#and to buy cigarettes in alabama

[melodramatic-wallflower]

three cheers for the birthday ghoul!

yesterday was the 19th anniversary of my mom’s death, and i think from here on out i’m gonna be celebrating her corpse’s birthday on that date

happy happy birthday from all of us to you! you lie in the ground right now, and one day we will too! *blows party horn*

#death #heckin corpses #parents #my mom's corpse is old enough to fuck in all 50 states #and to buy cigarettes in alabama #congrats mom's corpse! #dark humor #death jokes #mommy dearest #morbid #morbid humor #macabre

[hannahssimblr]

Chapter Three (Part 3)

When Marnie takes me back to the booth, there are even more people there than before. A crowd of hipsters have joined us, all looking like members of Vampire Weekend, and I scoot in next to one of them; a mousy haired boy with glasses called Stephen, who asks me what I want to drink, and then has no issue with ordering one of the lewdly named cocktails for me. 

“So you’re also an artist?” He wants to know. 

“Yeah I’m doing art and design. Hoping to get a bachelors in Illustration.”

“Illustration like books?”

“Yeah kinda. Sometimes.” My drink arrives with a flourish, the waiter making a big show of presenting it to me by lifting a glass dome from the top of it, letting a cloud of dry ice waft onto the table. It’s all very over dramatic and frankly embarrassing, and everyone makes noises like they’re dead impressed, but I just snatch it up and take a mouthful. I’m still feeling so rattled from seeing Jen that even my eyes are having a hard time focusing. 

Stephen is talking about the illustrations in some book from his childhood, but as he’s talking to me I kind of zone out and chew on the end of my straw, trying to decide whether or not there’s actually something wrong with me. I make a mental note to anxiety-google my symptoms later, wondering whether a churning stomach and palpitating heart are normal responses to talking to someone you used to know. Jen and I can’t be friends again, I decide. Being around her would up my chances of colliding with Jude Turner tenfold, and I don’t think my body could physically handle the stress of that encounter. 

I realise Stephen is waiting for me to say something, and I shake myself back to life. “What?”

“Oh, sorry, I know it’s loud in here. I was just asking what music you’ve been into lately.”

“Oh, like Sufjan Stevens.” I say immediately, surprising myself, “And I’m getting really into Alabama Shakes”

“You know Alabama Shakes?” He says, impressed, not knowing that I only said that because Shane left his iPod on the coffee table a few days before and when I scrolled through, theirs was one of the names that stuck in my memory. 

“Yes.” I say. “The sound is super unique. I’m drawn to the lyrics, actually I think I’ll try to get tickets to the next gig if they ever come to Dublin.” I sit back and take another drink, watching his face and wondering when on earth I became someone who could bullshit. I’m sure that someone who knew all about the who’s who of music would be able to see right through me, but Stephen doesn’t. He tells me that I seem like a pretty cool girl, and I smile, wishing it was true. 

He tells me that he’s in second year, studying social sciences in some small technology institute outside of town, and then we spend some time discussing that, and him, and where he lives and where he comes from, all things that kind of shape him into a person, rather than some hipster who buys me drinks. Stephen is nice, I decide, in an everyman kind of way. Nothing to get excited about, but there’s nothing especially off-putting about him, save his skinny jeans that are just a tiny bit too skinny. We share three drinks together, and then he asks me if i’ll go out to the smoking area, because he needs a cigarette. 

I’m usually not someone who smokes very much, and even when I do I try to limit it to just one, because I hate just about everything about it except for the social element of continuing the conversation outside with everyone else who’s smoking too. I never understood the appeal of the actual cigarettes though. Especially in a day and age where we know everything there is to know about the harm they do, the myriad of painful, excruciating ways that they’re killing us. Even now, after its ban indoors, the hikes in prices and the horrible, gruesome images on the sides of the packets, it feels like every single college student in this city has a cigarette between their lips as a fashion accessory. I’ve seen people put stickers over the warning labels, and even listened to them have in depth discussions about their favourite ones, Marnie was saying recently that hers is the picture of the man with the hole in his neck. 

I try very hard not to think about the man with the hole in his neck when Stephen is handing me my second cigarette of the night. He’s not smoking what Jen was smoking, and it’s much stronger and much more unpleasant, so much so that I have to stifle a wince while he tells me a story about the time he went to New York on a J1 visa. 

When I stand next to him and look up into his face, I think again about how alright he is. He’s friendly, he’s tall, his outfit is mostly nice, and now that I’ve had three strong cocktails and all of those awful, anxious feelings I had earlier have floated away with the breeze, I start thinking that maybe I could try out some light flirtation on him. 

“Have you got a girlfriend?” Is what comes spilling out of me though, and I wish I could stuff it right back into me. It must be the least graceful or subtle attempt at flirting there ever was. My face immediately burns up. 

“Um. No.” He says with bewilderment. I realise I have cut him off mid sentence. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. Just wondering.” I’m so embarrassed of myself that I can’t meet his eyes anymore.

“Ehm. Well, do you have a boyfriend?”

“Oh, absolutely not.” I laugh too loudly and then cover up my mouth. 

When my eyes drift back to him, he’s giving me an amused smile. “Is it funny? Like, the idea of you having a boyfriend or something?”

“Maybe.” I say. “Kind of. Yes.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, like, I dunno I just don’t really have boyfriends.”

“You’re exploring your options.” He says with a conclusive nod, even though that’s not at all what it is. In fact, I’ve been doing whatever exactly the opposite of exploring my options is; Avoiding all romantic prospects. Wallowing in my room. Fleeing in terror from any and all single men who might want my phone number.

“That’s what college is for anyway.” He goes on. “Like, just seeing who’s available and having fun.” He gives me a suggestive little smile that makes my stomach coil nervously even through my tipsy haze, because he seems to think I’m the queen of sex now. 

“Yeah completely.” Is all I manage. 

“You have lovely eyes.” He says. “They’re a real emerald kind of colour.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, let me have a closer look at them.” He leans down until we’re eyeball to eyeball and he gazes right at me. I can see my own silhouette reflected in his glasses, and think that I look kind of messy, and not in a purposeful, Alexa Chung kind of way at all. More in a three-cocktails, two cigarettes and a resurfacing of a past trauma kind of way.  I smooth down my hair with sweaty palms. 

“You’re extremely pretty.” He tells me.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He surges suddenly towards me and pecks me on the lips. It startles me and I jolt backwards. 

“Sorry.” He says with wide panicked eyes. 

“It’s okay.”

“Maybe I was misreading the signals.”

“No it’s fine, I don’t mind.”

“I don’t want to be one of those weird men.”

“You’re not.” I feel tetchy for some reason. “You can just… you can do it if you want. You can kiss me, I don’t care.”

“That’s romantic.” He says, dripping with sarcasm. 

“Sorry, I just don’t know how to be.”

“It’s fine, we can um… we can just chill out if you want.”

I don’t know why he’s insisting on prolonging the awkwardness when it’s clear to me that neither of us is going to leave the smoking area until we kiss. 

“Kiss me, please.” I say flatly, and his mouth does that porny quirk again. “You’re a woman who knows what she wants.” He says in a voice that makes my hands clench, just as he comes at me and puts his mouth over mine. 

It’s a strange sensation, kissing another person after so much time, and I’ve completely forgotten what it felt like to do it. It’s more real than I remember it being, I’m more aware than I used to be of the way his tongue feels and the sounds our mouths are making. It’s a little bit visceral, but not totally unpleasant. Despite the strong taste of cigarettes on his breath, Stephen’s kissing is fine, there’s nothing wrong with it, but still, it makes me feel almost nothing inside. I hold onto the front of his jumper anyway and I kiss him back, because it feels like he’s helping me to sever the very last connection I have with Jude. He no longer gets to be the last boy who kissed me. Now it’s Stephen. Just plain old Stephen, the social studies student whose surname I don’t even know, and it’s like all in that moment I’m freed. 

“You’re pretty.” He tells me again, gently as he pulls away from me. “Has anyone ever told you that before?”

“I dunno.” I say vaguely. Men are obsessed with being the very first ones to tell women that they’re attractive, like it’s some gift that they are privileged to bestow upon us. We’re floundering, lost in the world, completely blind to ourselves until some man comes along and lets us know what he thinks about us. I can’t agree with him, say that I know, or I’ve heard it all before, because then he’ll think I’m up myself. It always feels like a trap. And besides, he’s not really saying it because he believes it, it’s just a device to get into my knickers. 

“What are you up to later on?” He wants to know.

“I suppose I’ll just go home.” I say, my heart jumping a little in my chest. 

“Where’s home?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” I say, and he grins at me like he thinks I’m just being coy. “I would.” Maybe he really isn’t that bad looking at all. 

“If I tell you where I live then you might show up at my front door.”

“I might, who knows. And would you invite me in?”

I laugh awkwardly, feeling the vibe shifting rapidly into a realm I’m not comfortable with. “Probably not, no.”

“Ah, you art school girls, sure you’re always playing hard to get.”

“I like to stay mysterious.” I step away from him and make moves towards the door. “I’m pretty cold.” I tell him. “Maybe we can go back inside?” 

“Yeah, okay.” He stubs out the butt of the cigarette that he was holding onto the whole time, and we head through the doors. I’m just thinking about how maybe he’s not so bad, and maybe if we spent some time together I could get to like him, when the hot air from the bar hits his glasses and they immediately fog up, and the effect on me is so immediate that I almost have to flinch away from him. The sight of him with fogged up specs is so dorky that I’m instantly repulsed. I watch in horror as he takes them off and wipes them on his jumper. There’s nothing at all attractive about him. What was I thinking?

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” I say robotically. “But I actually have to leave now.”

“Oh, right now?”

“Yeah. I didn’t realise how late it was, my housemate wanted me to come back and help her with something.” I start walking away immediately, the thought of his kissing me causing a shudder through my entire being.

“Wait, uh, can I have your phone number?”

“Um. I don’t know.”

“Really?”

“I don’t really give it out to people.”

His face falls. “Oh.”

“I’m just really not in the place for… this right now. It’s not personal.”

“It’s okay. I get it.” He doesn’t get it. He looks downtrodden, and I feel horrible, but I can’t stand there looking at him anymore, so I turn towards the cloakroom and try to collect my things. 

“Hang on.” He calls after me. “Will I ever see you again?” 

Does he think we’re in a romcom? That I’m the Meg Ryan to his Billy Crystal? I have to try really hard not to roll my eyes in front of him as I pass my token over to the cloakroom attendant, my breath shuddering. “No.” I say over my shoulder. “You probably won’t, sorry.” I don’t add the bit about how I was just using him to get over the memory of another person, because that’d make me the bad guy here. 

“Damn. Okay Ellie. Nice to meet you.”

“Right. See you.”

I pull my coat on and walk right out the door into the freezing cold night.

Prev // Next

#sims #sims 4 #ts4 #simlit #sims 4 story #sims story #fiction #writing #romance #sims 4 storytelling #sims4 storytelling #sims storytelling #lucky girl part 2

[leechs]

carry me up them stairs with my white socks on and my pretty song you like my blue nail polish what is all this you said of the mess upstairs dont be scared daddy dearest you know how i like to take trips popsfirst stop at the kmart buy me my peach lipgloss cigarettes and lollipops for our trip across the usa were gonna party like its 1949 were in the pontiac from july to july gonna see it all before he says goodbye gonna party like its 1949 carry me up the stairs with my white socks on and my blonde hair long you like my pinup bodice and the solace that comes with the midnight air and my icy stare its the clearest when its me and him alone he stops he talks about all the ways he used to let up dinnerettes and soda pops for our trip across the usa were gonna party like its 1949 were in the pontiac from july to july gonna see ita lal before he says goodbye gonna party like its 1949 daddy likes black pool pleasure beach and road stops me i like the swiss alps souvenir gift shops late night midnight radio show talks him n me a big jailbreak ponytail and lollipops dinerettes and soda pops new blue bathing suit ruched tops and cadillacs blue lake carter docks hopscotch hot talk alabama hard knocks motel brass locks

[eternal--returned]

Lana del Rey ֍ 1949 (2009)

Daddy dearest, you know How I like to take trips Pops, first stops at the K-mart Buy me my peach lip gloss Cigarettes and lollipops For our trip across the USA

Carry me up them stairs With my white socks on And my blonde hair long You like my pin-up bodice and the solace That comes with the midnight air And my icy stare

Ponytail and lollipops, dinerettes and soda pops New blue bathing suit, rouge tops and Cadillacs Blue lake, Carter Docks, hopscotch, hot talk Alabama hard knocks, motel brass locks

#lana del rey #1949 #tunes #music #fav

[childrenofthebadrevolution]

lyrics 👇🏻

[Verse 1]

Carry me up them stairs

With my white socks on

And my pretty song

You like my blue nail polish?

"What is all this?" You said

Of the mess upstairs

Don't be scared

[Pre-Chorus]

Daddy dearest, you know

How I like to take trips

Pops, first stops at the K-mart, buy me my peach lip gloss

Cigarettes and lollipops

For our trip across the USA

[Chorus]

We're gonna party like it's 1949

We're in the Pontiac from July to July

Gonna see it all before he says goodbye

Gonna party like it's 1949

[Verse 2]

Carry me up them stairs

With my white socks on

And my blonde hair long

You like my pin-up bodice and the solace

That comes with the midnight air

And my icy stare

[Pre-Chorus]

It's the clearest when it's me and him alone

He stops, he talks about all ways he used to let up

Dinerettes and soda pops for our trip across the USA

[Chorus]

We're gonna party like it's 1949

We're in the Pontiac from July to July

Gonna see it all before he says goodbye

Gonna party like it's 1949

[Outro]

Daddy likes Blackpool Pleasure Beach and road stops

Me, I like the Swiss Alps souvenir gift shops

Late night, midnight radio show talks

Him and me, a big jailbreak

Ponytail and lollipops, dinerettes and soda pops

New blue bathing suit, ruched tops and Cadillacs

Blue lake, Carter Docks, hopscotch, hot talk

Alabama hard knocks, motel brass locks

#lana songs #lana del rey #lana del rey unreleased #lana del rey songs #lana del rey lyrics #lana del rey 1949 #1949 by lana del rey #party like it’s 1949 #lana del rey aka lizzy grant #lizzy grant #elizabeth woolridge grant #lizzy grant unreleased #lana unreleased #lana del rey stan #lana del rey fans

[jujurose222]

It's the clearest when it's me and him alone

Carry me up them stairs With my white socks on

Daddy dearest, you know How I like to take trips Pops, first stops at the K-mart, buy me my peach lip gloss Cigarettes and lollipops For our trip across the USA

You like my pin-up bodice and the solace That comes with the midnight air And my icy stare

Ponytail and lollipops, dinerettes and soda pops New blue bathing suit, ruched tops and Cadillacs Blue lake, Carter Docks, hopscotch, hot talk Alabama hard knocks, motel brass locks

#Youtube

[bloodenjoyer]

BART HERE HAPPY BIRTHDAY I HOPE YOUR DAY IS GOOD AND AWESOME AND I HOPE YOU LIVE YOUR NEW AGE AND ITS SO SO AWESOME THAT YOU ARE AROUNG TO EXPERIENCE 19 where I live you are just now hitting the age of majority and are just now an adult so congrats on your alabama-adulthood ily <333

HI BART ILY !!! also holy shit. im an alabama adult. So now i should be able to go out and buy cigarettes . to be honest. What a sick world we live in....but for real THANK YOU!!!! <3

#i didnt know 18 yr olds were minors in alabama thats interesting.. #asks

[hateoyster23]

Dental Question: Are Dentists Considered Doctors

his area is in Las Vegas, NV close by Bonanza and Jap’s junction. Into dentist for kids near me , it can help that Sarrell is, Parker statements, the superior-paying out dental enterprise inside the condition.” The revenue for just a not long ago skilled dentist who performs 5 times weekly is $one hundred fifty,000—far more” rather than dentist could generate in non-public training, and among the finest commencing shell out selling prices in the complete area, he suggests. With personal exercise gains together, as people scale back on dental appointments to save money, dentists are calmly at this time arriving at us and indicating, ‘Hey, I’ve obtained two or daily monthly that I can use you guys.’ What’s promising is, they’re likely-out from their elegant techniques to more compact towns and treating Medicaid small children. Marable experienced difficulties getting a dentist who’d look at Medicaid, let alone a which could agenda eye and dental assessments for all in one day, thus she wasn't unhappy to thrust the 50 kilometers from her home in Roanoke, Alabama. Each and every dentist and educational I’ve talked with of studying the career has discussed that Medicaid have to shell out extra in decades, but Sarrell has proved that it can operate a building business inside a condition exactly where the costs are considerably below enough. Espresso and wine are infamous for staining enamel, so it is best to steer clear of ingesting these beverages. In the event you’re a cigarette smoker, quitting can help you stay clear of tooth discoloration, in addition to encouraging you boost your wellbeing. These include ingredients that bond to your enamel and bring about staining. If you cannot stay clear of these, brush soon after utilizing them. For those who make use of them on the go you can buy mini finger brushes to carry around as an alternative to carrying close to a toothbrush. The abrasiveness in these brushes are what is going to clean up your tooth. In states wherever non-dentists are banned from possessing routines, one of the most typical design and style is for organizations, normally referred to as dental supervision businesses or dental support organizations, to regulate the nonclinical facets of a exercise—scheduling, acquiring, payment, etcetera.—Hence leaving the dentists to deal with delivering treatment for their people today.

#dentist near me

[campreport59]

Dental Question: Are Dentists Considered Doctors

his location is in Las Vegas, NV nearby Bonanza and Eastern’s junction. Towards the clinical facet, it can help that Sarrell is, Parker promises, the higher-shelling out dental company within the point out.” The earnings for the just lately competent dentist who performs 5 periods weekly is $150,000—far more” rather than dentist may well gain in non-public training, and among the finest starting shell out price ranges in all the location, he suggests. With non-public apply profits alongside, as people today cut back on dental appointments to save cash, dentists are calmly presently arriving at us and indicating, ‘Hey, I’ve got two or on a daily basis monthly that I can use you guys.’ What’s promising is, they’re likely-out from their sophisticated strategies to smaller sized towns and managing Medicaid youngsters. Marable experienced difficulties getting a dentist who’d take into account Medicaid, let alone a which could agenda eye and dental assessments for all in at some point, for that reason she was not disappointed to drive the fifty kilometers from her residence in Roanoke, Alabama. new patient free teeth whitening near me and educational I’ve talked with of investigating the profession has defined that Medicaid will have to devote extra in decades, but Sarrell has proved that it could possibly do the job a creating small business inside a scenario exactly where the costs are noticeably lower than ample. Espresso and wine are infamous for staining tooth, so you ought to avoid drinking these beverages. Should you’re a cigarette smoker, quitting can assist you stay clear of tooth discoloration, and supporting you increase your health. These have components that bond towards your tooth and result in staining. If You can not stay clear of these, brush just after employing them. In the event you use them on the move you can buy mini finger brushes to carry all over as opposed to carrying close to a toothbrush. The abrasiveness in these brushes are what will clear your teeth. In states wherever non-dentists are banned from possessing routines, by far the most typical design is for businesses, generally identified as dental supervision businesses or dental service companies, to manage the nonclinical areas of a exercise—scheduling, purchasing, payment, and many others.—Therefore leaving the dentists to concentrate on providing remedy for their persons.

#dentist near me

[cherry-interlude]

1949 Lyric Breakdown

This discusses the story of Lolita, which the song references. If you are not comfortable with Lolita, maybe skip it, though there aren’t any graphic discussions in this. I do love the novel and films of Lolita for the dark story, character building, writing, music and cinematography, but I do not see it at all as a love story - it isn’t. There’s nothing romantic about what happens in it, so this isn’t me trying to say I think there is if anything comes across that way.

In this, when I reference Lana I mean her as an adult singer with an older man, which is a trend for her music; when I reference Lolita, I mean the actual character and that disturbing story.

Carry me up them stairs

Lana, in the character of Lolita, is asking to be carried upstairs much like a child. This is both the actual reflection of Lolita being a child but also Lana being in a submissive role and cared for by an older, more dominant man

With my white socks on

White socks are related heavily to childhood, and white is an innocent and pure colour; feet are also a big part of the Lolita films, which Lana may be referencing

And my pretty song

Lana is a singer of course, but Lolita also liked to sing (I.e. in the nineties film)

You like my blue nail polish?

Lana is asking if this ‘daddy’ character likes her nails in an attempt to get validation or simply flirt; blue is a colour she often uses associated with sadness

What is all this? You said Of the mess upstairs Don't be scared

Lana’s ‘daddy’ character is telling her off (like a child) for making a mess (like a child); however, the “don’t be scared” says that he is not trying to scare her with his anger or disappointment, so he is still trying to be comforting

Daddy dearest, you know How I like to take trips Pops, first stops at the Kmart, buy me my peach lip gloss

Lana references how Lolita could be groomed with little presents at gas stations and gift shops, and it was how Humbert kept her happy; “Daddy” and “Pops” show terms of endearment for a father figure as well as the typical dom/sub influences Lana has in her lyrics (for consensual adults as opposed to Lolita’s disturbing story)

Cigarettes and lollipops

Lana does like cigarettes and uses lollipops in a few of her songs when she is putting on her cutesy image; the cigarettes could be to win Lolita over by making her feel more like an adult; there is a contrast between the adult, smoky, dangerous cigarettes and the sweet lollipops, which could reflect Lolita and Humbert’s relationship or Lolita’s two sides (her childhood and her forced adulthood)

For our trip across the USA

Humbert took Lolita across the USA so he wouldn’t get caught with her

We’re gonna party like it’s 1949

Lolita is set around this time period but it is also post-war, a time of celebration

We're in the Pontiac from July to July

This references the year-long road trip Lolita and Humbert took

Gonna see it all before he says goodbye

This could be how Humbert is taking Lolita around before he they stop and he gets caught, as if they “see it all” then there’s no where else to run, or it could be (in Lana’s typical way) how men tend to leave her

Gonna party like it's 1949 Carry me up the stairs With my white socks on And my blonde hair long

Lolita is usually remembered for the red in her hair but Lana used to be big on the blonde hair in her Lizzy era, so Lana may be personifying her own version

You like my pin-up bodice and the solace

A pin-up bodice references the kind of figure-hugging clothes that give Lana her womanly shape; solace is referencing how Lana (or Lolita) is a comfort while this troubled male figure is in distress

That comes with the midnight air

Also, more directly, the night time where they don’t have to run and are together in the motel rooms offers comfort

And my icy stare

Lolita may be the one with the icy stare, as she did not love Humbert the way he loved her and resented him for what he did to her, yet Humbert still finds comfort in her even when she’s unhappy with him

It's the clearest when it's me and him alone He stops, he talks about all the ways he used To about all ways he used to metal

Lana likes metal singers and has referenced men being into metal music in her lyrics

Dinnerettes and soda pops for our trip across the USA

Lolita and Humbert would have only small dinners as they go from café to restaurant rather than a proper, sit-down meal; soda pops are another sweet candy-like food that also show how hot it is in “July”

CHORUS

Daddy likes Blackpool Pleasure Beach and road stops

Blackpool is like Coney Island, a big interest in Lana’s lyrics; Humbert has ties to England so he may like the British version of Coney Island; the road stops are what Lolita and Humbert used to take when they stopped at points of interest, and he tried to make her see the sights

Me, I like the Swiss Alps souvenir gift shops

However, Lolita was more interested in buying little cheap things and fun stuff rather than sightseeing

Late night, midnight radio show talks

When travelling late, they would have had the radio for entertainment

Him and me, a big jailbreak

The jailbreak references Humbert’s actions would should keep him in prison but he is on the run from the law

Ponytail and lollipops, dinnerettes and soda pops

Ponytails are big for the fifties era and are a fun, youthful hairstyle (at least in this song’s context)

New blue bathing suit, ruched tops and Cadillacs

Humbert would buy Lolita new clothes a lot, including swimsuits for hot weather (blue being a sad shade again) and ruched tops that were a cute style of the era; Lana does love Cadillacs

Blue lake, car to docks, hopscotch, hot talk

There was a lake in the start of the story of Lolita, before the road trip began; car to docks shows how they go from travelling to the next sightseeing place they stop at, a dock being a place to board a boat and escape; hopscotch mixed with hot talk shows how Lolita goes from childish games to inappropriate discussion, so her innocence is lost

Alabama hard knocks, motel brass locks

Alabama may be one of the many places they travelled and hard knocks are tough situations, so Lolita would have had to experience some unpleasant things during her travels; the motel brass locks show she is trapped behind those closed doors, and unable to escape

#lana del rey #1949 #lolita #lyric breakdown #lana del rey unreleased

[spurgie-cousin]

WHW In Memoriam: Unarmed, Murdered Black Americans from History

(Content Warning: Violence, murder, abuse, racism)

So this is definitely not the same kind of ‘weird’ history I usually post about (and it’s not Wednesday quite yet), but in light of the George Floyd verdict I thought it was important to take a moment to remember some of the unarmed, murdered black Americans throughout our history, most of whom have never received justice. Whether their lives were taken by the police or violent, racist vigilantes, their memories should always be a reminder that though we’ve come a long way, we still have a long, long way to go. 

This is in no way a comprehensive list, in fact I start at Emmett Till because the *known* lynchings pre-1955 are too numerous to include in one, two, ten posts. I know I will not have room to include even everyone post 1955 (god there are so many) but please know that all of them, from the unknown to the infamous, from our country’s beginning to today, matter the same.

“History, despite it’s wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” - Maya Angelou

 1. Emmett Louis Till

Born: July 25, 1941, Chicago, IL Died: August 28, 1955, Money, MS

Emmett Till was a 14 year-old child from Chicago visiting relatives over his summer break in August of 1955. Unfamiliar with the strictly racist social codes in the American south, he spoke to a white woman at a grocery store, and was accused of flirting with her. A few nights later her husband and his brother abducted Till, brutally beat and mutilated him, and then shot him before letting his body sink into a river. When he was found, his body was barely recognizable even to his mother. 

In an act of grief and defiance, his mother held a highly-publicized, open casket funeral to show the brutality of what had happened to her child to the world. 

It’s believed that before her death, Carolyn Bryant, the woman from the grocery store, recanted key details from her original story, including that Till whistled or flirted with her. 

2. James Earl Chaney

Born: May 30, 1943, Meridian, Mississippi Died: June 21, 1964, Philadelphia, Mississippi

James Chaney was a 21 year old field/social worker working for Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He was murdered along with two colleagues, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, by the Ku Klux Klan while they were in Mississippi investigating the burning of a church. The 3 were pulled over by a patrol car being followed by 2 cars full of Klan members, who shot Goodman and Schwerner, beat Chaney, and then shot him 3 times. 

3. Michael Donald

Born: July 24, 1961, Mobile, Alabama Died: March 21, 1981, Mobile, Alabama

Michael Donald was a 20 year-old who on March 21st, 1981 was walking down the street after purchasing cigarettes for his sister. He was chosen at random by a car full of Ku Klux Klan members, angry that a recent Klan members court case had been declared a mistrial. He was beat, hung, and his throat was slit, and was left hanging dead from a tree in a secluded, wooded area. 

Three Klansmen were convicted of Donald's murder. Henry Hays was sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair in 1997. James Knowles and Benjamin Cox were sentenced to life in prison. A civil suit against the United Klans of America caused their bankruptcy.

4. Yusef Kirriem Hawkins

Born: March 19, 1973, Brooklyn, NY Died:  August 23, 1989, Brooklyn, NY

Yusef Hawkins was a 16-year-old black teenager who was shot to death on August 23, 1989, in Bensonhurst, a predominantly Italian-American working-class neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Hawkins, his younger brother, and two friends were attacked by a crowd of 10 to 30 white youths, with at least seven of them wielding baseball bats. One, armed with a handgun, shot Hawkins twice in the chest, killing him. Hawkins and his brother were in the neighborhood to inquire about a used car. 

5. Nicholas Heyward Jr.

Born: August 26th, 1981 Died: September 27th, 1994

13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr. was playing cops and robbers inside the stairwell of a Brooklyn apartment building when officer Brian George mistook the boy’s toy gun for a real gun and shot him in the stomach, killing him. 

6. Amadou Diallo

Born: September 2, 1975, Liberia Died: February 4, 1999, NYC, New York

In the early morning of February 4, Diallo was standing near his building after returning from a meal. At about 12:40 a.m., officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy were looking for an alleged serial rapist in the Soundview section of the Bronx. While driving down Wheeler Avenue, the police officer stopped his unidentified car and interrogated Diallo, who was in front of his apartment. When they ordered Diallo to show his hands, he supposedly ran into the apartment and reached into his pocket to show his wallet. Soon afterwards the four officers fired 41 shots with semi-automatic pistols, fatally hitting Diallo 19 times. Eye witness Sherrie Elliott stated that the police continued to shoot even though Diallo is already down and that McMellon is still shooting even though he is lying on the ground.

7. Kendra Sarie James

Born:  December 24, 1981 Died: May 5, 2003, Portland, Oregon

21-year-old Kendra Sarie James was shot and killed by Portland Officer Scott McCollister when she attempted to flee a traffic stop for a minor violation. Portland police initially said it appeared the car had run over the officer's foot but he did not receive medical attention at the scene or at Northeast Precinct. Police repeatedly refused to identify the alleged traffic violation that caused them to stop James and two companions in the car. Police had taken the driver out of the car and was checking his identity when they saw James slide into the Chevrolet’s driver’s seat. Both officers, while standing on the driver’s side of the car, struggled with James to stop her from driving away. One of them fired a taser gun at her to subdue her. McCollister fired a single round from his 9 mm service pistol at James, killing her.

8. Deaunta T. Farrow

Born: September 7, 1994, West Memphis, Arkansas Died: June 22, 2007, West Memphis, Arkansas

On the night of his death, Deaunta Farrow was walking with his 14-year-old cousin from Farrow’s home to the nearby Steeplechase Apartments where Nash lived.  Along the way the two made a stop at a gas station where they purchased soda pop and chips from the station’s convenience store, and continued down the street. Farrow and Nash turned up the street leading to Nash’s apartment.  At that point two undercover West Memphis police officers, Jimmy Evans and Sammis, who were on a stakeout in a narcotics investigation, appeared from a nearby dumpster.  According to some eyewitnesses, the two police officers confronted the young men and soon afterwards Sammis, noticed something bulging in the 12-year-old’s coat pocket.  As Farrow removed the item, Sammis shot and killed him.

9. Rekia Boyd

Born: November 5, 1989, Chicago, IL Died: March 21, 2012

On the night of her death, Rekia Boyd was hanging out with friends at Douglas Park on Chicago’s West Side at a party listening to music while having a few drinks. Around 1:00 am, Boyd and some of her friends walked to a nearby liquor store. Around the same time, officer Dante Servin was just finishing his shift on his second job. He was off duty, heading to a fast food restaurant for a hamburger, but Servin drove to Douglas Park after a citizen called police about a noise complaint. Servin saw Boyd and her friends and later claimed they were arguing in an alley. Whether Servin calmly approached Boyd and her friends or was rude and aggressive is still debated. One of Boyd’s friends, Antonio Cross, claimed that Servin attempted to buy drugs from the group. When Cross told Servin to “get his crackhead ass out of here,” Servin pulled a gun, stuck it out of the window of his car and fired into the group, hitting Boyd in the head. She was instantly killed.

10. Eric Garner 

Born: September 15, 1970, NYC, New York Died: July 17, 2014, NYC, New York

On July 17th, 2014, NYPD officers approached Eric Garner on suspicion of selling single cigarettes from packs without tax stamps. After Garner told the police that he was tired of being harassed and that he was not selling cigarettes, the officers attempted to arrest Garner. When Pantaleo placed his hands on Garner, Garner pulled his arms away. Pantaleo then placed his arm around Garner's neck and wrestled him to the ground. With multiple officers pinning him down, Garner repeated the words "I can't breathe" 11 times while lying face down on the sidewalk. After Garner lost consciousness, he remained lying on the sidewalk for seven minutes while the officers waited for an ambulance to arrive. Garner was pronounced dead at an area hospital approximately one hour later.

11. Breonna Taylor

Born: June 5, 1993, Grand Rapids, Michigan Died: March 13, 2020, Louisville, Kentucky

A narcotics investigation regarding suspected drug dealer Jamarcus Glover, led detectives to Breonna Taylor’s residence in the South End. Glover was a previous acquaintance of Taylor and she was under suspicion for using her home to his receive mail, hide his drugs, and stash money earned from his drug sales. Taylor, who was 26, at the time, lived in a Springfield Drive apartment with her 27-year-old boyfriend Kenneth Walker. Taylor and Walker were asleep in bed, on the night of March 13, 2020, when they were awakened by a loud banging at the front door. Taylor called out, asking who was there, but heard no response. Walker, a licensed and registered gun owner, armed himself and headed towards the front door, when it suddenly came off its hinges.

Under a “no-knock” search warrant, Louisville Metro Police Department Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, Detective Brett Hankinson, and Officer Myles Cosgrove, all in plainclothes, stormed into the apartment. Taylor’s boyfriend Walker, thinking this was a home invasion robbery, fired one shot in self-defense. Sgt. Mattingly was hit in the leg, and in response, the other officers opened fire, releasing more than twenty rounds into the apartment. Taylor was shot eight times and collapsed in the hallway of her apartment. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

12. Daunte Demetrius Wright

Died: April 11, 2021 (20 years old)

On April 11 of this year, Daunte Demetrius Wright was fatally shot by police officer Kimberly Ann Potter during a traffic stop and attempted arrest for an outstanding arrest warrant in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. After a brief struggle with officers, Wright was shot at close range by Potter, who had confused her gun with her taser. Officers pulled Wright out of his car and administered CPR, but were unsuccessful, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

#murder tw #lynching tw #violence tw #violence #murder #weird history wednesday #whw #racism #racism tw #abuse tw #george floyd #blm #black lives matter #history #not fundie related

[leechs]

when lana said carry me up them stairs with my white socks on and my pretty song you like my blue nail polish what is all this you said of the mess upstairs don’t be scared daddy dearest you know how i like to take trips pops first stops at the k-mart buy me my peach lip gloss cigarettes and lollipops for our trip across the usa we’re gonna party like it’s 1949 we’re in the pontiac from july to july gonna see it all before he says goodbye gonna party like it’s 1949 carry me up them stairs with my white socks on and my blonde hair long you like my pinup bodice and the solace that comes with the midnight air and my icy stare it’s the clearest when it’s me and him alone he stops he talks about all the ways he used to let up dinettes and soda pops for our trip across the usa daddy likes the black pool pleasure beach and road stops me i like the swiss alps souvenir gift shops late night midnight radio show talks him and me a big jailbreak ponytail and lollipops dinettes and soda pops new blue bathing suit ruched tops and cadillacs blue lake carter docks hopscotch hot talk alabama hard knocks motel brass locks

[wrentheworldsatstake]

Part 1 of 5+1 Stucky learn about the LGBTQ+ Community,

Warnings: Steve has some deeply internal homophobia, and uses some unsavory language to refer to himself+ Steve recalls a murder of a gay neighbor that traumatized him, I essentially projected my religious trauma on him darlings, so it gets angsty.

2k+ 

1) Steve Rogers was enjoying his countrywide road trip. His favorite things were to visit scenery that he dreamed of seeing with Bucky way back when. His second favorite things were the small shops that reminded him so much of the small businesses back home. It was still hard to buy things, even with Tony funding his trip with more money he’d ever seen, but Steve knew supporting these shops would keep them around, and Steve needed a slice of home. 

Steve had motorcycled all the way to Arizona. This is the last stop on his trip, and probably the most painful. Bucky always dreamed of seeing the Grand Canyon, it was one of those dreams that were tossed back and forth if they somehow became millionaires.

Steve remembers that winter that felt colder than the rest. Not much, he was delirious for most of it (according to Bucky after the fact he had his last rites done? Something he has no memory of but to be fair there was a reason he was having his last rites done). That isn’t important, what he remembered was Bucky crying, something he’d never seen before. He remembered Bucky telling him if he made it out of it, they’d see the grand canyon together. 

Steve misses Bucky, in ways he knows he shouldn’t. He remembers Robert, the son of the baker that made the good bread. He remembers he was seen kissing a boy, and he remembered Robert ending up dead. Homosexual Killed by Crowd, was in the papers. He remembered that he went to mass with his mother and the sermon that day.The priest called it justice, he called Robert (poor sweet Robert, who snuck his mom a loaf of bread when Steve’s dad died), filthy and depraved, and deserved to be murdered. He remembered the baker at the mass, nodding,crying yes, but nodding. Every time he tried to get bread there from then on it tasted like sawdust. 

Steve remembered when the boys (Bucky’s friends really, but when they were mean to him, Bucky chose Steve instead), were talking about Mary. And how her assets were nice and big. They described how attractive she was and Steve didn’t see it. He saw that in Bucky, brave, beautiful Bucky, and that scared him. Made him feel colder than any winter they ran out of kindling.

So there was Steve, staring at the canyon. His heart was shaking in ways that made him worried the serum stopped working. He had a slip of paper, a napkin from a diner with an image of Bucky sketched on it. He held it up so “Bucky” was seeing the canyon. 

“Buck, it’s the grand canyon. Buck isn’t it beautiful...”

Steve hoped in heaven Bucky was looking down at him. Steve hoped Bucky was happy up there. Steve hoped that Buck still loved him, even though he ought to know Steve’s proclivities up there. Most of all, Steve hoped that he could make it to heaven, to see Bucky again, even though he was a queer, hoped God made an exception, that maybe if he prayed enough that god could forgive him. 

It took a while for Steve to pull himself together. He wasn’t crying- per se, but some tears slipped out. He hiked all the way to a gift shop a couple of miles away from where he-. Well he walked a couple of miles to a gift shop. He had bought gifts for the whole team, except Natasha. Tony and Clint were easy, they both would appreciate a gag gift, so he got Tony a figurine of iron man that made him giggle in the store, with a face painted literally primary color yellow, lopsided eyes, and armor that was pretty much three red blocks stacked on each other. For Clint he got him a bag of birdseed, and he wrote Property of Hawkeye in purple marker on it. (He asked Tony on his phone (after spending twenty minutes reading an operating manual meant for senior citizens) if that’d be funny, and Tony apparently called “dibs” [whatever that meant] on him for a “prank war”). 

Thor and Bruce were a little harder, but he got advice from Natasha on what they may like. With Thor he bought food he’d never tried before, so they could try modern cuisine together. With recommendations from Tony, he got Oreos, Twinkies, “Seaweed” (which he had thought was an aquatic plant??), Tater Tots, Doritos, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and he did want to try some other things (like sushi? Or pineapple?) but Tony told him it would spoil on the way back. For Bruce, Natasha told him he drank a lot of tea, that it worked with calming him down. So Steve bought tea grown from places he visited. He got some from California called “Golden Feather Tea,” which sounded something Bruce would really like. He also found some from Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. 

Everyone had a gift, but Natasha. He wanted to get a gift that Peggy might like, because well… they reminded him of each other. He didn’t want to get anything that may imply he wanted to court her for, so flowers, jewelry, candies, cigarettes (which actually are bad for you? They make asthma worse? Which is pretty disturbing considering how many he smoked when his asthma was bad) or gum. Knowing what he did about Natasha she probably wouldn’t enjoy any of that anyway. 

Inside the shop there were a lot of stickers, license plates, and keychains. He also noticed some mid-sized flags he didn’t recognize. Well he recognized one, Natasha had one inside a potted plant. It was pink and orange and white, and he thinks it may be a country flag? He knows those changed some since he got back from the ice. Either way, it seems like a good gift for Natasha he guesses? I mean she already has a tiny one, maybe she’d like another? At least she’d award him for his observational skills. 

Going to purchase the flag he noticed a little sign saying 10% of flag purchases will go to some charity called GLAAD. That’s great then! Charities are good. He goes to purchase the flag and put it in the trailer Tony rented for him. He originally decided to go by motorcycle, but when he tried to lug around souvenirs, or sleep in a hotel, he realized he much preferred a mini-house that he drove around than a hotel where his nightmares ended up waking up a baby and it’s parents. 

---

Steve was in a good mood. Tony had offered him a room in the tower, which he was worried about originally, but it had so much thought and consideration inside of it he gave the man a bear hug. Tony had a radio on his dresser that Steve remembered having like it once. He had a station on it that played music he remembered throughout his lifetime. There were instructions for each appliance inside of the small kitchen under each appliance. There was “vintage” furniture throughout the apartment, a dresser he remembers his mother dreamed she could have. There were art supplies for him, and a room where he had skyline views and natural light (how Tony knew about his art, he has no idea). Finally he was close to the common room, and could either take the stairs or elevators there, so he was close to the team.

 It was an apartment that he dreamed of sharing with Bucky. He could imagine teasing Bucky while he was making the soup for the week. He could imagine giggling and dancing to the radio songs together. He could imagine sharing the bed, holding- no Steve. Steve, that's bad. 

---

The entire team was gathered in the common room. Steve had wrapped the gifts inside of newspaper, something he remembered doing with his mom, before kindling got low and they had to use the papers for heat. He handed Tony his first (it was the first one he bought after all). Tony eagerly unwrapped it, flinging paper at Clint, (who balled it up and threw it right back).

“Aww Capsicle ya shouldn’t have,” he said in an exaggerated girlish voice, “Such a gift ought to earn ya a smooch,” which made Steve back up. Did they know, know that he was a homosexual? If they did know, why would they bring it up? These sorts of things were kept shamefully hidden, (unless they were planning to hurt him, but he doesn’t think they will), they weren’t teased or advertised about. Tony stopped when he saw that Steve had backed up, face pale, and somehow the room became more tense. 

He handed Clint his gift next. (More like dropped it in his lap, causing an oof to be forced out of Clint). Clint took his newspaper and balled it up and hit Tony, who was just about to tell him not to do that. He held the bag up, and stared at the writing. Natasha who sneaked a peak got a small laugh at the birdseed bag. 

“Hey Birdman, do you need that in a feeder form? For when you’re feeling peckish”

Clint stared right into Tony’s eyes, opened the bag, took a handful and ate it. 

“No Tony, I have thumbs,” he said after chewing (and grimacing) “so I can eat the birdseed with my hands, I can also do this”

 which Clint punctuated with throwing a handful of birdseed at Tony. Natasha rolled her eyes, hoisted up the bag, and said “idiots” almost endearingly? As she put the bag on a shelf by the television. 

“Alright then… moving on” Steve said awkwardly. Steve couldn’t really wrap Thor’s gift, so he had it in a plastic bag 

“So Thor, uh- we’re both new to the modern era, well you on earth- so I thought that, maybe we can try these foods together? I got a list from Tony and-”

“That would be wondrous shield brother Steven. To try the cuisine of midgard is one of my favorite joys, if they are as any good as those poptarts my friend Darcy introduced me to, we shall have a glorious feast” Thor said, which made Steve sigh in relief, he didn’t want to have made Thor upset (because Thor could crush him with his muscles, his really strong- stop thinking Steve!) Steve gave an awkward smile and moved onto Bruce.

“So Natasha said you enjoyed tea, so I got some from my travels, uh- I hope you like it, if you don’t then I can get you something else-”

“It’s great Steve, thank you,”

Steve sighed in relief, if the team didn’t like him, if they were going to hate him because of his sickness, then how exactly could he lead? He got off on a bad foot in the helicarrier, and things were so different now, and there are now words that were okay back then but, not now, he was being very careful to ensure he didn't offend anybody. 

He saved Natasha’s gift for last. He handed it to her kind of sheepishly. Natasha opened it gingerly, and he could see an expression of surprise on her face, before she quickly schooled it to a neutral expression. 

“Thank you Steve,” she eventually said. 

“Hold it up Natasha! I can’t exactly see it from here,” Tony demanded. Natasha held up her flag, and showed it to the group.

“Wow Cap, you got Itsy Bitsy here a lesbian pride flag, way more progressive than I thought you’d be, I probably owe a bet to someone-” Tony said, sounding pleased. 

“A lesbian…? I’m sorry that’s not a term I’m familiar with? I noticed she had a tiny one in a potted plant on her desk, is Natasha from Lebanon, I thought she was Russian?  or was that a cover?” Steve said, with an expression of confusion. 

“Oh- okay then well…” Tony said. The entire room felt like it dropped several degrees. “Well,” Tony said, “A lesbian is a term for a woman who loves women, the flag identifies them-”

“Oh! I’m so sorry Natasha!” Steve said hurriedly, thinking exactly how the nazis identified it, the whole room tensed, “I didn’t realize I’d give you a modern pink triangle equivalent, I had NO idea, I’m so sorry Natasha-”

“Oh no-” Bruce said “It’s a pride flag, it's something that lesbians like- they use it to show pride, it’s not something that is used to hurt people”

“Wait, So no one will hurt Natasha right? Not that anyone can, but this is a thing in the future, that Natasha won’t be hurt?” Steve said. 

“No Steve. There’s laws against that now, you actually get prosecuted if you break them,” Natasha said, “I promise you Steve, I’ll be okay.”

“Wait what about the bible, I remember that it’s a sin under god right?” Steve said frantically, remembering the preacher's sermon, dead Robert, and the threat of hell he feared ever since he discovered he was attracted to Bucky, “I support your lifestyle Natasha, but I can’t, I don’t”

“Captain Steven if I may- there’s a website that goes over it, it’s like an online pamphlet or book, it goes over the bible, it gives evidence that the bible isn’t actually against homosexuality, I’ll pull it up for you tonight if you wish” Jarvis said, difusing all of the tension inside of Steve’s shoulders,

“So I won’t get sent to hell for my proclivities” Steve said, worriedly, trusting his team with something he’d hidden for so long.

“No Steve, it’s okay-” Bruce said, hand on his shoulder, “I promise Steve, there’s nothing wrong with you”

And somehow, that was okay, he was okay, even with Tony interrupting “So I’ve got a chance to tap that ass,” whatever that meant. 

#stucky #starker #future-starker #LGBTQ+ #Gay Steve Rogers #Lesbian Natasha Romanoff #first fic be nice!

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

Sick Little Games: Cutting Room Floor- 1

You leaned forward off the wall and pulled your jacket a little closer. It had been a slow day and the fog rolling in brought a chill with it... And chased away potential customers. And that was a problem because it had been a slow day. A really slow day and you didn’t have enough money yet to buy a place to stay for the night. 

You knew that you could talk into any police station, give your name and tell then that you were a run away. They’d book you and take you to a Juvie. Which. Was at least warm. And the foam mats were marginally more comfortable than some cardboard and concrete. 

There are some things you could do. You could pick a pocket or two, pray someone had some cash on them. The rest of it you could just drop in a mailbox. Minimizing Karmic damage, you supposed. Like stealing from big box stores instead of the mom and pop ones. And only taking from people that had wrist watches the cost at least a few hundred. Sure. People got gifts but not generally expensive watches. At least you figured. Why would they? Not when a phone did so much more. Still, you weren’t quite ready to pack it in. Thieving was dangerous. And picking the wrong pocket could be a one way ticket to a Oak Lawn across town. It was a last resort. 

You looked up towards the sky and sighed. It was overcast. And it had been for days. All you wanted was some sun. Some warmth. You’d been shipped to California, made your way to Houston, New Orleans, Alabama. Anywhere warm. Anywhere you could find some sun. A new temporary home. Something... Just something. Anything to fill the hole you felt in your chest. The ache that never really left no matter how high you got. But maybe it was a sign. Maybe it was time for you to move along and find some greener pastures. And a job. A real job. Not just posing for perverts or smuggling to get a fix. But then, moving on cost money too. The last thing you needed was to end up on a government watch list. It was bad enough that your step dad’s fucking cultists were still looking for you.

When the rain started to fall you sighed. It was a sign. Definitely a sign. And you weren’t thrilled at the thought of having to sleep in this never ending drizzle. And in the cold. It was all you really needed to tell Karma to fuck off for the night. And, as you looked around, just up the street, there was the perfect mark. 

An unassuming guy in a dark suit. Light brown hair in a professional cut. Slightly receded hairline. His watch and shoes were expensive. And he was helping an elderly woman. She was dressed expensively enough. Maybe his mother. Or a doting aunt. Possibly even a grandmother. But it didn’t matter. As he half turned to help her, you could see the outline of a wallet and your stomach growled encouragement, prompting you forward. It had been a while since you’d had a hot meal. The mission was full of weenie waggers and you were tired of getting hit on by toothless old men and women who reeked of old sweat and cheap cigarettes. Tired enough to throw karma to the side. And as you reached forward, reaching for the wallet that might buy you a night out of the cold, you didn’t expect the middle aged looking guy to throw you head first into a van that was screaming to a halt. 

__________

“Ah, fuck,” you groan. The light above your head was bright. Too bright and your head was pounding. 

“Language,” a cultured British voice scolded. 

“Sorry,” you apologize without thinking about it. Too confused and disoriented to tell her to fuck off. You hear the sound of liquid being poured into a cup and it makes you pick your head up, cringing at the light.

The woman, the same elderly woman you had seen early gives you something like a sympathetic look and slides a mug across the table. “I suppose,” she said, “That you were desperate.”

You shrug and glance suspiciously at the mug, “You ever slept under a bridge?” you ask.

The woman gave you a level look and shook her head, “No,” she admitted.

“Look, I won’t do it again,” you say quietly, “I’m just trying to get out of town.”

“And go where?” she asked. 

“Just... somewhere,” you answer, “Maybe back north. Get some work.”

“Doing what?” she asked.

“Whatever pays,” you say shrugging. The woman frowns, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening and you get the distinct impression that she’s looking through you. Searching for something. But you already know she’s going to find you wanting. Everyone does. 

“Sounds dangerous,” she said.

“So’s picking pockets but... that guy. His watch cost a couple grand. And his shoes. Italian Leather. New. I figured he might have some cash to spare,” you explain. They have you dead to rights. You may as well be honest.

“To spare?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow. 

“Why would I take from someone as bad off as I am? Or make someone as bad off as me?” you murmur, glancing away. 

For a long moment, there’s no sound but the woman stirring sugar into her tea. Looking away, looking towards the glass you’re pretty sure is a two way mirror, what you don’t see is that she’s smiling. But, when she clears her throat and you look up, she looks serious.

“I’ll level with you,” she said, sipping her tea, “We’ve been watching you. We know you... And we’ve got a job for you. If you’re willing.”

“And If I’m not?” you counter. 

“Cops will be her in 6 minutes and you’ll do at least 10 years with all the stuff we can give them on you.”

You hang your head slowly and exhale. 

“What do I have to do?” you ask quietly. 

#clint barton #clint barton x reader #bucky barnes #bucky x reader #Peggy carter #Phil coulson #angst #cutting room floor

[unsettlingshortstories]

He'll Come Knocking at Your Door

Robert R. McCammon (1986)

In the Deep South, Halloween Day is usually shirtsleeve weather. But when the sun begins to sink, there’s a foretaste of winter in the air. Pools of shadow deepen and lengthen, and the Alabama hills are transformed into moody tapestries of orange and black.

 When Dan Burgess got home from the cement plant in Barrimore Crossing, he found Karen and Jaime working over a tray of homemade candies in the shape of pumpkins. Jaime, three years old and as curious as a chipmunk, was in a hurry to try out the candy. “Those are for the trick-or-treaters, hon,” Karen explained patiently, for the third or fourth time. Both mother and daughter were blond, though Jaime had inherited Dan’s dark brown eyes. Karen’s eyes were as blue as an Alabama lake on a sunny day.

As Dan hugged his wife from behind and peered over her shoulder at the candies, he felt a sense of satisfaction that made life seem deliciously complete. He was a tall man, his face lean and rugged from a life of hard, outdoor labor. He had curly dark brown hair and a beard in need of trimming. “Looks pretty Halloweeny around here, folks!” he drawled, and lifted Jaime into his arms when she reached up for him.

“Punkins!” Jaime said gleefully.

“Hope we get some trick-or-treaters tonight,” Dan said. “Hard to tell if we will or not, this far from town.” Their home, a rented two- bedroom farmhouse set off the main highway on a couple of acres of rolling woodland, was part of a subdivision of Barrimore Crossing called Essex. The business district of Barrimore Crossing was four miles to the east, and the thirty-five or so inhabitants of the Essex community lived in houses similar to Dan’s, comfortable places surrounded by woods where deer, quail, possum, and fox were common sights. At night, Dan could sit on his front porch and see the distant porch lights of other Essex houses up in the hills. It was a quiet, peaceful place. And lucky too, Dan knew. All sorts of good things had happened to them since they’d moved here from Birmingham, after the steel mill shut down in February.

 “Might have a few.” Karen began to make eyes in the pumpkins with little silver dots of candy. “Mrs. Crosley said they always have a group of kids from town. If we didn’t have treats for them, they’d probably egg our house!”

 “Hallo'een!” Jaime pointed excitedly toward the pumpkins, wriggling to be set down.

 “Oh, I almost forgot!” Karen licked a silver dot from her finger and walked across the kitchen to the cork bulletin board next to the telephone. She took off one of the pieces of paper stuck there by a blue plastic pin. “Mr. Hathaway called at four.” She gave him the note, and he set Jaime down. “He wants you to go over to his place for some kind of meeting.”

 “Meeting?” Dan looked at the note. It said Roy Hathaway. His house, 6:30. Hathaway was the real-estate agent who’d rented them this house. He lived across the highway, up where the valley curved into the hills. “On Halloween? Did he say what for?”

 “Nope. He did say it was important, though. He said you were expected, and it was something that couldn’t be explained over the phone.”

 Dan grunted softly. He liked Roy Hathaway, who’d bent over backwards to find them this place. Dan glanced at his new Bulova wristwatch, which he’d won by being the thousandth person to buy a pickup truck from a dealership in Birmingham. It was almost five- thirty. Time enough for a shower and a ham sandwich, and then he’d go see what was so important. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll find out what he wants.”

 “Somebody’ll be a clown by the time you get back,” Karen said, glancing slyly at Jaime.

 “Me! Me’ll be a clown, Daddy!”

 Dan grinned at her and, his heart full, went back to take his shower.

 Darkness was falling fast as Dan drove his white pickup truck along the winding country road that led to Hathaway’s place. His headlights picked out a deer as it bolted in front of the truck. Beyond the ridge of hills to the west, the setting sun tinted the sky a vivid orange.

 Meeting, Dan thought uneasily. What was it that couldn’t wait? He wondered if it might have something to do with the last rent check. No, no; his days of rubber checks and irate landlords were over. There was plenty of money in the bank. In August, Dan had received a letter that said they’d won five thousand dollars in a contest at the Food Giant store in Barrimore Crossing. Karen didn’t even recall filling out an entry slip. Dan had been able to pay off the new truck and buy Karen a color television she’d been wanting. He was making more money than ever before, since his promotion in April from gravel-shoveler to unit supervisor at the cement plant. So money wasn’t the problem. What was, then?

 He loved the Essex community. It was fresh air and bird songs and a low-lying morning mist that clung like lace in the autumn trees. After the smog and harshness of Birmingham, after the trauma of losing his job and being on unemployment, Essex was a gentle, soul- soothing blessing.

 Dan believed in luck. In hindsight, it was even good luck that he’d lost that job at the mill, because if he hadn’t he never would have found Essex. One day in May he’d walked into the hardware and sporting-goods store in Barrimore Crossing and admired a double-barreled Remington shotgun in a display case. The manager had come over, and they’d talked about guns and hunting for the better part of an hour. As Dan had started to leave, the manager unlocked that display case and said: Dan, I want you to try this baby out. Go ahead, take it! It’s a new model, and the Remington people want to know how folks like it. You take it home with you. Bring me back a wild turkey or two, and if you like that gun, tell other folks where they can buy one, hear?

 It was amazing, Dan thought. He and Karen were living some kind of fantastic dream. The promotion at the plant had come right out of the blue. People respected him. Karen and Jaime were happier than he’d ever seen them. Just last month, a woman Karen had met at the Baptist church gave them a rich harvest of garden vegetables that would last them through the autumn. The only remotely bad thing that had happened since they’d moved to Essex, Dan recalled, was when he’d made a fool of himself in Roy Hathaway’s office. He’d sliced his finger on a sliver of plastic in the pen he was using to sign the lease and had bled all over the paper. It was a stupid thing to remember, he knew, but it had stuck in his mind because he’d hoped it wasn’t a bad omen. Now he knew nothing could be further from the truth.

He rounded a corner and saw Roy’s house ahead. The front- porch lights were on, and lights showed through most of the windows. The driveway was packed with cars, most of which Dan recognized as belonging to other Essex residents. What’s going on? he wondered. A community meeting? On Halloween?

 He parked his truck next to Tom Paulsen’s new Cadillac and walked up the front-porch steps to the door. As he knocked, a long keening animal cry came from the woods behind Hathaway’s house. Bobcat, he thought. The woods are full of ‘em.

 Laura Hathaway, an attractive gray-haired woman in her mid- fifties, answered the door with a cheerful, “Happy Halloween, Dan!”

 “Hi! Happy Halloween.” He stepped into the house, and could smell the aromatic cherry pipe tobacco Roy favored. The Hathaways had some nice oil paintings on their walls, and all their furniture looked new. “What’s going on?”

 “The men are down in the rumpus room,” she explained. “They’re having their little yearly get-together.” She started to lead him to another door that would take him downstairs. She limped a bit when she walked. Several years ago, Dan understood, a lawn mower had sliced off a few of the toes on her right foot.

 “Looks like everybody in Essex is here, with all those cars outside.”

 She smiled, her kindly face crinkling. “Everybody is here, now. Go on down and make yourself at home.”

 He descended the stairs. He heard Roy’s husky voice down there: “… Jenny’s gold earrings, the ones with the little pearls. Carl, this year it’s one of Tiger’s new kittens—the one with the black markings on its legs, and that ax you got at the hardware store last week. Phil, he wants one of your piglets and the pickled okra Marcy put in the cupboard… ”

 When Dan reached the bottom of the stairs, Roy stopped talking. The rumpus room, carpeted in bright red because Roy was a Crimson Tide fan, was filled with men from the Essex community. Roy, a hefty man with white hair and friendly, deep-set blue eyes, was sitting in a chair in the midst of them, reading from some kind of list. The others sat around him, listening intently. Roy looked up at Dan, as did the other men, and puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “Howdy, Dan. Grab yourself a cup of coffee and sit a spell.”

 “I got your message. What kind of meeting is this?” He glanced around, saw faces he knew: Steve Mallory, Phil Kane, Carl Lansing, Andy McCutcheon, and more. A pot of coffee, cups, and a platter of sandwiches were placed on a table on one side of the room.

 “Be with you in a minute,” Roy said. While Dan, puzzled at what was so important on Halloween, poured himself a cup of coffee, he listened to Roy reading from the list he held. “Okay, where were we? Phil, that’s it for you, I reckon. Next is Tom. This year it’s that ship model you put together, a pair of Ann’s shoes—the gray ones she bought in Birmingham—and Tom Junior’s G.I. Joe doll. Andy, he wants…”

 Huh? Dan thought as he sipped at the hot black coffee. He looked at Tom, who seemed to have released a breath he’d been holding for a long time. Tom’s model of Old Ironsides had taken him months to put together, Dan knew. Dan’s gaze snagged other eyes that quickly looked away. He noted that Mitch Brantley, whose wife had just had their first child in July, looked ill; Mitch’s face was the color of wet cotton. A haze of smoke hung in the air from Roy’s pipe and several other smokers’ cigarettes. Cups rattled against saucers. Dan looked at Aaron Greene, who stared back at him through strange, glassy eyes. Aaron’s wife, Dan had heard, had died of a heart attack last year about this time. Aaron had shown him pictures of her, a robust-looking brunette in her late thirties.

 “… your golf clubs, your silver cufflinks, and Tweetybird,” Roy continued.

 Andy McCutcheon laughed nervously. In his pallid, fleshy face his eyes were dark and troubled. “Roy, my little girl loves that canary. I mean… she’s real attached to it.”

 Roy smiled. It was a tight, false smile, and something about it started a knot of tension growing in Dan’s stomach. “You can buy her another one, Andy,” he said. “Can’t you?”

 “Sure, but she loves—”

 “One canary’s just like another.” He drew at his pipe, and when he lifted a hand to hold the bowl, the overhead light glinted off the large diamond ring he wore.

 “Excuse me, gents.” Dan stepped forward. “I sure would like for somebody to tell me what this is all about. My wife and little girl are getting ready for Halloween.”

 “So are we,” Roy replied, and blew out a plume of smoke. “So are we.” He traced his finger down the list. Dan saw that the paper was mottled and dirty; it looked as if it had been used to wipe out the inside of a garbage can. The writing on it was scrawled and spiky. “Dan,” Roy said, and tapped the paper. “This year he wants two things from you. First is a set of fingernail clippings. Your own fingernails. The second is—”

 “Hold on.” Dan tried to smile, but couldn’t find one. “I don’t get this. How about starting from the beginning.”

Roy stared at him for a long, silent moment. Dan felt other eyes on him, watching him carefully. On the opposite side of the room, Walter Ferguson suddenly began quietly sobbing. “Oh,” Roy said. “Sure. It’s your first Halloween in Essex, isn’t it?”

 “Right. And?”

 “Sit down, Dan.” Roy motioned toward an empty chair near him. “Come on, sit down and I’ll tell you.”

 Dan didn’t like the feeling in this room; there was too much tension and fear in here. Walter’s sobbing was louder. “Tom,” Roy said, “take Walter out for a breath of air, won’t you?” Tom muttered an assent and helped the crying man out of his chair. When they had left the rumpus room, Roy struck a kitchen match to relight his pipe and looked calmly at Dan Burgess.

 “So tell me,” Dan urged as he sat down. He did smile this time, but the smile would not stick.

 “It’s Halloween,” Roy explained, as if speaking to a retarded child. “We’re going over the Halloween list.”

 Dan laughed involuntarily. “Is this a joke, gents? What kind of Halloween list?”

 Roy’s thick white brows came together as he gathered his thoughts. Dan realized the other man was wearing the same dark red sweater he’d worn the day Dan had signed that lease and cut his finger. “Call it… a trick-or-treat list, Dan. You know, we all like you. You’re a good man. We can’t think of a better neighbor to have in Essex.” He glanced around as some of the others nodded. “Essex is a very special place to live, Dan. You must know that by now.”

“Sure. It’s great. Karen and I love it here.”

 “We all do. Some of us have lived here for a long time. We appreciate the good life we have here. And in Essex, Dan, Halloween is a very special night of the year.”

 Dan frowned. “I’m not following you.”

 Roy produced a gold pocket watch, popped it open to look at the time, then closed it again. When he lifted his gaze, his eyes seemed darker and more powerful than Dan had ever seen them. They made him shiver to his soul. “Do you believe in the Devil?” Roy asked.

 Again Dan laughed. “What are we doing, telling spooky stories?” He looked around the room. No one else was laughing.

 “When you came to Essex,” Roy said softly, “you were a loser. Down on your luck. No job. Your money was almost gone. Your credit rating was zero. You had an old car that was ready for the junkyard. Now I want you to think back on all the good things that have happened to you—all the things you might have taken as a run of good luck—since you’ve been part of our community. You’ve gotten everything you’ve wanted, haven’t you? Money’s come to you like never before. You got yourself a brand-new truck. A promotion at the plant. And there’ll be more good things to come in the years ahead—if you cooperate.”

 “Cooperate?” He didn’t like the sound of that word. “Cooperate how?”

 “With the list. Like we all do, every Halloween. Every October thirty-first I find a list just like this one under the welcome mat at the front door. Why I’ve been chosen to handle it, I don’t know. Maybe because I help bring new people in. These items on this list are to be left in front of your door on Halloween. In the morning, they’re gone. He comes during the night, Dan, and he takes them away with him.”

 “This is a Halloween joke, isn’t it!” Dan grinned. “Jesus Christ, you gents had me going! That’s a hell of an act to put on just to scare the crap out of me!”

 But Roy’s face remained impassive. Smoke seeped from a  corner of his wrinkled mouth. “The list,” Roy continued evenly, “has to be collected and left out before midnight, Dan. If you don’t collect the items and leave them for him, he’ll come knocking at your door. And you don’t want that, Dan. You really don’t.”

 A chunk of ice seemed to have jammed itself in Dan’s throat, while the rest of his body felt feverish. The Devil in Essex? Collecting things like golf clubs and cufflinks, ship models and pet canaries? “You’re crazy!” he managed to say. “If this isn’t a damned joke, you’ve dropped both your oars into the water!”

 “It’s no joke, and he ain’t crazy,” Phil Kane said, sitting behind Roy. Phil was a large, humorless man who raised pigs on a farm about a mile away. “It’s just once a year. Just on Halloween. Hell, last year alone I won one of them magazine sweepstakes. It was fifteen thousand dollars at one whack! The year before that, an uncle I didn’t even know had died and left me a hundred acres of land in California. We get free stuff in the mail all the time. It’s just once a year we have to give him what he wants.”

 “Laura and I go to art auctions in Birmingham,” Roy said. “We always get what we want for the lowest bid. And the paintings are always worth five or ten times what we pay. Last Halloween he asked for a lock of Laura’s hair and one of my old shirts with blood on it where I cut myself shaving. You remember that trip to Bermuda the real-estate company gave us last summer? I’ve been given a huge expense account, and no matter what I charge, nobody asks any questions. He gives us everything we want.”

Trick-or-treat! Dan thought crazily. He envisioned some hulking, monstrous form lugging off a set of golf clubs, one of Phil’s piglets, and Tom’s Old Ironsides. God, it was insane! Did these men really believe they were making sacrifices to a satanic trick-or-treater?

 Roy lifted his eyebrows. “You didn’t return the shotgun, did you? Or the money. You didn’t refuse the promotion.”

 “I earned that promotion!” Dan insisted, but his voice was strained and weak, and it shamed him.

 “You signed the agreement in blood,” Roy said, and Dan remembered the drops of blood falling from his cut finger onto the white paper of the lease, right underneath his name. “Whether you knew it or not, you agreed to something that’s been going on in Essex for over a hundred years. You can have anything and everything you want, Dan, if you give him what he wants on one special night of the year.”

 “My God,” Dan whispered. He felt dizzy and sick. If it was true... what had he stumbled into? “You said... he wants two things from me. The fingernail clippings and what else?”

 Roy looked at the list and cleared his throat. “He wants the clippings, and… he wants the first joint of the little finger of your child’s left hand.”

 Dan sat motionless. He stared straight ahead, and feared for an awful moment that he would start laughing and giggle himself all the way to an asylum.

 “It’s really not much,” Roy said. “There won’t be a lot of blood, will there, Carl?”

Carl Lansing, who worked as a butcher at the Food Giant in Barrimore Crossing, raised his left hand to show Dan Burgess. “Not much pain if you do it quick, with a cleaver. One sharp blow’ll snap the bone. She won’t feel a whole lot of pain if you do it fast.”

 Dan swallowed. Carl’s slicked-back black hair gleamed with Vitalis under the light. Dan had always wondered exactly how Carl had lost the thumb of his left hand.

 “If you don’t put what he wants in front of your door,” Andy McCutcheon said, “he’ll come in after them. And then he’ll take more than he asked for in the first place, Dan. God help you if he has to knock at your door.”

 Dan’s eyes felt like frozen stones in his rigid face; he stared across  the room at Mitch Brantley, who appeared to be either about to faint or throw up. Dan thought of Mitch’s new son, and he did not want to think about what might be on the list beside either Mitch’s or Walter Ferguson’s name. He rose unsteadily from his chair. It was not that he believed the Devil was coming to his house tonight for a bizarre trick- or-treat that frightened him so deeply; it was that he knew they believed, and he didn’t know how to deal with it.

 “Dan,” Roy Hathaway said gently, “we’re all in this together. It’s not so bad. Really it isn’t. Usually all he wants are little things. Things that don’t matter very much.” Mitch made a soft, strangled groaning sound. Dan flinched, but Roy paid no attention. Dan had the sudden urge to leap at Roy and grab him by the front of that blood- red sweater and shake him until he split open. “Once in a while he… takes something of value,” Roy said, “but not very often. And he always gives us back so much more than he takes.”

 “You’re crazy. All of you… are crazy.”

 “Give him what he wants.” Steve Mallory spoke in the strong bass voice that was so distinctive in the Baptist church choir on Sunday mornings. “Do it, Dan. Don’t make him knock at your door.”

 “Do it,” Roy told him. “For your own sake, and for your family’s.”

 Dan backed away from them. Then he turned and ran up the stairs, ran out of the house as Laura Hathaway was coming out of the kitchen with a big bowl of pretzels, ran down the front steps and across the lawn to his pickup. Near Steve Mallory’s new silver Chevy, Walter and Tom were standing together. Dan  heard Walter sob, “… not her ear, Tom! Dear God, not her whole ear!”

 Dan got into his truck and left twin streaks of rubber on the pavement as he drove away.

  Dead leaves whirled through the turbulent, chilly air as Dan pulled up into his driveway, got out and ran up the front-porch steps. Karen had taped a cardboard skeleton to the door. His heart was pounding, and he’d decided to take no chances; if this was an elaborate joke, they could laugh their asses off at him, but he was getting Karen and Jaime out of here.

 Halfway home, a thought had occurred to him that had almost made him pull off the road to puke: if the list had demanded a lock of Jaime’s hair, would he have given it without question? How about her fingernail clippings? A whole fingernail? An earlobe? And if he had given any of those things, what would be on the trick-or-treat list next year and the year after that?

 Not much blood, if you do it quick.

 “Karen!” he shouted as he unlocked the door and went in. The house was too quiet. “Karen!”

“Lord, Dan! What are you yelling about?” She came into the front room from the hallway, followed by Jaime in clown makeup, an oversize red blouse, patched little blue jeans, and sneakers covered with round yellow happy-face stickers. Dan knew he must look like walking death, because Karen stopped as if she’d run into a wall when she saw him. “What’s happened?” she asked fearfully.

 “Listen to me. Don’t ask any questions.” He wiped the sheen of sweat off his forehead with a trembling hand. Jaime’s soft brown eyes reflected the terror he’d brought into the house with him. “We’re leaving right now. We’re going to drive to Birmingham and check into a motel.”

 “It’s Halloween!” Karen said. “We might have some trick-or-treaters!”

 “Please… don’t argue with me! We’ve got to get out of here right now!” Dan jerked his gaze away from his child’s left hand; he’d been looking at the little finger and thinking terrible thoughts. “Right now,” he repeated.

 Jaime was stunned, about to cry. On a table beside her was a plate with the Halloween candies on it—grinning pumpkins with silver eyes and licorice mouths. “We have to go,” Dan said hoarsely. “I can’t tell you why, but we have to.” Before Karen could say anything else, Dan told her to gather whatever she wanted— toothpaste, a jacket, underwear—while he went out and started the truck. But hurry! he urged her. For God’s sake, hurry!

 Outside, dead leaves snapped at his cheeks and sailed past his head. He slid behind the pickup’s wheel, put the key into the ignition, and turned it.

 The engine made one long groaning noise, rattled, and died.

Christ! Dan thought, close to panic. He’d never had any problem with the truck before! He pumped the accelerator and tried again. The engine was stone-cold dead, and all the warning lights—brake fluid, engine oil, battery, even gasoline—flashed red on the instrument panel.

 Of course, he realized. Of course. He had paid off the truck with the money he’d won. The truck had been given to him while he was a resident of Essex—and now whatever was coming to their house tonight didn’t want him driving that truck away from Essex.

 They could run for it. Run along the road. But what if they ran into the Halloween visitor, there in the lonely darkness? What if it came up behind them on the road, demanding its trick-or-treat like a particularly nasty child?

 He tried the truck again. Dead.

 Inside the house, Dan slammed the door and locked it. He went to the kitchen door and locked that too, his wife and daughter watching him as if he’d lost his mind. Dan shouted, “Karen, check all the windows! Make sure they’re shut tight! Hurry, damn it!” He went to the closet and took out his shotgun, got a box of shells off the shelf; he opened the box, put it on the table next to the pumpkin candies, broke open the gun’s breech, and stuffed two shells into the chambers. Then he closed the breech and looked up as Karen and Jaime returned, clinging to each other.

 “All… the windows are shut,” Karen whispered, her scared blue eyes flickering back and forth from Dan’s face to the shotgun. “Dan, what’s wrong with you?”

 “Something’s coming to our door tonight,” he replied. “Something terrible. We’re going to have to hold it off. I don’t know if we can, but we have to try. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

 “It’s… Halloween,” she said, and he saw she thought he was totally cracked.

 The telephone! he thought suddenly, and ran for it. He picked up the receiver and dialed for the operator in Barrimore Crossing to call for a police car. Officer, the Devil’s on his way to our house tonight and we don’t have his favorite kind of candy.

 But on the other end of the line was a piercing crackle of static that sounded like a peal of eerie laughter. Through the static Dan heard things that made him believe he’d truly hurtled over the edge: the crazy theme music from a Porky Pig cartoon, a crash of cymbals, the military drumming of a marching band, assorted gurgles and gasps and moans as if he’d been plugged into a graveyard party line. Dan dropped the receiver, and it dangled from its cord like a lynched corpse. Have to think, he told himself. Figure things out. Hold the bastard off. Got to hold him off. He looked at the fireplace and felt a new hammerblow of horror. “Dear God!” he shouted. “We’ve got to block up the chimney!”

 Dan got on his knees, reached up the chimney, and closed the flue. There were already pine logs, kindling, and newspapers in the fireplace, ready for the first cold night of the year. He went into the kitchen, got a box of Red Top matches, and put them into the breast pocket of his shirt; when he came back into the room, Jaime was crying and Karen was holding her tightly, whispering, “Shhh, darling. Shhhh.” She watched her husband like one would watch a dog with foam on its mouth.

 Dan pulled a chair about ten feet from the front door and sat down with the shotgun across his knees. His eyes were sunken into his head and ringed with purple. He looked at his new Bulova watch; somehow, the crystal had shattered. The hands had snapped off.

“Dan,” Karen said—and then she too started to cry.

 “I love you, honey,” he told her. “You know I love both of you, don’t you? I swear I do. I won’t let him in. I won’t give him what he wants. Because if I do that, what will he take next year? I love you both, and I want you to remember that.”

 “Oh, God… Dan…”

 “They think I’m going to do it and leave it outside the door for him,” Dan said. His hands were gripped tightly around the shotgun, his knuckles white. “They think I could take a cleaver and—”

 The lights flickered, and Karen screamed. Jaime’s wail joined hers.

 Dan felt his face contorting with fear. The lights flickered, flickered—and went out.

 “He’s coming,” Dan rasped. “He’s coming soon.” He stood up, walked to the fireplace, bent down, and struck a match. It took four matches to get the fire going right; its orange light turned the room into a Halloween chamber of horrors, and smoke repelled from the blocked flue swept around the walls like searching spirits. Karen was pressed against the wall, and Jaime’s clown makeup was streaming down her cheeks.

 Dan returned to the chair, his eyes stinging with smoke, and watched the door.

 He didn’t know how much longer it was when he sensed something on the front porch. Smoke was filling the house, but the room had suddenly become bone-achingly cold. He thought he heard something scratching out there on the porch, searching around the door for the items that weren’t there.

 He’ll come knocking at your door. And you don’t want that. You really don’t.

 “Dan—”

 “Shhhh,” he warned her. “Listen! He’s out there.” “Him? Who? I don’t hear—”

There was a knock at the door like a sledgehammer striking the wood. Dan saw the door tremble through the smoke-haze. The knock was followed by a second, with more force. Then a third that made the door bend inward like cardboard.

 “Go away!” Dan shouted. “There’s nothing for you here!” Silence.

It’s all a trick! he thought. Roy and Tom and Carl and Steve and all the rest are out there in the dark, laughing fit to bust a gut!

 But the room was getting viciously cold. Dan shivered, saw his breath float away past his face.

 Something scraped on the roof above their heads, like claws seeking a weak chink in the shingles.

 “GO AWAY!” Dan’s voice cracked. “GO AWAY, YOU BASTARD!”

 The scraping stopped. After a long moment of silence, something smashed against the roof like an anvil being dropped. The entire house groaned. Jaime screamed, and Karen shouted, “What is it, Dan, what is it out there?”

 Immediately following was a chorus of laughter from beyond the front door. Someone said, “Okay, I guess that’s enough!” A different voice called, “Hey, Dan! You can open up now! Just kiddin'!” A third voice said, “Trick-or-treat, Danny boy!”

 He recognized Carl Lansing’s voice. There was more laughter, more whooping cries of “Trick-or-treat!”

 My God! Dan rose to his feet. It’s a joke. A brutal, ridiculous joke!

 “Open the door!” Carl called. “We can’t wait to see your face!”

 Dan almost cried, but there was rage building in him and he thought he might just aim the shotgun at them and threaten to shoot their balls off. Were they all crazy? How had they managed the phone and the lights? Was this some kind of insane initiation to Essex? He went to the door on shaky legs, unlocked it— Behind him, Karen said suddenly, “Dan, don’t!”

 —and opened the door.

 Carl Lansing stood on the porch. His black hair was slicked back, his eyes as bright as new pennies. He looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary.

 “You damned fools!” Dan raged. “Do you know what kind of scare you people put into me and my family? I ought to shoot your damned—”

 And then he stopped, because he realized Carl was standing alone on the porch.

Carl grinned. His teeth were black. “Trick-or-treat,” he whispered, and raised the ax that he’d been holding behind his back.

 With a cry of terror, Dan stumbled backward and lifted the shotgun. The thing that had assumed Carl’s shape oozed across the threshold; orange firelight glinted off the upraised ax blade.

 Dan squeezed the shotgun’s trigger, but the gun didn’t go off. Neither barrel would fire. Jammed! he thought wildly, and broke open the breech to clear it.

 There were no shells in the shotgun. Jammed into the chambers were Karen’s pumpkin candies.

 “TRICK-OR-TREAT, DAN!” the thing wailed. “TRICK-OR-TREAT!”

 Dan struck into the Carl-thing’s stomach with the butt of the shotgun. From its mouth sprayed a mess of yellow canary feathers, pieces of a kitten, and what might have been a piglet. Dan hit it again, and the entire body collapsed like an exploding gasbag. Then he grabbed Karen’s hand in a frantic blur of motion and was pulling her with him out the door. She held on to Jaime, and they ran down the porch steps and across the grass, along the driveway and the road and toward the main highway with the Halloween wind clutching around them.

 Dan looked back, saw nothing but darkness. Jaime shrieked in tune with the wind. The distant lights of other Essex houses glinted in the hills like cold stars.

 They reached the highway. Dan shouldered Jaime, and still they ran into the night, along the roadside where the high weeds caught at their ankles.

“Look!” Karen cried. “Somebody’s coming, Dan! Look!”

 He did. Headlights were approaching. Dan stood in the middle of the road, frantically waving. The vehicle—a gray Volkswagen van—began to slow down. At the wheel was a woman in a witch costume, and two children dressed like ghosts peered out the window. People from Barrimore Crossing! Dan realized. Thank God! “Help us!” he begged. “Please! We’ve got to get out of here!”

 “You in trouble?” the woman asked. “You have an accident or something?”

 “Yes! An accident! Please, get us to the police station in Barrimore Crossing! I’ll pay you! Just please get us there!”

 The woman paused. Then she said, “Okay. Climb in.” Dan pulled open the van's side door.

 They started off, the engine backfiring, toward Barrimore Crossing.

 “I don't see no accident,” the woman said. “You have a car wreck or what?”

 Dan shook his head. The two ghost-children were watching him over the front seat. In his arms, Jaime was dazed and shaking. “We're okay,” he managed to say to Karen, and took her hand. “We're safe now, honey.”

 And something wet dripped onto his cheek. He looked up at the van's ceiling.

The van had teeth.

Long rows of triangular, serrated teeth.

 As his mind cracked and he began to laugh, he saw the sticky fluid dripping down off the teeth, saw in the green glow of the instrument panel more teeth pushing up from the van's soft, wet gray sides and floorboard.

 His last coherent thought, as Karen's scream filled his head, was that the Devil sure could come up with one hell of a costume.

 “Trick-or-treat, Dan,” the shape at the wheel said.

 And the entire van smashed shut like a huge mouth, the teeth grinding down until bone and flesh were pulverized and unrecognizable.

 Then the van, looking more like a large shiny roach, scuttled off the road toward the Essex woods. It changed shape into something that would drive a man mad to behold—and then it was gone into the hills, with its bellyful of Halloween treats.

[lanamemories2]

THE CHARACTER STATISTICS

FULL NAME — lana rose jameson

NICKNAME — idk if she has many nicknames altho.... rod exclusively calls her banana..... some call her lana banana n her teacher as a kid wld call her lala land bc she ws always nt focusing..... bt mostly ppl call her lana......... she “dated” a loser tht wld exclusively call her sugar nips bt >_> i can’t let tht count i simply can’t..... i’ll throw up.

D.O.B. — june 2nd 1998

LINK TO THEIR PINTEREST BOARD OR TAG ON YOUR BLOG — tag n pinterest

STAR SIGN / MOON & RISING — gemini / virgo / pisces

MBTI — ESFP (the entertainer)

MORAL ALIGNMENT — chaotic good

MARITAL STATUS & SEXUALITY — single n bisexual

LANGUAGES — english

TALENTS / HOBBIES — dancing, origami (doesn’t rly publicise tht), rollerskating, cheer (altho i think she’s prob given tht up nw she’s working), humming ALL the time, collecting records, shopping, partying ig bc she does it 24/7

TOP 5 MUSICIANS —  the velvet underground, wild cherry, the rolling stones, donna summer n robyn

FAVOURITE BOOK — isn’t rly a big reader....... she read mre when she ws younger bt she’d find it difficult to concentrate n nt lose her place on a page...... she mostly liked picture books i think her fav as a kid wldv been one of those big illustrated encyclopedias of fairies

FAVOURITE FILM & TV SHOW — she likes musicals like cabaret n rocketman n moulin rouge bt then also coraline n moonrise kingdom n twilight n my neighbour totoro..... i think she likes anything thts rly pretty n interesting to look at. lovs sex n the city fr tv probably gossip girl.... vampire diaries :/ lots of trashy stuff.... also broad city

FAVOURITE VIDEO GAME — she doesn’t rly play games bt she does luv the princess peach game fr the nds

WHAT DID THEY DO THIS PAST SUMMER? — she usually jets off to like 5742759742 countries bt i think except fr visiting caleb montgomery (shout out 2 alli lov u) in paris fr a handful of days one week she stayed local n worked at the burlesque club n jst hd a sexy time in lovell going wild.............. living the vida loca................

WHERE HAVE THEY TRAVELLED? — god. literally sm places i cldnt even name them all.......... spits on the floor.......... me in a riot club vc: i am SICK to DEATH of RICH PPL! (new way sexier version)

DO THEY TAKE ANY PRESCRIPTIONS? — she’s been prescribed like 985729574 diff things fr adhd over the yrs bt she nvr rly tkes them ://// she hd a bad experience w one where it mde her feel kind of lethargic n sad n since she jst.... amasses them in her bedside cabinet instead of taking them.

DO THEY HAVE ANY DIAGNOSIS’S? — adhd n when she attended a few sessions of therapy her therapist quickly recognised she hd ptsd n lots of.... unexplored trauma :/ sighs.... 

FICTIONAL CHARACTER THEY ARE MOST LIKE? — penny lane, molly gunn, alabama worley, satine (moulin rouge).... also reminds me of edie sedgwick (factory girl) n linda lovelace (lovelace) bt they’re technically real so 🤷

ARE THEY EMPLOYED? WHERE DO THEY WORK? — at a burlesque club in downtown lovell!! she’s a 💃

WERE THEY POPULAR IN HIGH SCHOOL? — ya lana jst...... was friends w n slept w everyone bt she ws kind of like marmite like u love or u hate her....... bc of hw promiscuous/wild she ws n whether ppl agreed w tht or not.... mostly loved tho i wnt lie

DO THEY DO DRUGS? ya she’ll honestly jst.... tke whatever someone gives her she’s very ://// impressionable n up fr anything

DRINK? — ya way..... way too mch n often

SMOKE CIGARETTES? — non merci!

SMOKE WEED? — again ya bt usually jst if ppl offer she doesn’t buy fr herself

WHERE WERE THEY BORN? WHERE DID THEY GROW UP? — her mum went into labour bkstage at a rock concert in nyc bt her family home is in albany n she grew up sort of like.... between there n nyc n LA bc her dad’s company hd studios dwn there

DO THEY PLAN TO GO TO GRAD SCHOOL? — no

WHAT ARE THEIR PLANS POST-GRADUATION? — lana doesn’t believe in plans. prefers spontaneous. deciding things on whims

PARENTS NAMES — richard n victoria (rich n vic)

DO THEY HAVE SIBLINGS? NAMES & AGES? — caleb jameson!!!! holds his severely depressed hand. he’s 25 or mayb 26 now?? much to contemplate.

DO THEY HAVE PETS? TYPES & NAMES? — no pets lana’s so forgetful n irresponsible she’d completely blank on feeding it n get rly sad when she realised so it’s jst.... best nt to...... even tho she does Love animals

ARE THEY RELIGIOUS? WHAT IS THEIR RELIGION IF SO? — no altho she does tlk to her brother’s best friend tommy in her dreams n in some ways tht feels kind of religious like he’s....... still here w her trying to keep her safe in some way....... she wld nvr say tht bt she likes to think so

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE THEY SLEPT WITH? — god i genuinely cld Not even estimate.... it’s easily in the hundreds...... she hs ://// a problem

WHAT VEHICLE DO THEY DRIVE? IF THEY DON’T DRIVE, HOW DO THEY TRAVEL AROUND TOWN? — if she ws gna get a car it’d b a pastel convertible cadillac she’s obsessed w them she thinks they’re the coolest car.... bt she’s an awful driver. honestly she typically gets driven around everywhere by ppl..... or ubers

DESCRIBE THEIR FASHION — luvs red so a lot of tht bt honestly jst a lot of colour in general altho mainly warm tones...... penny lane style jackets, pastel faux fur coats, lots of slip dresses, corduroy flares, crochet tops, skimpy sequin halters, lots of sheer, glitter, red cowboy boots, go-go boots, any form of seventies platform, jst like.... lots of statement pieces.... LOTS of strange sunglasses elton john style..... sometimes jst randomly accessorises w stickers on random body parts...... doesn’t believe in being overdressed jst wears whtever she wants whenever she wants

DO THEY PREFER TO BE BEHIND THE CAMERA OR IN FRONT OF IT? — in front

DO THEY BELIEVE ANY OF THE STORIES ABOUT RADCLIFFE? WHICH ONES? — no lana prefers to mke up her own like she hs this whole one abt the trees where she thinks they hv souls in them n mkes up stories fr the diff lives the trees lived......... hers r nvr rly tht scary just fun n whimsical.....

DO THEY THINK THE MOTHMAN IS HOT? — yes

A QUOTE THAT DESCRIBES THEM —  “She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.”

A SONG THAT THEY WOULD RELATE TO — disco biscuit love by the jezabels ://////

#ruhqtask001 #ruhqtask #this is Not sexily formatted or anything bt......... im jst a mere woman................ of simple means.......... flings it