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yourfaceislikeabluemoon · 4 years

Text

His Little Imp

Words: 4.5k

Warning: Finger sucking, blowjob, face-fucking, cum play/cum eating, handjob, slight exhibitionism (if you squint), usual dirty talk, and language.

A/N: soooo I haven’t posted something like this in ages 👀 like I haven’t done a member x member fic in a really long time. but this idea barged into my head while I was trying to fall asleep one night and it wouldn’t go away. plus, this is a favorite trope of mine heh heh. also, it is conveniently Felix’s birthday as I’m posting this (I swear that wasn’t actually intentional, it just worked out that way lol). this isn’t edited bc I kinda forgot and also I’m lazy 😂 anywho, I hope you enjoy - I sure enjoyed writing it hehe ❤

The whipped cream was distracting. Tasty, sure, but it was the tiny glob on the side of Felix's mouth that he had somehow missed when he licked his lips that kept grabbing Seungmin's attention. After a few moments of actively trying, and failing, to ignore it, Seungmin sighed exasperatedly and reached to thumb it away. "Lix, you have whipped cream on your face," he alerted the older boy before he swiped the offending substance off his skin.

Felix made a noise of recognition and leaned forward to give Seungmin better access. The younger gently scooped the cream off with his thumb but wasn't fast enough in retracting his hand; without warning, Felix sucked the whipped cream off and giggled as his cheeks tinged slightly pink. Seungmin stilled, lips parted and eyes wide, and he could only imagine how red his own face was. Felix shrugged and looked away as Seungmin finally let his hand drop to his own lap, "Couldn't let it go to waste."

Seungmin awkwardly cleared his throat and nodded stiffly, "Uh, yeah, of course."

And that was that. They both went back to what they were doing before the 'incident', Felix acting like nothing had happened. But Seungmin was still distracted, just not by the whipped cream anymore. He couldn't get the image of his thumb in Felix's mouth out of his head; those pillowy, raspberry-colored lips, how warm and wet his mouth was, the juxtaposition of innocence and mischief that glinted in the older boy's eyes when Seungmin finally tore his gaze away from Felix's mouth and made brief eye contact, and the faint blush that dusted over those freckled cheeks.

That moment replayed in Seungmin's head way more times than he would ever admit. Not that he would admit to thinking about Felix's mouth in the first place, absolutely not. Seungmin definitely didn't think about Felix's mouth when he was tucked away in bed that night, staring at the inside of his eyelids and willing himself to just go to sleep.

Days later, Seungmin was cooking something in the kitchen of the dorm, it being his idea instead of Felix's for once. He regretted that idea fairly quickly when he gracelessly elbowed a full bowl off the countertop and reflexively tried to catch it, making an even bigger mess in the process. Seungmin swore and threw his head back dramatically, groaning in frustration.

"Lix, I made a mess again."

Felix shuffled into the kitchen already laughing even before he saw the state the younger boy was in, "How many times are you gonna tell me that exact thing in our lifetimes?"

Seungmin shrugged his shoulders and held up both hands, one of which was dripping with the sauce from the bowl, and stared down, past his sauce-streaked apron, at the liquid covering the floor surrounding and all over his feet. Felix tip-toed closer, avoiding the splatters and various sized puddles, and grabbed Seungmin's wrist which startled him. He looked over just in time to see Felix's plump lips closing around two fingers. The texture of Felix's tongue sliding against the pads of his fingertips, ridding them of the sauce, also rid his brain of anything and everything; his mind was just static. His entire body felt like static, too. The only place that had any feeling left was the hand in Felix's grasp and mouth. Jolts of electricity transferred from Felix's taste buds down Seungmin's wrist into the numbness of his arm while Seungmin stood motionless, mouth agape and something akin to disbelief etched into his expression.

Felix dragged the fingers from his mouth and looked off into the distance as he licked his lips, "Needs more salt."

Apparently, even when his entire body is in some weird form of hibernation, Seungmin's knack for sarcasm is completely unharmed, working as usual despite the lack of function everywhere else. So he said the first thing that barged into his empty brain, "Oh, well, hand me the salt shaker. I'll just sprinkle some on the floor here."

Felix snorted and doubled over with laughter, his tiny hands clutching his knees, "Sorry. Sorry, that, yeah, never mind." He wiped at his eyes and straightened up, "Let's clean up."

Seungmin nodded in agreement and looked disdainfully at his feet, "I really need to change my socks." Felix followed his gaze and cringed before busting out laughing again.

And just like that, they acted like nothing happened. Again. Only this time, Seungmin had a new image brandished into the back of his eyelids when he struggled to sleep that night. And this time when Seungmin replayed the moment in his mind, there was definitely no trace of innocence in Felix's eyes.

Now that his brain had so thoughtfully provided him with a new fixation, all Seungmin could think about was Felix's plush lips and warm, wet mouth. His eyes found Felix's face far too often and lingered on his lips for far too long. It was getting bad and he really hoped that no one noticed, especially Felix. But, alas, luck was not on his side -- it never was when it came to this 'situation'.

"Minnie, you're staring again," Felix pointed out from his spot on the couch, legs draped over the back and his head dangling with his attention fixed on his phone.

Seungmin grunted in acknowledgement and blinked rapidly. In his defense, he admittedly had been staring at Felix's mouth but sometime before his brain alerted him to look away after an unsuspicious amount of time, his thoughts wandered and he ended up staring off into space, deep in contemplation. "Sorry," he apologized and squirmed in his seat across from Felix, "Just thinking, didn't even know I was staring."

Felix hummed and spun himself around so he was sitting like a normal human being before patting the place next to him for Seungmin to come sit. "But, unconsciously or not, you've been staring at me a lot." Felix watched the younger make his way over, frowning when he sat down on the opposite end of the couch. He quickly crawled over to Seungmin and sat back on his heels, tilting his head like a confused puppy. "Is something wrong, Minnie? Did I do something wrong?" The pout was evident both in his tone and on those lips of his that Seungmin caught himself gawking at yet again.

Seungmin vehemently shook his head and tried to back away but was blocked by the armrest, "No! No, not at all! Everything's fine!"

Felix hummed again, squinting suspiciously as he eyed the younger boy before his expression morphed into one of smugness and teasing. "Like what you see?"

Snapping his eyes up from where they had been watching Felix speak, Seungmin swallowed thickly, "Uh, is that a trick question?"

Felix shook his head slowly and bit at his bottom lip. "Oh, come on. There must be something keeping your attention or else you wouldn't be staring at me every waking moment!"

Seungmin floundered, unable to come up with an answer. What was he supposed to do? Tell him the truth? Oh, yeah. Sorry, Felix. I just have this super weird fascination with your mouth and it's all I can think about. Not just during the day, I can't even sleep at night because I keep imagining your mouth. I want you to suck on my fingers again just to feel you, nothing major. Yeah, like that was gonna happen. That would go over so well.

"Am I really that pretty you can't keep your eyes off me?"

Seungmin was abruptly wrenched from his thoughts by the boy that was still kneeling on the couch next to him. He was all too aware of the fact that they were sitting too close to each other, so much so that Felix's bare knees were pressed up against Seungmin's thigh. Seungmin's brain finally processed the question he had just been asked but before he could stop himself, he breathed out his answer.

"Yes."

Felix's eyes became hooded and dark and he leaned in closer, a smirk curving his lips. "Tell me, what's your favorite feature of mine?" It should have sounded extremely narcissistic but something in the tone of Felix's voice, a bit contemptuous with just a hint of genuine curiosity, made Seungmin heat up, surely blushing a brilliant shade of red under Felix's enticing gaze.

Seungmin's mouth went dry and he found himself swallowing again as he fumbled for another answer, but Felix held up a finger to halt him. "Wait, let me guess! Could it be my tiny hands?" He wiggled his fingers and scrunched up his nose cutely.

"Oh, maybe it's my eyes," Felix tilted forward again, batting his lashes seductively and looked up at Seungmin through them.

The older suddenly sat up on his knees and lifted his shirt, causing panic to rise in Seungmin and something else. "Probably my itty-bitty waist, right? Wanna grab at it with your big, strong hands?" Felix teased as Seungmin's eyes wandered over the expanse of skin directly in front of him, defined abs, deep v-lines, and that tiny waist.

Seungmin was sweating. Or maybe that was drool. Probably both. And he wanted to touch. Bad.

He instantly glanced up when Felix started talking again, "But that wouldn't make any sense." He dropped his shirt and plopped back down, pouting because he hadn't guessed correctly yet. "You've been staring at my face this whole time." Realization washed over Felix's face and the smirk made its way back onto his plush, tempting lips.

And it was in that moment that Seungmin knew he was fucked.

Felix had known the whole time. He was just having fun riling Seungmin up, making him sweat, making him want him even more, the little devil. "I know," Felix licked his lips, seemingly in slow motion, "It's my mouth you like, isn't it, Minnie?"

Seungmin's sharp intake of air was answer enough. Felix nodded once, "You can touch if you want."

The younger gulped and hesitantly lifted his hand to the other boy's face. When he got within an inch, Felix snarled and snapped his teeth. Seungmin practically jumped out of his skin, eyes like saucers and his breathing labored and panting.

Felix giggled. He giggled. "I'm just kidding, Minnie! I won't bite. Unless you want me to." Felix winked and sucked in his bottom lip to bite down on it. When it popped free from his mouth, the wet flesh glistened in the light and Seungmin threw all fear out the window, grasping the side of the older boy's face before slowly sliding his thumb over Felix's bottom lip and lightly tugging it down. Felix poked his tongue out impishly and hummed, giving Seungmin permission for whatever he wanted to do next.

The younger boy's stare flicked from Felix's mouth, up to his eyes, and back down again. Seungmin retracted his hand only slightly to rest two of his fingertips against the pillowiness of Felix's lips. Tongue peeking out again, Felix gently licked at Seungmin's fingers, watching him intently and gauging his reaction, and when the younger gasped and his eyes fluttered but stayed open, Felix took both fingers into his mouth and sucked.

The faintest moan slipped from Seungmin and he breathed heavily, "Lix."

Felix hummed and smiled around the digits in his mouth, laving his tongue against the fingertips and sucking diligently. He found himself leaning in even further, hands resting on the couch in front of him and his ass perked out, an elegant curve to his spine.

Felix could feel his sense of control slipping and he almost lost it completely when Seungmin pushed his fingers in further and pressed down on the back of his tongue, causing him to gag a bit. Seungmin groaned in response, free hand snaking up to rest at the nape of Felix's neck as he slid down further into the couch.

Felix took the opportunity to move his hands from the sofa seat to rest one hand on each of the younger boy's thighs. Seungmin jolted minutely at the contact but smiled weakly as he pulled his fingers from the older's mouth, a single strand of saliva connecting them like spider silk sparkling in the light. Felix pouted at the emptiness and started to lean backwards but Seungmin stopped him with both hands on his waist. Quirking an eyebrow, Felix leaned back in as Seungmin tugged him forward.

"C'mere," he slurred and pulled the older into his lap. Felix fell against him from the force and chuckled as he situated himself in Seungmin's lap, thighs resting on either side and his arms draped over the younger boy's shoulders. Seungmin stared up at him, completely entranced, eyes wandering over every facial feature, stopping at every freckle and marveling at the beauty in front of him.

Felix giggled, "Minnie?"

"Huh?" Seungmin grunted, immediately making eye contact, pupils already blown.

A coy little grin playing over Felix's face, he leaned in a trifle closer and whispered, "Aren't you gonna kiss me?"

Seungmin was well and truly fucked.

He gulped and wet his lips, steeling himself in preparation. Not that he didn't want to kiss Felix -- boy did he ever! But this was something that had only played out in fantasies behind his eyelids when he let his mind spin things just enough while he was in that space between awake and unconsciousness when he laid in bed at night. This wasn't something he ever expected to happen outside of his daydreams, so to say Felix's question caught him off guard was the understatement of the century.

Felix saw the brief flicker of panic in Seungmin's eyes and he couldn't help but frown, fearing that he had somehow made the younger uncomfortable. "Minnie, if you don't want to kiss me-"

"No! It's not that at all, believe me!" Seungmin reassured as he soothed his hands up and down Felix's sides. He chuckled despite himself, "I just- I've thought about this so much but I guess I never really thought it would happen in real life?" He winced slightly at how lame he sounded but Felix was beaming and Seungmin could see the older boy's desire to tease sparkling in his dark eyes.

"I'm curious," Felix paused to bite at his lip playfully, "How did it go in your daydreams -- us kissing?"

Seungmin yet again explored his deserted brain for an answer and came up empty handed. The twinkle in Felix's eyes somehow became even more mischievous and he scrunched his nose a little before laughing breathily, "Why don't you just show me?"

The younger nodded dumbly, a hesitant palm resting on Felix's hip while the other shakily reached for the side of his face, thumbing at his bottom lip once again. Seungmin delicately guided Felix forward, noses brushing and fingers trembling.

The closer they got, the more Felix could feel his own nervousness thrumming in his chest and he wondered if Seungmin could hear how fast his heart was racing. But, he assumed, Seungmin's heart was most likely beating wildly, too. Their breaths mingled and jolts of electricity went through them both when their lips barely grazed each other's. Felix was yearning to just dive in and kiss him hard, no second thoughts, but he wanted Seungmin to take the lead and do whatever he was comfortable with.

After what felt like ages, Seungmin softly pressed his lips against Felix's and quickly pulled back a little bit. The older couldn't help the smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. Seemingly just testing the waters with that initial peck, Seungmin searched Felix's eyes for any sort of hesitation or discomfort and when he found nothing but ardor and rascality, he leaned back in. So gently, so carefully, so sweetly, Seungmin kissed Felix and drew him in closer, chests pressed together.

Seungmin was in heaven -- Felix's lips were somehow even softer than they looked or how he'd imagined, the feeling of holding him was the definition of blissful, and he couldn't get enough.

Felix was going insane -- he felt like a madman and he felt bad about it because all he wanted to do was kiss Seungmin senseless but darling, charming Seungmin was kissing him so innocently.

A few cautious pecks later, Felix calmly pulled away and smiled warmly. "I know I'm small but you don't have to be so careful with me, Minnie. I won't break. And I don't mind if you're a little rougher with me." The older couldn't help the blush that crept onto his cheeks, "I actually kinda like it. A lot."

That was all Seungmin needed; his gaze immediately darkened and his chest rumbled in a sort of growl before pulling Felix back in. His kiss had gone from gentle and pure to searing and sinful at the drop of a hat. He was stealing Felix's breath and the older found himself gripping onto Seungmin's shirt to stabilize himself to some extent.

Seungmin bit and nipped at Felix's pillowy lips, occasionally sucking the lower into his own mouth. He licked at the seam, silently asking for permission, which Felix unabashedly gave instantly.

Felix's jaw went slack and his eyes practically rolled to the back of his head when Seungmin's tongue finally tangled with his own. He whined lewdly when Seungmin sucked in his tongue and, at the same time, squeezed his ass firmly, yanking him in even closer. Felix couldn't help but roll his hips, grinding down in Seungmin's lap and relishing in the low moan the younger let out when their clothed erections brushed against each other.

"Want you in my mouth. Wanna taste you," Felix whimpered against Seungmin's lips when they paused to breathe.

Seungmin chuckled, "Isn't that what we're doing?"

Panting, Felix shook his head and pouted, "Wanna suck you off. Please?"

Breath caught in his throat, Seungmin stared at the boy in his lap. "Any of the guys could come out or come home and see us, we're on the communal couch," he hissed, panicking.

Felix pouted more and punctuated his begging by grinding down again, "Please, want you in my mouth. Please?"

Throwing caution to the wind, Seungmin groaned and tossed his head back before nodding, "Fuck. Yeah, OK. Fuck yes."

Eagerly clambering out of Seungmin's lap and onto the floor in front of him between his legs, Felix clutched at the strong thighs next to him in anticipation. He nosed at Seungmin's clothed length, humming contentedly while the younger squirmed under him.

Seungmin's hips canted and he couldn't help but moan deeply as Felix palmed him and mumbled into his thigh, "You want my mouth just as much as I want your cock, don't you?"

"Ngh, yes. Please, Lix," he groaned at the ceiling. Felix toyed with his zipper, still keen to tease despite being desperate himself. "Please," another whispered imploration. The eldest smiled softly and obliged him, undoing his jeans and tugged them down with bated breath. Seungmin lifted his hips to make it easier, resting back into the couch when Felix had pulled them partway down his legs.

The younger was straining against his briefs, his cock having already leaked enough pre-cum for it to leave a dark spot on the front. Felix whined when he noticed it and pressed gentle kisses along the still covered shaft before sucking at the head through the material, tiny hands kneading at the meat of his thighs, fingertips occasionally slipping under the hem to rile the younger up even more. Seungmin was gripping onto the couch like his life depended on it, drunk off the pleasure regardless of the fact that he was still in his briefs.

Felix quickly solved that problem, fingers dipping under the waistband to slide down the offending item of clothing. His breath hitched when Seungmin's hard cock slapped against his lower stomach and his eyes flicked up to the younger's, mouth agape and watering. Seungmin chuckled huskily and took the perfect opportunity to throw Felix's words back in his face, "Like what you see?"

Felix blinked torpidly and nodded, unable to hide the blush that dusted his cheeks when he registered the question. Without preamble, he leaned in to suck at Seungmin's balls. "Oh!" Seungmin shuddered, gasping at the sudden contact. Felix hummed and lapped at the supple flesh before licking up to the head of his cock. There he suckled tenderly, the tip of his tongue sporadically dipping into the slit, and made eye contact with Seungmin who looked close to passing out.

Panting and squirming, it was Seungmin's turn to whimper, "Shit, Lix! You look so fucking pretty! God!"

Felix fluttered his lashes in response and sunk down on Seungmin's dick, lips stretching obscenely around his girth. He moaned at the feeling of the younger boy hot and heavy on his tongue; his eyes rolled back and drool dripped from the corners of his mouth. Seungmin moaned right along with him, throwing his head back and anchored himself so as not to thrust wildly into Felix's tight, wet throat.

"Lixie, so pretty for me," he brushed strands of hair from Felix's eyes as the older looked up at him again and rested his hand against one freckled cheek, feeling it bulge and hollow as Felix fervently sucked. "Fuck, your pretty mouth was made for my cock, wasn't it?"

Felix whined and nodded in agreement, easing more of Seungmin down with each bob of his head. When he reached the base, he swallowed tightly, tears pooling in his eyes from the discomfort. Seungmin whimpered above him, getting lost in the pleasure. "How can someone be that pretty even when they cry?" he whispered, not really intending for Felix to hear, but the older heard and preened nonetheless.

With one last lave of his tongue over the bulging veins in the underside of Seungmin's cock, Felix pulled up slowly, the head falling from his lips with a filthy pop. He pumped the length with his hand, all the saliva making the slide slippery and smooth. "I know you're close, Minnie," Felix arched an eyebrow, "Are you holding out on me?"

Seungmin's hips pitched forward ever so slightly, dick twitching in the older's grasp, "Ngh, you feel too good. Wanna feel you for as long as I can. Don't wanna stop."

"Oh, baby! I'm not going anywhere! You can have my mouth again whenever you want, don't you worry about that!" Felix placed a single kiss on the head of his cock, seemingly sealing his promise, before smiling up at Seungmin, a dash of feigned pity behind his eyes. "Besides, it must hurt to hold it in so long like this." He tutted and shook his head, "No, that won't do. I know what'll make you cum, baby." Seungmin's hips shot forward at the pet name and Felix snickered meanly, "Here, fuck my mouth. I know you want to."

Seungmin whined and whimpered and writhed. He did want to. So badly. But he didn't want to hurt Felix. The eldest noticed the hesitation and smiled genuinely, "It's ok! I like it rough, remember?" Seungmin nodded tentatively and Felix took him back into his mouth, bracing himself against the strong thighs at his sides. The younger shyly thrusted once, again testing the waters, but when Felix's throat accommodated him so well, he sighed and reached to tangle his fingers in the older's hair before beginning to shallowly thrust. Felix moaned around the cock in his mouth, loving the feeling of his throat being abused as Seungmin's pace quickened and his strokes strengthened.

The older was a whimpering mess being used for Seungmin's pleasure and that got Felix more turned on than he's possibly ever been in his life. He reached down with one hand to grip at his dick over his shorts, trying to relieve some of the pressure, but he ended up pulling out his cock to thrust into his own hand, chasing the blinding satisfaction that he was on the very cusp of.

Seungmin was scorching hot, belly burning with his release so close, "Lix, I'm- I can't last anymore." Felix hummed in encouragement, quickening his own pace on his leaking length. "Lix, can I- I wanna cum on your face. You'd look so fucking pretty with my cum on your face. Can I, please?" Felix was eagerly nodding the entire time Seungmin was begging, or nodding as best he could while choking on his cock.

The younger whispered 'thank you's over and over again as he tugged Felix off by his hair and started to jerk at his sensitive dick. Felix obediently held his mouth open, tongue lolling out in wait, and seconds later, streaks of white painted his lips. A few shot up to land across his freckled cheeks and nose, narrowly missing his eyes, which he was thankful for because he could fully see Seungmin's reaction to his face covered in his cum. And god it was beautiful. So was Felix in Seungmin's eyes. And he told him so.

"Gorgeous," Seungmin breathed, smearing his cockhead in the cum covering Felix's bottom lip. The eldest moaned and smiled, lashes fluttering closed before he suckled any leftover drops of cum from Seungmin's cock and licked his lips. He dragged his fingertips across his face, scooping up all the cum, and sucked it from his fingers, making sure to look Seungmin in the eye as he did.

"Fuck, you're filthy," Seungmin smirked and tugged him back up into his lap, "C'mere." Felix clumsily scampered up, still hard cock bouncing against his own stomach when he sat down. Seungmin glanced down, smirk widening, and took Felix into his hand. "Good. Wanted to see you cum all over yourself anyway."

Felix whined, "And you said I was the dirty one."

Seungmin smiled naughtily before leaning in closer and started to tug at Felix's cute, pink cock. "Gonna make you even dirtier." The older keened and surged forward to kiss Seungmin again. Seungmin groaned when he tasted himself on Felix's tongue but made no effort to move away which made Felix twitch in his grasp. The younger twisted his hand and thumbed at his frenulum, making Felix gasp into his mouth. He swallowed his moans and jerked him to completion, cum spilling over his hand and shooting up the front of Felix's shirt. "Looks like you made the mess this time, Lix," Seungmin whispered against his mouth. Felix punched him in the arm and giggled as he came down from his high.

The two heard a noise and Felix turned around just in time to see Hyunjin, jaw on the floor, slap a hand over his eyes, immediately do a 180, and made a beeline out of the room, presumably in the direction from which he came. Felix giggled while Seungmin groaned, "I knew we'd get caught! You're gonna pay for this, you little incubus!"

Later that night, far past midnight, there was a soft knock on Seungmin's bedroom door. He opened it to find his little imp smiling sweetly, already batting his lashes.

"Can I help you, demon?" Seungmin asked with a raised eyebrow.

Felix clasped his hands in front of himself and cutely twisted in place, his big t-shirt billowing out around him made him look even tinier than usual. "I believe you promised me a punishment."

Seungmin scoffed before glancing the older up and down and growled, "This time, I'm shoving my fingers down your throat while I suck you off."

Felix feigned shock as he closed the door behind himself, "Minnie, how scandalous!"

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kri-babe · 3 years

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A Bad Experience ᅳ Word Count: 2143 Summary: TAKE THE TRASH OUT. Warning: Implied Sexual Assault. Murder.

I was a pretty average kid. I wasn’t excessively popular, but I wasn’t an outcast either. I liked my silence and my own company, but I didn’t mind the company of my friends either. I had my own little pack of misfits that I ran with but we were average kids. We hung out where we could, but it wasn’t all that often between our classes or after school. My best friend in school was… sort of unorthodox, and a lot of people would have probably questioned it, and had my mom been any better, she would’ve told me to stay the fuck away from him.

And with good reason…

Mr. Rhodes was the school janitor; dressed persistently in a dark blue jumpsuit, and jingling whenever he walked because of the keys he carried on his belt. He was a fairly recluse guy, and the other kids thought he was pretty creepy. I think that was because of the fact that he had this weird tendency to turn up in random places, or… maybe it was the scars that mangled the side of his face. Hell, now that I think back on it, it could’ve even just been the vibe he put off. The smile that was just a little too friendly… the dark eyes that were just a little… too happy.

I guess I was a bad read of people…

But for whatever unfortunate reason, I liked Mr. Rhodes… I spoke to him regularly whenever I saw him, treated the guy like he was just another friend of mine. He was friendly enough, and he didn’t treat me like I was just some dumb fuckin’ kid in his way, wasting his time.

I never told him about it, but I think he put it together anyway - the problems back at home. He’d told me one day that I could hide out in the janitor’s closet if I ever needed a place away from everyone else. I hadn’t thought anything of it. Just a friendly gesture from a decent guy everyone overlooked because he had an unsavory job, and scars on his face.

I never once stopped to wonder why he was working at that school, why he was a janitor, and why the other kids avoided him… why the teachers avoided him. I never really thought beyond the idea that they were just mean. That maybe it was pack instinct that kept the flock together, safe in their numbers where the wolf couldn’t easily get to them.

No, I had to be the black sheep - the one that sticks out like a sore thumb, all the easier to snatch.

Too bad I didn’t see his fangs until he found me in the janitor’s closet one day. It’d been a shit day, mom was off her meds, had thrown away some of my stuff because it was ‘Satanic’. I didn’t want to put up with the teachers, nor the other kids, so I hunkered down in that little, cramped closet to just ride the day out. Where the fuck else was I going to go? Home? As if. If only I’d thought of some place else. If only I’d refused to trust him too.

He asked how long I’d been there, and I told him since school started. Guess that meant no one would notice one missing kid. The minute he closed the door, I felt something. A sinking brick in my gut and it only got worse when Mr. Rhodes knelt beside me, rubbed my back and told me that it’d all be okay. He could make it better. … I must’ve been twelve.

I stayed in the closet for the rest of the day. I was too scared to come out until well after school had ended….

I told her anyway. I knew she wouldn’t hear it, I knew she wouldn’t believe me. I knew she wouldn’t be on my side. But sometimes… just… sometimes. She was mom. I told her anyway. I felt the strike far before I had seen it coming.

“No son of mine will be an incubus, not in this house. God will excise this evil from you, you pustulant seductor.”

I still have scars from the whipping.

So… what now…

What do you do when your childhood fucking rapist comes into your place of work… and recognizes you…?

“Well, well,” Chimed a familiar, snake-like voice from just a few steps behind.

Alby blinked tiredly a few times, staring at the bleary image of the DVD cases in the cart and in his hands. As per the norm, the night had been slow - Blockbusters wasn’t really what it used to be, and the few customers he did get were often high as hell, and just looking for cheap movies to rent. He’d had maybe one other customer earlier that evening, before he’d set to putting back the returns.

Another blink, Alby slowly frowned as it pushed its way back to the surface - that rotten, fetid trauma he’d buried years ago. The boy straightened, blinking, and turned his head to peer over his shoulder as Rhodes stepped nearer, grinning just like the wolf he’d always been. Alby’s frown hardened as his good eye slowly cleared from the haze of the pot that clouded his head.

“If it isn’t little Alby… and you’ve grown up to be so handsome too… I’m honestly surprised to still see you around, kiddo… I was so sure your mother would be the end of you…” He reached closer, tilting Alby’s chin in his direction with a finger to better see the patch that was taped over the young man’s right eye. “Looks like she might still be,” He smirked, releasing him then, and instead, placed his hand over Alby’s back.

Broad, slender - he’d shot up like a beanstalk since they had last seen each other. Rhodes looked no different somehow, and Alby wasn’t sure how to take that. But the hand over his back summoned something from the depths of his being. A cold sweat broke out over his porcelain skin and Alby could feel a tremble push its way into his arms and fingers.

“So, how’s life been, kiddo…?” Alby frowned again, staring silently at Rhodes. Was this a joke? Was this guy just… playing fucking stupid? Like they’d always been buddy buddy? Like he fucking hadn’t raped him all those years ago? What was this? Was he trying to get cozy with him so he could do it again?

“What’s the matter, Alby~? Cat got your tongue?”

Rhodes’ hand slid lower, and whether that was to withdraw or not didn’t matter anymore when Alby suddenly exploded into motion with a left hook that connected directly with Rhodes’ jaw. He fell like a sack of bricks and Alby stood there in total silence once more - naught but the sound of his own shaky breathing to accompany him as he glared down at Rhodes’ body. He must have hit him just right… and certainly just hard enough, his knuckles protested about it.

Fuck…

What the fuck was he going to do with this fucker… call the police? But for what… a crime he’d committed twelve years ago? This was assault… and he was positive that his boss wasn’t going to be happy about his one fucking employee assaulting a customer…

The walkie-talkie on the back of Alby’s hip crackled and popped, and there it came: his boss’s chipper voice.

“Hey, Al, you there, bud~?”

He’d never seen the guy’s face, but his manager was always so weirdly happy… it was unsettling at best.

“Fuck…” Alby breathed, still shaking as he pulled the walkie-talkie off his belt and brought it to his lips, “Y-yeah, what’s up?” Just… be calm. Act normal. Everything was fine. He never even came into the store, and it was late. They were just between the shelves. No one would know.

“Hey, Al, there ya are! Listen, bud!” Popped the walkie.

“Remember what I told you about the trash? Those no-good lay-about trash guys don’t come by anymore, so there’s an incinerator in the basement of the building you can use to take out the trash! It’s pretty big, too, remember? So don’t fall in!”

Alby shook harder, blinking widely.

He was so sure he could hear something else just under his boss’s peppy voice. Something unnatural, just under the static, like worms in the dirt, whispering the earth’s secrets into his ears.

‘T̴̨̥̥̮̖̮̠̰̗͖̘̺͒̂̿̅͠Ā̴̫̖̬̜̝̟̠̥̿͌̃͐ͅK̶̟̻̤̼͇̭̻̗̖̖̮̤̺̺̅̐̐̊̀̅̔̈́͑̔̄̀̕̚͝ͅE̶͔̥̺̩̖͓̗̱͉̤̮̭̲͎̺̫̋͛̋̒̊̄̕ ̶̧̬̙͉̮̦̮̭̘͙͌̈́̈Ţ̶̨̛̛̫͖̙̫̺̘̰̘̳̮̘̞̊̏̅͊͋̍͂̄̅́̌͜͠͠͝ͅH̸̨̟͕͍̝̠̫̔̏̓͘͜͝Ě̶̡̨̨͖̫͚͇͍̰̻̪̭̰̃̈́́̈́̌̇̔̒̂̑́̉̿̓̑͘ͅ ̴̭̮͍̟̩̯̍̉͂̂̒͗̀̈́̐̒͘T̷͓̱͎͔̦̫̲̹̰̠̬̤̹͂R̸̡̹͔͓̳͎̣̗͙̥͙̱̯̂͊̌̽͗̈́̎̅̇͘͝A̴̳̳̤̣͐̑̄͘ͅS̷̩̲͖͒̏́̆̋H̶̓͋͘��̧͔̥͉̪͓͉͇̠̭͒͜ ̸͇͎̘̮̀̊͐̈͋̽̑̇̔̄̋̈́͜͝͠Ơ̷̡̳̰̳͈͙̙̞͔̹̦͍͋̋̑̿̿͂̾̊̀̓͑̎̕̕͘̚U̶͔̩̘͖͖̗͚̞̲͓̬̟̥̺̅̓̂͑̏́͝͠͝T̸̺̹̤̮̆̓̽̈́̀̒̉͒̄̓̀̒͒͠,̶̪̤̯̖̩̯̘̾̒͊̇̂͂͗̑̂͋͋̈́̏͐̏͜͝ͅ ̶̡̡̣͓̠̭̫̟̫͕̔͆͋̈́̈́̌̊̓̈́̍͌̈́̔̐́̾͜͝A̵̲͓̝͚͚̖͖͙͉̹͍̗̦͙͔̭̞͑͊̃̓̿̑̓̑̾̃͊L̵̨͖̣̜̬̜̮̲̦̞̥̑̓͑̄͌̎̿͛̈́̈̂͝Ḇ̷̯͎̝̮̯͖͈̰͔̦͕̫̭̬̙̉̉̅ͅY̵̡̪̹̲͚̭͈̞͚̆̓͒̍̚͘͝͝͠.̷͚̳̘̜͙̺̝̳̌̀̔̑͒͗̐̌̈̃͌͝͠͝’

Alby swallowed, and looked back down at the body that lay sprawled across the carpeted flooring, lips working to form words he couldn’t find the ability to add noise to.

“Still there, Al!?” He jolted.

“Y-yeah, yeah, sorry, I’m here. I-I -- I’m on it, boss.” The walkie was hooked back onto his belt and Alby slowly exhaled.

Did he… know…? There was no fucking way this was coincidence. Trash day was usually at the end of the week… it was fucking Tuesday.

Could he do this…?

The basement door swung open, and Alby panted softly, grunting as he readjusted the man draped over his shoulder and slowly began down the steps into the blackness of the basement. There were lights, but the incinerator was often just bright enough that its orange glow was more than enough to light his way. That… beast of a machine. Steel and fire - the belly of a dragon, and the teeth to match.

When he first came to work here, there was no basement. There was no incinerator. There were large trash bins outside that the garbage men would occasionally come get, because the Blockbuster didn’t produce enough trash. Alby was the only employee. But after a time, he’d gotten word from his boss that the garbage men wouldn’t be stopping by anymore. They’d decided the place wasn’t worth the stop anymore, due to how infrequently they had to pick up from it.

The next day, there was a note about the basement. The incinerator. The shop never shut down. There were no construction workers. There was no equipment. No signs that the building had been added onto. It was just… there.

Every step thunked down the stairs as Alby disappeared down into that blackness, and squinted the moment he came around the corner to face the incinerator. It didn’t often make much noise… but it was growling now. Like a ravenous beast, it’s teeth clanking against its jaw in anticipation. Alby hesitated. He often wondered if this fucking thing was alive… the way it acted. But it was so easy for him to chalk it up to the fact that it was probably just funky machinery. He swallowed, and drew nearer, pulling the lever to open the jaws of this hellbeast which roared hungrily, releasing a burning belch of hot air into the basement. Alby squinted against the blast, and stared into those roaring flames.

The weight on his shoulder never felt heavier… and he wasn’t sure he could do this…

The guy… raped him but… this was murder, and no one would ever know…

But they never knew about his rape, either, did they…?

The walkie talkie crackled and popped, fuzzing loudly against the rumbling of the incinerator. There were no words that spilled through the static, and yet… he could hear that distant sound once again. As if there was just… too much interference, or the frequency wasn’t

quite right.

‘T̴̨̥̥̮̖̮̠̰̗͖̘̺͒̂̿̅͠Ā̴̫̖̬̜̝̟̠̥̿͌̃͐ͅK̶̟̻̤̼͇̭̻̗̖̖̮̤̺̺̅̐̐̊̀̅̔̈́͑̔̄̀̕̚͝ͅE̶͔̥̺̩̖͓̗̱͉̤̮̭̲͎̺̫̋͛̋̒̊̄̕ ̶̧̬̙͉̮̦̮̭̘͙͌̈́̈Ţ̶̨̛̛̫͖̙̫̺̘̰̘̳̮̘̞̊̏̅͊͋̍͂̄̅́̌͜͠͠͝ͅH̸̨̟͕͍̝̠̫̔̏̓͘͜͝Ě̶̡̨̨͖̫͚͇͍̰̻̪̭̰̃̈́́̈́̌̇̔̒̂̑́̉̿̓̑͘ͅ ̴̭̮͍̟̩̯̍̉͂̂̒͗̀̈́̐̒͘T̷͓̱͎͔̦̫̲̹̰̠̬̤̹͂R̸̡̹͔͓̳͎̣̗͙̥͙̱̯̂͊̌̽͗̈́̎̅̇͘͝A̴̳̳̤̣͐̑̄͘ͅS̷̩̲͖͒̏́̆̋Ḩ̶͔̥͉̪͓͉͇̠̭̓͋̀͒͘͜ ̸͇͎̘̮̀̊͐̈͋̽̑̇̔̄̋̈́͜͝͠Ơ̷̡̳̰̳͈͙̙̞͔̹̦͍͋̋̑̿̿͂̾̊̀̓͑̎̕̕͘̚U̶͔̩̘͖͖̗͚̞̲͓̬̟̥̺̅̓̂͑̏́͝͠͝T̸̺̹̤̮̆̓̽̈́̀̒̉͒̄̓̀̒͒͠,̶̪̤̯̖̩̯̘̾̒͊̇̂͂͗̑̂͋͋̈́̏͐̏͜͝ͅ ̶̡̡̣͓̠̭̫̟̫͕̔͆͋̈́̈́̌̊̓̈́̍͌̈́̔̐́̾͜͝A̵̲͓̝͚͚̖͖͙͉̹͍̗̦͙͔̭̞͑͊̃̓̿̑̓̑̾̃͊L̵̨͖̣̜̬̜̮̲̦̞̥̑̓͑̄͌̎̿͛̈́̈̂͝Ḇ̷̯͎̝̮̯͖͈̰͔̦͕̫̭̬̙̉̉̅ͅY̵̡̪̹̲͚̭͈̞͚̆̓͒̍̚͘͝͝͠.̷͚̳̘̜͙̺̝̳̌̀̔̑͒͗̐̌̈̃͌͝͠͝’

There it was again - that compulsion. This subtle… feeling. Like someone or something was just… gently pushing on his mind. On his thoughts. Compelling him, his wants. With a deep breath, and another soft grunt, Alby bounced the man from his shoulder, and into the blazing fires of the furnace, tossing in his legs to follow the body as embers shot out in every direction. He hadn’t even fully straightened when those steel jaws banged shut, and Alby threw a widened brown eye over the lever. Was it faulty…? Holy shit.

The blow to his jaw wasn’t enough to keep Rhodes down now… the screaming started shortly after, and Alby couldn’t take his eyes off the furnace as that blackening silhouette within thrashed and struggled frantically for an escape that would not be found.

It couldn’t have lasted for more than a few minutes… but those minutes felt like an eon, and Alby knew Rhodes suffered… too bad it was over so soon.

He stared quietly at the furnace as the roaring dulled to a soft, content rumble, fingers shaking by his thighs as he searched in vain for signs that Rhodes yet remained within that beast’s blazing belly.

The walkie talkie popped and fuzzed.

There were no clear words again… but he could have sworn that he heard the faintest sound of a voice… just… just out of range.

'̶̡͙̗͔̒̄͒͛̆̈́͐̏̐̃̈́̎͝Ṋ̷̱̙̝̋́͐̑̀̋̐̽̽̐͂̆͐͝Ơ̵͔̒̀͋̋̌̂B̸̖̞̘̬̥̺͓̜̘̟͙̥̑̍͑́̍̈́̿̉̈́̽͑̏̀͘ͅO̸̡̬͉̞̱̪͚̭̼̬͉͊̉̆͛̍̒̊D̷̥̩̮̈̃̊̈́͂͊̔͑̈́̽̇͘̚ͅẎ̵̦̺̯̣̦̲̣̐̽̀͆̽̊̏̃ ̷̨͖̖̪̥̹̣̠͕͔̤͎͍̹̽̈̕͝L̵͔̜͇͖̮̰͙̤̰̠̂́̄̓̌̑̄̐̈̚͝Ǐ̸̗̭̬͍̬͙̗̘͔̃͝͠ͅK̸̙̼͙̳̹̫͚̩͎͍̈́ͅȄ̵͙̏̉̏͛̈̎̒̐̆̿Ş̴̧͙̤̳̤̅̿̈̉́̌͂̐̿͠͝͠͠ ̵̢͙͍̮̳̐̅͐̀͐̅͗͂̈́́̈́A̸̧͉̟̯͔̠̮͚̻̭͑̿͒̈̿̅͒͛͛̽͠ ̶̡̢̹̭͉̳̙̣̺̘̍͂́̏͝K̵̻͉̳̘͍̩̦͎̱̙̩̝͍͌͒̈́̐̃͘͜I̵̺̝̣̩͕̱̱͇͔̊̅͒D̴̨͔̘͎̝̫͕͙͚̥̦̘̙̳̀̔͑͘D̵͔̤͓̗͈͍͕̱͎̭̀Ī̴̱̲́̇͂̐͠Ē̶̡̪̅́̑̃͊̎̐́͐̂̊̓ ̵̨̱͎͚̣͖̘͓̻̬̗͖͊̊̉̇̽͑̓̋͊̾̾F̶̡̡͈̭̼͇͇͎̙̂̽͛͐͒̈́̅̉̎Ḭ̷̧̛̮̤̣͓̖͈̐̏̀̅͗́͘͝D̸̛̦͊D̸̡̢͈̞͙͔̜͖̖̮̻͖̒͆̆̒̆̿͋̌̒́̅̚͘͠Ļ̵̻̼͚̝́̿͋̚E̸̝͎͍͂̇̽̃͋͊̐͌͝͠ͅR̶̡̞͉̞̩̱̝͚̗͙̦̐́̉̑̈́̆̀͌̀̾̅͘ͅ'̷̨̧͔̣̜̺̪̰̜̦̮̖̺͑̂̃̊̔͂̈̀͐̃͜

#writing #writers of tumblr #creative writing #fiction #this is just something #i kinda got inspired to write #and it bothered me for about three days #after i made a new sim lmao #i'm proud of it #but it's a little dark #so read with discrection

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zigtheeortega · 4 years

Text

unrequited [part 3]

✿ pairing: bryce x mc

✿ word count: 6327

✿ warnings: innuendos, mention of drugs

✿ author’s note: well, this took a lot longer to finish than i expected (lmaooo). i kind of lost interest in open heart after seeing how horribly characters were sidelined, including my fav surgeon. i’ve worked on this on and off since april after i posted part 2, so this is like 4 ish months in the making. this series means the absolute world to me because it was the first time i was really confident in my writing. not as confident in the conclusion, but it’s been weighing on me for months, so i felt obligated to finish it! i hope you all enjoy it!

added my tags to the end bc there’s quite a few, so i’m sorry if i tagged you and you didn’t want to be – i’m going off of who asked to be tagged/asked for a part 3 months ago!

[read part 1 and part 2 here]

•─────────✦✿✦────────•

She slumped into the seat in the deserted waiting room, her joints popping as she stretched, her deep sigh echoing off of the tile. She was exhausted.

She could usually push through the worst of her shifts, but fatigue settled into her bones, a lethargy she’d never experienced entrapping her like a net, and she couldn’t fight her way out of it this time.

“Hey, Spence. What’s wrong?”

She glanced at the door, expecting to see his arm pressed against the frame of the door, slouched casually like he hadn’t a care in the world. Instead, Bryce was unusually close to her, standing right next to her chair, like he’d appeared out of nowhere.

“I’m just so… tired. It feels like I’m trying to sprint underwater right now and I don’t know why. I can’t explain it,” she watched him, gauging his reaction, but something was off.

“C’mon, I think I know exactly what you need right now,” his smile was Bryce’s, but the familiar twinkle of mischief and flirtiness in his eye wasn’t there.

He turned wordlessly, walking out of the door and down the hallway, which was a lot longer than she’d remembered.

She shook it off and trailed behind him, heart beating soundly in her chest. Was he bringing her to the on call room? To the supply closet? Maybe to an unattended office?

“So, where are you taking me?” She asked playfully, reaching out to link her finger in his, but she fell short, even though he was right in front of her.

He either didn’t hear her, or ignored her, walking straight ahead at the same pace. “Bryce, did you hear me?”

He didn’t pick up his pace, but she fell behind, trying to keep up, – to no avail. She looked down, thinking maybe – crazily – that she’d stepped into cement, slowing her pace to a crawl, or something else that was explainable.

But she was fine.

She pushed herself harder as she fell farther and farther back, Bryce’s stride never breaking.

She pumped her arms, leaning forward, trying desperately to swim through the thick atmosphere, practically pedaling against the ground to gain some type of momentum.

“Bryce? Bryce! Hello?” She yelled, as his figure got smaller and smaller, the hall literally stretching to accommodate the distance between them.

She watched as the wall space stretched, new door frames popping up, the number of rooms multiplying by the second.

He turned back for the first time as she clawed her way towards him, making no progress. “You gotta try a little harder for me, Spence.”

He smiled, not sinisterly, but just wide enough, lacking just the right amount of his effortless charm, that she got chills.

She jolted awake, the sound of her alarm interrupting her R.E.M. She snatched her phone off the dresser and tapped her screen, met with a brief silence before the distant noise of traffic – engines rumbling, and horns blaring below – filled her room.

She sat up, panting, her back slick with cooled sweat, the thin fabric of her top clinging to her skin. She breathed deeply, calming her quick pulse, until a muffled sound broke her concentration.

Her phone laid face down on her comforter, slivers of light peeking out of the sides. She flipped it, and her eyes widened in horror after reading Bryce’s name at the top of the screen, but even more so after watching the numbers tick higher and higher.

It wasn’t an alarm – he’d called her at 3 a.m.

“Hello?”

“Hey, you okay? You picked up but I didn’t hear anything besides heavy breathing.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. You just woke me up.”

“Right. Sorry.” He was silent long enough that she almost asked if he’d muted her. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

“About what? You’re freaking me out a little bit,” she laughed once, but it came out as a scoff, and she kicked herself internally.

She didn’t want him to think she was mad. If anything, she’d been craving any time she could get with him.

They’d maintained a semblance of normality after the party, speaking to each other in the hallways, hanging out in groups, but they never unpacked their past conversation further.

She knew she’d said some profoundly batshit things while she was drunk, and vaguely remembered professing her feelings to him, but he never brought it up.

When she surprised the group with tickets to a music festival, she had ulterior motives. She wanted to get him as alone as she could in a sea of thousands. She wanted to make things right. But because Bryce was wholly intoxicating, she couldn’t do anything but live in their moment, the tough conversations – though inevitable – a million miles away.

They danced, they kissed, and she was enraptured by him. The way her hand fit into his own, the way his warm palm felt against her lower back, the way the cool tones of the stage lights bounced off of his bronzed skin, the way the smooth bass of his voice sounded as his full lips were nearly pressed against her ear, the way his smile was just crooked enough to be a smoulder and a smirk at the same time, and it was insufferable, but she adored it… Everything about Bryce was everything she’d ever wanted.

And she thought she was close to getting it back. She thought that’d be the end of it. They made up, and they could move forward. She wanted him, and he wanted her, finally.

But nothing came of it. He never avoided her, but he never stayed around long enough for her to bring up the night of the party.

The seed of hope in her chest blossomed, budding slowly every instance they spent enough time together to make it feel like when they were interns, the exhilarating sensation of hooking up freely a nostalgia she craved. She’d worked up enough courage to treat her situation dramatically – like in a movie – showing up at his apartment, wine in hand, ready to have make up sex and lay it all on the table while they were both sober.

The hope bloomed, coming to fruition when she surprised him, only to find that he’d been hiding his personal problems. It explained why he’d been avoiding her, she thought.

Bryce Lahela was a prideful bastard – one who couldn’t admit he needed a lifesaver until he was already sinking. He was in over his head, drowning underneath the pressure of fostering his kid sister, whom he had virtually no relationship with, all the while balancing residency – as well as… whatever was happening between them.

When she planned to spend her whole life making it up to him, she wasn’t bluffing. So when she saw the opportunity to salvage and strengthen the siblings’ relationship with something as simple as cooking pasta, she dove in headfirst, hand outstretched, eagerly pulling him to safety.

“Keiki’s gone,” he sighed, and she could feel his anxiety and overwhelming dread through that one deep breath.

“Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’? Did she go back to Maui?” She asked frantically, throwing her covers back, and began pacing the room.

“For all I know, she could be at the airport or across state lines by now,” he chuckled humorlessly.

“Why didn’t you tell me? We could’ve thrown her a going away party or something. Or at least given her a card,” she huffed, kicking at a dirty shirt she’d left on the ground.

“Well, it was kind of, uh, sudden.”

“That implies that it was out of nowhere. So she just bolted? Unprovoked?”

“I mean, it was a little provoked.” He said under his breath, just above a whisper.

“Bryce… what are you not telling me?” She asked, uneasy. She didn’t know if she wanted to hear his answer.

“We got into a fight –”

“And she ran away.” She finished for him.

“... And she ran away.” He said.

She could sense his shame through the phone, his voice getting weaker with every word. She slipped out from under the covers, and tiptoed to her closet, throwing on the first shirt and pair of pants she touched.

“You can explain why later, but right now we need to go find her. We can meet at the subway stop closest to your place. You can start by retracing her steps. Are there any corner stores she liked? Maybe a skate park? She seems like she’d be into that kind of stuff –”

“Spence.”

“Yeah?” “You don’t have to help me. I know things have been kind of weird lately. Don’t feel obligated to help me. This is my fuck up, not yours.”

“We can talk about ‘us’ later, Bryce. Even if we were on bad terms, you know I’d drop anything to help you and Keiki. I know you don’t have anyone to lean on.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath that she could barely hear over the slight static of the phone. “Thank you.” “You can thank me after we find her.”

––––

As soon as she stepped off the subway, Spencer hit a near sprint, trying to get to their designated meeting spot. The Boston weather was as unforgiving as ever, the chilled wind stinging her cheeks.

She ran towards the hole in the wall pizza joint that Keiki had told her about offhandedly the night they’d cooked together.

As soon as she saw Bryce’s form, she slowed to a jog, nearly breathless, both by the physical exertion and how awful he looked. His features mirrored the one she’d seen in the supply closet, his defeated expression a painful memory she’d worked hard to bury.

She’d never seen him cry before, but from the way his red-rimmed eyes nearly sagged, nose rubbed raw, lips tight, she felt emotionally spared by not being there whilst the tears fell.

“Bryce?”

“Hey, Spencer,” He smiled weakly, sniffling and rubbing his nose on the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Did you go inside and ask the owners if she stopped by?” “Yeah, they said she was here an hour ago. She stopped for a slice but didn’t stay long,” he said, shaking his head as he pulled his phone from his pocket, before tapping on his screen.

“Okay, that’s great news! She couldn’t have gotten far,” she said, before swivelling back towards where she came from. “C’mon, I hope you have your monthly pass. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

“Where to next?” He joked, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“First thing’s first, did you check to see if her location was on?”

“She never had it on in the first place. I guess she thought I’d show up and embarrass her or something,” he shrugged, running a hand through his hair.

They stepped onto the dingy subway car, nearly empty except for one other person who was slumped over in their seat, asleep.

“I doubt it. She has a soft spot for you, Bry,” she sat down, readjusting her loose sweatpants before doing so.

“If she did, then she doesn’t anymore. I think I really fucked up this time,” he said, more to himself than her.

He ended it there, so she decided to nudge him a little. “You don’t have to tell me, but it might help if I had some context.”

“No, no, I… want to. I trust you,” he glanced over to her, holding her eye for the first time that night. He inched his hand over to hers, cautiously, debating, she thought, before settling on rubbing his thumb up and down her pinky finger.

The dying bud in her chest bloomed once again, warmth spreading throughout her limbs at his touch, his soft gesture quenching the thirst her heart so desperately pined for.

She blinked, eyes trained on his mouth, unable to tear her gaze away from his lips. He didn’t seem to notice, or he was good at hiding it.

“I said and did some things I shouldn’t have. Some things that might’ve reminded her of our parents,” he started.

She waited for him to continue, watching his chest shake as he tried to find the words between the deep breaths he took to calm himself.

“She’s taking after me, and I don’t like it. Not me, like Dr. Lahela, one of the best surgeons this world has ever seen –” a hint of a smirk curled the corner of his lip – “but like the rebellious, angry, reckless teen Bryce who just wanted… attention. From anyone.”

“So… why don’t you give her that?”

He blew out a sharp huff of air. “I don’t get her. And I’m trying really hard to. But there’s only so many hours in the day, and I don't think she felt like I was trying hard enough.”

“You got wrapped up in work like your parents did, huh?” She asked softly, placing her other hand on top of his, quietly lacing her fingers through his.

“Yeah,” he said, remorseful. “I just wish I could’ve kept my fucking mouth shut for once –”

“Hey, hey, stop that. You can feel as guilty as you want after we find her, but we have to stay positive right now,” she said, a bit sternly, covering his hand with her own, gripping it tightly.

He watched her face, searching for something. Maybe a crack in her sincerity? Ulterior motives? She wasn’t sure if he trusted people or not, and it perplexed her to think about it – she’d known Bryce for over a year and couldn’t name a single person that she knew he definitively trusted.

“Thanks, Spence. I really mean it,” he said finally, a little more relaxed than he was seconds before.

He checked his phone every couple of seconds, clicking the lock screen to check the time, before locking it again, just to repeat the cycle incessantly.

“Can I be honest about something?” He asked, staring straight ahead, brows furrowed.

“Of course.”

“I… ignored her. Just like they ignored me when I started acting out. I…” He shook his head. “I said I’d never be like them.”

“You aren’t, Bryce,” she affirmed, rubbing his shoulder blade in soft circles. “The fact that you’re out here searching for her says so much about who you are.”

“It doesn’t say enough.”

“What do you mean?” “Running away from home means nothing if I’m not better than them. Thousands of miles of distance and I turned out just like them,” he scoffed. “The fucking cycle repeats itself.”

“Bryce…” she shifted her body, facing him completely, while he stared ahead, not meeting her eye.

“Just because you’re not good with coping with all of this doesn’t mean you’re a bad brother.”

He turned towards her finally, attentive.

“Yeah, you tend to bottle things up until they blow up, but you didn’t ask for this. You’re not her parent – you’re her brother, first and foremost. You can’t put those expectations on yourself because you’re not them. You’re doing the best you can as her brother, not her parent.”

She laced her fingers over his, squeezing the hand she’d been holding. “You can’t fault yourself for making mistakes. This is new territory for you. You’re learning and she is, too.”

The doors opened in front of them, the only indicator that they’d made it to the next stop. They were both so engrossed that they hadn’t noticed.

“We should probably get out here,” she said, standing. She didn’t check to see if he followed suit, missing the way he watched her as he walked behind her.

They clopped up the stairs again, Spencer shivering despite her cozy getup.

“Do you want my headband?” He asked, digging into his pocket. “It’s really warm.”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks,” she took it, pulling the thick band over her hair, snug against her ears, but comfortable.

“No problem,” he said, watching her adjust it, his eyes trained on the way she pursed her lips when she couldn’t get all of her hairs to lay down just right.

“We can split up,” she started, pointing down the main street across from the subway. “I’ll check the restaurants that are open down this way, and you can go the opposite way. I’ll text you when I head back –”

“I don’t want you walking alone, Spence,” he said, shutting her down immediately.

“We’re gonna cover more ground if we split up. I can handle myself. Don’t worry about me,” she shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t handle the idea of you getting hurt while helping me look for my sister. Please,” he pleaded, eyes soft.

“Fine,” she sighed.

They checked a handful of diners, breakfast places, and even a bar, but with no luck. Even when Bryce flashed a photo from Keiki’s Instagram, no one’s eyes lit up in recognition.

He looked more and more defeated with each subway stop, his posture slumping, his lips set in a thin line.

She could feel herself deflating as well, but she couldn’t bear to show him she was quickly losing hope, too. No one was going to support Bryce the way he needed, except for her.

“Let’s stop by that skatepark. If she’s not there, there’s bound to be someone who’s seen her,” Spencer nodded resolutely, absentmindedly grasping Bryce’s hand and tugging him towards the stop.

“It’s no use,” he whispered, and she whipped around at the sound of his voice, his body grounded, like his feet were nailed to the ground.

“What’s no use?”

“This,” he gestured with both hands, tugging his chilled hands from her grip. “She doesn’t want to be in Boston. It’s my fault she hasn’t adjusted. I haven’t exactly been the best welcoming committee.”

She shook her head vigorously. “Bryce, she could care less where you live. She came here for you.”

His brows furrowed, his face contorting, his features scrunching like he was in physical pain. When he covered his face with his hand, without hesitation, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, pulling him down to rest his face in the crook of her shoulder.

She whispered words of affirmation in his ear as he sobbed into her jacket, and she rubbed small soothing circles, doing her best to comfort him.

He’d never been this vulnerable in front of her. It was hard to decipher how he felt about things going wrong, his killer smile usually a convincing mask.

He pulled away after a while, his tear streaked face glimmering in the light. “Sorry. That was embarrassing,” he laughed shakily, flashing his teeth, just on the cusp of being a signature Bryce smile.

“Oh, shut up. I’ve cried in front of you before –”

“And it was embarrassing,” he teased, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

A laugh bubbled from her before she could stop it. A body aching, chest heaving, breath stealing guttural laugh that shook her to her core because of how unexpected it was. That type of joy was nearly lost on her. It was so foreign compared to the past couple weeks, and it felt good.

He cackled with her, more so at the involuntary snort that ripped from her nose, less at his not-so-subtle roast. He grasped at his chest with one hand, gasping for air. “God, I’d willingly do appendectomies for a month straight if I could get a video of that snort. I’d snap everybody.”

Her eyes widened, his words triggering a memory.

“Oh my god,” she smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. She quickly opened her phone, navigating to the app she needed. “What? Is it bad?”

“No, I just realized she added me on Snapchat, so her location might be on,” she smiled to herself, opening up the geolocation map, seeing Keiki’s Bitmoji pop up – in the city. “Oh my god, Bryce, she’s still in Boston! Look, it’s her!” She hugged her phone to her chest. “She’s a couple of stops down but not that far away from us.”

He watched her with a confused expression, a little hurt, almost.

“What’s wrong?”

“... She never added me on Snap,” he nearly pouted.

She cackled again, covering her mouth with her hand, shoulders shaking – real laughter. Another fleeting moment of pure joy was the eye of the storm, and she gladly basked in it.

“I didn’t know you two were so close,” His mouth lifted at the corner, a knowing smile forming.

“Well, I got her phone number and snap in case she wanted me to show her around Boston, y’know, if you were busy,” she said between breaths, still coming down from her fit. “Or if she ever got tired of you,” she teased, the feeling of normality settling between them like there wasn’t a massive elephant in the room.

“How could you ever get tired of this face, though? I’m adorable,” he grinned, flashing her favorite 1000-watt smile that made her stomach flutter. “Nah, but really. Thank you. I don’t really know where I’d be right now without you.”

His eyes softened, the debonair facade parting just long enough for her to see what was undoubtedly her favorite side of him.

He laid his hand on her jaw, the warmth of his palm comforting, a striking contrast to the nipping cold of the night air. Both his touch and the temperature differences elicited a reflexive shiver from her, goosebumps raising on her arms underneath her jacket.

Part of her wanted to admit she’d shuddered solely because of his warm skin, because she didn’t want to inflate his ego – but there was no denying it. A single touch from Bryce was all it took to make her putty in his hands.

His gaze flickered to her lips, and he stretched his thumb to lightly drag the pad of it over her bottom lip, parted in awe. “Spencer…”

The tension thickened, their anticipation making it difficult to breathe. God, there was nothing she wanted more in that moment than to grab his face and taste him again. As much as she wanted to kiss him, it wasn’t right.

“Bryce,” she whispered, eyelids fluttering as she watched his tongue flick out to wet his lips. “You can kiss me after we find her.”

––––

The skatepark was nearly empty, the streetlights casting long shadows from the ramps onto the concrete.

“You’re sure she’s here?” He asked, wispy streams leaving his mouth as he spoke.

“Unless she dropped her phone here, she should be close by,” she nodded towards where a few scraggly teenagers were standing around, pungent smoke in the air.

“Keiki shouldn’t be out here with those dumbasses smoking weed out in the open like that,” he huffed, eyeing them as they walked towards the back, the grassy area coming into focus.

“Relax. I doubt she’s out here to smoke. You say that like you didn’t smoke too,” she raised a brow at him, challenging.

He pursed his lips. “Oh, so it’s like that.”

“What? You can’t go all dad mode and expect me not to play devil’s advocate,” she quipped, shrugging.

Before he could form a retort, Bryce held her arm back, stopping her in her tracks.

On the steps leading down to the grass, sat Keiki, headphones in her ears, tapping her foot as she dug into a bag of chips, crunching loudly.

Bryce looked absolutely helpless, like he had no clue what to do next – so Spencer stepped forward without a second thought, trying her best not to startle her.

When she was in her line of sight, Keiki’s eyes bulged from her head, and she nearly choked on her soda. “Jesus fucking christ, you scared me,” she coughed into the crook of her elbow. “What are you doing here? Did he tell you I left?” “I was worried about you,” Spencer said, evading the last question, trying to play it cool. Keiki hadn’t noticed Bryce at the top of the stairs.

“Yeah, but how’d you find me?” She popped a chip in her mouth.

“If you wanna be harder to find, you gotta try a little harder than that,” she said, plopping down on the concrete stair next to her. “Snap maps.”

“I wasn’t trying to go off the grid or whatever. I just wanted some space. It’s no big deal,” Keiki huffed, scooting away from Spencer.

“Maybe so, but you can’t leave after a fight with no explanation. You’re too young to be out here alone this late.”

“You act like I haven’t been through worse,” she muttered.

“I know you have. But you can’t just walk out like that. Bryce is all you’ve got out here.”

“Oh, so you didn’t come alone,” she rolled her eyes. “He begged you to come, didn’t he? Did he not feel like coming himself? Did he have work or something?”

Spencer winced at Keiki’s tone of voice, simultaneously laced with seething rage and hurt. “No, he’s here. You need to talk it out.”

She set her mouth into a thin line, whipping her head around to gaze up at the top of the stairs, flipping him off.. “Go away.”

She gently grasped her wrist, pulling her hand down. “Please, Keiki. There’s a lot of things he won’t say to you, but I’ve heard them. If he didn’t regret what he said to you, I wouldn’t be helping him,” she pleaded, squeezing her wrist comfortingly.

Keiki glanced away, then back to her eyes, then back to the ground, unable to hold her gaze. “Okay.”

Spencer stood up, motioning for Bryce to come towards her. He met her halfway down the stairs, his gaze soft and admiring. “I… I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Don’t worry about that right now,” she smiled, reaching out to rub a hand against his arm. “Go work things out with your sister.”

He leaned in, surprising her with a soft peck on the corner of her upturned lips. “Thanks.” He winked and took the rest of the stairs two at a time, a spring in his step.

She watched as he bent down to sit next to her hunched form, nearly dwarfing her. Over the next twenty minutes, she focused on their backs, heads bobbing as they discussed and argued. They gradually relaxed, Kekei’s body unfurling from her condensed form, Bryce draping an arm on the step behind her.

And when they arose to walk towards Spencer’s place at the top of the stairs, they were both laughing, flashing the same grin.

God they were so similar – and didn’t even know it.

“I’m gonna wait over there while you two makeout,” Keiki grimaced, frowning as soon as her joke dawned on her. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Glad you’re back,” she called, but she was already throwing up a peace sign, back turned, probably not registering what she’d said.

The second they were alone, the nerves hit, the heat of his body next to hers already stifling. While she debated whether or not to meet his eye, he spoke.

“You wanna cash in on that kiss now?”

She glanced up, breath hitching in her throat when she realized how close his face was to her own. Her half lidded gaze was trained on his bottom lip, caught between his teeth. As soon as a quiet “yes” fell from her lips, he captured them in a searing kiss.

For a few blissful moments, the only sound between them were their soft sighs of contentment. She couldn’t remember if Bryce always kissed like this – so passionate and so enthusiastic, yet so cool, so suave.

Every methodical movement of his jaw was so practiced, so refined, she felt like underneath the flickering streetlight, in Bryce’s strong grip, she was the one he operated on, her chest reopened, her heart exposed. Everything she had to give was laid out on the metaphorical operating table, and as cheesy as it sounded, there was a chance he could save her.

The kiss was a reawakening for her. She knew what she had to do. She’d never been more sure of anything before.

She pulled back, their noses touching, as she whispered four words she knew he wouldn’t expect to hear. Maybe he’d forgotten what he asked her the moment it left his lips, but she was determined to mend what she’d broken.

“Ask me to choose.”

“Huh?” He panted, running a thumb across her jawline.

“Just ask me.”

“What do you choose?” He laughed, clearly confused.

“You. Always,” she breathed, tugging him forward by the collar of his jacket, sealing her promise with a kiss.

––––

On the ride home, Spencer sat cuddled up next to him, their fingers tightly wound – like they were afraid if the other let go, it wouldn’t be real.

“Did I say anything… big to you while I was drunk?” She asked, breaking the silence.

Bryce chuckled softly, trying not to wake a sleeping Keiki, curled up next to him, somehow lulled to sleep by the loud, aggressive music blaring from her headphones.

“Yeah, you did.”

“Shit, I really thought I’d made that up,” she shook her head, covering her face with her other hand.

“Nah, you definitely dropped a bomb on me that night.”

“Bryce,” she whined. “Can’t you just tell me? I’m already embarrassed enough.”

“Glad I’ve got you hot and bothered,” he grinned, teasing. “Well… you said, and I quote ‘I think I love you’.”

Her cheeks warmed, and she turned, burying her head in the crook of his neck. “Did I really?” “I said it back.”

She looked up from her place against his shoulder, mouth agape as he planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Do you think or do you know?” She whispered, unsure if she wanted the answer.

“After tonight, I’m more sure than I ever have been,” he shook his head. “Probably more sure of this than anything else in my life right now.”

He used his free hand to cup her face, kissing her lips tenderly. She couldn’t remember a time he’d kissed her with that much care.

“So are you gonna say it first, or am I gonna have to?” He murmured against her lips, earning a surprised laugh from her.

“I’ve done a lot of your dirty work tonight,” she joked.

“Not the kind of dirty I’d prefer, but I’ll give you the credit you deserve,” he laughed as she swatted his chest. He pulled back, holding her gaze with no ounce of fear in his deep brown eyes.

“I love you, Spencer,” he said, his voice taking the most candid tone she’d heard from him.

“I love you, too, Bryce. I always have,” she said, feeling her throat constrict, voice cracking. “I should’ve told you sooner how I felt.”

“I think it happened at the right time. I wanted a lot from you when I didn’t even have my own shit together,” he shrugged, still cupping her face in his calloused palm. “I couldn’t even give what I wanted to receive, ya know?”

“Wow… that’s profound,” she said, in all seriousness.

“Oh, you’re making fun of the meathead for being smart now, huh?” He cackled. Keiki didn’t even stir next to him, despite his booming laugh reverberating throughout the empty car.

“No, no, I’m serious. That’s the most self reflection I’ve ever heard from you.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had a lot of time to think about my mistakes.”

“Me, too. But… we can work through that stuff if you want to talk it out,” she offered, cuddling up to him for warmth again.

“Is therapy your side hustle or something, Spence? Is there something you need to tell me?” He teased, tickling her ribs with his freehand.

She let out an ear piercing shriek, completely caught off guard. “Bryce! Stop it! Please,” she said between laughs, noting the way he smoothly slid his arm around her waist, so that when he stopped, they were closer than before.

“Can you two shut up? I’m trying to sleep,” Keiki grumbled, taking them out of their moment.

“Oh, so you’re exhausted from scaring the shit out of me. By all means, get your beauty sleep,” he said, taking the headband Spencer borrowed from him, slingshotting it directly at Keiki’s forehead.

“That’s it!” Keiki shouted, leaping up on the bench and grabbing Bryce in a headlock, scuffling with him while he most definitely let her win.

Spencer was thankful their car was empty as chaos ensued but she couldn’t help herself from smiling at the fight in front of her – they’d never done typical sibling things like that before. They were robbed of normality from such a young age, and a playful fight was a step in the right direction.

“Uncle, uncle!” Bryce called out convincingly, winking at Spencer. Keiki’s fingers were tangled in his hair, one of his arms trapped in the crook of her elbow. He swatted at her face, trying to get her to let him go.

“We don’t have any uncles,” Keiki said, chomping down on his hand.

“Ow! You little shit – I need these for work –” He hissed.

“Yeah, you didn’t think I was gonna go for the kill? Serves you right for underestimating me,” she huffed, hopping off of him and back into her spot on the bench.

“I won’t do that again,” he smiled softly, reaching over to tousle her hair.

The doors slid open, startling them all.

“I’ll go ahead so you can talk to your girlfriend. Bye, Spence,” Keiki said, waving, strutting out towards the stairs without a second glance.

Her heart swelled at the younger Lahela sibling’s use of the nickname Bryce coined for her.

“So…” She said, as they stepped out into the chill night air for the last time, the first rays of sunlight peeking over the tops of the buildings. “What do we do now?”

“What, after this thrilling conclusion to our months of back and forth?”

“Bryce,” she rolled her eyes, barely holding back a smile. “We barely even talked any of this out. I mean like… where do we go from here?”

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re clean slating it.”

“You don’t wanna talk about that stuff at the party? Or in the supply closet?” She winced. “Maybe when we wanna tackle that, but as of right now, I’m just happy to have you all to myself,” he grinned, snaking his arms around her hips, leaning in to press another kiss on her bottom lip.

“You don’t know how fucking badly I wanna bring you back home right now,” he murmured against her lips.

She groaned, lacing her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss. “God, me too.”

“Soon as I spend some time with Keiki and can get some time set aside for us, I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he smirked, eliciting a shudder from her.

“I guess we’re dating now, huh?” She raised her brows, quirking her mouth to the side. “Don’t tell your roommates yet, please. I wanna see how long it takes them to put two and two together,” he said, a mischievous look in his eye.

“As long as you don’t tell yours,” she teased.

“Keiki’s definitely gonna notice we’re a thing if you keep showing up and leaving with wobbly legs,” he said, and raised a brow at her.

“Shit, you’re really flirty today,” she giggled, her face flushing because of both the Boston air and his innuendos.

“I’m making up for lost time, baby,” he grinned, pulling her in for what seemed like the hundredth kiss that night, but it felt just as incredible as their first supply closet makeout.

Although they had to part ways that night, both of them were rejuvenated in a way they hadn’t been in months – since they were noncommittally hooking up, secretly hoping the other made some kind of move to solidify what was between them.

And although it took way too fucking long for her to come around, Spencer was finally giving him what he deserved. Every single part of her. No distractions, no restraints, no excuses.

Every quip, every embrace, every kiss they shared that night nourished the flora of her heart, quenching her desperate thirst for his validation like a gentle summer rain, and she basked in it, head upturned like a silent thank you to the universe for giving her the chance to mend what she’d broken.

The vines that’d once had her heart in a constricting hold made way for the blossoming flowers; they’d both never forget their past mistakes, passion-fueled arguments, or the pain they’d endured at the hands of each other, but amidst those heated moments, amidst the beautiful disaster, their garden of love budded, a harmonious existence.

––––

tags: @beccadavenport ; @senatorraines ; @felix-hauville ; @messofakind ; @violinet ; @hudush ; @altairadtaz ; @agentdumortain ; @drsobemoji ; @levineseth ; @omgjasminesimone ; @lahellacute ; @doctorsurferbro ; @eleanorbloom ; @tarajoyful ; @bobbysmckenzie ; @raleiighcarrera ; @pixeljazzy

#playchoices #open heart #bryce lahela #bryce lahela x mc #bryce x mc #my fic #jade writes choices fics #just in time for the oph awards LMFAO #um i worked really hard on this and i'm very nervous #so please be kind #this is my longest fic too #so like im sorry if there's dips in quality - but i'm still very proud of it #anyways thank you to anyone who's ever read it

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adventuresloane · 5 years

Text

i left a light beside the bed for you

Read on AO3

Dani/Aubrey

Rated T

Raffle Prize for @desiree-harding-fic

@tazprideweek

"This feels...normal," says Dani, chewing on a three-inch nail.

Aubrey pauses. Her thumb stops gently rubbing over and over Dani's knuckle, and only then does she notice that she's been repeating that same gesture the whole time, absent-minded. She remembers that she has to pee. Truthfully, she's sort of had to pee for the past hour, but kept refusing to make the fifteen-foot trek from the bed to the bathroom. It would mean overcoming her inertia enough to leave the comfort of the soft duvet, and it would mean her bare feet on the cold tile, and it would mean no longer holding Dani's hand.

"Good normal or bad normal?" she asks. She can hold it.

"What do you consider 'bad normal'?"

"Well, you know. Like boring. I feel like normal things are usually boring." She shuts her mouth, then, and swallows. Is this boring? Was she bored?

"Well, I wouldn't call you normal," Dani answers, and her grin makes the freckles on her cheek shift.

Aubrey glances at the box of nails. "I wouldn't call you normal either."

"I guess not. I was just talking about...this." She goes quiet after that. Both of them are submerged in the hum of the mini fridge and the air conditioning. Aubrey looks away and holds onto the air inside her mouth, just behind her closed lips. Dani, she has learned, is the type to get her words all in order before she says them. She has also learned--is still learning--not to interrupt the process by blurting whatever comes to mind, which, as it happens, is her usual response to silence.

If she stares at the ceiling long enough, it starts to look fuzzy. Like there's a grainy film of static over the surface of the plaster. It makes her think of mist outside a window, of the big old tube TV that had sat in the living room of her house for her first few years of life and that had tingled warmly when she pressed her hand to the screen. Everything feels a bit fuzzy now, maybe because it's 3AM. Everything feels warm and a bit familiar.

Finally, Dani says, quietly, "This is what I imagined it would be like if...if things had gone differently."

Aubrey shifts to nuzzle underneath her chin and nods slowly against her, lips brushing her neck. "I know what you mean." As she says it, she knows that it both is and isn't true.

Aubrey had always been good at getting used to things. She had to be, in order to drift in the way she did, navigating unfamiliar towns and faces. The novelties of the new places she visited, the disorienting change of scenery that made her pay attention to everywhere she went, things like storefronts with shells in the windows and residents who all still referred to fridges as "iceboxes"--all these things turned into background noise before long, things she stopped seeing. Sometimes, she thought she was too good at adapting. Boredom always lumbered up behind her, would glom onto her if she stopped moving for too long. Her general rule of thumb was that if she managed to memorize the major street names in the latest podunk little place where she had settled, it was time for her to move on. She'd go and do her best to shake off any moss she had gathered.

So, typically, she wouldn't have chosen to stay in Kepler for as long as she was. But getting accustomed to monster hunting, moon-activated portals, and her own actual magic was its own kind of challenge. This, she guessed, was the new normal, this hotel and these people. But she was used to that too. Her life had been full of new normals the past several years. It had become normal for her, at the end of a long day, to crave the protein kick of a cheesesteak sandwich from a roadside stand, when before she had hardly ever touched meat and a fig and pear salad had been her favorite meal. Hell, it had become normal to be homeless.

Being unable to sleep through the night had been normal for awhile. It was fine, whenever she lay down to close her eyes and instead felt her heart running too fast and hot for her to relax. In that case, she just threw off the sheets and went for a walk anywhere.

While most of the lodge's halls were familiar to her by now, they were harder to navigate in the darkness. She got turned around and backtracked a couple of times. That was alright. Nobody was up to see her fumbling around at this hour of the night, or, rather, the morning.

Or that was what she would have assumed, until she wandered into the kitchen.

The first thing Aubrey noticed about her was what she always noticed, which was the fact that she was gorgeous. The second thing was that she looked as if she'd just been caught in the act. Frozen in shock, she stared wide-eyed, with her arms wrapped around a stack of take-out boxes freshly plundered from the open fridge. She hunched over it awkwardly, like an Igor in an eighth-grade production of Frankenstein, her chin pressed on top of the pile to steady it. All in all, there was a certain frantically-stockpiling-squirrel-in-autumn quality about her, which, Aubrey knew well, could only derive from the early-morning munchies.

This was to say that, for once, she looked like even more of a hot mess than Aubrey. Given that up until now, she, with her lithe body and smell of fresh earth, had resembled more of a fey creature than a person, this came as a strange relief. So she was human after all! Or, well, not human, but capable of imperfection. On the other hand, it just so happened that Aubrey was currently wearing a Snoopy-themed nightgown that she hadn't bothered to wash in a month and almost surely had a comical case of bedhead, so it wasn't like she was winning the Dignity Olympics.

Fuck. She'd been staring.

When Aubrey finally kicked her brain into gear enough to speak, her voice sounded an octave or two higher than normal. "Hi! Hey, uh, Dani, sorry to walk in on you like that! I hope I didn't freak you out, I was just--"

"Are you supposed to be down here?"

"Oh." Dani had said it quickly enough to make her jolt back. The sound was loud and bounced off all the chrome in the large space, hitting her like an accusation. Within moments, the tips of her ears felt so hot it was a wonder that they did not ignite. "Sorry, I, um, I can go--"

"No! No, I..." She exhaled heavily and placed her bundles on the chrome countertop. "Sorry, that was rude. You don't have to leave."

"Oh," she said again. "I mean, it's fine, though. I can if you want."

"I don't. Really. That, uh, wasn't what I meant to say." Dani glanced away and did not elaborate.

"Oh," she said, and now this was getting ridiculous, and she thought about how much she really ought to think of something better to say, quick, before this got to be any more awkward than it was, which was hard, because the only thought running through her mind right now was Don't blow it.

"I love your--"

"I love your hair," Aubrey said almost simultaneously, then quickly added on, "Sorry, what were you saying?"

"The same thing." Dani breathed out through her nose, something that was not quite a laugh but approached it. When she grinned, her canines showed, noticeably longer than her other teeth, disguise or not. That was kind of hot, though she couldn't say why. "And...thanks, but there's nothing special about mine, I don't think. I just like the way you dyed yours."

"Yours is really pretty, though! It's cool that you're able to keep it that long and still have it look nice. And you've always got that, like, strategically disheveled thing going on. Like, you don't even need to look in the mirror every morning and it still just looks good."

Dani blinked at the end of her rambling. "Well...I don't have a reflection, Aubrey."

Well, dunk. "Right! Right, 'cause, vampire, so you're--right, sure."

"I mean, it's not just me. It's something about the human disguises. Don't ask me how it all works--the disguises are made of illusion magic, and I guess they interact with light in weird ways. It happens in pictures and video too. Sometimes we just show up blurry, but my form's never shown up at all."

"So, wait, but how do you know what you look like, then?"

"I kind of don't?" She shrugged. "I know some things, obviously. But not so much what my face looks like. At least, no more than you know what your voice sounds like if you never hear a recording of it."

"Wow. That...that's kind of a shame."

"I mean, it's whatever. It's not what I really look like anyway."

"Yeah, sure." Her fingers tapped rapidly against the pad of her thumb as she considered. "But like...would you like to know? What you look like, that is. I mean, I could try to tell you, if no one else has."

Her eyebrows shot up, in what, thankfully, looked like curiosity rather than judgment. Aubrey accepted that as an okay to stay for a bit, seating herself on the metal of the kitchen counter, cold even through her clothes. Dani hopped up to join her.

The inherent problem with this idea, she realized too late, was that she would have to look Dani in the eye for an extended period of time, and, as it happened, the last time she had done that, she had nearly started an all-out bonfire in the middle of the lodge. All she could do was try to think cool thoughts, which, of course, made it more difficult to give a decent answer. She kept tapping her fingers together, this time to snuff out the tiny flames she felt budding at the ends of her fingertips. "Well..." Don't just say 'cute.' "You kinda look like Florence Welch."

Dani's mouth quirked upward, and a half-second later, giggles came up out of her. She turned so that her expression was half-hidden by the curtain of her hair, but not before Aubrey saw the way the smile changed her whole face, softly crinkling and brightening her eyes, lifting her slightly sunken cheeks. She looked lighter, somehow, than she did before, and it had nothing to do with the kitchen fluorescents. With some of the tension gone from her chest, Aubrey went on, "But, like, Lungs Florence, you know?"

"I can live with that," she chuckled. "I like most Florence + the Machine."

"Me too! I'm doing a bad job of this, though. Fuck. Um, you've got a sharp jaw and a square chin. Your nose is kind of narrow. Green eyes, but you probably already knew that. A really nice, light green, though. Kind of--hang on, don't blink for a second. Kind of like...duckweed? No, shit, I was trying to come up with a good plant simile but I fucked up."

"Oh my god, please keep going. You're doing great."

"Like matcha, then? Yeah, I'd say matcha. Okay, sorry, we can stop having a weird staring contest now."

She laughed softly again, then quieted, eyes cast downward. Then, without warning, she reached into her back pocket. She flipped through the pages quickly, but Aubrey still saw, flitting before her, the gray graphite faces of other residents of the lodge. Just about everyone, except for one.

As she sketched, Aubrey leaned over the page and watched her create a new person out of nothing, weaving an image out of crosshatchings as thin and delicate as spider silk. Although knowing next to nothing about drawing, Aubrey gave her some pointers. "Your lips are a little bit thinner than that." "Your cheekbones are a little bit higher." "Don't forget to draw in the freckles below your eye. They're kind of faint, but they're there."

Aubrey went to look in a little closer and felt her forehead knock against something hard. By the time she realized that her head had collided with Dani's, both of them had jumped back a little, instinctively. She hadn't realized how much they had been leaning in with their heads turned toward the sketchpad.

Dani blinked once, twice, as though dazed. "I'm sorry, I should...it's late. I should go."

"Um," she called to Dani's back, "are you usually up at this hour?"

Dani stopped walking, then turned with a small, sheepish smile. "Well, I don't strictly have to sleep."

"Rad! Me neither! I'll probably see you around then."

"Yeah, you probably will."

Aubrey kept sitting there for some time after she left. She wasn't tired, and her heart was still pounding too much for her to sleep.

A few nights later, as she wandered the lodge in the wee hours, she rounded a corner to find the door to a single suite open, drenching the otherwise dark hallway in the golden lamplight from within. Considering that no one left their doors open even during the daytime, this was decidedly weird.

When she walked by and looked inside, Dani was there to meet her gaze. As if she had been waiting.

"Hi," she said quietly.

Aubrey, whose exhausted brain was even more deficient in the attention department than usual, replied after a delay of six full seconds, "Hi."

More moments of silence passed as she tried to figure out whether she should just keep going without being a bother, or whether her addled mind could manage a conversation right now. She couldn't figure out which Dani would have preferred. Maybe it was a fault of the disguises or maybe it was just how she operated, but either way, she was hard to read.

"So...do you have your bunny?"

"His name is Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD, and no."

"Can you get him?"

"Huh?"

"So he can hang out with us. I probably should've asked if you wanted to hang out first. Sorry, I don't normally do this."

"Uh...no, that's fine. That's great. I'll...I'll go ask if he wants to come."

She brought him, and then, in the following weeks, made sure to bring him every time. More often than not, they passed the first hours after midnight together. For the most part, Aubrey did not remember the conversations in particular, at least not the specifics of them. They were long and meandered and doubled back on themselves. Instead, she remembered what she learned from them, from Dani. That the light orange-ish mushroom that grew on large trees in the forest were mildly poisonous to some and tasted like chicken to others, and that you'd never know unless you tried. That Barclay and Mama used to have regular competitions to determine who could handle the spiciest food. That she was, in fact, not to hard to read at all--that she picked at the stitches in her quilt when she was nervous, that she sometimes rocked back and forth a little on the bed when talking about something that excited her (though never enough to disturb the rabbit resting in her lap).

Aubrey remembered what she learned in the pauses, too. There were large in-between spaces of nothing, when neither of them spoke. She learned, to her surprise, that she didn't mind it. The sound of Dani's deep sighs and the bags of slightly stale Goldfish crackers she kept under her bed had become part of a routine. Predictable. She hated predictable, usually. But the rest of her life--her new life of monster-hunting and magic-using--had stopped being predictable awhile ago. So this was alright. Nice, even, to have one space where she knew what was what.

"I kind of don't want to leave," she mused into one of these silences.

"The room, you mean? You probably should. My bed's not big enough."

"No." Yes. "I mean leave Kepler. Normally I would've moved on by now."

Dani nodded. "I guess you did travel a lot before. You've got a lot going on around here, though."

"Yeah, I guess that's it. So much is new I haven't gotten used to it yet. I'd hate to live somewhere I'd gotten used to," she said with a chuckle.

"You always wanna keep moving?"

"I think so."

It might have been several minutes before Dani spoke up, though she didn't keep track. All Aubrey knew was that she heard her say suddenly, "Aubrey, don't take this the wrong way, just...how could you ever want that?"

The "how could you" pricked her. Aubrey slowly turned to look at her, eyebrows raised.

"It's an honest question," Dani went on. "I just...I can't relate. Maybe because I left home so early and...well. Suddenly."

Aubrey glanced away. She asked, "How early?" before she could wonder whether she wanted to hear the answer.

"Oh, I don't know. I was a teenager."

"And remind me again, how old are you?"

She had to think about it. "Twenty-two."

"How long have you been twenty-two?"

"Awhile?" She gave a small shrug. "But years are different on Sylvain than on Earth. Keeping track is hard for me. That's what I'm saying. I miss being used to where I live, and understanding it, and understanding my place in it. I'm barely acclimated to Kepler. I can't imagine having to pick up and do it all again, all the time."

The forest green hotel carpeting was rough under her toes. "Yeah, I hear you," she replied after a bit too long. She wanted to say it was easy for her to do it, over and over. She would have said that, normally, to anyone else. But now, in the early morning hush, she thought it might not have been what was easy so much as simply what she did, what she felt she had to do. "I guess...I mean, I had a home I left early too. And I don't think I'll feel that way about any place ever again. I never even wanted to try. Why stay anywhere when no place is ever going to feel the same? I don't know, I'm not making sense, probably. It's too late. Or too early."

"No, I think you are."

"Yeah." She took in a breath and tried a smile. "I could be wrong, though. I've, uh, found out I was wrong about a lot of things since getting here."

Dani glanced at her and, gradually, returned the grin. Aubrey had also learned not to look for too long, or she might get self-conscious and hide her face behind her hair again. Not as often, though, lately, and not now. She had been unfolding over these nights, slowly. "Like what?" she asked.

"Monsters being real was a big one."

She laughed this time, albeit from behind her palm. "Guess so." With one hand stroking Dr. Bonkers, she let the other rest on Aubrey's thigh, fingers lightly tapping. Aubrey tried not to squirm. Her body seemed hypersensitive under the touch, almost pricked by it. Or maybe that was the heat traveling just beneath her skin, out to her extremities, like it did just before flames burst from her fingertips. After holding it back for awhile, her hands stung like they had when she had touched a hot lightbulb as a child. Dani was still touching her, and she wanted to shift away but also desperately didn't want this contact severed. She tried to quench the heat radiating from her and hoped Dani would not notice. (Surely, she had to notice, and that thought only made her burn more.)

Later, she tried to hide the round scorch marks left in the quilt by her fingertips. She realized then that she was in what one might call deep shit.

So she had been less than proactive in the romance department for the last few years. She had had work to focus on. A blossoming career in entertainment, in fact. And anyway, she had never stayed anywhere long enough to make a real connection. Aside from some flirtatious moments in bars, a few teasing strokes, there had been nothing since high school. She was touch-starved, probably. Liable to crush on any living soul who so much as brushed arms with her. Did it really even count as a crush if all you wanted to do was sit together while touching? Maybe she just liked hanging out on her friend's bed in the middle of the night while the two of them took turns resting their heads in each other's laps and spilling their darkest secrets, and that was all fine and very platonic.

These were only some of her considerations as she sat, one evening, with Dani's fingers loosely interlocked with her own.

If she weren't careful, she knew she would just up and ask. She tried to distract herself instead. "Oh! I thought you might like this." She pulled out her phone and opened up her photos, which was about the only thing the device was good for in this quiet zone. "Saw a snail today."

Dani, who was already leaning against her shoulder, came even closer, tickling her clavicle with her hair as she looked at the picture. She grinned and nodded. "Effervescent."

"Can you ID it?"

"Virginia bladetooth, I think. I see them all the time in the garden."

"You're like a walking field guide, you know that?"

She giggled quietly, idly flicking the buttons on Aubrey's vest. "I think I've just spent way too many hours reading them." The metal jingled as she jostled it.

"You're amazing. Hey, by the way, what are we?"

After saying it, Aubrey immediately wished she had taken more distracting snail photos.

Dani, for a moment, looked as if she had not quite heard or understood. She gave her a curious look before the meaning of the question occurred to her, and her soft smile collapsed under its own weight. Her mouth was open. She seemed to take in a lot of air without breathing out.

She was just about ready to laugh it off, to make a gal pals joke, when Dani started, "We're friends, Aubrey." Aubrey didn't think she imagined the way "friends" had been enunciated. "Why? Were you...did you think we were more than that?"

Her whole mouth tasted of sour spit. "Well," she said, with an impressive lack of shaking, "we could be, if you wanted?"

"No."

The answer was instantaneous. She didn't say it in a mean way. Just an honest one.

"Ah." It sounded, even to herself, like the wind had been knocked out of her. "Right. I, uh, think I made this really goddamn awkward just now! Bad joke. I should probably go back to my room anyway, so--"

"No, hang on!" There was a tug on her sleeve as she went to stand up.

She sighed. "Listen, it was dumb. You really don't have to try and--"

"It's not dumb. I just...it's got nothing to do with who you are or anything..."

"It's not me, it's you, right?" she muttered. Suddenly, she felt exhausted.

"No! No, that's not what I...it's only even kind of about me." Her eyes snapped frantically this way and that, as if searching for a way to explain herself, or for an exit. They looked in every direction but Aubrey's. Her fist clenched and unclenched rapidly, over and over.

"Hey," Aubrey said in the softest voice she could. She sat back on the bed and considered, for a moment, wrapping an arm around Dani's hunched-up shoulders, then decided against it. "Hey, it's okay. Really, it is. I...I didn't want to make you worry."

"I'm sorry." Dani's breath shivered. "I'm sorry, I don't know how to explain...okay, look. I want to date you. I do."

Within half a second, Aubrey went through whatever the opposite of the seven stages of grief is. "Oh. Good to know."

"But I don't think I can."

"Can I just ask why, though?" She waited for an answer that she did not receive. "Listen, you're, like, really sending me a lot of mixed signals here, and I wasn't gonna push it but I feel like at this point you owe me some kind of--"

Dani slapped her hand down onto the bedspread and, far too loudly for 2AM, shouted, "I can't bring you home to my mom!"

The silence that followed was not one of the comfortable ones. It hit her like cold.

"Sorry." Dani's voice was a whisper, now, one that came out cracked. "I'm genuinely sorry. For all of this. I just don't know how else to explain it. This could never be a normal relationship, you know? I can't introduce you to my family, I can't take you on the dates I would've taken you on back at home..." She trailed off, swallowed loudly. "Maybe it's stupid. It's definitely stupid. I...when I was younger, I always imagined having a stupid romance like you see in teen movies or whatever, something really sappy and typical, and then I left home and resigned myself to the fact that I'd never have a chance of a normal relationship like that. Or a relationship at all, really. I don't know."

Aubrey let the quiet stretch on for a good while longer. Then, almost to herself, she murmured, "I couldn't bring you home to my mom either." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dani's head snap towards her. She kept staring at the floor anyway. "It's hard. She won't ever know the person or the people I decide I want to spend my life with, and that's hard as shit."

"Yes," Dani answered, barely audible.

"It'll always make relationships feel a little weird, I think." Finally, she glanced in Dani's direction. "I feel like that's not really a reason not to have them, though. I don't even know what would qualify a relationship as not-weird, honestly. Or what counts as 'normal' in your book."

"Maybe," Dani sighed. "But it's also like...you really don't know how much you still don't know about me. About Sylphs in general. You might find it too weird."

"Are you serious? Try me."

With a huff, she reached under her bed to pull out a small, jangling cardboard box. Making eye contact all the while, she pulled out an iron nail, held it up for Aubrey to see, and then bit down on it, running it back and forth so that it grated against her teeth.

"What, is that a stim? You don't honestly think I'd judge you for--"

"No," Dani interrupted with a tired tone. "That's not it. You'll see some Sylphs doing this when there are no humans around to comment on it. You know how my kind are rumored to drink blood? That myth started because we get insane cravings for iron, and so a lot of us will just spend all day sucking on literal metal."

"So? Still not that weird."

"But that's just an example. There's a million little things like that you don't know about. I just think you're going to find something about me too bizarre one day."

"Oh yeah? Well I can hang," Aubrey said, and with that, pulled an inch-long nail out of the box and gulped it down.

A pause.

"You don't swallow them whole, do you?"

"Aubrey, what the fuck.”

"Huh. Why did I do that?"

"Oh my god." Dani laughed, and kept laughing, high-pitched and uncontrollable. It was the incredulous sort of laugh that comes from being so delirious with panic that the feeling loops back around to being hilarious. Not that Aubrey could relate or anything. "Oh my god, Aubrey, you're insane! How did you manage to make this night even more ridiculous than it already was?"

"Am I weird enough yet?" She had started to giggle too. It wasn't like there was much else to do at this point.

"I'm gonna die." Dani wiped tears from the corners of her eyes, trying to catch her breath as she continued to laugh. "Or you might. I'm really scared for you actually."

"Yeah, this is bad probably, huh?"

"No, seriously, we have to go to the actual emergency room now because you just ate an entire nail."

"Wait, no, I hate hospitals!"

"Me fucking too, but you just swallowed a sharp chunk of literal metal! It could, I don't know, puncture you or something!"

Aubrey groaned. "Fine, but only if we don't tell Mama."

Dani stopped giggling for a moment, thinking. "We still need her car, though. I know where the keys are."

"You have a license?"

"I don't show up in photographs, remember? Of course I don't have a license."

"Right. Cool. Well, I don't either, so..."

"Don't worry. I drive the landscaping cart around the lodge's grounds all the time."

"Well, that's probably basically a car. You know what street signs and shit mean?"

"Probably."

Three blown stop signs, two unheeded red lights, and several screeching turns around bends on the highway later, they both came stumbling up to the sinister red glow of the EMERGENCY sign and the automatic sliding doors below it. "Stop laughing," Dani kept saying as they walked in. She tried several times to bite her lip in order to stop her own hysterics, but it only resulted in her snorting loudly instead. "Stop it! You're injured! We shouldn't be having a good time!"

Given that most cases of ingested foreign objects occur in individuals under the age of five--a fact of which the doctor felt the need to inform her--Aubrey figured she could at least take some pride in being a novelty. All the same, it was difficult to get her story straight. She ended up with several brochures for therapy to treat pica. It was at least preferable to admitting, "I ate a nail in a misguided attempt to prove a point to my anxious vampire not-quite-girlfriend."

Dani stood up the moment Aubrey walked back into the waiting room, as though she had been watching the door. She had sobered up some, it seemed. Nervously, she pulled on each of her fingers as though to crack the knuckles, though there was no sound. "How'd it go? What'd she say?"

"So apparently, most people just pass this stuff on their own. They took some X-rays, but apparently I'm not at a huge risk for being perforated or whatever, so they're not gonna put me through surgery. She just said to monitor it."

"Well, I guess that's good." Her tone was doubtful as she wrapped her arms around herself. "Still, I wish they could do more for you than just tell you to wait. Where'd you get the Jello cups?"

"The nurses will just give them to you if you ask! I guess they felt bad for me. Want one?"

With a faint smile, she took it and sat back down. "So," said Dani, peeling back the lid.

"So," said Aubrey. She tapped the side of her plastic cup with her forefinger. Of course they had to talk about it. It might as well be at this hour, she supposed, like all their other important talks. "Maybe you had a point, huh? You'd never have a normal relationship with me as your girlfriend." She forced a small chuckle at the end.

Dani didn't laugh in return this time. She poked at the red gelatin. Aubrey noticed that she liked to watch the chunks of it jiggle on her plastic spoon before eating it. That was important. "Maybe not," she said thoughtfully. "Though I was thinking that sneaking out and stealing Mama's car is pretty teen rom-com."

Aubrey recognized that as a hint of hope. "So is sharing Jello, I think." She looked out the window at the streaks of yellow on the horizon, signaling the coming sunrise. Mama would be up with the sun, surely, and possibly wonder where her car went not long after. "We're going to get in so much fucking trouble. Also very teen rom-com."

That time, Dani giggled. Then she stopped, not lifting her eyes from the tile. "I really do care about you."

Aubrey blinked. "I...I care about you too."

"Could we...would you be okay with taking it slow? I'm not sure I want to call it a relationship just yet. But I like what we've been doing. I really like it."

Slowly, she felt a grin spread across her face. "Just tell me something: can I do more than what we've been doing? Am I allowed to kiss you?" She brushed aside Dani's hair before it could fall in front of her cheek.

With a small smile, she asked, "Are you going to make fun of me if I tell you I've never kissed a girl before?"

"No. But I think it's worth a try."

"This can't be exactly how you thought it'd be, though."

"What do you mean?" Dani asks.

"I mean, for one thing, you probably imagined you'd be dating a Sylph. And that you wouldn't be living in a hotel. This probably isn't anything like you imagined a normal relationship being, is it?"

"Well, that's true." Another pause passes by. Matter-of-factly, she goes on, "Nothing in my fucking life worked out the way I wanted it, actually."

"I know," Aubrey says quietly.

She feels a graceful hand card through her thick curls. "I feel like that might be okay, though."

Aubrey had no idea if this relationship qualified as normal or not. Normal, she guessed, was not the word for it. It just felt a bit like home.

((Please consider reblogging if you enjoyed!))

#or: was that a twilight reference? the fanfic #aubrey #dani #danbrey #vampfire #taz #taz amnesty #taz fanfic #fan fiction #the adventure zone #the zone cast #aubrey little #taz aubrey #taz dani #f/f

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theparanormalperiodical · 5 years

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Ghosts Caught on Audio: The 7 Recordings and EVPs You Have to Listen To

It was only a week ago that I got a question from fellow tumblr user, @madphantom.

@madphantom told me that they picked up some paranormal activity whilst recording audio for a creative project.

The story goes that when they recorded audio for an actor who had died, things started to get weird.

When they replayed the audio, they realised that they had picked up a lot of static, and compared it to the iconic soundtrack from Slenderman’s notorious horror games.

Yikes.

And it was this story that reminded me of one my favourite horror film scenes, basically, ever from one of my favourite horror films, basically, ever.

There’s this scene from the film The Conjuring (which is based on the true case of the haunting of the Perron family) where they record the story of the haunting from one of the victims – the mother of the family.

And upon replaying the audio, they realised it didn’t actually record her voice.

After discussion of some key plot points, the recorder turned itself on and produced some seriously terrifying haunted noises.

Now, this didn’t actually happen as far as I can tell.

But it got me thinking: has paranormal activity ever been caught on audio?

There’s enough faked videos clogging up the youtube trending page to tell you we all love a bit of the supernatural making its online debut, and the same goes for audio recordings.

Go ahead, try ‘creepy audio recordings of the paranormal’ into youtube.

And so I was convinced that essentially, I had come to a dead end.

(Pun unintended.)

But then I remembered something:

Audio recordings are actually really fucking important when it comes to recording and investigating paranormal activity.

Methods like EVP and the use of Spirit Boxes have ruled the domain of ghost hunting since the late 20th century, and represent our desperate search for evidence of life after death.

And so, in today’s edition of The Paranormal Periodical we are going to be discussing the theories and histories behind EVP and Spirit boxes, and the 7 audio recordings of paranormal activity that you have to listen to.

So, what is EVP?

EVP – or electronic voice phenomena – are recorded sounds that have been identified as coming from spirits.

It was popularised by some bloke called Konstantins Raudive, and he himself recorded some seriously amazing EVPs.

He even claimed that he recorded political figures including Hitler and Churchill. Fancy a listen? Find a link to this recording is later in this post.

Now EVP is defined by Raudive as a short word or phrase from beyond the grave.

So no, you won’t be able to squeeze a 3000 word opinion piece from a historical figure of your choosing, I’m afraid.

But the conversation about paranormal audio recordings has been present ever since digital goods hit the shops. Just think of all those blurry photos supposedly evident of the undead!

In fact, it was actually a photographer who tried to capture the first audio recordings.

Attila von Szalay’s first recordings in 1956 apparently caught spirits saying some seriously scary stuff:

“Hot dog, art!...Merry Christmas and happy new year to you all”.

3 years later a swedish guy was recording some bird song.

Each to their own, I guess.

Anyway, he replayed the bird song, and he realised that he had captured evidence of the supernatural.

He made out his dead father’s voice, and even heard the voice of his dead wife. And she was calling his name!

A few recordings later and he picked up a message from another deceased relative, his mother.

Now according to theory, there are 3 types of EVP.

Basically, classification A is a clear voice, B is distinct but requires close listening, and C is a faint whispering.

EVP training is even required for ghost hunting in order to develop the ability to hear messages from the dead. Clearly this is serious business for fellow paranormal believers.

What’s a spirit box?

EVP’s require a digital audio recording.

Spirit boxes on the other hand allow spirits to use radio frequencies to talk to people that are actually alive.

Supposedly the ghosts can manipulate the energy of audio fragments to form words and phrases not unlike those heard in EVPs.

And the great thing about spirit or ghost boxes is that you don’t just listen to the dead – you can actually talk to them!

Normal practice involves asking questions and listening out for rather abstract responses. But the fact is this is one of the most famous and trusted methods of communicating with those beyond the grave.

The first official ghost box was created in the 1990s, and the inventor – Frank Sumpton – created it based off of EVP and an article he read on spirit communication.

But if you aren’t convinced by the ghost box, what about the Spiricom?

Invented in 1980, William O Neil created a device that could actually hold a conversation between a dead and a not so dead person.

Unfortunately – and to no surprise – no one actually reproduced the results O’Neil claimed he had.

Did you know that in 1979 parapyschologist Dr. Rogo claimed that you could get phonecalls from those that had passed away? People frequently report receiving a short one-way call from deceased relatives, and it has even been considered a phenomenon.

So, you’ve heard the theories.

But are you ready for the evidence?

Here are the 7 spookiest audio recordings of spirits:

#1 - The exorcism of Anneliese Michel

This is a recording from possibly the most famous case of possession of modern times.

Heck, it was even given it’s own film to document the case, The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

But if you haven’t heard the tale yourself, the story basically goes like this:

A devout catholic girl starts exhibiting strange behaviour.

From unexplained seizures to claims of hearing multiple ‘evil’ voices, she was eventually deemed possessed.

And whilst the many recordings of her exorcisms aren’t EVP or recordings from a Spirit Box session, this is firm evidence of how important recordings were to investigating evidence of the paranormal.

Check out this video to make your own mind up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3aI8kpHxDM

And below is accurate footage of me noping the fuck outta here:

#2 - Next up is the Enfield Haunting

Now this case is interesting because it was largely considered a hoax evoked by 2 young girls.

Investigators used tape recorders and some EVP to assess the potential nature of the haunting.

What’s interesting here is that the debate largely centres around the supposedly possessed voice of Janet – the main girl involved – caught on tape.

Sceptics claimed it was produced by false vocal chords, and that we can all put on a creepy and different voice when we want.

But it was by analysing the actual vocabulary used, they could claim it was similar to that of a child and not a potential ghost or demon, and often evoked mannerisms similar to that of Janet.

Even on national TV, Janet waved her hand to get attention, put it in front of her mouth, and a strange voice was produced supposedly from nowhere.

Hmm.

What do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OWgImgIRic

#3 - The Haunting of an Unnamed New York Hotel

In early 2007, the Central New York Ghost Hunters were asked to investigate a hotel in New York.

Why was it unnamed? The hotel in question asked for the name to be withheld from public discussions for the obvious reasons that their living visitor numbers would fall.

The investigator’s claim this investigation was one of their most active, which is not a surprise considering its long history.

(Unfortunately, this is hard to trace for this post as I do not have the name of the hotel…)

Anyway, the main activity they picked up was an EVP carried out by someone sitting on a staircase.

You can clearly hear a scuffle between two people as a woman asks someone to get off her, a rather sleazy ‘hello baby’, and even the ring of an old fashioned cuckoo clock.

Fancy a listen? Click the link: https://youtu.be/dXa0QrS-WV8

#4 - The Raudive Recordings

I’ve already mentioned Raudive and his innovatory practice, and thanks to his interest in EVP, he has created an incredible collection of evidence of the paranormal.

In total, he has 72,000 recordings of the paranormal talking.

Holy shit.

And this collection even contains the supposed voices of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Churchill!

He claims Hitler spoke to him in Raudive’s mother tongue of Latvian which Hitler barely learnt while he was alive.

And what did Hitler say?

‘you are a girl here, or else you are thrown out’.

Yeah, I don’t know what that means either…

And what did Churchill say? Well, interpreters don’t really care much for what was said, but how he said it.

It apparently was a convincing EVP as it sounded like him, and was thus supported by many as evidence of the paranormal.

Some of these recordings were even conducted in laboratories to ensure accuracy, and Raudive invited members of the public to listen and interpret the recordings he collected.

So why not try your hand at it too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz1PzPrOXPE

#5 - The Glen Tavern Inn

This tavern stretches back to the prohibition era, and its speakeasy history – which included being a brothel and gambling parlour – have fuelled its rumours of supernatural activity.

Whether its murdered prostitutes, or fights between budding gamblers, it does have some basis to the claims.

And these stories were confirmed by an EVP taken.

If you listen closely, you can hear a woman singing as an investigator enters a haunted room.

Check out the EVP here: https://youtu.be/iRtJLPWByFg?list=UU1VrWEFyQYIDKuWWfRjyj7A

#6 - The Eerie Mansion Basement

Now I’ve never heard of this mansion and its murderous past, and I’m kinda glad I hadn’t.

Rumour has it that this was once home to Bill Ely.

And it was here that he killed countless women.

But it was when the American Ghost Hunters took an EVP, they heard some paranormal activity more chilling than the stories that haunt this home.

The investigator’s recorded what sounded like the whimpers of a small girl.

And when they got close to what they believed what the source of the sounds?

A man in a gruff voice told them to ‘Leave that girl alone’.

Yikes.

Want to get seriously spooked? Check out the recording: https://youtu.be/JqQ6dx_w4qs

#7 - The Queen Mary (the boat, not the person)

The Queen Mary is deemed one of the most haunted ships in the world.

And it was all quite a recent discovery.

Only in 2008 did Time magazine claim it was once of the most haunted places, but many other people have made similar claims.

For example, suite room B-340 is one such spot which is considered ‘notoriously haunted’, and a stateroom is haunted by a murder victim.

But the location we are most concerned with here is the first class area.

And an EVP taken here recorded a woman calling for help in an area frequented by many ghost women and children.

Listen to that EVP here: https://youtu.be/re5-OGabpHk

So, we’ve heard what the ghosts have to say.

And now it’s over to you.

Do you think madphantom actually captured evidence of the paranormal?

What about the other audio recordings here?

Let me know by leaving me a comment!

Oh, and when you get out from under your quilt, make sure you hit ‘follow’ so you can always be updated with more stuff to traumatise you.

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welcometoyournewhell · 5 years

Text

Bro Tickles

Author’s Note: I haven't been inspired lately and this was just a little something that hit me. Ideas such as Tetsutetsu hardening when tickled and influence of this fic come from talking and rping with @kwaiipootato.

Over view: Tetsutetsu is curious to see how his look-a-like bro, Kriishima, is. As he finds his bud is wildly ticklish, they begin to discover some more interesting details abut each other before a question or idea comes to the steel hardener’s mind.

It started with pure curiosity. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu and Eijiro Kirishima were similar in far too many ways. They both liked things classic and old school, both had a passion for manly things and people, both had pretty much the same quirk, similar morning routines, workout routines, liked foods, disliked foods, etc. They were like twins in a way. Looked similar, carried over common interests like you would with a close friend your normally hung around, and understood each other to an impressive degree.

They were best friends! Yes, Kirishima loved Bakugou, Kaminari, Sero, and Ashido, but Tetsutetsu was his number one bro. The same went for Tetsutetsu; He loved Kendo to pieces but Kirishima was his closest friend. He new everything about him…. Almost. That would be his reasoning for the hand snaking around the other’s waist as they sat in the re head’s dorm.

Eijiro looked up from his video game that he stopped talking about to look at the other’s hand. He then looked up to the steel eyes in confusion. “Bro, what are you doing?” Was he trying to get romantic or was he trying to do something else. The smirk on the other’s face instantly told him it was along the later of the options. Crap. “No, no, no! Tetsutetsu, don’t you dare!”

Kirishima tried to harden but was too late. His bro had already alerted his nervous system, making it impossible for him to use his quirk. It was an odd weakness, but a useful one nonetheless. The silver haired male laughed before pushing his bro back and lightly tickling his tummy. “Something wrong there, Eijiro? You seem a little stressed out. Here, this should help.” After moving the hand-held device away from the rock hardener, the steel hardener straddled his bro’s waist and began to tickle a bit harder into the abbed tummy.

Hiccupy, gasping laughter left the redhead’s mouth as his hands tried to pry the other’s away form his being. “Brhahahao, chahahut it hahahout,” Kirishima begged as he let his head fall back. Fingers were inching too close to his navel for him to handle. “Nhahahaha! Tetsu!” The other laughed before striking gold. The shark babe below him started thrashing about, trying to block the sensitive area. “Brheheheak!”

A;ready? Tetsu compiled before planning out his next move. Kirishima sighed and greedily started to take in gulps of air. He drapped an arm over his eyes as he caught his breath, not about to bother with fighting for freedom. “Dude,” he started, “what the hell?” Tetsu merely gave a shrug before lightly tickling the exposed underarm facing him. “Was just curious I guess. I mean we have so many things and common and we’ve been hanging out for two semesters now.”

The explanation only somewhat traveled before the other was laughing his head off, trying harder to get away. “Nhahahot thehehere, sthahahop!” He was so open about exposing such a weakness to his friends, it was almost cute. Bakugou would disagree, but Bakugou wasn’t here at the moment. Tetsutetsu was getting a blast out of this cute weakness, slowly taking the invitation to tickle under the other arm that was coming up to drape over the face as well. “Ah! Shahahahait! B-Brohohohoho! It frhehehaking thahahickles! Hahaha!”

Should he tease him on the obvious lee mood? Maybe not. But also…. It was kind of cute that Kirishima was literally exposing himself more to be absolutely destroyed with tickles. As a reward for the cuteness, Tetsu lightened his fingers to mere traces that caused a permanent smile to form along with odd snorts and static television noises. Giggles would mix in here and there depending on the spot, but other than that it was rather the same reaction over and over. There was no protesting, not cursing, no pleading, no nothing.

The steel hardener was impressed. Out of all the people he’d tickle, normally they couldn’t keep down any swears or odd sentences. It was like they were in pain when in reality it just really tickled. Maybe Kirishima just really liked this? But…. so did Kendo. But she swore and would flail around a lot more, and there was no way she could keep her arms up like this. Deciding his look-a-like needed a break, the other stopped and crawled off of him. The peace lasted for only a few minutes before the red head was now on top of the silver haired, straddling his bro’s waist with a tired yet excited grin. “Your turn,” he cried softly.

It was like talking to the pink haired girl with the horns suddenly. Tetsu snorted before spreading himself out a bit so that Kirishima could really try. “Go for it, but just don’t be disappointed.” What did that mean? Oh well. The energetic babe dug in… ow. He pulled back before moving the t-shirt sleeve. Steel. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu could harden when tickled? “Okay, that’s so unfair,” Eijiro suddenly blurted out. He squealed before finding himself pinned under the other. “What, can you seriously not use your quirk when tickled?” The blush creeping onto his best bro’s face said it all.

“Wait…. Seriously? So like veen if I do this?” He pulled a leg forward before lightly tickling one of the sock soles. It was a general kill spot on anyone. Kirishima shrieked before snorting and shaking his head. He tried to free his leg while covering his face. “No!” Interesting. Tetsu stopped before slowly lowering the leg back down. “Dude…. I automatically harden when someone tries.” That was weird. “Guess we really are similar people, huh? Even tickling effects our quirks. Yours disappears and mine goes into hyper drive,” the steel hardener chuckled.

Kirishima crossed his arms with a pout. “That’s o unfair,” he laughed, breaking the facade. The other shrugged before lifting his shirt. “If I know it’s going to happen, my nerves freak and I harden. If I don’t know, well… Kendo can generally get a few in before it registers and I harden. Gotta say, it’s more embarrassing than when you laugh from a sneak attack in class. You get more weird looks and junk.” The redhead nodded as he processed this new information. How strange.

He decided to test it out again, poking at the tummy offered to him. It was honestly like watching one of those electric toys form grade school. Where his finger touched, and only where his finger touched, steel formed as the other let out a squeak of surprise. “So it only affects where your tickled?” Tetsu shook his head. “Generally it’s my whole body but…. This is more of a controlled thing at the moment.” Oh, okay.

Kirishima launched for the other’s ribs, earning a squeal and some strangled laughter before slowly the flesh turned cold and hard. “Yhahaou ass,” the look-a-like silver edition giggled as he calmed down. The red edition kept his hands up as he giggled and tried to slip out from the other. “No, no, no, no,” Kirishima begged as he kept his hands up in defense. “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” the other cooed as he started to evilly leer down at his bro.

“Tetsu, cut it out,” Eijiro broke as he started to seize up in suspense. “You’ve tickled me already, no!” The other chuckled before scooping up his best friend into a hug and blowing a raspberry onto the side of his neck. “PBBBT!” A shriek of laughter followed before the bedroom door slammed open. “Kirishima, can you keep it down? Some of us are trying to fucking sleep around here.” Both males jumped before looking over to the doorway. An irritated Bakugou stared right into the redhead’s soul, waiting for a response. “Ah, sorry Suki Tetsu just found I was ticklish and all. We’ll keep it down.”

The look-a-like tensed a bit as red eyes glared daggers at him. What was his issue?! The door shut before the redhead brought his friend at ease with some giggles. “He’s such a fucking old man dude.” Tetsutetsu was taken off guard by the sudden laughter and humor his friend found in the previous event. Damn, did Kirishima have steel…. Yeah. “Dude…. Did you not see his glare? Not sure that guy would mine fighting with us.”

The cutie stopped giggling before looking at the other in confusion. “Bakugou? I mean probably but he’d found it more useful to tickle me. Unlike you, I don’t really heat up. I’m a perfect match for his blasting powers when push comes to shove. Because of that he often will just kind of tickle me when I annoy him. I think the only reason he didn’t was because it’s an hour past his bedtime and he’s got a schedule to keep. If you weren’t in here he would have just shoved me over and slept beside me to make sure I kept it down.” Wow… not nearly controlling at all.

Tetsu nodded a bit before glancing at the clock. “It’s like nine thirty dude.” The red head nodded. “Like I said, he’s an old man. Bed by eight thirty, rise by anywhere from five thirty to six.” he other looked a bit shocked but Kirishima simply nodded. “He likes to study during the mornings and then start his routine. It’s…. It’s weird. I’ve done it for a week with him. Improved my grades but it was just so… foreign.” Huh?

“Wait…. Are you two dating or something? You know a lot about him and…. You did kind of say he’ll sleep with you.” Eijiro merely blinked before shaking his head. “No. Friends can cuddle dude.” “Bakugou….. Just openly cuddling with someone?” Okay, yeah…. Sounded screwy. “Uh, yeah? I mean… he sees me as his equal and all.” Tetsu felt like his friend wasn’t being fully honest. Grabbing a foot again, he sat down and started to mess with it.

Kirishima collapsed back into a hysterical puddle as he used the pillow to try and muffle his laughs as to not wake up Tokoyami or Bakugou with his loud screeching. “Plehehehase sthahahop! We’re nahahahot dating! I-I’d thehehelll yhahaou if wheheh were,” he cackled as he pulled at his leg more. His friend hummed before stopping. The answer would do, for now. “Sure you would. But, no I belive you.” Tetsutetsu stuck his tongue out at the other before gasping as he was pulled down ontop of, then beside his bro. “Whatever, your being punished now you damn bully.” Kirishima nuzzled into his bro as he pulled him close for snuggles. The other was taken back from the random act, but didn’t really resist. He held the other back as he let out his own yawn.

Maybe he’d dig more into his question another time, or maybe he should make…. No he should really make a list of their differences. Not that anyone besides Midoriya would be interested in them for his journals, but just so the two could contrast themselves when they felt insecure for being preserved as the same. Whatever the case, he was pretty sleepy now and that’s all that really mattered. He nuzzled into the washed, red locks before closing his eyes with a content sigh, a small snore escaping from the one below him.

Coming to U.A was probably that best thing that was going to happen to Tetsutetsu, his friendships really reflected it.

#bnha #tetstutetsu tetsutetsu #eijiro kirishima #tickle #tickling #ticklish #tickle fight

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fordanoia · 6 years

Text

Cast Away (2/2)

Words: 5,700~ || CW: Some Violence. || What happens when Stanley is the one to fall through the portal instead. Part 1

Hurting his back as he fell backwards wasn’t something Stan figured he’d ever miss after getting shoved, but he also didn’t think slowly lifting up and away from the ground would happen either.

Stan’s stomach flopped, and he wobbled in the air, trying to balance himself with his arms. “W-Woah, what is this?” When Ford tried to reach out for him, he tried stretching back out towards him, but he’d already drifted too far out.

This was already looking like bad situation, but then he saw Ford’s face and that’s when Stan got scared. Ford didn’t look ‘worried,’ he looked like he was already full blown panicking as he quickly glanced between Stan and the floor around himself.

“Stanford, what’s going on?!” Stan snapped out this time, looking behind him and eyes widening as he saw the massive circle of light he was headed towards. The cause for concern was pretty clear now.

“It’s the gravitational pull from the portal, it’s-”

Stan swallowed around a dry throat. For all he knew this portal thing was just going to burn him up like a bug zapper. Or he’d get spat out into some part of space and suffocate. Or a million other things. There had to be an off switch. Maybe a big red button. Something to stop it, right?

He looked back to Ford who was- who was just standing there, holding onto his journal and not even looking at him anymore, like he’d just given up. Like Stan might as well have already been dead and gone.

“Ford!” Don’t leave me hanging.

Stan desperately tried to kick a foot out below him to see if he could reach the metal ring, but it was too far away from him and the back of his heel sunk into the light for a second before he pulled it back out again.

Do something.

He tore his gaze away from the bright light that was so close it was burning his eyes now, looking back to Ford, hoping for something. Anything.

Bristling winds scrambled across his back, agitating the fresh burn on his shoulder, and he leaned forward to avoid getting sucked in for just another second. There was no running out of this one though.

“Ford-” His throat closed up, tears burning at the corners of his eyes. Please.

“Hold on, Stan! Just hold on!” Ford’s voice cut through the howling wind behind his ears.

His brother was looking up at him again again, and he took an urgent step forward, wind lightly pulling his clothes forward. He resolutely yelled over all the noise to him. “I’ll get you!”

The words rattled around his head, and he held fast onto them as he took a breath around all the rushing air. He didn’t have a chance for anything else, not even to fully breath out.

Crackling energy swallowed him up, static running over his skin, before the world disappeared in on itself with a loud pop to black.

For just a couple seconds he felt like he was free falling sideways in a weird darkness full of wind rushing past him with lights sparking behind his eyes and in his joints. He didn’t know what it was, but he wouldn’t call it a ‘place’ persay. Then colors spun into existence in front of him, and he was out of that rushing darkness.

He was scared for a split second, because it looked like he had gotten spat out into the middle of outer space rather than somewhere that at least had air. A short attempt at breathing proved he wasn’t going to suffocate though. So, he had that going for him at least.

There were a dozen different colors clashing against each other and crackling lines in the air. Plus, everything in the background was distantly shifting like he’d downed one too many drinks. The only things that were solid, which he was already focusing on, were a bunch of rocks floating around and-... all the monsters in front of him.

Aliens, he guessed, he really didn’t care either way because every single one was giving him a predatory look.

One of them, sitting on top of some big chair that made his eyes hurt, was a large, yellow triangle. It looked like it’d been drawn by some five year old, honestly. Just a triangle with a top hat and a couple of black arms and legs. It’d be pretty ridiculous if it wasn’t towering over him right now.

It blinked at him, its voice booming out. “STANLEY PINES!” If this situation didn’t already scream bad news, that sure as Hell did.

The triangle laughed, the high-pitched noise making him cringe as the sound echoed around him over and over. “Just the pawn to push this party BACK OVER!!” Its voice toned down to something less like screeching as he looked down to one of the bigger monsters underneath it and snapped its fingers. “Hey, chop, chop! Catch the human time!”

A huge ball of fingers and teeth, howled before charging at him.

“No way, bud!” Stan kicked off in the air and, to his endless relief, started actually moving away in the middle of nothing from the couple dozen monsters already starting to chase him.

He dove around one of the bigger rocks to hide, finding a hole big enough for him to duck inside. Thankfully, his feet dropped to the rock with some kind of gravity as he put a hand to the wall. No idea why there was suddenly gravity, but he wasn’t gonna look this particular gift horse in the mouth right now.

“Christ, Ford- hah.” He hoarsely whispered to himself, panting, “warning would ‘ave been nice. Agh.” He leaned his forehead against the rock wall for a second. Just a little ‘hey, watch out for the monsters’ would have been good. Not sure it would have helped all that much, but still.

“COME OUT, FISHY, FISHY!” The triangle’s voice boomed.

Stan pressed back against the wall, keeping still and holding his breath.

“COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!”

He slowly let himself breath again “Sucker,” he muttered with a slight smile. None of them actually knew where he was at, and Stan was gonna keep it that way. He quietly edged further into the small cavern.

Lay low for a bit, wait for the search to calm down, then- then uh...

Stan faltered, pausing. He really didn’t have an idea for after that. He moved back toward the edge of the hole, sneaking a glance outside. There wasn’t exactly a big bright ring of light like the one he’d gone through, so... how was he supposed to get back?

He swallowed uncomfortably, pulling his head back to think.

Ford.

Ford had said he was going to get him. All Stan had to do was hold on for a little while and not get caught.

Between all the cops, thugs, mounties, and everyone else in between - Stan had plenty of experience outrunning people. Plus, he’d already given these monsters the slip and nabbed himself a hiding spot too so he was by this point he was ahead of the game.

Stan settled near the edge of his spot, enough to where he could keep an eye outside without being seen. Just had to wait out for a few seconds.

He kept his hands against the side of the tunnel, ready.

The seconds stretched into a minute, and then a few minutes. A long time to be stuck around with a bunch of monsters, but it was probably just taking Ford a couple seconds to set everything back up again.

Five minutes, but he was sure some science-y calibrations had to be done or whatever. They’d been knocking around in that control room, after all. Had to fix that up. He found himself picking at the rock, as he waited now though, leaning against it.

Any minute now. It was a big machine, with a lot of buttons and switches.

Ten minutes... was that right? It had to have at least been ten minutes, maybe fifteen. He wasn’t sure. It felt like a lot longer, but he hadn’t bothered counting. Maybe... Ford was trying to open up something right next to him.

A few more minutes passed. Something was just holding Ford up, was all. Stan stayed vigilant, keeping an eye out for even just the hint of light again.

......

Just... Just a few more seconds and.... and who was he kidding?

Stan let out a breath of air, letting his eyes wander over to the rock wall in front of him. They’d started the thing up in less than a minute without even trying. If Ford had wanted, he could have already flipped the portal back on by now.

He should have known better. Wasn’t like this was the first time he’d gotten cast away, after all.

It was just what happened. Everyone looked out for themselves. The only times he’d ever gotten bailed out was when someone needed an extra set of hands with something because they couldn’t find anyone else.

Ford had probably thought about it, and decided he wasn’t worth turning the portal back on for.

He started to slump back against the rock, but a harsh burning pain made him hiss out a curse and jump forward. He put a hand over to his injured shoulder, feeling the burnt fringes of the hole in his jacket.

“Ugh, right.” He made a face. “You’re still there.” He’d kinda forgotten about the burn with all the adrenaline of outrunning monsters out in the middle of nowhere. There was a subtle burn building back up again, but he’d have to worry about it later. Wasn’t like he had a first aid kid on him, or even just a water bottle.

Would have been great if Ford hadn’t pushed him into some big scalding piece of metal, but you know... whatever, right? Stan scowled a bit, fingers picking at the burnt cotton of his coat. He probably shouldn’t have been that upset considering Ford had also pushed him into a literal hell hole, but you know what?

He was hiding away from a dozen monsters in space somewhere, maybe it wasn’t even space. It’s not like Ford had explained where this portal went or anything else about it really.

If Stan wanted to be mad about the damn burn then he was going to be mad about it, damn it! He’d earned the right to be mad about anything he wanted right now!

All these years, and Ford winds up shoving him and burning him. Gets him to come to the middle of the woods, asks for him to take a book and just leave. Then, on top of that, gives him a third degree burn!

Well, Ford really got what he wanted, huh! He’d gotten as far away as anybody ever could! Only thing missing was he hadn’t taken the stupid book with him. Stan gritted his teeth.

Why had he even believed Ford when he’d said he’d get him? After everything! He should have known better.

He’d really thought the one guy that hated him more than anyone else in the world was just going to up and pull him out of the worst situation he’d ever wound up in?! How stupid could he get?

He’d stood here for at least twenty minutes, maybe even a whole hour waiting on him - really thinking Ford was going to get him. All because- Because of not even ten words... that Stan had just ate up the second he’d heard them. Because of the look on Ford’s face when he’d said he’d get him back.

... Ford wasn’t the kind of guy to lie though. Not that convincingly, at least. He’d meant it. At least in those few seconds, he’d actually meant it.

Stan sighed loudly, and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, rubbing his knuckles into them. He wished that he wasn’t here.

At least on Earth he knew what he could do. He would have taken another couple seconds at the door, if he’d known there was a chance this could happen. Now he was stranded in some alien dimension with tons of monsters on his tail... How was he going to do this?

A loud voice made him grit his teeth, frustrated. “OHO, ALRIGHT!”

Stan turned to look outside, half tempted to just yell at the triangle to shut up. This was already bad enough, he didn’t need his ears to start bleeding too.

The gratingly annoying voice continued though, absolutely giddy. “STAY HERE AND FIND THE HUMAN BEFORE I GET BACK!! FIRST ONE TO FIND HIM GETS TO HAVE A BITE!” It then added in a scolding tone. “AND THAT’S ONLY ONE BITE! NOTHING VITAL EITHER, GOT THAT TEETH?”

There was a loud crumbling sort of noise and Stan threw a hand up into the air. “Getting eaten alive’s on the table now, that’s just great.” He muttered.

As he was thinking, there was a loud pop and a distant, familiar swirling sound that made him stop.

He hesitated for a second, before peeking outside again. He couldn’t see anything from the angle he was at, but there was something throwing light from around the bend of the asteroid.

... That... No, that hadn’t been there before, he knew it.

Stan waited until the coast was clear before he slinked out of his spot and sneaked around the asteroid he’d hidden inside until he was able to see it. Back, where he’d first popped out at, was a big bright circle of light like the one he’d gotten sucked through. A large beacon of bright light standing out, clear as day.

He... He’d done it.

Stan grinned, smile stretching practically ear to ear.

That was Ford! He turned the portal back on for him! Haha! No getting left to rot in the middle of space with half an arm gone for Stan Pines!! Not ttoday!

His relief faded a bit at the obvious realization that well- he had to friggin’ make it all the way back to that portal while monsters were swarming all around trying to find him.

Stan breathed out, and waited, gripping onto the side of the asteroid. Alright, he could do this. He’d already gotten this far out, he could get back just the same.

A few monsters had gotten near the portal, talking to each other before one shoved the others and suddenly flew off, the rest soon shooting off in different directions.

Besides some of the rocks floating around, he really didn’t have much options for stealth so he’d have to book it most of the way.

He took a break for one rock, checking around before kicking off towards the portal once again, swimming out into debris filled space.

About half way there, there was a loud screeching hiss. He turned to look and let out a frustrated noise.

Off in the distance behind him was a monster that was literally just a huge pair of dentures with arms and legs. One of the ones that looked like it was literally made to try to take a damn bite out of him.

He went right back to pushing along towards the portal, ignoring the thing as it scrambled towards him. Stan immediately noticed that the commotion had gotten plenty of attention though. A few more monsters came out of the woodwork, all headed for him, of course.

As the teeth monster got close to him, he grabbed a large piece of warped metal and turned to chuck it at its’ gums.

The dark blue metal embedded into the shiny flesh, and even caused the monster to fall back with a scream.

Stan quickly turned back to keep going, and grimaced at what he saw up ahead. There were a few monsters passing the portal on their way towards him now, which meant for him to make it back he’d have to dodge around them now.

He could do it though. He was going to.

He scanned around and spotted a piece of oily scrap metal that looked as big as his forearm that he snatched up. The texture felt more like a ridiculously thick crab shell that had splintered off rather than scrap metal, but hey. As long as it was solid, he was using it. “Alright! Try me, uglies!” He shouted, egging them on.

A gray loaf monster hurtled towards him, but Stan easily dodged over top of it, missing the arms that couldn’t even reach its own back. “Sucker!”

When an eyeball with wings flew at him, he swung at it, letting out a laugh as he sent it flying off like a baseball.

Just like that, he managed to pass through the small crowd of monsters. There were only a few more monsters way up ahead, but he had a clear path to the portal again. Even better, now he could see a long thick rope dangling out of it, dangling listlessly out just for him like a piece of fishing line in the water.

“Ha! You can’t take a bite out of me, but you all can kiss my butt!” He shouted a final farewell, this nightmare nearly behind him. As soon as he got to the rope he could just pull himself in. He was home fr-

Something slick and painfully sharp wrapped around his ankle and forced him to a stop. No.

He only had a split second to panic at the realization, his throat instantly closing up. Not enough time to even kick out of its grasp or even try to rip his ankle out from its teeth.

An intense, blazing energy ripped through him making his shoulder burn then. Harsh, but oddly enough it didn’t really hurt him. Apparently the same thing couldn’t be said for the monster that’d latched onto him though.

A loud, anguished cry of what he could only describe as ‘weird slormp-ing noises’ came from behind him as it quickly detached from him.

Stan quickly looked down to see what had happened. The monster, which was a mix of an octopus and a lot of brown fur, had remains of bright orange electricity running over over it. Its tendrils twisted and curled in pain, the spasming movements only lessening after the final traces of the electricity seemed to stop.

Stan blinked, but as he glanced around all the monsters around them had paused, looking just as confused and startled as Stan felt. They didn’t know what had happened either.

When the brown furry sea monster hissed, coming back to, all the monsters focused on him again.

“Watch your step or I’ll zap you out cold this time!” Stan threatened, jabbing a finger in its direction.

It faltered to a stop, and all the other monsters hesitated too, glancing between each other.

“That’s right.” He boistered with a crooked smile. “I came prepared and there’s plenty more where that came from.” He kicked back off towards the portal with a cocky wave, hoping that whatever that had actually been that it wasn’t going to get him in the next minute.

A few of them started up after him, hesitating long enough that he had plenty of a headstart, but none of them were fast enough to actually catch up to him again. Plus, a quick look back was enough for him to see they definitely weren’t trying as hard as they had been before.

A nervous looking creature with a keyhole in its forehead was near the rope when Stan reached it. “H-Hey,” it started nasally, “we were just joking, you know!” It tried, putting on a smile. “None of us were really gonna try eating you, so uh- you can stay and he’ll be back any second.” The creature pointed to one of the big rocks- wait, no.

It was that triangle from before, but turned completely to stone.

“I’d rather eat through a car trunk again, no thanks.” He dismissed, waving a hand to shoo the monster away, before he started to pull himself along the rope. “Now beat it, pal.”

It jerked backwards when his hand got close, and didn’t even try to follow him. Not that he would have been worried about that particular one, honestly. All he cared about right now was getting back to Earth again though.

He tugged himself through the portal with a prepared grimace. His raw shoulder flared up from the energy and the same sensations running across his body again, but it wasn’t any worse than last time.

Stan grinned as the rushing darkness disappeared and he was back in Ford’s basement. He used the rope to pull himself further into the room and away from the portal. “Ford! Poindexter! Where are ya?”

“Ford?” He tried again, louder this time. He scanned along the floor for his brother. That’s when he spotted a paper at the end of the rope pinned to the wooden beam.

Once he got past the cautionary tape on the ground, there wasn’t anything tugging him back to the portal again... but there also wasn’t anything pulling him back down to the ground. He was really starting to miss Gravity.

On the brightside, he was getting good at this whole swimming through the air thing. He tugged on the rope to gently launch himself to the end.

“Okay, okay,” he mumbled, ripping the paper from where it was literally nailed to the beam, “what’s the word here, Sixer?”

Stan,

You have to shut off the portal. NOW!!!

Please, I’m buying you some time, but it won’t last.

If the portal doesn’t shut down in time before He gets through, that’s it. You have to run.

I’m sorry, Stanley.

-Ford

Stan flipped the note over, gritting his teeth when he saw that was it. “God-” He pushed the heel of his hand up to his eye. “How the Hell am I supposed to even shut this thing down, Ford?!” He shouted down at the note. “What-” His throat cut out. “What kind of note even-” he stopped, looking down at the final words.

The portal was big and complicated, and Stan couldn’t just figure it out like it was a hotel shower. Instead of even writing down how to turn it off, Ford just-...

“Agh!” Stan folded the paper and tucked it into his back pocket before springing around towards the door of the control room. “Okay, fine! Fine, Stanford!” He shouted, pulling himself into the room. “Pin the whole world on a guy then forget to give him the instructions, fine! I’ll shut it down!”

He looked around at all switches and buttons. One of the machines near the corner was now pulled out of place, revealing a metal staircase in the wall. A huge rectangular chunk of thin drywall floating nearby. That must have been where Ford went, but he’d have to add ‘why was there a hidden staircase’ onto the monstrous pile of questions he already had going on.

Stan pulled himself over to some of the controls by the edge of the panels, pushing at different buttons and switches. He didn’t have to figure it all out, just enough to turn it off. Maybe push a big red button. He could do this.

After pushing at enough buttons, he glanced out the window and saw the portal still going, but to off to the right were blinking red lights.

When Stan pushed back out and over to the console of blinking lights, ‘MANUAL OVERRIDE’ was written plain as day across it with three keys already in place.

His smile slowly slipped off his face when he tried to turn one of the keys and it didn’t budge. He tried another, but it didn’t work either.

Okay. Okay, he was a resourceful man. They just all had to be turned at once or something. He’d done a lot harder stuff. It he just-

Stan spread so his hands were on the farthest keys then leaned down and bit on the middle one. No matter how much he tried though, he couldn’t do it.

If Ford had just been down here...! He grunted and pushed off to find a tool he could use to clamp down on the middle key, looking around a floating metal bench with all sort of stuff floating in the air around it. There were pliers, a blow torch, the nail gun, some tools...

A muffled and distant voice from above caught his attention.

“Stanford?!” He looked up above, then over towards the control room, but he could barely hear anything over the monstrously loud sound of the machine. Stan glanced back at everything, mind kicking into double-time. If Ford wasn’t busy with whatever then he had to-

“Stan! Stan, HURRY!” Ford’s voice cracked with a desperate urgency, closer and loud enough to be heard. “Shut it down! Please, you need to shut it down now!!”

He glanced back at the keys then to the portal.

If there was one thing Stan Pines knew he was good at, it was ruining things working perfectly fine, and in record time.

His eyes caught onto the huge beams of light that were big and judging by the looks of it - really important to keeping this machine running.

Stan turned back to glance over what he had, but the second he turned around he already knew.

Grabbing onto the large metal desk, he swung himself behind it and grimaced with his back against the wall as he kicked the thing with as much energy as he had right towards one of the beams. He watched it fly off, holding his breath.

As soon as the desk went into the beam of light it was instantly was shoved down with a loud metallic clang. It ricocheted back up only for the beam to push it down again a lot faster than before. It bounced with a horrific sound of scraping metal and sparks coming up from the bottom ring. The huge column of light flickered like a dying lightbulb before shutting off completely, leaving the room half as bright as before.

The portal seemed to stall, slowing down, but... it didn’t stop. The rim of light circling around the portal faltered, and Stan suddenly dropped, but was weightless again before he’d reached the ground.

Almost immediately afterwards, Stan heard a gratingly loud screeching noise, filtering out of the portal and into the room.

“Shit!”

Without even thinking, he grabbed the blow torch and flung it at the remaining beam of light.

Half a second afterwards, he realized what he’d done and shot off towards the control room for cover. As soon as he got a hand on the door frame there was a quick succession of noises behind him - metal banging against metal, a garbled sounding voice, then the loud boom.

The explosion went off behind him with a bright flash of light and scouring his back as he was knocking into the room. He flipped head over heels before hitting the elevator doors, and then tumbling to the ground as gravity finally came back.

Stan coughed, pushing himself up by his elbows to look up. The column of light was already gone, with a huge black scorch mark on the ground with a largely destroyed ring of metal.

The light of the portal was rippling apart and bubbled up only to dissipate entirely, leaving the cavernous room dark with the garbled screeching fading out as it did. The rumble of the machine was completely gone and he could hear everything falling back to the ground. The metal desk, all the tools, everything. Including something thudding down from the staircase nearby.

He saw a hint of beige up through the stairs before Ford actually came into view. His head cracking against the steps before he finally landed at the bottom of the staircase with most of his body sprawled out onto the floor.

Stan messily picked himself up. “Ya gotta be kidding me- Ford!” He wouldn’t be surprised if Ford had gotten a concussion at the very last minute, right now. “I swear, you better be okay.”

Ford opened his eyes, and pushed himself up from the staircase, staring right at him with an unexpected amount of malice.

Stan paused, having barely even started on his way over. “Uh, Ford?”

“Leave.” Ford said simply, and if looks could kill then Stan was sure there would have been a hole burned through him right now.

“Are-...” He hesitated, shell-shocked for a long second. “Ford, are you being serious, right now?! No! No, I’m not just walking out right now!”

“You ruined eve̞̥rythi̜̹̲͢n̵g̹.” Ford replied, voice seething and splitting apart and threading back together in a way that- didn’t sound real. “L̗̺̰eave̞͖͉.” Just the way Ford was even holding himself as he stood there felt like an open threat.

Stan ground his teeth together. “No.” He told him, steadfast in front of the alien behavior.

He barely reacted, narrowing only one of his eyes before taking a step towards him.

Stan didn’t back down. He jabbed a finger at his brother’s chest. “After everything that just happened, I-”

The second they touched, his shoulder burned with another surge of energy running through him that zipped through his finger. Stan saw the bright orange electricity crackling down his arm, as quick as lightning, before hitting Ford’s body. Several splintering lines exploded out over his skin.

Stan’s eye widened and he jerked his arm back, too late for it to matter.

He was expecting Ford to scream in pain or flinch away. Which was what made it all the more concerning when Ford didn’t even make a sound. The intense glint in his eye instantly vanished without a trace as he fell backwards toward the staircase.

Stan’s gut dropped like a stone.

“Ford!” He reached out to grab Ford by the shoulder, but stopped himself in time. “Ford, I-I didn’t mean it!”

To his utter relief Ford opened his eyes again, blinking.

He put his hands on his knees, catching his breath.

Ford looked up at him, using the railing to lurch himself back up to his feet. Half-dazed, he glanced over through the window then back to him. “Stan.”

“Listen, Ford, it- I swear, it was an accident.” Stan started.

Suddenly, Ford let go of the railing and wrapped his arms around Stan. He latched onto him. No burst of energy or bright orange electricity zapping Ford.

“Ford..?” What was going on? One second he wants him gone, then there was that electricity again, and now...

“I didn’t know if you’d make it back.” Ford said, a bit suddenly. He paused, like he was on the edge of saying something more, but it never came out. All he did was keep a tight hold onto Stan. It was like he was trying to keep him on the ground with him. As if, even now, he thought Stan was going to float back up into the air

Stan hugged him back and closed his eyes, letting himself hold onto the moment. After everything - the past half hour, the past decade.. He just wanted at least a couple seconds.

He shakily breathed out, maybe taking a bit more than just a couple seconds, but so what if he went a little over. Besides, when would he ever get the chance for something like this again.

“What’s..” He sighed, tired and sore before just openly asking him. “Sixer, what’s going on?”

“I... messed up.”

He didn’t know what Ford was talking about, but he had to crush down hopes that were already springing up. Last time he’d let that happen, Ford had told him to get as far away as possible from him. “You told me to leave not even half a minute ago, Ford...”

At that Ford tensed up, pulling back, and putting his hands on Stan’s shoulders. “No.” He said, oddly urgent. “No. No, that wasn’t-” he shook his head. “That wasn’t me.”

“Heh. Hate to break it to you, but there was nobody else here to say it.” Stan told him. “If this is how you joke around now, I can’t say I’m a big fan.” Not that it’d even seemed like a joke back then. Maybe it was his mind coming right off of a concussion though. Or maybe that’s what was happening now.

“No. No, you have to understand! That was-” he faltered, glancing away momentarily. “Someone inhabiting my body- it’s hard to explain.”

Or.. that, he guessed. “That’s hah-” Stan ran a hand through his hair. “Really?”

Ford nodded his head. “What else did-.. What else did ‘I’ do?”

“Got zapped by this weird electricity then got up like it didn’t even happen.” A thought came to him. “Were you the one making that happen?

“The what?” Ford made a slight face.

“The electricity thing, it’s already happened twice now and- ugh.” Stan rubbed his hands over his face. “Look, I got a whole list of questions, and that one was really high up on the list, Sixer.”

Ford breathed out, putting a hand to his head. “Okay ah... electricity.” He concentrated for a second, glancing over him and getting distracted. “What about the cuts?”

“The what?” Stan stopped to look down at himself. On the right side of his midsection was a fresh cut that was bleeding over onto his jacket. He stood there for a long moment. He didn’t even remember any of that happening. “Huh... didn’t notice that.”

Ford grabbed his arm, tugging him back towards the elevator and pushing the button. “That’s not a good sign. Increased adrenaline levels for periods of time can increase risk of bodily harm going unnoticed.” He kept going on, babbling about this or that medical thing all seeming more for his own benefit than trying to actually explain it to Stan. “Then- then I have to think about the electricity, depending on the amplitude that could numb your muscles. You’re at least not pale though so you shouldn’t have lost a lot of blood.”

Stan waved a hand, trying to ease him down. “I’ve survived a lot worse, poindexter. One cut isn’t going to kill me, especially after everything that just happened.”

His brother hesitated. “The blood loss it what kills you, and the infection.” His eyes widened then. “There could be alien infectants inside the wounds, that could be it.”

“Okay. Okay, alright. Well, let’s clean it up before I get the space flu or something.” He pointed to him then. “You’ve got a lot to explain though.”

“I’ll try.” Ford promised.

#2/2 meaning this is the last chapter on this baby of course #so if you got questions by the end feel free to ask if you want #mullet stan #gravity falls fic #my fics #Fic: Cast Away #C: Stan #C: Ford #C: Bill #aHAHAAHHA I'VE DONE IT!!!!!#I'M HAPPY WITH IT TOO!!!#my own

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poeplepound · 7 years

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!!! i !!!! love these guys so much!! theyre so spectacular omfg !

also i tried to do this once already ! and i was very far into a very long info dump about these guys and i was ALmost done ,,, and my browser crashed, but im doing it again anyway because i need it (i might make typos and sound like a bum jus btw)

sean bonnette and benjamin gallaty started releasing musci together in 2005 after having worked together in a coffeeshop in pheonix arizona - sean was 18, and the buds released their debut album “candy cigarettes and cap guns” and have since released four other full albums, a handful of singles, two eps, and a compilation

sean has a bachelors degree in social work, and has always been working in homeless shelters, volunteering with youth programs, and trying to give a voice to one of the largest groups of stigmatized humans on our planet

candy cigarettes and cap guns was released when sean (30 y/o) was only 18 - and he has since recieved lots of negative feedback on offensive content in ajj’s older songs - to this, sean apologizes but says , quite frankly , that he was a yung edgy boi at that time in his life, and even if his music was offensive then , it represents a time in his life and hes not going to let its content discount that relevance

this is similar to how ajj changed their name from “Andrew jackson jihad”, sean and ben publicly decided to stop using the old band name because they aren’t muslim and have to right to use the term jihad as a part of an aesthetic - neither of the guys expected ajj to get so big, and andrew jackson jihad was adequate for a yung edgy boi garage band

ajjs vast discography centers around themes of social anxiety, privilege, depression, mania, loving how horrible life is, making the most of nothing, being nothing, and how wonderful our shitty planet is

ajj is considered folk-punk, and to a certain degree i agree with that, but to me music genres are irrelevant, and often times musicians fail to fit a category

the idea of organizing music by genres is restricting to a musician and songs and music grow as people do. in an interview with verbicide, sean said that he acknowledges ajj’s influence on “folk punk” but how the identification of what folk-punk actually is is very vague and unclear, what really Is folk-punk?

ajj has albums that are way more based in folk music, and some that are way more based in punk - some songs are very poppy, some kind of choral in nature - but somehow, ajj has a very cohesive, recognizable sound that never fails to impress and comfort me

this is in part to sean’s wonderful lyrics, they are so very very raw and uncut - he is incredibly relatable while staying poetic, and i admire that So Much. his use of metaphor in his lyrics has alwasy been apparent, but even more so in his more recent albums, and his political commentary songs are more prevalent in older songs - but they stay SO RE l AT a b LE !! every time i listen to ajj, i feel so whole and accepted and like im listening to my deepest internal thoughts and feelings in the form of beautiful lyrics and entrancing music

when asked if sean’s lyrics are a reflection of a darkness inside of him, he usualyl replies by saying that hes no darker than anyone else is - he just has a way to express and expel that darkness. after the release of knife man, sean was asked if his emotional songs were about his past and what he’s been through as a person, and hes replied by saying that a lot of what he sings about is stuff that hes seen through his job, and learned about through people he’s met and interacted with.

shortly before christmas island was recorded, sean’s grandfather passed away. his grandpa had lived with him from the time he was 13 tot he time he was 18, and he was a very major male role model in his life. christmas island has lots of imagery around death, and a lot of the songs on the album personify grief and death. sean has said that christmas island is an album about “pre-grief” meaning the way that people feel bad about death and grieve loses before theyve even happen, just beause they know theyre coming. sean’s grandfather’s death was not unexpected or sudden, and he died very happily - surrounded by all of his grandchildren, and the feeling of knowing someone you love will die shortly is what fueled a lot of the tone of christmas island.

sean is a big big fan of 90′s hip hop, and a lot of his lyrics and writing style is heavily influenced by his favorites - aesop rock, brother lynch hung, biggie, and ol dirty bastard (seriously sean is SO Iconic)

i’ve been listening to ajj since their release of “knife man” in 2011, i could never pick a favorite album of theirs - i love each of them and theyre each incredibly important to me

their 2007 album “people who can eat people are the luckiest people in the world” gave me a completely new worldview , and showed me that the world is incredibly imperfect, and humans are incredibly imperfect, but life is so worth living, and there is still so much good amazing stuff in the world

in 2008 they released the ep “plant your roots” and in 2009 “cant maintain” - both of theses eps were the first time i had found relatable emotional music that felt so accurate to myself - it was raw, it was unapologetic, it was beautiful, and it was sad. these eps have an incredible tone, and theyre both so different (cant maintain being more light and - dare i say - playful) but still so connected and deeply rooted (pun intended ;) ) in my head as near perfect expressions of my feelings

“knife man” was released in 2011 and it came into my life at a time where i was trying to learn about myself and discover who i was, and this album guided me in such a strong positive direction - it introduced me to white privilege, taught me about forgiveness, how to be unapologetically me, but still let me stay in touch with my dark, cynical, pessimistic side of myself - knife man is somehow so negative but still so positive and i think thats how a lot of real life is, and ajj captures that incredibly well

knife man was the first ajj show i ever saw, and i will never forget how captivating sean is when he preforms, his body language and his expressions reflect so much of what he’s singing, theyre so true

in 2014 they released “christmas island” and im not gonna lie when i first heard it i really didnt like it - i thought it was too poppy, and not raw enough like how ajj usually is - it felt wrong to me. but alas, i kept listening, and i soon fell in love with this album. it is indeed poppier than their other stuff, and when it came out in may of that year, i didnt really want to like it that much - and so i avoided it, and once Taylor Swift’s super poppy 1989 came out that october, i avoided it Even Harder because i felt like 2014 would be the year of great musicians selling out to labels to gain hits. eventually, i let myself sink into christmas island - i allowed myself to like it, and boy o boy did i fall in love. i saw the show and i cried. the album seamlessly ties together themes from older albums - optimism, death, unrest, self-loathing - but it introduces a new style to seans words - theyre less direct, less blunt, less in-your-face , he starts using metaphors that dont make sense the first time you listen, his lyrics take on a new type of poetry on this album - and its beautiful

christmas island is softer, its more about introspection and knowing why youre the way you are - its about emotional intelligence - this album taught me how to know whats happening, and how to accept it and learn form it and let myself dream and live, despite how shitty stuff is, and i love it.

in 2016 “the bible 2″ was released, and i waited to listen to any of it until i went to see the show - i binged the album twice through right before i went to see them, and i had really really mixed feelings about it - some of the songs i didnt understand, i didnt like the sound of some of them, and i felt like they got very preachy. once i saw them play the song “small red boy” though, i was 110% hooked - it suddenly made sense to me as an album. the sound is so personal to me, and i connect with the radio static and the messy raw noise, and the lyrics take on such a poetic, innocent tone, and all the songs are equal parts inspiring, funny, and dark. i really really really truly love this album.

this is kind of just a silly extra, but in 2015 they released a single called “keep on chooglin” and i honeslty dont understand what most of the song means, but its really a bop and its poppy and upbeat and positive, and i can gather that basically to “choogle” is to be yourself unapologetically and just do your own thing and basically fucc the haters, and its a nice song to listen to if youre feeling down because the lyrics are funny and the message is bright

ajj’s discography has gotten me through some of the hardest years of my life, and have seriously, literally, kept me from killing myself on so many occasions and i am forever grateful - if i had not stayed alive until now, i would miss so much and i would throw away my life, just because i didnt feel like making it, and now i can say in full confidence that this band has ridded me of all my suicidal ideation , and if anyone is down here reading this, im gonna make an ajj “dont die” playlist that i Will post here

in 2012, ben gallaty recorded a couple songs under the name wiccan babysitter, adn then a few years later (2016) he recorded a few more under the name benjamin galaxy - he compiled these songs in 2016 onto an lp, one side being the wiccan babysitter ep and the other being the ben galaxy ep. i didnt know this was a thing until recently? which is weird? but i have listened through the lp many times - i still dont have a strong grip on what the songs mean, but i can say that the wiccan babysitter/benjamin galaxy lp is super comforting to me as well. the sound is unique and different from ajj, but it is still warm and whole feeling, and the lyrics are still relatable to me, and i want to read more about what ben wrote about and why, but im having trouble finding info on this project

im mostly done for now, it’s very late at night, and i have work tomorrow morning, but i’ll leave u with this - youre an irreplaceable human soul with your own understanding of what it means to suffer, and thats a huge bummer

#me #mental health #ajj #info #ajj the band #actuallyautistic #infodump

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castlehead · 7 years

Text

mx pharaoh -b-side u-

Ideals and notions slash into every oblivious dawn, which now I can only see through windows in the visiting room Clark 8 has. My friend on the outside came to visit today. He said I was living on “Borrowed Time” and that I should be lucky. I listen to him and do not quite know what he means by that.

. . . . . .

Ether swirls forlornly.

Merit in people, like merit in poets, according to poet Wallace Stevens, is a bore. Well seems to me a baseless assumption but I have not a friend in a single bloodvessel so maybe I am doing something wrong. But contra standards everything is baseless, sideless, endlessly sidereal. In a lit World. In a leaning, lit up, bloodshot World. But that is where I am in the night under a cloak of meds turning me robotic or like something.

. . . . . .

Generally, if the sky fell, which it has, would to me the sun in actuality be the burning pyre of a onceplanet, diffuse now, back then, though, home to matter unfeasibly unfreezeable, in regards the fiery heat, and lurking in their heat those burning bodies, knowing the surface of the sun as theirs, or at least learning like as we do of the grand mirror of consciousmind.

Under a newer cloak of mild hospital patterns I live a milder life than once I knew in being thrust indeterminedly blank, into sideless nothing. Knowing not.

A thing unto myself like a sack of carrion carried. Locked in a thrust of obligation and to trudge through my blazes and situations and then come to crisis.

Frame of reference disappears. Seeing God, whether true or untrue, which really doesn’t matter, produces doubts you hoard like a magpie. They are special to you. In the moment of seeing, there it dawns, lets itself be seen, is seen, but for you only, and never again: then you are forced to find understanding within yourself. You will be at inward war for endless time, I think silently: finding kinship with hope and an impossibility.

You experience the thing. It lights up your flesh like the last burnt being on an inhabited sun. Once. Once I could relay a moment with another, focus my thoughts, have a diameter more than an inch of reason around my headspace. Different however than phrenology. Old World cures. Trepanation. That guy Geoffrey Dahmer drilled acid like LSD into the brains of 14 year olds. And turned them into idiotzombies. Like he drilled holes in their heads. And poured pure acid into the drilled holes. But maybe that’s just an urban legend. In any case.

Who? Is? On? My? Side? Slipping slipping slipping dawn proves this abstract to think about when there is nothing to grab onto. Like in that moment of reckoning, even; you forget your confusion and say, “The star was never a planet, nothingness can exist godlessly most sensibly.”

But not that no. Not a farrow for the plow there. Just old rusted junk and the skeleton of old mouse of Burns. I frame it as a remark not a question needing appeasing: Who is on my side. Words on the life and soul of one, whose difference between life and death relied on a fucking air conditioner, and hence, a fall broken.

Then and then only can it be seen what it is. Something I guess not like expecting anything. There’s an old bluff in every answer to a personal question I use and it’s, Well that’s just me. Or. Something of the sort. Nearly draconian my sense of self whips me. Lashing a handsome leather one.

And maybe I block myself out of my own portrait or maybe others do that I wouldn’t know I’m not a fan of blaming people like I wasn’t there man I didn’t geographically locate the body of another and install myself fucking into their fucking harddrive. And see their thoughts about where he was and also reflections in sensations and impressions of emotions. I am the static field my space proclaims, and the static reality is where I am in the moment however the soul is often placed where I long to be and suffer to be.

. . . . . .

In this fecal birdcage I am hassled by the names I call myself. Hateful little whispers my own mind builds together and that unto itself, is unto itself, it is pressing, it is a pressing matter, it presses on me like a lover of a kind. Cosmos, touching. My evicted head, squeezed head, attenuating.

There is nothing different going to happen besides some screams. In answer is the clogged place the sound releases me from, once again, into the World, the whirly World, filled with friends or not with friends or not with friends but family or not family but just my Dad.

So I am injured greatly at heart. I am very sad. What is my sadness I do not know what my sadness is but it remarks on a soul hurt as if it knew more than that, more than little horrors, here and there, and mere, stubborn names, frames of mind, or all of it observed through a still glass, time then seen in and as frames, each: memory nearly real as present, and all of it a polaroid, a stillness made from the primordial clay by some mindfuck cretin upstairs.

So I knew perhaps a stubborn, loud thing of being had, which invaded all possible analysis with its goofy inverted visions. Trembling under disregards. You know, cutting myself out; or do I make nothing for nothing is real? Maybe the only real thing one does is his laps around his true character, his head waiting for an end to the meanwhile. As if to prove through the effort that truth is present there somewhere in the greymatter and would present itself, living and fecund and like a mirrored life maybe drumming in some morsecode blather of an arc I’d travel to in that life, a clime mine, and away from that picture in the glass, a face which even by the mundanest observance causes ringing in my ears.

And yet an observance guttural and still viewing the spectacle of nothing there. Dear everyone, my sumptuous actions. Are of bloom or like I guess to say in bloom sorta. These my fatted acts. Rosebud caught not in the bud, left unfed anyway to fetidness, roaming lights in the mind revolving, as would alive stones, real expanses of mind, of a mind of leafy strands of hair, soupy lectures on an element about me unfulfilled.

Well spare me, me. Or do I speak or have I ever spoken; I do and have. Logic’s remaining drug will be unapproved by the FDA. It will go waxing, first waiting to draw closer these stones, these eerie feelings about a glutton replenished again, a waterglutton again, rose budding again. Tears. Amor Fati. Winsome of incipient chance. Out of a straight line a knot. Something a definition. Not what I was. Who I was.

Will I not be owlish in eye, stretch rude features? Generous little snot. Begin. Provoke me. Tell me you matter, do you. Drain me out like foul blood. I am. Say breaths. Este loco. Este loco. Este loco. Precarious rich flowershoots fished risky out of a vase on the ledge of leaning dawn. Or I am fucked up and leaning on my friendless self. Or am I somewhere weightless and dark in a dried out morbidity, this horseman of myself pacing, clicking, clicking around his halls of hell, chiseling out aggressive conversation with himself despite me, whether I engage him or not. I am the place droopysnouted humankind takes their feelings, a place to browse through them, be a dog at. It is just some people walk in the shade and think it’s more than that.

. . . . . .

Staring down a bottle of expired Roxicet, right there, and my eyes glued there, and my face plain and stoic, and I already nearly under the table with five shots of Jäger and three lines of good shit. Like I mean fucking fire. But I guess blow and liquid shitface didn’t drown out the noise of my own mind, harping at itself, again, batty again.

Besides the talk of different friends at this guy’s house I mean, which was like thousands of pianos tapping a variety of keys. An eager discord I thought, eagerly. To drown out with.

Weird half-convos and I guess a few pills. Yeah, it was reason enough to ingest that shit. Reason enough to eat half the bottle nearly, and wind up passed out on the side of the street at 3 A.M., picked up to my shaky haunches, heaved rather, by a few preferably [in my mind] anonymous ex-friends, them all bodies for the carnage, this disturbing wastefulness, nearly a tale for Fitzgerald to read and think of abandoned

Airdales. I was green. Froggy. But at least I wasn’t blue.

But from that day on I figured out how easy it was to steal pills. How easy it was to lose people. Everyone. A few simple turns and you can be throttled forever until you put down the brick. Left me with a massive headache. The loss of trust people had in me is a gift doe. And, at least now, I take an aspirin or two, maybe. I was fourteen. In a word I have started recovering from my own illness that is yet too much a choice for me to call disease. Been shattered by drugs, this time bundles of heroin.

Spent four months in and out of seedy places in Windsor Locks, CT, cultivating this addiction, ignoramus that I am, who does not listen to his body. Tried quitting seven times; sick sick sick, unending sick, physical convulsions, puking black grease, needing water that yet when I drank it burned my throat. Physical addiction is the story of Narcissus embodied. Wasted money, wasted years.

I am clean now I guess and scared of drugs generally, but will probably pick up cocaine again. Perhaps this reasonable fear comes too late to retain the whole of what (or who) I once was. But I pick up the scraps and call it a day like anyone does.

So as of now I am clean. Only fitting I’d push myself to the extremity at the very end. I am doom-eager as Orpheus, my solitary lady, haha. I have thirty days clean and feel higher now than I ever was quenching my habit by the coming of the sun, my girlfriend and I driving to Hartford to pick up and sick as hell.

Every morning that was what it was. Blank sleep, maybe too disturbed to call it sleep, waking and heading to resume my disembodiment etc. Ah,

Hell,

I am done, I am serious, life is no joke; I tell myself this. If one doesn’t take what they have been given seriously life will respond and turn them into a joker, and their life an exposed punchline, meaningless, detrimental to everyone. A bug is in every family as Kafka said. But we are all bugs, sweaty, stinking, plain, thoughtless, wrong. I have in such and such a way quit my buzzing against the window and resigned myself to dying in this place, this World, this planet: this imprisonment etc., between two walls of infinite glass. It’s lovely. For we are all resigned. We as a race of people are stuck with life’s retaliation against those who do not celebrate the gift that it is. The positivity here is muddled I guess but it exists here in the words.

I am staying sober. Alright? For good. For my brain. For my body; I can make out a few of these directives without stalling. I still stall. But I am healing. Just like you. I am healing forever. We heal by affirming the awesome power that takes our ommateum and feelers to the glass walls and reveals our painful futility etc. which is grace. Life is grace. So we shall live and continue to live gracefully.

i don’t regret surviving anymore from that long fall a subsequent long haul i know it yes through these days of insidious boredom after too long a while walking the halls brought to me like unto me like 'unto’ like a thunderous punishment or a poison’s delay creeping stiffness over my slouching heart

a ‘wellnesss’ now and faked well for all time over itself, over itself and out i go into a dreamt stop of it all one of these days that encircles vulturelike round me whom is in this senseless room ordinarily and draped in an ordinary at least for the place a hospital a gown greeklike and soiled kind of by the wiping of snot and snot the more

i was listening to m83’s “soon, my friend” and came up with an idea. the idea was being stabbed in the chest. i thought this was a good idea because it hurts to be stabbed in the chest but life also hurts so to not be stabbed in the chest would hurt but maybe just later or over time collectively. i guess it’s a metaphor or something.

[Fecal ape. No remonstrance to that in this tattered brain, thank Lordy. None but the blare. And then these swaying things. Meretricious, subdued talk, of something hungering wealth in something aside from this field in my dandy head. Grope, grope, youth. File the truth. Mister, she came by but in the end asked for nuffing like you didn’t say. You don’t say. Well laddie churn about on that liquid sea. Black as regular. Another day on the Hudson, another yearned conversation, another bandaged head against the wind.]

so then i thought abt what love was and it was like being stabbed in the chest the first time you love and they leave you, then you meet someone else and you leave them, and they remove the weapon. and it’s like there’s this blind pain for years before that: you’re telling people, “Hey man, I’d love to hang, but I have a knife in my chest,” or “There are things I wish I could have done before this knife was sticking out of my chest,” or “The additional six inches of this leather knifehandle protruding from my chest make it very hard to navigate crowded rooms.”

[Embattled in scorn, years of shouts, foreign eye, a foreign, bleeding eye, yes, an evil one of those a better evil than the finest smile’s chancedisgust seen by that very communicated evil. In the eye. Shivershivershiver. Oh and what did the lady say a'you. Well sire she said I had not got a melon ripe enough but my head’ll do. Cheers. Tripe, well gone’s miss. Feel around in the dark for some verb, aside, you know, from anything like 'feel.’ Dread upwards, vertical people pounding pulpit. I’d say. Mmmmsmash.]

and then the other person comes along and they ask why. so i explain to them. and they hold my hand for awhile and maybe sit under a tree with me. then i say to them will you take this thing out please and they do it and i finally bleed out and die, after all these years. then they walk away, heartbroken. i left my girlfriend of three years a week ago. she finally let the wound be a wound. and then i think there is this subtle exchange of stabbings between rejector and rejected. and i think, we have enough blood to get us through the year, we have enough temperance to hide ourselves this last time, until the last time ends, and even she, thinking she saved you in removing whatever offending object, has unknowingly conspired to rid you of her. for death takes all, and where a relief begins another ends.

[Sad sad sad. My noise, but a ghost’s achoo through paper floors.]

. . . . . .

—To understand the interconnected conversation or to just somehow prove that something impossible could happen. How is nothing impossible you may ask well let me tell you. Our hero taps his crooked index on the chalkboard. That is life. And our life is rational thought. Not in a solipsistic sense, wherein the five senses are overseen by some abstract Will For Things More Pleasing. But in that reason gives us the pleasure of life for that is synonymous with purpose. So then. For something to be Impossible, besides conceptually, is impossible, because for it to exist as a word it needs to in its extremity pinpoint something absolute in words that do not exist in reality. It says that words are realer than beings in at least our three dimensional reality. It does not matter what this image, object is, or looks like, -but is this even logical for a word to etymologically call for itself to get gone to nothingness and exist, impossibly in its own fourth dimension logic, as an example that is not itself, within the ballpark of its opposite meaning at most. Words literally make more sense than reality doez. Which basically tells us we are the result of words and can be draped with whatever context makes the most sense. Look at, and I mean really look at the idea of Being. To me, the universe seems to have an aim, that is, expands itself with everything because not to include everything would imply not only that something could exist and calls for something other than everything in order to be/.-after but that if manifested would be absurd, nonsensical, for yet there. This statement proves the absurd. At the end of the day the word is pretty clearcut. Not possible. To make it possible is a logical fallacy. Well then haven’t we figured this out? Do you want me to spell it out for you. Ok then: It is not possible, so it is possible, as itself a word, qua a word. This has some catastrophic consequences. It means that language is fleet. It can simultaneously make sense and not. The Meaning, confined to the word itself, is one that exists as much and as light and heavy as money. Yet why is what is possible possible? How do we mark that. It means a load of assumptions. It means that there need be a lifeline for the universe. That at its most far reaching, Throughout its life, the universe itself denied that this would happen, when, and this is crucial -when there was more to add. That possibility were a matter of duality. Impossible cannot be called possible bc that is absurd. It is not the definition of the word. An infinite universe says this: impossible is an impossible word. It assumes something other than it’s own infinity.

Conservation of energy. No loose ends is the assumption here, which can be used if they are put in this environment to simultaneously justify and call their existence false. Everything that exists is everything that exists and impossible is a literal lie and proof of this, I feel, because it is a word that needs itself, you know -in order to be. Said MX Pharaoh through miraculous whiteness and white ethersglow a ascending him to a head of breathed punk until he realized he is too late for this car. The monolith. It will get HIM. I will give up my HIM. And Cherryblossom my own, forever, yet that will kill us both. I give up my myself to words that don’t exist.

—The stunt of a wonderful, broad nascence too ill stemmed to not screw out at every board’s unclung fangs. This thick meteoric chamber. Guide us willful. Plank to plank, threadless way, pushed mechanic feet -Dickinson //

To start out on the water and end in the meadow. To deny the distance between anything in my reach, everything, the least or perfectest touching The Mind Of Cosmos with ye own bare lurid looking. You look long when you lose me. Then you lose me I am back to the nurses harping on old fellas who stroked out. Endless debate in the brain, then nothing, k-holekablooiy. But nah. She doesn’t give up not for nothin. Dwelled hard in my brain and barely there before. What difference was there ?? well the loose chains to myself, makes clouded things. With its armor. Making it perilous to merely move.

—Honestly the only dead writer I relate to Is Antonin Artaud. A'saith. Love can drive a man to cruelty. His mind can rebel against its borders and piss off into nothing. I took my hand and petted the venetian blinds with my hand. “Touch with my tactile impressions.” I remember. Pessoa.

Monolithic as it was there was space enough to hit him. Made in no debt to anyone but himself, to reason, to find sonorous reason compiled

In this ship of mates. Long groveled he. Atop his vestibule shedding cuticles. And some mute drone like a cateye’s dearth in it o such a thing, and such

a thing as would insist me past deliverance, working wicks at both ends and driving the conversation. Looted, but not unemployed. Free hat. Free HAt !

–What . [?] –Keeps getting better. It does. PRomise, I.

… …

Few rue the slain, even in these irrational days. Corruption is seen from afar when it is right in front of you. Begging rhetoric, gold mountains of rhetoric. Feasibly HE was as far away as the floor. Busiest one. Soaked not in sun. For one day to bruise through venetians, that day, some part in the mix, or a lost umbrella or unoriginal ideas or faked curiosities I seize myself and slap him up right well to unhook his jaw M8 just a tiny flaw HE had nothing to do with ye ruining. Sun aslant. Sun given. OR a one his own. Where circles fix one of their ends.—

—That Shia Leboeuf or whoever’s motivational speech got to me. MX Pharaoh, a'saith. Extend the pause between period and period ol patcheyes say it is I JJ I have come to blight you, strike you, be like you like me to be and something carried with that black as art, as the puppetmasters speak again for you -M8 these are not real quarterstones through the suck. Sneak in the creaking bed, surrounding me like folds of weatherdd sheet, wooly mup of hair stickin, embracing into an egg of lightness, outside of a world filled with truisms, hiccuped persuits hosing down the interest like a brainwash: club me silly: So some by the dreaded thousandhead come like thunderheads. Stuff not lasting awhile. The only way to do it is to do it. I was abt to hit post on a status and two text messages. This is what that happens after the book. It was like i was abt to drop a bomb or something, which is why similar things happen in reality we call ‘dropped bombs’ -and just furiously held myself alone, but together. Strike, my patience.

“Yr so sexy.” They fuck. And that no more I would feel. And that no more I would but try and strain myself out of, instead of undeveloping the complacent rut. To not feel something different that impossible time in Bantam CT.

… …

The hanging pendulum, famous pendulum, I brought a disguise. That ippie Jesus lad was he. Round squat lad. That’s right. Annour away from here. Ye. Das Righ. When cannit. Some guy talking to the police bout a crash somewhere. We had this great blanket that had ciggie holes in it it was Black one side White the other, forget leavening, have liquor be the rise always, and forevour, she had a worst part of life, dolour, cherry, feast of I admit another’s blocked chemistry, gangly ganglion fretting the nethers’re fed well worser then and as the corroding jism implies and implies all day long. Playing skermish his index with words on the board: Don’t! Perceive! Doubt! Make it like he dinna think of doing it the night before in this the dim place, of a city [THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSCRIPT OF THE WELLKNOWN “STRIDENT BAT” NSA RECORDING, DISLODGED FROM ITS SAFE AND BROUGHT TO THE BLEAK PUBLIC] lording over his width and graveness obsoletely,ekin -int o- INTO the air. We was playing catch. Teleophne. The sars scare -Why –Cali hipsters -Bay Area, true heroes Fazzfazz. Fazz. Lonely mean men off to the sides of the street looking you. Fortunate you look. MX Pharaoh. Lonely alien plains their eyes. Ghost meat. Feel them burn a hole in ye back as ye cross. And called her that, for she is blossoming, for she limitless, pigs raining down to the world in droves of ström, lorilee the chance was -Ear -Wax parents.Searin-bet- stridenscimist. Then to the anchoring felicity that night feet in me lap. Stringy memories launch by like a list of buzzfeed. He struggled to notice fingers of him in hers. delicate cross, small, pink foison of bushytail, or a thing we had, or when it was it was had. Feeble embers these. The tap of a shoe is like a kiss and there’s, a sopping tongue there’s, white guilt there’s, manic, seeing figures in the tar of a television’s blank screen, of which frightened Cherryblossom, fidgeting her psyche to recall and experience and re-live a done for sure thing. Worried told her he was. And now this. MX Pharaoh left the door open all night. He says he means the window said patcheyes. Lost delivery, hope those vapethings get here. Squatting to piss public. Glad I don’t got to do that. Pharaoh said. Massagin a bad neck hoping madness to bend him back to life. It was never that I was back HE said. I was neck. I broke my neck in the crash. Is this even real. And all this looking into her eyes that day speaking lil wayne fashioning pigeon grills, good movies and tainted moments and their audacity to be tainted. Comforting things like that song in my head most times.

Simone to my Jean Paul. Delineating skyscape in the night waging itself free into the starry Staten Island chasm. Hope little prose roses lift him. Croon. Empty now. I was poor once. Less of an appetite now. Can starve for a few days and be fine. I had a little house in Bantam in Connecticut where I did that. Furtherance. Lift me now and ever in good stead. Such sadness. Such inexplicable maddening stabs of sadness. A knife’s throat drinking up quaffing up. Bloodblood. Bloodspew. Recoil at me she do. Fear symperanekromenoi for they are those who know not they are dead. Lifted lies, old father. That’s what they are and I read them to you for my video in the coffeeroom. Pharaoh shirking his moral duty. Pishyynallalastersheppalalalalalala. For when you can’t think of a word for omnipotent eyes. Teacher, teach. Little ones one day sighted in my possibility will too wag from me o sorrow. Pharaoh took his last drag on her porch.

“Rose the tenant. Crazy bitch.” This, Simone. “You put her out soon.” I say. Then her:

“Granma makes me hold her papers when she’s trying to get things in order.” “Soon enough. Seems nice.” I say.

… …

Well it goes faulty. Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet singing her tone row into the night. I stayed on the couch that night embodying soft abstractions. Dripdripdrip. Into faculties my night emits like systems, unlike faculties, like the mechanism of dripping itself as consummate, like they each were in their drops blessed whole: not form, unformed, but reaching into form through concept, concept, generality by generality elucidating the complex: a'saith the poor-sighted phantasm in his eyepatch. Dragged her into this. Pharaoh was bleeding thoughts. He says to himself did I see all this time a lie shining broken light all over the fleeting like it would make it lift, make it see itself through into clarity. My thoughts. He thinks man what a day what a day. Something of kin I feel. After this book is over, there will be a part of the life of Pharaoh where he thinks clearly of his epitaph. It will say A Just Death. For he thinks, at least it will be his, and if so, some moral measure could exist in the world, if by these granted hallelujahs a punishment makes me rescind back into the wordworld like some rite of passage, but writing nothing. Meets a good friend halfway. Tries to get back her, begging for Cherryblossom. And all these repetitions. Are they with gusto ah, enough? Or twirling leaves. Senselessly from the tree. Deciduous as mine pineal perspective, growing anew, growling anew, then dead, dead again, faced again, risen. He believed, then, that if T. were to kill himself he would feel for him, and her, and not be glad it happened, and not have such a secret to keep. For it is not to stomach without a bitter feeling in the right way of how that feeling is in that pit there.

No beginning no end. Stone heart, pealing laughter. Cherryblossom he wanted some sifting through. Some irrational need to. Maybe to make sense. Find GOD. But GOD would not have any multitude be in his creamy lap. Lost folds of sheet. Or lost in them. I would have marked another blight. I would have come again in six years to leave Cherryblossom thought Pharaoh. Thought Pharaoh: my inkling of prescience was not a rudiment doubt but one more complex chink for the place the hole. Chest cavity’s ache. I shouldn’t have done. Well now who is that young squanderer: he makes to heave his cutlasslegs and paint the street with kicking blood. Can goes: blunkunk! Blunkunk! He kicks the sodacan like an old maid he does. Well that’s what they think of me, he thinks; and he channels HIM who gives Pharaoh the thoughts of others. More trained. More the luckier. I still learned to use the words Pharaoh thought. And when they gently there in my head manifested as actual words -that limited the whole scenario. GOD-train. Mellifluous summer and home again from a stay in Staten Island. Waging silent postures waiting at the curb. Fat tangle of feelings:

[So it would have easily been the soft gloaming, so it would, so it would have righted itself in the encroaching rheum, and yet he was here, now, Pharaoh was here: and in his grace met something nondescript amongst big waves of time, something like when he smoked a ton of Angel Dust and thought of the rain, and himself, and all the lightning in the distance, opining and scary, the faced, the unfaced, the lorded morals of a scared kid in the corner, the corner an eye and an eye a flick away from being a movie for our lives to look at, and we see the movie: and he thought of her silly, raven hair, and the somber grate outside by the sitting trash; and of Cherryblossom, by now but the trillionshadow’s abrupt gaze, waveful and timely, back into the night of a substance, like perhaps the remembered reality of drugs, drugged reality, embracing the life of him who falls: Saw my feet a'saith. Hanging in the air. And HE was not the cause. HE had the very first knife that broke the spring in his gut. HE kept it on his celestial mantlepiece, you know, that towering muttering spaceconstruct through wild byways, where once HE hanged Pharaoh by the tits of void. But Pharaoh. Oh my lovely by his docks biking to the piers the metal napes sinking slovenly into abusive, hurtling waters. Like a thousand pounds. Andandand. Food for thought: life’s done. I can uncreate HIM. But for the plied wares I would not have reckoned HIM, thought Pharaoh. So then out the speckled iris the man shunned doubts and things and claptrap shaped into these light, fitful unnamables, seeking their tide yet really the wreck, the blind misery in the heat lightning of that alien Connecticut night, wherein I [and this the voice the woodwork wouldn’t have guessed] was this GOD in the moon, and the moon a plane’s drifted glint a distance resized and resized. Fly fly fly. Oh my Cherryblossom, and my friends, and specky hipsters, and the delicacy of life, and ooo the righteous glint a sand speck dries the eye to. And so he go scoffed at the feeble reed he but was. He thought of himself as he was, and of you as well, strange, omnipotent eyes, and of all the hankering voices singing from their last climes. licking yon wounds of wonder. Usurper and usurped in union and none in charge. No last buck. No trinity of sleepless nights giving him his religious stomachbutterflies. So it was neon yellow morning finally across the last day and Pharaoh smudged in his eyesocket once out into his breach, once that eking bit of the unreal panted into thought and out of strange scope and thoughthindrance. Tempted by dreams to punch through floorboard and in him a wandering wastrel’s presence a fertile eye like a dunce nudged into the chair in his corner. Forgone this, foregone that, so much had happened. Pharaoh needed more time to understand this but was tired of waiting and the light poured and the mouth of the window was all gripping and finding views here and there he made a wizz on the sides of the toilet kind of. Shaped crass the eye. The umlaut of moon and sun above the brow of mankind. Pharaoh smudged in his eyesocket and thought of his patronage, absurd ghosts, and his histories within him and all aflame like sightless ruin, like something needful in the dark.]

[These connections, these feeble relations I have forged, between myself and myself, and others with others, they are nothing, they are dull words in the dark, when still I have not bridged myself to those others, nor them to me, for then is left but GOD to mangle.]

#prose #creative nonfiction #b-sides

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