#but walking her and a few of her belongings over the new windowless office in a basement

[isfjmel-phleg]

(

[terreisa]

The Perfect Gift

Emma Swan has gotten away with trading out her pick for Secret Santa for three years. When she’s finally forced to keep the first name she pulls from the Santa hat it happens to be Killian Jones, the one person in the office that irritates her to no end.  She makes it her mission to find him a perfect gift and ends up discovering there’s more to the office Casanova than she’d ever suspected.

AO3

~*~CS~*~

“You’ve gotta be shitting me.  Let me pick again!”

Emma Swan groaned as her friend and co-worker Mary Margaret twisted at the waist so the Santa hat in her hands was well out of her reach.

“No.  I’ve let you, and only you by the way, re-pick for the past three years,” Mary Margaret said pointedly, raising her brow at her. “It’s not fair to the others who actually follow the rules of Secret Santa.”

“Rules you came up with,” Emma grumbled, scowling down at the name on the slip of paper in her hands.

“It can’t be that bad-” Mary Margaret sighed, “Zelena was transferred and Walsh was fired so there’s really no one truly terrible participating this year.”

“I think I’d prefer them over the one I did get.  Forget the fact that I can’t stand him, I don’t know what the hell to get him!”

“Who-” Mary Margaret began before her eyes widened and a pleased smile unfurled on her face, “You know exactly what he wants and it won’t even cost you twenty-five dollars.”

“Mary Margaret!” Emma hissed, embarrassed and shocked that her normally prim and proper friend went straight for an innuendo. “Gross.”

“Oh, come on, it’s no secret that Killian has had a crush on you from the moment he stepped foot in this office.”

Emma rolled her eyes at the familiar and franky ridiculous refrain.  Killian Jones was a well known film critic from England that had been hired two years before in an effort by the higher ups to expand their newspaper’s readership.  When he had walked in on his first day, with artfully tousled inky black hair, ocean blue eyes glittering with excitement, and tailored clothes that showed off a trim and toned physique, nearly every single woman in the office had attempted to help him set up his desk.  Emma, on the other hand, had appreciated the new eye candy and then returned her attention to the article she had been working on at the time.

She figured that it was her indifference that had Killian asking her later that day if she’d wanted to get coffee with him.  Of course, after watching him flirt and banter with all the helpful women in the office all morning she’d given him a withering look and a resounding no.  She’d been burned badly before by interoffice dating and she wasn’t looking for a repeat performance, let alone dealing with a no shame lothario.  He had merely given her a puzzled smile and wished her a good day before retreating to his desk. What followed was a year of watching him pull the same tricks with every available woman in the building while still brushing him off every few weeks.  As glad as she was that she hadn’t fallen for any of his pretenses there was an annoying stab of something in her gut whenever he walked someone new out the door with his hand low on their back.

Things had only taken a turn for the worse when Emma had been promoted to a full time writing position in the entertainment section.  While she’d been vying for a byline in that section for years she almost turned it down knowing she’d have to work almost daily near the man that had become the bane of her existence.  There had been an intervention from Mary Margaret, her husband David, and her roommate Belle to convince her to take the position. Even her own boss Tink, editor of the home and garden section, had had to sit her down and talk sense into her.  She’d emerged from her office an hour later, cheeks burning with the praise Tink had heaped on her and ears ringing with the passionate arguments she’d made in her favor. By the end of the week she’d moved her things to a desk across the office, one that was unfortunately situated next to Killian’s.

From the moment she’d unpacked her admittedly meager personal belongings Killian had seemed to take it upon himself to get on her last nerve.  He was constantly leaning over to ask her inane questions about her day or bore her with random bits of trivia he collected like a magpie with shiny things.  Though, she had to admit, it broke up the monotony of trying to think of a new way to write a review for a show that had jumped the shark three seasons before.  She also couldn’t find it in her to really complain about the perfectly made cup of coffee that was always annoyingly waiting for her when she was running late, which happened to be almost every day.  What really got on her nerves, however, was that his movie reviews were insightful, hilarious, respectful even when he hated the movie, and aligned with her own opinions so perfectly that she’d wondered more than once if he could read her mind.

Of course, everyone in the office saw all of that as tantamount to Killian having feelings for her.  Worst of all they saw her laughing at something he said, or drinking the coffee he made, hell even talking civilly with him as her returning those non-existent feelings. When it was really that she just found it easier to go along with his ridiculousness than to wear herself out actively loathing him.  She truly couldn’t stand him but no one else seemed to believe her.

“It’s not a crush,” she refuted though there was no heat behind it because she knew Mary Margaret wouldn’t believe her.

“Sure, uh-huh,” Mary Margaret singsonged with a grin.  She walked backwards away from her, still grinning, “Twenty-five dollars and we’re doing the exchange at the holiday party.  Good luck!”

Emma stuck her tongue out at Mary Margaret as she pivoted on her heel and made her way to the advice column's and editorial’s small cluster of desks.  She sighed, slightly glad she’d been cornered in the breakroom instead of at her desk where Killian would have definitely overheard something she didn’t need him to.  Then again she wouldn’t have had to once again brush of Mary Margaret’s ridiculous ideas of crushes and might have even stood a chance at getting to repick a name. With a groan of frustration she grabbed her now lukewarm mug of coffee and a random loose granola bar and headed back to her own desk, already mulling over and rejecting ideas for what to get Killian.

Twenty minutes and a thorough search of Killian’s almost too neat desk later and she was still at a loss.  She was fiddling with a paperclip to open the locked bottom drawer but knew she had already pushed her luck, time wise.  Killian and Robin, the editor of the sports section, always went out for lunch on Wednesdays and were always back in the office by ten till one.  Glancing at her watch she saw she had less than five minutes to jimmy the lock, dig through the drawer’s contents, get everything back in order, and be sitting innocently back at her desk.  Gritting her teeth in frustration she stood, tossing the half straightened paperclip onto her desk as she looked over the personal effects on his desk once more.

There were a couple framed photos: one was of him and another dark haired, blue eyed man, brother she figured from the resemblance; another was of a woman in soft focus with dark auburn hair that was curled to eighties perfection, his mother probably though Emma could only guess why he chose that photo to put up; the third and final frame wasn’t a photo but his review for the movie The Village, clipped from a newspaper and yellowed with age.  Aside from the frames there were only a few knick knacks: a small replica ship’s compass, a Rubick’s cube she’d seen him fiddle with when he was on the phone or stuck on wording for an article, and a potted plant she didn’t know the name of that he had somehow kept alive in their nearly windowless office. The only thing that seemed to give her any real insight was a thick, well worn paperback. She didn’t recognize the author’s name but the title rang a bell and having no other leads she resigned herself to jotting both down on a Post-It as a starting point.

“Interested in the works of Edwin Stephens?”

Emma jumped at the sound of Killian’s voice next to her.  She breathed a sigh of relief that she’d sat at her own desk to write the name down before realizing she had to come up with a reason for doing it.

“Uh, looking for present ideas-” she winced at her own stupidity, rushing on hoping he wouldn’t catch on to her, “For David.  Mary Margaret’s husband? He’s a big reader. Of everything. Hard to get him something he hasn’t read yet, you know? Thought I’d check if he had any of this Stephens guy’s books the next time I go over for dinner.”

Killian chuckled, settling into his chair, “He might, Stephens isn’t particularly popular but now that his work is finally getting the quality adaptations it deserves more people are starting to read his books.”

“So he’s your favorite author then?” She teased, delighting in the tips of his ears going pink.

“Since I was twelve and a neighbor let me borrow Absolute Bearing.  I was a bit young to be reading it but I loved it. Didn’t actually give it back to the neighbor, now that I think about it,” he hummed thoughtfully before shrugging and picking up the book on his desk. “If Mary Margaret’s husband doesn’t have Siege Perilous then it’s the one to get.  It’s considered to be one of Stephens’ best, and not only by me I’ll have you know. It’s also going to be a limited series on HBO next fall.”

“Really?  ‘Cause it kinda looks like you don’t like it at all,” she deadpanned, eyeing the well bent spine and slight discoloration of the pages.

He rolled his eyes at her, “Ha, bloody, ha, Swan.  I’ll have you know this is the third copy I’ve had to buy since I keep rereading it until it falls apart in my hands.”

Surprised by his utter sincerity she burst into laughter.  He grinned widely at her, absently thumbing at the pages of the book.  As her chuckles subsided she realized that she’d never actually initiated a conversation with Killian, let alone one where she joked around with him.  Suddenly feeling awkward she dropped her gaze to the note she’d written herself and tried to ignore the way she saw his shoulders slump out of the corner of her eye.

“Siege Perilous,” she muttered, carefully adding the title to her note just so she’d have something to do.  She peeled off the Post-It and stuck it to her monitor, “Got it.”

“He should enjoy it-” she looked at him, confused for a moment until he clarified, “David.  Don’t let the nautical themes put you off.”

“Right, thanks.”

She gave him a fleeting smile before turning back to her desk and made a show of throwing herself into her work.  Nevermind that she’d already finished her assignment for the week. Cursing to herself she opened a new document and began typing nonsense until the feeling of him watching her subsided.  She was highly annoyed when at the end of the day that all she’d accomplished was a page full of ridiculous phrases and the tiniest sliver of insight into the man she had to buy a gift for.

A week later she was no closer to narrowing down from over a dozen options.  She knew she was way overthinking it and that if she asked Mary Margaret or Robin she’d have a gift purchased by the end of the day.  Yet, somehow, she felt like that was cheating. It had become a challenge almost, the urge to crack the code to get her sworn enemy the perfect gift.  Though, since their conversation about Edwin Stephens she’d let her guard down and had a few more surprising talks with Killian about the things they liked to do on their downtime.  Which is how Emma found herself arguing with him over the best place to get pizza.

“Are you kidding?  Their crust is garbage!  The only good thing about that place is the sauce.”

“The sauce makes the pie, love,” he said vehemently. “Just because you prefer a paper thin crust doesn’t mean that every other option should automatically be disqualified in your book.”

She rolled her eyes, “Fine, I’ll give you that, I guess, but they don’t even deliver.  Not even Postmates! How are they still in business when they’re missing out on all those potential customers?”

“Ah, so the truth emerges!” Killian said smugly as he leaned forward and narrowed his eyes at her, “You probably don’t venture to eat anywhere that doesn’t have the option of showing up at your front door.  Think of all the delicacies you’re missing out on, Swan!”

“I eat at places that don’t deliver.  There’s a great Dominican place that’s a whole twenty minutes away from my apartment and I go there at least three times a month,” she shot back before realizing she’d revealed a part of her life she hadn’t meant to.  She scrambled to keep him from thinking too deeply over it, “Besides you can’t say that Angelo’s is the best when you haven’t even tried Pizza on Fourth.”

“With such an uninspired name how can their fare be any good?” He scoffed.  Then he hesitated, looking at her consideringly, “How about we put it to a test?”

“Meaning?” She asked warily.

“Do you have plans for lunch or vehement standards about eating the same thing twice in a day?” He asked, matching her wariness.

She blinked at him, “You want to see whose pizza place is better?”

“It’s the only way to know for sure,” he answered seriously, though she could see the corner of his mouth twitching into a smile.

“For scientific purposes or bragging rights?”

“Bragging rights, of course,” he said with a wink.

Ignoring the small flutter in her stomach she pretended to mull it over, “Will there be a medal?  A trophy perhaps?”

“How about a free lunch?”

“Deal!”

He chuckled, “Since Angelo’s is closer shall we get Pizza on Fourth delivered for lunch, then we can walk over to Angelo’s after work?”

“Sounds good to me,” she said happily, already opening the app to order. “Should we go with the classic pepperoni at both to keep it fair?”

“I like the way you think, love, and add on a round of garlic knots to really spice up the competition.  Just let me know when you need my card.”

“Uh-huh,” she murmured, busy tapping away at the ordering options.

Later that night, with a lot of hedging and dragging her feet she admitted that Angelo’s was the better pizza.  What she couldn’t seem to admit, even to herself, was that she’d had fun hanging out with Killian outside of work.  She also toyed with and then dismissed the idea of getting him a giftcard to Pizza on Fourth just for the petty satisfaction.

Four days before Christmas and two before the company party Emma found herself wearily scrolling through article after article on Buzzfeed for any kind of inspiration for a gift.  She felt as though she’d had a hundred ideas but none of them felt right. It didn’t help that every time her and Killian hung out that a dozen new options for a gift presented themselves.

“I don’t think he’d want a Tub Shroom, no matter how many people have given it five stars on Amazon.”

Emma groaned at the sound of Mary Margaret’s voice, dropping her forehead to her desk.  She felt a gentle commiserating pat on her shoulder and rolled her head to look up at her.

“He’s impossible to shop for,” she whined. “Is it too late to switch with someone?”

“He is not and yes it is,” Mary Margaret tsked. “Unlike you everyone else doesn’t wait until the last minute to buy something.”

“It’s not the last minute.  I still have two days,” she grumbled, pushing herself up only to slump down in her chair.

Mary Margaret frowned, “Which is not enough time for Amazon to send something.  You’re making this harder than it has to be, especially if you hate the guy.”

“I don’t hate him,” she mumbled, barely above a whisper.

“What?”

“I said-” she sighed and prepared herself for a torrent of ‘I told you so’s’ and squeals, “I don’t hate him.  He’s actually a good guy.”

Mary Margaret smiled widely but surprised Emma by remaining calm, “Then it should be even easier to find something.  Right?”

“That’s just it!” She huffed, throwing her hands up in frustration. “There’s too many options now that I’ve actually gotten to know him.  I should just buy him the best bottle of rum twenty-five bucks can buy and be done with it.”

“Then why don’t you do that?” Mary Margaret asked puzzled, though her smile was still too wide for Emma’s liking.

“It’s so…” she cast about for the right word and nearly let out a frustrated growl when none came to her. “Generic, boring, thoughtless?  I don’t know but I can do better.”

Mary Margaret laughed, “It’s not a competition.  He’ll appreciate whatever you get him. Probably even more so now that you’re friends.”

Emma opened her mouth to refute the claim but found that she couldn’t.  Since their impromptu pizza competition they’d gone to several more restaurants under the guise of deciding who had the better taste.  Even more than that they’d also gone out for after work drinks a few times, talking about nothing and everything, and once she’d gone with him to a critics screening of a movie she’d been looking forward to seeing for months.  That he’d been just as excited to see it and they’d spent hours dissecting it afterward at a twenty-four hour diner down the street from the theater only drove home the fact that he was, for lack of a better term, her friend. She tried to push down the sudden feeling of disappointment she felt at that.

“Ooo, Siege Perilous?  Isn’t that the set you get to visit next month?”

Mary Margaret’s voice dragged her back to the discussion at hand.  She nodded absently, “Yeah, they start filming after the holidays and it’s the only time they’re allowing reporters on set.”

“Lucky, David wouldn’t let me read anything else until I gave it a chance.  I was annoyed at first but it’s really good. You should read it too, get ready for that set visit.”

“I should,” she said slowly, staring thoughtfully at the Post-It she hadn’t thought about since she’d stuck it to her monitor.  An idea started to form in her mind and with it a realization. She looked up at Mary Margaret, “It’s totally a crush isn’t it?”

Mary Margaret’s smile somehow grew wider, “For him?  Or for you?”

Emma surprised them both by smiling herself, “Is it okay if I skip out on our lunch?  I’ll make it up to you.”

“Totally fine,” Mary Margaret said, waving her off. “I think I’ll go out to eat with Tink, she owes me.”

She barely paid attention as Mary Margaret left, already distracted by figuring out what she needed to do and how little time she had to do it.

Two days later, when Emma arrived at the restaurant that was hosting their company party it was already in full swing.  She snuck Killian’s present onto the table that held the other gifts before weaving through her coworkers to get to the bar.  When she got there she was pleased to see Killian already there, chatting with the bartender.

“Gonna buy me a drink, Jones?” she asked as she sidled up next to him and grinned.

“It’s an open bar, Swan, so I’d be delighted to,” he said with a grin of his own.  Then his eyes widened and she watched his adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, “You look-”

“I know,” she said demurely, pleased that her blush pink dress had made the impression she was going for.  She turned to the bartender and ordered a glass of wine, conscious of his gaze lingering on her. When she was handed her glass she turned back to see him still staring at her, “I know I probably already asked this but you’re not flying home for Christmas?”

“Uh, no-” he blinked, shaking his head slightly.  It seemed to clear his thoughts and he gave her a shrug, “Never had a place there to truly call home if I’m honest.  I tend to fly wherever my brother Liam is stationed at the time but seeing as he’s doing the whole first holiday with his girlfriend and her parents I figured I’d stick it out here this year.  It’ll just be me and a yet undecided Netflix marathon to celebrate. What about you, off to visit your own family tomorrow?”

“Oh, I, uh,” she stuttered, caught off guard by the suspicion that his past seemed to mirror hers.  She took a sip of wine to fortify herself, “I don’t have a, uh, family. I usually sleep in and then watch Die Hard before going to Mary Margaret’s house for the day.  Nothing too exciting.”

She took another sip of wine to cover what was sure to be an awkward moment between them.  Killian was watching her with a look she couldn’t understand, not saying a word. Finally after a few seconds that felt like lifetimes she glared back.

“What?”

“Sorry, love,” he said sheepishly, a blush blooming in his cheeks. “It’s just… sometimes you’re quite the open book but then you’ll do or say something that surprises me.  I never would have guessed- well, I knew there was something but I didn’t want to pry and it didn’t occur to me-”

“Killian-” she interrupted, grabbing his arm to stop his rambling. “It’s okay, you can say ‘orphan’.  It’s not like you’re breaking a story I don’t already know.”

He let out a tense laugh, nervously scratching behind his ear, “Perhaps I didn’t want to say it because I loathe the moniker myself.  Schoolyard taunts will do that to a lad.”

Her breath caught in her throat.  She had gone through most of her life not having much in common with people because of how she had grown up without parents or even a stable home.  It was almost ironic that she had been so determined to dislike Killian when he had more in common with her than she ever could have expected. A hiccuping laugh escaped her as she realized just how much she had grown to like him over the weeks since she’d drawn his name from Mary Margaret’s Santa hat.

“I propose a toast,” she said with a wide grin, lifting her glass, “To a couple of orphans not letting a little thing like that get us down.”

Killian gave her a soft smile, raising his glass to hers and tapping them together lightly, “To a couple of orphans.”

They drank, though neither of them took their eyes off of each other.  Emma felt the warmth from the wine spreading down to her toes, though she could have also blamed the look in Killian’s eyes with having something to do with it.  Just as she was about to comment on it and possibly ruining whatever it was that was growing between them the music that had been playing in the background cut out and Mary Margaret was calling for their attention.

“Merry Christmas everybody!” She chirped merrily.  David was at her side with two wrapped presents in his hands, “It’s time to hand out the Secret Santa gifts so when you hear your name come on up!”

Emma felt a thrill of anticipation zip across her stomach.  She turned towards Killian with what she hoped was a calm demeanor only to find that he was still looking at her with a gentle smile, not even paying attention to the names Mary Margaret was calling out.

“Not looking forward to your gift?” She prodded, worried that he’d already figured out that she was his Secret Santa.

“Oh, I’ve never signed up,” he said, giving a fleeting glance towards Mary Margaret before looking back at her. “The past couple years I was flying to England and missing this lovely party.  By the time I had my plans settled for this year it was far too late to sign up.”

“Emma Swan.”

Emma stared at him uncomprehendingly.  She knew she had pulled his name, for one it wasn’t like anyone else in their office had the name Killian even though Jones was pretty common and for another she’d stared at the slip of paper for at least an hour when she’d gotten home the night she’d drawn it, willing it to be any name other than his.  The only logical explanation was that he’d signed up and forgotten.

“Emma Swan?”

Killian’s gaze darted away and then back to her, “Er, Swan?”

“You forgot,” she blurted out. “You signed up and forgot.  Right?”

“No,” he said slowly. “You know how tenacious Mary Margaret is about making sure everyone remembers their gift.  I’ve never done it and still know what a terror she can be.”

With a dawning horror she realized exactly how much of a terror Mary Margaret could be.

“Has anyone seen Emma?”

Killian tilted his head towards the front of the room, “I believe you’ve been summoned for your own gift, love.”

“Yep,” she ground out, narrowing her gaze at Mary Margaret who was scanning the crowd for her.  With extreme care she set down her wine glass, afraid she would shatter it in her anger, “Just going to go get my gift now.”

Wasting no time she stormed to the front of the room, pushing past everyone and ignoring their grumbles in her wake.  Mary Margaret beamed when she caught sight of her but it quickly turned sheepish as Emma got closer. By the time Emma made it to her she was already whispering a rushed explanation.

“-sorry but you would barely give him the time of day and he’s really a great guy.  I figured if you had to get him a gift you’d get to know him and see that he’s not actually terrible.  And it worked! You’re friends now.”

Emma felt her anger leave her in a rush at Mary Margaret’s sincerity and the ridiculous lengths she’d gone to.  It helped that she was right, even though Emma would never admit it to her.

“What if I had just bought him a Starbucks gift card and been done with it?” She asked with feigned annoyance, wanting to know just how invested Mary Margaret was in her scheme.

Mary Magaret scoffed, “I knew you wouldn’t do that.  You complained about him too much to get him something that boring.  I knew you’d use your gift as a way to prove something.”

She gaped at her, surprised by the confidence she’d had in her plan.  Then a thought occurred to her, “You wouldn’t let me repick because every name in that hat was his wasn’t it?”

“Yep,” Mary Margaret grinned. “And don’t worry about someone else getting left out.  I kept your name out of the main draw to keep things even.”

“Then how do I have a present?” She asked, bewildered.

“Santa works in mysterious ways,” Mary Margaret said cryptically, still grinning like a fool.  She plucked a green bag, its handles tied together with a length of red ribbon, from the table, “Here you go.”

Emma took it in one hand and held out the other, “Can I at least give Killian his gift myself?  I don’t want him making a big deal about how he didn’t sign up and embarrassing us both.”

“Can’t-” Mary Margaret frowned dramatically, though her eyes were alight with mischief, “I sent David to give it to him when I first called your name.”

Sure enough, when Emma looked back at Killian he was trying to keep David from handing him the present Emma had brought.  Giving Mary Margaret a withering look she hightailed it back to the bar before anyone else’s attention was grabbed by the escalating argument between the two men.  She arrived as David pushed the wrapped box into Killian’s hands.

“Just take the present, man.  It’s got your name on it so it has to be yours.”

“And I’m telling you there’s a mistake, mate,” Killian bit out, refusing to hold onto the box. “I didn’t participate in Secret Santa.”

“I got it David,” she broke in, grabbing the gift and stepping between them. “Tell Mary Margaret she still owes me answers.”

David looked at her apologetically, “I really tried to talk her out of it.”

“And yet you’re still her accomplice,” she pointed out.  David gave her the same sheepish grin his wife had and she shook her head at him, “You’re both getting coal for Christmas.”

“Bah humbug,” David said cheerfully before giving her a hug and disappearing in the crowd.

“So that charming gentleman is Mary Margaret’s husband?” Killian intoned bemused behind her.

“The one and only,” she said, thinking about how she could cheerfully strangle the couple with tinsel for all their scheming.  She placed both his and her presents on the bar and faced him, “They’ve been together since their freshman year of college and are really bad influences on each other.  I sometimes have to remind myself that David’s a cop when he gets caught up in one of Mary Margaret’s grand plans.”

Killian’s eyes went wide, “Oh?  And what was her grand plan tonight?”

“Well, it looks like you getting a present would be part of it,” she hedged, not ready for him to hear Mary Margaret’s true motivation.

“So it would seem,” he said thoughtfully, tracing the gift tag on his present with his finger.  Then he frowned and pushed her gift towards her, “You should do the honors first, love, since you were actually expecting a gift.”

“Yeah?” She asked, relieved that she could put off an explanation for a few more minutes and highly curious what Mary Margaret’s Santa comment meant.

Killian nodded and said softly, “Go ahead, Swan.”

The tag attached to the ribbon gave her no clues since it was a square of paper with her name printed on it and aside from the ribbon holding the bag closed there were no other adornments.  The ribbon was tied in a simple bow and with a gentle tug it came undone. When she pulled out her gift she couldn’t help but laugh at the copy of Siege Perilous in her hand.

“Mary Margaret was in a tither in the breakroom last week,” Killian murmured, keeping his gaze on the book when she looked up at him, “She was going on about how the person who had picked your name had quit unexpectedly and that she needed to find someone to replace them.  I volunteered, of course.”

“Of course?” She breathed.

He gave her a lopsided smile, “It’s no secret that I quite fancy you when you’re not yelling at me.”

She felt the warmth of a blush in her cheeks and dropped her gaze to the book, running her hand over the cover, “Why get me this, though?”

“You were so skittish when we first talked about it and when you kept the note on your monitor I realized you never intended it as a gift for David.  I overheard you telling Mary Margaret that you would be visiting the set of the new show but felt guilty about never having read the book.  It seemed to me that getting you the book was rather fitting on all accounts.”

Looking back up at him she felt a swooping in her stomach as her eyes met his.  He was still smiling at her but she could sense his nervousness at her reaction to his gift and his confession in the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot and scratched behind his ear.  It was his nervousness that gave her the courage she needed to lay her own feelings on the line.

“It’s your turn to open your present,” she stated, nudging the wrapped box with her new book.

He looked askance at it, “It has to be a mistake and I don’t want to open a gift intended for someone else.”

“It’s part of Mary Margaret’s plan, remember?  So you should open it,” she encouraged.

“Fine,” Killian sighed, picking up the wrapped box, “But I’d feel better about it if I knew what her plan was.  Though you seem to have it all figured out.”

Emma kept quiet wanting to explain everything once he’d opened his gift.  He waited for a moment, watching her, before shaking his head and focusing on picking at the tape holding the wrapping paper together.  She bit her tongue at his fastidiousness, glad that she hadn’t used more than a few pieces of tape for the whole thing. Finally he pulled the paper off, without a single tear, and opened the box only to go absolutely still as he stared down at the present inside.  Glancing up at her with a perplexed look he reached into the box and pulled out the hardback copy of Siege Perilous she’d luckily found at the small bookstore near their office.

“I know the one you have now probably has a few read throughs left before it completely falls apart but I figured you’d want a pristine copy for next month.”

“You bought me-” his gaze darted from hers to the book and back, his confusion easy to see, “Why would you- no, wait, what’s happening next month?”

“Mary Margaret thought that I wasn’t giving you a fair chance, which I wasn’t,” she started, ignoring his last question for the moment, knowing that she had to explain the whys first. “It was mostly me judging you off of my first impression of you and what I’d seen when you first got hired and not by actually taking the time to know you.”

“What was your impression of me, Swan?  It must have been not very favorable for you to not have warmed up to me until recently.”

"I, uh,-" she felt herself flush and she only grew warmer in her embarrassment when he noticed and leaned closer.  Rolling her eyes she huffed, "To be fair you flirt with everyone and there were a lot of women you left the office with when you first got hired."

"Were you… were you jealous, Swan?" He asked incredulously.

“No, not jealous.” she contested hotly. “I thought you were making the rounds and I’d been cheated on by my last boyfriend with our former editor.  I didn’t need to be a notch in someone else’s belt and I really didn’t want to be the focus of office drama again.”

Killian’s demeanor fell but she saw no pity in his gaze, “Oh, Swan, I didn’t know.”

“It is what it is,” she said with a shrug, “The gossip had finally stopped by the time you were hired and I wasn’t going to bring it all back up again with someone I thought was the same type of guy.  Though I know now I was completely wrong about that.”

“You truly didn't know, Emma?” He asked so softly she could barely hear him over the music that had started back up.

“Know what?”

He grabbed her hand, running his thumb over her knuckles as he held her gaze, soft and sincere, “You saw me chatting and going places with those women because I didn’t know a soul when I first moved here.  I never led them on or asked for anything more than camaraderie while I got settled because it’s only ever been you.

"I first saw you by chance, you walked by in the background in my last Skype interview and I was smitten.  Of course when I was hired and you rebuffed me while others were clamoring for my attention I was intrigued.  Then we became desk neighbors and I got to know you, one small piece at a time, and I fell. For you. And then with these past few weeks of going for meals and drinks, talking for hours with you I began to think, even hope, that perhaps you might be beginning to feel the same.”

As much as she’d had an idea that he liked her, as well as been told numerous times by multiple people, hearing him say it out loud was like hearing it for the first time.  In a way it was because there was a small part of her that couldn’t believe it wasn’t another conjecture of the office rumor mill. She felt her cheeks begin to ache and realized she had been grinning at him like a fool but had yet to address how she actually felt about him.

“I was really annoyed when I picked your name-” Killian winced and tried to take his hand from hers but she held fast, “and Mary Margaret wouldn’t let me switch and now I know it’s because she rigged it so it was only your name in the hat.  So I was stuck with having to get you a present and practically knowing nothing about you. When we talked about Stephens I realized that it was the first time we’d had a whole conversation. Then we just kept talking and you were nothing like I’d believed you were and I liked spending time with you.  Really liked spending time with you.

“The thing was I kept telling myself that I was only hanging out with you because I needed to figure out what gift to get you and it was impossible.  I wanted to get you a perfect gift, something that was thoughtful and that you’d really appreciate. When I complained to Mary Margaret about it I realized why I wanted my gift to be perfect.”

“And why was that, love?” He asked hopefully.

“Because I fell,” she said simply. “For You.”

Killian beamed at her before swooping down to capture her lips in a surprisingly gentle kiss.  She sighed into him, reveling in the warmth of him encompassing her as his arms wrapped around her.  All too soon for her liking he pulled back, resting his forehead on hers with his eyes closed.

“One more thing,” she whispered, playing with the soft hair at the back of his head.

His eyes opened and he leaned back, looking at her quizzically, “What’s that, love?”

She grinned at the pet name she’d practically ignored before, “How good of a photographer are you?”

“Fair enough to keep things in focus.  Why?”

“Because the other part of your gift is that you’re going to pretend to be one of our photographers so you can come to the Siege Perilous set visit with me.  Edwin Stephens will be there too and I thought you’d like to get an autogra-”

Emma squealed as Killian picked her up and twirled her around.  When he finally set her down she paid no mind to the stares that they’d surely attracted and pulled him into a kiss far more passionate than the one he’d given her.

Much later, after they’d allowed Mary Margaret a moment of smug elation and left the party to a couple of whistles courtesy of Tink and Robin they were laying in her bed, sweatpant clad legs entwined.  Killian was running his fingers through her hair as she laid curled against his chest, listening to the rumble of his voice as he read Siege Perilous to her. With a contented sigh she figured that maybe Mary Margaret didn't quite deserve that lump of coal she'd threatened her with.

[eye-raq]

Lethal Lust.

A snippet.

Rage flowed through him like molten lava.

His fury sprang to life.

His edge of irritation had definitely returned.

Today, at approximately 3:15 am, on Saturday, he was wearing a suit. A Harrogate Black Indochino suit made with 95% Merino Wool, and only 5% luxurious Cashmere; which was a shame because it added warmth, softness, and lightness. His feet were covered in D-ring detail Monogram Patent Leather formal dress shoes by Burberry. Fixing his silver cufflinks with obvious aggressiveness, he began to walk the length of the hallway.

It wasn’t a typical hallway located in a fancy banquet or ballroom. No. It was narrow and smelly. Windowless, and ancient. Gloomy with a sadistic secret. Hideously colored. Cold and annoyingly stuffy. And to top it all off, accompanied with flickering fluorescent light bulbs and walls with chipped off-white paint. When he walked,  you could hear the sound of his dress shoes bouncing off of the hollow walls. His hands were clasped behind his back casually, whistling to himself a random catchy tune he came up with. Godspeed to the person he was looking for, the one that earned him a bloody lip that leaked onto his once perfectly crisp and white dress shirt.

This was child’s play. Hide and seek was for five-year-olds named Sally, Susie, Billy, and Mikey. So much for trying to be a different kind of horror. No matter how much he veered away from that narrative, people still found him to be like Micheal Myers. How he couldn’t tell you. Micheal was clearly otherworldly and not human. As for him, he was all human. One gunshot to the head and he would drop to his knees with eyes as wide as saucers, falling forehead first in a pool of blood. One quick step and a precise strike with a Karambit knife would slice open his gut leading to a slow, yet painful death.

Speaking of knives, he was currently holding a kukri: a middle Asia knife that is weighed in the front. It gives the user more downward force and power. Commonly used to chop down tree limbs, or in his case...human limbs.

With sharp ears like a wolf, he could hear breathing. Struggling, pained breathing. It was coming from his right. Oh, how nice...a dark room with a tiny rusted window that reminded you of a dank basement that belonged to a serial killer. Funny...he was a serial killer. Not like a Ted Bundy, or a Jeffrey Dahmer. Nah, those were the kinds he went after. Those were the ones who ended up here in his secret layer holding on to their last breaths before the final image they see is the morgue lights.

He could taste blood. His anger felt so good but it would feel even better if he just had that son of a bitch. His nostrils flared. With twitching eyes, he made his way into that pitch black room like he had night vision goggles on. With his hunting and tracking skills, he makes his way slyly into the room, twirling that Kukri knife in hand skillfully like a switchblade. Taking in a deep breath, then exhaling, he finally speaks.

“Funny...I actually thought to tie your legs with a chain but the urge to kill you was eating away at me. Excuse my fault...you won’t have long to worry about that shit anyway.”

Moving his eyes from left to right, he walks along the cold concrete wall, dragging that knife across it with every step.

“You won’t believe what I have in my hand. It’s your Kukri. You’re familiar with those, right? You use them a lot when you murder all those girls, correct? I can understand why it gets the job done.”

He takes the knife and places it firmly in his grip, walking with a rigid form. He could smell the alcohol and infection on him and it was only a matter of time before he unleashed again on his prey. His disgusting prey. The prey who preyed on little girls...one, in particular, Samara Jenkins.

—————-

15 hours ago:

“This is NBC 6, South Florida News. Today, Miami Police found the body of the missing six-year-old girl: Samara Ella Jenkins. Daughter to pastors of Heavenly Home Baptist Church, Ertha Jenkins, and Sydney Jenkins. Their daughter had been missing for over two weeks now. Miami police have been searching day in, and day out for this missing pure soul, and today...they finally made a discovery.”

Erik watched while the news reporter drowns on. The camera scanned the Everglades. It looked particularly dry and withering; a fucking Gator central. With narrow hawk eyes, a single vein appearing in the middle of his forehead, he took in the news he really wanted to hear, no matter how hard it was to listen. He needed to listen. It was his God-given duty to listen.

“Young Samara was found here in the wetlands wrapped in a trash bag, surrounded by Alligators. It took great difficulty at first, but the Police have confirmed that it is indeed Samara. The family has asked for privacy at this time, and the immediate finding of her murderer.”

Pausing his TV, Erik got up from his seated position, walking through his living room and towards the kitchen. His steel toe Doc Martens dragged across the freshly placed tile of his Miami apartment, walking past the black marble kitchen island and directly towards his office. It was time. If his memory serves him, it had been almost a month since his last kill. The urge was building up so much within him he was ready to combust. The sound of his Father's old grandfather clock that was given to him as a gift before he died ticked in the background eerily. Finally, standing in front of his fireproof wall safe, Erik cracked his combination. Pulling open the door slowly, he came face to face with his treat.

He’d like to call it… a souvenir. He took pride in it like a child did a sand castle on the beach. They served as trophy cases to him. There, lies a box with blood slides. In it housed 46 slides of his victims. Taking the box, Erik places it on top of his glass desk. Opening the box, he ran a single finger gently across the top of the slides as the glass slightly clattered. At times, he would refer to the slides as “my secret” or other times, “my pride kills...my friends.”

It’s funny that he called them friends. A few he caught the attention of by raising a glass with an easy-going smile. For others, he would pick up a random conversation from maybe bumping shoulders about the Miami weather and how shitty their jobs were. Or even, dropping a hint of sexual interest that always seemed to work since his looks were beyond dismal. Ordinary. Regular. No. Erik was handsome. The kind of handsome you would find in a Calvin Klein add or sitting in VIP at some high-end club surrounded by models. Not a woman could walk by and not stop and stare.

“I guess I gotta make it 47,” he lets out controlled breaths, eyes watering with anger. The person's blood who would reside on the empty forensic slide goes by the name of Dean Orrin. 38 years old and an ex-military man. A man who should be registered as a Pedophile but instead walks the streets of South Beach proud and cocky. This man, what a son of a bitch. This redneck.  Such a waste of fresh air and space. The raging alcoholic and child abuser worked as a Respiratory Therapist at a children’s hospital. Can you believe it? A fucking children’s hospital. His shifts were Monday through Thursday, 9 am to 5 pm. He drove a 1992 Ford Mustang in red, seats covered in fresh leather.

Too bad the vintage car didn’t match this man’s physical appearance.

He was short, balding, square-shaped with a beer belly and a faux-friendly face that belonged to a white man you wouldn’t dare assume was a murderer of young black and Latina girls ranging from the ages of 4 to 10.

Erik would sit outside of Dean’s Miami Shores home on Ne 92nd Street. He lived alone, kept the doors unlocked to give off a friendly vibe,  picked up the newspaper every day around 8:00 am, and ate the same old Salisbury steak TV dinner around 7:45 pm in front of his flat screen; his prized possession. One evening while Dean was away, Erik took the time to investigate Dean’s home. Of course, he would find child pornography on his computer, and even worse an entirely dark room with cardboard boxes filled with photographs of his victims bound and naked.

Erik picked up a picture of little Samara, afraid and weak with ropes around her little body. His eyes watered with rage, biting down on his tongue and ignoring the pain. He felt worse pain anyway. This was sickening. How could you hurt such an innocent child? Such pure light? It made no sense to him. Clearly, Dean had something deep and traumatic going on with him to resort to this type of lifestyle. Erik had demons too, and he sometimes wondered if they were all one and the same; a family of murderers United. He’d keep Samaras photo, it would only serve to kill Dean even more. Slide number 47 would be clean no longer.

Erik has built a file on this man for over a month now. After finding out about the murder of his Neighbors young Latina daughter, Cassie, age 8, he began to piece together the parts that Miami Day Police failed to do.

Dean’s way of going about doing things was getting to know the children that came through Giving Hands Children’s Hospital in South Beach. He would give them treats, learn things about them, and extract whatever information he needed from their files. No personal contact involving the parents, no meetups or anything, just getting the information and kidnapping the children.

He didn’t do it so often. Dean’s stretch would be at least a month or two in between. Samara was his fourth murder. Erik broke it down one rainy night in his office how Dean successfully snatched Samara and killed her. Heavenly Home Baptist Church held fundraisers for their neighborhood. The last night Samara was seen, only two weeks ago on a Thursday, was the night of Youth Day. It was an open house for anyone to come in and be a part of because Heavenly Hope housed generous, God-fearing people. Little Samara took her badminton racket to the back lawn, never telling her mother she was going out for some fresh air. She’d been gone for over an hour and Miss Ertha made a plate filled with Samaras favorites.

Well, you could probably guess what happened next, right? Everyone at that church searched high and low for her. Her parents and siblings had sleepless nights, signs and billboards were made, all in a span of two weeks. It hurts deep like an open wound. Erik never had kids, probably never will...but still...he could feel their pain. No matter, Erik was a man of his word. He wasn’t great in combat with a keen skill in blood spatter analysis, tracking, and weapons training for nothing. He’d put all of that to good use.

———

Saturday, April 1st: the day of fools. 1:30 am.

Sitting in an expensive suit that he intended to wear on a date, Erik finally finds the perfect opportunity to catch Dean. Erik could only hope that his date wouldn’t be angry with him, after all, she practically begged.

This motherfucker couldn’t be serious, could he?

He was already drunk off of Jack Daniels and now he was gearing towards entering an 18 and over club on Ocean Drive. The rage in Erik boiled his blood. Was Dean trying to age up his victims now? Is cockiness getting to him since he hadn’t been caught yet?

All of these things added to Erik’s fury, but the fury was what he needed to stay amped up. Anger for Erik made him more proud. He was correct to lay down an extra layer of plastic this time.

“Sick motherfucker,” Erik shakes his head, a single finger tapping at the steering wheel of his burner car that he used for kills; some beat up old Chevy with a stolen license plate.

This vigilante never sleeps when it comes to a kill.

Just stay in the shadows, Erik…

Night time is your time.

You have to be cunning to outwit your foes. The flashing club lights ignited his face purple, red, and blue. Bodies moved about in packs, sweat dripping and fingers intertwined. Erik could almost feel the heart beats racing among him. Young and naive they all were, especially the young girl Dean was eyeing.

She looked to be about 19, a drink in her hand and braids so long they swept the backs of her legs. She twirled, shouted to the music, and twerked in her own little world. Dean was compelled. Erik could see the killing fetish in his eyes so deep his pupils dilated an almost pitch black. Erik wanted badly to choke him up right here and finish the job but then that wouldn’t help him, would it? Keeping to the shadows, Erik watched until it was time for him to make his move.

———-

“Feel like making a deal with the devil?”

The young girl with honeyed skin and full lips turns to Dean, a little jumpy from being caught off guard. She regarded him, eyes squinted.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, do you feel like making a deal with the devil?”

Dean pulls out a baggy filled with LSD, swinging it in front of her face. The girl was tempted for a second, that was until she looked back at Dean and saw the sweat covering his face, a faded tattoo of a pentagram on the inside of his wrist, and the maniacal way he licked his lips.

“Uhm, no thanks. I’m okay.”

The young girl gave him a generous smile before sauntering away towards the back of the club. Clearly, Dean didn’t like being told no. He stood still for what felt like minutes, staring at her retreating form until she disappeared around a corner and out of sight. Like clockwork, Dean follows, a hand deep in his pocket and shoulders hunched. It was time, Erik had to make a move now before the young girl became Dean’s new victim.

Ignoring lingering stares of passion that he didn’t like nor accepted, Erik maneuvered through the crowd as they parted like the Red Sea for him, finally around that corner and hot on Dean’s trail. Apparently, the young girl wasn’t going to the ladies. There was an exit straight ahead, the LED of the sign almost blinding and cryptic. With much more speed now, Erik dashes to the back door, black leather gloved hand pushing open the swinging doors.

His dress shoes met a puddle, and his hands clenched into fists. There was no sign of either of them.

Fuck.

Deciding to make a left, Erik followed his path down the narrow garbage filled alley, head moving from left to right to find him. To his luck, he could hear struggling, choking breaths. Keeping close to the wall, Erik looked around that corner at the edge of the alley, coming face to face with the devil himself.

Dean had the young girl smashed against the brick wall, his hand lazily rubbing under her skirt. Every time she tried to scream, Dean would smash her face further into the brick.

“Shut up...shut up...shut up...SHUT UP!!!” Dean yelled, spit flying and a snarl on his face. He looked red from anger.

“Keep still you black bitch!!!! Keep still or I will slit your fucking throat with my knife!”

Erik has seen enough now.

Pulling out his 9mm pistol with a silencer, Erik’s 20/20 sniper vision aided him as he aimed a bullet at Dean’s side, watching as the stout man fell to his knees in agonizing pain, releasing the young girl from his deadly grip. She kicked away and down the alley in the opposite direction, screaming in tears and limping. A life saved, and one before him ready to be taken away.

Erik watched with joy and triumph as Dean stared into the darkness with confusion and pain, rolling around in the mud, shit, piss, and garbage juice.

“WHOS THERE!!!!!!!!!!” He yelled between cries, blood staining his teeth.

“AM I GOING TO DIE?!!!PLEASE, NO. AM I GOING TO DIE HERE?!!!”

Erik made his way towards him, adjusting his gloves and storing away his gun. It was so dark, Dean couldn’t make him out, but he could hear his footsteps.

“OMG. Who’s there!!!!!!!!!!”

Erik picks Dean up one-handed by his collar, silencing him with a tranquilizer to the neck. Dean was now dead weight. Luckily, his car was parked on the other side of the alley, and the coast was clear.

———

“Wha? Where am I?”

Dean blinked twice, rubbing his right hand over his dry tears. Sniffling snot, wrists in pain from being wrapped in chains, Dean stares into the pitch black, figuring he had to be in the trunk of a car with the smell of gas and rubber. Was this his fate? Was God finally judging him?

Death clearly doesn’t discriminate.

He took the lives of young girls, so now the price to pay was his life.

And to think he had a chance tonight with another kill. Maybe, it was too soon to go out for another thrill.

He could feel his death.

The amount of pain he was in, he felt like he was dead already. Ah, now he remembers. Someone shot him in the ribs back in that alley. Aiming for his respiratory technique, Dean breathed slowly and steadily, trying his hardest to avoid the feeling of his own blood dripping from his gunshot wound. If only he could apply pressure without bleeding out so much.

Whoever this person was wanted to take their time with him.

The sound of the car door slamming followed by the car shaking from the impact made Dean go stiff. It was time to meet His executioner. And when his time is up, would they tell his story? Make him another missing person? Dean much rather be seen in the spotlight like the Zodiac Killer had been. Too bad he wasn’t swift enough. Was it a parent of one of his victims? an off duty cop who just had to bring work home?

Whistling began.

“What?” Dean’s voice was scratchy and pathetic sounding.

With the trunk now open, Dean could feel the humid air of Miami pour in. Catching his breath and bracing himself, Dean came face to face with an unfamiliar foe. He had dreads braided back, a crisp suit that must have cost a fortune, hands covered with leather gloves and eyes so cold they could petrify you. He looked like a mercenary, or maybe a hit man. He was young, could be around early thirties. He smiled sadistically. Fuck. Was this bastard as crazy as him?

“It takes a monster to destroy a monster.”

That statement alone was bone chilling. He had the same kill stare but with a different goal.

“You’re playing my fucking game now. No little girls to touch and kill here. You should fear me.”

Swiftly, The unknown man grabbed Dean by the neck, pulling him up and out of the trunk. Dean rolled onto his elbow, pain shooting through his arm and dirt filling his lungs. It was so overbearing that he felt oxygen deprived. With his feet failing him, Dean tries to crawl away, but of course, that wouldn’t work, he was too fat and too weak.

“You can crawl all you want. Your fate remains the same, motherfucker.” Like the Hulk himself gripped his legs, Dean was dragged back across the ground, feet flapping and nails clawing at rocks and dirt. He could feel his skin splitting. With one struggling kick, his foot met the man’s face, bloodying his lip. No words were said then. His eyes were ice cold and demon like. Dean didn’t know what hit him, but those eyes made him get on his feet, and he ran into the abandoned building straight ahead. He didn’t hear the man’s footsteps, guessing that maybe he was too hurt to follow him and find him.

Little did Dean know his weapon of choice: a Kukri knife fell out of his back pocket. Erik has that very knife in his possession now, more than excited to use Dean’s weapon against him. This was going to be one hell of a bloody night.

——-

It was just too easy for him. He needed a challenge. That’s it...a challenge. Maybe a Russian who escaped prison and decided to go on a genocide killing spree. Or a calculated serial killer who played him at his own game. Dean was easy prey. They all had the same motive: hide in the most typical places, pray to themselves and breathe so loud the people down the road could hear, or worse, bleed out and leave a bloody trail. Dean’s wound was beginning to smell. Erik’s sense of smell when it came to infected, rotting, flesh was nearly non-existent. It didn’t bother him one bit.

All the lives he took when he killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, the States apart of JSOC and when he was an ex-assassin made it that way. The scars on his skin were there to prove it. Now, he did the kills without taking orders from no one.

“Dean...you fat ass motherfucker. Dirty, disgusting, sick, smelly ass, redneck, motherfucker.”

Erik drew in his bottom lip between his teeth, the sound of the leather gloves on his hand crunching from how tightly his fists were clenched.

“Why little Black and Latina girls, Dean? What’s so special about them? Is it the fact that they aren’t as privileged as your kind? The colonizers?”

Dean was so fucking stupid. How could someone go so long with precisely killing four little girls but hide where Erik could see him? In a dirty corner filled with old dusty crates and broken glass shards, Erik could see the silhouette of Dean Orrin. His body was practically leaning over from how weak he was. All that blood loss failed him. No energy, no will power, just dead weight.

Letting out a stressed sigh, Erik pocketed the Kukri, walking over to Dean. Picking him up by the back of his hoodie, hopefully choking him, he began to drag him across the dusty cobweb filled floor, startling him and causing him to scream.

“You a bitch, you know that? You kill little girls like you a man but wanna scream like a woman because you are about to die. I knew chicks more gangsta than you.”

Erik laughs hard, finally back in that hallway and headed towards his destination.

“Tell me,” Erik yanks him, hearing him choke up.

“Why little girls? Got raped when you were a kid? Touched your ex little daughter in her sleep and got a hard-on? What?!!!” Erik releases Dean, turning to yoke him up forcefully. Dean’s blurry and dizzy vision made Erik look like five Erik’s. He could still see the hard eyes though, they could never go forgotten.

“ANSWER. MY. FUCKING. QUESTION.”

Erik’s breathing was the only sound, Dean’s mind forcing him to speak but words couldn’t form. That pissed Erik off...oh...that made him mad. Erik’s eyes flickered a moment, before taking one hand to retrieve the Kukri, twirling it between his fingers, and ramming it into dean’s side, opening his gunshot wound further.

Dean’s screams were suspended in his throat, eyes watery and teeth grinding. His breath hit Erik’s nose causing him to drop him on the floor, back to dragging his lard ass leaving a bloody trail.

——

The old morgue was famous back in 95’ but it was closed due to concerns with keeping the dead cold until it was time for burial. It was gated off with grass growing so high gators could live here. No one dares to trespass, leaving it as a haunted destination to never visit. Erik had it soundproofed, and he fixed it up himself. He never used the morgue refrigerators, what was the point anyway? He didn’t care to slow up the decomposition phase. His job was to hunt, kill, and discard of the parts. Currently, in this fully double plastic-covered room, Erik had Dean on an operating table in the charnel house, head and feet restrained. He blinked up at the lights, failing to keep his eyes opened. Dean was already pale, now he looked almost chalky with skin leatherlike. Erik removed his suit jacket, hanging it neatly on a nearby coat rack. The sleeves to his white oxford shirt were rolled up to his elbows, surgical gloves on his hands and an entire surgical gown with goggles included to shield the blood splatter.

A medium force (velocity) impact spatter:

Produced with more energy or force than gravity.

The force of the impact causes the blood to break into smaller size splatters relative to the amount of force applied.

This type of splatter is usually seen in blunt force, stabbings, and secondary splatters.

Produced when the majority of larger drops of blood are broken into smaller spatters with diameters of 2-4 mm.

The force associated with this type of spatter is greater than 25 ft per second.

His first victim, Alejandra Lopez was just 4 years old. It was a rainy week in Miami; they called for thunderstorms around 90%. She was riding her little training wheel bike colored blue and pink down a small suburb in Little Havana. Her slicker hood was up, rain droplets shielding her vision but so what? she was on a mission. Her dad nicknamed her little trainer, speedy. Giggling, she made a sharp turn, only to fall off and in the gutter. She winced in pain slightly, but Alejandra was tough. Her mother was passed out drunk on the couch while her father was pulling doubles at the auto shop. Alejandra carefully lifted from the gutter, whipping off the mud from her slicker. As her doe grey eyes lifted, she came face to face with her murder. He struck her over the head with a lead pipe, watching as her tiny body fell to the concrete, cracking her skull further…

Erik couldn’t sleep after seeing that on the news.

So terrible.

The thought of that crossed his mind just now, causing him to pick up a broken lead pipe he found near a construction site on his way home from the beach. Twirling that lead pipe in hand, he turns to Dean, clearing his throat.

“You remember Alejandra? In Little Havana?”

Dean swallows spit, his eyes struggling to look to his right where Erik was standing.

“I-I-Yeah..yeah the little Mexican girl. I-I remember…” Dean began to cry.

“You remember how you used a pipe to crack her skull?” Erik’s grip on the pipe grew tight and painful.

“...yes…”

“How did that make you feel?”

“...good...but please...don’t…”

“There will be blood, Dean. And guess what? I got a lead pipe.”

Erik began to walk forward, pipe resting on his shoulder.

“WHO ARE YOU TO DECIDE MY FATE?!!! HUH??!!!!!!” Dean screamed at the top of his lungs, causing himself to cough up blood. He was going to die anyway, no use in screaming.

“I’m the Judge. Jury. And Executioner. Don’t fucking bark if you can’t bite.” He sounded baneful and destructive.

Everything went silent, that was until the pipe broke the wind from how forceful Erik’s blow was. Erik aimed that pipe to Dean’s head, the sound of his temporal bone splitting music to his ears. Dean shook, fingers twitching, and eyes wide with pain. His nose began to leak, eyes watering in agony. At this point, he could beg for instant death. Erik did damage for sure, his brain must be ricocheting in his skull right now.

An ugly laugh escaped Erik’s mouth, the sound of the pipe hitting plastic only audible to him since Dean’s hearing was no more.

“I-I-I w-won’t Let you-you…” Dean chokes on blood. His heart rate began to slow further.

“The question isn’t who’s going to let me. It’s who’s going to stop me?” Erik took this as an opportunity to pull out his Kukri. Yes, his now.

“I can imagine how many times you wipe this clean. Fucking sick...and I thought my traumatic past was bad? I can’t imagine yours…”

Holding the knife firm, Erik brought it to Dean’s right hand, cutting it off cleanly. At this point, Dean couldn’t even scream. He was already dying, all he could do was wither in pain. Cutting the hands of a pedophile. You touch young girls and murder them, you get your hands amputated. His dick getting cut off sounded great but Erik didn’t even want to SEE IT. Without saying another word, his other hand was amputated. The blood splatter Erik knew well stained the plastic.

With a clenched jaw and savage eyes, Erik takes Dean by his greasy head, bringing that Kukri to his throat.

“This is for Samara, and all the other little girls you killed. They have no fucking life, now you won’t.”

Erik twirled that knife, swiping across Dean’s neck quickly, watching the blood splatter briefly before slowing to a drip. The life could be seen leaving Dean Orrin’s eyes under those morgue lights.

——-

First off, it’s important to understand what dead bodies are like. They’re very heavy, they absolutely stink, they attract flies and vermin practically from the word go, they release a lot of unpleasant substances, they bloat and they can even explode. Draining the fluids as quickly as possible and mixing them with a lot of bleach before flushing them would prevent this.

Should the body be found, you need to make it as difficult as possible to identify. This means destroying the teeth, finger, and toe prints, and the DNA. The first two are easy, the last one is more tricky. Erik wasn’t a forensic scientist, so he just settled for the teeth and toes. Living in Miami, water was an easy source to dump bodies. Erik used to settle for burying them, but that took hours and a lot of footprints left behind. To make his life easier, he simply dumped the bodies far out in the ocean while taking a routine route on his boat. Applying weights to the feet and covering them with heavy duty body bags always helped him out. This was the only way he could dispose of the evidence before the police got wind of it, which they never did.

Erik wasn’t a wanted man, at least, not as Erik Stevens. When he was Killmonger, international police wanted his neck. Killmonger came out to play when he took the lives of vermin to satisfy his needs, but he went away when he did his daily routines. Believe it or not, Erik had friends, a foster sister, and maybe a possible girlfriend. It was odd, Erik considered himself to be asexual. He didn’t find romantic attraction or love for a woman. It never interested him in having a romantic relationship with a woman. He had sex, though it was more so because he could not because he wanted to. Being asexual had nothing to do with his dick, it was about the sexual and romantic attraction that didn’t spark his interest. It’s not like he didn’t try. There were days where he wanted that, other days he just didn’t and they were most days. Erik was attractive, rough around the edges, a lady killer without even trying. He needed to move on, make it look normal, kill those who deserved it in secret. These were the words of his late foster father who was a fireman.

Erik…

He could hear his father's voice in his head.

Be strong, Erik. Remember, use your disorder for the greater good. Kill those who deserve to be punished...

With a heavy sigh and all his upper arm strength, Erik heaved Dean Orrin’s body over the railing of his boat and into the ocean water. So long Dean Orrin. The pedophile. The abuser. The murderer. Erik took out the tiny glass vial of his horrid blood, twirling it in hand before pocketing it once more, turning to grab up his Hennessy.

“Ah, they playing Wu-Tang tonight,” he smiles as if it were any other evening, sitting back on his suede all-white sofa with his dress shoe covered feet resting on the fancy glass table.

Time to sleep on the water again.

@goddessofthundathighs @hearteyes-for-killmonger @panthergoddessbast @blowmymbackout @chaneajoyyy @bartierbakarimobisson @madamslayyy

————-

If you want to be tagged, let me know.

[alittlelessalone]

Backsliding - a Winston Billions fanfiction

Characters: Winston and Taylor

For some reason, I can’t post links on tumblr and still have the tags work, so I just decided to post this here. It’s also on ao3 if it’s easier to read there (the fic’s name is the same and I’m ArabellaTurner).

Also, Winston doesn’t have a last name, so I gave him one. Make what you want of it, but don’t feel the need to read into it unless you want to. Anyways, here we go:

Taylor rubbed the back of their neck and sighed. It had been a long day and they were happy to finally be heading home. Ever since they had joined back up with Axe Capital, Taylor’s days seemed to just be one headache after another.

Today had been worse than most. With every day Taylor continued their charade of being allies with Axe, they could feel his grip tightening just a little bit more around them. Yet it was still too soon to betray him. There were still too many moving pieces and unknowns.

As Taylor made their way through the desolate office, they were relieved at least that everyone else seemed to have gone home already. Lauren had offered to wait up, but Taylor had sent her home a few hours earlier. There was no reason why she had to sit around waiting just for Taylor’s sake.

Taylor was immensely grateful for the support, but they were not going to ask too much of their employees anymore. They had dragged everyone unfairly into battle before and this time they planned on being more careful.

Lost in their thoughts, Taylor almost missed the dim light coming from the southern stairwell. Those stairs lead down to the the quant work area, or quant dungeon as they knew Winston had taken to calling it.

Taylor frowned at the electricity wastage. Winston usually knew better than to leave the lights on when he left. Although Winston did have Math Meetup on Thursdays, so perhaps he wasn’t the last one out that day.

Taylor made their way over to the stairwell to turn the lights off, but froze when they heard noises coming from below. There was no way that anyone was still down there, was there?

Taylor squared up their shoulders before heading downstairs. It would not do to show any signs of fear, especially in their own office.

“Hello?” they called out. “Is someone down there?” They were greeted in response by a startled yelp.

“Winston?” Taylor asked, recognizing the voice and heading down the stairs. “Shit. You scared me. I guess I sort of got into the zone and lost track of the time,” Winston responded.

He stood up to greet Taylor as they got to the bottom of the steps. “What are you still doing here at...” Winston paused to look at the clock on his computer.

“Holy shit. What are you still doing here at 1:30am?” Winston asked, looking at Taylor with concern.

“I was taking care of some things,” Taylor responded vaguely. “Why are you still here?” they countered. “I was coding,” Winston responded, a little defensively.

Taylor made a mental note of Winston’s tone as they gave him a once over. He looked tired and defeated. “Don’t you have Math Meetup on Thursdays?” Taylor asked gently. Winston shook his head.

“Not anymore,” he replied miserably. He slumped back into his chair and stared dejectedly up at the ceiling.

Taylor frowned slightly. “What happened?” they asked. Winston sighed. “Well, you know how I’m an asshole?” he began. Taylor felt the corners of their mouth twitch, but refused to smile and Winston’s self deprecating comments.

“I know how you can be somewhat abrasive,” they replied diplomatically. Winston let out a slight chuckle at this. “Yeah, well, apparently they don’t want ‘abrasive’ people there,” he admitted.

Any degree of amusement Taylor was feeling before instantly disappeared. They though back to how Winston’s eyes lit up whenever he talked about Math Meetup. It was clearly something that meant a lot to him. Losing it like this was surely a painful blow.

Taylor stared at Winston’s sad eyes for a moment before making a decision. They quickly grabbed a chair and sat down next to him. “Did I ever tell you about my times as a child poker star?” they asked. Winston shook his head.

“Well, back when I was younger, I discovered the world of online poker. It was an amazing experience, really. I was just a kid, but I was already playing against and beating adults at that point. And I won quite a bit of money too. I felt like I ruled the world.

Only my rein was short lived. Eventually the other players grew tired of my success and rebelled. They kicked me out of the server and refused to let me back in. And even if I made a new account and pretended to be a different person, it was clearly only a matter of time before that one was banned as well.

They took something that I, just a kid at the time, loved and ripped it away from me. And even today it still hurts to think about,” Taylor concluded, their face more open and vulnerable than they had intended to get.

Winston blinked in surprise and let out a small exhale of breath. “Shit. That sucks ass,” he responded. Despite it all, Taylor felt the corners of their mouth twitched up again as they let out a slight chuckle.

“Yes,” they replied. “It does, as you so elegantly put it, suck ass. It really turned me off from the whole concept of poker for a long time. In fact, it wasn’t until Axe signed me up for the poker tournament that I was willing to play again. It was one of the few positive impacts that man has had on my life.”

Winston cocked his head and smiled at his boss. “So you’re saying that I shouldn’t let being kicked out of Math Meetup stop me from doing what I love?” he asked.

Taylor only raised an eyebrow mysteriously. “I’m simply telling you a tale about myself. What you take away from it is up to you,” they replied.

Winston stared at them for a second, then suddenly started to laugh. He continued to laugh until tears streamed down his cheeks. Only the tears continued even as the laughter died away.

“It was the one place I felt I truly belonged,” Winston admitted. “It wasn’t just about the math or the code. I felt like I had friends there. I saw those people all the time. Sometimes we would all even order food in during the meetup and eat together. Do you know how many other people willing eat together with me?”

Winston stared sadly at Taylor. “Without Math Meetup, what do I still have? All I’m good at is math, programming, and making stupid and inappropriate comments. I just lost the people who accepted me for the first two because of the third.

I feel like I’m backsliding so far. I promised I would become a better person, but here I am, months later, and nothing has changed. I’m still the same asshole I always was, only now I have less to show for it. If my skills can’t outshine my shitty personality, then what hope do I have for my future?”

Taylor stared at the sobbing boy for a few seconds before holding out their arms to him. Winston paused for a moment before realizing what Taylor was offering and sinking into them.

Taylor winced a little at the warm, wet form collapsing into their chest, but wrapped their arms around him regardless.

“You still have us, you know,” Taylor said gently. “You asked what you still have, and you still have this. You are an important part of the team here at Mase Cap and that’s not about to change.”

“But only because you don’t care about my personality,” Winston protested. “You are willing to overlook flaws in exchange for skill, but what if the other employees eventually can’t? I’ve already driven people away. What if I keep making that mistake?”

Taylor felt a small pang in their chest and let their arms wrap a little tighter around Winston’s body. “You’re wrong about that,” they admitted. “I didn’t hire you despite your personality at all. Your personality was one of your selling points.”

Winston sat up in surprise. “What?” he asked in confusion. “But you rejected me because of it! Then you only offered to let me try again if I stopped being such a piece of shit. And you only let my backsliding slide because my algorithm was so good.”

Taylor shook their head. “I reached out to you because I needed someone with passion and drive. I needed someone who was able to take risks and wasn’t afraid to challenge me. You were always so much more than just your code.”

Winston felt his body start to tremble. Was he really more to Taylor than just some extremely talented code monkey?

“Just recently you helped me realize how dangerous the path I was walking truly was. I lost sight of my goals, my values, and myself, but you helped guide me back. And sure, you were a little self-centered and abrasive in your words, but your anger was well-founded. And only you had the courage and passion to take me on.

There is a reason why you come to all my executive meetings and it isn’t because of your code. You are a valuable part of this company. You, Winston Kleinman, are the resource I was after when I hired you, the incredible code you produce is just a side effect.

And I’m sorry if you never realized that. It was my job to make you feel welcome and I guess I failed to do that.” Taylor looked around at the quant room. It was easy to see why Winston called it a dungeon.

“And you are important to me. Me, personally. Even if you were not my valuable employee, you would still be my friend,” Taylor concluded. Their body grew a little more rigid now that the words were out there. These were not words easily uttered, but they were completely true.

For his part, Winston was in a daze. He honestly couldn’t believe his ears, but he know better than to ask Taylor to repeat themselves. These were midnight words, he determined. They were the sort of words that were only uttered late at night while alone together in a windowless room.

Yet they caused Winston’s heart to swell. He had a friend. There was somewhere where he belonged, somewhere where he was wanted.

“Thank you,” he whispered. There was nothing else he could think to say. Taylor simply patted him awkwardly on the back.

Winston got up and moved back to his own chair. Taylor’s arms were a warm and safe place, but he didn’t want to overstay his welcome.

The pair stared at each other in silence for a few minutes. The tears in Winston’s eyes had dried up and the pain had faded from his eyes, but there was still uncertainty and fear there.

“Have you eaten?” Taylor finally asked, breaking the silence. Winston’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “I completely forgot to,” he admitted.

“There’s not much open at this hour,” Taylor continued, but there is a 24 hour diner not too far away from here. They have some decent enough vegan options there and you could use something in your system. Want to join me for a late night meal?”

Winston was once again rendered speechless, but as Taylor stood up and held out a hand, Winston found himself taking it. Wordlessly, he followed Taylor up the stairs, absentmindedly flicking the light off as he climbed the last one.

“I thought you always turned that off when you left,” Taylor remarked when they noticed Winston’s actions. “What?” Winston asked, startled a little by Taylor’s voice suddenly filling the air. “I almost without you left earlier,” Taylor explained. “But I saw the light was on and wanted to see what was going on. I’m glad I did.”

Winston felt his cheeks grow warm. He had thought that Taylor’s compliments would be limited to the confines of the quant dungeon, but they were on the main floor now.

“I’m glad you did too,” Winston agreed. “You should look for a new programming group to join,” Taylor suggested. “I’m sure there are plenty of others out there.” Winston nodded reluctantly. He knew that Taylor was right, but he was still scared.

“Once you find it, let me know the meeting dates. Then we can plan our dinners around them,” Taylor concluded, a smile once again tugging at the corners of their mouth.

Winston nearly tripped on a desk. “Our dinners?” he inquired. Taylor nodded. “You implied earlier that you wanted to eat dinner with friends from time to time, so I thought you might want to grab a bite with me sometimes after work. If I’m wrong then...”

Winston shook his head empathetically, cutting Taylor off. “I would love to grab dinner with you,” he assured them. “I’m just still getting over the fact that you want to spend time with me outside work.”

“Well, I do,” Taylor replied. “And I bet others do too. Have a little bit more faith in yourself, okay. Backsliding isn’t just about how you treat others. Treat yourself kindly too.”

Winston nodded. The tears were back in the corners of his eyes, but this time they weren’t from sadness. “Okay,” he agreed. “No more backsliding. This time I’m going to get it right. Just you watch! Winston Kleinman is ready to face the world! Nothing can stop him now!”

As his excitement grew, so too did the volume of Winston’s words. On the last ones, he jumped in the air, pumping his fists. And Taylor couldn’t help themselves. They laughed, bright and clear. And then Winston laughed too. The entire ride down the elevator was filled with the joyous sound.

And as they stepped into the cool night air, Taylor realized they weren’t stressed anymore. Their problems had not gone away, but they seemed so much smaller in the moment.

Taylor shot a quick text to Lauren informing her that they had left the office and were going to grab a bite before heading home. They then slipped the phone back into their pocket and turned back to Winston.

“Shall we?” they asked. Winston nodded and grinned. “We shall,” he replied. He then jumped up once more and did another fist pump. “Lead the way, my friend!” he declared, enjoying the sound of his voice echoing throughout the city. And with another smile, Taylor did.

[theliterateape]

Hope Idiotic | Part V

By David Himmel

 Hope Idiotic is a serialized novel. Catch each new part every week on Monday and Thursday.

LOU HIT THE SAN FRANCISCO CITY LIMITS JUST AS NIGHT WAS COMING DOWN. He used the hostel book as promised to find a well-rated spot with a good view of the city. He’d never stayed in hostels before and was curious. He’d hoped to meet a few strangers he could make friends with for the night and explore the city with, but the place was pretty empty. It was too early in the summer for college students or Europeans to be backpacking their way through the country.

Lou was sent to a room with four bunk beds. Two bunks — top and bottom — were occupied with sleeping bags, clothes and shredded bags of potato chips. Lou claimed the top bunk closest to the door. He tossed his stuff onto the mattress and quickly returned to the front desk.

“Where’s the best place to go for a few drinks?” he asked the grimy grunge-brat wearing flannel and a Sonic Youth T-shirt. “Maybe a place with good live music.”  He was directed to a place called, Shattered Glass. He was able to walk there from the hostel, which sat at the top of a hill and owned a perfect view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Like every other place he had encountered in California so far, this bar was mostly empty. On the small stage at the back end of the joint, a weathered man, who looked like he may have been part of the West Coast punk movement in the 1970s, played a banged-up acoustic guitar and sang cover songs of everything from Iggy Pop to Lisa Loeb. Miller Lites were six bucks a bottle, but hell, that was San Francisco.

Lou tried to engage the bartender in some friendly conversation about the town, where to go, what to do and where the hell everyone was that night. But the bartender, a bored, sad-looking man of about thirty-five, wanted nothing to do with it. And after six bottles of beer and an hour of the aged, never-was rockstar, Lou paid his thirty-six-dollar tab and took off.

He wandered the streets searching for a little action, but found nothing worth getting into. So, he headed back up the hill to the hostel, where he figured he’d tuck himself in and wake up early. Get a head start on the day. Grab breakfast. Visit the bridge then continue north into Oregon.

When he left the hostel, he remembered leaving his room’s door open just as he’d found it. When he returned, it was closed. He put his ear to the door to inspect any potential sounds. When he didn’t hear anything, he slowly turned the handle and opened the door. It was pitch black in the windowless room. He pulled out his cell phone as he closed the door behind him. He flipped the phone open to light the few steps to his bunk. He climbed up and carefully took his shoes and socks off, then slid into his sleeping bag. Lou had a near-perfect internal clock and rarely used an alarm. As he closed his eyes, he said in a whisper, “Wake up at seven a.m. Wake up in seven hours.”

Just as he began to fall asleep, he was startled by noises coming from within the room. He hadn’t scanned the place with the light of his phone before going to bed; he had just assumed he was alone. The noises were coming from one of the bunks that earlier he’d seen loaded with someone’s belongings. His cell phone was resting on his chest, and for a moment, he considered flipping it open and seeing who or what was in the room with him.

Now he was going to bear witness to alien robot sex and perhaps become a post-coitus sacrifice. Fuck Michelle. Fuck hostels. Fuck robots. Fuck San Francisco.

There were rustling sounds and what he thought were voices being muffled by blankets and pillows. He heard music being played. Not songs: more like ring tones from a cell phone or video game soundtracks from a handheld game system. The bunk squeaked in rhythm as it tapped the cement wall. He looked over and saw blue and green and red lights glowing, flickering intermittently from under blankets. It was like robots having sex.

 Lou was scared. This sort of thing would never happen under the parking lot light of a hotel. Why did he make that promise to Michelle to stay in hostels? Why did he keep that promise? He had a perfectly workable system when on the road, and she fucked it all up with her law school arguments and girlfriend charm. Now he was going to bear witness to alien robot sex and perhaps become a post-coitus sacrifice. Fuck Michelle. Fuck hostels. Fuck robots. Fuck San Francisco.

He debated making an escape, but figured he couldn’t collect his stuff fast enough in the dark without disturbing the alien robots that would probably kill him. So he slouched down farther into his sleeping bag, pulled his pillow tightly over his head and the opening of the bag around the pillow so he was entirely encased and protected, like a caterpillar in a cocoon. He forced himself to think about anything else: Chicago; Michelle; his career in twenty years; Chuck; his house in Las Vegas; the family dog Max greeting him at his dad’s house; Crater Lake; the price of gas; his pending empty bank account; his résumé; where he would live… More and more, he was less afraid of the increasingly loud and strange sounds coming from the adjacent bunk, and starting to fear what was waiting for him outside of that dark hostel room.

Panic finally put him to sleep. And when his eyes popped open at 7 a.m., he was still stuffed down in his sleeping bag and drenched in sweat. Slowly, he peeked his head out of the bag, but couldn’t see a thing because even during the morning, the room allowed no light to come in. He didn’t hear anything, so he flipped his phone open and aimed it across the room. It didn’t illuminate much, but from what he could see, the coast was clear. He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and hopped down. He reached the light switch and turned it on, ready for the alien robots to spring to life and attack him. But he was alone. No one, nothing, was in the room with him. The things he had seen on the bunks when he checked in were gone. Other than his own stuff and the beds, the room was bare.

He wondered if he had imagined the noises and lights. Was the anxiety of the move playing tricks with his brain? Was he going crazy, or were there really alien robots having sex a few feet from him last night? It didn’t matter. It was over. The day was anew.

He put on some fresh clothes, brushed his teeth in the communal bathroom, paid his bill and took off toward the Golden Gate Bridge. It was early and traffic was light. It was just Lou and a European couple on the pedestrian part of the bridge. He could tell they were European by the formfitting brightly colored jeans and vinyl windbreakers that looked like they were stolen off the set of a 1980s Wham! video. The air was cool and salty. There wasn’t much fog like expected, so he was able to grab a few good photos of the bridge and some grainy, but mostly decent, shots of the Alcatraz rock. The majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge was one thing. But what really grabbed his attention were the emergency telephone boxes secured to the bridge every couple of yards. They had signs above them that read:

CRISIS COUNSELING THERE IS HOPE MAKE THE CALL THE CONSEQUENCES OF JUMPING OFF THIS BRIDGE ARE FATAL AND TRAGIC.

He looked over the railing into the San Francisco Bay. He knew how it worked. A sad, troubled life. A moment of uncertainty — then certainty. A little leap. This was America’s hot spot for suicide aficionados. It was either the impact with the water or the greedy undertow of the bay that would kill a person. Lou wondered for a second what part would kill him. If it wasn’t the fall, could he survive? He was a strong swimmer. It was a rhetorical question; actually killing himself was not on his mind.

Still, he wondered about those emergency phones and about the operators on the other end of them. How many lives were saved by the telephone? How many operators heard last words? He considered picking one up and telling the operator that he would kill himself unless someone in Chicago would have a job waiting for him when he arrived in two weeks. But then he figured that probably wouldn’t work. No one would want to hire a demanding suicidal maniac.

He used his cell phone to call Michelle from the bridge. He hated the idea of bothering her at work, but she assured him that a phone call from him was never a bother but a blessing.

“Michelle Kaminski’s office,” her secretary said.

“May I please speak with Ms. Kaminski,” Lou asked.

“Ms. Kaminski is in a meeting at the moment. May I take a message for her?”

“Thank you. Please tell her that Lou Bergman called. She has my number.”

“Will she know what this is in reference to?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll have her return your call at her earliest convenience, Mr. Bergman. Have a wonderful day.”

He meandered along the bridge for a few more minutes until Michelle called back. “You called?” She did not sound happy.

“Hi, baby. That was a quick meeting.”

“It was three hours long — just finished.”

“Brutal. Guess where I am?”

“I don’t know… Moon Lake or wherever.”

“Moon Lake? You mean, Crater Lake. No. I’m standing on the Golden Gate Bridge. God, Michelle, you should see it. It’s beautiful.”

“I’d love to be there with you. But I have a job to do. I’d love to be able to take two weeks off to do whatever I wanted and go wherever I wanted, but I have responsibilities. People depend on me. I have billable hour quotas I need to hit. But you go ahead and enjoy the view from the bridge, Lou.”

“Whoa. I’m sorry that upset you. You sound busy. I’ll let you go.”

“I am busy, Lou. I’m always busy. This is my job. I think you need to hurry home.”

“I know, baby. I’m on my way to you. Just 12 more days. It’s nothing.”

“I mean it. This road trip, I get it. I know you like driving all over with no direction, like its your last hurrah or something, but you need to consider me, Lou.”

“I have direction. I know exactly where I’m going.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about me slipping away. You’re losing me.”

“What?”

“I know you’re moving here to finally start your life, but mine has been happening, and you can’t expect me to just wait around for you to show up whenever you please. It’s not fair to me. I love you, Lou. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But I can’t promise you I’ll be here when you finally show up. I hope I’ll still be waiting for you, but I don’t know. I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

What the hell just happened? She’s raving like a madwoman, he thought. He’d been through this with her before, however. In moments of personal stress, Michelle had a tendency to overreact and lash out at anyone within striking distance. There was one week during her freshman year in high school when her best friend Jen was too busy to hang out with her. As retaliation, during a soccer practice warm-up exercise, Michelle kicked a ball has hard as she possibly could at Jen, hitting her square in the gut, knocking her on her feet and forcing the air right out of her lungs. Jen had a soccer-ball–sized bruise for several days and was benched for that weekend’s game because of the injury.

When Michelle told this story in her maid-of-honor speech at Jen’s wedding, she didn’t understand why no one laughed at it. “Because it’s just mean,” Lou told her. But Michelle disagreed and stood by her case that Jen had it coming and that it was a funny story. Besides, they were still friends after all, she argued.

Maybe Michelle was freaking out on him because she’d just emerged from a painful three-hour meeting. She was just stressed at work and jealous that he was out having fun. Envy. That’s what it was. He wasn’t losing her. She was just kicking the soccer ball in his gut.

 ✶

HE DROVE INTO TOWN AND FOUND A PLACE TO GRAB A BAGEL AND COFFEE, and read one of the scummy alternative papers in the wire basket by the door. As he was biting into the bagel, he received a text from Michelle:

I’m sorry I barked at u. But hurry. I won’t wait forevr. Stop wasting ur life.

“I really don’t have time for this right now, Lou,” Michelle said when he again called her. He couldn’t let a text like that go without further explanation. Clearly, she was not just lashing out. She was giving him an ultimatum: Stop having fun or she was leaving.

“You’re not being fair,” he told her.

“No. You’re not being fair to me or your career. You know what the right thing to do is. So do it.”

He drove a little farther north but pulled into a gas station just before leaving the San Francisco limits. While the car fueled up, he called Chuck.

“She’s right. What am I doing out here? I’m wasting all of this money that I don’t really have, when I could be in Chicago looking for a job. And now what? Now she’s going to break up with me when I get there? All broke and unemployed but with some photos of the town where Hemingway shot himself? What the fuck am I doing?”

Chuck was at the hospital in Indiana where his mother was recovering from her second heart surgery. “First of all, calm down. Just breathe,” he told Lou. “She’s not going to break up with you. You’ll find a job. Just relax.”

“I can’t! I’m telling you, I’ve got a bad feeling about all of this. I’m freaking out. I swear there were robots fucking in my room last night. I gotta get to Chicago. I gotta get my life going. I know! I’ll call a shipping company, have them pick up my car from this gas station. I’ll call Southwest and get a plane ticket, and I can be home by tonight.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” Chuck said. “Now, shut up and listen to me. You’ll end up spending more money on shipping and flying than you will driving. If it’ll keep you from going insane, cancel the adventure. You can try it again another time. I’ll do it with you. So calm down, drive back into the city and find I-80. It starts there. Just take that straight across into Chicago. You’ll be there in three days.”

✶

WHEN LOU PULLED UP TO MICHELLE’S HIGH-RISE on Lake Shore Drive, he was covered in a layer of highway dust, beef jerky crumbs and sweat. His breath reeked of Red Bull, dehydrated meat and a tired piece of chewing gum. His hair was oily, but he thought it looked pretty good for having spent the last seven days windblown in the driver’s seat of his Volkswagen. If only it could look that good after a shower.

As he looked at himself in the rearview mirror, he closed his eyes and sighed. He told himself out loud, “All right, asshole. Don’t fuck anything up.”

When Michelle answered the door of her pricey northside one-bedroom apartment and saw Lou standing there, her face exploded into a smile. She grabbed his hand and pulled him inside, where she kissed him long and perfectly. Then she drew all the blinds down on the large windows that presented a picturesque Chicago — the peaks of downtown buildings, Belmont Harbor and Lake Michigan’s expanse out east, and the garden rooftops of Wrigleyville to the west. Again, their mouths met, and they fell into a rabidly intense lovemaking session.

“Welcome home,” Michelle said once she caught her breath, both of their naked bodies sweaty and shaking with pleasure.

“I can get used to this,” he said.

Part I Part II Part III Part IV 

[dashielldeveron]

A Prologue in Venom

Part One of the Viper AU: a Mob!Tom Holland AU in which you are a political author, Tom’s personal lawyer, and eventually his consigliere. 

Warnings: violence, swears, the law.

Summary: an introduction to the ongoing AU of you working for the mob tirelessly out of your innate sense of justice and thirst for the mob boss. You have an incredible mentor who is pushing you down a path of crime in order to do the right thing. Your mentor forgot 1) to mention that your new employer is so fucking charismatic and 2) that you’re a dramatic little bitch.

From: Tracey Prine To: epiales@epiales.com Subject: article attached

Thought you might want to see this. You’ve made the papers for your real job for once, although your name still isn’t mentioned—but I expect you enjoy that. It’s all over the news stations, and NPR is currently airing the story. Congratulations. There’s a nice quotation from Polson near the bottom that you’ll get a kick out of.

Additionally, I’m going to need your piece on the refugee crisis within twelve hours if it’s going to be published this week.

Thanks, t.

[attachment]

FALSELY ACCUSED, JULIA LAURENS ACQUITTED

In the late afternoon of October 17, the protracted trial of Julia Laurens came to a sudden end in light of new evidence. Laurens, on trial for the murder of Moira Herrington, daughter of celebrated actors Jay and Melissa Herrington, walks as an innocent woman this morning.

As Moira’s violin teacher, Laurens would have had access to the Herrington residence during lessons on Mondays, but, it turns out, she was not the only one. It seemed like an open-and-shut case when Moira’s body, dismembered, was found in various black bags in Laurens’s garbage bins, along with the ice pick used to gouge out Moira’s eyes under the seat in Laurens’s vehicle on the day Laurens was stopped on the route from the Herrington residence. Laurens had said that she had driven to the lesson without being able to find Moira and was returning home, but the body had already been discovered.

However, as the defence exposed, all supposed evidence was a plant by perpetrator Johnson Mays, a colleague of Laurens who had a secret, unhealthy obsession with the underage Moira. Mays, a mechanic, had attended the weekly game night at Laurens’s apartment on Sunday and had sabotaged Laurens’s car and planted an ice pick similar to the one used. With this setup, Mays would have time to commit the murder during the scheduled violin lesson, while Laurens would have to attend to her car.

You kicked your feet up on the coffee table and flicked through the article. Fucking yes. You’d made national news for being a lawyer, for once. You were the one who’d done the intricate research to discover Mays’s connections, and when Dr. Prine gave you leave, you had driven upstate to investigate Mays’s house under warrant, posing as a general lackey. You had felt the need to see his place with your own eyes, and you had struck gold: not only had you found the real ice pick in his wood pile, but you had found one of Moira’s contacts stuck to the back of his freezer. Her fucking contact. When the lab reports came back, complete with the drop of blood on the ice pick matching Moira’s, you forwarded everything to Dr. Prine, and she sent it to her attorney acting defence in the trial. Mays wasn’t even a player in the game before you, and now the rightful murderer was going to jail. An innocent woman walks free because of you.

Justice felt fantastic. Your work being in the national headlines felt a little better.

You scanned the rest of the article until you reached the quotation Dr. Prine had told you about.

…Out of the clamouring press following the trial, only this was squeezed from a fuming Prosecutor James Polson: “I [redacted] had them. Whoever dug up the dirt on Mays, they’re a [redacted] viper, sinking their fangs into the status quo and letting their venom spread.”

Grinning, you took another bite of Ben and Jerry’s, straight out of the carton. Dr. Prine was right. You were going to have to find a hard copy of the Times so that you could post this on your bedroom wall. You had to bite your lip you were smiling so hard.

You set your ice cream on the coffee table and lay back on the couch to compose a response to Dr. Prine, but you called her instead. As your phone rang, you kicked back and stared at the ceiling fan, its pull making small circles as the blades spun.

“Dr. Prine,” you said when she picked up, “Holy fuck! Holy fuck!”

“Congratulations,” she said, her smile coming through over the phone, “I’m proud of you. You did some really solid work.”

“I didn’t think this would happen! I saved someone’s life! Julia Laurens can go to fucking Hobby Lobby, and no one will accost her. It’s my fault, and she doesn’t even know me,” you said, sitting up to grab your ice cream again.

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Well, yeah,” you said thickly through a chunk of frozen brownie, “It is. I wish I could tell my mother, though, but it’s not that big of a deal.”

“Is she still doing all right?”

You swallowed, choking a bit to get it down. “Yeah. How’s work for you?”

“The freshman students write the worst papers I’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Prine with a clattering in the background, “Damn, I just—hold on. Dropped the binders.” A door creaked shut on her end, and Dr. Prine spoke more loudly after. “I miss your work. It was nice grading it, since I didn’t have to mark it up much. These kids can’t even handle a mock trial yet. I worry for your generation.”

“Don’t worry. We’re all just tired,” you said, “Speaking of my work, I’ve almost finished the refugee piece. Once I get a solid closing statement, I’ll send it your way.”

“Well, don’t procrastinate. Your deadline’s soon. You got anything lined up this evening?”

Scrunching your eyes shut, you winced. “Don’t remind me. Polson’s got me doing menial work again. Something totally useless with spreadsheets and the expenses of the fucking break room and secretarial offices. If he knew what I was capable of—”

“If he knew you worked against him in the Laurens trial? I know,” said Dr. Prine, her voice softening, “I’ve been meaning to tell you something. It’s your ticket out of Polson’s firm. I’ve found a place where your talents would be…much more appreciated. You could start within the week.”

“Say more right now.”

***

2,132.

2,132 rejections via mass email, starting in your second year of law school. All from different firms that didn’t want you. Rounds upon rounds of interviews, competing with your friends and total strangers who held themselves like they were Croesus, reaching the final interview, only to get rejection emails three days later from firms you would have quite literally killed people to work for. Years of working for and studying under Dr. Prine, editing her national law journal, diligently dotting the is of her excruciating cases late into the night. Getting a taste of the allure of wealth and entrenched power, and never having it want you outside of the knowledge that you were her student. All of it—from the cases you and she never could crack and stood outside in the rain pulling your hair out over, to the parts of your life you missed out on, like your best friend’s wedding and your mother’s last birthday before you started growing apart—leading up to this: walking into a high-rise building with mirror-like windows in the middle of Manhattan and staring up at an embossed, brass nameplate on a door that read Harrison Osterfield.

The next chapter in your life, and it sank like a stone in your stomach. You raised your fist to knock, but before you could, someone snatched it away.

“Ripley,” said the bony man maybe a decade older than you, pulling on his collar and dropping your hand, “and you’re not getting my first name. We’ve got to get upstairs before they see you. No time to lose. I’m the lawyer you’re replacing.”

Glancing back at Osterfield’s door, you followed behind Ripley up a few floors (the elevator was too risky, he told you.) and into a crusty, windowless office with water damage dripping in a back corner. After closing the door, he sat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk (one leg was propped up by a book) and gestured for you to do the same.

“You’re Dr. Prine’s student, aren’t you?”

“I am,” you said, sinking into the leather, “She also told me that you’d be waiting for me, but considering this business belongs to a Mr. Thomas Holland, one would think I’d be meeting him on my first day.”

Ripley pulled a leg into his lap, resting one ankle on the opposite knee. “With any luck, you won’t have any direct interactions with him. Nasty man in a nasty business.”

“Being in an IT consulting company can’t be that bad,” you said, head snapping towards a bucket against the wall once water dripped into it from the ceiling. “What’s with the, uh…?” You nodded your head towards the leak.

“They shoved me down here while the real office is getting renovated, or so they say. Doesn’t matter,” said Ripley, “You and I have a lot of work to do. You’re one of Dr. Prine’s. So am I. They’re working me to death here, and apparently you’re a masochistic workaholic. I need to get out, and this is—well, what we’re about to do is going to be easiest for everyone in this room.”

You tapped your fingers against the split leather, each landing with a dull thum. “Why do I get the feeling this is going to be needlessly complicated?”

“Please, trust me, or at least trust Dr. Prine,” he said, untwisting the cap of a nalgene from his desk, “It was her idea. I can call her up, if you want.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Shaking your head, you said, “I’ve already seen your credentials. Dr. Prine gave me more information on you than I need to know, Jerome Ripley. I know you’re trustworthy. What’s the plan?”

“I hear you’re into anonymity.”

You always were a dramatic little bitch, so you agreed to the plan: you and Ripley would collaborate on the job until you knew much more of the rope of Osseous Enterprises, and Ripley would fade out as you took on the job by yourself. The plan was sketchy, and everything reeked of ulterior motives. You found yourself addressing stranger and stranger things sent to you in the emails (a lousy lawyer@osseous, how lame) right up until you opened an email from Holland before Ripley could get to it.

Inside were photographs of a human skeleton with the flesh freshly ripped off of it, and that lay to the side of the bones. Boss shot him through the neck, it was labelled, Had me skin it. Wants you to send it along to H. Jones in Queens and cover the death. Victim lived in… And then addresses, social security, et al.

You were supposed to cover up a murder. A murder committed by—oh, um. Hm. You didn’t sign up for this.

Ripley walked into the office right as Dr. Prine picked up on your phone call, and he slapped the phone out of your hands.

Both of them talked you through. The mafia. You were working for the mafia. Not the whole thing, obviously, but you were working for the most prestigious mob family in—fuck, they covered multiple countries, but their base was right here in New York, in the very fucking building you’d been working in for a month—oh, fuck. Were you in the mob? No, you had to be inducted, and to be inducted, you had to be trusted, or at least, even fucking noticed. Osseous Enterprises was a front corporation for Holland’s dealings in the mob, even though it made a lot of money—but significantly less than what was officially recorded. No wonder Ripley was taking certain tasks. He was easing you into it, letting you deal with the surface level shit before you really knew what you were getting into (an aside: this explained why Dr. Prine seemingly sent you to work in business when you specialised in criminal law).

It took hours and hours of skype calls with Dr. Prine and talking with Ripley outside of work to convince you to stay. Dr. Prine appealed to your better nature, damn it, and talked about how even though Holland worked selfishly, he confronted people and solved problems the government was too scared to commit to. All she had to do was talk up your innate sense of justice, and you started changing your mind, albeit with extreme reluctance, especially with the threat of returning to Polson’s firm. Not to mention your first paycheque had your head spinning, and that didn’t hurt your cause.

So, you worked for the mob, and no one knew you did, not even the mob. If Holland knew Ripley were leaving, Ripley would have a knife in his back within the next minute. It was safer for Ripley to phase out, with you proving your worth secretly, until you deemed it time to reveal yourself, after Ripley left.

“It’d be odd if all areas of your life were perfect in tandem,” Dr. Prine would remind you, and you’d affectionately flip her off and get back to writing your next Epiales piece. Deadlines were always too soon.

***

The Epiales project was the only thing going for you right now, aside from the sudden income from Holland. It began your final semester of law school, when you shouldn’t have been taking on anything new at all. You had written, quite frankly, a fucking astonishing article on modern feminism as it functions in the government and in law, and Dr. Prine had featured it in her law journal. You hadn’t wanted recognition, because your views differed drastically from your family’s, and you didn’t want your peers making fun of you, either. You’d decided on Epiales as your penname, because, even though you wanted to follow in the footsteps of political authors throughout history, you couldn’t find a Greek philosopher whose views you agreed with. So, you went with the personification of nightmares, just because it’d be your family’s worst nightmare if they knew you were this politically different from them.

Just as a joke.

But then, the New York Times had bought your article from Dr. Prine and published it on the front page. Eventually, through repetitions of this and an endless string of emails, you had a monthly feature in the fucking New York Times, so long as the article was original to their newspaper and not a republished one from the law journal. They conceded to your continued posting to the Epiales website on the basis that you posted online after they began selling that day’s edition. You didn’t care. You were in the New York Times, for Christ’s sake.

And no one knew it was you. You were completely safe, from hecklers, from your family, from disgusting men threatening to ruin your life and/or end it. You had taken too many precautions. Hell, if someone tried to trace your IP address, it’d relocate to the middle of a sulphur pit in Yellowstone.

Through a series of accidents, you garnered respect.

***

The day you should have been waiting for comments to roll in for your latest instalment on the refugee crisis, Tom Holland needed his lawyer present at a tennis match in the Hamptons. Holland intended to ensure political ties with Senator Hernandez, whose daughter was playing in the tennis tournament. A sizable crowd at a public outing, all distracted and getting steadily drunk? Holland could make his move easily.

Thus there you stood under the scant shade of a pine tree in the ninety-seven-degree heat, sweating through your jet-black blazer, sucking on a piece of ice, and damning Tom Holland to his grave. You glared daggers into the back of his pretty head as he leant against the railing of the pavilion, laughing with the crowd and swirling an old fashioned in his palm against the muted sounds of rackets hitting the ball in the background. When Harrison bent in to whisper to Holland, Tom took off his amber-tinted sunglasses and cleaned them on the inside of his suit jacket, and once finished, he nodded and started weaving his way through the spectators.

Holland wanted his lawyer here yet wasn’t doing anything worthwhile, you thought bitterly. You were too good for him, really, because you’d planted yourself near Senator Hernandez’s bench as he watched his daughter. While Holland flirted, you were eavesdropping and sweating your fucking skin off.

Near the end of the second set, you caved and shrugged off your blazer when you caught the latter half of something Hernandez was saying: “—read it? It’s brilliant. Next time Congress is in session, I’m bringing in that Epiales article.”

Your jaw dropped, and so did the ice from your mouth. Your blazer hung limp from one hand, and you steadied yourself against the tree, your high heels sinking into the earth. Fumbling around for your phone, you barely had time to get to Dr. Prine’s contact entry before someone gently nudged your arm from behind with a glass tumbler, condensation sticking to your skin.

“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else but here,” said Tom Holland, his voice hot in your ear, while he’s standing a little too close for comfort and holding out an old fashioned identical to his, “I can offer a distraction, at the least.”

You don’t drink, but you took what was offered. “Am I that transparent?”

“Like glass, sweetheart. What’s bothering you?” He leant against the tree trunk, slumping a little, and tapped his index finger against his tumbler.

“Afraid I’ve been dragged here for work.”

“On a Saturday?”

You met his gaze, completely fixated on you through the amber sunglasses. “My boss is a bit of an ass.”

“Sounds like it,” Tom said, cracking a grin, “Forcing you to come to some silly tennis match on the hottest day of the month and flat-out ignoring you.”

“It’s better than putting me in a sundress and having me on his arm.” Like Polson did once that summer. You had kicked his ass, verbally, about it, but since he threatened to smear your name through the mud for the rest of your life, which he was capable of doing, it had to be done. “At least I’m here for a reason, supposedly.”

“Who treats his employees like that? Wouldn’t dream of it.” Tom brought his glass to his mouth as his eyes flicked up and down your body, taking his time about it. “Though I’d put you in a green sundress. Something that shows off your shoulders.”

“And I’d put you in navy, in something with a high neckline. Anything to accentuate those pretty-boy cheekbones you’ve got,” you said.

At this, he ran his tongue over his lower lip, pushed off the tree, and took a step closer to you. He may be enjoying it now, but this motherfucker would regret this conversation in about five minutes. To be honest, you were enjoying it a little too much. To have someone as powerful, confident, and attractive (the grey tweed suit buttoned over a tight, white button-down was doing things to you) as Tom was having his complete, unadulterated attention on you? It was a taste of something you denied yourself. But no matter how fast his charisma held you, it was time to wrap it up. You planned to work for this man a long time.

“Listen,” said Tom, “Why don’t I give you a tour of the country club?” He trailed two fingers from your wrist over the back of your hand to take your drink. “It’s not much, but we’ll get you into some air conditioning. We could find a place to talk without anyone overhearing, if you like.”

You rolled your shoulders back, and for the first time, you began to smile. “Hardly professional, Holland. To think I expected better of you.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Shouldn’t you be giving this attention to Senator Hernandez’s daughter? It’ll be easier to get to him through her.”

And there it was: his face hardened, his eyebrows furrowing and lips puckering very slightly, the brief clenching of his jaw and the flush around the tops of his ears—the face your opponents got in court when your research that would pack the case into a tight box was brought to the stand. “Who are you?” Tom asked flatly.

“You’re going to have to work for that information, Holland,” you said, “Be careful about how you respond. As much as you should like to, you can’t make a scene with so many witnesses.”

“I own all of these people,” he said through his teeth.

“Go ahead, then,” you said, and you clasped your hand behind your back, waiting.

After a beat, Tom sighed exasperatedly and grabbed you by the wrist to pull you somewhere, but before he could take two steps, you yanked yourself out of his grasp. He didn’t even bother looking over his shoulder. “Are you going to follow me?”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

He turned his head enough to look you in the eye. “You’re going to talk.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You appear to know who I am. Use your imagination.” He jerked his head towards the country club’s restaurant, not far from the tennis courts. “C’mon.”

Death sounded good at all occasions for you, but since someone needed to feed your cat this evening, now wouldn’t be the best time to die. Not to mention you still had half a croissant left over from that morning, and you couldn’t let that go to waste. You followed behind Tom at a couple of paces, checking to ensure no one was watching you leave, because it sure looked like you were sneaking off to give him a blowjob behind the ice machine.

He made you go first once you reached the stairs to the upper storey restaurant, and he cornered you at the far end of the balcony, trapping you against the iron railing with the metal pressing into your back and his hands planted on either side of you. Tom stood close enough that you had to lean backwards a little over the railing, and you had to grip the railing just inside of his hands to stay upright.

His mouth twitched. “Why are you here?”

Your gaze flashed from his lips to his eyes. “I’m here to supervise the contract you’re making with Senator Hernandez, and I’m ensuring that he does sign it.”

“And why’s that?” When he jerked forward in an attempt to make you lose your balance, you stifled a cough at the wave of the oversaturated cologne that hit you.

“Like I said, my boss is a bit of an ass.”

“Damn it,” Tom said, breaking eye contact for the first time. Freshly determined, he moved closer, his hipbones poking into you with one hand gripping your waist. “Who’d be stupid enough to provoke me? Who do you work for? Fletcher? The Fratellis?”

“You,” you said, and you left your lips pursed as he flinched away from you and bent over the back of a wrought-iron chair, pressing his fist to his mouth.

“I’m your lawyer,” you said, stifling a smile, “I wrote the Hernandez contract. I’ve also been managing your affairs for some time now, specifically covering your tracks for fucking murder—”

“What’d you do to Ripley?” Tom straightened up and removed his sunglasses. He tucked them over his collar.

“Ripley’s gone,” you said, “of his own free will. Or of his will, at least, since he wasn’t free to leave under your—”

“Where is he now?”

“Sorry. Privileged information. What matters is that Ripley’s gone completely off-grid so that you can’t find him. Even I’m not able to reach him.” You tentatively slid from your corner along the railing nearer to the chair he had propped a foot on. “I’ve been working for you for over a month now. You really should keep better tabs on your employees—though, I suspect, that’ll be part of my job soon.”

Tom snapped his fingers twice. “Name.”

“Paul McCartney.”

He narrowed his eyes, his nose wrinkling in the process, and said, “Your name.”

You didn’t hesitate in saying it, a first for you, and as he mouthed the syllables slowly, you said, “And don’t bother looking me up. I don’t have any social media, nor do I have an online presence at all.” Under your real name, that is. “You can find me in a list of interns for a certain renown professor, but I’m about to give you that information, anyway.”

Tom stared up at you, a curl dangling in front of his eyes. “A freely given piece of personal information?” His fingertips pressed above his left lapel. “I’m touched,” he said, his voice dark.

“My mentor for the better part of my life now,” you said, stepping closer to drag the back of your hand over the iron pattern in Tom’s chair (he jolted backwards, just barely, but you caught it), “has been Tracey Prine.”

He tilted his head, and his jaw hung open slightly, his tongue lingering on the edge of his top incisors before clicking it against the roof of his mouth. “No, she hasn’t.”

“Want me to call her?” You dug your phone out of your pocket and unlocked it to her contact entry, just where it had been before Tom started talking to you. Your thumb waited above the call button for his decision, but whatever. Fuck with him. You pressed it anyway and put it on speaker.

It rang twice before she picked up, and at the sound of her voice stating your name and telling you she’s got a class in two minutes and to check on the Times (you didn’t react to that part), Tom inhaled sharply and straightened his shoulders.

“Not much, Dr. Prine, but I’m here with my employer,” you say, the phone lying flat in your palm between you and Tom, whose gaze flickered from it to you.

“Tell Mr. Holland I appreciate his work ethic and that he should value yours to no end,” she said, “I’ve got to go. Tonight?”

“Tonight,” you said, and you hung up on her.

“What’s…?” When you shook your head, he held out his hand. “Let me see your texts.” He swore under his breath as he scrolled through them, going through months and months of casework for notable trials, and he read the attachments you had sent recently. “Lab work, blood results. An ice pi—holy shit,” Tom said, the hand with the phone falling limply to his lap, “The Laurens trial. You.” The corner of his mouth twitched before breaking into a smirk. “You’re the one that solved everything. You’re that viper.”

Oh, my fuck; he’s heard of you. Tom Holland has heard about you. He’s familiar with your work. Oh, holy fuck. You held it all in for the moment, but if you made it home alive, you were going to marathon Star Wars and call in for takeaway. “That I am,” you said coolly, accepting your phone when he offered it, “and what does that mean for you, Mr. Holland?”

Any evidence of doubt about him evaporated, and his charisma returned almost instantly. He was smiling now, his teeth on display, and he leant towards you. “I want you at my side, Viper,” he said, his hands dangerously close to yours on the back of the iron chair, “I want you to do for me what you did for Laurens. Exclusively. I’ll be your only client. I want you to tear apart my enemies and pick their bones clean. I want you to be merciless, and I want you to be mine.”

That’s a lot of subtext you’ll be thinking about in the shower later. But show nothing; be nothing. “You want an awful lot.”

Tom took a deep breath and moved to sit on the wrought-iron table. “That’s why I’m giving you an out,” he said, crossing his arms loosely, “before you’re in. Because once you’re in, you can’t leave. I’ll make sure of that.”

You took a moment before clasping your hands behind your back and taking a step around the chair towards him. “I want my privacy.”

“I can’t guarantee that. I’ve got to keep a close eye on you, since Ripley slithered away,” he said, “You’re a shot in the dark despite your accomplishments.”

“You will guarantee it,” you said, leaning against the table with the iron pattern pressing into your palm, “Addresses, bank accounts, social security, everything that I don’t give you.”

Tom shook his head. “I can’t—”

“You will. It’s all I’m asking. I’ll be covering your dirty work from the world, so why can’t I hide mine?” It was your turn to be too close, for your breath to be hot against his skin as you said softly into his ear, “Tell me, Holland: are you afraid of the dark?”

tags: @presidentbttrflyfreak @magstorrn @imstarwarstrashokay @infamous-webhead @starksparker @starksmile @pparkerwrites @softspideys @spidereyhes @bi-writes @iron-spiderr @laurfangirl424 @wheremyotpat @valar--m0rghulis @upsidedownparker @hollandroos

[rockofcalifa]

PART VI: 1435

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There were both pros and cons to being a favorite underling of the Archbishop. Pro: her position had more safety and security - she'd always have a solid roof over her head, no matter the circumstances. Con: she received the unwanted attention of novices either seeking spiritual guidance she wasn't exactly qualified to give or trying to figure out how to take her position for themselves. Pro: her permanent position at court afforded a measure of stability and kept her close to her favorite people (basically: Vitaliya). Con: in order to stay in the Archbishop's good graces, she had to take care of the man's most high-stakes-but-boring errands - as she was, in fact, doing now.

 This time, Dmitrii had requested that the Archbishop provide safe transportation for Vasilii's wife, Maria Iaroslavna, and son, Ivan, to Galich from Moscow. From what Milyena had heard, Dmitrii expected that if any fighting broke out, it would happen in Moscow, and he didn't want Vasilii's family caught in the middle of it. Milyena wasn't convinced that Dmitrii actually cared about the safety of the young woman sitting next to her in this carriage, and she was even less convinced that Dmitrii wanted the baby said woman clutched in said woman’s arms to survive, but if he wanted to pretend, and act as if he did to score political points, that was of course perfectly fine.

 Milyena sighed, and Anna Dmitriyevna, one of Maria's close companions who was traveling with them, glanced at her passively before closing her eyes again. Maria and little Ivan seemed to be asleep. It was their ninth, and potentially last, day of travel. The first few days, the two ladies had been in good spirits, keeping up a steady flow of conversation and asking Milyena to recite scripture or narrate the lives of saints. But the group dynamic had mellowed day by day as baby Ivan grew crankier, the adults grew more tired, and the familiarity of home grew farther and farther away.

 In some aspects, but not all, Milyena felt sorry for Maria Iaroslavna. There were both pros and cons to being the wife of Prince Vasilii. Like Milyena, her position brought the boons of security and prestige for her family and herself. Like Milyena, her position came with its liabilities too - as evidenced by the necessity of this very journey.

 And then there was the matter of Vasilii himself. On the one hand, Vasilii obviously had little interest in her, to the point of ignoring her entirely. Milyena often recalled, with embarrassment, the episode of Vasilii's wedding. Milyena herself had dedicated days to meticulously planning and coordinating the event, only for Vasilii to spoil it by paying more attention to the little Mongolian ambassador than to his poor wife. On the other hand, having a powerful and distant husband couldn't be all that bad. She got to be one of the most influential women in Muscovy without Vasilii intruding on her day to day life.

 A particularly nasty bump in the dirt road woke Ivan, and he started crying. Maria Iaroslavna rocked him back to docility and Milyena and Anna Dmitriyevna spent the better part of an hour entertaining him with silly faces and nonsense sounds, wearing him out so he was asleep again by the time they arrived at the center of Galich.

 Finally, they disembarked. Maria Iaroslavna and her party, after politely thanking Milyena for assisting their travel, were shepherded off in one direction, and Milyena took her bag and set off in another, seeking to check in with the local bishop.

 It was not the bishop she found, however, but Gerasim, waiting for her in the anteroom of the diocesan offices.

 "I'm surprised to find you outside of Moscow," Milyena said after they exchanged greetings.

 "I'm here with Dmitrii. We arrived a few days ago."

 Milyena frowned. "Oh... what brings him here?"

 Gerasim started walking, and she followed. "He just wanted to check up on some things, make sure it's all under control. Anyway, he heard you were arriving and he wants to talk to you."

 "What does that mean, 'talk to me?'"

 Gerasim shrugged. "He just wants to say hello."

 "And he sent you to collect me."

 "That's right." Gerasim glanced sideways at him with a raised eyebrow. "Are you surprised?"

 Milyena didn't bother to reply. She recalled, a few years back, her last one-on-one, private conversation with Gerasim. Then, she'd told him that if he went through with killing Iurii, he'd lose Dmitrii’s trust. But she hadn't really meant that - she had no way of knowing how Dmitrii would respond. She'd just said anything she could to convince Gerasim not to do the deed. Clearly it hadn't worked out.

 Gerasim was just more politically oriented than she was. As long as Milyena could continue to climb the Church hierarchy, it didn't matter to her who occupied the throne.

 Gerasim led them to a small, cozy sitting room off of the main hall. Dmitrii rose to greet them as they walked in.

 "Gospodin," Milyena acknowledged with a tip of her head, Vasilii’s old title rolling off her tongue for someone new. Dmitrii smiled.

 "I'm so glad to see you arrived without any issues," he said. "Sit down; I won't keep you here long." They sat, although Gerasim remained standing by the wall. "I trust you're doing well?"

 "As well as always."

 "Good. I wanted to ask after the health of Maria Iaroslavna, but I don't want to disturb her after the long journey."

 The question seemed harmless enough, but Milyena kept her answer positive and vague. "She is unaccustomed to travel, but she didn't take it too badly. She's healthy, and Ivan is too."

 Dmitrii leaned forward a bit. "And did she seem very... wary of coming here to Galich?"

 Honestly, Maria Iaroslavna had kept her feelings to herself. Were she in her place, Milyena would have felt very, as Dmitrii put it, 'wary' - but that probably wasn't what Dmitrii wanted to hear. "She seemed grateful for your generosity and consideration over her safety."

 Dmitrii leaned back, satisfied. "I was so pleased when I heard you were accompanying them. I figured that if I could trust anyone to bring them here safely, it would be you." Dmitrii was probably just saying that to be polite, but Milyena appreciated it anyway. "Anyway - that wasn't the only thing I wanted to ask about."

 Milyena nodded for Dmitrii to continue.

 "I'm a bit concerned about Vitaliya. I haven't seen her lately... I just want to make sure she's doing well."

 I'm a bit concerned about Vitaliya. Milyena heard the unspoken question: Does Vitalia hate me? Is Vitaliya going to try to kill me? At least, Milyena thought that was what Dmitrii was asking. Maybe she was reading into it too much.

 "I wouldn't worry about Vitaliya," Milyena answered. "She's a bit stressed, but she can take care of herself - at least, that's my job. You have bigger concerns."

 "Of course," Dmitrii said with a smile. "Thank you as always, Yena. I knew I could count on you."

  With that taken care of, Milyena went back and visited the bishop, who arranged somewhere for her to stay for a few days - she wanted to return to Moscow as soon as she could - and someone to show her around; and after dragging her feet through the little tour she was given, she went directly to bed, even though it was still early.

 But soon after she fell asleep - at least, what felt like soon after - she was awoken by a soft, persistent knocking at her door.

 "Hello?" she mumbled, groggy, shaking herself awake when she saw who was outside her room. "Anna Dmitriyevna?"

 "I'm sorry for disturbing you, Sister," she said, twisting her hands in front of her. "But I don't know who else to go to..."

 Milyena frowned. "What happened?"

 Anna took a deep breath. "When we arrived, they kept us waiting in a big hall for a few hours, and Lady Maria sent me out to check on our belongings, so I did; but when I returned, everyone was gone. I've looked around and I've asked but nobody will tell me anything."

 "It sounds like there's been some sort of misunderstanding," Milyena assured her, putting on her coat. "Let's see if we can get it sorted out."

 A misunderstanding. Probably, they'd forgotten Anna Dmitriyevna was part of Maria's original party, and thought she was a nosy stranger. That sounded plausible.

 Anna silently led her to the hall where she'd last seen Maria, and she pointed out a guard she'd talked to. Milyena approached him.

 "Excuse me," she said, watching as the guard took in her clothes, her status. "This lady here is looking for Lady Maria Iaroslavna. They were traveling together and got separated. Would you kindly direct us to where we might find her?"

 "Of course, my apologies," said the guard, keeping a grim expression. "Follow me."

 They followed. Deeper into the palace complex, down a flight of stairs or two, and he handed them off to another guard, who took them a bit further and handed them off again. The third guard took them down more stairs - Milyena was beginning to fear that Maria Iaroslavna was stuck in some sort of dungeon - before they came upon a well-worn spiral staircase, which they climbed. Up and up, passing guards and doors and more guards and more doors, and then they stopped, in front of a guard, in front of a door.

 "The lady is a companion of Maria Iaroslavna," the third guard grunted.

 "So?" said the door guard. Milyena and Anna exchanged a glance.

 "So, let them in."

 The door guard obliged, reaching for an obnoxiously large key attached to his belt and using it to unlock the door.

 Milyena and Anna stepped inside.

 It was a small room, round, windowless. Its walls were bare, its floor plain and not very clean. Maria sat on the little bed by the wall, staring at them with big eyes, clutching Ivan close to her chest. When she registered Milyena’s presence, however, she addressed her with anger. "You! Did you know?"

 "What -" Milyena sputtered, still taking in the meager room.

 "Did you understand what you were leading us into? Do you understand now?"

 "I - no - there must be a misunderstanding..." Milyena offered.

 "There's no misunderstanding. Dmitrii is using us as hostages in the event that Vasilii comes back to fight him." Breaking out of her daze, Anna rushed over to Maria's side, taking Ivan from her, allowing Maria to stand and approach Milyena. "In Moscow, we would have been perfectly safe. All of my husband's allies are there, not here."

 "But Dmitrii told the Archbishop that -"

 "He lied!" Maria jabbed an accusatory finger at Milyena’s chest. "If I know one thing about my husband's character, it's that if Ivan is at stake, he is going to do stupid, stupid things."

 "I'm sorry. I didn't predict this," Milyena stammered, stepping backwards. "I'm - I'm going to talk to Dmitrii."

 She turned and fled, down the endless spiral staircase and away, her shock quickly melting into indignation. Dmitrii lied to her. Dmitrii lied to the Archbishop. Milyena didn't involve herself in politics, but that was unacceptable.

 She was lucky enough to find Dmitrii in the sitting room where she'd last left him. Gerasim was there too, sleeping in an armchair, stirring a little at Milyena’s noisy entrance.

 "I suppose overtly lying to the Archbishop is okay now, huh?" Milyena yelled. "Using the Church's resources to convey an innocent woman and child into captivity! That's all right with you?"

 Dmitrii winced at her tone. "Can you calm down, please?"

 "I don't know! Will you let Vasilii’s family out of that little - that little tower you've locked them up in?"

 "I can't say that I will."

 "You must think you hold all the cards here. Don't you?" Milyena walked past the still startled-looking Gerasim, stopping at the table where Dmitrii was sitting. "Or are you too foolish to admit that the real power in Muscovy lies in the Church?"

 "Milyena, will you shut -"

 "And that when the Archbishop hears about this, he'll -"

 "I said, will you shut up," Dmitrii hissed, standing, his wooden chair scraping loudly against the floor. "For all the Archbishop knows, I've kept my word."

 "I'm going back to Moscow tomorrow."

 "Are you?"

 "You can't keep me here."

 They stared at each other. "Did you know? Vitaliya will be arriving in a few days," Dmitrii said. "Would you like her to have a warm welcome? Or something... different?"

 Milyena didn't think twice. She raised her hand and slapped the man across the face with as much rage-fueled strength as she could muster. Dmitrii barely flinched, grabbing Milyena’s wrists in a bruisingly strong grip.

 "I would advise you not to do that again," Dmitrii said, not bothering to hide his disdain.

 "It's your sister." (But Vasilii was Dmitrii’s cousin and Kosoi was Vitaliya’s brother and Iurii was Vasilii’s uncle and so maybe none of that mattered.)

 Dmitrii released Milyena, pushing her backwards. "Get out."

 Milyena stumbled backwards to the door. Gerasim was still sitting in his chair, gaze averted. "You're a coward, Gerasim," she said.

 "Out," Dmitrii repeated. Milyena slammed the door.

back to index

[ali-bhutto-blog]

The Caste-aways

Feature published in Newsline.

Behind the bazaar and billboards of Ratodero lie dark, winding alleys. Larkana district’s second-largest town of over 67,000 residents is a dense maze of unfulfilled promises. At its heart – in the Harijan Colony, home to approximately 800 Dalits, or ‘Untouchables’ – Ratodero hides those whom it refuses to acknowledge.

Daulat Balbir is almost invisible. He lives in a 24-square-foot quarter on ‘Central Lane’ (Vicheen Ghitti) – a two-foot wide alley. An open gutter occupies half its width. It is his aisle to the outside world. Society keeps him at a distance – a truth that has left its mark on his face. He sweeps the streets of the city and is considered unclean and an embarrassment to be seen with. For this reason, he faces social exclusion and isolation, like all members of the Harijan community. Nobody will eat anything from their hands and few invite them to wedding functions, let alone attend any of theirs.

The educated youth of Daulat’s neighbourhood cannot find employment because they belong to the ‘bhangi’ or sweeper class and are therefore deemed repulsive. Even the police hesitate to come near members of their community, or imprison them, lest the other inmates feel uncomfortable being in the same cell as a Harijan.

The Harijans have lived in the old city quarter ever since it was built – in 1938. The colony of 100 houses, organised in 16 blocks, or quarters, has seen little municipal construction or improvement since. The Harijans are among the oldest inhabitants of the city. “We have always lived here,” says Gian Chand, a resident of the colony and a sanitation officer in the Ratodero municipal administration. “Even Pakistan came later.” Gian is one of 40 members of his community who are currently employed by the municipality, and the only one who has risen above the ranks of a sweeper.

“Up until a decade ago, 200 members of the Harijan community were employed by the municipality as sweepers and around 70 of them were women,” says Mukhi Ashok Kumar, President of the Hindu Panchayat of Ratodero. “Over the last 10 years they have been reduced to 40, of which only six are females.” According to Ashok, the administration now resorts to favouritism and hires sweepers on sifarish. It currently has 472 cleaners in its employ, but most of them do not even turn up to work and are receiving a salary sitting at home, he says.

The result is a decline in the town’s sanitation. Ashok cites as an example, the conditions that prevail on the premises of Ratodero’s water supply, the tree-lined grounds of which have long served as a public park of sorts. “People defecate in the park and no one cleans up,” he says. “The park is in a bad way.” He adds that in the past around six Harijan sweepers had been employed for the upkeep of the park and that it used to be clean in those days. He finds it strange that it is the Dalits who are viewed with downcast eyes, while the supposedly respectable citizens of the city defecate in the park, despite the fact that a new toilet has been installed there, and then don’t even bother to wash up properly afterwards, using stones to clean themselves. “People in our society need to change their habits,” he says.

Sidelined, the Harijans have few avenues for employment other than  to work as cleaners. They cannot run roadside food stalls since no one is willing to eat anything they have touched. “The discrimination isn’t on religious grounds, but purely class-based and a lot of it comes from within the Hindu community as well,” says Ashok. There are some who have turned to small-time entrepreneurial ventures such as fixing mobile phones and motorcycles on an ad-hoc basis.

Ratan Lal and his wife live in one of the tiny, windowless quarters of the colony. Dressed in a white safari shirt and trousers and with his hair slicked back, he looks like a retired denizen of Florida. Ratan is a relic of a different era. He received a diploma in hotel management from an institution in Clifton, Karachi and briefly worked at the Taj Mahal Hotel (now the Regent Plaza) until a car accident sealed his fate. He now lives in his humble abode in a state of fear and suffocation. “Our daughters and sons are educated, but the only jobs they can find are as sweepers,” he says. With great difficulty, his daughter has managed to find work as a kindergarten teacher and his son as an art teacher.

Like every other resident of the colony, Ratan pays a monthly rent of Rs 1,200 for a dilapidated room built in 1938. Some rooms house up to eight people. Driven by desperation and a lack of alternatives, many families have expanded their quarters onto the lanes, making the colony’s public thoroughfares unusually narrow and difficult for residents to walk through.

“Local councillors and political representatives promised to give us plots and jobs, but we never heard from them again,” says Ratan. The only semblance of help came in the form of an attempt by the administration to rebuild the local mandir of the Hindu goddess Devi Mata, but even that has not been completed, he laments. “Rs 10 million were allocated by the government for the construction of the new mandir, but only approximately Rs 1.2 million were spent,” he says. “The upstairs section has not been built and the shrine lacks electrical wiring.”

Of the Hindu community of Ratodero, it is only the Harijans who prefer to bury their dead instead of cremating them, while some request that their bodies be deposited in the River Indus.

Owing to their status as outcasts, inter-marriages are common within the community, between cousins living in Larkana, Sukkur and Karachi. As far as Ashok can recall, there have been no cases in Ratodero of forced marriages, kidnappings or forced conversions of Harijan girls – mainly because of the stigma that surrounds them as the sweeper class that cleans up other people’s filth. “There is the rare occasion in which a Muslim male sees a girl sweeper on the street or working in his home and ends up marrying her,” he says, “but these are consensual affairs and not forced.” He points out that it is not solely due to their profession as cleaners that Harijans are viewed with repulsion. “There are Christian sweepers too,” he says. “But, there is not as much class discrimination against them, possibly because they are better educated and make more of an effort with personal hygiene,” he says.

Similarly, the Harijans are not the only ones who are treated like they do not exist. The colony overlooks an empty plot where leaders like Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have staged public meetings in an attempt to rally support. In one corner of the space is a collection of makeshift shanties and tents. They are home to a squatter settlement of Bheels, Bhattis and the Brohis of Kalat.

Aalam Khatoun and her sister, Khadija – Brohis by caste – make the long journey from Kalat to Ratodero every winter with their husbands and army of children, to escape the cold. Skilled artisans, they make and sell axes, knives, sickles and shovels. As homeless wanderers, they are in a constant state of flux, setting up camp wherever convenient. A few days earlier, they were living in another plot and were made to vacate. Khadija carries her medical reports on her at all times and shows them to whomever she meets. She has a problem with her lungs, but cannot afford treatment.

The Brohis’ neighbours, for now, are Bhattis, who reside in a cluster of 25 tents. Haleema Bhatti and her husband Rasool Bux have lived in Ratodero for 50 years and have been homeless for most of the period. Haleema begs for a living while Rasool Bux collects and sells cardboards from garbage dumps. Their 10 grandchildren play amid piles of polythene and scavenge along the banks of open gutters, hands and mouths blackened with dirt. “I went to a government hospital for treatment, but the doctor told me not to come back again,” says Hazoor Bux, one of the elders of the family. “It is only a matter of time before the police remove us from here.”

In the midst of poverty and hopelessness, stands the solitary shelter of Mithi Bhatti, an elderly, childless widow who lives on her own and fends for herself. She survives by begging in the town at night. This mélange of squatters of different castes and creeds are united by a common cause: they are in desperate need of a plot of land, or space that they can call home.

[jarmes]

JJBA Twisted Destiny Chapter 1 - Johana Joestar

Masterpost - Next Chapter

He strikes late at night. His target, a pretty young woman with brown curls, is walking home from class. He chuckles to himself as he thinks about what he’s about to do. Quickly, he moves from the bushes, drawing his knife and lunging at the woman.

She runs, screaming as loud as she can. He doesn’t mind; he expected her to run. She dashes for the nearest building, hoping to get away. That’s when she steps into his trap.

Her foot falls into a slipknot made thin string, so thin that she can barely make it out. She falls to the ground and feels a creature crawling on her back, creating more string and binding her limbs. Suddenly, she feels very, very tired. As she slips from consciousness she looks at her back, at the creature tying her up, and sees nothing.

He walks over to his trap and smiles. The creature abandons the woman and returns to its master, taking its place on his shoulder.

+++

Our story begins in the summer of 2011, in the City of London, on a swelteringly hot day. A young university freshman sits in the stuffy office of one of her professors, a small windowless room filled with bookshelves overflowing with old tomes. She wipes a few drops of sweat from her brow and regrets her decision to wear black. She’s been sitting in the office for ten minutes now, watching as her professor silently flips through an old history book. Then she notices it, an ice cold can of soda sitting on her professor's desk next to a tuna sandwich. Beads of condensation drip down from the can and plop on the professor's wooden desk.

The student glances at her professor, who is still enthralled by his book. Slowly, she reaches for the can of soda. The ruler moves faster than the eye can see, bursting through the air and striking the student in the hand the moment her finger touches the can. The student glances up at the man holding the ruler, her professor with an angry look on his face. “I do not recall giving you permission to touch my belongings, Miss Jonestar,” he says. “In fact, I recall instructing you to sit here quietly while I finished reading this passage, an instruction you seem incapable of following.”

“Joestar,” the student mutters.

“Excuse, me, I didn’t catch that,” the professor says. “Speak louder when you’re spoken to.”

“My name is Joestar, sir,” she says.

The professor rolls his eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he says, voice full of sarcasm. “Please forgive me for misremembering the stupid name of one of my countless students.”

The professor, an old man named Dr. Dre, is a tall, chubby man with horn-rimmed glasses. He wears a tweed jacket and a tie covered in the logo of his favorite soda brand. He has been a history teacher for thirty years now, a position he adores because it gives him a microcosm of power, a power that he enjoys abusing as much as possible, much to the dismay of his students.

He pulls the ruler back and discovers that Miss Joestar’s finger hasn’t moved from the soda can. She stares at him for a moment before slowly pulling her hand back. The professor rolls his eyes.

“You made me lose my place in my book, young lady,” the professor says with a scowl.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Joestar mutters.

“Now then, what was it that was so urgent that you felt the need to bother me during my lunch break?”

“Mr. Dre-”

“Dr. Dre.”

“Dr. Dre, I was hoping to talk to you about the recent exam.”

Dr. Dre scoffs. “Of course you are,” he says. “Every hour another one of my students comes here to complain about receiving a bad grade. It isn’t my fault that you children decided against showing up.”

“Sir, you changed the location of the test to a room on the other side of campus,” Miss Joestar says. “You also moved the time of the exam to six o’clock in the morning instead of noon. And you only notified us of this change two hours after the test ended.”

“Excuses, always with the excuses.”

“Sir, I was wondering if there was any way I could retake the exam, seeing as it is worth thirty percent of my grade.”

“Sucks to be you.”

Miss Joestar sighs. “I'm’ sorry to have wasted your time, sir,” she says before walking out of the office.

Professor Dre chuckles and grabs his soda. He pulls the tab and a torrent of soda bursts out, soaking his coat.

+++

The Joestars. This proud clan of British aristocrats immigrated to the United States in 1892 and became one of the wealthiest families in the country after earning fortunes in the oil and real estate markets. Using this wealth, they co-founded the Speedwagon Foundation, a top of the line medical research organization. Unbeknown to most people, the true purpose of the Foundation is the study and acquisition of supernatural phenomena.

For generations, the Joestars have dedicated themselves to this purpose, transforming themselves into honorable warriors dedicated to the protection of the world. But, after more than a century of battles, the family has begun to dwindle.

Johana Joestar was born in 1992 to Foundation President Joshua Joestar. Johana’s childhood was dedicated to preparing her for her destiny as head of the Speedwagon Foundation. From the moment she was born, she spent every waking moment studying history, science, and mythology, as well as training in martial arts, so that she could one day protect the world, like every Joestar that came before her.

Johana rejected this path and ran away from home at the age of fifteen. Three years later, she moved to her family’s country of origin and began studying history at Lonely Castle University in London. She wants nothing to do with her family. But, destiny is a fickle mistress, one that few can slip away from.

+++

Johana walks out of the class building. Her friend, a Japanese girl named Kan, is leaning against the doorway, strumming a guitar. “So, is Mr. Dre still a dick?” Kan asks.

“Unfortunately,” Johana replies.

“I had him my first semester. I remember one time, he gave us fifteen minutes to do a fifty-page test. One of the guys in my class actually started crying. Does he still drink that crappy knock-off soda, Sparite?”

Johana smiles. “Yeah,” she says. “Actually, I met with him during his lunch break, so he had a can with him. I shook it up while he wasn’t looking.”

Kan laughs. “You know, people say you’re an unfriendly jackass with absolutely no sense of humor, but you can be pretty clever when you want to,” she says.

“Who says that about me?” Johana asks.

Kan ignores Johana and places her guitar in its case. “I’m putting up flyers for the concert tonight, can you help me?” she asks.

Johana nods her head and Kan does a little victory dance. She runs off to the library to print off fliers, Johana following closely behind.

+++

Johana Joestar and Kan Nijimura met their first week of college. Both freshman new to the country, the duo bonded and quickly formed an ironclad friendship in spite of their different hobbies and temperaments. Kan is boisterous, energetic, and quick to make friends. She has bleach blonde hair cut into a mohawk that hangs down over half of her head. On this hot summer day, she wears black jeans, a gold belt, a t-shirt with an infinity sign and a diagram of the evolution of man printed on it, black heels, a pair of spike covered bracelets, and a denim jacket. The left arm of her jacket has been ripped off, showing a variety of rock band tattoos.

Johana, on the other hand, dresses plainly, wearing a tank top, skirt, tights, and boots, all black. Her dark blue hair is pulled into a bun and a pair of glasses sit on her nose. She’s the quiet, studious girl who always sits in the corner of a room while Kan is the girl who yells out the answer before the teacher can even call her name.

As she chases after Kan, Johana flashes back to the night they met. She was walking home from class, late at night, when she saw a man in a ski mask following Kan, holding a knife in his hand. At first, she turned her head away and continued on her way, not wanting to get involved. Then she heard Kan scream.

She moved without thinking, dropping her books and running to save Kan. Johana jumped into action and kicked the man in the face. He dropped the knife and ran away while Johana tended to Kan.

Kan was fine, she’d screamed before the man could do anything. In fact, instead of being terrified like Johana had expected, Kan was starstruck. “You saved my life!” she said.

Johana blushed. “Well, I don’t know about that,” she mumbled.

“That was so cool! You came out of nowhere and beat the shit out of that guy! It was like something out of a kung fu movie.”

From that day onward, the two were inseparable. They ate together, they studied together, they even started living together during their spring semester. Johana taught Kan self-defense and Kan introduced Johana to her favorite bands. For the first time since she ran away from home, Johana had a friend.

+++

“I think tonight’s show is going to be really good. We managed to borrow a small stage and some equipment from the music department, so it’s going to be like a real show!” Kan says while she and Johana wait for the flyers to finish printing.

“Show’s at eight thirty on the quad, right?” Johana asks.

Kan nods her head. For five months now, she has been the bass guitarist of a rock band she co-founded called Lifeless December. “Are you coming?” Kan asks.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Johana says.

They pay for the flyers, handing handfuls of change to a library employee with buck teeth who gives them a dirty look, and leave the library to go get lunch. As they walk through the college campus, they come across something rather odd.

A large white cocoon, as tall as Johana, sits by the doorway to one of the dormitories. “What’s this?” Kan asks while reaching her hand out to touch the cocoon.

Johana slaps her hand away. “What?” Kan says.

“Don’t touch it, it looks weird,” Johana replies.

“Okay, I won’t touch it. That doesn’t answer my question though. What is this thing?”

“It’s probably just a modern art exhibit or something. Best to leave it alone.”

As the duo walk away, Johana glances over her shoulders at the cocoon and feels an aura of menace that chills her to her bones. She knows that, whatever the cocoon is, it is evil, and she wants nothing to do with it.

When she walks into the school cafeteria, she sees something incredibly bizarre. A young man with blonde hair balancing with one foot on the back of a chair and the other folded over his waist. The young man wears a tight black tank top that shows off his toned body, dark green pants covered in white stars, a striped scarf covered in hearts, and a black beanie covered in four-leaf clovers. In his left hand, he holds a green banana. He taps it with his right hand and the skin of the banana turns yellow. He peels the banana and takes a bite.

“What’s that guy’s deal?” Kan asks.

Johana doesn’t say anything. She knows exactly what the guy’s deal is. It’s been years since the two saw each other last, but she’d recognize that dumbass smile anywhere. And, even if she couldn’t, she’d still recognize the star-shaped birthmark on the man’s left shoulder.

The man notices Johana and smiles. He does a backflip off the chair and walks over to Johana. “Cousin!” he says, arms spread for a hug.

Johana groans.

[thefaeriereview]

Blitz: Blood and Sand

https://ift.tt/324MBN5

  General Fiction (cozy small town fiction)

Date Published: August, 2019

Publisher: Pen & Key Publishing

    A tiny town. A broken tavern. And one woman searching for a place to belong.

Logan Cole is used to getting her way and what she wants more than anything is for her father to get out of jail and restore her old life in New York. All she has to do is wait for his scandals to fade and the online rancor against her family to subside. Low on cash and out of options, she takes a bus north looking for anonymity and stops in the smallest town she can find: Ramsbolt, Maine.

When she stumbles into Helen’s Tavern, she finds a place in need of a make-over and a grandmotherly woman who could use some help. Soon, she finds herself growing fond of the bar, Helen, and the town. She’s even found a friend in Grey, the local plumber. The tiny town puts her at a crossroads: keep hiding her identity to preserve her new reputation or let down her guard and reveal her true self to the people she’s grown to love. But the choice is ripped from her hands when tragedy strikes the bar and saving it requires every tool at her disposal.

Can Logan find a true home among the people of Ramsbolt Maine?

The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt is a series by Jennifer M. Lane, award-winning author Of Metal and Earth and Stick Figures from Ramsbolt. Fresh and heart-warming, the series tells the stories of a small town looking for belonging.

Excerpt

Chapter One

  Logan Cole had never been on a bus in her life. As she stretched her legs and stumbled onto the sidewalk at the tip of Maine, she cursed the eight hour learning experience and swore never to do it again.

The last stop before the border was less like a terminal and more like a dead end. No benches, no depot, no ticketing window. And no taxis. Just a little yellow house with leaning porch surrounded by scruffy blueberry shrubs. At least it wasn’t sweltering out.

She yanked her black Rimowa suitcase, one of the few things the FBI let her keep, from the bottom of the bus. She gave the driver a wry smile and thanked him for the trip. It wasn’t his fault a woman coughed and crinkled candy wrappers the whole way, and that guy with his earbuds in behind her never learned to sing.

“Six hundred miles better be far enough.” She mumbled to herself as she dragged the suitcase down the sidewalk, fumbling for her phone in her purse. It was a habit she still hadn’t broken, opening apps to fill a void, but she’d deleted Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of them when the threats started pouring in. Eight months, four court cases, a thousand stories in the news, and she still hadn’t gotten used to being without social media. Being disconnected was better than scrolling through contempt, though.

“Battery’s almost dead. Map won’t load. Damn it.” She walked back the way she’d come, past quaint little houses and blueberry bushes, back to the bar she’d seen a mile or so before. It was across from a cheap motel with moldy siding and mildewed plastic chairs. The bar itself was windowless and brick. Definitely not the kind of place where someone would look for one of the wealthiest people in the country. Or someone who used to be.

She paused at an intersection and started a text to her mom, a quick note to say she was far from the gossip and rumors, safe from tabloid headlines squawking about a Cole Curse, and nowhere near the internet trolls who flooded her notifications with threats, saying they knew where to find her and what they would do to her when they did. All because of her father.

She waited among the cigarette butts and rusted beer caps while her text bounced its way to France.

Delivered. Three dots appeared. Her mother’s reply came slow.

Good luck. Lay low. I'll send money if I can. Try to blend in.

Logan sent back a smiley face and a greeting for her aunt and uncle.

Letting her phone fall back in her purse, she swallowed hard and tugged hem of her T-shirt down over her jeans. Her heart pounded so loud she wouldn’t be able to hear traffic if there’d been any. But the intersection was dead. The only other animate object in that town was the little orange hand blinking on the stop light, telling her not to walk.

The light changed and a little white man blinked, urging her to cross the street before it was too late. By the look of the town nothing was urgent. The only signs of life were two cars in the bar’s parking lot. They could be abandoned for all she knew.

A countdown timer marked off the seconds. Eleven. Ten.

Left to the motel. Straight to the bar. Neither option looked all that inviting.

For the first time since she left New York, rage, hot as the surface of the sun, boiled within her. She was supposed to be in an air conditioned office somewhere, running a foundation. Sipping a latte that came from cart. Logan kicked a beer cap into the street, and it skittered into a pothole.

Five. Four.

The little man on the pedestrian signal had his whole life together. He had purpose and goals and a job. He had an identity, and everyone knew who he was. Logan had all of that until her father screwed up, and the government charged him with money laundering and took it all away. All she had left were some comfy pants shoved in a suitcase and a cell phone plan she couldn’t afford. She squeezed the handle of her suitcase so tight her knuckles turned white.

Two. One.

The Do Not Walk signal blinked, and she crossed the street defiant.

The sidewalk rippled. Uneven slabs of concrete were mere islands, broken by the freeze and thaw of ice, lost in a sea of weeds and road dirt. She faced the bar.

When she opened that door, she would find herself in a whole new world. There would be questions. What was her name? Where did she come from? Maybe they would recognize her right away from the newspapers, the tabloids, Twitter. She wasn’t prepared for any of it, and she never would be. She didn’t even know how to fill out a job application. What was she supposed to say? I’m a Yale graduate with a degree in Art History, the daughter of a felon, and I’ve come to scrub your bathroom?

The sun would set in a few hours, and that motel did not look hospitable. The keys to a job and a cheap apartment were somewhere in that bar.

Taking in a shaky breath of Maine air, she held it in until her lungs soaked it up, then let out a steady stream of all she had left.

“Get in there and prove your mother wrong. You are still a Cole and Coles do not give up. We don’t stand on the sidewalk and talk to ourselves, either.”

Her whole future lay ahead of her. She just had to get by until her dad set it right. Shoulders back, head up, she opened

About the Author

A Maryland native and Pennsylvanian at heart, Jennifer M. Lane holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Barton College and a master's in liberal arts with a focus on museum studies from the University of Delaware, where she wrote her thesis on the material culture of roadside memorials. She is the author of the award-winning novel Of Metal and Earth, of Stick Figures from Rockport, and the series of stand-alone novels from The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt, including Blood and Sand. Visit her website at https: //https://ift.tt/2CDNy6o

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[conflictandscotchblog]

Something In the Way They Move

From the time I separated from my wife to the time I settled into my current townhouse, I moved four times within six months. I was very fortunate that my friends were there for me — even moving me a few days after Hurricane Floyd (1999) devastated the town I was moving from and there were no truck rentals available. We had a caravan of minivans crawling through the piles of my neighbors’ belongings that were destroyed by the flood. It looked like a bunch of soccer moms escaping Berlin after the blitz.

My daughter must take after me, because she moved six times in four years. One of those moves was on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 — probably not the best time for Arlene (ex-wife and driver of the van) and me to come over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (bridge that connects Staten Island and Brooklyn) in a white, windowless cargo van. A police officer spotted us before we even went through the toll booth — nothing like having half-dozen police officers directing you to the orange-coned safety area on the side of the highway.

“Step out of the vehicle,” the officer commanded as he moved up to the driver’s side of the van. As I went to get out of the passenger door he barked, “Only the driver!”

I quickly retreated — much like my testicles did at that moment — back into the safety of the van.

A few minutes later we resumed our trip to Brooklyn, and a short time after that the van was filled with Amanda’s belongings. Wedged between those belongings, filling the gaps between the dressers and couch, were Amanda and two of her roommates. If stopped again by the police it would have looked like we were smuggling white kids out of Brooklyn.

A year later, with Amanda’s next move, we were headed back to Brooklyn, this time with an old nemesis, the monster sofa bed. After double-parking on the street, we unloaded the sofa bed. Four of us slowly carried it up the cracked brick steps and through the long hallway that led to the stairwell. After we carried it, one step at a time up the two flights, and with sweat pouring down my face and only a half-step away from having a heart attack, we stood it on end by Amanda’s apartment door. I knew then how the apes felt at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey as they stared in wonderment at the monolith that suddenly appeared before them. I had that same wonderment as I thought, ‘how the f*ck are we going to get this thing inside the apartment?’

Eventually I left them there, with the couch stubbornly standing its ground. Later that night, Amanda called and said they were finally able to get the monster inside the apartment.

I guess where there is a will (and alcohol) there is a way.

***

My niece, Lianna, was moving into a third-floor apartment in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. The Saturday morning of the move we loaded disassembled furniture, dressers and dresser draws (still full), and any assortment of books and utensils and just plain things into several SUVs and headed toward her new place.

As we pulled into the parking area I was surprised that we parked so far away from the front entrance. I asked why we were parking so far away, that it would be stupid to carry everything back to the front door when there was room to park up front.

“Oh,” Lianna said nonchalantly, her head nodding toward the building, “we are going in that way.”

The back of the brick building did not have a door and when I saw what it did have, I realized I was about to confront my greatest fear.

As I get older, my fear of heights seems to have grown exponentially greater. Even when I watch movies where the characters are on a rooftop or peering over some cliff, I grip the edge of my chair as if the possibility existed that I would get sucked in the forty-two inch screen of my television and plummet to my death.

On the brick wall of the apartment building I saw a three-story, rust-encrusted metal fire escape, like a crooked finger pointed toward heaven. It was not as wide as my shoulders and held in place by champagne cork-sized bolts that looked like they were about to pop.

With great hesitation I picked up a box and started up what I assumed at the moment would be the last staircase I would ever have to climb. With each step, the metal beneath my feet mocked me with tiny creaks and squeaks that made me question my manhood. Once at the top, I turned right, walked across the roof toward the back door of the apartment, went inside and dropped my burden on floor. I then grabbed my nephew, Dante, and told him we were taking the stairs (inside) and would move the rest of the stuff that way.

I continued to move boxes and bed frames the old-fashioned way until I noticed Lianna on the back end of a two-man carry as they moved a dresser up to the apartment. There wasn’t enough room for us to switch places so I went up behind her and put my hand on her back to ensure that she didn’t fall backwards. When we all got to the top she turned and said, “Thanks, Uncle A.J., for supporting me so I wouldn’t fall.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her I wasn’t supporting her — I was holding on for dear life.

***

In the summer of 2012 my sister, Diane, decided to sell her house in Livingston and move to Pennsylvania. One weekend I went to Livingston with my son Danny to help her pack and load our cars and begin the arduously task of moving her life from one place to another. As I stood with my son and two nephews, and looked at the boxes and furniture and stacks of plastic containers that needed to go from here to there, we came up with a unit of measure required to move things.

My nephew, Luke, is one big muscle — there is not an ounce of fat on his body. His wrestles for his college and is in incredible shape and very strong. So, as we stood there and looked at the items we needed to move we wondered, ‘How many Lukes to move that box?’

“Oh, that box? Easily two Lukes.”

“The piano is at least a four-Luke job.”

“This table is one Luke, no problem.”

In time we loaded the cars and headed toward her home in Pennsylvania, with the majority of her belongings waiting patiently for their turn to leave.

Moving is an anxious and exciting time — uprooting your life, your family, starting over in a new house in a new town, even a new state. With this in mind, I will always offer my help whenever someone has to move.

No matter how many Lukes it takes.

Cover Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

[thehorrorofnachosandhamantaschen]

A Mist Minute: Episode 8 - The Law of Nature

Sometimes we just don’t have the time to make a whole podcast episode about something like a TV show because they’re sooooo many episodes long and we’d need a million podcasts to cover them adequately. Who has time for a million episodes? Certainly not us! Just putting out 40 or so a year is killing us already and the sacrifices we’ve had to make in our personal lives are unmentionable. But every now and then there comes a TV show, nay, TV event, that we feel that we have to cover, especially when they relate to episodes we’ve covered already. I am of course talking about the new The Mist show, based off of the story by Stephen King (And 2007 Film) which we have definitively covered more extensively than anyone else on the internet ever and you can listen to HERE. So without further ado, the first of our “Minute” series, The Mist: Episode 8 - The Law of Nature:

EPISODE EIGHT - THE LAW OF NATURE

The Gang is driving around in the mist and decide to drop in on the Gaunt Friends’ family home to see if they’re still alive, also to siphon gas. They decide to do this not by pulling up next to the car they’re going to get gas from, but instead parking on the street, one driveway away from the car.

The people in the church are not super impressed by Frances Conroy stating that her living is the miracle rather than something big coming. She reminds them that everyone else who wasn’t impressed with her is dead, so just FYI...

At the mall Gaunt Mom and her group are worried that Isiah Whitlock Jrs group is running out of food and getting antsy. Gaunt Mom says she needs a room without windows STAT while looking on at Rapist Footballer.

In the Church Shitty Cop admit to Frances Conroy that he thinks his son actually raped Gaunt Daughter. She in return starts going on about Chemtrails in the sky, ramping up the crazy to a whole new level, and tells him that he needs to kill his rapist son in order to restore order.

Gaunt Friend finds his Shitty Dad eating at home and that his mother is dead, pecked to death by birds. “To Death” in this case seems to mean “eyes pecked out and a few peck marks on her face”, which as we all know is an instant killer.

Dad sees a blinking light and drives off to go look at it, because when you’re siphoning gas for a car the last thing you need for it is the car to put it in. Good thing Gaunt Former Addict and Jonah are too busy banging in the back of the other car to care. Bringing sexy back!

Gaunt Daughter and Rapist Footballer are skating around the mall and having fun and making out, which The Mother of the dead child who is lighting candles at the shrine for the dead child believe it or not finds objectionable. The Mother goes to narc to Isiah Whitlock Jr about it and he tells her to chill the fuck out about it, but the Security Guard thinks they should hear her out.

Rapist Footballer and Gaunt Daughter get back to their area and he is told to go get some water from the other room. He does, only to find out that the room is the windowless one Gaunt Mom was looking for earlier, complete with a cot, bucket with TP to shit in, and a few football magazines, and is immediately locked inside by her.

Gaunt Friend and Shitty Dad have a real heart to heart about how he hates his son because he’s gay. Shitty Dad thinks that Dad has been banging Gaunt Friend too and that he’s crazy, so Gaunt Friend shoots him and admits that he was the one who raped Gaunt Daughter! The thing we guessed several episodes ago!

Frances Conroy decides that what her group needs to do is go to the mall and kill Rapist Footballer.

The blinking light belongs to Crash from Crash and the Boys who has somehow survived walking out through the mist for the past few days and Dad lets him in the car. He warns Dad that things are getting kind of bad at the mall, which only makes up his mind all the more that he needs to go there.

Gaunt Daughter goes looking for the Rapist Footballer and goes to the other group to look for her at the other group. The Mother is all “Maybe don’t be making out with the guy who raped you” and everyone thinks that’s a bit too far, except the Security Guard.

The one Army Guy left goes up to Isiah Whitlock Jrs office, almost catching him eating his secret hidden store of food, warning him that he’s got to get a handle on The Mother going on about her dead kid and how Gaunt Daughter caused the whole thing.

Gaunt Friend fakes that his father had attacked him so when Dad comes in and finds the dead body it doesn’t look suspicious. Dad helps clean Gaunt Friend’s wound and says he’ll always be part of the family, no matter what kind of horrible things he did. This is put to the test instantly when Dad finds Triazolam in his medicine cabinet, the same drug used to knock out Gaunt Daughter. Gaunt Friend pulls the gun on him, and is about to shoot when Dad jumps up, pushing the gun aside at the last minute and getting knocked out in the process. Gaunt Friend runs out to the car and convinces the rest of The Gang that Dad is dead and they need to get to the mall STAT, no need to go in and check for a body or anything!

The Mother admits to Isiah Whitlock Jr that she got a little crazy and doesn’t really believe that Gaunt Daughter caused the mist. He accuses her of starting the fire, and she accuses him of hoarding food in his office. He won’t admit to doing so and she wants to tell everyone, so he smashes her in the head with a candlestick and then strangles her, which I’m sure he will step up and take the blame for.

Frances Conroy i s getting ready to go to the mall, but some of her group doesn’t want to go with her and just stay in the church. She say “oh no problem”, and then burns the church down around them while her group leaves via the sewers while listening to a Nick Cave song. They have some differences between what the definition of a “problem” is.

When his group finds him and the dead body of The Mother, Isiah Whitlock Jr of course does not step up and instead blames the murder on Gaunt Daughter instead.

We’ve done it! We got more of that hot sexy sex that we were promised would be what makes this series soooooooo hot and steamy! Yep, up to three whole instances (Four is you count the rape, and as much as this show goes on about it I guess we’re going to have to) of the thing that this whole making-a-TV-version-of-The-Mist was sold as and that nobody wanted. Good on you marketing team! Admittedly it is good that it isn’t a show where every episode is just different members of different groups just hooking up, but since you certainly can’t sell this show as being full of cool monsters the next best thing you’ve got is to highlight all the sex. That’s why the film didn’t make a billion dollars right, because they took out the sex scene instead of putting in four or five?

I do have to commend them not making the stereotypical footballer rapist guy the actual rapist (NOTE TO SELF: Remember to refer to that character as Falsely Accused Rapist Footballer going forward) that must have taken some restraint with all the other stereotypes going on in the show. The fact that it’s the troubled gothy gay teen character they make have mental problems and be a rapist killer instead is at best troubling and poor writing, and at worst means they’re probably not even of the stereotypes they’re littering the show with. #notallfootballersarerapists, #notallgothygayteensarepsychoticandrapists.

Two episodes left. As we can see all our groups are now heading for a showdown at the mall where both Gaunt Daughter and Falsely Accused Rapist Footballer are probably going to get killed by angry mobs. Who will survive, and what will be left of them? More importantly, will anybody care? Viewership is a little more than half of what the series started at, this episode garnering about 374,000 view is Wikipedia is to be believed. Is this good in general? Is this good for Spike? The only other shows I know of that are on the network are Bar Rescue and Catch a Contractor, whose viewship numbers are not available on Wikipedia, and reruns of COPS, which don’t count. Shockingly this show is doing better numbers than Twin Peaks (280,000 views of the last episode) which is goddamn mind blowing, so maybe The Mist will get a second season? We’ll see!

Also check out:

Episode 11 - The Mist v. The Mist

A Mist Minute: Episode 1 - Pilot

A Mist Minute: Episode 2 - Withdrawal

A Mist Minute: Episode 3 - Show and Tell

A Mist Minute: Episode 4 - Pequod

A Mist Minute: Episode 5 - The Waiting Room

A Mist Minute: Episode 6 - The Devil You Know

A Mist Minute: Episode 7 - Over the River and Through the Woods

A Mist Minute: Episode 9 - The Waking Dream

A Mist Minute: Episode 10 - The Tenth Meal

A Mist Minute: Show Retrospective

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