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reasonsforhope · 3 months

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On the outskirts of Austin, Texas, what began as a fringe experiment has quickly become central to the city’s efforts to reduce homelessness. To Justin Tyler Jr., it is home.

Mr. Tyler, 41, lives in Community First! Village, which aims to be a model of permanent affordable housing for people who are chronically homeless. In the fall of 2022, he joined nearly 400 residents of the village, moving into one of its typical digs: a 200-square-foot, one-room tiny house furnished with a kitchenette, a bed and a recliner.

The village is a self-contained, 51-acre community in a sparsely populated area just outside Austin. Stepping onto its grounds feels like entering another realm.

Eclectic tiny homes are clustered around shared outdoor kitchens, and neat rows of recreational vehicles and manufactured homes line looping cul-de-sacs.

There are chicken coops, two vegetable gardens, a convenience store, art and jewelry studios, a medical clinic and a chapel.

Roads run throughout, but residents mainly get around on foot or on an eight-passenger golf cart that makes regular stops around the property.

Mr. Tyler chose a home with a cobalt-blue door and a small patio in the oldest part of the village, where residents’ cactus and rock gardens created a “funky, hippie vibe” that appealed to him. He arrived in rough shape, struggling with alcoholism, his feet inflamed by gout, with severe back pain from nearly 10 years of sleeping in public parks, in vehicles and on street benches.

At first, he kept to himself. He locked his door and slept. He visited the clinic and started taking medication. After a month or so, he ventured out to meet his neighbors.

“For a while there, I just didn’t want to be seen and known,” he said. “Now I prefer it.”

Between communal meals and movie screenings, Mr. Tyler also works at the village, preparing homes for the dozen or more people who move there each month.

In the next few years, Community First is poised to grow to nearly 2,000 homes across three locations, which would make it by far the nation’s largest project of this kind, big enough to permanently house about half of Austin’s chronically homeless population.

Tiny-home villages for people who have been homeless have existed on a small scale for several decades, but have recently become a popular approach to addressing surging homelessness. Since 2019, the number of these villages across the country has nearly quadrupled, to 124 from 34, with dozens more coming, according to a census by Yetimoni Kpeebi, a researcher at Missouri State University.

Mandy Chapman Semple, a consultant who has helped cities like Houston transform their homelessness systems, said the growth of these villages reflects a need to replace inexpensive housing that was once widely available in the form of mobile home parks and single room occupancy units, and is rapidly being lost. But she said they are a highly imperfect solution.

“I think where we’re challenged is that ‘tiny home’ has taken on a spectrum of definitions,” said Chapman Semple. Many of those definitions fall short of housing standards, often lacking basic amenities like heat and indoor plumbing, which she said limits their ability to meet the needs of the population they intend to serve.

But Community First is pushing the tiny home model to a much larger scale. While most of its homes lack bathrooms and kitchens, its leaders see that as a necessary trade-off to be able to creatively and affordably house the growing number of people living on Austin’s streets. And unlike most other villages, many of which provide temporary emergency shelter in structures that can resemble tool sheds, Community First has been thoughtfully designed with homey spaces where people with some of the highest needs can stay for good. No other tiny home village has attempted to permanently house as many people.

Austin’s homelessness rate has been rapidly worsening, and the city’s response has whipped back and forth... In October [2023], the official estimate put the number of people living without shelter at 5,530, a 125 percent increase from two years earlier. Some of that rise is the result of better outreach, but officials acknowledged that more people have become homeless. City leaders vowed to build more housing, but that effort has been slowed by construction delays and resistance from residents.

Meanwhile, outside the city limits, Community First has been building fast. [Note from below the read more: It's outside city limits because the lack of zoning laws keeps more well-off Austin residents from blocking the project, as they did earlier attempts to build inside the city.] In a mere eight years, this once-modest project has grown into a sprawling community that the city is turning to as a desperately needed source of affordable housing. The village has now drawn hundreds of millions of dollars from public and private sources and given rise to similar initiatives across the country.

This rapid growth has come despite significant challenges. And some question whether a community on the outskirts of town with relaxed housing standards is a suitable way to meet the needs of people coming out of chronic homelessness. The next few years will be a test of whether these issues will be addressed or amplified as the village expands to five times its current size.

-via New York Times, January 8, 2024. Article continues below (at length!)

The community versus Community First

For Alan Graham, the expansion of Community First is just the latest stage in a long-evolving project. In the late 1990s, Mr. Graham, then a real estate developer, attended a Catholic men’s retreat that deepened his faith and inspired him to get more involved with his church. Soon after, he began delivering meals as a church volunteer to people living on Austin’s streets.

In 1998, Mr. Graham, now 67, became a founder of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a nonprofit that has since amassed a fleet of vehicles that make daily rounds to deliver food and clothing to Austin’s homeless...

Talking to people like Mr. Johnston [a homeless Austin resident who Graham had befriended], Mr. Graham came to feel that housing alone was not enough for people who had been chronically homeless, the official term for those who have been homeless for years or repeatedly and have physical or mental disabilities, including substance-use disorders. About a third of the homeless population fits this description, and they are often estranged from family and other networks.

In 2006, Mr. Graham pitched an idea to Austin’s mayor: Create an R.V. park for people coming out of chronic homelessness. It would have about 150 homes, supportive services and easy access to public transportation. Most importantly, it would help to replace the “profound, catastrophic loss of family” he believed was at the root of the problem with a close-knit and supportive community.

The City Council voted unanimously in 2008 to lease Mr. Graham a 17-acre plot of city-owned land to make his vision a reality. Getting the council members on board, he said, turned out to be the easy part.

When residents near the intended site learned of the plan, they were outraged. They feared the development would reduce their property values and invite crime. One meeting to discuss the plan with the neighborhood grew so heated that Mr. Graham was escorted to his car by the police. Not a single one of the 52 community members in attendance voted in favor of the project.

After plans for the city-owned lot fell apart and other proposed locations faced similar resistance, Mr. Graham gave up on trying to build the development within city limits.

In 2012, he instead acquired a plot of land in a part of Travis County just northeast of Austin. It was far from public transportation and other services, but it had one big advantage: The county’s lack of zoning laws limited the power of neighbors to stop it.

Mr. Graham raised $20 million and began to build. In late 2015, Mr. Johnston left the R.V. park he had been living in and became the second person to move into the new village. It grew rapidly. In just two years, Mr. Graham bought an adjacent property, nearly doubling the village’s size to 51 acres and making room for hundreds more residents.

And then in the fall of 2022, he broke ground on the largest expansion yet: Adding two more sites to the village, expanding it by 127 acres to include nearly 2,000 homes.

“No one ever really did what they first did, and no one’s ever done what they’re about to do,” said Mark Hilbelink, the director of Sunrise Navigation Center, Austin’s largest homeless-services provider. “So there’s a little bit of excitement but also probably a little bit of trepidation about, ‘How do we do this right?’”

What it takes to make a village

Since he moved into Community First eight years ago, Mr. Johnston has found the stability that eluded him for so long. Most mornings, he wakes up early in his R.V., feeds his scruffy adopted terrier, Amos, and walks a few minutes down a quiet road to the village garden, where neat rows of carrots, leeks, beets and arugula await his attention.

Mr. Johnston worked in fast-food restaurants for most of his life, but he learned how to garden at the village. He now works full time cultivating produce for a weekly market that is free to residents.

“Once I got here, I said, This is where I’m going to spend pretty much my entire life now,” Mr. Johnston said.

Everyone at the village pays rent, which averages about $385 a month. The tiny homes that make up two-thirds of the dwellings go for slightly lower, but have no indoor plumbing; their residents use communal bathhouses and kitchens. The rest of the units are R.V.s and manufactured homes with their own bathrooms and kitchens.

Like Mr. Johnston, many residents have jobs in the village, created to offer residents flexible opportunities to earn some income. Last year, they earned a combined $1.5 million working as gardeners, landscapers, custodians, artists, jewelry makers and more, paid out by Mobile Loaves and Fishes.

Ute Dittemer, 66, faced a daily struggle for survival during a decade on the streets before moving into Community First five years ago with her husband. Now she supports herself by painting and molding figures out of clay at the village art house, augmented by her husband’s $800 monthly retirement income. A few years ago, a clay chess set she made sold for $10,000 at an auction. She used the money to buy her first car.

“I’m glad that we are not in a low-income-housing apartment complex,” she said. “We’ve got all this green out here, air to breathe.”

A small number of residents have jobs off-site, and a city bus makes hourly stops at the village 13 times a day to help people commute into town.

But about four out of five residents live on government benefits like disability or Social Security. Their incomes average $900 a month, making even tiny homes impossible to afford without help, Mr. Graham said.

“Essentially 100 percent of the people that move into this village will have to be subsidized for the rest of their lives,” he said.

For about $25,000 a year, Mr. Graham’s organization subsidizes one person’s housing at the village. (Services like primary health care and addiction counseling are provided by other organizations.) So far, that has been paid for entirely by private donations and in small part from collecting rent.

This would not be possible, Mr. Graham said, without a highly successful fund-raising operation that taps big Austin philanthropists. To build the next two expansions, Mr. Graham set a $225 million fund-raising goal, about $150 million of which has already been obtained from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the founder of the Patrón Spirits Company, Hill Country Bible Church and others.

Support goes beyond monetary donations. A large land grant came from the philanthropic arm of Tito’s Handmade Vodka, and Alamo Drafthouse, an Austin-based cinema chain, donated an outdoor amphitheater for movie screenings. Top architectural firms competed for the chance to design energy-efficient tiny homes free of charge. And every week, hundreds of volunteers come to help with landscaping and gardening or to serve free meals.

Around 55 residents, including 15 children, live in the village as “missionals” — unpaid neighbors generally motivated by their Christian faith to be part of the community.

All missionals undergo a monthslong “discernment process” before they can move in. They pay to live in R.V.s and manufactured homes distinguished by an “M” in the front window. Their presence in the community is meant to guard against the pitfalls of concentrated poverty and trauma.

“Missionals are our guardian angels,” said Blair Racine, a 69-year-old resident with a white beard that hangs to his chest. “They’re people we can always call. They’re always there for us.”

After moving into the village in 2018, Mr. Racine spent two years isolated in his R.V. because of a painful eye condition. But after an effective treatment, he became so social that he was nicknamed the Mayor. Missional residents drive him to get his medication once a week, he said. To their children he is Uncle Blair.

Though the village is open to people of any religious background, it is run by Christians, and public spaces are adorned with paintings of Jesus on the cross and other biblical scenes. The application to live in the community outlines a set of “core values” that refer to God and the Bible. But Mr. Graham said there is no proselytizing and people do not have to be sober or seek treatment to live there.

Mr. Graham lives in a 399-square-foot manufactured home in the middle of the village with his wife, Tricia Graham, who works as the community’s “head of neighbor care.” He said they do not have any illusions about solving the underlying mental-health and substance-use problems many residents live with, and that is not their goal.

“This is absolutely not nirvana,” Mr. Graham said. “And we want people to understand the beauty and the complexity of what we do. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on the face of the planet than right here in the middle of this, but you’re not fixing these things.” ...

From an experiment to a model

Community First has already inspired spinoffs, with some tweaks. In 2018, Nate Schlueter, who previously worked with the village’s jobs program, opened Eden Village in his hometown, Springfield, Mo. Unlike in Community First, every home in Eden Village is identical and has its own bathroom and kitchen. Mr. Schlueter’s model has spread to 12 different cities with every village limited to 50 homes or fewer.

“Not every city is Austin, Texas,” Mr. Schlueter said. “We don’t want to build a large-scale village. And if the root cause of homelessness is a loss of family, and community is something that can duplicate that safety net to some extent, to have smaller villages to me seemed like a stronger community safety net. Everybody would know each other.”

The rapid growth of Community First has challenged that ideal. In recent years, some of the original missional residents and staff members have left, finding it harder to support the number of people moving into the village. Steven Hebbard, who lived and worked at the village since its inception, left in 2019 when he said it shifted from a “tiny-town dynamic” where he knew everyone’s name to something that felt more like a city, straining the supportive culture that helped people succeed.

Mobile Loaves and Fishes said more staff members had recently been hired to help new residents adjust, but Mr. Graham noted that there was a limit to what any housing provider could do without violating people’s privacy and autonomy.

Despite these concerns, the organization, which had been run entirely on private money, has recently drawn public support. In January 2023, Travis County gave Mobile Loaves and Fishes $35 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to build 640 units as part of its expansion.

Then four months later came a significant surprise: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved the use of federal housing vouchers, which subsidize part or all of a low-income resident’s rent, for the village’s tiny homes. This will make running the village much more financially sustainable, Mr. Graham said, and may make it a more replicable blueprint for other places.

“That’s a big deal for us, and it’s a big deal on a national basis,” Mr. Graham said. “It’s a recognition that this model, managed the way that this model is, has a role in the system.”

Usually, the government considers homes without indoor plumbing to be substandard, but, in this case, it made an exception by applying the housing standards it uses for single-room-occupancy units. The village still did not meet the required ratio of bathrooms per person, but at the request of Travis County and the City of Austin’s housing officials, who cited Austin’s “severe lack of affordable housing” that made it impossible for some homeless people with vouchers to find anywhere else to live, HUD waived its usual requirements.

In the waiver, a HUD staffer wrote that Mr. Graham told HUD officials over the phone that the proportion of in-unit bathrooms “has not been an issue.” But in conversations with The Times, other homeless-service providers in Austin and some village residents said the lack of in-unit bathrooms is one of the biggest problems people have with living there. It also makes the villages less accessible to people with certain disabilities and health issues that are relatively common among the chronically homeless....

Mr. Graham said that with a doctor’s note, people could secure an R.V. or manufactured home at the village, although those are in short supply and have a long waiting list. He said the village’s use of tiny homes allowed them to build at a fraction of the usual cost when few other options existed, and helps ensure residents aren’t isolated in their units, reinforcing the village’s communal ethos.

“If somebody wants to live in a tiny home they ought to have the choice,” Mr. Graham said, “and if they are poor we ought to respect their civil right to live in that place and be subsidized to live there.” But he conceded that for some people, “this might not be the model.”

“Nobody can be everything for everyone,” he said.

By the spring of 2025, Mr. Graham hopes to begin moving people into the next phase of the village, across the street from the current property. The darker visions some once predicted of an impoverished community on the outskirts of town overtaken by drugs and violence have not come to pass. Instead, the village has permanently housed hundreds of people and earned the approval and financial backing of the city, the county and the federal government. But for the model to truly meet the scale of the challenge in Austin and beyond, Chapman Semple said, the compromises that led to Community First in its current incarnation will have to be reckoned with.

“We can build smaller villages that can be fully integrated into the community, that can have access to amenities within the community that we all need to live, including jobs and groceries,” Chapman Semple said. “If it’s a wonderful model then we should be embracing and fighting for its inclusion within our community.”

-via New York Times, January 8, 2024

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manuscrypts · 2 months

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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝒜 𝐵𝐿𝒪𝒪𝒟𝒴 𝑅𝐸𝒰𝒩𝐼𝒪𝒩 — j.slaughter

word count ; 5k

warnings / tags ; MINORS / AGELESS BLOGS DNI, fem!reader, VERY DARK CONTENT, murder, heavy non-con to dub-con, light stalking, minor knife play (?), blood play, forced to fuck in ur boyfriends blood, typical johnny slaughter things, biting, fingering, oral (f!recieving), p in v sex, johnny threatening you, mentions of kidnapping + more murder, kinda dead dove do not eat.

authors note ; ok I wrote this at 5am feverishly, so there will probably be a lot of errors and it’s a bit rushed, but shirtless johnny has had me in a chokehold and I’ve been THINKING so I had to scribble something down — I swear I’ll do better next time 🤍

the heat haze shimmered above the road as you and your boyfriend continued to drive in the rust bucket of a car, which had practically become an oven. the smell of the leather seats mixed with the intense heat and long journey was enough to make you nearly throw up. your only saving grace was a little hand fan your grams gave you as a kid, and the occasional breeze that came through the window when the car could manage to go faster than 20mph.

you and your boyfriend were heading to dallas for a weekend away together, taking his fathers rusty old car that had started making a weird sound and smelt of burning about half way into the journey. you got lost at least three times, and of course your boyfriend blamed it on you because you had the map, and not the fact he just wouldn’t listen to you and take the directions you were giving him.

“look, there’s a mechanics there, we should pull over and see if it’s anything important.” your boyfriend spoke in the most annoyed, yet monotone voice he could, not even sparing you a glance.

“oh great, stay in this backwards little town that I’m pretty sure neither of us have heard of, sure that’ll be great.” you retorted, folding your arms and looking out the window to the streets you were driving through.

“just shut up and wait here.”

you glared at him as he got out and slammed the car door as loud as he possibly could, shaking the car side to side and managing to get the attention of the mechanic working in the garage just ahead. you didn’t even bother looking at him while he was talking away inside, instead you got out the car and headed to the little store just a few buildings down.

“heya, darlin’.” the shopkeeper chirped up from the seat behind the counter, his feet propped up on the glass top as he read the newspaper.

you spared him a polite smile and went straight to the refrigerator toward the back of the store, grabbing a bottle of water and sighing in relief at the cool air that hit you as soon as the door opened. the shop was pretty small, paint peeling from the walls and the door, posters all over that were a couple years past whatever they were advertising, and the cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air — presumably from the rugged looking man behind the counter.

you decided to grab a few more drinks and some snacks for yourself before making your way to the counter, not bothering to buy anything your partner liked.

“is that all, darlin’?” the cashier stood up and tapped away at the till, counting up all the things you bought for yourself.

before you could reply, you saw a stack of newspapers at the side of the counter, big bold letters on the front reading “another teenager missing—” and you couldn’t read the rest from it being folded over.

“oh that’s some nasty business, that is…” the man behind the till spoke in a thick southern accent, noticing how you were looking at the papers, “whole bunch of ‘em gone missing recently, search parties ain’t turnin up nothing, I bet they all dead by now…”

“oh wow…” you grimaced a little to yourself, “sounds like it’s quite a big issue round here.”

“yeah, like we say it been happenin’ awhile now, was one at a time then a few of them seemed to disappear. cops say there ain’t no way of knowin’ if they went missin’ round here, but everyone knows they did.”

you politely put a paper on the top of your other things and he nodded, placing it neatly into the bag he packed some of your stuff into already, “you be careful out there, darlin’, ain’t no safe place nowadays.”

“I will, thank you.” you gave him another smile and took your bag from the counter, you stopped just shy of the front door, “you wouldn’t happen to know if there’s a motel or somewhere to stay round here, would you?”

“oh sure thing, there’s a motel ‘bout mile and a half up the road, ain’t nothing too fancy but it’s a roof over your head.”

“thank you.” you grinned and let the door swing shut behind you while you reached into your bag to find your water, the little bell on the top of the door ringing out as you left.

“oh gosh, I’m so sorry!” you yelped as you walked into something solid.

“it’s alright, darlin’, you all good?” the deep voice spoke out from above you, his firm grip on your elbow to balance you.

you looked up to him with doe eyes, a heat rising up your face as you looked at his ruggedly handsome face. your eyes tracing across the scar that ran across his head, then down his jawline before quickly coming to your senses.

“I’m so sorry, I should really watch where I’m going, I was just trying to grab my water…” you spoke sheepishly, strangely embarrassed that you hadn’t been paying any attention and walked into someone that looked like him.

before the man could even reply to you, you heard a familiar voice shouting at you from across the road, the anger in his voice very apparent.

“where the hell did you go? didn’t I tell you to wait in the car? I was worried sick.” your boyfriend stormed across the road without even looking to see if there were any cars or anything, “what the hell were you doing?”

“hey, do we have an issue here?” the man you just met spoke up, moving to stand in front of you, he crossed his arms across his broad chest and glared at your partner to the point you could see how uncomfortable he was becoming with the stranger looking at him.

he was taller than your boyfriend by quite a bit, more muscular too, he had a deeper voice, better hair…honestly he was better in nearly every way. a wave of guilt washed over you pretty quickly after thinking that, you should be defending your boyfriend and not lusting over another man, but you couldn’t help it — after the day you’d had with your partner treating you the way he did, you thought it fair to think another man was attractive — it’s not like you were going to act on it or even see this man again after today.

“oh no, don’t worry, he’s my boyfriend, he was just over at the mechanics up there and I went to get some snack without saying anything,” you chirped up from behind the stranger, tiptoeing around him to get closer to your partner, “you know with all the stuff happening around here, it was a silly thing for me to just wander off without saying anything, especially in a strange town.”

“alright…” the strange man paused and then frowned slightly but nodded, giving you a slight wave as he turned and walked into the store you just left.

“who the hell was that?” your significant other muttered as he began walking away up the road, dragging your suitcase behind him.

you opened your mouth to answer him but before you could even get a word out your boyfriend spoke up again, “doesn’t matter. the cars gonna be in here for the rest of the day, said it’d be fixed tomorrow, noon by latest. motels not too far up the road so we’ll just stay there for the night and then we can get the hell out of here.”

you sauntered behind, not even bothering to give him an answer, instead you just rolled your eyes and admired the way the sunset cast a beautiful orange hue across the fields in the distance. the entire walk to the motel had you thinking about the man you bumped into and the headline of the newspaper that was in your carrier bag from the store.

a chill ran across the back of your neck just at the thought of all those poor kids who’d gone missing, and you wondered if they were all dead just like the shopkeeper had said they were. it was weird that it seemingly kept happening and the police didn’t seem any closer to catching the perpetrators, because you knew it had been going on for a while — but then again, what use were the cops anyway?

“looks like the motels just up here”, the voice pulled you from your thoughts and you looked up to see the large building with a big sign outside with “MOTEL” written on it.

“what gave it away?” you chucked to yourself, ignoring the annoyed sigh that you got in response.

“give me a second and I’ll go check us in for the night.”

“alright.” you grabbed your carrier and suitcase from him, and he kept hold of his own bag as he walked to the front desk.

you stood outside for a couple of minutes, having the uneasy feeling that you were being watched from somewhere, but there was no one else but you around for what seemed like a good way away. your eyes darted back and forth along the long stretch of road, looking into the trees that lined it, but it was too dark already to see anything if it were stood there stalking you.

“hey, got the key, come on.”

you followed close behind as your boyfriend guided you to your room on the second floor, once you stepped in you looked around with a bit of contempt. it was far from perfect, honestly it looked a little grimy and dusty, but it was a roof over your head for the night like the shopkeeper said to you.

you threw your bags down at the small table and chairs that were in front of the window, locking and latching the door shut behind you. you peeped out the curtains and looked back down to where you were just stood, scanning intently for a sign of anyone else but there wasn’t, the only thing that seemed to be moving were a few birds fighting for some scraps on the side of the road.

“you got nothing I like?” he grumbled as he scrounged through the bag you got from the store.

“nope, if you want something then you should go get it yourself.”

he mumbled something under his breath as he stood back up, grabbing his jacket from the bottom of the bed and storming towards the door. the mood he was in was foul, you could practically feel it in the air and you just wanted him out of the room for a little while. you both needed some time alone to cool off, and as much as part of you wanted to ask him to get himself a seperate room, you were too scared to spend the night alone here.

“lock the door behind you, I want to go have a shower.”

he didn’t even reply to you as he slammed the door behind himself, but still you heard him lock it behind himself just like you requested.

you took your light jacket off and threw it over the back of one of the wooden chairs with a grumble, as you did your coat caught the bag you got from the store and made the newspaper fall to the floor. you bent down to pick it up with annoyance and then sat down, unfolding it and reading the headline in full — “another teenager missing in newt, ninth person missing in the last four months.”

“holy—” you whispered to yourself in shock, your eyes looking at the picture of the long haired young man on the front, your heart feeling heavy just from looking at it.

you read a little of the article, it talked about when it first started and when each disappearance happened, and how little they knew about anything. there had been a lot of search parties in the county and the surrounding ones too, but there was never any luck. from what it seemed, it was like all those people just up and vanished into thin air, the police had nothing and there were no witnesses. apparently it caused a lot of ruckus within the town, lots of meetings held in the town hall and people trying to come up with their own solutions rather than relying on the police to do anything.

you threw the paper onto the table and shook your head, an uneasy feeling creeping into your entire soul, you wanted out of this place — you wished you could have stopped in any other town than this one, why did it have to be this one?

“god, I hope he’s okay…” you thought out loud to yourself as you stood, suddenly worried about your boyfriend being out there all alone.

you ran your hands up through your hair and let out another sigh, deciding it best to take that shower you said you would, hopefully washing the day away would make you feel any better than you did now. you grabbed a few things from your suitcase and bag and took them into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind yourself — double and triple checking it was locked before placing your things down and turning on the shower.

you undressed and kicked your clothes to the chair that was next to the door, and stood with your hand under the water, waiting for it to heat up, yet it only seemed to get to just under lukewarm before not getting any hotter. it didn’t really bother you, you were in need of a cold shower to wash away the grime of the hot summer's day, but you’d still have liked a little heat to the water.

you stood under the shower head for a good while before washing your hair and body, reaching out the shower to grab your shampoo from the side of the sink. just as you did you finally heard your boyfriend return, and you smiled to yourself, just happy he was safe.

“hey, sweetie,” you called out from the shower but it didn’t seem like he heard you, instead you heard the tv turn on and you rolled your eyes.

you knew he was probably still in a mood with you, and it didn’t surprise you in the slightest — he was always one to hold a grudge, if you didn’t apologise then you swear he’d go weeks without talking to you, just to spite you. he was stubborn and argumentative, but he could be sweet and caring, and even though some of your friends hated him, you loved him. he never really showed the better side of himself to other people, but when it came to you, he’d do anything — even if it drove him up the wall crazy.

the water switched off with a squeak and you carefully stepped out, wrapping your towel tightly around you before moving in front of the sink and looking into the mirror. you made quick work of brushing your teeth and squeezing the water out of your hair, then you did your usual nighttime routine to get it out of the way sooner rather than later.

“hey listen, I’m sorry about earlier,” you stepped out of the bathroom into the dark bedroom and switched the light off behind you.

just as your eyes adjust to the light difference, a large hand slammed over your mouth from behind, and then you felt the cool sensation of metal pressing up against your throat. you cried out from behind the hand as you saw your boyfriend splayed out on the bottom of the bed, his blood soaking into the covers and spilling onto the floor, throat cut ear to ear to the point you swear he was nearly decapitated completely.

“don’t make a sound, okay, sweetheart? otherwise you gonna end up like that annoying boyfriend of yours.” the voice was familiar, deep, southern.

your eyes widened, blurred from the tears pouring from them. it was the man from earlier, the one you walked into outside of the store. was he annoyed to bumped into him or that your boyfriend seemed to mouth off at him?

a million thoughts ran through your head in an instant, you didn’t even notice the hand move away from your mouth until the figure slowly walked around you and stood in front of you, his knife trailing along your throat at the same time.

“you… you’re from the store—“ you could barely spit your words out coherently through your sobbing, not being able to take your eyes away from the pools of blood trickling down the sheets.

“hey, you remembered me? that makes me feel real special…” he laughed, the tip of the blade tracing a light line down the middle of your chest and stopping at the top of your towel.

“I’m sorry for walking into you, I swear I didn’t mean it, I was just—“

“sweetheart, I don’t care about that, I ain’t that sensitive.”

he placed the blade under your chin and forced you to look up at him, he wanted all your attention and he’d make sure you gave him it. you didn’t know what to say back to him, you weren’t even sure if you should speak.

your heart was practically beating out of your chest as he stepped forward, backing you up against the bathroom door. you shut your eyes in wait to feel him attack you, but instead you felt his lips against yours — warm and gentle at first, but then he moved with more forced, more hunger.

you instinctively moved away from the kiss, smacking your head off the door behind you and gasping.

“I’m sorry, I just…”

“what’s wrong, sweetness? you’re a single lady, dont be going and worrying on me now,” his tone was mocking as he pushed his knife more firmly against your throat, a warning.

you couldn’t even speak, you just nodded. you knew what was coming and you knew you couldn’t exactly fight him, he was twice your size and clearly had no issues with killing anyone that didn’t give him what he wanted. you couldn’t look at him though, you felt dirty beyond what a shower could wash away, instead you stayed looking down at your own feet, trying to ignore how much of your boyfriends blood covered the man’s clothes.

he leaned down and kissed you again, this time he was a lot rougher, his free hand grabbing at your hip with a painful grip, his body pushing up against yours until there was no wiggle room left. you barely kissed him back, but still enough that he’d recognise you were doing as you were told.

he lowered the blade slightly as he forced you toward the bed, a sudden horror coming over you, he wanted to fuck you on that bed. the bed soaked in your boyfriend's blood, pools of it. that’s when a realisation dawned on you, he was the one who made all those people go missing, all those poor teens everyone thought was dead — all those people you know are dead.

“wait—“ you quickly spun around and faced him, looking up at his face and you could see the anger flash in his eyes, you knew you couldn’t push your luck too much, “at least…at least tell me your name, please.”

he laughed and gave you a genuine smile, “it’s johnny, baby, why? you wanna know what name you’re gonna end up screamin’?”

you nodded innocently in hopes to just buy yourself some more time, praying the police would barge through the door and shoot him dead, but you knew it was wishful thinking. he’s a man that’s got away with it for this long, he obviously doesn’t make mistakes, he knows what he’s doing.

his finger hooked over the top of your towel while you were distracted, he loosened the fold that held it up, and it crumpled to the floor with a quiet little thud.

“damn.”

johnny smiled to himself as he carefully dragged the blade from your pubic bone to the bottom of your ribs, his eyes practically fucking every part of your body already. without much thought your hands shot up to cover your body from his gaze, the embarrassment of being naked in front of a stranger immediately making you cower in front of him like a scared puppy. he didn’t even speak as he grabbed your wrists and yanked your hands away from your body, a quiet sadistic chuckle coming from him as he moved closer to you.

“you got some body on you…” his mouth ghosted across yours as he moved his lips down to your neck, kissing and suckling at your supple flesh.

he kept moving forwards until you both fell onto the bed, the sound of the blood squelching under you and you couldn’t help but yelp, to johnny’s amusement.

it was cold now, the sheets were full and with every movement more blood squished out of them with a sickening wet sound. you couldn’t help but whimper at the idea of it, the way your entire body was covered in blood, how it slashed up on your face and was soaking into your hair — it was enough to make you want to throw up, you squeezed your eyes shut and breathed in and out loudly to try and calm yourself.

“hey, open your eyes.” his voice was low, annoyed.

the knife pressed against your neck enough to pierce the skin, blood trickling from the wound just enough for johnny to run his tongue along it, licking up all the blood with a satisfied hum.

“you taste good.” his free hand ran up the inside of your thigh, the blood coating it making it all the easier for him.

more tears rolled down your cheeks but you didn’t make a sound anymore, instead you were too focused on the way his thumb rubbed rough circles on your clit, his mouth suckling on one of your nipples — it was like he was trying to pleasure you, and some part of you hated that more, you’d rather him just get it over with and hurt you, but it was obvious he didn’t want that — or at least that’s not all he wanted.

johnny let his mouth move further and further down your body until his mouth replaced his hand. his tongue swirling around in circles across your puffy, sensitive clit, quiet moans coming from him as he relished in the taste of the blood and your slick mixing together so beautifully. you felt sick to your stomach, not because of what he was doing but because you were enjoying it, because his mouth sucking and teasing at your cunt was one of the best things you’d ever felt. your boyfriend rarely went down on you and when he did, it never felt like this.

you couldn’t help but let out a quiet whimper, your back arching from the bed and coaxing him on even more. his tongue moved with more speed, going between circles on your clit or fucking into your clenching hole.

“fuck, such a desperate whore,” he smirked to himself as he forced two fingers into you, not even caring whether they were too big for you to handle or not.

“wait, ah—“ you tried to move back and away from his hand but his other hand gripping at your hip was too strong, you couldn’t move away from him.

his fingers were buried knuckle deep inside of you, curling and twisting against the deepest spots inside of you, his mouth resuming what it was doing before — and you could feel yourself unravelling like you never had.

the tears only got worse when you looked to the side, your boyfriend still laid there with his neck slit ear to ear, a horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach as you squeezed your eyes shut. you were disgusting, a horrible human, who in their right mind enjoys getting fucked by a psychopath? one that just killed their lover, one who has you coated in the blood of the person you loved? what the hell had even happened? you had no idea how any of this happened, and your heart broke the more you thought about how he died angry with you, how he died with you angry at him.

you were too busy in your own thoughts that you didn’t noticed your orgasm sneaking up on you so quickly, that disgraceful feeling in the pit of your stomach unravelling into something much better, a white hot ball of pleasure, johnny’s name rolling off your tongue like it’s a name you’ve moaned for the last few years.

he couldn’t take his eyes off you, the way your mouth fell open and your eyes rolled back as he forced you to come on his fingers, the way his name sounded so angelic when it came from your pretty little mouth. he could barely contain himself anymore, his cock almost painful behind the confines of his tight jeans.

“so… goddamn needy,” he panted as he stripped himself down to nothing, his muscles highlighted by the tv’s flashing pictures at the bottom of the bed.

there was something about you that he couldn’t put his finger on, you lured him in from the moment you walked into him. everything about you was perfect, was enticing, you were made for him and he knew it — he knew he had to make you his, and that’s why he followed you and your boyfriend to the motel. he needed to get rid of him and claim you as his own, to fuck you in front of him, but he got too cocky, said somethings johnny didn’t like and he got mad and slit the fuckers throat.

johnny loomed over you, his big cock teasing up and down your slit, and you couldn’t help but cry. he was too big, bigger than you’ve ever had, and you knew he wouldn’t be gentle with you. he looked down at you with the devil in his eyes, and a smirk on his face, “I’ll give us a little more room, yeah?”

he kicked to the side and forced your boyfriend's corpse to the floor with a loud wet thud. he laughed to himself as he slid you more into the middle of the bed, more into the pools of blood. he was sick, disgusting…he was getting off on this, all the blood and fucking you in it.

as he began to push himself into you, you whimpered at the stretch, “wait, johnny please, too big—“ your hands slapped up and gripped at his shoulders, your nails digging into his skin and breaking it.

“it’ll fit, don’t worry, just take it.” he licked the blood from your cheek and forced himself deeper into you with a groan, “fuck…shit”

he relaxed and leaned down, letting his head fall against into the crook of your neck as he got as close to bottoming out in you as he could.

he loved the blood, he loved fucking you like this, claiming you as his own whether you wanted him to or not, and it was obvious. you didn’t know whether he wanted you after this, what was going to happen but you needed to live, to fight for your survival, that much you knew — you had to do the things he liked, and it became pretty obvious what that was.

it wasn’t exactly hard to enjoy it, the way his hips moved all the way back then slowly pushed back to you, his cock sliding all the way back in again, the tip kissing your cervix surprisingly gentle.

a pleasurable sigh escaping past your lips as your hands weaved into his hair, dragging his mouth down to meet yours. you opened your legs further to give him more access, and he took that as an invitation to speed up.

“dirty little slut want more of daddy’s cock?” he muttered in between kisses, his bloody hand resting against your cheek, and covering your face.

“fuck— m…more please” you couldn’t help yourself, every single atom of self respect had practically left your body with each thrust.

his cock had stretched you out beyond your limit but you didn’t even care, the pain was part of the pleasure, and the more that his cock hit that spot inside of you, the less you could think straight. cuss words fell from his mouth as he forced two of his fingers into your mouth, and you could see the glimmer of sick satisfaction in his eyes as he made you taste your lover's blood. you could see how much he enjoyed it, so against every fibre of your being, you let your tongue swirl around his digits. you let out a moan and sucked on them, never once letting your eyes leave his.

and with that one move you send him over the edge, his thrusts became uneven and hard, he was practically feral. he leaned down and slammed his mouth against yours and bit harshly at your bottom lip, making it bleed just so he could taste you again. he moaned into the kiss, blood and spit stringing up to his lips from yours as he leaned up, his cum coating your insides without any care in the world.

“fuck…” he panted and collapsed down on you, taking a moment to catch his breath.

when he moved back it didn’t take him two seconds to replace his cock with his fingers, forcing you to keep his cum inside your aching cunt.

you could feel how heavy your eyes were getting, the mix of traveling all day, crying, and being brutally fucked had took it out of you. every single muscle in your body ached, you didn’t even think it was possible to be as tired as you were right now.

“that’s it baby, don’t you worry, I’ll take care of you, I’m keepin’ you.”