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beenpxshedaside · 6 years

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My Brother’s Keeper - Lost Souls AU - Part 3

I hope you like this. Reminder that I am up for talking about stuff if anyone wants to send asks or whatever (also I have work tomorrow evening but I’m already working on Part 4 so I should still be good to keep up)

tags: @memequeenjojo, @valkyreskye, @thatrandomweirdo88, @lulahood, @lifelikefin, @thatoneyoutubekid

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Part 1 - Part 2

The next couple of visits go in much the same way. Every few days, the doctor turns up to ask his questions and the Author does everything he can to be unhelpful. It kind of feels like they’re getting nowhere and the doctor is beginning to wonder if he should just give up and tell the Host he’s done with....whatever the hell this is supposed to be.

Then one day about two weeks into this experiment (or whatever it is) he turns up to find the Author already sat at the table waiting for him. He’s slouched partially across it and when it comes to answering the questions, the Author’s more open and frank, going so far as to admit that his shoulder’s been aching the last few days and that he’s been having trouble sleeping but no, he still won’t talk about it.

Just as with every other time, the doctor writes everything down in his book, not oblivious to the Author’s staring, watching every pen stroke extremely carefully as he writes.

“Subtlety, thy name is not Author.” Once he’s finished, the doctor puts the pen down on top of his open book and looks up. “You’re staring.”

“I know.” The Author gives a half-shrug with a slight smirk like its some kind of secret joke. “I ran out of books yesterday.”

The doctor glances over to the shredded papers and binding that litter the floor near to the bookshelf. “I noticed. Not good stories?”

“Terrible.”

“And yet you read every last one of them. And shredded them.”

The Author shrugs. “No pen, can’t edit them properly. So I just took out the bad bits.”

From what the doctor can see of the books’ remains, there were mostly bad bits. “You said there’s a difference between books and stories...” he prompts. Maybe since the Author is more open today, he can get an answer.

The Author carefully taps his fingers on the table in thought before moving to stand. Crossing over to the messy reading nook, he gathers random pages and two bindings, one practically empty, and the other with its contents mostly intact. When he returns to the table, he takes the most put together one and places it in between them.

“This is a book. It’s precise and clear cut.” he points to the corners of the front cover. “Everything fits neatly between these four corners with obvious write ins for sequels sprinkled liberally over everything. It’s boring, it’s dull, it’s predictable, and it never changes.”

He takes the random pages and aligns them in a sloppy way before placing them in the mostly empty binding.

“This is a story. It’s a mess. It rarely makes sense. There isn’t always solutions, and nothing wraps up in a nice little bow. It’s the kind of thing passed down by bards in the olden days, ever changing, never the same. And there isn’t just one, there’s millions, and they all interweave to form the fabric of life as we know it.” He points to the clean one “Bad.” He points to the messy one. “Good.”

The doctor looks between the two bindings. It’s a pretty good explanation but he inclines his head slightly before he speaks. “That seems a little pretentious.” The Author glares. Clearly this is not the response he’s expecting and the doctor decides to show a bit more tact. “Surely there’s some good books.”

“Some of them have potential but they’re trimmed to sell. Stories are unruly and aren’t restricted. You never know where they’re going to go.”

“So you write stories, not books?”

That seems to stop the Author short, staring blankly at the doctor before he stands up, abandoning the books on the table as he moves towards the bed. “You should probably go before the Host starts to wonder if I’ve tied you up and taken you hostage.”

He frowns. Sure this is their longest conversational interaction but it’s not even been half an hour yet. “Do you not like talking about your writing?”

The Author stops, standing next to the bed for a while before he turns, raising his arm to show off an old bronze bracelet around his wrist. A matching one encircles the other wrist. “You see these?” he asks. The doctor nods. “I made these. I created them to suppress the magic of Wilford-fucking-Warfstache. If I even try to use my powers, experience dictates that I could very well wind up driving myself over the edge of insanity.” He turns his back again, his voice becoming sombre, quiet. “There is only one person who put these on me, and he won’t take them off until I’m dead.”

It takes a few moments but then it strikes the doctor exactly what the Author is saying. “....you don’t write any more.”

“..........No.”

The silence between them is strained and uncomfortable and the doctor decides now is probably the time for him to leave. He packs his pen and notebook into his satchel, unable to resist the urge to glance over at the Author who’s sat down on the bed, staring off into space. Clearly they managed to strike a nerve and despite himself, the doctor can’t help but feel bad about it.

“Until next time.” The Author calls as he leaves.

Part 4

#Dr Iplier #The Author #; Lost Souls AU #; Lost Souls #My Brother's Keeper | Lost Souls

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zzzoloft · 4 years

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Ink Reflux

Do you ever feel like you must act a certain way? Maybe you think about how you’re acting sometimes, and realize you do it most of the day. “They” say it’s important to keep plans when you’re feeling bad. I feel as though I’m speaking one sentence while thinking another. Small-talking while I choke down a thick, gelatinous black ink that won’t stop rising up my throat. Another gross bodily function to pretend isn’t happening. Doesn’t it correlate with our words? We hide our humanity to make ourselves tolerable to other humans. Smile when I’m frowning. “Good, how are you?” when I’m thinking death might be easier than telling my loved ones to just give up on me. Sometimes it feels the greatest apology would be to get rid of myself. I feel poison, but some people still want to keep consuming me. Does alcohol feel sad when you binge on it and then try to cheat your way out of a hangover? I tell you I’m bad, you say I’m good and fun. But when it’s time to pay my toll you just accept it and forget it next time you decide to associate with me.

Eventually most people get better. They distance themselves or leave. They pick the parts of me they want to keep. The part of me that congratulates them or lifts them up or tells them jokes. The part of me that feels inferior and will always look at them as something greater unless they’re currently pissing me off. Because I really do want you all to feel empowered to live your lives authentically. With or without me. They may keep the parts of me that serve as a means to make them feel better about their appearance, career, their level of knowledge, their desirability, their popularity or their lack of friends. And when I write shit like this, their better judgment. Maybe they keep me around to give a fuck, so they can say things to see a look of pain flash over my face before I say something supportive. So they can do things and know that it hits my heart like a knife. And when I care it’s really there. I try to pull it out of me but I wake up with a shortness of breath and a tightness in my chest when I lose someone. I frantically apologize and try to make it better. I ruin it again. Remember that scene in Edward Scissorhands where he saves the kid from getting hit by a car but then frantically tears him up with his hands trying to comfort him? I do sometimes feel like fleeing back to my old black castle, far from the colorful cookie-cutter town. Because the damage is more important than the intention. It’s tangible. And you can see the pattern.

I’ve ruined friendships since I was a kid. My mom once yelled at me for playing in her room with our neighbors. She said we could never do that again. I told my neighbors we couldn’t be friends. Was I evil at 7? I like to think I just didn’t know better, but maybe I already had a knack for making things worse. Keeping things black or white because I couldn’t process grey, couldn’t emotionally handle it. Maybe in my mind, setting boundaries was the same as being useless as a friend.

My next best friend was spending the night, and started playing with my sister and I felt excluded. She and my sister were staying up playing NeoPets into the night and I wanted to go to sleep on the foldout couch with my friend and make weird faces in the dark and talk about random stuff. My friend wanted to stay up with my sister. I woke up my mom and told her, and my mom yelled at them. I was embarrassed but grateful my mom stood up for me, or so I thought. That friend never came over again. This was the Summer before 6th grade. My mom helped me make my friend an apology gift. A little paper box that had once held my mom’s business cards, I cut up pictures of me and my friend and glued them around the box. My mom gave me a necklace with a gold-dipped seashell on the end. My mom didn’t like jewelry much, and my friend seemed to like the beach. Her mom took us there a few times, at least. I’m sure I packed in a long apology note written in a sparkly Jelly Roll pen. I had a new acquaintance deliver the gift to my old best friend since they were in a class together. My new acquaintance said that my friend made a scene and threw it all away in front of everyone. I remember walking up to my old friend at some point either before or after this at middle school. I was alone and she had a new friend on each side. The message was clear. I wasn’t going to fit the mold of the new friend group she had in mind.

As a teen I was used by friends. A house where there were no rules and adults never checked on us. A ride to a gas station or drug dealer’s house if “we” needed it. A friend to make fun of and exclude when you weren’t feeling as popular or desirable as you wanted to. A friend whose stepdad had drugs to sell them. Those “friends” always needed to be high or have access to dick to have a good time. My company was never enough. I cut off contact with Friend B when Friend A told me that friend B molested her own nephew when Friend A was spending the night. I kept Friend A around until my mid-twenties when she betrayed me for about the 20th time and I realized, I was her life-line and she was the fucking disaster waiting to strike any time I built some semblance of a life. Who knew if what she said about Friend B was even true.

As I got older I found some friends that seemed to actually have things in common with me. They were funny and creative and loved music the way that I did. I lived my life in a free-love type way back then and made myself more enemies. The mirage of fitting in was just that, an illusion. There never was a real place for me. I was always too sad, too fat, too slutty. I’m sure there’s more I did wrong. I felt aloof. I felt hungry. I felt seen for the first time in so many ways. I tried to take it all in. I hurt people in my ambitions for love and attention.

I spent the next 5 years or so weaving in and out of old close friendships and chasing men who mostly didn’t want me. I would meet people I admired and be way too scared to approach them or be near them. They were too smart, too composed, always too “something”.

I learned that people didn’t like the artistic and reckless version of me. I became too ashamed to ever talk about my belief in myself again. That was for perfectly talented people who deserved it. Or, that was for naive people. That was for people who spend their life dreaming and amounting to nothing. I “got my shit together”. I learned to hide things. I changed my goals to boring and safe.

My next group of friends was inherited and I realized the first thing people wanted to know was what I went to school for and where, or what advanced literature did I want to discuss over craft beers? I spent about a year or two shutting the fuck up in case somebody found out how dumb and uneducated I was/am. Slowly I discovered there were a few people in the group who didn’t care or accidentally overlooked my shortcomings, liked artsy things and dancing and getting drunk and embarrassing. These are my favorites.

I still feel there’s a part of me that isn’t home anywhere. A part of me that comes out in the worst ways at the worst times. I feel like flashes of my worst thoughts, the ones that scare me, are the first I let out at people when I lose control. I don’t try too hard to justify them because that could reveal even more of my struggles or flaws. I just pretend they never happened. People want to read into the way you explain things or don’t. Some people just accept you either way, knowing that the ghouls in your mind get along with some of theirs. Most people won’t say it out loud or validate you about that, they’ll share a few years later that they related to that thing you posted. That thing that you thought nobody read and since writing is the way you try to express yourself, made you feel rejected and lonely again. I guess I hoped that if I shared only neutral or positive thoughts with people that I would suddenly be likable or popular. But it remains that I usually have 2-3 people willing to tolerate my shit, or maybe they really do understand.

It’s taken me until 30 to realize I can’t swing back into a special place with people of the past. It might feel like it for a day or a week. Other people move on. I can’t expect that I can just suddenly be important and vulnerable with old friends. This took far too long to click with me, I was always expecting more from people than I deserved. It was more painful not seeing that there was something between enemies and best friends, and wondering why I couldn’t get the latter to click into place like it used to. It’s liberating to know we can just exist in mutual support and peace.

I see those quotes that say the beautiful souls are the ones that are broken and choose to be soft instead. I became bitter and hard. Those quotes make me feel fucking useless.

#lonely #bitter #dark

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