#seeing a teenage autistic girl have a romance with another girl is. very important to me. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wildefluorescent · 3 years

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please talk about stupid polish book i would love to hear you talk about stupid polish book

okay i will. cant believe it worked. at first i was like do i REALLY want to talk about it? but you know what yeah. i have to say though that the books (cause it's a trilogy) haven't been translated & published outside of poland. btw if you're polish and you recognise this... the girl what were YOU doing at the witch trials meme. adding a read more cause this will get long

i was first made aware of the first & second books in this series not too long after they were published, maybe in 2017, but two things put me off them: the cover design for the first book and the blurbs for both of them, which i'll get to later, maybe. growing up i didn't read a single polish young adult book with lgbt characters, simply because when i was a young teenager, there was, hm, one. still haven't read that one though. and i accepted that, alright, it's not something i'm going to get. then, at the beginning of 2021 i finally beat my two year long reading slump and then my uni friend lent me this gay polish romance. which, wild. it was entertaining and fun, and not too badly written, and i was at such a point in my life that i read it twice in two days. and it made me so desperate to get more lgbt characters in polish books that in march, while in class, i texted my friend 'alright, i'm ordering them', them meaning books 2&3 in the series i first saw in 2017. but! there is also book one, which i got an ebook of. the next morning i was already done with it and waiting for my package, and when those two came, i also read them both in less than 24 hours while attending class. i've since done rereads etc. but this isn't what i want to talk about. those three books genuinely mean so much to me! the first one follows the main character as he realises he's a boy & navigates the first weeks after. the second one shifts the focus to his boyfriend as he deals with guilt and his internalised homophobia and responsibility. the third one is about mc1's classmate who navigates her first relationship, deals with coming out to her mum and wonders how much of her life is her own initiative and how much is just following expectations. the author's style gets less and less wonky with each book (the first one was her debut) and its genuinely really interesting for me to dissect from a storytelling point of view, because it's really clever with character archetypes and the way they switch or don't depending on whose book we are currently reading. it really, really hammers home the unreliability of our narrators without being on the nose about it, it's just something that once you pin it down, you can't stop seeing the ways in which things are Just Not Adding Up. i really love the relationships between book one's mc and his father and book three's mc and her mother, for both personal and literary reasons. also, some of their scenes made me cry. it's so obviously and firmly set in poland (of 2015-2017) and does not let you forget it that these are lgbt teenagers living in poland without making it into trauma porn. there are storylines that are really interesting musings on forgiveness and guilt that i only appreciated after a reread. and every single person is a flawed, sometimes very deeply, person, which, though sometimes incredibly frustrating, i appreciate. btw, i've got a quite interesting analysis of clothes symbolism in book one in my notes app. that's how much i got into it.

i've also got a lot of criticism, cause... i'll start a bit superficial, but i'm really not a fan of the design of the first book (though i read an article about why the design is like that. does not excuse the bad bad execution). the style is v clumsy at times and some comparisons the author attempts to make are just so bad they're funny. the autistic love interest in book three at times feels as if she was being written with a checklist right by the keyboard. the author, as a cishet, doesn't always get it right when it comes to her lgbt characters (but, surprisingly for me, a lot of the time she does). the plot sometimes feels as if it's being held together by old scotch tape, there are some weird time jumps that don't flow very well.

all this aside, the books are so important to me!!! and rereading them feels so. nice. i wont look for another word, just really really nice. i've got a playlist that lasts roughly as long as reading one book in one sitting, and it's one of my best playlists. and btw, book 1 is being made into a movie. gonna end it here now.

genuinely thank you for asking!! and sorry this was so long and maybe doesn't totally make sense

#ask #thank you for the ask blue!! how are u! here this is for u: ❤️❤️#shh marta #cause okay that was a lot

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aroworlds · 6 years

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Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Alex

Today I have the delight of introducing Alex, better known to aro-spec Tumblr as @arotaro and @mutant-jojos!

Alex is a bisexual, half-Puerto Rican multi-disciplinary aromantic artist and creative with severe ADHD. You’ll find her prolific fanworks on AO3 as EmeraldTrash666, writing primarily for the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fandom. Her bold, colourful art for the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hetalia, Pokemon and Vocaloid fandoms is also available on Redbubble under the name StellaHagane.

She writes, she creates digital art and she dabbles in music, sewing and fashion design, single-handedly proving that there’s no such thing as too much creative awesome for any one aromantic!

With us Alex talks about finding the word aro, the power of fandom and creative fanworks, her love of aro Jotaro, the challenges of creating with ADHD, the struggles of being an aro gen writer in fandom and the importance of expressing our aro headcanons. Everything she says is absolutely on point, so please let’s give her all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

I guess in some ways my “story” starts out pretty typical. Got older, kept waiting for my First Crush™, never got it, started worrying and trying to force myself to develop crushes. I actually was in a relationship with another girl on a forum I was part of as a teenager, but eventually I realized that I didn’t really like her romantically, and the relationship started to become really unpleasant for me. I eventually felt so miserable that I didn’t even want to talk at her at all, even though we were close friends, but I didn’t want to break up with her - partly because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, partly because we were everyone’s “OTP” and I didn’t want my friends to hate me for ruining that. But eventually I did break up with her, and I’m happy to say she took it with grace and we’re still close friends today! (She’s ace and a great writer/artist herself, too!)

I was part of a very nice LGBTQ+ group as a teenager, but I could never figure out my identity. I felt really ashamed and alone. Whenever I brought up how messed up I felt because I’d never had a crush on anyone, everyone was like, “Oh, sounds like you must be asexual!”, but I knew I wasn’t, and that was the worst part. Even though I knew aromanticism was a thing, nobody ever talked about it. It was only ever in the context of aroaces, so I didn’t know I was aro. I thought I must have had some sort of mental illness or something, but certainly not a legitimate orientation, nothing to be proud of like everyone else.

During that time, I found myself connecting on a deep emotional level to characters like Alphonse Elric, Fujiwara no Sai, the X-Men in general (although I’ve been an X-Men fan since I was literally a baby), basically anyone who was somehow “different” from the rest of humanity, even though I never understood why, since I was a fairly privileged kid who had never experienced much bullying or anything. Weirdly enough, it was Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure that helped me realize I was aro and come to terms with it; I saw an interview with Hirohiko Araki, the author of JJBA, where he was asked what type of girls Jotaro Kujo likes, and replied that he didn’t think Jotaro liked girls. The obvious interpretation would be that Jotaro’s gay, but somehow, one way or another, I decided to go with the idea that Jotaro’s aromantic. Jotaro also happened to be a character I really related to for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, so around the time I was 18 I put two and two together and was like ... oh shit…

Please click keep reading to continue Alex’s story!

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

I’ve always been weird in the way I’m very creative, but tend to kinda bounce around from hobby to hobby. Other people draw, or write, or sing, while I draw for a month, and then write for a month and sew for a week and play video games for a week, and then I draw some more, and then I try out something completely new, and then I write again. I think it must be an ADHD thing, idk. In any case, I’ve just always been really passionate about making stuff, whatever that stuff happens to be.

I’ve also always been very much fandom-oriented. Ever since I was a toddler, I used to dictate fanfiction to my mom (back then it usually involved Winnie the Pooh, the Powerpuff Girls, Godzilla, and my dog). I mostly draw fanart. I find that I’m not really capable of writing original stories, but I’m great at getting fanfics in character, and I love writing them. I love taking stories I already love and reinterpreting them, seeing what it would be like if the characters were put into different situations, etc.

Because of my ADHD, I really struggle with actually finishing things. I try really really hard, I really do, and I’ve been trying to push myself even harder these past few years. I’ve made progress, but it’s still extremely difficult, so I’m very sorry for all the projects I’ve abandoned over the years. Sorry I still haven’t finished the fic that was supposed to be done in early March. I’m trying, really. I promise I’m working on the next chapter of BLaD, too.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

Of course, pretty much everything I write is gen. Even if I include romantic relationships in my fics, I never write about romance, just stories which also happen to include some characters who might be dating someone. And obviously I always write Jotaro as aro! That’s really important to me. No matter which AU I’m writing, he’s always aro. (And autistic, but that’s off topic.)

I’m also not really into shipping because of my romance repulsion, but I ship Joseph Joestar and Caesar Zeppeli. The thing is … I’ve always viewed it as a unique relationship, sort of difficult to define as being strictly romantic or platonic or sexual, just kind of their own thing that defies words. That’s how I’ve always written it. I had the sudden realization recently that this strange view on the only ship I really actually like (at the moment, anyway) is probably due to my being aro, lmao.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

People don’t read gen fics, and people aren’t interested in aro stories. That’s just the way it is. I do have some dedicated readers, whom I love deeply, but in general… I could post something with a deep plot, something funny and dramatic and witty and touching, something I poured my heart and soul into for months, and it’ll get very few hits/comments/kudos, while someone else could post the same generic 2,000-word romance fic everyone’s seen a dozen times over, with no editing or anything, and get twice the amount of traffic my fics do in half the time. It’s really crushing.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

I dunno… The aro community feels so small. Online, I have a small circle of aro mutuals who all kind of vent collectively, and I’m part of Arocalypse and a few aro/aspec Discord servers, but I still feel like there isn’t really much of a larger community to be part of in the same way that there is for other orientations. Offline, I’ve never met another aro, or even anyone who actually knows what aromanticism is prior to me explaining it to them.

I also don’t feel like there’s a very unified “aspec community”. As an allo aro, I feel very rejected by the ace community - not to say that I feel like I should be part of the ace community, since I’m not ace, but I feel like they throw aros under the bus a lot. I mean, we’ve all seen the “asexuals can feel love, just like anybody else! … oh, except for aroaces, I guess. But the rest of us are normal, so you should accept us!” rhetoric. Both within and outside the aspec communities, aros are rarely treated with the same priority as aces, even though we’re arguably in a much more difficult position than your average allo ace.

That being said, I’m glad there is an aro community at all. I don’t know where I’d be now if I were still questioning. Probably not in a very good place.

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

As I mentioned, there’s a general lack of interest in gen fics or sympathy for romance-repulsed people in general. It’s really difficult being romance repulsed in fandom spaces, because nobody cares about anything other than ships. There are very few gen fics, and even less that are a decent length, not abandoned, or cater to my specific interests, so I have to write my own. I don’t often have anything good to read; most of the big fics, the ones with cool plots and long word counts and ongoing updates, are ship fics. If I’m lucky, maybe two gen fics will be posted in one week, and maybe one of them will be longer than a few thousand words. Maybe one might even have my favorite characters. But usually genfics are few and far between, and kind of random in terms of what you’ll get. Sometimes I get so bored that I read ship fics anyway, and then I always wind up feeling really awful afterwards.

I’ve written, over the course of the past two years alone, over 20 gen fics. But whenever I vent that sometimes I’d like to actually get to read something, I always get someone telling me, “Well if you want gen fics, write some yourself! You have to make the change! You can’t demand people write stuff for you!” And of course, at the same time it’s totally acceptable to request ship fics from your favorite author, and if you complain that there aren’t enough fics for your rarepair, it’s seen as relatable and totally valid.

Fandom is just … really, really amatonormative, tbh. I hate it. I’m trying to make a difference (I did organize Gen Jojo Week along with my friend Rachel last year, and hopefully will again this year), but there’s only so much I can do.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

Aside from reblogging my art and promoting my fics? Talk about stuff. Talk about aro stuff in fandom. Seriously! I know it seems obvious that aro people would like aro headcanons and gen fics and all that, but we need to talk about them more. Nobody outside the community gives enough of a shit about us to have aro headcanons, so let’s get them popular. Talk about your favorite aro headcanons. Talk about your favorite gen fics. Talk about how such-and-such character is totally aro; talk about how excited you are to see aro characters in fics. My dream is for aro headcanons to become just as common and popular as any other type of headcanon.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

This is old news to most of the people who already know me, but my current big project that I’ve been working on for several years now is Between Life and Death, a drama/horror/supernatural JJBA fic.

(WARNING: PHANTOM BLOOD AND STARDUST CRUSADERS SPOILERS BELOW.)

The plot of the fic is that Dio wins at the end of Stardust Crusaders, and after realizing that he has no hobbies other than harassing the Joestars, he decides to bring Jonathan back by sticking his head (which… we’ll just assume Dio preserved for plot purposes) onto Jotaro’s body. Obviously, Jonathan is NOT happy with this arrangement, but it also turns out that Jotaro’s still alive, just not in control of his body. He can still use his stand, so he essentially uses Star Platinum as a sort of proxy for interacting with the environment around him, even though he only comes out when Jonathan’s alone since he doesn’t want Dio to know he’s alive.

Basically, it’s the story of a depressed vampire and a traumatized ghost. It’s a very introspective fic; most of the story consists of conflicts between Dio and Jonathan, and Jonathan and Jotaro struggling to come to terms with their new existences - Jonathan being unable to reconcile vampirism with his personal morals, and Jotaro having one hell of an identity crisis while also mourning the deaths of his friends and family. The plot is picking up, though, and there is an end goal in mind, as well as an eventual sequel!

As for where the story-in-progress is at right now … well, the next “stage” of the plot is hamon training for Kakyoin and Avdol, which will be fun. This chapter also includes several dream sequences, including an extended appearance by Mary Joestar (Jonathan’s mom), and a very serious and dark scene which I almost ruined by having dream!Will Zeppeli refer to Jonathan as his padawan. Yeah.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

As mentioned, I’m working on chapter 9 of Between Life and Death! And working on and off on some stuff for the mutants AU. Most recently, on a whim I rewrote the lyrics to Handbeat Clocktower by MOTHY to be about Jonathan Joestar. Somehow this went far enough that I’m making an actual UTAU rendition of this “parody”, and hopefully it’ll be done sometime in the next few weeks. I’m really having fun with it and I hope people like it!

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thewillowness · 5 years

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No more apologies.

CW: Frank discussion of mental health. Also. very long and disorganized writing.

This year has been pretty challenging because of a confluence of several unrelated matters. By large, though, the perfect storm of events that took place since a year ago and now has taken a serious toll on my mental (and physical, to an extent) health. I am slowly recovering from all this as of this writing, but all this spring and summer I was not able to motivate myself to do anything at all.

In retrospect, the signs were there. I no longer enjoyed engaging in activities that I once loved to do. I was sleeping too much and even then I was exhausted a few hours later. I was, from time to time, bordering on the paranoid, having my anxiety to be debilitating.

Often I questioned why I am here, what in the hell I am doing, and any prospect for a better future.

I’ve wasted a large bulk of my lifetime, mostly trying to survive and nothing more. I had a long history of homelessness as an adult. When I was still newly on the street, I dreaded every evening and boredom was unbearable. The only goal in my life was to make another day fly by me as fast as possible so I could survive one more day. That was most of my life during my 30s.

I have never had a normal childhood and I have never had a normal adult life. That sometimes causes me an inferiority complex, when the kids who graduated from my high school the same year have already built respectable careers, earned multiple postgraduate degrees, and making families and children.

To add to this, the last three years in the United States have done a lot of damage to my own psyche. Having been exposed to the daily barrage of news about hate crimes, racist terror, institutionalization of extreme homophobia at the highest level of the government, and ethnic cleansing policy from the top, I have internalized so much of racism, classism and homophobia into my subconscious. Frankly, before the rise of Trump, I had not given much thought about discrimination or hate despite my being a member of the marginalized minorities. Now no day will pass without at least thinking about it.

I know that people around me are barely tolerating me, perhaps out of pity, perhaps out of their own guilt. Nobody has really liked me, and even though from time to time I made an attempt to be “likable,” I’ve given up on that prospect.

I tried to get a date and get laid for years in vain, but now I realize that I was doing all that (1) out of curiosity, and (2) because “everyone else is doing it.” I had internalized the rather heteronormative (and assimilationist) social narrative that relationship is good, romance is good, and everyone’s goal should be marriage and family. Fuck that.

Now I firmly believe that I am aromantic, and it makes sense because as an autistic I cannot relate to people like normies might.

People look at me with disgust, and I know I creep them out. They obviously try to be polite and don’t tell me that in my face but I am not fooled.

For too long I longed to be normal. I wanted to be one of the normies. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to be taken seriously.

Being taken seriously meant freedom. It also meant more income. More opportunities. More friends. Maybe more sex.

But I am starting to see the error in my thinking, because of two recent events.

1. Recently I attended an all-day conference called Build and Monetize. It was a conference geared toward consultants and other entrepreneurs. One thing I learned was that almost everyone thinks they’re not being taken seriously (”impostor syndrome”). The other thing is that I don’t have to market myself to the “normies” but rather I could play on my own difference (now working on this!) -- no more trying in vain to compete.

2. Like you, I have been following Greta Thunberg. It’s hard now to believe that merely a year ago, she organized a “School Strike for the Climate” at the Swedish Parliament and NOBODY showed up (like almost all of the events I had organized so far!). She just stood there alone. In 2019, she’s met Barack Obama, gave a speech in the United Nations, and is a leading voice of the youth climate movement and the global conscience. Her one-person protest has grown to one of the largest mass demonstrations in world history, ranking at par with the Women’s March on Washington (2017) and Occupy Wall Street (2011). I really wished I was her when I was 15. Like Greta, I was already very much politically and socially conscious at that age. Despite the haters (mostly the right-wing, how predictable) and critics feigning compassion, Greta actually was the right person to be doing this.

“She admitted her passion was partly down to viewing the world in stark terms. The result of her simplistic approach, fuelled by her condition, is that she has presented this issue with more clarity and competence than almost any adult activist or politician in recent years. And there is something rather beautiful in hearing this teenager demonstrate by her actions how society is stronger when it embraces difference – a message that seems so pertinent to our troubled age. Indeed, this aspect of her stance as a now-public figure on the autism spectrum is arguably as important as her bold stand on climate change, given many prevailing attitudes.“ -- The Guardian, April 23, 2019.

I don’t believe like some that autistic people are some new “supergroup” that will save the world. I think we’ve always been here. But I do think our clarity, moral outrage, allergy to bullshit and refusal to go along are some of the many disabled skills that can be part of saving the world. -- Truth Out, Sept. 25, 2019.

A few years ago, Thunberg’s ascent to fame likely would have been framed in the media as that of an inspiring young girl “overcoming” her disability to become the leader of a worldwide movement. But Thunberg herself makes a different, more radical argument: that she became an activist not in spite of her autism but because of it. “I see the world a bit different, from another perspective,” she explained to New Yorker reporter Masha Gessen. “It’s very common that people on the autism spectrum have a special interest. … I can do the same thing for hours.” Thunberg discovered her special interest in climate change when she was just 9 years old, and she couldn’t understand why everyone on the planet wasn’t similarly obsessed with preventing it.A visceral feeling of repulsion toward deceit and hypocrisy is also common among people on the spectrum. As Thunberg told the BBC, “I don’t fall for lies as easily as regular people, I can see through things.” She has a particular contempt for the professional propagandists and apologists who prop up the fossil fuel industry and discourage the development of renewable energy resources, dismissing UK claims about reductions in carbon emissions as the result of “very creative accounting.” -- Vox, Sept. 24, 2019.

In fact, Greta Thunberg may have been the absolute best thing that happened to the autistic community in modern history, when most people’s perception of autism was pretty much shaped by the film Rain Man and propaganda from Autism Speaks.

At the very least, Greta is my inspiration. (And despite what the haters think, she is beautiful and her face almost reminds me of a classical Greek or Roman sculpture. She could as well be a Greek goddess incarnate.)

Back to the topic, I feel that I’ve wasted good two decades of my life trying to fit in and be “respected” (read: act and speak like normies, according to the white cisheteronormative middle-class standard of “respectability”), and engage in activities that normies might find “respectable.”

Between apologizing for being “abnormal” and internalizing ableism, classism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism, I had wasted so much of my creativity and energy on this uncompensated labor to make people around me “comfortable” so they might “accept” me.

Fuck that. I’m done living my life like this, so as to please the normies for a pittance in return (and mostly uncompensated).

They never understand me anyway. They have never walked a tenth of a mile in my shoes at the intersection of multiple oppressions. They may be well-meaning but their privilege means ignorance, self-righteousness, meaningless virtue-signalling circle jerk, and unwillingness to learn (and it’s not my responsibility to “educate” them without compensation, either).

And yes, history of “mental health” is history of colonialism and racism, too. What many non-Western and pre-Christian Western cultures called it shamanic gifts or witchcraft, the Christendom called it “hysteria” and “lunacy.” (Note: I have studied cultural anthropology of shamanism as a purely academic subject for two semesters. I do not purport to be a shaman nor it is my intention to appropriate their traditions.)

I am instead going to quadruple down on my “craziness,” and I will no longer apologize for it. (For the most part, “mental health” in our society is just a mechanism to enforce social order and norms -- if there be any question on this, ask why it is always the police that responds to mental health “emergencies” and not EMTs.) I am turning the landmine that it my “craziness” into a goldmine instead.

And fuck the normies.

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thefaeriereview · 4 years

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Tour: Masters and Beginners

https://ift.tt/39D3CS8

Welcome to the tour for Masters & Beginners, by Daley Downing, book one in The Order of the Twelve Tribes series! Read on for a sneak peek, and a chance to win a signed copy of the book!

Masters & Beginners

Publication Date: August 2017

Genre: YA Fantasy/ Urban Fantasy/ Magic

When Sophie Driscoll’s grandmother dies, her parents take over running the Annex, a warehouse facility that stores magical artifacts and documents proving, and protecting, the existence of faeries. Sophie and her brothers, Flynn and Cal, happily adjust to a new house, new friends, and a new way of living, joining the ranks of generations who have kept the fey and mortal realms separate for centuries. Before the first month of their new life is over, they’ll encounter romance, elves, talking cats, ancient secrets, and potentially lethal danger. What could possibly go wrong…

4 out of 5 fairies

Masters and Beginners is a great afternoon escape. You really do get drawn in right from the start (and I don't just mean the prologue). I loved the whole Warehouse 13ish vibe that the book gives off. I loved the fae elements, but I could've skipped some of the more biblical/Christian things. That said I'm greatly looking forward to book 2.

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Excerpt

Prologue

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It was a pleasant late summer’s evening, shortly after sunset, the sky a rich navy blue, stars beginning to twinkle in the distance. In a pleasant subdivision, residents were settling in for the night. In a tent pitched on one of the well-mowed lawns was a group of four teenage girls, in their pajamas and sleeping bags, currently finding out who could come up with the scariest scary story.

"...and to this day, he wanders the woods, looking for his head."

"Can I just say, eew." Margaret wrinkled her nose and frowned disapprovingly. "That was the Headless Horseman. That's not an original story, Kimberly."

"Fine! You come up with something better." Kimberly flopped down onto her pillow.

The tent was pitched in a backyard just like so many other backyards up and down the street. The development was one of the last to be built in the town limits, and it sat near the boundary of the state forest. The fact they lived so close to a nature preserve meant to the adults lots of hiking and biking on the trails, a chance for the kids to see wildlife, and learn about the woods firsthand. To their children, it meant a sense of danger, dark goings-on, and the perfect atmosphere for telling ghost stories during slumber parties.

"Fine, I will." Sophie sat up taller on her blanket. It was her tent, her backyard, her house, with her family inside, hosting the slumber party. Taking the flashlight, she placed it under her chin, the beam casting shadows over the contours of her face.

"There was a house at the edge of the city that everyone called the glass house," she began. "It looked like it was made all from glass, and it was strange to the people in the city. It belonged to the most wealthy family, the Greymalkins. They employed many servants and farmers in the past, people working on the land they owned. But these days, they had all but stopped hiring new staff."

Margaret and Helen watched Sophie, listening politely. Kimberly pretended to be bored, and fiddled with a loose thread on her sleeping bag.

"The people didn't really go near the glass house anymore," Sophie went on. "The former staff, or their descendants, said that the Greymalkins were having troubles -- illness, bad investments, and the like. They said that soon the family may be forced to sell the glass house and all their land. "That was a shame, old Mrs. O’Connor said, as her grandson was coming back to town after traveling abroad for a few years, and he needed a job. He'd just completed his courses at an important university in another country, and he was well-trained in managing finances and keeping records. That was a very good thing, said Daphne, one of the few maids left at the glass house. Because the Greymalkins were looking for someone to do just that. "And so Augustine O’Connor began to work at the glass house."

Margaret and Helen were definitely interested now. Even Kimberly sat up a little more and glanced in Sophie's direction.

"Daphne showed Augustine where he would work. It was mostly in one room, a study where all the family's important papers were kept. After a few hours of working each day, he would go to the kitchens for a meal, and take a walk in the gardens if the weather was good. Most of the time, he only saw Daphne, or the cook, or the butler, Mr. Lee. "One afternoon, just as he was finishing up, a very grand, and beautiful, woman came into the study. She wore a silver dress, and diamond combs in her hair. This was Lady Greymalkin, he knew, as he had seen portraits of her in the lobby of the glass house. Augustine quickly stood up and then bowed, as Mr. Lee had instructed him to do if he ever met a member of the family. "Lady Greymalkin insisted he not bother about such a formality. 'Thank you for doing this work for us,' she said. 'We need all our affairs in order before we sell the house.' So it was true, Augustine asked, the rumors among the people? 'Yes, I'm afraid so,' the lady said. 'Life has not gone...as we planned recently.' Augustine gave his apology. 'There's no need to be sorry. It's how things happen sometimes.' And she invited him to tour the rest of the house with her." Outside the tent, it was quiet except for the chirp of crickets, and the occasional, brief passing of a car. Fireflies danced in the trees beyond the fence, but the girls didn't notice. "Augustine walked along the halls and saw the big dining room, the library, the grand parlor, where the family had entertained in happier times. Lady Greymalkin told him a little more about her children, her husband, and his parents, who built the glass house. When it was time for him to go, she invited him to tour the property on his own, as he wished."

Kimberly couldn't pretend anymore; she was listening as raptly as Helen and Margaret.

"A few days after this, the Lady came to find Augustine in the study," Sophie continued. "She told him that they had a buyer for the land, and soon his services wouldn't be needed anymore. 'Thank you so much for your help. I'm sorry it means you're out of a job. If I can do anything, please let me know.' Augustine replied that a good reference would come in handy, but also, before he left, he'd like to walk around the gardens one more time. The Lady said yes, and that she would join him. "As they walked, Augustine saw a door in the garden wall he had never noticed before. 'Come with me,' the Lady said, and she showed him a tunnel beyond the door. As they began walking down the tunnel, the Lady said, 'Oh, I forgot, Mr. Lee needed to see me! Do wait here.' And she ran back into the garden, shutting the door behind her."

The back door of the house gently opened and closed. A shadowed figure slipped away from the lights inside, creeping into the yard and towards the tent.

"Confused, Augustine tried to open the door. He found it locked. There was only a little light in the tunnel, and he couldn't see very far. Deciding he should wait as the Lady had told him to, he stood still." The dark figure paused near the tent, crouching down, trying to stay out of the light coming through the windows of his home. Sophie's hand was beginning to get tired of holding the flashlight, but she was almost done with the story. "Then a loud sound came from the other side of the wall, a sudden scream. Augustine jumped, and ran into the tunnel. As he ran, he heard other sounds, on either side of him, growls and snarls like those of wild animals. All the noise came out of nowhere, but it seemed to be all around him."

Helen was spellbound. Margaret hugged her pillow close to her. Even Kimberly's eyes were wide.

"Augustine stopped running when he realized the light was fading in the tunnel, and the noise seemed to be behind him. He stood in front of another door, and he wondered if this one would lead back to the garden, or to the glass house. He opened the door, and saw nothing else."

A branch snapped in the yard, and something scratched at the tent. Helen and Margaret screamed, and Kimberly dived into her sleeping bag. Sophie smiled and turned off the flashlight.

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About the Author Daley Downing is an autistic author, parent to special needs children, a dance teacher, and cat whisperer. She spends her days attempting to write just a few more words than in the previous 24 hours, and lovingly refers to her genre as suburban fantasy. Visit her at: https://daleydowning.wordpress.com/.

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