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theletterunread · 1 year

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Sam’s Dad

The idea must have come from the internet. Or TV. There was no real-life inspiration I could see. Nobody else in his school had had such a birthday party, and besides, Sam brought it up at bedtime, the time of night at which his day at school is always most obliviated. I should have asked who put it in his head, but the request left me too unmoored to talk, and his mother’s reaction set us on a different path.

“I want to invite everyone to the party.”

“Everyone?” said Anita. “In the world?”

“No!” said Sam, laughing and thrashing around under his blankets. “Everyone in class.”

“Oh! Okay. How many kids are in your class?”

“12 girls and 11 boys.”

“Including you?”

“Yeah.”

“Which makes…?”

Sam scrunched his eyes, but this was just for dramatic effect. He knew the answer. “23!” he yelled, kicking his legs hard enough to untuck the sheets.

“Okay, okay,” said Anita. “Calm down, crazy boy. We can do that.”

“Well, hold on,” I said, tucking in the sheets. Having some business to do with my hands helped disguise the nervousness in my voice. “23 is a lot of people. When they’re all here, you might realize you really only wanted your friends.”

“Everyone’s a friend in Ms. Bretillo’s class,” replied Sam.

That sounded like it came from a banner that was hanging over his classroom’s door – the kind of relentless messaging that you’re powerless not to absorb – but I didn’t say so. Instead, I asked, “Are you doing this because you think you’ll get more presents?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“It’s too mean when some people don’t get invitations.”

Anita gave Sam a squeeze and a kiss for this, and I felt the situation slipping out of my control. “Well, your mom and I will talk about it…”

“Oh, relax,” said Anita. “We can handle it. We’re not planning a wedding. It’s an eighth birthday.”

“But that’s a lot of kids to schedule, a lot of food to prepare.”

“They’re just gonna run around the yard for an afternoon. We’ll tell the parents not to expect any meal, and everyone will get a little piece of cake.”

Anita cinched the blankets tighter around Sam, kissed him again, and left. I wasn’t ready to end the discussion, but no more arguments came to mind. When I bent down to give Sam a kiss, I noticed, for the first time, that my heart was pounding.

I hoped that the notion would be forgotten overnight, like so many childish passions are, but it continued to be talked about. By the weekend, Anita had dug out the school directory and was using it to prepare 22 invitations. Sam wanted to write an individual message to each kid, but Anita had convinced him, in the interest of saving time, to settle for a form message with his wet-ink signature at the bottom of each.

Sam’s signatures (printed, not in cursive) always started flat, but bent upwards by the end of the M. And he’d got the idea in his head that all letters needed serifs (I was there when it happened: he was observing the font in his Superfudge book), so he spent a while adding tails all over each signature, which slowed down considerably the assembly line of printing, folding, and stuffing invitations into envelopes. This was a habit that manifested often in Sam’s behavior – hyper-focusing on details while ignoring the big picture.

I noticed it whenever he was trying to recount some scene or joke from a movie or TV show or video game. Rather than just getting to the point, Sam would feel the need to lay out every bit of irrelevant context or backstory. So when he finally reached his point, his audience was totally lost and often annoyed. I hasten to say that I was never annoyed by Sam. But he had habits that those who didn’t love him unconditionally could reasonably find tedious. I’m thinking of the way he’d bounce up and down and cheer at the slightest good turn of fortune (an offer of a snack of animal crackers, the television airing a regularly scheduled broadcast of his favorite show), and of his emotional nakedness, which kids find just as uncomfortable as adults.

These were behaviors I remember seeing in unpopular kids when I was in school. Not that I was Mr. Magnetism, but I was accepted by the crowd, and I had specific friends beyond that. I hadn’t seen that in Sam. He wasn’t being shut out of any group, but he was only a participant as a generic part of a group, if that makes sense. He could be swept up into any activity that involved a lot of kids, but when individual selections were made, Sam was never a top choice. Even when he did wind up in a one-on-one dynamic (a sleepover, playing some invented game on the jungle gym), it never grew into a lasting friendship. My son was always just a seat-filler.

Some days after the invitations were handed out, I was waiting with a dozen other parents at the border of the schoolyard. The bell was still a few minutes from releasing the students. I always tried to arrive for pickup as close to Sam’s emergence as I could, so I wouldn’t wind up in conversation with the other parents. But the stoplights were all green that day, so I was early, and wound up talking with Aldin, as bad a turn of fortune as there could be.

Aldin was the father of Richie, who, since kindergarten, had been in the same subdivision of each grade as Sam. This meant Aldin and I were often proximate at recitals and art shows and parent-teacher nights. He was a repellant pest who thought it was funny to whisper putdowns about the kids (his, mine, and the rest), holding, say, their efforts at clay sculptures to the standards of Rodin, or nudging me knowingly every time somebody dropped a line in The Wizard of Oz. He was afraid that the children’s failures (and I say “failures” only to accept Aldin’s premise) were somehow going to reflect poorly on him. His ego was bound up in his kid’s success, and it was astounding that he couldn’t see that.

To my horror, he began by bringing up the party invitation. I was certain he was going to make some crack about Sam’s handwriting, but instead, he just asked, “Who’s coming to this shindig?”

“Who’s coming?” I replied. “Or who’s invited?”

“Whichever. Give me the answer that sounds better.”

“Everyone was invited, but I’m not sure how many––”

“Oh, you’re afraid it’s gonna be some no-show event?” I didn’t answer this out loud, but it must have been written on my face, because he went on. “I mean, I get it, you don’t want it to be some traumatic disaster. But don’t sweat it. Kids are gonna go to a party.”

“We’ll see,” I said, hoping to sound airy. But it came out doom-stricken, and Aldin recognized that.

“Hey.” He actually put his hand on my shoulder. “Richie will be there. I’ll get him hyped for it. He’ll spread that to the other kids. And I’ll talk to the other parents too. You’ll have a crowd.”

I felt this deserved thanks, but offering that to Aldin would have been an admission of feelings I didn’t wish to share with him. So I vamped by clearly my throat and pretending to be lost in thought until our kids came out of the building and I could leave.

Nobody arrived early for the party, but I was the only one to see this for the red alert it was. Sam and Anita merely spent the last half hour before 2pm stacking and restacking the board game boxes that had been hauled out of the closet. Though the bulk of the action was expected to take place in the backyard, where we’d strewn every ball and paddle and frisbee and water gun we had, Sam wanted there to be an option for “the quiet kids,” as he dubbed them. So while he and his mother tried to find the most appealing arrangement of boxes, I silently calculated how small a party would have to be to foreclose the possibility of even a single guest messing up the time and arriving early.

When 2 o’clock rolled around and there was still nobody there, Anita distracted herself by bringing out the food that she’d intended to save for midway through the party. There were cheese puffs and blue corn chips as well as a touchingly naïve platter of celery sticks and baby carrots. It may have been nothing more than my literally hypersensitive mood, but the crunch of her bitten vegetables echoed loudly though the house. I stayed away from the food myself, though eating would have been at least some kind of distraction. I was afraid I might throw a plate across the room.

After an hour of waiting, Anita spent 20 minutes out in the yard alone, with her face turned up to the sky. She was ready to claim, if asked, that she was checking the weather, wondering if some threatening clouds had blown in that might be discouraging guests. But it was uninterruptedly sunny out, and anyone could see that, even from indoors. She didn’t want Sam to see her tears, whereas I was reaching the stage of fury where I began to think that it was better shared, that Sam and Anita would be better off raging at the absent guests rather than letting the pervading mood mutate into unhappy self-reflection.

In the first hour-and-a-half of waiting, I only saw Sam look at the clock once. He kept his head down, working on a Lego set that had been gifted by his grandparents. Not building it – he could have finished that in 15 minutes – but doing everything else: sorting the pieces by size or by color, stacking every piece into one tower, pouring the pieces into or out of the box. When the tension of waiting for him to say something became too great, I walked to the other side of the room, where I could better see his face. His expression was unbothered – he appeared transfixed by his building blocks.

The silence got to Anita as well, and she eventually blurted out, “I don’t know where everyone is.”

Without looking up, Sam said, “We’ll see.” Though I heard him perfectly clearly, I asked him to repeat himself. He did, but his tone was no less opaque the second time.

At five, when Anita decided there was no point in not carving up the cake, she took Sam into the kitchen and I went to the car with the school directory in hand. I backed out of the driveway without looking and drove fast through the neighborhood. I thought of kids playing carelessly on the streets and didn’t slow down.

Aldin and his family lived on Larkspur Court, nowhere I’d ever been, but I deduced it was in the neighborhood by the reservoir, with the other flower-named streets. The trip there wasn’t long, yet still by the time I pulled into his driveway, I had worked out my entire speech: everything I would said when Aldin opened the door, and alternate responses to every pathetic defense he might offer. Normally, rage clouded my thinking, but this time, it was some kind of muse. I even had ideas for how to deflect his wife, if he tried to hide behind her.

What I wasn’t prepared for was his son Richie opening the door. Still, I only hesitated for a moment before barging into the house, ready to launch into my script. “Where’s your dad?” I asked.

“He’s not here,” said Richie.

“Then where’s your mom?”

“I don’t know.”

He hadn’t reacted at all to my angry knocking or to the way I stomped across the threshold as soon as the door had opened. He was either precociously unintimidated by grown-ups, or just too dumb to pick up on my violent energy. “Look, I’m not a burglar,” I said, though he didn’t seem to need the reassurance. “I’m just looking for your parents. I’m Sam’s dad.”

“Oh,” said Richie. “They’re not here.”

I looked around the house. It was nice, but only in the way a staged home is nice. Nothing seemed lived-in. From where I stood, I could see into a den without a single depression in any of the couch cushions.

“You don’t know where your parents are?” I said. “When did they leave?”

“They were gone when I woke up.”

“Did you call the police?”

“I don’t have a phone.” This was bizarre, but I looked around the place and saw no landline. And I trusted that he knew the facts of the house better than I did. “It’s okay, though,” he went on. “They leave me alone a lot. And I’m allowed to make my own dinner. I can make you an egg.”

His hands were grimy and gunky, but that didn’t seem to be appropriate grounds to turn down that offer in this context, so I let Richie lead me into the kitchen. He took an egg carton out of the refrigerator, then went rooting through the cabinets for cookware. I remembered a morning when I asked Sam what he wanted for breakfast. He didn’t have a preference, and when I offered to cook him an egg, he shouted “Yeah!” and bounced around so excitedly that he hit his head on a kitchen cabinet door.

“It’s Sam’s birthday party today,” I said. When Richie’s only response was another “Oh,” I felt disappointed, but wasn’t sure why. Then I realized: I wanted him to give me permission to leave.

What Richie pulled out of the cabinet wasn’t a pot or a pan, but a cheap contraption I’d seen advertised on TV: the Egg Wave. He cracked an egg (deftly, for a little kid) into a plastic cup, sealed it, and placed it into the microwave. As he punched in the cook time, I could already feel the vomit rising in my throat. Not just for the disgusting meal that awaited me, but for the shame that came from recognizing that only the world’s worst father would find himself here.

#short story #birthday party #elementary school #fathers #mothers #sons #abandonment #egg wave

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kittyburgerface · 1 year

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my little soyrunners

#wojakified #splatoon 3 #splatoon #splatoon art #salmon run #salmon run next wave #GET THOSE EGGS!!!!!#forget the bosses ok!#inkling #octoling #my splatoon art

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kollector-of-stims · 1 year

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So I recently found this kind of stim toy I'm fond of!

Tsunameez Eggs! I got the shark from series 1! Five below had many of them, and so many looked very nice!

They're like those balls with fluid or objects inside, but egg-shaped. Very cool how they have a thick plastic texture instead of a glass texture, so if you drop them, they don't break!

I love this one, but I'm SO tempted to get more and display them somewhere...

#stim toy #stimming #tsunameez eggs #gifs #mine #shark #blue #water #egg #tw hands #tw waves #visual stim #waves #floating

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beelzebubsis · 5 months

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i think one aspect of bbh's character in purgatory that often goes unnoticed is the huge difference in his well-being before and during purgatory. prior to purgatory, he was not doing good. He went through a huge depressive arc resulting in him losing all his colour, which he only managed to overcome when he began actively searching for the eggs, resulting in him kidnapping the fed worker. and while it was a bad thing he did, it was the only seemly progress he had actually made towards finding the eggs. but when that started to go no where he started torturing himself with the soul vultures because he felt guilty for his actions and when he was constantly being reminded of the absence of his eggs. he felt like if the bad action he took manged to help him he would need to do worse things so the soul vultures were his self made punishment for the things he was doing and about to do and if we look more deeply into his character it was his punishment for failing to protect the eggs. the more the soul vultures attacked him the more wounds and cuts he had all over his body and the more blue was spreading all over him. (a lot of fans theorise that he's got a soul infection and that the blue is actually his blood but he's infected so its showing as blue but that's not really been confirmed). he went through the psychotic break which i believe was the beginning of his character losing a huge chunk of his sense of reasoning and his ability to separate reality from his own delusions and then further isolating him from others because he began not trusting others and believing the worst.

before purgatory started bbh was fully prepared to do worse things for the sake of the eggs (see his forest burring convo with foolish) but then purgatory happen.

and suddenly everyone was doing horrible things for the sake of the eggs. i think the biggest reason why bbh's character felt comfort regarding purgatory is that he didn't feel alone in his horrible actions and he felt more justified. dapper had explicitly told him to do whatever he could, the other parents and his team were talking about winning and strategizing. he didn't have access to his soul vultures and he and most of his team viewed his actions as necessities to saving the eggs. moreover soulfire ended up being a huge support network for bbh, because he finally felt like he was sharing the burden of his horrible actions with others. they were all paranoid and hiding away like bbh had been. it makes sense that from his perspective it would be comforting to feel like people understood him.

but now post purgatory he's got his eggs back. he doesn't regret his actions because at the end of the day he saw them as necessary to get the eggs back and there wouldn't be any point in regretting those actions now especially when he had resolved himself to do horrible things before purgatory had even started. plus he self imposed the punishments for those actions to begin with and there are huge consequences for him now because of that. he's started to get his colour back because the eggs have returned. but he's still covered in the wounds from the soul vultures and the potential infection, the injury on his head is seemingly getting bigger and he now has the radiation poisoning on his back from the nuke. his first few streams back we saw him struggling against his character reincarnation, or to clarify his death, and we later learn through his conversations with pomme and dapper that he doesn't want to reincarnate because he'll lose the ability to recall specific memories and he's scared of forgetting the eggs, which explains why on the first streams back when we weren't sure what had happened to dapper and the other eggs, he had no memories because he didn't see any reason to keep them without the eggs so he wasn't fighting his death. implying that the eggs are his reasons for fighting against the reincarnation and why when he's around them he's able to recall and remember again but he's started to cough and suffer instead. so now he's faced with the moral dilemma of keeping his memories of everyone and the eggs but continue to suffer in a dying rotting body OR to reincarnate and forget everyone.

plus we now have the mysterious ghost and "old friend" invading his home and leaving him ominous message so he doesn't feel safe. so what does he do? he goes back to when he did feel safe or at least comfort and support. which was the soulfire base, because at least there he felt like he was sharing the suffering. i believe that the "old friend" is someone involved with his reincarnation which is why hes avoiding it but thats an entirely different post.

holy shit how did this get so long D: but yeah this is why i think bbh has such different feelings towards purgatory compared to others and why he keeps taking people to the recreation of the soulfire base. like always i'd love to hear any more interpretations.

heres another tik tok

#qsmp #qsmp bbh #qsmp badboyhalo #qsmp eggs #qsmp dapper #qsmp angst #tw torture #tw death #this wasnt suppose to be so long but i saw a post about bbh consequences and my brain sent off shock waves #just have alot of feelings about bbh arc of suffering and the justifications of his actions #cause i like characters that are self sacrificing for selfish reasons #its a good juxaposition :)

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blacksm1le · 17 days

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Re-egginator brainrot (I turned Herbert into my curry I am so sorry guys I had to kill him)

#The last chunk of my sanity waved goodbye #I hit the eggs against each other... Danyolk was superior #brainrotting so hard rn #reanimator #danbert #herbert west #dan cain

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cat-mentality · 6 months

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I will NOT accept hot takes about Team Bolas killing some damn half assed statue as if they killed the eggs themselves when y'all mfs have been defending the creation of a new appendix at the Geneva Convention by all the war crimes committed against them.

I would be more sympathetic IF they were actually alive, like Barriguinha Mole and her weird siblings, but it was a damn statue carved to resemble a Frankstein monster of their children. Ain't no fucking way anyone in any team got attached to anything but the idea that those rocks symbolize.

And I would too be more sympathetic IF Green Team didn't kick start the whole thing by attacking Blue, you can't cry "they stopped before killing it!!!!" after the fact because honestly? It doesn't matter. Because sure they stopped, but at the same time they began it didn't they? How was Blue supposed to trust they would stop, how was Red? The higher powers were the ones to take the egg statue out for good but they wouldn't have done it if Green had not attacked it and left it so damaged.

No moral high ground to be found in Purgatory only fucked up people trying to survive and have their children back while also stabbing and plotting to fuck over everyone they know.

#good night here i come with the controversial take of #FUCK those statues #qsmp purgatory #and also i think Green should have went for the kill #my problem is Not them attacking the egg I think they should have done worse rp wise #my problem are the hot takes like Red is waving flags written 'kill the children!!!!!!' and supporting the death of the eggs because of this #they are just playing the game #exactly like the others did on all the other days

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autoboros · 5 months

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Okay well fuck me I guess

#big run moment from . what. 5 am #i kept getting dcs but its all okay because one of the few games i didnt get a dc i got gold #never thought I'd see the day I'd be thankful for glowflies (63 eggs on 1 wave)#splatoon 3 #splatoon #big run

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cairavende · 6 months

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Worm Arc 11 Interludes thoughts:

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Ok. Just in order I think. Sorry for the chaos.

Started off with puppies. I was happy.

Then the puppies started getting a little more violent than needed. I was less happy.

Then Victoria got clowned on a little and I was little bit more happy.

Then the unkillable naked zebra lady showed up everything kinda went downhill. For everyone.

Bitch do not join the supervillain serial killer group, please and thank you.

Seriously though, The Siberian is a bit scary. Just, completely invincible as far as anyone can tell. And super strong.

Theo is having a bad day. And unless someone takes care of Jack Slash for him he's gonna have a bad few years.

Jack Slash is such a poser oh my god. Dude. Come one. You aren't all that.

Also. Jack. Do not toss a loaded baby! That baby had a full diaper. You toss that baby and you are liable to have a containment breach. Speaking from experience, you do not want a containment breach. (Also just don't throw babies of course.)

I hope Theo gets cool powers and is able to become a super amazing hero like he dreams of. On the plus side, probably gonna be lots of opportunities for trigger events coming up. On the minus side, he didn't trigger when Jack Slash was planning on killing him so I don't know if he's gonna be able to.

They were obviously going to go for Labyrinth. She has such amazing powers for mass terror. Though I guess Burnscar never tried to actually recruit her. I assume that was the plan though.

Also Burnscar needs to stop excusing her actions. Just be evil or don't be evil. You don't get to be evil and say it's not your fault (that sure will come up again in these interludes).

I fucking LOVED the description of how Labyrinths powers work. Just the details of everything. So good!

Fucking Colin. Of course they had to go for you. Why can't you just go away and leave my robot daughter alone?

Mannequin is fucking WILD. Like, god damn. Those are sure choices you made. Helps you be creepy as shit though. And get through air vents.

Mannequin writing out "U ME" to Pocketknife Man by laying keyboard keys down on the table one at a time has cursed meet-cute energy.

In the end, Colin survives cause my robot daughter saves him. And I guess she's gonna tell him the truth about being an AI. Fiiiiiiine. I will be polite to Colin if he comes over to dinner. He still needs to apologize to my other daughter though.

Also I'm sure glad the Slaughterhouse Nine won't have any use for the magic pocketknife that can cut through anything that Mannequin took. No worries at all I'm sure. It won't do jack shit for them. Might as well just slash the idea and toss the knife out.

Cool. Some Nazis died. That's great!

Not enough though. Disappointed in Shatterbird.

But if one good thing can come of this whole Slaughterhouse Nine thing, maybe Hookwolf can die. I'm not holding my breath though.

Shatterbird has a very interesting power set. Being specifically glass focused like that. Definitely can see how she would terrorize a city.

Dinah PoV. DINAH POV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok well first off, I obviously hated Coil for Dinah already. Enough that I don't really know if the Dinah PoV can technically make me hate him more. But that said, I hate him more. WTF.

The description of her power was so NEAT though! Had a minor moment of "oh hey this paragraph of this precog talking about her power works inside her head is an almost perfect description of how my brain works" which was wild. I don't actually get to see the future though, which is a major difference.

She can actually just full blow see a possible future holy shit! Wow. Like it hurts and she hates it but it's still crazy.

Also I guessed that Crawler was going to come for Traveler in a Vault (that is Noelle's cape name until I am told different) after the Bitch interlude. I was very happy I got that right since I really knew almost nothing about either.

So Crawler just basically can't die and gets stronger every time he gets hurt. I wonder how long it will take him to reach Endbringer level power?

And Traveler in a Vault is just a large monster that is always hungry and can be driven to the point of eating people. That sucks a lot for her.

Also Leviathan came after her too huh? Well that's probably fine and won't matter in the future.

Regent's sister is worse than he is. That's impressive! Like, not good impressive. But impressive.

Getting real close to the "can't exist" physic power set. I guess it's not quite it though.

She should keep a better eye on her phone battery.

AMY DALLON! I knew it would be you.

I knew you were destined to be a tragedy from the moment I met you. You were always going to become a villain. So once I knew the Nine were recruiting it was a guarantee that you'd be recruited.

Specifically, that you'd be recruited by Bonesaw. She is an artist and obviously she is obsessed over the art you could make together.

Holy shit though that chapter.

Lets see. FUCK CAROL. Victoria gets some excuses, she's a kid, she's following her mom's example, etc. But FUCK CAROL. You are partially responsible for what Amy is about to become.

Despite being terrified, Amy seemed to have a dark fascination with everything Bonesaw was doing and saying. Really listened as Bonesaw explained things.

The more detailed view of what Amy's power does is crazy. She really can do just about anything to someone.

“Why not fix your dad?” is where Bonesaw won. It's about 3/5 of the way through the chapter. And she won at that point. That was the killing blow. The rest of the chapter, the remaining 3.5k or so words, is watching Amy bleed out to drive the point home. It is Panacea's death monologue. It is beautiful and tragic and amazing.

All that said, since she is losing anyway, is it bad for me to want more of Bonesaw's notes? SHE HAS LORE! GIVE IT TO ME!

Dad at least seems pretty good. He made the perfect response after getting healed. Unfortunately she was already gone.

AND THERE IT IS. THERE IS THE THAT FINAL STEP. Fucking rewire your adopted sisters mind to have romantic feelings for you. No you don't get to say it was an accident! You chose to do it. Holy shit Amy. You are going to be an amazing (terrifying) villain.

Callback to Burnscar and blaming her power for her actions.

If Worm was a Disney movie Amy would end up with the best song, 100%. Hellfire or similar levels.