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twdmusicboxmystery · 3 years

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FTWD 6x11: The Holding

Wow! Where to begin with this episode? We had some super-stellar parallels going here. I don’t think it was any secret that I wasn’t thrilled with last week’s episode. It was fine, but also kind of meh. I LOVED this week’s episode. So much good stuff!

***As always, spoilers for 6x11 abound below. Don't read until you've watched!***

So, we learn about these “end is the beginning” people. They’re staying in a place called The Holding, which is really an underground parking garage. (Um…cars, anyone? Let’s recall that Daryl and Carol walked through at least one parking garage in Consumed while looking for Beth. They also passed lots of above-ground ones, including one that had a red car with its door open in front of it. Also, the fact that it’s underground could make it a symbolic tomb/grave.)

These people are composting walkers to grow food underground. (People do use blood and bone feed to fertilize gardens. Like compost and waste, it really does help them grow. Of course in our society it’s ANIMAL blood and bone. Using walkers/humans is definitely more sinister and cringy. And they have proven that eating various parts of humans leads to things like Mad Cow’s Disease, so I do think Alicia’s question about food being grown that way being healthy is viable.)

But moving on.

It’s important to note that the showrunner called this group a cult, so are not they meant to be “good people.” Most of those that live there aren’t sinister, but they’ve been brainwashed into thinking their leader is a good man and that what he’s trying to accomplish is good. They’ve drunk the koolaid (or eaten the walker food?).

So, we have the ivy walker.

There really couldn’t be a more clear parallel to the blond girl Daryl saw on the tree in 5x15. Plus all the green ivy around her.

I believe we saw a promo of this walker early on. Like maybe nearer the beginning of S6. Which, thanks to Covid, was more than a year ago. I’d pretty much forgotten it, but we actually do see it in this episode.

The dogma of this group (“the end is the beginning”) is that from death springs new life. This walker is meant to represent that. Life growing out of death. And on its own, it doesn’t seem like an overly negative mission statement. After all, this world is full of death and people are trying to survive. But it quickly becomes obvious that there’s more sinister stuff at work here.

So what does this have to do with Beth? I think she’s the ultimate symbol of life springing from death. So, not only does this foreshadow her, but they’re also using her as a symbol here. I don’t know how this group may feed into future story lines, or if they’ll just be a FTWD thing, but it will be interesting to watch.

Some of the major things in this episode: a Sirius reunion, a Daryl/Merle parallel, Grady parallels, at least two major Beth/Bethyl proxies, and some tantalizing hints for what’s to come involving both this group and the CRM. (See why I loved this episode?)

Let’s dive in.

First, let me acknowledge all the background symbols. There are tons of them, and I don’t want to go into tons of detail about them. But we see cheese (think Morgan/Eastman), tomatoes, eggs (lots of food). We also see fire extinguishers, lots of green (especially paint), an elevator. You get the idea.

The first big thing that happens is Wes meets his brother, Derek, whom he thought was dead.

Welcome to the first Beth proxy.

Okay, I didn’t remember much of this backstory or how much of it was told when we first met Wes. I do remember talking about his brother as a possible Beth proxy, but beyond that, I didn’t remember details. But they rehash it all here. Care to take a guess?

Wes went out for supplies and was overwhelmed by, you guessed it, a walker horde. He ran into a shed but it collapsed (becoming something of tomb) and the walkers were beating on the outside, trying to get in (think Beth and Daryl in the trunk). He passed out and woke up in The Holding.

That’s exactly like what happened with Beth, actually. She told Gorman she was fighting a walker and everything went black. She woke up at Grady.

The difference here is that Beth never bought into what Dawn was peddling, but unfortunately, Wes’s brother did. We eventually learn that he’s a true follower of “Teddy,” the cult leader and condones the murder that’s being done.

And of course that’s also what we think happened during the missing 17 days. Overwhelmed by walkers, left behind. Perhaps she woke up back at Grady, or somewhere else.

But the actual reunion between Wes and Derek is very on-the-nose. Because Wes truly thought this brother dead, he even says things like, “You’re alive?” and “What the hell?” Probably things that will be said about Beth when she finally shows up.

There’s also a serious/Sirius mention when they sit down to talk. And Derek keeps mentioning his bike. Like Daryl, he had a bike that Wes took when he thought his brother dead. But the fact that he mentions “bikes” like five times in this conversation is important.

I wanted to mention coffee. We’ve seen coffee as a symbol before, specifically around Carol. We first noticed it when Paula told her little story about the carrot, the egg and the coffee beans going into the water in 6x13. She said the coffee beans changed the water itself. So, coffee = a catalyst for change. But this episode made me realize it’s a catalyst for a change that’s not necessarily good.

Apparently, the supplies Wes’s brother went out for was coffee creamer. The change that came was not only him being left behind and presumed dead, but changing into a person that no longer empathized with other human beings. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we see Carol making and drinking coffee just before they went to the caverns and Connie disappeared?)

There’s also a huge eye/sight/see theme. They take everyone over to see this green-ivy walker and ask them what they “see”. The idea is that they should see life and possibility springing from death, but it’s just a way to indoctrinate them and check to see if they’re willing to go along with what the cult’s beliefs are. Lots of talk of eyes (opening your eyes), what one can and can’t yet see, etc.

Later, we see walkers with their mouths sewn shut. So we have at least the see no evil, speak no evil themes. There might have been hear no evil that I didn’t catch.

The second major parallel is to Daryl and Merle, since these two are brothers.

But it’s more than just that. Wes took Derek’s bike after he disappeared (same as Daryl and Merle). When Wes found his brother again, he was with a bad group (with Merle, it was the Governor) or rather a group of decent people led by an evil man. Derek has a skewed mindset, and is working for Teddy. Remember that Merle not only worked for the Gov but even tried to kill Michonne at one point. And how they die is…similar. Merle’s, in the end, was more chivalrous, as he died to help save Daryl and TF. That wasn’t the case with Derek, but his death resulted from him pretending to work against Teddy. Unfortunately it wasn’t real, and he betrayed them, but there are still parallels/anti-parallels between the two stories.

How is this place like Grady?

There’s the underground tomb aspect, the fact that they grow their own food. At the beginning, Alicia’s group keeps asking them questions about the community, which Riley (Nick Stahl) pretty much refuses to answer.

One of them is, “Are we allowed to leave?” or “Is anyone allowed to leave?” That, of course, instantly reminded me of Grady. Now, they never answer it directly, and at one point, Riley says they can decide if they want to stay or not. But by the time we get to the end of the episode, I’m pretty sure that’s BS. So, like Grady, no one’s really given the choice to leave. Even if they tell people they can.

They’re taken into a room with medical equipment at one point. It just looks a lot like Grady, though I could tell it wasn’t the same kind of medical equipment. We’re told that it’s embalming equipment.

In fact, Al says something that should catch your ear. She says, “they must have hit the funeral home.” Naturally all our minds will go to Alone, but she’s talking about the funeral home she and Dwight (I think) were at before. I don’t remember which episode, but we talked about it looking a lot like the funeral home in Alone. So, I think Al is saying these people, The Holding, raided that funeral home and took the equipment. Kinda makes me think the funeral home in Alone will come back into the picture at some point.

And it turns out, The Holding is embalming walkers. Al’s group ends up in a room with dozens of walkers strung up by their wrists (kind of like Daryl and Michonne were in Scars). They’ve been embalmed and their mouths have been sewn shut.

So, here’s where the plot becomes super interesting. I mentioned above that Riley told them they could choose to leave at some point, right? Al was saying that everything they’ve set up is impressive—food, power, water, they’re very self-sustaining—but it felt like they were preparing for something big.

He admits that they are. He says they are planning to soon close the doors permanently. He says they never want to go topside again, and the new way to live will be underground.

Later, when talking to Morgan, Al sort of implies that maybe it’s not so much about them choosing to go underground as that something will drive them underground for a long time. Almost like they’re preparing for a nuclear winter or something. But we don’t know exactly what it is.

I think what we’re supposed to infer is that they’re collecting walkers to use as compost in coming years. (They even call the walkers ‘posters.) They’re embalming the walkers to keep them “fresh.” Riley says the walkers last about 2 months in the composter before they break down entirely, so putting away 20 or 30 walkers really will last them for years.

CRM Ties

Wes and Al snoop through Derek’s room. They find maps of different communities and some of those transparent overlays that have the three rings of the CRM on them. That’s how they know that this group is attacking communities (like Tank Town) and that Derek knows all about it.

The other thing Al figures out from looking at Derek’s maps is that the group seemed to be tracking the CRM’s drop sites. She thinks they want to get their hands on a helicopter. (So, when it comes to Nora’s group, who was in the high rise, this group wasn’t after them. The roof was a helicopter drop site and that’s really who they were after. Though, they might have set the plague on Nora’s people because they are trying to kill humanity.) And given that this cult might be planning the end of the world, clearly them getting a hold of a helicopter would be a bad thing.

Al tells Dwight she’s going to go look for Isobel and warn her. I think she’s just planning to go to the drop sites and wait for a helicopter to show up.

So, we have more potential interaction with the CRM through Al. And I’m really hoping we get some good Bethyl symbolism and clues through this storyline. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it.

Morgan and Burning it Down

Wes confronts him and talks him into leaving with them. At one point, Wes mentions Morgan. I think he just does it without thinking, because what would Morgan mean to his brother, right? But Derek instantly gets weird when he hears Morgan’s name, and Wes doesn’t really notice.

When they try to leave, they get caught, and it’s obvious Derek set them up. They’re taken to the embalming room, and Riley asks where Morgan is. They won’t say how they know him or why they want him, but they’re VERY interested in finding Morgan.

I was thinking it might just be because Morgan killed those two guys in one of the early episodes when they attacked him in his truck, but they both died and wouldn’t have known his name from that encounter anyway. So I’m not sure what this is about. There are the tapes they were leaving at gas stations and such. Maybe that’s it, but it wouldn’t explain why they would want Morgan more than the others.

They’re taken to the embalming room and threatened with death. Derek takes Wes back to the ivy walker to see if he can “see” what Wes does.

A fight ensues, and Wes throws Derek into the walker where he’s bitten. He shoots his brother so he won’t turn. The thing about this part is that it doesn’t show it. It instead shows the (somewhat yellowish) mural Derek was working on before, and Teddy’s voice is talking about how light comes from darkness. Then, we just hear a single gunshot.

That gave me *major* Beth vibes.

Wes then goes back to the embalming room to rescue the others.

Wes’s reaction at this part reminded me a bit of Daryl/Merle too. Not so much at Merle’s death, but back in 3x10 when Daryl returned to the prison. It just struck me that, while Wes did cry when his brother died and clearly mourned him, he got over it really fast. He went back to where the group was and no longer seemed terribly broken up about it. I was just thinking he seemed to have figured out who his true family was and where he really belonged, and that that was more important than his brother’s warped mindset. Much like Daryl and Merle.

When he goes back, he takes Riley hostage briefly and they all escape into another room and bar the door. This room is full of the hanging walkers full of embalming fluid. They have to walk between them toward an exit on the far side.

Al Parallels Daryl in 5x15

Here’s another super interesting parallel. Al sees one walker hanging that has the black CRM gear on it, including the helmet, so she can’t see its face. She walks over to it and lifts its helmet, clearly looking to see if it’s Isobel, which it’s not. Such an obvious parallel to Daryl looking into the face of the blond walker on the tree. It even lunges at her and she kills it, like Daryl did with that walker.

What I liked here is that Alicia freaked out about it. She said, “what the hell was that?” Aaron didn’t say that to Daryl, so they weren’t drawing as much attention to it there as they did here. But clearly we are supposed to notice that, without knowing more, that behavior is bizarre. And here, we the audience know that Al was worried it was Isobel. But Alicia doesn’t. Where the blond walker on the tree is concerned, the audience is in Alicia’s place, not being terribly clear about what’s behind Daryl’s behavior. (I mean, TD is, but most of the rest of the fandom isn’t.)

So then Alicia says they should take this place down. When Al stabbed the CRM walker in the neck, embalming fluid poured out. Embalming fluid is highly flammable. So, long story short, Alicia stays behind to “burn it down” and the others escape. (I don’t have to explain that parallel, right? ;D)

It all happens really fast. We see Alicia light the match (which Al had; just reminded me of Daryl having matches in Rick’s hallucination in 7x01, and clearly Al = Daryl in this parallel), and then it skips to Al, Wes, and Luciana back with Morgan telling him what happened. They say the fire was huge and burned hot, and Alicia could have gotten out, but they couldn’t FIND her. They also don’t know if any of the Holding people got out.

So Morgan just says they’re going to go back and start at the Holding location to look for Alicia. I’m assuming that will happen next episode.

So, we aren’t exactly clear on this group’s dogma or what they’re trying to do, but it does seem that they want to kill off everyone who lives up top. Which is, you know, everyone. And once again, that makes them a lot like the Wolves. They believe killing people is saving them. I’m not saying these are Wolves or anything (they might be; after all, both groups tied a blond walker to a tree and believed similar things about killing off the remnants of humanity) but rather that the Wolves were a foreshadow of other groups to come.

And the next question is, are they part of the CRM? Because of the CRM walker, and what they implied about them trying to hijack a helicopter, I’m thinking not. But there’s clearly a lot of entanglement going on.

Alicia = Beth

So, in the final scene, we have some interesting developments. This may be the scene that got my mind spinning the most, just in terms of symbolic Beth potential.

We see Alicia, very much alive, and still in the embalming room, though now all the walls look blackened. So obviously the entire place didn’t burn down. (That doesn’t surprise me. It’s an underground parking garage. It takes a lot to burn down cement.)

She’s being held hostage in there. Riley comes in and says some weird, cryptic things. He says new life springs from death, for MOST people, and that they plan to preserve Alicia exactly as she is. It’s obvious they mean to kill and embalm her.

But I had the thought that maybe they meant her to take the place of the Ivy Walker. We don’t know what happened to that walker. It might have burned in the fire, but they didn’t show us either way. I was thinking that it would make a twisted sense for them to embalm Alicia (who tried to take their community down) and put her in its place. Which would make her a Beth proxy.

Riley leaves her alone with the embalming guy, but she stabs him in the eye (Sirius) and then, after a brutal scuffle, sticks him in the neck with the embalming needle, killing him.

It’s then that we finally meet Teddy, the leader of the cult. We hear about him and hear his voice a lot during the episode (they play tapes of him talking throughout the garage as people work) but this is when we first see him. It’s John Glover. I don’t know if everyone’s familiar with him. He was on Smallville back in the day. I totally forgot he was going to be on the show. He’s usually a villain, but more of a funny villain than a scary villain.

Anyway, he basically tells Alicia he has a special role for her and that he’s been looking for someone like her for a long time. He seems convinced that he can convert her to his philosophy, but he’s also fixated on the fact that she sacrificed herself for her family. So, it doesn’t say what he means by “someone like you” but I’m assuming someone who is brave or else self-sacrificial.

But here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking recently that they haven’t really done much with Alicia lately. She’s one of the few surviving originals for this series, and one of the most well known actors going into it, because she’s been on other highly-watched tv shows, but they’ve kind of been ignoring her.

So, I think this is the beginning of a big arc for her, and I think it will be a major parallel for what happened with Beth after she was left behind.

Alicia becomes a proxy here for Beth, not only because she’s in the Grady-like medical room, and stabs a guy in the eye, but Teddy totally razzes her about being left behind.

He says, “they left you behind.” She says, “I made them.” He says, “Yeah, but they obliged.” And then goes off about how they’re her family and family is sacred and they shouldn’t have done that.

And in my head, I’m screaming, “Beth! Beth! Beth!”

So yeah. Super intrigued by this episode. They’re setting up some really intriguing things and it will be very interesting to see what happens moving forward.

What did everyone else think of the episode?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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asthesamcroflies · 4 years

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Hi I was wondering if you could write a story with Jax Teller. The reader is pregnant and goes into labor during a lockdown but she doesn’t tell anyone she’s in labor. Eventually Jax or Gemma or Lyla catch on but they won’t make it to the hospital so they have to deliver the baby in the clubhouse. I totally understand if you do not want to write this. Since it doesn’t follow what you are specifically asking. Thanks.

Thanks for the ask - happy to give it a go, so hope you enjoy! :)

Lockdown delivery

“You think I don’t know the timing’s shit? Of course, I know the timing’s shit!”

You could hear your old man’s voice rising angrily, even over the thrum of noise filling the crowded clubhouse. Not for the first time, Samcro had been forced into lockdown by an outside threat for the safety of its members and all those they held dear. Old ladies, kids, some extended family, close friends – all those who were considered at risk now seeking refuge within the clubhouse walls.

All the responsibility, more now than ever, of the club’s young president Jax Teller. Your old man.

It was a huge burden on his shoulders and, for all his usual confidence and authority, there was worry etched between his brows. You hated knowing you were a big factor in adding to that.

With a sigh, you let a hand rest lightly on the huge swell of your stomach. You had to admit you didn’t exactly need all this right now, not at just coming up on thirty-seven weeks pregnant and with the finishing touches still to be done on the nursery and so much still to organise.

You were exhausted and yet here you were, doing what you could to be of practical help and to show your support for your old man.

“Go lie down, baby – we can manage,” Gemma scolded yet again, on her way past with another armful of blankets to make their guests more comfortable. “You look worn out.”

“Thanks,” you managed, through gritted teeth, rolling your eyes at Gemma’s usual bluntness and too stubborn to be dismissed even if it was for your own good. “I’m fine…”

But you trailed off with a pained expression, your other hand going to the small of your back as the dull ache you couldn’t seem to shake only deepened.

“You good, doll?” Lyla stopped briefly in her tracks to check in, but she had her hands full too, trying to feed the impatient little kids who’d been voicing their needs loudly amid ongoing groans over being kept shut up inside, so she accepted your less-than-convincing nod more quickly than she otherwise might.

So left to your own devices again, you took a deep, steadying breath. Goddamn Braxton Hicks contractions. You’d been having them all damn day and… Really? Had it really been that long? Normally, they passed much quicker than that…

No. No, it couldn’t be. You had at least another three weeks to go – not to mention a lockdown to get through!

Maybe you would have that lie-down after all.

*****

“Jax?”

“What, mom?” the biker finally snapped, more sharply than he normally would, riled at having his attention diverted from a quick situation update from his grim-faced sergeant.

Gemma’s eyes narrowed in warning at his tone, but she let it slide, knowing full well the pressure on her son’s shoulders right now. And that she could well be about to add to it.

“Oh, nothing important,” she snarked nonetheless. “Just the small matter of your old lady. You know, the heavily pregnant one?”

That was enough to cut through Jax’s focus on the club and he was immediately on a red alert of a different kind. “What about her? She okay?” he demanded. “Where is she?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing… No one’s seen her in a while.”

“What?! Shit. Well, she can’t have left – no one’s left. Jesus, how do you lose a pregnant woman in here?” Jax bit out, raking a hand through his blond hair. “Sorry, Hap, I gotta go deal with this.”

*****

Gasping in pain, you tilted your head back against the seat, now regretting the seemingly bright idea of taking the weight off your feet in the rare peace of the big old car that had been left in for a service at TM before the shutters had been forced to come down. With every dorm room already full, it had seemed like the best chance of just sitting back and holding on until the pains you’d been experiencing had passed. And you had still been telling yourself they would pass. That there was no way you could be so unlucky as to be in labour in the middle of a lockdown.

Ha, if only that were true.

Trying to remember everything you’d been told about breathing, you couldn’t hold back a cry in response to a particularly strong contraction.

“Oh god, please not now…” you all but sobbed, realising that even if you called out for help, it was highly unlikely anyone back in the main clubhouse would hear you.

But just as panic was about to set it, you heard your old man’s voice calling your name, concern already obvious in his tone. And somehow you found the strength to respond.

“Jax, I’m here!”

“What the hell are you doing out here? I’ve—Oh, shit!”

As soon as you saw him staring at you, you could let your eyes close in relief, knowing at least you weren’t alone in this now.

“Now? Seriously?” he grimaced, before quickly realising that wasn’t exactly the reassurance you needed. “Hey, hey, easy now, darlin’. It’s gonna be okay. We can call an ambulance and see if--”

“I … I think it’s too late for that …” you managed, panting for breath. “I’m so sorry, Jax. I thought it was just Braxton Hicks and--”

You broke off with another cry of pain, making your old man wince in response.

“Fuck,” he swore. “Okay, two seconds, I swear – I’ll be two seconds.”

“Jackson!” you yelped. “Don’t leave me, you asshole!”

“Two seconds!” he hollered back, dashing towards the clubhouse, yelling for his vice president at the top of his lungs – literally turning on his heel and racing back to you as soon as he’d managed to get the attention of a startled Chibs and had the Scotsman running to catch up with him, convinced they were all mere moments from being blown sky-high. Again.

But Chibs skidded to a halt when he realised the truth of the situation, his eyes widening.

“Ah, Jesus Christ, Jacky – I’m no a fucking midwife, brother!” he declared in alarm.

But seeing you sobbing in pain as you caught your old man’s hand in a death grip, the VP crossed himself, kissed the rosary that hung around his neck and heaved a heavy sigh.

“Towels, hot water, and a bottle o’ whisky,” he ordered.

“She can’t drink in her condition,” Jax protested.

“The whisky’s fer me,” Chibs clarified.

*****

It was rare for the clubhouse to fall so quiet in the middle of a lockdown, but with word about what was going on having spread, a hush had fallen over all those now waiting for news – or at least a hush periodically broken by screams drifting through from the garage, making the mothers among those gathered exchange sympathetic, knowing looks, while even the most battle-hardened Sons could only cringe in something close to horror.

And in the backseat of that godforsaken car you’d sought refuge in, you no longer gave a shit who heard what as you struggled in agony, exhausted by your body’s efforts.

“I can’t, I just can’t,” you panted, your hair sweaty and falling in your flushed face. “Please, just make it stop.”

“I know, darlin’, I know,” Jax tried to soothe you, his hand still caught in your death grip, but his well-meaning words enough to make you round on him with renewed energy.

“Do you? Do you really, Jackson? Are you also pushing something the size of a watermelon out of your vagina, darlin’?” you snapped, your voice rising shrilly. “Oh my fucking god, someone just get this baby OUT OF ME!”

Chibs could only chuckle, looking at you over the top of his glasses as he patted your knee gently while your words turned into a roar as you pushed through yet another agonising contraction. “Atta girl. Come on now, lass – nearly there…”

“I can’t…”

“You can, baby,” Gemma coaxed, from where she was hovering anxiously in the background with an armful of towels. “And you’re damn well going to – I want to meet that grandbaby of mine!”

You could only grit your teeth at that, more than tempted to take out all your pain and discomfort on everyone around you, but starting to lack the energy for that. Just when you really did think you couldn’t take much more though, it was done.

And a small whimper turned into a full-throated cry.

“Welcome to the Reaper Crew, wee fella,” Chibs declared, shooting you and Jax a little grin, tears shining even in his brown eyes as he laid the tiny wriggling bundle in your arms.

“A son,” you whispered tearfully, trying not to cry, even as Jax blatantly wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, his arm curled protectively around your shoulders. “We have a son.”

“And he’s absolutely perfect,” your old man nodded, leaning in to kiss your damp forehead, his ringed fingers tenderly tracing your baby’s soft cheek. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”

#soa #sons of anarchy #soa fanfiction #soa prompts #soa requests #samcro #jax teller #jax x reader

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latenightsleuth · 3 years

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(Image from: https://disappearedblog.com/disappeared-episode-list/)

The Loxahatchee Horror – Could It Happen to Your Aviary?

If everyone in your household should suddenly disappear, would anyone notice? If they did notice, would they have the initiative or the authority to break into your house to rescue your birds from starvation? In the case of Moses Lall, the well-known bird importer, the answer was no–at least not in time to save the lives of most of the approximately 1,000 birds whose cages lined the open field behind his rented house. On June 15, l994, after the continued urging of several concerned parties, local authorities entered the property. The gruesome sight that they beheld was something that should appear only in ones’ worst nightmare.

What Happened

Moses Lall and his aunt, Lila Buerattan, both natives of Guyana, South America, had lived on a rented 5-acre ranch in Loxahatchee, Florida, since December of 1992. They had moved to the rural community with the idea of starting a large bird-breeding farm. They spoke with no one in the local avicultural community, nor did they interact with anyone at any of the surrounding ranches. They lived extremely private lives, and no one, except their veterinarian, was ever permitted to see their birds. In fact, they even refused to purchase a license that would have allowed them to legally breed and sell birds within the state of Florida. When approached by Florida Fish and Game officers the previous year and urged to purchase a permit and undergo the minimal inspection procedures, they declined. They claimed that the birds were not for sale or breeding, and were being maintained for their personal pleasure. Most of us locals who knew of them never saw them, and were aware of their existence only because we all used the same feed company. In fact, it was the feed company that began sounding the alarm that something was wrong.

On June 9th, the driver for Bird Haven Feed Company arrived to deliver the weekly supply of primate biscuits, sunflower seeds and dried corn to Lall’s farm. No one was there to let him in. Finding no one at the gate to receive the feed was highly unusual. Realizing that they never purchased reserve supplies, and not wanting the birds to go hungry, he piled the feed up in front of the gates. They tried to reach Lall by phone to make sure all was well, but no one answered. Feeling uncomfortable about the situation, they returned the next day. The feed was still piled up outside the gate and had been ruined by the rain. At this point, they called several local aviculturists, as well as Lall’s veterinarian. The questions put to all of them were the same: Do you know where Moses and Lila are? Do you now them well enough to jump the fence, walk through the pack of dogs and go around to the rear of the property to see if someone has been feeding the birds? They all gave the same negative answer.

Between the 11th and the 15th of June, several concerned parties, including the seed company and the veterinarian, began calling the authorities and demanding that action be taken. As birds were starving to death, the concerned parties were sent in a circular motion from one agency to the next. The Palm Beach County Sheriffs’ Department, upon hearing the story, said that animal abuse was the jurisdiction of the Palm Beach County Animal Control. When Animal Control heard the words macaws and parrots, they explained that jurisdiction over exotic birds had been taken way from them and given to Florida Fish and Game. Florida Fish and Game explained that since the facility was not permitted by them, they had no right to enter. They added that if, in fact, birds were starving, a misdemeanor had been committed and that was the jurisdiction of the Sheriffs’ Department.

On June 15th, the feed company contacted Bob and Liz Johnson, who rescue abused, mistreated and crippled birds through a branch of their nonprofit organization, Life Awareness Inc. At that point, Liz contacted me and Dr. Susan Clubb to get a full update on what avenues had been pursued. Upon discovering that pleas for action had been thwarted by “red tape,” she called the Sheriffs’ Office and made demands. After “much insistence,” they reluctantly agreed to send out someone to investigate. The deputy immediately called the Johnsons and reported that our worst fears had been realized. The Johnsons, Dr. Clubb, I and my daughter Stacie raced to the scene to offer assistance in the feeding and care of the birds. By that time, all three of the previously contacted agencies were present.

We were totally unprepared for the sight that we encountered. It was a horror beyond belief: row after row of cages with either dead or dying green-winged and blue-and-gold macaws. Literally every pair of macaws had at least one dead member. Several had succumbed to starvation and dehydration, with their heads in their empty food bowls–a final desperate move with the hope that food would arrive before their last breath was drawn. Although the collection was made up predominately of large macaws, there were also hundreds of smaller parrots and toucans. These included Amazons, hawk heads, African greys, Jardine’s, Pionus and mini macaws. Most of these had succumbed. There were several cages with 25 to 30 birds in them that had either one or no survivors. It was a miracle that any of the birds were alive.

The feed company had told us what the farm’s approximate weekly consumption was. By taking inventory of the feed that was left in the garage, we were able to determine that the birds had not been fed in at least 10 days.

Inside the house awaited another horror. Incubators, still operating, contained dead babies that had hatched but were never fed. Aquarium brooders that were lined up against the wall all had one or two dead baby blue-and-gold macaws. All had starved to death, sitting on clean bedding, while waiting for their next meal. An open bucket of handfeeding formula was on the kitchen counter with a bowl and spoon next to it. It appeared as if someone had changed the bedding in the brooders and was ready to mix up some formula when he or she was interrupted. With our assistance, Dr. Clubb was able to tube-feed those that were too weak to eat or drink. One died in Bob Johnson’s hands while it was waiting to be tube fed. Another 60 birds that were too far gone died the following day. In all, there were only 335 birds left alive from the flock of almost 1,000. The following morning, the birds were taken to the Palm Beach Animal Control facility. Food donations, as well as volunteer labor from all the local bird clubs and organizations, began pouring in. When Lall’s family from Guyana tried to claim the birds as family property, they were presented with a bill for $130,000. The majority of this bill was Animal Control’s standard charge of $10 per animal per day for the care of confiscated animals. Ten dollars per day multiplied by 335 birds adds up very quickly. As the Lalls fought to regain the birds at a more reasonable price, the bill rose to approximately $180,000. On August 22, a judge ordered that the birds be auctioned off individually to the general public in order to raise the most money. Exactly what happened to Moses and Lila is still officially a mystery. Those who knew them said that they truly loved their birds and would never have deserted them. Moses and Lila are now considered dead. The murder investigation cannot proceed any further until their bodies are found. There were also two other people staying at the farm that were originally considered missing. They were Daljeet “Harry” Gobin, a fellow Guyanese, and Felix Eyuom, a reptile dealer from Africa. Harry Gobin is being sought for questioning.

The purpose of this article is not to try to solve an unsolved crime. It is to make everyone aware that such things can and do happen. Although this situation may be unique due to its magnitude, it is not unheard of on a smaller scale. It is not uncommon to read about animals dying from lack of care due to the undiscovered death or incapacitation of those responsible for their care.

What You Can Do

To prevent such a calamity from happening again, each and every one of you should have a plan. This plan should ensure that, should anything happen to you, it will be discovered without delay and your animals will be cared for. This can be as simple as a regularly expected phone call to a friend, a relative or someone’s answering machine. A simple statement like “I’m okay” is all that is necessary. The receiver of the regular call must be ready to notify someone who has been given written authority by you to break into your house and aviaries to care for your birds if you cannot be located. It must also be specifically stated, in a notarized document, who will hold and care for your birds until your whereabouts are discovered, or until your estate is settled. Your birds must never be allowed to be considered legally abandoned.

Lall’s birds were considered abandoned. They suffered the ultimate fate of being sold to the highest bidder without regard to the bidder’s expertise. Two thousand people converged at the auction on September 10th. Most were there to buy a cheap bird for their kids. Most bought bronco wild breeder macaws with the intention of turning them into pets.

Luckily, due to some generous monetary donations, the Johnsons were able to purchase the birds that were blind or crippled. These were purchased to be retired to the parrot sanctuary that they maintain.

All the birds were sold in small temporary holding cages with no doors and with two tiny metal cups. The idea behind no doors was to keep the public from opening the cages at the auction site after the purchase. It was explained to the buyers that the birds should be transferred to suitable housing after they were removed. Unfortunately, two weeks later buyers were still showing up at local vets with their purchases still in the temporary cages with no doors and nothing but the two tiny cups for food and water. As time went on, a large percentage of the birds were diagnosed with papilloma infections.

All proceeds from the publication of this article will go to support the parrot sanctuary run by the Johnsons. Private donations are also appreciated. Their address is Life Awareness Bird Sanctuary, P.O. Box 641032, Miami, FL 33164.

#moseslall #moseslallandlilabuerattan #lilabuerattan #missing #missingadults #missingrelatives #missing person #disappeared #thecharleyproject #charleyproject #lifeawarenessbirdsanctuary #voren #latenightsleuth

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orionxcastillo · 3 years

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full name: orion castillo nicknames: ori, conejito (”little bunny” in spanish) gender and pronouns: cis man, he / him. age: thirty-eight. date of birth: april 9, 1983. hometown: chelmsford, england. nationality: british born, cuban and american heritage. religion: catholic. sexual and romantic orientation: bisexual biromantic. occupation: antique store assistant. living arrangements: lives on his own. languages spoken: english, spanish. (accent is a mess of english, american, cuban) strange history: edith alby

TW: mental institution, domestic violence, attempted murder, mental instability

Orion’s mother left America to study mythology at a British university. It was there she met his father, also studying. The pair hit it off and eventually married, Orion wasn’t far behind.

The night Orion’s mother told his father they were having a baby she took him outside to star gaze, telling him the stories of the ancient Greeks above. He struggled to see what stars she was talking about, except for Orion’s belt - three stars perfectly lined up together. Just as they would be as a family.

When he was born Orion cried like nothing would ever be okay in the world. The nurses and doctors worried, but found nothing medically wrong. It wasn’t until Orion’s father nursed him by the window, pointing out Orion’s belt to the newborn did he seem to finally calm. The new parents felt the name Orion was fitting, as if he picked it out himself.

Life growing up in the UK had its ups and downs. He didn’t look or sound like the rest of the kids around him - his father was first generation Cuban-British, his mother was American. Sometimes there were fights in the school grounds, or out, some days he just skipped class entirely. Sometimes that was to flirt with the local girls school as they walked by his returning from sports at the nearby oval. If anything he would have thought of his childhood relatively normal, expected even. He did well in class despite his absences, he participated in sports and made friends who would invite him over to watch the latest movie on VCR. It was normal, at least in that aspect of life.

Home life was getting more and more destructive as Orion moved into his teen years. His father was becoming known for outbursts, whether anger or from distress. His mother would pretend all was okay; he was just having a ‘tantrum’ or a ‘funny day’. It was normal! Everyone had trouble sometimes. But sometimes when he was alone with his father he could hear him talking to someone, when the room was empty. He would say something to his father and the man would seem to be in another world entirely, not hearing a word that left his mouth.

Things got the worst when Orion was 15. His grandparents, his fathers parents, moved in. They used the excuse they were struggling with money, but they always seemed to have a wallet full of cash ready to go. He was starting to get pushed out of rooms, told to go study or sleep when he heard his father scream. They didn’t want him to see what was happening to the man. He was sick. Doctors were in and out of the house, sometimes they would help - for a few days the house would grow quiet. Then things would get bad again, and every time it seemed to be getting worse.

Orion spent a lot of time out of home, he would sleep at friends houses or wander the streets. It felt for a while there no one cared what happened to him, he was pushed out and forgotten. Most mothers would worry about their son being out all night, his mother didn’t even notice. She had a lot on her hands, he knows this now, but as a teenager sometimes you need that support.

Everything came to a breaking point when one night that he did happen to be home he was awoken by his mothers screams for help. He scrambled out of bed, launched through the house in nothing but his boxers, to find his father welding a knife trying to prove to everyone they were all dead. He doesn’t remember everything that follows, his mind protecting him from as much trauma as they can. All he knows is he put himself between his mother and the knife, tackling the man he had looked up to as a child.

Orion, his mother, and his father all ended up in hospital that night. His grandparents came home after a later dinner party in time before trauma turned to tragedy. Doctors submitted his father into the psych ward as his grip on reality slipped away completely. His mother would come to divorce his father, his grandparents taking care of the man moving him to a care facility where he remains today. His mother would take Orion across the sea to America where her family would welcome him.

Orion would struggle after what he went through, it wasn’t allowed to be talked about - his mother wanting to forget it ever happened. A fresh start, why would they dirty it up with what has been? She would go on to work at Pleasance library whilst Orion finished his education through home schooling. He was of age to get a job so filled his free time working small jobs around town, planning to build enough funds that at age 18 he would return home to England.

Except he never did. Ask him today and Orion will probably shrug as to why not, honestly he doesn’t quite know. There was something about this town, he didn’t really feel like leaving. Ever. Strange, no? In his time in Pleasance Orion has made friends, had good and bad relationships, lived a typical life. He moved into his own flat, even bought himself a cat to keep him company. His mother eventually retired and calls in on him far too often but he humours her, knowing she never meant him harm.

Over the years Orion has received letters from his family in England looking to update him on the state of his father but they go unanswered. Truthfully, he wishes they would stop, but part of him would appreciate that the line of contact always stayed open. It was just more annoying than welcoming when a letter showed up in his mailbox.

The last few years Orion has been working at For Keeps, the antique store. He likes working there because there is always something new in store, something he had never seen before or a story locked away inside. Orion liked to research the history behind them, filling his time with books at the library or fingers tapping away at the keyboard as he looks online for further information. It feeds his curiosity, making it always annoying when he hits a dead end.

Life was normal, well as normal as you can get in this town (it’s always been a bit strange). Except, well, there was the fact he was seeing dead people. Well, Orion isn’t completely sure they’re ghosts. It’s not everywhere nor is it all the time. He first noticed it around five years ago, or maybe it was longer than that. They would just be there, doing their thing, when a figure that didn’t belong would join him. The ‘ghost’s don’t talk to him, not really. Sometimes they utter a word or shake their head but it’s never enough to know what they want from him. Occasionally they move his things, or things around the store, or follow him around as if they were breathing down his neck.

Orion would be more distressed over the idea of ghosts if it wasn’t a more comforting idea than what happened to his father. Ghosts meant he wasn’t insane, just haunted. That he could handle, they didn’t bother him enough for it to disrupt his life and sometimes the company was nice on a slow day. Of course he told literally no one of the things he was seeing, they would call him crazy and break his mothers heart. If she ever found out she would have him hospitalised and possibly end up there herself.

Telling himself it was ghosts felt easier than the fact he was of the same age his father was when he lost touch with reality, that the things his father saw could be appearing in front of his own eyes. To turn into the man he left behind so long ago was his worst nightmare - he may not have an exciting life but he had one he longed to hold on to. So ghosts were easy to handle, for now at least. Trauma from his father? He’ll pass on that one, even if it meant his own health was a risk.

Orion to his friends is just like his cat, he likes to find somewhere warm and settle. If he’s at the bar he’s in the corner booth with his drink, maybe a book in hand until company joins him. He likes to check out sometimes, go out to the lake with some camping gear and forget the worst exists. You’re lucky if he invites you along, he clearly doesn’t want to forget you.

Orion almost always is carrying a packet of cigarettes, a notebook or novel, a packet of gum and spare change. He walks most places so his car is collecting dust in its garage. He likes to cook for people, as long as you’re not a picky eater. He is often scribbling in his notebook, whether reminders or notes on something he’s researching, or poems no one is supposed to ever hear.

To most Orion is known as Ori, his parents are the only one who would call him conejito, which means ‘little bunny’.

OOC:

My name is Jen but for less confusion you can call me J. I’m 27, live in Australia, and have been on Tumblr for like... over 10 years. Love me.

He is open to all kinds of connections, I do not have a specific list so just hit me up to plots.

@phqextras

#domestic violence tw #mental institutions tw #attempted murder tw #mental instability tw

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wheresmynaya · 4 years

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Lopez’s 8 Ch.4 | Brittana

Thank you all for the luv last chapter and for those who stopped by here for a chat too! Still getting used to writing for such a big 'cast' so hopefully that's translating alright.

Also available on ff.net (x) ao3 (x) & below the cut!

With everyone moved into the loft and somewhat acquainted with one another, Santana feels like she can breathe a little easier. Keyword: a little. The team is aware of what they need to do and set off on their tasks, even Quinn’s orders are already starting to arrive at the loft. You think you’re addicted to online shopping? Well, you’ve never met someone like Quinn Fabray.

“What is all this?” Santana asks as she comes round. She’s eyeing all the empty packaging and bubble wrap then steps out of the way just in time as a hulking man rolls a large box through her path. She knew she should’ve given Quinn some ground rules when she told her to make sure they had the necessary equipment needed.

Who the hell knows what she considers necessary.

“Don’t worry, you’ll like them,” Quinn chuckles then gives the guy’s shoulder a pat, “Thank you, Hank. You can set it down by that wall over there.”

“Yes, Miss Fabray,” He nods and wheels off the box.

Santana quirks a brow, “You’re on a first name basis with the delivery guy?”

“We’ve been in business together for awhile,” Quinn nods and waves for her to come closer. “Two things first,” Quinn points to the giant box being wheeled away, “That’s a 3D Printer – which we’re going to have so much fun with once it’s installed – and these.”

Santana looks down at pair of the most dorkiest glasses she’s ever seen being handed to her.

“Try them on,” Quinn says.

Santana snorts and backs away with a chuckle, “I’m not wearing those.”

Quinn rolls her eyes, “Just do it.”

“So you can snap an embarrassing pic of me to post everywhere?” Santana waves off, “Nope. I wear contacts for a reason.”

Quinn just gives her a stern look until Santana finally relents and snatches them from her hand.

She slides them on and is immediately surprised by the graphics that pop up. These aren’t your normal pair of dork glasses, they’re super high tech dork glasses! She looks around at the various boxes and equipment surrounding before looking back to Quinn who has this proud smile on her face.

“Cool right?” She asks while Santana continues to look around.

“This is awesome,” Santana mumbles in awe. She sees an icon that kind of look like a camera and asks, “Can this thing take freaking pictures?”

“Even better,” Quinn answers, “They can capture scans which can be sent to Mercedes’ laptop or directly to the 3D printer. Once it’s up and running, we can replicate pretty much anything!”

“Like the necklace?” Santana smirks.

“Like the necklace,” Quinn confirms.

Santana’s just about to praise her for nabbing such a handy find when the door leading to the garage slides open and in comes Brittany, clad in her leather jacket and Ray Bans.

“Someone’s parked in the loading zone. I think you’re about to get towed,” Brittany calls out as she chucks her helmet on the counter and slides off her sunglasses.

“Crap!” Tina curses from her desk set up across the room and quickly bolts outside.

Quinn chuckles at the pair but Santana continues to watch as Brittany grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. Her cheeks look a little flushed as she tips the bottle back for a long drink and Santana stares the whole time, wondering why Brittany doesn’t wear this leather jacket more often. That paired with Brittany’s tight blue jeans and white t-shirt is a look Santana won’t ever get tired of.

When Brittany pulls away from the bottle, she notices Santana and Quinn and starts to make her way over to them. Now with her coming their way head on, Santana can’t help but admire the view. It seems like Brittany knows Santana’s caught in a trance again because she reaches up and rakes her fingers through her hair, attempting to bring some life into it after being constrained by her helmet.

As Santana’s eyes slowly drag up Brittany’s slim frame, her mouth goes dry.

“Jesus, give me those!” Quinn snaps when she notices Santana’s leering.

“What?” Santana sputters out.

“You’re ridiculous. That’s what,” Quinn shakes her head just as Brittany approaches them.

“Shut up,” Santana hisses just before Brittany greets them.

“Hey, finally invest in a pair of x-ray glasses?” Brittany asks but it’s directed at Santana. She’s wearing this smug grin as she adds, “Although, you don’t need them if wanted to see me naked.”

“Here we go,” Quinn groans as she face palms while Santana shakes her head.

“They’re not x-ray glasses,” Santana corrects her.

“Just for looks then?” Brittany asks, “Do we all get a pair?”

“No, we’ll just share this one,” Quinn says as Santana hands them over to her, “I already know what Santana would use them for anyway and I don’t think anyone needs that.”

Brittany frowns at Quinn, “You don’t want Santana to see? That’s kind of rude.”

“They’re not for seeing,” Santana clarifies with a chuckle, “They can take pictures.”

“Oh! Wow, really? That’s like some super secret spy stuff,” Brittany comments before taking a sip from her bottle.

“Yeah. They’ll be perfect for Emma when she and Tina go to the Cartier vault,” Quinn replies proudly.

Santana nods while Quinn stows away the glasses case for safe keeping. She turns to Brittany, “Nice jacket.”

Brittany looks down at what she’s wearing as if she forgot, “Oh this old thing?”

Santana chuckles, “Did you have a good ride?”

Brittany hops up on a counter and swings her legs, “Yeah, it was nice. Hot out, but nice. You should come with me next time. It’d be perfect for you, maybe you’ll finally find some peace.”

Santana shakes her head, “Peace? That’s the last thing I’d find if I got on that thing with you.”

“See, that’s what I don’t get,” Brittany laughs and waves at all the new equipment, “You can play with all this gear and put yourself in danger with these heists, but you draw the line at riding a motorcycle? Because that’s too risky?”

Santana takes a step closer to Brittany, “Among other things, yes.”

“Other things like what?” Brittany challenges as she sets down her water bottle. Her legs fall open a little wider and Santana nearly slips in to stand right between them without even noticing.

“Well for starters,” Santana narrows her eyes as she steps like she’s being drawn in, “There’s the helmet hair.” She reaches up and ruffles Brittany’s blonde hair, momentarily reveling in the softness, “Not cute.”

“You don’t think I’m cute?” Brittany asks behind a pout.

Santana almost falls for Brittany’s trap, “I just don’t think I could pull that off as well as you do.”

“I beg to differ,” Brittany grins mischievously and tugs Santana in close by her hips. It catches Santana off guard, but she doesn’t move once she’s there. She’s too caught up in the look Brittany’s giving her, “I’ve had many, many dreams of you doing just that and I can confirm, you looked very sexy. No surprise there though, you make everything look sexy.”

Santana smirks as she lifts a brow, “You having dreams about me now?”

“Yup!” Brittany pops the ‘p’ while her hands slide around to the small of Santana’s back, “Hot ones too. I’m kind of jealous of dreamy me. She has way more fun than I do.”

Santana giggles but it comes out low and husky.

The sound has Brittany licking her lips and the two get so caught up in staring at each other that they completely forget that they aren’t exactly alone. With how wound up they are and so desperate for each other, giving a fuck about being alone has nearly left the building. Brittany’s got Santana trapped between her legs and if Santana’s hands start to trail inward, she’d be right where Brittany wants her.

She thinks back on what Brittany said about changing her mind soon and she finds herself really considering it now.

When has an orgasm ever gotten her into trouble?

Santana thinks of a specific instance actually but chooses to ignore that one because majority of the time it doesn’t.

“Can you two make out somewhere else?” Quinn interrupts with a groan, “Some of us are trying to work here.”

Santana and Brittany both blink out of their daze and pull away from each other.

Thankfully, Quinn and the random delivery guy Hank are the only ones around but Santana doesn’t want to make something like that nearly happening in front of everyone a habit. She doesn’t want to deal with having to explain what’s going on between them; she just wants to steal some expensive shit and get rich, not have a whole existential crisis about whether or not her feelings would be taken seriously.

“I – I’m going to make sure Tina’s alright,” Santana says abruptly and heads outside. The more distance she can put between her and Brittany right now, the better. That was too close of a call for her comfort.

Quinn just eyes Santana leaving and turns back to Brittany with this tired look on her face, “So I see you two are still like this…”

Brittany frowns as Santana disappears out the door, “I guess so.”

As the countdown ticks away, the most important day for Santana arrives. She’s trying hard to seem cool and collected, but on the inside she can’t help but feel a little anxious. Today, Emma and Tina are off to the jewelers to hopefully get a successful scan of the Toussaint so Quinn can begin the printing process and Tina can start crafting the decoy. It’s probably the most important part of the entire heist because without this scan, the whole thing goes to shit.

“Knock knock,” Brittany says softly as she raps her knuckles on Santana’s bedroom door. She’s already poking her head in through the crack, looking for where her partner might be.

“Hey,” Santana greets from the edge of her bed. She’s been sitting there for awhile trying to wrangle her thoughts so she can make it in time for the live feed of Emma and Tina’s trip.

“We’re just about to connect to the feed downstairs. You coming down?” Brittany asks.

Santana just nods, “Yeah. I’ll be there in a sec.”

Brittany frowns a little at the sight of her and the sound of that faraway tone.

“You okay?” She asks in that voice that calms Santana and puts her on edge even more so all at once. The blonde goes to take a seat next to her partner and eyes her warily, “You look stressed.”

“I think I am,” Santana chuckles lightly and turns to Brittany, “It’s an important day.”

Brittany gives her a sympathetic grin and squeezes at Santana’s thigh, “We’re gonna be fine. Everyone knows what they need to do. You know how to get us out if something comes up, right?”

Santana returns the grin, “Right.”

“So there’s nothing to worry about then,” Brittany shrugs, “We’re prepared for whatever happens. You made sure of that.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Santana nods, already feeling somewhat eased by Brittany’s words, “Just the jitters I guess.”

“We’ll be okay,” Brittany moves to stand and holds out her hand, “Now turn that frown upside down, we’ve got a show to catch.”

Santana smiles at the offered hand.

This is why their dynamic is so perfect;. when one is starting to spin out, the other takes hold of the wheel and gets them back on track. They balance each other out but also always have each other’s backs. It’s something Santana’s never found in anyone else and it’s one of her favorite things about being in this with Brittany.

So Santana takes Brittany’s hand and they head downstairs together.

It’s one of the most nerve-racking thirty minutes of Santana’s life, but just as Brittany predicted everything goes according to plan. They get a perfect scan and start the printing process so that by the time Tina returns to the loft there is a set of zirconia ready for her. While Emma’s across town attending her first session with Rachel Berry in regards to designing the gown she’ll wear for the Gala, Tina gets started on replicating the necklace.

“Wow,” Tina breathes out as she steps forward to get a closer look. The rest of the team minus Emma is huddled around her as she looks in the 3D printer’s case, almost mesmerized by how similar the fake is to the actual necklace.

“Think you can work with this?” Santana smirks, nudging her childhood friend’s arm.

Tina’s smile is big and bright, “Definitely. This’ll be fun!”

Sugar steps up too and her hands itch to make a grab at it, “You guys think I can try it on?”

“No!” Everyone says in unison.

Sugar just pouts and jams her hands into her pockets.

In the following days the team begins to find their grove and go off on their individual missions: Emma deep in designing Rachel Berry’s dress, Tina hard at work on the necklace, and Mercedes hacking away. While Brittany hangs back with her and Sugar, Santana and Quinn head to the Met for their next task: plant a Banksy.

It’s a simple switcheroo, one that’ll cause enough ruckus to grab the security team’s attention which is exactly what they want. Minus the getting caught part, of course.

So once inside the Met, the two split off: Santana gets into position with the painting while Quinn distracts a guard. They’ve done something like this loads of times before, so the switch is smooth and Santana’s out of there in no time. With the Met thinking there’s been a breach of their security system, Mercedes can slip in and do whatever she needs to do to make sure that they can get around undetected.

Once a crowd begins to form, it’s all pretty fast moving and the two slowly make their way back to the car without a second glance.

When Santana and Quinn get inside, Santana pulls out her phone to send a text to Brittany to update her on their progress. She’s surprised to find a new text waiting for her though when she swipes into the conversation. It’s a selfie with Brittany and Sugar making silly faces while Mercedes sits behind them looking as unamused as ever with both of her middle fingers up.

It makes Santana chuckle before she goes to type her text.

Quinn notices and asks, “What’s so funny?”

“Just this picture Britt sent,” Santana shrugs as she types, “It’s kinda cute I guess.”

Quinn watches Santana’s smile grow and quirks her brow, “So…what is it about you and Brittany?”

Santana sends off the text and looks to Quinn questioningly, “What do you mean?”

“I see how you two interact with each other. Neither of you have changed any after all these years,” Quinn explains, “All of the planning and the scheming and the intricacy of it all…it’s like your foreplay or something.”

Santana feels her chest tighten and quickly turns away from Quinn to focus on starting the car. Here she goes again, sticking her nose job in places that she shouldn’t. Santana wished Quinn would just mind her business, but that wouldn’t really be Quinn now would it?

“That’s just how we are,” Santana brushes off as she begins to drive, “We like to have fun.”

“So that’s what you’re calling it?” Quinn smirks.

Santana rolls her eyes, “What else am I supposed to call it, Q?”

Quinn just shrugs and goes to look out the window. The silence doesn’t last long though.

“Fuck,” Santana snaps as they catch up to all the traffic, “We’re going to be here forever!”

Quinn chuckles at her dramatics. Since asking her question, they’ve sat in near silence the entire ride so Quinn jokingly asks, “Trapped in a car with me, isn’t that a dream come true for you?”

“You have no idea,” Santana answers sarcastically then lays on the horn as if it’ll make all the traffic suddenly disappear, “Let’s fucking go people!”

“Stop! What’s that going to do?” Quinn whines and starts swatting at Santana’s hand until she quits it. She gives her an annoyed glare which Santana returns instantly.

“We’re just going to have to wait it out,” Quinn says to which Santana lets out a long sigh. “Don’t be like that. This is good, we can finally catch-up. We haven’t really talked much since you broke into my garage.”

Santana softens at that. At one point in time, she and Quinn were pretty tight. Not in the way that she and Brittany are, but Quinn was around just as much. Also, there was the whole giving birth thing that Santana had to witness and that kind of thing creates a weird bond between people.

“Okay, what do you want to talk about?” Santana relents and puts the car in park since they aren’t moving anytime soon.

Quinn looks pleased with herself, like her mood has instantly lifted at the very idea of some girl talk.

Santana regrets agreeing to this the instant Quinn starts talking about Beth and how much she misses her daughter.

Later that night, Santana’s sitting alone at a diner across from the McCallister Security tower. She’s been sipping coffee while Mercedes and Sugar are off trying to infiltrate the building. They got word that an important meeting regarding the Met’s breach was going down and it was imperative that they listened in.

Right about now, Mercedes should be tapping the room and then on her way to meet Santana at the diner where they could catch all the hot gossip. It takes about ten more minutes of Santana waiting before Mercedes finally joins her.

“Where’s Sugar?” Santana questions as Mercedes pulls out the headphones.

“Went back to the loft already,” Mercedes answers and hands Santana an ear bud, “Said listening to a meeting was even worse than having to sit in one.”

Santana chuckled as she popped the earbud in, “Fair enough. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

It’s late by the time Santana and Mercedes return to the loft and almost everyone has gone to bed, everyone but Brittany.

“You’re late,” She points out as Santana and Mercedes enter. Mercedes’ brows rise at the blonde’s tone and quickly disappears to her room without a word.

Santana just strolls over with a sweet smile on her lips, “You keeping tabs on me, Britt-Britt?”

Brittany shrugs, “Maybe. Maybe I kind of missed you? Between Emma’s weird muttering and the constant squeak of rubber gloves and Tina being annoying, it wasn’t much fun here.”

Santana laughs, “What about Quinn?”

“She’s getting into character for tomorrow. Whatever that means…”

“She has her interview with Vogue,” Santana explains as she shrugs out of her jacket, “Sorry you were lonely. Mercedes and I grabbed a bite while we listened to the meeting. She’s actually pretty cool. Oh! I brought you a cannoli. You like those, right?”

Brittany instantly perks up as Santana hands her a small box. She wastes no time in taking a bite and hums happily at the taste, “Thanks San. You bring home the best desserts.”

Santana feels a blush beginning to creep up her cheek, but she does her best to ignore it and takes a seat next to Britt on the couch.

“How’d it all go?” Brittany asks with her mouthful.

“We’re in! It was an interesting meeting but a long one,” Santana smiles proudly before it falls, “These late nights are starting to get to me.”

“That’s because you need to relax,” Brittany tells her before putting on her best flirty smile, “You know, I can help with that. My offer still stands.”

Santana lets out a breathy chuckle, “Cute. I’ll keep that in mind, but I think I know something that might help me even more?”

“What is it?”

“Take the lead on the meeting tomorrow?”

“You giving up control on something?” Brittany fakes a gasp, “Maybe you really are losing steam.”

Santana just rolls her eyes, “You really gonna give me a hard time?”

“Sorry. Yes San,” Brittany nods seriously, “I can run the meeting for you.”

And so she does.

The next day, Brittany gathers the team for an update on the McCallister Security meeting Santana and Mercedes listened in on last night and how that’ll effect what happens at the Met.

Mercedes has the overview of all the Met camera angles projected on the drop down screen while Brittany comes up to the group with a mug in her hand. She ends up handing it to Santana who is curled up the arm chair watching the various camera angles like it’s her favorite show.

“Here. Made this for you,” Brittany says softly as she hands Santana the mug, “It’s herbal. The packet said it’s supposed to help you relax or something.”

Santana takes the offered mug with a surprised smile, “Thanks Britt.”

“You’re welcome,” She winks before turning back to the team to get the meeting started, “Okay! So as you can see, the Met is covered in camera and security will be watching them like hawks. It’s almost impossible to get out of there without being spotted…let alone with a ridiculously expensive necklace at that.”

“Keyword there is almost,” Santana interjects before taking a sip of her tea because she can’t help herself.

“Right. We’re going for a spot security doesn’t even care about: the bathroom,” Upon its mention, Mercedes clicks to the angle, “But once we get going security is going to go over everything with a fine tooth comb, even angles like this. Whoever exits that is going to be a suspect. So what do we do?” Brittany asks and waits for someone to answer. When no one does, she continues, “We get a mule. Not an actual one like I thought, but a figurative one…sort of.”

The group all exchange somewhat confused looks so Santana cuts in, “Someone else is going to move the necklace for us.”

Brittany points to Santana, “Exactly.”

“Sugar, how much room do you need to plan something on someone?” Santana asks.

Sugar ponders a moment, “Like nine feet?”

Santana nods and looks to Mercedes, “And how long will it take to create a nine foot blind spot?”

“Maybe 10 or 12 days if I’m moving the camera bit by bit,” Mercedes responds.

Santana smiles proudly at their answers and looks to Brittany who’s already looking back at her with an equally pleased grin. She loves when things just come together like this.

“Sounds like a solid timeframe to me,” Santana says and turns back to the team, “What do you think?”

“Yeah, I can get to work on that now,” Mercedes replies and everyone else starts to shuffle about to continue their tasks.

“Wait!” Sugar stops them and raises her hand, “Question.”

Santana notes the hand in the air and laughs as she looks to Brittany, “Is she raising her hand right now?”

Brittany just shakes her head and laughs too.

“What is it, Sugar? I already told you I’m not paying for your Metro Card,” Santana says.

“It’s not that,” Sugar waves off as her hand drops to her lap, “I was just wondering…are you two like…a thing?

Santana looks slowly to Brittany.

“I was wondering that as well,” Emma adds, “You don’t really see one of them without the other.”

“Two peas in a pod!” Tina chimes in happily.

“Glad to see I’m not the only one that’s noticed these two fools making googly eyes at each other all the damn time,” Mercedes says next.

Santana catches Quinn’s eye and the blonde just smirks as she adds, “Didn’t I tell you that your subtly needs some work?”

Santana feels her face getting hot so she’s glad that the lights are still off for the projector because she’s sure everyone would see her as this blushing mess and that’s not a good look.

The team is all talking at once, giving their examples and theories, and it’s a lot. Santana doesn’t know how to deal and Brittany’s just kind of watching with her hand covering her mouth, hiding her smile. She thinks it’s all so hilarious and she loves how flustered and riled up Santana gets over the teasing.

The girl can dish it but struggles when it comes to taking it.

Suddenly Sugar has her hand up again and she’s speaking a little louder than everyone else, “Okay, raise your hand if you think Santana and Brittany are banging.”

Everyone raises their hand instantly, even Brittany.

“Oh my God, Britt, put your hand down,” Santana urges looking stressed.

Brittany does as she’s told as a couple giggles escape her.

Santana doesn’t think it’s quite as amusing though, “We aren’t banging. Who even calls it that anymore?”

“That explains everything,” Tina replies knowingly, “It’s probably why this heist is so immaculate, she’s gotta channel all that extra energy somewhere.”

“Preach,” Mercedes nods and goes to bump her fist with Tina.

It’s all playful – at least that’s what it was meant to be – but Santana hates feeling like the butt of a joke. She hates that her thing with Brittany is being analyzed by all these people she barely knows. People that shouldn’t be commenting on whatever goes on with them.

So she snaps and jumps to her feet to address the crowd.

“They’re immaculate because I’m a fucking genius and decided to use my time in solitary confinement wisely, so let’s just be careful here with trying to talk about things you know nothing about,” Santana threatens with her steely gaze, “Don’t forget. I’m a convicted criminal. I’ve been to jail and I will shank one of you if you happen to piss me off. So try me, I dare you.”

“Santana…” Brittany whispers and gives Santana’s arm a gentle tug, “They were just joking.”

“Well this isn’t fucking comedy hour, okay?” Santana growls and Brittany backs off as she turns to the group again, “You’re all here to do a job. Not speculate. There is nothing going on between Brittany and I – not that it’s any of your business – so let’s stay focused on the plan and do what we all came here to do. Get me?”

The group all nod in unison before heading back to their tasks.

Santana turns away from them and hits the lights. She’s still fuming and a little embarrassed but she instantly feels a whole lot better when she spots Brittany staring at her ass.

“That’s not helping,” Santana points out.

Brittany chuckles, “Maybe you should stop wearing those leather pants around me. You know they’re my favorite.”

“I thought you don’t pick favorites?” Santana asks with narrowed eyes.

Brittany lifts her shoulder casually, “Guess I make an exception when it comes to you.”

Santana’s heart skips a beat and it takes everything in her not to swoon. This is Brittany. This is how she talks to everyone. She’s charismatic and flirty and everything good in this miserable stinking world, but she can’t get wrapped up in all of that again.

It didn’t end well before and she doubts it’ll end well now.

#Lopezs 8 #Brittana #brittana fanfiction #fanfics #oceans 8

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onisiondrama · 4 years

Photo

(Note: I’m not repeating stories he’s told before and just putting them in parenthesis. I have a lot more videos to go until I’m caught up so that would save me a lot of time. If he gives details I never heard from him before, I will type those.)

“Is Onision A Dad? (+ Story With Onision's Father)“ October 12, 2020 Speaks

James says in the past he’s said he’ll never talk about being a father because the internet is crazy. They called CPS on them 3 or 4 times and every time CPS found that they were really good parents. They are responsible, take care of their kids, show them compassion, don’t hit them, listen to them, hug them when they cry, and you try to give them a better childhood than you had.

(Allegations against his father)

Says his childhood was not awful, but it lacked a lot. He did not have a male role model to look up to that was consistent in his life. He believes most of his problems comes from his childhood.

When he thinks about raising another human being, he thinks it’s important to give them a structurally sound environment so they don’t have an excuse to wind up damaged by something not beyond his control.

Says he was watching Christopher Titus talk about children and he said every parent he talked to regretted having kids. James asks if they knew what they signed up for? He says of course they’ll cry and you’ll have to spend a lot of money feeding them. They’re a financial burden and they’re going to cost you you’re time. That’s your responsibility. His mind is blown that they’re acting like parenthood is a curse.

Says he had a nephew who broke his femur and he was like “how could you let that happen? That’s insane. You must have been so neglectful.” His cousin told him, “just wait.” He says it was kind of like his cousin cursed him. (His found his daughter after she fell out of a 2nd story window story.)

He says he feels like a failure in keeping his child safe. If he could go back, he would have not worked so late that night. He still works a lot to pay the bills. When he found her, he thought she was not going to survive, but once the doctor told him the details he knew she would be fine.

He says he refers to himself as “Dr. James” because of instances like (he refused exploratory surgery for his son story.) He says his common sense was more than the doctor’s 18 years of medical training. If you disagree with him, your conclusion results in a child pointlessly cut open. Says it’s horrifying some doctors do this, but it’s reality.

(Refused down syndrome test story.) He says even if their child had down syndrome, it was past the point of pregnancy termination and they would have not wanted to terminate because people with down syndrome deserve love and to be raised. He says he’s a very virtuous person with common decencies. He asked what the point of the test was if it was too late to terminate? She told them it’s for peace of mind. He says he lost it and went full rant on the two women who were trying to potentially kill their baby with a needle. Their kid doesn’t have down syndrome, but if he did they would still take photos of him playing in the park like all other parents do.

He says one of the leading causes of death in our country is medical error. He says that’s because it’s un-natural and you’re cutting people open. Scalps don’t grow on trees. It’s helpful if you have cancer, but if you don’t know what’s going on you should step back and take a breath.

(More of the rash / refuse surgery story. He keeps name-dropping the doctor and where he worked.) He concludes he’s a very protective father. He says his life is nothing compared to theirs. He exists to make their lives better.

He says when they got to the new hospital their new doctor was Asian. He has a natural assumption that Asian doctors are more balanced and smart. Doctor says it was a rash. (He smacks his deck and stares at the camera.) He says people online gaslight him and question his intelligence, but when he makes decisions they benefit people. In this instance he saved his son from an unnecessary surgery. He was so glad he was there because Kai isn’t the type of person to throw down. Kai would have let them put in that needle and potentially kill his kid. Kai would have been walked all over by the doctor and let the explorative surgery happen. Says he fought for his kid and he won and his son is better for it. Says full disclosure, from that point on he looked at his kid as a drama queen. He was screaming so much over a rash they went to the ER and they almost did surgery on him. He didn’t say this to his son, but he was thinking it.

James says when he had his first kid, Kai was part of a mom group. People were talking about getting divorced. Kai told him 8 or 9 out of 10 people get a divorce after having a kid. He says having a kid isn’t that stressful. It strengthened their bond when they had one. People came and went who tried to ruin their marriage and they all failed at homewrecking. It’s difficult get him to leave his family when he loves his kids. If his life is inferior to his kids, why would his love life be superior. He says people approach them and try to get him to leave Kai or Kai to leave him and they haven’t been successful so far. They have a foundation built on loyalty to their kids. It’s programed into people, but some people don’t have it. Like his father, he had the opposite. According to an article he tried to sue James, but couldn’t because James never said his name. James says he remembers saying his name so if he wants to sue him down the line, that says who he is as a parent.

(His mom tried to sue to see his kids story.) He says his mom called Kai a “tranny” and said he was invalid because he came out in his 20′s and breastfeeds. He says Kai breastfed because the kids need milk, but he plans on getting top surgery once they don’t need it anymore. One of the kids still breastfeeds. His mom refused to date a guy because he slept with a man before. She said he was attractive and she really liked him, but she wouldn’t date him. He says she’s phobic on every level and she lies to his face.

He wants to be honest and accepting with his kids. He wouldn’t call their spouse what she called Kai. Kai was crying about it and his mom said “good. I’m glad he’s crying.” (he’s doing a texting gesture while he’s quoting her.) He asked his mom about Caitlyn Jenner. His mom wouldn’t say anything ill about Caitlyn Jenner, but still attacked Kai. He thought it was mean because he gave her a house for free. He tried to buy it back and she wouldn’t let him even though she previously said she would give it back for free. Says there’s a lot of bad blood with his parents. If his kid ever gave him a house he would be grateful. He says his mom could visit his kids, but he didn’t want her driving them around because she does drugs.

He says this all reflects on their parenting. His mother-in-law asked if she could drink wine while watching their son when he was a very young baby. He said no. He holds everyone to the same standards. He kicked people out of their life for lying and doing drugs. They went on Hansen and acted like he was a monster. No one gives him compassion for that, he was protecting his kids from drugs. The internet believed the drug addict, criminal, liars.

He doesn’t put anyone over his status as a parent. He says lots of families experience tragedies. He saw a 10 year old that was playing with other kids at a family event. The next family event he found out he was dead. He drowned in a pool or a river. He didn’t think the parents were incompetent, he thought it was a horrible tragedy. He immediately thought their pain must be so severe.

He has a cousin whose kid was on a feeding schedule and the kid was bawling for breastmilk. He thought that was insane. The baby is crying because they need to be fed. The most basic of common sense. The baby died of SIDS. He doesn’t know if it’s related, but as a parent you can’t think you screwed up and hate yourself forever. He says if a kid drowned while the mom was shooting up heroin, that’s clear incompetence. If he was voting or paying his taxes when something happened, you can’t say he’s a monster. You can say he was in the wrong place and that sucks, even if he was 10 feet away. It’s awful and you’re not an innocent party because it could have been prevented, there’s that guilt. There was something very specific you’re supposed to do and it seems your kid starved to death or was nutrient deficient. When they went to the funeral, she talked about how Jesus had a plan and taking care of the kid. He says he never heard her talk about religion in his life. It’s just a scapegoat to make people feel better and so they can live with themselves.

He doesn’t know how he knew his kid was outside when she fell. He still doesn’t know what that metal scraping sound that sounded like a toy car on the garage door. His daughter was a few feet away and couldn’t even reach the door. She barely made any noise. He was so lucky he had his headphones off at that specific time. When you survive a tragedy, you don’t feel woe is me. You say thank god we survived that. He’s not going to sit here and say it was part of some plan. He thinks god or angels are more of a clean up crew than a protector. He thinks god can only influence how to fix it or help. What kind of god lets the holocaust happen and give an 8 year old cancer? He thinks there are subtle miracles.

Says we are programed to love our own unconditionally. If your kid stabbed you in the chest, you ask what you did wrong for them to do that. You don’t blame your kids. There may have been a chemical imbalance, but you have to blame yourself. When he sees his kids he sees a smaller version of himself and it scares him. He sees the vulnerability and how many scary things can ruin his life or her life.

He thinks about how he was abandoned as a kid by his dad and his perversions. His dad didn’t try to apologize to the people he hurt or work it out with his mom. He said I’m fine the way I am and screw my family. He blamed everyone and didn’t take responsibility. When his uncle threatened his dad if he came near the family, his dad said he would do the same thing so he knows how bad he is. Instead of talking to his son, he went to a newspaper. Three victims were abused by him. He loves himself more than his kids.

He says they found out his father had a child out of wedlock. He’s the father to a Somoan woman who is much bigger than he is. He says it looks really silly and they don’t look alike. His father didn’t tell them about his other family. 3 of 4 of his kids don’t talk to his father anymore.

A lot of parents only think of themselves and their ego. He thinks it’s a suicide prevention mechanism. When you’re awful, the species programs you to justify your existence.

(Beat up his dad story) He says that, speeding on the highway, and running a red at 2 am are the only crimes he’s committed. He got pulled over for running the red on his way to Tinker Air Force Base and paid a fine.

He doesn’t understand why people think having kids is a burden. He doesn’t understand why people go against their programing. He doesn’t have a mom or dad who loves him unconditionally. He gave his mom a house and she still doesn’t have unconditional love for him.

He wants to lead by example and share his stories. He think he’s at the point of surpassing so many things and up t this point he already gave his kids a better life than he had. They were never hit like he was as a child. They don’t have a stepdad that makes them pray “I love you satan” to the TV, or does drugs around them, or tape a dead duck to a dog’s neck, or shoots that dog for attacking a child. They don’t have a mom that forces you to round up your geese to be sold for potential slaughter because doesn’t agree with you having them and she doesn’t want to take care of them.

He says he might be hated by his young one day because the standard now is probably low. The mistakes he makes, they might grow to say they’ll be better than their father. Then their kids, etc.

If you regret having your kids, you need therapy. You’re going to set them on a path for only caring about themselves. You have to teach your kids to be kind to animals, kind to each other, respectful of people they love. He knows people who had healthy, functional parents and they turned out to be the coolest people. He is painfully damaged as a human being because of what he went through as a child.

You signed up for having kids, so act like it. They’re not a burden or curse. They’re a gift. When you have kids, you’re going to feel love and happiness like you never felt in your whole life. Your view of the world changes and you realize what you did in your life up to that point was meaningless.

He says he’s going to try to only upload new videos once his other videos hit a certain amount of views so he can focus on other things. He doesn’t want to invest in a sinking ship.

He says don’t buy people houses because they won’t appreciate it. You’ll just dump a quarter of a million dollars and they’ll just roll their eyes. He says he used to have a fantasy of buying everyone in his family a new house or pay off their mortgage when he made it big on Youtube. His mom destroyed that fantasy. He gives, but never stopped to think what have they given you? A lot of people who complained about him publicly were given tens of thousands of dollars of stuff by him.

He has a friend, McFly, who always shows up to his Twitch streams and gives him tons of bits. In return, he bought her a $50 gift certificate for a video game and a couple other games at other points. She also gave him a costume. That’s what real friends are.

He hopes you learned a lot from this video.

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creativeskullcreations · 5 years

Text

Outside chapter 3: Food?

Third chapter is out! Not much to say about this one, expect that we finish up the day with some delicious Chinese takeout! Nothing heavy going on in here! Nope! Not at all!

When Stacy felt Scout was sufficiently distracted, she pulled her laptop out of her bag. 'Let's see, what was the group that guy was a part of? Vox I think...' She searched the group on Google, and found them almost immediately. She clicked the link to their website, and was struck by how professional it looked.

'So these guys are paranormal investigators...' From what the site said, they were a professional team that specialized in locating and researching. Specifically, they went after the newer, modern activity, like the Waygetter toys, or cursed animatronics.

'Where were you guys when I was a kid?' She shook her head. 'Focus, Stacy! Forget the past, focus on the present! You have a different problem to solve...<' She scrolled down and clicked on the contact button, which gave her an email address. She clicked over to her own email and typed in the address, but paused before writing anything.

'What do I even say to them? They didn't believe that Anthony guy, and he was one of them. Maybe if I send them proof...' Her eyes drifted to Scout, who was staring at the TV. Her attention was completely taken by the show, and she seemed oblivious to what Stacy was doing and thinking. 'A picture might not be enough, but maybe a video? But would she even agree to it? And could I even do that to her?'

Stacy shook her head, closing the laptop with a small sigh. 'I can't. Not right now. Maybe once things are settled...' She moved the computer to the side and stood up, stretching as much as she could. She then went into the kitchen and started digging through Sammy's fridge.

'Ugh, he's such a bachelor. There's nothing in here but some old lettuce and leftover soup. He'd better be buying groceries on his way back from work, or I'm telling Aunt Hannah he has no food again.' She closed the door, and then grabbed some bread and peanut-butter from the cupboard, and the last clean knife from one of the drawers. She quickly made herself a simple sandwich, cut it in half, then went back to the couch.

"Where'd you go?" Scout asked when she'd sat back down. She flopped over onto her lap, making Stacy jerk her plate up to keep it from getting hit. "You're missing the show!"

"I've seen it before, don't worry." Stacy assured her as she bit into the sandwich. "I'm not missing anything important."

"Hey, what's that?" She climbed into her lap and peered onto the plate, reminding Stacy of a cat. "Is that Host Food?"

"Yeah, it's a peanut-butter sandwich. I got hungry, and it was all Sammy had to eat, other than gross leftovers." She took another bite of sandwich, not really paying attention as Scout pulled the plate down a little. She watched the Puppet grab the other half of the sandwich 'Gross.', and examine it closely. Then, without warning, she tore a bite off and started chewing.

Stacy froze mid-chew, unsure of how to react. While she knew Scout had to have organs, she hadn't thought she actually could eat anything. It was quite surreal, watching a thing made of cloth chew and swallow real, human food.

"Hmm, not bad. Kind of sticky, though." She smacked her lips, then tore off another bite and turned back around to keep watching the show, leaving Stacy feeling like she'd smoked some of her cousin's weed. She shook the feeling off, though, deciding to come back to it at a later time. Like maybe when she'd actually had some weed.

Instead she finished her half of the sandwich(since she apparently only got to have half, now), and then pulled back out her laptop. She opened up a new doc, and started drafting up some plans.

'One way or another, I'm gonna figure this out.'

Several hours later, and Stacy had not figured it out. She had maybe one and a half pages of notes on the Puppets, most of which was on just Scout, and three different plans.

1. Go to the police.

-Too Risky for Scout

-Can lie about what's going on if needed

2. Ask Vox for help.

-Way too risky for Scout and me

-Can't lie to these guys about it

-They would know what they're doing tho

3. Arson.

-Has potential

-Can have a bon fire and roast marshmallows while we do it

-Could get arrested but might be worth it if we can get all the Puppets

-Might also be worth it just to see Scout try and eat a melty marshmallow

So far, plan number three was looking like the best one. It still wasn't the absolute best plan, but it was all they had at the moment. She'd have to talk to Will and see if he still had those gas cans in his garage.

"Hey, are you guys still here?" Stacy started at the sudden entrance of Sammy, surprised at how late it had gotten. She shut her laptop and put it to the side for now, standing up.

"No, we left and stole all of your soup." She told him. What you're seeing now is a hunger induced hallucination."

Sammy paused, the held up a plastic bag with a panda on it. "So you don't want the takeout I got?"

"Oooh, gimme!" Stacy rushed to snatch the bag from her cousin. She brought it over to the table, pausing briefly to pick Scout up from the couch. She started to set the food out while the Puppet settled over her shoulder, watching what she did. While she worked, she also pointed out what each different food was.

"So, all of this stuff is rice. We don't normally eat it, but they include it anyways with some of the meals. This is teriyaki chicken, and this is-"

"Stacy, really? Why would it even need to know what that stuff is?" Sammy tsked as he sat at the table and grabbed some noodle dish. "It's stuffed, and can't eat."

Stacy just stuck her tongue out at him and sat down. She picked up a pair of chopsticks and set about showing Scout how to hold and use them properly.

For awhile, they ate silently as Scout watched them, which Stacy personally thought was a little odd but didn't want to say anything. If the Puppet wanted to be weird, then she wasn't going to stop her. Sammy, on the other hand, soon fixed her with a hard stare and cleared his throat.

"So." Stacy looked up at him mid-chew, cheeks bulging. "What are you going to do when you get back to your apartment?"

She swallowed hard, putting on a more thoughtful expression. "Go back to class, tell Carol I can't do the article and why, maybe go tell the police about the psychopaths in the warehouse." She shrugged, digging out another bite of chicken from one of the boxes. "Y'know, stuff."

"And what about...?" He gestured to Scout with his chopsticks, and the Puppet glared back at him. Stacy, in a stroke of seldom seen genius, offered the Puppet her chicken before she could say anything.

"She's coming with me, of course. I live alone, so there shouldn't be a problem." Scout chomped down on the chicken, to Stacy's mild surprise. She quickly picked up some more food for herself. "Besides, Will is gonna love her. They're so much alike."

"Okay, ignoring the fact that you just fed that thing," Scout made an offended noise. "that sounds like a shit plan. There's no way in hell the police will believe you without proof."

"Fine, you're right. I have a back-up plan in the works, too." She thought back to her arson idea as she offered another bite to Scout. "But it needs work, so I can't put it in action yet." ‘And gasoline. Lots and lots of gasoline.’

"... Where's that food even going, anyways?" Both Sammy and Stacy turned to stare at Scout, who didn't even pause in her chewing to send them both a glare. Obviously, she wasn't going to be explaining anything, so Stacy turned back to her cousin.

"I have no idea. Don't think too hard on it."

'Don't think about why you're feeding her, either.' She ignored her own thoughts to shove some more food in her mouth. That was something to think about later. Or, perhaps, never. Never seemed like a much better time.

They finished their food, with Stacy giving Scout a few more bites, then boxed up the leftovers and put them in the fridge. Stacy then made Sammy get them a blanket because "It was too cold last night I almost froze to death!"

"It wasn't that bad, Stace." He told her, but fished out some spare bedding anyways. "It was near sixty."

"And yet, you had the air on or something. I swear it was colder than that in here." She insisted. She almost shivered just thinking about it. "You need to turn the AC off."

"The Ac's not on." He frowned at her, head tilted like he was studying one of his patients. "Maybe you're getting sick? You did spend God knows how long running around an abandoned warehouse with open wounds. I wouldn't be surprised if you caught something."

"God I hope not." She muttered, helping him spread the blanket out on the couch. "I gotta drive back to my apartment tomorrow. I don't wanna be sick while doing that."

"Well, if you do come down with something, promise me you'll go straight to the walk-in clinic or ER." Sammy told her seriously. "It could be something worse than a cold, like an infection from the stitches."

"Promises are curses." Stacy responded automatically. "But if something comes up, I will go to the walk-in. I don't wanna die after going through all of that bullshit."

"Wow, you're swearing. Must have been some pretty bad bullshit." He joked as he handed her a pillow. She resisted the urge to hit him with it.

"It was the second worst thing I've ever been through. It was horrible, and I hated it, but now it's over forever." Her eye twitched slightly as she placed the pillow on the couch, and saw Scout watching them from the side table. She was overcome with a childish urge to knock Scout over onto the pillow, which she quickly did.

"Wha-? Hey!" She pulled the blanket up over the Puppet, and heard a soft snort of amusement from Sammy.

"Are you ever going to grow up." He shook his head with a sigh as they watched the blanket covered lump move around.

"Nope!" She told him cheerfully. "I'mma be a kid forever!" She noticed the lump had stopped moving and leaned down, reaching for the blanket. "Uh, Scout? You oka-"

"DEATH FROM ABOVE!" Scout hit the back Stacy's head with far more force than necessary, knocking her onto the couch. She then bit onto the top of her head, though that didn't do much.

"AAUGH! How'd you even get up there?!?" She became aware of laughter and turned a death glare on her cousin. "Stop laughing! It's not funny Samuel!" She threw the pillow at him, but that didn't stop the almost hysterical laughter coming from him.

"Oh my God!" He gasped out, collapsing against the couch. "She just came out of nowhere! Holy shit!" He fell onto the floor while Stacy wrestled the apparently feral Puppet off of her head. She held her at arm's length, trying to simultaneously give her a disapproving look and check her over for injuries. It was hard to do, however, as she kept trying to bite her hand.

"Dude, seriously? That's not even gonna do anything to me..." She watched Scout thrash for a moment, actually struggling to hold onto her. "Okay, seriously, stop it right now, or you're going back under the blanket and I'm gonna sit on you." That got her to stop, but she kept up the death glare.

"Geez..." She looked over at Sammy, who was coughing on the floor, finally finished laughing. "It wasn't that funny..."

"It was fucking hilarious." He retorted between coughs. "Instant karma." He took a deep breath and started to pull himself up from the floor. "I like that Puppet." Stacy just sighed. "Whatever dude. Glad to know my pain is what made you like her." Unconsciously, she hugged Scout close and sat on the couch. She grabbed up the remote to turn Netflix back on, wanting a distraction from her humiliation. She let Scout drop onto her lap, and resisted the urge to drop her head into her hands.

'Defeated by a hand puppet. I'm never living this down.'

Sammy climbed up onto the couch seconds later, still wheezing. He went to speak, but another death glare shut him up before he could start. So he just shot her a smug look instead, holding out a hand for Scout to fist bump. "That was a pretty great move." He told the Puppet. Stacy ignored him, but heard a quiet "Hell yeah!" from Scout. "You should do it again the next time she does that."

"Do you want to die?" Stacy deadpanned, but Sammy just shrugged as he finally settled in to watch the show with them.

"Hey, it's just a suggestion." He couldn't keep that grin off of his face, and it was starting to annoy her.

"Whatever." She resolved to just ignore everything for now and watch the show. Sammy attempted a few more times to draw her into conversation, but quickly gave up when she didn't answer him and started watching too.

A few episodes later, however, and Sammy stood up and stretched. "Well, I need to get to bed, I have work tomorrow." He started towards his room. "I'll be gone by the time you two leave, so make sure you lock up tomorrow, okay?" "Kay. G'night Sammy." Stacy gave a halfhearted wave as he left, leaving Host and Puppet alone for the night.

"Leave?" Scout asked after they heard his door close. Stacy glanced down to see the Puppet staring up at her, a worried look on her face.

"Yeah. We gotta go home tomorrow." Stacy told her. "I gotta tell Carol about what happened at the HQ and find out what she wants me to do about that article. And then classes start back up soon, so I've gotta be back by then." "... I thought we were staying here." Scout said quietly, and Stacy felt a pang of... something. She wasn't sure what, but it made her feel bad and she decided right then that she hated it.

"Eh, it was more of a stopping point, really. Some place to get my mouth cut open and you off my hand." She shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. "And as much as I would love to hide here until I die, we can't actually stay on Sammy's couch forever. He doesn't have any food, and would expect me to clean."

"..." Scout was silent, and no longer paying attention to the show, instead staring down at her hands as she played with the hem of Stacy's shirt. The Human felt like she should say something, but didn't know what. Instead she stopped the show and turned off the TV, dropping the Puppet to the side and standing up.

"I'm gonna get ready and go to bed myself. We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and I want to make sure I'm ready for it." She started towards the bathroom, almost missing the quiet "Okay." in reply. She hesitated at the doorway, but forced herself through anyways.

Scout would figure out it was better this way. Her apartment was even further from the HQ than Sammy's was, and thus safer than Sammy's. Plus, it would be better if it was just the two of them alone, and they could figure things out.

Things would get better, starting tomorrow.

They had to.

#hello puppets #fanfiction #outside #scout #stacy stein #sammy davis

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etraytin · 4 years

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Quarantine, Day 83

June 2

Rough, rough day today. It started out pretty well, I even got to sleep in a little bit and woke up to good coffee and the chocolate chip pan dulce we got at Trader Joe's yesterday. I successfully ordered the spare parts we accidentally threw out for the video doorbell, and kiddo completed his schoolwork early in the day with no complaining. MIL had her first physical therapy appointment today, so they headed out around 10:30 and I settled in for a little quality fanfic reading while the kiddo played TABS, his current obsession.

About an hour later, I got a call from the nursing home business office. We did the usual "Can I speak to Mrs. Lastname?" and me asking "MIL's Name Lastname?" because she and I are both Mrs. Lastname and I have had sixteen years of conditioning to say "this is she." They wanted MIL, and when I said she was out they asked for my husband's cell phone number, which I had to admit I did not have memorized even though I am his wife. When they heard I was part of the family, they said they could talk to me, and told me that based on FIL's sudden rapid decline, they wanted to put him into a single room so that we could come and be with him, but they wanted our authorization both in general and because Medicare only covers a semi-private room and we'd have to private pay.

My brain absorbed about thirty percent of that because I was stuck on the "sudden rapid decline" that I did not know about at all, and I was very unhappy that MIL and my husband were both out of the house. I asked for immediate clarification on that, and she admitted that she did not know the specifics because she is the business office person, but she'd get the doctor on the phone. I sat on hold for a minute and she came back to tell me that the doctor and nurse were both outside with MIL and my husband, talking to them about FIL, and she hadn't realized they were already at the center. I told her that we would be able to pay for the private room. She was very nice, but it was the sort of phone call that hits you in the solar plexus.

It was more than another hour before MIL and my husband came home. In the meantime, I fussed with lunch and tried to break it gently to the kiddo that Papa had gotten a lot sicker, but that we would finally be able to go in and see him. They came home and we sat down for lunch (leftover grilled stuff from yesterday), and afterwards I sent the kiddo out to water the plants while we talked. FIL's feet turned blue overnight, which indicates serious problems in the circulatory system, usually the beginnings of shutting down. They could do bloodwork and scans and x-rays to figure out exactly why, but it would be unlikely to change anything, and it would be painful and stressful. Knowing that we were planning on getting hospice involved already, they gave him Percocet and Ativan, so he would sleep and feel no pain. He slept the entire time they were there. The doctor said it would be a matter of days.

We sent messages to my husband's half sisters to let them know what is happening and that now is the time to come if they want to visit. Even this is complicated because of COVID, but we're going to give our bedroom to one sister and her adult daughter while another sister and her son stay in a hotel, and my husband and I will take the basement. This is both because a single bedroom is more likely to keep germs contained and simple hospitality. The last time we visited her home, she gave us her own bedroom to sleep in and bunked with one of her kids. It's only right to pay back the favor. So tomorrow will involve a lot of cleaning and moving luggage around while she drives down from Indiana.

After all of this, MIL and I went downstairs (the long way, by walking out of the house, down the sidewalk and around into the driveway rather than taking the stairs) to clean out the garage fridge and freezer. This was something that had been bugging her for a long time and she wanted something to do. While we were doing that, we remembered the stupid forgotten salad dressing from Saturday, so that was my next thing. I drove out to the restaurant to pick it up so we would have plenty of homemade ranch dressing in the house. I ended up taking the long way both ways, just to have some time in the car to breathe and call my folks.

When I got home, MIL and my husband went back to the center because the room switch had been done. While they were gone, the kiddo and I did the water fight I'd promised him. We didn't use the squirt guns because we found the spinning sprinkler instead, so we spent an hour or so playing with that, running through it, daring each other to stand over it, generally getting very wet. As he played, I followed the saga in my TNR group chat of how one of my friends back home tried to rescue an abandoned kitten at one of our trapping sites, but it was too far gone and died at the vet. She was really sad, we all were, but we tried to remind her that you have to concentrate on the ones you can save. MIL and my husband came back while we were playing. FIL was sleeping the entire time they were there. I don't know if he was awake at all today, but maybe that's better.

My PMS is still very ugh today, so I laid down on a heating pad after dinner and missed the nightly Avatar viewing. I will have to catch up, I don't want to miss Zuko Alone and the introduction of Toph, that's all very important stuff. Kiddo went to bed for about half an hour, then came out and cried all over my bed because Papa is going to die and he didn't want him to. I don't even remember what I said, stuff about heaven, and about how people we love stay with us, and we'll remember everything he was to us. I didn't even bother to try and send him back to bed alone, just went in there with him and we listened to a podcast he likes. He alternated between playing and crying and having a headache for a few hours and finally went to sleep a little after midnight.

I came out and realized that I had an hour left before our grocery order for Wednesday evening (started last Thursday and added to throughout the week) needed to be finalized, and we suddenly were going to be feeding a lot more people. I added ingredients for some easy crockpot meals, figuring none of us are going to feel very cookish, plus a new battery because the damn smoke alarm keeps beeping. I caught up on news about the protests and it just makes me feel more sad and helpless and angry. Everything is happening all at the same time, it seems. We're in for some rough days ahead, and I don't know how to make them better for anybody. Right now we're just holding on.

#quarantine #hospice #tw: end of life #tw: animal death

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turdblossommm · 5 years

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Secrets

Summary: Bucky has been struggling and that is an understatement and ever since his name has been cleared and has been going to therapy all of his memories are coming back.

Pairing: Bucky x Female Reader

A/N: Hellooooo lovelies I wrote this little one shot on my lunch and I hope you enjoy it! I was inspire by someone on here but I can’t remember their name!

Masterlist

“My mama used to make the best baklava in the entire village” Bucky could hear the happiness in her voice. At night when he can’t sleep he always wondered what her smiled looked like. Did the corners of her eyes scrunch up? Did she had straight or crooked teeth? Did she get a twinkle in her eye?

“What’s baklava?” Bucky asked

“I forgot you’re American”

“Land of the free doll” He smiled

“I wonder what it’s like to be like that” She sighed

“Like what?”

“Free” Bucky felt his heart clench, she had been here longer than him, snatched from her village in the middle of the night. She had been there when he woke up with the new prosthetic, she quietly calmed him down through the drain pipes.

“It’s nice” He smiled “I'd go out on the weekends to the dance halls and dance with all the pretty girls” He leaned his head against the wall “When we get out I’ll take you to all my favorite spots”

“I’d like that” She whispered knowing damn well you two were never getting out of there. Bucky was the only comfort she found in the dark cell she’d been sentenced to live in all these months. Bucky heard your door open through the pipes

“It’ll be okay” He reassured her, knowing that there was nothing he could do to stop the pain she’s going to feel.

“Sargent Barens” Bucky shook his head while looking at his therapist, the look on his face told him he’d said his name multiple times

“Sorry” He mumbled

“Anything you’d like to talk about? More dreams?”

“No” Not her, he wasn’t ready to talk her. The doctor dismissed him and he walked back to his car and headed to the compound

“I think you should tell him” Bucky sighed and looked over to her, he knew it wasn’t really her but ever sense he’d been exonerated all the memories started coming back he hasn’t be able to unsee her

“I was just pardon for all my crimes and go to court ordered therapy, I don’t think they’d like to hear I see and talk to dead people” He rolled his eyes

“You see other people?” She put her hand on her heart “That hurts I though what we had was special”

“You know you’re the only one I see” His cheeks warmed as he saw her smile at him from the passenger seat

“I still think you should talk to someone about this Buck, it’s not helping you”

“But I don’t want to stop seeing you” She gave him a sad smile

I’m dead Bucky, I’m part of your imagination. You carry my death with an immense amount of grief, this-” She motioned between them “-is potentially normal” He parked the car in the garage and climbed out as she followed him

“Hey Buck was someone in the car? I thought I saw you talking to someone” Steve asked him

“Bluetooth, I was on the phone” He lied smoothly while Steve nodded unconvinced.

“How was the session?”

“Good, talked about my dreams”

“Lair” She snapped from behind Steve, who responded to Bucky but he was so lost in his thoughts he didn’t hear a word. Maybe he was slowly going crazy, seeing her was driving him mad. When he climbed in to bed that night he was afraid to sleep, afraid to see her or the horrible things he did to people.

“Go to sleep Bucky, I’ll keep the monsters away” She whispered before kissing his cheek and Bucky felt his eyes close and he was launched into darkness

“Oh the things we have planed for you fräulein” Bucky hear Zola’s voice through the pipes and felt his fist clench. Bucky had no idea what they were doing to her but it was making her sick to the point where she couldn’t keep any food down, he feared she die from starvation.

“Bucky?” She whispered with a shaky breath

“I’m here” He heard her dry heave, they weren’t feeding either of you anything besides water and stale bread.

“Did I tell you about my trip to Cooney Island with Steve?” He asked

“No, what’s Cooney Island?” Bucky chuckled at her pronunciation of Cooney with her accent. He continued to tell her about the roller coasters, specifically the tilt-a-whirl. How he and Steve at hot dogs and then Steve threw up in a trash can after said ride.

“And then I spent all our money trying to win a game to impress a girl”

“Did you?” She asked

“Did I do what?” He asked

“Impress the girl?” She giggle and Bucky lavished in the sweet sound

“Yes, we went out dancing the next weekend and then I was shipped out”

“I’m sorry” She whispered “She sounded nice” Bucky nodded as heard he doors being unlocked “Be strong Bucky” He heard her words as he was yanked out of his cell and led to the chair.

Bucky woke up gasping, drenched in sweat he glanced at the couch where she was sitting when he fell asleep, but she were no where to be seen. He climbed out of bed and pulled on a shirt while he walked in to the kitchen. He found Tony leaning over the cook top

“Jesus Christ Elsa” Ton clutched his chest “You assassin spy types” He muttered

“Sorry” Bucky sat on the bar stool, sometimes when he came out at night it was Natasha in the living room watching documentaries, on occasion Sam would be on the couch with her. Sometimes it was Steve who was sketching mindlessly while Bucky would read or watch a show, on nights like that Wanda would join him on the couch. And on nights like tonight it’s Tony, says he needs to do something with his hands to distract him.

“Pancakes?” Bucky nodded and Stark slid the plate across the bar “Bad dreams?” Tony asked as he sat next to Bucky

“Yeah, you?” Tony nodded

“I’m terrified that everyone is going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it” Tony shoved a bite of pancake in his mouth “What do you see?”

“Tell him” Bucky looked up at her leaning against the stove “Come on Buck, you have to tell someone, if not Steve or your therapist it’s gotta to be him” Tony followed his gaze, he could’ve swore he saw his eyes water.

“I see dead people” Bucky whispered

“I’m getting real sixth sense vibes here” Tony mumbled “Who do you see?”

“It’s only one person, she was held with me in Siberia” Bucky sighed “Every time I close my eyes I see her and then while I’m awake she’s every where. I know I should tell the therapist or Steve but I don’t know how to without sounding fucking crazy”

“Write it down, it’s easier to write it than say it” Bucky nodded “Tell me about her”

“She was pretty, I only saw her once before she was gone. She was from Romania and tiny little village” Bucky paused “She was really something, she wanted to help me despite her suffering”

“I’m sorry” Tony looked back at his pancakes

“Me too” He finished his pancakes with Tony before heading back to bed.

“See I told you, everything is going to be fine” Bucky nodded and watched her sit on the couch while he got back in bed and grabbed his journal.

Bucky walked back into the therapist’s office the next week with multiple papers clutched in his flesh hand. Bucky sat in the usual chair while staring at the pictures and of people and his framed degrees

“What do you want to talk about today Sergeant Barnes” Bucky felt his palm start to sweat as he handed over over the pages from his journal. Bucky felt his heart races as the therapist took the papers and began to read

October 19

I remember telling her about my childhood while she was sick from what she called treatments with Dr. Zola. I wanted to distract her from the pain she was in, I had no idea what they were doing to her but I hoped t was nothing like what they were doing to me. She gave me comfort when I had the new arm

“You’ll adjust, don’t stress too much they’ll sedate you again”

She tells me about where she grew up in a tiny village outside of Bucharest, I chose to stay there when I was on the run, hoping to make it out to her little village but I never got there. I wanted to see that part of her

She told me about the larger house her and her mother lived in with another family who her mother worked for. She played with the other kids in the market around the fountain in the middle of the square. She always said you have to be careful or you’d trip over the uneven cobble stone street.

October 27

Last night I had the dream. We had been held captive for years at that point. She had been dragged out of the room, she hadn’t been doing well the last couple of days. Deep down I knew that wasn’t going to be a good day. I could hear her screams from the room, which was something I didn’t enjoy hearing.

The handlers pulled me out of the room and pushed me in to the testing room. When I walked in I saw Zola and two other men holding down a frail women, with dark circles under her eyes and sunken in cheek bones. Her skin was an awful pale color with a blue tint. I heard her whisper my name and I knew it was her, the women I’d been whispering to. The one that’s been comforting me

At the time I didn’t know what they were going to do to us, let alone her. I knew it wasn’t going to be anything good but I never imagined that. As the Winter Solider I didn’t have many memories, but I could remember her face, the tears that streamed down her face. I remembered how pretty her eyes were despite being rimmed red and full of water. I remember how cool the gun felt on my flesh hand

The doctor struggle to read after this point with the droplets that smeared the ink one the page. Bucky froze as the doctor looked up.

“I can see you care about the women” Bucky nodded

“I see her, she talks to me” The doctor raised his eyebrows “I know she’s not real”

“It’s common with people who are experiencing a large amount of grief. Like men who lose their wives suddenly, mother’s losing their children. If this women meant this much to you I wouldn’t be alarmed that you are seeing her”

“That’s good I thought I was losing it” Bucky chuckled

“Why are you so guilty about her?” Bucky swallowed and rubbed his eyes as he thought about that day

Bucky enjoyed being able to place her face with her voice but it pained him to see how hurt she was. His chest warmed as she gave him a small smile from the metal table littered with syringes that used to be filled with what look like a black liquid. He figured they were injecting her with the serum.

“желаниe” His handlers shoved him toward the table and Bucky grabbed her hand

“You’re going to be okay” Bucky whispered and you shook your head

“No I’m not, this is all apart of the game they play Bucky”

“pжавый” Bucky felt his face twitch

“I’m not going to let them hurt you anymore” She gave him a weak smile as her hand reached for his face and cupped his cheek

“семнадцать, Девять, Один”

“You’re going to be okay Bucky, this is the end for me but you’re going to do some much more”

“Возвращение домой” How did hey yet so far in the words? Bucky questioned while she quickly pushed you lips on his cheek

“Y/N” He whispered as they pulled him away from her and placed a gun in his hand

“грузовой вагон”

“Be brave Bucky Barnes”

“Soldat” She watched as a switch was flipped in his eyes and he raised the gun and pulled the trigger, ending her life.

“She was the first person I ever killed as the Winter Soldier”

Bucky returned to the tower with a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. Being able to tell someone about her released this tension in his body. He was never going to forget you but maybe he could move on from you and heal from the pain the Winter Solder caused him.

Bucky was ready to tell Steve about everything, come clean with him about the lies ad shady behavior. Tell him about seeing her and what happened, tell him about the terrible dreams he was having. The relief he was feeling was something he wanted to feel about the rest of the animosity revolving around the Winter Soldier.

He felt his heart stop as he walked into the common room where everyone stood. The team surrounded Fury with a familiar women. Steve shook her hand and Bucky caught sight of her face and he almost fell to his knees.

“Buck come here” Steve called and he watched her head turn, Bucky’s blue eyes met her’s and watched tears come to hers. Bucky’s feet carried him to her, unbeknownst to him she met him halfway.

“I’ve looked every where for you Bucky Barnes” Bucky reached up with his metal hand and touched her cheek. He could feel the warmth under the metal, he had never been able to feel anything before when he’d try and touch her.

“It’s really you” She placed her hand on top of his while the other wiped his cheeks

“It’s really me” Bucky pulled you into his chest while his eyes scanned the rest of the team who seemed confused besides Tony

“I found your girl Barnes” He smiled and Bucky mouthed ‘thank you’

Bucky held her hand loosely as she led him into the tiny village as you two approached the cracked water fountain he could picture her as a child running around with other children. He scanned the abandoned village and wished he could’ve seen the what it was really like. The large house was covered in caution tape, it was unsafe to walk in but she pulled him in anyway. She told him how Hydra destroyed the village after she escaped.

“How did you survive?” He asked “I put a bullet in your head”

“I healed” She pointed to a scar on her head “I passed out but my mutantism allowed me to heal. It’s also how I’ve lived this long, I can also heal others” She touched his eyes brow that was split from his latest mission and when she moved her hand the soreness was gone.

“That’s what Hydra used you for” She nodded

“They tried to make you like me so you could heal yourself”

“Doll, I’m so sorry” She grabbed his hands

“None of that is your fault, Hydra had me before they ever had you” She leaned her forehead against his “Now we have all the time in the world so you can take me dancing”

“I can do that” He pressed his lips to hers before heading back to the rest of their life together.

#Winter Solider #winter solider imagine #winter solider x reader #winter solider fanfiction #BUCKY AU #Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes au #sad bucky #bucky imagine #bucky x reader #bucky #Steve Rogers #mutant reader #Avengers #marvel

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hellas-himself · 5 years

Text

Crack Ship Holidays

Friendsgiving Pt. 2

Since it’s Rhysand’s birthday this week, y'all are getting two updates. ;)

With my furniture gone, we eat pizza on the living room floor. Cassian pulls me onto his lap while I hold our plate. Aelin is lying on the floor with her head on Rowan’s lap and he’s purposely not feeding her pizza as she asked. Rhys and Lucien are sitting back against the wall and Rhys has his arm around Lucien’s shoulder. Mor might have shut off the flash but I can tell that she’s taking pictures of us all from where she sits on the kitchen counter, next to the box of white pizza Cassian ordered specifically for her.

When the door unlocks, Az steps inside but Iliana rushes past her father and makes her way towards Cassian and I.

“So it’s true?! You’re gonna have a baby now!” she blurts out and Rowan nearly chokes on his food while Aelin howls.

“Hello to you, too,” I say as I set our plate down and hug her tight. She starts to laugh, especially when Cassian starts tickling her. Her laugh reminds me so much of Elain but that mischievous glint in her eyes is all Azriel.

“Daddy says you finally stopped being a…” She mouths a word that has Cassian glaring daggers at Az who raises his hands innocently.

“I said nothing.”

Iliana presses a kiss to Cassian’s cheek.

“It’s okay, tio. Mommy told him not to talk like that in front of me even if she agreed.”

My sister is blushing which makes Cassian laugh.

“It’s okay. They were both right,” he says as she sits next to him. “So thank you, Lia.”

“Me? What did I do?”

I lean in real close and whisper, “For helping your tio stop being a complete pendejo.”

I give her a wink, and our niece starts cackling. Cassian is feigning offense when I sit upright.

“I love you,” I say and he pinches my side, making me laugh.

“I hope it’s a boy,” Lia says haughtily. “I want to be the only girl.”

Cassian insists on carrying my box full of rolls of canvas, stretched canvas and brushes.

“Just get the door,” he says with a wink and I roll my eyes. I can hear Az and Iliana playing with Valo in the backyard. Everyone got here before we did; I handed in my keys to the landlord and Cassian broke the lease. I was still internally cringing from how much money he just spent. And yet, he has been grinning from ear to ear ever since.

Rowan and Aelin are setting up my bookshelf in the living room while Rhysand and Mor busy themselves with my closet. Lucien is in the kitchen putting away what little I had as I gave away everything I didn’t need.

“Shouldn’t we bring that to the garage?” I ask as he continues on towards the bedrooms.

“I don’t want you painting around weights and shit,” he replies as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “So I thought of something.”

“What?” I ask but he says nothing and stops in front of one of the guestrooms.

“Get that for me, will you?”

I roll my eyes and open the door. I have to remember how to breathe.

“Cas…”

The bed, the dresser, all of it was gone and replaced with a desk. An easel. With the curtains pulled aside, the light in the room was perfect.

“I have to set up the shelves in the closet but-”

I grab him by the collar of his shirt and kiss him. He smiles when I step back. I’m blushing.

“I can’t believe you.”

He grins and bring the box to the closet.

“I want you to have your own space,” he says and sets it down on the floor before turning to face me. “I have mine. Now you have yours.”

“Get over here,” I say and he smiles, closing the space between us.

I wake up at the sound of Cassian’s alarm going off. This isn’t the first time, but I still find myself smiling. Cassian is holding me against him and he hasn’t woken up yet. Carefully, I turn until I’m facing him and press a kiss to his cheek. His jaw. His neck and across his collar bone. I see him smile.

“Good morning,” I whisper.

“Good morning, bunny,” he whispers back and rolls onto his back, taking me with him. He reaches over and grabs his phone, tapping on the screen until the alarm stops. He opens his eyes and squints at the screen.

“What?”

“Mor.”

He shows me his phone. Morrigan_not_la_fey tagged you and bunny_darling in a post. I unlock his phone and open the post. I snort. The caption reads, ‘FUCKING FINALLY’. There are several pictures; the first is of Cassian and I last night on the sofa with Val sprawled across our laps, followed by one of us eating pizza with everyone else on the living room floor. Then one with Cas and I kissing in the bedroom with Rowan in the background disassembling the bookshelf and then Halloween night where he had lifted me up and she’d interrupted us.

“I love this,” I say with a laugh and set the phone down.

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

“Was it really that obvious to everyone?” he asks and rubs the sleep from his eyes.

“To everyone but us, I guess.”

He smirks and grabs his phone. I am content to watch him no doubt replying to Mor but then I hear my phone go off. I raise a brow and begrudgingly slide off of Cassian to get to my phone. I laugh when I see Cassian’s request to update my relationship status.

“You’re silly,” I say and accept it. “Oh! Can I match our profile pictures?”

“To what?” he asks and shifts to lay beside me, putting an arm over my back. He slides his phone in front of me.

“This one. The one Mor took of us outside.”

“Okay,” he says with a yawn.

Both of our phones start going off as our friends and family begin commenting on the posts.

“Why don’t you sleep a little more? I’ll make coffee and wake you up when it’s done,” I say as I pry myself out of his hold. His response is incoherent.

Cassian had fallen asleep last night waiting for me to finish unpacking. But it was worth staying up so late. Everything was in its place; it didn’t look like I’d just moved in. The art room was a mess but it didn’t bother me. I had the entire day for that.

After I wash up and put up my hair, I put on Cassian’s shirt and basketball shorts and walk to the kitchen. I let Val out while I get the coffee going and I let myself look at my phone. Endless congratulations and like after like. Rhys and Mor reminding Lucien and Az that they won some bet they’d made months ago about when and how Cassian would ‘finally’ ask me to be his girlfriend. I felt ridiculous smiling while I read the messages and I was blushing while I looked at that picture of us. It was perfect.

Cassian of course, comes to the kitchen already showered and ready to go. I set his coffee down on the counter and pile pancakes on his plate. He looks surprised.

“I ate one,” I say. “You’re not going to die.”

He laughs and takes a seat.

“It’s been a while since anyone made me anything… Well, someone that wasn’t Rhys or Az.”

“Maybe I’ll start practicing and I’ll cook for you every day.”

“And deny myself the pleasure of how you react to my cooking?”

I laugh. “So, maybe not every day.”

Cassian holds out his arm, motioning for me to come closer. When I do, he holds me against him. I wrap my arms around his neck and lean into him.

“I don’t know how I waited this long,” he says softly. “This is… I’m just happy that you’re home with me.”

“I am, too.” I kiss his cheek. “I love you, Cassian.”

“I love you, bunny.”

For the zillionth time this evening, my phone blacks out while I read the stupid recipe I have been following for dinner. Cassian is working late today and I wanted to surprise him. For more reasons than this.

“Do you think daddy will like burnt chicken for dinner?” I ask Valo and sigh. The dog looks at me sideways and I laugh. “I’m kidding. This is going to be fine.”

After making the yogurt sauce and chopping up the onions and other things I’ll need as a topping, I get the marinated chicken onto the iron skillet. It smells like heaven. I preheat the oven and make to wash a few dishes when I hear my phone go off. Twice.

The first message is from Cassian- actually, it’s Az using Cassian’s phone to tell me Cas is almost finished. I reply with a quick thank you. The other is from Nesta. I regret opening it.

Halloween was nearly two weeks ago. When were you going to tell me about Cassian? During Christmas dinner?

I roll my eyes. I haven’t spent Christmas with our parents in years. Had zero intention of doing so this year. And no. I wasn’t planning on telling you anything for this very reason.

I set my phone down and wash half of the dishes before I go to flip the chicken on the skillet. I return to the sink and finish the dishes, then quickly clean my hands before setting the pita bread in the oven. I pour Val some food into his bowl and hear my phone go off again.

He was my boyfriend, Feyre. Mom and dad have been bothering me about it ever since Elain posted that picture of the two of you with Iliana. It was a cute picture from their date night last week; he and I were on the sofa with Iliana between us. We had fallen asleep while she read from her Percy Jackson book to us and Elain had come to pick her up and found us just like that.

Was. Years ago. Get over it.

How long has this been going on?

I sigh. That’s honestly none of your business. I’m happy and so is he. That’s all that should matter to you. Tell mom and dad they can call me if it bothers them that much.

They don’t have your number.

Give it to them then. I hear the door unlock. I have dinner on the stove. Love you, Nes. Stop letting them get to you. Elain and I did- and we’re happier for it.

I am tempted to say more but, until Cassian knows- I refuse to tell anyone else. She’d probably find a way to spoil it, anyway.

“Honey, I’m home!” Cas shouts from the door- as he has done every night he comes home from work. I laugh at his attempt to sound like Ricky Ricardo.

“I’m in the kitchen!” I shout back. I hear the closet door opening and close, hear him kick off his boots.

“Did you order out?” he asks, his voice sounds much closer now.

“Nope.”

I look at him from where I stand by the stove. He’s standing in the entry way.

“What’s this?”

I shrug. “Dinner. For my incredibly handsome and hardworking boyfriend.”

His stupid grin gives me butterflies.

“You cooked dinner?”

“I meant what I said.”

He comes to stand behind me and kisses my cheek before putting one hand on my waist. He tries to grab a piece of chicken from the skillet but I slap his hand away.

“Go wash up. Where do you want to eat?”

“So bossy,” he murmurs and kisses my neck. “You know, I wouldn’t mind that later on-”

I sigh. “Cassian…”

He laughs. “Alright, alright. Let’s sit at the dinner table.”

He slaps my ass before he runs off to change. When he comes back, I’m carrying plates to the dining room. He helps me bring everything to the table and after getting drinks, we sit to eat.

“The first time we had shawarma, was after homecoming, remember?” he asks.

“I think I have that picture somewhere. Rhys and Elain won homecoming king and queen which was hilarious, considering who they were dating at the time.”

“You and Grayson?”

“I didn’t date Rhys,” I say with a scowl.

Cassian laughs. “You were his rebound-”

I slap his arm. “Hey, better it was me than someone who’d break his heart. I don’t even remember her name, only that she had some college boyfriend driving her to school one morning and it pissed me off so much.”

“So much so that you kissed Rhys in the parking lot and lied about being his girlfriend for the rest of the year.”

“Best pretend boyfriend I ever had,” I say wistfully. Cassian rolls his eyes but I can see him trying not to smirk. “But listen, I wanted to tell you something.”

“Hm?”

“So… Briar called me at like… nine this morning. I have an interview at the school tomorrow.”

His eyes light up.

“Really?”

“Yeah… She says she doesn’t doubt I’ll get it.”

Cassian leans over in his seat and gives me a quick kiss.

“That’s amazing, bunny! We have to celebrate or something.”

I laugh as he sits back in his chair.

“We are,” I say and wave at the table. “I haven’t told anyone else. And I won’t, not until after the interview.”

He puts his hand over mine.

“God, I love you so much,” he says. “I’m so happy for you.”

“I love you, too, Cas. I can’t believe this is happening.”

He brings my hand to his lips and presses a kiss to my knuckles.

“What time is the interview?”

“Eight-thirty.”

“I’ll drive you,” he says. “Then we can have celebratory breakfast together.”

“And if they ask me to stay for the day?”

“Then I guess I’ll come back for celebratory lunch.”

“I like the sound of that,” I say and he winks.

“And what about dessert?” he asks and I look at him up and down and grin.

“I think I have an idea of what I want.”

With a wave goodbye to Briar, I step out of the school. I take a deep breath and clutch the strap of my bag with both hands in an attempt to stop them from trembling. The security guard gives me a nod and I return it. I’m relieved to see Cassian standing by his truck. He’s on his phone and he’s wearing sunglasses. To my absolute delight, he has his hair down. For a moment, I can remember him as he was in high school; the stupidly popular football player with long hair and the tattoos on his back, who drove a motorcycle and smoked cigarettes in the parking lot. Who, along with Rhys and Az, always looked out for me and my sisters. For Mor.

“All we’re missing is a pack of cigarettes and I’m fourteen-year-old Feyre, trying to act like it was no big deal that Cassian Rodriguez is waiting for her in the parking lot,” I say when he notices me approach.

“Well, seventeen-year-old Cassian was all too happy to do it,” he says and immediately takes my hands and pulls me close. “Thank you for convincing that idiot to quit. I can’t believe I got away with so much shit.”

He kisses me and I playfully swat his arm.

“You’re a sweet talker,” I quip.

“So. How’d it go?” he asks and I sigh, shaking my hands. I don’t understand why I feel so nervous.

“I start on Monday,” I say softly. My stomach hurts. Cassian simply beams at me. He cups my face with his hands and kisses me.

“I fucking knew it!” He kisses me again. “God, I’m so happy for you, bunny!”

I laugh and hug him tight. After another kiss, Cassian walks me to the passenger’s side and opens the door. He lifts me up by the waist and sets me down. He doesn’t even bother hiding the grin on his face when his hands brush against my thighs as he steps away. I blush and wave him off. That was one story I wouldn’t tell Mor- ever. She’d never let me live it down.

“So what are the hours?” he asks as he gets into the driver’s seat. We talk about my salary and the schedule as he drives us to get breakfast.

“Is it weird that I’m kinda scared?” I ask quietly.

“No… You’ve been out of the game for a while.” A while. Leave it to Cassian to try to soften the edges. It had been years since I’d worked as a teacher. Tamlin had provided for everything until he left and if it weren’t for Cassian, I would have lost everything.

“At least now I’ll have health insurance,” I mutter and instinctively brush my fingers over my inner left arm. I barely feel it with my jacket on until I press on it. Cassian grimaces. “I can finally replace this stupid thing.”

“Stop it,” he whines. I laugh.

“Such a baby,” I say playfully. “If not for this we’d be pushing a stroller around.”

“Fair enough. Stop playing with it though, bunny. That’s gross.”

I stick my tongue out at him and he grins.

We have breakfast together at the café Mor and I had gone just two weeks before. I wait until Cassian is busy stuffing his face with French toast to text the group chat. Guess who’s the new art teacher at Aelin’s school? I hit send and then open the chat between Aelin and I. I GOT THE JOB.

Our phones begin to go off as our family starts to reply. Cassian reaches over to hold my hand and I sigh, meeting his gaze.

“You’ll be amazing,” he says to me. “You are amazing.”

“Thank you,” I say and feel myself blush.

I have a feeling I’m going to be blushing until the day I die because of him. And honestly, I’m completely fine with that.

#Iliana is a menace #cassian is the best #friendsgiving #part one of maybe five #still don't know #couldn't think of another last name so #Rodriguez it is #cassian x feyre #crack ship holidays #self indulgence #cuz yall aint ask for this #Feyre Archeron #cassian

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sweet-xoxo-thatcares · 3 years

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I want another siamese cat from childhood when I was in elementary.

Dad dropped her off on the highway in Florida because the neighborhood association was gonna start charging him for her and her child meno (I named him that because he was so meannnnn, complete opposite of Nemo from finding Nemo. My favorite movie at the time) and then her youngest, Snowflake. They all had white faces, but the similar siamese black or grey striped tail.

She had to be mixed. Because siamese have a black or dark brownish face with white around the edges. Like the Instagram filter feature that darkens the edges. I forgot the name, but its something to do with the exposure.

I still have pictures of her and her 1st batch of kittens. She only had one that looked just liked her, I think I named her snowball. The other two were black and gray striped....I think Dad knew who the cat was. He let her outside one time cause she kept meowing to ask one time and then he saw when she came back that there was another cat nearby....they didn't think to get her neutered since it was already too late by then....lol

I named one striped one Tigger, since he was the most to get in a fight with the other striped...but I forgot her name....aaayyyyeeee I don't remember because it happened so sudden and then I think a week later mom drove them to petsmart because she said we couldn't keep them. I was so sad. Cause I had already gotten used to the kittens and I remember someone was throwing up the Purina cat food we gave her, but there was also a bit of fur in there too...or she going through the trash or eating crumbs that wasn't vacuumed yet from the carpet.

I don't think it was the kittens. She taught me a trick on how to pick up the kittens when they would get into a fight if she wasn't there. She pinched them behind their heads, the neckfat where the collar would be. I copied her from watch her take care of them and feed them. She had them in the garage and mom and dad found her. I didn't know she was hiding in there or that she was even pregnant. But she did seem like she wasn't as active as she used to be. Sitting in my warm, red Elmo all day because it was soft. I just assumed she wasn't feeling good. I was too young at the time. I even had a matching Big Bird chair. They were little and furry just like the real puppets. That's why I liked the chairs the most.

Her 2nd batch of kittens, were 3. Unfortunately they died behind the freezer, because I remember her guiding me to the garage in the new house and there were scattered dead kitten fur and there were kitten skeletons like they were caught behind the big freezer for days, their faces looked decayed and the fur was still on them. I told Dad and he said there was nothing we could do. Mom made her an outside cat because she kept going outside. So when she came back pregnant, I think mom and dad forgot she in the garage for that long. I fed her water and food sometime, but looking back we were negligent cat owners and I was young, but too worried about school and chores. Had mom and dad reconsidered to let her stay in the house again, I think we could have saved the kittens.

Their logic was, if she's always meowing by the door, asking to go outside the house where it isn't safe for her, then she should stay outside and then yall (the kids) could put her food bowl and water outside for her to get if she came back. She would gone 2-3 days at a time, depending on where she went in our suburb. We thought it was okay to do. Mom and dad just assumed she was a dirty, street cat, not a housecat.

This was maybe between 3rd and 4th grade when I saw Furina wasn't coming back. They kept going into the little forest trees in the neighborhood and behind the house.

I didn't find out until I just straight up asked Dad, "what happened to Furina?" Cause I wanted to know the truth...

And that's when he said it.

I was upset with mom when I was younger because I assumed they took her to the pet store like last time with the kittens. But it was Dad. And dropping her off in the middle of the real big forest in Florida. I could always imagine him doing it in the middle of the night so nobody would see it.

Abandoning my distant, but friendly neighborhood cat.

Snowball and Meno, came back to the house after I noticed she stopped coming for weeks.

And then after they saw she wasn't there anymore.

They left too.

It was sad to see them leave, because it's like they already knew. They saw my face waiting for her outside the patio door, calling for her. But she wasn't there. Meno, looked like he was upset with me. Like his owner neglected his mother, like he was so mad that he never wanted me to own him. And now that his mom was gone, the brothers left together.

I was sad too Meno, not just me. And I didn't do it. It was my mean old dad. Mom didn't care about Furina once she kept going outside. But we were the ones who taught her that it's ok to go outside, we opened the door for her when she meowed and asked at the 1st house. We just assumed that she would always come back to us.

It's like they just gave up on her, just because she wanted to go outside. Like fine then, leave, and stay out. It's sad because I wanted her to be a house cat.

I didn't want her to leave, but mom and dad did. And they didn't want to pay for a groomer and they stopped buying her flea collars.

They would try to make it fair, like I was part of the blame, because I didn't check up on her enough or didn't try to bring her back in the house fast enough when she started slipping through the slide door at the 2nd house. Cause I remember that door from mom yelling so many times "close my slide door" making sure we locked it if we were coming back in or going back outside cause of mosquitoes, bugs, lizards, and frogs could get into the house. Dad said screen door when he yelled it. Lol he was northern based, she was from a southern family, but in raised in the north too.

I think that's one of the other things I liked about Florida. All of those different kinds of bugs and things you would see outside your house or in your front yard.

Dad used to scare us when the frogs would pop up on the screen door....he would say yyyaaaahhhh like he was gasping for air. The same look the frogs 🐸 had when they would get stuck with their faces glued to the glass. The grudge, that's what it reminded me of.

Watched too many scary movies with my family at such a young age. That shit used to haunt me, to go from nice people and animals on Disney movies to scary ugly evildoers like Jeepers Creepers, Michael Meyers, The Aliens and Jurassic Park animals that could snatch you up, take your family away, or just eat you and Freddie Kreuger just looked creepy and gross to me.

And I hated Saw. That little goblin clown with the sarcastic deep voice. It confused me on why he would wanna torture people so detailedly and specific to where their body parts grew in grotesque forms or he made people manipulate their best friends and people who would even try to help them play? It was so sad and dark for 2-3hrs, no.mix in the plot just torture.

and Darius's favorite movies were Saw 1,2,3,4.

I hate that bitch. But I can understand now why...

He pulled apart a lizards tail just because he said they can grow back a new one.

DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD PULL IT OFF ANYWAYS!!! POOR FREAKIN LIZARD NOW GOTTA WAIT FOR A NEW TAIL JUST BECAUSE OF THIS IDIOT. HE DIDN'T EVEN TELL ME HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE FOR THE LIZARD TO GROW IT BACK!!!

what a sick, weird, little fuck I was into. Too fascinated with gore and torture. He even pulled a part an earth worm. I think he just said that animal fact about the lizard, just so he could have an excuse to pull it apart.

The little demon bullied me and tortured me too at school. Consistently, on, and on, then off if he noticed I had feelings for him, then on and on, then off, if I ignored him on purpose, then on, then off again, then suddenly he stopped....like jokes here and there....and I don't know why I cared....but all that negative attention he gave me, ppl said it was because he liked me, but was deep down ashamed of it and didn't want ppl to know (because I was fat).

But it was dumb.

Why pick on somebody you like...so much to where they want to punch you, kick them in the balls, and burn their backpack if they ever hit you with it?

I kicked him in the balls indefinitely.

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rosiegeee · 4 years

Text

For @noktoraspali Thank you for your drawing, here is your writing request in return.

Gida Rol, was a dark green skinned Twi’lek woman who’s beauty was almost as well known as the fear she struck into the lives of men across Coruscant.

The Empires flag hung in nearly ever window she passed while driving in her hovering Corellian transport, but that did not bother her. Up on the surface and beyond into the stars groups of people were fighting the oppression of the Empire, and she did hope that one day the Imperials will fall, but way down in the depths of the Capital all she cared about was getting her cargo safe to its destination without-

“Dang ferret!”

Stormtroopers on speeder bikes had made a barricade which formed a makeshift check point. She took back her previous thought, she did hate the Empire when it got in her way.

She had to evaluate her choices, going through the check point legit wasn’t an option, she had pagers for the transport, but not for herself or her cargo, and the xenophobic Imperials weren’t going to believe anything that came through her mouth. She could pull off the path and fly her ship into the traffic but the troopers will be sure to notice and chase after her and shoot at her which could endanger her cargo. There was always brute force, which normally in a fire fight, or even hand to hand she would come on top, but even from here she could tell there was to many and she would probably be over powered. Quickly trying to figure out a plan she looked out her side window and the people walking by. There was a Bith walking by, as well as a Zabrakian couple, and so many humans, if she could just, right there-

“Hey, you, I need your help.”

She discreetly waved at and got the attention of a young human male with light skin and brown hair. He was armed and wearing a simple orange jacket, the colour of the Rebellion. He may not be apart of there ranks, but she was willing to bet he was a sympathizer.

“Please I need your help, do you have identification.”

“Yes, but I-“

She put on her most innocent face and manipulated her voice to sound has soft and feminine as she could, but laying her Rylothian accent on thick.

“Please, it is a matter of life and death, I have to get through the checkpoint without being detained or killed. I have credits, 100 now, 250 once we are safe.”

He continued to look hesitant, but once she lifted a credit bag into view and held it up for him to see he seemingly made up his mind and went around the back and got in. She handed him the bag and began to slowly drive again.

“I need you to tell the officers that you are the owner of this vehicle and that you are delivering grain and flour to Bak-co to be made into bread rations.”

“What are we actually transporting.”

“Grain and flour.”

The transport reached the checkpoint and a stormtrooper was now at each window. The one on her side spoke, she kept her expression light and ignorant as the human responded.

“Who’s vehicle is this?”

Thankfully the humane did as she asked.

“Mine sir, this is my driver, Kaa Frey.”

“Identification and registry.”

The human handled up his identification for the trooper to see, and Gida held up the registry for the truck.

“Seems in order, what is your cargo.”

“Grain and flour sir, to be delivered to Bak-co to be made into bread rations.”

“Your papers for that.”

The human looked at Gida and just spoke calmly.

“Show him the papers.”

But Gida did not have any papers. Her plan was to get the troopers to check a box or two to verify she just held grain, and than have them send them on there way. In the most broken Basic she spoke.

“Papers, I don’t have papers, you said you had papers.”

The human must have been a good improviser because he responded perfectly.

“No, I told you, you stupid alien, to hold the papers. Are you sure you don’t have it.”

“I just have registry.”

“I am so sorry officer, my driver here left the papers back at the port.”

The stormtrooper took his blaster out of his holster and kept it in his hand, this made the human squirm, but when he realized the blaster wasn’t being pointed at anyone yet he tried to recollect himself. The trooper pointed with his other hand to the back of the transport.

“Check the cargo.”

Another trooper started heading to the back. This did not concern Gida, but the human miss-read the severity.

“That isn’t necessary-“

Gida stepped on his foot to shut him up.

“No, it iz all good.”

Gida could hear the trooper open the back, and than tare open a couple boxes. She was relieved when he called out.

“Sir, it does appear to just be boxes of grain and containers of flour. It’s pilled all the way to the top.”

Her heart sank however to the trooper right outside her windows response.

“Sounds in order, still we are going to have to get a sensor out and scan the vehicle. Lady, I am going to have to ask you to pull your transport to the side for further inspection.”

“Sure, sure.”

A quick prayer to Rytee for strength and guidance than she started backing the transport up. She kept going and going until finally the trooper that had been at her window clearly caught on that something wasn’t right.

“Hey, stop right there, that’s far enough!”

Dropping her fake accent she pulled a blaster hidden in her jacket out and called to the human.

“Hold on to something!”

She put the transport into full forward thrust at the same time as shooting at any trooper in range. The launched forward and crashed right through the troopers on speeder bikes. The human pulled out his weapon and started blasting through the window, maybe he was an actual Rebel spy after all.

She kept going at full speed, trying her best to avoid civilians and there vehicles, but she could hear that there were being blasted at and therefore she could not slow down.

She did a hard turn into the tight alleyways, she knew this made them an easier target, but she had a plan.

She turned right, than left, left, right left, right, right, left. The human spoke out.

“They haven’t turned the last corner yet.”

That was exactly what she wanted to hear. She put the hover thrusters at full power and they shot up into the sky. About 20 stories up there was a large opening on one of the buildings and she flew in and a garage door slammed behind them. Both Gida and the human jumped out of the transport and headed to a window. Looking way down they could see the troopers on the remaining speeder bikes pass the building, they were safe for now.

Gida breathed a sigh of relief, and tossed the human another bag of credits.

“There’s 300 credits in there, the extra is for the trouble. That door right there leads to a staircase that will get you safely out of the building, now go.”

“Wait, what was all that about, what happened to your accent, where are we, what is really the cargo?”

“I’ll answer your questions in order. I wasn’t raised on Ryloth, I was raised in the depths of Coruscant. Where we are is none of your business, and here, let me show you what the cargo is.”

She went to the back of the transport and opened it. There were many boxes and containers going all the way up to the ceiling. She opened one that the trooper hadn’t touched and showed it to the guy. Inside was just grain, nothing more, nothing less.

“It really is just grain.”

“I told you, now thank you for your help, but please get out.”

“Um, ok, ok, I am going.”

He looked around the room one last time and than went out the door she pointed to. Gida had long since rigged that specific door to only be one way, people could leave, but never enter, the human would not be returning today.

Quickly she knocked three times on the wall in front of the transport and it opened up, revealing two older Twi’leks. All three quickly removed all the boxes revealing just behind the second layer there was another wall, this one with a door. Gida unlocked the door and opened it, revealing dozens of Twi’lek woman, a couple children, and two males, all of which skinny, tired, and terrified.

The three Twi’leks started helping them out and giving them blankets and loads of freshly baked bread. As she helped one woman, Gida turned to the older couple.

“You promise they won’t be forced into slavery again? It would be heart breaking to know I put so much effort into freeing them, only to be put on chains again and forced to dance.”

“You have my word, we are going to feed them, help them learn basic, get them fake identification, than help get them to either Naboo, Alderaan, or a safe agricultural world far from any criminal organizations.”

A genuine smile went over Gilda’s face. She touched the scar on her cheek of where her slave explosive used to be before she had carved it out herself and escaped all those years ago. These Twi’leks all had similar scars across there bodies, but because of those scars they were now free. Free to live there lives as all species should. One day, just maybe, Gida would be able to free the very last enslaved Twi’lek. Maybe, someday.

#STAr wars #twi’lek

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kamikazezoomy · 7 years

Text

Cat

People think cats are assholes, but I don’t think they ever stopped to consider that maybe we’re just reacting to the way we get treated in the first place. Nobody goes bad without a reason.

Take me for example, when I was a young mangy stray, I got taken in by a family of people. See what I did there: taken in. Double meaning, that! They really liked me at first. They saw me in an alley, playing with the small one’s bike handle tassels. Thought I was so cute, they did. “Oh, look at her play with the tassels!” they said. “She’s such a cute playful thing, swatting the tassels like they’re alive!” They went and got some tinned tuna out of the pantry and put it on a dish for me. I thought to myself, this is a sweet gig! I find fun things to play with, bring it to these big, weird primates, demonstrate how it’s fun, and they reward me with food and attention!

And it was a sweet gig. The people let me keep my freedom to roam the neighborhood, and they fed me and played with me on a regular basis. And in return, I’d bring them presents, souvenirs from my adventures. The small one, especially, seemed to like these gifts. I’d disappear for a couple of days and come back with butterfly in my mouth, or colorful piece of cloth that I’d found. The small one would pick up the presents I’d leave by the back door and tell me how much she liked them. One time when it was raining, I darted inside to warm up and dry off and before the people caught me, I found a box of my presents under the small one’s bed. The medium one grabbed me with a towel and put me in the garage before I could look too closely, but it was enough: I knew this thing was working out. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. I bring presents and joy, they give food, shelter and attention. What more could I ask? Oh, how about not to have the rug pulled out from under me!

Time passed and the seasons did their thing. The big one and the medium one continued to feed me and play with me, and they seemed to find some enjoyment from the little gifts I brought back from my adventures. The small one was getting bigger, but she still played with me too, though she wasn’t around as much. One afternoon, when I was napping in a patch of sunshine, she told me she had shown some of my presents to a friend who was impressed with the uniqueness of the items, the buttons and stones and ribbons. She confided that there were a few presents I had brought that she hadn’t kept, but she had appreciated them all the same. That frog I had caught? What a shock! She’d had quite a laugh from that one, she had!

She also talked about other presents that the other people had shared with her. I don’t know where they came from, but she said they had a lizard inside. She called it Brennan. She and the big one liked the lizard. It ate crickets and made them chuckle with its antics. I wished I could share their laughter over the lizard, but I think it eventually died and I never got to see what was so funny. They didn’t seem to care that I might like to play with the lizard. I began to wonder if my presents weren’t good enough to earn time to play with the lizard. They weren’t playing with me so much anymore. I would have to step up my game.

On my next adventure I brought back a mouse. I had heard them wondering that I had kept mice away from the house and thought maybe it was a hint. I presented my prize at the door and sat proudly above it until the people came and saw. They laughed kindly and said they liked it, I was a good cat for catching the mouse. They weren’t going to keep it, but they were glad I caught it and could tell why I liked catching mice. Mice must be just the perfect thing for me, a cat, to catch. I must have had such a good time catching it and playing with it! And you know what? I had had a great time catching and playing with that mouse before I brought it to them. It didn’t matter that they weren’t going to keep it, they liked that I had caught it and shown them. Maybe this would get them to play with me again.

But it didn’t, really. I would have to do better. Maybe, since they now preferred lizards, I should bring them one of those! Yes, that would do it! They missed Brennan, so I’d bring them a new lizard, and since I brought it, maybe they’d let me play with it, too! We could all play with the lizard together, and things would go back to the way they were! I set off to find a lizard.

Now, I was smart enough to know that they wouldn’t want a dead lizard. No, I didn’t think they liked dead things too much, and surely Brennan was not dead when they talked and laughed about him. The people liked different things from what I liked, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t want to play with a dead lizard. I’d bring them a live one.

I spent the next couple days stalking through the neighbors’ gardens, chasing the scurrying little dinosaurs through the dying plants, getting themselves ready for winter’s hibernation. After a few attempts, I caught one. (I had had several close calls, but the damn things kept letting their tails fall off, and what was the fun in that?! But I finally got one around the front and middle, so it was still burdened with its glorious tail when I brought it back to the people. As before, I waited by the back door, proud and triumphant, with my souvenir. This lizard was fantastic. I loved it, and I knew they would love it. As I waited by the door, I heard the people coming. They had all been on a walk looking at the trees and talking about how excited they were that soon the leaves would change color. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but they were excited. I was excited too. I ran to meet them, the wriggling lizard gently but firmly held between my teeth.

At first, before I got to them, they smiled, pleased that I was running to meet them; what a happy reunion after their walk and my hunt! They turned and waited for me, watching me prance up like a proud, stupid labrador. They smiled. I smiled. I parked myself in front of the people as they said “What have you found, kitty? What did you bring us?” I triumphantly dropped the lizard (who was terrified, by the way, I guess he didn’t understand that we weren’t planning on killing him. At least, I wasn’t. But I had never figured out what had happened to Brennan, I suppose…) at their feet. The people gaped at me. They looked at me. They looked at the lizard. They blinked. They shrugged. And they walked on into the house.

Unbelievable! What happened? They used to love when I brought them things! And I knew they liked lizards! This one wasn’t even dead! Not even a “good kitty!” The bastards! I’ll admit, I was a little upset over this for a little while. Personally offended. I had put serious thought into this one, and I was sure it would be a great new thing for us to bond over, like the bicycle streamers of old. But nooooo, just a blank expression, a shrug, and nothing! Like they didn’t even know me! The loveable alley cat they had fed and played with for years! I vowed to myself I wouldn’t bring them any more presents.

But I really am a softie. And even with the embers of anger smoldering inside me, I eased my rage a little when I thought I saw the problem. Over the next couple days, I overheard the people talking about the leaves changing color again, and I guess if I looked closely enough, I could tell that they maybe were a slightly different shade of gray, but mostly they smelled different and I could tell that they’d be loosening from the trees and covering the ground soon. Crunchy leaves were good for playing in but bad for stalking. Too noisy. I frowned inwardly for a moment, but was drawn from my reverie as the people started bringing things from inside the house to outside the house. They put some gourds outside and little signs in the yard. And then, lo and behold, skeletons! Maybe that was the problem! They had wanted a dead lizard after all!

I contemplated my next move, my previous vow to neglect the people out of spite forgotten. I should bring them something dead. I had underestimated these people! I didn’t think they liked dead things, since they had thrown out my dead mouse, but they were more ferocious than I thought, marking their territory with the carcasses of what I can only presume were their own kills. I didn’t think I could bring down anything as large as the people themselves, but I could find something nearer my own size. That should impress them. But what specifically? I surveyed the items they were arranging around their territory. People shaped skeletons (too big)... Pumpkins (too heavy)... Oh a picture of me! (obviously I’m not going to sacrifice my own kind for these jerks, though)... A people with a funny pointy head (no, those carry those bristly sticks they swat cats away with)... And then I saw it: a raven! Genius! I’d catch one of those big sinister birds and they could decorate with it! We’d be thick as thieves again!

I staked out the neighborhood and found a flock of ravens to stalk. There were a couple that were on the old side but should do just fine. And, like the lizard before, it took me a couple tries, but, damnit, I caught the one of the bigger ravens. When I was sure it was dead and would present nicely to the people, I dragged it back. It was almost as big as I was! But they would have to love it. They used to always give the best reactions to my surprise presents. (Except for the lizard. I had to forget about that. Just a fluke, it was. Had to be!) And it had been a while since I had brought the lizard, so this present would sure be a surprise. They had always seemed to like the unpredictability best. When would I be back, what would I bring? They never could tell, and the shock would make them laugh. They would love this raven.

And to add to the surprise, I would take it to the front door this time! Usually I brought presents to the back door, but that was too predictable, and this was a surprise! A grand surprise! I sat with my raven on the mat by the door. I could hear the people inside talking about the decorations, about pumpkins and sweaters and leaves. I thought to myself, I’ve done it this time! I’d be proud of this present any time of year, but they’ll particularly like it right now! I grew impatient. I mewed to get their attention. But still they stayed inside. I had suspected that maybe they couldn’t hear as well as I could, so I mewed louder. By the time I was almost hoarse, they opened the door, all bundled up in extra clothes to go somewhere. I realized they hadn’t heard me, but I waved that thought aside. They would still like it.

They didn’t. They wrinkled up their noses. They took a step back. They looked back and forth between me and my raven.

“Oh, kitty! Why’d you do that?” the big one sneered.

“Eurgh! I just don’t get it!” the small one said, recoiling.

“I’m not even going to touch it.” said the middle one, slightly exasperated.

I tried to explain, “I got this for you! I thought you’d like it! You used to always love the things I showed you! This is exactly the kind of thing I’m supposed to do! It even goes with the decorations! You’ve got a fake one over there!” But I guess they never learned to speak cat because they grabbed a bristly stick that people use to shoo away cats and used it to throw my raven in the trash. Then they stepped around me and went on their way.

At first I was heartbroken. I thought they loved me, but they rejected me and my contributions. I couldn’t understand it. What had I done wrong? But that sadness melted away into anger. I had done my best! And I hadn’t done anything wrong! I had continued to uphold my end of the unspoken contract. They’re the ones who changed the deal! It wasn’t my fault! It was theirs! How could they do this to me?!

It all became clear to me: cats aren’t born assholes, we’re made into assholes. My destiny was clear. My future opened wide with the possibilities of malevolence. In the spring I would shred their new plants. In the summer I would knock their fruity beverages off the patio table. In the winter I would wait for an approaching snowstorm and poop on top of their cars and let the snow hide the dirty surprise. In the fall I would hide in the leaves and attack their furry boots as they walked by. I could roll over as if to ask for tummy scratches and then bite their fingers to bits. If I could sneak my way inside on a regular basis, I could do so much more… so much more…

And that’s why this house is covered in a mountain of spiders. It was a big job, but some asshole had to do it.

#cat #short story #fiction #creative writing

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notsdlifter · 6 years

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Kill Hollows: Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO:

THE FACILITATOR

Robert Warrington’s Journal

Token-Oak, Summer of 1996

8888 days before the Syndemic

I didn't see Jacob again for a long time. He spent two years committed at Shadow Mountain. They taught him, according to the grandparents, the “tools to cope.” By the time Jacob got released, he was equipped to “handle the peaks and valleys of life.” Unfortunately, those peaks were too high and those valleys too low.

I moved from Token-Oak to live with an Aunt Gina in the “big city” 300 miles away. Gina was a domineering woman who worked the night shift at a local hospital making beds and mopping floors. She lived in a mobile home nearby the hospital. Even though her house had four wheels and no yard, she kept it meticulously clean. No matter what the excuse, I was not to wake her from sleep. I spent my days tiptoeing around a rickety trailer barely grabbing door handles and plates just trying to survive. The only thing that didn’t wake Gina was reading, so I devoured books on my twin bed at the end of the trailer.

Aunt Gina and I visited Token-Oak on holidays, and even that became rare. The grandparents sent me cards on birthdays, and we had the occasional phone call filled with the truncated dialectic between the elderly and children: “[question]: how was [blank]” . . . “[answer]: it was good.” About once a year, the grandparents would visit. Most of the news I heard about Jacob was cliched mundanities about how he was “finding his way” or “the Lord’s plan for him is different.”

It wasn't until I was in high school that I saw Jacob again for any meaningful stretch. I'd bought my first car and itched to take my first trip. Vegas was out of the question. Even a day trip to the Lake of the Ozarks made my aunt nervous. Eventually, she agreed to let me stay with family. One summer morning, I loaded up my car and headed back.

Token-Oak had been calling me home ever since I left. On the drive back—my teenage nervousness with driving on the highway in full bloom—I thought about all the things I hated about the place: the smallminded bigotry of the town, the anger everyone seemed to wear around their neck like 7,000 scarves, and those fucking oak trees, dying everywhere. The broken fingers of their limbs reaching up into the sky like the tiny fingers of long-dead children. Most of all, though, I thought about that man on the driveway. I’d had dreams about his black gums for years. Waking up sweating, breathing in short puffs to avoid the ammonia stench, I’d curse the thought of Token-Oak.

I had to see it again. I had to.

Jacob was living in a dilapidated home on the south side of town. As Token-Oak’s first neighborhood, Old Town houses were built at the turn of the nineteenth century. Big houses with sprawling lawns, there was a time when well-to-do citizens lived in Old Town. In 1955, the tire plant was built nearby, and a smoky haze blanketed the area. A few years later, an oil drilling company bought a plot of land across the road from the tire plant. All through the night, the clanging of pipes and the smell of burning rubber filled the air. Families left nice cape cods and Tudor homes to flee the nuisance. Over the years, Old Town buildings and homes turned black from the smoke. Rough necks and immigrants working nearby filled the neighborhood.

Jacob bought a home there, an L-shaped two-story in between a flop house for illegals and a home with all the glass broken out and no front door.

I met Jacob one Saturday, and he was raving about his new business on the outskirts of town. The tires of his new pickup thumped as we drove over railroad tracks into a neighborhood with single room cinderblock houses. A few of the houses were ashen-black with burnt roofs and shattered windows. Many others sat abandoned like open sores on a very sick patient. The lawns were dust patches littered with trash and dilapidated automobiles. Front doors of many of the houses sat wide open like amazed faces. The smell of ether singed the air.

A pregnant dog with enlarged teats darted out of a leafless bush. As we rolled through, I felt suspicious and alert and nostalgic at the same time.

At the edge of this neighborhood, there was an aluminum building with a steel door. It was surrounded by a ten-foot razor wire fence with a remote gate. In the back of the building, there was a garage door with two commercial padlocks. White gravel was thickly spread throughout the storefront. On a long, skinny piece of plywood, a sign outside hung under the peak of the roof that read “Buy, Sell, and Trade.” It was an old-style sign, a pure anachronism that should have read “general store” or “saloon.” The remote gate slid open, and Jacob and I pulled inside.

“What is this? A pawnshop?” I said, looking up at the sign.

“Better,” Jacob said, striding to the entrance.

He pulled out a ring of keys and plucked one from a set of two dozen. After inserting the keys in the lock, he looked left and right then leaned to glance around the back of the building. He raised his eyebrows when he saw me watching him “C'est la vie,” he said. When the door opened, he turned off an alarm near the front and hit several switches of lights. There was a large sign at the entrance that read “NO MORE THAN EIGHT PEOPLE IN THE STORE AT A TIME” in block letters.

The store had shelves on every wall. On each, as best I could tell, sat jugs, glass pitchers, rubber tubing, and all kinds of chemicals. The wares displayed were a mixture of garden supply store, indoor pool cleaning agents, and farming chemicals. In the far corner, there were generators of various sizes. In the back, there were two, 2,000-gallon trailers marked with anhydrous ammonia.

There were no prices listed on any item.

As I walked around the store, Jacob stepped behind the counter and pulled up a bar stool. He smiled while nodding his head. He spread his arms and swept the shop with his eyes. After a deep breath, he blew it out like a puff off a $50 cigar. He pulled out from behind the counter a double-barreled shotgun. He broke the gun open, looked in the barrels, confirmed it was loaded then snapped it shut.

“You know what it is now?” Jacob said, standing.

“It’s a store for chemicals?” I said.

“Am I going to have to spell it out for you?”

“He touched a shelf near the door that had smaller bottles and batteries. “You got your lower rung shake and bake stuff here.” He stepped a few feet to the right next to matches and a series of plastic jugs and tubes. “Here is your Nazi Cold/P2P cook.” He stepped back a little further to a steel tank and near the generators. “I can even provide the necessaries for an industrial cook. Top quality shit, too.” And he banged a 500-gallon steel drum that reverberated through the room in a loud wobble.

“You can legally do this?” I said.

“What’s illegal here? Name one thing. Hell, I am even a licensed dealer for the fertilizer. Check the name on the jeans, broseph! That says it all.” He pointed to the back of his jeans at the Levi’s logo.

Jacob told me about his hero: Levi Strauss. During the 1849 California gold rush, hundreds of thousands of miners hit the hills and streams of rural Cali looking to strike it rich. Only a few of them found gold and fewer still made money. Most ended up broke, desperate, and dead in pursuit of the dream. But “Uncle Levi” was a visionary, instead of focusing on the unlikely profits, he outfitted gold rushers with new pants, double stitched with denim fabric. He made a killing, and his empire grew, according to Jacob, by “feeding the frenzy.”

“Sutter’s Mill is now in shambles. But Levi’s has a corporate headquarters on the San Fran pier that ships clothes worldwide.”

“So, you’re outfitting the meth crisis?”

“Nah. I’m a facilitator,” Jacob said as he grabbed the shotgun on the counter and rested it on his hip. Jacob was posturing again, and the message he wanted to convey was clear: he was not to be fucked with. He explained his profit margins and how he tipped the police to “unusual purchases” so they never gave him any trouble. There was a specific dealer, a “skinhead with a bridge piercing and facial tattoo” that bought over half his supplies each month and paid for information about any new cooks.

“Who is this guy?” I asked.

“He is quiet—comes late—after dark. He pulls his truck in the garage and takes a tank of anhydrous and some parts. Pays cash and asks who’s cooking. Some weeks, I make three or four thousand off of him alone.”

“Four thousand… in a week?”

Jacob laughed and slapped the counter.

Jacob walked to the window and pulled the string on a neon open sign. He pressed a button to open the front gate. A razor wire chain link on wheels rattled backward. Jacob walked back to the barstool on the counter and sat down with his shotgun within reach. “Watch this,” he said with a wry smile. In less than ten minutes, the place was filling up with “customers.”

The first person to shuffle in was a woman in her mid-thirties. She had wild, red hair and her freckled skin was pockmarked with sores. The skin on her face sagged in flabby pouches so I could see the outline of her skull. She blinked often and hard. A blue T-shirt that had holes across the belly had a picture of a grey wolf. It took me a while to realize that these were cigarette burns.

Her focus was in the shake and bake section. She picked up a two-liter bottle and a few packages of batteries. She shuffled to the counter, set them down, and stepped back with her eyes on the floor.

“Fifty,” Jacob said, staring a hole through the woman.

She pulled out a fifty, slid it across the counter, and picked up her supplies. She shuffled out the shop without making a sound. There was a rhythm to purchasing materials from the store, and she knew it well. In less than a minute, she disappeared between two houses.

“You see that?” Jacob said, smiling. “That’s respect. First time, she gave me trouble. But I put that shit down quick.”

“Fifty for a bottle and two batteries? That’s crazy.”

“Yeah,” he said through a pride-filled smile. “She’s going back to her house to start a batch in her little bottle. In a few hours, she’ll have a thousand dollars’ worth of “dirty meth.” He said she was a “small-timer,” but a steady customer. “In a way, she’s smart,” he said. “She does just enough to avoid being tracked by the cops or put down by the big timers.”

A few minutes later, the shop filled up with more customers. Several of which looked like they were in high school. They were looking in the “Nazi Cold” area. One of them, a kid with a backward cap and skinny jeans below his waist, picked up a jug and some tubing and brought them to the counter.

He leaned in close to Jacob and said in a suggestive whisper, “So . . . I need heat to break down pseudo or can I do it cold?”

Jacob’s face contorted into a snarl so intense his eyebrows covered half of his eyes. The kid stepped back and exchanged a glance with his friends. This question, it was clear, was not part of the well-established shop etiquette. Jacob reached up and grabbed the materials from the kid’s hands. He set them behind the counter. And walked around and seized the kid by the shoulder.

“Get the fuck out of here. I don’t know what you think, but we don’t do that here.”

I saw then that Jacob had indeed matured into a man. It wasn’t a display of force—I have no doubt he would have hit that kid if necessary—it was the fact he showed calculated restraint in handling the situation.

Jacob watched them all leave. He sat back down and explained that high schoolers just getting into the trade often wandered in the store. He did not allow store customers to discuss the making of meth inside—“no synthesis talk, no exceptions.” Most importantly, he explained, he did not make scenes with the kids. According to Jacob, they had “parents, people that cared.” A corollary to the rule, Jacob treated full-blown addicts differently.

A man walked in wearing a dirty wife-beater and itching at a ragged beard. There was an instant tension when he entered the shop. His eyes were glazed, and his fat tongue bulged in his mouth. He looked fifty but had the bouncy movements of a younger man. The skin on his arms hung in flabby rivulets riddled with acne. He had a tattoo, an Aztec chieftain astride a pyramid of skulls, with bold lettering, the phrase “Aztlán” coiling up one arm to the base of his chin. There were seven black teardrops tattooed on a single cheek. His eyes connected with the two tanks near the back of the store and he shifted in that direction.

Jacob saw the man walk past and stood behind the counter and scowled.

“Those are ag only!” Jacob said loud enough to grab everyone’s attention. The man stopped and looked Jacob up and down. Two tweakers near the door slipped out. Another customer froze and started shaking. I noticed a bulge in the man’s belt at the base of his spine. When he turned to square up with Jacob, I saw it was a gun. Guns tell the truth. You can tell a person’s experience with firearms by the way they walk. This man had been carrying for a long time.

I held my breath as I stepped back from the counter towards the back of the store. My nerves took over, and my knees shook.

The man smiled at Jacob, exposing a row of golden teeth.

“Necessito… fifty gallons,” the man said in Spanish accent.

“Motherfucker, that’s AG-RI-CUL-TUR-AL only.” Jacob’s hands reached under the counter and his fingers wrapped around a shotgun.

The man looked at the tanks and back at Jacob. There was a stillness in the room as the man’s eyes danced over the store. There was a calculus occurring in his head. When he reached the end of his conclusion, he chuckled. I heard confidence in that laugh, a sound that said he had no problems putting blood on the floor.

He reached behind his back while exposing his horsey teeth.

I hoped to make it to the back of the store, but I knocked into a pallet of aluminum cans, sending them crashing to the cement floor.

An electric snap of a tazer vibrated through the room. There was a hollow moan that mimicked the sound of the electric current. The man grabbed his chest while going down to one knee. Jacob jumped the counter with his shotgun, landing with both feet. Raising the butt of the shotgun, Jacob struck the man in the face with the butt of the gun. He caught him clean on the right cheek. The bone-chilling sound of cracking teeth preceded another moan.

The man collapsed backward clutching his face. Jacob pulled the handgun from behind the man’s back and pistol-whipped the man across the forehead. The sound of metal smacking a skull bone produced a dull “thwap.” The man balled up on the floor in exquisite pain. The man’s desperate hands grabbed the handgun and Jacob pinned his wrist to the concrete.

“Let it go!” Jacob commanded. But the man, even on his back, was defiant. He held on. He clenched his teeth and glared up at Jacob, who towered over him with the shotgun.

“Libre Soy!” Jacob said. Jacob aimed the shotgun at the soft part of the man’s throat.

The man spat through cracked lips. Blood ran down his forehead and across his face. He pulled himself up, as far as he could with his wrist still pinned, and screamed, “jódete hijo de puta!”

Jacob took the butt of the shotgun and brought it down on the man’s knuckles. I heard the man’s bones breaking against the floor. The man screamed, and Jacob shoved the barrel of the shotgun several inches down his throat. The gun barrel separated more teeth as it destroyed the man’s tonsils. There was a desperate gasp of air as the man took sharp breaths through his nose. Blood covered his face and neck. Each breath was a hollow gargle. In less than thirty seconds, Jacob had obliterated the man’s face.

Jacob grabbed the pistol off the pavement. He slid it into the pocket of his pants. Jacob released the man’s wrist. The broken fingers of the man’s hand contorted into directions in which they were not meant to turn. Jacob leaned into the butt of the shotgun pressing it into the man’s tonsils and cracked teeth. The tearing flesh caused the man to whistle a muffled howl through the gun barrel. It reminded me of how we used to blow on the bottles of our soda pops as a kid. Jacob held the gun in that position until the man was entirely out of breath. Jacob pulled the shotgun free, the barrel dripped a river of blood and mucus on the floor. Jacob raised the dripping barrel and pointed it directly at the man’s head.

There was a calmness to Jacob, though he held an intense stare. His fingers tightened over the trigger as his lips stretched over his teeth.

The man rolled to his stomach and broke into a run. He hit the steel door of the entrance so hard he tumbled to the ground in the white gravel outside. In his wake, he left a bloody trail through the shop and on the door.

Two customers stood silent, watching Jacob. Their mouths agape in shock.

I could not stop shaking. I crouched in the corner surrounded with aluminum cans. I had come so close to death. One wrong move, one fumble of the finger—hell, an unexpected sneeze—and that could have gone much differently. I forced myself to breathe in through my mouth and out my nose, counting each inhale. One . . . ahhh . . . two . . . ahhh.

Jacob walked over and handed me a spray bottle. “Calm down,” he said and asked me to clean the blood from the floor and on the door. Before I could refuse, he pulled out his cell phone and stepped past me to the back of the shop by the anhydrous tanks. He spoke in a hushed tone into his iPhone.

“The Mexicans are back.”

The voice on the other end asked a question that I heard vaguely mumbled.

“Guy’s wearing a beater—face all smashed to shit—driving a Black Silverado heading south on MLK.” There was a short pause as Jacob looked up front. He mumbled something into the phone and stuffed it back into his pocket.

Jacob took the spray bottle from me and asked me to sit behind the counter. He cleaned up the blood on the floor and the walls quickly. Bleaching it and then soaking it up with a mop. He brought in a leaf blower and had everything dry in a few minutes. He had a system for cleaning up such a mess and the tools at the ready. The store never shut down, even for a minute.

I sat inside watching customers for another two hours, focusing on my breathing. During that time, over fifty people wandered in. The clear majority of them were full-blown addicts and cooks. They overpaid for parts without a word. Throwing down twenties and fifties for things they could buy from Walmart—which Token-Oak did not have—for a tenth of the price.

Jacob didn’t speak again until late afternoon. The customers shuffled silently about. The shop filled up, there were people in front of every shelf, perhaps eight, maybe ten. All were veterans of the trade. One more walked in, and Jacob stood. He refused to let an additional person in the store and kicked one more out.

In that day alone, Jacob netted over $2500. By five, he locked the front door, padlocked the garage, and we drove out of the gate. He had this little grin on his face, a quiet satisfaction as he turned the wheel, guiding his truck back across the railroad tracks. We turned south on MLK.

As we drove over the bridge into Old Town, Jacob looked over to the passenger seat and said, “It’s not for everyone.”

“It’s not for me,” I said, still rattled from the incident. Jacob laughed and whistled to the radio. “You beat the hell out of that guy. Once he sobers up… heals up, he’ll come back.”

Jacob cocked his head to the side and looked over at me with a toothy grin. There was something he understood behind that smile, something he would not share. He turned the wheel and took a deep breath.

“He won’t.”

I thought about asking more questions, but I let it slide. It was one of those feelings people get, perhaps a conversational cue. I didn’t want to know more, so it sat. And we drove down Main Street listening to the radio as we headed towards Jacob’s home.

“Why only eight?”

“Huh?” Jacob said in response. “Eight what?”

“In the shop, why do you cap it at eight people? There is enough room.”

Jacob explained that, for whatever reason, once the shop filled up with over eight tweakers, they displayed unusual behavior. They seemed more standoffish. He felt they were “doglike” and when they “packed up” they felt fearless. So, he kept the number of customers searching the shop small at eight.

Once we arrived at Jacob’s house, we walked upstairs. He said he wanted to “show me something I’d appreciate.” We climbed out a second-story window onto an old shake shingle roof. And we laid on our backs in between two half-dead oak trees looking across the rooftops of Token-Oak. The sun set behind the buildings of downtown. Jacob lit up a joint as he looked out across the quaint tableau of the small town. He took a long draw while watching the fading daylight for a long time. It wasn’t comfortable, not exactly, because there were no comfortable moments with Jacob, but it was a pause in the madness.

Token-Oak, like so many small towns, was built around a courthouse. The building had four columns and a clock tower at its apex. Though not the tallest building in town, it was the most commanding. Blazing white and set upon a slight hill for all to see, the courthouse evoked a Grecian heritage.

In the center of the courthouse square, there was the Token-Oak. The old oak had a way of making people stop in mid-stride to take in its twisting branches. They say that the beautiful old oak on the hill was the reason the first settlers stopped in the town. The pioneers named the village after the tree, viewing its strong trunk and vast branches as emblematic of the town’s inevitable future success; a “token” of good times that were sure to follow. Every town event dating back to the 1860s was held under its branches. For a hundred and fifty years, the “token oak” symbolized manifest destiny and the rugged frontier spirit of its founders.

“It’s dying,” Jacob said. “The Token-Oak. It started dropping leaves last year, and they say they are going to leave it alone.”

We both looked out at the old tree for several minutes.

Set off from the high school, there was a football field with enough stadium lights surrounding it that gave it an ethereal feel. At night, the field glowed as a bubble of brilliant light. It made you understand the fascination so many youths had with the game.

On the outskirts, north of town, there was the meat packing plant surrounded by feedlots of soon-to-be slaughtered cows. Nearly every night, you could hear the wailing of the herd, and if you really listened, you could feel the cattle calling to those headed into the plant. Those yearning bawls were Token-Oak’s background noise

Far in the distance, about two miles northeast, some hills rolled together into each other leaving deep ruts. The view of the setting sun above those hills with the bright clouds just above was spectacular. The townspeople called these deep roots the Hollows. The forest of oaks surrounding Token-Oak was exceptionally thick, but it was a veritable riot of tangled branches along the Hollows. So thick, that some claimed, sunlight couldn’t touch the ground.

The dark lines of the Hollows meandered to a rare bald spot on the tallest hill in the county. People called this bald spot the Hilltop. The Hilltop held a macabre lore that never lost its power to scare. Back in the day, it was rumored that Osage Indians used to come from all over America to die up there. They would sit Indian-style and pile fist-sized rocks in a ring around their legs and let the elements do the rest. They were sick or old or just too sad to live anymore. They would die out in the open, sitting upright enclosed by the rock circles. And the sun and the wind would dry their skin tight, and the skeleton would stay upright in that position for months. The Osage believed the Hilltop was a conduit to the dead. A rally point for the living to meet with deceased loved ones.

There were hundreds of rock circles sitting up there undisturbed. And they weren’t all old-school circles, either. Every year, a teenager, a mother who lost her daughter to a drunk driving accident, a depressed middle-aged man, walked into the dark of the Hollows and up to the Hilltop. They sat down in a circle of rocks and “died.” Anyone who went into those woods, townsfolk said, rarely came back. If they did, they were different, disconnected from their family and friends, they might wander the town for a time, but they eventually disappeared. That fact, more than the weird stories, prevented people from fucking around up there.

The Hollows were full of off-the-grid types and had its share of meth labs and murders. Supposedly, a collective of dealers and ne’er-do-wells ran the Hollows. No one went into the Hollows for a stroll. At the crossing of two dirt roads at the base of the Hollows, someone had been dumping dead town dogs there for as long as I could remember. It was a message, a not-so-subtle reminder to anyone that might wander into the dead oaks. It worked, too. Few went in those woods. Not even the cops. Unless they were going to drag out a body. Even then, they walked in at noon, eight deep, fully loaded.

To Jacob and me, the Hollows held a nervous fascination. It was more legend than story. There were town kids that claimed to have a circle rock from the Hilltop that would whisper to them at night. Every few months, there was a fire lit in the darkness of the Hilltop. I knew a kid with a telescope who claimed to see pagan-style dancing around the fire. Everyone had a story from McClintock’s Tree Farm claiming to see lines of people in the woods. When the wind blew in from the Northeast, which was rare, a haze drifted into town that reeked like ether. There were bits of truth braided with exaggeration, yet the Hollows were real enough. It was the one thing that Jacob was scared to face.

Jacob had been trying to get me to go to the Hilltop since we were little kids. But it held such a mystical fear that we never made the trip.

We sat on the shake shingles of his roof, staring at the Hilltop. As the sun was setting, the ring of the horizon—especially north of town—was dotted with eighty-foot-tall oil rigs. Each one lit up in the shape of a Christmas tree. It gave the little town a bustling feel.

As I looked over at Jacob, he was doing it again. That weird ass thing he did when he knew people were watching him. It was his “deep-thinking-stare” and he was looking right at the Hilltop.

“We should go tonight,” Jacob whispered.

I took a long pull of my beer and shook my head in the negative.

“We should,” he said again with more force, but still no real motivation.

“People don’t come back,” I said in quick response.

“That is bullshit. That lady came back. The teacher with the two twin girls. What was her name? Amanda something.”

“She came back for two weeks. Remember? And she got a motel room and didn’t speak to a single person. Not even her kids. A few people saw her around town. She was all freaked out. Right before she disappeared. And her family moved away a few weeks later.”

“Well, the point is, she came back.”

I laughed at this, and we both looked up at the Hilltop. An October wind was blowing across town. A dust devil spun leaves along the ditches of MLK.

“We could sneak in from the north. That old creek bed that runs through Miller’s pasture. It's low and dry and rounds straight up to the Hilltop. Come on, Bha-aab. It’ll be fun. For old times’ sake?

That nickname. I hadn’t heard it in years and, hearing it now, it brought back all the old insecurities. For the briefest of moments, I had relaxed with Jacob. That silly moniker wrecked any rapport that was building. I realized, looking at Jacob, that he was waiting for the right moment to insert the jab. It was the first of many insults, I was sure. I let it pass.

Jacob took a quick pull of his beer and emptied the longneck. He threw it off his roof in a twisting parabola over the reaching fingers of the dead oaks. The bottle hit the street below and shattered.

Old Town was full of older homes with big porches. Jacob’s immediate neighbor had couches in the front yard. Another had two bumper pull campers sitting on blocks with an extension cord running to each. The house across the street had a hole in a wall the exact size of a car. It was the kind of neighborhood where breaking glass bottles was an everyday occurrence.

“You think that’s true? You think a person can talk to the dead?” he said, looking at me with squinted eyes.

I didn’t answer. We both stared out across Token-Oak. Out through the dead branches of the trees near his house. I heard the bawling of the cattle as they shuffled into the slaughterhouse plant. Faint cries floated on the wind. Just to the North, I saw roughnecks on oil rigs twisting pipe thousands of feet down into the earth. Each pipe spinning into the liquefied remains of ancient life buried beneath eons of geology.

It was a Friday night, a half mile away the football stadium was glowing. There was a helmet crack, and Jacob and I listened to the roar of the crowd. From such a distance, it sounded like an exasperated moan that twisted into the night.

Courthouse square was bathed in brilliant moonlight. A twisting string of low-lying clouds floated above. It was a beautiful side view of the town. From the third story of Jacob’s roof, you could see about everything: the Elks Lodge, McGuillicuddy Mortuary, Zion Lutheran Church, and the open ground around the massive white columns of the courthouse. You could even see the alleys between the principal streets of the town.

I took a long pull on my beer. It was my fifth, and I felt a little loose. So, I threw it in the same spinning parabola that Jacob had. I tossed it a little too hard, and a rictus of alley cats erupted as the glass of my longneck shattered below. Jacob looked at me in a broad smile, though his lips never parted. He was well past five beers, and it showed.

Suddenly, he was up on his elbows looking out at the courthouse square. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth opened in a perfect circle. He raised his index finger to point out. “Watch this,” he said.

There were people on every corner of the courthouse square. All of them standing in front of back alleys. The sun dipped below the horizon, and I didn’t remember seeing so many people moments before. But I didn’t know. I was sixteen and drinking longnecks on a roof. It wasn’t my best moment for memory.

“Who are those people?” I said, looking at Jacob. Token-Oak had several dozen town drunks that wobbled around at night. Shuffling between two dive bars on opposite sides of the courthouse like seasonal birds. They hit the Elks for happy hour, the Moose Bar for quarter beers, and then migrated to McSmitty’s Bar (a local dive named for its owner, so the drunks called it McShitty’s bar) for closing time. It wasn’t uncommon to see a few drunks slouching about. But looking out at the square that night, there were at least two dozen. All of them stumbling around.

“Tweakers,” Jacob said, “Now watch.”

Jacob had gone from leaning on his elbows to sitting, to a full stand as he looked out on the town. He was moving his index finger and mouthing numbers with a Shiner Bock still in one hand.

“Twenty-nine,” he said without looking at me. “And there is another one by McGuillicuddy’s and the cemetery, so thirty.”

“Twenty-nine?”

“Thirty,” Jacob said, correcting me. “. . . wait for it . . .”

They were all moving in various directions, at least it seemed that way at first, but as I stared out, I saw something unique. All thirty took a step at the same time, in a weird shimmy. They moved a quarter block in a few seconds, each of them with curled hands and their necks contorted way to the left. We were too far away, but I swore it looked like their teeth were shut, yet their lips curled back. They walked a few more gamboling steps. Then, as if on a cue, all thirty did the same thing again.

“Whoa . . .” I said raising to a stand, “that is fucking spooky.”

In a few seconds, most were blocked by our vantage point and disappeared behind buildings. In a few more, they were all gone, as quickly as they came.

He only nodded. “This place is full of surprises.”

And he sat and glared out at the square for at least an hour. A few groups of people wandered underneath the Token-Oak in the square. There was a rowdy group of town kids smashing pumpkins. We watched the cops give a half dozen sobriety test to patrons leaving the Elks. But the tweakers didn’t come back. Not that night, at least.

#Kill Hollows

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