#also butterfly is a darkly ironic and funny word for me to say

[factorialsotherfandoms]

An féileacán, Mamaí, an féileacán

(Le papillon, Maman, le papillon)

[hailbop1701]

Down The Rabbit Hole: Extra Chapter

John Kennex X Female OC

Okay here is the extra chapter of "Down The Rabbit Hole"! @zecklein I hope you like it! I'm using a different format so tell me what you guys think! Let me know if I should stay with my old way or keep it this way! No beta for this so as usual expect typos!

-H❤🖖

Thea sat back stiff, her eyes narrowed at the woman sitting across from her. The woman’s hair was wild and the firetruck red dye was slowly fading showing her blonde roots. She sat there with a wicked grin her hand neatly folded on the table in front of her, “Harriet, I came because I was ordered to find out if you’ll be willing to give up your partner,” Hatty sat back in her chair eyes briefly flashing worry before it faded back into an insane mask. Thea nodded crossing her arms, 

“Yeah we know about them, the DA is willing to take the death penalty off the table if you’re willing to cooperate,” she said voice hard. Harriet chuckled leaning forward again, “What’s the fun in that?” she purred her cuffs clinking together. Thea sighed and Harriet continued, “ I just wanted to meet the woman who beat my game; well-done detective,” she congratulated and slowly clapped her hands in mock applause. Thea pressed her lips together to keep from talking back ‘It’s what she wants,’ she thought bitterly.

 “How many did you have to lose to figure it out?” Hatty asked with a deadly smirk. 

Thea gritted her teeth and kept her face blank; the heavy door opened behind her with a sliding clang, “Sorry detective time’s up,” a guard said apologetically. Harriet chuckled darkly, 

“Someone’s protective,” she sang leaning so she could see around Thea into the hall where detective John Kennex stood with his arms crossed. He gave Hatty a warning glare as Thea moved to the door, 

“It’s funny detective, death being both of our next great adventures,�� Harriet called out cryptically. The door slid shut with finality when Thea stepped back out into the hall; John stood there with a worried expression on his face,

 “Are you okay?” he asked the scratches and bruise on his face still visible. Thea swallowed and took a breath, she started moving toward the exit without saying anything, 

“Thea,” John whispered placing a hand on her arm. The female detective stopped to look up at the man, 

“I’m pissed, I’m scared, I’m guilty, I am a lot of things right now John and all I know is that...if I pick an emotion I will fall apart. So I don’t want to feel at the moment,” she ranted huffing out ragged breaths. John nodded in understanding, the security door opened to allow them back into the main hall of the prison away from death row,

 “I get that more than you know. But I also found out the hard way that if you keep it all in, it will destroy you. I know you’re obsessing over the partner but please make sure you’re taking care of yourself, cause sweetheart you look like crap,” John advised with a smirk. Thea rolled her eyes and half-heartedly smacked John on the arm. They stopped at the main desk to get their weapons and ID’s back, 

“What did she mean when she said that death was the next big adventure?” Thea wondered aloud Harriet’s words repeating in her head over and over again. 

John was silent as they trekked out to the parking lot where Dorian and Max were waiting, “I think she’s just trying to freak you out but I wouldn’t let it go. Better to be safe than sorry,” he murmured. Thea grimaced and opened her car door, John held the door open for her “I’ll pick you up tonight, okay?” he gave her a look and she finally smiled.

 “I’ll see you tonight,” she whispered before shut the car door. Max sat in the passenger seat, “I recommend you dress up, the restaurant is four stars,” he said emotionlessly. Thea rolled her eyes “I swear Max,” she grumbled starting the engine. 

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Thea was smoothing out the wrinkles in her little black dress when the doorbell rang, heels clicking against the hardwood floor of her apartment Thea rushed over to the door. Opening it Thea smiled, John stood there with a single rose in his hand.

 “Hey,” she breathed: John gave her a crooked smile, “Hey back, I uh I got you this,” he murmured holding out the rose to her. Thea’s smile grew bigger, taking the rose she sniffed it contently. 

“It’s beautiful John thank you,” she whispered butterflies fluttered in her stomach. Holding the door open wider Thea invited him inside, 

“Let put this into some water and we can go,” she said scurrying off to the kitchen. John stood in the entryway with his hands in his pockets, his black shirt sleeves rolled up to almost his elbows. Thea walked briskly back to him a jacket slung over her arm,

 “There,” she whispered breathlessly. John grinned taking her jacket and holding it out so she can slip her arms in. “It’s damn cold out,” he said with a wrinkle of his nose, Thea chuckled a quip on her lips but a sudden bang on the front door made them both jump. 

John furrowed his brows and held out his hand indicating for his date to stay back. He yanked open the door and looked down the hallway on either side. Empty. Turning John froze, there jammed into the door was a knife, and the knife was holding up an envelope with Thea’s name on it. Yanking the blade from the door John took the letter and turned the weapon carefully in his hands. Thea rushed over and snatched the letter from his fingers, she opened it and paled. 

“Dear Detective Redding, The capture of my love and partner will not stop the bodies from piling up. How many will it take before you figure it out this time? Let’s start with one. I hope to end with you, yours truly The collector” Thea’s mouth went dry after she read the note out loud. A polaroid photo fell from the envelope onto the floor depicting a young girl frozen brutally in time. She had a look of horror on her face, eyes wide open a silent scream on her lips. She was dressed as a ballerina posed in a glass case like a life-size doll. Under the photo in black ink, it says, “See a performance for your first date,” 

John snatched up the photo his phone already at his ear, “Go pack a bag,” he ordered. Thea numbly did as she was told. She ran up the iron spiral staircase up to her room, she grabbed an old duffle from her closet and started shoving clothes inside. She kicked off her heels and ran to the bathroom to grab her toiletries, shoving them haphazardly into a cosmetics bag she flew back into her room. John leaned against the railing of the stairs that led back down to the living room, phone still pressed against his ear. He watched her flit back and forth from her dresser to the bag that sat on her unmade bed. Zipping up the duffle Thea grabbed a pair of jeans and a simple long-sleeved shirt and raced into the bathroom. 

“Captain we have a problem,” John growled into his cell when the woman finally picked up, 

“What happened I thought you were on a date?” the older woman asked voice showing concern. John sighed, 

“I was about to be but it was interrupted, Killer’s partner showed up. Left a knife and note stuck in Thea’s front door,” 

“Is she packing?” Sandra asked the sound of shuffling erupted from the background.

 “Yeah she’s getting changed, we’re going to head over to her PD when she’s done,” he muttered sourly.

 “No, bring her to a safe house, I’ll call her captain,” Sandra said voice tight and John hummed in agreement. He was about to hang up when Maldanado whispered one last thing, 

“John be careful, both of you,” 

Thea opened the bathroom door dressed and hair hastily pulled up into a ponytail, her makeup was still in place and pair of combat boots were in her hands. She sat heavily down on the bed working to pull them onto her feet,

 “Did you call your Captain?” she asked breathlessly. John ran a hand through his hair, 

“Yeah she’s calling yours to fill him in and we’re going to a safe house,” Thea deflated at his words glaring slightly. “John-” he cut off her argument with a look of his own, 

“Thea it’s dangerous now, this guy made it personal and now it looks like he wants you. It’s my job to protect you now,” he said strode forward. He grabbed her duffle and swung it over his shoulder. He then grabbed a leather jacket from the railing nearby and held it out so she could put it on. Thea let the subject drop  ‘For now John,’ she internally growled. 

John ushered Thea out the door and toward the stairwell of the apartment complex. “Best we don’t risk the elevator,” he grumbled holding her hand as they went down the stairs at a quick pace. The sound of their echoing footsteps will the empty stairwell until they burst into the lobby, the man at the front desk jumped and Thea gave him a slight smile. John pulled her out the door over to where he parked his car; he clicked the starter stopping them several feet away. Nothing happened and they both sighed. John jogged over with Thea in tow, he opened the passenger door for her before opening up the backseat and tossing her duffle into it. Closing both doors John rounded the car and got in. 

“So much for our first date,” Thea muttered dryly. John snorted keeping his eyes on the road,

“I was hoping for a nice steak but I guess we’re gonna have to settle for MRE’s,” and Thea groaned at the mere thought. 

“It’s going to be a really long first date,” she warned sounding apologetic. John smiled a little, eyes flitting to her for a moment, 

“I don’t mind,” 

Yes I did keep it open just in case I wanted to play around with it in the future! 😉

Everything Tags:

@thottiewithashotgun

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Down The Rabbit Hole Tags:

@zecklein

[jennywarhurstsmith-blog]

Manifesto(es)

I’ve got a multiplicity of ideas about what I want this blog to reflect and record. The ideas which I’m hoping to put down aren’t solid. Even as I’m starting to channel this manic burst of inspiration (thank you late afternoon coffee paired with IMing Jennifer Taylor for madcap blog title ideas) into an introductory post, I’m getting distracted by my Dad arriving home from working at his friend Geoff’s and wanting me to talk to him and help him pick raspberries from the garden, on this very grey afternoon. So all I can do is to tell you now about how I feel today, and what I want this to become. And why I’m nervous and finding this so hard to compose.

I’ve got brain cancer, and it can’t be operated on. And that’s the first and biggest fact I am going to reveal about myself. The shadow on the scans creeps over my whole life, and it chokes all of the ideas that I have and checks my ambition. It stunts the growth of the flowers of poetry. It comes knocking at my doors and my windows insistently, carrying an insidious bouquet of chronic fatigue. Today it’s a mild headache, a compulsion to sleep. I don’t know where my illness is going to take me, or stop me from going. It is from a sense of confusion and flux that this blog will begin to take shape.

The beginning of this blog came from a few different places. Firstly, I guess, there’s the fact of my new feeling of impermanence. For a while, I really did feel like I could just die at any time. And although I’m still more aware of being weaker than I was, I have begun to rationalise this idea of frailty against comforting ideas (although bear with me, because they are very morbid…)

Every day, we do things that have a risk factor just to survive. And that’s why although I can accept that I have cancer and that as a result I get more tired more easily and I struggle with big gaps in my memory and concentration, I refuse to accept that I am closer to death than anyone else. I’m simply not. I’m sick, yes, I’m maybe a little weak, yes, but I’m also just as likely as you to get hit by a car or choke on my next (illicit, sorry Slimming World!) chocolate biscuit or even trip and fall in the canal. So I’m going to do it. I’m lighting a fire under my own arse and committing a gross act of creation, I’m going to indecently expose my innermost thoughts to the world. And I’m going to do it in a way which reflects the hormonal rollercoaster of emotions which has definitely sped up recently, but has really always been a part of ‘Jennifer Louise Smith,’ as my long suffering friends and family can attest.

Lovely Siân of the City Hospital Teenage Cancer ward is responsible for this particularly madcap and infuriating mode of self expression. She began the whole thing by giving me a scrap book early on in the phase when I was first beginning to gain an awareness of what was happening to me. I made a lot of progress early on, but as I began to get busier, this format began to suit me less because firstly I was filling up my days by leaving the house, and secondly I was becoming more self aware and self critical. Quite often I find my artistic skills lacking. However, I’m hoping that the early style I was developing which was really mixed media and responsive can continue, because my artistic inspiration really does come from all sorts of sources less obvious than just the books that I read and my day to day life.

That’s the other reason behind the mixed up format I’m hoping to embrace. Around the time when I first received this scrapbook (which I hopefully titled ‘I AM MORE THAN MY ASTROCYTOMA’, which became darkly funny because I was later re-diagnosed with Multifocal Glioma….multi….as in there is ‘more’ than an astrocytoma…) I was still really struggling from the most surreal aspects of the tumour and associated raised pressure inside my skull. I was having big memory blanks, some of which I still haven’t been able to re-obtain (something which frustrates me, and is part of the reason I’m constantly writing down every scrappy idea that paddles through my brain) and I was also having some slightly trippy and surreal experiences. Those issues have mostly resolved themselves and I’m much more acquainted with the here and the now and the rational and the solid. But I feel in some way the strangeness of those experiences is something that I really won’t ever be able to forget, and that the experience of losing parts of me has changed something essential about me.

For a long time, I couldn’t have concentrated for the extended periods of time that any type of blogging would recquire. Let’s call this my goldfish phase…due to the problems I was having just with every day life, I was referred to a wonderful occupational therapist called Zandra, who has really helped me to look at methods to improve my life not only in terms of getting back to work but really at helping me be at one with my personal circumstances once again. It’s hard to hold onto anything in a concrete way when you can’t even remember what you’re doing as you walk from one room to another. Perhaps I’ll include some of the things which Zandra encouraged me with – one of the first being these big sort of day planners that my Dad was writing for me around Christmas 2016. These planners/journals were a way to check and record myself and try and replace my memory. It’s from these early ‘diaries’ that new ideas developed.

Zandra also really pushed me to think about the future. The way that this episode has positioned itself in my life is beautifully ironic (though not to all parties involved, just to me, Miss Morbid.) My most dramatic symptoms coincided with the end of my time at Sussex University, and my collapse and first admittance into hospital happened as I was undertaking a liberation graduation Eurotrip with my American friend Amanda. So all of this happened just as I was about to leave education, as I was about to become a fully fledged adult and begin to experience life for myself. I wanted to make concrete roots and career successes. I hoped for boyfriends and travel and excitement.

It’s difficult not to sound dramatic when I touch upon how these things aren’t accessible to me now, like they felt that summer in Amsterdam and Berlin with Amanda.

Still, maybe this could be the start of a new future. And if it isn’t, it still feels wonderful to begin to re-organise my thoughts in a way that other people can understand.

I’d hoped to be a teacher some day, but I just don’t have the ability at the present moment to be reliable. Due to my medical issues I wouldn’t be allowed to learn to drive. I feel for the same reason that perhaps I would no longer be able to take responsibility for a class and teach. So when I was finally coming back to myself and Zandra was helping me come up with goals, I had to refigure. Because I am not the same girl who was travelling with Amanda. I’ve shared a lot of experiences with that previous Jenny, but she doesn’t know me anymore. What I know now is that some parts of me are fragile but simultaneously resilient. And I have interesting and insightful things to tell people because of what has happened to me, but I also still have a lot to learn.

If I’m not going to be able to teach, maybe then I can pursue less practical career paths without feeling like I am being selfish and not giving back to society. Perhaps the most generous thing I can do now is to recover as best as possible in order to bring peace of mind to the people who care about me most. In a lot of ways this entire work will be dedicated to my family and all of the things they have always done for me. My mother in particular – I just CANNOT express how grateful I am. Even if I was to fill a library with the word ‘Thank-you’ it couldn’t begin to tell you how thankful I am for my family and my friends and everyone else (medics and counsellors and members of the public) who have all contrived to create a new niche to cradle me in and help cushion my return to lucidity.

So although I feel my oxymoronic noble-selfish wish to teach (selfish because it allows me to remain in academia) I also know that I’m probably not currently reliable enough to take on students – a student-teacher relationship is one where the tutor must be available to the student first and foremost, and I feel that a lot of the time I’m just not mentally THERE. This has left me a fish out of water – where do I go from here? I’ve also lost the ability to travel the world independently, which was another huge motivation and a dream for the future. Yet while my world is shrinking, I’m also feeling the strangest kind of zoom effect. Everything seems to carry more significance and beauty than it did before. Sometimes I feel like a receptor for nature. Other times I feel like a lump, and an undeserving one at that, because I don’t really contribute anything to society at this moment in time.

One of my strongest convictions is that creating optimism and drive in your immediate life moves outwards from you like the rings created by dropping a stone in water. This butterfly effect is all I can have for now, so I may as well take all of my frustration and devastation and turn it into something. Anything at all! Its better that I’m sat here expressing this big lump which sits between my heart and my throat than just letting it catch every time I sit about listening to other people rather than speaking my mind.

A lot of the time, that mental voice is just screaming YOU HAVE CANCER YOU ARE DYING over and over again. It’s not a thing that’s easy to ignore, but it’s something I have to put into its box and just let it stew. I can’t look that thought in the eye.

So much has become unreal recently that I find it difficult to explain simply to anyone what it is exactly that I’m feeling. I’m going to put a positive spin on it for the purposes of this blog post, however, and just say that although I can feel my limits, and they never go away, I also feel liberated in other respects because something as simple as getting out of bed and getting dressed has become a victory. I can be proud of myself for not giving in. And in that way I’m hoping to use this adventure in journaling as a way to celebrate all of the interesting outcomes of a really cruddy situation.

Yes, my writing makes me cringe. And I’m already critiquing myself and second guessing every single word choice that I’m making. And I do intend to edit and refine the work that I create and publish on this blog. However, I also want to show resilience and ambition. Being so physically weak has helped reinforce how much I really do love reading books and how much I’d love to continue to study. I keep getting this idea that I could succeed in a creative writing course. Perhaps this will be the very first chapter of that narrative.

I don’t want to give up anything more. I’ve given up enough already.

The use of this format, the blog, is a substitute for an ideal format that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past few months. I’ve been struggling to describe exactly what I want this to look like and show, but I haven’t generated all of the content I’d want to be contained within it. So this is all a work in progress. That’s part of the reason I’m calling this post ‘Manifesto(es)’ – like an avant garde artist I want to set out to explain to you what exactly it is I want to show you, because I’m not yet certain how I’m going to execute it, and I may even need your help to make it possible.

I can’t get the idea of the spider’s web out of my mind. Having such pervasive cognitive issues, these big gaps and misty confusions, I spend a lot of my day trying to re-create arcs of thought which have occurred, bursting into life then fading back into the general miasma of my brain. The only way I can think of to describe the way my brain feels is to picture that old secondary school technique, the mind map (or sometimes known as a brainstorm). By linking ideas, memories, pictures, photographs, messages and factual information, I can mimic the paths which my thoughts have taken, and use them to build new ideas and create a new memory artificially. For a very long time now I’ve been keeping notes of all sorts of abstract ideas on paper, on my phone, but now I’m becoming engaged with society again I need to be able to explain them to people, to make this ‘second brain’ a physical thing that I can access. It’s a sketch of my brain. I wish I could sketch it, perhaps using a computer programme to make it interactive? However, I don’t yet have the skills. My solution in the meanwhile is to use the popular medium of the hash tag at the same time as the standard chronological blog format. In this way, I can keep a diary which is multimedia, which chronicles my recovery, which allows me to edit and curate what other people can see and will also help me develop. Because perhaps, if I can become more confident in my ability to express what my brain is trying so desperately to make known, I can recover myself.

Because that is what’s breaking my heart about my illness. It feels like the border between me and the rest of the world has been damaged. Nobody else quite gets me anymore. I’m me, I’m vivacious and silly and embarrassing...but I’m also this fragile brain damaged train wreck. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost so much, sometimes it feels more like I’ve learned from this experience. But always, it feels insular and lonely inside my skull. And even this, thinking about my thinking, is cathartic. And I’m hoping that eventually this blog can help me feel like Jenny Smith again.

Manifesto{es} is an unashamedly pretentious title for an early blog post, but I’m hoping to keep writing new variations on these explanations, and keep adding to these ideas. And I’m also going to add hash tags to the blogs I write in order to show the secondary methods of sorting and linking the ideas in my brain. Over time, I’m hoping this will create a structure to model the way my mind works and perhaps to solidify the changeable. However, only hard work and time will allow me to live out this experiment. So I’ll sign off here, and start to input old thoughts onto the blog. I’m going to try and back date as much stuff as I can, even if it doesn’t yet seem relevant. It’ll help assuage some of the fear I have of losing the little memories I’ve recovered. And perhaps it’ll even help me build up my creative impulses, and become a half decent writer. So the way the new structure is going to work is that I’ll sign off each post with dates and times, and if I go back I’ll acknowledge the changes. It reminds me of Joyce’s ‘Trieste, Zurich, Paris 1914-1921.’ This is my palimpsest, my monument of sand shored against the tide:

Written on my laptop from my bedroom, 3rd July 2017, altered from a piece started 27th June 2017