#mr. fibreglass | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

inlocusmads · 2 years

Text

Jane's Theory of Everything

It is Jane's first day as the newest addition to the diagnostics team and she's already missing in action.

Featuring: Jane Fletcher, Ethan Ramsey and Yasmin from IT (OC) from Open Heart, Choices.

Word Count: 1.8k | No Warnings/General | References: Book 2, Ch 1

A/N: This is Jane in her pure element. I had to write this.

"You're not officially part of the A-Team until you get your own desk. So here you go." Baz beamed.

Jane turned her head around to see an old mahogany desk. On top was some kind of fibreglass. She was already given a desktop - something definitely outdated. The IT Department hadn't run their routine checks yet. And she was given a pencil-and-pen case; a tall white mug with stationary already filled in for her.

"It's great. Thank you very much."

"And you get your own chair. It's great, isn't it?"

"Very great."

"Well, if you need anything, you can--"

She seated herself on the chair, peering intently at the computer.

"The software needs updating. It is still using a very old system. I can see that because when I open up Word to type in, the fonts and the layout is something from the 2010s. Has nobody updated the system yet? And I don't think there's any firewall protection either, so our data can be compromised. I read that in a blog two years ago. I wasn't very good with computers, so I had to change things. It is a great blog. Called At-Home Computing For Stupidheads. Despite the aggressive name, it is very helpful."

"Yasmin from IT can help." he suggested.

"It's no problem. I like retro layouts. It reminds me of the time I read this book called Windows 101. It was in my med school library. And it had the most exquisite font system and layout. I assumed the writer, James M. Free, and his editing team would’ve prepared the manuscript on Word, because there are some typefaces unique to Word."

"Right."

"It's interesting." Jane had a smile on her face. "How things work."

"How things -- work?"

"I can use my new ID card anywhere, right?" she piped up.

"Yes. You wouldn't need a written-up anything. You can just walk in and demand a candy bar from the nurses if you want to." Baz scratched his stubble. "But I don't recommend you do it. Those -- nurses-- they're a different breed of human. I doubt they're actually human. No human can possess all of that-- sass."

"Great, then."

"Is everyone here?" Dr Ramsey asked. He took a headcount. There was Baz Mirani, manning the computer, June Hirata going through the case files of the day and himself, Ethan Ramsey.

"Where's Dr Fletcher?"

"The new one?" June sniped.

"She might be busy with her new intern. You have to go easy on her." Baz suggested, but neither one of his colleagues were having it.

"It is eight AM. Where is she? Making lousy chit-chat with her band of Mordor friends?" Ethan snarled.

"She is here." Baz informed them, even though none of them cared to listen. "I don't know where she went. She came, went through her new desk and left abruptly. I thought she was doing rounds. She might be. Or maybe she's showing her intern the ropes."

"The Intern Meeting was an hour ago. She should be here." June snapped. "Punctuality is an integral virtue for a doctor. If she can't do that, then.. it is a little concerning. Just a little."

"I'll have a look around. Go over the cases for me, please."

Ethan sighed, marching down the long hallways, looking particularly displeased.

Jane Fletcher was something else. He'd hoped she'd learn something from what happened the previous year, but maybe he was wrong. She was often late, often zoned out and it was like she wasn't even there. And it was the oddest thing too, because Jane had the experience. Far better than anyone else. Having studied engineering and medicine, she was clearly the only one fit for the so-called "rookie" position on the diagnostics team.

Now Ethan was reconsidering his decision. It took a lot of convincing to have June and Harper aboard the decision. The Mrs. Martinez case didn't exactly paint a glowing picture of Jane.

"Jane is one of the bests we have, but she has such outlandish thoughts and aspirations. I think you should go with Dr Varma or even, Aurora, to be on the team." Harper had confessed. "She's great, no doubt, but her strengths are elsewhere and we're looking for someone who can delegate and take orders."

Harper was never wrong about those tactical details.

"Excuse me." He asked the front desk nurse. "Have you seen Dr Jane Fletcher? Is she not here?"

"Didn't you page her, Doctor?"

"My messages aren't reaching her. Something's probably faulty with my pager as well."

The nurse nodded, before looking up the details on the computer.

"Weird. Her pager's not active. She could've manually turned it off. Have you tried phoning her?"

"No. Her phone's busy too. She must've left it in her locker." Ethan deduced. "Have you looked around, perhaps? Seen her? She's late. And June will consider having my head if she doesn't show up. I've spoken a great deal with her about the new addition to the team."

"Oh. Dr Hirata is a handful, I know. Don't worry. That's what I'm here for."

"Plus. How hard is it really? To follow instructions? Christ. It's the first day. First. And -- everything has gone wrong."

Ethan waited, while the receptionist tried to get a hold of Jane. Five minutes soon became ten. Then twelve.

"Got her. She's on the fifth floor." the nurse held up her phone. "Chris the Computer Guy notified me."

"Fifth? But that's the --"

"And that's how the pager works."

"Really? Wow. I've always thought they were just sort of small Blackberry phones."

Yasmin from IT chuckled at the joke.

"Radio transmissions. They remind me of the electromagnetic spectrum. And the electromagnetic spectrum reminds me of X-Rays. It is interesting how everything is connected to everything and we all use electromagnetism. It is interesting too, because you have these waves which are perpendicular to each other. An electric and a magnetic wave. And we do all sorts of things with it. I had this unit in my pre-med about it, but they never really expanded on it."

"Now, is that all?" Yasmin asked. "Do you have any other questions?"

"How does a firewall work? I've been hearing so much about it. I'm often told to think about it like it is some Giant Filter that scans your data 24/7. Software firewalls are basically computer programs which scan each and individual data packet. The word scan is so ambiguous. What does it scan? Does it read every individual text file? Does it look at the extension of each file to make sure it isn't corrupted?"

"That is--"

"You know what the Great Filter reminds me of? The Fermi Paradox. Suggesting that there's some force field that protects us from contacting alien life forms. But that can't be right, can it? Electromagnetic waves can travel across vacuums. Otherwise we can't get pictures from space. So if there existed a Great Filter, does it mean that there's another medium that exists in space? Something like dark matter for instance? That prohibits light, the simplest electromagnetic wave, from getting into it?"

"I'm not --"

"If we can see through bones and muscles, get to the heart of our body's ecosystem, why can't we do the same up in space? What is limiting us? And how can we prove something like the Fermi Paradox is real, when it itself is a paradox? Or is that the true intention? Like you've got the River Avon. Avon means "river". Then you have the Sahara Desert. Sahara means "desert". Is it like that? Does Fermi actually mean 'paradox'?"

There was a knock at the door.

"Dr Fletcher. You were supposed to be downstairs half an hour ago." Ethan huffed.

Jane turned around. "Sorry."

"Dr Fletcher came here to learn about the pager."

"The what?"

Yasmin continued. "It appears she wanted to learn about things."

"Learn about the pager -- of all things? Learn what?"

"Just how it worked.." Yasmin cowered. "I'll be -- erm-- at my desk now."

Ethan eyed her curiously. Jane's eyes fell to the ceiling. He stole a glance at the table, occupied by a put-apart pager, with all the parts lying around separately.

"Very well. Come on, now. And take your pager."

Jane had half expected Ethan to yell at her. To blast her for being so reckless, so late. To poke and prod her for disappearing off. To compare her with her young classmates, tell her she was no good, ec cetera. Ec cetera. But to her surprise, he didn't even scold. Nor was he actually cross.

As they walked to the end of the hallway to the elevators, Ethan glanced at an anxious Jane, now twisting her sleeves and holding onto her pager, which unfortunately didn't work anymore, even after Yasmin tried to put the parts together.

"Learning things?" he asked her, as the elevator doors closed.

"Yes."

"But you're a doctor."

"That doesn't mean I know everything and anything. That I know the Ultimate Truth. Even though the answer is forty two."

"Why forty two?" Ethan asked, curiously.

"No. The actual answer is one point six one eight, a close approximation of the Golden Ratio. It's everywhere, but again, not the most consistent thing in the universe. It might be ever-present in the Mona Lisa and in the skies of Starry Starry Night but upon close examination, Da Vinci's The Last Supper and Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters don't have the Fibonacci spiral."

"What is the most consistent thing in the universe?"

Jane thought for a brief moment.

The elevator doors opened.

"I think it is three."

"Just.. three?"

Ethan and Jane now walked down the corridor, en route to the diagnostics lab.

"Three. The Pythagorean Theorem uses three variables. Triangles are easier to use as tiling patterns. When they come together, they form a hexagon. It has six sides, which is twice of three and it is used everywhere, from under aeroplane wings to the bee hives and even in our own eyes."

Ethan nodded, listening carefully.

"But even three sometimes is far too simple to describe the universe. There are lots of famous numbers. Pi is one such example. Extremely simple. It is the ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter. And it works for any circle, because circles are the most consistent thing in the universe. Ovals, ellipses and other twisty things fall under the same Circular Family."

"And you don't think it is the Answer?'

"No. I think the answer is three-one-four-four-two-one-six-one-eight. Pi. 42. The Golden Ratio. And it has eight exponents upon estimation. Three times the tenth power of eight. Which becomes the speed of light. The fastest thing known to mankind. And I believe swiftness is pretty neat and the key to everything."

Ethan wasn't sure if he was supposed to be amused or infuriated.

They finally arrived.

"We have to get you a new pager." Ethan sighed.

"That's okay." Jane nodded, placing the remains of her worn-out gadget on her desk. "I think it looks nice as a decorative thing."

"So -- this is the new -- resident?" June quipped.

"Hi. It's nice to meet you." Jane extended a hand. "My name is Jane Fletcher and I am more than happy to work with you. Unfortunately, you have a very compromised computer system. Yasmin will be here to make some changes in fifteen minutes' time. And our pagers can easily be copied and traced, so I suggest we use even more faster means of communication, like say, photon transmitters for example. I think they're quite neat. I read it from a book that quantum communication systems are the thing of the future now and the key can never be copied at all, because we're using the spin states of the atoms to--"

The two of her colleagues stared at her. And it wasn't the good kind of staring. Jane wasn't sure if it was because of her ridiculous height or her heterochromia. She blamed them regardless. It was hard making friends with an odd physique, anyway.

Meanwhile Ethan stood off to the side, his expression unreadable.

"Uh.. um. What I meant -- I hope to do some of my best work here."

"And you will." Ethan said. "Now. Let's get to work, team?"

A/N: The answer is clearly 42.

This was super fun to write, because it had everything I love in it: pure, unadulterated geek-ery.

Quick Background: Jane's pre-med was actually chemical engineering. She got into medicine after someone's recommendation, and also because it seemed like a fun thing to do.

Tag List:

Perma: @ofmischiefandmedicine @quixoticdreamer16 Open Heart: @cariantha

Please let me know if you'd like to be tagged/removed for/from my works from here-on! I lost all of my tag lists after my "Reboot", so I unfortunately have no idea who was on it and who wasn't. If you'd like to read more pure garbage like this, leave a comment!

#open heart #jane fletcher & ethan ramsey #w: inlocusmads #jane & ethan

15 notes · View notes

navnir · 1 month

Text

Formwork Failure in the Projects

Formwork is the significant factor that decides the success or failure of a construction project. It is a temporary or permanent mould made of concrete or similar raw materials. Construction projects use formwork for slabs, columns, shells, beams etc., and it can be made with wood, steel, fibreglass or plastics.

Formwork affects your project time, cost, quality, and safety of the work. The study says formwork constitute around 35 to 40 per cent of the total roller compacted concrete (RCC) project budget and almost eighty per cent of the project time.

Having established the importance of formwork in the construction sector, we should not take it casually. Any lapse in planning can cause severe loss of money, human lives, time, etc. If you follow leading news channels and news portals, you can see numerous accidents happening due to faulty formwork. We will share some recent instances in the blog and the causes of formwork failure.

Formwork failure is a major reason for construction accidents. The viewpoint was underscored by Mr Kumar Neeraj Jha while delivering a lecture on the topic ‘Innovative Formwork for Construction Projects’ at a seminar held in Margao, Goa. He said, ‘formwork failure is the reason behind up to 60 per cent of the building accidents.’

Let us go through reasons and a couple of real-life accidents that happened due to formwork failures.

Causes of Formwork Failure Careless Stripping and Shore Removal

Construction is not a casual business. Improper shore removal and stripping can cause formwork failure. It can lead to deadly accidents, and multi-story buildings are highly prone to such accidents. We have seen several news coverages about a multi-story building collapse in leading newspapers & channels.

For example

The Hindu published about a building collapse in East Bengaluru on 8th October 2021. It was the third accident in a fortnight due to presumably faulty construction.

Improper Bracing

Bracing in formwork protects building or construction projects against strong winds, storms, etc. Improper bracing in formwork cause accidents with extra concrete weight, storms, and other external factors.

Other Reasons for Formwork Failure

Unable to manage the order and rate of concrete placement on the horizontal formwork. It leads to disbalance while loading and subsequent formwork failure.

Excess traffic, high headcounts of labours, hardware, and machines on the project site can cause vibrations and high impact. It also causes formwork failure and can lead to accidents.

Formwork dependability can be compromised due to out of plumb shore and shaky soils. Unstable land leads to weak settlement and is prone to collapse. We can see several bridges and flyovers collapse due to unstable ground.

Examples of Bridge or Flyover Collpase

Concrete beams of an under-construction flyover collapsed in Vizag (Times of India 6th July 2021), under-construction flyover collapses in Bandra, Mumbai (NDTV 17th September 2021), and many more.

Small missing details in formwork can cause fatal accidents. It includes improper or missing nailing, inadequate management to forestall pivot of pillar formations, improper corner tying, unable to arrange the locking gates etc.

Formwork should be planned with minute details and quality raw materials. You require a trustworthy supplier for quality formwork. Contact Nav Nirman to get the best formwork at the most competitive prices and expert help for your construction projects.

#formworksystems #constructionwork #formwork

0 notes

babydxhl · 4 months

Note

"Boats are female. Everyone knows you can’t call a boat after a man."

the talented mr ripley sentence starters | still accepting.

"Why not?" They had dragged the cushions and blankets up from the cabin and onto the prow, the fibreglass hull cold against their skin and a sharp breeze slicing through the warm night off the California coast.

"It's my boat," Mary says after a moment, a little petulant, "I can name it whatever I want."

She turns onto her stomach, peering down at the water — an otherworldly blue glow shines back. Dinoflagellate algae. Thousands of creatures no bigger than her eyelash all clinging together in the waves.

She had not bought the small — compared to the fishing boats in the Santa Clara dockyard — cruiser yacht, as yet unnamed, to come look at nature. But a bout of insomnia and a looming heatwave mean it's a nice perk.

#buying luxury boat to do crime but immediately using it to take star to see bioluminescence ofc #;;ask.#pierprincess

1 note · View note

rubykarelia · 1 year

Text

L'ATELIER ROUGE (short story, horror, 2021)

“With the sugar lace?”

“Please, and the candy pearls,” Vivienne replied insistently. She perused the crisp laminated pages of wedding cakes that Miss Blossom had brought as samples.

“And you said pink piping,” Miss Blossom mused as she sketched in her notebook as if she was da Vinci, the tiered buttercream her Vitruvian man. Blossom was the cake designer in Beverly Hills ever since Monsieur Sucré was disparaged after an E Coli outbreak at a Wilshire baby shower.

“No, red,” Vivienne interjected. “Please.”

“Red it is,” Blossom assured her. “And you’re sure we don’t need to call Mr. Beaumont to confirm?”

“No, he’s so busy,” Vivienne sighed, looking down at the mascarpone-frosted chantilly on page 10. “He’s been working late, taking on more cases. I’m sure he’ll appreciate any cake, as long as it’s not made of take-out Chinese.”

“Oh, I promise—nothing of the sort!” Blossom laughed a little too hard. “Perhaps the two of you are saving for a nursery?” There was something saccharine in her voice, a presumptuous upturn to her lips sugaring her words.

Vivienne quickly lifted her eyes, furrowing her brow, confused.

“Please forgive my romantic abandon,” Blossom back-pedalled. “I just

know the two of you will have the most beautiful children.”

Vivienne’s smile tempered, and the movement behind her eyes paused. “Do I look pregnant, Liza-Beth?”

“No, Ms. Beaumont, please. I wasn’t insinuating—I’m sorry. I never should have said anything. Just my imagination.” Blossom recoiled.

“I tried on my mother’s gown last night,” she began, gazing down as if she was recalling a torment from ‘Nam, “and it wouldn’t fit in the stomach. It’s funny. My mother herself would tell me I should start pilates again. Or put me on a diet. No eating before dinner, no white foods, no drinkable calories.”

Blossom’s mouth was frozen in a contrite grin. Vivienne could tell that she had nothing to say, maybe because she agreed that her stomach was swollen, and it was the first thing the woman had noticed when she had walked through the door. But Vivienne felt sure that she couldn’t be pregnant; Victor—or Mr. Beaumont as he was known around his office and oftentimes to close friends—hadn’t touched her in months.

“I’m sure you’re quite busy, too, Ms. Beaumont, just like your fiancé. I’ll let you go. I’ll see you next week for a tasting.”

Vivienne arose, smoothing the tweed fabric of her skirt with her manicured hands.

“Thank you, Miss Blossom,” she smiled, “you’re truly a lifesaver.”

* * *

Vivienne swiftly swooped into her car, a gift from Elliott’s father. She set off for home, weaving through the cobbled veins of the wedding district and towards the honeymoon of Beverly Hills. She didn’t feel very well. She hated the way her stomach felt too intimate against the steering wheel, too comfortable bridging the waist of her underwear. She suddenly felt too big for the car, her coiffed hair grazing the sunroof, legs screaming from their tight dashboard chamber. Pearls of oily sweat began to puddle on her forehead and upper lip as if her body was trying to make even more of itself. She had to stop and reach for the silk scarf in her pocket and try to pare these new extremities, wipe herself away.

A dimly lit shop caught her eye from across the street. Its brick cladding was caked with city grime, and there was an unseasonal frost speckled on the window panes. L’Atelier Rouge, the awning read in a curly, barely-legible font. A headless mannequin stood proudly in the window, trussed in a shocking 22-inch-waist girdle. Vivienne strangely felt a twinge of jealousy, gazing at that fibreglass model. She killed the motor and decided she needed to go in.

Inside L’Atelier Rouge was undoubtedly organised and thoughtfully ornamented but dusty, cramped. Each small surface—and there were many—had a film of yesterday, so concentrated in some places that it looked like ashes had been spread in the alcoves between skinny statues and lingerie racks. Curtains with parted red lips mounted bare brick walls, as if they were opening to some absurd theatre. Dress forms cliqued in beautiful armies of boasting breasts and feather boas. Even their limbs—though maimed like Greek statues that had weathered with age—were adorned in pearls and garter belts. They look beautiful, thought Vivienne, making a mental note. I’ll pick up a garter, too.

Vivienne saw no associates, feeling strangely impelled to ask a mannequin for assistance. She approached one of them, its waist wrung like a damp towel in a crimson corset. Her fingers unfurled and outstretched to the satin, tracing the strict architecture. She held the waist in both hands as if she was about to lead the form into some grand arabesque. The figure was so tiny that her fingers almost met at the small of its back.

“Welcome,” a voice said from behind her. Vivienne flinched and swivelled. She met the wired eyes of an older woman, thin and delicate. She had unnaturally vermeil hair that had been twisted into neat curls atop her wool blazer. She smiled somewhat knowingly, her thin lips painted in a severe ruby lacquer.

“Hi,” Vivienne rasped, clearing her throat.

“Mother Francine,” the woman extended her polished, ancient hand. “Welcome.”

“Vivienne,” she replied. “Thank you.”

“That’s a vintage piece,” the woman explained. She wasn’t warning Vivienne against letting her hands wander—she was bragging. “Made in Paris in 1929, completely flawless. We restored the eyelets downstairs.”

“It’s incredible,” Vivienne said earnestly, turning towards the mannequin once again. She could feel the woman’s eyes studying her.

“Are you looking for something?” she asked.

Vivienne paused. She wondered why the shop made her freeze up, unable to rehinge her jaw and exchange niceties like a normal patron.

“Yes,” she finally admitted. She shook her head inwardly, scolding herself for being so awkward. “I am looking for something. I’m getting married next month.”

“And you’re looking for a husband?”

Vivienne couldn’t move again, and confusion crept into her smile. The woman gave a guttural laugh—her throat seemed to process each sound through metal mesh.

“I’m joking, my love,” she smiled. It wasn’t funny, but Vivienne aped along. “I’m sure your fiancé is marvellous. He sure does have good taste.”

“I’m looking for a garter belt,” Vivienne confessed. “And a corset.” She almost wrapped her arms around her abdomen in a shameful embrace. The woman looked at her stomach anyway as if she noticed its prominence.

“We’ll fix you right up,” she observed.

* * *

“I think this one will suit your complexion, my dear,” Mother Francine said, carrying a cream corset in her arms like a small child. They had transitioned into the dressing room—a funhouse of mirrors and scarves and drapes. The lighting was nothing like the stringent temperature of a department store; it was honeyed and warm like her grandmother’s boudoir. She took off her blazer and blouse. “But first.” Mother Francine drew a measuring ribbon like a sheathed sword and stood behind her.

The tape wrapped around her near-naked form. She watched as Mother Francine studied her body in the mirror, her lips miming silently in some sort of calculation. Vivienne could bear the looking but cringed as the tape tightened its grasp. She had to keep herself from jumping as Francine’s fingers pinched her abdomen for a quick second.

“I’m a little bigger than I used to be,” she apologised instinctively. “I suppose I’ll need a larger size.”

“No, no,” Mother Francine insisted. She swapped the tape for the corset and began the binding process. “They’re all small. No such thing as a large corset. You have to train yourself to wear them.” She began to fasten the lace with the same vigour as a protective mother securing her child’s seat belt. “Like a wild animal needs to be tamed. Your body is trying so hard to be big, but you tell her to be small, no matter what she says.”

Finally, Mother Francine stepped back. Vivienne was surprised at how tight it was, how eerie that satin could serve as skin. Her hands found her hips, minding the exaggerated dips.

“Wow,” Vivienne laughed proudly. “I look like a question mark.” Mother Francine laughed and called her colourful.

Vivienne put a hand on her stomach and wondered where it went. For a moment, she lifted her palm to where it used to protrude—it was strange to feel air where skin was meant to be. She couldn’t suppress her smile.

Suddenly, a small man entered. Vivienne gasped and hugged her torso, now scant in both clothing and volume. She’d never felt so naked and small—she wondered if such words meant the same thing.

“Oh, child, I’m sorry,” Mother Francine sighed. “This is my son, Silas.” Though he had to be in his mid-forties, something about Silas was small, childlike, maybe even naive; he was short, and his suit draped off of his extremities like there had been a mix-up at the dry cleaners. Vivienne released herself and gathered her composure.

“Oh, wonderful,” she remarked. “How do you do?”

“He’s on vocal rest. All that singing.”

“How cool,” Vivienne smiled. Silas reciprocated with a closed-lip grin and handed his mother a garter belt.

“Marvellous,” Mother Francine sighed. “Silas, doesn’t Miss Vivienne look beautiful?” He nodded three times, his eyes staying on Vivienne’s, as if his accordance was choreographed.

“Thank you so much. I love it.” Vivienne couldn’t stop looking in the mirror.

“My pleasure. Perhaps you can return soon with your gown and try the entire ensemble,” Mother Francine rasped. “But before you go, I’d be remiss if I didn’t show you the museum.”

The three walked down a dark set of stairs leading to the basement of L’Atelier Rouge. Mother Francine flicked a switch and the room ignited with spotlights, revealing an array of dress forms. Each was adorned in an intricate, vintage piece, manned by an engraved plaque.

“Wow,” Vivienne mused, still cinched in her corset. “This is incredible.”

“It’s been a lifelong passion of mine and Father Frances, my husband,” Mother Francine contended. “He labours each day away in the workshop, right over there.” Her finger gestured towards a wooden door. White light gleamed beyond its cracks. “Lacing, sewing, boning.”

“Boning?” Vivienne asked.

“The structures that keep you nice and conformed, dear,” Mother Francine replied. “Come, come. Look at this. It’s a nineteenth-century.” Before them was a Victorian piece made of gilded brocade. Vivienne always thought that something so old would have to be in black and white, but it was in mint condition, its colours still gleaming and gems winking at her as she admired its arches. “They used whalebones, see, to maintain the shape.”

“A skeleton into a skeleton,” Vivienne mused before she could catch her words.

“Yes,” Mother Francine attested with a smile Vivienne had never seen before. “And look here, child.” She motioned Vivienne and her son—who followed in a seemingly conditioned obedience—towards another piece in her collection. The plaque read Agnes Sorel Cotte in Linen, mcdl. It was an enchanting peach hue—the same that Vivienne often tried to replicate on her cheeks. She couldn’t help but admire the impossible waist, how it made her sympathise for the mannequin’s nonexistent spine. But what struck out to her the most was the circumstance of brown lining each armpit—the vestiges of ancient blood.

“It’s a French cut from the 1400’s. A lower neckline and the smallest waist of its time,” Mother Francine explained. “Twenty inches.”

“Goodness,” Vivienne puffed. She decided not to mention the stains.

“Of course, one can really go as small as they’d like. As I said, it’s manipulation. We’ve got you at a twenty-four, but we certainly could get to a twenty if you so desired.”

“Do you get many customers with such a request?” Vivienne gasped.

“Everyone wants it, but no one wants to admit it,” Mother Francine lamented. Turning to Vivienne, she unbuttoned her blazer, and then revealed her own torso.

Her grey skin folded over the top and out from under a white corset dripping in straps and laces of all sorts. Her bosom was pruned and translucent, and below, the garment cinched her middle to a disconcerting size. Vivienne knew she had necklaces that reached a larger circumference. The valleys of her hips were defined and angular; unlike the soft arches of a question mark, Mother Francine pinched in at the waist like an ampersand.

Vivienne’s eyes opened fully, bracing for the woman to snap like a sawn redwood. But Mother Francine stood tall, her posture unflinching. It was as if the corset kept her from doubling over, serving more as a splint than a saw.

“Eighteen,” she stated plainly, then continued with a smile that showed her yellow teeth, “at eighty-one.”

The sight left Vivienne uneasy but ultimately besotted. She decided that Mother Francine was someone they should make books about, make movies about. She felt proud to have met her, better for it in some way. She supposed Francine was merely a committed saleswoman, too, trussing herself in her own garments to demonstrate their efficacy. And she did, of course, make the sale; upstairs, Vivienne paid for her garter belt and vowed to return on Friday with her mother’s gown.

“Thank you,” she said to Mother Francine, “you’re a lifesaver.”

* * *

That night, tucked in the eggshell nook of her walk-in closet, Vivienne tried on her mother’s gown once again. It still refused to zip shut in the back. She grew frustrated—she couldn’t contort her arms to reach the zipper anyhow, and Victor wasn’t home to help. For a few moments, she missed the confinement of the corset she wore earlier, the uncomfortable but cosy captivity in linen and lace.

When Friday came, Vivienne treated her appointment at L’Atelier Rouge with as much professionalism as an actress attending a dress rehearsal. She woke up earlier than required—abiding by an imagined call-time—folded her mother’s gown into a garment bag, waxed her underarms, and arranged her hair into the same updo of ringlets she planned to replicate for the wedding.

* * *

“Twenty-two,” Mother Francine celebrated as she stepped away from behind her customer. Vivienne smiled and felt her own curves with a loving hand. Once again, they were in the mirrored dressing room—there was plenty to look at, but Vivienne’s wide eyes remained fixed upon herself.

“Twenty-two,” Vivienne sighed. It hurt, of course, but numbed her ever so slightly in a way that she found almost pleasurable.

“I’ll leave you to put on your gown, dear,” Mother Francine croaked, “I’m sure I have a veil somewhere in the workshop. I’ll retrieve it, and then we can show Father Frances. He examines all of the garments—makes sure they work.”

Vivienne couldn’t look away from the mirror. There was a sentiment in her grin that only came out at charity galas and Christmas time. “Fabulous.”

She peeled the cream charmeuse out of the bag and stepped into it. Pulling it over her shoulders like a pair of suspenders, Vivienne rejoiced. She could just tell it was going to fit.

Silas appeared as if sensing that Vivienne would need a hand.

“Oh, hello, Silas,” she smiled, “Could you help me zip?” The timid fellow followed the command dutifully and delicately as if Vivienne was made of china.

“Pretty, don’t you think?” Silas nodded in agreement. “It’s my mother’s. She passed away just last February. I miss her plenty. It’s nice you get to work with your parents.” He stayed still.

“So, she says you’re quite the singer,” Vivienne remarked. She couldn’t stop letting words tumble out of her open mouth—it was as if that cinching feeling in her abdomen was slowly inching up to her throat. Silas offered a soft smile of assurance. “Could you sing something for me?”

His smile bowed and his eyebrows knit together in confusion as if his mother had never mentioned his vocal rest.

After a few moments, his lips pursed inward and he shut his eyes. Vivienne recognised this face as apologetic—the same look she assumed when her mother chastised her for cheating on her spelling test in the second grade. Silas reached for the buttons on his blazer and began to unbutton them one-by-one.

Silas was bound in the narrowest girdle Vivienne had ever seen. She didn’t know a man’s body was able to move that way, but figured such stiff, unyielding boning had been holding him in for quite some time. The condition of the piece was so poor that it quickly eliminated any allusions to sensuality; it was covered in seagreen mold and other mysterious stains, a crimson shade pooling on its edges and hardware. The lace wasn’t lace but cord—the braided polypropylene twine that Vivienne had only ever seen wrapped around Christmas trees to keep them on top of car roofs. This was not lingerie, but a cage. What was it trying to keep inside?

She froze for a long minute, a hand to her mouth. “Can you take it off?” she finally mustered.

To her surprise, Silas began to untether the cord. But when he took off the girdle, his body didn’t reset. He was forever indented. His torso was a greenish grey, wrinkled and creased as if it had pruned underwater. He had permanent bruises casting shadows on his ribs which were now recoiling into his chest. And on his sides were distinct punctures where the laces and hardware had broken skin. Some of the holes were lined in both crimson and ash—Vivienne recognised them as cigarette burns, especially the ones that left the linen and blemished his collarbones and shoulders. Some wounds weren’t as sympathetic than those that still blushed: a patch, just below where his heart should’ve been, was black as night. Vivienne couldn’t move, but if she were able to, she would’ve cringed from the scent—a coppery cocktail of mold and dried blood.

Suddenly, Silas resealed himself in his layers. He had heard his mother traipse back into the dressing room, proudly carrying a lace veil.

“How beautiful,” she said to Vivienne, still immobile, “you’re almost done.”

She placed the veil on Vivienne’s head, her eyes now obscured by its intricate weave. Silas stood plainly in the corner and resumed his habitual complacency. He was a great actor.

“Now, we must go see Father Frances.” Before Vivienne could gather her words, Mother Francine had grabbed her hand and led her towards the basement.

The procession down the stairs and into the museum had the frills of a wedding but the solemnity of a death march. Vivienne could not close her mouth nor eyes; neither were working very well. Her hand hurt, her skin woven between Mother’s skeletal fingers. And her stomach hurt, too, collapsed under steel and charmeuse.

She found herself outside of the wooden workshop door. Mother Francine primped each detail of Vivienne’s ensemble—she adjusted her veil, ringlets, and breasts as they expelled from her chest.

Behind her, the workshop door creaked open with a grumble. Still frozen, Vivienne managed to employ her neck—she met a stout man with dishevelled, greasy hair and a lit cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. He wore an apron spotted with so many stains that it appeared as if a Rorschach test was painted on his protruding gut. Sitting atop his wiry moustache, a pair of thick glasses magnified the vacancy of the man’s watching eyes.

“Father Frances,” Mother Francine called. “This is Vivienne, the bride.” Father Frances merely grunted in acknowledgement. “How does she look?”

The man situated himself before her and scanned her entirety. There was a tinge to his gaze that Vivienne couldn’t help but identify as disgust. Before she knew it, a salty tear fell onto her painted lip.

“I’m considering not wearing a corset at all, anymore,” she muttered nervously, “I’m not feeling very well.”

Mother Francine furrowed her brow. “Cold feet. That’s normal.” Father Francine, now behind her, wrapped a hand around her waist, inspecting his work.

“Tighter,” he croaked to his wife. Vivienne was aquiver and tried to still herself, though this effort only made her tremble all the more.

“It hurts,” she tried, knowing the complaint would be left unheard.

His hand still on her stomach, Father Frances paused, then lifted his eyes to Mother.

“Mother,” he rasped, “Feel this.”

The old woman pursed her puckered lips in concern and extended a hand to Vivienne’s abdomen. “Quickening.” It was then that Vivienne could feel it too—the unmistakable clamber of life as it writhed below her humming heart.

“Tighter,” Father Frances insisted once again, and he pulled the reins of the corset with such force that everything went black.

* * *

Vivienne barely awoke, folded in a dank recess of the workshop. Her lungs and lips laboured to lap at the air in arrhythmic gasps. She tried to unleash a scream, but no sound emerged. With her eyes beginning to adapt to the stringent light of the workshop, Vivienne noticed blood pooling beneath her. She moved her hands to her hips, still clothed in the corset and her mother’s gown. So much of her was gone.

In fact, the quarter was littered with discarded dresses, each sequinned with a distinct iteration of sparkle. She thought she saw the ruby of a ballroom, the bubblegum pink of a sweet sixteen, the magenta of a quinceañera.

Vivienne was weak, unmoving. Her vision began to thin into a new obsidian. Before her, Father Frances played a discordant lullaby as he worked. His instrument was an industrial file and a milky rib that he pared into punctuation.

#fiction

0 notes

treason-and-plot · 3 years

Photo

“Boss, I need to talk to you,” says Spencer loudly, interrupting a spirited debate Raj is having with Lincoln about wood versus fibreglass hulls, while Lincoln’s wife Jasmine sways and hums along to the track the DJ is playing on the deck above. Raj turns and frowns, displeased by Spencer’s lack of decorum.

“I’m sorry, Spencer, I’m in the middle of a discussion,” he says. “Is it urgent?”

“Would I have interrupted you if it wasn’t?” Spencer bristles. Raj gives Lincoln a tight smile, and Lincoln laughs dismissively and says no problem, Raj had better take care of the business at hand, and he and Jasmine will head down to the bar and catch up with him later.

“What’s happened?” says Raj to Spencer after Lincoln and Jasmine have wandered away. “Were you able to complete the task I set you?”

“Yeah, it was a piece of piss,” says Spencer with a satisfied smile. “All we have to do is set up the receiver, and we should be able to hear any conversations he has in his car as clear as a bell.”

“Good work,” says Raj, his shoulders relaxing. “So what’s the urgent matter that you need to talk to me about?”

“We’ve got a gatecrasher,” says Spencer. He pauses for dramatic effect while Raj waits. “Warren the Wanker.”

“Warren Sandler is on my boat?” says Raj. “Right now?”

“Yeah,” says Spencer. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” says Raj.

“Nothing?” says Spencer, a patch of red skin flaring under his eye. “The fu-“

“Spencer, the place is crawling with journalists and other media types who would love nothing better than to be able to report on an altercation between Warren Sandler and myself,” says Raj. “I’m sure Mr Sandler himself would like nothing better than that. But I’m not going to give them the satisfaction. My revenge will be a particularly enticing dish when it is eventually served, but it will not be served tonight. We will treat Warren exactly the same as all our other guests. Is that understood?”

“Understood, Boss,” mumbles Spencer.

“Now,” says Raj, “Quickly tell me what method you had to employ to break into Lincoln’s SUV. Was it the pick, the wedge, the laser key, or the jiggler?”

“None of ‘em,” says Spence, his voice gruff with amusement. “The fucking idiot had left it unlocked.”

#Spencer #Raj #return to isla paradiso #5 years later #Lincoln #sims 3 story #ts3 story #Jasmine #sims story #Sims Stories

97 notes · View notes

seat-safety-switch · 3 years

Text

If there's one thing I wish my neighbourhood had, it's an auto parts store. Although the internet is delightful and my avowed preference for getting cheap new parts, your friendly local auto parts store is essential for those 4pm "oh shits" on Sunday afternoon. And without one close by, everything that breaks becomes a car drive away from getting a replacement part. Suddenly, if you've noticed two bad gaskets in one water pump replacement job, you've lost two hours of wrenching time just going back and forth.

Now, the chain that's closest to my place does have delivery, but only during the weekdays. A dude comes in a little Chevy hatchback with a giant fibreglass hat on the top bearing the logo of the store. He's used to delivering to big businesses like Ted's Car-Unfucking Salon, so when he encounters a regular house, he just doesn't know what to do. Most of the time, he leaves several hundred dollars' worth of parts on your porch right before flooring it on his way out of your neighbourhood.

Now, I haven't had any porch pirates in the last few years – Mr. Cho, who lives on my block, was very interested back in May 2016 when I went by his Friday night poker game and told him about the alternator that got stolen. In June of 2016, I was driving to work and I saw the fire department working hard to get down the body of some guy with no skin hanging off the street light. Ever since then, no problems. That might not be the case for your neighbourhood, which is not lucky enough to lay claim to a Mr. Cho or substitute good citizen thereof.

That's why I've adopted a sort of "middle-ground" policy to the entire auto parts store problem. They've got a pretty big parking lot over at the store, so why not just do the entire job out there? It's not like they can really do much to me once I've taken the front subframe out, and if I miss their closing time, I'm basically first in line for when they open.

The real genius of all this is that if I don't get my car running in time to go to work the next morning, I can just use my phone to order some parts to the office and hop into the hat-car as it leaves. Sure, a citizen riding shotgun on a parts delivery is not "allowed" by corporate, but he knows who I live near.

#mr. cho

20 notes · View notes

vincentbriggs · 4 months

Note

Mr. Fiberglass looks very dashing and extremely gender. May I ask how you made that mask? It looks great and I may want one for myself 👀

Thank you!

It was 8 or 9 years ago so I don't remember it super well, but it's mostly cardboard and papier mâché. I built the base using cardboard boxes and a lot of masking tape, and you can still see some of the tape and cardboard inside the snout.

I made the horns by cutting 2 identical spiral shapes out of cardboard, and stretching them like a slinky, which is a much easier way to get them to spiral and be symmetrical than starting out with a straight thing and curving it. I'm pretty sure I bulked them up and got them to stay in that shape by taping lots of wads of crumpled up newspaper to the sides.

I covered the whole thing in layers of very cheap paper towel and Elmer's art paste, and used that to add a few little ridges and such.

The texture on the horns was made by just wrapping one long continuous strip of paper towel around and around, straight off the roll. (It was the really cheap stuff with no perforations and with obvious flecks of recycled paper in it.)

I have a piece of polyester batting shoved into the top because I didn't quite get it to the same shape as the top my head, and it's a bit uncomfortable.

It's also very hard to see in! I looked at photos of real sheep skulls for reference, and I put the eyes further forward to account for my human binocular vision, but they're still really far back and hard to see out of, so you have to look out the nose too.

I seem to remember first painting it with glossy acrylic paint, and then repainting it with matte paints because it just doesn't look as skull-like when shiny. The shading is awful because acrylic paints dry so dang fast, so it might be nice to go back and refine the texture a bit and repaint it again someday, but that's not at all on my priority list right now.

I hope this helps, and that you have fun making one!

#skulls #masks #rams #papier mâché #costume #mr. fibreglass #ask #sculpture

429 notes · View notes

slut-kiss-g1rl · 3 years

Text

geostorm <3

FADE IN:

INT. COURTROOM

GERARD BUTLER is at a COURT HEARING... in the FUTURE!

GERARD BUTLER

It is the future. Natural disasters have become alarmingly commonplace. Hurricanes, mudslides, floods, you name it. The level of destruction is catastrophic.

RICHARD SCHIFF

To be clear, this is the FUTURE you’re talking about?

GERARD BUTLER

The nations of the world have finally decided to take action. So, pooling our resources, we’ve invested heavily in environmental research and clean energy, and cracked down heavily on industrial emissions standards-

(laughs and laughs and laughs)

Just kidding! We’ve built a giant orbital platform that shoots the bad weather with space missiles and space lasers, of course.

RICHARD SCHIFF

So you’re the genius who built the space station. But instead of just making you the chief engineer, which would make sense, we made you director of the whole multi-national program, despite the fact that you have no administrative skills or political experience and mostly get what you want by yelling at people and punching them in the face?

GERARD BUTLER

That’s correct, you useless government fucks. You can all lick my sweaty gonads.

(moons everybody)

RICHARD SCHIFF

You’re fired and we’re giving your job to your little brother Jim Sturgess. At least he can do a passable American accent.

GERARD BUTLER

Och, ye dinnae hae ta be a deck abote et!

INT. SPACE STATION

Engineer RICHARD REGAN PAUL is aboard the WEATHER STATION when he notices that somebody has stuck a SMARTPHONE on an important CIRCUITBOARD.

RICHARD REGAN PAUL

Oh crap, somebody’s sabotaging this hundred-trillion-dollar space program using consumer electronics! I better draw everybody’s attention to this and alert my superiors!

(falls down and hits head very hard)

Duhhhh I mean I should hide this evidence and tell nobody yessss.

He stashes the EVIDENCE, but shortly afterwards the CORRIDOR he’s walking through is SEALED and all the WALL PANELS START BLASTING OFF!

RICHARD REGAN PAUL

What the fuck? Why would we design them to be able to do that? What possible situation could arise in a space station when we’d need to get rid of the WALLS in a hurry? This makes no-

(spaced)

The SPACE STATION then proceeds to turn a bunch of VILLAGERS in AFGHANISTAN into SNOWMEN.

INT. WHITE HOUSE

JIM STURGESS is having a meeting with the movie’s entire supply of Oscar-nominated actors.

JIM STURGESS

So yeah, we kind of murdered a bunch of innocent people with a giant ice ray like Mr. Freeze, oops. We need to send up an international team of brilliant engineers to the space station to investigate what went wrong, despite the fact that there’s already an international team of brilliant engineers ON the space station.

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE ANDY GARCIA

No way, Jim. As the president, I can’t have foreigners touch this station which has been funded and staffed predominately by foreigners! We’ll send up Americans.

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE ED HARRIS

ONE American. I mean if we’re going to half-ass this thing, let’s half-ass it, y’know?

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE MARE WINNINGHAM

I am also in this scene for some reason.

JIM STURGESS

Ugh fine, let’s send up Gerard. It’ll take some doing though, he and I haven’t really gotten along in the vague amount of time since you gave me his job. Seriously, the timeline is super nebulous, it could have been anything between a week and five years.

ED HARRIS

I have faith you can convince him, Jim. As your father figure and mentor, you know I support you in everything, and if you ever need somebody you can implicitly trust-

JIM STURGESS

We get it, you’re the villain, whoop-de-doo.

(leaves)

EXT. LOSER SHACK

JIM goes out to see GERARD, who is hanging with his DAUGHTER.

JIM STURGESS

Hey bro, the space laser’s been acting up. Think you could pop up to space real quick and fix it? Thanks.

GERARD’S DAUGHTER

Dad, no! You can’t go back to space! It’s too dangerous! Don’t abandon me like this!

GERARD BUTLER

OH GOD NOT THIS FUCKING TROPE. Yeah, parents should never do work that takes them away from their families for any amount of time or puts themselves at risk, no matter how important it is. I’m a shitty father because I’m agreeing to go save hundreds of millions of lives, possibly including yours. Shut the fuck up, you little turd.

GERARD immediately storms off and goes to SPACE.

EXT. HONG KONG

Suddenly the movie remembers the CHINESE BOX OFFICE and cuts to HONG KONG, where DANIEL WU is heading home with some SHOPPING.

DANIEL WU

(looks around)

Aw fuck. A famous capital city in a disaster movie? This isn’t gonna end well.

Sure enough he drops some EGGS on the ground and they immediately begin to FRY!

DANIEL WU

Holy shit the ground is apparently as hot as a stovetop! You’d think this is something the people in the street would have noticed, but uh, I guess all our shoes are made entirely of thermally nonconductive silica fibreglass?

(jumps in car, speeds off)

And our tires too, don’t forget our tires!

DANIEL drives through the streets as the pavement CRACKS and FIRE erupts out of the SUPERHEATED PAVEMENT!

DANIEL WU

Damn, the space station must have done that! Not that we ever explain how geothermal energy could possibly be controlled by space lasers!

INT. SPACE STATION

GERARD arrives aboard the SPACE STATION to meet the team of ENGINEERS.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Welcome, Gerard! I am an asshole. A smug, unlikeable asshole. The exact kind of jerk you’d think would turn out to be the saboteur. Which is kind of awkward, because I DO turn out to be the saboteur.

AMR WAKED

It’s okay, I’ll cover for you by red herringing as hard as humanly possible in every scene I’m in.

(lurks sinisterly)

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Meanwhile I’m the station’s commander. I exist to be your sort-of love interest with whom you never get beyond meaningful eye contact, and to make you seem hypercompetent by standing around uselessly while you do everything important.

GERARD BUTLER

Okay then, now that everybody’s in position let’s get this 2012-but-with-weather/Gravity-except-stupid-and-with-more-explosions hybrid on the road! Bring on the barrage of gratuitous global annihilation!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Actually there’s nowhere near as much of that kind of thing as the trailers promised. But if you like scenes where someone stares at tiny gobbledegook on a computer screen and explains what plot points it discloses, we’ve got a buttload of that!

GERARD BUTLER

(puppy dog eyes)

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Oh fine, here’s one to tide you over.

EXT. TOKYO

Giant hail in Tokyo!

INT. SPACE STATION

GERARD BUTLER

Ta! Now let’s look at that satellite that fried Hong Kong.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Uh, oops, unfortunately that malfunctioning satellite got smashed beyond usefulness because the hydraulic arm which was holding it malfunctioned!

GERARD BUTLER

Fine then, let’s look at the surveillance footage from when Richard Regan Paul got spaced.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Um well we can’t see the footage of that wall malfunction because the footage has also malfunctioned.

GERARD BUTLER

Wait though, there’s still a useable recording in a leftover bit of wall that got stuck in a solar array panel! Let’s go for a spacewalk and get it.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Sure thing WHUH OH while you’re trying to retrieve that malfunctioning bit of wall, your space suit has malfunctioned!

GERARD BUTLER

(bouncing off every part of the space station)

HEY YOU KNOW WHAT, I’M STARTING TO THINK THAT MAAAAYBE THERE’S JUST A SMIDGE OF SABOTAGE GOING ON.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Damnit! Turns out that by the time you’re committing sabotage to cover up your sabotage to cover up your sabotage to cover up your sabotage, it starts to get kinda obvious what you’re doing.

(pause)

Nnnnnot that I have anything to do with that. Right, Amr?

AMR WAKED

(hovers creepily at the edge of frame)

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Exactly.

GERARD retrieves the DATA from the WALL FRAGMENT, but finds that he can’t ACCESS IT.

GERARD BUTLER

Oh crap, only a high-level government official could have restricted the data like this! That means that SOMEBODY extremely high-ranking is behind all this, but we don’t know who!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

It’s Ed Harris. Everybody has figured this out already.

GERARD BUTLER

I have to tell Jim about this. But they might have bugged our comms, and my message may be intercepted by whoever the traitor is.

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

It is quite obviously Ed Harris.

GERARD BUTLER

I better use a code.

(calls Jim)

Hey there, Jim! Just thought I’d stop in the middle of this deadly crisis to randomly reminisce. SOMEtimes I think about that old WHITE porch we used to have at our HOUSE, where our pathetic inbred ASSHOLE of a father used to get FUCKED up on tequila and whale on US with a wrench. Glad that’s all OVER.

JIM STURGESS

A high-ranking government traitor? Why that could only be-

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

ED HARRIS, IT’S ED HARRIS YOU IDIOTS, THERE'S NO OTHER REASON FOR HIS CHARACTER TO EXIST

JIM STURGESS

-the president! America is soon scheduled to hand control of the space station over to an international committee. The president must be causing these disasters in order to retain control!

GERARD BUTLER

Right. Because after a fuckup of this magnitude, obviously the last thing people will want to do is remove the administrators responsible for killing everybody.

JIM STURGESS

And he’s not gonna stop with these penny-ante special effect showcases, either! He’s trying to chain a bunch of them together and bring on a geostorm!

GERARD BUTLER

You mean the tiny, ugly-ass sports compact from Isuzu?

JIM STURGESS

Not a Geo Storm, a GEOSTORM! A made-up, probably impossible meteorological phenomenon where it storms everywhere on the planet at once! According to our computers, this precise sequence of weather disasters - including the ones which the space station hasn’t caused yet - will lead to a geostorm in EXACTLY the nice, round timeframe of ninety minutes!!

GERARD BUTLER

Fuck! Fine then, let’s do an emergency shutdown of the station so it can’t frag the planet. This potentially apocalyptic orbital weapons platform DOES have an emergency off switch, right?

JIM STURGESS

Well, yes... but, ha ha, it turns out it can only be activated using the president’s biometrics. So if the most dangerous thing ever made malfunctions, it can only be stopped if you can get the president into the right specific room quickly enough.

(shrugs awkwardly)

Fortunately, I have been provided with a convenient secret service girlfriend who can grab the president for us!

ABBIE CORNISH

Okay then, I’ll-

JIM STURGESS

Plot devices don’t speak, honey.

ABBIE CORNISH

Then why does this movie have any dialogue at all?

INT. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

JIM and ABBIE go to find PRESIDENT ANDY at the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION in ORLANDO. But first they run into ED HARRIS.

JIM STURGESS

Ed, thank god I ran into somebody I can trust! We need to grab the president so we can shut down this Bond villain-esque weather scheme.

ED HARRIS

Uh, okay. I have the president right here in this gun. Stand still so that I might fire him at you.

JIM STURGESS

Wha - YOU?! EVIL?!? DWAAAHHH?!?!?

ED HARRIS

Don’t patronize me. Anyway, part of my plan is to set off a giant lightning storm here and kill everybody in line of succession ahead of me, so I become president!

JIM STURGESS

Are you fucking kidding me? We’ve gone to the trouble of pointing out it’s an election year! Do you honestly expect an administration that ran an environmental program so badly that it KILLED THEM ALL to get reelected?

JIM and ABBIE grab ANDY and run for it! Then a fuckton of LIGHTNING starts DESTROYING THE DNC!

BYSTANDER

Man, those Russian hackers have really stepped up their game.

(incinerated)

ABBIE CORNISH

Quickly, we can get away using this SELF-DRIVING cab we just commandeered! Since I’m driving it there might seem to be no reason for us to point out that it’s a SELF-DRIVING cab, so I guess now the audience has already figured out we’re shortly going to be pulling some trick where it SELF-DRIVES. We’ll still act like we’re being clever, though.

ED HARRIS

Chase that cab, my suicidally dedicated minions! Meanwhile I will teleport to the road ahead of them, so I can set up a rocket launcher ambush! Nothing screams “accidental death” like getting blown up by a fucking rocket launcher. FIRE!

MINION

Uh, you sure you don’t want to wait until we can see who’s driving? Disregarding any possible self-driving tricks, cabs are pretty interchangeable and that could in fact be entirely the wrong car-

ED HARRIS

I SAID FIRE!

They BLOW UP THE CAB! But then ANDY appears and shoves a GUN in ED’S FACE.

ANDY GARCIA

That’s right, we sent the empty cab driving towards you at sixty miles an hour! And now here we are, having caught up to it on foot within the next twenty seconds. My legs are KILLING ME.

ED HARRIS

Come on Andy, you should still let the geostorm happen! My theory is that the massive catastrophe which is going to demolish the face of the planet will handily attack only our political enemies and we’ll be fine!

ANDY GARCIA

Goddamn, how is it that each new layer of your motivations is even dumber than the last?

EXT. EVERYWHERE

Meanwhile DIRECTOR DEAN DEVLIN looks under the COUCH and finally finds the movie’s MISSING DISASTER EFFECTS, and they all start happening at once! Ice storms in Rio! Fire storms in Moscow! Tsunamis in the desert!

GERARD BUTLER

Opposite weather, is it? In that case I’m guessing London is currently having a pleasant sunny day HEY-OOOHHH!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

But we’re not doing so great here in space either. Somebody’s set off our self-destruct system, and the station’s gonna explode in [amount of time left in which the geostorm can still be averted + just enough time for a thrilling escape]!

GERARD BUTLER

Wait a minute, according some kind of plot mumbo jumbo, the only one who could have started the self-destruct protocol is... ROBERT! You little traitor, you’re working for Ed!

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Okay okay, you’ve got me, but SURPRISE I had a gun strapped to the underside of this desk and now you haven’t got me at all, HA!

GERARD BUTLER

What was your plan if I’d confronted you in literally any other room?

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Clearly I must have guns strapped underneath every surface in the entire space station.

(opens fire)

Aw yeah, no better strategy for staying alive than shooting bullets in a room which is separated from the vacuum of space by a single pane of-

ROBERT accidentally SPACES HIMSELF! The movie does not reveal whether, in his last moments of consciousness, RICHARD’S FROZEN, ORBITING CORPSE happens to collide FOOT-FIRST with ROBERT’S CROTCH, so one is forced to assume that it DOES.

INT. SPACE STATION STOPPING ROOM

Back on EARTH, ANDY arrives in the ROOM he has to be in so that he can turn off the SPACE STATION.

ANDY GARCIA

All right, we did it! I just used my biometrics to activate the thing, so now the world is saved! Right?

JIM STURGESS

Actually Gerard still has to get to another specific room on the station itself and press a big “YES” button for it to actually work.

ANDY GARCIA

OF COURSE. What was I thinking, we can’t let this emergency shutdown be activated merely by having the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED FUCKING STATES TURN IT ON WITH HIS OWN SPECIAL BODY SCAN. No, we need the extra, mega-secure step of having some engineer click “confirm”!

JIM STURGESS

Look, we wanted to do the president kidnapping scene but still give Gerard a big action climax, this was the only way.

In SPACE, GERARD and ALEXANDRA make it to the SPECIAL ROOM, shut down the SPACE STATION and SAVE THE WORLD!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Phew, and with one second left to go! That’s right, because we turned off the weather machine when we did all the bad weather instantly cleared up; but if it had gone on for even one more second it would have become a global superstorm which would have wiped out most of humanity. What a sensible premise!

GERARD BUTLER

Unfortunately while we were able to get everybody else off the station, there’s no time left for you and I to escape. But I knew this when I stayed behind. I may not have been a good father, but I hope my daughter can at least appreciate the sacrifice I made by dying in space in order to save-

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Are you seriously copying Bruce Willis’s death from Armageddon?

GERARD BUTLER

Oh FUCK you’re right. Screw it, let’s just jump in a spare satellite and fly to safety then.

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Hooray! I’m not even gonna ask why a weather satellite has room inside it for passengers!

They HOP ABOARD the SPACE EX MACHINA and fly away!

EXT. LOSER SHACK

Months later, GERARD, JIM and GERARD’S ANNOYING DAUGHTER are all hanging out and fishing.

GERARD BUTLER

Neat, our family’s come un-estranged! What a happy ending. Why if we keep the focus on stuff like this, and the fact that in Brazil the dog didn’t die, we can ignore the fact that millions of people just got horribly murdered!

JIM STURGESS

And the rebuilt space station is now in international hands as intended, and they’re gonna make sure none of this can ever-

GERARD BUTLER

Wait, what the fuck? They’re doing the space station again? After the last one turned out to be a city-destroying death ray which could be commandeered by a single nerd with a smartphone? That’s the least plausible ending this movie could have possibly had!

JIM STURGESS

Uh huh. Yeah, I’m sure in real life politicians the world over would instead start seriously committing themselves to environmental policy. Hmmm?

GERARD BUTLER

...Okay yeah this way’s more realistic.

---------------

>:(

#ur a bitch #<33 #submission

6 notes · View notes

nobodyenjoysanything · 3 years

Text

New writing

Lord Archibald was a duck, a statuesque one with white plumage and a golden beak. His webbed feet were yellow-orange like the trumpet part of a daffodil and his eyes were perfect black circles in tufted depressions on either side of his soft face. He beheld himself in the mirror – a draftsman’s rhapsody of lines and textures, from the elegant French Curve of his back to the rough hatching of his under-feathers, to the jagged planes of his folded flight-feathers – he was the archetype, the prototype, the very planotype, of a duck. This was the thought he burnished in his mind, as he always did when adjusting his large, bicorne hat, decorated as it was with the flags of Italy and Eritrea, from his time in the old Italian quarter of Asmara, where he had served as a diplomat, heading the Italian Consulate there for a while.

Now he was surrounded by luxury and privilege, quite separated from the concerns of International diplomacy, on a large, partly artificial island off the coast of Yemen, just North of Djibouti, overseeing International trade relations and dividing his hobbies between inserting himself (largely unnecessarily and to the great annoyance of captains and port officials) in the various businesses of the shipping lanes, and the induction of his daughters into society.

Lord Archibald had two lovely, well-mannered children – the comely Isabella, who had debuted in Paris last fall and was educated in deportment with the Versaille school, having majored in ladies’ piano and polite conversation in their Montmartre department – and the heavier-set, but duskier and bigger-eyed Penelope, who studied Samoyedic agriculture, before switching to Cordon Bleu, majoring in marine gustation.

It was Penelope’s debutante ball this Spring, and the house was a-buzz with the particularities of preparations, for an army of servants would see to it that everything was arranged and polished and there was a different outfit from the finest silks and muslins and jacquard-ed cheesecloth for every hot hour of the brazen day and every cool minute of the turquoise night. Nor would any dainty go undiscovered in researching the menu for a fortnight of gentile festivities, for a swarm of chefs and wine-tasters and edible-perfumiers bustled in a spaghetti of tunnels under the family residence, and heads could be seen surfacing from cellar trapdoors and poking from outbuildings and smokehouses at all stations of the clock. Much industrious grumbling was done with hushed immediacy under sun-grizzled parasols and a keen naturalist could have spotted an entire menagerie of moustaches, twitching with muffled importance.

In these efforts, Lord Archibald was aided considerably by his giant, robot wife, who glided along, underground, on a network of subterranean monorails repurposed from the internal mechanisms of a missile silo. The bunker, concrete for the most part with fibreglass domes and glass chutes near the water’s surface, was built as late as the 1960s by a reclusive and vengeful oil tycoon. Modelled to resemble a crab, complete with claws, carapace and eye-stalks, it had been extended in the early 90’s into the body of the island, where the living, fossil-rich rock sang cavernously as Mrs Archibald hurtled through the darkness, delivering bouquets, wax-sealed invitations and cake samples, with the cataclysmic force of hundreds of tonnes of coach-built steel.

1 note · View note

angelaiswriting · 5 years

Text

Esme | John Shelby x Esme

[original picture: pinterest]

✏️ Pairing: John Shelby x Esme

✏️ Summary: Shot by Changretta’s men, Esme fights for her life while John slowly loses himself in a sea of pain and sorrow. (Requested by Anonymous)

✏️ A/N: I cried like a bitch :) Writing about Esme getting hurt gave me a breakdown HAHA but at least I like the end result. Also! This is different from my usual style so if you feel like it, let me know what you think of it! It’d be greatly appreciated xx

✏️ Beta-read by: @sweetvengeancee (even though she’ll hate me forever)

✏️ Warnings: angst and talks of loved ones dying, I guess ? + Esme getting shot, “fuck” and “fucking” said countless times, cursing, tears

✏️ Word-count: 3,086

The noose is tightening around his neck, choking his throat in a vicious, iron grip.

He can’t breathe – no matter what he does, no matter what he tries to think about, John Shelby can’t breathe. His lungs feel like they’re slowly drowning, veins and capillaries and cells filling with lead and petrol and fibreglass.

His fingertips have pins and needles and so do his arms, his legs, his feet, his cheeks. But he can’t feel them, because he…

He…

He can’t… feel anything.

The bullets keep on flying past him, grazing his cheekbones as they miss him by a breath even six hours after they were fired. They don’t whistle in his ears, they don’t whisper against his skin. There is no… no sound. They are silent – as silent as aunt Polly when she’s mad, as silent as his house on the rare day none of the kids is home.

He’s never heard of silent bullets. And John Shelby has seen the war – has lived the war. Survived it, even. But these are – and painfully so. And his wife’s pained gasp is the only sound exploding in his ears, ricocheting in his brain.

Even with his eyes closed, he can see her. Even when screaming, he can hear her. And it’s a sound so soft the rage of the moment should have drowned it out but it didn’t. It didn’t and now it plagues him.

It plagues him as he stares at her, motionless in her hospital bed, dressed in white.

If he managed to focus and delude himself enough, it would feel like on their wedding day, when he hadn’t exactly wanted to marry a Lee. But now he can’t – he can’t… He can’t. The dark purple under her eyes scares him, her pallor terrifies him – it stops his heart and his brain and it’s not because she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen; it’s not because he’s learnt to love her more than he loves himself, but because he-

Fuck.

He almost lost her. Today. A few hours ago. In front of their own home.

He almost lost her and while she’s there, fighting for her life like the fighter he knows she is, he can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. He can’t even feel – can’t feel the cramps in his shins, can’t feel the headache pounding inside his head, can’t feel the stings in his eyes nor the tears that have dried up on his cold cheeks.

He can’t hear Arthur and Tommy talking behind him, can’t hear the way his heart is thundering in his chest and in his throat and in his stomach.

All he hears is her pain – and the thud of her body as it hits the ground. And her whines. And the gurgling of her blood in her-

Fuck.

He’s choking. He’s choking on her blood – and on the tears he can’t shed. He’s choking on reality, that same reality that now feels worse than a nightmare. He chokes on the screams he can’t let out, not yet, chokes on the surreality of the moment, on the absurd quietness of the hospital room, chokes on the white of her dressings and on the red of her blood.

He’s seen her blood. He’s seen her blood when she accidentally cut herself while cleaning vegetables and he’s seen her blood when she gave birth to the additional two children he’s managed to bring into this world. But he… He would have never-

His eyes still see it – the blood squirting from the bullet wounds in her chest – the blood bubbling in her mouth – the blood staining the stones of the patio. The sight makes him sick. The memory makes him sick – sick to his stomach and to his heart, where it hurts the most.

But he can’t vomit. He can’t puke it out – can’t let the pain out – can’t…

He’s yelling at his brothers before he has the time to realize it. He’s yelling and cursing and bloody hell-

They make him cry, those two words. It definitely was, a bloody hell, back there, back at home, with those fucking… fucking fuckers… shooting his wife like a target at a funfair. He’s crying and screaming but he can’t hear himself – he can’t feel himself as his mind slowly drifts away, drifts into darkness and stillness and… cold.

He’s cold inside, John, even though his body is feverish with pain and rage and tears and blood. He’s cold and stale, and he can feel his limbs slowly but surely turning to stone as his possessed eyes stare into nothing.

Esme, she…

She knew it was coming. She has always known.

He’s nauseous as he thinks this is on him – whether his wife lives or dies, those bullet wounds are on him, her blood will always be staining his hands and his clothes and his soul.

It’s on him and on the Peaky Blinders. The Peaky fucking Blinders. They should have protected her – he should have protected her – protected her from this life and from their enemies.

He has vertigo as he sits there, on the cold floor of her hospital room, exactly where doctors and nurses don’t want him to be.

Your wife needs to rest, Mr Shelby.

If she makes it through the night, she might make it.

They never say it. They never say survives. Just like they never say death or life or she’ll live. Or she’ll die.

They say if we’re lucky – we, like they have shit to do with his wife, with his Esme. They say we like they’ll have to share his pain if she fucking dies. They say we like they’ll have to go home and explain to their kids that their Mummy is not… is never… that she’s fucking gone and that she’s never coming back – she’s not coming back because love didn’t save her, because all love did to her was put her in danger, shoot five bullets into her chest, cover her in her own blood in the only place that should have been safe – for her, for them, for the children – the only place he had promised her and his children would be their secret heaven.

They say all we have to do is pray – we again, like they are leaving her room to join hands in the corridor and pray to fucking God to spare her. Spare her because I don’t know what to do without her. Spare her because I love her more than life. Spare her because she’s a mother. Spare her because she loves life like nothing else – because she’s able to create life – because she’s given me new life. Spare her and take me – fuck, take me instead.

Take me. Take me. Take me.

But no one takes him, no one takes his life. And God is not going to help because God doesn’t give a fuck. God has taken Martha first and if He decides he wants Esme to join him, too, there’s shit John can do to stop Him.

He should have loved her more. Or, better, he should have proved to her how great his love for her was and the lengths it went. He should have taken her away from Birmingham – from England – take her to the other side of the fucking world. Somewhere where Shelby means nothing, where the Peaky Blinders have never been heard of. He should have taken her and the children to safety, should have listened to her and her gipsy witchcraft when she told him something was coming – and that it was coming for Shelby blood.

And she is Shelby blood, too, now. They have joined hands on their wedding day, they have mixed their blood and she is now Shelby as much as he is Lee. And blood means everything – to the Shelbys, at least.

And yet…

And yet, he has disregarded it. He has put her in danger and-

Fuck. He’s choking again. He’s choking on his own tears and on his own sobs because he’s never seen her like this – he’s never even thought he’d one day see her like this. And there’s nothing his hands can do to give him a break from this sight of her because even with his eyes closed, with the heels of his hands pressing against his eyelids, all he sees is her.

Her ashy skin. The dark circles under her eyes punching her. Her dry lips. Her hair – always so soft and curly and shiny now spread over a grey pillow.

He wants her to live.

Fuck, Lord, she doesn’t deserve this.

He wants to scream it – he desperately wants to scream it but his body can now take only one thing at a time and now – now he’s crying, he’s tearing at the seams and he feels thin and scattered everywhere. And he’s made of paper – Bible-thin paper, so delicate and fragile he could break at any given time. Head heavy, heart heavier, there’s nothing else he can do – not even when he runs out of tears, not even when his voice cracks and breaks and gets hoarser and hoarser the more he cries.

Where is that we now that he’s alone? Now that his wife is fighting the fight of her life alone? Where is that we now that he needs it? Now that his body has gone limp against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him?

There’s blood on his left shoe. It turns the brown leather darker and there’s nothing he can do, nothing he can conjure up to stop himself from staring at it. From getting lost in it.

He’s numb. He’s been numb on love so many times, but now… Now there’s nothing. Nothing worth feeling, at least.

Days bleed into nights and nights bleed into days and-

Bleed.

The word makes him scream as he hurls a glass of whiskey across aunt Polly’s living room. It centres the mirror – the mirror shatters – he doesn’t care about those seven years of bad luck because his bad luck is now. His bad luck is Esme fighting to live in a hospital bed. His bad luck is his children without a mother – again. His bad luck is a silent house and a weeping heart and a dead mind.

His bad luck is now. And now has such an abstract meaning, for he doesn’t know how much time has passed. He doesn’t care – he doesn’t care because he doesn’t have the strength to care. He doesn’t know it’s been twenty-seven days and eleven hours – well, part of him does know, at least.

It’s the part of him that doesn’t scream. The part of him that hides in the back of his mind and remains silent, waiting and hoping and praying.

But his children have been asking questions.

Where’s Esme?

Where’s Mummy?

When’s Mummy coming home?

Does Mummy not love us anymore?

He doesn’t know. But he doesn’t know how to tell them – how to tell them he doesn’t know when Mummy’s coming home. If. If she’s coming home. But he’s certain she loves them all – both her and Martha’s children and she loves them all so much that she’s been begging him to go away, to leave, to take the road together and see where it leads them.

But he can’t talk, he can’t form words – not in his mind, not in his mouth, not even in his heart. He cracks and breaks and he crumbles down to the floor like flakes of plaster in an old house.

And he feels that way – like an old house. Abandoned and empty and cold. The fireplace is freezing, the kitchen is silent. Weeds grow in the garden where roses and hydrangeas used to bloom. And he feels as dry as a potted flower forgotten inside, on the dining table, petals fallen and colours lost a long time ago.

And there are echoes in that house. Screams. There are screams tumbling down the dusty walls, ghosts that refuse to leave their mansion, their nest.

But he doesn’t want to become that. Doesn’t want to become a ghost. Doesn’t want for his house to turn empty and cold and silent. He wants his children to shout and Esme to sing and he wants to sit there, in the midst of that chaos, because only there he feels at home. Only then he feels alive.

Esme’s silent, though, and the children weep. They weep when they fall asleep and they weep when they wake up. Their teacher hasn’t seen them in almost a month and while she has come to check on them, she has found no one to open the door.

His brothers are the only ones who talk – Tommy and Arthur, that is; Finn is just as absent as John is. Michael hasn’t spoken much since leaving the hospital, scars on his chest and a cane in his hand. And Polly…

Polly has lost so many people that by now she knows what to do – and what not to do. She knows he doesn’t want to talk. She knows he only needs contact, even if nobody – not even John – knows how he needs it.

I’m sorry, John-boy.

We’re getting revenge for what they did to Esme.

That fucking wop will see who the Peaky fucking Blinders truly are.

I feel your pain, John.

No!

He wants to scream that word, wants its weight to leave his lungs.

No, Tommy doesn’t feel his pain. Tommy might have lost his wife, but this… No, he doesn’t know what this feels like. Doesn’t know how quickly and slowly at the same time you die, watching your unconscious wife – the fucking love of your fucking life – lie in a bed that isn’t hers. Doesn’t know how colours fade around you, how even the walls of Polly’s house bleed, how the wind howls and whines and moans through the leaves.

The ticking of the clock hanging over the mantlepiece is killing him. It’s driving him insane. It’s taking what’s left of his sanity.

And it makes him see ghosts.

He sees Martha, lives her death again, just a few hours after their daughter’s birth. He sees her youth, that same youth that used to sparkle in her grey eyes.

And then he sees her, sees Esme. Sees her maturity, sees the weight of a vagabond life in the lines of her face, in the expression wrinkles that appear when she smiles.

It’s the memory of her smile that gives birth to that thought.

I don’t want you to die.

He doesn’t want her to, doesn’t want to think of a life without her. Doesn’t want to stop and imagine all the ways he’ll have to rebuild himself and his children once she’s gone. If, he reminds himself. If she’s gone.

Polly brings him closer to her chest when he falls on his knees, whiskey still trickling down what’s left of the mirror. She brings him closer to her in her motherly embrace and his sobs intensify, his tears turn into a sea. And-

Please, don’t die.

God, please, don’t take her away from me. Away from us.

He can’t feel his body. His soul is leaving it through his tears. Here. And there. First left. Then right. Then right again. A salty tear sneaks into his mouth, the other stains Polly’s dress. Then, he loses count – not that he’s ever kept it.

Once she comes back home and she’s back to health, you’ll be free to go wherever the heart takes you.

Polly doesn’t say if. She says once.

Once she comes back home.

It sounds good. It feels good.

It’s almost real.

John can almost feel her skin under his fingertips – Esme’s. Esme’s skin. Like when they hold hands, or when he grabs her chin to kiss her, or when he makes love to her. It feels like hope – greater than that bloody all we have to do is pray.

Do some of your gipsy magic, aunt Pol.

He doesn’t say it, though, he doesn’t ask for it. It would mean deluding himself with lifeless hopes – lifeless rituals. He doesn’t ask Polly to do some trick just as he doesn’t pray to God.

If God truly cared, He wouldn’t have let Esme get shot.

She was innocent.

She is innocent.

He is the sinner. He should have got shot. He should be in that bed fighting for his life – or bleeding his life out just a step outside his home.

Days bleed some more, and nights shed their tears.

John is restless – he doesn’t know when it’s day and he doesn’t know when it’s night. The house is quieter than a cemetery – the children are at Polly’s – he can’t even bring himself to look after himself, let alone after a dodgeball team of kids.

Everyone else is there, though – Tommy, who’s left Charlie at Polly’s; Arthur and Linda, who have done the same with Billy; Finn and Ada; and even Michael. They feed him, they force him to wash and get dressed, and they give the illusion of a life still being lived.

Even though John still feels like that dry potted flower in that abandoned house.

Life starts again one Tuesday morning, though, and it does so just as unexpectedly as Esme got unexpectedly shot thirty-three days ago.

There’s a phone call, and its ringing noise throughout the empty house makes John curse and scream and wail as anger bubbles up again. And anger turns to rage and then to fury when Tommy forces him downstairs, pushes the receiver in his hand.

“Mr Shelby?”

He doesn’t recognise the voice – doesn’t even want to. The light of day burns his eyes and he’s not drunk enough to cope with today, not yet. So he just groans and then there’s that what the fuck do you want? that makes his sister Ada cringe – no one’s ever heard his voice so broken and cracked and lifeless.

“Your wife has woken up.”

The receiver falls to the floor and before it has the time to touch the somewhat dusty parquet, John is out of the door.

Are you crying yet or is it just me? For some reason, the mere thought of my bby Esme getting hurt pains me to no end haha

Feedback and PB requests are welcome! ❤️

TAGS (to be added to or to be removed from any list, shoot me an ask)

Everything: @idhrenniel @saibh29 @fuckthatfeeling @aya-fay @pebblesz892 @mblaqgi

Peaky Blinders: @whimsylavender @thethyri @friendleyneighbourhoodvillain @oddsnendsfanfics

People that might be interested: @sweetvengeancee @flowers-in-your-hayr @kellydixon01

#john shelby #john shelby imagine #john shelby x esme #peaky blinders #peaky blinders imagine #angelaiswriting #esme shelby #esme lee

65 notes · View notes