranoia feeds off insomnia. Getting an hour or two of sleep after watching your friend die right in front of you, in arguably one of the worst ways possible, is an unfortunate series of events. She can’t prevent not being able to sleep, so you’ll just help her as best as you can.

When you presented all of this to Finnick, he agreed. Said that he was thinking something along the lines of what you are. The only hiccup that he’s worried about is finding sponsors wealthy enough to sponsor this late into the games. They also have to be betting on her too, so that if she does win, they’ll get the return in full.

The betting room seems slightly busier than usual. Like you predicted earlier, Gloss decided to go ahead and take company in the Capitol people. Tekla’s mentor seems busy off in the corner, with people that don’t look like they nearly have enough money to sponsor this late in the game. It wouldn’t be any use trying to steal them, just a waste of time.

Gloss knows people, but that would mean to interrupt what he’s doing right now, which seems fairly important. The group of people that Finnick had approved of is thin, pooling their money together wouldn't even buy a loaf of bread. Much less what you’re thinking about right now.

It only leaves a couple of people, ones you haven’t talked to in days. You stop a couple of steps inside of the room, allowing Finnick to come in and shut the door behind him. He waits there for a moment, before coming around the side.

“What are you waiting for?” His voice is slightly hushed. No one has really taken notice of your appearance just yet. If needed, you could probably slip out the door and no one would know the difference.

You look at him.

You made an agreement, take his advice on who to be around and who to stay away from, and he’ll help you. You thought that it would be easy then, because you didn’t need the sponsors. Annie and Marsh had a strategy down, they didn’t look like they’d be needed help anytime soon. They had everything they needed at the moment. But now that Annie needs something more, you’re stuck.

Having Finnick around to be a second body, a second pair of hands and eyes and ears, has made a difference. You’ve slept well, you’ve been allowed to hang out with friends when given the opportunity, and you can finally pace yourself. No more running around like it’s life or death, or being afraid to sleep because an arena is particularly dangerous.

However, you can do it alone. Annie’s needs right now is going to come before whatever requirements Finnick has. Bringing a tribute home is crucial, buddying with Finnick is a perk. If he gets mad at you for this, there's always next year.

“I need you to come with me and not intervene, or go back upstairs.” You say, squeezing the finger your ring is on.

His face twists, “It depends—“

“No. You go upstairs, or you don’t intervene.” You start towards the sponsors, “I mean it, Finnick.”

You’re not even halfway across the room before they spot you. You smile at them, letting them welcome you. When you don’t feel Finnick’s presence behind you like normal, you turn to look. The door is sweeping shut, you briefly catch a glimpse of him leaving.

The sponsors are happy to see you again, you talk with them for a while, and watch what goes on inside of the arena. It’s all small talk, or questions about what you feel like is going to happen. Until they finally bring up Annie, how she’s doing. And just because you can’t hold it in, you spill it all out, being completely honest with them.

Annie is hurting right now, and she can’t help it. She can’t simply fall asleep because she’s afraid of the nightmares and the vulnerability that comes with it. There’s always the possibility that her body simply isn’t letting her sleep, too. She’s not physically tired, so why would she lay down and try? So, you think that if you find something that’ll make her drowsy, she’ll feel more inclined to.

You can’t guarantee that it’ll work, but it’s worth a try if it means that she wins the games, right? The sponsors seem to think so, and with a budget, you bring them over to the sponsoring table. Everything under the sun is allowed to be sent to them. Name it, and thye’re probably have it. It’s just the price that makes it impossible to work around.

You know for sure that pills are out of the question. The second you see the price, you’re switching gears. Medicine? Maybe. You look at all the options they have for tributes for when they’re sick. You’ve seen a handful of these brands in District Four, all of them expensive. With the money that the Capitol gives you, you can finally afford them. Which means that Alyssum doesn’t have to suffer through colds like before. The medicine works wonders, but the Capitol version will be too much for her to handle. It might as well be a tranquilizer.

Something more natural, then. Those are always cheaper. You go through it, seeing the little vials of brightly colored liquids and the contents. Ones to make you throw up, give adrenaline if the tribute is dying, allergy medicine to save them from anaphylactic shock. And finally, one for sleeping. Without a moment of hesitance, you tap on it.

They all pitch in a certain amount, allowing the vial to be covered in full. You thank them, with assurance that it won’t go to waste. Annie is a tough tribute, she’ll be able to win. All she needs is a little sleep to reset her body, hopefully start her over. It’s like shutting something completely off before trying again.

You take a breath before writing on the paper, ‘Drink it all’.

You get to stand back and watch as the gamemakers find the best way to send it to her. You don’t doubt that she’ll hear the noise that the gifts make. Especially if she’s hearing noises that aren’t being picked up on the microphones. It’s where they have to drop it off to make sure it doesn’t get caught on anything on the way down, like a corner of a roof.

The chiming is a sound that you still hear in your nightmares. You watch as the silver parachute glides through the air, slowly moving between the houses. At first, it doesn’t seem to alarm Annie, but then she jolts, pauses to make sure she’s hearing it right, and then gets up. She shoves her knife into her belt, carefully goes down the stairs so that it doesn’t break beneath her.

She looks more alive like this, the color has returned to her face slightly, she’s got a smile hinting at the corner of her lips. When she finally comes out of the house, swinging the door open and letting in the natural light, she cries out in shock and covers her eyes. She mutters out a few curse words, squinting through the sun until her eyes adjust.

She spots the gift in the middle of the walkway. The smile grows more, scooping the tin into her hand. She gives the area around her a little look-around before disappearing back into the house, shutting the door and locking it. Even though it looks like the lock won’t do much for her anymore. The doorknob is practically falling off.

She makes it all the way to the third floor, back into the corner of her room. She slips down the wall and pops open the lid of the container. The first thing that Annie sees inside is the note, which she reads over carefully before moving it out of the way for the vial. It’s small, not at all as big as they normally sell them earlier on, but those ones also have the tendency to knock a person out for a whole day. This will just keep her asleep for a few hours, maybe the entire night if she drinks it now. You hope that she’ll be up at a reasonable time tomorrow.

Annie uncaps it carefully, and takes a small sniff. You can’t imagine that she recognizes the smell, even though it is sort-of distinct. If the medicine is fresh, it’ll usually smell sweet. If it’s not, then it’s stale, maybe a little sour. Obviously, one is more desirable than the other, but it works the same either way. Whether or not it’s fresh doesn’t affect the way it works.

When Annie is satisfied with the smell, she goes ahead and caps it again. There’s no directions, so she’s going to have to decide how she wants to do this. The sun will be setting in an hour, maybe two. Annie eats some dry foods, drinks some water. It’s smart, her wanting to get food into her body beforehand. If it were you, you probably would’ve just settled for drinking it straight, it might have worked faster that way.

She drinks it, slipping to the floor. She pulls the sleeping bag over herself, closing her eyes. It’s going to take a second to kick in, but it’s enough time for you to go upstairs and out of the betting room. You’ll be back down here bright and early tomorrow, there’s no point spending more time than you have to.

You thank the sponsors, shake hands and exchange hugs. Before you leave the room, you see that the Afternoon Line Odds are all the same. Sanguin’s is 2-1, Annie is 3-1, Tekla is 7-1. All very good odds, but not as good as Sanguin. Hopefully, that’ll change within the next couple of days. You leave the room before Gloss can see that you’re down there.

You spent a good hour or so just talking to the sponsors. The fastest part was getting them to agree on sending Annie a gift. It wasn’t nearly as bad as you thought it would be. Finnick makes all of them out to be like criminals, constantly looking for their next fix. But they understand that you’re not like that. They can have their eyes on you all they want, it’s not going to happen.

Just before you go inside of the apartment, you’re sure that Finnick isn’t going to be out in the living room, or he’s not going to be inside of the apartment all together. However, when you step inside, you’re surprised to see that he’s on the couch, his arms crossed. He doesn’t bother to look over, not even after you shut the door. You almost feel guilty for doing what you did.

Almost.

You sit on the couch next to him, pull your legs up beneath you, and sit in silence. There’s no point to try and talk to him right now. You know that he’d probably like a moment to cool off. It might even be better if you didn’t sit in here at all, so he won’t be fuming next to you. But it’s not like you have much of a choice. You can’t just go back downstairs and sit in the betting room, that would be stupid. If Finnick’s right about the sponsors, there’s no reason to stay around them more than you have to.

So, silence it is. It’s a while before either of you have anything to talk about. Annie should be asleep by now, an entire hour later. There’s no way that the vial would take more than five minutes, even with a full stomach. Still, you watch as her eyes open, a frown appearing on her face, eyebrows turning in.

Your mouth falls open, you stand from the couch, “That’s not good.”

“What did you give her in the first place?” Finnick asks.

“It’s one of those natural sleeping medicines, the expensive ones?” you briefly look at him, before you go back to the tv, “Costed a fortune, so it should’ve worked. The gamemakers wouldn’t send a dud, right?”

“Probably not.”

You sit back down onto the couch, hands falling into your lap. You made sure that it was the sleeping medicine, and not the sick stuff either. The only other option that was left for Annie besides this, was the herbal tea. And that shit hardly ever works for you, or your siblings when you use it back home. The most the tea would do anyway, is make her drowsy, not even a guarantee.

It’s a good thing that you didn’t even consider the tea, because if the vial did nothing, Annie would be able to drink the entire box of tea and still not feel a single thing. The medicine was a waste of money, and who knows what it’s going to do to her. Make her even more delirious than she already is? Like she, or you guys, need that at all. You were already worried over her paranoia, now you’ve got to be worried about her accidentally killing herself?

There’s nothing you can do about it now. You’ve just got to sit back and wait to see if it kicks in, after all. There’s no point in going downstairs to tell the sponsors it was some sort of mistake, because you really didn’t know that this was going to happen. If you did, you probably wouldn’t have bothered in the first place. Everything is worth a try until it’s wasting resources. You might have been able to use the sponsor money later on.

Still, you have to sit and painfully watch as Annie progressively gets worse. Turns out, that if you don’t fall asleep with the medicine, it starts to work as a hallucinogenic. On top of Annie’s paranoia, she’s not hallucinating she’s hearing noises, and maybe even seeing things. You close your eyes and rest them against your palms when you lean forward, not really liking to hear Annie go through it.

It’s stupid. You’re not even sure how Annie’s resisting the drug, anyway. She’s not doing it on purpose, she clearly recognized the smell if she laid down immediately after. And it’s not like they had any sort of drugs available for hallucinations. No mentor would willingly give their tributes something like that, so why would it be offered?

No matter what happens, though, you’re glad to see that Annie doesn’t leave the house. She stays where she is, clutching onto her knife, staring into space. She’s just like how she was before you sent her the sponsor gift. Only this time around, she’ll randomly jump as if there’s been a loud sound, and then her eyes will follow things in front of her, even when there’s nothing there.

Elysia comes into the apartment around the same time you guys normally eat dinner, a little out of breath, “Oh, there you guys are!”

You look over your shoulder to see that she’s dressed in lime green and black. The black helps accentuate the green part, which you’re not really sure is a good thing. You’re sure that everyone can see her coming from a mile away, literally.

“You were looking for us?” you ask, she nods, heading over to you and Finnick.

“In the betting room, I thought you’d be down there since you normally are.”

Figures that the one time you wouldn’t be down there, she’d go, “Looked like there wasn’t much going on today so I thought we could stay up here. I only went down there to send the gift.”

“I saw that.” she says, “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

You three do it over dinner. With Elysia hardly eating and doing most of the talking, Finnick watching the tv and only chiming in when he’s needed, and you trying to do all three at the same time. It’s easy for the most part. Remember when you said that you got good at multitasking? This is an example of that.

She mostly tells you what you already figured out, which is that it turns out to be a hallucinogenic after a while. It should wear off, but it’ll take hours to do. Like, for the amount of time she should have been asleep for. She’s already got a couple of hours under her belt, you’d say that by tomorrow morning, she’ll be back to normal. So, there’s no reason to sit around and wait.

You and Finnick can get a full night of sleep for once. You just have to get up early tomorrow morning to assess the damage. You’re sure that it’ll be fairly easy to do, you’ll have to get yourself into the habit of waking up early again, anyway. You’ve got the boarding school to worry about. Anchor won’t want to do it alone forever.

Before you give it up tonight, you check the tv one last time. Annie is in her room, so she’s fine. Sanguin looks like she’s officially laying down to sleep, her weapons are displayed around her, all ready to be picked up and used at any time. As for Tekla, she’s made a bed in her little clearing in the trees. However, she’s bold, with a fire going that is distinguishable in the dark. She’s lucky that the back of the cornucopia is turned towards her, otherwise Sanguin would be more than tempted to take Tekla out.

You head back to your room after dinner, mainly to brush your teeth. You pace in your room for a moment, caught in the decision of whether or not to talk to Finnick or to leave him to be angry on his own. You’re sure that he’d appreciate being by himself, but there’s also this morning and last night to talk about. You can’t really just leave those alone, who knows what kinds of problems they’ll cause in the future.

“Okay.” you sigh, heading out of your room and to his. You knock on his door, waiting a second, “Finnick?”

It’s a couple more beats of silence, “Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

You open the door to see that Finnick is sitting on the corner of the bed. He looks up when you step inside, you shut it behind you, and lean against the door, “I’m sorry about earlier. I know we had an agreement, but the sponsors were at my disposal. I decided that I might as well, because I was sure that it would work.”

“And it should’ve.” Finnick mutters, “I would just like it if you wouldn’t go and do it again.”

“Yeah, I won’t. I don’t even have the options for it.” you laugh slightly, he cracks a smile, “You should probably know that I prioritize my mentoring job over everything else. If it’s the needs of the tributes versus you, I’m going to pick the tributes every time.”

“I know, you don’t have to be sorry for it.”

“Good, cause I wasn’t.” you grin.

Finnick rolls his eyes, “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

“You can probably guess what it is.”

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with the horribly covered up hickeys, would it?” He’s cheeky now.

“Maybe.” you give him a soft smile, “I’d just like to know what we’re doing, and if we’re going to continue on with it.”

Finnick makes a face, “This is going to sound like shit, but I’ll go with what you want.”

“You’re right, it does sound like shit.” he laughs first, and then you join in, “The thing is, Finnick, is that I don’t have a problem with it. But the last time I checked, you were the one that told me that we weren’t good together. So are you sure that you’ll go with what I want, or are you going to break up with me in a couple of months after you realize it again?”

Finnick opens his mouth, and then closes it. “I deserve that.”

“It wasn’t an explanation, Finnick. In fact, it made things worse when we were just fine on the train, and then you come back from seeing Snow and--!” you’re shaking your head, giving yourself a moment before you start speaking again, “and suddenly I was supposed to know that we weren’t together anymore.”

“But you know why now, right?” Finnick asks.

“Parts of it.” you rub on the ring, “I know that it was because of Snow and the sex work. He made you break up with me to make you more available to the Capitol, right?”

“No, I actually made that decision myself.” he says.

You raise your eyebrows.

Finnick stares, tilts his head for a moment like he’s unsure, “There’s more to it.”

You wait, thinking that he’s just going to give up the information, but he doesn’t, “Okay…?”

“I don’t want to make you feel guilty.”

“Then why’d you say anything at all?”

He laughs, “To not make me look like an asshole.”

You snort.

“Alright well,” Finnick pauses, “President Snow had me taken to his mansion after the train, you know this. He told me that it’s not uncommon for victors to be well received by the Capitol, but I was different because I was handsome or whatever,” his face twists, “And since I was sixteen, I was finally eligible since it’s more morally correct to sell a teen into sex slavery when they’re sixteen and not fourteen.

“Snow said that I didn’t have a choice. I had to get into it or…” Finnick shakes his head, “There wasn’t even an or at the time. He just said that it was something I had to do, and I told him no, because I was finally feeling better and I had you. Then he urged me to say yes, didn’t even tell me that there would be consequences, so I told him no again….”

He’s angry, “And he fucking killed my entire family, gave the order right in front of me. I thought he was kidding, like it was some sort of sick joke until I had to fucking listen to it.” Finnick looks at you, “He didn’t even flinch when the screaming started, or when my brother started crying. I didn’t even know what to do. And after it was over he told me that the next person he’d kill next would likely be you, or your family if he could get to them. Or worse, sell your body too.”

You can feel the blood drain from your face.

“And I didn’t want that to happen, so I said yes. And then I broke up with you because I hoped that it would make the decision a whole lot easier but I think…” he grits his teeth, “I know it would’ve been easier with you to support me.”

No words form in your mouth, you stand in silence as you try to absorb the information.

“I’m…” your eyebrows draw in, “...selfish.”

“No.” Finnick says, “You’re not. You didn’t know, how were you supposed to? I told you nothing, I wanted a clean cut but it turned out to be messy, I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing, Finnick?” you look at him, “I’ve been giving you a hard time--why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you come around later?”

“Because you moved on, like you should’ve.”

“I didn’t!” you laugh, moving forward, “Finnick, I hardly spoke to anyone after the year we broke up. My brothers fucking hated you for that entire year because of it. It took forever to convince them otherwise. The entire time, I was hoping that you were going to come around and tell me that it was some stupid prank. I would’ve forgiven you!”

He gives you a smile, “It’s better that I didn’t.”

You give him a look, and then sit on the hammock, “I guess that explains a lot.”

“You guess?” He laughs, “That’s it?”

“There’s not much to say, Finnick.” you shrug, “You said you didn’t want to make me feel guilty and I do anyway.”

“I didn’t have a choice. If you want, you could thank me for saying yes.”

You stare at him, he develops a cheeky smile, “Come on, that was mildly funny.”

“Mildly is the key word.”

The two of you sit in silence for a second, and then you dip your head, “I would be willing to give it another try, if you are.”

“Yeah.”

He’s got a grin on his face, like you just told him he’s getting a car for christmas.

“My brother’s will have to warm up to you again.” you warn him.

“Okay! They liked me before, right? What’s one more time?”

“They hardly give out second chances so you’ll have to consider yourself lucky.”

Finnick softly smiles, “I already am.”

A sharp pain in your chest wakes you in the morning. Your eyes shoot open, sitting upright in bed. It spreads immediately, like your heart is pumping it out; the source of the problem. You try and take a deep breath, hoping that you’ll get your mind off of it, but it makes the pain worse. Mid-breath, you stop, and exhale too deeply, causing another shock to go through you.

A groan leaves your lips, tears appearing in your eyes. You carefully get out of bed, wanting to be on your feet, hoping that laying down was the problem. You make no sudden moves, allowing the blood to make its way to your feet as you pace the room. With your palm, you rub small circles around your chest, which seems to relieve some of the pressure.

The clock on the stand reads eight in the morning, four hours before you actually have to get up and get ready for the day. You have a feeling that if you go and lie back down now, right when the pain is beginning to subside, you’re only going to make it worse. Plus, you don’t think that you’ll be able to fall back asleep, not with the adrenaline running through your body.

You take deep breaths when it doesn’t hurt, starting to feel dizzy from the self-hyperventilation. In no time, the pain is almost completely gone, only lingering in aches every now and then. You stand around for a few minutes longer, watching the sun rise high enough to finally come through the window before deciding that you might as well get ready.

The Tribute Center seems to have found its happy medium between too hot and too cold, as last night it was like existing in a frozen tundra. You’re lucky that the blanket they provide retains heat, otherwise you would’ve been bundled up a lot more than you were. Because of this, you think that you can settle for a lukewarm shower.

You lock your bedroom door before disappearing into the bathroom. The shower runs in the background as you undress, throwing all the dirty clothes by the door. You look over the tattoo on your collarbone, which is practically done healing by now. With the cream that the tattoo artist gave you, it doesn’t take weeks to heal like it does in the districts. As for the one on the back of your neck, it looks like it was done yesterday, when really it was years ago.

When you step inside the shower, you allow the water to run through your hair. You might as well wash it today. The shampoo you use smells like straight sugar, same goes for the conditioner. The bottle says it’s good for your hair, but the list of chemicals on the back is seriously concerning. The bathroom provides a matching body wash that smells exactly like the shampoo. You know for a fact that you saw a body lotion in one of the drawers, a part of you wonders if that’ll be overkill.

You turn the shower off and let the machines dry your body and hair. You decide to use the body lotion anyway, and by the time you realize that it’s glittery, it’s too late. You stare at your hands for a couple of minutes in shame, watching the white shimmer in the light. However, when it’s completely spread over your body and dried, it doesn’t transfer onto your surroundings, so that’s a good sign.

You brush your teeth while manually putting your hair together. You go for half-up, half-down since it’ll keep most of the hair out of your face. In the end, you still pull out a few strands to make sure that your face isn’t bland. Before you can do anything else, you have to get dressed.

The dresser holds plenty of skirts to work with, which you’re not opposed to. You sift through them, figuring that white will be fine. When you hold it up to your hip, you see that the skirt ends above the knee, so Finnick won’t have a reason to freak out. As for the shirt, you settle for a light pink, scoop neck bodysuit, with white underwear. When you finally get the entire outfit put together, you look at yourself in the mirror.

You’re very pretty today. The skirt doesn’t ride up too bad, even when you move quickly. The bodysuit prevents anything serious from showing, just in case the skirt does find a way to get stuck, or you spin too fast. You apply mascara, pull on white slip-on tennis shoes and the ring. Needless to say, you’re looking extremely girly today.

The clock says it’s reaching nine, you’d say that breakfast will take thirty, and then you can meet Finnick in the betting room at ten. So, you go out to the dining room to see that Elysia is nowhere to be seen. You refuse to believe that she left before you got up, she has to be sleeping in. Normal Capitol people stay up late and rise at noon. But then again, Elysia is an escort and she’s far from normal sometimes.

An avox turns on the tv, so you sit down at the table and wait as they serve brunch in front of you. It’s hashbrowns, steak, and a bowl of assorted fruit. You pick through your food, not super hungry and in the mood for all of it. Nevertheless, you’re sure to thank the avox that serves it to you, and continues to come back around to give you orange juice and coffee.

The arena screen is split into three, which isn’t new. It was like this last night, since there aren't many tributes to focus on at the moment. If there’s only three, you might as well show all of them and what they’re doing. At least one of them has to be doing something mildly interesting.

Tekla is still in her small clearing in the trees, which is fairly close to the dam, now that the gamemakers have marked it on the map. It’s a beautiful place to rest, you’d even picnic there if you had the opportunity. It’s not a good spot, though. It’s too close to the dam, too easy to kill her if and when it breaks. Still, she lays on her back, eyes closed. You can’t tell if she’s awake or not, but you’re going to guess that she is, judging by how her hands are intertwined over her stomach.

If she were sleeping, she’d probably be more annoyed by the sun. Instead, she’s directly under it, which might actually end up giving her a sunburn if she isn’t careful. That’ll be miserable to work with inside of the arena. You can’t even do anything to remedy the burn this far in, except for natural leaves and plants. You can’t think of any off the top of your head that you’ve seen so far.

Sanguin is in the cornucopia, she’s awake and stretching. She doesn’t look tired, despite the fact that it’s obvious that she just got up. Judging by her ratty blonde hair and the way her face twists each time she leans over. She stands up straight, and then grins slightly, turning around and going back inside. She combs through her hair with her fingers and sits on the edge of a box, sword right next to her. Maybe she’s planning on going out hunting today? You hope she doesn’t actually think she’ll get anything out of the village.

Especially with how awful Annie is looking. She’s got her arms wrapped around her body, knees pulled to her chest. The good news is that she looks to be asleep, mouth slightly open, leaned up against the connecting wall in the corner. But she’s got deep purple bags beneath her eyes, she’s only recently fallen asleep. You wonder how long it’ll last before she’s jolting awake.

It’s good that she’s sleeping, with no thanks to the medicine that you sent her. It probably drove her insane into early this morning, like you said would happen last night. You’d say that it’s a good thing, but with the way that Sanguin keeps looking to the village, it’s not. Annie needs to get up and be ready for a fight. Unfortunately, there’s no way you can warn her of this. You’re all out of options.

You finish your food, thank the avoxes, and leave for the betting room. There’s not a lot going on right now, it’s early morning. Everything big that happens in the arena is normally dedicated towards the afternoon to the evening, for the gamemakers at least. As for the tributes, they’re welcome to make and wreak havoc as they please, when they see fit.

The betting room is quiet and empty when you get down there. Finnick and Gloss are sitting by each other on the couch. You hold the doorknob on the door, carefully setting it against the doorframe so that they won’t hear you. If they thought that you scaring them was bad when they were semi-expecting you, it’s going to be worse when you’re supposed to be sleeping.

You stand behind them for a moment, squinting down at them, wondering if they have the same sixth sense that you do when people are standing over you. Your question is answered when Finnick barely glances over his shoulder, and then jumps three feet in the air when he realizes that they’re not alone. Gloss has the same moment, inhaling sharply.

A laugh erupts from you as you go around the couch to sit on the arm next to Finnick, “You two are too easy.”

“You’re like a fucking ghost, I didn’t even hear you come in.” Gloss says.

“That was on purpose.” you cross a leg beneath your thigh, “Woke up early by accident, thought that it wouldn’t hurt to come down and keep you two company for a little while.”

“Well, the afternoon schedule was nice while it lasted.” Finnick mutters.

Your face twists, you look down at him, “You’re a bad liar. There’s no way you like waking up at midnight and going to bed at noon.”

Finnick tilts his head for a moment, making a face, “I mean…”

You slap the side of his head before he can say anything else, “You don’t have to prove you’re a teenage boy.”

The Morning Line Odds say that everyone is still at where they were yesterday, so there’s no need to take in new information. You’re really just left to sit and wait for anything important to happen inside of the arena. In the meantime, you talk to Finnick and Gloss about the unusual silence. With your guys’ luck, it’s not going to last very long. There’s no way that the gamemakers will allow two normal days in a row.

However, today’s the ninth day of the games. You’re sure they’re going to want to keep it going on for a little while longer, so maybe they will allow fate to be in the tribute’s hands. In that case, you all might as well buckle up for a long day, because it’s going to take hours for Sanguin to make it to Annie, with the pace she’s going right now.

It’s almost ten in the morning when people begin showing up inside of the betting room. All brightly dressed, and particularly chatty this morning. This is when you decide to officially sit between Finnick and Gloss, not wanting the sponsors to see that you’re in a skirt today. Finnick seems happy, which is all that matters.

Unfortunately, Annie wakes up. She jolts, eyes flying open as she reaches for her knife. She gets to her feet without a word, carefully making her way across the bedroom to the window, where she rubs it down to look outside of it. Her eyebrows are drawn together, staring straight at the dam.

She seems satisfied for a second, gently nodding to herself. She goes to move away, until Sanguin comes into clear view. For half a second, you think to yourself that it’s a good thing that Annie is paranoid, because she just spotted the threat she’s been waiting for. After that, Annie scoops up all of her belongings, not leaving a single trace that she was there, besides the now-clean window.

She carefully goes down the steps, making it to the base floor without falling through the floorboards. Outside, she takes a deep breath, shuts the door and tries to jam some rocks beneath the door to make it harder to open. She tiptoes in grass to make sure that there’s no footprints, makes it a few houses over before she even considers walking through the dirt again.

None of it matters in the end.

A thunderous crack echoes throughout the arena so loudly that it breaks the microphones and makes several people scream out in surprise. You all watch in deafening silence as the dam continues to crack, and water begins to spurt out in large streams.

Your heart pounds in your chest. Today is the day.

You stand from the couch, moving a few feet forward to see better. Finnick and Gloss join you, not a single word passes between you three as you watch in awe. If such small cracks are already sprouting in streams big enough to create rivers, then how will the rest of the water fare? You have no choice but to wait and watch.

The screen is now in four, with one long screen on top completely dedicated to the dam, and three bottom squares for the tributes.

Tekla is on her feet, already rushing down the hill. She’s got no weapons on her hand, no backpack to weigh her down. She’s left it all behind in her peaceful circle in the woods. She whips through bushes, swings around trees, barely makes it over root and rocks on her way down. She’s freaked, struggling to keep her hair out of her face, constantly tucking it behind her ears.

Her feet look like they have a mind of their own, though. With the way that she goes down, it’s almost like she’s dancing, how flowery it is. However, her panic isn’t easily masked. She’s obviously shaking, and sometimes she’ll fuck up and have to catch herself before it’s too late.

Sanguin is standing on top of the hill, everything still on her as she stares at the water making its way towards her. Her eyebrows are pushed together, trying to assess the situation and if it’s worth worrying over. The answer is yes, because it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the concrete blows, and she’s left with a real problem. She slowly turns her back to it, picking up her pace, jogging through the grass. She’s still carrying all of herself.

And finally, Annie is also running through the buildings, just as panicked as Tekla is. The only thing that Annie has is her knife, clutched with white knuckles. She’s as white as a sheet too, breathing heavily through her mouth. You can empathize with her, even if she’s a while away, she knows that she can still be reached.

Another large crack sounds, Tekla slaps her hands over her ears and risks a glance behind her. There’s a jagged horizontal crack that runs from the right side to the left. It’s a matter of time before it goes. The concrete is spider-webbing, developing into a worse problem. Tekla tries to quicken her pace, but there’s only so fast you can go downhill before you risk hurting yourself.

Sanguin has dropped her things, running as fast as she did to catch up with Bauhinia. Her feet slam into the ground, and launch her forward another couple of feet before she’s connecting with the dirt again. She makes it across the second lower clearing, going uphill again. Those hills are going to be an absolute killer when it comes to the water.

The gamemakers are evil. It’s been exactly nine days, ten minutes and forty seconds since the tributes got inside of the arena. You said a week and a half? It hasn’t even been that. They’re in a hurry to get the big event over before one tribute can kill another. Why? Because it’s more fun cheering on the running tributes than watching them kill each other. It’s like betting on a running horse, who’s going to make it to the finish line first?

Annie stops, taking in deep breaths as she watches the dam through a row of trees. She’s able to watch as the final crack breaks the dam open like an egg. Concrete and debris go flying into the trees as the water creates a nasty flattening path through the woods. Almost every tree that the front water initially hits, is uprooted and brought with.

Tekla’s scream is piercing, lasting a couple of seconds before she’s completely cut off. She doesn’t die immediately, you’re able to watch as the water brings her along. She’s suspended in the middle, legs kicking, hands wrapped around her throat. She has half the mind to hold her breath, so that’s good news. The bad is that she’s a quarter mile underwater. There’s no way she’ll make it to the surface in time, if she did know how to swim.

You think you’ll have to watch her drown when she runs out of air, but an entire tree branch goes straight through her back and out the middle of her chest. Bubbles erupt around her face, hands grabbing the wood just before the cannon sounds. One down, three to go.

Sanguin has one more hill to make it up before she’s in the village. Her arms are pumping, face a bright red, her glances over her shoulder are quick and spared. She doesn’t do it often because it slows her down, it’s a brief check to see how far ahead she is in front of the water. And the truth is that it’s catching up on her. Just like you said, the hills are a nightmare.

Not only because she has to run up them, which tires her out more. But because the water gains momentum and unpredictability with every hill it surges over. The water doesn't seem to endlessly pour out of the dam, though. It seems like the gamemakers had a prepared forcefield. They just wanted to let out a controlled amount of water. Big enough to kill a couple of tributes before it thinned out and became a minimal threat.

Sanguin starts uphill the same moment the water hits the hill just behind her. Down it goes for a couple of seconds, before it’s surging above her in a giant wave. Sanguin makes it into the village, running beneath the roofs as if it’ll protect her from the water. She runs straight for a while, before starting to zig zag towards the corner.

She must realize that it’s not worth it, and that the diagonal running only slows her down, because she goes back to running straight, heading closer and closer to where Annie had been staying.

Speaking of which, Annie’s on the run again. You can tell that she’s keeping track of the height of the water. Even though the houses are decades old, they seem to be slowing down the water, since they’re all individually filling up inside. Sanguin doesn’t seem too focused on the fact, mostly wanting distance. She’s almost on the brink of losing it, though. Her steps are getting sloppier the more she goes.

Annie goes around a corner and into an alleyway, effectively blocking the water from her sight. It’s stupid, she’s not going to be able to keep track of it the same way she has. Sanguin has a point when it comes to running straight away from the water.

And then she starts climbing the walls. With how narrow the walkway is, she can scoot her way up little by little. It burns a lot of her time, and cranks up your anxiety, watching her do this. You know that she’s trying to get herself above the tide now. The houses where she’s at, are at least two stories tall each, not counting the roof.

Annie grabs the gutters, using her arms to pull her onto the red-orange shingles. You get a glimpse from where she’s at now to see that the water is lower, but she’ll still have to swim, even if she gets onto the high point of the roof. She takes one last look at her knife before she frisbee’s it to her right, making sure that it’s far away from her when the water does come.

Sanguin is losing ground. Soon, she’ll be stuck swimming too. It seems like that their times are lining up. Annie bends her knees, cracks her fingers, prepares her arms. Sanguin’s glances get more and more frequent, anticipating the moment the water hits her.

Annie dives straight in, letting the water welcome her. She doesn’t waste time, swimming straight to the top. Her face is serious, she has her eyes locked on the surface, kicking her legs hard, arm over head. While Sanguin holds her breath, fingers squeezing her nose shut, eyes following the structures in front of her. She narrowly misses the wall of the first house, before slamming right into the neck.

Just like with Tekla, there’s a large burst of bubbles. Sanguin struggles now, trying to swim to the top. She makes a few inches at a time, but it’s hardly noticeable, or comparable with how well Annie is doing. In fact, she’s reached the surface already, inhaling loudly.

The water directs Sanguin into a wall again, this time her head cracks against the wall. The water turns a light shade around her head, and it’s minutes before the cannon finally sounds. Which signals the water to drain, lowering Annie onto a roof nearby.

Her dark hair is stuck to her face and neck, clothes completely drenched. Her mouth is slightly parted, breathing loudly.

You grab onto Finnick’s arm, “Oh my god.”

“Congratulations, guys.” Gloss has got a grin on his face, he slaps you on the back.

“She did it.” you say, “Annie’s done it!”

Claudius Templesmith’s, the announcer, voice comes over the arena, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victor of the Seventieth Hunger Games, from District Four, Annie Cresta!”

Annie’s face drains of color again, before it’s bursting in red, “I win.” she murmurs at first, barely audible, before tears of relief are filling her eyes. Much louder, this time she screams; “I win!”

REDAMANCY IS PART 2 OF A TRILOGY //MASTERLIST//

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saladejin · 4 years

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Call An Uber? | 01

BTS x Reader | idolverse au, uber driver!Reader, translator!Reader | Fluff, flirting, super slow burn, angst and hurt/comfort, mature themes and eventual smut

Summary: Your normal life with a normal, yet inconsistent job gets drastically changed when your dreams come true. Sounds boring right?

What happens when all of this occurs, but you’re still doing something you love AND getting a large sum for it? Now there’s something to think about, and it’s definitely not what you’re thinking.

Warnings: Mild swearing, hysterical fan behaviour

Word Count: 7.1k (Chapter 1 is longer than usual)

A/N: Okay, so in my next phase of finally crossposting my works to tumblr, I’m adding this massive multi-chapter fic.

I began this slow-burner (emphasis on slow-burn) a couple of years ago, so it’s easy to see how my writing has changed and evolved throughout.

Basically, I wanted to imagine what it would be like to have one of those ‘chance encounters’ every fan has thought of at least once. Thus, this fic was born, and though it is full of coincidences and wishful thinking, I always try to work realistically to make it enjoyable (and not as foolish as the premise makes it sound).

I hope you enjoy the ride, and feel free to check out the rest on my Ao3 in the meantime while I try my best to transfer everything in an orderly fashion! <3

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Reader 1st person POV

Imagine being asked to remember the most boring day of your whole existence. If you're anything like me, then it's a bit hard to recall...but for once I was certain.

Today was that day.

Or it was, until something outrageous happened. Something so unprecedented and so unbelievable that I struggle to recall it at all.

I suppose I'll give it my best shot anyway.

A clear and uneventful morning leading straight into the annoyingly peaceful afternoon, and I had still only picked up and dropped off a measly number of people. Yes, being an Uber driver had its ups and downs, and I had been one for about a year and a half already. It paid decently enough most of the time, and the job just worked hand-in-hand with the flashy new car leaving a gaping hole in my bank account.

Despite all these alleged perks, today had been an obviously gruelling exception.

The lack of activity could be blamed on a number of scenarios, for instance a public holiday or event stirring attention somewhere else. Whatever it was, it was decreasing the number of customers in this usually bustling city of Seoul much to my dismay. I needed good cash, and I’d been working my ass off lately in order to get exactly that. Even closing myself off to social media and other forms of communication with friends helped me focus solely on working nowadays.

I need a real job…

Then suddenly, even as cliché as it sounds, God decided to answer all of my prayers. A loud ding emitted from my phone and I almost veered off the road in sheer astonishment.

“Thank the Lord!” I pulled up quickly onto the curb and examined the Uber request, almost questioning if I had imagined the whole thing out of desperation.

The name read ‘J’. Literally just the letter, boldly sitting in the middle of my screen. I raised an eyebrow, and normally would have considered declining the request if it seemed too prank-worthy, but I needed this job. I didn’t think the person had even registered or used the service before, as there wasn’t a clear rating to be seen anywhere. Once again...I needed this job.

The pinpoint appeared nearby, and luckily it was only about a five-minute drive to reach the destination. It was located just outside a large shopping mall in central Seoul, and even though this was a seemingly quiet day, it shouldn’t have been this empty. There were of course a few groups of people and individual shoppers wandering about, in and out of the entrance looking for easy buys. Even so, I knew this place to be quite popular and to say I was astounded would be an understatement.

There must be something going on in the city somewhere.

Making a grab for my phone about three minutes after looking around for ��J’, I considered sending him or her a text to ask where they were. The place was basically empty, so spotting someone on the lookout for their ride shouldn’t have been too difficult.

“They mustn’t be out yet.” I clucked quietly to myself, typing out a message to indicate I had arrived.

The gentle hum of my engine was the only sound accompanying me as I waited. After another thirty seconds, I received a short reply of “there soon”. I glanced at the simple words a second time before lightly scoffing.

“Okay ‘J’, I’m in no rush.”

Still amused over the less than eloquent reply, I leant back into my comfortable leather seat and hummed to myself to pass some time. I would’ve usually had the radio going, but for now I wasn’t really in the mood for any background distractions. I liked silence when it was comfortable, and especially in a place such as this shopping mall, it was rare to come by.

The reverie was soon shattered when faint sounds of various screams erupted from somewhere in the distance, and I instantly jerked my head up with squinted eyes to observe the area. Tinted car windows revealed just enough of the area to discern an overall lack of movement.

The paved courtyard outside the mall wasn’t occupied by a single human being, which was even stranger than before. The only moving things I could eventually see where a couple of dirtied napkins being thrown around in the slight breeze, and a ripped paper cup from a popular juice bar rolling around caught in the same fate.

The frantic screaming continued. Should I be worried? The shouting wasn’t in terror or anger, that much I was sure of. I usually would pin it on some brawl breaking out nearby, but these sounds where mostly female when I listened closer. In any sense, it definitely sounded extreme.

I wondered briefly if there was some massive sale happening at a famous clothes brand down the street, causing a flurry of panic within female shoppers. The anticipation from the sounds caused me to tap my fingers on the steering wheel in curiosity.

Then it happened. An enormous group of Korean women and probably a few men, some looking fairly young, flocked around the corner of a building in an intense hurry.

Was the sale here or something??

My eyes widened in shock, as the group only seemed to be growing in numbers. Many were holding their phones out, as if recording something, and I scanned the rapidly moving crowd with anxious eyes to spot the source of the commotion.

Two well-dressed men seemed to be caught in the centre of it all. The pair that stemmed this chaotic crowd were clad from head to toe in designer clothes, including darkly coloured masks and sunglasses, not to mention the hoods covering their heads. The shorter of the two donned a lighter colour palette through a milky white button-up, while the other was dressed in a charcoal black hoodie and black ripped jeans.

They appeared to be trying to escape the bundling mass of people, as they moved quickly and swiftly ahead of the horde in their haste. I gripped the wheel in surprise. The screams where deafening and I could feel them grating my nerves. I hoped my client would not be caught in this mess. I wanted out, and I wanted out as soon as possible.

Maybe they’re famous, maybe idols?

A small excitement sparked at that thought, but I was still daunted by the scene playing out in front of me. If they were idols, I felt incredibly sorry for them. This was a clear breach of privacy and personal space, and they didn’t deserve it at all. This was the reason for hatred against K-pop fandoms all around the world.

“Who do they think they are?” I found myself muttering, eyebrows furrowing in disappointment.

Suddenly, the more brightly dressed man glanced around and pointed directly at my car, turning to his well-built friend to shout something following a flurry of gestures. I stiffened and my breath hitched when both started sprinting towards me, their fans following desperately to try and at least touch them.

Oh no.

My breathing sped up and the situation finally dawned on me. The empty mall, the shady name and blunt text response. The timing…

I unlocked all my doors and gripped the wheel harder, if that was even possible. The mass of people followed the two guys as they drew closer to my car, and I prayed to God that they didn’t leave any scratches or dents by the time I was gone. The one that acknowledged me first reached the car, and I jumped slightly when he opened the passenger door and clambered in swiftly. The other darkly dressed one threw himself in the backseat next and I jumped again when both doors slammed shut simultaneously.

“Hello!” The first guy cleared his throat from where he sat next to me and I could see he was bouncing his knee in apprehension, obviously wanting to scoot the fuck out of there, but still trying to be polite towards me. His breathing was shallow, and I could see large beads of sweat rolling down the side of his half-hidden face. I was in no mood to sit around and ponder about him.

“To hell with this!” I exclaimed with a squeak, and the second after the passenger door closed I shifted the gearstick and floored the pedal. Making sure that no people were in my way before skidding slightly around the pick-up bend. Only the sound of one singular hand slapping the boot of my car made me wince, but I was glad there was no other physical contact on my precious red Hyundai.

Only the sound of laboured breathing could be heard amongst sighs of relief as we pulled away from the mall. I looked into the rear-view mirror to see some people giving a hearty chase down the road, but most of the fans had broken away and were just waving towards my car as we rolled down the street.

Adrenaline was pumping through my veins, and I could feel a small smile resting on my face at the thought of escaping something like that. What a turn of events for this tedious day! A muffled gasp caught my attention and I looked into my mirror again to see the darkly dressed guy’s eyes screwed shut as he laughed breathlessly, one hand slapping his knee. His friend was just leaning his head back against the headrest as he gulped in large breaths of oxygen through his plump lips. They had both pulled down their masks and lifted their shaded glasses to catch their breaths, but the sight caused my own eyes to widen dangerously.

Holy shit on a stick, Park Jimin and Jeon Jungkook are sitting in my car. What in the ever-loving…

My breathing hitched at the realisation, but I continued to drive steadily. The thing I needed to focus on most of all was getting away from the crazy population of the city. I knew internally I was freaking out a little at the thought of members of my favourite boyband sitting in my own car, but I kept it under wraps knowing they would definitely not appreciate another bout of whatever that shemozzle was before.

I guess nothing goes unnoticed when you’re that famous. Why the hell were they alone?

Jungkook stopped laughing as he looked at my wide-eyed and slightly terrified expression. He suddenly grew apologetic due to his unexplained laughing.

“Sorry, uh, just how you drove off… sorry.” His voice died down as he gradually started to regain his composure, and I watched a shy demeanour suddenly take over his form, as if he had been hit with a realisation of overstepping his bounds. Jimin just turned and glanced pointedly at him, and then back at me to search wearily for a response.

“No it’s fine, I’m just a tad shaken,” I huffed out an exasperated breath, amusement showing on my features at the maknae’s sudden behaviour change. The idol next to me cleared his throat as I turned another corner, luckily no traffic barred my way and I was easily able to fly down the main road.

“We’re very sorry for what happened back there, that was probably quite troublesome for you. We apologise for the inconvenience.”

“Seriously don’t worry. You guys definitely needed an escape from…that. I’m glad to help, honestly.” I smiled to ease any worry radiating from the two flustered boys. “J, right?”

I glanced upwards into the mirror to lock eyes with Jungkook, not missing the way Jimin tried to conceal a smirk from the younger member. “Ah, he’s not that creative with names it seems.”

The older boy’s melodic speaking voice caused my lips to part in an involuntary breath of awe. I had always loved Park Jimin’s voice, whether it be singing or speaking or doing literally anything. Jungkook’s amused exhale and gentle chuckle also made me quite soft.

“Ah, sorry about my rude message too.” He looked downwards and bowed slightly. I noticed how politely he spoke and my insides turned to jelly once again. I felt warm and fluffy from their pleasant mannerisms.

“Don’t worry guys, how could I expect an essay when you were running for your lives?”

The two boys couldn’t contain their amused smiles as they exchanged another glance, seemingly conflicted. I could tell they didn’t know quite what to do with themselves in this situation, as they surely seldom had to get rides from anyone else other than their own personal drivers. I saw Jimin’s brows crease in concentration next to me, as if he was trying to figure out how to maintain his sense of professionalism. His hands fidgeted with the hem of his shirt anxiously.

“You guys may want to start with an explanation, if that’s alright?” I decided to help them out a small bit. If I could establish a comfortable atmosphere here, it would be much easier to converse and work out what to do.

“I notice that you put the next street over as your destination, but I’m fairly sure you’d both want to go further than that.” I made my point with a raised eyebrow and gestured to my phone sitting on the dashboard, destination showing clearly across the bottom of the screen.

Jimin clicked his tongue and leant in to read my phone more clearly. My skin tingles at his closer proximity.

“Seriously Jungkookie, any other place would’ve been better,” he eventually spoke, and although his tone was whiny with complaint, I could see the traces of a smile dancing across his features. He was obviously trying his best to remain stern.

“Ah, sorry hyung. I didn’t have all that much time in this case, did you forget?”

The cheek of this boy.

Jimin turned around and pointed at the younger boy while failing to hold back a giggle.

“Oi, show some respect you brat.”

Jungkook was snickering to himself, and I couldn’t help the smirk from tugging at my lips involuntarily. The group these guys came from always had this certain dynamic of playful teasing that won over so many fans. I included myself in that list honestly, as I always managed to have a good laugh watching their energetic interactions. It made me feel so youthful, as though an inner child would come out to play even though I was still adolescent at the age of 22.

They were fine joking around with themselves for a bit, but I could tell they were still very conscious of me and my presence in the car. They stopped chuckling and Jungkook cleared his throat noticeably in the back, silently handing over the responsibility of the situation to his elder.

“Um, sorry about that as well,” Jimin began to launch into a heartfelt apology, his bouncy blonde hair lowering with his head in a meaningful bow. I stopped him softly with a smile and made steady eye contact for a couple of seconds. His oak-brown eyes were confused, and I knew he was trying his best to deal with the situation properly. Just as his leader would.

“It’s fine, no more apologies please,” I requested warmly, easing the tension as he leant backwards in his seat to relax.

“I just want to know how you both ended up there, if you don’t mind sharing that is. Also feel free to give me somewhere to drop you both off.”

Jimin glanced over at me once more as if calculating my chances of being a threat. I made sure to keep my expression calm and clear while focusing on the empty road in front of me.

“Do you know us?” the sudden question from behind caused Jimin’s head to snap backwards, and my heartbeat to speed up incredibly. It wasn’t an accusing tone Jungkook used, but more on the curious side. Jimin still showed slight disapproval before turning his gaze back to me, a newfound curiosity also flashing across his features. It seemed he became a little shy after the topic of their fame rolled around, but I could tell he still wanted to know pretty badly.

“I’d consider myself a pretty big fan, not insane but you get what I mean,” I managed to force out, swallowing the lump in my throat at the thought of explaining my admiration for them.

They were literally sitting in my car and I never thought I would be shy, but here I was with an embarrassed blush alighting across my face. Jimin widened his eyes next to me, his mouth parting slightly in his shock. Jungkook inhaled a sharp breath before letting out another hearty chuckle.

“Wow! I never would have known.”

“Neither, I guess you must not be as emotional as many ARMY are when they see us,” Jimin smiled at the thought, and it was easy to say he didn’t mean anything bad by the comment.

“I’m just here to do my job. I’m not usually one to express my emotions that intensely, but I’ll let you both know that you’ve made my entire day.”

I saw Jimin turn his radiant smile towards me with an abashed sound falling from his lips. “Thank you, you’ve done so much for us already. Thank you for rescuing us.”

I saw him throw a questioning glance at Jungkook, who in turn squinted his doe-like eyes in confusion.

“It’s (Y/n). You can use honorifics if you want, but I don’t care much for them,” I explained softly, easing his sudden bout of guilt for not even knowing my name.

“Ah, thanks once again (Y/n)-ssi.”

Both of the boys were nervous, as they had just learned that I was a fan and were probably expecting me to flip out on them at any given moment. I knew Jungkook was shy around girls especially, but even he was kind of uncharacteristically silent in the back.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to freak out on you,” I assured them, keeping my eyes fixated on the road with a mostly amused expression. “I’m curious as to why you guys were alone with no protection out there. That usually doesn’t seem to happen.”

“No, definitely not,” Jimin sighed and I heard Jungkook hum in agreement.

“We didn’t mean to get separated from the others, we were all meant to just be shopping,” Jungkook huffed, and I could tell the young man was still shaken from his escapade from the mall. His large dark eyes were still slightly widened from the adrenaline spike.

“Yeah, everyone was together, and then we weren’t. Then the fans appeared and all we could do was run. Jungkook had to download Uber and make an account and everything on the spot. Lucky you were there because our drivers weren’t going to be around until a few more hours,” Jimin provided, his voice rough and raspy with weariness and relief. I could tell the shorter member was finally beginning to relax in the presence of the vehicle.

“Shit, I gotta call the Boss!” Jimin whipped out his phone and groaned when he discovered a couple of missed calls from his manager already.

I gave him a nod to let him know he could make the call safely. I wouldn’t record it or anything shady like that, I respected them too much and it wasn’t in my nature at all. Jimin gazed over a final time before finally deciding to place his full trust in me. I was already driving the car he was hitching a ride in, so trust honestly couldn't have mattered less when both of their lives were pretty much already cradled in my hands.

“I’d like to thank you as well (Y/n)-ssi, you really did save us back there,” Jungkook commented quietly as he leaned forward so I could hear. Neither of us wanted to interrupt Jimin as he fell into a heated discussion with his manager, or possibly Namjoon from the sounds of his replies over the phone.

“It’s okay Jungkookie, I know you guys deserve a much-needed break after all that. Sit back and enjoy the ride is all I'll say,” I said with a sigh, and finally decided to relax as well by releasing the tension in my muscles to sit more comfortably. I noticed Jungkook smirk cutely at the nickname accidently slipping out, and was just glad that he didn’t find it inappropriate.

“No, I swear she’s fine. She won’t do anything like that hyung,” Jimin’s suddenly louder response caused my smile to drop and my eyes to swivel around to the blonde boy. His temperament had grown agitated and I could see he was having difficulty trying to convince his managers and group leader. His round cheeks were blown out in exasperation, and I could clearly read the worry flitting across his expression.

“Jimin-ssi, if he wants to talk to me he can,” I offered softly so I didn’t spook him, raising my eyebrows in encouragement. We’d travelled a fair way, so pulling over was an option even though it was probably still too dangerous to linger in one place for long.

“No thanks it’s fine, I do trust you.” Jimin shook his head and I couldn’t help but smile at his kind, yet stubborn nature. These boys had no idea who I was, yet they put their faith in me and my driving ability for longer than they even needed to.

Jimin finished up with his call after another few minutes of stressed reassuring.

“Um, (Y/n)-ssi? I have an address I need to put in. If that’s okay.” He turned to me after letting out an explosive sigh, and I nodded towards the phone resting on the dashboard.

“Go ahead, distance isn't an issue.”

Jimin smiled at my response and shyly reached forward for my phone, still trying to be respectful.

“Hyung said it would be ideal if you dropped us off somewhere nearby the dorms so there’s no suspicion, but apparently all nearby areas are swarming with fans trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“Shit,” I breathed, the full realisation dawning on me. If their fans found out who I was, I wouldn’t be left alone for a while. I could imagine receiving threats and loads of unwanted attention, possibly not even being able to leave my house for a few days at the very least.

“So, you’ll have to drop us at the actual dorms then.”

“What?” I questioned in an instant. That sounded like the dumbest thing I’d ever heard.

“Isn’t that the area where most of the fans would be?”

“Well, most likely, but there's security.” Jimin ran a hand down his face as if trying to rub away the sudden bout of stress brought on, and I could fathom just how tired he was from all the rambunctious disorder.

“Why not drive you somewhere far away and get your driver to pick you up or something?”

“I did suggest that, but they just want us back as soon as possible so they can calm everyone down. I don’t mean to be rude, but they can’t exactly know or predict what you’ll do.”

That definitely made sense. Watching another car pull out of the building might also cause the fans to suspect the worst. They could even believe that I kidnapped the two band members instead of saving them. Well, that and there was absolutely no reason for their company to trust me with two of their idols that much.

“Okay, but one of you lend me a mask or something. I’m not going in there with a death wish.”

Jungkook chuckles from the back seat, and I’m slightly startled due to not hearing from the younger boy for a while.

“You’re right though, here you can use mine. I have my hoodie anyway.” A hand appeared next to me holding a familiar black mask, the faint but fragrant smell of a rare cologne wafting around me at the action. Of course, anything he’s worn would smell this expensive. Seeing how normal they can act, it’s hard to remember just how rich they actually are.

“Thanks.” I slipped on the mask and the smell was now stronger. I almost swooned.

“It’s actually not as far as I thought,” I commented when the map displayed the route to take. I knew the traffic was most likely to be more congested in this area than the city mall was before, so I decided to take a couple of back routes.

“Good plan,” Jungkook piped in with a nod and I saw the excited grin plastered on his face.

“What are you so happy about?” Jimin scoffed with a raised brow.

“I dunno, just this whole thing is so… exciting? Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Jungkook replied while trying to smother his grinning, but failing miserably.

“True, you guys would usually be living a careful life, right?” I decided to join in. Jimin and Jungkook didn’t seem to be shy or guarded around me as much as they were, but I knew they were still keeping face amongst all the drama.

“Of course, we don’t want our precious fans to worry about us,” Jimin went on in a level tone, his hand flying up to emphasise his point. I still couldn’t get over how captivating his voice sounded in person, and how it was this close to me...

“Speaking of fans, you’re an ARMY?” Jungkook’s cheeky lilt gained my attention and caused me to look up and lock eyes with him in the rear-view mirror.

“What of it?”

I try to suppress my sharp exhale of amusement, but fail miserably as well. Kookie’s adorable expression of playful confidence, bordering on egotistical even, made the laughter bubble up.

“Well, obviously you’d have a favourite, a bias.”

The question causes me to now laugh loudly, smacking the wheel once.

“Ah, I should’ve seen this coming honestly.”

Jimin clicked his tongue at his junior band member. “As if it matters.”

His voice is also playful, and I can tell he’s just as curious as the maknae by how he looks across at me with raised eyebrows and a small knowing smirk adorning his full lips. They were both taking this as a joke, and I was not going to be any different.

“Of course it matters Jimin, this is the question that decides my fate,” I feigned offense, and watched as his smile caused his eyes to disappear in the cutest, squishiest way imaginable.

Before I could say anything else, an embarrassed blush swarmed my cheeks as I spluttered, “Oh crap, I forgot the honorific.”

“Its fine,” Jimin assured. “You mentioned you don’t care for them before, so I can live without it.”

I smirked at him and shook my head slightly. “You’re actually too nice.”

His melodious chuckle was then interrupted by the mischievous maknae in the back.

“Hey, don’t change the subject hyung. Who’s your favourite member (Y/n)?” I noticed he took instant advantage of the honorific drop, and almost slipped an amused snort.

“Well it’s not either of you, that’s for sure.”

I knew they could tell there was a certain level of sarcasm in my tone, but they still let out varying noises of defeat.

“What, no way. It must be Jin-hyung then,” Jungkook groaned and I couldn't contain a giggle. His narcissistic nature was showing, and this time I wasn’t even sure if it was a joke or not. Jimin chose to pipe in as well, obviously enjoying the mystery that was my ‘supposed Bangtan bias’.

“Nah, I reckon it’s Tae. She’s weird enough to be a perfect match for him.”

Oh my, he really went there.

Both of the boy’s breath hitched, as if they thought I was going take offense and kick them out on the curb.

“Honestly, if you think Tae’s weird then I’m a whole other level. Although I guess I can never know who you guys are behind the screen.”

Jimin visibly relaxed after hearing me take the joke, but then grew serious again after my last comment.

“We’re fairly genuine to our fans, as much as we can be,” He defended, but wasn’t insulted. Jungkook nodded in agreement from the back, still smiling from the joking around that happened before.

“Of course, that’s why you’re one of my favourite groups, but you have to admit it is kind of impossible for someone like me to make a judgement on someone I’ve never met.”

“That is true, I guess. We really do try hard for you guys. I never thought super hard about that,” Jimin looked upwards as he pondered, and I felt proud that I’d gotten more than enough glimpses of both their true natures just from this simple car ride. Though, realistically they could be phenomenal actors and I wouldn’t know any different.

“We may be one of your favourite groups, but I’m still waiting for the member~,” Jungkook started lowly from the back, his sentence breaking off into his famous high pitched giggle when he saw my deadpan expression staring him down in the mirror. Jimin joined in and I sighed in defeat.

“Okay. I don’t have one.”

There’s a small silence, but both boys explosively let out sounds of understanding.

“Ah, you’re one of those.”

I was about to question what Jimin meant, but Jungkook cut me off.

“I was just about to pin her as a Yoongi stan.”

The sudden and serious statement made me cackle, although the sound was muffled by the black fabric of the mask over my mouth.

“Oh boy, you have absolutely no idea. My best friend…” I trailed off as laughter gripped me, almost causing me to veer off the road uncontrollably.

“Jesus Christ, watch out!” Jimin breathlessly squeaked as he made a grab for the wheel to steady the moving car. I gripped the wheel harder in fear, but amusement washed over me once again.

“Hyung did your voice just-”

“Shut up.”

I couldn’t stop the amused snort, but managed to regain control. My chuckles were now borderline wheezes, and I could hear Kookie in the back sharing the same demise.

“As I was saying,” I began, but erupt once more as the memory of Jimin’s voice crack surfaced back to the front of my mind. Jungkook is in shambles, but Jimin is just sitting with his head buried in his hands next to me, shoulders shaking as he tries to avoid his inevitable embarrassment.

“Stoooop.” He drawled it out and reached behind him to smack the chortling maknae on the knee somewhat harshly. I knew he hated the fact that he just got embarrassed in front of some stranger, who had also been established as a pretty avid fan. Poor Chim.

“You forget I’ve seen videos of your many embarrassments,” I offered in between chuckles, and caught the moment his face scrunched up in an adorable cringe. A sigh of defeat fell from his lips. “Yeah, I give up.”

He still chuckled and shook his head, the tinkling sounds causing me to bring a hand up to clutch my chest dramatically. Both boys laughed cutely once again at my reaction, Jimin’s eyes disappearing as he covered his face with one small hand.

“You sure you’re not a Jimin stan, noona?” Jungkook chimes in. I raised a brow and decided to skilfully avoid the question.

“Ah, so you picked up that I’m older than you?”

Jungkook stopped, his jaw going slack at the sudden question, and I found myself face to face with his widely memed blankness instead. I almost can’t contain myself.

“Oh, yeah maybe? It kind of actually just slipped out.”

I find myself giggling at the return of his shy persona, and he smiled bashfully at the floor in response. His tongue pushed out one of his cheeks in shame.

“Yah, don’t assume such a thing,” Jimin chuckled, obviously grateful that the heat was finally off of him.

“Don’t worry, I’m the same age as Jiminie I believe,” I decided to help the poor boy out, craning my neck forward to check the next turn off for oncoming cars.

We were actually almost to the destination, and the trip had flown by way too quickly. After Jungkook made a noise of comprehension, Jimin looked around suddenly and grunted in surprise.

“Crap, I was meant to call Namjoonie back a few minutes ago.”

“What are you doing hyung?” Jungkook chided in flippant scolding, to which Jimin responded with another angered slap. He brought out his phone and dialled a number quickly, obviously not concerned that I could very well easily read and memorise it in two seconds flat.

As If I would anyway.

I fell silent as Jimin waited for the phone call to connect.

Jungkook 3rd person POV

Jungkook also waited, breathless at the thought of how dire the situation was to their careers as a whole. This was such a strange occurrence to the famous band members, and he thought about how normal and relaxed the car ride had actually been when compared to how awkward they thought it was going to turn out.

When Jungkook had made the Uber request originally, he and Jimin were prepared to face the worst. Anyone who had the opportunity to drive a car unsupervised with two famous idols in tow could easily turn the tables and expose them more, or maybe even do worse things…

He shook his head at the thought and silently swallowed the bile rising in his throat. He glanced over to your form sitting in the driver’s seat, stiffened slightly due to the very important call being made.

You had been nothing but kind and understanding so far, not to mention hilariously easy going. Jungkook found himself respecting you immediately. You could have freaked out and demanded autographs or photos from them at any time. You could have decided to not drop them off where they wanted and just continued to drive for eternity. You could have even taken them anywhere you wanted to, but no, you listened to them, respected their privacy and even agreed to risk your reputation to drive them into their dorms where countless fangirls could eat you alive if they found out.

You were just amazing, and Jungkook knew his hyung felt similarly. Well, considering how he defended you without question before when Namjoon probably jumped to conclusions, it was evident that Jimin trusted you too.

Jungkook was completely numb from bewilderment. Everything could have gone wrong for them in their haste to escape the mob of their excited fans, but it didn’t, and it was all thanks to you.

These types of people drive our purpose, we’re so happy to have reached you.

Although if he was honest, he wouldn't mind at all if you got all flustered and cute while gushing over him. Just a little bit.

Reader 1st person POV

I watched as Jimin jerked the phone away from his ear suddenly, a loud voice booming loudly through the tiny speaker to reach even my ears. Jimin’s face winced as he brought the phone back to his ear hesitantly.

“We’re so sorry for the mess Sir, but it worked out.”

I knew that he was most likely talking to his manager or director with how his language changed. He ruffled his blonde hair anxiously and continued to listen to the voice on the line, eventually digging his teeth into his bottom lip in another bout of anxiety.

“Wait, we’re almost to the dorms, she’s got a mask on and everything-” Jimin was cut off and my eyes darted in between him and the road ahead to try and figure out what was happening. His breathing sped up and I could see his own eyes meeting mine a few times worriedly.

What is going on?

We were getting close to the dorms, and I had already noticed how the housing had become wealthier the more I drove through the city. The streets were becoming beautiful and cleaner. I knew that the boys lived in most likely the richest place in the city, and this place was by far the definition of that.

One thing I also noticed is that there were a few groups of girls dotted here and there that were walking or sitting around the footpaths. Some even saw my car and started pointing and taking photos while jumping up and down.

“Well, there goes my anonymity.” I sighed and slumped further in my seat, as if to hide my face better than it was already hidden. The only sound as I drove onwards was Jimin’s occasional reply into the phone next to me. His responses were becoming less worried, but still sounded unenthusiastic.

“Yes, I understand, okay I’ll tell her,” Jimin murmured and I held my breath at the sound of the call being hung up. My curiosity was nothing short of burning, and I instantly turned to the blonde boy when he looked at me pointedly.

“Um, our manager needs you to come in with us so you can speak with him and sign some stuff.”

I look forward again and nod once in understanding. “Yeah, I knew this would most likely happen. Confidentiality, right?”

I crack a smile at the thought of actually going in and meeting the famous Bang Sihyuk, CEO and founder of Bighit Entertainment.

“Wow,” I breathed after fully wrapping my head around what was happening.

“I guess you never thought this would happen.” Jungkook chuckled from the backseat, and I scoffed in disbelief.

“Yeah it’s not every day you meet two members of Bangtan and their producer.”

The sarcasm was heavy, and the two boys grinned in amusement. Jimin leant forwards to rest his forehead on the dashboard in a weary manner. “Ah, I’m so sorry for forcing you into this mess (Y/n)-ssi.”

“What did I say about apologising? I love you guys and your music; this is the least I can do to repay you for all the happiness you have brought me.” My voice became emotional and quiet as I let out all my pent-up feelings. I didn’t know how exactly I could express my bundling thoughts into formed words, but I felt as though that might have been just enough to let them know how ecstatic I truly was that this miracle had happened to me.

“You must be an angel,” Jimin smiled at me so sweetly and genuinely that I had to rip my gaze away from him in order to prevent tearing up. I heard Jungkook sigh in awe at my words, and I looked up to see him smiling shyly at the ground before glancing forward.

“Devoted fans like you are the reason we have made it this far, (Y/n).”

Jimin turns his head and gives Jungkook a look that says 'Well that was fucking sappy' but I can’t help but smile wider and let out a tiny gleeful squeak unknowingly.

His words had caused my emotions to storm again, and I was so fortunate to hear them in person that I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I gripped the wheel tighter so I wouldn’t let go and do anything stupid. Since I had my mask on, they could only see my smile through how my eyes and cheeks bunched up, but unfortunately the mask wasn’t large enough to cover my entire face.

“Awe you’re so cute when you blush like that!” Jimin laughed loudly, reaching out to poke my reddening skin. I gasped and knocked his hand away softly with one of my own.

“Leave me alone, I can’t control it or anything.”

Jungkook was also sniggering in the back, his cheeky nature making a comeback as I shook my head to try and rid myself of the heat.

“Sorry for that noona.”

Now he was using the word to tease me, and I fought the urge to slap him like Jimin did before. “Silly boy, I swear you’ll never make me blush again.”

“You sure about that? I’ll accept the challenge.”

“And we’re here!” I dragged out the first word to hopefully try and cut him off. I could still hear him giggling in the back, his knowing smile holding an impish quality.

The sight before me was spectacular, if that was even enough to sum it up. The area in which BTS lived was absolutely breathtaking, and I knew that this was in fact one of the, if not the richest place in all of Seoul.

The gardens were marvellously well grown and maintained, while the architecture seemed to gleam and glow in the sunlight, too perfectly constructed to be true. Modern was also an understatement, as this place seemed borderline futuristic. To describe it in one word, glorious.

“I don’t even know if someone like me should go in there,” I stammered, my voice cracking multiple times in sheer astonishment.

“Don’t be silly, how else are we gonna get in there?” Jimin joked and I snorted lightly at his change of demeanour.

“Walk, silly.” I shared a cheeky glance with the maknae behind me when Jimin gasped.

“Rude, and here I thought you were a fan?”

“I’m joking Jimin, alright how do we actually do this?” I looked around and saw a parking space out the front of the main building. Jimin gestured towards it and nodded, giving me the go to proceed.

There were no fans lurking around this place due to the security, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to escape any photographers if they were there. Luckily we had only a few brief, yet concerning encounters with the fans while driving in to the complex itself.

If Kookie hadn’t given me the mask I would be dead meat cooking on a spit.

I parked the car carefully and fell back into my seat with a sigh. Jimin and Jungkook eyed me with concern clouding their features.

“We’re so-”

“Park Jimin, will you eventually heed my words?” I tilted my head and blinked rapidly at him with a smile on my face. He sees my playful, yet tired expression and shakes his head with an annoyed groan.

“I probably will never stop apologising for the trouble we’ve caused.”

I sighed again and exaggerated a pout, borderline mockery if you will. Jungkook let out a huff and a click of his tongue indicated the long-awaited comeback of his cocky attitude.

“Come on hyung, she already said it doesn’t matter.”

His tone caused Jimin to narrow his eyes towards the back accusingly, and I watched as the younger member sat back down, satisfied with the reaction.

“Thank you maknae,” I rolled my eyes and suppressed a chuckle at his scoff, catching Jimin’s amused and appreciative look. I observed around one more time before turning my gaze upwards to glance at the building next to us.

“Okay it’s now or never boys, run and don’t look back.”

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spectraspecs-writes · 3 years

Text

Tatooine - Chapter 108

Link to the masterpost. Chapter 107. Chapter 109.

@averruncusho @ceruleanrainblues @chubbsmomma @strangepostmiracle thank you for reading, you get a tag. @skelelexiunderlord thank you for support, you get a tag.

——–

I find myself waking up early, far earlier than I meant. But then I’m amazed I got to sleep at all, or even stayed asleep. The nightmares were awful, but I couldn’t wake up. I felt like I was being suffocated by that mask but I couldn’t pull it off. Revan’s mask. My mask. No. No. Revan’s mask. Because I’m not Revan, I don’t know what she knows, she doesn’t know what I know. Or knew - what she knew. I’m a scout. Revan was a killer. A murder. A Sith Lord. I’m not Revan. I’m not.

T3 stayed with me the whole night after Carth changed our course. And the engine isn’t making any noise, so I guess we’re here. Tatooine.

And it’s morning. I suppose I should go check, shouldn’t I?

The cockpit is empty. Carth’s not there. He’s not in the main hold, either. And I don’t sense him in the port side quarters. I guess he left. Not that I blame him.

I’ve got to get out of here. But not like this. Not these robes. This isn’t me. I’m not a Jedi, I’m a scout. And out there is a world I haven't explored. All I looked for was the Star Map. All I cared about was the Star Map. But this is not a dead world. Not even a desert is dead. Where there is life, there is water, and where there is water, there is life. That’s one of the first things you learn as a scout.

But did I even learn it? If I’m Revan, then…

No. No.

A Jedi robe does not a good scouting outfit make. The copious lack of pockets alone makes it a poor choice. I tie up my hair so it’s off my neck, and pull out a soft white tunic. And my vest. I’m torn between shorts for the heat and pants to fight the sand, but I eventually settle on a loose pair of pants and sturdy boots. I keep only a single lightsaber in my pack, opting for my swords instead. I’m not a Jedi. I'm a scout. A lightsaber is a weapon. A sword is a tool, far more versatile in use. I have my sunglasses. Now all I need is my droid. T3 doesn’t need much prompting. Like he doesn’t want to leave my side.

Much as I hate it, Czerka is the only game in town. They’re the only ones sending people into the desert. I could go alone, but that’s not a good idea. The clients always have insurance if something happens - it’s in your contract. They pay for whatever you find, even if all you find is pain. You never go out alone. I need to be myself, even if that means taking one job with Czerka.

This is good. I missed this. Missed my vest. Missed myself. But it isn’t myself, is it? Who the hell even am I? I remember being a Republic scout, I remember turning over rocks, discovering insects I’d never seen before. Watching eggs hatch and documenting what I saw. Seeing lemurs hang from trees by prehensile tails. Leaves no one had ever seen, trees no one had ever seen! I remember finding a hot springs on Utapau! Spending the nights on the rocks while we analyzed water quality, microbial landscapes, geological makeup, or just plain swimming! Are those memories even real? Do those insects even exist? Those eggs, those lemurs, those leaves, those trees? Is there a hot springs on Utapau? Where did the data come from? What was real?

But I know. Whether any of that was real or not, anything I see today, anything I find today will be real. Anyone I meet today will be real. My memories here will be real. Maybe I wasn’t a scout before. But I will be today.

I step into the Czerka office - the same representative is there from the last time. “Greetings from the offices of Czerka Corporation.” The disgust I feel is thankfully different than the disgust I’ve been feeling for myself. “How can I help you?”

I pull up my Republic file, my fake scouting record. Doesn’t feel fake. “I’m a scout,” I say, “with a specialty in ecology and droid repair. Do you have any expeditions going out?”

She hums a bit, reading over my record. “According to this, the Republic holds your contract. Czerka corporation has no interest in any legal disputes with the Republic.”

“You won’t have to worry about that,” I assure her, “The Republic violated my contract, and the mission I was on came to an abrupt end when the Sith destroyed the ship I was on.

She hums again. “I suppose that is a risk when your employer is at war.” Tell me about it. “For long-term employment, however, you would have to fill out an application with Czerka headquarters. Business hours only, please.”

“I’m not looking for long-term contract negotiation,” I say, “This is just for a one-off freelance gig.”

“I don’t think our teams would have much use for an ecologist,” she says, looking back at my file, “but I am interested in your technical skills.” Better than nothing, I guess. “Our mining teams have had difficulty keeping the machinery functioning. As I’m sure you know, sand has a tendency to interfere with machinery. How soon would you be able to start?”

“I’m willing to head out now,” I say, “What’s the pay rate?”

“When you return at the end of the day, you will receive 150 credits.” She transfers a file to my datapad. “This is a standard contract. It stipulates that Czerka corporation is not liable for any harm sustained on the Dunes. Any disputes you may have with Czerka Corporation will be settled through binding arbitration. When you return to this office you will receive 150 credits in exchange for your work.” I don’t expect any problems, nothing I can’t deal with. And despite what she says, you can’t absolve yourself of all liability when you send out scouting teams. It’s been galactic law for the past two hundred years or so and there are scouting organizations who take it very seriously. Czerka tries to skirt the law but it never lasts. Scouts who know what they’re doing hold them to it, or threaten to call in the authorities. And Czerka tries to keep all that on the down-low, paying off officials, making donations, counting on the ignorance of the people signing the contracts. If I was doing anything other than a one-off gig… well, actually, you should just shoot me if this was anything other than a one-off gig. But anyway, if it were anything but that, I’d get into it myself. No one is expendable and they can’t pretend to be ignorant of the hell they’d catch if they tried to say otherwise. Even so, I sign the contract but I’m not even sure it’s legally binding. Rena Visz doesn’t exist. I’d have to sign Revan’s name but I don’t know what it is.

Nope. Nope. Nope, I don’t want to think about that.

“Excellent,” she says as I transfer the signed contract back, “There's a speeder outside - input your datapad and it’ll direct you to a set of coordinates. You’ll meet one of our mining teams there.”

And that’s that. I load T3 into the pilot’s side of the speeder and input my datapad, like she said, and off we go, onto the Dune Sea. The speeder takes us past the Czerka marker points, past even the Star Map. I can feel it calling out to me as we pass it. And it feels different, so different, from how it felt… oh God, it was barely last week. It felt like such a long time, so much has happened. I met Jolee, Bastila and Canderous got together, Kashyyyk was liberated, Carth’s son, Carth… Carth! That happened! That happened two days ago! And now… he probably hates me now. And I can’t say I blame him. If T3 wasn’t driving, I would have stopped. Because its call is so loud, so strong. And I can’t tell if it’s calling for Rena or Revan. But T3 drives on, and with distance the call fades. It doesn’t go away but it fades.

The speeder pulls up to a cave and slows to a stop. The sand is different out here. Still sand, of course, and a very fine sand, at that, but it’s dirty,. Soot and smoke from the machines. Polluted. To think what this sand could have given with care. Something like this doesn’t happen naturally. There’s nothing I could do about the state of this world now. As if anyone would listen to me if I could. Not even the Sand People, I think - they would surely feel the same way, but I can never know the same as they do. They should be the ones to rehabilitate the planet. I am only another outsider with an opinion. And besides, this is a stable state now, any massive changes, if not done slowly and carefully, could just as easily land the world in a worse state as it could a better one. And it’s not my place.

I have to assume it’s the site foreman who comes up to me. I get T3 out of the speeder. “You the Czerka droid tech?” he asks.

“Droid tech, yes, Czerka, no, but suffice it to say I’m here to help,” I say.

He chuckles. “You hate the bastards, too, huh?” he asks rhetorically, and I shrug and nod. “I don’t know why we're still out here, the ore’s no good, and the machines hardly work with all the sand. You’ve got your work cut out for you with fixing.”

“I’m hoping for it,” I say, “in fact, I’ve got something that should make everything easier.”

“What? You’ve got a way to teleport us off this rock?”

“I wish,” I say. I set my pack down on the speeder and open it. I’ve got an old shirt in here. “The machines stop working because sand gets into the vents and clogs with the gears and the works. Close off the vents and the machine overheats, but leave them open and the sand gets in and they’re useless.” There’s the shirt. “So what you need is a way to keep the sand out and prevent overheating. And we’re gonna do it the same way the animals do.”

“But that fabric will hold the heat in,” he objects.

I scoff. “Yeah,” I say sarcastically, “because I’m stupid.” I indicate T3. “Check out his vents - does he look like he’s overheating?”

He stoops to look. Sees the fabric under the vents, and around the joints. “I don’t believe this.”

“Then watch me. Got a machine down?”

He indicated a machine near the mouth of the cave. “Just pulled it out a little while ago. Started sputtering and smoking. We’re down to just one - if that one craps out, we’re stuck mining by hand.”

Easy enough. “T3, help me get this open.” T3 has a laser cutter, and he carefully lasers off the seal on the large access panel. I can pop it open with my panel tool once the seal’s off. Tool, panel, open - yep, the wires are loaded with sand. I shut the vents off, because the first step is to get the sand out, and I don’t want it getting to other parts of the machinery. Too big to tip over and dump out, so I get in and sweep.

This is a good feeling. I can do something with this, and the machine won’t care who I am or what I’ve done. Won’t care that I had no idea who I was when I woke up this morning and I still don’t. Won’t care that I can’t help but hate myself for atrocities I don’t even remember committing. Won’t care that I have two people in my head, two sets of memories even if I can’t access one set, and no way to reconcile them. Because I can fix this. And even better? Revan can’t take this away from me. Because I invented sand shields, not Revan.

Okay. Sand’s all out. I tear the fabric to a more reasonable size, popping the panel closed with my foot and T3 welds it shut again. The vent should be… there we go. Doing this outside could prove a little tricky, more sand could get in while I’m putting the cover on. Quick work is needed. I pull my vest off and use it to cover the majority of the vent, except for the bolts, which I set to work getting off. Once the bolts are off, I quickly whisk the vent cover off and put the fabric in its place. Then I put the cover back on, and replace the bolts. “That should be good for most of the time. It might need replacing after a sandstorm, but as you could see it wasn’t that difficult to do,” I say to the foreman, “And this is more basic that what T3 has, but like I said. It gets the job done.”

Still skeptical, the foreman turns the machine on. With a healthy whir it comes to life. He comes around to the vent and holds his hand in front of it. Waiting. A few seconds later, he looks at me, then back, then me, then back again. “I can feel air coming out,” he says simply, surprised, “This… but it’s so simple! But it works!” He turns the machine back off. “This could solve half our problems. This is great. Did you come up with this?”

Yes, as a matter of fact, I… wait.

I… I remember.

No.

“The sandstorms aren’t the worst of it, Master Jedi.” Someone said that. A long time ago. “It’s the sand. It chokes out the machinery. Our engineers tell us there’s nothing they can do to stop it, but it’s leaving us like sitting ducks out there.”

“And the Mandalorians don’t have the same problems?” That’s me. That’s my voice. But… not me. No.

“Not that we’ve seen, though damned if we know why.”

“Maybe they’re using a different power source,” Hanna said. Who’s Hanna? She was my best friend, but who was she? I don’t know. I don’t know.

But a thought struck me. I don't know why or how. But it came to me. Revan. Me. Revan. She pulled her robe off and tore it. “The insides of the machines are sealed up tight, with no way in or out. Except the vents.” She pulled out her lightsaber. Green one. Held it on the metal, where it met the fabric. The metal melted and fused with the fabric, and when she removed her lightsaber it cooled and the fabric stayed. Sand shields. The very first sand shields. And she must have refined the process… because that looks exactly the same as the sand shields on Hk-47. Revan built HK. I built HK.

“No,” I finally say, “I didn’t.” Because she took it from me. Revan took this from me. That was my accomplishment, something that I did, something I achieved and she took it from me. My stomach turns. This is going to be the rest of my life - every single thing I’ve ever done, every good thing that’s ever happened to me, poisoned by Revan. I’ve done nothing. Revan has. Nothing good ever happened to me. It happened to Revan. Carth was the only good thing and Revan spoiled that too. I can’t have anything. Revan will only take it away.

I don't feel so good.

I fall to my knees and retch into the sand. I can’t stop it. Everything hurts. Everything burns. “Get some water!” the foreman shouts, “She’s got sun sickness!”

“It’s not sun sickness,” I manage to say, forcing the words out.

“I’m not willing to take that chance,” he says, “I’ve lost more than a few miners to sun sickness, I’m not about to risk another.”

“I’ll be fine,” I repeat, “It’s not sun sickness, I’m positive.”

“Oh, yeah, doctor?” he says sarcastically, “Then what else could it be?”

Well… there really is no way to tell a perfect stranger you used to be a Sith Lord and it’s destroying your life. So I shake my head a bit. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

He doesn’t believe me. He hands me some water. “Drink this slowly. And let’s get you back to Anchorhead.”

“You send all your miners back to Anchorhead when this happens?”

“You’re not one of my miners. You’re from the company, and in their eyes you matter more than these miners.” T3 gets loaded into the speeder first, then the foreman helps me in. Makes me feel even more like shit now - not only did Revan take sand shields away from me, she’s taking away what could have been a good day’s work. I wasn't even out here for an hour!

I try my hardest not to cry. No one would get it anyway, and I’d just come off as a pitiful little girl. Because it turns out none of my memories of dealing with that are real and I have no idea how Revan would have dealt with that. Because it turns out that at heart I’m a terrible person even though I don’t want to be.

“I know it doesn't seem like it,” the foreman says, “but you did a lot of good today. Those machines are a lifesaver for my miners. If even just one of them keeps working because of this, you’ve saved us a lot of pain.”

Maybe so. But none of that makes up for all the pain Revan caused. There is a massive debt of blood owed that Revan accrued, that I could hardly begin to pay back. I've already, personally, accrued a debt, but it was easy to justify - I was trying to stop Malak, stop the war, and in doing so would save countless lives. But Revan started the war. Revan is responsible for the deaths of billions, Republic and Sith. Not even counting the Mandalorians from the last war! Saving the lives and limbs of a handful of miners doesn’t begin to make up for that.

When we get back to Anchorhead, the foreman tells me to wait in the speeder, so I do. He’s gone for maybe five minutes before he comes back. “You’ll find 250 credits transferred to you,” he says, “She wasn’t happy about it, but you saved the company way more than that, so I persuaded her to increase your cut.” He gets T3 out of the speeder while I pull myself out. “I’ll make sure the rest of our machines get shielding under the vents. And thanks again, really.” And he speeds away, back to the mine.

I don’t want to go back to the Hawk. I don’t want to go to Manaan. I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t. Maybe I can get passage on a freighter out of here. Actually join the Republic scouting corps. Or, hell, maybe the Sith. Mandalorian. Aratech. Free-lance - just to actually do something. To feel something other than hatred and anger. Because there’s no way I could hope to make up for all the shit I’ve done that I don’t even remember. Not by finding the Star Map, not by ending the war, nothing. And staying and doing all that only increases the chance that I’ll hurt the people I care about. The only way to avoid that is to just… go. Run away. Take T3 and just go.

I find myself at the cantina. That feels about right. So I go in. “Hey!” the bartender shouts to me, "You can’t bring that droid in here. It’ll have to wait outside.”

Oh, hell, no. I’m not leaving him. And I think I could get away with a little intimidation. I look at a bottle resting on the bar. Reach out with the Force and lift it high above his head. “How about now?”

He looks from the bottle, to me, to T3, and back to the bottle. Decides it’s not worth it to argue. “Just don’t cause any trouble.” I gently set the bottle back down and take a seat.

#knights of the old republic #star wars #star wars kotor #fiction #autistic artist #specs writes stuff #kotor fic #chapter 108 #rena visz #oc #fem!revan #ls!revan #t3-m4 #tatooine

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trashcatsnark · 3 years

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1, 14, 19, and 30 for the ask game. I'm curious, especially about the last one

Ahhhhhh thank you so much for the ask, I really appreciate it, it was so nice to wake up to, thank you! 1. what radio station(s) do you listen to?

Personally, I switch around the radio stations a lot, i think the Vexelstorm(?) and Dirge are the two I flicker between the most. I like the rock music and having a chance of hearing Samurai tunes. One time black dog started to play while I was cruising the highway and it just had such a cool vibe; if only I hadn’t immediately crashed into a wall.

My V though, doesn’t actually fuck around with the radio much especially if someone else is in the car. She’s deaf, has been since around the age of 9, and while she uses hearing aids and can hear, even “listens” to music in her apartment (though she takes her hearing aids out and feels the music rather). But when she has hearing aids she sometimes feels overwhelmed by being able to hear, so she’ll keep music off to quiet, and when someone is in the car she prefers the radio off so if they talk its not two loud sounds at once. Ironically, given this, when she takes her hearing aids out to “listen” to music, she prefers the loudest rock music because it provides the most bass and vibrations to feel it.

14. what quest/sidejob/gig made you happiest? (again, multiples allowed)

God, I have so many I can think of; I like the rescue gigs a lot, like saving Bugbear, Wakako’s favorite netrunner, Hwangbo, the one where you save the doctor (there are actually technically two doctors you save in two different quests i realized). Those make me really happy, because they’re kind of a reminder that the work V does is not all thievery, revenge, and dealing with dark shit. I love the monk mission, um seeing that poor monk with the forced implants made my heart shatter, so being able to help him and his brother made me really happy. The Ballad of Buck Ravers made me grin because its one of the ones thats just pure fun and seeing how Johnny interacts with V. I love the boxing missions, especially with Cesar the Valentino and that I can choose to help him out because lbr he needs the cash and car more than V does. Delamain and his quests makes me happy. The only other one I’ll say (tho I do like a lot of gigs and side missions) is probably a specific Cyberpsycho one, where the game just takes a sudden hard dive into horror which I love. Cause its like a maelstrom cult and you’re investigating corpses in a bloody pentagram, as you start hallucinating the cyberpsycho, who then comes out of a ice filled tub in the center. Like it has an energy to it that I just fuck with.

I’ll project and say my V is in a similar boat of liking the rescue missions, she likes feeling like she can do some good in the world despite being a merc. She also likes the ones that are avenging people or helping folks; killing corpos who fucked people over, tracking down the raw bd of a boy who was murdered to help solve the case, and things of that nature where it feels like she might actually be doing something good. 19. how do you feel about revenge? is it a worthy fighting to achieve or something that sucks you in too deep?

This is all on my V, cause I feel weird talking about my personal feelings of revenge. Given her job, V has seen a lot of kinds of revenge and is often asked to be the one to deliver it. And there’s revenge she gets and revenge she doesn’t get. She’s actually far more selective with what work she’ll do and isn’t afraid to blatantly go against what she’s suppose to do in order to do what feels right. Which sometimes pisses off her fixers, but they begin to understand that they just shouldn’t send her certain jobs. But she’s all for revenge against people who genuinely did wrong; because her logic is if she lets the corpo agent who killed an entire nomad family for scientific trials just go, the corpo will do it again. She sees it as taking them out before they can hurt others, like cutting out a cancer in society. But when it comes to shit like, go kill a guy for loving a girl in a rival gang???? No fucking way, she’s not killing someone for falling in love, eat a dick, she’s telling the kid to run. In terms of her personal life and revenge, she struggles a bit more, because when you add in your own feelings it feels a hell of a lot less black and white. And she sometimes struggles with the fact that her feelings don’t always make sense, she’s definitely not morally opposed to revenge and despite usually being more calm, there is always kinda this underlying layer of anger in her that when something makes that come to the surface she loses herself in it. She could have killed Dex, would have if she had gotten the chance, because he brought her into this mess, she vouched for him to Evelyn, trusted him as much as he supposedly trusted her; then everything went to shit and he threw her under the bus. She’d kill for that, for that hurt, that loss, that pain; it’d be revenge she’d get happily. Her nomad family for example though is more complicated...cause despite everything...she loves them, but they’re actively trying to kill her, that hurts but she can’t bring herself to be angry... or vengeful...just hurt.

30. does Rogue Amendiares scare the shit out of you or are you weird

Controversial take, I guess I’m fucking weird. I’m not scared of Rogue, yet, I feel I should preface. And I do project this on V, so take it as the answer for both of us. I feel like the two biggest things that contribute to Rogue’s ability to scare/intimidate is her social standing in the fixer community (which comes with power of course) and something Johnny says when you go to talk to her, that she can see right through you, don’t waste time lying. And the first aspect of that, doesn’t mean shit to me. Like, while I know Rogue was badass in the past and eventually is actively doing shit later on in game, the fact of the matter is fixers aren’t shit. Don’t get me wrong, most of them are cool people, and its nice to be hooked up with clients. But they’re getting a large chunk of cash for being a middle man who’s too big of a baby to go get their hands dirty. Like, fixers aren’t scary to me even if they’re powerful ones, like what, you gonna send someone else to axe me while you sit around??? terrifying, kill me yourself, coward.

As far as the other aspect of why Rogue is propped up to be intimidating, the idea she has built in bullshit detectors. I/my V don’t bullshit a whole hell of a lot at least not in the current context of how I’ve interacted with her (haven’t done tapeworm missions and her stuff with Johnny yet tho tbf). Like, i don’t have a reason to lie about needing Hellman, so why the fuck would I? However, if this bullshit detector also helps her pick up on emotional shit, like if my V tries to hide her feelings about stuff...thats gonna suck and be scary if Rogue like picks up on what V is really feeling. Because emotional vulnerability is a thousand times more terrifying than a fixer who could make V disappear with a snap.

*Small fun fact when I first did the Panam mission, Johnny told me I had balls to go ahead and do the mission without telling Rogue first which I didn’t even know I was suppose to do but also why the fuck should I, she sent me to do the damn thing, I gotta call her everytime I sneeze too????? How is that ballsy????

SORRY ONCE AGAIN FOR SUCH A LONG RESPONSE, BUT THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK, I APPRECIATE IT SO MUCH!!!!!

#cyberpunk 2077 #aidan becker #cp2077 #c2077 #tisunii

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transitverse · 3 years

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But what if you did?

WORDS: 3073 CHAPTERS: 1 CHARACTERS: Zenith, Aubrey, Dak (briefly)

You said you didn't want to remember. You said you wouldn't want to know them. (or: Zenith has an unlikely and emotionally challenging encounter.)

This takes place somewhere around their journey through the Rockies. Time in NeoScum is nebulous.

You're in a gas station when you see them.

Xanadu is parked up outside; you stopped in this little nowhere town to grab a bite to eat, all hungry enough to shoot out of the doors like greyhounds the second the engine cut and over to the grubby diner across the street. The place had clearly seen better days, but the staff seemed happy to see some new faces passing through, and the food was decent - though at this point, you're all grateful for a sit-down meal anywhere, quality irrespective, as opposed to living on scraps that could be described as varying degrees of stolen or whatever dubious substance Dak has managed to procure and is insisting is "real trucker food". Everyone split off afterwards, wanting to stretch your legs, get some space and enjoy the fresh air before gearing up for another God-knows-how-many hours on the road. So, now, here you are in the convenience store at the truck stop, gathering up snacks to keep you going for the next day or two of driving.

The town has been pretty dead so far, so it doesn't come as a surprise that the shop is empty, either, until you notice the shadow of another person in your peripheral vision. A couple of aisles over, someone is picking out drinks from one of the refrigerators. Your gaze only lingers for a second, dropping as they turn around, but what you catch a glimpse of at the last moment makes your blood run cold.

Was that an ocular drone?

Frozen in place, you curse yourself for not having recorded it, even though of course you didn't fucking record it because there's no way, no way in hell you could ever have known that was coming, and-- They're gone, now, having moved back behind a taller shelf, and it takes a few seconds for you to unstick yourself from your place on the floor and dart down the adjacent aisle.

Despite your racing heart, you do your best to look casual and like you're absolutely not at all following this complete stranger as you briefly catch sight of them between aisles again. You don't see their face, but you do see their hand: metallic and marked with a glowing, white crescent. Just like yours. They still haven't noticed you - or if they have, they're ignoring you. You think about what might happen if you make eye contact. You think about why you're even trailing them in the first place. What's your goal, here? What are you trying to achieve?

You said you didn't want to remember. You said you wouldn't want to know them. But a voice speaks in your head:

You're desperate. You want answers. You need answers. Faced with this, right here, right now, this impossible chance, something you couldn't believe would ever actually come to fruition?

You'll take anything.

You stop again, this time at the end of an aisle, peeking around the corner just enough to see your quarry eyeing up the pharmaceutical section before quickly retracting your head. A woman, if you had to take a guess, about your height, with auburn hair long enough to cover the implants in her skull that you can only assume are there, and clad in light armour. Quality stuff - not something you'd find just anyone parading around in.

Lists of possible careers and loyalties are already flitting through your mind. This is so stupid. This could take a bad turn so fast. You don't know who she's working with. You don't know if she got out. You don't know what happened to the ones who stayed, and you don't know what damage that did, and you don't know if they held any care or sympathy for the others they were trained with by the end of it all.

Maybe they didn't. Maybe she wouldn't care the slightest bit for your shared past, and frankly you don't know if that would make it better or worse.

Your mouth is dry and you're struggling not to go into full panic mode: just walk right out of the store, tell nobody, pretend none of this ever happened, and carry on with your life never fully taking in the reality that there are other people like you in the world. You've always known it, but encountering someone else is so different and so much scarier than anything you could have imagined. How the fuck do you approach this? "Hey, weird question, but were you also forcibly operated on and put through intense combat training as a child by a cybernetics corp to be shunted into someone's private army?" Does she even know? Does she even remember?

You're so lost in your own head that when she rounds the corner from the aisle, it makes you jump, and you drop some of the food packets you'd had clenched in your fist this whole time. It catches her off-guard in turn - she reels back a little, blink, then gives you an apologetic look as she bends to help you collect the dropped items.

"Sorry--"

"No, it's fine, it's fine." You quickly dip your head to try and hide your left eye as you kneel down, hoping that your sleeves cover your hands and your collar hides the implants on your head well enough. Fuck. Fuck. Your heart is in your throat and you know you're going to have to look her in the face but maybe if you can drag this out long enough you can avoid it, or at least figure out what you're going to say, or-- or--

Taking a deep breath, you stand again, and do your best not to falter as you raise your head and reach out to accept the bag of chips the stranger holds out for you. Your eyes meet.

Time stops.

The air around you is heavy all of a sudden, dense, suffocating. Neither of you tries to hide the fact that you're staring right at each others' drones. If the ground opened up and you sunk straight down into hell right now, you'd be totally fine with that.

"Look, I..." You lose your train of thought immediately. There are so many thoughts and feelings fighting to make themselves known that none of them can make it through the door.

"Sorry." The stranger's expression is no longer apologetic. It's cold and a little angry and she turns and strides away towards the bored-looking orc cashier at the till with her bottles and packets of pills.

Fuck. Fucking shit. You scramble after her - not too close behind because you don't want to scare her even further - hurriedly pay for your things and try to cram the soda and cereal bars into your pockets as you tumble out of the shop door. Your head is on a swivel, hoping she hasn't gotten too far, and-- There she is, making a hasty exit down a street to the left.

You follow after her, not quite running, but she's moving quickly and you have to do the same to catch up.

"Hey." You slow as you draw near. "Wait, just a sec--"

She turns to face you. Faster than you can even register, you're suddenly flat against the wall of a nearby alleyway, pinned in place by one metal hand with another at your throat. You can feel the barrel of a machine pistol pressing against your neck.

"Did they fucking send you?" The stranger's eyes are narrow and her expression fierce. You have to recalibrate rapidly: things have gone south, and you need to be ready to fight, if it comes to it. But you didn't come here to shed blood.

"No."

"Don't fucking lie to me. Did they send you to bring me back? Because this is pathetic and they're going to have to try a lot harder."

"I'm not lying!" You squirm uncomfortably against the brick as she presses the gun harder into your throat. The mechanics inside whirr threateningly. "Nobody sent me. I'm not-- I just wanted to talk, okay? I just... wanted to talk."

Silence. Then the pressure on your throat eases up. You're no longer pinned down, but she hasn't sheathed her guns.

"Talk about what?"

You stare dumbly for a few moments. Put on the spot, your ability to form coherent sentences has gone straight out the window.

"I-- The--" You stop. Okay. Breathe. One thing at a time. "You're-- C&C Logistics, right?" God, even saying the words aloud makes you nervous. "Look, I'm sorry for following you. I know that was weird. I've never met anyone else... like this. From them. I don't actually remember anything from back then, so I just-- I thought--"

"What?"

"I don't know, okay?" This was a bad idea. This was a terrible idea, because you've held yourself together so well for years, and now all it's taken is a fucking breeze for that carefully-constructed fortress to begin to crumble, and you're ready to start crying at any second in front of someone you don't even know. You're vulnerable. You don't like to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is dangerous. "I don't know. I've been-- I'm looking for information. About them. I wasn't kidding when I said I don't remember anything. I just--"

You pause. You take a deep breath. You exhale slowly. Try again.

"I want to know who they are. I want to know why they made me-- make us-- and I want to know about who's... using people like us. What they planned on doing with us." The words leave such a bad taste in your mouth. It stings more than you'd like to admit to acknowledge, out loud, that you were once nothing more than a product to someone. That in a sense, you always will be.

"Like that isn't obvious?" She's giving you a look that sits somewhere between boredom and frustration. "So, what, you want all the gory details? You think I'm going to know all their dirty secrets?"

"No," you answer, weakly, all of a sudden feeling so stupid and so small in a way you haven't in a long time. "But..."

"But what?" She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. She's withdrawn her guns, at least, you notice. "Look, I have a client waiting for me, so if you're ready to stop wasting my ti--"

"I just wanted to talk to someone who gets it." The words are out of your mouth before you can stop them, and hey, Satan, if you're down there, that sinkhole would go down real smooth right now. Failing that, a well-timed interruption from one of your fellow scummers would do the trick. Unfortunately for you, a quick matrix sweep of the immediate area tells you none of them are close by, so it looks like Operation Hellhole is still your best prospect for getting the fuck out of this.

For a minute, there's just... quiet. The fight to hold back tears is a hard one. Crying always makes your left eye socket burn even though nothing comes out. You think about just walking away, but you need this. You opened this wound and now you need closure. This is a conversation you have to see to the end.

The stranger steps towards you again, but her guns remain sheathed.

"What's your name?"

You take a few ragged breaths and do your best to keep your voice from wobbling.

"Zenith."

The corners of the stranger's mouth twitch upwards.

"Hi, Zenith." She offers her hand out. You take it. "I'm Aubrey."

It's your turn to smile, and the smile breaks into laughter out of sheer relief-- relief that you're not dead already, or relief that you don't have to walk away feeling like you fucked this whole thing up, or something like that. Aubrey laughs, too. Just a little bit.

"So, you-- You're not with them, then," you say. A statement more than a question. Aubrey shakes her head.

"Transport accident," she states preemptively. "A bunch of us made it out. We got ourselves set up--money, ID--as fast as we could, then split. Figured we'd be harder for them to catch moving alone rather than in a group, if they wanted to track us down. I'm with a security firm now. You?"

You actually try to remember, like her story might have awoken something, but reaching back, your memory is as blank as ever. Nothing but white and static and vague shapes with no sense of time or place.

"I don't know," you answer finally; and, then, seeing her quizzical look: "I woke up in Seattle that was just... it. I knew how to hack and I knew how to fight. I was in the pro gaming scene for a while, but shadowrunning is... more interesting."

Aubrey's expression softens somewhat as you speak.

"And you don't remember anything before that?" When you shake your head, she laughs softly. "I'm kind of jealous."

"Well, it's not as fun as it sounds."

The laughter fades to a sad smile, and she looks away.

"You... shouldn't take it for granted. It's a good thing that you got out. It's not fun trying to break the mindset that you have no worth as a real person, either." She stops for a moment, still not looking at you. Her words make your chest ache. You're on the brink of an apology, but she lifts her head and speaks again before you can get a word in. "So, you're out here on a run? Seems like kind of a bum town for that sort of thing."

"No, actually. Well, kind of. We just stopped--"

"Oop." Aubrey raises a hand to stop you and blinks a couple of times; she seems to look past you for a second before zoning back in and sighing. "Sorry, I hate to cut this short, but my boss is hassling me. I was only meant to be gone ten minutes--"

"No, no, it's fine. I should probably figure out where the rest of my crew went, too." You take a moment to wipe away the tear residue from your eye. You step forwards, back towards the street, but both of you hesitate and exchange glances.

And then, unplanned and wordless but synchronised nonetheless, you reach out and wrap your arms around one another.

Something about it feels familiar. Deep in the recesses of your memories, something stirs; you think, maybe, that you shared similar embraces with other trainees, all those years ago. Perhaps you did care for one another, no matter how hard your superiors tried to beat the compassion out of you.

There is something unspoken yet knowing in the hug. An invisible, intangible energy passes between you; the silent recognition of the pain you both endured, the trauma it left, the way it still clings to you as you try to forge your new lives - and, now, in this impossible moment, the mutual reassurance that you can keep moving forward; the knowledge that you will. You hold on tight - just as she does to you - and linger for as long as you can before she eases away. When you finally separate, you still have one of her hands clasped in your own.

"It was nice to meet you, Zenith." Aubrey smiles again. "Sorry I almost killed you."

"Thanks. But trust me," you reply, unable to keep a grin off your face, "I've come way closer to death than that before." She chuckles, but then her brow furrows into a frown.

"Be careful out there, okay? If you really want to go looking for answers, you won't go unnoticed. They never completely write off runaways as losses."

"I will. I'll be careful." You look down at where your hands are joined: almost-identical silver fingers wrapped around one another, the brands on the backs of your palms glowing softly in the shadows of the buildings that rise up either side of you. You feel the distinct sensation that something inside you has changed; some part of you that you didn't even know existed no longer feels quite as empty as it would have done before today.

There's another brief silence. You can feel the question that threatens to break it hanging over you both.

"I don't think it's safe for us to stay in contact." You can't decide if the emotion her words flood you with is relief or disappointment.

"Probably not," you say, quietly, with a little affirmative nod. "We have a lot of angry people looking for us, and we've had to do some convoluted stuff with our comm security-- It's a whole thing." She looks concerned, but you can't help but smile, just thinking about how fucking crazy the last couple weeks have been. "Point is, if you're already worried about C&C or whoever else coming after you, you're better off not getting wrapped up in everything we have going on, too."

Your hands slip apart as the two of you step back out into the sunlight.

"I guess I won't see you again," Aubrey says. "But I hope you find what you're looking for."

"Yeah. Yeah, me too." You exhale heavily. "Just-- Thanks. For talking. Even just for a minute. And, y'know, I definitely looked like a creep for a minute back there, so don't feel too bad about putting a gun to my throat."

She grins, now, and opens her mouth to respond, but then a voice shouts from further down the street:

"Aubrey!"

She spins, looks at the figure waving at her, and then turns back to you with a shrug.

"Like I said, I gotta go." She's already backing away, half-turned to start jogging. "Good luck! Stay safe!"

"You too," you call back, and then you just stand there, watching, unwilling or unable to look away as her figure grows smaller until she eventually joins the other person at the end of the street. You get that ache in your chest again as they round the corner, and finally disappear out of sight. Somehow, you feel like you know her so much better than your short encounter could possibly have allowed.

A weathered hand suddenly claps you on the shoulder and makes you jump for the second time today.

"He-ey, Z! Who're you talking to?" Dak squints at the far end of the street where Aubrey just made her exit. You pause. You think. You speak.

"Just an old friend."

#lost in transit #neoscum #mainline #complete #aubrey #zenith #dak #but what if you did

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rebellect-writes · 4 years

Text

[SIZE=1][b]Name:[/b] Jess. [b]Age:[/b] 21. [b]How did you find us?:[/b] In the TARDIS’s swimming pool.

[b]Name:[/b] Drew Shamis. [b]Nicknames & Aliases:[/b] Drew works as best as anything. Dew at a push. [b]Age:[/b] 27. [b]Date of Birth:[/b] May 11th 1984 [b]Gender:[/b] Male. [b]Sexual Orientation:[/b] Homosexual. [b]Occupation:[/b] Works at and owns Creature Comforts. [b]Powers:[/b] None.

[b]Face Claim:[/b] Ryan Kwanten. [b]Description:[/b] [IMG]http://www.blogher.com/files/Jason-sized.jpg[/IMG] [i]Height:[/i] 5’10 [i]Weight:[/i] 150lbs. [i]Eyes:[/i] Brown. [i]Hair:[/i] Dirty blond. [i]Build:[/i] Average. [i]Visible marks:[/i] He has a nasty looking scar circling his right wrist from where wire cut to the bone. Also, Drew has a tribal wolf [URL=http://th09.deviantart.net/fs15/150/f/2007/073/6/9/Tribal_Wolf_Bust_and_Paw_by_KMoongangSR.png]tattoo[/URL] on his right shoulder. [i]Style:[/i] Drew’s not the type to spend money on lots of clothes he’d wear once. So he gets and wears what he’s comfortable in. So jeans, t-shirts, boots. If he has to dress up, he will do but he always feels like a clown when he does. Jewellery isn't something he'd normally wear either. The exception to that rule is a gold crucifix that he's had since he was a kid.

[b]Special Skills:[/b] He's good at working on the fly, if that counts. He’s also pretty handy when it comes to slinging out drunks at the bar. [b]Personality:[/b] At first glance, Drew’s the type that smiles and tries to be the friendly type of guy. He may not look it or come off it at times but he’s actually a smart one. He just hides it behind his sometimes dumb looks and useless comments. Drew wants people to be comfortable around him so if he can make people laugh and also laugh at himself, he counts that as win. Now he’s not exactly smart-alecky either, Drew knows when to hold his tongue and stop talking. It’s probably something that he’s picked up and harnessed while working at the bar, who knows.

He’s loyal, stubborn and persistent, and not always in that order. Drew will back friends no matter what because that bond means a lot to him. Former friends fall into his loyalty zone, even if they drag him into some kind of trouble. That’s not to say that he’ll let people walk right over him. He’s more than willing to give a little as long as he receives and if someone’s run out their fourth, fifth and sixth second chance with him, he knows when to call it a day and just walk away. While he may go out of his way to help people and be friendly, Drew’s not an attention seeker and won’t willingly search for it and he’s not exactly great when dragged into the spot light either.

Drew’s known love once, and he’s still in love despite having no idea if Eric is alive or dead. He’s held out hope since he was sixteen that Eric is alive though, and where most people would have moved on and found someone else, Drew hasn’t done so. One night stands don’t appeal to him; women at the pub get turned down or distracted by Ja-Mal while Drew can escape into the office out the back. It’s been over ten years, you’d think that he would have done the sensible thing and let things lie, but he hasn’t. Did I mention that stubborn streak?

On matters regarding the supernatural, Drew’s pretty loud. He doesn’t care if a person has fangs, fur, scales or feathers. They’re still human. He’s not about to go out and cause trouble just because he’s breakable. Drew knows for a fact that a lot of things could end his life, and he’s more than likely to end up in a deadly bar fight than eaten by a ‘monster’. And that’s another thing! He hates the word “monster” being used when referring to preternatural people. The only thing that Drew doesn’t tolerate is when someone kicks off in Creature Comforts, he does have human clients to and his ‘baby’ doesn’t need to be seeing none of that nasty Hollywood monster mojo.

Because people see him as a nice guy, they generally get a shock when he snaps. Drew’s not an angry person by nature and it takes a lot to make him so but when he gets angry, he also gets a little angsty and may slightly paranoid. He’s locked himself away in his office for hours before today and had to be dragged out by his best friend because a delivery had been messed up. He doesn’t like being angry, or scared, or any of those pesky negative emotions because then he can’t help but wonder why he tries so hard. [b]Likes:[/b] [LIST] [*] Cherry coke. [*] Playing video games. [*] Canines. Shush your faces. [*] Working so he doesn't have to think. [*] His baby, Creature Comforts. [*] Cooking. [/LIST][b]Dislikes:[/b] [LIST] [*] Thunderstorms and rain. [*] Dealing with drunks at the pub. [*] People demanding he does something. [*] Being stuck indoors. [*] The catholic religion. [*] Doctors, hospitals, anything medical. [/LIST][b]Strengths:[/b] [LIST] [*] Understanding and accepting of the supernatural. [*] Knows when to back down in a situation. [*] His stubborn streak. That’s saved his life. [*] Isn’t opposed to listening to others ideas. [/LIST][b]Weaknesses:[/b] [LIST] [*] Clowns, borderline fear. [*] Eric. [*] Sometimes he forgets to look after himself. [*] Smokes when he’s stressed. That’ll kill him one day no doubt. [/LIST][b]History:[/b]

Back in the early summer of 1984, a young mum named Cheyenne gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. There wasn’t much room to celebrate though. Cheyenne had a ‘white boy’ according to her boyfriend at the time, Louis. He was Hispanic in origin; Cheyenne was only half Native American from her mother’s Hopi blood. The boy that she named Drew didn’t look like it at all; in fact he looked more like the beast that had taken her virginity in a brutal attack. Still, she didn’t hold that against her son and even though the colour of skin drove Louis away and left the small family broken, she did her best for almost two years before finally giving up and signing Drew away into the child protections services. She left no trail for Drew to pick up should he ever want to contact her, only a scribbled tribe name on a book store receipt and her cross.

Since he was too little to remember his real parents, Drew grew up in a small town house in the central business district of New Orleans. He hated it with a passion, his sister Anna made his life hell and Amanda and Nickolas his foster parents didn’t even notice, they were so wrapped up in their own respective work lives the majority of the time they barely even noticed their own biological daughter, their foster son was beyond them. It was basically a time where he brought himself up, if he fell down then he picked himself up, if he was hungry, then he made himself something to eat and avoided the family as much as possible by staying out as late as possible or locking himself away. It wasn’t like the bruises from Anna’s ‘lessons’ would have bothered his mom or his dad even if they had seen them when he was around.

By the age of thirteen, nearly fourteen, he’d more or less dropped out of school and spent a lot of his time on the streets avoiding things. He met another kid, just a little older than him called Eric and they started hanging out more and more. By the time he was sixteen, he’d developed a major crush on Eric but he was always scared that the other male would turn him away. He’d seen Eric’s parents once, and they in a roundabout way made Drew glad that he had foster parents even if he did want to deck Eric’s deadbeat dad. It was only a few weeks after getting a glimpse of what Eric’s parents were like that he finally admitted that he had feelings for Eric and got the shock of his life when Eric admitted the same thing.

They had a year together and it was great. Drew would always come up with something new for Eric and Eric would retaliate and surprise him. It was one of the happiest times in Drew’s life and not even his bitchy sister couldn’t ruin for him. Even his foster mom was a little more approachable, especially after she’d stumbled across him and Eric making out. The happiness was short lived though. Eric’s Ulfric caught them out one day along with the pack Bolverk. Ulfric Shane believed that wolves should stay with their own kind and wanted to deal with the ‘embarrassment’ that the boys had become before anyone within Eric’s pack got any bright ideas and tried something funny, so he set the evil doer on Eric to teach him a lesson.

While the wolves fought and tore into each, Drew was held back by Shane. He struggled, it was only natural, and the guy snapped Drew’s arm in two like a twig without even blinking. He was hauled away when Shane thought that he’d got what he wanted. Drew all the while thought that he’d end up as Gator bait or something worse, dinner for Shane. It was perhaps a stroke of luck that a rival pack decided to take over the territory because Shane wasn’t doing what he should’ve been doing. Drew never saw his boyfriend come mate again after that day, the only thing he remembers seeing was his Eric pinned by some shaggy Hollywood monster that smelt of wet dog.

Shane handed Drew off to the Geri and Hati, loyalists that believed in what Shane did. These pair weren’t none too gentle with the teenager either. The Geri threw Drew in the back of a car after clocking him upside the head and that was it. Bye bye Eric, bye bye New Orleans and hello Chicago. He fought against the two wolves, Julian and Warrick. If they thought that he was going to sit back and let them just walk all over him then they had another thing coming. Of course every time he resisted something that they said or did, they hurt him. After awhile it was like he became their pet, he stayed with them for almost three years before they finally let him wander around on his own. The first chance he got, Drew ran as fast as he could and didn’t stop until he collapsed and when he got up he ran some more.

Drew bounced around a lot after that, finding work when and where he could. Sure, he could’ve gone back to New Orleans and tried to find out what had happened. Instead something kept him away from his home. He tried getting a life for himself, and by the time he was twenty five he’d made his way across the pond and settled in the UK, Jackford actually. Instead of sitting on his thumb though, Drew hunted for a purpose and found a rundown family pub that was up for sale because the owner’s wife had passed on because of cancer after pouring her life into the business. Drew snapped the offer up with a promise there’d be a memorial for her. He’s made a good go at things at Creature Comforts since then and still stays somewhat under the radar. Just in case.[/SIZE]

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jockedguy · 6 years

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Unfreeze (Change Theory, part 1 of 3)

ONE

You can tell a lot about the guy in the picture up there. You can see a slice of his life, just from the second that was captured by the camera’s eye.

1) He’s not too bright.

Look at his eyes, the way his face is moving from one thought to the next. You can tell that it takes him a minute to process, that maybe he’s not too quick. You wouldn’t be able to make a pun, or talk about current events, with this guy. He’s young, he’s in the prime of his life, he’s maybe a little disoriented because of the hot sun that’s been soaking into his brainpan all day. Probably got a little spin on from that last in a chain of four beers he’s got in his hand.

2) He’s not from around here.

Here, in the city, where there’s barely a gasp of green, you don’t see guys like this. You see a lot of reflections of the urban color palette, like how the sky reflects on the ocean. Endless gray and slate. This is a picture of a guy who would feel ill-at-ease in a city, hyper-sensitive to the inundation of noise and technology, to the constant floods of people with their shoulders ratcheted up around their jaws.

3) He doesn’t give much of a fuck what you think.

This is a guy who’s worked his whole life outside, with his hands. As a kid, he probably spent all his time crashing through the woods or smashing into the still water of the local swimming hole. He saw the sunrise most days, and squinted into the dusking evening, as bats came out to lazily swoop from dark to dark. He caught lightning bugs in a jar. He shot off fireworks and smoked cigarettes at the gas station. He has an easy confidence.

There’s more, too, I’m sure, but all we get is what we can infer from the split-second the photograph shows us.

He’s the kind of guy I see on tumblr, scrolling endlessly through my perfect kind of man. Of course, since I live in the city, this kind of guy is harder to find, except for various dirty phone chats or Skype messages. Stuff that doesn’t last, but is enough to get me off quickly and efficiently.

Briefly (since this story is about me, too), I grew up in the deep South. I knew guys like this, was surrounded by them - if you can ever really be surrounded by anyone in the deep South, that is. They were my cousins, my neighbors, my schoolmates. I was always looking at them, even if I wasn’t, you know - “looking” at them. My life took me quickly through school and college - I’m an intelligent guy. I quickly understood what it meant to succeed, and with that understanding, I chose a career that would make me a good amount of money and best utilize my skills - advertising. I’m very good at persuasion. I see things very simply, and I speak very logically. Clients tend to like that. Hell, most people, including my small group of friends, like that. I think they feel like it’s a nice break from the modern-day affectation of wandering around the point.

I also happen to be a gay man, still single as I stare into my 30s. I’ve had a few boyfriends, all of which except for one lasted less than a year. I was never content with them - they seemed to need me in a way that I found kind of repulsive. They were depressed, or lackluster, or we just didn’t have the same goals. I’m a creature of change. I’m not happy to sit in one place, thinking the same thing - I want to know how I can better myself, how I can be more efficient. I’d started working out at the local gym, experimenting with my form, with my muscles, when I found you.

I’d never seen someone so much like a lump of raw clay. And it wasn’t just that - it was as though that lump had been possessed of some metamorphic desire, some inherent drive. It was almost as though I could see a hundred possible futures super-imposed on top of you as you struggled, over and over, to lift the dumbbell. I could tell you were hyper-aware of yourself, of your surroundings. Your eyes would dart surreptitiously from guy to guy, quickly sizing them up and continuing with your lifts. I could tell you weren’t the most confident guy, wearing a baggy t-shirt with sleeves and basketball shorts that came down to your knees. Most guys would come to the gym wearing clothes that accentuate their bodies - you, it seemed, were trying to hide yours.

Who knows why it was that I was drawn to you. You were just like so many other skinny white boys in brand new sneakers and ankle socks, headphones firmly screwed into your ears to block out the anxiety clawing at your brain. Maybe it was that glint in your eyes, that metamorphic desire that I mentioned earlier - it reminded me strongly, almost in an olfactory way - of my own drive to transform, to better myself. I caught myself wondering what your story was. Who you were.

I wouldn’t say I stalked you. That’s not the right word, and I think if anyone asked you now, you’d agree. There’s just some people in this world, you’re drawn to them - you see them once, maybe a handful of times. Maybe they’re one of those “stranger-friends” that you see every day on your commute. You just know, deep down, that this person is going to figure into your life, somehow.

It was easy, actually. I started seeing you in the gym more often. Maybe you had just started going. One day, after we happened to finish at the same time, making our neutral, civil nods to one another in the locker room, I just decided to follow you down the street. In this borough of this city, I would hardly be noticed. It was almost like you left a trail in the air, though - I was able to lag behind at least two or three steps without losing track of you. You lived in an apartment building a few blocks away from the gym, slightly to the west and south of my own railroad apartment. Conveniently, a small coffee shop across the street from your place served as my outpost. I could watch you come and go as I pleased.

It didn’t take long to figure out that you were gay, too. I actually got to see a date break down in a miserable fashion, watching you and a (surprisingly) much bigger guy part ways in front of your building. As you went inside, he lingered by the front gate for a second longer than I would have thought, head hanging. This only intrigued me further - this guy, whose t-shirt barely fit over his biceps, had been left cold by you at the end of the night without even a hand-shake.

You became a challenge in my mind. Your seeming distance, detachment from the world, was a heady ambrosia that left me not only curious (for the first time in a long time, believe me) but your continual drive at the gym spiked that curiosity and stoked the flames over a period of weeks.

I knew you were gay, but it wasn’t the normal hookup situation. I didn’t feel like I could make a move, cop a feel, arch a brow, have you sucking me off the in the showers before you knew what was good for you. You were different somehow.

On the day we first exchanged words, there was a massive weather pattern shifting and sliding over the city. The Saturday morning was bright, passive, and breezy. By noon, the sky was swirling with cruciferous heads of cloud. By mid-afternoon, the thunder rolled & splayed warningly. I don’t mind a rainstorm - I even love a great thunderstorm - and I headed out to the gym for my daily workout in just a sleeveless tee, basketball shorts, and my Nikes. The humidity had balled itself up to a stifling percentage, and I found myself soaked with sweat before I even got to the front door of the gym.

I had been jogging in place on the treadmill for about five minutes, eyes on the ceiling-mounted televisions. Our President was up to his normal dramatic shenanigans on one. An episode of SVU was on another. Recaps of NFL games blinked back and forth on the other. I don’t actually remember when it was that you were beside me, but I remember you had the first word.

“Hey,” you said. Your voice wasn’t reedy, wasn’t thin, but it wasn’t deep, either. For all that, it had a steadiness and even had a wry twist to it, as though you had already seen the future of the conversation.

“Hi,” I replied, neutrally, not looking away from the screens.

“I’m Tucker.”

“Jordan,” I replied. Edged my speed up a little.

“This might sound a little weird, but, um, I’ve noticed you around here a bit, and, well - I like your form, you know, when you lift. Do you think you could, I dunno, help me out a little?”

You had a unique way of speaking. It wasn’t hesitant, but it did involve a lot more words than I judged necessary. But I was able to pay attention to the words that mattered. Kind of like when all the letters are mixed up in a printed word except for the first and the last, but you can still see and understand what the actual word is.

If anyone else had asked me that, I probably would have spit out some kind of laugh or awkwardly referred them to a personal trainer. I’m not a personal trainer, and I don’t know how to make anyone else’s muscles grow. But for you, well - like I said, you were different. I was curious.

“Sure,” I said between breaths, maybe even surprising myself a little. “I’m just warming up here, then I’m gonna head down to do some arms.”

“Ah,” you said, face falling a little. “I was gonna do legs. Well, maybe another time.”

“Well, I guess I could do legs today,” I found myself saying. “Arms are a bit sore from yesterday.” I flexed, to show you, and I remember seeing your eyes widen a little.

“We could compromise,” you said. “Chest?”

“Deal.”

And just like that, our first workout session as bros started.

We didn’t talk much, which I liked. You went someplace deep inside of yourself when you lifted - as though it took intense amounts of energy to spark that mind-muscle connection. You seemed to stare through your reflection as you sat on the bench, performing the pectoral flyes. When we did talk, it was cursory. Shoulders back, down. Engage your abs. Breathe.

And when it was my turn, you were the same way. Focused on my body the way you had focused on yours. Quick, instinctive comments. By the end of our session, my chest ached like it hadn’t in a long time, and I could tell that you were exhausted, too. You didn’t exclaim about it, you didn’t even groan. When we stretched out to cool down, the only reaction you had to our workout was a squeeze of your eyes & a slight grit of your jaw as the muscle fibers stretched beneath your skin.

You pushed your glasses up on your nose as you slid out of your shirt and blinked in the light. You were solider in the core than I’d imagined - even had the shadowed ridges of a four-pack beginning. “Wow,” I said, impressed despite myself.

You grimaced, but flexed, and smiled bashfully. It was at that moment that I fell in love with you.

Well, maybe not you. Maybe the you I could see in the future. My boy.

More like the guy you see there, in the pictures.

TWO

I could tell you were smart. There was no denying that. We started going for food after our workouts, which were at least twice a week, if not more. It helped that there was an amazing Thai place just steps from the gym, and we could order a huge helping of chicken and rice from the kitchen. A few of the other regular gym-goers would go there as well, some even of bodybuilder status, and I remember feeling a glow of welcome as we ordered for the first time.

There’s a nice, heady feeling that comes with a post-workout ache. It’s a glimmer, an aura, almost like being drunk. Tongues loosen, bodies are uncoiled. More primal desires are closer to the surface of the body than other worldly concerns. You spoke a little more freely - told me about your life. You’d grown up in New England, you’d always been a loner, you liked books and TV shows, you smoked pot, you drank craft beers. I had yet to see you out of gym clothes, but that was because we only met at and after the gym. You’d been coming along nicely, and I’d mentioned that. Your form was strong, your lifts were becoming smoother, we’d even added plates on the bench press. But when you talked about your life outside the gym, your eyes skated around restlessly. You picked at the neckline of your shirt. You shifted in your skin.

For me, that was like a vole rustling through the grass to a hawk on a branch above. Everyone has their secret unhappiness. For you, that was a sort of disappointment in yourself - you’d never really “found” yourself, you admitted. That was part of the reason you’d started coming to the gym. As a child, your father disappeared and you were left with only a wounded mother to give you guidance. You never learned how to form your own opinions, for fear that they would damage the delicate balance of the household. You found yourself, later in life, able to agree with any viewpoint - something that was both valuable, but also a massive handicap.

To me, it was the way in.

Identity is a tricky thing. You can either create it yourself, and defend it as best you can against the cynical hurricane of society; or you can collapse and let society give you an identity. This last way is often the quickest way to unhappiness, and I surmised this was your quandary.

I smiled, and leaned in. “Dude, you’re doing fine. Who cares about all that shit?” I injected a good amount of masculinity into my phrasing, squared my shoulders. Flexed, for good effect. Grinned. “Who you are is who you make yourself, right?”

“Sure,” you said. And before I could believe it, you looked up from your protein and grinned back at me. Flexed back.

“That’s the spirit!” I held out my fist for a bump, and you laughed, but you bumped back with vigor. “You wanna know a secret?”

“Sure!” You were eager to hear my magic. I savored how your eyes developed a hunger, how the blood pumped a little faster through your dilated veins. Your pupils even opened a little wider, as if ready to take in anything and everything I was about to offer.

I leaned back, clasped my hands behind my head - maybe winced once as my sore pecs felt the stretch. “The secret is ... there is no secret.”

Your face fell. “That’s ... it?”

“Hear me out.”

“Okay.” You were a little wary. Deer in the forest, but still rapt. Maybe you were even a little hypnotized, even then, before anything.

“You make your own identity. You gotta ask yourself, bro -- who do you wanna be?”

You sighed. “That’s just it, man. I don’t know.”

“Sure you do.” I laughed, easily, for good affect, and reached over to squeeze your forearm. I knew I had you, then. “You know what you don’t like about your life, right? You just told me. You hate feeling like the guy who has all the answers. You hate the constant barrage of news and politics. You feel depressed and frustrated. You can’t figure out how to make opinions.”

“Yeah...”

“Isn’t that how you felt when you started working out? Confused, lost, overwhelmed?”

“Yeah...” But something was dawning in your eyes. I felt your forearm flex in my grip. I didn’t let up on your eyes.

“And how do you feel now?”

“Stronger,” you said, immediately.

“Nothing has to stay the same forever,” I concluded, letting my hand fall back, crossing my arms over my chest and shrugging. “You have the power to change whatever you want about yourself.”

You sighed, and narrowed your eyes at me, unconsciously crossing your arms over your chest - just like I had, without even knowing it. “So that’s it? I just have to ... will myself into being a different person?”

“Is that what you want?”

You blinked at me. This was the crucial moment. I could almost feel the strong under-current of your desires, battering at your hesitation like a rain-swollen river at the banks. If I’d done it right, if I’d led up to this moment perfectly, I’d hear -

“Yes. It is what I want.”

I nodded. “Okay, then. You’ve taken the first step.”

You nodded, too. “So what now?”

I spread my hands, then my mouth, into a wolfish smile. “Now we begin.”

[To be continued.]

#jockedguystories

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zippiethehangnail · 5 years

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It all started with a message from Grindr. If you're unfamiliar with just what Grindr is. Grindr is a gay dating app used primarily for hook ups. And if your unfamiliar with that term then... I suggest that you refrain from reading the rest of this story.

I was sitting in the publix parking lot around 1 o'clock in the morning when i first learned of his existence. If you're wondering what i was doing at such a place at that time of night well the answer is simple. I was piggy backing off their wifi so i could get some dick. Granted this was about 2 months after a break up with a person i had been with for 5 years. So of course i was still hurting financially and couldn't afford service.

It starts out with the usual small talk and then he asks me if I'd be up to chat on the phone. So i agreed and gave him the number to my textme (which is an app that allows you to make texts and calls over wifi). So we end up chatting occasionally getting interrupted by the call dropping ( i dont recommend this app... 2 stars..) But he was very understanding about my situation.

"I know what it's like. I've Been there"

He was very charming right off the bat

And very opened

I felt like i knew him

So he suggested that i come over to his house when i had a day off

And i agreed

So fast forward a few days later. Since i had absolutely no service, and i didnt want to get lost especially since i had no way of contacting him if i did. i walked up to publix, looked up his address, and took screen shots of the route. Since he lived all the way in north fort myers and neither him nor i had any access to a car. i was forced to take the bus. The 240 to bell tower and then the 140 to the last stop which was north fort. I jumped off the bus and immediately opened my gallery. Following the route i walked up to pine island round took a left, trailed it down to Pacific, took another left all the way down to state street i took a right and began scanning the mailboxes for his address until finally i was in the driveway of a rickety old trailer with an old man perched out front in a wheel chair, enjoying his afternoon, drinking nothing but naddy ice. Noticing that id stopped in his driveway and was staring at him.. My mouth all but agaped.. He gave me a perplexed look.

"Is Stephen here?"

At that

i could see movement from the porch to the left of him.

"STEPHEN!! SOME BOY'S OUT HERE!"

He had these sparkling blue eyes that stopped me dead in my tracks. The whole time he was walking towards me i was thinking how his pictures did not do him justice. He was dirty and unkempt. His shirt was littered with oil and greese stains. But underneath all the grime and muck i could see he was handsome.

He walks up to me, his shoulders slumped and his feet dragging, and leads me into his room. Which was in the back of the porch and closes the door. He offers me some weed that he said his grandpa got for him ((the old man in the wheel chair)) so i take a hit and get down to business...

Afterwards we take a walk around the neighborhood, just chatting it up. He opened up to me about how he was a mechanic and about, how his mother pretty much abandoned him with his granmother when he was younger. About how he just got out of prison, not even a month ago, for running a scam on a client, when he had his shop (i dont think he ever had one to be honest..)

Eventually, the sun starts to set and i figure if i want to get home, i better get going so i could catch the last bus. He shrugs it off and suggests that i spend the night.

"What about your grandma?"

"Don't worry about her. I can sneek you in"

So we walk around until the sun sets and go back up to his house. He tells me to sit in the lawn chair right oustide the kitchen window because there was a gigantic beach umbrella obstructing the view of who ever was sitting in it from the inside. He goes inside, tells his grandma about his time, and how he saw me off on the bus. Or something of that nature. He comes outside, goes in his room to get the make-shift bowl fashioned out of an old beer can, comes out, and sits right next to me. He takes a hit, passes it to me, and i do the same. We keep doing this until we're too high to function.

"Do you think i can go in now?"

"No, we have to wait until she falls alseep." So he gets up, goes back in to check, and comes back out to tell me that she's still watching tv.

He then checked to see if the cost was clear grabs my hand and kisses it. All while still holding it, he lowers his arm down and scotches closer to me.

"It's a discrete hand hold."

I blush and scoot closer to him.

He looks around again and kisses me.

Maybe it was because i was high

Maybe it was because i saw this rough scraggily, mechanic, all giddy and overflowing with affection

But my heart had stopped

And i did not want that moment to ever to end

But... He starts to get restless..

He gets back up, goes back in checks,

Comes out stands in the door way of the screen door takes a hit. Goes back in checks, turns off the porch light, comes back out.

"STEPHEN!? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOIN!?"

"NOTHING IM SMOKIN A BOOWL!"

"WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STANDIN IN THE PORCH WITH THAT DAMN BOWL? WE HAVE NEIGHBORS AND I'M TIRED OF EVERYBODY AROUND HERE THINKING THAT WE'RE... WHITE TRASH!"

"THE NEIGHBORS ARE FUCKING DRUG DEALERS! THEY HAVE CARS COMING THROUGH HERE ALL HOURS OF THE NIGHT!"

"YOU BETTER NOT BE LYIN TO ME ABOUT SENDIN THAT BOY HOME! I DONT CARE. HE IS NOT SPENDING THE NIGHT!"

"I'M NOT LYING!!"

"YOU BETTER NOT BECAUSE IF HE IS IM CALLIN THE COPS AND THEY CAN TAKE HIM HOME!"

She closes the door and goes back inside.

"Don't worry about her."

He sits next to me and hands me the bowl.

About 2 minutes later out she comes.

"STEPEN WHAT THE HELL DID I TELL YOU! HE'S NOT SPENDING THE NIGHT."

"HE'S NOT HE'S WAITING FOR HIS MOM TO PICK HIM UP!"

"BULSHIT! Listen i want you off my property or I'm calling the police and reporting you for trespassin."

"HIS MOM IS COMING AND PICKING HIM UP!"

"NO! I AM NOT LETTING ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR ADDICT FRIENDS SPEND THE NIGHT AT MY HOUSE. LOOK AT HIM HIGH OUT OF HIS MIND! EXCUSE ME BUT CAN YOU SPEAK ENGLISH!? GET OFF MY PROPERTY!"

They then get into a screeching fight, where she brought up the fact that she had previously let one of his friends spend the night and he eventually, ended up living there. I pull Stephen aside and tell him that, we should probably go. Considering there was no way in hell that she was gonna let me sleep there.

"AND DON'T YOU THINK ABOUT COMING BACK HERE TONIGHT. I WILL BE OUT FRONT ON THIS LAWN CHAIR WITH MY SHOT GUN! IM NOT GOIN TO SLEEP!"

So it's about 11 and me and him make our way up to Wal-Mart to use their wifi. I think about calling my mom but it's useless. She'd already be in bed so that means her phone was inside and there was absolutely no cell service in her house. Evertime i called it went straight to voicemail. "Shit! What the fuck are we gonna do?"

He tries calling his friends but they're not answering. "We could always sleep in the woods. There's a spot just a few miles down the road where i used to stay when i was homeless."

I was so tired and stoned off my ass that i just wanted to lay down.

"Okay..let's do that then."

He looked at me and shrugged

"Sure...I guess."

So we start making our way down 41. There was no sidewalk so we had to walk in the biking lane. Id like to add that when Im high im the paranoid type. So the whole walk I'm fucking terrified of the cops pulling us over and asking us what we're doing and where we're going. Didn't help that everytime i brought up the possibility to Stephen he'd add that the cops in north ft myers are waay worse then the ones in my area... so i was like wow thanks.. Now I'm even more terrified... About 3 miles later we finally make it to the spot. He finds a piece of cardboard and we cuddle but i can not seem sleep. Maybe it was because i was high, alone in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere, with no phone service, with someone i had just met that day and i kind of had the sneaking suspicion that he was gonna kill me.. I dont know... Just kind of lingered there in the back of my mind.. "Oh he could kill me right now and probably get away with it." Obviously, that wasnt the case.

I eventually realise that he was also having trouble falling asleep as well so we start to get a little freaky...

So yeah i had sex in the middle of the woods on a dirty piece of cardboard. It was fun.

#confessions #love #story time #grindr #writing #funny #lol #wtf #weed #420 #whatever

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izumitate · 6 years

Text

moonbound

kurodai week day 3: partners in crime

A space opera AU! Featuring scrappy Nekoma pirates, a decade long enemy-ship, and Daichi’s readiness to fight everybody in the galaxy. Content warning: contains mentions of violence and bodily harm.

Kuroo can feel his knuckles blanching white as he clutches at the armrest of Shibayama’s seat. His navigator is leaned so forward he looks like he might pitch right into the console at any moment, but Kuroo doesn’t want to disturb him while he’s calculating their best escape route with only his eyes, seconds before they need to make a decision. Ahead, the towering spires of Kamomedai’s financial sector stand jagged and crystalline, and will come away barely untouched when their ship finally collides with one of the armored glass walls and shatters into space debris.

“Lev, pull up! Pull up!” Kuroo hisses when he can’t take it anymore, but his pilot just laughs.

“It’s fine, captain! Not until Shibayama says so.” He turns them effortlessly around the next ‘spherescraper but continues his low course, skimming the skyline.

The only thing on their tail right now is the persistent first cruiser that caught them speeding out of the slums, but Kuroo knows from the klaxons sounding outside that it’s only a matter of minutes before an entire police battalion takes after them.

“Okay,” Shibayama finally says, pointing at the next monstrous crystal obtrusion on their right. The magnitude of its size is a step up from the others; must be a central bank for the planetside elite. “Lev, put on a burst of speed to get to the other side of that bank, and once you’re there, ascend as fast as possible. There’s a ton of floating condos up by the stratosphere, but you can handle it, right?”

“Of course I can!” Lev punches the accelerator and they shift violently forward, careening around and out of sight of their pursuer. He does exactly as Shibayama says, taking them almost vertical as he slams their ship up, up, up as fast as this engine can take them – which reminds Kuroo that they need to get a patch job done as soon as they’re back in the rogue quadrant – even as the sound of patrollers gathers behind them.

But Shibayama is right, as usual, and when Lev takes them into the overladen golden clusters of the floating apartments that only the richest can afford, their tiny ship flows through the maze of arches and gardens with ease, Lev’s skills weaving them without trouble out of the tangled airpark. They take the chance to finally put on the thrusters and break out of Kamomedai’s orbit while the police are mired in the gilded complex below.

Once free, Lev gives the rest of them a brief warning before putting on speed, so they’ll be well on their way to another star system by the time the police leave the planet. That, combined with the best cloaking system that underworld credits can buy, should keep them safe long enough to make it back to home base.

“We’re free and clear, team,” Kuroo calls to those below deck. By now Akane and Kai should’ve gotten Inuoka’s scrape taken care of; it was a minor injury, which means they don’t have to bother stopping by any outpost on their way back. “Headed home.”

“Sounds good, captain!” comes Akane’s voice echoing against the steel walls before she begins scolding Inuoka for getting up too quickly. Yaku’s voice joins the din and soon the whole ship is clattering with noise again, just the way Kuroo expects it to be.

Outside, the barren expanse of space between here and the safe haven of the unbound territories is comforting, as is the quiet. Nothing but stars to light their way back.

Nekoma calls the ramshackle colony of Spring Heights their home, though during most cycles their ship is home enough for the crew. Spring Heights is the most ironically named planetoid on this side of Andromeda, and it’s a hub of underworld activity. Kuroo rarely takes a job before first running it by his information network planetside, because who knows what kind of nonsense you could get embroiled in alone with some unknown party in the outer reaches. This is a lesson he learned long before he had his own people, when he was still a kid running jobs for some two-bit privateers who’d survived on luck instead of smarts. A broken leg, a crater canyon, and three gunfights later, Kuroo had realized he wasn’t working with anyone he hadn’t chosen himself anymore.

Nekoma is the team he built from the ground up with Kenma, who is the only thing more constant in Kuroo’s life than the call of the endless dark, the cosmic dust in his veins. He trusts them with everything, and it’s part of the reason why he never decides alone whether to take on a new job. This time around, he gets word from Johzenji that there’s a job specifically requesting to employ Nekoma; it comes down from Misaki, so Kuroo’s tempted to take it just on principle, but that’s the kind of messy thinking that gets people shipjacked even if she’s one of the most reliable info brokers he knows.

He agrees to meet the client out at Sumida Outpost, located on the outskirts of snake country because he knows that even though Daishou hates his guts, and even though he’s a dirty, thieving bastard, his territories are always well-defended and nominally hospitable toward others of their profession.

As usual, most of the crew stays behind under Kai’s command, busy with everyday tasks like sprucing up the ship and fencing their goods. Kuroo takes their secondary ship with Kenma, Yaku and Yamamoto, and they head off for the grungy, scorpion-ridden tavern Yaku favors at Sumida.

Even before they land Kuroo gets a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach, but it’s different from his flight instinct. There’s a spark of danger in the air, though he could also write that off as the dissatisfied static that always buzzes around dry, end of the road towns like this.

The tavern is dimly lit as always, and filled with the sounds of cards shuffling and deals being made. The smell of tobacco and ale and burnt meat hang heavy in the air, and it’s difficult to see through the veil of smog as they make their way toward their usual corner table next to the blown out window. The person seated there is staring out at the dunes that stretch on and on in gray and tan bands to the horizon. Kuroo can’t make out any details of their client’s face until he’s close enough to touch.

“Hello, captain. It’s been a while,” says the calm, terrifying voice of Imperial Vice Admiral Sawamura Daichi a split second before the air clears and Kuroo can make out more than his silhouette shrouded in tavern smoke. It doesn’t speak well to Kuroo’s preservation instincts that his first thought is damn, just as hot as I remembered and not danger!!

“Shit,” Yaku curses, hand jumping to his gun faster than Kuroo can say a word. At least one of them is still on it. Yamamoto shifts immediately in front of Kenma, fully prepared to shield him from any harm with his own body. But even though Kuroo’s body is reflexively poised to spring away, his heart remains steady. The Imperial Navy might be the scum on the bottom of a comet hopper’s shoe, but he’s known Sawamura for over a decacycle now, and he knows that the man would never initiate an attack against one of Kuroo’s subordinates unless he had made certain to kill Kuroo first. There’s a degree of integrity in him that most Imperial officers don’t possess.

Sawamura makes no move to stand or draw to fire; instead, he raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. Around them, activity in the tavern continues, no one disturbed by this turn of events the way Nekoma is, which Kuroo supposes either speaks well for the situation, or it means everyone in the building is going to die. Even out here in the boondocks, the name and face of one of New Miyagi’s best military commanders is known and feared, so why isn’t anyone else surprised to see him?

“If it helps put your mind at ease, Yaku-san, I came unarmed. You can check if you want.” And he looks down at his waist, folding his hands casually atop his head. Yaku wastes no time flipping open Sawamura’s coat and patting him down.

“He’s not lying,” Yaku says, but one hand remains at his holster and his eyes never leave Sawamura even as he backs away. “But I don’t trust him yet.”

“That’s fair. But I didn’t call you out here to hunt you down,” Sawamura tells him. He gestures at the bench on the other side of the table. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. I actually really do have a job for you.” No one moves.

“Forgive me if I find that a little unbelievable, vice admiral. Seeing as the last time we met you gave me a good bonk on the head for my troubles, and strafed most of the left side of my ship right off,” Kuroo says mildly. His eyes flick down to watch the way Sawamura’s mouth twitches into a quick smile before he tries to look neutral again.

“If I remember correctly, you gave me a nice parting gift too, Kuroo-san.” He reaches up to tug aside the right sleeve of his dusty tunic (and isn’t that a look, Sawamura Daichi out of that crisp uniform and dressed like a meteor rat like the rest of them) and bares the long sword burn Kuroo left him with two cycles ago, back on one of Tsubakihara’s lesser moons.

“It looks good on you?” Kuroo tries to sound remorseful, but it had been one hell of a fight that he probably would’ve been laughing his way through if his crew hadn’t been scrambling all over the deck, desperately putting up patch shields where they could. Even now he can remember with perfect clarity the taste of adrenaline and dust against his clenched teeth as he finally knocked Sawamura off the roof of their ship to be bubbled back to his own fleet. Crazy bastard hadn't let up on Kuroo for a second, even if it meant almost getting fried by one of his own ships’ artillery. Then again, Kuroo has no room to speak. He’d almost dragged them both down into a death marsh during a knife fight once. “Rugged. Everyone digs a good scar.”

“Yeah, my whole unit wolf-whistles every time I walk by,” Sawamura says with a roll of his eyes.

“Well, can you blame them? You’re too handsome to be wasted in your line of work. Come take a walk on the wild side. We’re prettier and we have more fun.”

Sawamura laughs when Kuroo winks at him. “I suppose one of those statements is true.”

Just like that they’re bantering again, the way they always do before one of them inevitably draws a weapon. Kuroo can sense Kenma’s sigh long before he hears it.

“What kind of job could you have for people like us?” Kenma asks, sliding back into view, even though Yamamoto still has an arm held protectively out in front of him. He watches Sawamura with what looks like a disinterested face, but Kuroo knows better. He’s intrigued, albeit still on his guard.

“Honestly, ‘people like you’ are the only ones I would trust with this. I need a certain skill set – one that Nekoma’s proven to excel at – and I need a group of people I can...I don’t know if trust is the right word, but let’s go with it for now.” Sawamura sits forward looking briefly at each of them in turn. “I know we have a long, volatile history, but it’s also exactly why I think you guys are the people I need to hire for this job. Because I know what your boundaries are, and I know I can count on you not to fuck me over where it counts.”

He looks directly at Kuroo when he says this, and there’s a plain honesty in his eyes that leads Kuroo to finally take a seat across from him, elbows up on the sticky tabletop.

“Alright, that’s enough buttering up. I’ll hear you out. What’s the job?”

“I need to get into Datekou. And I need your help to do it.”

He’s met with silence.

Probably because what he just proposed is beyond insane. The others must feel as shocked as Kuroo does, and it seems for a second that even the rest of the tavern conversation lulls when the name Datekou is spoken aloud. It’s a cursed shroud that settles over their table, instantly dampening the already tense mood.

“Wait- wait a second,” Yamamoto sputters first. “Are you telling me you want to hire us for a jailbreak? From the Iron Wall?”

“Yep. That is exactly what I want.”

“This is a setup,” Yaku announces. “You’re goading is into accepting your highly illegal mission then busting us once we get there. Now, what I’m confused about is why you didn’t pick something that wasn’t a blatant suicide mission.”

“That’s another fair assumption, but I give you my word that I’m completely serious. I didn’t come here to entrap you.” Sawamura flexes one hand, clenching and unclenching in an exercise of control, clearly trying to suppress some emotion as he keeps his voice even. His eyes are incandescent as he continues.

“They have four of my crew locked up in there, and I want them back.”

“Your crew? On what grounds? The Karasuno’s an Imperial ship,” Kuroo says in confusion. Not that the empire’s navy is in any way a stronghold of morality, but for government dogs, the crew of the Karasuno are better than most. Honorable where honor still counts. He can’t imagine they’d have done anything worth being court martialed for.

Sawamura’s laugh is pure bitterness. “The Karasuno was an Imperial ship. Now it’s being junked for scrap. Those of my crew that the court couldn’t frame for treason they reassigned to the outer rim fleet. The cloud skimmers. Ougiminami, Kakugawa. Chidoriyama. They scattered my team, my family, across the stars, and they locked up the rest behind the Iron Wall. I’m taking them back.”

Kuroo swallows down the parched itchiness in his throat at this news. It’s not like Nekoma could ever be friends with a naval crew, but there had always been a kind of mutual respect between themselves and the Karasuno, and this is nothing he ever would have wished on them.

“Well, shit, Sa’amura-san, what the fuck did you do to get your entire ship obliterated?”

“You know me,” Sawamura says, his smile vicious. “Stayed a little too honest. Didn’t look the other way when they insisted. I kept on pushing, kept on playing even after I should have folded.”

“But you never fold,” Kuroo says ruefully.

“No, I don’t,” and it might be the only time he’ll ever sound like he regrets it. “And I still don’t plan to.”

It’s not just simple posturing. After enough encounters, there are a few things Kuroo would say he and Sawamura can tell about each other. One fact is that they share the same tenacity, for better or worse.

This asshole really means it: he would walk right up to the Iron Wall armed with only his black market gun and military issue sword and it would still be Datekou’s mistake for standing in his way. But all logic says that despite Sawamura’s damnable perseverance, he’s dead if he tries whatever idiotic plan he’s come here to talk Nekoma into.

“That’s your prerogative, and I don’t expect any less of you, really, but. Fuck, Sawamura, you know we’re fucked if we take this on, don’t you? Everyone knows that Nekoma’s the best at infiltration that there is, but we’re thieves, not soldiers. We move cargo, not people. And we don’t take a job like this no matter how lucrative. I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can do this.”

Sawamura nods once, understanding. Then he sighs, sounding truly regretful.

“I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to do this, but I think I’m going to have to call in that favor.”

Yamamoto sucks in a harsh breath, and the others fall still. Kenma’s hand twitches at his side, resisting the urge to reach out to Kuroo’s arm. Kuroo himself just rests his hands together on the table and bites his lip once before nodding as well. He might have figured.

Out here, in the lawless territories, on the husk planets fit only for rogues and mercenaries, a life saved is a life owed. And Kuroo knew that when Sawamura inevitably cashed in on that favor he wouldn’t take it lightly, even if he wouldn’t demand outright that Kuroo sacrifice his life for him.

“You know that only promises my service, not that of Nekoma, correct?” Next to him, Kuroo can feel his crewmates tensing, but they all know better to say anything. They know they can’t talk him out of this one.

Sawamura brought Kuroo back from death’s edge once, at the cost of his own arm and half his jaw. Both parts had been grafted back on with the best medi-tech the empire could afford, but it’d been a total shitshow for a while there, the two of them stranded alone on the ice and iron hull of a downed Inarizaki starfighter. Kuroo only remembers fever-dream flashes of the event, too far gone on whatever the foxes had gassed him with as he shoved Alisa and Fukunaga into the last escape pod. Sawamura found him lying barely conscious on the stern of the ship, and rescued him from being slaughtered by one of Inarizaki’s automated guards. Fucking fox militants and their stupid fucking robots.

“C’mon now, Kuroo, I can’t you die at the hands of the Federation. You’re pirate scum, but you’re still an Imperial citizen,” Sawamura told him, hitching him higher on his back and trundling on through the blood and shrapnel splattered snow.

“Like fuck I am,” Kuroo mumbled out, too woozy to banter.

“Save your breath until you’ve got enough brainpower for a witty comeback.”

Sawamura carried his useless rag doll body all the way to the outpost where they could hunker down until help arrived. Kuroo thought they would be safe there: it was converted from a shrine to a makeshift waystation, all stone walls and steel fixtures, but it had been overrun with more Inarizaki infantry automatons. They fought off the droids at great cost, and the last memory Kuroo has of that desolate place before waking up under Kenma and Kai’s watchful guard is of Sawamura, his face a mess of jagged flesh and his left side drenched in blood, cutting down another advancing automaton before it could reach them.

Kai told him later that Sawamura hadn’t even bothered to send a perfunctory ship after them when they came to collect Kuroo. He’d simply waved them off, saying that Kuroo owed him now, and hobbled into the hold of his lieutenants to be rushed back to the medbay of the Karasuno. A full cycle passed before they met again, and they avoided the topic altogether, choosing to mock each other about overcompensating with their weapons, which of course led naturally into trying to shoot one another again.

But Kuroo has never forgotten that debt, and apparently, neither has Sawamura.

“I know. I would never ask you to risk them. Under any other circumstance I wouldn’t ask you to risk yourself either; you could say I’ve developed a strange interest in keeping you alive.” He offers Kuroo the slightest of smiles, and it almost makes him look sad. “But for my crew I would do anything.”

“Understatement of the centicycle. Alright, Sawamura-san, you have me at your disposal,” Kuroo says, finally leaning back in his seat to relax. If he’s going to die like this, then he might as well enjoy the time he has left in the universe. This is a fool’s errand, he knows, but on the one in a million chance they pull any of it off, well. It’ll be the adventure of a lifetime.

“If my captain is in, then so am I,” Yamamoto says quietly, and Kuroo looks sharply over at him.

“No, that’s not your decision to make. Nekoma isn’t a part of this deal.”

“Yeah, it is, Kuroo-san. If you’re in, then I’m in. That’s how it is.”

“Don’t be stupid, I’m not risking any of you for Sawamura’s death wish-”

“Do you like pretending to be an idiot, or did that bonk really knock some of your sense out of you?” Yaku says, an irritated line cutting into his forehead. “This is a job for Nekoma. You accepted it. Therefore, we’ve all accepted it. Kenma?”

Kenma, the usual voice of reason, just gives Kuroo a tired shrug. “Kuro, we’ll take the offer back to base to discuss, but you know you won’t get anywhere without the rest of us. Tora’s right. If you’re taking the job, then so are we. Is this acceptable?” he asks Sawamura.

“No complaints here. I came to hire Nekoma, after all, not just Kuroo. Though you personally occupy a special place in my life,” Sawamura says dryly, running a thumb across the graft scar running along his cheek.

“In your heart too, I would hope,” Kuroo says automatically, still hung up on the thought of getting his whole crew annihilated over a clearly impossible feat. But the conversation is already moving on without him.

“Before we commit to this, I wanna be sure we know what we’re really getting into,” Kenma says, sliding onto the bench next to Kuroo.

“Of course. Ask away.”

“Strategy, logistics, personnel – are you willing to leave it all up to us?”

“I trust you to do whatever needs doing, yes. And I’ll finance whatever you need me to, on top of your payment.”

“Okay. This will take some time to get together; they’re not on death row are they? Good. One last time, I need to check. Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? Even knowing you’re more than certain to die?”

Sawamura doesn’t waver in the slightest. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

“You’re already lucky your men are just imprisoned instead of up for execution,” Kenma warns. “But if you try this, they won’t pardon you again. Ignoring the fact that it’s virtually impossible to get into Datekou, let alone get back out – even if we somehow miraculously succeed, you’re dead the second any of you ever set foot on Imperial territory again. You’ll be worse off than even we are.”

“I know, and I don’t care. They lost me the moment they took my crew from me.”

“What happened to you?” Yaku asks abruptly. “They took your men, took your ship, but for someone like you- the less you have, the more dangerous you are. Why would they let you stay around?”

“Divine intervention, I guess you could call it. An old friend on the flagship Seijou pulled me for one of his smaller ships, and I’m too fucking decorated for the empire to just throw me to the wolves. They want me to waste a few years before they can reassign me to a frontline ship and hopefully get myself killed on some nameless moon in the middle of nowhere. I figured I would do them the favor of getting out of their hair before then.” He says it matter of factly, like he decided this life-changing course of action over tea one day.

“And cause an intergalactic riot in the process?” Kuroo asks, impressed by how far off the deep end Sawamura has decided to dive in one go.

“Why not? I’ve always been committed to justice, not order, captain. The empire has made it clear to me they do not value justice, so I’ll take it into my own hands.” There’s that shadow again, the one that lingers behind Sawamura’s brown eyes whenever he carries the weight of more than just himself. Kuroo can only see it when he’s really looking for it, but there’s something that lurks in the corners of Sawamura’s soul that’s just as dangerous as the rest of him, albeit in a different way.

“You know, I always thought you’d make one hell of a pirate. It’s good to know that assumption wasn’t misplaced.”

Sawamura laughs, some of the darkness in his gaze ebbing away. “Funny, I always thought you would have excelled in the navy. Odd how fate works sometimes, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it was fate that brought you to us today. I think you just take a kind of sadistic pleasure in fucking up my plans for a carefree life, vice admiral.”

“I’m not going to lie to you by denying it, captain.”

It’s kind of fucked up that Kuroo missed this, the dance of words they’d perfected in between trying to stab each other. It’ll be strange, adapting to a new relationship built on more than banter and the chase, but if he’s being honest with himself, he’s always wondered what it might be like if they spent more than thirty heart-racing minutes with each other every time they met. Might as well find out before he dies.

With a grin, he extends his hand across the table, holding just a second too long after Sawamura accepts the handshake. “Alright, Sawamura-san, let’s get your team back.”

#kurodaiweek #kurodai #kuroo tetsurou #sawamura daichi #haikyuu!!#hq fic #partners in crime #space opera #space western #my fic #cw: violence #cw: injury

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unsettlingshortstories · 4 years

Text

Onion

Caitlin R. Kiernan (2005)

Frank was seven years old when he found the fields of red grass growing behind the basement wall. The building on St. Mark’s where his parents lived after his father took a job in Manhattan and moved them from the New Jersey suburbs across the wide, gray Hudson. And of course he’d been told to stay out of the basement, no place for a child to play because there were rats down there, his mother said, and rats could give you tetanus and rabies. Rats might even be carrying plague, she said, but the sooty blackness at the foot of the stairs was too much temptation for any seven-year old, the long, long hallway past the door to the super’s apartment and sometimes a single naked bulb burned way down at the end of that hall. Dirty, white-yellow stain that only seemed to emphasize the gloom, drawing attention to just how very dark dark could be, and after school Frank would stand at the bottom of the stairs for an hour at a time, peering into the hall that led down to the basement.

“Does your mama know you’re always hanging around down here?” Mr. Sweeney would ask whenever he came out and found Frank lurking in the shadows. Frank would squint at the flood of light from Mr. Sweeney’s open door, would shrug or mumble the most noncommittal response he could come up with. “I bet you she don’t,” Mr. Sweeney would say. “I bet she don’t know.” “Are there really rats down there?” Frank might ask and Mr. Sweeney would nod his head, point towards the long hall and say “You better believe there’s rats. Boy, there’s rats under this dump big as German shepherd puppies. They got eyes like acetylene blow torches and teeth like carving knives. Can chew straight through concrete, these rats we got.” “They why don’t you get a cat?” Frank asked once and Mr. Sweeney laughed, phlegmy old man laugh, and “Oh, we had some cats, boy,” he said. “We had whole goddamn cat armies, but when these rats get done, ain’t never anything left but some gnawed-up bones and whiskers.” “I don’t believe that,” Frank said. “Rats don’t get that big. Rats don’t eat cats.” “You better get your skinny rump back upstairs, or they’re gonna eat you too,” and then Mr. Sweeney laughed again and slammed his door, left Frank alone in the dark, his heart thumping loud and his head filled with visions of the voracious, giant rats that tunneled through masonry and dined on any cat unlucky enough to get in their way. And that’s the way it went, week after week, month after month, until one snowblind February afternoon, too cold and wet to go outside and his mother didn’t notice when he slipped quietly downstairs with the flashlight she kept in a kitchen drawer. Mr. Sweeney was busy with a busted radiator on the third floor, so nobody around this time to tell him scary stories and chase him home again, and Frank walked right on past the super’s door, stood shivering in the chilly, mildew-stinking air of the hallway. The unsteady beam of his flashlight to show narrow walls that might have been blue or green a long time ago, little black-and-white, six-sided ceramic tiles on the floor, but half of them missing and he could see the rotting boards underneath. There were doors along the length of the hall, some of them boarded up, nailed shut, one door frame without any door at all and he stepped very fast past that one. Indiana Jones wouldn’t be afraid, he thought, counting his footsteps in case that might be important later on, listening to the winter wind yowling raw along the street as it swept past the building on its way to Tompkins Square Park and the East River. Twenty steps, twenty-five, thirty-three and then he was standing below the dangling bulb and for the first time Frank stopped and looked back the way he’d come. And maybe he’d counted wrong, because it seemed a lot farther than only thirty-three steps back to the dim and postage-stamp-sized splotch of day at the other end of the hall. Only ten steps more down to the basement door, heavy, gray steel door with a rusted hasp and a Yale padlock, but standing wide open like it was waiting for him and maybe Mr. Sweeney only forgot to lock it the last time he came down to check the furnace or wrap the pipes. And later, Frank wouldn’t remember much about crossing the threshold into the deeper night of the basement, the soup-thick stench and taste of dust and rot and mushrooms, picking his way through the maze of sagging shelves and wooden crates, decaying heaps of rags and newspapers, past the ancient furnace crouched in one corner like a cast-iron octopus. Angry, orange-red glow from the furnace grate like the eyes of the super’s cat-eating rats—he would remember that—and then Frank heard the dry, rustling sound coming from one corner of the basement. Years later, through high school and college and the slow purgatory of this twenties, this is where the bad dreams would always begin, the moment that he lifted the flashlight and saw the wide and jagged crack in the concrete wall. A faint draft from that corner that smelled of cinnamon and ammonia, and he knew better than to look, knew he should turn and run all the way back because it wasn’t ever really rats that he was supposed to be afraid of. The rats just a silly grown-up lie to keep him safe, smaller, kinder nightmare for his own good, and Run, boy, Mr. Sweeney whispered inside his head. Run fast while you still can, while you still don’t know. But Frank didn’t run away, and when he pressed his face to the crack in the wall, he could see that the fields stretched away for miles and miles, crimson meadows beneath a sky the yellow-green of an old bruise. The white trees that writhed and rustled in the choking, spicy breeze, and far, far way, the black thing striding slowly through the grass on bandy, stilt-long legs.

Frank and Willa share the tiny apartment on Mott Street, roachy Chinatown hovel one floor above an apothecary so the place always stinks of ginseng and jasmine and the powdered husks of dried sea creatures. Four walls, a gas range, an ancient Frigidaire that only works when it feels like it, but together they can afford the rent, most of the time, and the month or two they’ve come up short Mrs. Wu has let them slide. His job at a copy shop and hers waiting tables and sometimes they talk about moving out of the city, packing up their raggedy-ass belongings and riding a Greyhound all the way to Florida, all the way to the Keys, and then it’ll be summer all year long. But not this sticky, sweltering new York summer, no, it would be clean ocean air and rum drinks, sun-warm sand and the lullaby roll and crash of waves at night. Frank is still in bed when Willa comes out of the closet that passes as their bathroom, naked and dripping from the shower, her hair wrapped up in a towel that used to be white and he stops staring at the tattered Cézanne print thumbtacked over the television and stares at her instead. Willa is tall and her skin so pale he thought she might be sick the first time they met, so skinny that he can see intimations of her skeleton beneath that skin like milk and pearls. Can trace the blue-green network of veins and capillaries in her throat, between her small breasts, winding like hesitant, watercolor brush strokes down her arms. He’s pretty sure that one day Willa will finally figure out she can do a hell of a lot better than him and move on, but he tries not to let that ruin whatever it is they have now. “It’s all yours,” she says, his turn even though the water won’t be hot again for at least half an hour, and Willa sits down in a chair near the foot of the bed. She leans forward and rubs vigorously at her hair trapped inside the dingy towel. “We could both play hooky,” Frank says hopefully, watching her, imagining how much better sex would be than the chugging, headache drone of Xerox machines, the endless dissatisfaction of clients. “You could come back to bed and we could lie here all day. We could just lie here and sweat and watch television.” “Jesus, Frank, how am I supposed to resist an offer like that?” “Okay, so we could screw and sweat and watch television.” She stops drying her hair and glares at him, shakes her head and frowns, but the sort of frown that says I wish I could more than it says anything else. “That new girl isn’t working out,” she says. “The fat chick from Kazakhstan?” Frank asks and he rolls over onto his back, easier to forget the fantasies of a lazy day alone with Willa if he isn’t looking at her sitting there naked. “Fucking Kazakhstan. I mean, what the hell were Ted and Daniel thinking? She can’t even speak enough English to tell someone where the toilet is, much less take an order.” “Maybe they felt sorry for her,” Frank says unhelpfully and now he’s staring up at his favorite crack on the water-stained ceiling, the one that always makes him think of a Viking orbiter photo of the Valles Marineris from one of his old astronomy books. “I’ve heard that people do that sometimes, feel sorry for people.” “Well, they’d probably lose less money if they just sent the bitch to college, the way she’s been pissing off customers.” ”Maybe you should suggest that today,” and a moment later Willa’s wet towel smacks him in the face, steamy-damp terry cloth that smells like her black hair dye and the cheap baby shampoo she uses. It covers his eyes, obscuring his view of the Martian rift valley overhead, but Frank doesn’t move the towel immediately, better to lie there a moment longer, breathing her in. “Is it supposed to rain today?” Willa asks and he mumbles through the wet towel that he doesn’t know. “They keep promising it’s going to rain and it keeps not raining.” Frank sits up and the towel slides off his face and into his lap, lies there as the dampness begins to soak through his boxers. ”I don’t know,” he says again; Willa has her back turned to him and she doesn’t reply or make any sign to show that she’s heard. She’s pulling a bright yellow T-shirt on over her head, the Curious George shirt he gave her for Christmas, has put on a pair of yellow panties, too. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s the heat. The heat’s driving me crazy.” Frank glances toward the window, the sash up but the chintzy curtains hanging limp and lifeless in the stagnant July air; he’d have to get out of bed, walk all the way across the room, lean over the sill and peer up past the walls and rooftops to see if there are any clouds. “It might rain today,” he says, instead. “I don’t think it’s ever going to rain again as long as I live,” Willa says and steps into her jeans. “I think we’ve broken this goddamn planet and it’s never going to rain anywhere ever again.” Frank rubs his fingers through his stiff, dirty hair and looks back at the Cézanne still life above the television—a tabletop, the absinthe bottle and a carafe of water, an empty glass, the fruit that might be peaches. “You’ll be at the meeting tonight?” he asks and Frank keeps his eyes on the print because he doesn’t like the sullen, secretive expression Willa gets whenever they have to talk about the meetings. “Yeah,” she says, sighs, and then there’s the cloth-metal sound of her zipper. “Of course I’ll be at the meeting. Where the hell else would I be?” And then she goes back into the bedroom and shuts the door behind her, leaves Frank alone with the Cézanne and the exotic reek of the apothecary downstairs, Valles Marineris and the bright day spilling uninvited through the window above Mott Street.

Half past two and Frank sits on a plastic milk crate in the stockroom of Gotham Kwick Kopy, trying to decide whether or not to eat the peanut butter and honey sandwich he brought for lunch. The air conditioning’s on the blink again and he thinks it might actually be hotter inside the shop than out on the street; a few merciful degrees cooler in the stockroom, though, shadowy refuge stacked high with cardboard boxes of copy paper in a dozen shades of white and all the colors of the rainbow. He peels back the top of his sandwich, the doughy Millbrook bread that Willa likes, and frowns at the mess underneath. So hot out front that the peanut butter has melted, oily mess to leak straight through wax paper and the brown bag and he’s trying to remember if peanut butter and honey can spoil. Both the stockroom doors swing open and Frank looks up, blinks and squints at the sun-framed silhouette, Joe Manske letting in the heat and “Hey, don’t do that,” Frank says as Joe switches on the lights. The fluorescents buzz and flicker uncertainly, chasing away the shadows, drenching the stockroom in their bland, indifferent glare. “Dude, why are you sitting back here in the dark?” Joe asks and for a moment Frank considers throwing the sandwich at him. “Why aren’t you working on that Mac?” Frank asks right back and “It’s fixed, good as new,” Joe says, grins his big, stupid grin, and sits down on a box of laser print paper near the door. “That fucker won’t ever be good as new again.” “Well, at least it’s stopped making that sound. That’s good enough for me,” and Joe takes out a pack of Camels, offers one to Frank and Frank shakes his head no. A month now since his last cigarette, quitting because Willa’s step-mother is dying of lung cancer, quitting because cigarettes cost too goddamn much, anyhow, and “Thanks, though,” he says. “Whatever,” Joe Manske mumbles around the filter of his Camel, thumb on the strike wheel of his silver lighter and in a moment the air is filled with the pungent aroma of burning tobacco. Frank gives up on the dubious sandwich, drops it back into the brown bag and crumples the bag into a greasy ball. “I fuckin’ hate this fuckin’ job,” Joe says, disgusted, smoky cloud of words about his head, and he points at the stockroom door with his cigarette. “You just missed a real peace of work, man.” “Yeah?” and Frank tosses the sandwich ball towards the big plastic garbage can sitting a few feet away, misses and it rolls behind the busted Canon 2400 color copier that’s been sitting in the same spot since he started this job a year ago. “Yeah,” Joe says. “I was trying to finish that pet store job and this dude comes in, little bitty old man looks like he just got off the boat from Poland or Armenia or some shit—“ “My grandmother was Polish,“ Frank says and Joe sighs loudly, long impatient sigh and he flicks ash onto the cement floor. “You know what I mean.” “So what’d he want anyway?” Frank asks, not because he cares but the shortest way through any conversation with Joe Manske is usually right down the middle, just be quiet and listen and sooner or later he’ll probably come to the end and shut up. “He had this old book with him. The damned thing must have been even older than him and was falling apart. I don’t think you could so much as look at it without the pages crumbling. Had it tied together with some string and he kept askin’ me all these questions, real technical shit about the machines, you know.” “Yeah? Like what?” “Dude, I don’t know. I can’t remember half of it, techie shit, like I was friggin’ Mr. Wizard or somethin’. I finally just told him we couldn’t be responsible if the copiers messed up his old book, but he still kept on askin’ these questions. Lucky for me, one of the self-service machines jammed and I told him I had to go fix it. By the time I was finished, he was gone.” “You live to serve,” Frank says, wondering if Willa would be able to tell if he had just one cigarette. “The customer is always right.” “Fuck that shit,” Joe Manske says. “I don’t get paid enough to have to listen to some senile old fart jabberin’ at me all day.” “Yes sir, helpful is your middle name.” “Fuck you.” Frank laughs and gets up, pushes the milk crate towards the wall with the toe of one shoe so no one’s going to come along later and trip over it, break their neck and have him to blame. “I better get back to work,” he says and “You do that,” Joe grumbles and puffs his Camel. Through the stockroom doors and back out into the stifling, noisy clutter of the shop, and it must be at least ten degrees warmer out here, he thinks. There’s a line at the register and the phone’s ringing, no one out front but Maggie and she glowers at him across the chaos. “I’m on it,” Frank says; she shakes her head doubtfully and turns to help a woman wearing a dark purple dress and matching beret. Frank’s reaching across the counter for the telephone receiver when he notices the business card lying near a display of Liquid Paper. Black sans serif print on an expensive, white cotton card stock and what appears to be an infinity symbol in the lower left-hand corner. FOUND: LOST WORLDS centered at the top, TERRAE NOVUM ET TERRA INDETERMINATA on the next line down in smaller letters. Then a name and an address—Dr. Solomon Monalisa, Ph.D., 43 W. 61st St., Manhattan—but no number or email, and Frank picks up the card, holds it so Maggie can see. “Where’d this come from?” he asks but she only shrugs, annoyed but still smiling her strained and weary smile for the woman in the purple beret. “Beats me. Ask Joe, if he ever comes back. Now will you please answer the phone?” He apologizes, lifts the receiver, “Gotham Kwick Kopy, Frank speaking. How may I help you?” and slips the white card into his back pocket.

The group meets in the basement of a synagogue on Eldridge Street. Once a month, eight o’clock until everyone who wants to talk has taken his or her turn, coffee and stale doughnuts before and afterwards. Metal folding chairs and a lectern down front, a microphone and crackly PA system even though the room isn’t really large enough to need one. Never more than fourteen or fifteen people, occasionally as few as six or seven, and Frank and Willa always sit at the very back, near the door. Sometimes Willa doesn’t make it all the way through a meeting and she says she hates the way they all watch her if she gets up to leave early, like she’s done something wrong, she says, like this is all her fault, somehow. So they sit by the door, which is fine with Frank; he’d rather not have everyone staring at the back of his head, anyway. He’s sipping at a styrofoam cup of the bitter, black coffee, three sugars and it’s still bitter, watching the others, all their familiar, telltale quirks and peculiarities, their equivocal glances, when Willa comes in. First the sound of her clunky motorcycle boots on the concrete steps and then she stands in the doorway a moment, that expression like it’s always the first time for her and it can never be any other way. “Hey,” Frank says quietly. “I made it,” she replies and sits down beside him. There’s a stain on the front of her Curious George T-shirt that looks like chocolate sauce. “How was your day?” he asks her, talking so she doesn’t lock up before things even get started. “Same as ever. It sucked. They didn’t fire Miss Kazakhstan.” “That’s good, dear. Would you like a martini?” and he jabs a thumb toward the free-coffee-and-stale-doughnut table. “I think I’ll pass,” Willa says humorlessly, rubs her hands together and stares at the floor between her feet. “I think my stomach hurts enough already.” “Would you rather just go home? We can miss one night. I sure as hell don’t care—“ “No,” she says, answering too fast, too emphatic, so he knows she means yes. “That would be silly. I’ll be fine when things get started.” And then Mr. Zaroba stands, stocky man with skin like tea-stained muslin, salt-and-pepper hair and beard and his bushy, gray eyebrows. Kindly blue grandfather eyes and he raises one hand to get everyone’s attention, as if they aren’t all looking at him already, as if they haven’t all been waiting for him to open his mouth and break the tense, uncertain silence. “Good evening, everyone,” he says, and Willa sits up a little straighter in her chair, expectant arch of her back as though she’s getting ready to run. “Before we begin,” Mr. Zaroba continues, “there’s something I wanted to share. I came across this last week,” and he takes a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolds it, and begins to read. An item from the New York Tribune, February 17th, 1901; reports by an Indian tribe in Alaska of a city in the sky that was seen sometimes, and a prospector named Willoughby who claimed to have witnessed the thing himself in 1897, claimed to have tried to photograph it on several occasions and succeeded, finally. “And now this,” Zaroba says and he pulls a second folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, presto, bottomless bag of tricks, that pocket, and this time he reads from a book, Alaska by Miner Bruce, page 107, he says. Someone else who saw the city suspended in the arctic sky, a Mr. C.W. Thornton of Seattle, and “’It required no effort of the imagination to liken it to a city,’” Mr. Zaroba reads, “’but was so distinct that it required, instead, faith to believe that it was not in reality a city.’” People shift nervously in their seats, scuff their feet, and someone whispers too loudly. “I have the prospector’s photograph,” Zaroba says. “It’s only a Xerox from the book, of course. It isn’t very clear, but I thought some of you might like to see it.” And he hands one of the sheets of paper to the person sitting nearest him. “Damn, I need a cigarette,” Willa whispers and “You and me both, Frank whispers back. It takes almost five minutes for the sheet of paper to make its way to the rear of the room, passed along from hand to hand while Zaroba stands patiently at the front, his head bowed solemn as if leading a prayer. Some hold onto it as long as they dare and others hardly seem to want to touch it. A man three rows in front of them gets up and brings it back to Willa. ”I don’t see nothing but clouds,” he says, sounding disappointed. And neither does Frank, fuzzy photograph of a mirage, deceit of sunlight in the collision of warm and freezing air high above a glacier, but Willa must see more. She holds the paper tight and chews at her lower lip, traces the distorted peaks and cumulonimbus towers with the tip of an index finger. “My god,” she whispers. In a moment Zaroba comes up the aisle and takes the picture away, leaves Willa staring at her empty hands, her eyes wet like she might start crying. Frank puts an arm around her bony shoulders, but she immediately wiggles free and scoots her chair a few inches farther away. “So, who wants to get us started tonight?” Mr. Zaroba asks when he gets back to the lectern. At first no one moves or speaks or raises a hand, each looking at the others or trying hard to look nowhere at all. And then a young woman stands up, younger than Willa, filthy clothes and bruise-dark circles under her eyes, hair that hasn’t been combed or washed in ages. Her name is Janice and Frank thinks that she’s a junky, probably a heroin addict because she always wears long sleeves. “Janice? Very good, then,” and Mr. Zaroba returns to his seat in the first row. Everyone watches Janice as she walks slowly to the front of the room, or they pretend not to watch her. There’s a small hole in the seat of her dirty, threadbare jeans and Frank can see that she isn’t wearing underwear. She stands behind the lectern, coughs once, twice, and brushes her shaggy bangs out of her face. She looks anxiously at Mr. Zaroba and “It’s all right, Janice,” he says. “Take all the time you need. No one’s going to rush you.” “Bullshit,” Willa mutters, loud enough that the man sitting three rows in front of them turns and scowls. “What the hell are you staring at,” she growls and he turns back towards the lectern. “It’s okay, baby,” Frank says and takes her hand, squeezes hard enough that she can’t shake him loose this time. “We can leave anytime you want.” Janice coughs again and there’s a faint feedback whine from the mike. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand and “I was only fourteen years old,” she begins. “I still lived with my foster parents in Trenton and there was this old cemetery near our house, Riverview Cemetery. Me and my sister, my foster sister, we used to go there to smoke and talk, you know, just to get away from the house.” Janice looks at the basement ceiling while she speaks, or down at the lectern, but never at the others. She pauses and wipes her nose again. “We went there all the time. Wasn’t anything out there to be afraid of, not like at home. Just dead people, and me and Nadine weren’t afraid of dead people. Dead people don’t hurt anyone, right? We could sit there under the trees in the summer and it was almost like things weren’t so bad. Nadine was a year older than me.” Willa tries to pull her hand free, digs her nails into Frank’s palm but he doesn’t let go. They both know where this is going, have both heard Janice’s story so many times that they could recite it backwards, same tired old horror story, and “It’s okay,” he says out loud, to Willa or to himself. “Mostly it was just regular headstones, but there were a few bigger crypts set way back near the water. I didn’t like being around them. I told her that, over and over, but Nadine said they were like little castles, like something out of fairy tales. “One day one of them was open, like maybe someone had busted into it, and Nadine had to see if there were still bones inside. I begged her not to, said whoever broke it open might still be hanging around somewhere and we ought to go home and come back later. But she wouldn’t listen to me. “I didn’t want to look inside. I swear to God, I didn’t.” “Liar.” Willa whispers, so low now that the man three rows in front of them doesn’t hear, but Frank does. Her nails are digging deeper into his palm, and his eyes are beginning to water from the pain. “You wanted to see,” she says. “Just like the rest of us, you wanted to see.” “I said, ‘What if someone’s still in there?’ but she wouldn’t listen. She wasn’t ever afraid of anything. She used to lay down on train tracks just to piss me off.” “What did you see in the crypt, Janice, when you and Nadine looked inside?” Mr. Zaroba asks, but no hint of impatience in his voice, not hurrying her or prompting, only helping her find a path across the words as though they were slippery rocks in a cold stream. “Can you tell us?” Janice takes a very deep breath, swallows, and “Stairs,” she says. “Stairs going down into the ground. There was a light way down at the bottom, a blue light, like a cop car light. Only it wasn’t flashing. And we could hear something moving around down there, and something else that sounded like a dog panting. I tried to get Nadine to come back to the house with me then, but she wouldn’t. She said ‘Those stairs might go anywhere, Jan. Don’t you want to see? Don’t you want to know?” Another pause and “I couldn’t stop her,” Janice says. Willa mutters something Frank doesn’t understand, then, something vicious, and he lets go of her hand, rubs at the four crescent-shaped wounds her nails leave behind. Blood drawn, crimson tattoos to mark the wild and irreparable tear in her soul by marking him, and he presses his palm to his black work pants, no matter if it stains, no one will ever notice. “I waited at the top of the stairs until dark,” Janice says. “I kept on calling her. I called her until my throat hurt.” When the sun started going down, the blue light at the bottom got brighter and brighter and once or twice I thought I could see someone moving around down there, someone standing between me and the light. Finally, yelled I was going to get the goddamn cops if she didn’t come back…” and Janice trails off, hugs herself like she’s cold and gazes straight ahead, but Frank knows she doesn’t see any of them sitting there, watching her, waiting for the next word, waiting for their turns at the lectern. “You don’t have to say any more tonight,” Zaroba says. “You know we’ll all understand if you can’t.” “No,” Janice says. “I can…I really need to,” and she squeezes her eyes shut tight. Mr. Zaroba stands, takes one reassuring step towards the lectern. “We’re all right here,” he says, and “We’re listening,” Willa mumbles mockingly. “We’re listening,” Zaroba says a second later. “I didn’t go to the police. I didn’t tell anyone anything until the next day. My foster parents, they just thought she’d run away again. No one would believe me when I told them about the crypt, when I told them where Nadine had really gone. Finally, they made me show them, though, the cops did, so I took them out to Riverview.” “Why do we always have to fucking start with her?” Willa whispers. “I can’t remember a single time she didn’t go first.” Someone sneezes and “It was sealed up again,” Janice says, her small and brittle voice made big and brittle by the PA speakers. “But they opened it.” The cemetery people didn’t want them to, but they did anyway. I swore I’d kill myself if they didn’t open it and get Nadine out of there.” “Can you remember a time she didn’t go first?” Willa asks and Frank looks at her, but he doesn’t answer. “All they found inside was a coffin. The cops even pulled up part of the marble floor, but there wasn’t anything under it, just dirt.” A few more minutes, a few more details, and Janice is done. Mr. Zaroba hugs her and she goes back to her seat. “Who wants to be next?” he asks them and it’s the man who calls himself Charlie Jones, though they all know that’s not his real name. Every month he apologizes because he can’t use his real name at the meetings, too afraid someone at work might find out, and then he tells them about the time he opened a bedroom door in his house in Hartford and there was nothing on the other side but stars. When he’s done, Zaroba shakes his hand, pats him on the back, and now it’s time for the woman who got lost once on the subway, two hours to get from South Ferry to the Houston Street Station, alone in an empty train that rushed along through a darkness filled with the sound of children crying. Then a timid Colombian woman named Juanita Lazarte, the night she watched two moons cross the sky above Peekskill, the morning the sun rose in the south. And all the others, each in his or her turn, as the big wall clock behind the lectern ticks and the night fills up with the weight and absurdity of their stories, glimpses of impossible geographies, entire worlds hidden in plain view if you’re unlucky enough to see them. “If you’re damned,” Juanita Lazarte once said and quickly crossed herself. Mr. Zaroba who was once an atmospheric scientist and pilot for the Navy. He’s seen something too, of course, the summer of 1969, flying supplies in a Hercules C-130 from Christchurch, New Zealand to McMurdo Station. A freak storm, whiteout conditions and instrument malfunction, and when they finally found a break in the clouds somewhere over the Transantarctic Mountains the entire crew saw the ruins of a vast city, glittering obsidian towers and shattered, crystal spires, crumbling walls carved from the mountains themselves. At least that’s what Zaroba says. He also says the Navy pressured the other men into signing papers agreeing never to talk about the flight and when he refused, he was pronounced mentally unsound by a military psychiatrist and discharged. When Willa’s turn comes, she glances at Frank, not a word but all the terrible things right there in her eyes for him to see, unspoken resignation, surrender, and then she goes down the aisle and stands behind the lectern.

Frank wakes up from a dream of rain and thunder and Willa’s sitting cross-legged at the foot of their bed, nothing on but her pajama bottoms, watching television with the sound off and smoking a cigarette. “Where the hell’d you get that?” he asks, blinks sleepily and points at the cigarette. “I bought a pack on my break today,” she replies, not taking her eyes off the screen. She takes a long drag and the smoke leaks slowly from her nostrils. “I thought we had an agreement.” ”I’m sorry,” but she doesn’t sound sorry at all, and Frank sits up and blinks at the TV screen, rubs his eyes, and now he can see it’s Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story. ”You can turn the sound up, if you want to,” he says. “It won’t bother me.” ”No, that’s okay. I know it by heart anyway.” And then neither of them says anything else for a few minutes, sit watching the televisions, and when Willa has smoked the cigarette down to the filter she stubs it out in a saucer. ”I don’t think I want to go to the meetings anymore,” she says. “I think they’re only making it worse for me.” Frank waits a moment before he replies, waiting to be sure that she’s finished, and then, “That’s your decision, Willa. If that’s what you want.” ”Of course it’s my decision.” ”You know what I meant.” ”I can’t keep reciting it over and over like the rest of you. There’s no fucking point. I could talk about it from now till doomsday and it still wouldn’t make sense and I’d still be afraid. Nothing Zaroba and that bunch of freaks has to say is going to change that, Frank.” Willa picks up the pack of Camels off the bed, lights another cigarette with a disposable lighter that looks pink by the flickering, grainy light from the TV screen. ”I’m sorry,” Frank says. ”Does it help you?” she asks and now there’s an angry-sharp edge in her voice, Willa’s switchblade mood swings, sullen to pissed in the space between heartbeats. “Has it ever helped you at all?” Frank doesn’t want to fight with her tonight, wants to close his eyes and slip back down to sleep, back to his raincool dreams. Too hot for an argument, and “I don’t know,” he says, and that’s almost not a lie. ”Yeah, well, whatever,” Willa mumbles and takes another drag off her cigarette. ”We’ll talk about it in the morning if you want,” Frank says and he lies back down, turns to face the open window and the noise of Mott Street at two A.M., the blinking orange neon from a noodle shop across the street. ”I’m not going to change my mind, if that’s what you mean,” Willa says. ”You can turn the sound up,” Frank tells her again and concentrates on the soothing rhythm of the noodle shop sign, orange pulse like campfire light, much, much better than counting imaginary sheep. In a moment he’s almost asleep again, scant inches from sleep and “Did you ever see Return to Oz?” Willa asks him. ”What?” ”Return to Oz, the one where Fairuza Balk plays Dorothy and Laurie Piper plays Auntie Em.” ”No,” Frank replies. “I never did,” and he rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling instead of the neon sign. In the dark and the gray light from the television, his favorite crack looks even more like the Valles Marineris. ”It wasn’t anything like The Wizard of Oz. I was just a little kid, but I remember it. It scared the hell out of me.” ”Your mother let you see scary movies when you were a little kid?” Willa ignores the question, her eyes still fixed on The Philadelphia Story if they’re fixed anywhere, and she exhales a cloud of smoke that swirls and drifts about above the bed. ”When the film begins, Auntie Em and Uncle Henry think Dorothy’s sick,” she says. “They think she’s crazy, because she talks about Oz all the time, because she won’t believe it was only a nightmare. They finally send her off to a sanitarium for electric shock treatment—“ ”Jesus,” Frank says, not entirely sure that Willa isn’t making all this up. “That’s horrible.” ”Yeah, but it’s true, isn’t it? It’s what really happens to little girls who see places that aren’t supposed to be there. People aren’t ever so glad you didn’t die in a twister that they want to listen to crazy shit about talking scarecrows and emerald cities.” And Frank doesn’t answer because he knows he isn’t supposed to, knows that she would rather he didn’t even try, so he sweats and stares at his surrogate, plaster Mars instead, at the shadow play from the television screen; she doesn’t say anything else, and in a little while more, he’s asleep.

In this dream there is still thunder, no rain from the other sky but the crack and rumble of thunder so loud that the air shimmers and could splinter like ice. The tall red grass almost as high as his waist, rippling gently in the wind, and Frank wishes that Willa wouldn’t get so close to the fleshy, white trees. She thinks they might have fruit, peaches and she’s never eaten a white peach before, she said. Giants fighting in the sky and Willa picking up windfall fruit from the rocky ground beneath the trees; Frank looks over his shoulder, back towards the fissure in the basement wall, back the way they came, but it’s vanished. I should be sacred, he thinks. No, I should be scared. And now Willa is coming back towards him through the crimson waves of grass, her skirt for a linen basket to hold all the pale fruit she’s gathered. She’s smiling and he tries to remember the last time he saw her smile, really smile, not just a smirk or sneer. She smiles and steps through the murmuring grass that seems to part to let her pass, her bare arms and legs safe from the blades grown sharp as straight razors. ”They are peaches,” she beams. But the fruit is the color of school-room chalk, it’s skin smooth and slick and glistening with tiny, pinhead beads of nectar seeping out through minute pores. “Take one,” she says, but his stomach lurches and rolls at the thought, loath to even touch one of the things and then she sighs and dumps them all into the grass at his feet. ”I used to know a story about peaches,” Willa says. “It was a Japanese story, I think. Or maybe it was Chinese.” ”I’m pretty sure those aren’t peaches,” Frank says, and he takes a step backwards, away from the pile of sweating, albino fruit. ”I heard the pits are poisonous,” she says. “Arsenic, or maybe it’s cyanide.” A brilliant flash of chartreuse lightning then and the sky sizzles and smells like charred meat. Willa bends and retrieves a piece of the fruit, takes a bite before he can stop her; the sound of her teeth sinking through its skin, tearing through the colorless pulp inside, is louder than the thunder, and milky juice rolls down her chin and stains her Curious George T-shirt. Something wriggles from between her lips, falls to the grass, and when Willa opens her jaws wide to take another bite Frank can see that her mouth is filled with wriggling things. ”They have to be careful you don’t swallow your tongue,” she says, mumbling around the white peach. “If you swallow your tongue you’ll choke to death.” Frank snatches the fruit away from her, grabs it quick before she puts any more of it in her belly, and she frowns and wipes the juice staining her hands off onto her skirt. The half-eaten thing feels warm and he tosses it away. ”Jesus, that was fucking silly, Frank. The harm’s already done, you know that. The harm was done the day you looked through that hole in the wall.” And then the sky booms its symphony of gangrene and sepsis and lightning stabs down with electric claws, thunder then lightning but that’s only the wrong way round if he pretends Willa isn’t right, if he pretends that he’s seven again and this time he doesn’t take the flashlight from the kitchen drawer. This time he does what his mother says and doesn’t go sneaking off the minute she turns her back. Frank stands alone beneath the restless trees, his aching, dizzy head too full of all the time that can’t be redeemed, now or then or ever, and he watches as Willa walks alone across the red fields towards the endless deserts of scrap iron and bone, towards the bloated, scarlet-purple sun. The black things have noticed her, and creep along close behind, stalking silent on ebony, mantis legs. This time he wakes up before they catch her.

The long weekend, then, hotter and drier, the sky more white than blue and the air on Mott Street and everywhere else that Frank has any reason to go has grown so ripe, so redolent, that sometimes he pulls the collars of his T-shirts up over his mouth and nose, breathes through the cotton like a surgeon or a wild west bandit, but the smell always gets through anyway. On the news there are people dying of heat stroke and dehydration, people dying in the streets and ERs, but fresh-faced weathermen still promise that it will rain very soon. He’s stopped believing them and maybe that means Willa’s right and it never will rain again. Frank hasn’t shown the white card—FOUND: LOST WORLDS—to Willa, keeps it hidden in his wallet, only taking it out when he’s alone and no one will see, no one to ask where or what or who. He’s read it over and over again, has each line committed to memory, and Monday morning he almost calls Mr. Zaroba about it. The half hour between Willa leaving for the café and the time that he has to leave for the copy shop if he isn’t going to be late, and he holds the telephone receiver and stares at Dr. Solomon Monalisa’s card lying there on the table in front of him. The sound of his heart, the dial-tone drone, and the traffic down on Mott Street, the spice-and-dried-fish odor of the apothecary leaking up through the floorboards, and a fat drop of sweat slides down his forehead and spreads itself painfully across his left eyeball. By the time he’s finished rubbing at his eye, calling Zaroba no longer seems like such a good idea after all, and Frank puts the white card back into his wallet, slips it in safe between his driver’s license and a dog-eared, expired MetroCard. Instead he calls in sick, gets Maggie and she doesn’t believe for one moment that there’s anything wrong with him. ”I fucking swear, I can’t even get up off the toilet long enough to make a phone call. I’m calling you from the head,” only half an effort at sounding sincere because they both know this is only going through the motions. ”As we speak—“ he starts, but Maggie cuts him off. ”That’s enough, Frank. But I’m telling you, man if you wanna keep this job, you better get your slacker ass down here tomorrow morning.” ”Right,” Frank says. “I hear you,” and she hangs up first And then Frank stares at the open window, the sun beating down like the Voice of God out there, and it takes him almost five minutes to remember where to find the next number he has to call.

Sidney McAvoy stopped coming to the meetings at the synagogue on Eldridge Street almost a year ago, not long after Frank’s first time. Small, hawk-nosed man with nervous, ferrety eyes, and he’s always reminded Frank a little of Dustin Hoffman in Papillon. Some sort of tension or wound between Sidney and Mr. Zaroba that Frank never fully understood, but he saw it from the start, the way their eyes never met and Sidney never took his turn at the lectern, sat silent, brooding, chewing at the stem of a cheap, unlit pipe. And then an argument after one of the meetings, the same night that Zaroba told Janice that she shouldn’t ever go back to the cemetery in Trenton, that she should never try to find the staircase and the blue light again. Both men speaking in urgent, angry whispers, Zaroba looking up occasionally to smile a sheepish, embarrassed, apologetic smile. Everyone pretending not to see or hear, talking among themselves, occupied with their stale doughnuts and tiny packets of non-dairy creamer, and then Sidney McAvoy left and never came back. Frank would’ve forgotten all about him, almost had forgotten, and then one night he and Willa were coming home late from a bar where they drink sometimes, whenever they’re feeling irresponsible enough to spend money on booze. Cheap vodka or cheaper beer, a few hours wasted just trying to feel like everyone else, the way they imagined other, normal people might feel, and they ran into Sidney McAvoy a few blocks from their apartment. He was wearing a ratty green raincoat, even though it wasn’t raining, and chewing on one of his pipes, carrying a large box wrapped in white butcher’s paper, tied up tight and neat with twine. ”Shit,” Willa whispered. “Make like you don’t see him,” but Sidney had already noticed them and he was busy clumsily trying to hide the big package behind his back. ”I know you two,” he declared, talking loudly, a suspicious, accusatory glint to his quavering voice. “You’re both with Zaroba, aren’t you? You still go to his meetings.” That last word a sneer and he pointed a short, grubby finger at the center of Frank’s chest. ”That’s really none of your goddamn business, is it?” Willa growled and Frank stepped quickly between them; she mumbled and spit curses behind his back and Sindey McAvoy glared up at Frank with his beady-dark eyes. A whole lifetime’s worth of bitterness and distrust trapped inside those eyes, eyes that have seen far too much or far too little, and “How have you been, Mr. McAvoy,” Frank said, straining to sound friendly, and he managed the sickly ghost of a smile. Sidney grunted and almost dropped his carefully-wrapped package. ”If you care about that girl there,” he said, speaking around the stem of the pipe clenched between his yellowed teeth, “you’ll keep her away from Zaroba. And you’ll both stop telling him things, if you know what’s good for you. There are more useful answers in a road atlas than you’re ever going to get out of that old phony.” ”What makes you say that?” Frank asked. “What were you guys fighting about?” but Sidney was already scuttling away down Canal Street, his white package hugged close to his chest. He turned a corner without looking back and was gone. ”Fucking nut job,” Willa mumbled. “What the hell’s his problem anyway?” ”Maybe the less we know about him the better,” Frank said and he put an arm around Willa’s small waist, holding her close to him, trying hard not to think about what could have been in the box but unable to think of anything else. And two weeks later, dim and snowy last day before Thanksgiving, Frank found Sidney McAvoy’s number in the phone book and called him.

A wet comb through his hair, cleaner shirt and socks, and Frank goes out into the sizzling day; across Columbus Park to the Canal Street Station and he takes the M to Grand Street, rides the B line all the way to the subway stop beneath the Museum of Natural History. Rumbling long through the honeycombed earth, the diesel and dust and garbage scented darkness and him swaddled inside steel and unsteady fluorescent light. Time to think that he’d rather not have, unwelcome luxury of second thoughts, and when the train finally reaches the museum he’s almost ready to turn right around and head back downtown. Almost, but Dr. Solomon Monalisa’s card is in his wallet to keep him moving, get him off the train and up the concrete steps to the museum entrance. Ten dollars he can’t spare to get inside, but Sidney McAvoy will never agree to meet him anywhere outside, too paranoid for a walk in Central Park or a quiet booth in a deli or a coffee shop somewhere. ”People are always listening,” he says, whenever Frank has suggested or asked that they meet somewhere without an entrance fee. “You never know what they might overhear.” So sometimes it’s the long marble bench in front of the Apatosaurus, or the abyssal, blue-black gloom of the Hall of Fishes, seats beneath a planetarium constellation sky, whichever spot happens to strike Sidney’s fancy that particular day. His fancy or his cabalistic fantasies, if there’s any difference, and today Frank finds him in the Hall of Asiatic Mammals, short and rumpled man in a threadbare tweed jacket and red tennis shoes standing alone before the Indian leopard diorama, gazing intently in at the pocket of counterfeit jungle and the taxidermied cats. Frank waits behind him for a minute or two, waiting to be noticed, and when Sidney looks up and speaks, he speaks to Frank’s reflection. ”I’m very busy today,” he says, brusque, impatient. “I hope this isn’t going to take long.” And no, Frank says, it won’t take long at all, I promise, but Sidney’s doubtful expression to show just how much he believes that. He sighs and looks back to the stuffed leopards, papier-mâché trees and wax leaves, a painted flock of peafowl rising to hang forever beneath a painted forest canopy. Snapshot moment of another world and the walls of the dimly-lit hall lined with a dozen or more such scenes. ”You want to know about Monalisa,” Sidney says. “That’s why you came here, because you think I can tell you who he is.” ”Yeah,” and Frank reaches into this pocket for his wallet. “He came into the place where I work last week and left this.” He takes out the card and Sidney turns around only long enough to get it from him. ”So, you talked to him?” ”No, I didn’t. I was eating my lunch in the stockroom. I didn’t actually see him for myself.” Sidney stares at the card, seems to read it carefully three or four times and then he hands it back to Frank, goes back to staring at the leopards. ”Why didn’t you show this to Zaroba?” he asks sarcastically, taunting, but Frank answers him anyway, not in the mood today for Sidney’s grudges and intrigues. ”Because I didn’t think he’d tell me anything. You know he’s more interested in the mysteries than ever finding answers.” And Frank pauses, silent for a moment and Sidney’s silent, too, both men watching the big cats now—glass eyes, freeze-frame talons, and taut, spectacled haunches—as though the leopards might suddenly spring towards them, all this stillness just a clever ruse for the tourists and the kiddies; maybe dead leopards know the nervous, wary faces of men who have seen things that they never should have seen. ”He knows the truth would swallow him whole,” Sidney says. The leopards don’t pounce and he adds, “He knows he’s a coward.” ”So who is Dr. Monalisa?” ”A bit of something the truth already swallowed and spat back up,” and Sidney chuckles sourly to himself and produces one of his pipes from a jacket pocket. “He’s a navigator, a pilot, a cartographer…” Frank notices that one of the two leopards has captured a stuffed peacock, holds it fast between velvet, razored paws, and he can’t remember if it was that way only a moment before. ”He draws maps,” Sidney says. “He catalogs doors and windows and culverts.” ”That’s bullshit,” Frank whispers, his voice low now so the old woman staring in at the giant panda exhibit won’t hear him. “You’re trying to tell me he can find places?” ”He isn’t a sane man, Frank,” Sidney says and now he holds up his left hand and presses his palm firmly against the glass, as if he’s testing the invisible barrier, gauging its integrity. “He has answers, but he has prices, too. You think this is Hell, you see how it feels to be in debt to Dr. Solomon Monalisa.” ”It isn’t me. It’s Willa. I think she’s starting to lose it.” ”We all lost ‘it’ a long time ago, Frank.” ”I’m afraid she’s going to do something. I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself.” And Sidney turns his back on the leopards then, takes the pipe from his mouth, and glares up at Frank. But some of the anger, some of the bitterness, has gone from his eyes, and “He might keep her alive,” he says, “but you wouldn’t want her back when he was done. If she’d even come back. No, Frank. You two stay away from Monalisa. Look for your own answers. You don’t think you found that card by accident, do you? You don’t really think there are such things as coincidences? That’s not even his real address—“ ”She can’t sleep anymore,” Frank says, but now Sidney McAvoy isn’t listening, glances back over his shoulder at the Indian rain forest, incandescent daylight, illusory distances, and “I have to go now,” he says. “I’m very busy today.” ”I think she’s fucking dying, man,” Frank says as Sidney straightens his tie and puts the pipe back into his pocket; the old woman looks up from the panda in its unreal bamboo thicket and frowns at them both. ”I’m very busy today, Frank. Call me next week. I think I can meet you at the Guggenheim next week.” And he walks quickly away towards the Roosevelt Rotunda, past the Siberian tiger and the Sumatran rhinoceros, leaving Frank alone with the frowning woman. When Sidney has vanished into the shadows behind a small herd of Indian elephants, Frank turns back to the leopards and the smudgy hand print Sidney McAvoy has left on their glass.

Hours and hours later, past sunset to the other side of the wasted day, the night that seems even hotter than the scorching afternoon, and Frank is dreaming that the crack in the basement wall on St. Mark’s place is much too narrow for him to squeeze through. Maybe the way it really happened after all, and then he hears a small, anguished sound from somewhere close behind him, something hurting or lost, and when he turns to see, Frank opens his eyes and there’s only the tangerine glow of the noodle shop sign outside the apartment window. He blinks once, twice, but this stubborn world doesn’t go away, doesn’t break apart into random kaleidoscopic shards to become some other place entirely. So he sits up, head full of the familiar disappointment, this incontestable solidity, and it takes him a moment to realize that Willa isn’t in bed. Faint outline of her body left in the wrinkled sheets and the bathroom light is burning, the door open, so she’s probably just taking a piss. ”You okay in there?” he asks, but no reply. The soft drip, drip, drip of the kitchenette faucet, tick of the wind-up alarm clock on the table next to Willa’s side of the bed, street noise, but no answer. “Did you fall in or something?” he shouts. “Did you drown?” And still no response, but his senses waking up, picking out more than the ordinary, every-night sounds, a trilling whine pitched so high he feels it more than hears it, and now he notices the way that the air in the apartment smells. Go back to sleep, he thinks, but both legs already over the edge of the bed, both feet already on the dusty floor. When you wake up again it’ll be over. The trill worming its way beneath his skin, soaking in, pricking gently at the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, and all the silver fillings in his teeth have begun to hum along sympathetically. Where he’s standing, Frank can see into the bathroom, just barely, a narrow slice of linoleum, slice of porcelain toilet tank, a mildew and polyurethane fold of shower curtain. And he thinks that the air has started to shimmer, an almost imperceptible warping of the light escaping from the open door, but that might only be his imagination. He takes one small step towards the foot of the bed and there’s Willa, standing naked before the tiny mirror above the bathroom sink. The jut of her shoulder blades and hip bones, the anorexic swell of her rib cage, all the minute details of her painful thinness seem even more pronounced in the harsh and curving light. ”Hey. Is something wrong? Are you sick?” and she turns her head slowly to look at him, or maybe only looking towards him because there’s nothing much like recognition on her face. Her wide, unblinking eyes, blind woman’s stare, and “Can’t you hear me, Willa?” he asks as she turns slowly back to the mirror. Her lips move, shaping rough, inaudible words. The trilling grows infinitesimally louder, climbs another half-octave, and there’s a warm, wet trickle across Frank’s lips and he realizes that his nose is bleeding. Behind Willa the bathroom wall, the shower, the low ceiling—everything—ripples and dissolves and there’s a sudden, staccato pop as the bulb above the sink blows. And after an instant of perfect darkness, perfect nothing, dull and yellow-green shafts of light from somewhere far, far above, flickering light from an alien sun shining down through the waters of an alien sea; dim, translucent shapes dart and flash through those depths, bodies more insubstantial than jellyfish, more sinuous than eels, and Willa rises to meet them, arms outstretched, her hair drifting about her face like a halo of seaweed and algae. In the ocean-filtered light, Willa’s pale skin seems sleek and smooth as dolphin-flesh. Air rushes from her lips, her nostrils, and flows eagerly away in a glassy swirl of bubbles. The trilling has filled Frank’s head so full, and his aching skull, his brain, seem only an instant from merciful explosion, fragile, eggshell bone collapsed by the terrible, lonely sound and the weight of all that water stacked above him. He staggers, takes a step backwards, and now Willa’s face is turned up to meet the sunlight streaming down, and she’s more beautiful than anyone or anything he’s ever seen or dreamt. Down on Mott Street, the screech of tires, the angry blat of a car horn and someone begins shouting very loudly in Chinese. And now the bathroom is only a bathroom again, and Willa lies in a limp, strangling heap on the floor, her wet hair and skin glistening in the light from the bulb above the sink. The water rolls off her back, her thighs, spreads across the floor in a widening puddle, and Frank realizes that the trilling has finally stopped, only the memory of it left in his ringing ears and bleeding nose. When the dizziness has passed, he goes to her, sits down on the wet floor and holds her while she coughs and pukes up gouts of salt water and snotty strands of something the color of verdigris. Her skin so cold it hurts to touch, cold coming off her like a fever, and something small and chitinous slips from her hair and scuttles behind the toilet on long, jointed legs. ”Did you see?” she asks him, desperate, rheumy words gurgling out with all the water that she’s swallowed. “Did you, Frank? Did you see it?” ”Yes,” he tells her, just like every time before. “Yes, baby. I did. I saw it all,” and Willa smiles, closes her eyes, and in a little while she’s asleep. He carries her, dripping, back to their bed and holds her until the sun rises and she’s warm again.

The next day neither of them goes to work, and some small, niggling part of Frank manages to worry about what will happen to them if he loses the shit job at Gotham Kwick Kopy, if Willa gets fired from the café, obstinate shred of himself still capable of caring about such things. How the rent will be paid, how they’ll eat, everything that hasn’t really seemed to matter in more years than he wants to count. Half the morning in bed and his nosebleed keeps coming back, a roll of toilet paper and then one of their towels stained all the shades of dried and drying blood; Willa wearing her winter coat despite the heat, and she keeps trying to get him to go to a doctor, but no, he says. That might lead to questions, and besides, it’ll stop sooner or later. It’s always stopped before. By twelve o’clock, Willa’s traded the coat for her pink cardigan, feels good enough that she makes them peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches, black coffee and stale potato chips, and after he eats Frank begins to feel better, too. But going to the park is Willa’s idea, because the apartment still smells faintly of silt and dead fish, muddy, low-tide stink that’ll take hours more to disappear completely. He knows the odor makes her nervous, so he agrees, even though he’d rather spend the afternoon sleeping off his headache. Maybe a cold shower, another cup of Willa’s bitter-strong coffee, and if he’s lucky he could doze for hours without dreaming They take the subway up to Fifth, follow the eastern edge of the park north, past the zoo and East Green all the way to Pilgrim Hill and the Conservatory Pond. It’s not so very hot that there aren’t a few model sailing ships on the pond, just enough breeze to keep their miniature Bermuda sails standing tall and taut as shark fins. Frank and Willa sit in the shade near the Alice in Wonderland statue, her favorite spot in all of Central Park, rocky place near the tea party, granite and rustling leaves, the clean laughter of children climbing about on the huge, bronze mushrooms. A little girl with frizzy black hair and red and white peppermint-striped tights is petting the kitten in Alice’s lap, stroking its metal fur and meowling loudly, and “I can’t ever remember her name,” Willa says. ”What?” Frank asks. “Whose name?” not sure if she means the little girl or the kitten or something else entirely. ”Alice’s kitten. I know it had a name, but I never can remember it.” Frank watches the little girl for a moment, and “Dinah,” he says. “I think the kitten’s name was Dinah.” ”Oh, yeah, Dinah. That’s it,” and he knows that she’s just thinking out loud, whatever comes to mind so that she won’t have to talk about last night, so the conversation won’t accidentally find its own way back to those few drowning moments of chartreuse light and eel shadows. Trying so hard to pretend and he almost decides they’re both better off if he plays along and doesn’t show her Dr. Solomon Monalisa’s white calling card. ”That’s a good name for a cat,” she says. “If we ever get a kitten, I think I’ll name it Dinah.” ”Mrs. Wu doesn’t like cats.” ”Well, we’re not going to spend the rest of our lives in that dump. Next time, we’ll get an apartment that allows cats.” Frank takes the card out and lays his wallet on the grass, but Willa hasn’t even noticed, too busy watching the children clambering about on Alice, too busy dreaming about kittens. The card is creased and smudged from a week riding around in his back pocket and all the handling it’s suffered, the edges beginning to fray, and he gives it to her without any explanation. ”What’s this?” she asks and he tells her to read it first, just read it, so she does. Reads it two or three times and then Willa returns the card, goes back to watching the children. But her expression has changed, the labored, make-believe smile gone now and she just looks like herself again, plain old Willa, the distance in her eyes, the hard angles at the corners of her mouth that aren’t quite a frown. ”Sidney says he’s for real,” half the truth, at best, and Frank glances down at the card, reading it again for the hundredth or two-hundredth time ”Sidney McAvoy’s a fucking lunatic.” ”He says this guy has maps—“ ”Christ, Frank. What do you want me to say? You want me to give you permission to go talk to some crackpot? You don’t need my permission.” ”I was hoping you’d come with me,” he says so softly that he’s almost whispering, and he puts the card back into his wallet where neither of them will have to look at it, stuffs the wallet back into his jeans pocket. ”Well, I won’t. I go to your goddamn meetings. I already have to listen to that asshole Zaroba. That’s enough for me, thank you very much. That’s more than enough.” The little girl petting Dinah slips, loses her footing and almost slides backwards off the edge of the sculpture, but her mother catches her and sets her safely on the ground. ””I see what it’s doing to you,” Frank says. “I have to watch. How much longer do you think you can go on like this?” She doesn’t answer him, opens her purse and takes out a pack of cigarettes, only one left and she crumbles the empty package and tosses it over her shoulder into the bushes. ”What if this guy really can help you? What if he can make it stop?” Willa is digging noisily around in her purse, trying to find her lighter or a book of matches, and she turns and stares at Frank, the cigarette hanging unlit from her lips. Her eyes shining bright as broken gemstones, shattered crystal eyes, furious, resentful, and he knows that she could hate him, that she could leave him here and never look back. She takes the cigarette from her mouth, licks her upper lip, and for a long moment Willa holds the tip of her tongue trapped tight between her teeth. ”What the hell makes you think I want it to stop?” And silence as what she’s said sinks in and he begins to understand that he’s never understood her at all. “It’s killing you,” he says, finally, the only thing he can think to say, and Willa’s eyes seem to flash and grow brighter, more broken, more eager to slice. ”No, Frank, it’s the only thing keeping me alive. Knowing that it’s out there, that I’ll see it again, and someday maybe it won’t make me come back here.” And then she gets up and walks quickly away towards the pond, brisk, determined steps to put more distance between them. She stops long enough to bum a light from an old black man with a dachshund, then ducks around one corner of the boathouse and he can’t see her anymore. Frank doesn’t follow, sits watching the tiny sailboats and yachts gliding gracefully across the moss-dark surface of the water, their silent choreography of wakes and ripples. He decides maybe it’s better not to worry about Willa for now, plenty of time for that later and he wonders what he’ll say to Monalisa when he finds him.

We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorn’d as well as our own. CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS (c. 1690)

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williamlwolf89 · 4 years

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Writing Inspiration: 99 Ways to Get Inspired to Write in 2020

Need some writing inspiration? You’ve come to the right place.

Ugh, it happened again.

Another week or month has passed, and you’ve made zero progress on your writing goals.

Deep down you know your writing is important, but you can’t take consistent action.

What’s really going on here?

The truth is, you don’t feel inspired.

You can’t help but marvel at other writers who do persist, and have a large body of work you can’t even fathom achieving.

How do you get there?

How do you find the inspiration you need to stay the course long enough to become the prolific, popular, and successful freelance writer you dream of becoming?

The Dirty Little Lie You Tell Yourself About Writing Inspiration

If you’re struggling to find writing inspiration, you might be guilty of “believing in magic” when it comes to your writing process.

People who fail to do the things they say they want to do believe in fairy tales, like this one:

One day, for no reason whatsoever, I will find the ultimate source of inspiration that will carry me through to the end of the writing career rainbow. It will happen in an instant, and I’ll never have to “start over” again.

They believe successful writers have “made it,” and have no problem staying motivated because they’ve “arrived.”

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Regardless of how successful you are, there will be days you feel uninspired. In fact, what once seemed like a passion-filled calling can turn into a bit of a slog after a while.

Professional athletes love the game, but they don’t necessarily want to train their bodies every single day.

Business owners love money and recognition, but they don’t necessarily enjoy the process of getting their business off the ground.

You love expressing yourself with words, but you won’t necessarily enjoy each and every writing session.

You have to learn to inspire yourself every day if you want to turn pro and become a popular author or successful writer. To keep your inspiration fresh, you’ll have to find various unique ways to get inspired.

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.” — Zig Ziglar

Fortunately, I have 99 different writing ideas — use them whenever you’re struggling to turn intention into action.

So here’s how to get inspired to write:

1. Do the One Thing They Always Tell Writers Not to Do

Watch T.V. Some of the best writing in the world can be seen in the scripts of your favorite shows. Pay attention to the dialogue, listen for the clever storytelling methods, and use them in your own writing.

Use the ideas of the show creator and the personalities of the characters to get inspired. Think about what goes through Don Draper’s mind when he writes an ad on Mad Men or the way Carrie Bradshaw wove her own life into her daily column on Sex and the City.

Once I paid attention to the writing in my favorite shows, I drew inspiration from the stories and turned a seemingly useless activity into creative fuel.

2. Read Your Old Love Letters

If you’ve been writing for a while, you must have gotten a compliment or two about your work. Keep a file with positive comments you’ve received about your writing. Whether they’re emails or blog comments, reading over compliments you received and hearing how you’ve helped people will motivate you.

3. Embrace Your Insignificance

Realize the universe doesn’t care about you. Oftentimes, we lack inspiration because of fear. We’re afraid because we feel like the world is waiting for us to fail, like there’s a spotlight shining on our inadequacy. We live on a planet that’s one of billions of planets in one of billions of galaxies, each of which contains billions of stars.

In the grand scheme of things, you’re insignificant. Nothing you do “matters,” except that it matters to you. Go for it, because you have nothing to lose.

4. Make the Subtle Shift from Goal-Setting to Habit-Forming

Goals give you inspiration by providing an end point, but habits weave inspiration into the core of your being and make it automatic.

Instead of saying, “I want to finish my manuscript,” say “I want to write 30 minutes per day.” The second statement comes without the pressure of expectation. You’re just putting yourself in a position for continual inspiration.

Habits trump goals every time. The most prolific writers aren’t the most goal-oriented. They’re built to show up every day and do the work.

5. Tell Yourself You’re Not Good Enough

I once heard a story about a successful real estate agent who was constantly asked about how to break into the industry. He gave them all the same answer, “Don’t get into real estate. You’re not cut out for it.” He gave that answer because he knows it acted as reverse psychology for those who were cut out for it, and filtered out those that weren’t.

Try a little reverse psychology on yourself. Try to convince yourself you’re not good enough, and then get offended. Of course you’re good enough! You were born to write. Trick yourself to put a fire in your belly and get inspired.

6. Start a Chain Gang

Buy a calendar. Mark an x on the calendar each time you complete a writing session. When you complete a few days in a row, the x’s start to form a chain. The longer the chain grows, the more inspired you are to keep writing. Picture a calendar with 29 days marked off. You’d almost certainly write on day 30, right?

Visuals and imagery are powerful. Seeing a representation of the work you put in will inspire you to keep working.

7. Become the G.O.A.T.

Focus on becoming so great you can’t be ignored.

Most writers are worried about what the competition is doing and idolize their favorite writers. Instead, you’ll focus on being so good the competition will start to watch you. Embrace the attitude of Michael Jordan in his first few seasons. He knew the league was going to belong to him before it actually did. He put his head down, did the work, and demolished the competition to become the Greatest of All Time. You can be the same.

Put your head down, write, and one day people will say “Who is this?”

8. Take a Dump

Have a bowel movement. I first learned this unusual writing tip from James Altucher. He says if your body isn’t “clear,” your mind won’t be either. You may also come up with some interesting ideas while you’re, erm, indisposed.

9. Embrace Your Inner Hulk

Get angry. Anger is easy to express. When you’re angry you know exactly why something pisses you off. What pisses you off about the world, your niche, or life in general? Vent your frustrations and your powerful words will pour out.

10. Become a Better Writer Without Becoming a Better Writer

Have you ever seen a professional athlete who’s in a slump? Nothing about his routine changes, he plays with the same quality teammates, and the team is run by the same coaching staff. Later, you find out he was having personal issues and that was the source of his decline.

Look at Tiger Woods. He never recovered from his personal scandal. What does that tell you? It tells you life outside your craft is just as important as practicing it, if not more.

Think about how many aspects of your life can affect your writing. Your diet, exercise routine (or lack thereof), relationships with friends and family, and stress level are a few among many factors influencing your writing. When you lack inspiration for writing, look at other areas of your life. If those aren’t going well, your writing will suffer.

11. Make It Impossible to Edit While You Write

Write with the monitor off or with white text. This is the definition of writing a crappy first draft. When you can’t even look at the words on the screen, you won’t be able to enter into self-editing hell while you’re writing. You’ll let loose and write with reckless abandon. Afterward, you can clean up the carnage and make it pretty.

12. Imagine Your Worst-Case Scenario

Think about the worst-case scenario in terms of your writing career and decide you can handle it. Fortunately, the negative consequences are more emotional than tangible or financial in terms of things like writing a book. At the very least, you’re out of a small investment and your ego will get a little dent. You can’t sell negative books. Your worst pain will be the feeling of rejection. Although rejection is a tough pill to swallow, you face bigger dangers in life without fail, like getting in a car and driving it, without batting an eye.

13. Start Acting Like a Child

What advice would a five-year-old give you about your writing? Would they tell you to focus hard, create solid outlines, and hit your daily word count? No. They’d tell you to have fun.

Remember fun? When you were a child, you only cared about exploration. You didn’t waste time worrying about the future. The present was all you knew. I get it. You have “big dreams,” but if you take yourself too seriously, writing will get rote.

If you’re feeling stuck trying to edit your manuscript, write something ridiculous. Write something totally unrelated to your niche for pure fun with no intention of publishing it. Act like a child and watch your curiosity and creativity flourish.

14. Dumb It Down

Stop trying to sound smart. Once you realize you don’t have to write with tons of flowery language and words that could be replaced with simpler words, writing gets easier. People enjoy straightforward writing better anyway.

15. Make Money Your Muse

Take writing jobs as a freelancer if you’re looking to get writing without having to come up with your own blog post ideas. As a freelancer you’ll work within the guidelines of what your client wants. This offers the benefit of making money, plus you’ll develop a writing habit along the way.

16. Use your 9-to-5 to Fuel Your 5-to-9

Scott Adams, most known for his cartoon strip Dilbert, used real-life experiences from his job as inspiration for his work. Charles Bukowski wrote a novel loosely based on his own experiences as a post office employee. Even mundane jobs like these can inspire you to write something interesting about them. Some say you should write what you know. What do you know better than the activity you perform 40 hours per week?

17. Discover the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Create an immaculate space for your writing. A cluttered environment clutters the mind. When you’re in a clean space, you can feel it. That feeling can translate into a calm and focused state of mind while writing.

18. Don’t Believe the Myth

Remember this phrase from Jerry Seinfeld: “Writer’s block is just a made-up excuse for not doing your work.”

19. Sign Your Life Away

Create a contract with yourself. Make an actual signed document stating what you’re going to accomplish with your writing and place it somewhere prominent.

Imagine you’re sitting down to write and you look up to see an agreement you made with yourself, not just mentally, but physically. Wouldn’t that inspire you to hold to your commitment?

These little “nudges” might seem trivial on their own, but combining them changes your environment and makes it more conducive to productivity and creativity.

20. Make Your Writing Career a Family Affair

Communicate your goals with your family and friends. Writing takes up time, and if you’re not clear about your intentions, your spouse or loved ones can start to resent and even become jealous of your writing. Let them know it’s important to you, set boundaries for when you’ll write, and when you’re not writing make sure you’re 100 percent off, meaning you’re spending time with the people you love and not in your head.

21. Get Meta

Write about how you feel about your writing. One of the most successful posts I’ve ever written talked about my struggles with writing. It was meant to be a venting session, but I realized it was worth sharing. Like anger, frustration leads to expression.

22. Converse to Create

If you listen carefully, the conversations you have with other people can inspire you to take something they’ve said and run with it. Listen intently, and see if there’s anything in your dialogue that sparks interest or could be used as a writing topic. Cormac McCarthy said he used actual conversations with his son in the bestselling novel The Road.

23. When Inspiration Fails, Try Desperation

Turn your pain into passion. If you feel the dull monotony of sitting in a cubicle every day pushing papers, working in a factory on the assembly line, or any other job that isn’t being a full-time writer, use that desperation as fuel. Sometimes inspiration isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to get fed up to do the work.

24. WWJD

Ask yourself, “What would Jon do?” If you’ve been following Jon Morrow’s work for any amount of time, you know he has a no-excuses attitude and is driven to succeed. Would Jon give up on a writing session if he wasn’t “feeling it?” Would Jon cry in the corner about someone leaving a negative comment on his blog post? When in doubt, do what Jon does and bang out 1,000 words per day no matter what.

25. Create to Connect

It’s easy to get caught up in numbers — how many subscribers you have, how many views your website gets per month, and how many comments you receive — but remember, you’re writing for real people.

Even if you have just a few readers, get to know them. Send out an email to your tribe telling them they can each get 15 minutes on the phone with you to talk shop. Add prompts to your blog posts to encourage readers to share their lives with you.

When you create with the intention of connecting with other human beings, it inspires you to work that much harder, because you can feel the person on the other end of the screen.

26. Become the CEO of You, Inc.

Come up with a name for your publishing company. Perhaps you don’t have to go as far as creating an LLC, but do something to establish what you do as an actual career and not just a hobby. If it means spending $25 to get business cards printed, so be it. Something in your mind has to transition into feeling and acting like a pro.

27. Don’t Follow in the Footsteps of Great Writers

Let go of your need to be the next great author. When you compare yourself to the likes of Hemingway, Plath, or Murakami, it’s hard not to get discouraged about your own writing. Focus on becoming the best writer you can be. There are plenty of successful — and financially independent — writers who aren’t legends, but are pretty damn good. Become pretty damn good.

28. Do the Math

Remind yourself: each time you sit down to write you’re ahead of 99 percent of other aspiring writers. Most people do nothing. They talk, wish, and wonder. The mere fact that your fingers are touching that keyboard makes you special.

Inspire yourself by reminding yourself you’re part of an exclusive club — the doers. I get inspired when I realize the steps I’ve already made go way beyond those of most people. Once your foot is in the door, step all the way through.

29. Answer Random Questions from Total Strangers

Answer questions on Quora. Users on Quora ask questions about topics ranging from personal development to health to what Kim Kardashian’s favorite color is. Other users on Quora answer these questions. Many authors and bloggers use Quora to practice their writing by answering questions. You’re also allowed to leave links in your Quora responses, and many people drive traffic back to their websites through using Quora.

30. Get Zen, Then Pen

I meditate for 20 minutes every morning before I write. When you wake up, you usually start the day feeling anxious. The practice of meditation helps relieve stress and clears your mind of negative thoughts. You’ll feel refreshed before you pen your first word.

The headspace app comes with a series of guided meditations you can use to start fresh every day.

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has a great introductory post on how to form a daily meditation habit. He also happens to be one of the most prolific and successful bloggers in the world. Coincidence? I think not.

31. Choose Quantity Over Quality

Write ten ideas per day around your writing. They could be ideas for new blog posts, book titles, and book sections or chapters. By the end of the year, you’ll have 3,650 ideas. Most of them will suck, some will be good, and a few will be amazing. Your creative muscles will be strong, and you’ll have endless material to write about.

32. Teach an Old Draft New Tricks

Revise an old piece of writing. This has a two-fold benefit. First, you’ll realize how much you’ve grown since writing that piece, which will give you the confidence to know you’ll improve in the future. Second, if you really add some beef to it, you’ll have a brand new piece of writing to share with the world.

33. Surround Yourself with Great Work

I once visited an art museum that had a photography section. It was filled with famous photos of famous people by famous photographers. I lost complete track of time and was immersed in the photos. When I left the display, I felt almost dizzy. That day, I went home and wrote a couple thousand words in a way that seemed effortless. Seeing great art in other forms can inspire you to create great writing yourself.

Visit a gallery, go to an opera, or watch a play. Feel the passion and inspiration from the artists you just watched, and use it in your own writing.

34. Put a Pot of Gold at the End of Your Rainbow

Setting writing goals doesn’t often work. The reason why they don’t work is because we don’t like to work! We want results. It’s why workout DVDs are called Beach Body or Six Pack Abs in Six Weeks instead of Exercise Regimen for your Core. You know you’ll have to do the work, but the results are what compel you to get started.

Create statements around the rewards you’ll reap from your writing and the results you want, e.g., “Writing my book will give me the money, attention, and sense of accomplishment I’ve always longed for. ” When you think of setting goals and building habits in terms of the rewards they’ll afford you, you’re more likely to follow through.

35. Drink Rocket Fuel to Skyrocket Your Inspiration

Drink coffee. Coffee has fueled the creative inspiration of writers for centuries. I’m not sure if it’s even possible to write well without it.

36. Journey into the Wild

Go for a walk in nature. There’s an odd connection between walking and inspiration. There’s something about wandering about that stirs up random thoughts in your mind. Ideas come to you when you aren’t so focused on them. A walk in nature will distract you with its beauty enough to make room for the muse to sneak up on you.

37. Switch Your Scenery

Imagine you’re lying back in a hammock in Bali. You’re surrounded by warm weather and a fresh breeze with a coconut by your side to sip on. You also have your laptop in your lap. That sounds like an inspiring environment to me.

There has long been a link between travel and writing. Seeing new parts of the world is inspiring in and of itself, plus it will surely give you new material to write about as well. Or, heck, just go to your local coffee shop to switch things up.

Even if you can’t make a physical trip, just spending a few minutes visualizing an exotic destination can provide valuable writing inspiration.

38. Devour People’s Brains

Read. Read. Read. You can’t be a great writer without being a great reader. Read a wide range of material. If you write non-fiction, sprinkle some fiction into your reading and vice versa. Reading widely opens new doors in your brain and helps you make odd connections between ideas.

I just finished my second book. I pulled and wove in ideas from billionaires, dead Roman emperors, and Harvard psychologists. I didn’t go searching for the information. I conjured it from the recesses of my mind while writing, because I’ve read 100 books in the past two years. It’s like Neo in The Matrix where he “downloads” the ability to fight in Kung Fu style.

With reading, you can “download” hundreds or thousands of years of human experience and use it at your disposal.

39. Write in This Insanely Inspiring Environment

Write in a bookstore. Writing in an environment surrounded with words is inspiring. Go to your favorite section and browse the titles. Seeing the names on book covers will cause you to picture your name on your first or next book, and you’ll be ready to pen your masterpiece.

40. Put a Gun to Your Head

I submit guest post pitches to various blogs before I feel ready to write them. Once my pitches get accepted, I can’t quit. As you know, it’s a big no-no to flake on a guest blog owner, and I’d never want to ruin my reputation. Finding situations that force your hand can keep you from sitting on the fence.

41. Search for Instant Inspiration

A quick Google search can give you inspiration by spoon-feeding you endless ideas for your writing. If you’re stuck on a topic to write about, do a search about your subject and run with the results. You don’t have to come up with new ideas by yourself all the time. You don’t even have to use the ideas you find to create a finished result.

The process could serve the purpose of getting your fingers moving, which is the most important step.

42. Chase the Muse

Inspiration can be tricky to capture.

To maximize your chances of spotting the muse, come up with clever writing prompts. For example, you can come up with a writing problem you’re trying to solve right before bed, let it stir in your subconscious mind while you sleep, and wake yourself up in the middle of the night and jot down what comes to mind in your hazy subconscious state. You can set prompts on your phone to randomly write whatever comes to mind at the exact time.

Carry a pen and paper with you everywhere you go to capture ideas as they come. It seems mechanical, but careful planning can inspire you to create more.

43. Star in Your Own Montage

Visualize yourself putting in the work it takes to become a great writer. Visualizing the type of outcome you want is effective, but visualizing becoming the type of person capable of achieving those outcomes is even more powerful. Take a few minutes every day and visualize yourself being in a state of flow and writing effortlessly.

It’s like picturing yourself hitting the game-winning shot. If you can see it, you can believe it.

44. Find a Tango Partner

In a rut? Find a writing partner to keep you accountable. Working with someone who’s “in the trenches” like you will help both of you inspire each other. There’s strength in numbers.

45. Find Inspiration in Your Rear-view Mirror

We’ve all had moments in life we cherish. Why not use those moments as inspiration for your writing? If you’re feeling stuck, try to remember an amazing moment in your life — time spent with your children, a vacation you went on, your wedding day — and write about that. The moment will inspire you to write because the moment itself is inspiring. If it was a pivotal moment in your life, you can recall how you felt and what the atmosphere was like.

46. Eviscerate Your Excuses

Find examples to eliminate your excuses. The undisputed heavyweight champion of blogging, our very own Jon Morrow, isn’t able to use his hands, and has written blog posts read by millions. Stephen Hawking moves his cheek muscles to write. You have writer’s block? Boo hoo.

If seeing examples of people with legitimate obstacles thriving at what you do doesn’t inspire you, I don’t know what will. You’ve been blessed in one way or another. Regardless of what you don’t have, you have something someone else would kill for. Be grateful and use your gratitude as a well of inspiration to create.

47. Join a Local Gang

If one partner isn’t enough, you can join groups of writers to increase the effectiveness of group support. I’m part of a local writers’ club where we meet in person, and I’m a member of an online community of writers. We share insights and tips, and keep each other motivated.

48. Fake Your Own Death

Write your obituary. This exercise provides a two-fold benefit. First, you’re putting words on the page. Second, you’re thinking about the type of legacy you want to leave. My guess is you want “renown writer,” or at least “writer,” somewhere in the description. It will remind you of your ultimate mission and the fact you’ll regret it if you fail to follow through.

As best-selling author Stephen Covey says, “Begin with the end in mind.”

49. Tune In to Tune Out Writer’s Block

Listening to music boosts your effectiveness in many areas such as exercise. It’s also a great tool to inspire your writing, as long as you don’t make it a distraction. Some writers have been known to play the same song on repeat while they write, saying it gives them a calming sense and the music fades to the background while they write.

Music has been known to “set the mood” in more ways than one. Pick an inspiring song and let it inspire you to write.

50. Choose the Opinion You Like Best

Have you ever looked at the same piece of writing at different times and had two different opinions?

We’re quick to look at the negative opinions of ourselves and our work and believe them to be true. We accept negativity with alarming ease. Our mind can just as easily believe the good things we tell ourselves about ourselves. The next time you swing between both opinions of your writing, choose the one that inspires you.

It’s okay to toot your own horn (in your mind) when you’ve penned some damn fine words. In fact, you should do it every time you feel good about your writing to keep the inspiration going.

51. Let Your Fingers Do the Talking

Get your fingers moving. The act of typing itself can lead to a flow state and productive writing. Sometimes, I’ll start a blog post by typing “I don’t know what to write about,” just to get my fingers moving. The staring at the blank page without typing contributes to writer’s block.

52. Get Back in Touch with Your “Why”

Remember your why. Did you get into writing because you wanted to improve people’s lives? Do you have interesting stories to share? Do you want to entertain people? Go back to the source of inspiration that made you want to write in the first place. Revisit it often.

53. Find Writing Inspiration in Dark Places

Life throws curve balls at you. While you can’t avoid certain situations from happening to you, you can use them as sources of inspiration to create.

In an extreme example, Viktor Frankl used his experience in a Nazi death camp as inspiration to help others through his writing with his book Man’s Search for Meaning. You can let negativity overwhelm you, or you can use your experiences to inspire yourself in a cathartic way through your words.

54. Remember that Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Have you ever had a loved one go on an extended trip? When they come back, you’re overjoyed to see them, and you cherish the moments you have together a little bit more than usual. Why not create instant inspiration by doing the same with something you wrote?

Take a draft you’ve worked hard on and “lock it away” for a week or two before you revise or add to it. If you distance yourself from it for a bit, you’ll be inspired to jump back into a relationship with it, just like a loved one coming back from their trip.

55. Look Back and See How Far You’ve Come

Think about something that was once hard for you to do, but you now find easy. When you’re struggling to put together an introduction, edit the chaff from your sentences, or transition between points, remember that practicing these things will lead to a point where it becomes second nature.

56. Picture Your Name on a Best-Selling Book

If you’ve never written a book before, go to Canva’s free book cover maker tool and create your own custom book cover. Stare at it and imagine how it will feel to have a published book with your name on it in the future. The first time I held a copy of something I created, I was euphoric. I continue to chase that feeling each time I write.

57. Let Life Inspire Art

Many imagine successful writers as people locked up in cabins with typewriters, toiling away at their work in isolation until they resurface with their manuscripts. Some of the best writers, like Hemingway, spent as much time living and adventuring as they did writing.

If you want to make your writing more interesting, make your life more interesting. If you’re feeling frustrated, step out into the world, enjoy it, and let your experiences compel you to write again.

58. Keep Your Eye on the Prize

Enter a writing contest. Writing contests often pay for top prize winners. There’s one incentive.

The popular writing blog The Write Practice hosts writing contests multiple times per day. During its most recent contest, the blog partnered with Short Fiction Break, which displayed every single piece submitted to the contest. They encouraged writers in the contest to comment on each other’s pieces and get to know each other, which created a hotbed of inspiration.

Knowing you’re a part of something larger than yourself can be inspiring. Use a writing contest to show the world what you’ve got.

59. Act Like a Hollywood Script Doctor

Rewrite a dissatisfying ending of a popular movie, short story, or book. It’ll get you in the mood to write because you’re familiar with the subject matter. If you have the gall to rewrite a popular story, you should be confident enough to create your own.

60. Don’t Fall into the Routine Trap

Write when you’re most creative. You don’t have to be a morning person to write well.

Some people are more creative at eleven at night. Blindly copying routines that don’t suit you is a surefire way to fail. Create an environment and schedule that aligns with your strengths.

61. Make a Creative Pilgrimage

This may seem a bit drastic, but moving to another city can inspire you to be more creative.

In his book Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson claims that moving to a more populated city fosters creativity through “superlinear scaling,” which is a fancy way of saying that the more people you’re exposed to, the more creative you are. Maybe you’re not in a position to move, but if you’re young and mobile, perhaps you should take your talents to the Big Apple or out West.

62. Exercise Your Neurons

Your brain needs exercise like any other part of your body. If you’re not feeling inspired, try playing some games that involve words. Hitting a triple word score in Scrabble can remind you of your creative writing prowess. The education company Lumosity has a line of brain games that help you increase your vocabulary.

One of my inspirations for writing is the words themselves. I was one of the weird kids who looked forward to vocabulary tests, because new words excited me and stimulated my brain. Play brain games with words to inspire yourself to pen them.

63. Cast Yourself Away

Go on a thinking retreat. Bring books to read, but no electronics. Spend time alone to be with your thoughts and consider what steps you want to take in your writing career. Bill Gates does this for two weeks every year to crystallize his vision for Microsoft’s future as well as his charity foundation. You’re not a billionaire with unlimited free time, so a day or two will suffice.

64. Use These Two Words as Inspiration

Interesting questions lead to interesting answers. Many of the best pieces of writing started with the phrase, “What if?”

Use hypothetical questions to inspire new ideas. For example, you could ask, “What if I wrote a piece saying the exact opposite of what most people believe about _____?” or “What if we lived in a world where everyone was bluntly honest all the time?” These types of questions create open-ended areas to explore, giving you new material to think about and write about.

65. When in Doubt, Ship

Seth Godin has written 18 books, and has been quoted as saying, “I feel like a fraud as I read you this, as I brush my teeth, and every time I go on stage. This is part of the human condition. Accept it. Now what?”

Other creative people like Neil Gaiman and Tina Fey have reported feeling the same way, regardless of the amount of work they’ve put into the world.

What’s the difference between them and the people who let their inspiration die? They ship.

They put their work into the world regardless of how they felt about it, and it paid off. If they can create while plagued with doubt, so can you.

Look far and wide for examples of successful writers and you’ll find one common denominator — and it sure as heck isn’t procrastination. It’s shipping. Let their stories inspire you to do the same.

66. Let Technology Lend a Helping Hand

Use idea-generating tools from companies like Hubspot and Portent’s Content. With ready-made ideas and headlines, you should have everything you need to get started.

67. Be a Little Creepy

Have you ever looked at a couple across the room at a restaurant and wondered what their lives were like?

Have you ever walked past an older person at the park and thought about what crazy experiences they’ve had?

People-watching can be great inspiration for writing. You can observe people you don’t know, and let the mystery of their lives inspire you to write a story about what they could be like. It’s part writing exercise, yes, but knowing you can draw material from anywhere is inspiring.

68. Eat a Sh** Sandwich

Charles Bukowski once said, “Find what you love and let it kill you.”

He was referring to what many, including bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert, call a “shit sandwich.”

If you don’t love something enough to go through pain for it, you don’t really love it. Your shit sandwich is the one thing you cherish so much you can endure for it. How is that inspiring? Well, if you’re capable of going through heartache for something, it has an inspiring quality drawing you to do so, or else you wouldn’t do it.

Is writing your shit sandwich? If so, get really hungry, because life is going to give you an all-you-can-eat buffet.

69. Say “Hi, My Name Is _____”

Attend a conference for writers in your niche. You have to be careful with conferences because they’re a waste of time if you go without any predefined goals, but they’re great for meeting and affiliate yourself with industry insiders and the atmosphere of the event will make you want to perform well when you get home.

70. Go to the Source

Reach out to your favorite writers and ask for advice. Many people do this, but they do it the wrong way.

First, send them a message simply thanking them for the work they’ve done and leave it at that. Tell them how you’ve implemented something they’ve taught you. After your initial outreach, come back later and ask a specific question regarding a situation. Don’t just say “let me pick your brain.” Most are willing to help if they’re not too busy.

Some won’t respond, but others will. Use their words as inspiration, follow up with their advice, and let them know when you’ve implemented it.

71. Get Yourself Some Education

Take an online course on writing. I took Smart Blogger’s Guest Blogging Certification Program. Before taking the course, I wouldn’t have had the guts to pitch big-name blogs. I thought they were “off limits.” Seeing examples of people who went through the course, some of whom built million dollar businesses with the course being the catalyst for their growth, inspired me to level up my game.

Finding the right online courses by the right instructors makes a world of difference. Having a laid-out blueprint for success gives you confidence to follow through with the steps required to build something valuable.

72. Pat Yourself on the Back

Take a piece of writing you’ve done and evaluate it based solely on what you like about it. Even if it’s just one sentence. Find something to highlight as inspiration to keep writing in the future.

73. Follow The Artist’s Way

Use stream-of-consciousness writing like Julia Cameron’s famed morning pages to get your creative juices flowing. Many writers swear to this strategy, saying it unlocks the creativity hidden in their subconscious minds.

74. Find Inspiration in Everyday Heroes

I once listened to a podcast by serial self-publishing author Steve Scott. He was recapping the strategies from his latest book launch, which resulted in $60,000 in royalties.

Hearing his story was inspiring because he isn’t Malcolm Gladwell. He started self-publishing books and kept doing it until he figured out how to become one of the best. He’s what you would call an ordinary person doing something extraordinary in the publishing world. There are many examples of self-published authors you can use as inspiration. Find them on Amazon and read their stories.

Once you know it’s possible to make a killing without the gatekeepers, you’ll be inspired to do it yourself.

75. Embrace Your Inner Barbara Walters

Interview people in your niche about a topic you’re interested in. Creating profiles of other people might seem less daunting than coming up with a topic from scratch. You can use their stories in your books or blog posts.

76. Dare to Be Different

Embrace your inner weirdo. Your idiosyncrasies and strange ideas are what make you you. Don’t be afraid to show them. The more personality you put into your writing, the better.

77. Throw Your Big Hairy Goals in the Garbage

When I encounter someone who has a puffed-up chest and talks about what they’re going to do, I know they’re going to fail. Most “grand missions” end abruptly. To stay inspired, gain momentum. To gain momentum, create the smallest goals possible. Your brain likes to “win.” If you set laughably achievable goals and succeed, your brain equates it with making progress. A series of small wins is better than no wins.

For example, if your goal is to write 250 words per day, and you reach it every day for a week, it will inspire you to either write at the same pace again or up your word count. If instead, you’d started out by setting a goal of writing 1,000 words per day, you could’ve gotten discouraged and quit. The first goal inspires you to continue, while the second is demotivating.

78. Stop When You Hit the Sweet Spot

Cut your writing short right when you’re in the groove. Pick up where you left off the next day. You’ll be inspired to dive back into the page because you’ll have been thinking about where you left off.

79. Sleep with the Enemy

Make friends with fear. The sooner you stop expecting fear to go away, the better off you’ll be. Remind yourself that fear is a sign of you doing something amazing with your life — something most others won’t do.

Fear is the enemy of inspiration, but thriving in spite of your fear is inspiring. If you’re afraid of being criticized, hit publish anyway and feel inspired from overcoming the hurdle. If you fear your writing won’t be captivating, press through and ship, because one day you’ll write something people will love.

Action is the best deterrent to fear, but it never erases it. Each step you take forward alongside your fear will inspire you to do it again and again.

80. Bore Yourself to Death

You stare at the blank page and nothing comes to mind. You feel blank and stuck. You’re bored.

Good.

Boredom filters out the pretenders from the contenders. Sometimes inspiration won’t sneak up on you until you stop looking for it. If you stop trying to force the situation and let the words come to you, they’ll come. Those writing sessions where you’d normally quit after ten minutes of boredom may bring a creative breakthrough at the eleventh minute.

81. Literally Write for One Person

The idea of writing for one person has been offered time and time again, but what if you went into insane detail about the person you’re writing for?

Instead of writing for “a member of your target audience,” come up with a customer avatar even an experienced marketer would find a bit obsessive.

Something like:

“Mary Elle Christiansen is a forty-year-old woman with two children — Jeremiah, 14, and Deanna, 11. She lives in Cranston, Rhode Island. Every morning after dropping the kids off to work she visits her favorite breakfast spot, Harriet’s Kitchen, and has a pecan maple danish with a Venti caramel iced macchiato — with an extra “half pump” of caramel.

After her meal, she settles in, opens her computer, and writes. She’s working on a memoir. Her late husband, Jim, was an air force veteran. She was an air force wife. Her entire family traveled the world together, moving from base to base. The constant motion was turbulent at times, but Mary was a supportive wife through and through. She wouldn’t be happy if her husband wasn’t. After Jim died — during a tragic flight exercise gone wrong — Mary was left with a large life insurance settlement, a pit of loneliness in her stomach, and an unrealized dream of becoming a writer she suppressed for her family. It’s just her, her children, and her laptop now.“

It wouldn’t be hard for me to write a blog post to inspire Mary Elle. Get insanely specific about who you’re writing for to the point of absurdity, and get inspired to benefit that person’s life.

82. Have an Affair

Many of the world’s most successful creators had extra hobbies that had nothing to do with their main craft. Try drawing, playing music, or making pottery. Take time to express yourself creatively without writing. Creativity fuels you regardless of its source. Add some creative gasoline to your tank to use in your writing.

83. Create a Monster in Your Lab

If you’ve been writing for a while, you have a hefty list of unfinished drafts. Instead of discarding them for good, you can find inspiration by taking pieces of each unfinished post to build a “Frankenstein piece.”

84. Don’t Trust the Opinions of Losers

Fear of ridicule kills inspiration. If you’re worried about what a reader will think of you, consider this question from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius: “You want praise from people who kick themselves every 15 minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves?” People who don’t even think highly of themselves don’t have the right to hold a negative opinion about your work.

Get your inspiration back by seeing “trolls” for what they really are — people who hate their own lives so much they want to criticise what you do in yours.

85. Stop Telling Yourself You’re a Writer

Stop only identifying with being a writer. If your identity is closely tied to being a writer, you’ll take your failure in writing as cracks in your personal character. You write, yes, but you do lots of other things, too.

86. Turn Trials into Triumph

You know what’s more inspiring than believing you can overcome obstacles? Actually overcoming them, because knowing you have the strength to do it inspires you to do it again.

Most writers fail because they avoid difficulty. Most don’t grasp the hidden inspiration in defeat. When a team loses by one point in the championship, they work even harder the next season, because they know they’re on the cusp of victory.

When a piece you write gets rejected, get inspired to prove the editor wrong. When your blog post or book falls flat on its face, get inspired to write ten times better the next time.

Real inspiration isn’t warm, fuzzy, and cute. The truly inspired are gritty, tenacious, and walk directly into the flames of disappointment and setbacks.

87. Con Your Way to Success

Become an impostor. Impostor syndrome is the feeling of being a fake, phony, or fraud who doesn’t deserve success. A great remedy for impostor syndrome is embracing the idea of being one. Write under your guise of falsehood. Realize nobody knows exactly what they’re talking about, and give up your need for appearances. Fake it till you make it.

88. Appreciate the Fortunate Timing of Your Birth

Consider the fact it’s ten times easier to become a successful writer than it used to be.

A few decades ago, to get published you needed to throw your needle into the haystack of the publishing world and hope someone discovered you. Now you can publish your own books. With the click of a button, your words can potentially reach millions of people. Technology has empowered us all.

I call this the excuse-free era because there are more opportunities than ever to find exposure.

89. Realize You’ve Already Put in “10,000 Hours”

Think of how much writing you’ve done in your life. From papers in school, to emails, to social media updates — you write all the time. When you focus on building a writing career, it’s more of a focused effort, but it’s writing just the same. Remember how much you effortlessly write in other areas of your life, and take some pressure off the writing you do for an audience.

90. Make a Mountain Out of a Molehill

Focus on doing one thing a little better each time you write. If you only get one percent better every day, you’ll be 37 times better by the end of the year.

Growth in writing is exponential, not linear, which means your practice won’t just make you better little by little. One day, after several weeks and months of getting better inch by inch, your skills will explode. You’ll enter a higher plane of creativity and the words will come out of you as if possessed by a wordsmith demon who scorches the keyboard with its fingers.

91. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Making an investment in your writing inspires you to create because it shows you’re serious. Being an “amateur,” isn’t always inspiring, but “turning pro” is.

How do you turn pro? You do the work, but you also treat your writing like a business instead of just a hobby. Making financial investments in your craft inspires you to live up to the image you create for yourself.

A telltale sign of someone who isn’t serious about their writing is a lack of willingness to spend money. Invest in tools to grow your website. Invest in your writing education. Invest in tools to create high-quality books. The more you invest, the more you’ll feel invested in your work.

92. Stop Robbing the World of Your Creativity

Think about your readers.

What if the scientist who was meant to cure cancer decided medical school was too hard? She isn’t only robbing herself, but the world. Your writing belongs to your readers. Your words can help educate, entertain, and inspire people. I once had a reader comment on a lull I had between blog posts. They were relying on my words to help their career.

Your words matter, and we need them.

93. Pay Your Debt

Earlier we talked about the idea that your writing isn’t for you, but for other people. This is true, but at the same time remind yourself that you owe yourself. Sure, writing can be a bit of a slog at times, but you owe it to yourself to push through the pain and see what’s on the other side, especially if you’ve already invested time into your writing career. Don’t let what you’ve done go to waste.

94. Harness the Curious Power of Envy

Have you ever been jealous of another writer for their accomplishments?

You can use your envy as fuel to inspire yourself to improve. Oftentimes when I see someone else do something I want to do but haven’t done, I turn my envy into curiosity. After seeing green for a bit, I think to myself, “How did they do it?” Then I trace their steps and reverse-engineer what they’ve done.

I’ve used this strategy to get featured on popular blogs, come up with headlines for blog posts, and add more substance to my work. Don’t just get jealous, get better.

95. Hit the Reset Button

I once wrote 15,000 words of a book and quit. I just wasn’t feeling it. I struggled over the words over and over again, but the project just didn’t seem like a good fit. I started over completely and wrote my second book.

The experience of having a fresh start was inspiring because I was re-energized with new material. You don’t want to fall into the perfectionist trap, but you can inspire yourself by carefully choosing when to start over.

96. Create Your Own Turning Point

In every book or movie, there’s the moment where the unassuming protagonist takes the call to adventure. For most of her life, she’d been somewhat of a nobody, but opportunity arises, and she finally begins the chapter of her life that changes everything.

Will this moment happen in one instant for you? Maybe not. But you can embrace the idea of taking action and starting your journey today. Get inspired by the moment, or the idea that life is fleeting. Dig dip inside yourself and conjure up whatever energy is inside you and make today the day that’s different.

97. Curate an Inspiration “Museum”

We come across inspiring material all the time, whether they’re quotes, places we visit, pieces of art, or experiences we have.

What if you created a place to document and store all of this inspiration, so you could use it later in your writing? This could be in a form of a journal or scrapbook where you collect inspiring ideas. You could keep track of things you’ve thought to yourself or heard from other people that inspire you.

When your creative well runs dry, you can look to your journal for the jump-start you need.

98. Set a Finish Line

With the first book I wrote, I gave myself a specific deadline to publish it. I woke up every day, hammered away at the keyboard with reckless abandon, and looked forward to the last lap.

I relaxed a bit on writing the next book. I told myself I’d get it done without any pressure of a deadline. The result? I worked on it on and off instead of being consistent. I didn’t get back into the swing of writing until I put a deadline on my work again.

Give yourself deadlines for your writing projects. They might seem arbitrary, but deadlines help you stay motivated to push through, and they make you treat your writing like a business instead of a hobby.

99. Boil it Down to This…

Each one of these points ties into the central message behind becoming a great writer. You have to write. Get inspired by your own deep love and need for putting words on the page. You’re the best source of inspiration for yourself.

You have the itch, the pull, the call. Use it.

Get Busy Writing, or Get Busy Dying

If you really have the itch to write, it’ll never go away,

You have two options — get inspired and get to work, or let your anxiety and insecurities grow and fester.

I know what it feels like to get stuck between the feeling of knowing you have something important to say and wondering whether you’re cut out for the task at hand.

It’s been two years since I started, and I never imagined I’d be where I am today. The same can happen for you, but not without putting in the work day in and day out until you get what you want.

Remember, whether you write or not, the time will pass anyway.

You are cut out for it.

You can make all of your writing dreams come true.

You got this. Now go.

The post Writing Inspiration: 99 Ways to Get Inspired to Write in 2020 appeared first on Smart Blogger.

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