#*waves hands inarticulately* your sprouts!

[bread-tab]

"stop making [media] your whole personality"

ah... okay. yes. so.

first off:

there's this neurodivergent thing, where you use an interest as a filter for processing the world.

for some people that is called a "special interest," for others with different needs it is more of a "hyperfixation;" there are far more variations than i (or the field of psychology) know how to describe now. if you want to understand the difference there are people who can explain those variations better than me. but i can tell you what it feels like.

you discover something.

it doesn't matter what it is; you find something that speaks to you, something you can connect to, and it becomes a bubble of safe habitat from which you can rest from and explore and connect to all the other parts of this strange chaotic world.

a source of joy. a source of illumination.

it's like you're a person who has lived all their life in dark caves and you find something that glows.

these interests can be anything.

(literally anything; i personally derive meanings that you could never imagine from ✨ drainage ditches. ✨)

but very often, they are stories. tv shows, books, movies, comics, songs, podcasts, minecraft improv streams, cartoons, web serials, whatever

these things are:

tangible. you can hold them in your hands, replay them, turn on the subtitles, take screenshots, read the sheet music

and yet

real. they form a genuine connection from your (isolated, untranslatable) internal world to other (formerly unknowable) people and the rest of the universe

they create meaningfulness

and they exist because humans find these incredibly effective soul-deep ways of communicating to one another.

now, appreciating stories, that's not a neurodivergent thing. that's a human thing.

the point of relevance here is that experiencing an extreme love for stories is a neurodivergent thing.

it's a very common neurodivergent trait which often gets mocked, portrayed as childish, and used as a pretext for infantilization and bullying.

(and it is also a trait of young people in general, to take stories very seriously in a way that looks silly to adults, and that is something that many people (regardless of age) try to bully out of each other.

what good is that doing anyone?)

"stop making [x] your whole personality"

listen, you. get down off that goddamn embankment and climb down into this ditch with me. dip your toes in this oily water. watch the stars and city lights ripple into constellations you've never seen

now look me in the eye

you need to understand that no matter what lowbrow, cringey, problematic or otherwise not-to-your-tastes drivel you might be complaining about today,

you are talking about the phenomenon of creativity

you are talking about a transcendent catalyst of human emotion

and yes that includes the overmilked disney franchises, it includes the formulaic shippy fanfictions, it includes whatever brightly-colored cartoon this website is obsessed with this year (and will be having incredibly dramatic meltdowns over next year), it includes the cheesy action movies and the fanservicey anime and the badly-designed video games and the milquetoast tiktok "literature", it includes the indistinguishable scribbles of some random five-year-old and/or famous fine artist and/or precocious elephant

i get it. you care about real life and touching grass and shit. you have taste. just take the stilts off your horse for a second, okay?

i know you're probably sick of "let people like things" discourse

i would just like for you to stop for a second and take a deep breath, and let the stench of whatever is in this mud puddle wash over you (yeah i know, ew, but you'll be fine) and consider

what is so bad about having a cringey personality, anyway?

and maybe you will think better of making "stop making [some silly moment in the universe] your personality" into your personality and maybe you will come off as a little bit less of a snob/ableist/ass and maybe you will have a slightly better outlook on life among humans.

that's all. yeah you can get out of the gutter now. thank you for coming to my ted talk—

ooh wait, look, a bottle cap

[blarrghe]

Shall We Not Revenge? Ch. 24

I finally wrote something!! This was going to just be a drabble, but now it’s a chapter. A very short chapter that I am posting the entirety of under the cut because it’s been so long since I wrote anything.

I recently broke my Inquisitor’s heart, and fortunately/unfortunately he and Dorian took the leap to start their relationship at pretty much the exact same time. I’ve had it in my notes to write a bit on how that affects things, so this soft bit of drabble quickly became uh,,, sad. On a lighter note, I got to make use of my extensive knowledge of curly hair physics. Ps. Shout out to @midnightprelude for giving me the push I needed to finish this thing. Sorry it got less fluffy, in senses both literary and literal... Read on AO3 or under the cut!

“Mm,” the sound Dorian’s waking mind made in response to Taren’s movement beside him was muffled by pillows at his lips. With eyes still closed he turned his head to breathe in the scent of Taren’s hair, and found it brushing up against his lips, wisping as it did in light, messy locks over Taren’s neck. Dorian shifted a little closer, hooking an arm around his torso and pulling Taren’s body up against his so that he could feel the bones of his hips press against the curve of his back. His hands clutched over his chest and then seemed naturally to drift downward, pulling his torso into place. It fit so perfectly there, pressed snugly up against his own. He leaned his head in and pushed his lips through that soft cloud of tickling, lightly pine-scented hair until they found purchase at the base of his neck, and the kiss he left there fell out of him like instinct, barely conscious and utterly natural.

“Soft.” Another murmur from his still mostly-slumbering mind tumbled out of his mouth as he nudged the delicate locks aside, as he brought a hand up to brush his fingers over the smooth section of hair that had been shaved close and patterned for the ball in Orlais. That night seemed oddly far away now, and Taren hadn’t tended to the intricate hairstyle whatsoever, but the soft fuzz left there betrayed the shortness of time, and Dorian could still feel the light bumps of texture under the stroke of his thumb, playing at his fingertips like embossed velvet.

Taren responded to his sleepy mutterings with one of his own.

“Hmm?” It came with the inflection of a question, as he turned his face and shook the loose hair from where it draped over his forehead and eyes.

“Your hair is so soft.” Dorian muttered the explanation into his neck, his nose still poking through some of it. Soft.

He felt Taren’s laugh rising up through the warm neck under his lips, lightly shaking the body his arms were hung around. The movements pulled him just a little closer to wakefulness, and a little farther away from the uninhibited musings of sleep. He was doing that thing again, he realised as he opened an eye and started to allow daylight and reality to float in, that unguarded thing. Waking up drooling and even a little sweaty - ungroomed, half naked - in another man’s bed, mumbling inarticulate compliments about the softness of hair. No wonder Taren was laughing.

“Thank you,” Taren replied between chuckles. He turned, breaking from the secure mould Dorian had made for him only to press himself back into place, his hands finding their way into his hair now, as though to compare their morning states of unkempt.

“Good morning.”

Dorian opened his other eye as Taren’s fingers delicately swept some of his own hair off his forehead, and as he came into focus, so did his thoughts. Mostly, they were pleasant; grateful observations on Taren’s full lips and bright eyes, and a more fully conscious appreciation of how good his body felt, still connected to him from belly to thigh, how comfortable. A leg shifted to wrap itself over one of his, and he couldn’t help but smile. But there was another thought, too, worming it’s way uninvited into the forefront of his mind: the nagging little voice that berated him for his naivety in being kept so close - in being seen and held and woken up with in such an unmanicured state. For a second, his blissful morning was soured by the thought that he shouldn’t really be there at all, but that he should have at least risen a little earlier, and fixed his hair.

His hair. It was getting long too, going uncared for as it had on the extended trips across the demon-ridden and war torn regions of the south. There was no one to cut hair in Skyhold - at least, no one he’d trust. For one entirely unsympathetic reason, he was beginning to regret not joining Taren on his recent excursion to free the man formerly known as Blackwall from a Val Reauex prison: it would have provided an opportunity to seek out a proper barber. He kept that thought neatly to himself; southerners never seemed to understand the importance of a well-styled appearance.

Taren’s hair tickled his nose again as he nestled deeper into the embrace, and he let his vanity fall aside without even trying to, though that little voice insisted on whispering a new question into his collection of lovestruck anxieties. How might Taren perceive his close attention to appearance? Would he find it tiresome, once the novelty of it all wore off? Look at you, it seemed to say, you’re being vain, and you aren’t even doing it well. Taren’s approach, of course, seemed only to be to keep himself cleaned and sweet smelling, without a single care being given to the rest. It suited him, but there seemed to Dorian to be a certain bravery to that which he did not possess.

But here he was, unkempt and drowsy, spending another morning where he shouldn’t, waking within arms reach of the thing he had told himself he wasn’t allowed to have. His hair was long, and without creams or pomades to keep it in check, and Taren was pushing it out if his eyes, and he was feeling a strangely comfortable uncomfortableness with all of it. Taren’s lips met his forehead, and the voice reminding him that this was a perilous position to be in quieted a little more.

“Good morning.” He returned the greeting as he let his fingers fall through Taren’s hair and graze the length of his smooth cheek, taking the moment to study the little straw coloured flecks that sparkled in the mossy green of his eyes. Dorian leaned in, pulling Taren’s chin gently with one hand and his waist in tight with the other, and kissed him deeply, morning breath be damned. Taren returned the kiss, and he eagerly invited the quickening of his heart that came with it, falling into the all-encompassing sensation of warmth that drove away all his other cares. He let his mind go back to being mostly unconscious, let it go on with uninhibited wanting and appreciation for the softness of hair, of lips, of warm skin on his. His hands moved and he kissed and kissed and rolled Taren over him and pulled and felt and squeezed. Waking up where he shouldn’t, doing that unguarded thing with his thoughts and feelings and actions, keeping the day away for just a minute longer. And Taren kissed him back, dug his hands into his back and squeezed himself into it with his eyes closed and his breath quick, until he didn’t. Two blinks, and a sigh.

Taren was positioned over him when he stopped, blankets tangled about his ankles and morning sun glowing through his wild hair. Dorian’s hands were at his waist, poised to become more than just gentle guides for his hips - ready to reprise the passion of the previous night. Taren rolled off of him, slowing things down with a quick run of his fingers through his hair, which smoothed under them but sprang back in all directions as soon as they were through. Some of the curls broke apart with his fingers, and if anything the mess only grew from the attempted taming. He moved to sit up, looking away with an expression Dorian couldn’t read, but kept his legs wound over his.  

Dorian sat up too, staying close and planting a few more kisses onto his shoulder and neck as he did, then taking his own hands up to the soft tangles sprouting from Taren’s head.

“Sorry, I… um -” Taren gave his head a shake and flashed Dorian half a smile, one that was still lopsided and warm, but sad at the edges. He wondered which weight was holding it down - there were plenty to choose from - but commented on the hair instead. He patted down a lock that had gone particularly upright, tucking it carefully behind his ear and regarding the rest with a smile that bordered on laughing.

Taren caught his amused look and the smile seemed to rise just a little higher. He grabbed a few more locks from their stray places and tried to find them homes behind his ears, but they didn’t stay. Dorian chuckled.

“What - why, what does it look like?” Taren was back to speaking through quiet laughter, and he leaned his shoulder into Dorian’s.

“Magnificent.” Dorian replied, meaning it. Chunks of hair in all directions, some lumped to the side in a cloud of not-quite curls, and some smoothed into a crushed, bent fold where his head had pressed it into his pillow overnight. Some shorter pieces near his forehead stood straight up in little spirals, and the whole coiffure had no discernible part to it, with sections tossed this way and that. It was wild, hilarious in a way and unbearably sexy in another.

“Sometimes I think I should cut it all off.” Taren joked, pulling it all back now. With a few quick flicks of his hands he’d wrangled it into a thick braid, the ends of which still splayed out in haphazard curls and waves, but of a more orderly sort. The short pieces that didn’t make it still stuck up, but for the most part the wildness had been tamed.

“Don’t you dare.” Dorian tugged gently at the braid, pushing Taren’s head toward his own for another kiss. The kiss that Taren returned was full and warm, but as he pulled away the edges of his mouth were reluctant again.

Dorian frowned. “Something on your mind, Inquisitor?” He said it teasingly, hoping for an eye-roll and a playful reprimand, instead he received another sigh.

“Just a lot of work to do.”

Maybe bringing the title into the picture was the wrong choice, as Taren seemed now even more ready to jump up and begin his usual unceasing bustle about the fortress.

“Of course, no rest for the wicked.” Dorian kept his tone teasing, and nipped at his neck with sensual emphasis for wicked.

Taren didn’t take to the opportunity, however, and shuffled his legs out and his body up into still more of an upright seat. He kissed Dorian tenderly, once on the cheek and then softly on the lips.

“I have to get going.” He said apologetically, something dark and unreadable again behind his eyes. Dorian ceased his attempts at temptation and let him rise, watching him as he made his way to the folded piles of clothes on his dresser and hastily threw some on. The drab beiges and browns of wool and leather were a disappointing sight after the glow of tan skin and artful tattoos, but he tried not to let it show on his face.

“If you ever take a break, you know where to find me.” He said, trying to sound casual despite the flutter of his heart. The rejection felt shattering in a way that was utterly unreasonable and almost certainly unfair, but the sneering little voice that had been silenced under soft messy hair and impulsive kisses was screaming at him now,  and it was all he could do to keep it from biting into the tone of his speech as he tried to say something gentlemanly and take his leave.

It isn’t that, he told himself once he’d settled into his own work in a quiet alcove of the library, carrying on a debate with the suspicious voice in his head that insisted that whatever was wrong, he must surely be the cause. It had taken him the better part of the morning to weed out his selfish reactions from the truth. There was plenty to choose from besides his breath or hair or his being an Altus, plenty to worry an Inquisitor which had nothing at all to do with him. The most genuine person he had ever met was telling him that it was the work, and who was he to make it all about himself, anyway?

He sighed, rereading a sentence in the dusty tome before him for the seventeenth time, words tangling about like Taren’s morning hair. Hair that was messy and soft and sexy and wild, but wilder, he knew, because of how he had spent his night tossing and turning in his sleep, restless with some nightmare that crept into their bed even after he woke.

He shook his head at the jumbled words and runes that refused to make sense before him, letting the unhelpful little voice get one last word in. You are good for sex and excitement, not this, it said. You have never opened your heart to anyone, why should he trust you?

[sidpah]

Sutra of the Magick Kingdom Part 4 – Dream Worlds

1.

Knees pulled under chin, toes burrowing into hot sand… I’m being absorbed slowly back into the Earth… People run in every direction around me, not one seemingly aware of my presence. I’m battered by blowing sand and splashes of cool mist. And am again, like always, the lone voyeur surveying alien terrain...

Two old lovers swim into each other’s arms a dozen yards out from shore – voices rough with age but their hearts fragile as shy adolescents. Leaving me to steal a kiss from my distant love… My darling Luna, the Effervescent, who, though it’s still bright blistering afternoon, has been brazen enough to reveal her frail, anemic body; exposing herself to the ridicule of the masses who are themselves, brazen only in the day. When shadows rule, and the Sun has shown her fickle nature and retreated to turn her gaze upon more interesting entertainment – all wild dramas and merriment bare before her - they praise Luna for her protecting light; they are scared orphans, desperate for a new mother…

That is the extent of Luna’s love for me… The romance I never consummated.

I’m perplexed by those sounds. How children laughter sounds so much like sexual ecstasy... How two newlyweds crossing the lake can be so silent… Are they thinking communal thoughts? How I fight the urge to bark at the Moon and swat at the chiggers and gnats...

Respect life, young son. They only want to be happy, no different from anyone else.

How the mother understands every inarticulate gurgle of her daughter, while sons can’t understand the garbled monologue of their own thoughts… Resigned to be a sinner. Hungry and steadfast in that hunger…  Shoot a hole in the Moon’s glass eye… Fuck it, I’ll be the one to murder my frigid lover. The droughted lake... I’ll be a user ‘til the day I die and have nothing left to use… Abused ritually and narcissistically. Snap the wrist, vein rolls away in disgust...

“Lightening can be very therapeutic.” I’m hung.  Shoving broken glass into empty hole. Bleeding geysers of pus. Tourniquet pinches bicep and the fist ventilates... A horizontal river in the intermediate plane between heaven and earth. Universe implodes; dead husk I so eagerly disposed of implodes in wide-yawning laughter with tiny misshapen hands curled in ecstasy... Parents touching their vacant ghost.  Digging for reassurance… bleeding the anemic hole...

All hungry snakes having vomited their night blood meal skulk into tunnels and coil tongue against rattle. Tasting their own restraint. Completing the current, earning their venom its ferocious toxicity.  

Bogs of bloody tissues, gauze syringes laced with active viruses swim into empowered bloodstreams…  

War drums reverberate in time with explosions of organelles… The beating heart all floating in its own broth, expanding in time to the thunder, contracting the dead-bell-whine, hum, ring of silence. Spilt songs. Spears pointed at tight throats… Adam’s Apples rising to ring the bell and clanging back against hard thorax...

Ferns sprout from cavernous nostrils, rock formations grow like hemorrhoids from seamless asses…  They push the seat of his pants out in reverse mockery of hard-on – pole and its respective fissure united... Glass noses sense each whiff of pie and lime, each carrot stalk musty with earth, spicy with botulism.  

The gods have been angered – Wrath appropriated, the cat burglar steals a monkey paw with just one wish left… Mother and her milk infused with aftosa – Someone spiked the anthrax tea – The whole beast imploding, driving its frantic herd into fits of Grande Mal retreat. Teats blown out like ragged inner tubes empty and spoilt, emitting loud whistling farts as they shrink away to thin red latex... Calves and cubs and kids, cheeks full with the warm nutrients melt from bones and tendons leaving two spinning eyeballs in white sockets, small shreds of cartilage hang from blistered bone. Mewling and wailing and screeching bestial vestments, the creatures dance around the May Pole of their own demise, singing “The blood drips in the vial,” in warbly decomposing voices. Tripping over furless hooves, blood follows thin pipeline to intricate system of tubes, now stopped up tight with small balls of toilet paper.  

The clot sets up its detour.  

May Pole splinters when a half-dissolved goat kicks it with shattering hoof... The chef has arrived to eat… May Pole swings a wide, fast arc to the Earth, upending a noxious plume of ferrous nutrients into the air…  

The slow animals gnaw their own legs to escape, not realizing they aren’t tethered to anything...

Erect spires cast off kaleidoscopic clouds, transfixing me to my white-stamped beach. Eyes blink off and titanium sheets snap shut amputating the neck clean and cauterized. “Asante Sana.”  

Lonesome accents; accents wearing torn gloves and antiquated battle armor, tiled hats and feather headdresses. Rain is confusion, their mouths open beating drops blow throat dust between teeth as eyelids meet. Tiny buds of brown rise from larynx on vines of this lonesomeness. Lonesomeness is not loneliness; the wise are alone and satiated as kings after a banquet. The lonely are beggars craving sustenance, their throats stuffed, choking on the rotting vegetation…  

Rain blooms into yellow pods of pulp and noxious juice filling each segment with coagulated congratulations, condolences and introductions beneath burning watts of grow lights hidden away in damp basements and firetrap closets.  

These actors pretend to feel reality while the gunshot happens off camera and the arsenic silently plays its role in the cappuccino skin. These things happen, but these things are inconsequential to the Son.  

Whole honey-breasted Earth Mother, legs shuddering to open and close, exorcising the profligate offspring....  

The accent is a sign of obedience. Obedience to the feigning Baphomet.  

Someone scalped the full Moon. Lopped off her crown leaving her off kilter to spin out of control on a collision course with the Sun… A connection between all occurrences is indeed discoverable.  

Apatosauruses were long-necked herbivores spending their days lazily grazing on high foliage.  Their personality traits are carried by the pensive giraffe who lives same as his ancestors did twenty-million years prior. Giraffes give common spirits a familiar vessel in which to dwell. I am purely a byproduct of my upbringing and influences. Mannerisms are not unique, but are composites of those family and friends we idolized during our formative years. Our way of speaking, gesturing, eating, voting, dressing – our favorite sayings and passions – all sums of our varied influences... Once these influences become plentiful enough that their initial donors are too numerous to pinpoint, we credit said person with having their own persona. This is the Emptiness of Personality.  

“I know what you’re doing.” So do I. Getting caught up in label and form. Like always. I’m warm, but I’m still sick. I shall stop being morbid and go collapse. Stab the sky and return to my frigid bed…  

 2.

Out there remains running with precision, the Real World. I touch it vicariously, constant. They’re frustrated and angry, impatient and hungry. Working a meager wage, smacking their children, telling strangers to shut their fucking mouths, to keep their hands to themselves or they’ll have them arrested for assault, crying in a crowd of hundreds, being stung by bees and rushed by siren and strobe, withering their fortunes and placing final bets. The length we go, the fortunes we spend, the births we waste on this quest for pleasure... Self-fulfillment through forced smiles and opiate warmth. These droves I fall in sway amidst demonstrate in collage that the search is universal. The thirst once whetted, insatiable.

How could we find fulfillment in garish costumes sewn by thirteen-year-old mothers in distant lands whose existence seem like impossible urban legend surrounded by such playful opulence? While smoked mutton legs are torn apart by round young teeth in grotesque imitations of medieval royalty… Tossing bones and cartilage to immaculate ground.  

Make a mess and the peasantry will always clear away the corruption. Keep careful tallies, divulge the hidden crush, open the trap door and rain down hail and hell. Rain down sunburnt cheeks, rain down smooth thighs not yet parted, rain down mockery upon the chivalrous!

Resentment taints the flavor of even the most succulent meal. Globe adorned with divot for each day of the year stands high above all pettiness... Completely, exquisitely unperturbed…

Emptiness is the black silhouette of palm fronds against a dust blue island sky – Emptiness is the voice in my ear imparting statistics and folklore I’m bound to forget in lieu of this foreign landscape.                  

 3.

This act of writing is an act of defiance...  Some of the romance has returned – a fraction maybe, but it tastes like mango and sweet cream… The bliss state is inexorably separated from the Real World. As long as the two remain individuals, as reflections of each other’s opulence, then one becomes a necessary haven from the other. Striving is a waste of time. We spend both holiday and labor trying desperately to forget ourselves.  

The crux is that there isn’t any self to remember or forget...  

There’s a futility behind all action.  

Sometimes I’m not sure whether I’m Buddhist or just depressed…

From all corners where I’ve exercised my irrepressible voyeurism, I’ve come to the same realization: a face may be plain, but the hidden thoughts, turbulent behind layers of fortified armor, deceptively stable: dead skin sheaths – (kissed, exquisitely caressed, licked by patient meandering strokes – flecks of discarded yesterdays on your tongue – Oh, sainted lover! Oh, cannibalistic ravisher of my flesh!) muscle, sinew, expressive masks and face paint, never were blessed with such luxury as simplicity – as peace.

In rows they form a steady procession of black waves rising up from the water, into their own deep brooding substance. Shoulders rolled round neck pulled taught to project strong pecks to the Rising Eastern Sun… Soon sunken – spotted ribs hunched to rejoin heart with mud – Thumping dulls in throbbing brown murk.  

Radiance inseparable from Source of Light… Mud and heart inseparable from deep black waters of All That Is –

 4.

Vivid striped leaves stare back at me incredulous – How dare I ignore their cluster for this old mangled sheet in my hand – Their fallen brethren, doomed to this scratching servitude…  

Cold concrete bench shakes beneath my ass, damp and rustling – Am I or the wind rocking it? Am I the wind? Shouting like ambulance siren? Echoed from distance to distance fading –

The tall trees enthroned continue their indictments, guilty, I bow my head – God bark of foliage from the wind and siren – Loud and brash is the god of this midday hour. Stifle the eyes, suture the ears… Closed, all doors sealed against the tumult… I could die upon that tree – murdered by fate attacking through obstreperous evil leaves –

I feel sullen and doomed. Testicles ache with indecision. They crowd loudly around – shadows spiked and tall – one million gods all sides... On this day of judgment the Fear dawns. Sentence handed down – (touch thumb to third finger and frown) – An icon guilty or explicit: it was all a dream I murdered – killed the mist. Strangled the tortured soul who’d forgotten my face; dreamt up the final sequence of the Stone Statue Lucifer emitting golden rays of hope from tail and forked tongue, each fang and dagger nail unsheathed sent shivers of glorious light through my dream until they’d all perished sleepily, until the backfire of a moving van – Rapid blasts – (am I hit?)  – Check for blood or holes – fragments me and I am again – body and fog – Two gunshots shy of one less morning…

[borrowedxtime-blog1]

Eclipse

Black Hat stiffened as he stepped back inside the mansion, instantly aware of a certain presence…

 Sure enough, when he approached the door to his office there was a dense grey smoke wafting from beneath the door jam.  Pausing to straighten his tie with a grumble, he went inside, closing the door behind himself and locking it.

 "So, did you enjoy yourself?" a voice asked from the vicinity of his desk.

 "….It was amusing enough," Black Hat snorted, sitting down in his tall-backed chair and leaning his chin on a fist.  

 His mysterious visitor chuckled richly at the reply.  "No eating of men this time?"

 BH rolled his eyes, crossing one leg over the other.  "I didn't see any jaguars emerging from the earth either."

 Claws clicked on his desk, more smoke billowing up towards the ceiling.  "Yes, well.  It's rather old hat, wouldn't you say?"

 The demon's lip curled at that, which was apparently also amusing to his guest. 

"Hilarious- I've never heard that one before.  Did you drop by just to annoy me about the eclipse?" he growled, stuffing one hand in his pocket, gloved fingers playing over the casing on the watch inside.

 Slit pupils squinted with mirth at the eldritch's reaction.  "I'm just checking up on you and your little venture, of course. How are you on time, my dear?"

 "Fine!" Black Hat blustered, uncrossing his legs and shoving away from the desk.  

 "Really?  Not having any trouble at all?  How nice for you…"  His visitor appeared to reach into the air, hand coming back holding a familiar pocket-watch.  It was clicked open and examined with a tsking sound.  "It's pointless to lie to me about this, you know." The watch was held up so the demon could see its face, which was now sporting strange little dots instead of roman numerals.  

 Black Hat hissed and practically vaulted over the desk to get the item back, falling harmlessly through a cloud of smoke and nearly running into his own wall.  He whipped back around with a screech and several bizarre limbs full of teeth and eyes sprouting from his back.  "I'm working on it!  I have several plans in motion at this very moment!"  he snarled, an inky darkness slowly starting to eclipse the room.  

 "Wonderful!  But you better hurry!  I'll be so disappointed if you run out of time this quickly," the voice teased.

 "THEN STOP WASTING IT AND GET OUT!"  Several mouths bellowed at once from what was quickly becoming a twisted black mass of horror and reality bending proportions.

 “Ah, be careful with that, my little Cipactli~  Break things too badly here and you'll have to sleep, won't you?"

 The inarticulate roar that followed was met only by a smile and a wave as the smoke coiled back in on itself and disappeared.

 Black Hat was left alone in his office once more, seething as he forced himself back into an acceptable shape, cursing in languages that would have made any spectators bleed from their ears.  The pocket-watch was sitting there on his desk which he snatched up immediately, claws leaving gouges in the expensive wood.  

 As usual when his guest was gone they left behind a familiar and infuriating scent…

 Jaguar piss.

Black Hat grit his teeth so hard his jaws creaked.   Something needed killing.  Anything.