#the light is burning my eyes and frying my brain

[tenrose]

I can't with these fucking headaches every month and in between I want to get rid of that shitty pill 😭

#misc #it's been only four months #thank god I have an appointment tuesday #and let's hope the next one is better #like ok it's true my cramps are a bit less painful #but i have ten new problems instead 😭 #and those headaches are worse #the light is burning my eyes and frying my brain #im already a bit photosensitive because of my eyesight problems and the fact that i work on computer all day long #specifically having for task to really decipher wtf is going on my screen #basically everything i shouldn't be doing #not to mention my phone addiction #so i already had this kind of specific flashy headaches before #especially during summers #but now I'm having this for the entire week I'm stopping my tablet #and this month i even had some during the rest of the cycle #so yeah my body is really agaisnt this one #my hormones are already trash on their own thanks #speaking of which #i have had very bad acne for the past weei #so instead of adjusting my body is doing the exact opposite #i mean it's not the end of the world #I know finding the right Pill might take a while #but like waiting 3 - 4 months in between to see the effects seems so long now 😭 #i really went from i haven't seen a gynecologist in 10 years because of medical anxiety #(is that even a real thing??? because i can tell you that I suffer a specific kind of anxiety for any medical appointment different than #my other social and generalized anxiety if that makes sense) #to give me that fucking appointment now i know to drop that bitch #ok i didn't let me touch me except for breast check up last time and this time i'm on my period so too bad it won't be this time either #but hey if i takes me ten Pill test to find the right one I might be comfortable enough lmao

[aluciahaz]

may i just say that your character writing is AMAZING! i honestly don’t check up on your blog a lot but when i do i’m left SHAKING because your shit is soooo hot.

Anyways i humbly come requesting mommy kink with vox because you know i’m all about that. he’s so desperate for validation and scared of rejection i feel like he’d be weeping at a domme mommy type reader. Anyways, do what you want with this!

once again i love your work! sincerely, bimbo <3

oh my god it's one of my favorite writers on tumblr🦅 thank you so much for the compliment it means a lot 😭 also i loved writing this ive desperately needed more vox asks! hope you enjoy! (kinda went ham on metaphors 💀 mb)

greed never stops

—vox x f!reader

—includes: overstim, tons of crying, begging, light bondage

vox was a walking, living(?) juxtaposition.

he’ll go barking orders to his subordinates, control most situations with smooth, quick thinking, and command his business with an iron fist.

but with you, the other side of his screen is on full display. his vulnerable, attention-desperate, failure-fearful self. you’ve seen it enough times to notice how it seeps into his daily life. how his control is really just a mechanism to take hold of his vulnerability, hiding it behind a mess of steel wires to make anyone who would try and reach it get tangled in its grasp.

but the moments he lets you untangle his facade, allowing you to see his true self, he feels free. even if most of the time it was during more intimate moments in the night. it was where he could truly indulge in his unfamiliar desires, crying and begging for the validation he was always seeking.

and you were the one he needed it from.

your praise was one of the highest in the hierarchy of compliments, making him feel like he was burning up, frying his brain in a way that made him feel like he’s short-circuited, but the feeling of fuzziness was intoxicating. he could never give up the taste of your compliments.

“come on, aren’t you a good boy? you can hold out for a little longer.”

those words were like rich liquor, and vox was an eager drinker. it swirled his thoughts into a never-ending spiral, and he could only cry in response as you touched his face with a gentleness that rivals an angel’s.

“b-but, mommy—!” he sobs as your fingers drive into him for what seems the thousandth time, his voice module starting to struggle as he tries to speak.

“oh?” you raise your eyebrow, feigning shock before narrowing your eyes, pressing him further down the sheets in disdain. is he still being ungrateful?

“but what, huh? don’t tell me you need more already! you’re such a greedy fucking slut,” you spit out, watching his eyes shoot open from the whiplash of your cruel words. “maybe i should stop—,”

“NO! nono, please! no! i’m sorry—!” he keens as your fingers slowly start to slip out of him, the sound so indecent it makes him shiver.

he pushes his hips up into your hand, trying to follow them only for your other hand to shove his hips back down on the sheets, your fingers twisting nearly all the way out before ramming back in, curling in wickedly that seems to shut him up briefly as he catches a breath that ran away.

vox weeps, unable to do anything else as his claws rip into the mattress, his legs shake and tremble as though they weren’t practically crushing you before. he seems so fragile at this moment, yet you knew he could take much more.

he just didn’t deserve it.

he whines and screams at your touch, tears starting to fall down his pretty little face as the small amount of dignity he had seems to get lost, overrun by your torturous fingers and unyielding pleasure that shoots through his body like a current.

“mommy—ha—please jus—zz—t fuck me, oh, god!” his head drops back down onto the pillows as your fingers wrap around his weeping cock, making his back arch as he sobs out noncoherent pleads. it’s beautifully pathetic.

his legs, weak and feeble, were strewn across the bed with previous markings trailing up his inner thigh, his neck even more decorated with a necklace of red, the glimmer of sweat that covers his whole body making those bites shine similar to crude rubies.

his hands, now tied with his own wires behind the bed (he charges there before he goes to sleep) were sullied with crimson from the tightness of the metal around his wrist, but not as bright crimson as his eyes, which flashed with bright red hearts intermittently. it was always a pleasant surprise, and a sign that he fucking loved this. no matter how much he complained at the start, his eyes spoke the truth.

which is why now, as you replace your fingers with his favorite strap, you know he’s absolutely overjoyed as those beating hearts seem to overtake his pupils once more, pulsating with a hypnotizing spiral.

“finally—! oh—zzz—FUCK!” his last word is practically inaudible with the airiness in his voice, his tone starting to distort, yet, your pace was slow. shallow, even. tears of frustration started to form at the ends of his eyes, his whines more pitiful as he tries to fuck himself back on your strap, only to be stopped by your sturdy grip on his hips.

“what do you say, vox?“ you asked, irritation slipping into your voice. how could he still be so ungrateful? but, he catches on fast, looking up at you with round, glossy eyes.

“thank you! thank—thank you, mommy!” he stumbles out before you switch up your pace instantly, brutally ramming into him just how he likes it. it makes him unable to fathom he could have been known to be anything but yours, surrendering his well-built persona to you. all of it, for your praise.

“such a good boy.”

those words were priceless, but he always ends up trying to buy them with obedience. and even though he’s successfully checked out with such praise, they still have the same effect on him every time.

he shudders and wails with ruined pitch, his screen flickering in and out of error messages and his lovely expression as he gets his reward. there was just something so satisfying about earning your praise.

sure, he can buy pretty much anything, and yes, he can get people to kneel at his feet, but he can’t cry without shame, or indulge in his true desires of being completely wrecked with soft words and fast hips with anyone. no, it could only be you. and even if he practically has everything under his hands, he will always be greedy for your affection, begging, screaming for a chance to have it set his whole body ablaze with its foreign warm feeling.

it makes him lost. no matter how much intelligence vox has, he always finds himself unable to search his way out of the feeling of pure lust overtaking his senses when you fuck him with abandon, his need to keep face seemingly never being there in the first place as tears make him short-circuit, and pleads for you to never stop. he doesn’t want to leave this labyrinth of carnality. he wants to stay lost in it forever.

it’s why even after he cums with a high-pitch sob so loud you thought his volume module broke, he kept weeping incoherently as the lights flicker in the room, his legs practically numb. and finally, he looks up at you, sniffling and choking on his words he’ll pretend to regret the next morning.

“m-more. please, mommy—! AH!” his whole body jolts as you heed his wishes, leaving him to fall back into the pleasure that he craves. he babbles on and on with thank yous and nonsensical sentences, the night seeming to become never-ending even with daybreak inching closer and closer.

vox is unable to speak at the end, and god does everything fucking hurt. his arms ache and his legs are definitely going to be an issue when he has to walk. there are marks all over his skin that will never see the light of day, yet be around for plenty of nights.

but you both know he’ll come back for more. his greed is an unquenchable thirst, and your praise is the only fountain that seems to satiate it, even if only for a little while.

(i totally didnt forget to tag)

tags: @xx-all-purpose-nerd-xx @mvskedxrtist @drlucichen @luciferspetduck

#hazbin hotel #dom reader #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel dom reader #sub hazbin hotel #bottom vox #sub vox #vox x reader #hazbin hotel vox

[missbabyjay]

I Wanna Be With You Everywhere - Pedro Pascal x Reader

FLUFF!

MASTERLIST - CHECK OUT MY PAGE FOR MORE!

Warnings/Content: Fluff, Alcohol

The piece is based off of the song Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac

Summary: After a long week of hard work Pedro treats you to a home cooked meal. The two of you finish off the night basking in a beautiful sunset before drifting off to a world of luscious sleep.

Word Count: 1.1 K

The light hum of the fan tickled your brain as you lounged on your snug, plush bed, propped up with your favourite book. The large windows that resided in your bedroom were cracked open, allowing the warm summer evening breeze to seep into the house, the fresh feeling lingering in your lungs as you breathed in. You had experienced a hectic week; work was incredibly busy, you had a bunch of meetings leaving you relentlessly tired. You hummed along to the soft music playing downstairs that muffled through the house, tapping your finger on the back of your book. “Finally some relaxation,” you thought to yourself. 

 Pedro was cooking dinner for the two of you - knowing a hearty and tasty meal would make your spirit feel lifted. That man would do anything to make you feel better and considering he was on a break from work he had all the time he would need to make the end of your week far better than it had been since Monday. He danced as he switched between the cutting board and the sleek frying plan that laid hot on the stove - cooking a mixture of vegetables. Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac filled the atmosphere, creating a calming environment. 

You placed a bookmark into your book making sure you wouldn’t lose your spot - the plotline was becoming too enticing, but the overwhelming smell of Pedro’s spiced cooking filled your nostrils and you decided to make your way downstairs. You were eager to enjoy a nice meal alongside Pedro; his presence always calmed you down and after the past few days that was exactly what you needed. 

You trotted down the stairs, happy to see Pedro. The aromatics hit your face as you turned the corner to enter the cosy kitchen you shared with Pedro. You saw him dancing along to the music - the two of you shared a love for Fleetwood Mac. You began singing along with the song, “oh-ohhhh, I wanna be with you everywhere.” Pedro turned around with a smile beaming from ear to ear. “Oh Princesa, I love your voice,” he cooed into the air. You wrapped your arms around him as he finished cooking dinner, the two of you swaying along to the melody together. Every so often he would send you a peck, making you giggle. “Dinner is ready. Why don’t you have a seat, baby. I’ll serve you,” he insisted with a warm, loving smile.

Pedro had arranged the table so that two candlesticks sat inbetween you bearing white taper candles that were already partially burned, drips of wax gliding down the sides of them. A cream satin table cloth draped over the small table and the delicate dinnerware was set out on top. Pedro cooked a traditional chilean dish - oh how you loved his culture’s food. The two of you enjoyed the home cooked meal alongside a glass of wine, basking in each other's company. 

“I hope this was a lovely end to your week, mi amor,” his voice purred. You smiled gently at him, you appreciated how much he prioritised your feelings. “It was lovely. The meal was absolutely delicious, P.” You reached for his hand across from you, rubbing your thumb against his tough yet soft skin. He grabbed your other hand, squeezing both of them tightly. “I’d do anything for you, Y/N,” he said with a serious tone while gazing into your eyes. You heart felt warm from the kind words that poured from his lips.

Pedro offered to take care of the dishes, insisting you should continue reading your book. You decided to change your environment by bringing yourself out to the patio. The clock read 7:45 p.m., “Perfect,” you thought to yourself, just in time to catch the sun fall behind the horizon leaving the sky glowing. The stone tiles felt cold on your bare feet as you made your way outside. You settled yourself on the sectional couch that was nested in the corner of your patio. As you bundled up with a light throw blanket you heard the footsteps of Pedro coming from behind you. He was accompanied with two glasses of wine. He lit the citronella candles that sat placed on aesthetically pleasing candle holders. “I’ve got wine!” he sung, while wiggling his eyebrows at you. 

As you sat there you realised just how lucky you were to live the life you have. Pedro nuzzled in beside you, grabbing a portion of the blanket to cover himself with. He brought his arm around you, pulling you close to him. “I love you baby,” he said as he planted a kiss on your temple and let his head rest against yours. You decided to close your book, knowing it would be waiting for you to continue later on. You intertwined your fingers with Pedro’s, “I don’t know what I’d do without you, P, I am so thankful for you,” you exclaimed before cupping his face and pulling him into a passionate kiss. His kiss tasted sweet from the wine you were sharing, making you pull him closer to enjoy the moment a little more. 

The two of you pulled away just in time to savour the beautiful sunset that laid before you. “You’re more beautiful than this sunset, ya know that sugar? As corny as it sounds,” he giggled. His cheekiness made you chuckle. 

The sun had settled and the sky grew dark, dusk washed upon the two of you. You felt quite chilled, rubbing your arms to create some warmth. Pedro noticed while glancing down at you, “Why don’t we head inside?” he suggested. 

As a team the two of you collected everything, making sure to exhaust the candles - safety first! You made your way into the bedroom, picking out one of Pedro’s favourite t-shirts out of his dresser while he also got ready for bed. You glanced at his toned and tanned body as he ran his fingers through his chocolate brown curls.

You decided to keep the windows open, lounging in the sweet summer air. The two of you intertwined your bodies and sat in silence, listening to each other's heartbeat and breathing. Pedro’s hands ran up and down your body, finding their way to your bare back underneath his large cotton shirt you sported. He began circling his fingers on your back, causing goosebumps to form on your skin. Your heart rate slowed and you found yourself falling into a deep sleep; ending your stressful week in the arms of your passionate lover.

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x you #pedro pascal fanfic #pedro pascal fan fic #pedro pascal x y/n #pedro is daddy #pedro pascal fluff #Spotify

[ambi-kiko]

tma music tma music tma music

please reblog with your own! i need it (:

also im more than willing to elaborate on any of em, just ask! (i have much to yell about)

for bitchard, we have:

kiss me, son of god (they might be giants)

i'm gonna win (rob cantor)

blood & money (the orion experience, orion, linda XO)

ruler of everything (tally hall)

BlackBoxWarrior - OKULTRA (will wood)

community gardens (the scary jokes, louie zong)

the main character (will wood)

your body, my temple (will wood)

laplace's angel (hurt people? hurt people!) (will wood)

saint bernard (lincoln)

welcome to the internet (bo burnham)

all eyes on me (or3o)

my ordinary life (the living tombstone)

cabinet man (lemon demon)

peter x elias (for my frenchies out there <33)

marine marchande (les cowboys fringants)

ok dont judge me too much i had to have smth for them ((: plus its not that unrelated

next! martin

a better son/daughter (rilo kiley)

12 feet deep (the front bottoms)

things to do (alex g)

be nice to me (the front bottoms)

step on me (the cardigans)

heart for brains (roar)

mama (my chemical romance)

summer child (conan gray)

hello my old heart (the oh hellos)

i cant handle change (roar)

against the kitchen floor (will wood)

least favorite only child (leanna firestone)

sharpener (cavetown)

empty bed (cavetown)

life's a beach (bears in trees)

jmart ((:

no children (the mountain goats)

the moon will sing (the crane wives)

euthanasia (will wood)

as the world caves in (matt maltese)

the truth (the front bottoms)

balade à toronto (jean leloup)

doctor (jack stauber)

apocalypse (cigarettes after sex)

talk to you (ricky Montgomery)

cabo (ricky montgomery)

meteor shower (cavetown)

juliet (cavetown)

feel better (penelope scott)

would you be so kind (dodie)

two birds (regina spektor)

line without a hook (ricky Montgomery)

and jon, ofc <3 i rly dont have enough for him ):

body terror song (AJJ)

downhill (Lincoln)

montreal (penelope scott)

ramblings of a lunatic (bears in trees)

its called: freefall (rainbow kitten surprise)

chin music for the unsuspecting hero (foster the people)

love, me normally (will wood)

dinner is not over (jack stauber's micropop)

also melanie! dont have that many but she deserves the mention (:

saturn suv (fredo disco)

brave as a noun (AJJ)

tongues & teeth (the crane wives)

wreaking ball (mother mother)

we fell in love in october (girl in red)

and just random songs with tma vibes (other characters, ships, dread powers, etc)

underground (cody fry)

hand me my shovel, i'm going in! (will wood)

terry's taxidermy (teddy hyde)

cotard's solution (will wood and the tapeworms)

amnesia was her name (lemon demon)

memento mori: the most important thing in life is death (will wood)

skeleton appreciation day in vestal, n.y. (will wood)

icicles (the scary jokes)

puppet boy (devo)

oh ana (mother mother)

i dont smoke (mitski)

choke (I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME)

thermodynamic lawyer esq, G.F.D (will wood and the tapeworms)

sorry haha i fell asleep (egg)

despair (leo)

stuff is way (they might be giants)

baby teeth (baby bugs)

king park (la dispute)

i/me/myself (will wood)

dr. sunshine is dead (will wood and the tapeworms)

amygdala's rag doll (ghost and pals)

little pistol (mother mother)

burning pile (mother mother)

this is home (cavetown)

body (mother mother)

turn the lights off (tally hall)

like real people do (hozier)

im going insane

#long post #tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #magnuspod #jon sims #jmart #martin blackwood #martin kartin blackwood #jonmartin #jonny sims #melanie king #elias bouchard #lonely eyes

[buckgasms]

Let's talk about Bucharest Bucky 😍

So last night I couldn't sleep again so I thought about this and then I kept thinking too much and was awake till 4am but sometimes life is like that....

I've written some of the text like this so you can know what's being said but only the bold is what the reader understands. Hopefully that makes sense!

Running

You have escaped from the Hydra base, running blindly through forests, across railway tracks and through deserted city streets.

Your body is aching and burning from your running, but you can't stop, can't listen to it until you know they can't find you any more.

You've been frozen and unfrozen so many times you have no idea how old you are. You were taken and used and made to be some sort of baby making machine for Hydra. But it never seemed to work.

All you had now was broken Russian, scars, fear and twisted memories that you couldn't make sense of.

Finally you reached an abandoned building and squeezed through the holes in the window, you might have even nicked yourself on the glass but you didn't care. Your blood pumps through your ears and all you can hear is your own heartbeat thudding.

You sneak through the building until you come across a small room. It's got a beat up mattress and a blanket, a little radio and a table and chairs. It looks abandoned so you sink down to the mattress and let your exhaustion take you.

Meeting

You awake suddenly, aware of faint music being played in the background. Your body freezes as you hear soft shuffling.

"Are you awake?" A man's voice asks in the quiet of the room and you manage to turn over, putting your back to the wall and clutching your knees to your chest. He looks almost as nervous as you feel.

"You must be hungry? Come and eat" he places a bag of something on the table and it smells divine. Your stomach betrays you and growls so you tentatively hobble over to the table and take the food. You look inside and grab a fry, it's salty and warm and delicious, but you nibble slowly. Still watching him.

"Do you have a name?" He asked

You nod and manage to whisper it out. You point at him and he takes off the chain around his neck and slides it over to you.

The words "James Barnes.... 1917.... Brooklyn" stand out to you.

"My name is James" he says, almost as if he's telling himself as well. You rub the metal between your fingers as you nibble on the food.

"Brooklyn?" You say eyeing him. "Where?" He smiles and tells you it's America and your head nods because you think you might be from there too! You point at yourself and say "America!" Which makes him smile, which you like a lot.

"You're hurt" he says after a moment and he points to your feet which are quite bloody and dirty. You also have cuts on your limbs from your nighttime adventures. He moves and rustles around the room until he returns with bandages, water and other things from a makeshift first aid kit.

You start to shake when he approaches but you continue eating and stick your left foot out for him to help you. You think maybe he would have done something by now if he was going to hurt you. You can be brave. You can.

"What happened to you?" He asks but you don't understand him. Eventually he points at your injuries and says, "How..." He sets to work and you rack your brain for the words in Russian for your ordeal.

"In the lab. Unfrozen.... Lights go off... Very dark. Noises, very loud. I ran... Got away" your shaking intensifies as you talk so he gently squeezes your ankle as he wraps your foot in a bandage.

"Why?" He asks and you shrug. You had been asking yourself that over and over for the last, who knows how long. He finishes tending to your feet when he asks, "Who?"

Your fingers grip his tag and your hands shake when you whisper, "Hydra."

His hands let go of your foot and he stands up, backing away until he hits the wall. His face is pale as a sheet and he looks like he's going to be sick.

"Hydra had you? Did they follow you?" He shakes and it scares you because he had been so calm before but you don't understand everything he says as he rants, his brow covered in sweat.

You begin to cry, you don't understand and it's not your fault. As tears track down your cheeks he seems to calm down and comes back to you, kneeling and taking your hand in his.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know.... I know Hydra.... We just have to be safe...." He says and squeezes your hand in his. "It's ok, let me think. Eat and I'll think... Just let me think..."

Eventually he removes his jacket and glove from his arm and you are shocked to see his arm is made completely of metal. "They hurt me too" he says softly. You nod and wipe your tears away as he returns to mend your wounds.

Learning

After a few days you settle into a little routine with James. You don't ever leave the room you just stay put and potter about. You listen intently to the radio, trying to pick up more words to improve your Russian when James goes out. He sometimes leaves his little book behind and you study the pages, running your fingers over his neat writing.

He brings food, he seems to like fruit and he shares soft peaches, crunchy apples and juicy plums which you both smile at as you eat.

You managed to learn enough Russian to insist he gets a mattress for himself after spending a week sleeping on the cold floor. When he was out you arranged them so your heads were next to each other in a little L shape.

Whatever Hydra had done to him it must have been awful. He wakes often at night sometimes shouting at a mystery spectre. It scares you at first, and you would lie dead still until his breathing returns to normal.

But as time goes on you feel braver and reach a hand out to him, pressing on his shoulder and whispering "I'm here". Words he taught you when you woke him up with your cries in the night. It seems to soothe him quicker and it makes your stomach ease when he relaxes at your touch.

Tonight he takes longer, shakes harder and you notice little tears slipping down his cheeks. Feeling brave you crawl off your mattress and perch on the side of his. Your hand rests on his tags and you rub them between your fingers.

"James Barnes.... 1917.... Brooklyn"

You whisper it over and over again, his hand grips yours and his breath finally evens out. You shiver in the cold and he pulls you down keeping you close and your eyes slip closed as your body warms up in his arms and your body relaxes.

Moving

James decides one morning it's time to find somewhere else to stay. "Never linger too long" he says as you help him pack up a few little things and you smile at him.

"Never linger" you say in a gruff voice at an attempt to mock him and he smiles, walking over and nudging you with his hip. It makes you giggle and he smiles more.

He brings you to a little apartment block and walks up to the fifth floor. It's a dingy little place and you don't feel very safe but you know being with James it'll be ok.

You help him cover up the windows and clean the room. He moves the bed into the kitchen as you scrub the sink clean, noticing there's only one now. It makes you feel....something.

He goes out again and returns with some essentials. A few more clothes, some fresh bedding and some food. He also pulls out a pot plant out of his rucksack and he turns almost beetroot red as he slides it across the table towards you.

"I can't buy you flowers. But I can buy you this..."

You smile and shuffle round the table sliding your arms around his waist. He presses his lips to your head and you both stay there for a moment, before going back to your chores.

Summer

As the heat builds in the city you feel braver about being outside. Sometimes you don't go out together so he has sorted out a plan in case anything goes wrong.

While he does his thing, you do yours. You spend time at the nearby library and take books home to read with James. You sit in his lap and run your finger along the page, following the words. He holds you close and rubs circles in your skin, soothed by your soft, determined voice as you learn more and improve everyday.

"That was great" he says softly as you close the book and lean back, his lips just inches from yours. You hesitate for a moment before leaning forward and brushing your lips against his. It's electric and then he's pressing his lips against yours, sucking and wrapping you up closer as you whine in his mouth.

You shuffle around a bit in his lap before you are straddling his hips. His metal hand grips at your waist as his flesh hand strokes your cheek. Your fingers grip his face and you lean in for more.

It's suddenly boiling and you pull off your dress and tug at his red shirt until he drags it over his head. Your hands skim without hesitation across his skin, loving everything you see, wanting him against you and closer than you've ever been.

"Beautiful" he whispers as he dips his head down to take your nipple in his mouth, sucking harshly as you tug at his hair and moan. He lavishes attention to you until you become impatient and needy.

"James please" you whine and he finally relents pushing you backwards and laying you down in front of him. He takes a moment removing his jeans and underwear as you lay there, unable to move. You feel scared all of a sudden as he climbs over you.

"Talk to me" he whispers softly as his nose runs over your face and he presses kisses to your cheeks.

"M'scared" you mumble as he gently presses his body down and covers you in his warmth. He soothes you, reassures you and relaxes you until you need him all over again. He chuckles as you kick off your underwear and drag him back on top of you, his thick length pressing against your stomach as you kiss each other with abandon.

"I love you" you whisper as he sinks into you and he exhales a smile. "I love you too"

When your bodies are worn out you lay, wrapped in his arms, a cool breeze dancing over your skin as he kisses your forehead. Suddenly into he dark he mutters,

"Bucky... I'm Bucky"

Loss

One day everything goes wrong. You come back from the library and see the apartment block surrounded by police and army types in tactical gear and guns. Some men are being carried out on stretchers while others head inside.

You almost drop your stack of books but manage to keep walking as you feel panic set in.

Like you've practiced, you walk for 20 minutes towards the local park and you sit in the bandstand for an hour. Then, leaving the books behind you walk for another half and hour and go to the train station and buy a ticket. After the train departs you walk to a coffee shop 10 minutes from your apartment and wait there.

You were hoping Bucky would be there. That was always the plan. You kill time and regroup together later. But as you sat there and waited it was clear he wasn't coming.

Was it hydra? But you had been so careful not to be found.

When the cafe was closing you didn't know what to do so you did the thing you shouldn't do. You headed back to the apartment. It was totally deserted from military activity so you snuck in.

As you climbed the stairs you noticed broken bars on the staircase. Neighbours were attempting to fix their broken doors and dust and the smell of gunpowder was everywhere.

Finally you reached your door. Well what was left of it. The room was in chaos. Bullet holes everywhere, the bed ripped to shreds and a telling hole in the floor where Bucky kept his getaway backpack.

You managed to reach the bed and collapsed into it, sobs wracking though your body. He was gone. Someone had hurt him and taken him from you. And now you were all alone again.

Steve

A few days later you heard footsteps coming up the stairs. You ran into another room but you were spotted and heard a voice say, "Hey!"

You hid behind a wardrobe and a tall blonde man walked into the room. He looked a bit worse for wear and desperate as he looked at you.

"I'm Steve. Rogers. I'm a friend of Bucky."

You had definitely heard that name before. Bucky talked about Steve all the time, and now you looked at him, it was definitely Steve Rogers. Bucky had pictures in his little red book.

"Bucky told me to find you. He's safe, he's with me. He told me he wouldn't go any further without you, so please, please come with me..."

Throwing caution to the wind you removed yourself from your terrible hiding place and nodded. He gave you a moment to grab some belongings and change then you were on the move.

He led you on a short walk until you reached a little blue VW. Another longer drive until you reached a miserable looking warehouse. But you didn't care because then you saw him and you ran as fast as you could to Bucky, jumping into his arms and sobbing.

"Dudes on the run and he still finds a girlfriend?"

That was Sam, you learned later and apparently he and Bucky had met before, but the less said about that meeting the better.

Parting

Your heart hurt as you said goodbye to Bucky to leave with Sharon Carter. You didn't want to be away from him, or for him to be in danger. This all felt wrong and unsafe. What if you were found by the wrong people?

He pressed a kiss to your lips and took off his tags, placing them around your neck. "I'm coming back for these, and I'm coming back for you. I can make a difference and knock out Hydra just that little bit more. It's for us."

You smiled stiffly as tears clung to your eyelashes. He kisses you again and holds you tight. "I won't be long doll, I promise."

Endings

After the fight that left Bucky without his arm and damage to egos and friendships, Bucky and you were hidden in Wakanda. It was a paradise for both of you.

You were left to your own devices for a good while and you'd never felt so at peace. Mornings were spent lazily kissing each other as the sun warmed the little house you occupied. You had a small garden to tend to and Bucky herded goats. Children often came by to gawk at you, but eventually they got more involved in feeding the goats and helping you with your planting. The evenings were a mix of good food, warm fires and making love.

Eventually he was prodded to try and remove the trigger words which you added your own encouragement to. It took a lot of work and pain, but one night he was finally free. In fact you were both finally free....

(and then endgame never happens and they all live happily ever after 😫)

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky imagine #bucky smut #bucky barnes smut #bucky fluff

[veroniquesboutique]

Kinktober Day 3 - Hate Fucking / Thigh Riding

For Kinktober day 3!

Sukuna Ryomen x AFAB!Reader

Content warnings: AFAB reader, thigh riding, spitting, PV sex, hate fucking, body swap, degradation, swearing, slapping/impact play, biting, unprotected, name calling, dacryphilia, light cheating (kinda?), choking

18+ MINORS DNI

More under the cut!

The painful sting of your palm is harsh enough to static out the panic that is frying the neurons in your brain as you watch Sukuna rub at his jaw in shock. You don’t usually make it a habit to slap the shit out of people you despise - even people you despise as much as you despise Sukuna - but the string of obscene swear words that fell from your mouth overtook your body and before you knew it, your open palm was swinging with all of its might towards his cheek, and the strike reverberated hard through both of you before you could stop yourself.

See, you have no allegiance to this…thing masquerading as a human. Your allegiance was to your long time boyfriend, Yuuji Itadori, and unfortunately, the two of them came as a package deal, one that only seemed to ever inconvenience you. Sukuna had a habit of showing up at the worst possible times. When you had Yuuji meet your parents for the first time, it wasn’t until the overhead light of the chandelier in your family home’s entryway hit his eye just right that you realized Sukuna had taken over just to fuck shit up, and now your mom prays nightly that you’ll find a “good man” unlike your current boyfriend sooner rather than later. Or when Yuuji was your plus one to your best friend’s wedding, and then Sukuna showed up too many drinks into the night and ended up causing thousands of dollars of damage to the venue for the bride and groom. And you two don’t even discuss the time Sukuna took over during that cruise you booked months in advance that caused both of you to be banned from maritime activities in the Pacific Ocean.

Needless to say, Sukuna solely exists to ruin your life.

So tonight, when all you wanted was to celebrate your anniversary with Yuuji at the way too nice restaurant that you made reservations at on your last anniversary, when Sukuna takes over with that sly fucking smile and that I’m-better-than-you squint, something in your brain finally snaps. That’s how you end up standing in your dimly lit apartment, hand burning in pain, and a red mark appearing on Sukuna’s cheek. 

Oh my God, he’s going to kill me. You think to yourself in the molasses slow moments that tick between him popping his jaw and locking eyes with you. 

You’ve never given much thought to how you were going to die, and you’re not the protagonist of a wildly successful young adult fantasy romance novel from the early 2000s, so now’s not the time to wax poetic. In fact, the only thing going through your mind as you feel Sukuna grip your neck and throw you back against the nearest wall hard enough to shake the pictures from their nails is that Yuuji is going to wake up, regain control of his body, come back to the moment to rescue you only to see your lifeless body on the floor. He’ll blame himself forever, and it is the saddest thought you’ve ever had.

“You fucking bitch,” Sukuna all but screeches at you, and a fire ignites behind his eyes, burning with fury you’ve never seen from him. He’s usually so calm, so cocky in his strength, but something about you seemed to have set him off as much as he set you off.

Continued on AO3...

#x reader #fanfiction #smut #kinktober 2023 #kinktober #creative writing #writeblr #veroniquesboutique #sukuna #ryomen sukuna #sukuna ryomen #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #sukuna x reader #sukuna x you #sukuna x y/n #sukuna smut #jjk smut #jjk x reader #jjk anime #jjk sukuna #female reader #x you #x you smut #fem reader #cw sex mention #cw smut #tw sex mention

[yveaart]

late night talking

jungwon x reader

genre : fluff!! tooth rotting fluff, mentions of kissing, cuddling🥹, enemies to lovers trope !!, cursing, slow burn.

synopsis : you were going home after a long day of frying your brains out from studying but then you meet your academic rival yang jungwon, starting a quarrel as he walked away after your confrontational questioning of his detention.

warning ! lowercase intended, not proofread

after processing that you couldn't fit any more knowledge into your brain you came to the conclusion of just going home and sleeping after two weeks of sleeping and waking up in ungodly hours, your body called— basically screamed for you to lay the fuck down.

feeding your already filled backpack with your laptop and few more supplies you used in the last few hours, you huffed carrying it with a lot of weight applied to your back. walking down the dusky halls as the lights were not yet lit.

it was once again nighttime, walking out of the campus made you feel peace, somehow beating yourself up to be up the academic list made you love the night, it made you feel alive, but yang jungwon beat you up last semester, your interactions with him were either snarky comebacks that are borderline personal or either smirks and death stares mainly depends who score the highest.

the first time jungwon peaked this year, you took it as a challenge, until he did too, leaving confrontational comments and he did bump onto you causing you to drop your figure of the great wall of china that took you weeks! the moment it fell onto pieces you saw red. for a second you thought his eyes were built up with guilt but in the urge of a breakdown you left.

you would claim to be his biggest hater, for that you ended every communication with him, you strived to be the best as you were paid with pride when you were first again.

but that was last semester , and your goal now was to crush him in pieces, you were sure of that.

"what are you doing here yang? planning to break my bag this time?" you said as you tried to walk faster

"listen, i didnt-"

"didn't what? mean it? yeah sure you didnt"

"no i mean it. dont believe me? then dont" his voice getting frustrated.

"don't worry you won't have to make me think that you didn't do it on purpose" you said finally walking away.

he grabbed your arm, flipping you around making you face him. "you have every reason to be mad, but you have to listen to me, i didn't mean to break it" he exhaled loudly as if he was holding all the air in his lungs"

"as well as hating you, i never said that"

"you dont have to say it aloud jungwon, i dont care if you hate me, all i care is for getting up the list and for you to fall back into pieces" his gaze started to sharpen, his tongue poking the insides of his cheeks slowly losing his patience. you were unsure on which part he was mad about.

" i dont care about who comes in the first place damn it!"

"is that why you got sent for detention then? huh?" suddenly everything felt silent as he started walking away.

"then i probably hate you so much" he said enough for you to hear

"answer me yang!" you asked as he walked away

————

"i dont get why he tried so hard convincing me that he didnt hate me and suddenly walk away when i confronted him about his detention" you complained to areum as you sat in the benches out of the campus the next day.

you were left confused and eager to know why your rival was acting unusual.

"oh didnt you know he punched the new kid who tried to take a photo under your skirt" she answered mouth full of the sandwich she bought.

"WHAT? AND YOU JUST TOLD ME NOW?" you stood up facing her.

she tried to answer you but almost choked so you gave her water, she showed you a video that was sent to her buy a student who saw it, you started running desperately trying to find him. you ran to his best friend nd riki but he told you that jungwon went home already.

you ran a few more blocks until you stood at his front door, knocking 3 times and another one after thinking that 3 was an odd number. a few seconds later you were met with the black haired boy looking confused.

your gaze went down seeing hid bruised knuckles... he did actually punch the new guy. you hugged him around his neck sending him a few steps backwards as the door closed. you dropped your bag letting his neck go.

"what was that for?" he asked confused as his eyes lit up realizing what just happened.

"for what cause your knuckles to bruise" you smiled at him, he would probably do it if it was any girl, but you still stood there in his house.

"so uhm you wanna stay? my parents are out for a while..." he asked scratching the back of his neck

".. if only you let me borrow your physics notes"

"oh uhm yeah sure, come" he lit up once again. he led you to the top of the stairs to his door.

his room was really neat, with his desk organized, he went to the side to take the notes ad you lost focus to him but instead the huge piece placed on his table— your project of the great wall of china rebuilt...

"hey?? are you there" he asked waving his hand in front of you face.

" you took every single piece and rebuilt it?" you stared at him?

"..."

"i did..." and for the second time you do something the past you would never do, kiss him. he hugged you around your waist smiling into the kiss.

today in a new day, jungwon did indeed fall back into pieces because of you.

— end —

OHMYGODDD THIS WAS MY FIRST POST :") i hope yall like it😭

#enhypen imagines #enhypen #jungwon oneshots #enhypen oneshots #yang jungwon #jungwon imagines #jungwon #engene #jungwon x reader

[finn-m-corvex]

Whumptober 2023 Day 4 - Cattle Prod

Day 4! Not my best one by far cause this prompt was HARD but I did it! And I think I got some pretty good whump out of it too!

@splinnters tag number four! You're a trooper!

Words: 2.1k

“You won’t get what you’re looking for out of me,” Jay panted, head hung low over his chest. He could feel the blood leaking from the blow he had taken to the head, and he struggled to keep drool from slobbering down his chin. This man was not going to get what he was looking for.

Whoever he was, he must’ve had connections, because Jay couldn’t think of how else he and Cole would’ve been located and kidnapped in the middle of the night.

The man only hummed behind his black mask, putting down the now bloody brass knuckles that he had just used to knock Jay’s ribs in. Every breath made him feel like throwing up, except he had already vomited all over his lap. Jay tried to get a look at whatever other tools were being kept on the table, but it was no use, especially with one eye covered in blood flowing from a gash in his forehead.

“It’s only a matter of time before you talk,” the man said, reaching for another thing on the table. Jay couldn’t see it properly in the darkness of the room, but he heard the low whine of charging electricity as the man flicked a switch on the side of the tool.

He walked towards Jay and into the dim light of the one bulb overhead, and Jay clocked the tool immediately: an electric cattle prod.

Gritting his teeth, Jay knew that this interrogation was about to get even messier, but he couldn’t let his composure slip. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last that he had to endure under harsh conditions, and with any luck this time would be better than the time he spent on the pirates’ ship.

Bright blue electricity arced between the two prongs in a mesmerizing dance that Jay was more than familiar with, and the man had a look of fascination under his mask as he watched. “Pretty, isn’t it? Sometimes I like to hold it just like this and stare, because how could nature ever make something so beautiful?”

“Look in the sky once and a while and you would see it there too,” Jay retorted, his tongue bleeding where he had bit it after letting out a scream earlier.

Snorting, the man turned back to face Jay, and the ninja was suddenly very aware of how vulnerable he was when the prod was shoved right under his nose. He could smell the ozone, a harsh scent in his broken nose, and the light was blinding. “I’d watch your tongue if I were you, blue ninja. We both know that your lightning resistance doesn’t work with vengestone.”

“And?” Jay said, bored. It was a role that he knew how to play. “We both know you don’t have the balls to try it.”

“Oh?” the man asked, wiggling the prod as if it were a toy. “Is that a chance you’re willing to take?”

“Always.”

“Then that will be your downfall.”

Jay screamed as the man shoved the prod into his thigh, prongs shoved deep into his skin and sparking rapidly. Electricity ran up and down his leg, frying his nerves and making it feel like someone had doused him in gasoline and set him alight. The pain only lasted for a few seconds, the man pulling the prod away, but Jay’s stomach turned at the smell of burnt flesh left behind.

He cracked his eyes open to assess the damage. It wasn’t a normal cattle prod; standard ones wouldn’t have left behind such a large burn mark, angry and red and swollen on the top of his thigh. Lines snaked out from the injury, lines that he knew all too well: Lichtenburg figures. His leg was tingling, and his fingers couldn’t stop twitching behind his back. All of this felt way too familiar to how it felt using his lightning when he was younger: out of control, wild, untameable, and incredibly painful.

Goddammit, they weren’t going to make this easy for him, were they?

“Where is your master?” the man asked, holding up the prod. Jay’s brain almost short-circuited itself; that’s all they wanted to know? They were looking for Master Wu too?

If they were willing to go this far, to kidnap two of Ninjago’s most powerful heroes out of the shoddy campsite they had made in the middle of the woods, then he couldn’t let them get close to the others or Lloyd, or god forbid Master Wu.

Luckily, he knew jackshit about Master Wu’s location, but that wasn’t what the man wanted to hear.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Jay spat out a hunk of blood onto the floor at the man’s feet.

“Now isn’t the time to be cheeky,” the man chastised. He flicked a switch on the side of the instrument, and Jay watched as the light turned brighter and the arcs grew in size. “Where is Wu?”

“I have no idea where Wu is-” but Jay barely had time to prepare himself before the prod was shoved into his other thigh. The charge was definitely higher, and Jay slammed his eyes shut and screamed, feeling his leg jerk against the restraints. His back arched off of the chair as the man moved the prod, digging it in deeper. Finally pulling it out made Jay slump in exhaustion; only two shocks and he was already on the verge of quitting. He was out of practice.

The man quickly flipped the prod around, slamming the butt of the blunt side into Jay’s temple. “Let’s try this again. Where is Wu?”

His head was spinning, everything around him rotating as if he had spent too much time on a tilt-a-whirl. Blood dripped down from his temple and onto his gi. “I don’t know.”

Clicking his tongue, the man looked disappointed with Jay’s resistance, and Jay watched as he flicked the switch again and again and again. Full power. “I can keep going for as long as it takes for you to crack, lightning ninja. But can you last that long?”

“Are you kidding?” Jay gave a toothy grin, making sure to show off every single one of his blood-stained teeth. His ribs were screaming, his stomach was revolting, and every time he moved his legs he felt like he was going to pass out; but he had never been better. “Bring it on, tough guy. You haven’t even broken into the top five all-time torturers on my list.”

Because all of those spots would be held by the pirates, now and forever.

All his words did was make the man’s face contort in anger, and Jay braced himself as the low whine of the electricity grew louder and louder. This wasn’t going to be good.

He hated being right.

Powerful shock after shock, not just on his legs but on his arms as well. There were a few well-placed points on his chest, but the most painful one by far was when the man stabbed it into the small of Jay’s back, chasing as the blue ninja’s back arched against the restraints. He did actually pass out for a few seconds that time, quickly coming to when the man splashed ice cold water onto his face without any fanfare. It felt good against the bruises, and Jay felt some silent relief when it washed away part of the blood coating his face.

Maybe they were finally done, because the man pulled back and put the prod back on the table. Jay panted heavily, catching his breath, watching as the man picked up a pair of gloves and slid them onto his hands. He made a quick hand motion, and suddenly Jay felt two more pairs of hands on his arms and shoulders to hold him in place.

Jay’s fight or flight instincts kicked in, struggling against their grips and fighting to free himself. The rope binding him dug hard into his wrists, and Jay could feel the rope-burn setting in as he twisted from side to side. His legs wouldn’t budge, and he even tried to flail so that the chair would fall backwards and knock the other two off-balance.

One of them slammed something into the back of his head, dazing him and subduing him long enough to tie a blindfold around his eyes; it was tight enough to make stars swim across his vision,  and he started bucking his head to dislodge it, knock it off, anything to let him see what they were going to do to him.

This was the most violent response they had coaxed out of him so far.

Anxiety churned in his gut, looming large over him and pressing in from the corners of his mind. He had to get free before anything else could happen.

He wasn’t afraid. He was terrified.

“If that’s all it took to start breaking you, then I would’ve called them in so much sooner,” the man mused, and Jay heard the cattle prod even though the tool had been left alone on the table. His eyes darted around, looking for any sort of pinprick of light to give him his bearings. It was far too familiar to the pirate ship.

“Whatever the fuck you want, you’re not getting it,” Jay snarled, but even he could hear the tremor in his voice.

Chuckling, the man grabbed his chin, tilting it up and to the side. Jay grimaced when he felt eyes roving across his face and body; he knew when someone was admiring their handiwork. “So much pain, and for what? To protect your pitiful little master? How are you even sure if he’s alive?”

“Well, he must be if you’re making this big of a deal out of finding him,” Jay quipped, and he grunted when the man gave his chin a harsh shove.

“You better watch your tongue before I decide to cut it out,” the man growled, and Jay hated the way even the image of that happening made him start shaking. He couldn’t afford to show any more weakness in front of these people.

And yet, it only took a snap of his fingers for Jay to start screaming again.

Both of the men holding him had cattle prods of their own, one going for his abused thigh and the other going for his chest. Jay had nowhere to go, as trying to escape one only pushed him farther into the other, and he could feel the tears start to sting at his eyes as they turned the charge up. Before, the man had never kept it on for more than a few seconds, possibly afraid of causing critical damage since he was right; Jay’s resistance wasn’t nearly as powerful with vengestone on.

These men didn’t care about the damage.

Grabbing his chin again, Jay could hear the man snicker at the way his blindfold was changing colors due to his tears. “Ah, there we go. Just the reaction I wanted to see.”

He stroked Jay’s chin with a single finger as the prod in his thigh finally pulled away, but Jay sobbed as he was stabbed right in the small of his back instead. The smell of burning flesh assaulted his nose, and Jay could feel his hands clenching and unclenching as his muscles contracted and loosened and contracted and loosened and it hurt it hurt it hurt—

“Please!” he finally begged. “Please!”

In an instant the electricity was gone, and Jay collapsed in an exhausted heap; the restraints were the only things keeping him from falling onto the ground. He could feel where the skin had rubbed raw against the ropes, tender and bloody and burnt from the prods. Even the light breeze blowing from a vent above him irritated the wounds, but Jay had nothing to cover them with. None of his muscles were working properly, and Jay was paralyzed with something entirely different than fear as a cloth gag was shoved into his mouth and secured.

Looking proud of himself, the man stepped back, and Jay felt sick to his stomach as he realized what he must look like to his captor: a prize, something to be controlled and praised for when it did as it was told.

He was nothing more than livestock to these people, so how fitting that he was tortured with a tool meant to contain them.

“Well,” the man said brightly, “how nice of you to finally beg. Unfortunately, we have other matters we need to attend to. If you’re not going to talk, then maybe your friend will.”

Jay’s eyes widened. Were they talking about Cole?

“Get him up,” the man said, and Jay yelled into his gag when he felt the two men on either side of him haul him to his feet as if he were a sack of potatoes. “We’re going on a little trip. Let’s just hope that for your sake, your friend is more cooperative.”

And the only thing that Jay could do as he was marched out the door, legs shaky and dripping in blood, was hope and pray that Cole could hold out more than he could.

#whumptober 2023 #finn's writing #ninjago jay #ninjago fanfiction #lego ninjago #ninjago whumptober #whumptober day 4

[mgkxximagines]

You threw back your second sex on the beach, throat burning with pleasure as you chugged it in one go. The glass clattered on the bar, a soft growl escaping your throat. Rage coursed through you, but you knew better than to drink anymore. If you did, you’d likely end up doing something you might regret. Like slash your ex’s tires. Or maybe murder his brother. Who the fuck knew? You were a vengeful drunk. Especially when your boyfriend of four years cheats on you in your own bed.

You checked the time on your phone. It was only 11:00. You snarled and locked your phone a little more aggressively than you probably needed to, but you were pissed.

And righteously so! He had the fucking balls to cheat on you with that whore coworker of yours! Ugh, you knew the one— who always wore tiny skirts, open blouses, and was sleeping her way to the top of the company.

It didn’t matter that she didn’t do shit. Nah, it wasn’t your work she piggybacked off of— oh, wait! It was! Fucking bitch.

You didn’t realize you’d started muttering to yourself until the bartender gingerly slid you a basket of fries. Yeah, you should probably eat something. The alcohol was getting to your brain way too fucking quickly for your liking.

Your attention caught on a tall, muscular shape throwing darts at the wall. He seemed familiar but you couldn’t tell where you knew him from. Whatever. You were in Los Angeles, famous people were a dime of dozen here.

You turned back to your French fries, seething with silent rage.

It wasn’t until you’d finished about half the fries when you noticed the man watching you from the corner of your eye. You swiveled to observe him properly, your eyes threatening to water. Your gaze caught on a very, very attractive man— possibly in his mid—twenties, maybe thirties at the absolute least. Your gaze traveled over his face slowly, as though you were memorizing his features. His eyes were light and intelligent, and his mouth was quirked up slightly in a half-smile. A 5’o’clock shadow dusted his chin, but it did nothing to dampen the stunning beauty and elegance of his face. He wore a red flannel with a leather jacket over it, and you could catch the slight scent of shoe polish mixed with something sweet—- honeysuckle?

You were pulled form your open observation of him when he cleared his throat to speak.

“You okay, there, honey?

You blinked. Did MGK just call you honey?

He waited expectantly for you to answer, leaning closer as he did.

“Umm—not really, but I don’t think that’s any of your business, Colson.” You crunched a fry without breaking eye contact. “What is a big shot like you doing in a dive like this?”

He looked slightly taken aback, but he recovered quickly.

“Hmm—I guess I like to get away from it all sometimes. Life is pretty exhausting nowadays.” He sighed, seeming to forget who he was talking to for a second. “I kinda wish I could disappear for a while, but too many people know who I am.”

You rolled your eyes despite yourself.

“Oh, please. Do you know how many people would kill to be you for a day?” You snickered and added to yourself, “or to do you for a day...”

His interest in you was once again piqued. Colson eyed you curiously, with a knowing smirk.

“Can I count you among all of those thirsty fan girls, honey?”

Your posture shot upright as you frantically glared at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you, me, and lovers peak.” He purred. Colson was somehow much closer than you remembered him being mere moments before, his knee brushing your thigh softly from where he perched his barstool.

Okay. Your heart rate was going way too fast for you to be comfortable in that moment. You tried to laugh it off, though it came out as a nervous warble more than anything else.

“What, is this some kind of joke? You’re Colson Baker, the sex icon of my entire generation. And I’m a nobody.”

You tried to keep the hurt out of your voice, but it pierced through beneath your words like a shiv.

Colson’s face fell. He wasn’t smirking anymore. He felt the pain in your words as your eyes threatened to spill over with sadness. Wordlessly, he pulled you into his chest as you began silently sobbing. It hurt more than you wanted to admit. Your ex was a lying sack of shit and you didn’t know how to cope with that information. You’d lived with the guy for three years, dated him for four— he had, arguably, been your first requited love. Apparently, though, that statement didn’t ring true anymore.

It was with this revelation that you utterly broke down, letting yourself be held for the first time in who knew how long. Colson hushed you softly, humming in his sweet baritone a song that was only for you.

When your tears began to dry, you recognized just how close you were crushed to his chest. His very toned chest. The chest whose heartbeat was increasing, possibly from the same revelation; your breasts were in fact pressed into his abdomen, your arms wrapped around his waist. You coughed and began to right yourself, pulling back with flushed cheeks.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to unload on you. My boyfriend of four years cheated on me, so I’m not quite myself.”

His spine stiffened and his lips pressed into a thin line. Interesting. Colson glared at a spot on the bar as though it was to blame.

“I’m so sorry.” His hand absently stroked the back of yours, warming it with his own. “For the record, if he was stupid enough to do that, he didn’t deserve you anyway.”

You rolled your eyes. You wanted to laugh.

“Colson, you don’t even know me!” You snickered. “Goddamn, I’ve gotta be in some sort of stupid anime subplot. Don’t you have a concert to play or a girl to woo?”

His face fell only for a second before a thought made his eyes flicker with mischief.

“What if I do?” He raises his eyebrows. “Maybe you’re the girl to woo.”

Your laughter died in your throat and you swallowed hard.

He wasn’t joking.

His eyes were hungry and his hand gently squeezed your own.

He really wasn’t playing around.

“Wh...why?”

He grinned, flashing his pristinely white teeth in the dim light of the bar.

“I dunno. It might further the plot.” He winked at you impishly.

Fuck. Okay, you were hella in trouble.

You ground your thighs together in a sudden desperation, your eyelids fluttering as his hands held your own and began to trace themselves over your wrists in feather-light movements. It really shouldn’t have done anything at all, but the feeling of his calluses fingers on the sensitive skin of your inner forearm was definitely feeling like it should be obscene.

“You gonna take me up on my offer?” Colson purred.

Well.... fuck. How could you say no?

“I mean...” you forced your voice to be even-keeled. “It’s still pretty early. Maybe I will.”

He let out of soft laugh before sweeping you into the bathroom before you could blink. His lips were on your neck, gracing sinful trails of bliss across your nerves and dancing with your flesh. At your quizzical glance, he only chuckled deeply.

“I couldn’t wait that long, honey”

Any protest you might’ve had was drowned out by the moan that escaped your lips when his mouth pressed to your throat. Colson made quick work of your clothes and began worshipping your curves. His hands cupped your breasts reverently, lips ghosting over your skin and sending goosebumps flying over you. He sucked on your nipple and you had to bite your tongue to keep yourself from outright screaming.

He licked your breast once before popping back up to give you an evil smile.

“You don’t have to hold back. I don’t care who hears us. There’s no paparazzi here..” Even as he spoke, he trailed his mouth over your skin. Leaving his breath rushing across the skin beneath your ear, his hands sliding into your hair.

With an irritated mewl, you pushed him away for a second.

“No fair.” He chided.

“Uh-Uh. You. Naked. Now.”

Realization dawned on him as he quickly reassumed his sly expression.

“Mm. Whatever you say, honey.”

His clothing hit the floor and you were on him, your hands roving over the hard, chiseled planes of his body with reckless abandon. He smirked down at your tenacity, your enthusiasm as you kissed his body with a devotion that equaled his.

“Enjoying yourself, huh?”

You snorted and bit his collarbone.

“Please. This has been my fantasy since I was a teenager. Don’t at me.”

With an aggressive little groan, you nibbled at his earlobe, earning a sharp breath from him. He laughed softly at your sudden vigor.

“Mm. Be mean to me, honey.”

Now it was your turn to snicker.

“Goddamn it, Kells...”

He looked at you innocently.

“I didn’t do anything. Not one little thing.”

His fingers slipped between your legs, completely invalidating his statement. You keened under his touch, his lips capturing yours and warring for dominance.

You groaned. God, it had been so long since someone had touched you like this.

“Fuck me, Kells.” You pleaded. “For the love of God, fuck me black and blue.”

“Ugh, fuck yes.” He breathed

With a sudden burst of energy he lifted your leg and began running his length across your slit, feeling the wetness af the apex of your thighs.

“Damn, honey, how long has it been since someone’s loved you like this? You’re so fucking wet..”

His rhetorical question didn’t earn the biting sarcasm he’d expected, so Colson made the executive decision to ensure that this would be a night you’d never forget.

He sucked on your breasts one more time before cupping the backs of your legs and lifting you onto him with a grunt. With your breath sufficiently knocked out of your lungs, you managed an approving whimper before he began to move. Colson’s hips rocked back and forth with a practiced ease, his rhythm steady and heart-poundingly delicious.

His hand dropped to where you were joined and he began playing with your clit in sync with his thrusts, a decision that made you bite his shoulder to keep from screaming outright.

Goddamn, this boy knew how to move.

You tightened your thighs around his waist, locking him inside you as you felt your heart beat as one, suspended in the moment, ecstatic in the feeling of one another.

Not one to rest for long, Colson snickered and unlocked your legs with a quick buck of his hips. Fingertips dug into your waist as he gripped you roughly, rutting into you like his life depended on it. Your throat ached as you let out a guttural groan, your first orgasm leaving your legs quaking. Sensing your release, Colson slowed his pace as he worked you through it, his lips soft as his tongue danced with yours.

“Fuck.” You muttered.

He let out of breathy laugh.

“My sentiments exactly.” He pressed feathery kisses to your neck and face, letting his guard down for the first time in months. “I wouldn’t mind if this became a regular thing... we fit together so well.

Your face flushed and you met his eyes, curious.

“Wait, really?”

Colson nodded, biting his lip as he did so.

“I like you a lot—- not just because of the sex, but you’re also just... I don’t know. I’m drawn to you.”

You held back a snort, totally ruining his cute little moment of sincerity.

“Yep, this is straight up some anime shit.”

He glared at you, but his smile betrayed him.

He pulled you close, his chest pressing to yours, as he simply breathed with you in the near-total darkness.

“So you’re coming back to my place, right?”

His smirk made your heart jump with the possibilities that it held.

“Absofuckinglutely.”

#colson baker #colson baker imagine #colson baker imagines #colson x reader #machine gun kelly #machinegunkelly #machine gun kelly imagines #mgk fanfic #machine gun kelly imagine

[gyeomsweetgyeom]

[2:03 am]

It was weird being on campus this late surrounded by other students. The library felt like it would at any other time of day with the sun out, but right now the sky was dark with only the moon and stars to serve as light. Finals week was just about to begin, stress and nerves on campus were at an all time high, including your own.

“If I read one more chapter of this stupid book I’m going to rip my hair out!” You whisper yelled. At this point, you didn’t care whether or not anybody at the adjacent tables heard you or not, they were probably in the same boat. 

Shotaro threw his head back with a laugh, “You said you wanted to stay here this late, now you’re telling me you can’t?”

You whined, putting your head on his shoulder, “Sho! My eyes burn, my brain hurts, I’m tired, I’m starving, and I never ever want to look at another book ever again in my life. I just really want some hot, crispy fries and an ice col drink, that would fix every problem I have right now.”

Shotaro hummed in acknowledgement, he knew staying at the library this late to study the whole time was a bad idea. This wasn’t how you both usually studied, so he had a feeling you just wanted to know what the university library was like this late at night. Well, it wasn’t just a feeling, he had actually heard you mumble something like this after you saw a flier up. Your usual study sessions consisted of your coffee table being filled with loose papers, index cards and highlighters to copy down important information while Shotaro’s lo-fi study mix played in the background. Reading textbooks and being organized just didn’t work.

Now, it was going on hour 5 of just reading the textbooks and he was starting to feel a bit stir crazy too. “Come on, let’s go,” Shotaro told you as he began putting his things away.

It didn’t take you too long to follow suit before you were both running out of the library, past your stressed, tired peers.

A short drive later you were both seated at one of the only restaurants open at this hour of the night for a cheap price, huddled together on one side of the booth to combine your warmth. You unconsciously brought a fry to your mouth, eyes staring blankly ahead out the window. Your brain felt completely fried and filled to the brim with information yet you couldn’t recall anything specific. Sitting in the cold and slightly sticky seat of the booth eating fries was just what you needed.

“Thank you, Sho,” you mumbled tiredly, “All that studying was making me go crazy. I think finals week will be the end of me.”

“No, you’ll be fine like every year. I think this is just your tired brain talking,” Shotaro smiled reassuringly.

“Can we just do our normal studying tomorrow, please? I’ll get us dinner and afterwards we can watch a movie and fall asleep on the couch. We can cuddle under that blanket you like and...” you trailed off.

Shotaro hummed in agreement, waiting for you to continue with your plan. The seconds ticked on but you remained quiet and your food untouched. Shotaro leaned over to see what the problem was only to find you peacefully asleep.

Next time you wanted to stay awake studying at this hour, let alone on cmapus, Shotaro was just going to remind you that you fell asleep in a restaurant with a fry in your hand.

#kpop imagines #kpop au #kpop scenarios #kpop reactions #nct #nct imagines #nct fluff #nct timestamps #nct x reader #shotaro x reader #shotaro drabble #shotaro imagines #shotaro fluff #shotaro timestamps #shotaro blurb

[mistresslrigtar]

WIP Wednesday!

Two wip ideas today that I have barely started on....

The first is a one-shot called Giving Her Away

Summary: another Link introspective (because that is where my brain goes a lot) title is self-explanatory, but it would be Link's thoughts about giving his daughter away.

The idea:

He’s giving her away. His first born, his baby girl. His daughter. How is this happening?

Does this man, boy, really even love his daughter? Is he going to be able to take care of her? Protect her?

The second could either be a steamy one-shot or potentially a ficlet.

It is currently untitled, but it involves an alternative college band. And the members?

Lead guitarist/singer: Revali

Bass guitarist: Link

Drummer: Daruk

Keyboards: Ganon (he's not the bad guy! this is a pure fluff piece. Okay, maybe he will just be a bad influence...)

Excerpt:

Mipha’s boyfriend, Revali, was spot-lighted, front and center, carelessly swinging his guitar about as he showed off with an obscenely gratuitous guitar solo. Every once in a while, screaming into the mic. He would fry his vocal cords if he kept up that nonsense. 

But Zelda could care less about him. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the bass guitarist. How had she never noticed this man walking around on campus before today? The heavy kohl liner smudged around his maddeningly long lashes, made his turquoise blue eyes practically pop - two glowing coals of blue that she wanted burning her skin with their gaze, not the sticky stage floor. And his long, nimble fingers, picking out chords on a bass guitar shaped and painted to look like an ancient Hylian shield, sent not-so-nice thoughts of what else those fingers might be good at running like wildfire through her brain. She didn’t even care that all the drunk students were jostling her, pressed in close, dancing to the music. 

That's all I have. Is it worth my time to pursue either of these in the future? Thanks for the feedback!

#legend of zelda #zelink #the legend of zelda #artists on tumblr #loz #breath of the wild #loz botw #loz college au alternative band #botw link #botw zelda #wip wednesday

[thunderousone]

Chapter 8

Summary: Eirene's training continues and she's granted permission to check in on her home from a distance... Sparks fly.

TW: profanity, (eventual... it's slow burn get over it) graphic depictions of sex, pain kink, childhood trauma, parental trauma, chronic pain

Rating: 18+, MDNI

Comments, likes, and reblogs are appreciated 🤍

After a long day of striking Vír down she was starting to think he was enjoying the feeling of being electrocuted.  

Eirene made her way inside, changed from her insane rubber clothes and tried to massage her shoulders. Her muscles were ripped to shreds trying to keep the wild element inside her contained. She bypassed a bath after training for fear the latent sparks would fry her right there in the tub. Once changed, she went to the large loft to overlook the first floor. Vír had immediately gone to his study after training, slamming the door behind him. Lyire was on the first floor, lounging, looking out at the rose garden through the big paned windows.   

She descended the stairs to join him and he slowly sat up to greet her.  

"Vír is still standing so I'd say you made some progress out there today?" He slid over to make room for Eirene next to him.  

masterlist | read it first on ao3

  "Hardly, Vír is insufferable and my brain feels like it's going to explode," She pinched the bridge of her nose between her eyes and winced, feeling the pressure relieved for a moment. "If the offer still stands, I'd love to see what's going on in Lyranth." She missed her home so much sometimes she thought she’d go mad from the heart ache. 

Lyire stood up and smiled at her, gods he was charming. How could someone this kind stand to be around someone like Vír? "Follow me," he said warmly. His white hair was half pulled back and it made him look so soft and beautiful. 

They ascended the cool marble stairs and went to the opposite end of the home where she knew Vír and his study were. Vír's bedroom door was closed of course, and a slight mist was bleeding through the crack beneath the door to the study.  

Eirene's footsteps echoed softly as she walked with Lyire down the hall. She had not ventured down this way during her walk through with Yvonne for fear of seeing Vír, so seeing this room for the first time took her by surprise.  

In a stark contrast from the rest of the manor, this was vastly more intimate. An old and beautiful deep red carpet spanned the majority of the room and the walls were lined with old oak shelves filled to the brim with books, their spines and lettering shining in a warm glow.  

Dominating the rooms center was a large transparent sculpture of sorts, an orb suspended above an elegant pedestal. It's perfect, glassy form refracted light in the room like a drop of water pierced with rays of sunlight. A crackling fireplace sat nestled in the corner, it's flickering flames greeting Eirene like a comforting old friend. Her heart felt ten times lighter as she approached the large leather chair in front of it and slid her hands along the soft, leathery, warmed surface.  

A cough from the other side of the room made Eirene turn quickly. Vír was sitting behind a large wooden desk, his head tilting slowly cocked to the side, examining Lyire and Eirene.  

"Excuse me?" He asked them. He put his pen down and his long fingers laced together, his skin so fair from lack of sun that you could see his veins in his arms. His eyes seared into her, watching her every movement as she looked around the room.  

Lyire stood in the center of the room near the large glass object and rested a hand on it. He rotated it slowly and caught Eirene's eye. She quickly walked over to him, her footfalls muffled by the carpet beneath her feet. He rotated the object around with a soft touch to its crystalline surface. "We were given permission by the Guardians to let her check in on her home while she's here, Vír.” Lyire looked into the glass, seeing something beyond the room.  ”Okay, come on over here Eirene," he murmured, still adjusting the position of the orb with his hand. He placed one of her hands on the glass as he leaned in. "So, here is Lyranth, and your home should be right about here," he put more pressure on her hand and slid the ball upward.  

Slowly, Lyranth came into view. It took some finessing of the ball to get it to focus in properly but there it was, and Lyire left her to look through the glass. She had never seen it from this vantage before. She was so high above everything, she could hardly make out faces of people as they drudged through the wet streets. It wasn't raining, but it was wet. She knew this type of day well. It had clearly rained badly earlier in the day and let up recently, judging by the amount of people out on the street. She shifted the glass under her hand and her breathing hitched.  

Her hand pressed harder into the glass and she felt Lyire step away. The soft plop of tears hitting the orb were the only sound other than the warm fire crackling away in the background. There, walking through the street... She'd know those figures anywhere. She saw Paarth, with Violet on his shoulders, walking through town. She couldn't see their expressions or much else about them, but it was them.  

Safe, she thought with a sigh of relief. Violet is safe.  

Her heart felt like it was ripped from her chest, because she saw it walking there, on Lyranth. She felt the electricity in her hands buzz, sending a shiver down her spine. Suddenly, a hand was on her back. She knew the hand on the small of her back didn't belong to Lyire. She felt the vibrations and rumble leave his touch and enter her body. Her electrical currents pushing into his like a wave.  

"Keep whatever emotion you're fighting with pushed down, even if it's a good feeling. Extremes can be dangerous for them down there," Vír's voice was low in her ear, she could feel his breath on her neck, along with the electrical pull of the lightning in her veins to him.  

Violet and Paarth slowly vanished from view, inside a building, but her eyes remained fixed on the glass ball. Tears flowing freely now, she felt the lightning moving in her veins and it felt as though they would pierce her heart.  

"Close your eyes," he coached her. "Let whatever your feeling go, it's no use having these emotions. In and out," she listened this time, ripping her eyes from the ball and letting her hand fall to her side. His hand moved from her back to both of her shoulders, one hand on each as he felt them rise and fall with each breath. With her eyes closed in silence, she stood there listening to the crackles and pops of the fire and breathed with Vír, in and out.  

She wasn't sure how long they stood there like that, where Lyire had gone, but at some point Vír also vanished, and she was alone in the room, her only company the hearth. She slept in the chair, letting the warm leather comfort her into a peaceful sleep. 

masterlist | read it first on ao3

#acotar #stray kids fanfic #ao3 writer #sjmaas #fanfic #skz fanfic #straykids #skz smut #skz stay #hyunjin #kinktober #kinktober 2023

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

Do you have anything written for To Live is to Die Twice that you are willing to share?

I just looked through my folder and found something. More than I expected, actually. XD (It's not edited at all though, so beware the mistakes)

Here you go

Mors drifted through the In Between, guided by the gentle prodding of a presence just beyond his understanding, until it suddenly stopped and sensations came rushing back all at once. The experience was so jarring he forgot he was supposed to breathe. His lungs felt like iron bands were clamped around them, burning hot and ice cold at the same time.

He could hear something. It was warbled, like someone trying to talk underwater and his ears were full of cotton. Something crashed into his chest and if he had had any breath left, he would have gasped. A spark ran through him. It was some kind of magic, but it was gone too quickly for him to say what kind of magic it had been. It could have been a lightning spell trying to fry him from the inside out for all he knew.

Suddenly he could breathe.

Greedily he sucked in gulps of air and blinked blearily against the golden half-light. Was this how souls arrived in the Ring of the Lucii? If so, it sucked balls.

An unbidden groan made its way past his lips. Somebody was talking again in hushed tones and gentle words, but his brain was too scrambled to make out what was being said. Fingers carded through his hair. This was embarrassing. Showing weakness like that in front of his ancestors and needing to be molly coddled like that.

Mors forced his eyes open – it took more effort than he thought it would – with the intention to make the person stop whatever they were doing and came up short as he stared up at a cracked ceiling. It must have been beautiful once, a distant part of his brain – the part that had always had an interest in architecture his own father had never truly allowed him to pursue, not that it had stopped him, of course – voiced as his eyes trailed the crumbling stucco and the bits of plastering that still held traces of colour.

This wasn't the Ring of the Lucii.

Where by Bahamut's bladed wings was he?

The fingers carded through his hair again and he flinched back. As it turned out, whipping his head around was a bad idea. Black spots crowded his vision and nausea made his stomach lurch rather unpleasantly. Mors was sure he would have vomited all over the scratchy bedsheets, if his stomach hadn't been empty already.

He forced himself to take a few deep breaths until he didn't feel like his whole world was spinning around him in a dizzying array of shadows and soft light anymore. The frame of the bed creaked ominously as he shifted his weight to gain a better look at the person, whose fingers should fucking stop already.

It was a young man who looked like he had barely hit twenty – if that – with an unruly mop of long, black hair that currently obscured half his face, and striking violet eyes. There were thin lines tattooed around his eyes and along the cheek and temple of the left side of his face. Mors suppressed a derisive snort. If Regis had dared to do something like this he would have beaten him black and blue for disrespecting his family line like that.

The stroking of his hair finally stopped as the young man seemed to get the hint that his touch wasn't welcome. Mors couldn't help the unbidden sense of loss-emptiness that washed through him and squashed it down mercilessly.

A soft sigh rushed past the young man's lips and they twisted into a slight smile as Mors's eyes focused on him.

“Finally with me again? You had all of us worried.”

With a furrowed brow Mors inched further away along the bed until his back hit the wall. Only now that he could feel the old stone at his back, did he realize how cold the air hitting his face was. He shivered in the warm cocoon of the blankets he was wrapped in, and scowled at his own reaction. He was a King of Lucis, and not some pampered noble that wouldn't know the sharp edge of a blade, even if it hit him in the face. But here he was, barely able to move, limbs heavy and without the strength to summon a weapon.

Then it registered what the young man had said. What did he mean 'again'? Wait, no. That wasn't as important as: “What do you mean 'us'? Who are you?”

He snapped the words out with all the air of a man who knew his questions would be answered – or else. His mouth clicked shut sharply as he heard the sound of his own voice. This wasn't how he was supposed to sound. He hadn't sounded like that since -

Before his mind could slip into the dark hole that was his death and what by Pitioss is wrong with me, there is something wrong, wrong, wrong, an amused huff made his attention snap back to the man sitting on a stool next to the rickety old bed.

“Such insolence. It must really run in the family.”

…What?

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The man blinked like he had just realized something. He leaned slightly back and carded his hair out of his face – it was long enough to fall between his shoulder blades – and Mors's breath shuttered in his chest. That face. This unknown man looked so much like Regis, and by extension, him, it hurt.

Oh Gods, Regis. How was he doing? Had he grieved at all? Mors had always done his best to protect his family, even if he knew that Regis thought different. He had seen it in the growing distance his son kept, the polite, empty words they exchanged, the looks Regis and Clarus had exchanged when they thought themselves unwatched.

#ask #raven-6-10 #ffxv #deep city au #to live is to die twice #mors lucis caelum #snippet #geist writes #I haven't continued this in ages #XD #I wrote down lots of potential continuations for chapter 1 #but they're all in notebooks #and in german #and to this day I haven't found the energy to translate them #geist answers

[flowerwithdepression]

Turn off the lights

I don't want to see any light at the end of this tunnel

It's been too long of a walk to end

The ending would be no welcoming light

I'm trying to sleep okay?

It's burning in my eyes and into my skull

Leaving a mark of blinding shine on everything

I just want some rest in the comforting dark

I'm trying to sleep okay?

Please let me have a moment for myself

A hundred flashlights pointed at me

Lasers targets from every direction

I'm trying to sleep okay?

Street lights showing every piece of trash and ruin

Cold yet burning florescent lights

White and shining, impossible to escape

I'm trying to sleep okay?

Pinning my gaze to the ground

How can anyone keep their head up?

It's toasting my brain and frying my soul

I'm trying to sleep okay?

Evaporating every passing thought

Making the tears as hot as lava

Killing me with every tick of the clock

I'm trying to sleep okay?

Please

Please

Please

I am asking

I am begging

Just please

For a minute

No.

For a moment.

A moment would suffice.

Turn off the lights.

[6uts]

[Writing] Hunger's Teeth: Cecil May

Just some RP writing that I'm pretty happy with. I think it characterizes Cecil pretty well, too.

10:20 PM. The old family car finally rolls into the mostly abandoned gas station. Blinding lights bop up, then down as he rides up the curb. The entire car throbs with the heavy bass. It's a miracle the old can doesn't bust at the seems.

Cecil's late. It's not his fault Google Maps is busted. One missed turn and you're absorbed into the stream of lights and tin and burning rubber forever. No way out. He'd told Lionel to meet him here. It's as good a place as any other. Nondescript. Generic. One of a million more like it. Perfect for a meeting of strangers intent on chasing ghosts.

The engine winds down and the car stops in one of three lots just outside the fluorescent lights oppressing the whole thing. The music meets a sudden death and a window is rolled down. Cecil's arm snakes out to rest on it. The straw of a Starbucks cup chokes between artificially sharpened teeth as it struggled to suck the remaining fluid film from the plastic bottom producing obnoxious slurping sounds. Unsettling white eyes search the lot for Lionel with an anticipatory grin.

---

The immediate silence made Cecil think Lionel had already left. Shame. He would wait a few minutes. Maybe the boy had had the same idea. A test of commitment. The street hummed in the background. Micro flickers of neon strained his eyes in the rear-view mirror. The comfortable buzz of electricity soon carried him to over things, voices, sounds— blurred echoes of the past. Cecil squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe Morgan had the right idea to fry his brain with drugs. Cut the connection.

When he opened them again, a boy stared at him. He seemed like a ghost. And for a moment he wasn't sure that he was real. Smothered by an aura of sadness. The putrefied goo of ice cubes and coffee rattled in the plastic cup as the bottom was pointed at Lionel. Cecil smiled. "Lionel! Get in," he nodded to the passenger seat. In the pallid light Cecil appeared even paler than it usually was. A layer of makeup was caked on his skin. That must be why.

The window was rolled back up and he waited for the boy to get in, eager to fill the space with something other than lost souls. "'Sup? Sorry I'm late, man. Traffic's a bitch." Everyone could relate to that. Except it was ten o'clock in the evening on a weekday. The majority of people were at home, letting themselves be lulled to sleep by the idle chatter of their TV. "What do you like?" The cup had been stowed and Cecil was waving his iPhone between them. The question was vague but the pops of Spotify green on a sheet of reflective black glass made it clear that right now, he meant music. "Otherwise you'll have to listen to my crap," he laughed, treating him like an old friend.

The phone was dropped in Lionel's lap and the engine roared to life, gently rocking the car. "It's about 20 minutes out. How do you usually do this? Do you prepare a script? Or just improvise?" Probing eyes flicked to his passenger. Streetlights warped his features, shifting shadows. Of course, Cecil had a hunch that none of this was an act at all. And that's what he was here to find out.

---

Cecil listened. Yeah, he'd done none of that. There was no process. Overconfidence and research as deep as looking up the place on Google Maps. The idea had been sown in his brain years ago, an off-handed comment by a friend about an abandoned nuclear missile site. Finding the boy's TikTok had reminded him of that old itch that had soon turned into irritated nagging that he needed to scratch.

His eyes were on the road ahead, face blank aside from a small twitch of his brow, questioning Lionel's choice of music. Not bad but not the mood he had in mind. Too slow, too sad. It left room for his mind to wander.

"Right. Yeah," he smiled again. Charming. Convincing. A glimpse of sharp tipped teeth. "Your viewers are gonna love this one." Cecil did have an intuitive understanding of how to attract people and capture them despite his somewhat unsettling nature. Wearing the monster right on his sleeve.

As they drove through the night concrete blocks and playful neon lights died on the roadside. Darkness swallowed the world. Winds whipped around the car crossing the vast expanses of water.

The smell of human filled the car like a promise. Cecil popped some aggressively artificially flavored strawberry gum into his mouth and carelessly flung the paper into the already overflowing middle console. Cecil changed the music to something more energetic and chaotic while keeping up small talk with wondrous ease. He tapped his fingers to the beat and the car sped beyond the allowed limit as indicated by a maps warning on his phone.

Not long after, they entered Redmond and Cecil navigated through a residential area to finally park the car near a sign that read "Nike Park". "Gotta walk from here, you ready?" He asked looking directly at Lionel. The pink gum stretched and popped wetly between his teeth. Cecil grabbed a backpack from the backseat, unplugged his phone and stepped outside. Phone flashlight ready to go.

#c. cecil may #3xce55 d0c5 #w. cecil may #w. hunger's teeth #d0c5

[casicroaks]

Tiffany Valentine has two things in her mind: love and murder. The origins of the brains behind the infamous Lakeshore Strangler and the string of broken hearts she left along her way to Chicago, interwoven with the development of the tempestuous relationship between her and a certain Charles Lee Ray.

CHAPTER 7

[ CHAPTER 1 // CHAPTER 2 // CHAPTER 3 // CHAPTER 4 // CHAPTER 5 // CHAPTER 6 // CHAPTER 7 // CHAPTER 8 // CHAPTER 9 // CHAPTER 10 // CHAPTER 11 // CHAPTER 12 // CHAPTER 13 // CHAPTER 14 // CHAPTER 15 // CHAPTER 16 ]

NEW JERSEY, 1972

The egg sizzled loudly on the pan, almost as loud as the music on the radio. I seasoned it with salt and pepper, pushing the already white edges with the flipper so it didn’t spread over and stick to the frying bacon slabs, before taking a dish from the sink, giving it a quick rinse with hot water, and rubbing it dry with the dishcloth I had tied around my waist to improvise an apron.

“For five long years, I thought you were my man,” I hummed while watching the egg so it didn’t burn. “But I found out, I’m just a link in your chain…”

I turned off the stove, laid two slices of toast on the dish, and put the bacon and the fried egg on top. It would have made a great sandwich if we had some cheddar, but I had forgotten about it at the grocery store… Next time it would be. In the meantime, I added a generous dash of hot sauce on top to compensate for it, hoping the egg yolk was runny enough to give it the color it was needing.

I went into the living room with the dish on my hand, swaying my hips to the chorus. “You told me to leave you alone… My father said, ‘come on home’,” I sang along. “My doctor said ‘take it easy’, oh, but your loving is much too strong…”

Heath was still asleep on the couch, ashes on his chin, mouth wide open and drooling, in a posture that was probably not very comfortable. I gave his leg a little playful kick. He woke up suddenly, blinking and blinded by the sudden bright yellow light of the morning.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!”

He stretched and yawned, scratching his messy brown hair. I left the warm breakfast on the coffee table, kissed his cheek and sat on the floor next to the couch.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah…” he muttered, still kinda groggy. “How ‘bout you?”

“Like a log,” I smiled, hugging my knees. He looked so cute when he was sleepy.

Heath finally noticed the dish in front of him, and gave me a big half-grin. I giggled. He leaned down and kissed me, sweetly, lovingly, and I put my hands on his cheeks, trying to keep him close to me for as long as possible.

Several months had passed since that first kiss we had shared in his car. This was not the first time I stayed overnight at Heath’s place, nor the first time I had fixed breakfast for us. Maybe, apart from the kisses, out of everything that I had the luck to have ever since we became a couple, that was what I liked most: to feel right at home in his house, to work the kitchen as if it were mine, to wake up beside him as if we were already married. Even if some other things about being a girlfriend weren’t like I expected them to be, at least in that aspect I felt more than comfortable. In some other aspects, though…

By then, I had enough experience touching myself to know exactly what I liked, which did make things a lot easier. Besides, I knew Heath liked it when I put on a show for him. In a way, I had to admit, knowing I was the only thing in his mind, seeing myself reflected in his green-hazel eyes –it made it all worth it.

Still, actual sex with him, even as I got more used to it, had barely gotten any better. Most of the time I just felt numb and uneasy, especially when he got on top. Once, I burst out crying, and I didn’t know why (it never hurt that much for me to cry) and Heath kept asking me what was wrong, and I didn’t know, and he kept asking how could I not know, and I kept crying and crying, and he left the bedroom, and I was left alone a sobbing mess on the rumpled sheets, feeling completely unlovable. There was something wrong with me, it seemed. But I knew that, despite whatever I felt, Heath still liked it. When he touched me, even if I didn’t like it very much myself, it did feel like he loved me. So we kept doing it, and I made my best not to lose hope in that, someday, it wouldn’t feel as awkward anymore.

In the meantime, I could kiss him and talk with him and cook for us and stay over, and I never felt alone. I loved him, and he loved me. That was everything I could ask for.

Heath moved away from me, yawning again and rubbing his eyes. I smiled at him, humming the rest of the song, as he sat on the couch and picked up the fork.

“How did you pay all this?” he asked, going straight for the bacon.

“Don’t worry,” I said, resting my chin on his knee. “I used some of my poker money.”

“Oh, right.”

By then I had learned to choose my battles and lose from time to time when gambling, since otherwise I wouldn’t get anyone to play with me –especially when                                      most of Heath’s friends that I had beaten were convinced I was just really good at cheating. If I allowed others to think they stood a chance, I could bet higher sums of money, and they would be none the wiser. That was how my savings increased tenfold, all saved up in a thick roll in a sock that I kept in the spider jar in my bottom drawer for safekeeping.

“I counted it again, just to check Bri hasn’t taken anything… And you know what, Heath? I got quite a bit saved up already.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…” I said, twirling my pigtail. “So, I was thinking, maybe by mid-June we could start packing and properly plan our life in New York…”

Heath frowned. “Our what now?”

“New York!” I repeated with a big smile. “Remember when we talked about it? I’ll try out auditions to be an actress…”

“Ah, right,” he nodded. “I remember you saying you wanted to be an actress…”

“And you said you’d come with me,” I added. “You’ve always wanted to leave Hackensack, like me. Wasn’t your dream to go to New York, too?”

“Sure.”

Heath was so glum lately, he was no fun to be around anymore. I had to wonder if it was something I had done or said, especially since he seemed to be so happy around his friends during those weekly parties.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked him, and held onto his left arm. “Please don’t be mad at me…”

“Do I look mad?” he said. “At this point I thought you knew me, I don’t get mad… I just thought… See, it’s a whole thing, growing up. You know, so many of my friends were shipped off… And with dad sick, it’s like… Like everything’s falling apart somehow.”

I frowned. For me, nothing was falling apart. It seemed to me everything was coming into place.

“And I thought…” He gave a sigh. “You, of all people, might understand how that feels.”

“I do understand—”

“Do you, really?”

I looked away. I wished I could understand. I loved him, and wasn’t that enough? I spent all weekend at his place, every waking hour I wasn’t at home or at school with him. I cooked for us, I cleaned up for us… What more could he want from me?

But I didn’t want to argue. I never wanted to argue with him –I just wanted us to be happy, together, forever. We had been making plans. We had an idea of a future together. And I didn’t want to ruin it by my stupid complaining.

I stood up with a smile. “Hey, darling –you promised you’d teach me to drive shift gear before the end of the week,” I reminded him. “You think I could cash in on that promise now?”

“Sure…” he said, scratching his cheek. “Just gimme a minute, alright? I need a shave.”

I nodded, bouncing a little on the balls of my feet. Heath went into the bathroom with the beaded curtain, and I watched him as he quickly rubbed some water and white soap to get some foam, and spread it hastily over his face. He should have first warmed his face with hot water, I thought. Then again, it was his face, not mine, and I assumed he had done this before enough times to know what he was doing, even if it didn’t quite seem so. He ran the razor so carelessly against his cheek, I just knew he was gonna—

“Agh –dammit…” He had nicked himself. The tiny drop of blood bloomed and colored the white foam around the cut.

“You got to shave in the direction the hair grows,” I told him with a little snicker. “Not all the hair on your face grows the same way.”

He glanced back at me. “How do you know about shaving?”

“My dad explained it to me,” I said simply. Some years ago, he was shaving in the bathroom, and I was fascinated by how he moved the razor along his face, so close and so precisely, without getting a single wound. “His father was a barber. He was supposed to be a barber too, before he and his brothers were drafted to fight the Germans.”

Heath nodded and smiled in amusement. “Would you look at that.”

“Your hair in particular grows sideways and in swirls,” I added, going through the beaded curtain, moving closer to him and pointing to a spot just under his chin. “You need to keep the angle in mind when running the blade against your skin, otherwise you’ll just keep nicking yourself, or irritating the skin.”

“Aren’t you the specialist…” he said, lathering more soap on his cheeks to cover the bloodstain. “Say, would you do it for me? You’re clearly the professional here.”

It was no problem: I had a steady hand, and I took any chance I had to stay close to him. He sat on the toilet and handed me the razor. It was a silly thing, but I felt a little proud that he trusted me enough to let me bring a blade to his beautiful face.

“Roll me a blunt, will you?” he asked, pointing back at the living room. “Before you start.”

I nodded. I already knew where he kept the weed, somewhere where the rest of his friends wouldn’t find it. Another little perk of being his girlfriend.

“Do people drive around in New York?” I asked him, putting the joint in between my teeth, lighting it, and taking a quick hit before handing it to him. “I remember you telling me Dave told you that the traffic in the city is nightmarish…”

“Oof, yeah. I went there last month to help my father out with some dumb paperwork that needed to get done, and…” He snorted a laugh, shaking his shoulders, his eyes squinting from his wide smile. “You know, we needed to be at the office by two, but the streets were so bad we ended up arriving so late, around four—”

“Don’t laugh, sweetface,” I snickered. “Or I’ll end up giving you a matching cut on the other cheek.”

“Alright,” he said, biting his lips. Even with his face covered in soap, sitting on the toilet of his dimly lit, dirty little bathroom, Heath seemed to glow. “But yeah, it’s not easy…”

“’Cause I was wondering… I mean, I’m gonna try to get myself a job too, of course,” I continued. “But what are you gonna do?”

“In New York?”

“Of course that in New York, silly…”

“Something’ll pop up,” he shrugged. “Worst case scenario, I’ll get some gig waiting tables, I guess.”

“Hm… You think that’ll be enough to afford rent in a big city?” I asked him, hoping the worry in my voice wasn’t too obvious.

“Don’t you worry your little head about stuff like that,” he said. “And in any case, we can always come back here, where we still got the house, the auto shop—”

“When I leave with you, Heath, I’m not coming back,” I cut him off, pulling the razor away from his cheek for a moment. “I told you, I haven’t even told my parents about us, and I know they’d throw a fit if they knew we were planning to skip town together—”

“What’s the worst thing they would do if they knew?” he laughed again. “Spank you? Lock you up in your room? Forbid you from watching TV?”

I wiped the soap off the blade on my skirt. He was right, of course. It was stupid to worry about something as meaningless as my mom’s disappointment. Especially when it was something I should have already gotten used to a while ago.

“You put too much weight on what your mother says,” he commented.

“I know…”

“What does it matter what she thinks? It’s not like she owns you or anything,” he said, bringing the joint to his lips. “You’re your own person, not her shadow.”

“I know, I know, it’s just that… I just wish she could understand that I’m trying my best,” I said quietly. “Before Bri was born, I can remember a few times that my mom saw me crying, and that she made an effort to make me stop, beyond just telling me to cut it out. But after she got pregnant again, and after she had my sister… I don’t know, I guess she just became tired of hearing so much crying. Had no patience left in her,” I sighed. For a few years I’ve had this clear memory of her kneeling down and kissing my cheek, wet from tears. Then again, it could have been just a very vivid dream. I can’t even remember why I was weeping in the first place. “Now, if she sees me crying, she gets angry at me. She thinks I do it on purpose. As if I was trying to annoy her.”

Heath remained quiet. I wondered if he had been listening to me. Maybe I was being too chatty. But that was another wonderful thing about him: he never told me to shut up.

“… I don’t know. I guess she just thinks I’m already rotten to the core.”

Sometimes I wondered if my mom hated me, like I often wondered if I hated her. It could be that she just didn’t like having me around. It could be that she just grew tired of me. It might just be that I hadn’t done enough to earn her love.

Whatever the case, the only thing that was clear was that it had been like this for many years, and that I knew that neither me nor my mom would be changing any time soon. I let out another deep sigh. “You’re so lucky you don’t have a mom, Heath—”

Heath turned his head and stared at me. “Kid, you can’t just… Say stuff like that. That’s dark.”

“I –I’m sorry—”

“It’s alright, just… Don’t say that sort of stuff. Geez.”

I mumbled another apology under my breath. He took another drag, while I continued shaving him, running the razor as close to his skin as I could, softly turning my wrist to go through the curves of his face. I knew I could do it quicker, so I could have that driving lesson sooner; but I liked being there, under in the soft warm light, his soft angelic glow becoming fuzzy with the cloud of smoke.

“Um, Heath… Could you please not call me ‘kid’?” I asked him, once I was almost done. “I’d rather you just called me Tiffany… It feels like you think I’m dumb, or something.”

“It’s just a nickname.”

I kept silent, just staring at him, and turned my eyes down to look at my chipped nails, fidgeting with the razor.

“… Alright,” he said, with the smallest of smiles in his voice. “Tiffany it is.”

I smiled, too. “Thank you.” And I kissed him, getting some of the foamy soap on my chin and nose.

Six months had passed, of boring schooldays and great parties and staying over at Heath’s house. After a certain point I managed to balance being at home for dinner, at school for classes, and the rest of the time at Heath’s place. I was the happiest I had been my whole life. But still, there was this feeling that there was something missing… Like everything was picture-perfect, except for one lost piece of the puzzle. I couldn’t see what it was, or where it fit, but I just knew that somewhere there was a little hole, a flaw in what was so close to being heaven.

Just in case, I kept praying at my love altar. I wouldn’t even admit it to myself, but I was afraid, to some level, that as quickly as Heath had turned out to love me back, he might fall out of love with me too.

Sometimes, while I was lying in bed back at home, I liked to think that life could be like this forever. I was already getting used to him touching me, even though I still felt that weird disconnected sensation I couldn’t quite shake off. Heath had called me ‘frigid’ once, as a joke, and I had to pretend I knew what that meant and look it up as soon as I got home. It meant something like cold, like unresponsive. I wished I had known before, so I could deny it. I was never cold, after all. Each time he called me I came, I smiled at him and laughed at his jokes and loved him as much as I could, in the only ways I was familiar with. I was still pretty young. But in my mind time would pass and we would become wiser, and learn how to love each other properly, eventually. For the time being I froze without even understanding why, but someday, I would make Heath truly happy. I smiled and told myself it was proof of how much I loved him. I was willing to be patient and learn. If I didn’t love him, after all, I would have left already.

I tried to spend the weekends with Heath, too, especially since mom had decided that Bri was now old enough to help her around the house, allowing me to slink away and avoid doing the chores. There was this one weekend, though, not very long after Heath’s dad finally died and he was even gloomier than usual, in which mom was sick with something –so the responsibility to make lunch and dinner and do the cleaning fell on me. At least, when I took care of things at Heath’s home, he would smile at me and give me a kiss at the end of the day.

Mom had told me that Bri and I should watch less TV, and that we should play outside or find something else to do with our free time. Obviously, I was far too old to play with my little sister, so in the end I convinced her to help me bake almond cookies. I couldn’t even remember how old I was when my mother taught me the recipe, but I had done it a few times already, and since I was leaving for New York soon, I thought it would be good for Bri to learn how to make them, too. She was too distracted munching on toasted almonds while I was not looking at her, or sucking her fingers to dip them in the powdered sugar jar to lick them off. I told her off many times, but I had to keep in mind that I used to do the same, back when I was her age.

After leaving the dough to rest for a few minutes, Bri and I went out to our badly-kept backyard, hanging the wet clothes on the clothesline. I glanced, out of the corner of my eye, the pink bunny Bri was still allowed to sleep with, hanging from the cord by its ears, and took another drag of my cigarette.

“You smoke a lot,” Bri said.

I scoffed. “You don’t even see me much apart from home.”

Bri stared down at her little dangling legs. “… Can I try?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re just a kid.”

“You’re just a kid, too.”

“No, I’m a grown up,” I insisted. “At least, I’m more of a grown up than you.”

Bri pouted… And then she shrugged. “Okay, I didn’t even really want to try it anyways. It probably tastes bad. And I’ve heard that it’s bad for you.”

“Yeah, that’s probably about right.”

“If it’s bad for you, then why do you do it?”

“Because grownups can choose to do things that are bad for them.”

“Huh… When will I be a grown up?”

I gave her a long hard look. Finally, after a moment, I sighed and handed the cigarette to her. She smiled smugly, and took a drag. She immediately coughed and hacked so loudly I feared I had killed her, and that mom would then find out and kill me.

“I thought I’d taste better—”

“Well, now you know,” I said, grabbing the cigarette before she dropped it.

“Why do you smoke that, then?” she asked, still coughing.

“You grow to like it,” I said. “It’s like with everything. After a while you get used to it.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’ll get it when you’re older,” I told her.

We couldn’t watch TV, and we couldn’t turn on the radio either because mom had a headache… I really wanted to go to Heath’s place, but with our mother bedridden, I couldn’t leave Bri unattended, no matter how much I wanted to. I even considered taking her along with me, before realizing how stupid of an idea it was. She was already a whole snitch, and I didn’t want to give her more material for her to tell mom –especially when I had decided to stop spending money on candy to bribe her with, being more preoccupied with saving my bucks for when I left for New York.

Time passed by, and soon it was around four. Mom liked to have red tea, which was a whole issue since dad never had tea, only nasty burnt-smelling coffee, and that meant mom had to prepare her own kettle and also dad’s coffee pot every morning, which if she did not time properly could mess up the entire morning, leading to another argument between the two about how he would be late for work at the office and about how she was the first one to wake up in the house and that he should be able to iron his own shirts by now. My parents argued a lot less, now; I used to harbor the hope that it was because they were falling in love again, and that they would start being nicer to one another. But, after a while, I think it was just because dad arrived later than usual, and when mom began arguing with him, he just ignored her. Still, that was better than having to bear their yelling at each other late into the night.

“Too much lard,” she remarked, putting a cookie down after giving it a taste. I had brought her a tray with her tea, so my mother had at least something to eat. She hadn’t had breakfast, nor lunch. All she did that day was stay in the darkness of her bedroom, in a thick fog of herbal cigarette smoke. “At least you remembered to toast the almonds first.”

That was as close as she would get to a genuine compliment. I forced a smile, and reached for a cookie –but she moved the dish away from me.

“Don’t,” she said firmly. “You’ll ruin your appetite.”

I had made them myself from scratch; I thought I deserved to have one, at least. Never mind, I told myself. I’d pocket two while she slept. Bri herself was probably already gorging herself with the almond cookies, even if they burned her tongue, even if she knew she’d get a stomachache later.

“Did you make your bed?”

“Yes, mom.”

“And hung the clothes to dry?”

I nodded. She frowned.

“Use your words, Tiffany, you’re not mute.”

“Yes, mom.”

She pressed her temples with the tip of her fingers, letting out the quietest, most dignified groan. I thought of all the times I had told my mother I felt sick, too sick to go to school, and she had scoffed it off and told me I was exaggerating, or lying, or was just being lazy.

“Mom… How did you and dad meet?”

Mom shot me a look that was somewhere in between exhaustion and annoyance.

“Well, then… How did he propose to you?” I insisted.

“Why do you need to know?”

I shrugged. “I just… I think it’d be nice to know.”

“Make up a version of it in your head,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “It would be the same as the real thing.”

“Are you angry?”

She let out a deep sigh and had a sip of her tea. “No, Tiffany. I’m just feeling awful. Have a little sympathy.”

I almost apologized. I didn’t, though. I had nothing to apologize for.

“Why did you marry him?”

Mom huffed, putting the teacup down. “Why do you think?”

“… Because you loved him?”

“Sure,” she muttered between gritted teeth. “What’s with all these questions?”

Ever since his father had died, Heath was more detached than ever before. When he kissed me, it was almost out of obligation. It reminded me far too much of the cold cheek kisses my parents exchanged before he left for work.

“Just wondering,” I shrugged again.

“Is there a boy in school bothering you?”

I scoffed. There certainly were, even if they didn’t quite dare to annoy me right on my face. “I… I might be in love.” Me and my mother, we barely ever about this stuff. Now that she was stuck in bed, though, I thought this could be the best chance I would have to get her thoughts on a few things. She was the only person I knew who was married, after all. She surely had some wisdom to pass onto me. “How do you know when you’re in love?”

Mom took a moment to think. “… I’d say you feel it, in your gut. It’s like heaven, and also like you’re being turned inside out.”

“Does love truly last forever?” I asked, leaning forward, quite surprised that she had decided to answer me in the first place. “Like in the songs?”

“If you love someone forever, then it does,” she replied, making a dismissive gesture with her hand.

I thought of that Ronettes song I liked so much, and hummed it to myself, remembering the lyrics. ‘Wonder if he’ll love me forever, and ever…’ I could do that. I loved Heath enough for the both of us. Sometimes, when I looked at him smiling, eating, sleeping, smoking, talking, dancing, it felt as if my heart was gonna burst. I loved him so much, forever might just not be enough.

“As much as it can hurt… Love’s supposed to set you free,” she said thoughtfully, in a puff of smoke. “I know it set me free.”

“Free from what?”

She didn’t reply.

“Did you and Brittany have lunch?”

I nodded, before remembering her previous comment. “Yes. I made sandwiches, and set the chicken out to defrost on the sink, so I can prepare it with some rice for dinner.”

She nodded and sighed, holding her head. “Did Brittany brush her teeth after breakfast?”

“Yes.”

“Did she help you with the laundry?”

“Yes,” I said, and smiled to myself. “She saw me smoking, and asked if she could have a smoke, too.”

Mom turned to look at me, her thinly plucked eyebrows raised high. “Oh?”

“She hated it,” I snickered. “She almost threw up.”

Mom laughed quietly. “Your sister can be really clueless sometimes.”

“Right?”

We both laughed with our mouths closed; I saw the tiniest sliver of wet teeth from between my mother’s lips. I didn’t see her smiling very often, but when she did, it really reminded of how I looked myself, when practicing my smiles in the mirror. We were so much alike.

I grinned, thinking of Heath without me that afternoon, asking around whether they had seen me, growing more and more desperate to know where I was. Maybe it was a bit mean of me, not telling him I was not going to be there that evening; then again, maybe it was better to not become too dependent on the other. After all, Heath could manage to fix himself dinner for once.

Next Friday, like most Fridays, I took the bus to the mall; that was when it was most crowded and it was the most fun to people-watch. Usually, I went to the record store first of all and listened to what was new, so I could at least know what Heath’s more music-savvy friends were talking about. After that I had an ice cream, so I wasn’t just wandering around empty-handed while window-shopping. When I was done with it, I would go into a couple of fashion stores, pick everything I liked, and spend an hour or so in the changing room, trying it all, imagining the sort of events I would wear these outfits to. An elegant sundress, to an audition on Broadway; a flower-patterned skirt and blouse set, for a picnic date in Central Park; jeans and a printed top, for a dinner and a movie in the heart of Manhattan, by Heath’s side. These stores tended to give out cheaply-printed, complimentary catalogues that I could take home and use as references to modify the ugly dresses my mother made for me, to make them more fashionable and flattering.

Obviously, I always considered taking something from those stores, the kind of clothes or makeup I couldn’t just replicate for free. A few of Heath’s friends would show off the items they shoplifted, either by being chummy with the security, knowing where they could get away with it, or just by being really good at swiping. Once I asked them to teach me: they told me to start with little things, tubes of lipstick or mascara, which were easy to hide in my bra or my panties, before I eventually moved on to actual garments, which would need for me to bring a coat or a bag to stash them in, which would be a lot more suspicious. Following their advice, I soon got pretty good at smuggling small makeup cases out of stores and into my bedroom drawers. Ever since I began doing it, I could stop worrying about mom finding me stealing her own makeup, which was a real relief.

I did, eventually, get caught once. It was the last time I would go to that particular mall, in the end: I wised up and realized how dumb it had been of me to think they wouldn’t notice anything weird about me passing by every Friday, buying nothing, and then seeing they had a few things missing from their inventory. I did always take only makeup, and in small amount, with just one exception. Only when I got too confident –that was when I got caught.

Really, it was all because, one day, I was at Heath’s place, helping him clean up, since he was still very bummed out by his old man’s death. He was smoking in the living room, like always, watching TV, while I sorted out which clothes of his needed to be washed, and what just needed to be folded up and put in its place. ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’, I told him, like my mother had told me once before. It couldn’t hurt to try. Besides, there was no more food in the house, not even eggs, and he didn’t seem to hear me when I asked him for money for groceries, so finding some loose change in some jeans’ pockets would have been nice too. Picking up old worn socks off the floor, looking for their pairs, I stretched my hand under his bed, grimacing a bit at the amount of dirt and dust that had gathered there. My fingers touched something unusual –it felt like papers, like books. For some reason I assumed it was his old textbooks, from back when he went to school, and wondered to myself if he also used to doodle on the edge of the pages like I did. I took out those papers –but it wasn’t school stuff, they were just porn magazines. I sighed, noticing how dusty my hands were now, and leafed through the pages, hoping to find some dollars hidden between the photos of tits and asses. My attention was caught by one of the girls, though: she had short black hair, eyes narrowed and half closed in pleasure, her lips barely parted in something that was almost a smile. She was stunning. There was a black background behind her that made her skin seem milky white, almost glowing. And she wore (yes, she was wearing something) a lingerie set, lacy and tight-fitting and bright red, which made the red of her mouth and flushed cheeks pop out even more. I spent a while staring at the picture, I’m not sure how long. The noise of gunshots coming from the TV snapped me back to reality, and only then I realized how worn that magazine was, even though it was the newest one in the stash. Heath must have thought that woman was perfect in some way. And then, it dawned on me. More than tidying up his room, what would make him truly happy again was to be with someone like that girl –beautiful, and perfect.

I took off my dress and, angling myself to fit into the little mirror on the wall beside his bed, I made my best to copy the girl’s position and expression. My hair was far too long, but that was just a detail, easy to ignore. What wasn’t so easy to ignore was my dull, basic white underwear, compared to that red set that made her look even more striking. I put my dress back on and thought about my options. I knew my mother didn’t have anything even remotely similar to that, and sewing something like lingerie myself was out of the question. My best choice, I decided, was to take it from the mall. After all, since it was such a small amount of fabric, it had to be easy to hide, right?

Not really. Apparently other girls had thought the same as I did, because a security guard caught me trying to stuff a bright-red bra, the closest one I could find to that of the picture, under my blouse. I had hoped I could have put it on at a changing room, but the lingerie store didn’t have one; so, I had to improvise. And I chose a really bad time to do it.

 The guard grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me out of the store, through the crowded halls of the mall, and into the small dirty office of the security team. It was like being at the principal’s all over again. I was told to sit in a chair in front of a desk, and expected to tell my version of the story, which would be promptly ignored. A man with a thick moustache asked my name and my parents’. I refused. He kept insisting, but I wouldn’t budge. After what felt like hours, he finally left the office, to be replaced with a younger, probably more patient guard who would take it from where the other left off.

“Listen, this is clearly your first incident…” he said, sighing down at the paper he was staring. “I think we can let you go this time. You just have to promise you’ll never do this again. Got it?”

I held one hand up in an oath, and the other behind my back, crossing my fingers. “I swear. Cross my heart, hope to die.”

“Good,” he said with a little smile. He shot a glance to his wristwatch. “Alright, considering it’s almost eight o’clock, you should probably be on your way.”

I nodded enthusiastically in relief, already about to stand up and leave.

“Though… Listen, you should at least allow us to escort you home. It’s late, and you’re clearly a minor.”

“I’m certainly not,” I frowned.

“Really?” he asked, leaning back on his chair. “What year were you born?”

“It’s not polite to ask a lady her age.”

“I’m not asking your age, just your year.”

I thought about it for a moment, before realizing that thinking about it for too long made me look even more guilty. “Nineteen… Forty… Five.”

He laughed out loud. “You’re twenty-seven?”

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. “I know, everyone says I look young for my age.”

He laughed again.

“I’m perfectly able to take the bus!” I insisted.

“Well, a young woman shouldn’t go out so late on her own,” he pointed out. “Are you close to home?”

I wasn’t. I mean, I wasn’t that far away, but the mall was definitely not in any way close to my neighborhood. Besides, the bus stop was a good few miles away from the mall itself, so I would have to walk quite a bit regardless. And who knew how long the bus would take to arrive?

“… Alright,” I grumbled. “I guess you can take me home.”

He smiled and stood up, opening the door for me to leave the office along with him. We got into the car in silence. I told him the general area in which I lived, taking care to not be too specific, and he didn’t ask any further questions, just drove quietly.

“You can leave me just around the corner,” I said once we were close enough. “I can walk from here.”

He slowed down, but didn’t park. I pushed the door to open it –but it was still locked.

“I think you should tell me the address,” he said gently. “So I can drop you there.”

“No, I think you should drop me here.”

“How far are we from your place?” he asked, glancing around the street.

“What’s it to you!?” I said, raising my voice, losing my patience. “Let me out!”

“Just tell me where it is—”

“Fuck you!”

I tried to unlock the doors, but he grabbed my hand –and I threw a punch to his face –he managed to dodge it, just barely, and grabbed my arm even harder. I let out a little cry and pushed my head against him, as hard as I could, and I got to shove him towards the steering wheel and hit his elbow against the car horn, making quite the racket. He groaned and tried to restrain me. I bit his arm, sinking my teeth as deep as I could through his shirtsleeve. It was difficult to move in that tiny car, but I still squirmed and writhed and yelled and screamed as much as I could.

Some neighbors heard the noise, and came out into the street. None got too close, they just stayed by their porch in their pajamas, watching what little they could see through the windshield.

Finally I got to slam my fist against the lock, and stumbled out of the car. A few neighbors went back inside, a couple blinked at me but did nothing else. I rushed through the street, still feeling the strain on my jaw from trying to bite down. Behind me I heard the steps of the security officer’s heavy regulation shoes.

“Hey –stop!”

I got running. And just then, about to cover my face with my arm, embarrassed by the unblinking stare of the neighbors, I saw my mother standing on the sidewalk, curlers in her hair, wrapping herself in her faux-silk nightrobe.

“Tiffany?”

I stopped right on my tracks. The security officer got me and grabbed my arms behind my back. I screamed and went back to writhing and pushing back, but it was too late now. Mom hurried towards us while the neighbors went back inside, surely to watch everything from the anonymity of their windows.

“What on Earth—!?”

“Are you her mother, ma’am?” the officer asked her.

“… Yes, I am.”

“Your daughter was caught shoplifting at the mall, ma’am,” he said. I winced and whined, hanging my head, avoiding my mother’s glare.

“What?”

“She was trying to steal a set of underwear.”

“Mom, I didn’t—”

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Tiffany.”

I grit my teeth, holding back all the words I wanted to hurl at her. She turned back to the officer.

“Thank you, mister. I’ll take it from here.”

“Have a good night, ma’am.”

And with that he left, and my mother dragged me back into the house.

“… What are you even wearing, Tiffany?”

Only then I realized I was still wearing the top Janey had lent me, one of the few I got to take home and hide in my backpack to wear at school, and to put back out when I had to come back from Heath’s to be home for dinner.

“I cannot believe you really went out dressed like that,” she said in a hiss, finally letting go of my arm, looking at me up and down. “Where on Earth did you get those clothes?”

“My friends lent them to me—”

“You’re clearly hanging with the wrong crowd, then.”

“Mom, please, I got nothing to wear—!”

“Oh, that’s bullshit, Tiffany, and you know that!” she said, raising her voice. “I got you blouses and skirts that actually fit you—”

“But they’re all dull and ugly, mom!” I replied. “All the girls at school have these beautiful blouses and dresses and necklaces and jackets, and I’m the only one who wears these old things!”

“You are so thankless.”

That was it –her usual argument. I was thankless. I was clueless, I was demanding, I was thankless. Wasn’t it her fault, though, that I turned out the way I did?

“I have devoted my entire life to you. To raising you, to feeding you, to dressing you, to keeping you well and healthy,” she continued ranting. “And this is how you thank me? Stealing underwear, of all things? Dressing like a damn floozy, like a cheap slut? Do you want boys to see you as trash? Do you want to be treated like trash, Tiffany?”

“No, of course not—”

“Then why do you do this!? What possible reason could you have to do such a thing!?” she yelled. “Are you so desperate for attention, you’d stoop this low? Have you no goddamn self-respect!?”

My cheeks were burning. “Well… I feel like you don’t pay attention to me.”

“So you admit that is what you’re doing. That all this charade is your own desperate little plea for attention.”

“Well –if you actually loved me, then I might not be doing this… This ‘charade’, or whatever you call it— “

“Who says I don’t love you!?” she cried. “I love you, Tiffany Valentine! You are my own flesh and blood! You are my daughter! And I will love you, no matter how much it hurts me, until my last dying breath! But I expect an ounce of respect in turn! You owe me that same love I give to you!”

I didn’t say nothing to this. It made me angry, to realize how right she was. I was furious at her, and I wanted to call her a cunt and a bitch and a shitty, cruel mother, but I knew that, if I was in her place, I would feel the same. I looked down at the clothes I was wearing, at the little folding of my belly. My mother clothed and fed me. She worried about me. She did love me, and I was stupid for even suggesting she didn’t. And I was ungrateful… But would it kill her to be kinder? A little more patient?

“You are so lucky. You have food on your table, and a roof over your head, and your own allowance…” she said. Mom would only bring out this speech of hers about her own childhood when she was especially angry at me. She knew it made me uncomfortable to hear it. “I had to share bread crumbs with my brothers, I had to work since I was twelve, I had to bear my mother’s bad temper… You have a wonderful life. But you just have to go on, wanting more. You just have to find ways to ruin yourself and your own future.”

My mother began sobbing very quietly. Her eyes became glassy and red, to match the rest of her head.

“I… I worked so hard when I was your age. I did my best at school, I worked my fingers to the bone, and I bore the brunt of everyone around me. I learned to fend for myself. I made myself strong,” she said with a trembling voice. “But then, then I was pregnant with you. And I gave it all up on the spot. I gave up everything I had built for myself, to devote myself to your father –and to you and your sister.”

I knew all that. I knew my mom had it tough growing up. I knew she wished she had it as easy as I had it. I knew she loved me, even if I often forgot. It was hard to remember when it felt like all I did was something she could never be happy with.

“I love you, Tiffany. I really do…” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “… But you make it so hard on me sometimes.”

“It doesn’t seem like you love me, mom,” I replied. I knew she did. I really did. I just wanted her to show it…

She seemed offended. And I guess she was. And, once again, I felt a part of me wanting to apologize, and another part wanting to tell her to fuck off.

“I have loved you your entire life, because you’re my daughter,” she stated coldly. “Because it is my job to love you, as your mother. Just because it doesn’t look like it does on TV doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Those were her last words on the matter. She glared at me in silence, until I finally hung my head and left to change in my bedroom. After I got in my pajamas, though, and came back clean-faced and barefoot to the dark, empty kitchen, I realized that I was not going to have dinner that night.

Next morning, mom surprised me and Bri by waking us up even earlier than usual, hurrying us to gobble down our breakfasts, and walking us to school. Bri kept bitching about being tired and her feet hurting, begging mom to give her a piggyback ride. Mom, surprisingly, just ignored her. When Bri changed her complaints to demand to know why we weren’t taking the school bus, mom simply said:

“I want to make sure you both get to school on time.”

Which was, obviously, just an excuse. What she really wanted was to watch me and stop me from skipping class. If she didn’t have stuff to do back home, washing the breakfast dishes and fixing dinner and changing the sheets and buying groceries, I was sure she would have stayed by the school gates like a guardian dog.

Back at school, where I had to spend far too many hours of the day locked up in a crowded classroom full of noisy kids and where the teachers’ jabbering became a monotone hum, I really felt like I was bored to the point of torture. My grades had been in freefall for a while now, but that added to the fact that, it seemed, the only solution my teachers and my parents could see was to keep complaining about my lack of effort and yelling about how I was set on ruining my own future, I really had no solution to it. No class could hold my interest for long. Everything was just a constant exercise on apathy. There was a point in which, for every test, I basically flipped a coin on any possible answers. At least, though, I wasn’t called to the principal’s office again. The school was full of deadbeats like me, and I guess they preferred to focus on the whiz kids and the teachers’ pets than wasting time with those that they had given up on.

I think it’s clear now why I was waiting so anxiously for the end of the school day, so I could rush to Heath’s house.

On the other hand, it wasn’t as if nothing had changed for me after deciding to keep going to class for fear of expulsion. Not long after I became Heath’s girlfriend, he passed by to pick me up after school so he could take me for a drive. He didn’t do that often, because he had work to do at the auto shop, of course, but still, the few times he did it was an absolute delight to see his beautiful face, his sweet smile, as he leaned against his blue Falcon and waited for me after grueling hours of having to sit still in a stuffy classroom. First time he did, though, it was just as Peggy Buckman and her toadies came out of the school as well, and they saw me kissing Heath and climbing into the passenger’s seat of his car. I still remember their awestruck gaping faces as they stared at us, as Heath revved the car up and drove us away from them. I might have been jealous of Peggy Buckman and her public makeout sessions at some point –she had been the first one of any of us to have a boyfriend –but now it was their turn to be jealous. What was a dumbass like Johnny Curtis worth anyway, compared to a dreamboat like my Heath?

The day after they saw me leaving with him, Peggy, Amy and Lisa officially accepted me in their friend group. I had thought that day would never come. Of course, I knew that if they hadn’t seen me kissing Heath, they would have never even given me the time of day, but I didn’t care. At least I had friends, now. Or so I told myself.

Being friends with Peggy, Amy and Lisa wasn’t the field day I had expected. None of them liked each other very much, and most of what they did was gossip and brag. Me, I didn’t care about the boring lives of our classmates, and I could only brag about Heath and his parties; I didn’t have holidays in Hawaii or a brand-new dress for Christmas. Amy in particular (no doubt because of the nose incident) was always trying to bring me down with side-eyes and snide comments. Lisa was the nicest of the three: she also had an interest in baking and an annoying little sister –two of them, actually. Despite our shared interests, though, we never got to being real friends. At least, not in a way I could recognize as friendship. Maybe they wouldn’t agree, but I did see Janey and a few other girls that went to Heath’s house parties as my friends: true, they were a couple years older than me, and sometimes they treated me in such a way that made it clear that they saw me as a kid… But more often than not, I knew that they liked having me around. I wasn’t sure of that with Lisa, and I was certain I was not liked by Peggy and Amy. At first, I assumed it was just because Peggy and Amy would talk shit about me to Lisa, but as time went on, I had to believe that it wasn’t them –it was me. Lisa was friends with other girls from the class, the sort of girls who didn’t even talk to me, who when I tried to approach them just avoided me. Peggy, Amy and Lisa, at least, were interested in knowing all I had to share about kissing boys, about dancing and dressing and styling our hair like the cool older girls, about what music was in and what was out; these other girls at school, they just thought I was some weirdo.

I thought of what Heath had told me, about me being a handful. Was I too much? I tried being quieter, a little nicer, a little kinder to my classmates. To put myself out there, so to say. It didn’t come easy, especially when I knew that I had quite a reputation already. Tiffany Valentine, the crazy bitch that punched Amy McNab at a garden party. The crazy bitch that kicked Kelly Johnson behind the school. So what if I lost my temper now and again? That didn’t mean I couldn’t be nice and kind.

After the time that Peggy had gotten me to accept her dare, suddenly I wasn’t untouchable anymore. People actually looked my way, they paid attention to me –but not in the way I wanted –not like back at Heath’s place, where I felt seen and appreciated. Here, back at school, it was as if whatever I had done or seemed to be to them before had shifted. People were no longer afraid of me. Did I seem vulnerable, out of a sudden? Was it because I had run away, back then? Did they see a sliver of fear to latch onto? Whatever the case, I missed it when I was feared. At least then they wouldn’t dare to be cruel to me.

Still, I made my best effort at being nice and kind. It hadn’t worked at helping me make any new friends, though.

“Is it true you sucked Darry Cade off?” Lisa asked me at the school’s bathroom, where we stayed every morning for a little while before we had to get to class.

“What?”

“I just found out… Is it true?” she insisted, staring at me through the mirror, leaning forward and lowering her voice, as if it was some terrible secret.

“Of course not,” I frowned. “I’m with Heath.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like he would know,” Peggy said, fixing her mascara. Unlike me, Peggy, Lisa and Amy were allowed to buy makeup and to wear it to school. I still had to do mine in the bathroom before class, and wash it off at Heath’s place before getting home –otherwise I risked getting yelled at, and spending another night with an empty stomach. “Right?”

“I don’t care about that,” I said while putting on my lipstick. “Where the hell did you hear that from?” I asked, turning back to look at Lisa.

“My brother said that Cade’s been bragging about it all week. He overheard him from behind the bleachers.��

I closed my hand into a fist, but told myself that I was trying to be nice. Nice girls don’t go around punching people, no matter how much they deserve a good punching.

“Your brother shouldn’t believe all the shit he hears.”

“It’s not particularly hard to believe, though,” Amy said, shooting me a brief glance, with a smirk on the edge of her lips. “Of all the boys in the class, Cade’s obviously your type.”

I grimaced. That wasn’t a compliment. Darry Cade was a known menace: even the teachers were afraid of him. Last year, he was almost expelled from school for good after he set a desk on fire. It had taken his parents paying for the expense and promising they would get special therapy for their son for the school to allow them to keep Darry enrolled. I had a feeling Darry had found a way to avoid going to those therapy sessions, though. If I was pretty friendless, he was probably the least liked boy in the whole school. Even some other bullies, like Peggy, had a bunch of supposed friends to follow them around. Darry was alone. All he could really do was beat up the younger kids, since he knew that he hadn’t a chance looking for trouble with boys bigger and stronger than he was.

But, despite everything, I saw Darry fidgeting in class like I did, scribbling on the pages of his paper-bag bound notebook like I did. If he didn’t feel like pretending to pay attention, he didn’t. He knew he was not going to save his grades from dipping further, so he just did what he felt like doing. I had to respect that. I had to admire his guts. It still bothered me, though, that Amy could see how clearly I related to a loser like Darry Cade.

“He’s not my type, at all,” I replied.

“You don’t fool me, Tiffany. If you weren’t dating that burnout hunk, I’d have bet good money you’d end up with Cade.”

I scoffed. “You’re just pissed because Gary didn’t want to dance with you at your birthday party.”

Peggy and Lisa smiled wide and went ‘ooh!’, and I laughed. Amy just glared at me and pretended she didn’t hear me, now angrily brushing her hair hard over and over. I kept on chuckling, fixing my lipstick, wiping the excess with the tip of my finger. Peggy in particular (since neither Lisa nor Amy had boyfriends yet, though not by a lack of trying) was extremely interested in whatever I could share with her on the topic of boys. She had been in an on-and-off relationship with Johnny Curtis for years now, and they always argued, made up, and broke up again.

“Don’t worry about it so much,” Lisa told Amy. “Boys are all jerks. You’re better off waiting for a decent guy than giving the wrong one any attention.”

“That would be assuming any decent guy’d have any interest in you,” Peggy said with a snicker. I grinned.

“Maybe Gary will get your hints,” I continued, raising my eyebrows with a shrug. “Once you manage to learn how to cover all those splotches you got on your face during your last summer in Hawaii. Don’t you think?”

Peggy stifled a laugh. “Yeah, Amy. You’d probably have better luck with Gary if you’d ask your mom to buy you something to get your skin from acting up. It’s getting really out of hand.”

“But don’t worry,” I smiled. “I can teach you how to apply some foundation. You’d have to get the big jar, though.”

Amy glared at me again, rubbing her cheek. She was the one of us who had gotten the real short stick of the teen acne experience. I was really glad mine wasn’t half as bad as hers.

Biology class was done, finally, and I got to the back of the school, to the shadowed area beside the trashcans of the kitchen, where I could have a moment to be by myself. I knew I should have been with my new friends. I could be on my own at any time. Regardless, as much as I had wanted to have a friend group of my own, I needed some time away from them every once in a while.

My little smoking break was cut short by Johnny Curtis, of all people, approaching me. How did he even know I was there? If the back of the school was the secret area where the cool kids gathered, the hidden section beside the trashcans was the part nobody would even bother to consider a hanging out spot. Amy had said that there were rats there, and she had seen a junkie there once, hiding from the cops, but that last thing sounded kind of unlikely. With all of Hackensack to explore, why would a junkie even think of nesting behind an elementary school?

“Hey, Valentine,” Johnny said, raising his chin, his hands firmly stuck in the pockets of his blue tailored pants.

I huffed. “What do you want?”

“As nice as always,” he grinned. I huffed again.

“As if you were the nicest,” I grumbled. “As if you’d say hello to me out of sheer kindness.”

“Can’t really be kind to someone known to be the bitch of the class.”

I glared at him. For a moment I considered giving him a well-deserved slap, but I thought it over. Not only was he taller and stronger than me, he was a lot higher on the social ladder than I was. “I’m the friend of your girlfriend,” I said. “Doesn’t that make me at least a little deserving of some respect?”

Johnny laughed. “Are you her friend, really? I thought you were just her little project.”

I closed my hand in a fist, but reminded myself that it could end up worse for me than for him. For a lack of swift payback, I had to content myself by thinking of his face hitting the pavement and my saddle shoe stomping on it, over and over, until I could calm down.

“Alright, I’ll tell you what I want,” he said, pulling some bucks out of his pocket and counting them. “Bobby and Gary told me you take twenty for a hand job—”

“What!?”

“And Peggy, you know, she’s super hot, but she’s kind of a prude,” he continued, as if I hadn’t said anything. “She wants to keep it all over the clothes, and it’s not fun anymore. And besides…” He grinned again, staring at me up and down. I felt sick. “She’s something, but you’re something else.”

I was absolutely amazed by even thinking that I could have found Johnny Curtis handsome at some point. Being tall and blonde didn’t begin to make up for the piece of shit he had turned out to be. “Whatever Bobby and Gary told you, that’s a goddamn lie.”

“Why’re you so shy out of a sudden? Everyone knows you’re the school slut—”

“Fuck off,” I said, shoving him to the side and stomping away.

“Alright –ten, just to see your tits, okay?” he insisted, following me and waving two bills, now almost pleading. “Come on, I know for a fact you did that, Peggy told me so.”

My cheeks were burning red. Who the hell did he think I was? Even worse, I considered bartering. After all, ten bucks was not nothing, and if it just meant I had to lift my dress for a couple seconds… But I decided against it. Who the fuck did he think I was, a damn whore?

“I said fuck off!”

Johnny grabbed me from behind and pulled me back into the shadow. “Hey—”

“Get off me, you asshole!”

“Just for a minute—!”

“Eat shit!”

Johnny’s hand suddenly clutched my left tit. I saw red. I tried to elbow him but he was stronger than me, and despite my thrashing and yelling he, pressing his chin on my neck to get a good look down at me, managed to slip his other hand under my dress—

The side of his head was just inches from my own face. I didn’t have to think about it –it came naturally –the only way I could see of breaking free. I opened my mouth and bit down on the soft tender flesh of his ear, and it was Johnny’s turn to scream, but he still didn’t let go. I didn’t give him enough time to even consider it. Biting down even harder, feeling my own lower jaw through the thin gristle, I pulled and ripped a good chunk of his ear off with one quick jerk of my neck. He screamed louder and, finally, let go.

Johnny raised his hand to the right side of his head, screeching and howling like a madman and opening his eyes wide. Soon thin lines of blood were dripping from between his fingers, as he pressed them against what was left of his ear. I stared at it, wanting to see but too startled to even ask, before I remembered I had a piece of someone else’s meat in between my teeth. I spat it out. The ear fell with a splat! on the concrete floor. I gazed at it, then back at Johnny, and licked my lips. Johnny was trembling now, too shaken to keep screaming, staring down at the ear I had torn off him. I wiped the blood off my mouth with the back of my hand, remembering too late that I had probably smeared my lipstick too.

“Don’t you fucking mess with me again,” I managed to blurt out.

I felt powerful again. Hopefully that little stunt would shut up the boys for a good while.

To hell with classes. I wasn’t gonna stay around to have Peggy cursing me out for flirting with her boyfriend, like I knew that fucker would try to spin it. I headed home instead, knowing that mom was out buying groceries that afternoon, and I went straight into the bathroom and got the water running. To get the little bit of blood that had splattered on the front of my dress, I figured the best I could do was to wash it along with myself in the tub. Mom had taught me how to rub out period stains, with soap and a handful of baking soda, for when the monthly curse was too heavy for a quick rinse. First time I had gotten my period, two years ago, while I was touching myself and thinking of Heath, I had noticed it hurt a bit –but I didn’t give it a second thought. When I saw blood on the water, though, I became terrified. Nobody had told me that this could happen. At first I thought I might have hurt myself, digging my fingers in an open wound, as I had been tearing at my own flesh. I spent a while trying to hold back sobs of panic, and wondering whether I should tell my mother or not, while the bathwater grew cold. I finally did, and she had to calm me down and tell me that it was normal, and that I just needed to clean myself up better next time. I was almost sure that Bri hadn’t been there when mom gave me the whole speech. I wondered when it would be her turn, and whether I could get away with telling her that she was rotting from the inside, like I thought I was.

I got into the bathtub and scrubbed my face first, to take all the makeup off. I hadn’t gotten a look at myself in the mirror, so I didn’t know whether or not the blood had dripped to my neck. I wondered if anyone had seen me with blood on my mouth and asked themselves what had happened, if I was alright. Dipping the little bit of fabric of the dress in the water wasn’t gonna cut it. The blood had dried already. Mom might ask, if she saw the dress all drenched at hanging from the clothesline, if I had gotten it dirty with oil or something at the school cafeteria –though I didn’t think she cared that much anymore about what I did with my clothes, at least not half as much as she cared about which clothes I chose to wear.

Thinking of my mother at the grocery store, though, I had an idea. Maybe, after my botched attempt at getting some pretty lingerie to wear for him, it was the next best thing to cheer up my grieving, recently orphaned boyfriend. Heath’s next house party was that Thursday, and I wanted to make something easy to eat, something good with few ingredients that filled the stomachs of a big bunch of hungry people, but that didn’t make too much of a mess.

“He’s the kind of guy that you give your everything, and trust your heart, share all of your love, til death do you part… …” I sang to myself, quietly, wandering through the aisles of the supermarket that Thursday afternoon after school, thinking about what I could prepare for that night’s party at his place. “I wanna be what he wants, when he wants it, and whenever he needs it…”

Lamb skewers was the way to go. By that point I had gotten really good at cooking, even in Heath’s tiny kitchen.

It was still early when I got to Heath’s; only another friend of his had arrived, and they were chatting in the auto shop, so in the meantime I got started with the meal. Firstly, I needed to clean the grill, which was really dirty and clearly hadn’t been used in a long while. Once it was good enough to cook in, I lit a little fire and fanned and blew on it until I was sore; and then I remembered that I had to soak the wooden skewers on water, or otherwise they’d catch fire too. While the fire was crackling and the skewers were soaking, I sliced the meat I had bought with the only knife in the kitchen, a dull and kinda rusty old thing that was as good as a wooden spoon; still, I managed. And, when the fire was ready, I got the skewers ready and put them on top of the grill, and mixed the cumin and chili powder with a fork in a little jar I found in a cabinet. The meat cooked slowly, but it was alright: meanwhile, Heath’s friends arrived and passed by the yard, wanting to see what I was preparing. I was very focused, though, in my task. I couldn’t let it burn, and besides, it had to be seasoned at the right time. I had to wait till it was seared, and then sprinkle the cumin and the chili on top, and then watch it for a little while more till it was ready.

By the time I piled the lamb skewers on the largest dish I could find and made my way to the living room, a crowd had already settled and a dense cloud of smoke was growing bigger and bigger. A couple of Heath’s friends hurried to me and began devouring the meat hungrily, messily, getting spice and grease all over their mouths and noses. I wanted to find a place to set the plate, but everywhere I looked there was someone sitting on, or had a half-empty can of beer. I stayed by the doorway, holding the plate, bopping my head to the music and wondering where Heath was.

“Hey, kid,” Janey greeted me with a tired smile, suddenly appearing by my side.

“Oh –hi…!” I replied, smiling back, until I saw the baby she was carrying. The baby looked at me, and I smiled wider. “… And hello to you too!”

I had heard about Janey having baby, though a lot of the girls would sometimes say stuff that they knew wasn’t true, just for the hell of it. But when a girl shows up with a baby, the safest assumption is that it’s hers. I just knew that the rest of the girls talked about it like she was already dead. And, quite honestly, it felt like it: Janey barely showed up to Heath’s parties. There was a reason, then, for marriage before sex. An actual reason, beyond your run-of-the-will sin and damnation and whatnot.

“What’s their name?”

“Bobby,” she said, bouncing the baby. Just hearing the name made me think of Bobby Farrell and Gary Lamotta and Johnny Curtis and all their damn dirty lies. “Like Jeff’s older brother.”

“Jeff’s the father?” I asked, a bit surprised, trying to focus on the conversation. I knew Janey and him used to date, but it had been a while ago –back when Jeff was still in Jersey.

“Yeah… I’m getting worried, y’know,” she admitted. “He hasn’t written back in so long… I sent him a little picture of Bobby, but I haven’t even heard of him.”

I could barely remember Jeff’s face. He wasn’t very attractive, nor particularly smart or funny. God knew what Janey saw in him. “Have you asked his parents?”

“I’ve tried… But they’re still refusing to talk to me! I don’t ask for anything, I just want to know if they have any news on him…”

I nodded, hopefully sympathetically. My dad insisted on listening to all news about the war during dinner, despite mom’s complaining. Nobody that he knew, as far as I knew, had been recruited. Still he tuned in every night, as if it was his favorite show. I wondered if he wanted to know the death count; after all, he had lost quite a few brothers back during his time as a soldier. I wondered if Jeff might be dead already, lying in some jungle in Vietnam. I wondered if Janey had considered that possibility.

“… I wish I didn’t have to bring Bobby, but… I don’t have anywhere to leave him, and my parents… It’s a whole deal,” she sighed. Indeed, Janey looked pretty damn tired. “I really need a smoke.”

“I don’t have one… Want to switch, though?” I asked her with a little shrug, offering her the plate of lamb skewers. She chuckled and, while she grabbed the dish, I held Bobby for a moment, bouncing him like Janey had done.

And Janey was hungry: she immediately got to gobbling down one of the skewers, smacking her lips and clicking her tongue. “Ah, it’s spicy… Hey, it seems like Bobby likes you!” Janey said with a smile. Bobby turned to his mother, then to me, and laughed a big toothless grin.

“He’s such a cutie,” I said, giving him a kiss on his chubby cheek.

“You know, nobody wants to talk to me anymore, now that I got Bobby to take care of,” she said with her mouth full. “And the few girls that do are always telling me how tired and sad I look… But I’m not sad! I’m just… It’s just that things are hard, you know?”

I nodded. Bobby imitated me, nodding while shoving his fat little baby hand in his drooly mouth.

“You see, kid…” Janey quickly took a cigarette out of her jean pocket and put it between her greasy lips, and, balancing the plate in one hand, lit her cigarette with a little lighter she had hidden in her other fist. “You see, you just can’t trust a guy… You can’t trust a guy unless he’s committed. Commitment, it’s not just a pretty word. ‘Cause guys see a chance to dip and they always take it, no matter how much you think they might love you.”

She kept smoking with a bitter expression on her face, biting down on the filter, looking away. I had noticed she had been eyeing Pete lately, but giving her situation, I didn’t think she would really dare to make a move.

Someone put on a new record, and a new song started. It wasn’t my favorite Aretha Franklin album, but it had a couple of really good songs. And I’m not usually the biggest fan of slow ballads, but there was something about her voice that was so tender and loving, it made me feel all warm inside. It was like the choir songs at church. It was hopeful, and majestic, all the while it was like it talked to you and you alone…

“To make you laugh, I would be a fool for you… Although the people turn and stare, I really don’t care…”

“I know I can trust Heath,” I said with a smile, turning to Bobby, moving him as if he was dancing along to the music with me. “He loves me so much, it’s almost funny… We’ve already been discussing leaving Jersey, moving to New York… We’re just waiting until he has enough money saved so we can start a new life there, together.”

Janey stared at me with wide open eyes. There was a moment of silence –and she burst out laughing, so loud that a couple people glanced at us with a puzzled look, and even Bobby was so confused he started to cry out.

“Oh –sorry, baby… Come, come here,” she said, and she handed me back the dish, and held her son again, bouncing him again, a bit faster this time. It didn’t seem to change a thing. “It’s alright, baby, it’s alright…”

“What’s so funny?” I asked her. I could feel the heat of where she had held the dish.

“It’s just that… Kid, don’t you know?” she chuckled. “Look, I love Heath, but he’s… Well, he’s a player!”

I frowned. “A player of what?”

“A serial romancer. A libertine, a bed-hopper, a rolling stone,” she insisted, trying her hardest to stop herself from grinning. “A whoremonger… Tiffany, please, he’s been with almost all the girls in the room, including me! Don’t you know?”

I blinked. “What?”

“We dated last year, before I got with Jeff… Just a month or so, but—”

“What? No…”

Janey sighed and reached out to touch my hair. “I’m sorry, kid, but I thought you knew… It’s public knowledge—”

I moved away from her hand. Baby Bobby began crying again. I didn’t want to talk to Janey anymore. There had to be somewhere I could leave the plate, I thought, looking around, when actually what I wanted was to find Heath, and smile at him and offer him what I had cooked for him, and for him to give me a kiss…

There, next to the turntable, beyond the crowd that danced and smoked, were Heath and Dee, dancing slow and close to each other. He was saying something into her ear.

“Oh me, oh my, I am a fool for ya, baby… Oh me, oh my, you know that I’m crazy, baby, yes you do—”

I walked towards them, and called his name, but I guess he couldn’t hear me, since he was standing so close to the music. I was about to call him again, louder, when I saw it happen. He put his hand on her back to pull her closer and she smiled, looking up at him like I did, closing her eyes like I did, circling his back with her arm while holding a cigarette between her fingers just like I did, and they kissed…

It was as if something broke inside me. My heart, maybe, but it felt higher –like something in my throat –like a bad taste that lingered in the bottom of my tongue. I was in shock for a couple seconds, but soon enough I found my voice, and I ran to him and yelled, I screamed and cried and cried and cried… Some girl grabbed me and tried to pull me away, but I thrashed and elbowed myself free and continued pummeling Heath as best as I could. He was taller and stronger, though, and I barely managed to hurt him, if at all, no matter how much I tried… He held my wrists and shook me to make me stop, and I was finally so heartbroken (then I really felt it, like a hole in my chest, something ripping and being pulled apart like a growing tear in my dress), and it all felt so senseless, that I just fell to my knees and cried my eyes out. I felt like such a child, in the middle of those cooler kids, whimpering and weeping like a damn baby. But how else could I react? Even when he was distant and cold, when he didn’t seem to want to talk to anybody, Heath still welcomed me with a smile and a kiss. How was I even supposed to know that he could be so unfaithful?

“I hate you!” I managed to blubber, at the top of my lungs, my eyes all blurry from the tears. “I fucking hate you!”

And with those last words I ran away from Heath’s place, stumbling and sobbing my way out of the house, out of the garage and into the street, all the way back to my home.

I’m not an idiot. I knew that sometimes people cheated on their partners. Of course I knew that, even if I still did not know whether my father was really cheating on my mother or not. I watched TV, I went to the movies from time to time, I read those little novels Janey lent me. I knew it was something that could happen; I just thought it would never happen to us. After all, Heath and I were so in love, it still seemed impossible to me that he could ever want anyone else.

I had one of those romance novels on my bedside table right then, ‘Secrets of an Accidental Duchess’, by Jennifer Haymore. I picked it up and desperately leafed through it, trying to find the scene in which the Duke admitted his wrongdoings to the wife he had married through an arrangement done by way of a bet with his crummy friends. How had the Duchess solved her own infidelity problem? I skimmed through the paragraphs till I found the conversation I was looking for.

The Duchess simply forgave him, kissed him, and declared she would always love him. I groaned and tossed the book out the window.

Ever since I began dating Heath, in my efforts to be more mature and to show myself that I wasn’t like bratty little Bri anymore, I had sworn off my toys and left my teddy bear and my few dolls on the shelf. But now, though, with how lonely I felt… What else could I do? I stood on my toes and managed to pull my teddy down. He wasn’t too dusty, all things considered. Definitely not enough to stop me from snuggling him, rubbing my tear-stained face against his soft belly, and hiding from the world with him under my bedsheets. I didn’t care about anything anymore. If the day of reckoning came right then and there, I couldn’t give less of a shit. All I wanted was to be left alone.

Obviously, I just had to think about how much I wanted to be alone for Bri to show up.

“Tiffy?”

“Go away, weirdo…” I whined, covering myself further with my sheets before she could see me hugging my teddy bear.

“It’s my room, too,” she replied.

I heard Bri walking up to me, her naked feet pitter-pattering on the wooden boards of the floor, and felt the mattress sinking when she sat on it next to me. I was too tired from crying to kick her off the bed. We remained silent for a few minutes.

“… What the hell do you want?” I finally asked her.

“You’re crying… I just thought you could use some company,” she said. I heard her, muffled but clearly, from the other side of the sheet. “When mom’s sad, she wants me to stay by her side.”

I blinked. I definitely didn’t know that. “Why’s mom sad?”

Bri hesitated before answering. “… I think she’s just a bit tired sometimes. Between managing the household money and the expenses, and doing all the chores, and with the things people say to her—”

I pulled the sheet away to look directly at my sister. “What do people say to her?”

Bri rubbed her nose and looked away. “Um… Things, I don’t know. Well… Really, she doesn’t want me to repeat them. She made me swear on it. But people sometimes call her things on the street, at the store… Have you never noticed?”

It had been a while since I had gone grocery shopping with her. Bri was the one mom was now dragging along with her, anyways.

“Is she sad because of dad?” I asked her, sitting on my bed.

“I don’t know,” Bri shrugged. “She doesn’t like talking about him. She doesn’t like answering my questions.”

I scoffed. I knew that much.

“Mom and dad aren’t gonna split, are they?” she asked, looking up at me.

“No… I don’t think so,” I replied. “After all, what would even happen to us if they split?”

“That’s what I was wondering…”

“Like mom said… ‘He’s the one who keeps the lights on.’”

Bri nodded. I kept staring at her. She was so much prettier than me, pretty enough not to need to wear any makeup. It just wasn’t fair. Then again, life was just not fair. That night had ended up confirming what I had always known.

“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you, Bri?”

“No, not yet.”

“Good. Don’t have one,” I sniffed, wiping my runny nose. “Being in love is so difficult… So much more difficult than I thought. And it hurts so much… I didn’t even know it could hurt.”

There was a silence. Quietly, slowly, Bri leaned her head against my shoulder. I allowed it.

“I wish it didn’t hurt,” she muttered.

The next days were spent in a miserable daze. I didn’t want to eat at all, skipping breakfast and lunch, until I felt my stomach growling and rumbling and pushing me to raid the fridge for the previous day’s leftovers. When I passed by Heath’s auto shop I walked faster, forcing me to keep my eyes on the ground, just in case he was out and about and I was forced to look at him or, God forbid, actually talk to him. I thought about him almost all day, and when I managed to turn my thoughts elsewhere, it was only to how pathetic I was and how nobody would ever love me.

I had to wonder, was it because I wasn’t fully there during sex? Did I not love him like he wanted me to? Did he end up replacing me with Dee because, in some way, she had something I did not have and that he was needing? I was told I looked mature for my age, and I believed it. Looking the part was not enough.

Apart from just wanting to be left alone in my misery, I had to finally accept that I really had no true friends. Janey and the other girls at Heath’s parties were a world away, once I avoided going to his place. And I couldn’t tell Peggy, Amy and Lisa about what happened; I knew none of them would extend a sympathetic arm to me. At best they’d tell me they were sorry and then change the subject; at worst, they’d ask why he cheated on me, and how I didn’t see the warning signs before. It was as if living underwater, with my head sinking lower and lower in the bathtub water. Words became mangled, and everything looked deformed and strange. Dad still came back from work every day to listen to the news on the radio, and mom prepared breakfast and dinner and washed the sink and chopped the vegetables and watched that the rice didn’t burn, and Bri babbled on and on about her day at school and how she did in her exams, and what her friends were up to, as if I wasn’t coming apart and having to excuse myself from the dinner table to run to the bathroom and cry my heart out. In the end, Bri, despite being bullied by Kelly Johnson, still had good friends. Still had good grades. She was probably the best version of herself. She was even gonna be the better version of me. When she became fourteen like me, she’d get some wonderful boyfriend who’d think she was sweet, and beautiful, and heaven-sent, and he’d never even think of cheating on her. She’d be mom and dad’s pride. She’d graduate top of the class, be homecoming queen, and her life would go on as it was expected of her. She’d marry, and have a lovely house, and lovely children. I could see it all so clearly, it was as if it had already happened. Now, if I thought about my own future, I could only see a blur.

“I’d also love to do nothing but stay in bed all day,” mom huffed every morning, before pulling me out of my room. “You’re not sick, you’re not dying, so you better get going or you’ll miss the bus.”

I hadn’t realized til Bri mentioned it, but it was true that mom was getting tired more frequently, now often complaining she had had ‘an awful day’, like dad would say when he came home from work, to avoid any requests or even to get us to shut up when we were, in her words, ‘making too much damn noise’. Even if Bri hadn’t mentioned it to me, I would have ended up realizing it, though. Mom never told Bri to shut up –she only ever told me.

“God, Tiffany –dour much?” Peggy asked me at the school bathroom, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Hey –Earth to Valentine! Are you even here?”

“Yeah, I’m here…”

Now that Heath had cheated on me, Peggy’s constant fawning over her boyfriend was unbearable. I knew that if she had a botched nose surgery like Amy McNab, or if she didn’t have her long soft blonde hair and pretty blue doe eyes, nobody would give a shit about her. It seemed Johnny hadn’t told her about his little stunt at the back of the school, and by what I could make out he had been telling everyone he had been mugged on his way back home and that he had been cut his ear off for refusing to hand over his allowance. I don’t know who really believed it, but everyone in class had decided to not question his story.

Weekend came around. Just one week, but it had felt like ten years had passed me by, and now I had turned sad old woman, religiously looking away when I passed by the auto shop. I realized I could not keep on like this, crying myself to sleep and thinking of everything I should have done instead. My mother was getting sick of my whiny exaggerated dramatics, my few friends were growing tired of me stumbling around like a zombie, and it really did feel like I was swinging violently between pure numbness and brutal emotion. I couldn’t go on like that.

I had to face the issue head on. I had to go to the house and talk to him. I couldn’t really expect for him to show up at my porch with a flower bouquet and asking me to forgive him. No, I had to be the bigger person.

“Heath?” I called.

The door was open, like always. I walked in. The place was a mess, even more of a mess than usual. There were empty bottles everywhere, even some broken glass. The turntable was still spinning a record that had ended a while ago. I turned it off. I thought of turning the radio on, at least to fill that unnerving silence, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.

“Heath?”

What I was even doing there? I hated myself for it. Why did I still love him, when he clearly didn’t give a damn about me? Why did I decide to hurt myself like that? I guess I just couldn’t help myself. Maybe I just felt too much, I was still too in love with him to simply be able to forget and move on.

I finally found him hidden away in the overgrown backyard, surrounded by the lush greenery, lying on a folding chair, with a joint almost completely burnt out between his fingers. I almost thought he was asleep. His gorgeous green eyes were staring at nothing.

“Hey, Heath…”

Startled, Heath turned to look up at me, and gave me a half-smile. “Hey, kid… Tiffany,” he corrected himself. “Long time no see.”

“Just a week or so,” I said with a little shrug. His comment echoed in my mind. Did he mean that this week felt longer? Did he really feel my absence? Did he miss me? I hoped so. I hoped he felt as lonely as I did without him.

“We were wondering where you’d gone.”

I kept quiet. Maybe I was just exaggerating, like mom said. Surely Heath still loved me. You can’t go so long spending so much time with someone without having some affection for them. Even if it wasn’t enough to keep him from cheating, I knew that he had to love me, at least a little bit. Besides, if my parents could still stay together even after mom had the strong suspicions dad had been unfaithful, surely, I could do the same –as shameful as it was.

“How’ve you been?” I asked him, fidgeting with my nails.

“Good, good…” he said, absentmindedly, dragging his words. “Finally finished the paperwork of… You know, the whole—”

“Your father’s death?”

Heath pursed his lips. He seemed like he was feeling sick. “Yeah.”

There was a silence. I waited for him to apologize, or to at least acknowledge that he had kissed Dee at the last party, in front of everyone, in front of me. I was not going to bring it up –Heath had to know that was why I was angry. Then again, he probably knew I didn’t care enough about it so as to not come back to him.

He stood up and went back inside. I followed. It was as if he was an astronaut who had just landed back to Earth. My very own space cadet. I giggled quietly, watching him curse and kick the bottles on his way to the bathroom. He had a piss while I waited patiently outside the beaded curtain.

“Dee told me that I look kinda scruffy with this stubble… What d’you think?” he asked out loud at his own reflection in the little cracked mirror. “I mean, I don’t really give a damn, but… I don’t know. I don’t want to end up looking like Santa Claus here, you know.”

“I think I like you better without stubble,” I said. “You look much more handsome that way.”

Heath turned around and looked at me as if he had just then fully realized I was there. “Hm. Yeah, Dee was right.”

I swallowed my annoyance at him mentioning her name twice already. Regardless, I told myself that it was because of me that he had made the choice. He took another deep drag of his joint, grabbing the straight razor and the can with shaving soap from the bassinet and coming out to the back of the house to sit on the folding chair. I followed him again, wondering why he didn’t stay in the bathroom to do it. He dipped his hand in the can and was about to slather it on his cheeks, when he stopped, blinked a few times, and snickered.

“Shit, I’m too high… Can you do it for me, Tiffany?” he said, handing me the razor and the can with a slippery hand. “Thanks.”

I picked some of the soap with my left hand and carefully slathered it on his chin, his jaw, his cheeks… He really was the most handsome man I had ever met. I gave him a quick kiss and looked at him in the eyes before bringing out the razor, wondering if he ever wanted to kiss me back. If he would ever look at me with as much love as I looked at him. But there didn’t seem to be anything behind those eyes.

He was not going to apologize. For a second I considered breaking up with him. I could do that, right? The relationship wasn’t instantly destroyed just because one cheated on the other. We could still fix it… But maybe he was just trying to prepare me for the inevitable breakup. In that case, wouldn’t it be better if I did it myself, just to save myself the heartbreak? Heath knew me so well. He knew what would hurt me the most. If he got angry at last, if he got mad at me…

“Hey, Heath… I, uh, I was thinking…” He kept quiet. Maybe he was too far off to listen to anything I was saying… But I told myself I had to talk about this with him, and it was better I did it sooner than later. “We’ve been together for, like, almost ten months now, right?”

Heath frowned at this, a confirmation he was actually listening. “Huh. That’s a good bit more than what I thought…”

“Time flies, right?” I chuckled. “So, well, I was thinking… Heath, sweetface, you must know that I love you.”

Heath looked up at me and gave me another half-smile. I smiled too. A half-smile was better than none.

“And so, I wondered… I mean, I know you might end up messing around with other girls from time to time,” I continued. “And –I promise, I don’t mind… But I think it’s very telling that I know you’d always come back to me.”

“Well, yeah. You’re a gas, Tiffany,” he said. “And you cook like the gods.”

I giggled again, flattered. “Yes, well… But do you love me?”

Heath took a deep breath. “Do we really need to talk about it now?”

I wiped the razor against my skirt. “When, if not now? I just want to know how you feel about me.”

“Listen, Tiffany, you’re alright,” he said with a chuckle, patting my leg. “You’re a great kid. But you got this crazy imagination… What does it matter, how I feel about you?”

“It matters,” I frowned. “It matters a lot to me.”

“Yeah… Well, I don’t know, Tiffany. I mean, it’s not like we’re gonna get married or anything. We’re just messing around. Just having fun.”

I took a moment to process his words. “Just having fun?”

“Yeah. So, like… Don’t expect a commitment from me, or anything,” he said, tensing his jaw, squirming in the chair. “I thought that much was obvious. I really don’t know where you got the idea that this was anything more.”

“… Oh…”

Heath smiled a bit wider. “It’s fine. Just… Keep your expectations realistic, you know?”

I forced a smile and nodded. But I could feel the anger boiling up.

“… I see what you mean,” I told him, I told myself. “I-I mean, I clearly… I clearly made this whole thing up in my head that you never even thought about—”

He brought the joint to his lips and took a drag. He didn’t seem to be listening to me anymore, if he had ever listened to me in the first place.

“… But you’re right,” I said, now fully to myself, trying to convince myself of it. “Got to keep my expectations realistic. Otherwise…”

Heath blew a cloud of smoke. It remained over our heads for a moment, in which it looked just like the clouds in the sky, before swirling and vanishing in thin air.

“… Otherwise, I guess I’m just setting myself up for disappointment.”

The blade moved smoothly from his chin to just under his ear. I thought of how many times I had kissed him there, kissed his whole face, practically begging for him to kiss me back. Always hungry for it. And he, he had become fickle with his affection. Sometimes he grabbed me and held me so tight I felt we could never be apart. Other times, it felt like he was a world away. I held the razor very still against his skin. Was that normal? That distance we felt? Was that something we could ever overcome?

Would he ever love me like I loved him?

I grit my teeth. Clearly not. We were just having fun. Just messing around. I was the crazy one, imagining things.

I turned the blade of the razor inwards, slightly askew, just enough to begin to cut. I think he was high enough that he didn’t even feel it at first. Watching closely, I moved my wrist as if it were a paintbrush, drawing a red line from under his ear down to where his Adam’s apple was. Somewhere in the middle of this Heath opened his eyes wide, now feeling it, as the first drops of blood trickled down. I was still going quite delicately, barely scratching his tanned skin. Heath gave two quick, small, nervous breaths as he realized, before opening his mouth –ruining my drawing –and let out a brief scream—

That I cut short by sinking the razor in the middle of his throat, with the kind of blunt force I had used for Peggy Buckman and Kelly Johnson and Johnny Curtis –only that this time I was armed. And it was a completely different feel, to have such an effective little tool in my hand.

After cutting deep, he couldn’t utter a sound. His gorgeous green-hazel eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. His mouth remained open but silent. When I pushed the razor just a little bit deeper the blood began gushing out, soaking the razor, soaking my hand. I hadn’t seen so much fresh oozing blood like this before. It was thicker and warmer than what I could have expected, much more different than that of a nosebleed or a fallen baby tooth. This felt like the real deal. The sort of stuff that kept bodies moving.

Heath made a funny gurgling sound while I pulled the razor carefully out of his throat and went on up to continue the line, curving now back up to finish under the other ear. The more he tried to say something, the more blood came out. I giggled, quite impressed with myself, as I took a step back to admire it all. His hands were trembling and shaking. His legs convulsed and his hips moved like he was trying to get himself off the folding chair. But he couldn’t move any further than that. Blood kept pouring down his white tank top, down, down to his belt buckle.

All the while I still held the razor up in my hand. The blood dripped down my arm as well. Fascinating as Heath’s death was, I found myself turning to the razor, to this ordinary thing I had handled so many times before and which now had helped me kill a man. I was in awe, really. And probably more than a bit shocked at myself. I turned the razor around, watching the few silver spots where it wasn’t blood-soaked, reflecting the midday sun. In the light, clinging to the metal, the deep red stains looked like gems, like stunning expensive rubies. Blood went down to my elbows now. I gave thanks for having worn a short-sleeve blouse that day.

And then Heath stopped moving. His body went limp. His arms finally hung lifeless from the sides of the folding chair, his legs stretched in front of him, his head turned slightly to the side. His eyes were wide open. I remember thinking that was weird. For some reason I always thought people closed their eyes before dying.

My heart was beating so quickly, I could feel it pounding in my throat, trying to slip out of my body. I took a deep breath and exhaled. That felt good. Like I had gotten something off my chest. Something stronger than relief –a feeling of freedom. I had loved Heath, but now that he was dead, that I had killed him –I was free from the weight of that love. I had set us both free.

But most of all, I felt like this made me realize that, after all, this might not be true love. I had felt enamored by him… And yet, as Heath’s body kept bleeding out in the folding chair, his green eyes staring blindly at me, I felt none of that love. He was still handsome as hell, that was undeniable. But I felt no grief, not anymore. No pity at all. Only the typical fascination of watching fresh roadkill. It was as if he wasn’t the man I had been madly, hopelessly in love with for the last few years.

Well… He wasn’t. Not anymore.

Alright, I’ll admit it. I was a late bloomer. I didn’t actually make my first kill till I was fourteen…

But I think I did a pretty good job, all things considered.

No cops came to my house wanting to interrogate me about what I was doing that morning. Life went on as usual. The days after Heath’s murder, I was half expecting to feel bad for not having him with me anymore. I didn’t feel bad at all, though; I felt better than ever. Happier, for once. Free, like mom had said love would make me feel. Nobody knew what had happened, but I did, and suddenly I didn’t feel like everyone else’s chew toy.

Most importantly, I knew now that, despite being the family’s disappointment, I could do anything I wanted. There was nothing standing in my way. If I wanted, I could run away to New York myself, without Heath, and start anew. I could be anyone I wanted to be.

Once the idea had settled in my mind, I gave it a lot of thought, between my daily daydreams during class. It was entirely possible: I had my poker money, and I could take the bus. There was the possibility of stealing dad’s car, but that would be too much of a hassle. Back at home, smoking a cigarette while soaking in the bathtub, I mentally went over how much food I would need for a week, more or less the time I assumed it would take me to get settled in the city, find a place to stay and a job to work. I could manage, I was used to skipping dinner every once in a while. Swirling my hand around the floating strands of black hair, smiling wide before dipping my head under the water, I thought: I could really do it.

So I began planning. I was anxious to just leave already, but I had to plan it properly. I should take a bus during the night, so the next day my parents could assume I just had left earlier to stay at a friend’s house, the excuse I had blurted before when I spent the night at Heath’s. Besides, if I arrived early at New York, that meant I had more hours in the day to find a good place to sleep, a hotel or something. Apart from all these practical thoughts, though, I returned to my old fantasies of visiting the famous tourist spots of the Big Apple: Broadway and its shining lights, the fairytale forest that was Central Park, the Empire State Building and the ferry going to the Statue of Liberty, Little Italy and Chinatown… All of those places, I would be visiting alone. But I’d find someone, I reassured myself. There were so many people in New York, I’d find someone who would truly understand me, someone who could love me like Heath could not.

And, beyond all of these happy thoughts that put a goofy little smile in my lips while I dozed off at school and at the kitchen table, I always came back to the feeling of exhilarated triumph I got from pulling the blade from under Heath’s head. I remembered the warmth of his body and of the blood, the way it gushed as if it had been wanting so hard to be released from his veins, how his body shook and jerked as he died. I had shivers just thinking about it.

A couple days after killing Heath, deep in these thoughts, on my way back home from school after having a little ice cream treat and watching the toy store’s display one last time, before I kissed Hackensack goodbye, Darry called me and took me out of my fantasies.

“Hey, Tiffany!”

I turned around, even when I knew that I should just ignore him. He walked up to me, all badly chopped hair, dirty t-shirt and hand-me-down pants. It was a sunny day, and he had to shield his eyes with his hand, blinking and squinting to get a good look at me.

“Wanna see something cool?” he asked.

I looked at him up and down. “I don’t think your dick’s part of that category.”

He laughed. “No, I mean something really cool.”

Goddammit, I thought, my curiosity was piqued. I sighed and, with my hand inside my backpack and grabbing a pencil, ready to stab Darry in the neck with it if he tried anything, I followed him. We walked through the old stores and familiar sights in silence, passing by neighbors’ homes, barking dogs and children playing on the street, until we arrived to the area of abandoned houses, a little meadow of reclaimed nature in the middle of a sleepy Jersey suburb. I was surprised to know that Darry even knew of the place. All the times I’ve been there, I had never seen another living soul: maybe a squirrel, maybe a rat; a couple times, a few younger children trying to play ball in a forgotten spot that didn’t allow anything but exploration and shelter. Never another kid my age. I picked a couple wildflowers as I walked a few feet behind him, eyeing different sized and shaped rocks in our path in case I needed to bust Darry’s head open, in case he knew something he shouldn’t. I was nervous and anxious to leave Hackensack: the last thing I needed was another Johnny Curtis-like incident, or a surprise witness that could try to blackmail me into keeping his mouth shut.

But in the end it was nothing of the sort. We stopped at what used to be the front yard of a smaller house, its windows all smashed, pieces of debris all scattered around and covered in leaves of the wild overgrown trees. He grinned a crooked-toothed smile and pointed at a furry little thing in the ground.

“A raccoon?”

“Yeah,” he said, grabbing a broken branch and poking its eye like he wanted to squeeze it out of its head. “It’s been dead for three days or so.”

I gave it a little kick to roll it over back on its belly. A bunch of ants crawled out from under its back, a few of them still clinging to its pelt. I turned my head to the side. Just out of curiosity, I raised my foot and leaned it against the raccoon’s squishy body. I pressed down, slowly, until there was a soft crack! of the bones, and it began to leak some sort of weird juice, not quite red enough to be blood. I looked up at Darry, curious about what his reaction would be. He kept staring at it, with an unreadable expression. I stepped away and wiped the sole of my saddle shoe against a tree trunk. He crouched and kept poking at the mangled body of the raccoon, now turning the guts that were peeking out of its swollen torso.

I sat on a piece of rubble, smoking my cigarette, wondering how Darry had even come across the raccoon. I wondered if he had killed it himself. Now that it laid all squelched like a bug, I had no way of properly figuring out how it had died.

“You got a light?” he asked me.

I shot him an unimpressed glance. “I’d expect you, of all people, to have a light.”

“Huh?”

“You know… The desk on fire incident?”

“Oh.”

Darry said nothing to this. I sighed, and lit his cigarette.

“Um… You were dating Heath Shepard, right?”

I froze, my pulse racing.

“Did you hear about his suicide?” he continued.

How does one pretend to be surprised? Should I cry? Should I pretend I didn’t believe him? “… How did you find out?” I asked him.

“My older brother used to be friends with him. I’ve always wanted to go to his house parties… That was before my brother was drafted, of course,” he said with a little chuckle. “… Was Heath as cool as he seemed?”

“He was sweet… But he wasn’t that great.”

Darry frowned, clearly disappointed. It wasn’t as if it mattered much. He was already dead anyway.

“I’m gonna run away from home,” I declared, rather stupidly. “Heath and I, we were gonna live together in New York.”

“Really? You’re gonna leave anyway, even without him?”

There was a chance for me to say I was just joking, and stop from going ahead and just spilling all this information to this random boy from my school. Still, I nodded.

Darry raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed. “Huh. You’re pretty ballsy… To dare and go on your own.”

I smiled proudly and blew some smoke. “I know.”

He nodded, taking a drag of his cigarette. I looked away, avoiding his gaze. A few minutes passed. Out of nowhere, he spit at a broken glass bottle that someone had left there. I smiled and spat there too, aiming closer. Darry smiled too, and we kept spitting, aiming for the bottle’s mouth. He clearly had a lot more practice than I did, but I wasn’t doing that bad either. He won, in the end, but I didn’t care that much. It wasn’t like we were betting anything on it.

“… Would you be my girlfriend?”

I looked up at him. He was now gazing at me, jaw clenched shut, hands tense, clearly nervous about what I my response would be.

I thought about it. I would lie if I said I wasn’t flattered, even if it was just Darry fucking Cade. To have anyone want me at all, and to ask so gently, it was a real delight. But I had to be practical. And besides, I knew that, if I was as flat as I used to be, back when I was eight, he wouldn’t even look at me.

“Would you come with me to New York?” I asked him.

Darry gulped. “Uh, well… I mean, I’d like to, b-but I’m not sure I… I mean, I don’t—”

“I knew it,” I replied in a sigh, flicking the butt of my cigarette. “You pussy.”

Janey was right. Commitment was hard to come by.

“I’m going back home. You better not tell anyone at school about this,” I told him. I thought it over. “Or do. I don’t give a damn.”

I stood up and fixed my skirt. He watched me with hungry eyes. I kept avoiding looking directly at him. It disgusted me, once I decoded what that feeling was, how much I wanted to give it a try and have one last kiss in my hometown. Darry was just a boy. He was probably a shit kisser.

“And Darry…”

“Yeah?”

“If you tell anyone that I’m leaving, or where I’m going… I’ll kill you.”

I didn’t stay to see his reaction. I couldn’t afford to even care. I had stuff to do, things to prepare and a backpack to get ready for the trip.

Back at home, I felt so anxious I was barely hungry at all. I did have to eat something, at the very least not to awaken any suspicions.

Besides, I had one more matter to take care of.

While mom made dinner and Bri watched cartoons on TV, I slipped away from their sight and went into our parents’ bedroom. I looked around in my father’s drawers: I was looking for a gun. As a veteran, I had to assume he still had one; and, most importantly, it was possible that I could be mugged in the city. I had heard horror stories of the girls at Heath’s house parties, of being robbed at gun point. Having some way to defend myself was essential if I wanted to make a life for myself. Better safe than sorry, after all, like my mother said.

I found some money that I quickly pocketed, but no gun; instead, at the very bottom of the underwear drawer, I found a switchblade, pretty similar to the one Darry had.

“Cool,” I whispered to myself, with a big smile, holding it carefully. Even better than a gun –it didn’t need bullets, it was lighter, and far easier to carry.

I opened it –and nicked my finger, getting the smallest dot of blood on the blade. I sucked on the wound. And, very carefully, I wiped the blade with the tip of my thumb, before closing it and slipping it into my pocket as well.

“Tiffy?”

I jumped. Brittany was standing behind me, in the darkness, barely lit by the light that came from the open door to the hallway.

“Jesus, Bri, you scared the hell out of me—”

“What are you doing?”

“What’s it to you?” I grumbled, closing the drawer quickly and pushing her to the side so I could get out. “Get out of my way, weirdo.”

“What’s in the drawer?” she insisted, opening it herself and peering inside. “What did you take?”

“What are you, a cop?”

“You took something, I saw it—”

“You didn’t see shit.”

“Mom!” she screamed, running through the hallway past me, dodging my arm as I tried to grab her. “Tiffy’s doing something—!”

“She’s lying!” I cried and ran after her. “Whatever she tells you, it’s a dirty lie!”

“Girls, stop that!” our mother said, just as I caught a strand of my sister’s hair in a fist. “For God’s sake, it’s like you were raised in a barn… Brittany, go get washed for dinner. Tiffany, you set the table.”

I let go of Bri’s hair. “I need to go to the bathroom first—”

“Don’t try to get out of doing something as insignificant as setting the table, Tiffany…”

“I’m not trying to—”

“Don’t argue with me,” she said. “Just do it. You can go to the bathroom later.”

I huffed. Taking the cutlery out of the kitchen drawers, I caught a couple glances she threw my way. Could she suspect what I was planning? Of course not –I hadn’t done anything suspicious, anything that could call her attention. I was just being paranoid.

Regardless, I held back my need to go to the toilet for as long as I could. After all, my mother had the key to the bathroom. If she wanted to, if she assumed anything, she could lock me up there again, and keep me prisoner in that house for the rest of my life.

I had to be patient. I had to be careful. Most of all, I had to be quick.

While I changed into my pajamas, I looked around at my bedroom. There was the dollhouse I had neglected, and the old storybooks that were gathering dust on the shelf, and the few framed photographs of baby pictures and of the family at birthday parties, and a document that certified I had had a Holy Communion, and the fashion magazine cutouts glued to the wall next to my bed, and the three baby dolls that I didn’t play with anymore and that had become Bri’s, even despite my pouring fake blood inside their mouths…

I wasn’t sure yet if I was gonna miss all this or not. I guessed I wouldn’t know until I was far gone.

I climbed into bed, under the watchful eye of our mother, as I juggled with the decision of taking my teddy bear with me or not. I definitely didn’t want Bri’s grubby little hands anywhere near it; then again, it would take a good amount of space in my backpack. And, besides, teddy bears are for babies… But I felt like I needed to take something, anything from that place with me. Something that could make any homesickness I might feel easier to swallow and, eventually, forget about completely. Think about it like a set of training wheels, I told myself. You know you don’t actually need it, but it makes the whole process a lot more comfortable.

Once I could hear my mother’s snoring in the next room, I got out of bed, put my teddy bear in my backpack, and quickly changed into the outfit I had chosen for my journey. All the other clothes I had decided to take along with me were already in the bag. I had also packed a few snacks, some toiletries and a little bit of my mother’s makeup. Since I was gonna be far away by the time she realized it was missing, I finally wasn’t afraid of her finding out.

I opened the window and released my last spider. I hadn’t been properly taking care of her, honestly, so I wasn’t too offended when she scurried away as quick as her eight legs allowed. I took the money out of the jar, recounted it, put some in the backpack and some inside my bra for safekeeping. I was tying my saddle shoes when I heard a quiet little whimper, and, holding my breath, I listened to my sister tossing and turning in her bed next to me. I hadn’t made a noise –so why was she waking up now, of all times?

“Tiffy…?” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes and sitting on the bed. “What are you doing—?”

I shushed her. She stared at me with her big brown eyes, and for a moment, she seemed stunned enough to keep quiet. I hadn’t planned for this situation. I thought about giving her some of the candy I had in my backpack to bribe her into silence, but I couldn’t trust her to truly shut her mouth anymore. We kept staring at each other for a while. At some point though I had had enough, and I kept tying my shoes and, after that was done, I finally headed for the bathroom.

“Wait –what are you doing?” Bri asked.

“Keep it down,” I said, turning to her. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“You’re… You’re leaving?” she insisted. “Where are you going?”

“None of your business.”

She frowned. “Are you really leaving?”

I didn’t answer. See, there’s a reason I didn’t even consider saying goodbye.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Wait… Please, don’t –don’t go.”

“I said go back to sleep.”

“Please, Tiffy…” she started sobbing. “Don’t leave me. I don’t want to be here alone with mom…”

“Tough luck,” I grumbled, struggling to close my backpack. “You’ll have your chance to run away when you’re older.”

“B-but… If we go together, then I can help you! It’ll be better if we go together—”

“Really, Brittany? How, exactly?” I snapped. “You’ll slow me down. Any food I manage to get I’ll have to split with you. And besides, you’re still a kid.”

“But I’ll… I’ll miss you…”

I stared at her. “Don’t you give me that shit.”

“If you don’t take me with you, then I’ll tell mom,” Bri said with a pout. “I’ll tell her, and she won’t let you out ever again.”

I shot her a look. She opened her eyes wide. And she was about to scream –when I managed to grab onto my bedside lamp –and hit her on the head with it. Only a little bit of blood –a speck on the porcelain –and she dropped onto the mattress with a short grunt. I had to act fast. While she was out, I grabbed a bunch of socks from my side of the room, the longest bunch I found, to tie her hands and feet to the bedposts. And, when she began to blink back into consciousness, I stuffed another balled sock into her mouth.

 “You’re always trying to please her, to be her favorite!” I whispered. “You won’t miss me –you’re just trying to get me to regret this and come back.”

Bri said something in muffled cries. But I hadn’t any time to keep wasting with her.

It was an hour to midnight, and ahead of me I had the tall task to change my hair on my own for the first time. First of all, I laid a towel on my shoulders, carefully reading the warning on the bleach bottle I had pulled from under the sink while I sectioned my hair in halves. I wished I could play some music on the radio in the meantime, but I had to work quickly and quietly. Wielding my mother’s fabric shears, I chopped strands of hair to about chin-length, watching myself in the bathroom mirror and turning my head to check how it was looking. There was no plan –just an itching hurry to change how I looked, enough so I wouldn’t be recognized.

The sound of the blades closing in next to my ears made me think of when I was six and, on my first day of school, a boy stuck a piece of chewed bubblegum in my pigtail, and how I had cried and whined when my mother said she would have to chop it off. I was so worried about how it would look, back then…

Once the haircut was done, I slipped my hands into the rubber gloves and took a deep breath. I spread the bleach on top of my uneven hair strands with an old toothbrush, I covered my head with a shower cap, and kept checking on it every five minutes or so. After an hour, as far as I was going to be able to wait it out, I finally took the cap off, closed my eyes and dipped my head in the sink to wash it all off. Sinking my fingers in the now-thinned-out hair, massaging my burning scalp and drowning the chemicals out of the strands, I gasped and blinked to breathe face-down under the dripping water, feeling the warmth of the water in my hands.

The sound of slow-running water over my head made me think of when I was five and, one particularly cold winter, we didn’t have any hot water, so my mother had boiled a few liters in the kettle, and carefully washed my hair in the bathroom. She had mixed the hot water with the cold in a jar, and, lying my chin down on the frozen porcelain sink like Marie Antoinette would wait for the guillotine, she poured the water on my neck, on my nape, on the back of my head, with her long fingernails digging into my scalp and shampoo foam getting in my ears, asking me if it was too hot or too cold…

It wasn’t the blond I wanted –it was more like a weird, pale orange –but it would have to do. Regardless of how far it was from the color I wanted, it was undeniable that, with my hair now short and light, I looked like someone else altogether. If I looked different, then, maybe I could feel different –act different –be different. I’d kill who I was supposed to be to become who I wanted to be.

I smiled at my reflection.

The walk to the bus stop felt shorter than I had expected. Everything seemed to be happening so quickly. Maybe I was just impatient and restless, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep on the journey. I bought a one-way ticket, gripping my bag close to my chest, going over how much money I would have left. Not that it mattered much. I knew I had enough to last me a week or so, I had assumed.

I took a seat next to the window and watched the streets I had grown up in rushing past my eyes, dark and silent, as the road brought me closer to the noise and the lights of the mysterious and bustling city.

#childs play #chucky series #fanfiction