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maddiem4-writes · 2 years ago

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Yes, Anything

Close your eyes. It's late afternoon, and the golden streams of sunlight are creeping in through the stained glass of a half-full bar, lighting the dust motes into visible beams of varying tints and colors. This place doesn't get busier than happy hour, and for two women sitting at their regular booth - not a clean table, but probably the cleanest to be found here, with the least indeterminate stickiness and stale beer smell - it's the perfect density of schlubby middle-aged patrons and thin enthusiastic hipsters for a pair of conspirators to have a private conversation in peace and comfort. You notice that the thinner, sharper-edged of the two seems deep in thought…

I leaned back and groaned, blowing a smooth and careless river of smoke between my pursed lips, The Cigarette perched between my fingers in a deceptively tight two-finger pose. Carmen waited patiently, sipping her beer, watching me think. The noise of the bar, in warm tones like the wood of our booth seats, faded into the background. I closed my eyes and considered the biology of it. Everything else fell away from my attention, the clink of glass and murmur of regulars, gone.

"Fuck. There's no way around it." I opened my eyes and glared at a chip in the far wall. "We need a changeling."

Carmen laughed. "A changeling? Where are we gonna find a changeling for this job?" She brushed some crumbs off her oversized sweater, which permitted a clearer view of the permanent stains on the Eagles logo. She tapped at the edge of her plate with a finger. "What about a wolf. Eh? They're a dime a dozen in this town, we both know it. They transform too."

I shook my head. "Not in a way that could sever the connection. You still have an arm before, and an arm after, right? Either way, from wolf to human or back again."

She picked up her sandwich, took a big bite, and responded around it. "Shuw. Thas how weahwolves wook. Obviouswy."

"Obviously." I pointed at my arm. "Which is why we can't use a wolf for this job. It needs to be arm, then no arm - quick." I lowered my voice to a whisper. "You have to understand, this thing doesn't want to exist on its own. It'll work its little knifey ass off to stay integrated with the host."

Carmen gulped down her bite of BLT. "Right. The whole blood thing. Why is everything about blood, anyways?"

I shrugged. "Blood is life. Everybody wants life."

"Sweetie, I raised four kids. If I asked one of them what he wanted for his birthday, and he said 'blood,' we'd be looking up psychs in the phone book." She went in for another mouthful. "It's gwoss, bwood is gwoss."

"Well Carnificābō wants blood. It's just a dull, lifeless little stage prop without a host vascular system to tangle itself up in. It needs a battery, or it can't do its thing."

"Well why not one of us?" She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "We've got arms and some shape changing abilities, asterisk."

I shook my head. "We're dead batteries. The knife needs a living thing."

Carmen gave me a devilish grin. "Well that probably rules out a few other options, don't it?"

I couldn't help but smile back at her. "You were going to suggest a vampire, weren't you?"

She took another glug of her beer. It was some kind of stout or porter, dark and heavy. "You know me. And I know you - if a vamp could do the job…"

I stared her down, lifting The Cigarette back up to my lips. "I'd do what's necessary. I'd complain, but I'd do it." I sucked the air through the tobacco and the filter. "A woman has to have her priorities in order."

"See that's what I kept telling myself." I saw the muscles in her neck tense up just a bit. "You can take that hint any time, honey."

I stared at The Cig, now nearly burnt down, and I stubbed it out in the ashtray in front of me. "I'm still just fine with my choices, thanks. I know what I want."

"At all costs."

"More or less."

She shook her head. "You're a fucking nutcase. I'm loving the ride, don't get me wrong here, sugar. I'm in all the way to see what happens. But you're a fucking nutcase, with a fucking nutcase contract, and that's just the facts."

I chuckled. "Yeah, I have the nutcase contract? Look who's talking."

She shook her head vigorously, swiping no with her hands, in a way that made the leftover cigarette smoke dance out of the way. "Uh-uh. There's a line, Lizzie - see, my contract is unwise." She made a vertical gesture with her hands, this box over here. "Your contract…" She gestured again in a distinctly separate zone of the space between us. "… is unwell. There's a difference."

"You're saying you'd pick something else, if you had the chance to do it over?"

"I dunno. I might. I think about it sometimes."

"Hey, I keep offering to go break some linebacker kneecaps for you…"

She jabbed her finger at me. "Don't you fucking dare."

I smirked, and took a second to go back to WINTER, 16 YEARS OLD, NEXT TO THE ICE MACHINE BEHIND THE 7-ELEVEN, HOLDING THE Cigarette. The only one I ever smoked. It was bad at the time, put me off smoking for the rest of my life, but after living I'd developed the acquired taste. It was a Camel Blue, better than a pack of blues you could buy today and at a cost of zero dollars. I stuck it in my mouth, struck the lighter in my other hand, and puffed the Cig to life for the thousand and something-eth time.

She glared as I continued smugly, "… and every time I offer, you always react like that. That's no way to live forever, you know."

"Well, not everyone is quite so 'aT All cOsTs' as you." It was a very funny impression, cartoonishly affable and icy. I was flattered. "It's the goddamn Eagles, you fucking harlot. There's things in this world that are sacred."

I couldn't help but show my teeth in a Cheshire cat grin. "This is why you're so fun to work with, Carmen. The way your mind works is a delicious and profound mystery to me."

She rolled her eyes, arms crossed, huffy. I could practically see the gears turning in her head. "And if we get the knife? Who's on the kill list, other than the obvious?"

I stole the sandwich off her plate and scarfed down a bite before she could protest. She stared at me, dumbfounded, and I winked at her. "Ashide from him - (mm) - obvioushly, there'sh shome who'sh, but alsho shome whatsh."

She leaned in. "Lizzie, you're concocting something, and I wanna know. What do you mean, whats? You said it's a knife that can kill anyone."

I swallowed. "Uh-uh. I specifically never said that. What I did say, was it's a knife that can kill anything." I licked my lips clean. "We're here, at this dive in midtown, right? So what's stopping me from taking a step forward and having sushi in Tokyo right now?"

"Well you're not in Tokyo, idiot."

"Right, but think. You have to frame the idea right. What is the obstacle in the way of me being in Tokyo? What's preventing me from just being there if I want to be?"

She looked at me suspiciously. "It's… far away."

"Exactly!" I yelled, a little too loud, and then dropped to a whisper. "It's distance, right? Distance is the obstacle."

The gears were starting to get traction in her brain. I could see it. "Sure…."

"Well distance is just a concept, just a thing, right? And let's say I had this knife in my hand, Carnificābō. A knife… that can kill… anything."

"Oh fuck."

"If you can frame it right in your mind, you start to realize this knife can do just about anything. Open a portal to a faraway place, if you kill the distance. Make you instantly rich, if you kill your poverty. Cure any disease. Kill your ignorance, to learn anything you want. For the price of having to think about it like a Jeopardy contestant, and having the handle of the knife integrate its veins with yours, you can grant more or less any imaginable wish."

At some point she'd gripped onto her glass, hard, and a bead of condensation had started a voyage down her finger. She didn't seem to notice. "Oh fuck."

"You wanna know why nobody's stolen the knife before? Not for awhile, anyways."

Her eyes darted back and forth conspiratorially. "Well I expect if someone has it, it'd be hard to take from 'em, given the whole granting of wishes thing. How the hell do you steal something like that?"

I wagged my finger. "Easier than it sounds. We won't be the first people to try."

"So he'll be paranoid, for entirely justified reasons, about someone stealing the fucking knife. That's swell, hon. How do you know someone else will try to steal it, anyways?"

"No. I mean someone tried to steal it a long time ago."

"Who?"

"Long story, doesn't matter, and stop interrupting. The owner, he panicked, and made a big juicy mistake. He killed time itself, in a bubble 3.7 meters in diameter around himself. It's been measured and everything. He, and the knife, they've been frozen in the bubble for about 40 years now. Nobody's been able to break into that bubble, but we will. If anything, that's the easy part." I leaned back, put my feet on the table, and puffed a ring of smoke. "We have boy wonder on the team now."

Carmen stared at me for a long moment. "Alan?" I wiggled my eyebrows and nodded. She took a deep chug of her beer. "Good luck with that one."

I raised The Cigarette in a mock toast. "He's already working on what we need, not that he knows it yet. But like I said, that's the easy part. When the bubble drops, we need to move fast. We'll have the advantage of the old host being disoriented and terrified, so I think we can lop his arm off faster than he can realize what's happening."

Carmen nodded, started to get her feet under her again. "Tricky, but doable, okay. What's the location?"

I sucked in another puff of tar and toasted tobacco mulch. "Warehouse in Pittsburgh, and that's where most of the challenge lies. The place is occupied. There's this… mm… a polycule, I suppose, of gnomes."

"Fucking gnomes," Carmen gritted her teeth as she said it.

"Oh yes. So you know what that's going to mean."

"Yeah. Automations. Defenses. Automated defenses. Enchantments and booby traps and random bullshit all over the floor. And that's if they're not home." She stopped, and gave me a pointed look. "They aren't gonna be home, right?"

"I have a distraction lined up," I reassured her, a bit of a purr in my voice. It was a good plan. "And besides, we're ghosts. What's a trap to a ghost?"

She held up her fingers and started counting off. "Salt lines, rock salt shotguns, iron cages, bear traps, rune circles, holy flame…. and don't forget, we'll have a new host to escort through the mess, one you told me in no uncertain terms needs to be alive."

"T-t-t-t-t. You're right about the defenses, but we don't need the host for the heist, just to use the knife afterwards. Think about it." I tapped out The Cig. "Easy, clean, and simple."

Carmen looked me up and down. "You really think so, don'tcha?" Her lip curled up. "I mean, it's not the worst plan. On paper."

"Oh Carmen, you wound me. As if you've never seen my contingency management skills before."

"Don't forget how you died, Sugar."

"Ancient history," I brushed her off, "that I learned quite well from, thank you very much."

She laughed, and finished off the rest of her beer. "You're a crazy one, Lizzie, but I'll play along. Where do we start?"

I fetched The Cigarette and sheltered it in the cup of my hands, striking the lighter until it caught. "Well, like I said…" I blew a current of smoke into the air above the empty glass and nearly-finished sandwich. "… we have to find a changeling."

#writing #maddiem4 #elizabeth maroney

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maddiem4-writes · 2 years ago

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Midway

I stayed up a bit later on this one than I wanted too, but I really got into a flow that I didn't want to interrupt. The more I write these characters, the more I like them. It feels like a good sign to me, that I can't advance the plot without naturally writing character development, and vice versa.

Anyways. You know the drill by now. Close your eyes. It's the Fourth of July, 1982, at the New York State Fair. The heart of the fairgrounds is a busy place, even when it's not bannered red-white-and-blue. Teenagers kiss in the shade behind the portable haunted house, and the line to ride the bumper cars feels eternal. And on the border of the Expo Center, a little girl is closing her eyes, just like you...

The smell hit my nose before I even opened my eyes. Animals, farm animals: cow farts and goat piss and pig muck and horse shit. But also hay, and dust, diesel exhaust, and lilting above it all, cutting through it, the deep-fried irresistible smell of funnel cake. The chaos was wild, alive, constantly teetering between enticement and disgust.

I didn't waste my first moments of sight on Alan. Alan could manage himself. Holding a hand was a skill I'd mastered at age 4, and if my math was right, in here? This particular memory? I was all of 11 years old.

I'd dipped into this memory very briefly that morning, just barely enough to grab a snack and go. I was a little too used to my powers, maybe, only appreciating them when I had a guest to interrupt my routine - to put the magic back into the magic. Looking around me now, I felt the wonder all over again, stepping into this big, impossibly big world, with my whole future ahead of me. It was a lost world, and I'd stolen it back, an immaculate archive woven into my soul.

The Ferris wheel loomed over us, and that terrifying tilting thing I'd never had the guts to ride, and to my left, holding my hand, so did Alan. It was strange to see him so tall. Holding my right hand, was my father. Alan turned to see us and froze in shock, jumped, and I gripped his hand insistently.

"I told you, you have to hold on, idiot." I glared up at him, making a point of it.

"Just… what? Okay first of all you are so tiny and a child. That is not a move you pull right after sex, I shouldn't even fucking have to say that. Nobody should have to say that!" He was backed off as far as he could go, our arms taut. "And like, second, is this your fucking dad?" He looked up, bug-eyed. "Sir I swear this is not what it looks-"

I yanked his arm close enough to stomp on his foot. "Can it, dumbass. We're in a memory. I'm still me, and he can't really react to you. Be cool."

He was hyperventilating, which I took as a sign of direct disobedience. "Oh yeah? Be cool, huh? I've never been in a memory before. I don't know what's going on! And he's looking at me!" My hapless visitor pointed repeatedly, although once would have gotten the point across. "Why's he looking at me?"

I sighed. "People in memories are like… actors. Placeholders that just kind of wait for cues and lines, so they can do their cues and lines. Watch." I looked up at my memory-dad, and he looked at me, with that soft dopey face of his, the kind of deep-set eyes that are brought to you by the letter Beer.

I looked into his eyes and told him, matter of factly, "Ooga booga woogidee woo." Waved my hand in front of his face, and he didn't even flinch.

I took it further. "Mommy sucks off your brother every Thursday night." Memory-Dad's smile never changed, as peaceful and adoring as ever. Man had the patience of a saint, or maybe more aptly, a golem.

"I'll be damned," Alan muttered in wonder behind me. I turned, and he'd settled down almost immediately. I think if he'd had a notepad handy, he'd be filling it full of scribbles on the spot. "Can you control him?"

I smirked. "Nah. He'll just wait forever until I say my line. This place is halfway between a recording and a simulation. He's not reacting, because none of this is what I said next in '82."

"Obviously not. Although to be fair, you do have a bit of Bad Seed energy. It's not unthinkable."

I chuckled. "There's only one thing that's unthinkable, Alan. Can you guess it?"

He grimaced. "Can I guess the unthinkable thing? I doubt it."

I leaned toward him, with a gap-toothed grin. "THE PSYTANIC!"

He groaned, and I stuck my tongue out at him. "Wow. I didn't figure you for awful puns, Lizzy. That's a clunker."

"Oh, you love it," I said, rolling my shoulders in sweet victory.

"You wish!" But he was smiling. I got him. "Truly, you are full of terrifying and terrible talents." He bowed theatrically.

"Yeah." My smile sagged a little. "I didn't come up with that one though. It was… one of my dad's favorites." I looked up at his automaton. "You would have liked him, I think. The real version I mean."

"Maybe," he shrugged. "Kind of a bold claim, for someone who doesn't know me much yet."

"No, but I knew him. He loved everybody, everybody loved him. Well, I guess there were some exceptions. He sure managed to marry one." His image continued to wait, patient and peaceful. It was starting to hurt, to look at his eyes. "I think there had to be a time when mom and dad loved each other. Like, logically, right? Just… sucks that I missed it."

"Yeah." Alan stared at his shoes as the Midway crowd hummed around us. A handful of people screamed distantly as their roller coaster cars ticked over from lift to descent. The popcorn and cotton candy and overtaxed toilets waged war over the air, and the flies buzzed for all of it. Only we stood still. "…. yeah."

I squeezed my dad's hand. He looked at me attentively. I said, softly, "Hey. Can we get slushies?" I felt very, very small.

He nodded, and brightened up with excitement. "Sure, pumpkin, I got a few bucks budgeted for snacks, and I think a slushie would count." He leaned down, until he booped my nose with his. "Do you want…. asphalt flavor?"

I giggled. "No!"

"Do you want… barf flavored?"

I shook my head vigorously. "Nooo! Dad!"

"Do you want… roadkill chipmunk with a cigarette ash swirl, all topped with-"

"Dad!" I suddenly interrupted. This part… would hurt. "I'm not a little kid anymore. I just wanna see what flavors they have, okay? Don't be…" I didn't want to say this line. I was glad I didn't need to get the tone right, and so I said it soft, a soreness in my throat. "Don't be stupid."

His face fell. "Oh." He stepped back a pace, staring ahead. He nodded quietly. "That's how you… okay." He stood up, peered around over the crowd lifelessly. "It's over there. It's… it's over there."

I followed him, and Alan followed me, and at the cart, I picked lime.

We all sat down at a bench together. We were a quiet pack. Alan obviously couldn't order anything, and I didn't feel much like rewarding myself, so I handed mine to him. Dad got peach. We all sat there and watched the people mill and march around us.

Alan put the cup down after a few long sips. "Hey. Look, I'm… sorry about what I said earlier. The bad seed thing. I hope that's not close to home or anything."

I shrugged. "Doesn't bother me. I mean, I joked about Uncle Irwin, and that whole mess was real. Mom was a skank. It's old news, it's fine." I couldn't mask my voice well. I don't think Alan believed me.

He leaned back on the bench. "If it's fine, it's fine." He tapped the straw to his lips, thinking. "I just don't want to say anything hurtful."

I rubbed my temple with my free hand. "God! Can't you see that's a hundred times worse? Don't pity me. I've got a better afterlife than your actual life, if your life was twenty times better. I outgrew all these shitbirds around me." I waved my hand around at my past. "So stop treating me like glassware. These fucks couldn't break me, and neither can you."

He leaned back. "Okay, okay! Jesus." He scratched his head, and winked at me. "Irwin, though. Your mom hoed out for a guy named Irwin."

I laughed, and tossed my hair back. "Well I hoed out for an Alan, and really, who sleeps with an Alaaaan?" I needled him. "The only thing worse would be being an Alan!"

"Heyyyy, what's wrong with being an Alan?" he feigned a great offense. "I've been an Alan all my life, I'll have you know."

"It's a dweeb name! Alan. Look at us, the cuck, the dweeb and the ho."

"A fearsome triumvarate."

"They'll never know what fucked 'em."

"Hear, hear!" He toasted the air in front of me, since I didn't have a drink. Or, well, he had my drink. After a triumphant slurp, he put the half-full cup back down. "On that note, strategy. I haven't forgotten the conversation we're actually here to have."

"Right. You first, wiz kid. What are you up to, in that basement of yours?" My lips curled up, I was genuinely curious.

"A broad variety of things - the broadest possible, really." He cleared his throat. "That's kind of the point. I'm… curious."

"Curious?"

"Yeah, curious. Every type of magic has a feel to it, and details to know, and catches to navigate. Conventional wisdom is, okay, there's too much magic in the world to know it all. Well… fuck that. I don't just want to know everything in the flat and hypothetical sense that I read some words on a page. You don't really know it until you do it, and I want to know… everything."

I tapped my fingers on the wooden table. "Really?" I was fascinated. "'Everything' is… broad, even to read. But you want to do. You realize that your little project is going to include some real fucked up shit, right?"

Alan smiled thinly. "You have no idea."

I found myself very impressed with Mr. Shaw.

He turned to look straight at me. "I think I've incriminated myself enough for one long-past Independence Day, don't you? Now spill, Miss Elizabeth. What's up your sleeve, that you need a half-amateur sorcerer to make it happen?"

The wood was smooth under my slow-moving fingers, polished by heavy use and greyed by sun-bleaching. "I keep my interests close to my chest. But… well… there's a certain spell I'd like to acquire. It has some interesting potential if you put enough juice into it."

He sucked down another sip. "What kind of spell?"

I smiled sweetly at him. "Love."

"That's suspiciously mundane. What are you expecting to happen by amping it up to 11?"

"I'm expecting it to work, Alan. No maybes. Oh, and I'll need to track someone down, but I think I can mostly handle it on my own, unless you have some very interesting contacts."

"Funny you should mention that…"

I narrowed my eyes. "Why?"

"Because, if you can help me with the teeny, tiny resurrection I've been working on…" He winked, and finished off the slushie.

#maddiem4 #writing #elizabeth maroney

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maddiem4-writes · 2 years ago

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Lime Slushie

I told y'all I'd write a sequel to that last piece, and yes, it's hornier. In fact, from a literary standpoint, I probably should have broken this into multiple chapters, but I didn't, because I wanted to keep my promise about this being the smut chapter. You're welcome :D

Place yourself in a verdant field, with the distant sounds of children climbing on a playground, a handful of ultimate frisbee players being a little too competitive about it, and the distant sounds of traffic, all seemingly muted by the quiet hum of life itself growing at its calm and everlasting pace. Time stretches on a day like this, but it never thins. There's shade under the trees, for those who want it. Vendors hawking various snacks. And in one particular patch of grass, bathed in sunlight...

A gnat buzzed in my ear, and I shooed it away lazily, drowsy in the sun. God, how I loved the sun. To think I'd ever seriously considered giving it up… the idea felt absurd to me now. The cheap beach towel under me, ratty as it objectively was, felt luxurious pressed between my tan skin and the freshly mowed lawn of La Vista Park. Late spring felt like my birthright, and I soaked it in with the casual entitlement of a queen.

There are certain emotions you eventually give yourself license to, when you get old enough to let go of the bullshit. Certain kinds of confidence, an unwillingness to live by anyone else's standards. My airbrushed purple bikini was starting to look a bit out of date these days, and my body wasn't perfectly trim like a magazine model - but nobody stealing glances at me seemed to be bothered, and neither was I. It wasn't so bad to look younger than I was. Let them look, and let them blush. I didn't mind.

I was laying there like a reptile when I heard him. Even still, there are moments where I think the footsteps are his - my eyes opened a little quicker than I would have liked. But it was just… some guy. Some guy who was clearly attempting to summon a lot of borrowed courage from any generous god or demon willing to oblige. I gave him something that bordered on a smirk. I leaned forward, and broke the ice directly.

"I don't bite, you know. Missed my window for it." I gave him a sweet smile, a generous tableau of canines and incisors.

He sputtered nervously, disposable paper cup shaking in his hand, and the straw shaking even harder. For a moment, anyways. He regained his composure well, and earned a tick more of my attention by doing so. Not just prey, this one. Interesting.

"I was wondering if, maybe, you'd like a slushie from the cart over there. The piña colada's really good. Like…", he struggled visibly with his words, "really really good."

I reached down and picked up a half-empty cup of my own. "Oh, I've got it covered." I took a sip of the bright green slush. "Lime flavor. That's pretty good too."

"Ooh!" he leaned down to examine it. "I didn't see that flavor on the sign."

I winked. "It's my favorite. Reminds me of home. Doesn't taste like actual limes though, it's the artificial, candy kind of lime. When it's sour enough, it makes your mouth water, so it's extra refreshing, you know?" I took another sip, drawing the cup back from his prying eyes, and savored the sensation washing over my tongue. "That's the good shit."

"I'll make a note of that. Especially since summer's just about here. Which… you're definitely dressed for." He blushed a little. Cutie.

"Who am I to argue with the weather? It's a hot day, I might as well dress for it. Life's too short - or, maybe too long - to worry what people think." I leaned forward a little, looked him in the eye. "If anything, I think they like it. If they allow themselves to admit it, that is."

He blushed even redder, but didn't look away. He looked me up and down, like he'd granted himself some permission to do so. "I… I'll admit it, yeah."

I held out my hand to shake. "That makes you more honest than most men I meet. And still polite, in a world where it seems like every guy is just one or the other. Congratulations on riding the line, Mr. ….?"

He seemed to shake out of a trance, a little bit. "Shaw!" He reached out with his slushie-holding hand, caught himself, swapped it to the other hand, and tried again with his now-icy right hand one more time. "Alan Shaw. Pleased to meet you."

I took his hand lightly, and shook. "Elizabeth. Just Elizabeth."

"You don't have a last name?"

"Oh, I do." I grinned at him. "I have it, and I love it, and I'm fiercely protective of it. That's why I keep it all to myself." I realized we'd stopped shaking, and I was still holding his hand. The gentle dappled shadow of the sugar maple leaves swayed over us and back again. He felt so alive, and I felt alive with him.

"Elizabeth, No Last Name Given. Alright." He seemed uncertain, but intrigued. "How about a phone number?"

I laughed. "Nothing in service. You got a phone, though?"

"Yes?"

"Good. Help me up." He lifted me to my feet by my hand. I was unsteady for a moment, I felt like I'd softened in the sunlight, all rubbery-legged. I shook it off, and held my other hand out. "Phone?"

He handed it to me hesitantly. "Who are you calling?"

I didn't look up at him, focusing on the screen. "Nobody. I need to check something, real quick, while I have the chance…" These days everyone's phone was pretty fancy and different from each other, which is not an ideal combination if you're always borrowing phones, but I figured out how to do a web search. I frowned.

He stared at me. "What?"

I shrugged. "Nothing."

He popped his head over before I could stop him. "Wait, what? You a sports fan?"

"Me? I couldn't care less. But my best friend is."

He scratched his head. "Eagles, huh? I don't exactly follow sports myself. I had no idea they were taking off this year. Your friend, are they from Philly?"

I handed back the phone, screen privacy now entirely pointless. "Originally."

He looked at the screen himself. "They must be real excited. A shot at winning the Super Bowl, huh? That's gotta be a huge deal for them."

I pursed my lips and stared off into space. "Couldn't be bigger, honestly."

He finally looked up. "Shit. Sorry. I feel like I just invaded something personal."

I held my arm and looked down. "A bit, yeah. But you can make it up to me."

He stuffed the phone in the pocket of his shorts. "Anything! You name it. I really didn't mean to step in your private life or anything like that."

I looked up a little, at the markings just visible at the edges of his sleeves. "Anything, huh?" My mind raced, and I answered recklessly. "Then take me home with you."

"…what?"

"Not tonight. Not some scheduled date night you'll never show up to. Take me home now, or nothing." I had to look like I wasn't concentrating. Beach towel. Lime slushie. Hold in position. It was no wonder to me now why I'd felt a magnetism to this man. The risk and the reward were both astronomical, and I was going to chance it. If I was very lucky, this Alan guy would think with his dick. If not…

"N- now?" Come on. "Literally right now?" Yes. Just say yes. "With me?" You're the one, pal.

I shrugged and started rolling up my towel, putting it under my arm. "It's a one-time offer. If you're not interested, that's fine…" I was cursing profusely in my head. "But I'm heading home either way. So better make up your mind fast. I'm a busy woman, not lacking in options."

I think I saw him sweating. The towel wasn't so hard to maintain while I was touching it. I gave him a few seconds to look me over, and picked a direction for "home" in case I needed to take the bluff further. I slurped down the rest of my slushie, and began walking to the nearby trash bin. "Last chance," I said, tossing the empty cup in.

He looked around, debating with himself. "Fuck it. My place isn't fancy, but it isn't far either. Come on." He wasn't even parked far away. Cheap little beige sedan. Perfect.

The buildings passed by out the window, familiar to me by now after a long residence. I watched them go by, then turned to smile at my driver, who was stealing glances at my body. I winked, pulled down my top briefly, and told him: "that's all you get until we get there. Don't crash."

He grinned and saluted me. "Yes, ma'am!" And then turned his attention to the road just in time to slam on the brakes for a red light. God, I couldn't wait to see him naked.

His apartment was a basement with outdoor steps. It smelled damp and earthy, with a bit of fresh grass poking through the mud of the "lawn" that had long since become a walkway to the concrete stairs. There's a musty smell that all basements have, that got stronger as we walked down, and while I didn't mind it, it made me very glad I hadn't died in a basement.

He fiddled with the keys, until they jangled the lock open, and he rushed inside. Good boy. I walked in, and couldn't help but grin. I'd come to the right place, and it was obvious by the… decor. The books left open, the posters with sharpie corrections. I shut the door quietly behind me.

He was frantically trying to clean the place at the last second, apologizing for the mess, and I put my hand on his shoulder. He looked up, and I guided him to standing face to face with me, my finger on his lips. "It's alright. I like the mess. Leave it be."

His breath caught. "Okay."

I leaned in and I kissed him, tongue snaking around his, exploring him. His hands, somewhere between the roughness of a gardener and the softness of a scholar, started tentatively at my hips, then up my torso along the sides, then touching my breasts. Every second he was more urgent, or confident, or both. I reveled in it.

He broke free to breathe. "You taste like lime," he said, almost second-guessing his senses.

"And you taste like piña colada." He had scruffy brown hair, a little too long and shaggy, and I brushed it away as I caressed his face. "You were right. It's really, really good."

He gasped, and worked his fingers under my bikini top, grasping and groping, massaging my nipples. I began to unbuckle his belt with my hands. I soon had it free, and I broke off from kissing him again, and got on my knees for him. I prayed a thank you for the knockoff Persian rug beneath us, softer than the concrete below it, and slid his shorts down.

He was already hard, and I hadn't even done my due diligence of stroking him through the fabric. I knew I'd make up for that in a moment. At least from the waist down, his body was on display for me, and I liked what I saw. He was thin, and his cock was an average length and girth, but his legs had some tone to them, and the scratches on them… yes. I gave him one last look, and I think I must have been adorable, looking him in the eyes as I slid my tongue from his scrotum, up the shaft, all the way to the tip. He shuddered and leaned back against the bookcase behind him as I slid my lips down the length of him. He was salty and delicious.

And by god did I make it worth his while, and mine. I felt him on my whole tongue every time I got all the way down to the base. Up, down, up, down, feeling his fingers entwine in my hair. Hearing his sweet moans. I stopped halfway down, and worked him with my tongue inside my mouth, and I felt him grab a shelf of the bookcase to avoid crumpling to the floor. Emboldened, I pursed my lips for stiffness, so he wouldn't feel my teeth, and I sucked hard, and began bobbing my head like that. I wouldn't have cared if I made him cum then and there. I was lost in it.

His grip tightened on my head, and I knew what was coming next. I reminded myself that the need to breathe was an illusion for me. I couldn't get deader, at least, not this way. Fellatio is always an act of service, but it can seamlessly switch back and forth who's in control, and that's the beauty of it. Alan took control, and started forcing my head down onto him, fucking my face in its pretty little hole. I let myself go limp, even gag. I let him have his way with me. I became an object for his desire. If I'd been alive, I might have stopped him, but by now I'd had some practice pushing my limits.

When he finally pulled me off of him, I had tears running down my face, and a river of spit running out of my mouth and down my chin, with little threads still connecting to the sloppy drench of saliva on his penis. And I was smiling. I was proud. I looked up at him, messy and beaming. My voice was a bit hoarse and wet as I told him: "You can fuck me now, if you want."

He wanted.

He picked me up, hands under my armpits, and threw me against the bed so that I tripped and fell backwards onto it. He towered over me, with that look in his eyes. Knowing he was doing something wrong, something I wanted, something he could barely admit to wanting himself. I should have known he'd be rough with me. He peeled his shirt off, and I gasped. He truly was exactly what I was looking for.

I untied my top and threw it off, and was working off my bikini bottom when he put his hand on my chest and pushed me flat down on the bed. It was only when I went limp for him again that he took the hand back off, and used both hands to slide my panties off of me. He caught me by surprise by burying his face in my pussy, and I put a hand over my mouth to catch my own scream as his tongue slid inside me. His nose was rubbing my clit, and I used my other hand to grip his cotton sheets - a few weeks overdue for washing, and rich with the smell of him - writhing as he tortured me with pleasure.

He just kept going deeper, and then he started using his fingers… he crooked them upwards, finding that spot on the roof, and he stroked along the ridges. He moved his mouth to suck gently on my clit while he fingerfucked me. My body felt like it was on fire, and I moaned loudly. I was helpless to him.

Time seemed to stretch, I don't know how long he did that to me, but it was heaven. But when he stopped, he wiped his face on his arm, like he'd just finished up at a drinking fountain. He scooted me back on the bed. I looked up at him, feeling almost dizzy, so hungry for him to be inside me. He teased my clit with his cock once…. twice…. and then slid all the way in.

He'd lulled me back into a false sense of security with that detour into oral. His lust was greedy and aggressive, and he fucked me like he was trying to fuck the life out of me. I stared up into his eyes, my own glassing over, my brain being rattled into a submissive haze. He held me by the shoulders and drilled himself into me over and over and over again. At one point, he grabbed one of my breasts and fondled it, but the other kept bouncing with the power of his thrusts.

His breathing became harder, more jagged. I tried to nod, but my head was already being shaken up and down too much for it to be noticeable. He was going to cum inside me, and I wanted that so bad. Not for any plan, or ulterior motive. Just for me. Just to feel him do it. He fucked me harder, faster, pushing himself. I felt overstimulated and beyond the reach of reality. He took me for his own. It felt like a flood inside my pussy. I wasn't surprised that he was pent-up, but jesus. It lubricated him further as he kept fucking me, until his muscles spasmed with the roll of the orgasm, and he collapsed onto me, his weight cementing me under him, his cock plugging me full of his seed and preventing a single drop from escaping.

The sudden ending set me off in another orgasm, and I wished I'd been counting, but I'd got lost in the whirlwind of it all. I shook under him, and wrapped my legs around him, holding him even tighter. As close as a person can be. The thought flitted briefly in my head that maybe, just maybe, I'd underestimated my own loneliness. I didn't allow that thought to stay long. I just held him inside me.

We stayed like that for a long time. Interlocked, intersected, whole in a way we couldn't have been individually. We rested like that. When he finally pulled out of me, I lost control of my muscles again for a moment, shivering with stimulation. He rolled over next to me, wrapped his arms around me, and held me from the side. I looked over at him.

He couldn't look me in the eye, even as he held tight to me for comfort. When he finally spoke up, he said, in a simple statement of fact: "they don't sell lime flavor at the cart."

I shook my head. "No." And after a pause: "You've been carving runes in your skin, haven't you?"

He sighed and nodded.

I smiled. "I can show you the memory if you like. And you tell me what you're up to. Just… get dressed first."

He sat up, looking out a thin and pale-blue window of his basement home. "You say that like we both haven't made some huge mistake."

I put my hand on his shoulder blade. It lived up to its name on a thin guy like him, angular and defined. "We haven't. Or at least, I don't think we have. I think we've laid the groundwork to a very mutually beneficial partnership."

"Oh yeah?" he said sarcastically, pulling on a pair of jeans that had been crumpled at the foot of the bed. "Not getting any results in the Ghost4Sorceror section of Craigslist?" But there was a bit of playfulness in the tone. That's how I really knew. Got 'em. I knew you couldn't say no.

"Don't be an ass, hear me out. You tell me your thing, I'll tell you mine. We help each other. Friends with extensive benefits, what's not to love?" My towel and bikini had disappeared… probably an hour ago. My concentration had been elsewhere. I stood up, closed my eyes, and remembered:

SUMMER DAY. AUGUST. LATE 80'S. I WAS WAITING IN LINE AT THE BANK. I WAS WEARING A-

I opened my eyes, dressed in a red skirt and frilly orange top. The outfit had made me feel like a marigold flower, and made enough of an impression that I could remember it clearly, down to the shiny black heels. I felt fresh and clean.

Alan blinked. "That's fucking spooky."

I shrugged. "I'm a spook. And, well, you did just fuck me."

He wrestled his way into an uncooperative graphic tee, boasting a faded and pockmarked Led Zeppelin logo. "True and true. And for the record, I have no problem with spookiness. Obviously. I'm just trying to figure out which kink I've gotten myself into - interspecies, or necrophilia."

I waggled my finger in front of him. "Nuh-uh. Monsterfucker."

He stared at the ceiling in thought. "I can live with being a monsterfucker. Ah, crap, shoes…."

I laughed and offered my hand. "Don't need 'em! But… hold on.'"

He stared at me warily. "Why? Is it like, I'm gonna fall down the vortex of space and time, or fly across the city, or…"

I grabbed his hand. "No, dumbass, it just doesn't work if you let go." I closed my eyes and called up the same memory I had hours ago, when I was settling in at the park this morning.

JULY 4, 1982. SYRACUSE, NEW YORK. I WAS ELEVEN YEARS OLD AND MY DAD TOOK ME TO-

#maddiem4 #writing #elizabeth maroney

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maddiem4-writes · 2 years ago

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Exit Music (for a Sunrise)

This is a short story I wrote because I was feeling inspired by Spooky Season and a Veritasium video. It involves unique vampire lore and self-destructively horny characters, and I'll probably eventually write an explicitly explicit sequel.

Close your eyes, smell the pine forest and chlorine, hear the hum of an ice machine faintly down the hallway, and then...

"It's the acidity, that's the stupid thing."

I glanced dozily over at the boy sitting next to me. I wasn't entirely sure if I could feel his pulse pushing back against mine. The short length of aquarium tubing between us was a much darker red than I would have imagined, and I felt just fine.

He pointed at his neck, in two places, symmetrical on either side, and continued. "Your carotid forks like a wishbone on either side. And there's a little bit in the fork, that tells you if your blood is acidic. That's what tells you when to breathe."

"Really?" I smiled warmly. "What's acidity got to do with breathing?"

He smiled too, but his eyes were on the horizon. There was a thinness in his expression, an old pain. I felt my heart leap for him in that moment. I don't know why. "Acidity's got everything to do with breathing, especially the yearning for it. You've felt the need to breathe before, haven't you? The desperation that comes from being denied air?"

I shrugged, a little put off by the question. "Yeah. Obviously. I'm alive, aren't I?"

He chuckled. "Obviously. Silly question. It's been awhile for me." I wondered what he meant by that, and waited for him to explain, but he was determined to get back to his original topic. "You can't really feel low oxygen. And you can't really feel high carbon dioxide… directly. But carbon dioxide, it makes your blood sour. Those little bits in your neck, they tell you that your blood is sour, which means you probably have high carbon dioxide, which means you probably have low oxygen too. Sour blood means you need, more than anything in the world, to breathe."

"Really?" I stared off into the orange-ripple sky, wondering if he was seeing something particular in the clouds, or the skyline. The night air was cool on my skin, but by now I'd warmed the concrete of the balcony, at least the parts I was touching. It felt a little less warm now than I vaguely remembered it feeling half an hour ago. It was beautiful out there in the expanse of the world, and complicated, and so was he. I turned to him, and pointed down at the tubes. "Am I sour?"

He turned to me, and his short sandy hair rustled in the breeze. His lips were turned up in a grin, and he held a finger up, gesturing. From inside the hotel room, Thom Yorke's voice rang in sweet, distant echos from the FM radio. Pleading, crooning:

Breathe…. keep breathin'….

The boy tapped his finger in the air to seal the moment. "No. Not sour at all."

I relaxed a little further, cozy in my spot. "Cool."

His brow furrowed then. "I'm sorry about this, by the way. Either way it goes."

The wind opened up the neck of my shirt a little further, and I didn't mind, but I wished so badly it would do the same favor for him. I laughed, I honestly laughed. "Well, what are the ways it could go? Sounds like there's just two of 'em."

He just stared at his palm, the gorgeous hand which flowed in clean lines upwards to the softly sculpted arm that had the needle stuck into it. He didn't answer my question, he just said, "You probably think I'm unfathomably selfish, don't you?"

I shook my head. "Why would I?"

He looked at me fiercely then. "Because I do." And there was a razor buried in his voice, a fresh fire in his eyes like I'd never seen. "Because I'm trying to convince myself desperately that I'm not, that I don't have choices, and really, do I? When it's like this, when the price is this high to simply be?"

I wasn't sure what to say to that. So I said nothing, and he continued, gathering terrible momentum.

"It would be easier if I could pretend what so many of us pretend. A divide between the divinely ordained race, and the livestock. There's certainly a host of fucking incentives to believe that. But it's a house of cards. It falls apart when you can talk to the cattle, and they're just like you, except.. briefer. And you were like them once - even if it feels more like a story than a memory anymore - it happened, and you can't escape knowing that."

I leaned toward him, careful of the needle in my arm. "You say a lot of words to dance around what you mean, Conrad."

His expression softened. "There are more than two options, actually."

The trees were visible several stories below us, and stretching out for acres. Just barely visible, mind you, but a texture of the world painted in moon-grey tinsel. The birds were beginning to wake now. I asked him, gently, silently. Insistently. I asked without words.

He hesitated. "I'm… deciding."

I sighed, peeved.

He looked me up and down. "You could live forever, you know. If you don't mind the dark."

I scooted closer to him, and it was harder than I expected. My muscles were heavy. I didn't care, and I kissed him. "The dark's not so bad. But your voice has a catch in it, something darker than that. I want to know what it is."

He took my hand, put it on his chest. I steadied my heart - I had to. He was looking at me earnestly, and I matched him. "Do you feel it?"

Breathe…. keep breathin'….

The rising, the falling. "Yes."

"I still do that. It'll buy me about a week. But it won't last. Blood breaks down, it gets sour, and I'll feel like I'm drowning… all the time."

I nodded. My mind was starting to feel clear, even as my body as getting heavier. "You're deciding whether to put me through the same wringer, aren't you? Forever, but with an asterisk."

He nodded back, eyes serious as Sunday service. "It's one of the options. And it's a big asterisk. But it's bad to be alone like this. You don't die, but it's hard to find fresh blood when you can't function, and you can't function without fresh blood." He cupped my face in his hand. "I've been alone for ten months, Elizabeth. A blink in my lifespan, and I can't count the times I've nearly spiraled into helplessness and suffering in that time. It's the longest blink I've ever endured. We're not meant to be alone."

I smiled at him. "I've loved other men. Gone on a NyQuil run here and there. Sounds like the same thing, just with higher stakes."

He winced theatrically, barely containing a giggle. "Oh, don't talk stakes to me!"

His hair felt so soft as I twirled it in my fingers. "You're an idiot, Conrad. But I don't mind it."

He stared into me, warm and kind. I was starting to feel a bit cold in the morning chill myself. "I really could. I really could do it." The last vestige of my glass of wine was in his voice, and it sounded like spun gold.

I kissed him again. "Call that Plan A. And the other options?"

"Cheeky!" The smile lasted for a moment, then faded, and he was looking through me. His voice resumed hollowly. "The next option is to just drain you. You know that's on the table."

"Walk the earth alone? Take your chances with that vicious cycle of yours?"

He raised his eyebrows at me. "That's a remarkably selfless way to talk about the consequences of dying tonight."

"I won't." I winked at him. "You need me and we both know it."

He rolled his eyes. A little of the morning light - indirect and pale, but with the promise of a turmeric sunrise - was beginning to dance through his hair. "I told you, I lived ten months without you so far."

"Oh, I know." I poked his nose with my finger. "I heard you describe it. Good luck with month eleven, sounds like real glory days for you. Lap of luxury, through and through."

"It's not a kindness to put you through that."

"Then don't." I traced my fingers up his bare leg, towards the cuff of his long-dry swim trunks. "Take me with you. You said it yourself, we're not meant to be alone."

He stopped my fingers with his, gently. Sadly.

"There's a third option."

He stared off into the horizon, but I stared upwards at the wall of the hotel. The rising sun was already peeking over the forest-covered hillside at the cold stucco of the upper floors. The curtain of light would find its way down the wall to us in a few minutes. In these hours at the open and close of day, the sun is at such an oblique angle that, if you watch carefully, you can see the borders of shadow moving moment by moment. It still doesn't seem quick, and yet if you take your attention away for what seems like no time at all, it creeps up on you with a ferocious and unwavering pace.

That is what made me feel truly cold.

"You wouldn't," I said, with none of my previous confidence.

He stared off at the hillside, wind rustling his teal polo shirt, saying nothing.

"You wouldn't."

He opened his mouth, idly stroking one of his fangs with his finger. "Did you wonder why I didn't use these?"

I gulped. "Because it's hard to talk while drinking?"

"We don't drink it. Our fangs are… highly vascularized. What good would blood do in our stomachs? We don't drink, we drain. That doesn't make talking hard, it makes it impossible." He turned to look at me again, a weariness in his gorgeous shoulders that I could barely stand to witness. "And I sorely needed to talk with you tonight."

I felt a hot tear run down my cheek. "Before you go?"

"In case I decided to."

"It doesn't have to be like this."

"It's been a long ten months, Elizabeth."

"The next ten don't have to be. They could go by like nothing at all. You and me."

"And the trail of bodies we'd leave behind together."

"God dammit, Conrad!" I shouted, suddenly impatient and furious and terrified. "Don't do this to me. Not now."

You can laugh…

He smiled at me, transparent in a way I'd not seen him before, old inside and visible and vulnerable. He was pink and warm, and if anyone had seen us, they would have guessed wrong which of us was a vampire. Pink and warm and tired. "I asked you, when we met, what you'd do if you only had one night left on earth…"

… your spineless laugh…

I couldn't even raise my arms anymore, but my hand was clenched in a fist by my side. "You fucking bastard."

We hope your rules and wisdom…

He looked up at the sky, its stars stolen by clouds and the rising dawn. "And we did it, you know! We actually fucking did it."

… choke…

I felt lightheaded. I looked up again, and the light was beginning to glare off the frame of our room's sliding glass door, the top edge.

… you….

What they don't tell you about exsanguination is that it feels a lot like not being able to breathe.

He held my hand, and stared into my fading vision. "I'm so grateful to you, Elizabeth Maroney. And you've helped me decide, at the eleventh hour. Down to the fucking wire."

… Now, we are one…

He unstuck the needle from his arm, and started for the sliding glass door, which was still open. "I'll never forget you, Lizzy. Sorry it wasn't Plan A."

And then he fell like a mailbox making the unfortunate acquaintance of a vehicle-speed baseball bat.

… In everlasting peace…

My hand was clamped down hard on the tubing. I don't think I could have let go anymore if I wanted to. "Fuck you, Conrad."

He stared down at the noose of deep-red tubing around his ankle, yanked into an impenetrable knot by his resistance against it. I guess he never felt me wrap it around him when I was teasing his leg.

… We hope…

He stared at me, dumbfounded. "Lizzy, what did you do?"

… that you choke….

"Insurance."

… that you choke.

The blaze of the sun was upon us, and I realized one last time that I finally felt warm again. I was distantly aware that he was struggling with the tube around his ankle, and then with my hand, beating me, screaming in panic.

We hope… that you choke…

The sun was so warm.

… that you choke.

Let there be no mystery about how I died. February 4th, 1996, exsanguinated next to a severely burnt corpse. His name was Conrad. And my name, the last goddamn word he screamed out of that pretty little throat, was Elizabeth.

#maddiem4 #writing #short story #one off #vampire

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maddiem4-writes · 3 years ago

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Reposado - Chapter 24

We stared at each other from across the beach. I couldn’t read her face at all. I began to really feel the tremendous weight of being in your own past. I shook myself off a little. None of this was real, this all had to still be a dream. I was still wearing the same clothes (and in some cases, the same lack of them) as the first dream when I arrived here. There probably wasn’t anything I could do to break real history here. Probably.

I put my hand on Jonas’ shoulder, gently. He was very enthusiastic, and it took a minute to tell him “I need to talk to your cat.” He seemed very, very perplexed by that.

He gave me a very serious, concerned look, and then looked back and forth between me and Citrine. Eventually he said, “you know cats don’t talk, right, Mrs. Meyer?”

I blinked. “I just want to pet her a few minutes, won’t be long. I’ll teach you a spell when I get back, okay?

And all else was forgotten. He belly-flopped into a wave, yelling about how all he needed now was his buried treasure, and I figured, well good for him. That would keep him occupied for a minute. I focused my attention on the climb, the hill… the weird conversation I was about to walk into mostly blind.

The terrain got surprisingly difficult toward the end. The beautiful smooth rocks don’t provide a lot of steady footing, and they tend to roll in unexpected ways. I looked down, paid attention to every step, heard the ocean get quieter, and felt the saline breeze slowly drying my hair. It smelled good, I liked it. I finally looked up and there she was.

I cleared my throat. “Well. I see you haven’t talked to him yet.” She just stared at me and flicked her tail. “Really gonna give me the silent treatment too? You were a tough nut in the 20s. Both of the 20s I’ve seen so far, but… in very different ways, I think.” She cocked her head, but still said nothing.

I sat down next to her and sighed, looking off into the ocean. “You don’t wanna give up a cover of being an ordinary cat? Fine. That’s totally fine.” I took a deep breath of sea air. “But something important happened today, or maybe it’s still going to happen today. August 8, 1921. And I don’t know what that something important is.” I looked at her. “But I want to hear your take on it, Citrine. I think I value your opinion more than almost anyone right now.”

She looked at me in surprise. I shrugged. “What? I know who you are, at least in parts. I know that you have a clearer picture than you let on. I could use a little wisdom, or at least context.” I sighed. “And maybe a way to wake up from this dream.”

“Dream?” She stared at me intently.

I broke out in a smile, “I knew it! I knew it wasn’t just a name coincidence! Jesus Christ, you had me sweating, little cat!” I didn’t want to admit to quite how crazy the one-sided conversation had made me feel, but maybe admit a little.

She scowled. “Just because you inexplicably trust me, doesn’t mean I trust you. Maybe you are just foolish and naive. Have you considered that perhaps I can’t be trusted?”

I shook my head. “Nah. I have too much life experience to go down that path of thinking.” I took a chance. “I just know you too well by this point.”

Someone who didn’t know her so well might have been fooled by her seemingly unchanged posture. She was extending her claws and trying not to be seen about it. “You’ve been watching me, chimp?”

I backed up. “Holy shit, girl. Easy. It’s more of a time loop thing. We’re gonna know each other really well and lean on each other in crisis someday. Just… in almost a hundred years.” Her ears flicked in surprise. "Okay, you didn’t know that yet.” I held up my hands unthreateningly. “I didn’t know how much you knew in 1921. You’re mysterious about things.”

She relaxed a little more in body posture, but kept the claws ready. “It’s an interesting claim. I don’t think I believe you, but I’m listening. One shouldn’t believe claims of time travel easily.”

I snorted. “No, one shouldn’t. You should have some kind of proof, something that isn’t just a story from the future that you can’t che-“ I stopped. I instantly knew it was the right idea, but it was a hard one. I coughed, and bowed my head down. After a moment, I said, “I know what would prove it to you, but you wouldn’t like it.”

She glared at me. “Don’t waste my time. Either tell me or don’t, but remember I’m not a kitten. Do not treat me like one.”

I said it softly. “We named your children together.”

Her body slowly bristled up. “Excuse me?”

There was no way out but through, now. “You always remembered your children, but you had them before you had language. They lived and died without names. When you started to get more comfortable talking about those memories, you wanted names for them, so we… named them. Retroactively. Together. All in one night.”

She stared at me in horror. “I would never, ever do that.”

I looked at her apologetically. “Things change. People change. I’m realizing how different you are. I kinda thought as an immortal you’d change slower than anyone, but you are different than the Citrine I knew. I don’t know all of what happens to you between now and then, to soften you on the idea of naming your kittens. You never told me. But I can tell you their names, if you’d like.”

She stiffened. “No. Just tell me how many you think there were.”

“You had seven, but one of them died almost immediately, so growing up it was more like six.” The memories were wiring together in my brain. “This is going to sound even weirder, but I have tattoos of all of them. I saved your life a couple times that way, it’s a long story. But you’ll eventually have matching ones under your fur. Nobody would know, but we know.”

She sat down and sagged. “Please stop.”

I looked down again. “I’m sorry.”

After a long moment, she said bitterly, “You know, it’s ironic? I think I believe you, but you’re not here for me. You’re wasting your time way up from the beach. You’re not here for me at all.”

I scratched my head. “What do you mean, Citrine?”

She looked up in exasperation. “This is all my fault. I brought the boy here. I thought it would help him. I pointed out little clues, knocked things over to point him in the right direction. I hate dogs and I hate water, but I knew this is where he needed to be to find someone to help him.”

I stood up. “Wait, so that means… are you saying me falling from the sky was the event? This is all your memory, isn’t it? Your dream?”

She looked out toward the ocean. “I was just trying to do the right thing. And I think I failed.”

I shook my head vigorously. “No, this is a memory, your memory. You and Cassie are linked, so your memory of the dog star printed on me too. This is what the Sirius tattoo brings up for you.”

She stared back at me. “You needed to help him, and you missed your opportunity. This dream is threadbare and fragile, you will not be here much longer.”

“No.” I backed up. “No, I can still get down there. Tell me what I need to do.”

“You need to wake up.”

I stumbled across the rocks. I couldn’t see the kid. It was empty beach in all directions, so he had to be in the water. “Jonas!” I screamed. “Jonas!” Of course he went in the water alone, shit shit shit. The ocean swallowed my words. I couldn’t even figure out which part of the water he’d went in, but it had to be somewhere. I hit the sand and ran full-speed. “Jonas!”

Citrine’s voice was far behind me now, but louder than I’d ever heard her. “If I have to live with this memory in my heart forever now, why should you get to walk away without it? We are guilty together, bluebelly. We always were.”

I stopped at the waterline and looked around desperately. I was so scared of the ocean now, and it had begun to roil and churn in new, unsettling ways. I'd promised him I’d teach him a spell when I got back.

The black cat was far behind me now, and yet I heard her voice with the clarity and presence of a breath on the back of my neck. “Do not hold onto this fading place, do not let it take you with it. It’s just a dream, Lisa.”

The wave rose high above me, and I felt small in the scope of it. I closed my eyes and held my breath. I heard Citrine’s voice, one last time, as the shadow passed over me, and reality collapsed.

#reposado #maddiem4 #novel #writing

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maddiem4-writes · 3 years ago

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Reposado - Chapter 23

I opened my eyes, weightless, at least 3 stories above the Atlantic ocean and ripping through the air like like a dull knife through a worn-out tarp.

It occured to me in that moment that I really don’t know how to properly dive, and hitting the water wrong is the kind of thing that can kill you. The water came up fast as I pivoted, and I hit in the simplest way I knew how - a pencil dive, feet first - and held my nose with my hand. I tried to take a huge breath on the way down, and choked on the black liquid still sloshing inside me. So when I crashed through the surface and the impact knocked my fist off of my face, and I plunged deep below with no sense of direction, I had no reserve of air, I was already choking.

The water stung in every possible way and I didn’t want to open my eyes. I tried to feel which way the bubbles were drifting, and I thought I had it, and I swam. But I had so little air. It was only a few seconds before I peeked and let the seawater in, and I blinked in despair. My angle was off. I’d been swimming 45 degrees instead of straight up. So I shut one eye and squinted the other, and swam for the sunlight.

I’d never been a very good swimmer. Right now, that would be a useful skill. But fuck, at least I’d swam a bit at all, or I’d already be dead.

The farther I went, the more I panicked. I must have been 20 feet under when I first started swimming, but how bad was it really? How close was the surface? I could barely see, and it kept looking closer and closer, but when would I get there? All I could think about was air. The liquid tickled my gag reflex and I choked again, swallowing water and getting more into my lungs. I was, somehow, about to die of drowning.

I remember thinking, “I’m not so tough after all….. I just want my mom. She’ll never know what happened to me. Shit.”

I knew I wasn’t going to make it after awhile. However far I’d gone wasn’t enough. But as I stopped thrashing and drifted in the water, I was finally able to hear a noise. The sun darkened over me, and an arm wrapped around my torso. Someone was pulling me up, up, up, up, up, up up up up up up up-

We crashed into the atmosphere and punctured our way into it. I vaguely felt like it would be polite to help, a good courtesy, but I was too soggy inside to make it happen. And while my head dipped under a moment or two on the way back, having some access to air kept me from going entirely unconscious.

I felt it when we got to the rising sand of the beach, and he dragged me up to where it was somewhat dry, and flopped me down on the sand. He seemed a bit panicked. He wasn’t doing CPR, he was saying something I couldn’t understand. Why wasn’t he doing CPR? So I balled up a fist, grabbed it with my other hand, and smashed it into my chest as hard as I could. Once, twice, actively trying to spit up water, and then I did, hurking it out, a geyser that crashed into a dribble. My arms were too weak, and I gestured, frantic, and he straddled over me and smacked me in the chest. Of course, he could actually pump in a way I couldn’t do on my own, so I grabbed his hands and guided him. He caught on, and I started vomiting water all over myself, diluted murky gray.

When I could talk, I croaked “enough,” and tipped over to finish retching up my personal swamp. It felt like I’d been breathing aerosolized stinging nettles. As I got the oceanwater and black rain combo out of me, what was left had a more obvious tint of blood. You could put it in a glass and tell people you’d invented cigarette juice. Just what the world needed.

As I lay there heaving, I noticed two very uncomfortable facts about clothing. Firstly, that I’d dropped out of the sky topless and scrambled out of my heavy jeans at some point in the water, so I was just air drying in my panties. Secondly, that my rescuer was wearing an actual one-piece male swimsuit, and therefore far more clothed than I was. I thought about hastily covering up, realized the hurry would be wasted, and wearily crossed my arms at a comfortable pace.

It was hard to talk without starting another round of choking, so I put a lot of focus into the words, “hey kid. Do you have a towel I could borrow?”

He stared at me in wonder, and then ran off down the beach. I took a look around, but laid back down after a couple seconds. It wasn’t a bad place, if you weren’t dying in it of supernatural causes. High sandstone cliffs, a toasty warm beach where sand eventually gave way to polished rock near the cliff base, and seagulls venturing back and forth between earth and ocean.

My hero came back with a sturdy blanket, which I was certainly grateful to have. I wrapped it around myself. “Well. This wasn’t how I was expecting tonight to go, but I’m alive, and I wouldn’t be without you. I owe you. What’s your name, kid?”

He gave me a very teenager scowl. “Jonas, and I’m very nearly an adult myself, actually.”

I raised my eyebrows, and humored him. “Alright then, color me corrected. Jonas the full grown man. Good to meet you, very glad to be alive.” I held out my hand, and he shook it warily. “It’s alright, I don’t bite. Well, sometimes, but not you.”

He cocked his head. “You bite people, ma’am?”

I laughed. “Not you, just women. And my age, no offense.” I looked him up and down, and had a thought that made my shoulders sag. “Oh. Shit.” Nothing to do about it but get the words out. "I hate to have to ask this, Jonas, but since we’re friends now… could you do me a favor, and tell me what year it is right now?”

He blinked at me. “The… the year?”

I squinted at him. “I’m a very soggy woman, and I’ve been through an ordeal. I’ve lost someone very important to me and fallen down a disgusting goopy hole. I think I drank a pint of seawater. And I’m a little hazy about when I got tattoos all over my body. If you could please tell me the decade that’s left me topless and cranky on the beach, it’d just make my night, pinky swear.”

He shifted uneasily and looked around. “Night? Miss, it can’t be more than half past noon.”

I gave a little shrug. “Well that’s delightful, I could use a little lunch right now. Noon on what date, Mr. Jonas?”

“Um. August 8th, 1921. Miss.” His eyes were bugging out now, and I started to worry he’d hurt himself if they got any wider.

“Mrs., actually. Mrs. Meyers.” I smiled at him, hopefully in a disarming way, and probably the opposite. Mrs. Meyers sounded like a soft-spoken teacher, and maybe I was a little soft here and there on my body - hadn’t needed to fight anything for awhile, until recently - but I still had a bit of a boxer’s build underneath.

He held his arm nervously. “Jonas Sullivan. I swim around here and look for things.”

I settled back a little bit. “That’s a nice hobby. What are you looking for out here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He looked around, as if someone out here would be listening. Hell, what do I know? Maybe that’s something to worry about on this beach. Things aren’t always what they look. After a few seconds, he said, “I don’t think anyone would believe me, but you might. You’re already crazy.”

I laughed out loud. “I can’t even be mad at you for that one, kid. But you’re right that I’d believe you, and I’d like to know what kind of crazy that makes me. So, Jonas Sullivan, what are you looking for out here?”

He stared out at the ocean. “People say the North Star is the brightest, but it’s not. It’s actually just 48th, which is still a pretty number, there’s 48 states, it divides evenly a lot of ways-“ he fidgeted nervously. “Anyways, Polaris isn’t the brightest, the brightest one is called Sirius, and it’s called the Dog Star, or the Pup sometimes. And it’s out to the southeast, you can’t see it during the day, but it’s out there. That’s where I’m looking. And that’s where you fell out of that hole in the sky!”

I let my jaw drop a bit.

He pointed off in a direction that had to be southeast. “Right over there. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He shaded his eyes with his hand. “I think maybe that means I’m on the right track. Or at least there’s something magic happening. I don’t know, my aunts won’t teach me.”

“Your aunts know magick? What kind?” I was very curious now.

“I don’t know. I pick up bits and pieces. They say I can’t be a witch because I’m a boy.” His face was wistful, and I understood it better in that moment. “Well if I can’t be a witch I’m gonna be something. I get ideas of my own sometimes, and nobody takes me seriously. I ain’t-“ he paused. “I don’t talk about it at school anymore, I keep my mouth shut at home. A man keeps his head down sometimes, he’s gotta. But just because it’s down doesn’t mean it’s empty.”

I staggered up awkwardly, I came over, and I hugged him. Ratty old 20’s towel and all. “Hey. It’s okay. Guess what? I knew some of the best witches in all the west, and one of them? He was a boy too.”

Jonas looked at up me in a startle. “What, really?”

I nodded. “Oh yeah. We don’t talk so much anymore, and… I’m actually not sure I’ll ever get to see him again. But he was goodhearted and hardheaded, and he made the arcane a safer place. And he was a witch. Technically a priestess, even.” I looked out at the ocean and breathed in the salt air. “Life is funny like that sometimes. But it’s better to enjoy the weirdness than worry about it, when you can."

Jonas seemed ready to explode, processing this new information. He stood there frozen in place with wide eyes, just reconciling things in his brain. He started hopping from one foot to the other. “Oh heck. Oh heck! Boys can be witches! I can be a witch!”

I laughed and started (carefully) clapping along as he started dancing. I don’t know if it was a real dance, or just something he made up on the spot, but he had fun, and soon he was whooping and yelling.

He settled down for a second, giddy, and I asked him, “so what do you think? You gonna be a witch, and learn how to divine the divine, kid?”

He looked at me with a mad grin. “Oh you bet I am. I’m sorry you’re taken, Mrs. Meyers, or I’d marry you today and you’d be a witch’s wife!”

I slapped my knee. “Jonas, I am a witch’s wife!”

He looked at me in another round of awe. “You are a witch’s wife?” I did a little curtsy - I was in a silly mood, shut up. But that set off another round of euphoria for him. “Hot damn, you are a witch’s wife! Woooo! Wait, you a witch yourself?” I curtsied again, and he hollered again.

“I have never been so happy on any day in my whole godforsaken life, Mrs. Meyers, and I am so glad I fished you out today. I’m going to be a witch! A man-witch! With muscles and a wand!” I didn’t even try not to laugh, and it didn’t slow him down. “I’m going to be a witch!”

I turned it into a chant. “You’re going to be a witch! You’re going to be a witch!”

He chanted right along. “I’m going to be a witch! I’m going to be a witch!” He leaned over his shoulder and yelled for the whole continent to hear him, “You hear that, Citrine? I’m going to be a witch!”

My blood turned to ice and my thoughts disintegrated.

Up on the rocks, perched at the base of the cliffs, almost motionless except for a slowly flicking tail, was a slender black cat.

#reposado #maddiem4 #writing #novel

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maddiem4-writes · 3 years ago

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Reposado - Chapter 22

I stared out above the wide, lush expanse of greenery, perched on the second story, and held the pear in my hand, a single bite taken out of it. I’d just missed a question. I turned slightly but didn’t look behind me. “Sorry, what was that? I didn’t quite catch it. You’ll have to speak up.” My voice felt like a leather couch with thick, soft cushions.

My wife wrapped her arms around me from behind, and I melted into the warmth of her embrace. I leaned back, and she leaned forward, and the comfort washed through me from the shoulderblades down. She leaned her head to the side of mine, whispering in my ear, in a way that tickled playfully. “Oh, yes. Just when I ask something that actually matters, your mind wanders. I absolutely believe you.” Could a woman wink with words?

I turned around and looked at her in the face, grinning, flushed, a little too much wine too early in the evening. That’s okay, it made two of us. “Stop, I’m serious! I lost my train of thought.” I pouted unseriously. “Just say it again. Repeat a little time with me.”

She placed her hand on my heart, pushed lightly. “You, are a hopeless romantic, and you better never change, Lees.” She pulled me closer, by the waist, and I gasped a little. Almost 5 years now, and she still took my breath away in the smallest of moments. Her face was close to mine, and I felt her breath. Her coffee-colored eyes looked up into mine. “I said, ‘have you heard back from the agent?’”

I groaned. “Technically? Yes, yes I have. But the question under the question? There’s no news. I know it’s gonna sell eventually, but I really do not like being held in financial limbo like this.” I rolled my eyes. “Not like we need the money from the old house for anything…”

She curled her fingers through my hair and laughed. “Of course not. But, you’re right. The market’s picking back up, the price is fair, and we’ll be done with the old place soon enough. You know, it’s funny, you never think you’re gonna miss some places, but then, when you’re nearly packed up and realizing you’ll never be there again… I don’t know, it’s unfairly sentimental.”

I nodded, and set the pear down on the flat railing. “Yeah, I felt that too. Like, how dare you make me miss you! Stupid shitty house with no hot water, fuck you. God, I hated that place, and I still cried. And I never cry, you know.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Yeah. It’s a problem. You should cry more.” I knew she was being half serious. It’s not like this had never come up before.

“I guess. I’m just saying, a place isn’t alive, this one didn’t even feel good to live in, but it still looked… I dunno, lonely! It looked lonely and empty and rejected, with none of our stuff in it. Like when someone’s being annoying, and you snap at them, and they recoil. I have to get out of that framing though. I know I don’t like inflicting pain, but it’s inanimate, Cassie! What is wrong with me?”

She reached down and took another sip of chardonnay. “And yet, you do what you do. God, what a weird power. Not that I’m complaining.”

I shook my head, “No, absolutely. Me neither. Being able to keep you safe, and all of us? It’s worth it.” I kissed her, a light peck at first, then more as we got carried away. There’s a moment where the proximity just feels right, and electric, and you can’t imagine backing out of it. I came up for air, and we giggled like much younger women. God, the stuff you’re just allowed to do when you own your life. “But that’s what we do, isn’t it? We keep each other safe. Obviously we don’t all see eye to eye anymore these days…”

Cassie scrunched up her face. “Hah. That’s one way of putting it, yeah.”

“… but you know,” I continued, staring with my gentle little you know I’m right face, “if she ever came back again, or anything bigger, or worse. If any of us was in trouble. We’d set it all aside, every single one of us, musketeer style.” Her skin glowed in the sunset, but I didn’t get lost in it, I flowed with it. The moment was at peace. “In a heartbeat.”

She held a shrug for a second. “I mean, you’re not wrong. I just wish some people didn’t go to complete shit anytime we were lacking a common enemy. I miss how we used to be.” She gazed off behind me into the woods, into the distant slate-colored clouds I knew were being chalk-highlighted in every brilliant pastel as the sun descended. “I miss when we didn’t need that.”

I pondered, and “borrowed” a sip from her glass. She play-chided me. After a moment, I asked, “Cassie, do you miss who you used to be?” It was a question with a muted, subtle intensity. I wondered for the hundredth time, just how old my soulmate was. We didn’t track it nearly as well as we could have, and Cassie had lived many years over again. She was a little wiser and sadder than she should have to be, than I’d had to be. And even moreso under the surface than she let on, I was sure. I could only guess how many futures she’d undone and chosen to just… leave behind undescribed, personal horrors she didn’t even want to burden me with. She rarely told me about them, but sometimes at night, she’d get… terrors. Clues, devoid of context, made worse by ambiguity, leak out.

Cassie looked far out into the distance in the other way, now. The way without seeing. She cleared her throat, and said in a voice that was meant to not sound deliberate, “No. I feel a lot of sympathy for her, there are things I wish I could tell her instead of just replacing her. But god am I glad to have outgrown some things.” She returned her focus on me, staring me straight in the eyes. “No, I don’t miss being her."

I gestured carefully with my glass hand. “And I would never want to be the old me. We weren’t baked at that age. We were still just dough. And I don’t have to tell you, those years sucked for me. I’d hate to go back to all that, myself.” I felt a twinge in my heart that I didn’t understand, but proceeded with my point. “And I’d bet, probably everybody from the old days feels the same. Everyone’s glad they grew out of their old shapes. But those old shapes fit together.”

Cassie nodded. “And the new shapes don’t. So you’re saying, it’s personal growth vs. interpersonal compatibility? You can’t have both?”

“Eh. I’m saying, you can only have both if you grow into a new group of compatible shapes. But that’s never guaranteed, especially if you never stop growing, and I sure as hell hope I never stop.”

She leaned forward, thinking. “Even if it’s the same people, you might never have the old dynamic again. It’s like the old house, really. Maybe it’s not the best, maybe it has deep issues, and yet… it’s finite, and it’s hard to grapple with finite things ending. Pack what you can, say your goodbyes, because there’s no returning when you hand in the keys.” She stole her glass back, and took another sip of her own. She was quiet for a long time. “I can’t really avoid thinking, what’s protecting us from ever growing apart? What if we grow out paths in our own directions, and they can’t entwine anymore? I don’t see that anytime soon, but what makes us magically immune?”

I shook my head. “Not magic, no, that’s… that’s for other stuff. But yeah. It’s like… there’s no guarantees in life, and that’s always been the deal, but it does hit you sometimes.” I shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know that that will ever happen to us, and it’s hard to imagine what even could wedge us apart after all we’ve been through together. I think if anything could, it would have happened by now.”

She held my face in her hand, gently. “Probably. It’s nice not to worry about it.”

I leaned in closer. “Just stay in the moment?”

She leaned in too. “The moment is nice.”

We kissed again, as deep hues of purple finally began to arrive on the stained wood deck. I was not obsessed with the taste of her lips, the smell of her hair, the warmth of her hand on my waist. They were imbued with magic by the soul inside her. I settled into my body, and she settled into hers, so that we could collapse the distance between us as tightly as possible, pilot to pilot in the setting sun.

She stepped back and gave me a sly smile, a little dance. Her fingers gripped the bottom of her shirt. I stared in disbelief as she peeled it off of her, dropping it on the deck. I looked around anxiously. “Babe, the neighbors!”

She just laughed at me. “What neighbors? You worried we’ll turn on the coyotes?” She danced backwards now, in her bra and skirt, reaching behind her for the clasp.

I hissed conspiratorially, “There’s some people out here, Cass.” I knew she was right, and I felt silly and irrational, but darn if some flavors of paranoia don’t run deep.

She gave me a quick kiss on the lips, still working on the hooks behind her back. “Then let ‘em look.” And then it just fell off of her, and there she was, beautiful and perfect in the golden light. She crooked her finger for me to follow her inside, through the sliding glass door, and I did, gladly.

She hopped on the bed as I shut the slider. I peeled off my own fuzzy sweater, and noted, “we’re not gonna be able to see each other in a minute, if I don’t turn some lights on. It’s getting dim out there pretty fast.”

She chuckled, and unzipped down the side of her skirt. “The better to see my starlight,” she winked.

“Hah, hah”, I said dramatically. “Well I’m turning on the fireplace at least. Warm, and romantic.” It was just an electric, but that also made it easy to switch on, if I could find the switch in the shadows. Most of the room was actually still pretty navigable for the moment, but the fireplace was on the inside of the west wall, well-hidden just when you needed heat or light.

I heard her practically purr behind me. “I like romantic. As long as it doesn’t get too hot. I’m in the mood for a workout here…” I heard her stretch, and make the little groan noises that stretching people make.

The fireplace whirred up as the fan motor kicked on. The lights warmed up, and the simulated flames began dancing and casting autumn leaf tones through the room. I leaned up and saw myself in the mirror of the fireplace for the first time, lit up by the fireplace, and froze.

My brain tried to tug in two directions. I’d… I’d looked like this for years, more and more, I know it. I remembered it. I got a little closer to the mirror, trying to understand why there was a little voice in my head that was screaming in alarm. Same old lines under the eyes. Maybe if I could get over my dykeiness a bit I could start wearing masks at night or something, but… no, there was a more glaring issue than that.

It was mostly my body that was wrong. But it looked just like it did yesterday. And it was something obvious. I stared for a minute, feeling the dread bubble inside me. I looked over my shoulder, not sure how to ask without sounding like a crazy person. “Babe? I… um… can you help me for a minute?”

Cassie looked concerned, and crawled up to the foot of the bed, closer to me. “What’s wrong, Lees?”

I turned to her, and gestured down to all of me. All my skin under the sweater. “Cass, I really don’t know why I’m asking this but… why do I look like this?”

“Is this a philosophy question?”

“I… I think it’s the tattoos.” She leaned back, warily, but I kept going. “When did I get all these tattoos, Cass? There’s… there’s a lot of them, all over me.”

She backed up on the bed, and her voice got very small and scared. “Lisa. You made them. To keep us safe, remember? It’s literally what you do. Remember? Like the star on your shoulder? You… you helped me, and we both survived? Lisa, please tell me you remember that.”

I felt numb. “I… I think there’s one supposed to be here.” I pointed to my forearm, in a spot where there was a thorny vine illustrated wrapping around. “Not this one. It was an X, and then a sideways Y, but there were lines through it, and a moon…” I struggled for words, but my brain was pudding. “It… it had something to do with dogs! It was very important! And it was right here, it was just right here and now it’s not there anymore and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s happening.” I looked up at her, hyperventilating.

That’s when I noticed the rain dripping down the windows. It was so dark outside. When had it started raining?

Cassie backed up to the very edge of the bed, and her fingers began to glow. “Lisa? Please don’t do this to me. I need to know that you’re you right now. She can’t be back, we beat her.” I knew that body language, didn’t I? Don’t come closer.

“I’m not possessed, I’m not joined. I don’t think? I know that’s the least convincing thing I could say, but it’s true.” The rain continued to pour. I guess that was it for the abandoned top on the deck, and the bra too. “This is different and I don’t know what it is, but I’m… actually very scared right now. I just need to know what’s going on, and why I don’t know what’s going on.”

The rain started to creep in through the seals under the windows, and now I could see. It was black, opaquely black. It looked like it was erasing the world as it covered terrain. Walls, the old chair in the corner, the hand-me-down record player. Our knicknacks from the Europe trip, and thrift stores near the old place. All bathed in the encroaching rain. I could feel, in the hairs on the back of my neck, that it was coming in through the slider too. I just knew it was soaking through the shag carped behind me.

Cassie looked at me for a moment, and the glow in her fingers died down. The face she made for me was… pity. Such a deep, deep fucking pity. She slid off the bed and walked to me, into the warm glow of the faux firelight. She held my face in her hands.

“Don’t you know what’s happening to you?” A tear ran down her cheek, and I felt a lump in my throat. I didn’t want her to say it. But I knew I couldn’t stop her. The blood rushing in my ears got louder and louder. And yet it shut off abruptly as my love whispered in my ear…

“… you know this is a dream, right?”

The rain hit the back of my feet then, and it wasn’t water, nor was it thick like tar. It was like cold rancid vegetable oil dyed with charcoal and burnt rat carcasses. The carpet felt very squishy and soft beneath the bare soles of my feet, squelching as I shifted my weight.

“No, but it’s real! This is a real thing that happened, I know it is!”

The rain crept up her legs, some droplets rushing ahead higher than others. “I’m sorry.”

I could barely talk. “But I don’t dream, I definitely don’t lucid dream, and this is not how it feels. This is different. Why do I have all these tattoos?”

She shook her head. Some of the oil trickled into her mouth as she said, “You don’t belong here anymore. I couldn’t save you, why should I get to keep you?”

I reached for her, and she stepped back. I was screaming now. “When did this happen? Tell me what year! When is this? Tell me, Cassie!”

She shook her head. “This is a never, Lisa. One of the worst, how it all started unraveling. She’ll never admit it, she’ll never tell you, but she remembers all of these. Every single one. They are nevers for a reason.”

The squelching was louder now. “Then why am I dreaming it? I shouldn’t remember this.”

She stared at me with eyes that pooled black, inky, nocturnal. “You should have known there would be consequences to take another’s tattoo. This is the moment she held in her heart as she chose the shape. It’s printed on you now.”

I stepped back, and sunk too far. I looked up at her, despondent and afraid. “How does it end?”

She stepped forward, leaned in, kissed me in a way that felt like being infected, penetrated, drowned. It was tendrils violating my windpipe and my stomach, fractaling in all directions, burrowing into my soft tissues. And then it turned to liquid again, and soaked down the front of both of us. I felt the blackness swim in my vision.

“The same way every time, my love.”

And then the floor gave way, and I sunk through the soaking, squelching shag fibers into the abyss. I was swallowed whole.

#reposado #maddiem4 #writing #novel

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maddiem4-writes · 3 years ago

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Reposado - Chapter 21

I whipped my head around looking for Citrine. I could swear I went to the right door, but she wasn’t on the other side. I sat up, and smacked my hand on the linoneum in terror and frustration. “Fuck!” I looked at Mara, and blew on my now-red palm. “What the fuck was that out there? A zombie army?”

She looked up at me, hands still on her knees, as she bent over and panted. “I dunno, Lees. I don’t know if they’re going back to normal on their own, if they’re stuck like that, or what.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to ever see that again. They were all really fixated on you, too.”

I frowned and looked down. “Yeah, I don’t exactly know why. I’d like to think I have a kind of cool, but I’m not that kind of cool. And who even compares me to flowers? My grandma?”

Mara smirked. “You always struck me as more of a ‘tractor tire rolling uncontrollably down a road’ girl.” But she looked me up and down kinda slowly as she said it so… duly noted?

I grinned and said “Shut up.” The words came out bashful and soft. This girl, she brought out a side of me. “And you’re like… a handmade mailbox, smelling like pine in the fresh air. I dunno, like, you don’t have to be pretty, but you’re good at it.” I looked up at her. “I’ve heard of exactly one person like you, and that was you.”

She blushed, and tried to play it off like a stage blush, but I could tell it was real. “Ms. Meyers, so forward! What will the neighbors think?” It was kind of a Cassie joke, and that realization stabbed me in the heart pretty hard. But I didn’t want to show that.

I gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes. “That they live on the most interesting road in all of Nothing County. What with all the road hazards and custom infrastructure, you know. All ‘a that.” But I looked away.

Mara laughed for a second, then looked around. “Yeah. Probably. Hey, are you sure our kitty girl went down this way? I haven’t seen her for a minute.”

I shrugged. “A hundred percent positive. She didn’t say where she was going, so this is really as far as we can follow. Guess we’ll just be stuck here waiting for her.”

Mara shook her head. “I don’t want to do that. I’m sure she’ll be back any second.”

I blinked. “What?”

She blinked. “What?”

Citrine popped through a magic portal in a nearby classroom. She seemed frustrated. “It never stops, does it? And now I don’t know where to find any sterile sharp objects. I like to be safe and have such things on hand. It seems like we’re all here in one piece though.”

Mara turned to her. “What do we need something sharp for? Actually, nevermind, that can wait. What do we do about the zombies out there? What’s going on, kitty?”

Citrine looked at her wearily. “This is how it always starts. And we’re really not ready. The thing out there is one mind among bodies. They don’t realize what they’re doing or saying. They think they’re saying one thing, they’re actually saying another - her words.”

Mara shivered. “Whatever it was, it seemed angry.”

I looked warily outside. “And hungry and creepy.”

Citrine gave me an odd look. “Analisa?” Huh. Not bluebelly, not kitten, not monkey girl. I looked at her, and saw her eyes giving me a strange look. Wary. “Did you feel anything… strange… on your way in here?”

I thought about it, but I was kinda bewildered. “I mean, I watched some sort of hivemind sweep through the school in seconds, so I’m kinda worried about that now.”

Mara took a step back. “What do you mean, now?”

I stood up, but felt… unsteady about this conversation. “Well to the best of my knowledge there wasn’t a fucking hivemind before, and it’s kind of a primary fucking worry since seeing it.”

Citrine squinted at me for a moment, and said quietly, “Analisa, what do you think you’re saying right now?”

My stomach dropped and I felt a cold sweat start. “Oh my god. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. This can’t be happening to me, oh god no. Please. Not to me.”

Mara shook her head, eyes wide. “It’s you, it’s just you.”

I stood very still, and I felt myself doing something that was usually behind a very thick emotional wall. I felt a tear running down my cheek. “He’s taking me first, isn’t he? That’s what this is? Am I literally dying right now?” I blinked, my eyes warm and stinging. “He said he was going to unwrap me like a present. Oh god.” I took a step toward them, and they leapt back like I was full of plague. It felt like a punch in the gut. “Please don’t be scared of me. Please. I’m sorry. I don’t want to die. Please.”

Citrine bristled. “You need to stay right there, stay still. Feathers, do you have any needles on you? Maybe a lighter?” She looked at Mara.

Mara looked at her. “Why am I Feathers? For that matter, why the eff would I have any of those things? I’m 17!”

Citrine glared at her. “I do not know, humans carry a lot of random objects and right now anything pointy will be better present than absent.” She turned to me. “Please just stay as still as you can. Hang on, Analisa.”

My legs began to shake. I felt like I had to sweat, but almost in the same way you can feel like you have to pee. The body just desperate to extrude something. “I don’t think I’m gonna last that long. Actually. I think I’m just gonna die, maybe. I… I think it’s gonna hurt.”

I didn’t ask my body to take a step forward, I just found myself doing it, and hear Mara scream. The pores of my skin felt pregnant somehow. I looked down at them in fascination and agony as I began to see little black antennae poke their way out of me, all up and down my arms. I started feeling it in my face. It was every inch of me.

Citrine was bristling at me now, hissing. “Analisa, you need to stay back.”

My brain felt dizzy, full of dancing. I didn’t know the song but I think I’ve heard it before, a very long time ago. “I really didn’t think I was gonna die today, like I had plans to keep on living. I don’t know how to do it right, but I had plans. I really thought I was going to live. I’m sorry.”

Mara went incredibly pale. My vision started to get blurry. And then I saw her.

You’d never know she was sick. Her eyes glowed like the sun, her pink dress gleamed and the gold accents pulsed with energy. Without looking at it, a ribbon unpeeled from her dress, smashed a little glass window on a classroom door, and grabbed a glass shard. She never stopped, never even slowed down. She looked like a goddess.

I felt the ants wiggling out of me, but she was here. She grabbed my arm without a thought for her own exposure or preservation, and jabbed me over and over again with the thin glass needle. I could barely track it with my eyes. She wasn’t carving. She was so precise it felt inhuman. It was an X, then two corners connected, then a line with three crossbars, and finally the moon.

The ants receded inside of me, and deep-black ink beaded out of the fresh jab holes on my arm. As she finished the sigil, I felt like I needed to fall on the floor and sleep for a decade, but the whole tattoo lit up with a glow like Cassie’s eyes, and it felt like I was branded. It clapped like thunder. I collapsed to my knees. I looked up at her with bleary eyes and felt clean.

I whispered hoarsely, “is this really you?”

She whispered in my ear: “yes.”

I looked at the symbol on my arm, red hot and rapidly fading to charcoal black. “What does it mean?”

She looked sad. “Nothing to you, which is why it’s not a permanent solution. But a lot to me. Have you really never seen this symbol before?”

I shook my head, struggling to stay awake.

She looked down at it. “Once upon a time I gave you a tattoo, that was meant to symbolize brightness and hope. But I had to do it with black ink. The Darkness made me regret that decision, latching on to the idea of a dark star. But that’s not who you are.”

I laughed weakly. “Nah? Who am I? You would know, wouldn’t you?”

She smiled, gently. “You remind me, usually when I need it most, what actually cuts through Her. It’s mockery. Do you recognize it, Mara?”

Mara stared at my arm in wonder. “It’s… Sirius. The symbol for Sirius.”

I smiled as I drifted off. “Oh. I know that one.” I pressed against Cassie’s warmth, and whatever reserve of adrenaline and caffeine I had in my body drained out. It felt peaceful for the first time in a long time. “Sirius. It’s… it’s the dog star, isn’t it?”

The last thing I remember is her kneeling down and cradling me in her lap. “It sure is, Lisa. It’s the dog star."

#reposado #maddiem4 #writing #novel

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maddiem4-writes · 3 years ago

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Reposado - Chapter 20

I rested on a bench, Citrine sitting between me and Mara. My feet hurt like shit, but I was feeling pretty good about our chances. I was losing myself in thought about the next steps, getting Cassie from the bathroom to the Engasmotron, and I probably would have missed the word if I hadn’t felt Citrine bristle hard against me, and go perfectly still.

“Wildflower.”

I looked up at the two teenagers in front of me. He had his hands in his pockets, and was blushing. She was tucking her hair behind her ear, smiling and listening. It was cute, in that horny clumsy “fuuuuck I guess we have to learn to talk to each other” way. I do remember thinking, what kinda dork has that as a pet name for his girlfriend? It’s kinda grim how naive that question is.

She tilted her head in a flirty way. “It’s always been you, you know. Every time. You’re my first.” She shifted her shoulders a little bit, playfully, and dug a hand into the pocket of her powder blue skirt.

Citrine hissed quietly, and I leaned down with a scowl. “What’s your deal, cat?”

She looked up with a kind of terror that was new to me, and it stopped my thoughts dead in their tracks. We’d been through a lot in a short span of time, but it was striking me that I’d seen her urgent, impatient, angry, worried… but never in a state like this. A panic attack, out of nowhere.

The boy leaned in a little, but looked away shyly, like he’d suddenly taken an overwhelming interest in the toes of his sneakers. “From the first moment I set eyes on you, I knew. My dark star.”

I looked at Mara, and she was already looking at me. Something was wrong. Citrine was shivering between us, and whispered, in a voice that was high and strained and barely audible: “Please. Act normal. We have to get out of here right now.”

She wrapped her hands around him, clasping one of her hands with the other behind his neck, looking into his eyes with admiration and intensity. “And now I have you again. Pure as the virgin snow. Just look at all your skin.”

Citrine jumped upright. “Things are about to be very bad and we have very little time. I’ll run. Chase after me. As fast as you can.” And she was gone in a black flash.

She pulled him close. “I’m going to paint every inch of it. Again.”

I was halfway to my feet already as Mara grabbed my right arm and pulled me the rest of the way up. I imagine we were making the same face at each other, or at least, I expect mine looked like hers: pale, confused, scared shitless. I was just starting to lean into her momentum when I felt a hand on my left wrist grab me firmly, warm and cold at the same time. It held on and I jerked to a stop, and as I looked back, I’m not sure what I expected to see. Medusa, maybe.

The boy stared straight at me with a hollow, soulless smile. It was empty in a way that could echo forever, and yet was somehow quieter than the bottom of a dead lake. His bony fingers felt unshakeable on my wrist. He tilted his head very slightly.

“Stay, Wildflower.”

I locked my leg muscles and yanked, too freaked out to care about my feet. The sudden motion broke me free, and I stumbled back, flipping him off with my newly freed hand. I landed on my ass, and scrambled back up, scuttling backwards in the process. I never let my eyes off him.

“Fuck that.” I regained my balance and kept backing up. “… psycho,” I added. He was entirely unbothered. He just slowly let his arm back down, never breaking eye contact. I had to be the one to do that as I turned and ran.

Mara turned back to me as she pulled me through the crowd after Citrine. “I’m getting you out of here, Lees. Whatever’s going on, we’re not sticking around for it.” We started ducking and weaving through the crowd, and I couldn’t tell if I heard footsteps behind us. I saw Citrine dash back into the school building through a spylet in the door, and I knew where I had to get to. My feet were killing me and it didn’t matter.

A girl next to me chuckled, and told her friend group, “I kill you first every time, you know.”

One of them nodded, and said, “My favorite of the six.”

We swept past them and nearly bumped into a boy eating a snack pack of processed cheesy goop and crackers. He explained between bites. “I have unwrapped you more times than you could possibly imagine, Wildflower. My favorite present.”

I felt a tingle on my arm. It was an ant the size of a thumbnail. I brushed it off, only to see one on my other arm too. Was I running under a tree?

We broke out of the crowd, and heard on a megaphone behind us, a teacher: “Run for a thousand miles. Hide for a thousand years. I will find you.”

We slammed against the door, and Mara frantically opened it. The megaphone kept going. “I will plant you in my garden and grow you in my ink. Grow your petals black for me. I will devour you whole. Do you think there is an escape from me? Every piece of me?”

We collapsed on the tile, as the door pneumatically drifted closed.

“You were born with one of those pieces inside you."

#reposado #maddiem4 #writing #novel

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maddiem4-writes · 3 years ago

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(Planning Break)

No update here today. I realized I'd gotten as far as I could without formal character sheets for the entire team, so I'm spending a day behind the scenes making sure I have a more fleshed out model of each and every character, without having to cross-reference a bunch of chapters constantly. Normal updates should resume tomorrow :)

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maddiem4-writes · 3 years ago

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Reposado - Chapter 19

“Absolutely not. No way.” Mara was gonna be a hard sell. “I am not riding in the Engasmotron.”

“C’mon,” I insisted, and limped a little closer. “It’s not like you’ve never ridden it before.”

She slapped me on the arm. “Gross. I’d feel less suggestive in the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.”

I feigned surprise. “What’s so suggestive about the Engasmotron? It’s a perfectly mundane, perfectly 90’s sedan, with a totally normal metallic starlight purple paint job, and plenty of cargo space.”

“… which is full of dildos.”

“Oh obviously, chock full of dildos.”

Mara glared at me and crossed her arms. “Everyone in town knows what the purple sedan is selling, Meyers. I’ve barely settled in here and even I know it.” She hunched down and whispered in pleading despair, “She sells to my mom, Lisa. My mother.”

I grinned like the Grinch. “Well good for her! Satisfied customers are the arched backbone of the industry. But no, seriously? She sells to all our moms.” I looked around conspiratorially, then put my hand on my chest, and raised my eyebrows meaningfully. “All. Of our moms.”

Mara buried her face in her hands and groaned, like that was gonna stop the bad thoughts from getting in. Yeah, good luck, Mars. “Ugh, so gross. I didn’t need to know that.”

I laughed. “What, you don’t have one?”

She grimaced. “You do?”

Eyebrow. Wiggle. She groaned and buried her face in her hands all over again.

Citrine stared at us in wonder. “Disgusting, but fascinating. In any event, if we have a ride, we should take it. You seem to know what you’re doing, bluebelly. How do we make it happen?”

I looked around. “Caleb. Caleb drives for his mom on a regular basis. He’ll know where the car is, where the keys are, all of it. We find him, we’re good.” Our guy was tall, just like his sister Bree. Just a couple of tall-ass rich kids, and yet finding them in the outdoor chaos was like a Where’s Waldo that kept moving as you stared at it. “Easier said than done, apparently.”

Mara rolled her eyes. “You’re doing it all wrong. Come over here, up on the rock.” I did as she said, climbing awkwardly with my injured foot. “Okay, now be careful, Lees. But, when I count to three, I need you to climb on my back, and start screaming for Caleb. If we stand out as a mobile beacon, he’ll come to us.”

I held my arm nervously. “Mars, I… I’m heavier than you. I’m… stocky.” I didn’t normally have to think about it, I wasn’t fat fat, but I was built a bit chunkier, and it was hard to feel elegant. I didn’t dance much, I’ll tell you that. I felt so big and so small in that moment.

She stared me down, insisting. “Meyers, what do you think I do for a living? Trust me. I can take you. And if I can’t, I’ll tell you.” She backed up to the rock, and looked behind her. “Please?”

She had a point. Her arms were wiry, but I’d seen them toss haybales and restrain panicking horses. They had an understated power. I scanned around self-consciously one last time, and shook it off. “Okay. I trust you.” She braced her arms for me to step through, and I climbed on piggyback. “Let’s ride, I guess!”

“Mmmpph!” She grunted under me. Seemed like I still weighed more than she expected, but she had it handled. “Let’s… ride!”

That’s how we explored out into the parking lot, with a high vantage point to see and be seen. It was nice to be the carried one, I realized, as I belted out Caleb’s name. I actually saw Bree first, and pointed her out to Mara. We started going in her direction. I could feel that the piggyback wasn’t gonna last too much longer by the end, so any direction was a gamble, but staying in place was a guaranteed losing bet.

She started moving toward us too, and I hopped off when we got close. “Bree!” I said, as Mara took a second to pant. “Boy am I glad to see you. You seen your brother anywhere? I know you’re normally in the same classes.”

She looked over. “Oh you mean him?” She pointed and we looked, and there he was, munching on a corn dog. “Ask him where he got that corn dog. I want one.”

“Thanks, Bree! Hey, hey Caleb.” I walked up, limping a little but not bad. “Uh, so two questions. First of all, where did you get that corn dog?”

He shrugged blankly and took another bite. “I ‘unno. It’s pretty good though.” He chewed passively.

I stood there for a second, confused and slightly fake smile on my face. “Right. Cool. Good for you. Um, second question’s a bit more of a thing here…. can we borrow your mom’s car?”

His eyes widened. “My… mom’s car?” He looked around and lowered his voice in embarrassment. “The purple one? You sure?”

I nodded, and Mara piped in over my shoulder, “and your driving skills! You’re the only one of us licensed, Cee. But we gotta hit the road with some cargo.”

“What kinda cargo?” Bree asked from behind us. I jumped, and recovered myself. “He’s got the car, but the tank’s nearly empty, and I’m the one with a credit card. Whatever’s going on, we’re a package deal.”

Caleb rolled his eyes, and took another bite. “Ish chrew. Annoying, but chrew.” He swallowed. “And yeah, what kinda cargo you wanna haul in that thing?”

I sighed. “Alright, why not an extra person at this point. Only one we’re really missing is Steph. There’s a lot to catch you up on, but we have someone who needs to lay down and lay low for a bit. Someone you kinda know, but kinda don't. It’s complicated. Shit, can we tell them?” I looked down to Citrine, who’d caught up to us.

She nodded and meowed. I raised my eyebrows at the vocalization. She whispered lightly, “What? We’re in a public space, kitten. I’m trying to blend in.”

Bree and Caleb stared at Citrine in shock. Caleb took another bite of his corn dog and chewed it thoughtfully. “Huh,” he said. "Cool."

#reposado #maddiem4 #writing #novel

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