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zaharadessert · 3 years

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The Roommate (9/11)

Summary: Two pacts between friends, one Wedding, a change of plans and a Best Man who is not what Emma was expecting.

In other words, what happens when you make a marriage pact with your roommate, and he falls in love with your best friend when she brings over the wedding dress you bought together nearly ten years ago.

Rating: Mature (things do get saucy)

Notes: Huge huge thank you to @motherkatereloyshipper for the prompt for this fic. We ended up with a more cake situation, and this is the link to her fic… Another thank you to @ultraluckycatnd for being my beta once again, you do such an amazing job and I am forever grateful! Without you my commas would be so all over the place it isn't even funny! All art by me! I tried to keep it fluffy but I'm unable to contain the angst... and this chapter is basically all angst sooo...

Tagging: @jrob64 @xhookswenchx @kmomof4 @wefoundloveunderthelight @superchocovian @lfh1226-linda @teamhook @jonesfandomfanatic @tiganasummertree @onceratheart18 @snowbellewells @karlyfr13s @itsfabianadocarmo @ouatpost @winterbaby89 @thepirateandhisson @xarandomdreamx @xsajx @captainswan21

As always, let me know if you’d like me to add you to my taglist for future fics :)

Also on AO3

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Emma had cried, long and hard, sleeping fitfully. In the morning, she felt terrible, but she dragged herself out of bed. She avoided looking in the mirror too long because she looked as terrible as she felt, but she applied an appropriate amount of war paint and went to work anyway. Everything had her struggling not to cry, but she made it through the day.

Liam and Elsa had told her not to worry about meeting them at the airport; that they would get home, put a wash on and most likely fall asleep on the couch and then they’d all order takeout when she got home and they could tell her about Paris. Emma hadn’t thought much of it when they’d made the decision, but now, with her heart a shattered husk in her chest, she didn’t want to hear about their blissfully romantic honeymoon.

But she knew she was just as much to blame for the state she was in as anyone else was. Stupid Liam and their stupid pact and that stupid dress and his stupid brother who had wormed his way past her walls and left her broken and alone.

She’d never felt this alone before in her life.

Not even after Neal had cheated on her, or when she'd gone to his wedding without a date.

Because years with Neal couldn't even begin to compare with the one week she'd had with Killian.

How the hell was she going to face Elsa and Liam now? How was she going to look her friends in the eye and smile and laugh when she could already feel the acrid bitterness of jealousy curling in the pit of her stomach?

Instead of going straight home she diverted to the dockside and spent an hour sitting on a bench staring out at the water, letting the ebb and flow of the waves help her find a sense of calm. The sea had always done this for her, back home when her parents were being overbearing, or when she and Neal had argued. She’d sat on the dockside of Storybrooke harbour most of the night when she’d found out he was cheating on her before her father came and found her. He hadn’t said anything, just wrapped his arms around her and let her cry.

How she wished he was here now, but she was out of tears, her head pounding from dehydration and exhaustion when she finally felt settled enough to head home. Her footsteps were heavy as she crossed the lobby, stalling by climbing the stairs, part of her relishing in the slight burn in her thighs as she rounded the last turn. She was fishing in her bag for her keys as she walked along the corridor, but paused when she heard raised voices floating down the space ahead of her.

It took her a moment to realise that she recognised them and she froze a few steps away from the front door. She didn’t want to listen to what the two male voices were saying, but just like Liam’s phone call, once she started, she couldn’t stop; it was like a train wreck she couldn’t stop watching.

It didn’t take her long to realise they were arguing about her.

“…bloody hypocrite, Killian!” Emma caught the tail end of Liam’s shout.

“I’m not the one who ditched her for another woman, do you realise how much that hurt her?!”

“I know exactly how much that hurt her, I’ve been part of her life a hell of a lot longer than you have!”

“Exactly, and you still threw her out like yesterday’s trash the moment you could. It’s despicable!”

“Right, and that’s not what you’re doing at all? You knew you were leaving and you still fucked her didn’t you? You disgust me!”

“I disgust you? That’s rich!”

“What were you planning to do, keep her your dirty little secret like that other bitch did to you? String her along and visit every other Christmas? Keep her at your beck and call because after you got your heart broken, you wanted to feel better?”

“Of course not!”

“Then what? You planning to ditch your 'oh so wonderful' navy career and move out here? Don’t make me laugh!”

“Yes! … No!” There was a frustrated growl. “I don’t know!”

“Don’t you think she’s been hurt enough, or did you want to make it the Jones double? Bloody hell Killian, you’re worse than Dad!”

“Right, because hijacking the girl’s wedding for her tramp of a best…”

There was a shout of pain and Emma flinched.

“Don’t you dare talk about my wife like that!” Liam roared.

Killian’s next reply had dropped in volume and Emma couldn’t make out what they were saying any more but she was still rooted to the spot, barely breathing. She heard Elsa’s higher pitched voice chime in with something and then approaching footsteps before the door opened and Killian stepped out into the corridor, slamming the door behind him and shielding his nose.

He too froze, staring at her with wide eyes.

There was so much Emma wanted to say to him, but she couldn’t find the words. He had no right to rant and rave about her business so the whole apartment block could hear.

She drew in a shaky breath.

“So your brother knows?” she asked, her tone light and casual.

Killian nodded, wincing.

“And, you’re leaving and not planning on coming back. That’s good to know,” she continued, still sounding oh so casual, like she was talking to an acquaintance she barely knew.

“I…”

“So this is it?” she talked over him. Not really giving him a chance to respond. “Have a good life Killian,” she said, her voice finally breaking with a squeak of anguish. Part of her genuinely hoping that he did have a nice life.

He could be a nice guy, for the right girl, and he deserved the chance to make someone happy. Even if, like Liam, that girl wasn’t her.

She dropped her gaze, finally found her keys and slid past him. He reached for her arm but she shrugged him off and shoved her key into the lock. She pushed the door open and almost walked straight into a seething Liam. He took one look at her face and the pity in his eyes was more than she could take.

She shook her head, not trusting her voice and ducked around him heading for her room.

“Emma!” Killian called.

“Bugger off you complete and utter wanker, she clearly doesn’t want to talk to you!” Liam spat and Emma heard the door slam once more. She didn’t even look at Elsa as she hurried through the apartment, shutting her own bedroom door behind her a lot softer than the other doors had been shut recently and sank back against it.

She’d thought she was cried out, but it turned out she wasn’t. She could hear Killian pounding on the door for a few moments until Liam shouted back that if he didn’t stop he was going to call the police. Emma couldn’t decipher Killian’s reply, but she didn’t care.

She ached all over as she sank to the floor holding her door shut. Once again it was just her, against the world.

Emma had showered and crawled into bed by the time Elsa knocked on her door a few hours later.

“Here,” she said gently, setting a mug of hot chocolate, a pint glass of water and blister pack of painkillers on her nightstand. She settled on the edge of the mattress and brushed Emma’s hair out of her face. “Want to talk about it?”

“He left, what else is there to say? Everyone leaves,” Emma croaked sadly, not looking up at her best friend.

“I’m sorry Emma, I wish there was something I could do…” she said, her voice full of regret, and Emma knew she was feeling guilty about the whole sorry situation.

“I’m sorry too.”

“Whatever for?” Elsa asked, her tone still gentle but Emma could hear her surprise.

Honestly, she was sorry for everything. For making stupid decisions, for sleeping with Killian, for falling into some dumb pseudo relationship that would never work out, twice. For overshadowing their happiness with her own misery.

“I was looking forward to hearing about France,” she admitted. “But I just can’t do all that right now… and I didn’t want…” She sniffed, feeling sick to her stomach of crying but being unable to stop a fresh wave of tears. “I fucked up, Elsa, and I can’t fix it,” she sobbed.

Elsa sighed and laid down next to her, pulling her into a hug.

“Don’t apologise, we understand,” she said soothingly, and Emma sobbed harder, even hearing the word we hurt, apparently. “You take as long as you need, and we will be here for you whenever you need us and for whatever you want to do or say or hear about, okay?”

Emma nodded into her best friend’s shoulder.

The hug was comforting in a different way to Killian’s, in a different way to Liam’s. Elsa had been her best friend for so long, they knew each other so well and she knew that seeing each other hurting wasn’t pleasant. That was why she’d made the decision she had about Liam all those months ago. Because seeing Emma with Liam would have hurt Elsa far more than it would have hurt her to see Liam with Elsa, or so she’d thought.

Emma declined the offer of dinner; she didn’t feel like eating, but she encouraged Elsa to go and eat and not worry about her. Elsa shot her look that told her nothing in the world was going to stop her worrying when she was in this kind of state, but she left anyway. Emma took the painkillers and drank half the water before settling back against the headboard with the hot chocolate.

The next morning, Emma pushed the pain aside, boxed it up, and got on with her life. Killian Jones was just another bump in the road. One day at a time she was going to deal with as much of the heartbreak as she could handle and keep a tight lid on the rest until she’d worked through all of it.

One day she would be fine.

Elsa and Liam didn’t push her to talk, and she forced herself to smile as they talked about their honeymoon as they organised the wedding presents into the everyday life of the apartment.

Liam tried to apologise for his ‘stupid tosser halfwit of a brother’ on more than one occasion, but Emma wouldn’t hear it. She remained adamant that she didn’t need to, but deep down she knew it was a lie.

She missed Killian so damn much it hurt all the time. She spent hours sitting by the water, thinking of him and wondering if his work had him looking at the same ocean as her. She called her parents, declined their invitations to return home, as well as offers to come and visit. Knowing she’d find it stifling. She loved them dearly, but she’d spent so long without their almost overbearing affection that she knew she would end up resenting them for it.

So, she told her woes to the ocean, who was unable to tell anyone her secrets. She painted them onto canvas at work, joining in painting with the kids who attended her art therapy sessions. She did the best damn job she could of getting on with her life and forgetting, or at least pretending to forget, about Killian bloody Jones.

Part of her knew she wasn’t fooling anyone, and part of her didn’t give a damn and decided they could think what they wanted about how she chose to live her life. One thing was for sure, Emma wasn’t going to let anyone else get close enough to hurt her.

#cs ff #Captain Swan #ZaharaDessert Writes #The Roommate #more cake #apparently I art too #chapter nine

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bangtanfictiondan · 6 years

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A night to remember -Chapter one

Y/N’s POV

“Flight 227 to Copenhagen departing from gate 11 in ten minutes.” I’ve been listening to messages like this for over an hour now, I’m still waiting for my turn. I’m going on flight 459 to London, boarding from gate 2. It’s 7am and I barely got any sleep last night, so I should be tired, but of course I’m not! I’m going to a concert tonight, not just any concert, this is basically a once in a lifetime kind of thing since, unfortunately, I was born in the wrong country. You guessed it, I’m seeing BTS tonight, and I couldn’t be happier! Well actually I could… my mom wouldn’t let me go and since my stepbrother had something he wanted to look for, I think it was a skateboard or something, in London, she decided that we could go together. My stepbrother is kind of… I don’t know, he’s really controlling and quite mean. He actually scares me sometimes, and now I had to go to London with him, at least he wasn’t coming to the concert. “Flight 459 to London boardi-” Yes! Finally, it was my turn! I’m pretty much running straight towards the line, I end up at 6th place in line so that’s not so bad. “Hey, you can’t board without Me come back here!” I hear a voice calling. “Well shit…” I think to myself as I start walking towards him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” He grabs my arm, it hurts. “Are you really that excited to see those stupid Asians that you can’t even act like a normal human being, I can’t be held responsible for your stupidity but yet that is exactly what…“ I stop listening, he let go of my arm but it still hurts a bit. We get to the end of the line and show our boarding passes, a flight attendant points us to our seats after wishing us a great flight and gives me a vague smile, I guess she feels sorry for me, she heard him while we were waiting in line.

---

The plane takes off and I can’t believe it, I’m leaving my hometown to go to London, to see Bangtan, that’s crazy, right? Well I’ll go back home tomorrow morning but still. I plug in my headphones and put on some music, I prepped for the trip by downloading like a thousand songs, so I think I’ll be okay. Love maze starts playing and a smile covers my face, I sink into the music and let myself go for a while.

---

We land on Heathrow and take a cab to the hotel, we get settled and he says: “Don’t go anywhere while I’m out.” And then he just leaves. I’m 18 years old I can take care of myself, there’s still a few hours left before I have to leave for the concert and I’m hungry, so I go out to get something to eat. There’s some kind of pub right down the corner so I go in there and decide to order a classic fish n’ chips. I kind of have to, I bet it’s a law for all tourists, while in London you have to eat fish n’ chips. When I’m done eating I stroll down the street, just looking at people, buildings, really cute dogs… Then I decide to go back to the hotel and get ready for the concert.

---

“Where have you been!? I told you not go anywhere, you need to grow up, stop acting like such a brat and listen!” I barely made it through the door before the yelling started, apparently, he got back before I did. “I’m not a child, I can take care of myself, and I just went down the corner to get something to eat. You can’t tell me what to do, and who’s the real brat here!?” I yell back but instead of giving me an answer he hits me. His fist hits my cheekbone before I can even register what’s going down. I hear him swearing and then he storms out and slams the door behind him. By now tears are streaming down my face, he has raised his voice, even raised his hand, but he has never hit me before. I’ve always felt like he might do though so I’m not that surprised. Why now, I can’t deal with this, this day is supposed to be all fun, now I can’t even seem to get my crying ass up from the floor. “Y/N, you need to stand up, right now.” I tell myself. I stand and walk up to the mirror. Half my face is turning purple and my eye is swollen. There’s also a small notch on my cheek, it’s bleeding a little but fortunately it doesn’t seem to deep. I take a deep breath and try to push the tears away, this is nothing a little makeup can’t fix…

---

A little concealer later I’ve covered up most of the purple, of course you can still see the swelling and the notch, but it’s a lot better than before. I’m not gonna let this ruin my night. Right now, I’m gonna focus on having fun, everything else is just gonna have to wait. I finish my makeup, get dressed and go down to the lobby. One of the receptionists help me call for a cab to the concert venue. The whole car ride there the cabdriver is looking at me kinda weird, it’s making me uncomfortable, but at last we arrive, I pay for the cab and get out as quickly as I can. There’s a long line to get into the venue but as soon as the doors open everything goes by quite fast. I’m there pretty early and since I got a standing ticket I’m almost as close to the stage as one can possibly get, there’s just one row of people in front of me. There’s still over an hour until the concert actually starts so in the meantime I talk to some of the other fans around me since I came there alone. It’s a lot of fun and time passes by quickly.

---

The stage lights up with hundreds of spotlights and Taehyungs voice starts flowing through the arena in the beginning of Fake love. The crowd is singing along, screaming, dancing, crying, all at once, army-bombs are swaying in synchronized harmony. My whole body feels warm and I’m happier than I’ve ever been before.

---

Several songs later that euphoric feeling still hasn’t left my body, I think there’s only about seven songs left. In the middle of Yoongi’s verse in Outro: Tear I start feeling lightheaded, black spots are covering my eyelids and everything sounds as if I’m under water. Suddenly I can’t even stay upright, but right when I’m about to fall someone picks me up, I try to see who it is, but everything turns black and me head falls back.

---

I wake up on a black couch with two women and one of the security guards beside me. “Hey, are you feeling okay? Headache? Are you dizzy?” the women are bombarding me with questions. “I’m a bit dizzy.” I answer and try to sit up. “Was it you who carried me here?” I ask the security guard. “Yes, I saw that you were about to faint and just had time to catch you before you fell.” “Oh, thank you.” I say but can’t help but think about how incredibly embarrassing this was, he had carried me all the way here, not that I know where “here” is yet, with everybody watching… One of the women, whom I’ve now figured out are nurses, hand me a glass of water. “Do you know why you fainted? Have you eaten anything today? Have you had plenty of water?” “Yeah I have done both, but this happens sometimes, I get lightheaded really easily, I’ve gotten used to it.” “Well as soon as possible you should go see a doctor, you might have an iron deficiency or something like that, okay?” the nurse says, and I nod. Then I realize that I can still hear the music from the stage, and it’s loud, how haven’t I noticed this until now, I look around and I seem to be by the side of the stage, backstage, I guess… I still can’t really think clearly, my head is spinning. “I should get back to my position.” the security guard says. “Us too, but we’ll be right nearby if you need us, just call for us.” One of the nurses adds. “Okay, and thanks.” I respond before they leave. I can’t believe they’ll just leave me here, for all they know I could be a hired assassin, but oh well. Since I’m still quite dizzy I close my eyes and lean back. Just a short while later a voice interrupts me in my silent slumber. “Hi.”

So guys, the first chapter of my new fanfic “A night to remember”, I know this first chapter is really uneventful and boring but I will upload the second chapter as soon as possible. I just really needed this as an “introduction” to the story! Anyways, tell me your thoughts in the comments and feel free to DM me! :)

#bts #bts namjoon #namjoon #kim namjoon #fanfic #fanfiction #chapter one #a night to remember #bangtanfictiondan

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nh935 · 5 years

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Creepy America, Episode 11: Monday

Creepy America Episode 11 Monday Jackson, Mississippi

My grandmother had a saying: “a life well lived is a life with a lot of scars.” She fully understood what that meant. Both of her parents died in the Holocaust. She almost did as well. And once all that was behind her, she had to uproot her life and move to America, knowing no one, having no one to turn to, struggling to make ends meet.

She did it, though. And she never got bitter. Never complained. I always remember her smiling, happy, joking, laughing. When I asked her how she could be so upbeat in the face of all that darkness, she’d say “oh, those are just scars. I got them. Everyone does. But there’s a whole lot more of me than there are of them.”

I never fully understood that. I still don’t. And I really don’t know what it says about me that I don’t have scars.

Scars are things that healed. They may hurt, but not as much as they once did. So I don’t have scars. I have wounds. I have things that still cut deep, that still pain me as much as they did when I first think about them: Sam and the Alone place, Thorn, Zed, The Terrible Trivia Test…

...Zoey....

And Timothy Chapman’s Mondays. That wound still bleeds as fresh as ever.

***

I was getting real sick of the South.

To be fair, no matter how long I spent on the road, I never felt at home anywhere other than the Midwest. North Eastern cities are baffling labyrinths. The West Coast is simply strange. Plain States are big empties populated by winds, and the South West is more of the same.

But the South is just plain hostile. Outside of the king of venom that is New York City, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten less friendly welcomes than deep South rural towns. Their legendary hospitality only applies once you know somebody; if you don’t have that, you’re an outsider, plain and simple.

And remember, we had to interview these people. The idea for “Faces of America” was to pull from everywhere, deep South included. But they refused to bite. Everyone was suspicious that we were with somebody, or spying on them, or trying to pull an elaborate con, so it was slammed doors or chased off all around. We did manage to find a few outliers, including some amazingly sweet and generous individuals. And if you could get your foot in the door and convince others to introduce you around, man did the tune change. But it still wasn’t as much as we were hoping for.

During that time, we used Jackson as a sort of safe ground to retreat to. I wish I was joking, but after the sheriff of an extremely small town started to follow us around, we figured that heading out after we overstayed our welcome wasn’t such a bad idea, and the relative anonymity of a big city helped with that.

“I still don’t get it,” Zoey complained as she stabbed more hashbrowns. We were at Huddle House, which was located just outside the city and was slowly becoming our favorite place to eat. “Aren’t there any places around here that won’t give us the ‘move along’ treatment?”

I shrugged. “Small towns are small towns, I guess. If they see a stranger, their first thought is ‘why’?”

“Hmph,” she replied. “Well they need to lighten up a little. Maybe let them know that the Civil War is over.”

I choked on my coffee. “Jeez Zoe. Comments like that definitely won’t help.”

She slid a fork full of potatoes into her mouth and began to stab more. “Well, I’m frustrated. We’ve only got five, maybe ten minutes of stuff to put in for this section when I was hoping for at least a half hour more. And I’m tired of being stared at like a bug in a microscope LIKE YOU ARE!” she finished, violently pointing at the other side of the diner.

I followed her finger to a middle-aged white guy, somewhere between thirty and forty, with thinning black hair, glasses and a crumpled gray suit and tie. He was staring wide-eyed at the two of us, as if we were aliens from outer space.

He continued to stare for a good three seconds more, before awkwardly shifting his gaze back to the plate in front of him.

Zoey groaned. “Please tell me we’re leaving soon.”

I fished out the crumpled itinerary. “Well, Alabama is next, then Georgia, then Florida…”

Zoey perked up.

“...then back to Mississippi.”

She slumped her head on the table and extended her fork towards me. “Do you think you can jab this into my ear so hard it kills me?”

I gently took the fork and placed it next to my plate. “I think somebody’s burnt out. I know we just got a new episode ready, but do you want to put ‘Faces’ on the backburner and work on the next ‘Creepy America’?”

She looked up at me. “I suppose that does sound better than suicide by silverware.” She sighed, stood up, stretched, and walked over to the front counter with me to pay the bill.

“Do we have any leads?” she asked as I exchanged cash.

“Well, we did have that mirror,” I replied. “The Myrtles Plantation in Mississippi. It wasn’t too bad of a drive the last time I checked.”

“Hmm.” As we walked out of the door, she glanced over her shoulder.

“What is it?”

“That weird guy sure is causing a scene.”

I turned and looked back. Inside of the diner, the crumpled businessman was rushing out, pushing past waitresses and leaving his food unpaid for.

“Wonder what his problem is,” I said.

Zoey shrugged. “Maybe he just forgot the ‘dine’ part of ‘dine-and-dash.’”

“You don’t think we should follow up on it?”

“What’s there to follow up on? Nothing ever comes from the crazy ones.”

“Fair enough, I suppose.”

We kept walking on in silence for a while, turning the corner to get to the parking lot, until Zoey suddenly stepped close to me. “We’re being followed. Crazy guy.”

I looked back. The man in the wrinkled suit rounded the corner in a hurry and stopped as soon as he saw me watching him, instead making a big show of observing the area around him.

Zoey jabbed me in the side. “Don’t stare. Keep walking.”

I picked up the pace again.

“Who the hell is he?” Zoey muttered.

“Not Archangel,” I answered. “He sucks at this too much.”

“That’s not assuring. Not professional isn’t the same as not dangerous.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Turn down this next alley and hide.” Zoey said in a harsh whisper. “If he tries anything, we jump him.”

My stomach turned a bit at that statement, but I turned down the darkened side street without saying anything. Once there, I flattened myself behind the wall of the right building while Zoey crouched behind the dumpster.

A minute later, the man bolted in, panting and out of breath. “Where did…” he wheezed. He spun around in a circle, then widened his eyes when he saw me.

“You!” he gasped.

Zoey leaped forward and tackled him, shoving both of them onto the ground. It was hardly a fair fight, seeing as how he was a winded forty-year-old and Zoey was still in her spry twenties, so it didn’t last very long. Once he was down, Zoey scrambled back to her feet and put a foot on his chest, keeping him there.

“Why are you following us!?” she demanded.

“I’m sorry, I just thought maybe you knew something or were something because I’d never seen you before today…” His words continued into more meaningless babble.

I raised an eyebrow. “He’s really not making any sense.”

“Yeah,” Zoey agreed, “maybe we should call someone…”

“No!” The man exclaimed. “Please don’t I…” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “My name is Timothy Chapman. I’ve been living the same Monday for almost twenty years. Every day is the same date. Every day, the exact same things happen.”

He opened his eyes and stared at us. “Except you two. You two are different. I’ve never seen you before, so you have to be part of this. Please…” he begged, “please get me to Tuesday.”

***

Timothy Chapman (“please, just Tim” he told us,) was staying at a Motel 6 outside of town. After pleading for a while, we agreed to meet him there and hear him out, but once we had entered the lobby, Zoey grabbed my arm and forced me to stay behind for a second.

“What are we doing here? He’s obviously nuts!” Zoey hissed. “And the dangerous kind, too!”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “We’ve seen crazier things. Hell, we’ve done crazier things.”

“But reliving the same day over and over?”

“It makes sense, given what we’ve seen.”

Zoey stared at me in disbelief.

“You remember what I was talking about at the Monolith?” I asked. “About secret pockets of space and time?”

She thought for a second, then turned back to the hallway where Tim was waiting. “So… what? You think he’s trapped in one of these secret pockets of time?”

“Exactly.”

Zoey shook her head. “Then why would we be any different?”

“I think…” I stopped to choose my words. “I think that maybe when we used that terminal, we de-syched ourselves from the normal time stream. Everyone else here may be trapped linearly, but we now exist outside of that linearity, even if we’re still going in the same direction.”

Zoey groaned and rubbed her temples. “Fine, I don’t get it, but…” she looked back at me, “tell me the truth Liam: do you actually believe this could happen?”

I met her gaze. “With what we’ve seen? A thousand times yes.”

She nodded. “Fine. We’ll at least hear him out then.”

***

Tim’s room was the normal fare for a motel: bed, bathroom, desk. It didn’t look like he had been living there long, though: the bed was still neat and made and a solitary, unopened suitcase sat next to it. He had to have just checked in, I figured, which was weird considering that he had rattled off the directions without any hesitation whatsoever.

Tim sat down on the bed and looked at us sheepishly. “So, um, I guess you need to hear about what happened to me now, huh?”

Zoey shot me a look of impatience.

I silently asked her to wait it out with my eyes.

She sighed. “If you would. And, you don’t mind us recording this, do you?”

“No, not at all.”

Zoey pointed at me and I started up the camcorder.

Tim cleared his throat. “My name is Timothy Chapman. I’m 23…”

Zoey and I glanced at each other.

“...and every day, I live the exact same Monday.”

“What do you mean by ‘the exact same Monday’?” Zoey asked.

“I mean the exact same Monday,” he insisted. “February Seventeenth, 2016. The date never changes. I go to sleep, I wake up, it’s still the seventeenth. And every single day, the exact same things happen over and over and over again. Here,” he jumped up and ran over to the window, “let me show you.”

We walked over to the window and watched.

“In twelve seconds, you’re going to see a tall woman with blonde hair walking a big white dog. In fifteen, a hispanic man with a reflective vest is going to come from the opposite direction.”

I pointed the camera at the window and waited. Sure enough, a tall blonde woman showed up, walking a poodle. A moment later, a man with a neon yellow vest passed her.

Zoey cleared her throat. “That’s not exactly…”

“We’re good, thank you!” Tim interrupted.

We stared at him.

“No housekeeping?” a muffled voice asked from behind the room door.

“No housekeeping,” he yelled, then looked back at us.

“And how do we know that this isn’t some elaborate prank?” Zoey asked.

He sighed. “Go outside and travel one block east, towards the gas station. On the corner, there’ll be a man with sunglasses arguing with a teenage kid standing next to a red ferrari that’s been rear-ended by a white station wagon. Go see, just,” he looked down at his watch, “please hurry. We’re running out of Monday.”

Zoey and I glanced at each other, then silently walked out of the hotel and down the block he told us to. There, parked behind a stop sign, was a smashed cherry red ferrari, back end rammed into by an old, white station wagon. Standing next to it was an angry white guy alternating between screaming into a cell phone and screaming at a teenage boy, head in hands, sitting on the curb.

“Now way he could arrange that,” Zoey said. “I guess he’s legitimate.”

“So now what?” I asked.

Zoey held her hands out. “That’s on you. I do people, you do weird.”

“Since when?”

“Since you saved me from the blood curse.”

“Mmmph,” I grumbled.

“C’mon,” Zoey goaded me, “don’t tell me you haven’t been obsessively thinking over this already.”

I paused. “You know, he looks awfully old for 23.”

***

When we got back to the room, Tim had the door propped open, pacing back and forth inside. Once he saw that we were there, his eyes immediately lit up. “You saw it, right?! You know I’m telling the truth now, right?!”

“Yes yes, we saw it.” I motioned for him to sit back down on the bed. “Can I ask you some questions?”

“Of course!” He sat down on the mattress and leaned forward, far enough to be in danger of falling off.

“You said you were 23.”

“Yes, I am,” he confirmed. “Or maybe, I was. I’m still aging.”

I furrowed my brow. “At the exact same rate?”

“Yes.”

“But, that would mean…”

He gave me a sad smile. “6,198 Mondays. Almost seventeen years in the exact same day.”

I slowly nodded. “The aging, is that why you move out of your house every morning?”

He looked down at the packed suitcase at his feet. “At first, it wasn’t really noticeable. But my wife, Kaitlyn, she started to say things. Asking me if I was sick, or if I was stressed out at work. After a while, she stopped recognizing me and started freaking out in, attacking me and asking me what I did with her husband, so I started sneaking out of my house in the morning and come here.”

“So you wake up in your own bed every morning?”

“Yeah. No matter what happens.”

“What about… physical harm?”

“You mean…” he mimed putting a gun to his head.

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“Tried several times. Never seems to work. I just wake up back in bed.”

Zoey gave me a sideways glance. “You’ve got an idea, Liam. I can see it.”

“I don’t know if it’s an exact match, but the terminal…”

“Right. Good thinking.” Zoey checked her watch. “Do you know how far it is from here?”

“About two and a half hours.”

Tim’s eyes bounced between the two of us. “What? What is it?”

“You stay here and explain it to him,” I told Zoey. “I’m going to bring the car up.”

“Right,” Zoey said, sitting down next to Tim. “Don’t worry Mr. Chapman, we’re going to fix this soon. I promise.”

***

It took me all of five minutes to get to the car, unlock the door, and slide into the passenger seat. Once there, I cracked my knuckles and slid the key into the ignition. “Right,” I said out loud to myself, “time to use this knowledge to do some good for once.”

A soft click-clack answered me. “Hello Foster.”

I glanced up into the rearview mirror. Behind me was a large tan man dressed in a black suit and trench coat, shiny aviator glasses covering his face.

“Thorn,” I whispered, “what are you doing here?”

“Just came to ask what a bright young man such as yourself is doing leaving the fine city of Jackson.” His hand moved up an inch and the black of his pistol became visible in the reflection.

“You already know, don’t you?”

He scoffed. “Of course I already know. We’ve been watching you since Bethesda. The question is, what are you doing trying to head back to the access terminal?”

“My guess is that you already know the answer to that one, too.”

“Yeah I do. What is it with you kids these days? Being famous isn’t enough, you want to be heroes too?”

I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “So what are going to do? Kill me?”

He chuckled. “Course not. If I wanted you dead, I would have put a bomb in your car engine. Or took you out with a sniper already. Or brought something heavier than a silenced .22 when I decided to take potshots at your RV. No, I’m here to warn you.”

“About what?”

“That if it was up to me, you would be dead.” He brought the gun up to my ear, tickling it. “Anderson thinks you’re harmless. That when push comes to shove, you’ll play ball. But I’ve been doing this for a while, Foster, and I know what a crusader looks like. You won’t quit, not until everyone and everything around you has been burnt to the ground in the name of your little quest. And you want to know why I know this?”

I stayed silent.

“Because I was part of the team that had to fix that access terminal. Quite the mess, Foster. It was going all kinds of apeshit. And that didn’t have to happen. You could have done the smart thing and walked away. You didn’t have to play with keys. But you did, because you felt you needed to know, and you caused damage that you couldn’t comprehend and that I don’t have time to explain.

“So here’s your one chance to prove me wrong: stay in Jackson, and forget that terminal exists”

“No can do.” I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I’ve got someone in there who needs it.”

He pressed the gun closer. “You willing to stake your life on that?”

I nodded.

“What about the life of Ms. Hammersham?”

I tried to respond, but my throat went dry.

Slowly, I took my hands away from the steering wheel.

He gave another soft laugh. “That’s what I thought.” He opened up the back door and stepped out. “Think about that the next time you want to play hero, Foster. And remember, I’ll be watching.”

***

The walk back from the car to the motel was the longest walk of my life.

***

I stepped into Tim’s room to find Zoey and him waiting, suitcase slung over one shoulder.

“Alright, ready?” Zoey asked.

I shook my head.

Zoey’s furrowed her brow. “What’s…”

“We can’t use the terminal,” I replied.

“But…”

I stared and shook my head again.

Tim collapsed backwards, into the bed. “Bu… what now? If we can’t…”

“I promised I’d help you, and I’m going to keep that promise.” I sat down at the writing desk and pulled out my phone, Googling ‘Jackson MS missing persons.’ “Tim, you said you’ve been re-living the same Monday, right?”

He looked up at me with watery, red eyes. “Yes?”

“Do you remember Sunday?”

“That was so long ago.”

“Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,” I whispered to myself. “That’s below the national average.”

Tim looked up at me. “Huh?”

“Nothing, just tell me about Sunday.”

He looked up to the ceiling and closed his eyes. “I… was excited for the new promotion at Parkway. We both were. I had worked hard to get it. Monday was supposed to be the first day, but…” he scrunched his face up, “...Kaitlyn had to go to her Mom’s and I went to the museum…”

“Museum?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Eyes still closed, he blushed a bit. “The Mississippi Art Museum. It’s kind of an interesting place.”

As I opened up Google again, Zoey leaned over my shoulder. “What are you looking for?”

“Jackson Mississippi has roughly the national average of missing people, which suggests that whatever happened to Tim hasn’t been here for long; it moved in recently. And if the last place he went was the Art Museum…”

I opened up the museum page and scrolled down to exhibits, continuing until I found , ‘Garretson’s Tempus Fugit Collection. NEW!’ Once there, I clicked open a gallery to showcase dozens of clockwork figures, animals, buildings, and humans made out of gears and metal scrap.

Zoey squinted at the text line at the top. “In this sculpture collection, Garretson, better known by his alias ‘Mind Over Matter’, demonstrates the fleeting nature of time with these interactable sculptures made out of repurposed scrap…”

Hearing those words, Tim came over and peered at my phone as well. “That’s it! I was looking at those!”

“Interactable, huh?” I flicked through the gallery pages until I came across a gray box with the words ‘Oops! We’re sorry, but it appears this image link is broken!’

I pointed at a small winged ‘A’ in the corner.

“No way…” Zoey whispered.

Tim looked back and forth between us. “What? What is it?”

“A sign that something shouldn’t have been there, and telling people like us to stay away.” I flipped from there to Twitter, clicking on the search box and typing in #MississippiArtMuseum.

“What are you doing now?” Zoey asked.

“Hoping,” I replied. Not seeing what I wanted, I hit search again and typed in #MindOverMatter.

“Hoping for what?” Zoey continued.

“That Anderson was right when he said that Archangel can’t catch everything.”

Half a page down, I found what I was looking for: a woman posing for a selfie with a clockwork old man with a cane. A sculpture that definitely hadn’t been part of the original gallery images.

“I remember that one!” Tim said, practically bouncing. “That one came with a handle that you would spin to make it move!”

I opened the picture up and zoomed in a tiny bit, over to where a wooden handle was attached to a thin metal gear. Alongside one section of it, cut into the metal itself, were the letters “WONDERLAND CONTROL GEAR 136-A.”

“Wonderland again,” Zoey whispered.

“What’s Wonderland?” Tim asked.

“Not sure,” I answered, “but everytime we run into it, freaky stuff starts happening.”

“Hang on,” Zoey interuptted, “if this is what put him in a time-loop, why haven’t these other people been affected?”

I scratched my head. “Again, no idea. But if this thing caused it, this thing can fix it.”

“But if Archangel already found it…”

“...then it’s gone, yeah.” I tilted my head back to the two of them. “But even so, I don’t think it’s gone gone. My guess is that they couldn’t move something like that too quickly, especially if it was potentially dangerous. So it’s most likely still there.”

“So all we have to do is break into a museum protecting priceless pieces of art,” Zoey grimaced. “Great.”

Tim stood up straight. “I can help with that.”

***

Tim told us to meet him at the museum at five in the evening; that would be the ‘easiest time’ to get in. That gave us a couple hours to drive around and do our best to case the place out, even though we really had no idea what we were looking for.

After our third time around, we saw Tim stepping out of a yellow taxi cab, so I swung into a parking space and stepped out to meet him.

“Are you ready?” he asked us.

“Sure, but…” I took a glance back at the building, “I don’t think there’s anyway in. That place is locked up tight.”

“You leave that to me,” he declared, striding around to a side door labeled ‘employees only.’

I turned to Zoey. She shrugged and started following him. I hurried to catch up.

As soon as we reached the door, it swung open to reveal a large, muscular black man in a kevlar vest with “SECURITY” written on it. He stopped and looked at us in bewilderment. “What the…”

“Shh… it’s okay Carl,” Tim interrupted.

The other guy took a step back. “How do you…”

“Melissa sent me.” He put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s ready for you to come home.”

I winced and stepped back a bit, ready for the man to clock Tim straight in the face.

The other guy drew himself up…

...and started crying.

“I can’t” he mumbled, tears coming down his cheeks. “That night, what I said…”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Tim consoled him, “it’s okay. I know that you’re still hurting, but she’s hurting too, man, You both need to heal… together.”

“She really wants me back?” he asked.

Tim just silently nodded.

The man ran out, shouting “thank you!”s all the way across the parking lot.

We stared at Tim.

“I take it this isn’t your first time breaking in here?” I finally asked.

“After a few Mondays, you start seeing what you can get away with.” He waved us forward into the open doorway. “Follow my lead.”

We did, trailing on his heels as he moved from white stucco hallway to white stucco hallway, too fast for me to discern any pattern behind it. I could barely keep up with him, much less take time to process my surroundings.

Suddenly, he stuck his arm out and crouched low, forcing us to follow suit. Ahead of us, around a corner, was a chest-high wall and windows that reached up to the room’s ceiling, forming a small room, and inside, a red-headed man in another “SECURITY” vest was seated, reading a magazine of some kind.

“What now?” I whispered.

Tim looked at his watch. “Seventeen seconds and the Miller kid comes out.”

Zoey tapped my shoulder. I turned around and shrugged back.

“Son of a bitch!” the guard shouted. He stood up and bolted out of the room, leaving the door to the guard-house wide open.

Tim slunk out and into the guard house with us behind. Once inside, I turned the camera to the computer monitor there, showing a teenager running away and the guard close behind. Framing the chase was a large wall with scarlet spray paint dripping down the side.

“Here.” I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to the source. Tim was holding out a plastic keycard. “This should open all the doors. The PIN is 8161.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, grabbing it. “So where do we go now?”

“I have no idea,” Tim admitted. “Usually I’m here to screw around, not find things.”

“Right then,” I sat down at the computer and started hitting keys. “How long do we have until that guard gets back?”

“Thirteen minutes, give or take 30 seconds.”

I clicked through files until I found one labeled “DIRECTORY.” I opened it and scrolled through the pdf it brought up. “Temporary storage. That sounds like what we want… Wing B, Sublevel One.”

Tim leaned over my shoulder and studied the document with me. “We’re on Sublevel One right now. Wing B is a right, then a left, a left, then straight.”

“How about we just follow you?” Zoey suggested. Tim nodded and barrelled down the hallways, forcing us to run in order to keep up. He dashed down three intersections like he was being chased and abruptly stopped at the fourth, holding his arm out and causing us to almost trip and fall as we stopped as well.

A young man pushing a trash can and a mop glided past us, headphones blaring with music and eyes focused on empty space.

After another minute more, Tim waved and we continued moving down the hallway, this time at a brisk walk instead of an all-out run.

The hallway we were following turned right one more time and emptied out into a long corridor with a large, blue letter “B” painted on the side. Down the walls were dozens upon dozens of doors, each with a small, wire-meshed glass window set into the center and a keycard reader and number pad set above the handle.

“Wing B,” Tim announced.

Zoey spun around the passage. “There has to be at least 50 doors here!”

“Better get started,” I moved to the closest one on my left, slid the card Tim had given me through, and punched in ‘8161.’ Once I did, the door gave a tiny beep and I swung it open to reveal a small room filled with crates and hand-dollies.

I heard Tim mutter “the pin is 0115” behind me. A minute later, Zoey was by my side, sliding a card through and punching in keys while the sound of Tim opening doors continued behind me. I leap-frogged over Zoey and continued down the line, the three of us accessing rooms as fast as we could.

When I opened the twelfth down, a life-sized, flat sculpture of an old, hunched-over man composed out of rusted sheet metal and large, interlocked pieces of scrap and gears stood in the center of the room, a paper sheet reading “DO NOT TOUCH UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES” taped onto it. Following the arm down, the area where the hand rested on the cane had a large wooden handle on it, and attached to the handle was a long, thin gear that read “WONDERLAND CONTROL GEAR 136-A.”

“Guys” I shouted, “I found it!”

Silence.

I turned around. Zoey was gone. As was Tim.

I walked around, seeing the doors they had been searching through swung open, but no sign of the other two. “Tim?” I asked in a harsh whisper, trying to grab their attention without revealing ourselves. “Zoey?”

They didn’t answer.

But something else did.

THERE GOES LIAM. ONE OF GOD’S OWN PROTOTYPES. TOO WEIRD TO LIVE, TO RARE TO DIE.

My blood ran cold. I slowly stepped back into the room with the sculpture. There, perched on top of it like some kind of demented angel, was Sam, green hoodie, jeans, boots and all, perched on top of the metal head and grabbed on with both its hands and feet. Two large, black wings of pure shadow extended from behind its shoulders, filling the entire top half of the room and those damnable shining pinpricks of eyes and crazy, twisted grin were visible in the blackness of his hood.

“Go away.” It barely came out as a whisper.

It cocked its head. WHAT WAS THAT?

“I said go away!” This time, I managed to shout it.

IS THAT ANY WAY TO TALK TO YOUR MESSIAH?

“Leave me alone! I didn’t ask for your help, or your baptism, or…”

FUNNY. There was a rush of darkness and all of a sudden it was in front of me. It happened so fast I startled backwards and fell over, letting Sam leer over me. YOU’VE USED MY GIFT SEVERAL TIMES WITH NO ISSUES WHATSOEVER.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said, trying to get back up.

As I sat up, he reached over and covered my face with a large, dirt-caked hand. My vision went black, then faded back into view with me sitting in the darkened RV, Zoey collapsed into a chair in front of me. “I just… I just wish there was a way to fight back,” she sighed.

“Archangel,” I said to myself. “This was the night they talked to us.” But that’s not what came out of my mouth. What came out of my mouth was what I said when I had a sudden flash of insight:

“We can. They’re afraid of ‘Creepy America.’ They’re afraid of this show.”

The colors twisted and blurred until Zoey and I were standing on top of a large desert rock, black terminal with green letters in front of me.

“No, it can’t be,” I thought to myself.

“Wonderland access terminal,” past-me said. “Wonderland. Wonderland. Worlds of… Hey Zoey, you don’t think…”

The scene faded to black and my vision returned as Sam’s hairy, dirty hand lifted from my face.

“You…” I stammered.

I TOLD YOU LIAM, Sam leaned closer to me until its face was only inches away from mine, I AM A MUSE. I AM HERE TO INSPIRE YOU TO DO GREAT WORKS. ALL YOU NEED ARE A COUPLE OF HINTS.

“I don’t want them!” I turned around and crawled away, then scrambled back to my feet.

OH REALLY? EVEN IF I WERE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING LIKE… HOW TO CORRECTLY TURN A WONDERLAND GEAR?

I stopped, then slowly spun back. Sam was leaning against the statue, gently caressing the gear with the wooden handle. MR. WONDERLAND DOES MAKE SUCH INTRICATE TOYS. BUT HE RARELY INCLUDES THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL. He stood back up and stepped forward, offering a hand to me. BUT I AM AN OPEN BOOK. I AM THE ALMIGHTY WIKI OF ALL THINGS: KNOWN, UNKNOWN, SECRET, COMPLEX, OCCULT. ACCEPT MY PENTECOST, LIAM, AND YOU CAN DO MUCH MORE THAN SIMPLY RESUME THE CLOCK OF A TOCK-STUCK MORTAL. YOU COULD OPEN DOORS TO OTHER WORLDS, ASCEND TO NEW REALMS, REWRITE REALITY ITSELF. JUST TAKE MY HAND….

I stopped.

I reached out my hand…

Sam’s eyes grew larger.

...and slapped its arm away.

“I don’t know what you are,” I growled, “but you’re wrong. I can feel it. I’m never joining you, Sam. So feel free to take your little pentecost and shove it.”

Its grin downturned into a grimace and its eyes slanted into rage. YOU… ARROGANT! It reeled back and shoved me with both arms, throwing me to the ground and sliding me into the wall behind me hard, hard enough to hurt.

“Liam!” Zoey appeared in my vision, bent down next to me.

“I’m fine,” I muttered.

Tim looked at me, then back to where I just was. “What the hell just happened?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I grabbed my side and hobbled back towards the room.

“‘Ey Bobby!” A staticky voice crackled near Tim. “You hear something near B Wing? Over.”

Tim pulled out a large walkie talkie from his jacket pocket and clicked it on. “It’s this damn art piece, Jamie. It’s hooked up to some kind of video clip and I can’t shut it off! Over.”

The walkie talkie laughed. “Artists, right? Over.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tim replied. “Now quit yammering so I can figure out how to shut it up, Over and out.” Tim then turned back to me, panic in his eyes. “We’ve got to hurry. We’ve only got about a half hour left before the night crew comes and starts moving pieces around from here.”

“Don’t worry,” I grabbed onto the door and creaked it back open, revealing the sculpture and the handled gear attached to it, “I found it.”

Tim stepped in and began to walk around the it. “So this is the thing that got me stuck in Monday?” He sounded unconvinced.

“100 percent,” I said. “Time never works right when Wonderland is around.”

He grabbed the handle and moved it back and forth. “So what do I do?”

“Well, what did you do with it on Sunday?” Zoey asked.

He blushed. “I don’t remember.”

“Not at all?” I asked.

“It was a long time ago!” Tim protested.

There was a sharp bang from the other end of the hallway. The three of us scooted back into the room and I moved the door back, almost closed but open just enough to hear out of.

“Tim,” I whispered, “what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he stammered. “This has never happened before.”

There was the click-click-click of two sets of footsteps, then it stopped.

“I don’t see why this has to be done tonight…” one voice whined.

“Circumstances changed,” a deeper, familiar voice replied. “We need to get it out of here before interested parties steal it.”

Zoey tapped me on the shoulder. “Is that…”

“Thorn,” I finished quietly. “He must have decided to move the sculpture sooner after talking to me.”

“Talking to?” Zoey hissed.

I looked back at Tim. “I’m going to go out and make a distraction.”

Zoey squeezed my shoulder. “We’re.”

I started to say something, but Zoey just squeezed tighter. “Not the time to argue,” she said.

“Fine,” I sighed. “We’re going to go out and make a distraction. You stay here and experiment with the gear. Get yourself unstuck.”

“Alright. See you at my hotel room,” he smiled, “on Tuesday.”

I nodded back, then turned to Zoey. “Ready?”

“Depends,” she replied. “What’s the plan?”

“I was just going to run out and make him chase me.”

She smirked. “Think I can manage that.”

“Okay. One, and two, and three!” Zoey and I barreled out of the room, hitting the door so hard it flew around its hinge and slammed into the adjacent wall, clipping both Thorn and the headphoned janitor I had seen earlier. The janitor immediately fell over, but Thorn rolled back with the motion, bringing his arm up and pistol raised as he did so. “Foster, stop!”

“Split up,” Zoey panted. She went left and I went right. Back towards the guard shack, I realized.

I heard running footsteps, much faster than my own, stop at the intersection, then squeak and chase my path. I pushed further and dove into the guard shack, curling myself up underneath the desk.

The footsteps continued, then stopped. I heard the soft tinks of the pistol being handled as Thorn began moving slowly across the area, scanning for me.

I summoned all of my willpower and held my breath. The action inflamed my already burning lungs and turned my heartbeat into a roar.

C’mon, I mentally urged, we have to be close to thirteen minutes.

As if on cue, footsteps from the other side of the hallway sounded off, then stopped. “What the…” the voice of the security guard muttered.

“Stand down!” Thorn shouted. “I’m a member of Archangel!”

“A whowhatnow?” The guard raised something else tinky up. “Hands up! Drop the gun!”

“I’m with Archangel! Protocall Five!”

The guard brought his walkie-talkie to life with a click-beep. “Robison, call the police right now. We have someone who’s armed and dangerous, possibly insane.”

Thorn mirrored the action with his own click-beep. “Copy base, I am in pursuit of the assets, about to be detained by local law. Permission to terminate obstacle.”

The air turned deadly quiet.

“Denied,” a radio voice sounded next to Thorn. I couldn’t quite be sure, but it sounded like Anderson. “Allow yourself to be taken in.”

“Sir,” Thorn insisted, “the assets…”

“Are to be allowed to escape,” the maybe-Anderson interrupted. “We’ve told you before: they are to be given a certain degree of trust. Comply with law enforcement and consider this your punishment for disobeying orders. We will pick you up in the morning.”

The silence resumed.

Something clattered to the ground where Thorn was.

Carefully, I crawled out of my hiding spot and back the way I came. As I did, I watched Thorn stare daggers through his reflective aviators, scowling as he laid flat on the ground, hands behind his head.

***

It took another hour of sneaking around and making distractions to get out of there, an hour I’ll skip for the sake of time. Once I did, though, I found Zoey waiting for me in the parking lot. Without a word, we got into our car, drove back to the Motel 6, and headed into Tim’s room, door still unlocked and opened from when we had left.

Still silent, we sat on the bed, waiting for Thorn to come back. We sat like that for hours, not moving, not talking, until finally, Zoey looked down at her phone. “Where the hell is he?” she complained. “It’s after midnight.”

We waited a minute longer.

“He’s still in Monday,” I realized.

Zoey glared at me. “Don’t say that. He’s… he probably got caught in the museum, and they put him in jail. Or back home, or…”

I stood up and moved over to the writing desk. A solitary piece of paper sat there, covered in tiny, neat letters.

“That… wasn’t there before,” Zoey said.

I picked it up and began to read out loud:

“Liam and Zoey,

“I hope this letter manages to find you. I can only pray that these words, unlike myself, manage to find a way to get to tomorrow. It’s funny, or pathetic, I can’t say which, that at my dying hour all I can think about is you. Not my wife, or my parents, or all the friends who will wonder about me when I’m gone. No, instead, all I can think about are the two strange kids who, in one Monday in a million, found me and tried to help.

“The gear didn’t work. I don’t know why. I’ve tried a million times since, but nothing ever happens, no matter what I do. I’m sure that if you were here with me, you could explain to me how to use it, but that’s no use now. I used to be angry at you, but years later, I realize that you were just doing the best you could. Perhaps not even you knew how the gear worked, and you were just grasping at straws, like me.

“I’ve seen your work, by the way. Good stuff. I’d ask you how you do the effects, but… well, I think we both know the answer.

“I can feel my body give way as I write this. Far too many Mondays, I fear. My frame has become one of an old man, so please, consider this my Will. Remember me. The others won’t. Not Katherine. Not those who knew me. I’ll be vanished. But you, you two, who knew what happened, remember me. And keep working at it. Help others, if you can. Nobody deserves this.

“Nobody deserves this.

“Sincerely,

“Timothy Chapman”

“Well, maybe, if we get that gear, we can go back,” Zoey said, tears in the corners of her eyes. “Right, Liam? I mean…”

I hung my head.

The conversation ended.

***

“Liam, c’mon, it’s time to move on.”

It was two days later. I was seated at Huddle House, staring blankly at the spot where we had first seen Tim. Sprawled out at my booth was a large poster:

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

TIMOTHY CHAPMAN, 23

150 LBS. 5’8”

REWARD FOR ANY INFORMATION

PLEASE CALL KAITLYN CHAPMAN:

And a picture of a much younger, much happier Tim than I had ever known.

“I know it hurts,” Zoey said, “but we have to move on. We can’t beat ourselves up every time we have a loss like this.”

“At any given time, around 90,000 people are missing in the United States,” I muttered numbly.

Zoey looked at me confused. “What did you say?”

“My mantra as of late.” I buried my face in my hands. “What are we doing, Zoey? Everytime we try to help, we just make it worse.”

“Don’t say that,” she whispered. “We’ve had our good moments. Millie, and Red Like Roses…”

“And Greg and Sims and Tim.” I sat back up. “We can’t save one person. Not one.”

“Liam, we’re not gods. There’s only so much you can do…”

“Wrong.”

Zoey sighed and sat down at the seat across from me. “No, Liam, we exhausted all our options.”

“No we didn’t,” I insisted. “We had something we knew would work. The terminal. But Thorn came. Intimidated me. Convinced me not to go. And then…” I swallowed, “and then, Sam came. Offered to tell me how to work the gear. But I was scared. Again. And I said no, and…”

“Hush,” Zoey commanded me. She paused, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper and handed it to me.

I took it and read the top. “Raven’s Riddle. A spell for learning secrets. Dominis Enim Novit Omnia.” I looked back up to Zoey. “Is this…”

“One of Jenny’s spells, yeah,” she confirmed.

“I thought we burned them all.”

“Me too, but this was lodged under some stuff. We must have missed it when we were rounding the papers up.” She took the paper back. “I was going to get rid of it, and then Tim happened. And I turned it over and over in my hands, thinking about how much easier it would be if I could just use it once.”

I stayed silent, watching the paper.

“And you know what?” Zoey took the spell and ripped it into pieces.

“We could have used that,” I said.

Zoey shook her head. “No, we couldn’t. Liam, this… world, we keep finding, it’s not right. It’s… consuming. And the first thing we need to do is make sure it doesn’t consume us. I want to help people just as much as you do, but we can’t do that dead. Or screwed over by spells. Or under the influence of whatever a dark pentecost is.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Monday sucked. Tim should be here. But we need to be here also, and we can’t kill ourselves for the sake of one person. If we go, nobody fights this fight anymore.” She gave me a sad smile. “That alone is worth sticking around for. So… hero responsibly, okay?”

I stayed quiet, then nodded.

“Okay,” Zoey said. “We’ll win. Eventually. Trust me.”

I don’t if I believed her then. All I know is that I don’t believe her now.

#short story #series #creepy america #horror #weird fiction #cosmic horror

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fashiontrendin-blog · 6 years

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A gal's guide to Las Vegas (because it doesn't have to be like a scene from The Hangover)

http://fashion-trendin.com/a-gals-guide-to-las-vegas-because-it-doesnt-have-to-be-like-a-scene-from-the-hangover/

A gal's guide to Las Vegas (because it doesn't have to be like a scene from The Hangover)

Tony Curtis once said, “if you know how to live in Vegas, you can have the best time”.

We Brits have always had a fixation with Vegas. Our first experience of the city usually stems from having lived it vicariously through over-the-top Hollywood films like The Hangover and the Ocean’s movies. Movies, which glamorise the black out drunk, disastrous stag/hen do and frenzied gambling narrative that is so synonymous with Vegas.

As appealing as getting stuck in Las Vegas with Bradley Cooper sounds, we felt it was time to discover another side to Vegas. A side that consists of more than just walking up and down the strip, nursing hangovers and spending unconscionable amounts of money.

Here at GLAMOUR, we’ve decided that what happens in Vegas shouldn’t just stay in Vegas. They say everybody goes to Vegas for 3 days. We stuck to that formula – and boy, did we live our best lives! So, we’ve compressed our trip of a lifetime into a ‘Day and Night Life Guide to Vegas’, especially for you.

You’re welcome.

The Hotel.. After an 11-hour flight and the initial merciless assault of heat as you emerge from the airport, we were beyond grateful for the respite offered as we entered the cool lobby (in the literal sense) of the stunning Vdara Spa hotel. Whilst benefiting from being right at the heart of the strip, the hotel is surprisingly casino-free – a refreshing anomaly in Vegas. With stunning views of the city and beyond, a fully kitted out spa and a high-tech gym, it’s totes the digs for the millennial traveller. Did we mention that the hotel also has robots that can deliver room service all ours of the day at the mere press of a button? MIND=BLOWN.

The spot for lunch… Chica at the Venetian. Nestled within a quieter corner of the opulent, Italian themed ‘Venetian’ and with its infamous canals, paddled by T-shirt clad gondoliers (yes, really) – it would be easy to miss this heavenly little piece of Latin-inspired cuisine. Mouth- watering dishes like the crispy calamari fuego, fish tacos and the shrimp and butter salad are easily washed down with the sinfully tasty array of cocktails that are available on the menu.

Laugh and Dine at… Beauty & Essex at the Cosmopolitan. Now, if ever there was a restaurant made for the girl with serious Sex and the City nostalgia, this is it. Behind a hidden entrance in a pawn shop (I know, we couldn’t either at first), Beauty and Essex can best be described as a lux restaurant-lounge; the sort of place you would go with your best girlfriends to giggle, chat, eat, drink and flirt with the waiters just like Carey Bradsaw and co. But don’t be fooled, it’s not all glitz, this place packs a culinary punch serving some of the most innovative finger food and creative cocktails a girl can ask for.

Nightcap at.. the Chandelier at the Cosmopolitan. In a city that never sleeps, the idea of a nightcap is somewhat redundant. Nevertheless, after you’ve eaten far too much than you should have (this is Vegas, after all), the Chandelier bar is a great spot to see and be seen. Stunningly encased within a giant crystal chandelier (which could only ever work in Vegas), you have a choice of 3 bars across 3 levels, giving you the added bonus of both walking off those excess calories whilst trying out the different menus that each bar offers. #winning.

Day party at.. Drai’s Beachclub at the Cromwell or the Marquee at the Cosmopolitan. A trip to Vegas is not complete without a pool party, okay?! Head over to Drai’s at the Cromwell for a signature Vegas day party. First of all, it’s perched 11 storeys above the strip gifting spectacular views. Secondly, the music is on point and you can enjoy all of this from your own private cabana with up to 8 of your closest mates. This comes with incredible VIP service – vodka cocktails and chicken strips with dirty fries are optional!

If, however, you’re looking for something a little more “boujie”, then head to the Marquee day club. A club offering sun-blazed lavish pool-sides, bungalow lofts, beautiful people and more fun, sun and music than you can shake a frozen margarita at. The best bit? The cabanas come with their own infinity pools and hot tubs. I mean…

Fine Dine at.. Spago at Bellagio Hotel and Casino. This statement-making location, featuring views of the fountains at the Bellagio, Celebrity Chef Wolfgang Puck’s infamous brainchild is a must. Even J-Lo rates it! Nothing quite prepares you for the unbelievable oysters with cocktail sauce or the mouth-watering tuna tartare. Don’t even get us started on the, quite frankly, outrageous burrata salad topped with balsamic and rocket pesto. Head there for an early dinner so you can enjoy the spectacular waterworks.

Dance at… ’Jennifer Lopez: All I have’ concert at Planet Hollywood! Quite frankly, it would be rude to go to the entertainment capital of the world and not be, well… entertained. After Britney made Vegas residencies officially cool (all while reportedly raking in an eye-watering £500,000 per show), other stars such as J-Lo have followed suit, picking up the baton with her “All I have” show. And its err-mazing. Energetically fusing cabaret, hip hop, Latina, dance and pop in a way only J Lo can, this is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the trip. It’s intimate, it’s slick, it’s spectacular all at the same time. Just remember not to overindulge with the supersize frozen cocktails as you’ll need to pop to the loo and miss part of her performance.

21 times Jennifer Lopez rocked the sheer dress trend & looked better than all of us

Insta at… Seven Magic Mountains. Art installation in Vegas? Yes, you heard correctly. If you can bear to tear yourself away from the strip, just a few miles from Las Vegas Boulevard, you’ll stumble across Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s installation of 730 foot tall columns of neon coloured boulders. If ever there was an installation made for insta….

Brunch at… Primrose at Park a MGM. In case you hadn’t noticed, Vegas is all about recreating iconic places and cultural references from across the Globe – and Primrose is no exception. With a tropical garden-inspired terrace, Primrose brings a piece of Provence right to the heart Vegas. Refined yet relaxed, Primrose offers stunning lavender mimosas, succulent fruit platters, hearty breakfasts and the show stopper- garden fries (made of fried pickled dill beans, hot peppers and sauce gribiche) making it a refreshing addition to the Las Vegas scene. You won’t want to ever leave. We guarantee it.

Wine and Dine at… Rivea at Delano. Perfect If you want to take a break from the hustle and bustle of Las Vegas. Alain Ducasse’s French and Italian-inspired restaurant is light and enjoyable fine dining. It’s also happens to have THE.BEST.VIEWS.OF.THE.ENTIRE.STRIP. #Truestory. The decor is also stunning with hundreds of glass bubbles suspending from the ceiling. Standout dishes include the moreish asparagus and ricotta ravioli, chick pea fries (who knew?!) and the zingy, uplifting marinated seabass. Nom! You’ll definitely want to eat more than you want to share. Rivea isn’t a restaurant, it’s an experience…. And one that you’ll want to insta the hell out of…

Brunch at… Bouchon at the Venetian. Bouchon at the Venetian is often feted as one of the best restaurants in Vegas. Pretty high praise but it really does live up to the hype. You can enjoy French-inspired cuisine including classics such as, the croque madame and their pretty – as-you- like patisserie assortment. The restaurant opens out onto an impossibly pretty outdoor terrace complete with a Venetian pool, fountains and foliage. The perfect spot for recovering after a boisterous night on the strip.

Go Glam… with Gypsy shrine. When you’re in the party capital of the world, getting your bling on is a must – especially with The Gypsy Shrine’s Vegas collection.

Vegas really is the place that keeps on giving, it totally lives up to the hype. “Man, I really like Vegas,” Elvis Presley.

The best spas in the world for far-flung luxury

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jessemccry · 7 years

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blah blah blah this blog is new so i’m gonna do this ok? ok

1. Who is your defense main?- hanzo

2. Who is your support main?- i can play lucio and ana but they both suck now

3. Who is your offense main?- im a 250 hour mccree main but i turned into a tracer main because of dive

4. Who is your tank main?- dva/zarya

5. Who is you MAIN main?- mccree

6. Which character have you played the least?- moira or doomfist

7. Which character do you want to learn how to play?- i can play him but i want to get better at genji

8. Which character do you dislike the most?- junkrat

9. Which character’s background story do you like the most?- gabe or mccree i guess

10. Which character’s background story do you like the least?- give zen lore

11. Which map is your favorite?- dorado

12. Which map is your least favorite?- i hate numbani horizon junkertown and blizzworld equally

13. What Arcade game type is your favorite?- no limits i guess

14. What Arcade game type is your least favorite?- team death match

15. Do you prefer quick play, competitive, arcade mode, or custom games?- comp

16. Which map type is your favorite? Assault, escort, assault & escort, control, or arena?- i like everything but 2cp

17. Which map type is your least favorite? Assault, escort, assault & escort, control, or arena?- 2cp

18. Which event map was your favorite?- i like the halloween/christmas reskins

19. Which event map reskin was your favorite?- oh

20. Which event was your favorite?- theyre all pretty good except anniversary

21. Which event legendary skin was your favorite?- it was van helsing mccree but i think its baihu genji now

22. Which event was your least favorite?- anniversary was a let down

23. Which event legendary skin was your least favorite?- there’s a ton, but recently the new widow skin was pointless

24. Which event non-legendary skin was your favorite?- amercian mccree or nihon genji? idr its been so long

25. Which event non-legendary skin was your least favorite?- the widow summer games one is not memorable

26. Which event item do you most regret not getting?- i have every event item in the game except achievements

27. Did you beat the Uprising event on Normal, Hard, Expert, and Legendary?- i only beat it on hard but i was still new at the game then

28. Do you have Sombra’s “Power Outage” achievement?- yeah

29. Do you have Widowmaker’s “Smooth as Silk” achievement?- yeah

30. Do you have Lucio’s “The Floor is Lava” achievement?- i got it with pre rework lucio and nowadays its so easy

31. Do you have Zenyatta’s “Rapid Discord” achievement?- one of my first

32. What was the first achievement you got?- of the character specific ones i think it was woah there!

33. Did you get the “Not A Scratch,” achievement on Junkenstein’s Revenge?- no i got so sick of grinding for the pumpkin reaper spray that after i got it i didn’t want to play it anymore

34. What has been the hardest achievement to get for you?- i dont have one of orisas and neither of doomfists

35. What’s your current SR score in Competitive Mode?- on my main 3000-3200 idk i let it decay last season

36. What the highest you’ve been in Competitive?- 3207 i think? or 3217 idr

37. What’s the most amount of placement matches you’ve won?- ive won 9 twice

38. How many gold guns do you have?- 8 (mccree x2 hanzo x2 tracer genji ana bastion)

39. Which was the first gold gun you got?- mccree

40. Whose gold gun do you currently want?- not sure, might get mei next

41. What role do you usually play in Competitive?- hitscan/flex dps but i can play mostly anything

42. If you don’t play Competitive, why not?- i do

43. What kind of theme event would you like to see in the future?- anything is fine

44. What type of character would you like to see in the future?- more mid to higher skill characters

45. Who needs more (or better) skins in the future?- orisa

46. What country would you like a new character to come from?- idc

47. Favorite voice line?- ive always loved the zen line when he discords a genji “i know the doubts that plague you”

48. Favorite player icon?- i have a couple that i use: have fish, the snowman, gamf, the la gladiatiors one, a few of the summer games ones, and like 2 others idk

49. Favorite emote?- the new genji one is cool

50. Favorite spray?- the sorry spray

51.Favorite victory pose?- victory poses are pointless

52. Favorite highlight intro?- the new mccree one is cool

53. Characters you ship the most?- mchanzo

54. Characters you ship the least?- im not gonna say

55. Characters you wish had more in-game interactions?- mccree and anyone, anyone from original overwatch and each other

56. Character you wish had a comic about?- hanzo or genji

57. Favorite comic released?- reflections i guess

58. Favorite short released?- dragons

59. Favorite new character released?- ana

60. Overwatch, Blackwatch, or Talon?- blackwatch

61. Pro-Omnic or anti-Omnic?- pro

62. Favorite character that isn’t a playable one? (Ex: Emily, Brigitte, Gerard, Efi, etc.)- well it was brigitte but now idk mabye lynx

63. Character change (nerf, boost, work around) that you liked the most?- the mercy nerf

64. Character change (nerf, boost, work around) you liked the least?- im scared for the hanzo changes

65. Best ultimate?- objectively (and unfortunately) its riptire but other than that grav?

66. Worst ultimate?- deadeye or doomfist ult

67. Most kills in game?- i cant remember if it was 84 or 74 on a very long gibraltar game

68. Most heals in game?- idr like 25k probably

69. What character do you think needs a nerf?- junkrat ult dva or sombra

70. What character do you think needs a buff?- other than the obvious rein lucio mccree (but im biased)

71. Have you ever rage quit in the middle of a game?- not a comp game

72. What’s the fastest you’ve won a game?- you can cap a 2cp map in like a minute

73. What’s the fastest you’ve lost a game?- you can get steamrolled on a 2cp map in like a minute

74. Your best Overwatch-related story?- idk

75. Weirdest thing that happened to you on Overwatch?- idk

76. Platform you play on?- ps4

77. Do you stream?- occasionally for one of my fiends

78. Do you normally play solo or with friends?- usually solo

79. Have you made any friends because of Overwatch?- a couple

80. Have you cosplayed a character from Overwatch?- not really into cosplay

81. Have you ever wrote fan fiction about Overwatch?- no

82. What’s the lowest you’ve been in Competitive?- when i did my first placements over a year ago i placed 1337

83. In “All Brawls,” if you get “Charge!” do you play Reinhardt or do you pick the Lucio role?- tbt but lucio

84. In “All Brawls,” if you get “One Shot, One Kill,” do you play Ana, Hanzo, or Widowmaker?- depends on the lobby but hanzo usually unless they have all widows

85. In “All Brawls,” if you get “This is Ilios,” do you pick Lucio or Roadhog?- lucio

86. Team Genji or Team Hanzo?- hanzooooo

87. Be honest! Do you usually get on the payload?- depends on whats going on in the game

88. Does your team?- hm

89. What’s the longest session of Overwatch you’ve played?- uhhhhhh (17 hours once i think....)

90. No Limits, Mystery Heroes, or Total Mayhem?- no limits

91.Most cosmetics you have for one character?- 97/97 on mccree

92. Least cosmetics you have for one character?- idk its probably moira by default but i have almost all of them

93. Have you ever made your own custom game?- all the time

94. Best D.Va skin?- cruiser

95. Best Mercy skin?- witch

96. Best Tracer skin?- honestly? she doesnt have many good ones but i guess graffiti

97. Zarya’s Industrial and Cybergoth skins: yes, no, or HELL NO?- the only good zarya skin is frosted

98. Do you want more animal character, robot characters, or human characters?- any

99. Is there are character you’d get rid of completely?- junk

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roodiaries · 7 years

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Tropical Thunder

The Journey North

I'm not talking of a Game of Thrones journey north, where the bitter cold whips one's bones to the brittle core as they pass beyond The Wall and into the icy depths of the unforgiving wildling realms. No. A nice gentle tropical journey north towards the equator, where beaches and tourists are plentiful, the palm trees nestled along an expansive Pacific coastline and the state of relaxation knows no bounds as yet another shrimp is procured from the figurative barbie. Stereotypes aside, the East Coast is fun, but a little too popular and similar at times. You have to make it your own, with good travel mates and a random journey.

Fresh from my incredible holiday in Vanuatu, I left Sydney with Yusuke on 11 September, excited to jump in the Nissan and plough northwards. I had to be in Cairns (2400km away) in 9 days for my new job. We didn't bother messing about too much in New South Wales, as we'd both spent a lot of time here and seen all we wanted to see. We Byron Bayed for a night, and enjoyed the tremendous views on offer there, before a short jump over the Queensland border to Brisbane, where we spent two nights and almost got towed.

The real journey into the unknown began after this, along with an epic 14-hour driving day where we ended up talking to a local woman about the effects of the recent cyclone in Rockhampton (which lies on the Tropic of Capricorn) and eventually reached Airlie Beach. Its electric atmosphere was unfortunately wasted on us tired travellers, as all we wanted to do was go to bed and shovel food down without the pressure and distraction of hostel kitchen chit-chat. Of course, we were awoken by an Aussie guy screaming – “I'll fucken' cut ye open, yer cunt!” – to a guy who had boldly told him to quieten down. Next day was the legendary Whitsunday Islands trip. All prior knowledge about this archipelago and national park had conjured up images of a calm sandy paradise, but we were in for a huge surprise as it turned out to be the ferry ride from hell and one of the roughest sea journeys I've ever experienced. I'm never sure whether I'm just being overly affected by things (scientifically known as OABT Syndrome), but it was bumpy as. Whitehaven Beach was a real treat, however.

It was more driving, driving in our car, north past the dispersing Great Dividing Range and glinty inland sunsets, through forests and fields, over sugar cane train tracks and past vast banana plantations. Townsville & Magnetic Island was the highlight of the trip for me. Mostly because the hostel was good quality – a good balance between social and quiet – and we met spirited Dutch Oz-newbie Jenny, who joined us for the sunset hike up Castle Rock, a towering and majestic hill over Townsville. The Maggie Island daytrip involved joining forces with Jenny's friend Lizzy, renting a mini open-top 4x4, a hot hike past wild koalas to WWII fortifications (I think I bored the others with any over-zealous talk of wartime history), one incredible sunset at West Point, a shy echidna and two brown tree snakes.

Cairns

Named after Irishman & Governor of Queensland, William Wellington Cairns, and unpronounceable without adopting an Aussie accent, this modest city of 140,000 inhabitants is a surprisingly pumping tourist mega-hotspot. Go more than 200m from the ocean and everything basically becomes shit (e.g. classic highways lined with industrial outlets and nothingy commercial suburbs), but the heart of the city is the marina and downtown area. Despite a smaller size, it has a nightlife to compete with most other Australian cities and a huge mix of nationalities. Steamy nights at Salt House, Pier Bar, The Reef Casino, Three Wolves and even The Woolshed will stay with me for a long time. The gorgeous green hills provide a tropical backdrop, and the Trinity Inlet is a beautiful spot to the south, while the beachside suburbs to the north – Trinity Beach, Kewarra, Palm Cove to name just three – are incredibly chilled out and enjoyable. Fishing with fun work-mates Max, Tun & Rankin on a boat trip up the river was a real privilege; as well as trips to Shangri-La's North Bar overlooking the marina with ex-Pullmanites and great friends Caitlin & Davide; the work-mate pool party at Caitlin & Max's house with poker and Cards Against Humanity was yet another reminder that this is not a normal life for an Englishman.

Nothing makes you feel more like you're in the tropics than the pungent smell of bat shit outside the Cairns Library, where hundreds of them gather before fleeing and feeding across the night sky. They are the animal that most represent Cairns for me, along with the ominous curlew, a gangly and awkward flightless bird that drifts in a ghostly way by night. I discovered the city by bicycle and was able to experience the city in all its hot, heavy, pungent glory.

The Winkworth Way

I moved in to 45 Winkworth Street in the western suburbs, paying $135 per week for a single room with a double-bed and air-conditioning. It was by far the best accommodation I've had in Australia. I loved the house for its airy openness and traditional Queenslander ambience, but mostly because of the fantastic people I lived with. I don't say this often, because I generally seem to end up in accommodation that's less than ideal. We were all travellers in the house, and all worked a lot so often wouldn't see each other for days at a time. But that made it all the more special when we did meet and hang out. There was Yukie, a Japanese lady from downstairs who dropped her keys in a bush when she fell down the stairs drunk one time; Ander from the Basque Country, who enjoys parties, bed bugs and violently offering biscuits as well as taking me on some excellent and fun day-trips; Leonie whose surname and town of origin (Ter Stege and Enschede respectively) Ander and I always enjoyed repeating back to her in a Dutch accent for immature amusement, who works too much but has a heart of gold; Tim, an Austin Powersy German dive instructor and goon connoisseur as well as a valued source of Stephen Colbert episodes; and Kacie from Texas, who is a rock of a friend and proves the Trump-American stereotypes wrong with a kind, fair outlook on life, and loves Australia if only it weren't for the cockroaches constantly falling on her head.

Even Andrew, the landlord, was pretty cool. Except for the occasions when he simply could not stop swearing in anger for minutes at a time, over some trivial thing that's happened with the roof or his phone. “Oh no. You baaastard!”

Pullmania

Working took up the bulk of my time. 39% of my waking hours over three months in Cairns were spent in the Pullman Cairns International Hotel. I actually calculated it. I had transferred up here from Sydney to fill the same role (a Food & Beverage Attendant, in Banquets), so technically should have known what I was doing. However, a few factors made PCI more challenging than PSHP: the climate was hotter, the furniture heavier, and many of the events much bigger and more challenging. It was a hectic & sweaty 3 months, and below I've chosen some events to paint a picture:

Friday 22 September: my first shift. I found my way through the labyrinthine back-of-house corridors in time for briefing, simultaneously meeting my manager, Karen, and the staff working tonight (most of the banquets team). In addition, we had lots of staff from Coco's (the restaurant in the lobby) and Staffing Solutions (a hospitality agency). I was behind the main bar with Italian sage Davide for a 400-pax cocktail reception, meaning canapés and free drinks for a bunch of lairy let-loose corporate types. Since it was the pool-deck, we couldn't serve glass bottles, so had to pour every single beer into a plastic cup. The queue was infinite, with murmurs of disapproval when not getting served immediately, and over the fact they had to drink beer out of plastic glasses. The struggle was very real and lasted for hours: one guy simply sighed, while another shook his head and laughed in disgust at my occasionally over-foamy beers. An arrogant racktastic blonde kept appearing at the bar, clicking her fingers and demanding to be served her rum & Coke (she knew it was my first day and that I would be a soft touch). I really felt shell-shocked when the event finally ended, and then overwhelmed with fatigue and frustration for the next few hours when we had to replace all of the furniture and polish all of the glasses we'd used tonight, which took us until 2am. 10-hour physical shift, no breaks. I soon realised this was not unusual.

Tiffany & Gareth: The Unhappy Bride. The grand ballroom was used to host the wedding reception of Tiffany and Gareth, an aboriginal couple who had married earlier today. Most of the guests were indigenous, too, and I always enjoyed doing events with aboriginal people, since I had seldom met any during my time in the South-East. However, Tiffany decided she wanted to ruin her own day by complaining about everything and causing problems in a truly bogan manner. Why didn't everyone have champagne for the toast!? This wasn't what I asked for on the buffet! Why are people getting too many free drinks!? Why did I get married!? The banquets team was on edge, and people snapped at each other, while our trooper of a supervisor, Shontelle, bore the brunt of the complaints (she had met with Tiffany several times before the event, and none of the things she was complaining about had ever been mentioned). She wanted a Fairytale Wedding, but wasn't the fairytale bride.

Melbourne Cup Day: I hadn't slept well the night before, and my body and mind weren't ready for a rare daytime shift. Some of the richest people in Cairns came to the hotel to mingle with fellow poshos over lunch, look fancy and watch the Melbourne Cup horse race on big TV screens. I was put in the fenced-off VIP section with my Team Leader, Harumi. All we had to do was pour drinks for them, or fetch beers from the bar, then clear their plates when they were finished with their buffet lunch. But things went wrong early on when I opened a bottle of champagne and the cork literally flew up to hit the ceiling, bouncing off it and landing in someone's lap on the other side of the ballroom. I could have melted with embarrassment, but played it off as the fault of the bottle (“she was a fizzy one!”) to the gawkingly judgemental woman I was serving. Luckily, neither the General Manager of the hotel, my F&B Manager nor the Banquets Manager had noticed, but I still felt traumatised and on-edge for the rest of the day. I over-compensated by being especially servile and smiley, and somehow managed to gain a $10 tip for my efforts. It was a horrible shift and I felt very alone. Some staff, like Tun, were supportive, patient and helpful, some were less understanding, while others simply didn't care. I hate the pressure not to mess up in these kind of VIP environments, constantly being on display and concentrating hard not to bump into stuff, drop things or spill drinks (difficult for me). And to look busy, even if you're inconveniencing the customer by reaching over unnecessarily to grab that one extra glass. It made me question whether the job was for me. But is this my career? Hell no. I decided to try meditation to relieve stress, which was reaching unhealthy levels during some shifts, like this one. It would have been nice to have some kind of feedback on your work, and to be told you had done well, or how to improve in certain areas. But that didn't seem to happen much here.