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fish-engulfed-writes · 4 months ago

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A Father's Heart: A Beauty and the Beast Retelling

For the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge at @inklings-challenge

Let me tell you, I sure confused that Beast when I returned. Have you ever seen a cat pounce on its own tail? That was the look of confusion the Beast had when he saw me in his palace. Only this cat was enormous—standing seven feet tall on his hind legs—black as soot, with claws this long, and a mouth full of teeth like butcher knives.

"Where is your daughter?" he asked me. Yes, that's what he sounded like—all deep and raspy, like he was growling and purring beneath his words.

"At home," I said.

"You did not bring her?"

“You told me,” I told him, "that I could return to be devoured or send her to take my place. I returned.”

"She did not wish to save you?"

“I never told her. Do you think I could lay that kind of burden upon my own daughter? What sort of father do you take me for?”

He had taken me for a cowardly one, I guess, because it took me a long time to convince him that my daughters were all safely at home, and I didn't plan to fetch any of them. He didn't seem to know what to do with me after that. He wasn't as bloodthirsty as I'd have expected someone with that many teeth to be.

"You will be my guest," he said at last—and he didn't seem too glad about saying it. No doubt he'd have preferred a pretty young girl as a houseguest to a weathered old sailor. But he gave me run of the place—I could help myself to anything, go anywhere I pleased. I didn't understand it. He'd been ready to kill me for a rose, and now he was giving me everything in the house?

I wasn't about to complain, though, so I set about to enjoy the place. The Beast encouraged me to enjoy the luxuries of the palace, but I've always been a working man—I didn't fancy living the life of an idle aristocrat. Before the week was out, I was working in the gardens—the place was overgrown like you wouldn't believe. When I wanted a rest, I'd explore the castle, and boy, was there plenty to see. He had rooms upon rooms of treasures—paintings, silks, wines, musical instruments, even an entire room full of exotic birds! I'd made my living selling such things, and my head swam at the sight of it—a tenth of it would have been worth more than all the riches I could have transported in ten lifetimes.

I didn't make my fortune by having dull wits, and I didn't lose it for lack of courage, so it wasn't long before I began to piece together the truth of this place and confronted the Beast with it.

"How long have you been cursed, your highness?" I asked him one evening at supper.

That great big cat was so shocked he knocked a wine bottle off the table. "Who says I am cursed?"

"Blazes, man, I'm not blind! This palace is worth more than most of the kingdoms of the world put together. If there was a king out there this rich, you can bet every merchant in the world would know of him. He'd have destroyed the world's economy. Fairy magic's the only way you get a horde like this, but you, sir, are no fairy."

Now the Beast seemed intrigued. "How do you know that?"

"A fairy would never have let me live—if he promised to kill me, he'd have killed me. No mercy among their kind. Only a human could have changed his mind like that—for which I'm very grateful, by the way."

"You're welcome," he said, seeming dazed.

I went on, "You're definitely more than a dumb beast; you walk and talk and dress like a man, so it stands to reason you were a man once—that furry coat of yours is just some fairy shell. Same way all these riches are probably just dirt and ashes once you take away the magic. Which means you must have run afoul of a fairy sometime in your past, who decided to curse you with an animal body and then trap you in a palace full of false riches."

I looked at the furnishings, the food, the Beast's clothes—everything spoke of royalty. "Fairies always meddle with royals, so you must have been a prince. The seventh son of the king of Gher went missing just before I went on my last voyage, so I'd wager that he is you. Am I right?"

The Beast goggled. "I…can't say."

"Which means I'm right. No fairy worth his salt would let you say you were cursed. Which means all I have to do is figure out how to break it. Those fairies always give you a way out—the more improbable the better."

I came around to his side of the table so I could walk around him and examine him from all angles. "You were disappointed when I came—you wanted one of my daughters, not me. When I did come, you didn't seem too keen on killling me—which makes me think it was an empty threat, trying to convince me to send my daughter instead. Which means she must be the way to break the curse. What can she do that I can't? Easy—true love. No fairy would think a girl could love a hulking monster like you, so that would be their impossible way to break the curse. You needed, what—true love? Marriage?"

"I can't say," the Beast said, but I knew by his face that I'd hit upon the right answer.

"That makes things simple. You let me out once before. Let me go home again and fetch one of my girls, tell her there's a prince waiting for her, and bring her back to join you in wedded bliss."

He seemed genuinely horrified by that. "I…can't say."

"Oh, of course. It won't count if she knows you're a prince. Well, I'll leave that part out. Tell her that the Beast who spared my life is in need of more company. With a bit of time and a bit of encouragement from her old dad, we'll have you back in human form by Christmas."

He thought it was worth a try, and something he could arrange with the conditions of his curse. So I went home to my children, convinced my sons not to follow me to slay the Beast, and made the castle sound intriguing enough that all three of my girls agreed to join me. I thought that maybe Hope would be the one to break the curse—she's always been the boldest of my girls—but it turned out that my quiet, gentle Beauty brought out the soft side of the Beast. It was the cutest thing you ever saw, the way they'd sit together reading in the rose gardens, that great big cat as shy as a schoolboy with her.

It wasn't three weeks before the Beast worked up the courage to propose—and my Beauty accepted without hesitation. Then there was blinding light and earthquakes, and when the dust cleared, the palace was gone. We were standing in a clearing in the woods—and a black-haired prince stood where the black-haired Beast had once been.

He's an excellent boy—I'll be proud to call him a son. He doesn't mind at all that his bride's the daughter of a failed merchant or that she once worked on a farm. We'll all be moving to his palace across the sea to live as honored members of the family.

Which is why we're moving out on such short notice—his highness doesn't want to be away from his kingdom any longer than he has to. I'm sure you'll find someone else to take the old place off your hands.

No, you don't have to believe me, but it's much better if you do. You'll look much less like a fool once it comes out that it's all true.

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fish-engulfed-writes · 4 months ago

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Nadezh' Interview

Summary: After Nadezh previous identity as the Firebreather, notorious Supervillain, was revealed, she thought she’d lose everything. She’s never been so happy to be wrong.

You can read Nadezh' first story (HERE)

--------------------------.

It’s decided that Nadezh will work in the finance department of Hero Force. She hates to leave her civilian job and her coworkers seeing the success of her budget fully bloom, but the other option is wearing the power suppressors 24/7, and their power frequency vibrates through her engagement ring in a way that reminds her of a bee buzzing, and she won’t take the ring off so.

The interview is a formality but they make her do it anyway. She prepares for it over the course of seven days, making Gannon rehearse every hypothetical question with her until the last minute.

Until the last minute meaning on the drive to Hero Force for the interview.

“There is a discrepancy in the packaging budget,” Gannon reads. He’s used to her driving and doesn’t flinch when she merges too quickly, and a chorus of Chicago drivers chastise her loudly. “There is a flat rate for three different sizes of package. According to the average order value and average product mix, packaging should be $3.5k—Nadezh, Hero Force doesn’t have a commerce division, I don’t think this is necessary.”

Nadezh knows the rest of this question. What steps would you take to reconcile actual and planned? “Of course, there’s the option to conduct a forensic audit, however—”

“We do have a forensic finance department,” Gannon concedes, “but that’s not—”

“—first would be to observe the whole packaging process. While there is a flat rate for all three package sizes that doesn’t mean all orders are being packaged for efficiency—”

Gannon reaches for her knee, thinks better of it, considering her foot on the gas pedal, and diverts to her shoulder. He squeezes, and all of the tension in her back magically eases. “Babe. You’re already overqualified. You’re going to do great.”

They’ve already had this argument, so Nadezh doesn’t say Overqualified? It’s amazing they’re even letting me into a Hero Force building, I could be the President and I still wouldn’t be qualified considering my past. Instead, she says, “Right. Right, thanks. You’re right. Right.”

“Right,” Gannon says seriously.

“Right,” she says and takes the next exit.

“Riiiiiiight.”

By the time they pull into the parking garage, Nadezh is laughing at the increasingly bizarre ways Gannon says the word right. The word barely has meaning anymore, and she’s fairly certain that if anyone else heard Hero Zone sounding so goat-like, they’d send him to psych for an evaluation.

Nadezh gets out of the car first, hurrying before he can say anything else that will set her off.

“Go save the day,” she says. Her face hurts from smiling. She tosses him the keys over the roof of the car after she closes the door. “I can get the train back.”

Gannon rounds the bumper and presses them back into her hand. He kisses her forehead. “No public transport from HQ.”

She blinks, the spot his lips touched tingling. “Is that a rule?”

“Our house rule,” Gannon says. He smiles reassuringly at her. “Just a precaution. I know too many people who get made getting followed out of HQ.”

Gannon always explains himself even though she never asks. Her heart is racing at our house rules. They have house rules. They’re engaged. They’re going to get married. She lifts her chin for a kiss. “I love you.”

“Love you.” He kisses her.

Kissing Gannon is the closest she feels to her powers these days. The warmth that runs through her, the heat in her cheeks, the pounding of her heart – actually she takes it back. It’s not like her power at all. It’s better than her power.

“Break it up!” a man calls from across the parking garage.

Electricity shoots through Nadezh. She didn’t hear him come up behind her. She tries to pull away from Gannon, to turn and protect them, but his hands on her shoulders stop her. Her brain catches up a moment later. Gannon is relaxed, warm brown eyes still happy. The voice is familiar.

“It’s not goodbye yet,” another voice says grumpily. This time Nadezh recognizes the speaker. When her tension eases, Gannon lifts his hands long enough for her to turn and greet Flare. He drapes his arms over Nadezh’s shoulders. Flare’s eye twitches. “There’s, like, a whole elevator ride to go.”

“There’s cameras in the elevator,” Gannon says.

Nadezh still doesn’t know what to make of Gannon’s Hero team. Omit – the leader of the team – is decent. Fast, sound decisions on the field, always knows when to retreat, which is important when your team is made of B and C-rank heroes. His power – to eliminate an object from the enemy’s perception during battle – makes her uneasy. Despite his openness with her, she can’t erase the suspicion that he’s using his powers on her from her mind.

She likes Flare. The woman is bright and bubbly, almost six inches shorter than Nadezh, with all the energy of a hummingbird. Though she’s stationed on Gannon’s team, she’s in high demand across the city. There aren’t many fliers out there, and although her dragonfly wings aren’t exactly subtle, she’s fast enough and strong enough to conduct recon across Lake Michigan. Flare keeps Gannon safe when he’s out saving the world. Nobody sneaks up on them with her around.

Mostly.

“Us singles are feeling left out,” Omit says and tries to drape an arm over Flare’s shoulders.

Flare flits away. “Interview today?” she asks Nadezh.

“Right,” Nadezh says.

Gannon’s burst of surprised laughter lasts all the way to Nadezh’s floor where he waves goodbye breathlessly.

Even with his mask obstructing the crow’s feet she loves, Nadezh savors the memory of his joy all the way to her interview.

----.

Agent Briston isn’t like any other agent Nadezh has ever seen. He’s in his sixties, round, bald, and wearing a sweater vest under his regulation suit jacket. She thinks there’s a reason agents like him are kept out of sight. He looks like an easy target—no. She doesn’t think about people as targets anymore. She means that he looks like the grandfather in a commercial about watches, the one who takes the vintage watch off of his own wrist to wrap it around the grandson’s with an air of gravity.

“This interview isn’t a guarantee, despite your…recommendations,” Agent Briston says the moment Nadezh sits down. His desk has nothing but a computer, a notepad, and a pen. Somehow the harried look on his face makes it seem cluttered with paper. “We don’t have the budget for many staff. We need to be selective.”

Nadezh resists the urge to pull at the Hero Force regulation mask on her face or the power suppressors around her wrists. Part of her agreement with Foresight was that she’d wear the cuffs whenever Gannon wasn’t with her. The blue glow feels ostentatious, and she hopes Agent Briston won’t turn her down based on them. “Understood, sir.”

“Briston,” Agent Briston says. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Only the heroes call me sir. My staff calls me Briston.”

Nadezh nods. “I’m Nadezh Mel—”

“No last names, Nadezh,” Briston says. He pulls his glasses from a desk drawer and puts them on. He squints at his computer. “Now. Tell me. Do you have accounting experience?”

“Yes, si—Briston.”

Briston’s thick white eyebrows raise and he abandons his computer to focus back on Nadezh. He seems skeptical. “Really?”

“I created the office budget for my last company,” Nadezh says. She has a better way to say this, she rehearsed this with Gannon— “My plan allowed for the purchase of new chairs and a copier.”

Briston stares at her. “You really have accounting experience.”

Did he not hear her? Or did she answer incorrectly? “I-I was also part of the team that allocated reinvestment funds—”

“Foresight’s recruits never have accounting experience.”

“—and payroll for over 500 employees—”

“Payroll!” Briston looks up at the ceiling. “She does payroll!”

“I—I’m sorry?” she says. She can’t read his tone. Is he disappointed or being sarcastic? She scrambles for her next interview answer. “I have a bachelor’s in accounting from Illinois State, but I plan to complete my master’s in the next five years—”

Briston makes a sound she’s only ever heard from frightened raccoons. “You’re hired,” Briston declares. He reaches over the desk to shake her hand. “I’ll draw up a counteroffer before noon.”

Confused, Nadezh shakes his hand. His grip is surprisingly strong. “Sir? The terms of my employment should already be in my file.” Foresight had made it clear she’d be starting at the bottom level of the pay scale.

“We aren’t paying my new director that,” Briston says. “We’ll start double that and see what they counter offer.”

“They? Aren’t you in charge of salary approvals?” Nadezh asks. Then, as his words sink in, “Director?!”

Briston beams at her. “Experience, a degree, and common sense! We’ll settle for 30% higher than the initial offer with a condition for an additional 10% at the next performance review.”

“Director,” Nadezh says. When Briston doesn’t answer, ignoring her in favor of typing feverishly, Nadesh says with surety, “You’re joking.”

Briston hums and doesn’t answer her.

“Right?”

----.

Briston isn’t joking.

Gannon takes a dazed Nadezh out for dinner and drinks to celebrate. The private room he reserves is in the back of a Japanese restaurant run by a former Superhero. There are flowers on the table, candles strategically placed around the room, soundproofing on the walls, and a chilled bottle of Nadezh's favorite white wine waiting. She processes all of this distantly. She makes Gannon read her employment contract between bites of sushi. Bemused, he dutifully announces her employed status and starting salary whenever she asks.

“Guess I shouldn’t have listened to the rumors about the department head,” Gannon says. Rather than surprised, his voice carries an element of relief. “You’re barely taking a salary cut with this.”

“Cut? This is a ten percent raise,” Nadezh hisses. She stares at her green tea. “Does Foresight know?” A jolt of sick fear floods with her. “I didn’t make Briston give me a raise, I swear!”

“Nadezh, of course you didn’t,” Gannon says. He reaches across the table to nudge at her clenched hands. Automatically, she unfurls them to reveal half-moon indents from her nails. He slides his palm against hers. “You deserve this.”

“But Foresight might think—”

“He won’t.” Gannon picks up his chopsticks with his left hand, content to let his right keep holding hers so that her dominant hand is free. He’s clumsier with them and frowns as he chases salmon roe around his plate. “Briston has almost unilateral say in the finance department. Nobody can sway him. He’s known for being short-tempered, cheap, and stubborn. I’m sure Foresight will just be grateful he finally hired someone.”

Nadezh narrows her eyes. “You said you didn’t know the person interviewing me.”

“Oops?” Gannon finally catches the salmon roe under a bite of rice and pops it in his mouth. He chews innocently. “Did I?”

“Fess up.”

“It’s not like I know a lot. People say Briston fires more than he hires.” Gannon’s eyes shift to the side. “Aaaand that he can be heard yelling whenever it’s time to calculate overtime expenses. Or whenever the armory submits their expense report. Or when the audit team comes back with city damage claims. Or when—”

Nadezh drops her head into her free hand, letting her long black hair hide her for a moment. She forgot that Hero Force accountants dealt with destroyed skyscrapers and medical leave for when you got your arms ripped off in a fight, not copiers and desk chairs. “You didn’t think to mention any of this before the interview?!”

“You were freaked out enough.” Gannon pauses in the way he does when he’s about to say what he’s really thinking so Nadezh doesn’t interrupt. She waits as he chews until he finally says, “I’m glad he bumped your salary. I was starting to feel guilty.”

Nadezh’s hand spasms around Gannon’s. “Guilty?”

“Yeah,” Gannon says. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I argued against making you leave your job. Said it made Hero Force the sort of organization everyone always accuses us of being. Overreaching and, well…cruel.”

“You didn’t tell me about that either.” Had he been thinking that this whole time? While she made him practice interview questions with her? Did he think she was forcing herself? The thought of Gannon feeling even a tenth of the gnawing guilt that lives inside her makes her want to throw up. Nadezh shakes her head and leans across the table. She’s glad for the private room and how it allows her to show him how his words affect her. “Babe, you don’t have anything—"

“I know how hard you worked for that job,” Gannon interrupts. He licks his lips. Now it’s his turn to stare at his tea. “Please, just…listen.”

Nadezh would do anything Gannon asked. She squeezes his hand again and fights the words bubbling up her throat like lava.

“We haven’t really talked since that day,” Gannon says. He’s a Hero; he makes himself look into her eyes. “I haven’t really talked. I’ve been afraid to. I know your past isn’t…isn’t good. I do. And I know that you don’t want to forget about it or pretend it doesn’t exist.”

She wants to, but she can’t. Like hunger and emptiness, she doesn’t think Gannon will ever understand the weight she carries from the harm she’s done. The screams she’d once reveled in now haunt her in ways she could never have guessed. But he’s talking to her, so she doesn’t explain. She listens.

“I feel like I’ve been making you give up everything for me,” Gannon confesses in a rush. He speaks faster as her eyes widen, like if he makes his sentences a big enough river, she won’t be able to dam it up. “Your first civilian job, your past, and your freedom to do whatever you want to do – because you could do anything, you really could – and even your powers.” He rubs his thumb over the underside of her wrist where the power suppressors sit during working hours. His face crumples. “Every morning, I will have to take you to put them on. It’s…I hate it. It feels like I’m abandoning you, or like I’m part of your punishment, or like I’m not being the partner you deserve.”

She starts, half rising from her seat. “Gannon! How could you—?”

His grip is strong on her hand, and he gestures for her to sit with a quick jerk of his chin. His eyes close tight. “Please, Nadezh.”

She quiets.

It takes him a long time to start speaking again. He remains quiet until he’s able to look her in the eyes again. “You…that day. The day you saved my and my team’s life.”

The day she thought her fairytale had come to an end. Even now, the memory of his blank eyes as she revealed the red and gold costume of the Firebreather, one of the world’s most notorious and deadly supervillains, follows her. The cold wind whipping across the ship’s deck, the pillars of ice gleaming in the sun, his team haltingly asking her if she was going to take over the boat…and his eyes. The pain that ripped through her when she realized she would lose him was worse than anything she’d ever experienced. It had made her realize that she’d been a shell for years until she met him, that she’d been nothing until he showed her a world where she could be someone. In that moment, she’d known that she’d wasted his time on a dead end. That their dream to get married would never be the same if it happened at all and she had robbed him in her greed.

But he remembers it as the day she saved his life rather than dooming his future.

“I became a hero to save people,” Gannon says. His lips thin. “How did I put it? That day at the diner? To share the relief of having the day saved.” His face twists in a way she can’t understand. “You must have thought I was so naïve.”

“No,” she says simply.

He raises their hands so he can kiss the back of hers. “Thank you. I think I was naïve. Being a hero seemed simple, looking at the world that way, like everyone wanted to be saved and, in turn, wanted to one day go on to save someone else. Every moment of salvation would get repaid. Good things would always happen to good people.”

Well, when he put it like that.

Gannon continues, “But when I saw you standing there, dressed as the Firebreather, being saved was…different. It was all different.” He swallows hard. “For the first time, I realized saving the day wasn’t so simple. You had to reveal your identity to do it. You had to put your freedom and everything you worked for on the sidelines. Even us. You were ready to do it even if it meant we never got the chance to be married. I could tell that you weren’t going to let that stop you. You were going to save the day. Instead of being relieved, I felt afraid.”

A small noise of protest builds in Nadezh’s throat. “Afraid of me?”

“No!” Gannon’s eyes widen and he leans over the table. “No, never. Never, Nadezh. Even when that last fireball singed the toes of my boots, I didn’t flinch for a moment. I knew you would never hurt me.”

Nadezh’s laugh is watery. “So that’s why you threw out those boots.”

“Regulation is closed toe,” Gannon says gravely. He plays with her fingers. “I was afraid because I realized there was a cost that I wasn’t willing to pay, but you were.”

“I couldn’t let you die,” Nadezh says.

“I know.” Gannon clears his throat and adjusts his grip on her hand so that he can feel her pulse against his thumb. “I know. I’m not saying that’s wrong. Just…it was hard, wasn’t it?” His brown eyes search hers. “You knew before you even left the apartment to find me that you were going to lose everything.”

“But I didn’t,” Nadezh points out.

“But that’s what you thought.”

She can’t deny that.

“Saving the day is easy when it’s just a job,” Gannon says. “That day, I realized that I’d never really been a hero. It was a job, an important one, but not one that was going to take anything I wasn’t willing to give. That same job was the reason I let myself just stand there as Hero Force took you into custody. Like a coward. I hate myself for that moment.” His voice is raw with the admission. His free hand curls into a fist. “I should have run with you then.”

Nadezh barks a disbelieving laugh. It’s inappropriate, but the idea of Hero Zone, the most honorable hero in Chicago, running away with a supervillain is ridiculous. She hides her incredulity. “That’s—”

“I’m serious, Nadezh.” Gannon’s eyes burn through her, gaze unflinching. Her pulse jumps under his thumb. “I still think that. We could run now. Settle down somewhere and be civilians. Never show up on Hero Force radar again. Like Bonnie and Clyde hiding out from the law.”

“That’s not funny.” Try as she might, Nadezh can’t find any trace of humor on Gannon’s face. Her eyes dart around the room. When she can’t find any cameras, she leans forward and hisses, “Don’t even joke about that. You love being a hero.”

“I love being with you,” Gannon says. This time when he smiles the mole under his eye disappears with the force of it. “I told you, all I want is to marry you. No job will ever be worth more than that. So…” His smile wavers for a moment before he fixes it in place. “What do you say? Will you run away with me?”

Fuck. Her mind leaps ahead. They could get a place in the mountains. She knows how much Gannon misses his hometown on the East Coast. His family has long since disappeared from those ridges and valleys, but she can see him there, facing the sun with his arms held over his head in triumph. A field sprawled out below him blooms with green and a house sits just beyond that with a gently smoking chimney. Could she belong there too? With him?

Gannon mistakes her silence. “You wouldn’t have to wear the power suppressors ever again or worry about Briston yelling or what Hero Force will make you do. It could be just you and me like we always imagined. Together.”

Is he pleading with her? Begging her to say yes?

There will always be a part of her that wants to. The greedy and selfish part that wants to keep him all to herself, like the doll in her childhood that unraveled at the seams after only a month. The part of her that could hide him away is familiar. Too familiar.

“No.”

Gannon’s face falls. “No?”

“Not because I don’t want us,” she assures. Somehow, she feels lighter. Is this what’s been sitting silently between them this whole time? She could laugh. “I do. But I think you’re misunderstanding something. You’re not the reason why I’m cooperating with Hero Force.” She thinks over her words and then rephrases. “You’re not the only reason.”

“I’m not?” Gannon backtracks. “I mean, it’s not a problem if I’m not, but I thought…well. I thought given what you said in the interrogation room…”

“You will always be the love of my life,” Nadezh says. She finds the words as she says them. She’s had a lot of time to think about this – Gannon is not the first one to think what it’d be like to run away. “That will never change. It’s just…” Private room, she reminds herself. No one will be able to hear. She confesses, “I want to change. I don’t want to be the Firebreather anymore.”

“You’re not!”

Keep him, no one can stop you, power suppressors barely work once we really get up to temperature—Nadezh stops those thoughts firmly in their tracks. “There are parts of me that still are. I was afraid when I revealed who I was, but since then look how far I’ve come. You know all of me and you’re still here.” She lets her wonder and hope leak into her voice. Some mornings she wakes up to him by her side and can’t fathom how the universe let someone with hands as stained as hers have something so good. “I have a job. I have a way to give back for all the harm I caused. I…I think confronting my past has given me a chance to grow like I haven’t done before. A year ago, I couldn’t even accept the proposal from the man I love more than life itself. Now? I know that I can walk into work every day and have those power suppressors put on me by Hero Force -not you - and I can hold my head high.”

“Not me? Nadezh, I’m your containment,” Gannon says. His expression is tortured in the candlelight. “You say it’s Hero Force, but it’s me. I’m the one holding you back. Foresight said that Firebreather was sufficiently contained by my side, he awarded me custody—”

“Are you feeling guilty over that?” Nadezh’s mouth drops open. “Gannon, seriously?”

“I feel like I’m choosing to be your captor over being your fiancé,” Gannon says.

“Just like how you knew I would never hurt you, I know you would never hurt me. I wouldn’t even have to use my powers. I know the second I didn’t want to put those cuffs on, you wouldn’t.”

“I’m still—”

“No.” Nadezh won’t allow any room for confusion here. “Gannon. Stop. I am the one choosing to do this. That day I gave you a choice, remember? I said that you could walk away and I would be—” fine is a strong word “—I would understand. I was going to keep the memory of us agreeing to get married and let you walk away.”

There’s gravel in Gannon’s voice. He reaches across the table to capture her other hand. “I would never change my mind.”

“I believe you.” He was patient with her, waiting for her to believe it. She holds his hands back. “I believe you. So here’s what I’m asking. You gave me a choice just now. Stay or run away. Please believe me when I say I want to stay.”

“Even if it means I have to be your captor?” he asks, anguished.

She nearly snaps at the question. Isn’t he listening to what she’s saying? His tone stills her. She studies him. His eyes are teary, and she can feel his hands tremble in hers. “This really bothers you.”

He nods wordlessly.

She tries to put herself in his shoes. She imagines that he’s working as a henchman who used to be a hero. She imagines putting cuffs on him before work every day, knowing that he’d be helpless if the Villain ever decided to turn on him—She winces. “Maybe we can ask Omit to put on the cuffs instead?”

“I…we could try that,” Gannon says after a long moment. He breathes in through his nose. Out through his mouth. In through his nose. Then, “I really ruined this celebration dinner, huh?”

She snorts. Both of their eyes are red and swollen despite neither of them crying. “This is about how most of my celebration dinners have gone. Better, actually. Nobody is screaming and nothing’s on fire.”

“Yet,” Gannon says.

“See? There’s still hope.” They’ve been talking for so long that her wine is warm. She grimaces as she swallows. “Hey, captor? I think it’s time you took me to a secondary location.”

“That’s not funny.” Despite his words, Gannon’s lips twitch as he stands and pushes in his chair. “I’m really upset about that.”

Nadezh follows him to the door. She caresses his shoulder, ostensibly checking him for dust, but really needing the contact. “Should I comfort you?”

Gannon drops back to put his arm around her shoulders. “Hmmm, keep talking.”

“I think I have Stockholm syndrome—”

“I change my mind. No more talking.”

Nadezh laughs. “Riiiight.”

It’s not perfect. Nadezh knows that the conversation isn’t over. There’s a guardedness in Gannon she’s never seen before when talking about Hero Force. He doesn’t believe her, not yet. But that’s okay.

She’ll be around to convince him.

(Except for 9am-5pm Monday through Friday. She somehow doesn’t think Briston would take kindly to a hero responsible for flooding the docks every other week hanging around the office.)

----

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Next week I have the continuation of my Cinderella retelling going up there first and then here later in March. You can read Cinderella here (Tumblr X) (PatreonX)

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fish-engulfed-writes · 4 months ago

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You were once the most powerful villain. You retired early and are engaged to a minor super hero who isn’t aware of your past. They are about to be killed right before your eyes..but you step in.

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fish-engulfed-writes · 4 months ago

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Granny's Sugar Cookies

Summary: Working in Hero Force’s mail room is the equivalent of being a poison taster for monarchs – it wasn’t a matter of if a disgruntled citizen was going to send Hero Force a bomb, but when.

Based off this prompt (X)

--------.

Travis, your supervisor, makes you take Disposal Training every two weeks to keep your skills fresh for the inevitable day something does show up in the mail.

“You’re lucky,” Travis says with his wide arms folded over his chest. He still wears the mail uniform from the 90’s with the pale blue, short-sleeved button down and the darker blue pinstripes. The Hero Force mask covering half of his face is in the new “regulation black” that every Hero Force personnel has to put on at the start of every shift. You hear Travis complain that they won’t let him wear the old brown one a lot. “But luck won’t ever take you further than training, kid.”

You aren’t a kid. In fact, Travis could almost be your kid. Your pension isn’t supposed to start for another three years, so that’s how long you need this job to last. There are rumors that Travis is trying to get you to quit before then as a way to prevent you from collecting retirement benefits from Hero Force. Save the company some money. You don’t think that’s true. You think that the extra training every second week is actually Travis’ way of being kind – you get to sit in the air-conditioned office for two hours and watch the same videos with your feet propped up.

Still, it is unusual that you haven’t opened anything criminal yet. Lots of people cautioned you against taking the job. Your neighbors, friends, your husband…even your eldest -who also works for Hero Force and who suggested it to you in the first place. They said it was the equivalent of being a poison taster for monarchs – it wasn’t a matter of if a disgruntled citizen was going to send Hero Force a bomb, but when.

“I don’t think it happens as often as people think,” you’d told your husband and child when the offer letter came. What you didn’t say was we don’t have a choice. You’d laughed and petted the coffee table. “Now maybe we can think about getting this old thing refinished, hm?”

Three years isn’t a long time anymore, not with a good 63 of them already under your belt. When the financial advisor ran the numbers and grimly told you how long you’d need to stay in the workforce, you’d been relieved. You’re fortunate that being a baker for most of your life has kept you reasonably fit and that you’re used to being on your feet.

Still, eight hours is a long time for anyone to be staring at bland white envelopes and brown boxes wrapped with yellow tape, so you’re thinking longingly of the bath you know your husband will have drawn for you at home when the blast doors slam down over the exit, trapping you and three of your coworkers in the sorting room.

You blink at the heavy metal plate that nearly took your (seemingly ever-growing) nose right off your face. The WARNING light hanging above the door is lit, casting the room in a striking red glow.

“You scanned that here?” Ring asks. He’s over at the sorting table, standing over the new hire’s shoulder. He gapes down at the screen held between her hands. It shows an x-ray of the box sitting innocuously on the sorting table. “Boxes with that dimension are supposed to be scanned in the disposal room!”

“It’s my last package,” the new hire says. You have to strain to hear her voice despite only being a dozen feet away. She’s already been given a nickname – Mouse. Fear makes her even quieter than before. “I-I thought—It’s to Strongwoman. Who would even think sending her a bomb would work? She got hit by a bus last week and the bus lost.”

“You know we don’t sort based on recipient,” Hawk says, pinching the bridge of her nose under her mask. She’s the veteran in the room, gaining her nickname from being the longest surviving member of the mail room after Travis and for having the highest number of successful disposals in history. Hawk eyed. “Your scan just told the defense system there’s a bomb in a vulnerable part of headquarters. We’ll be trapped here until they can get Demolition out to disarm it.”

“Or until it goes off,” Ring offers helpfully. Ring stands for ring the alarm, something he’s always doing. “Which it probably will before Demolition flies over from freakin’ California.”

Mouse hiccups. Her hands tremble on the scanner. “I-I’m sorry. Maybe it’s not…it could be something else?”

Ring and Hawk look at each other over her head. Ring tilts his head to the scanner. Hawk’s lips thin.

Translation: Unlikely.

“Maybe,” Hawk says. She puts a comforting hand on Mouse’s shoulder. “The only way to tell for sure is to open it.”

“Which protocol says we shouldn’t do,” Ring says.

You rub your nose. You don’t have to go to the bathroom this second, but you know your body. Protocol is not to carry a phone in the sorting room, so none of you have a way to you’re your husband and let him know you’ll be late. “How long do you think it will take for a disposal team to arrive? Supposing there’s one besides Demolition.”

Three heads whip towards you. There’s a range of emotions there, from surprise to dismay to dread.

“Oh no,” Mouse whispers, “I’ve killed Granny too.”

“If you survive, no one will ever forgive you,” Ring says.

Mouse’s eyes well with tears. “R-really?”

“Even Neon loves her muffins—"

Hawk hits him over the head hard enough his mask slips down over his eyes. While he curses and sets it to rights, she says, “Sorry, Granny. We’ll probably be waiting a while.”

You tug at your cardigan and shuffle over. The box is too big to be scanned in the sorting room – about the size of a case of flour you used to get delivered to the shop. The three of them make room for you on their side of the table. You squint at the screen. “What type of bomb is it?”

“Not like any I’ve seen before,” Hawk says. She takes the scanner from Mouse and angles it towards you. The box is shown in green and black lines. Inside is a cube of white and some curly bits. There are strange shadows across each shape, as if there are layers and layers of something over the top. “You?”

You raise your eyebrows. You thought it was common knowledge. “Well, I’ve never seen one before outside of training.”

Mouse starts. “Never seen—”

“Granny is lucky,” Ring says. He pats her on the shoulder like Hawk had. It’s nowhere near as comforting. “You��re just unlucky enough to have canceled that out.”

You pull out your glasses. You’re supposed to get the mask with your prescription over the eyes to prevent anyone from recognizing your personal eyewear. You think the prescription masks are itchy, however, so you regularly sneak them in your cardigan pocket. The scanner remains incomprehensible to you, even with them on. “It doesn’t look anything like it does in training.” You frown as the curls begin to look like ribbon the longer you stare at them. “Are you sure this is a bomb?”

“The defense system triggered on it,” Hawk says.

You wave your hand. These new AI systems are wrong all the time. You recently saw a news article about how the facial recognition software at the Hero Academy failed to pick out a top journalist, allowing him complete access to the campus. “They wouldn’t have us here sorting if the system were infallible.”

A strange look crosses Hawk’s face. “That’s one perspective.”

“It’s a state-of-the-art system,” Ring tells Mouse in a low tone. You imagine he thinks you can’t hear him or the faint laughter in his voice. “It’s not wrong.”

That grates. You may be new to the sorting room, but you aren’t wrong to question the systems. You point. “It could be cookies. See these disks here? Sugar cookies, I used to make a recipe just as thick. They’ve been very popular to send to Strongwoman lately; she must like them. And that’s the ribbon tying the box closed.”

“No,” Ring says. “No, it’s not cookies, Granny.”

Your spine stiffens. “I think it is.”

“Granny,” Hawk says tentatively. “Do you…often think things like these are cookies?”

“People do send the heroes a lot of baked goods,” you say. “It’s the best way to show gratitude!”

Mouse’s jaw drops. In a normal voice, she says, “You’ve been sending bombs onto heroes thinking they’re cookies?”

“Because they are,” you say.

“Oh my god,” Ring says. “Granny has seen a bomb, she just hasn’t recognized one before. Oh my god.”

You’re too old to stamp your feet. Instead, you narrow your eyes at Ring like you did when your eldest drew on the walls. “I have not. I open each package—”

“You open them?!”

“Protocol—"

“-and they’re always just cookies,” you say. You snag the package before any of them can move. “I’ll prove it to you!”

There’s a bit of a scuffle. Mouse doesn’t move out of the way of Ring’s lunge in time, and they both topple onto the table. Hawk tries to yank the package away from you, shouting something or other about better to be cautious or Granny stop! But you’re stronger than they think. They may call you Granny, but you’re only 63! Do they think you need a cane to walk?

You rip open the tape. Mouse screams. Ring whimpers. Hawk closes her eyes tight. You shake out the contents of the box.

A pink pastry plops out of the package and onto the scanning table. The three of them are frozen, eyes darting over the pretty ribbon curled into a bow holding it closed. With an indignant huff, you use a letter opener to cut the ribbon and flip back the lid.

Sugar cookies in six sloppy rows and stacked four deep sit inside.

“See?” you say triumphantly. “Sugar cookies!”

Hawk’s brow is furrowed. “That’s not—that can’t be—”

The bomb doors slide down and the WARNING light switches off. The system beeps three times and then falls silent. The quiet that fills the room sounds like victory.

“…so I can go home now?” Mouse asks.

“Yes,” you say smugly. You know it’s bad manners, but all the excitement has dropped your blood sugar. You snag a cookie and bite into it. “We all can.”

Ring and Hawk stay behind, staring from the box to each other and back again as you go home.

----.

You have two days off, and then Travis is off the day you come back so it takes three days for someone to tell you it was a bomb in that box.

That someone is Foresight, the leader of Hero Force.

He looks out of place in the sorting room, smiling and standing by the door as you shuffle from cart to cart to collect your jobs for the day. Travis is there with his arms folded and his eyes narrowed on Foresight.

“We call your class of power S-class,” Foresight explains. “The ability to change reality with a thought – it’s only been observed in a handful of super-powered individuals.”

“I don’t care what power she has,” Travis says. “You aren’t poaching Granny.”

“I would also like to stay in the mail room,” you say.

Foresight opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. He looks bemused as he says, “Alright then. We do need to quantify your power. Does Thursday work for you?”

“Yes,” Travis answers for you. “We’ll be there.”

Your ears perk up. Maybe it will be a long meeting. Maybe you’ll have a chance to sit down. “Thursday it is then. I’ll bring some snacks for everyone.”

----

Thanks for reading! If you'd like to support me and see stories like this one before anyone else, please consider checking out my Patreon(X)!

Next week's story is already posted and is a follow up to this story (X) about Nadezh and Gannon

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fish-engulfed-writes · 4 months ago

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In the interest of not derailing this already-long-and-awesome thread, here are some more details! (Paging @sparrows-corner and any other interested parties.)

So in my first semester of college, I took an Intro to Psychology class. I didn't expect anything special; it was just one of those general education courses that everybody was supposed to take at some point. But it turned out amazing.

What the general public didn't know at that point was someone in the college administration had screwed up and forgotten to assign a teacher to this class. Until a week before class. When several students emailed to ask why that detail was missing in the online listing.

The administration panicked, scrambled for someone-anyone-omg-who-can-drop-everything-and-teach-this-class. They called recently-graduated owners of Masters Degrees in teaching.

They found Sandy.

She was qualified and available, and much older than the average recent grad, with the confidence to go with it. This was still a daunting task, though, and she agreed on one condition: that she team-teach the class with a friend of hers who was still working on finishing his degree.

Having no other choice and seeing no real problem with this, the administration agreed. And thus was born the most glorious educational comedy act in my entire academic career. The two of them were a delight. They knew all the stuff they needed to teach, and they knew a great deal more, and they delivered lectures in a way that had everyone paying eager attention. It was great.

This friend, by the way, was awesome in his own right. While Sandy was a curly-haired white lady around middle age, Wayne was a black guy who (1) dressed in impeccable suits and (2) had cerebral palsy.

I think a lot of 18-year-old minds were quietly enlightened about a few things just from watching these two banter back and forth, one with joints more wobbly than the other. Wayne told a memorable anecdote at one point about stopping by a grocery store in sweat pants instead of his usual classy wear. The cashier asked some gentle question about what he spent his time on, assuming that he had some sort of carer following him around. The expression on her face when he told her that he taught college was one I'll never forget, and I didn't even see it.

Anyways, at the end of this semester, the two teachers asked a few of us smart kids if we wanted to be TAs (teaching assistants) for the next semester. Since most of us had already become friends during the make-a-group-and-discuss-things portions of the class, this sounded like a party that would look good on our records later. And it really was.

I TA'd for that class a few times in a row, with my buddies and the two very cool teachers. We met up outside of class for holiday parties and everything.

And, since this was during the time the Lord of the Rings trilogy was first coming out in theaters, we all dressed up in costume and went to an early screening together.

Wayne drove. His handicap placard meant we got to park at the front, which was pretty awesome.

Now, I'd met people before who knew more LotR lore than I did, but they all paled in comparison to Sandy. As I said in the notes on that other post, she shared some stories of her youth with us. When she was fourteen, she ran away to join a hippie commune. She already knew fluent elvish, and she used that to help the commune's drug-runners stay out of the clutches of the cops, by translating their drug notes into a language the cops couldn't read. With a start like that, it was unsurprising that she still knew elvish now, along with all sorts of fascinating deep lore.

She had a limited edition book that looked shockingly expensive. She made beeswax candles for all the TAs as holiday gifts, with our names written on them in elvish. I still have mine somewhere.

I haven't heard from any of these lovely people in a long time, since college moves on and so does life, but I will treasure those memories forever. I hope Sandy and Wayne and the others are doing well. They deserve the best.

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fish-engulfed-writes · 4 months ago

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there is something to be said for going to zoos and aquariums on weekdays to avoid school-aged crowds but going to the aviary on a weekend is fun because going into big greenhouses and watching toddlers who just learned to walk encounter loose tropical animals taller than they are is part of the overall experience for me.

to me a three year old is just as much an entertaining and strange beast as an egret. and here they can interact directly. incredible.

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fish-engulfed-writes · 5 months ago

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Babylon and the Duck of Butter

I have a gift for falling in love with random objects. One time, my aunt got me a little rubber chicken, and whenever I squoze it, a little egg thing popped out. Very silly. Except that chicken became something like my best friend. I carried it with me to school, and I kept it with me in my pocket, and whatever social hazards there were about Being The Guy Who Got Stressed Whenever His Rubber Chicken Was Missing were far outweighed by being The Guy Who ALWAYS Had a Rubber Chicken On Him. There's a lot of comedic opportunity that comes with always having a good prop on your person.

Of course, the chicken did eventually. Explode. And such was my grief that I did not eat for 36 hours. This was very stressful for many people. Mostly my mom. I was a very strange child to work with. She took parenting so incredibly seriously, and then I'd pitch her these curve balls like refusing to eat for a day and a half because my rubber chicken died. No parenting book tells you what to do when that happens. You just have to feel it in your heart.

A less tragic story of an object that I fell in love with was a large, foam toad that I found in a trinket shop. The toad was the size of a very large grapefruit. Much too large to carry with me to school (thank god) but enough that I could move it around the house, to keep me company during my solitary pursuits. If I was reading, the toad was there, and if I was tinkering with legos, the toad was there, and even when I slept, I would wrap the toad up in layers and layers of blankets, and then spoon it. I did this until the rubber coating on the foam started to wear out, and the foam started to get brittle and break down and leak this repulsive yellow powder. Then I simply put the toad in the playroom and would consult it on matters of great importance. Eventually I stopped doing that, and someone took the opportunity to dispose of it. Not sure who. By the time I noticed its absence, too much time had passed for me to actually be sad. As an adult, part of me thinks I would have maybe liked burying the toad, but part of me also thinks I might have refused to part with the toad, which would have resulted in it leaking more repulsive yellow powder into the house. So I understand why that decision was made.

I want to state that this does not happen often, and it does not happen on purpose. I don't choose to fall in love with random objects. And it's always a little bit embarrassing when it happens.

Which brings me to my wife.

Before meeting my wife, I did not often go to places with crowds. I didn't really think of it as avoiding them - those places just didn't seem fun to me. But she liked those places, and I really liked her, and being with someone who really likes something can kind of sell you on liking it too, so I'd take her to places and watch her Visibly Enjoy the Fair and go: Alright. The fair is pretty sweet.

Which is a thing that happened. After fourish months of dating, I took her to the fair. And she fell very visibly in love with a large series of quilts, and she stayed near them for a while, which she thought was very embarrassing, and I got to pretend to be understanding as an outsider, because I thought it would be much more impressive than also being the type of person that would fall in love with a quilt.

Do not do this. The gods punishment for my hubris was that the room next to the quilts was full of butter sculptures, which was an entirely new thing to me, and I immediately fell embarrassingly in love with all of them. It was like the biggest, sappiest non-sexual crush you've ever had, but not only did the other person not recipropcate, they could not, because they were made of butter. I actually got yelled at for pressing my face against the glass, which is fair, but also, I hadn't realized I was pressing my face on the glass, I just started leaning forward because after approximately 30 minutes of staring wistfully at a cow made of butter my legs got tired. And I think I should be given some grace for that.

Anyway. My wife was very patient with me taking more time to look at the butter sculptures than the average person might spent at the Louvre, and she also felt much less embarrassed over falling in love with a quilt, and we had a good laugh about it on the ferris wheel.

A few weeks after that was my birthday. And I don't know what I expected, exactly - but I did not expect what she did.

Dear reader, she made me a butter sculpture. Of a duck.

She picked a duck, because our first kiss was at a Japanese friendship garden. It was our second date, and she'd made up her mind not to do any kissing until the third date, but as we sat on the grass, a duck walked past me, and I'd just seen the hold-duck-gentle-like-hamgurber meme,

so I sort of impulsively reached out and snatched it. I honestly didn't think it would work. I don't know who was more flabbergasted, me or the duck. But we looked at each other, and then I looked at her, and then she looked at the duck, and she looked so incredibly envious that I assumed that must have wanted the duck so I just handed it to her.

It turned out she was actually envious of the ability to just grab a duck as it walked by, but she accepted the duck and stroked it a few times before releasing it. (She also made up her mind to kiss me in that moment, which was very nice.)

Anyway.

She made me a butter duck of my own. Obviously, I fell in love with it immediately. I cleared out all of the freezer-portion of my mini fridge, and I put the duck in there, and for the next several months, when I felt sad, or lonely, I would open the door up and spent some quality time. Just me and my duck.

But this is, of course, not the end of the story.

Because.

After several months.

The mini fridge died.

I really didn't use it that often. It was mostly my duck storage container. But one day, I walked by it, and it struck me that it wasn't humming. So I opened the door, and it was just. Far, far too late. The duck was dead. Dead dead. Turned into a foul-smelling slime dead.

I cried. I did. After the rubber chicken thing, I thought I had changed, but I had not changed, and the unexpected death of my butter buddy left me pretty shook. I texted my then-girlfriend now-wife about how sad I was, and she actually came over to help me say goodbye. We didn't even bother scraping the duck out of the mini-fridge, we just said our goodbyes to both and threw them together in the nice dumpster behind the chapel, because it seemed appropriate to put it in God's dumpster. And it did actually help quite a bit. I certainly did not go 36 hours without eating again.

And that was, for some time, the end of the butter duck.

However. Three (or four?) years ago, for my birthday, my wife was looking around thrift stores. And she found something interesting.

The original butter duck had an odd pose. She'd sculpted it laying flat, intending to raise it up later. But the butter was less flexible than she thought, and she was afraid of cracking it so she left it down which left the duck with a very elongated, very in-motion appearance. And she found a brass statue of a duck in the same, running posture.

It wasn't the original. But it was oddly on the nose. It was a yellow brass, it had the same strange posture, the same crude little face feathers.

I think it was $3, but it remains perhaps the most thoughtful gift I have ever received. I got very choked up when I unwrapped Butter Duck, The UnDying.

Pic provided.

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fish-engulfed-writes · 5 months ago

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The Van Has Officially Declared It Spooky Season

---

I've got my parent's van for the week and it seems determined to establish my status as The Local Cryptid by terrorizing an innocent 7-11 clerk.

...I might need to back up a bit.

My mother is an eminently sensible woman who knows herself well, and when The Plauge hit, she knew she'd need some sort of mentally and physically engaging craft project to keep herself from going insane and massacring the local zoning and water management boards (even if they have it coming). So she and Dad acquired a utility van and converted it into a camper van because while they love camping, they're past the age where their joints and immune systems will tolerate sleeping on the cold ground in a nylon tent.

They did a terrific job of it and my mom taught herself woodworking and carpentry and now the van has it's own cabinets, fold-away dining table, and removable queen-sized bed with memory foam mattress. My Dad was already a computer engineer, but he learned the dark magics of automotive software and electronics to install after-market backup cameras, a media player that would take a terabyte hard drive and a solar-powered battery and outlet so they could wake up and just turn on the kettle and griddle for breakfast without having to exit the van into a cold morning on an empty stomach.

Truly, the height of Camping Luxury.

My parents are both in their mid-seventies and my primary life goal is to be at least half as cool and hale as they are when I get old.

Anyway, they take it out at least a dozen times a year and it works fabulously, but, being as I am on good terms with my parents and also finishing the process of moving house, I've been borrowing it to move large and cumbersome objects that will not fit in the back of my equally lovely but minuscule Honda hatchback.

It's a Great Van. Very easy and comfortable to drive. Stunningly good MPG for it's size. The best cruise control I've ever had in a car.

It's just also. Quirky. Mischievous, even.

---

If this van has a fault its that it bears the unfortunate affliction that all lightly used white utility vans have in that the combination of an utter lack of branding features and the large dent/scrape I accidentally put on it while trying to escape a Denny's last Thanksgiving means that this vehicle is one addition of a Badly Spray-Painted "FREE CANDY" on the side away from being the sort of vehicle you see in an edgy horror movie.

It's got the same issue that Doberman Dogs have where they look like the sort of creature that likes to snack on toddler's faces whilst actually having personalities made of marshmallow fluff. This vehicle is unnecessarily menacing and I think nothing short of an airbrushed Epic Van Wizard will correct this. People see this van pull up and lean over and squint suspiciously at me when the driver's side door opens, and then look moderately confused when, instead of Charles Manson, a small, potato-shaped creature with neon purple hair and a statistically unlikely assortment of dogs emerges.

My own two dogs, Herschel the Hanukkah Goblin/Corgi and Charleston Chew The Taco Dumpster Dog, Do Not Like The Van. Even with the bed in it, they have a tendency to slide and roll around in the back, and both WILL chew through dog saftey belts or other attempts to secure them in there.

On the other hand, my house mate's dog, an exceptionally tall standard poodle whom we lovingly call "The Creature", loves the Van because SHE wears her doggy seat-belt with only mild complaining and gets to sit up in the passenger seat like A People.

Also like A People, The Creature likes to stand and walk around on her hind legs. It doesn't hurt her and it's entirely voluntary, but every so often I will feel a hand on my arm and instead of my husband or friend, it's a canine that's taller than I am on her hind legs who wants to stare at my face with soulful, concerned eyes. The Creature's favorite thing is that she is exactly the right height for me to hold her arm in Genteel Fashion and walk around the pet food or hardware store with her like I'm a count escorting a debutante around a royal ball.

---

As it stands, I am set to inherit this vehicle whenever my Honda gives up the ghost, and I fully intend to paint an Epic Van Wizard on it when that time comes.

The other peculiarity of The Van is that while Dad did manage to successfully install all his after-market electronics, not all the electronics get along. Sometimes, they fight for Dominance. The Terabyte Music Player and the Backup Camera have a particularly contentious relationship, and turning on the music has about a 25% chance of turning on the backup camera as well, and turning on the Backup Camera is equally likely to turn on the music.

Firthermore, The Van has a favorite song.

I am not kidding that Dad filled an entire terabyte hard drive with music and the software to sort it via the radio controls, but of all the Early Boomer Dad Rock (Kingston Trio over The Eagles) and Irish Folk and Symphonies and the entire discography of Weird Al Yankovic, The Van's favorite song- The one it picks to play as victory music every time it beats the Backup Camera at their weird electronic game of rock-paper-scissors -is The Liberty Bell March by John Phillip Sousa.

You all know this song already.

...but in case you've forgotten the tune:

youtube

Yeah.

The Van's favorite song is the goddamn Monty Python's Flying Circus Theme Music.

It does not play this song at a normal volume.

Every time I turn on the Backup Camera and it manages to turn the music player on as well, The Van insists on absolutely blasting this nonsense on at the maximum volume it's physically capable of producing, which I know is loud enough to be heard from the Denver International Airport's Pickup zone when they Van decided to start playing it from the economy lot about half a mile away.

Perhaps it's The Van's way of honoring the aesthetic sensibilities and sonic enthusiasm of Mr. Sousa.

...I can't help but wonder if the purpose of an Epic Van Wizard is to control this sort of faerie-like malarkey, and channel these chaotic energies into things like Spell of Don't Break Down In Nevada or Enchantment Of Always Have Good Parking.

---

So last Friday the 13th, I get a call from my friend and housemate, at said airport.

It's roughly 11PM at night, and I have already retired for the evening. I am in the exact minimum of clothing required to be a decent housemate and not scandalize the neighbors should I happen to walk by a window. My feet are up. There is a cat in my lap and fictional British people murdering each other in highly inventive fashion on the tv. -But my friend has returned from her friend's wedding,and either American or United Airlines has managed to lose her luggage, including, among other valuable possessions, the keys to her car. ...So she cannot just drive home as originally planned.

There are, as luck would have it, her spare set of keys not eight feet from me.

Being a good and decent person, I agree to bring the spare keys to her so she may get home before daybreak and not spend a semester's worth of tuition on an uber across the greater Denver traffic jam.

Being also that she Loves Activities, and it's her mom we're going to pick up, I elect to take along The Creature.

I am primarily focused on remembering how to get to the airport and not leaving my friend's spare keys on the counter, so I throw on a pair of flip-flops, step outside, remember that it's AUTUMN and my minimal evening attire is not sufficient thermal protection, step back in, grab the first coat in the closet I lay hands on, pull it on, check that I have her keys again and leave.

The trip to the airport is largely unremarkable, save that it becomes necessary for me to put on sunglasses to drive, despite it being nearly the witching hour and almost entirely darker than the inside of a cow.

It's necessary because this blissful darkness of night is violently punctured by a startling number of cars that seem to have installed miniaturized but no less powerful lighthouse bulbs in where their headlights ought to go so the oncoming traffic and sports cars that insist on tailgating me in the slow lane alike illuminate the road and my mirrors with the kind of radiance I'd normally associate with the arrival of a Seraphim.

I arrive at the distant highly discounted airport car lot where my housemate is waiting, deeply apologetic. It's nothing. I say. Once I see that your car starts up, I'm gonna go to that 7-11 across the way that I parked in front of, get a slurpee or something and I'll see you at home.

While she is retrieving her vehicle (an equally eccentric but much more stately Subaru that is old enough to be elected to congress) I rifle through the loose change in the glove box and discover that I have exactly $6.66 in small bills and coins. The Subaru, continuing it's long voyage into vehicular immortality, immediately starts up.

Upon her return, we all remember that my friend had all her camping gear in the backseat of the car and there is no room for The Creature to ride home with her parent, so I again assure her it's nothing, and will just take The Creature into the 7-11 with me. She is trained as a service animal and needs the practice after the plague.

I wave my friend off and turn to enter the 7-11.

I promptly trip over the jutting back bumper of The Van and fall, cartoonishly, face-first onto the sidewalk.

Fortunately, I have a lot of practice falling on my face, and have learned not to throw my hands out but instead cover my face, so my unexpected self-inflicted attempted curb-stomping lightly scrapes my hairline and nothing else -my sunglasses even stay in place- and I get up and resume my quest for a slurpee.

It's well known that the airport is a lawless place, and the 7-11 across from the discounted airport parking at the stroke of midnight is no exception.

I know it's the stroke of Midnight because there's one of those Audubon society bird-call clocks that makes bird noises, and my arrival is heralded by the twittering call of a Summer Tanager. I am almost charmed enough by the unusual choice of chronological device to excuse the exorbitant Airport-adjacent mark-up of Slurpee prices. I stand at the machine for some time, trying to decide on a size for the price and guess what the fuck "Blue Lighting Blast" is supposed to taste like.

The Creature is being Very Polite but is somewhat agitated, I assume because she *just* saw her mother for the first time in three days and then she LEFT with no explanation, so The Creature is on her hind legs, staring woefully into my eyes, asking to be escorted around the 7-11. Even though that's not what she's not supposed to be doing, there's nobody else in here, so I let her hang off my arm and discuss various Slurpee Flavor options with her.

We eventually decide on an experiment in which I try a Small Blue Lightning Blast, and discover it tastes a bit like licking a nintendo cartridge but in a pleasantly satisfying way.

I go up to pay and realize something is amiss.

The Cashier is a young man staring at me with wide eyes, one had over the register and the other wrapped up in his rosary.

I look down at myself.

In my haste to reunite my friend with her spare keys and service animal, I had left the house in the following accoutrements:

Flip Flops. Not matching. It's below freezing outside. That last part is not particularly odd footwear for the weather in for Colorado, but it's an important detail for the rest of the ensemble.

Assorted scrapes, bruises, cuts and welts on my arms and legs that come with doing outdoor work and living in a house with three dogs and a fully-clawed cat that all want to be in my lap all the time. It's cold out, so vasoconstriction has pulled the blood away from my skin, a trait that served my ancestors well during the last Ice Age, but leaves me with pale skin to contrast the various wounds and I look like a corpse that fell out of the back of a pickup truck.

The black Bootyshorts with "CRYPTID" painted in bright red gothic font across my ass, that @theshitpostcalligrapher gave me for my wedding present.

A peculiar but extremely comfortable garment that straddles the line between "Lacy Camisole" and "Industrial-Strength Sports Bra" like the Ever Given straddling the Suez Canal. It is also Bright Red. with black accents.

The Jacket I had grabbed out of the closet, which is in fact, a black Velour Dinner Jacket.

The Tokyo-Ghoul inspired reusable anti-covid mask a friend made me with the set of Coyote Teeth.

My sunglasses, which are shaped like a Halloween Bat. The lenses are the wings and the body is the nose bridge. It is ALSO bright red.

A Very Large and remarkably Humanoid Poodle that I have been audibly affectionately calling "Dear Creature" who is hanging off my arm like she's my Prom Date.

The Very Large and remarkably Humanoid Poodle is ALSO dressed up in a black Dog Sweater that has white bones printed on it to look like its an X-ray jacket showing off her skeleton.

I look like I am taking my Very Fancy Werewolf Girlfriend to a particularly casual Dinner Party for Vampires, but the thing that's really selling it and probably alarming the kid the most is the fun accessory I acquired in the parking lot not five minutes earlier:

The "Small Scrape At my Hairline" is actually a painless but PROFUSELY bleeding head wound that I had somehow entirely failed to notice covering my face, neck, decolletage and magnificent cleavage with blood like a Tarantino Film Extra.

This does explain why The Creature has been delicately trying to use her bodyweight to push me down onto the floor for the last ten minutes. So I don't injure myself while we wait for the paramedics she hoped this kid called to arrive, you see.

The Creature has such a High and Naive Opinion of humanity.

I decide this social situation is already fucked, and the only way out is through, and with haste, before I start dripping on the floor.

"Hi there!" I say cheerfully, to indicate this is a visually alarming but not terribly serious situation. "Just a Small Slurpee!"

The Cashier has entered the relevant code into the register before I finish the sentence. His gaze flicks off me just long enough to look at the total, and he grips his Rosary harder.

$6.66

"Oh cool! I have exact change!" I say, taking the money out of my as-yet-unsanguined pocket without looking and slap it down on the counter. "You have a good night and be safe out there!" I wave, leaving.

I get in The Van, mortified, buckle The Creature up, and as I make to leave, I have to put it in reverse, which automatically turns on the backup Camera.

It also turns on the music player.

I make eye contact with the cashier as the dulcet tones of John Phillip Sousa boom from the van hard enough to make the windshield and the windows of the 7-11 rattle for the nine-and-a-half seconds I have to wait to be able to turn the volume back down. Not knowing what else to to, I give him a thumbs up, and leave.

Anyway, now I know what my Future Van Wizard has got to be dressed like, and what their familiar is.

---

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fish-engulfed-writes · 5 months ago

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So the tire-eating potholes in my neighborhood finally killed both my rear tires and I had to get that dealt with, but while they were getting replaced, I put the dogs in puppy daycare and upon picking them up early, the attendant literally sprinted to the front desk, grabbed me by the shoulders and breathlessly exclaimed "YOUNEEDTOCOMESEEWHATYOURDOGSAREDOING"

While she escorted me back to the play yards, she explained that every time they have more than three Corgi, they have to put all the Corgs in a separate play yard because they turn into a little gang and bully the Very Large dogs by playing Cow Herding Simulator 5000 with them, and especially if Herschel is there, because corgis are bossy-pants dogs, and Herschel has the bossiest pants of them all and acts as leader.

Despite being a little Don Corgleone to the short bitch mafia, Hershcel is also a Huge Baby and will apparently cry and cry and try to climb the fence and cry and eat people's shoelaces and cry if he is separated from Charlie during playtime, so this means any time that "Corgi Party" is happening, Charlie also has to go to Corgi party, despite being full-height, running cat software and a senior citizen. he copes with being Gulliver amongst the Liliputians by climbing onto the roof of the playskool castle they have for a climbing structure in the yard, kicking the ladder down behind him, and stretching out to nap in the sun while the corgi frolic and gambol around him.

Corgi are dogs that make up and play games with secret rules, like kindergartners. "Everyone bark in sync" is a popular game, as is "follow the leader" and it's companion game "March in a circle around a tall structure like ants caught in a death loop".

So what I was greeted with, when the attendant and I snuck out to the play yard, was the sight of Charlie, sound asleep and flat on his back with his paws crossed over his chest because sighthounds sleep in the stupidest fucking positions, on top of a faux-medieval castle with gargoyles on the corners, surrounded by approximately seven Corgi, all trotting in a circle around him, barking in sync.

"They look like they're preforming some kind of ritual!" giggled the attendant as attempted to get my phone to focus.

"Yeah, they're gonna summon Corgtulhu." I said.

Unfortunately, this made the attendant literally fall on her ass laughing, and distracted Herschel and his compatriots, so they didn't get to complete the summons, and I didn't get the pic.

The attendant kept laughing because apparently she's new to puns, and had mostly gotten it under control by the time we got everyone's leashes on and back out to the front.

The manager was watching the front desk, bemused. Did you get to see them doing the ritual?"

"YEAH!" shrieks the attendant, still excitable with merriment. "THEY'RE- THEY WERE-" The attendant ends up giggling on the floor.

"You okay there Katie?" asked the manager with minimal concern.

"We think they were trying to summon Corgthulhu." I eplain, and Katie screams from the floor. "Wasn't gonna work though, you need a virgin sacrifice and Charlie had an STD when we got him."

It was the manager's turn to shriek. and for Charlie and Herschel to start barking in solidarity.

"That's right Charlie! Your sluttiness saved the world!" I told him, as he jumped up and kicked me in the face.

Anyway, that's why Charlie's nickname at daycare is now "Superman(whore)"

---

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fish-engulfed-writes · 5 months ago

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The Shortest Day Of The Year

Hey look it’s more Family Lore! content warnings: discussions of mental illness, nongraphic and nonmoving video.

Depression doesn’t run in my family so much as stampede, and this is the worst time of year for us. I pretty much live under my 10,000 lux lamp this time of year, and my sister gets into Christmas with an unusual degree of intensity for an Agnostic, to the point where nearly every available surface in the house is covered in garland, and she tried to put wreaths on the dogs last week. Charlie was his usual confused but accommodating self, and Arwen ate hers.

Out of us, my Mom has it the worst. She pretty much turns into a shadow of her usual self starting in about November. The sun lamps and holiday celebrations help, but she’s exhausted and glum, and at her absolute worst on the solstice.

December of 1995 was particularly bad for her- her parents health had taken a dive, work was being a pain, and our regular sitter had cancelled for the entire first week of winter break so I had to come into work with my parents. (My sister’s preschool hadn’t cancelled, at least. This was at Hewlett-Packard before everything went to shit, and we could be relied upon to sit in a cubicle and draw all day, so her manager allowed it). She was extremely stressed, to the point of coming home and crying.

Dad decided to do something about this.

They both worked at HP, at the same building, on different floors. Dad was an engineer, and Mom wrote internal instruction manuals (everything from business plans to repair guides), and would visit each other if they happened to be on the same floor, so it was generally known they were married.

On December 21st of 1995, I went in with him a bit early, and on the way to work, dad turned to me at a red light and said:

“If you can keep a secret from Mom, we’ll get donuts.”

I am easily bribed.

I don’t actually see what the paper-wrapped cone shape he puts in the trunk is, or make a note of the buildings we stopped at that he came out of with envelopes. I was six and had a chocolate donut. I had noted that he’d been listening to the same song from an old broadway musical for like, a week now, but I listened to enya on loop at the time, so I wasn’t going to judge.

We arrive at work late, and the envelopes and the paper cone come in with us. I amuse myself by taking every single one of my dad’s O’Riley Media books off his desk and drawing the animals on the covers.

At lunch, Dad finally unwraps the cone and I discover he’s gotten a bouquet of a dozen white roses. We go upstairs towards Mom’s cubicle and as we do so, begin to gather a crowd.

Every year since they’ve been together, Dad has gotten my mother flowers and sung a love song to her on their birthday, and it had become something of an event in the office to see Dad perform for her. But their birthday is in April, so clearly something special is going on.

We find Mom eating lunch at her desk. Dad stands strategically behind the cubicle wall to hide the roses.

“May I bother you for a few minutes?” hes asks.

“Sure.” Says mom as I climb into her lap. The gathering crowd shuffles closer. Someone brought a video camera.

“You have an audience.” She observes as he steps out from behind the wall with the roses. She gasps, delighted and completely surprised.

He then sings the song he’s been listening to and rehearsing for a good week now, “The Shortest Day Of The Year” from Rogers & Hart’s “Boys From Syracuse” Since I was six and didn’t have my own video camera, you’ll just have to listen to the Broadway recording, but my Dad does have a very nice tenor:

youtube

There isn’t a dry eye on the floor, mostly because everyone came over to see what the fuss was. The women are crying because it’s romantic, the Men are crying because they aren’t nearly as cool and romantic as my dad is, Gay Charles who arranged my parent’s relationship in the first place is crying because 7 years on this is happening. I’m crying because it seems the thing to be doing.

Mom hands the roses to me, gets up and grabs Dad to pull him into a dip for a kiss, which is really impressive because she’s a good 9 inches shorter than him.

“I love you.” Says Mom.

“I also arranged for my parents to watch the kids next week and booked us into that B&B you love for three days after the project is finished so you can have a vacation.” Says Dad, awkwardly hanging off her shoulders.

“I really love you.” says mom, kissing him again.

It’s December 20th 2018 today and it’s another Bad Year for seasonal depression for Mom. It’s been cloudier and darker than usual, she’s on new photoractive meds right now so she can’t use the sunlamp and current events are what they are.

Dad called me earlier today to ask me order a dozen white roses because Mom gets email alerts on her credit card and he wants it to be a surprise.

He’ll pay me back at christmas, but I’d do it anyway because I’m ridiculously lucky to have these romantic dorks for parents.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider donating to my PayPal or KoFi so I can support myself as a writer, or if you want to Pre-Order my book of bizzare, funny and sometimes romantic Family Stories, you can subscribe to me on Patreon!

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