#and he crushed it under a paper towel and then proceeded to push the paper towel into my face

[manygreetingsfriend]

i don’t think there’s anything that makes me feel like a shit stain on my parents’ doormat than the way my father just. couldn’t give less of a shit about my lifelong, intensely phobic fear of spiders. there’s no one i hate asking for help from more. i will be nearly catatonic in fear trying to communicate where it is and he will just. lackadaisically make his way over when convenient and just. stare at me. and just ask over and over again where is it. where is it. and then say he can’t help me if i won’t show him. and leave lmfao

[five-rivers]

Changeling Chapter 1

A DP Fae Au fic. I've been promising you this for so long XD. I can hardly believe I'm finally delivering, even if it's only one chapter for now.

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Chapter 1: In the Beginning, There Was an Offer

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They studied legends. According to those legends, today, Beltane, was a time of renewal, of birth, of fertility.

It was not supposed to be… this. Their dreams weren’t supposed to be crushed today. Not under this sun, not under these blue skies and among softly blooming flowers.

This kind of news should have come with rain. It should have come with storms.

Maddie wiped tears out of her eyes and Jack patted her on the back. The air smelled sweet and dusty at the same time. The bench was uncomfortable.

“We could try adoption,” said Jack. He sounded shocked, too. Drained. His voice was pulled taught over a great hollowness. “Lots of people adopt. We can- can do some good in the world, maybe.”

Maddie sniffed and cried harder. She’d wanted her own children, and Jack knew it. Adoption was all very well and good, but at this point the suggestion felt like some consolation prize, and she felt terrible for even thinking it was, because Jack was right, it could be a good thing, and…

She wanted children. Her own children.

“Excuse me, I believe I can help.”

There was something about how he said that, about how the voice wound and slipped through her ears that had Maddie’s head snapping up. The man who stood to the side of the bench wore a long coat with a deep hood. Symbols, symbols that Maddie had spent hours, days, weeks, researching were stitched into the fabric. His eyes glittered in the shadows. The fingers of his hands, clasped in front of him, were too long, their coloring faintly lavender, as if they had been dipped in ink and retained the stain even after they’d been washed clean.

This was not a human.

“How?” asked Maddie, feeling hope drip back into her limbs even as Jack tensed behind her. “How can you help?”

.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” said Jack as they drove home. “We really shouldn’t have done that. Maddie, they’re evil, there’s always a catch and it’ll always be looking for a way to push us into it.”

“The catch is in the open,” said Maddie, leaning back against the seat of the car and closing her eyes. “It isn’t as if it’s in the fine print and we’re going to stumble into it. We have one, and then I get my tubes tied, or you get snipped, and we go on with our lives.”

“What if we have twins? Triplets? Maddie, we should have talked about this.”

“There wasn’t any time,” Maddie said defensively. “I had to decide right away.”

“What are we going to do if we have twins, Maddie?”

Maddie bit her lip, her eyes opening without her full permission as she thought. “We know how to deal with things like him.”

The car jerked just a little to the right as Jack failed to suppress his flinch. “Do you remember our work on motivations? On why they take artists, musicians, children?” he asked. He forged on without waiting for an answer. “Creative sterility, we called it. For this one to be able to cure sterility, he has to be powerful. I don’t think nails in pockets and inside-out clothing is going to stop him.”

Such protections were hit and miss to begin with. One faerie might hate bread, another might love it. The sound of bells would drive off one, and another would wear them in their hair. Even cold iron was no guarantee against them.

“We’ll have to find something better, then,” she said, firmly.

.

Maddie laughed. Not a twin. A single child showed on the ultrasound monitor. A girl. A beautiful baby girl. Perfect.

On the other side of the bed, Jack sunk into a chair, obviously relieved. “She’s healthy?” he asked the OB/GYN.

“Completely,” she said. “This is quite the miracle the two of you put together here.” She shook her head. “We must have gotten something wrong during our examination. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am to have put you through all that, and I won’t blame you if you wanted to find a new doctor.”

“It’s fine,” said Maddie, patting the woman’s arm. “It happens.” Yes, being approached by a powerful fae just ‘happened.’ “The important thing now is to make sure there aren’t any complications.”

.

They made sure Jazz was born on a Sunday, with two middle names, one of which Maddie made sure to forget. They scheduled her baptism for as early a date as possible, even though both Jack and Maddie were as lapsed as it was possible to be.

Precautions.

Jack had his surgery only a month later.

They were safe. They had won.

The family of three snuggled together on the couch. Well, Jazz snuggled inasmuch as a newborn was able. They watched TV.

“Jack, dear,” said Maddie, roused to awareness by a news story about a rising young businessman. “Is that our Vlad?”

Jack blinked at the screen. “I think you’re right,” said Jack. “I haven’t seen him since college. I don’t think we’ve talked to him since college.” He frowned. “Did something happen? The three of us used to be so close… He was the only one in the whole folklore department that would put up with our theories, do you remember?”

“I don’t know,” said Maddie, trying to remember. “It was like he was there one day, gone the next.”

“Do you think he’ll mind us getting back in touch?”

“Only one way to find out.”

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(As it turned out, Vlad did not particularly care to get back in touch.)

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Jazz was not a normal child.

She saw too much. She understood too much. Her teeth grew in early. She learned how to get the milk out of the fridge at about the same time she learned how to walk. Her eyes were too large, even for her age. She didn’t start talking until she was almost two, and when she did, it was in complete sentences. She took to responsibility like a duck to water. No, she demanded responsibility, from waking up the family in the morning to answering the door. She loved rules and games, and the rules of games.

But they had never raised a child before. Perhaps this was simply how they were. Perhaps this was within the expected variety of humanity.

Most importantly, Jazz was theirs. Completely.

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Maddie was not terribly concerned when her period missed a few days, or even when it was late by a week. But when it started pushing two…

She bought a test.

It came back positive.

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Danny’s birth was different from Jazz’s in almost every particular. Instead of being infused with a sense of joy, proceedings were overshadowed by dread. Jazz had been born in a hospital. Danny would be born at home, behind every ward and protection Jack and Maddie could conceive of. The midwife they hired was more than used to odd belief systems and threw a few of her own traditions in as well.

It couldn’t hurt.

.

It didn’t help.

After the birth, Maddie held Danny in her arms. He’d been born in a caul, which had been slightly alarming, even though Maddie had known that it was a thing that happened regularly, and that, by most accounts, it was lucky.

He was such a tiny little thing. Smaller than Jazz. Which made sense, he was a little premature.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” she promised him, whispering into the silky, wispy curls on top of his head.

Someone knocked on the door. Maddie jerked her head up, even though the front door wasn’t at all visible from the basement. Jack flinched hard enough to drop the towels he was holding. The midwife froze.

“Hospitality,” croaked Maddie. Those rules were always humanity’s first defense against the uncanny. Don’t want something in your house? In your life? Don’t invite it in.

Although, she had arguably already invited in the fae they were worried about. Hence all the other contingencies.

The knock came again. And again, louder.

Jack let out a sigh of relief. “It can’t get in,” he murmured. Then he smiled, broad and bright. “We just have to wait it out.”

Maddie nodded, tears in her eyes. The knocking continued. This was far from ideal, obviously, but she’d been half expecting the fae to simply rip through the wards like tissue paper.

Perhaps the theory that more powerful fae were more bound by custom, more vulnerable to their weaknesses, held water? She and Jack had always dismissed it as fanciful, but they’d never been able to gather evidence before.

Then, a sound that made her heart stop.

“I’ll get it!” called Jazz, childish voice muffled by distance and the obstacle of the floors above. She’d been told not to answer the door when Danny was being born, to wait patiently in her room, but for all her unusual maturity, she was only three.

Faster than she’d ever seen him move, Jack bolted for the stairs, pushing aside several pieces of furniture and medical equipment in his haste. He took the stairs four at a time and nearly taking the door off the hinges.

He wasn’t fast enough.

“Who are you, mister?”

“Me?” said a voice Maddie had prayed against ever hearing again. “I am your uncle, my dear. Did your parents not tell you about me?”

.

Jazz tipped her head to one side and stared up at the man, making her eyes extra big. She knew it made a lot of people uncomfortable when she looked at them like that, so she treated it as a kind of test.

The man smiled, kind and patient. He was kind of funny looking, but in a good way.

“No,” she said finally. “Are you Mommy’s brother or Daddy’s brother?”

“Ah, you already know about uncles, then. I was worried I’d have to explain. May I come in? I would like to greet your little brother, as your parents promised I could. I have gifts for both of you.”

Jazz liked gifts. “Okay,” she said. “But I dunno if Danny’s been born yet. Mommy said it can take a while. And I dunno if he can have gifts, yet. He’s gonna be really little. That’s what all my books say, and also the internet.”

“Jazz! Don’t!”

Jazz turned to see her Daddy skid around the corner, just as her uncle stepped across the threshold.

“Not quite on time, I fear,” said uncle. “Young Jazz has already let me in.” He patted Jazz on the head. She ducked away and stuck her tongue out, like she always did when Daddy did that. “Having greeted my niece, I would like to see my nephew.”

.

The fae did walk past the rest of the wards as if they weren’t even there. It didn’t even break them, just ignored them. Some of them he even commented on, as if approving.

He gazed down at Danny with his otherworldly eyes. The midwife had retreated to the corner of the room, refusing to look at what was happening. Jack had attempted to attack the fae with his bare hands, only to be pushed away with something approaching gentleness by an invisible wall. Maddie didn’t know where Jazz was. Upstairs, somewhere, hopefully.

“So beautiful,” the fae said, brushing Danny’s forehead with his off-color fingers. Faster than Maddie could react, he had a pair of scissors in his hand and was cutting off a lock of hair. “A lovely child.” The lock of Danny’s hair disappeared into the fae’s coat.

If Maddie didn’t know better, she’d call the expression on the fae’s face love. But she did know better. Love was as incomprehensible to the fae as fae laws were to humans, so she’d call it by its true name: avarice.

She tightened her grip on Danny, as if she could keep the fae from plucking him from her arms.

“Not now,” said the fae, after another moment. “Soon, I should think.” It ran a hand over Danny’s head. “Soon.” The fae looked up, meeting Maddie’s eyes. “I will return,” he said, “in one year.”

“For what?” demanded Maddie, unwilling to get her hopes up.

The fae blinked slowly. “For his birthday.” He tilted his head. “To determine whether or not he is ready. Perhaps, also, to visit my niece.”

“You stay away from Jazz!” snarled Maddie. “You have no claim on her.”

The fae merely shrugged, then smiled, slyly. “She does, however, have a claim on me. I promised her gifts, before your husband whisked her away.”

“Gifts,” repeated Maddie, hoarsely.

“For the sister of my child, yes,” said the fae, voice and face as calm and even as ever. “Would you ask me to forswear myself?”

“Then,” said Maddie, “you can leave them here, with us.”

“You will give them to her?”

“Yes,” said Maddie, through her teeth. She did not say how long she would let Jazz be in the presence of these ‘gifts.’

“Very well, then,” said the fae, pulling a number of boxes out from beneath his coat. “One year. Be prepared.”

And, with that, the fae faded from view, as if he had been an illusion all along.

Danny was still with them. Their son was still with them. Still theirs.

“One year,” she said, breathless. “Only one year.”

“One whole year,” corrected Jack, rushing to her side. “You’ll see, Maddie. Next time, that fae won’t know what hit him!”

“One whole year,” echoed Maddie, weakly.

“One year to prepare,” said Jack. “Look what we did with half that time! We’re Fentons! We can do it!”

“We can do it,” breathed Maddie. “One year. We’ll be ready.”

Jack nodded, firmly. “We’ll be ready.”

[margoshansons]

Here’s The News: q.b.

Quentin Beck x Summers!Reader// Yours Truly, 2095: 01. 02. 03. 04.

Summary— bright, beautiful, and broken

Warnings: swearing, lying, Manipulation

Notes: I want to reiterate that this is not meant to be an action-focused plot. I wrote this because I wanted to explore a relationship, not change FFH. I wrote this because I wanted to combine my favorite album with one of my favorite villains and I hate that I possibly have to use this as a disclaimer.

_________________________

She woke up surrounded by warmth, the sensation of Quentin’s finger brushing up and down her bare arm sending a pleasant shiver down her spine. She flipped over to face him, eyes locking onto each other as smiles crossed their faces.

It really was the perfect way to say goodbye.

“I have a meeting with Fury and Hill this morning” He whispered, still dragging his finger up and down her skin.

Y/N furrowed her brows. “There was no meeting on the agenda that I remember” She murmured.

Quentin’s expression shifted, “It was an emergency, something about an unusual spike near London, it’s probably nothing.”

Her hairs stood on the back of her neck again, empathetic perception clueing her into something that wasn’t quite right. “Why didn’t they tell me?”

A playful look crossed Quentin’s face, “I may have told them you had left for the airport already.”

Her chest burst in laughter, “And why would you do that?”

“Maybe it’s because I want you all to myself” Quentin’s expression was teasing, but his tone was something darker. Something she had never seen in him before. Something vicious.

It scared her.

“Mr. Beck!” She continued to tease, a smirk crossing her face as she pushed her fear away. The pair giggled, sharing a soft moment in a week filled with pain. She liked this. Waking up next to him, teasing each other like they were a couple. It quelled the butterflies that awoke whenever he was around, and he wasn’t bad to look at either.

“I have to go” he spoke, refusing to move.

Y/N pulled the sheets closer to her, “You should’ve woke me up earlier, I could’ve made you breakfast.”

Quentin chuckled, a rare toothy smile arriving on his face, “I thought that was my job as host.”

She shrugged, “It’s 2023, I thought we could shake things up a bit.” A thin smile passed her lips, “Besides if you had woken me up earlier you could’ve had some of my famous chocolate chip waffles.”

Quentin brushed her hair out of her face, the touch of his hand against her skin sending an unfamiliar feeling through her body. “You looked cute while you slept” He explained, “Besides, we have plenty of time to try new breakfast foods when we get back to New York.”

Y/N stayed silent, not wanting to tell Quentin about the real reason she was going back. Not wanting to tell him that this was as far as she wanted to go. That she didn’t do feelings. That there wouldn’t be plenty of time.

His lips gently pressed against her forehead, his warmth leaving the bed, creating a cold spot as he left to go get changed.

She missed him.

She pulled up her phone, double-checking to make sure Fury had actually called the meeting to quell her senses.

Quentin appeared above the bed once again, pressing another kiss into her hair before whispering a soft “goodbye”.

The door shut and Y/N stretched, the queen bed allowing her to sink further. All she wanted was to cuddle into the covers once more, sleep off what had happened last night. But her sixth sense was screaming, telling her to investigate every inch of this room. To turn every drawer and piece of furniture over until she found what she was looking for.

Desperate to find some relief from the bugging sense, she slid out of bed, the cold air making her shiver as she moved over to the dresser first.

Nothing.

She threw one of his shirts on for kicks before returning to her search, the comforting material shifting as she walked.

With every step, she proceeded with the standard SHIELD protocol search. Her hands ran themselves over every speck of dust, every inch of wood, every nook and cranny.

It looked normal.

Travel-sized toiletries, luggage bags, everything was reminiscent of someone who had made a fiscal trip to Europe.

“Or perhaps an interdimensional one” she murmured to herself, standing up from the floor to search the only place she had left untouched.

His desk.

Y/N swallowed the rising fear, cracking open the small drawer, revealing a series of scattered objects. But she knew better.

She ran her spindly fingers across each object until she found what she was looking for. The pencil that refused to budge. She pulled the board out of the drawer, revealing the false bottom underneath.

Papers littered the area, and as she flipped through them all she found files on all of them. Hill, Fury, Peter. Y/N scrambled, anxiety reaching ungodly amounts as she flipped to find her own name in his meticulous filing system.

It wasn’t there.

He didn’t have anything on her except what she had told him. She let out a deep breath, relieved at the revelation.

Taking her time to place each file back the way she found it, her arm bumped up against a small object in the corner of the false drawer.

It was small enough to be tossed aside, a tiny device that anyone else would’ve cast aside at the first glance.

But she was a SHIELD agent. She had worked along Tony Stark post-Accords.

No piece of tech was unimportant.

Carefully wrapping her hands in the towels in Quentin’s bathroom she gingerly placed the device on the desk, examining it for any sign of malicious intent. Instead, she was greeted with a small projection.

Y/N’s body crushed under the weight of the revelation. Everything finally made sense.

Because as she looked at the figure in the projection she discovered why her extrasensory perception spiked whenever she was around him.

Her chest constricted, the dagger of pain digging further and further until it spread through her veins, into her blood vessels, lighting up every area of her body as the stinging blade of betrayal lingered. 

She wanted to take last night back.

She wanted to take everything back.

Her sweet words, her vulnerability. She wanted to traverse back and time and stay in New York. She wanted to quit SHIELD like she should’ve done before the decimation. 

Had everything been a lie? Had last night been a lie? 

A single tear slid down her cheek at the horrible thought, but as she watched the repeated video of the figure in front of her, she couldn’t erase the terrible shame washing over her.

Because the figure before her was Quentin.

***

The atmosphere was wrong. 

When he had left Y/N that morning she had been nothing but smiles, now she was staring at her hands.

“What’s wrong honey?” He tried out the pet name, something unusual erupting in his stomach as he caught the slightest smile from her.

“I just realized” Y/N replied, meeting his eyes, “I don’t really know that much about you, I mean other than the usual.”

Quentin had been preparing for this moment. For the moment she would ask about the other Earth. About his life.

She couldn’t find out about London. It wasn’t time yet.

Just one more day of lying and then he could tell her everything. Once Peter was taken care of, everything would be his.

“In all fairness, you don’t talk much about yourself either,” Quentin countered, taking in the sight of her in his clothes. His eyes raked up and down her body, recalling every inch of it.

The memory sent a pleasurable chill down his spine, and his eyes followed her bare legs as they paced the room, ending up on the opposite side of the bed.

Her face was expressionless, jaw set.

The same face that had been moaning his name last night. The same face that had sent him shy smiles and giggled like a teenager whenever he was around. The same face that he wanted to worship every night and day until his death.

“You’re right” Y/N finally conceded, “So how about we play a little game of twenty questions?”

He had no reason to question the suggestion. It was an innocent ask. Simply trying to get to know each other better.

Except he knew everything he needed to about her.

She cared about the little man, her empathy put her positions of power, she was related to a leader of a fabled group, her brother had died, and she was exceedingly bright.

Bright, beautiful, and broken.

Exactly like him.

“I don’t think so honey,” He answered, gulping down his nerves. He needed to gain some control back. “I have to meet Fury in Germany in a few hours, If I don’t leave soon I won’t catch my plane.”

Y/N nodded, a solemn expression shadowing her face.

Quentin’s stomach did a victory leap.

He stuffed what he could in his suitcase, knowing that all he needed was his MoCap suit. But he needed to look busy. He needed to keep up the ruse for a little while longer.

Even though a shot of pain pierced through his chest at the sight of her pouting face. Even though he wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed with her, cuddling as his plan died in the ashes, forgotten by everyone except Peter Parker.

He shook his head in disbelief.

She was a dangerous woman to make him want to give it all up.

“I should be going with you” Y/N chimed in.

Well, he certainly couldn’t have that.

“No” Quentin commanded, softening his voice as he approached the woman, “You’re needed back in New York soon. If I need your help I’ll let you know, ‘kay?”

His finger brushed against her chin, the soft skin sending soothing waves through his veins as he tipped her jaw upward.

Y/N’s head nodded slightly, eyes falling. He brought his lips to her in a chaste kiss, knowing that if he left now, it would be so much sweeter coming back.

___________________________

This is a bit of a lame penultimate chapter, but this was always more about the relationship than the plot. I’m really not a fan of changing canon unless something strikes me.

TAG LIST: @thefuriousquake @rizamendoza808 @osric-the-l3m0n-l0v3-demon

[blackbellybella]

Long story about a possible bad decision

So I made a post a while ago about hitting up one of my ex’s. Idk if he could really be counted as an ex we met 3 years ago Christmas break at a New Years party.... I know that sounds like the plot to high school musical but it’s not stay with me. Anyway I didn’t know anyone at this party really, well as much as you could not know the same ppl in a class of 300 that you’ve gone to school with since the first grade. Basically I didn’t know anyone enough to be social. Other than my cousin and even that’s a stretch, but I was sitting at this patio bar with a few old class mates and douche bags coming up doing the whole “I remember back in HS... wow you’re so different...” fake bull shit. Then he walk in thru the fence gate door thing and it was immediate, we made eye contact and next thing I knew he was in front of me being introduced. At this point I was already kinda drunk and a bit mesmerized that I didn’t catch his name then he was gone being introduced to other ppl. In this moment my cousin was taking the time to tell me about her crush getting here, other people came in at the same time so it didn’t register to me at the time who she was talking about and I wasn’t listening anyway I was just focused on him.

THIS would be the first time I’d ever become out going at a party, him and one of the few friends there I was actually close there with went to play beer pong with a random who had been half assed hitting on me thru out the night. The random needed a partner so I joined just to put my self in that space as this guy. Honestly I assumed the random was my cousins crush. He fit the roll, tall white incredibly douchy so I really didn’t pay him any mind I guess he picked up on that because the game ended weirdly with him just walking away but I got stuck in another game with another group of people and lost the guy. At this point I was WAY too drunk before I knew it I was with this group of girls dancing around a fire pit like in some kinda of covenant witches circle while one girl was telling us about her weekend on a wolf reserve down in hill county... it was a weird magical moment. I never saw that girl again

Anyway once I got out of that I noticed my cousin and that guy and my friend sitting around another fire pit and I kinda saw that as my chance, I sat down and it was instant again. We just kinda kept catching glances at each other then I just blurted out “i really like your style” he laughed at it and was a bit confused “my style?” “Yeah, you, I’m not sure what it is but you have a presence and I really like it” after I said that I was being dragged away by one of the girls I met to dance again. We took a break and I kinda went to the drive way to kinda cool down from all the socializing and I was chillin against this truck. Sometime later I heard someone walking towards me, it was the guy. He properly introduced himself to me, Austin.

We sat and talked for bit he said how he’d been wanting to talk to me all night but kept getting dragged around from group to group also avoiding so crazy short girl who was trying to twerk on him... my cousin. Then he asked do you want to go on get fire works? Mind you it’s like already after midnight so no fireworks stand would be opened and I knew that but still agreed. He was like alright get in and unlocked the truck I was sitting on, “weird how you already knew what truck I drive” and we went on. All we did was talk he never tried anything never asked to try anything we just talked in our short circle around town. We shared music and it was just one of those, “I like this, what?! No way me too” conversations. When we finally got back it was like a bomb kinda went off my cousin was mad I disappeared. Now come to find out mad I disappeared with Austin our friend was also mad Austin disappeared because that was his ride and a third party mad because Austin was apparently one of those girls ex....

All of this unknown to me at the time and again we were pulled apart. The girls wanted to dance to one more song before the party ended so one last round around the fire I had got Austin’s number before hand and set my phone down on a table with other phones and a few drinks. In the mist of dancing I heard a loud crash and the table with all the phones and drinks was knocked over and my phone was in a puddle of assorted alcohol. My very high classmate scooped up my phone grabbed my hand and pulled me too the sink. Apologizing the whole time he proceeded to take the phone apart and clean it down with ALL the paper towels. He just kept apologizing and saying how high he was. I wasn’t even his fault later I found out Austin’s ex knocked over the table claimed to be a drunk accident but apparently some words were exchanged by the 2 while my phone was being cleaned.

I honestly had no idea what was going on here I was thrown into a web of things when I was under the assumption everyone was on the same clueless page as I was. Once my phone was deemed clean enough I went back outside with the rest of the party everyone was leaving now and I was pretty sobered up at this point so I agreed to take a few ppl home, Austin came along not sure why but we dropped everyone off except my cousin, when we got to our neighborhood she for some reason refused to get out the car, now I know why. Austin suggested we go back to his apartment since we were close by and didn’t want me to drive back to the other side of town just to get his truck since no one “wanted to go home yet”. So we watched movies Austin wanted to talk more in his room 😏 and we thought we left my cousin asleep on the couch but she followed us😒... it was a weird night after that all of us crammed in queen bed. At some point in the night me and Austin were cuddled together and this bitch, my cousin, rolled her ass on top of me and pushed me to the opposite side of the bed. Like what 💁🏾‍♀️

That whole remainder of the break we snuck around trying to hang out with just us but eventually I had to come back to school. We tried to keep up communication but with the now gang of girls I’ve unknowingly pissed off and the distance we just thought not to do anything I’d hang out when I could but I some how made friends with Austin’s ex so there was that. Found out girls don’t like it when you date their ex. Stupid by the way, why keep 2 ppl apart because one didn’t work out with you 💁🏾‍♀️ but she got into my head and I developed so kind of anger towards him and we drifted. Now I’ve found him again and I just want to see if I missed something, like it was so interrupted idk maybe I’m making a mistake but I’m risking stirring all this shit up again to see for my self and he’s on board or at least to just hang out again, I’m still dealing with the repercussions of my last relationship and someone cheating on me 🙃 but he understands he just missed me.

[kuso-otaku]

Aizawa Week, Day Three: Lost (@aizawa-week)

Read it on Ao3

Title: Dragon

Pairing: Shouta Aizawa|Eraserhead/Original Female Character

Rating: Teen And Up Audience

Word count: 2796

Excerpt: The quiet, piercing sound reached his ears as he made his way from the practice yard to the teachers’ lounge. Shouta stopped in his tracks, straining his ears to find the source of the sound. It had stopped. Just as Shouta was resigned to blame it all on his imagination, the sound resumed, louder than before. He took a hesitant step to the left where a bunch of bushes with purple flowers stood. Again, the sound was there, louder and incessant.

Read it on Ao3

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7

The quiet, piercing sound reached his ears as he made his way from the practice yard to the teachers’ lounge. Shouta stopped in his tracks, straining his ears to find the source of the sound. It had stopped. Just as Shouta was resigned to blame it all on his imagination, the sound resumed, louder than before. He took a hesitant step to the left where a bunch of bushes with purple flowers stood. Again, the sound was there, louder and incessant.

With the target's location identified, Shouta confidently walked in its direction. He carefully parted the bushes to reveal a small, black figure. Wide, green eyes met his, and the creature took half a step back, weighing its options. Reaching a decision in a split second, it lunged at him like a coiled spring that had been released. Shouta evaded his attacker and took a respectful step back, after all, it was his fault for scaring the little one. Thankful that his capture scarf was on him, Shouta draped one of its ends to the ferocious creature. It considered his capture scarf carefully, then without getting too close, it gave it a quick sniff, hissing at it for good measure.

Shouta's hand reached for one of the many compartments in his utility belt and produced a small pouch of food he kept in there for emergencies, and a medium-sized sticky note he kept there for the same purpose. Placing one of the sticky notes on the ground, Shouta emptied the contents of the pouch on it, then proceeded to push it towards the angry, little monster. The smell of food wafted towards it and it sniffed at the air; its aggressive stance forgotten for a second. When it finally found the source of the smell it threw a wary glance in Shouta's direction then took a hesitant step towards the food, glancing up at Shouta between bites.

As it got busier with eating its food, the kitten's wary glances decreased, and in time stopped completely. Patiently, Shouta watched it happily eat until the food was gone and it began to lick remains from the paper. Shouta's insides warmed up as the corners of his mouth turned up.

When the kitten was done, it started licking its front paw, cleaning it and using it to clean its tiny face. Shouta searched for any mother cats nearby but found none. It wasn't unusual, she was probably looking for food for herself and the kitten. There was nothing to worry about. A pounce in his peripheral vision brought his eyes back to the kitten. With a full belly and clean paws, it was ready to play. Shouta teased it by moving the end of his scarf, draping it an inch from its face then pulling it away when it stood on its hind legs to claw at it with its paws, causing a grin to spread across his face.

Vague awareness that the lunch break would be over soon made him reluctantly pull back his scarf and stand up, searching one last time for the mother and not finding her. Glancing behind him, the kitten was peeking its head from the bushes, its green eyes following him as he left.

---

Classes dragged on and all Shouta wanted to do was return home to sleep, and maybe check on the black kitten first. Fortunately, it wasn't a patrol night. While that promised lounging around at home, it also meant lounging around with a pile of papers to correct. If he was quick enough, he might be able to finish correcting by the time Shia got back from patrol. Some weeks, they were lucky and their schedules aligned, both going on patrol on the same nights, while other times, like that night, they weren't so lucky.

Shouta gathered his papers, placed them in his bag, said his goodbyes to his colleagues, and made his way to the school gates. On his way to there, Shouta made a detour for the practice yard. There, by the bushes with the purple flowers, the kitten lay sleeping, curled on itself, a purple flower crushed under its little paw. Shouta's lips spread into a smile. Maybe he shouldn't have done this, but the urge to touch the little spitfire was just too strong, and he found his hand extending to the furry figure in front of him.

Without indulging his urge, he drew back. Touching the little kitten while it was unawares might freak it out and convincing it that he was a friend would have been difficult after that. Although, maybe getting the little creature used to him, a human being, might not be the best idea since not all people were nice to cats and for a feral cat, blindly trusting humans might not be in its best interest.

As Shouta took a step forward from where he squatted down, a dead leaf crunched under his boot and the sound was enough to wake the sleeping kitten. First, its ears twitched, twisting like a radar in the direction of the sound. Then, its eyes opened and blearily stared back at Shouta. For a moment, it didn't move, clearly still sleepy, taking in its surroundings and his presence there. An alarmed pounce backward proved that it had finally fully woken up. Unfurling its fur, it bared its teeth in a silent hiss, and Shouta stifled a laugh.

It was mean of him to laugh at the kitty's terrified attempt at distancing itself away from him, but it wasn't his fault that it had been hilarious. The kitten's eyes seemed to dare him to laugh as it stood sideways with an arched back. Shouta adopted the same strategy he had used earlier that afternoon and draped his capture scarf to let it sniff at it. The kitten stared at it suspiciously, then, relenting, gave it a good sniff, all the while forgetting to maintain its previous threatening stance.

Shouta fished out another cat food pouch from his many pockets and placed it in front of the kitten much as he did earlier that day. Once Shouta had taken a step back, the kitten started devouring the food after smelling it first. Again, there were no signs of the kitten's mother; it was strange that the kitten was left alone for so long, but the mother might've returned while he was in his classes. With a fond, last glance, Shouta made his way back home.

---

There were only two more papers to go. Shouta placed the one in his hand onto the 'done' pile, pausing for a second to rub his dry eyes, and pet Tora on the head. With a sigh, he grabbed one more and started correcting it. As he was turning the page, keys clinked on the other side of the door, then it slowly opened.

"Welcome back," Shouta greeted Shia with a mumble.

“Hey, Shou-chan.” She smiled warmly.

“How was your night?” he asked, glancing back at the paper in his lap.

“Good,” was her automatic reply, but the tired tone was there. “I had to deal with a villain who had a speed quirk. God do I hate those!” she complained while making her way towards him, her hand brushing her spiked up white fringe to bring it down to cover her right eye.

It was a shame because Shouta liked the striking contrast between her mismatched eyes; the left one was a beautiful sky blue, while the right one was golden like a cat’s eye. He wasn't selfish enough to ask her to keep it uncovered though. Nothing in the world was worth the migraines she suffered because of overuse of her secondary quirk. She used it during patrol and that was more than enough. He had often teased her about her right eye, saying that it made her look like his first cat since it was white with a blue left eye and a yellow right one. Shia never minded that though, since she loved cats as much as he did. In fact, she probably took it as a compliment.

Shouta hummed in response, and Shia went on as she plopped down next to him on the couch and petted Mochi, who sat on couch arm rest. “Their quirk also affects their emotions and they all seem to feel a million different emotions at the same freaking second, and the headache is just UGH!” Scowling, she rubbed at her temples.

Shouta placed the paper and his pen down on the coffee table and opened his arms in mute invitation. Shia’s shoulders instantly relaxed, a warm smile spreading across her lips as she accepted his invitation, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Her happy sigh told him that everything that irked her was forgotten.

“How was yours?” Puffs of air tickled his neck as she spoke.

“Good,” he replied, “I’m almost done with correcting.”

“How many?”

“One, plus the one I was doing just now.”

“Well, then I’ll leave you to it. Wanna watch a movie after that?” She broke the embrace, smiling.

“Sure.” He shrugged. “I’ll finish them while you take a shower, then I'll dish out dinner.”

“Sounds good, thanks!” She beamed, practically bouncing out of the room.

Shouta chuckled and resumed his work.

Shia's shower wasn't long and by the time she got out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and made her way to the dresser, Shouta was done with his corrections for that week. He put the last paper down in the 'done' pile and his pen on top of it. Sliding down the couch, he rested his head on top of its back, his arms spread out next to his head.

"Done?" came Shia's question as she re-entered the living room.

"Done," was his tired answer.

The couch dipped next to him, then a gentle kiss was planted on his left cheek. He seized her waist and brought her closer as his lips found hers, and she tilted her head a little to deepen the kiss. They both broke it at the same time.

Thunder crackled in the sky making Shia exclaim, “I’m so happy I’m not out there right now!”

Wide-eyed, Shouta sprung from the couch, as Shia shrieked in surprise. Shoving his phone in his pocket, he sprinted for the door, only stopping to slip on shoes and grab a jacket and an umbrella from the rack next to the door. In his haste, his keys were forgotten.

In between all this, he managed an incoherent sentence which Shia probably didn't understand. Thankfully, he spotted a taxi driving in the opposite direction as he ran down the street. If the taxi driver thought Shouta was a weirdo, he said nothing, pulling up and allowing Shouta to get in the car."

Breathless, Shouta informed the driver of their destination. Fortunately, the drive there wasn't long, and Shouta spent it all bouncing his leg impatiently as rain and wind hit the outside of the vehicle. He hated it whenever Hizashi did that, but somewhere along the line, he had picked up his best friend's nervous habit.

The taxi stopped at U.A.'s gates, and Shouta swung open the door, asking the driver to wait for him. The security guard blinked at Shouta as he showed him his staff ID. After signing a couple of papers, Shouta was free to go through the gates, making for the practice yard. There it stood, the bush with the purple flowers. Shouta popped his head behind it looking for the kitten while trying to shelter himself as much as possible from the rain with his umbrella.

Nothing, there was nothing behind the bush, only scattered wet leaves and wilted flowers. Shouta's eyes quickly swept the area looking for the kitten but found nothing. He tried searching the bushes around that one-- again, nothing. A sinking feeling of despair took hold of him as raindrops beat down on his umbrella. He tried one more time, widening the area he searched but found nothing.

Shoulders drooping, Shouta gave up, trying to console himself with the idea that the mother had finally returned to the kitten, and that they were well-sheltered from the rain. The taxi driver honked his impatience, and Shouta, with a heavy heart, turned in the direction of the gate. He was almost halfway there when he heard a familiar, quiet, piercing sound over all the noise of the pouring rain. Perking up, he frantically searched for the tiny dark figure lost in all the darkness of the night. He followed the sound to a small bush on the opposite side of the path, and a little movement in the lower leaves of the bush revealed a dark figure. Shouta’s heart soared.

Quickly, he took out the cat hairpin he had pinned his bangs with, and squatting down, he let the kitten remember his scent by smelling it. While the kitten was busy sniffing it, Shouta stuck the handle of the umbrella under his armpit and snaked his fingers behind the kitten’s head, gently grabbing it by the nape of the neck.

The kitten’s tail went up to its belly between its legs as it went limp in Shouta’s hand. Slowly, he brought it to his chest and it hooked its claws in his shirt as it held on for dear life. With one last searching look for the mother, Shouta zipped up his jacket and returned to the taxi.

The minute Shouta rang the doorbell, the door swung open, and Shia stepped to the side to let him in.

“What the heck, Shou-chan? You’re drenched! I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer me. Are you okay?” Shia’s rushed sentences greeted him as she closed the door behind him.

It was finally safe for him to carefully unzip his jacket.

“Shou-chan, what…OH, MY GOD!” Her sentence was cut off when the kitten poked its head from the jacket and looked at her with its big, green eyes. “What is that doing here! Aww… Where did you find it?”

“At school, looks like it got separated from its litter.”

“And it doesn’t have a collar, does it?”

“No.”

“Come on in; let’s get you both dried off.”

He walked to the couch and Shia went to the bathroom to grab some towels. The tiny wet kitten stood on his lap sniffing the air, wide-eyed. It was a good thing that Shia’s cats, Mochi and Tora, didn’t come to greet him. Shia returned with the towels, handing him a small one while she went around the back of the couch with a bigger one. She draped the towel over his head and gently started massaging his hair dry.

“So, its mother didn’t come for it?”

“No, I saw…” He lifted the kitten up and looked beneath its tail, then continued: “her twice this afternoon, and she was alone both times. If the mother was around, I would have probably seen her.”

“Aww… poor little girl,” Shia cooed.

“She’s all wet and scared now, but you should’ve seen her hissing at me this afternoon.” Shouta chuckled, fond of the little spitfire.

Shia laughed. “I’ll go get her some food.”

Shouta continued to dry the kitten as it struggled against the towel, clearly wanting to explore her surroundings, if only with her eyes. When Shia returned with food and water, the kitten sniffed at the air, the smell of the food wafting towards her. Shia placed the food and water on the coffee table and Shouta put the kitten down next to them. Not wasting a second, the hungry kitten started devouring her food.

“So, what do you plan to do with her?” Shia asked.

“I don’t know, keep her.” Shouta shrugged, and Shia beamed at that.

“Do you have any names in mind?”

Shouta was bad with names, not that Shia was any better, but oddly enough he had a pretty good idea for the little one.

“Ryu.”

“Ryu? Why?” Shia cocked an eyebrow at him, clearly confused.

“It suits her.” Shouta grinned. “Besides, she looks like that dragon from that silly movie you like.”

Shia just stared back at him in confusion for a second until recognition was visible on her face.

“Toothless? Now that you said that, she does look like him!” Shouta’s grin spread even more when Shia’s eyes widened then narrowed as she said: “How to train your dragon is not a silly movie, how dare you say that, fine sir?” She mirrored his grin. “But it does suit her.”

“I told you it does!” His fingers found Ryu as he ran them down her back.

Just like that, tiny Ryu had a new home.

[killprettymagazine]

Never Again - An Edible Marijuana Horror Story

“Never again” is a phrase that you should utter with decreasing frequency as you mature: You should learn from your mistakes.  When you’re a kid, the world is full of sparkly phenomena, and you have not yet accrued enough disappointments to employ skepticism in investigating the seemingly endless sources of sparkle.  When you’re nine-years-old, for instance, you may not have yet learned that candied apples are detestable pieces of shit.  Imagine a giant apple that you can hold on a stick, like a king with a goddamned scepter, encapsulated by a reflective deep red coating.  Just the sound it must make when you bite into it, that crunch – you’re left with no choice but to force your parent or legal guardian to buy you one.  Then you try one.  It turns out that you can’t eat this magical apple like you would a regular apple, expecting each bite to be covered by a proportionate coating of candy, because hard candy doesn’t break like that; it shatters into many hostile shards of candy that annihilate your teeth.  It turns out, shards.  It turns out that if you wanted to, you could theoretically break the apple and use it as a fucking weapon.  And all that work and torture went into unearthing the most flavorless, soul-crushing apple variety: A Granny Smith.  Is it any wonder that so many of us develop trust issues as adults?

Sometimes, after experiencing a never again situation, you’re struck by a wave of amnesia and get pushed back into a neutral pre-trauma state.  Unfortunately, when this happens, the universe is burdened with the task of correcting you in a more memorable manner.

A few months ago, I suffered a bout of this type of amnesia during an ill-fated trip to a pot dispensary.  While there, I was brazen enough to pose the question, “Why don’t I ever get edibles when I shop here?” 

(As a side note, yes, I used the word “shop” in this context: While I am an avid believer in the medicinal benefits of pot, whose properties are vastly complex, visiting a dispensary sure doesn’t feel very medically official. You’d be hard-pressed to find a medication called “Alaskan Thunderfuck” at a conventional pharmacy). 

After interacting with the budtender at the dispensary - whose white lab coat, long Zen master’s beard and cosmic presence made me feel like I was talking to God - I got home and prepared for an epic night.  I purchased a ribeye that was so beautiful that I felt like I should apologize to it for the mess in my kitchen.  I was going to cook it sous vide at 130 degrees and then sear it to perfection in clarified butter.  Coltrane’s Giant Steps.  16-year-old single malt Macallan.  Porn, probably.  I ate half of one of the grown-up lozenges that I procured and risky-business’ed my way into the shower.

As I dried off with a towel, I felt the first signs of tingling in my toes; a very welcome sensation. About 20 minutes later, as I was tinkering with the immersion circulator, I still only felt the tingling.  “Shouldn’t I be giggling by now?” I wondered, “I’m preparing a bath for a steak while wearing a robe and I have a mustache.  I look like I’m about to fuck this steak.”  But my high seemed to be reaching stasis and I was not about to settle for the smooth jazz of evenings after dropping $25 on a single piece of meat.  I popped the other half of the lozenge in my mouth and proceeded with my grooming routine as the steak-bath reached temperature.

By the time the immersion circulator reached 130 degrees, a smile appeared on my face.  “That’s more like it,” I thought, “now I can honor the bull that was sacrificed for this evening appropriately.”  I would have never guessed that the next five hours of my life would consist of scrotum-gripping dread.

The first signs of trouble appeared as I removed the steak from the butcher paper in preparation for its bath.  I unwrapped the packet and stared in horror at the practically pulsating piece of flesh that I was about to consume.  I must have stared at the thing for the better part of five minutes.  “Oh, Christ,” I thought, “Not again.  I’ve already been through this – I’m not going to become a vegetarian.”  But I could not tolerate the idea of eating this steak so I wrapped it back up and returned it to the fridge, where I hoped it would be safe from whatever awful force was possessing me.  I opted for a couple of potatoes that I “baked” in the microwave.

As the potatoes cooked, which could have occupied anywhere from a few minutes to several weeks, I noticed that I could feel my heart beating in my chest without touching it.  “Does it always do that?” I wondered.  Suddenly concerned, I elected to take my own pulse; I placed my index and middle fingers on my wrist and started counting.  I kept losing my place and had to start over, again and again, which it turned out did not help my anxiety.  But I’m not a quitter; I would take my own pulse come hell or high water.  As I counted, it occurred to me that I had no clue about what constituted a normal or an abnormal pulse.  “Who do I think I am,” I thought, “a fucking doctor?”  But I continued to count for some reason.  My efforts were then interrupted by a heinously loud siren, which catapulted me out of my kitchen chair.  “JESUS CHRIST!” I exclaimed.  I no longer had to check my pulse; I knew that it was off the charts at this point.  I was on the verge of weeping from fear – then I realized that my potatoes were done.

I opened the microwave door to retrieve my potatoes, which now resembled the wrinkly testicles of a 90-year-old, and realized that I did not have enough saliva in my mouth to move my tongue, let alone to eat potatoes – the driest of root vegetables.  I shut the door, imprisoning the potatoes in the microwave.  It was time to lie down.  

“This lozenge is very, very mellow,” the budtender at the dispensary said.  “You’ll hardly notice that you’re high,” he said.  “One might not even be enough for you,” he said.  As the second half of the lozenge high-fived the first that was already reclining in a La-Z-Boy somewhere in my amygdala, I fantasized about finding that budtender, yanking him by his wizard’s beard and screaming, “IS THIS WHAT YOU MEANT BY ‘VERY, VERY MELLOW,’ YOU FECKLESS TURD?”  I wanted to strap him into a “good vibe” equivalent of an electric chair and pump him with the strongest possible current of good vibes until he exploded into a supernova of ineffectuality.  Because I wasn’t mellow, I was going to die.  I’m not using the phrase “going to die” to indicate that I was in any actual danger, nor in a histrionic Morrissey sense (…and you go home and you cry and you want to die).  No, as far as I knew, I was dying. 

I’ve danced around the rainbow of anxiety experiences in my life, including several shades located in the “bad pot trip” wavelength.  Most pot anxiety I’ve experienced, while often terrible, is usually short-lived: You smoke, the effects come on and intensify rapidly, you panic, you take a benzodiazepine (at least if you’re me) and 15 minutes later you’re back to watching cat videos on YouTube and eating pretzels.  Easy as pie.  This, on the other hand, was like some archaic form of corporal punishment – like being chained to a giant rock and then pushed off a cliff into the sea.

I was now curled up in the fetal position on my bed, my whole body trembling violently; I was a six-foot vibrator.  “W-w-when will it stop?” I might have said out loud.  The Ativan wasn’t working.  It occurred to me that I had no idea how much time had elapsed since I had placed the tiny pill under my tongue so I grabbed a small alarm clock that was on my nightstand and placed it right in front of my face on the opposite pillow.  It looked like the clock and I had just finished making love.  Then I realized that tracking time might not be such a great idea so I buried the clock under the covers and proceeded with my trembling regimen.   

At this point, my anxiety was so severe that my perception of reality started to waver; I felt like I was in a movie or a dream.  I was so scared that nothing around me seemed real and, every time I thought my fear could not become any more severe, I was proven wrong.  “Aren’t I supposed to be enlightened by now?” I wondered.  I was hitherto under the impression that if I would experience a state of fear that was adequately extreme, I would ultimately be led into a state of oceanic tranquility and be one with the cosmos.  “That Alan Watts didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about!” I thought. 

It was now 1:23 AM according to the clock that I hid under the covers.  My anxiety was not letting up and I was hallucinating.  I needed to talk to someone, preferably a human.  I needed to hear something other than my auditory hallucinations or the sound of my absurdly dry “NPR” mouth, the latter of which was really starting to grate on my nerves.  I didn’t want to call any relatives because I was worried about being chided for my weed blunder.  I called one of my friends but he was busy.  Then I suddenly remembered a recent conversation with another friend who, upon learning that I was going through a bad breakup, made the mistake of telling me that I could call him whenever I wanted if I needed to talk. 

“Did I wake you?” I asked.  “Umm, no,” he groaned in response.  “Yes, I did.”  Silence.  “I’m having the worst anxiety attack I’ve ever had.  I’m gonna die.”  “You’re not going to die.  Just breathe.”  The conversation consisted mainly of me proclaiming that I was going to die and my friend telling me that I was not dying.  He eventually tried to distract me by transitioning to other subjects but I could not focus on what he was saying.  At one point, it occurred to me that he was talking about Jeff Goldblum for a reason that was beyond my comprehension to such an extent that I considered taking another Ativan.  If I was going to die, I really hoped that my last conversation would not be about Jeff Goldblum.

After about 40 minutes on the phone, multiple references to Jeff Goldblum and several hundred “I’m gonna die’s,” I felt an internal release.  Finally, after about five hours of swimming through the rectum of the psychedelic spectrum, I was free.  I suddenly realized that my friend was still talking.  Eventually, noting my silence he asked, “You doing better?”  “I think so,” I said, “I’m starving now.”  I remembered that I still had those delicious wrinkled potatoes.  While cradling the phone on my shoulder, I walked over to the kitchen and opened the microwave door.  The potatoes looked like Guantanamo Bay detainees.  I suddenly remembered Obama’s quote, “…under my administration the United States does not torture” and started laughing maniacally.  I couldn’t breathe.  I tried to share this thought with my friend.  “I’m going to sleep,” he responded.  I continued laughing when I got off the phone.  I ate the potatoes and went to sleep, occasionally bursting into laughter in the dark. 

The next day I woke up and treated myself to a ribeye breakfast.  As I chewed the steak, I reflected on the events of the previous evening and wondered, “Was that a valuable experience?”  I concluded that it might have been but only in the crudest sense.  It would be like saying that the experience of intentionally hitting yourself in the balls was a valuable experience because it taught you not to do that.  Would you really have to be doubled in pain to figure that one out?  Still, I can say with gusto that I would sooner wipe my ass with a cactus than ever ingest another edible.  Never, ever again.

[ecotone99]

[MF] Nosedive

Emma was up in the air about her position up in the air.

Being a flight attendant just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It was no longer the glory days of the classy Pan-Am stewardess, adorned in her robin blue dress and cap, long legs and aura of elegance. There was no more mingling with wealthy jetsetters in those luxury liners in the sky, those flying spectacles of glitz and glamour, jetting off to the globe’s most exotic locales. Now it was all about waiting on the impatient masses. The ever-impatient masses.

“Just a second!” Emma hissed. The fat man in 36C was trying to monopolize her attention again. He leaned back on his neck pillow, folds of sweaty red flesh billowing out the sides. Earbuds in, he snapped his fingers above his head as if the plane would nosedive straight into the ocean if she didn’t come serve him. Right. That. Moment.

She clamoured past Margaret, her near-octogenarian co-worker. Fifty years and a hundred pounds ago, Margaret could’ve been one of those glamorous Pan-Am girls that a young Emma had pictured in her dreams. Margaret pushed a clunky metal service cart, loaded with reanimated frozen food (“chicken or pasta?”, the modern attendant’s catchphrase). Her oversized rear-end nearly sent Emma tumbling into a row of French businessmen, pattering away on laptops.

“Sorry love” Margaret purred. Her rosy cheeks and sweet old lady demeanour masked her gross incompetence. Emma liked her slightly better than the other attendants though, a bunch of middle-aged chain-smokers with skin like leather. And Craig.

Cursing her life choices, she finally reached the fat man, who resembled a raging toddler. He was watching some lame action movie, Tom Cruise sprinting across the miniscule screen as a hoard of thugs and dead pixels closed in.

“Yes sir?” Emma asked in her customer service voice. Despite her extreme disdain, her paycheque mandated that she attempt to remain pleasant.

The man swished something around in his cheeks, and proceeded to spit a chunk of half-chewed food into the plastic platter on his tray-table. It was flanked by a small cup of water, a roll from the Middle Ages, and something the airline deemed a ‘brownie’.

“I ordered the pasta.”

“And what is that?

“It’s chicken!”

Dammit Margaret. Emma wearily glanced around. Margaret was headed into first-class, backside squeezing down the cabin, begging for a hard kick. There were rows of seat-backs and human scalps as far as the eye could see. She didn’t like breathing the same recycled air as these people. Only one thing to do.

“Craig!” she called out. Craig, the only other attendant her age, spun around, spilling a stream of orange juice across the lap of the woman with the sleep-mask he was serving. Craig had always had a massive crush on Emma, mainly because there as no one else to really have a crush on. He was kind of cute, as one would describe a puppy or a small squirrel as cute, with a soft baby-face and patches of adult acne.

“You got any more pastas?”

Craig fumbled through his cart, unsheathing a tray of regurgitated dogfood with steam-soaked plastic wrap over the top. He tossed in some packaged utensils.

“My lady” he cooed, passing it over the passengers’ heads between them.

“Thanks” Emma muttered, cringing.

“Don’t mention it!” Craig said excitedly. “I’ve got so many pastas. And chickens. And pastas. And chickens. And vegetarian pastas. And…”

Emma smiled at him, and he visibly swooned. That did the trick. She placed the new meal atop the fat man’s tray-table.

“There you go, one pasta.” She resisted the urge to add your majesty.

The man poked at a congealed glob of tomato sauce with his fork. “How long til Paris?” he sneered.

Emma glanced at her watch. “Just a couple hours.” The man could’ve easily looked at the virtual map on his TV. One of the few conveniences of modern air travel.

He grunted.

“Are you traveling with your wife?” Emma asked, mistakenly advancing the conversation. An equally-obese woman pooled in the seat beside him, dead asleep, slobber leaking from an open jaw. She wore a football jersey and Cheetos dust.

“Yeah” he sighed. “It’s our anniversary trip. She always wanted to go to Paris.”

“And what are you most excited to see? The Eiffel Tower? Notre Dame?”

“Euro Disney” he answered. “I’m gonna try to give her the slip in Frontierland.”

Emma nodded with the most plastic smile she could muster. Thankfully, she was pulled away by the monotone ding of a ‘call attendant’ button a few rows down. In fact, there were multiple ‘call attendant’ dings, an entire ear-piercing symphony. Emma shuffled down the fuselage to find an exasperated mother in a middle seat, yelling with a strained voice, two shrieking gremlins darting around her. They slipped through her arms whenever she attempted to snatch one. Deep crayon strokes were embedded in the seat-back. The old man in front of them, nose in the latest Dan Brown atrocity, was growing more agitated with each kick and jab.

“Uh, hi” Emma muttered, with a quick wave.

“Sorry, sorry, look, I didn’t press it, they’re just…” the mother started. A gremlin resumed spamming the ‘call attendant’ button, the ding blaring, the little light flickering. “JASON! STOP PRESSING THAT! YOU’RE WASTING THE NICE LADY’S TIME!”

“Shhh!” hissed the old man from ahead.

“Emma! Emma!”

What now? Emma spun around from one train-wreck to the next. Margaret stood at the border with business class, leaning out the iron curtain, trying to get her attention. Emma swallowed her wits and hurried forward, vaulting over a pair of bare legs stretched across the aisle.

“What Margaret?”

“We’ve got a teeny bit of a problem up here, love” Margaret explained. “8B brought a chihuahua in her handbag. Very adorable of course. But he seems to have gotten loose and had a little tinkle on the floor- the chihuahua that is, not the passenger.” She glanced back behind her. “A wee more than a tinkle I’m afraid.”

“…And?”

“And it’s my break time. I was hoping you could be a dear and swab it up?” Margaret tossed a roll of paper towel, which Emma caught before she could react. “Thanks love!”

Looking at the paper towel, Emma felt something that certainly wasn’t job satisfaction bubble up inside her, pushing towards the surface. She swallowed it with a few deep breaths before slipping into the nearby lavatory, flicking it locked, and taking a seat on the closed high-suction toilet. She turned and looked at herself in the mirror, stained with God-knows-what. Heavy bags hung beneath her eyes. Leaning closer, she could even make out a few faint wrinkles, commencing their journey across her cheeks. Her lips throbbed from fake-smiling. Was this really what she wanted to do with her life? A glorified babysitter stuck on a Transatlantic tube, at the beck and call of every ridiculous tourist and their nonsensical demands? She briefly wondered if any Pan-Am girls had ever stooped to scrubbing up chihuahua piss. Probably not. Too classy. Emma fantasized about storming into her manager’s office once she finally made it home, slamming a big fat resignation letter on her desk. Maybe this would be her final flight after all.

As she soaked in her fantasy, she was interrupted by a sudden jolt. More than a jolt really. All at once the plane lurched abruptly sideways, sending Emma crashing into the sink, knocking the wind out of her. Just as she started to get up, smoothing the front of her stewardess uniform, there was a sudden thrash the other way, knocking her over the toilet, her knee bashing on the side. The lights flickered with a questionable buzz.

Pushing out the lavatory, Emma came upon utter chaos.

“Uh, this is your captain speaking, you may’ve noticed that we’ve hit a wave of turbulence” came Captain Ronaldo’s voice over the static-y intercom. “Should hopefully clear in a few minutes, but the seatbelt sign has been turned on and oxygen masks have been deployed for your safety. Please direct any questions to a member of our cabin crew.”

Nope!

Ignoring the prehistoric-sounding mess in the cabin as passengers scrambled for their masks- biting, clawing, kicking small children- Emma ducked into the galley where Margaret and Craig were already seated. She tugged on her dangling mask from overhead, her steady breaths soon inflating the small bag at the end.

Craig, his bag widening at a much faster rate, gripped her arm. She carefully pried him off like an unwanted Band-Aid.

“We’re going down…we’re going down…” he gasped between breaths.

“Oh, don’t worry love, we have Captain Ronaldo at the helm!” Margaret cheerily exclaimed. “This will be over in a few minutes! Everything is going to be fine, tip-top, we…OH SHITTTTTT!”

The plane plunged suddenly downward. Turbines screamed as it collapsed into a dizzying spiral, dropping hundreds of feet per second, the icy black waters of the mid-Atlantic rising to meet it.

Emma lurched forward, body straining against the seatbelt, clinging with white knuckles to the edge of her chair. She glanced around. Time seemed to have stopped. A coffee pot, knocked from the adjacent counter, hung in mid-air, a ribbon of black decaf floating out the lid, like something out of the space station.

This was how it ended, she supposed. Trapped in a plane with all these stupid people, Margaret and Craig her seatmates for eternity, no legacy but a name on a forgotten memorial plaque on a blustery seaside somewhere. She should’ve quit while she had the chance. Lived a little. Experienced life outside the tube. She never got to fall in love, never got to find herself, never got to have an adventure. Never got to see Paris beyond the overpriced airport hotels huddled around the tarmac. It was, indeed, her final flight. A weird sort of irony.

Emma braced for impact.

Suddenly, yet another jolt shook the craft, and it somehow leveled out. The dimmed lights reignited in full force. Emma watched the floating coffee pot shatter across the floor. Margaret was muttering “oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear” under her breath. Craig looked catatonic. Then came the bland tone of the seatbelt sign switching off, and Emma knew it was going to be okay. She brushed her windswept hair back into place, gingerly pulling off her oxygen mask and unclipping her seatbelt, filled with utter awe.

She’d been given another chance to live. And maybe the flight attendant life wasn’t so bad after all. Serving a few unruly passengers was sufficiently better than plunging to a freezing death in the middle of the ocean. Most of them were quite nice anyway. A few bad apples, rotten from travel stress and general indecency, ruined the bunch. That was it. None of it was personal. None of it was defining. Emma strode towards the cabin with a restored passion. Perhaps the very same passion that those retro Pan-Am girls had felt.

Upon arrival, every ‘call attendant’ button was screaming, the flashing lights like a sea of strobes. Feeling something bubble up inside her again, Emma wearily headed for the fat man in 36C, frantically snapping his fingers above his head.

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