#coming out of the corn to take the town’s children from the church to the cornfield and put sickles in their hands. or selling anything and

[slutshamethesquirrels]

All The Sweet Tea In Carolina

Pairing: cowboy!geto x reader

TW/CW: historical inaccuracies, smut, rough sex, choking, gagging, mentions of guns, mdni

Description: Restless and duty-bound, you are set to begin courting with one very handsome Nanami Kento come morning. However, your heart belongs to another, who may change your mind before sun rises.

This work is part of the "Slow It Down, Cowboy" AU, a collaborative effort with @vallification . Read it's sister work, "In My Heart You Pay No Rent" here.

How unfair life could be, truly.

You should've been ecstatic, over the moon even, to have received an invitation to court from one Nanami Kento. He was the son of a blacksmith and a well educated mother, polite, modest, and only four years your senior. Nanami Kento, certainly, would make a fine husband.

”Oh my, how handsome he is!”

Your mother had gushed in the dining room, occasionally dipping her head to peer around the entryway into your living quarters as he discussed his intentions with your father. Marriage, money, children were all topics that had been thrown around. All of which you knew because every time your mama would hear something she liked she’d floundered and flounced as if there were ants under her feet, squealing excitedly at what had to be your worst nightmare. You had to resist the urge to insinuate she was a church bell.

She wasn't wrong, though, the old church bell. Nanami Kento was handsome. The other young women of the town would simply stone you if it meant they could step into your shoes.

And so you’d accepted the proposition with a tight smile, hoping he may have thought your eyes were wide with excitement, not panic.

I am a wretched, ungrateful woman. I will be courted by the very handsome Nanami Kento. When he asks for my hand I will be his wife. I will learn to love him.

Your brain repeated the mantra over and over in your head, trying desperately to convince your heart of it’s truths. All the while, your body seemed to revolt against you as well, taking sides with your heart in this futile pursuit. Every shift in your bed was uncomfortable, the collar of your nightdress too high, the wrist cuffs of that same dress too tight. Your body thought this night would be much more comfortable with a particular pair of arms wrapped around you. Your heart screamed for the return of a certain set of catmint hued eyes. Your brain thought he was a backhanded fly-by-night, and argued with the other two to follow suit.

To the rest of the world, Suguru Geto was an outlaw, a cowhand turned desperado chasing some wild tale of claiming land out west by means of force. Under your bed in an old pine box were clippings from newspapers spinning wild fables of his desperate attempts at gunslinging his way into codfish aristocracy alongside one notorious “Six Eyes Satoru Gojo”, a figure whose name struck fear in the hearts of many.

To you, though, Suguru Geto was a humble farmboy, sent to the dogs by the untimely death of his parents not long after he’d turned 18. 

You hadn’t known him well then, not honestly, but gossip needs no carriage. Rumor in the market paths was that the young man was a bit less of a pony, and more of a stallion. You remembered feeling a blend of emotions everytime it was mentioned. Disgust at the reckless deflowerment of so many young women of proud heritage. Visceral shock at the idea that Suguru Geto, a boy known to live by his charms, with a voice laden with honey and a tender smile, would commit such atrocities. Then, on top of the latter, was a feeling that spurred an immense shame within you, jealousy. The green eyed wretch. 

It was no surprise to you why so many young women had fallen into the bear trap that was his porcelain grin; the one that he would flash at merchants as you passed him time and time again at the market with the furtiveness of a field mouse darting through the grass. Though, with the way you assumed of him, perhaps you were more like the corn snake. After all, who was to say any of it was true? Lies and gossip had long since been wed, after all.

Those girls in their bustled gowns would be floored to know how many times he’d bedded you in the years since then, especially after he’d run for the west and Chicagoed more men than you could count on both your hands and all your toes. Your family would simply be ruined if the coffee-sisters caught wind of all the ways he’d taken you. If it ever happened, you’d already decided you’d publish a pamphlet and then promptly drown yourself in the river to save them from the shame. Tell the emerging nation in its entirety how sure of a shot “Sure Shot Suguru Geto” really was. He’d forgive you for bubbling around, surely. Not like he’d have much of a choice.

After all, it was his own discourteousness that had left you here in your bed on this night, tossing and turning and wallowing in your own delusional sentimentality. What was there to miss, even? He was a landlouper, a vagabond that only stayed for a night, if one could even refer to it as such. He’d come to take you after dusk on the off chance it wouldn’t trouble him so much as he was passing through, and return to his misruled adventures before the sun had even risen. Of course, there were more reasons than his own transgressions that sent him packing so quickly. Once, he’d made the mistake of over sleeping, only to be awoken to your father beating on the door of your room, asking why a horse was posted up by the tree on the farside of the property, wanting to ensure your safety. Admittedly, it was a tad fun trying to distract your Pa while he attempted to back slang it by way of your bedroom window. You almost understood why he chose such a lifestyle.

God be with you, you needed to sleep. Now.

Either by night or by sleight, by fair means or foul, you stomped the images of his broad shoulders and calloused hands out of your mind and attempted to count sheep. But even the sheep, it seemed, were disgruntled. After a fair number they laid down in the field of your mind, refusing to run their courses and instead curling into briskets, having grown tired and lazy. It seems they needed a cattleboy to guide them. A tall, toned, miscreant cowhand with a flair for violence and princess-esque locks of inky silken hair that tumbled down his--

Your eyes fly open, and dammit you could absolutely kill that man for the way he’s ravaged your entire being. The thought crosses your mind that perhaps you should’ve counted Nanami Kento’s jumping hurdles instead, and you can’t help but giggle childishly at yourself, pawing at your weary eyes with balled fists.

“What’s s’funny?”

You jolt upright, catching the crown of your head against the pine headboard as you did so, causing you to yelp a little louder than you should’ve. Clutching one hand over the painsome spot where you’d practically bludgeoned yourself, you lift your eyes to find none other than “Sure Shot” himself, his jaw resting against a closed fist and his elbow against the wood paneling of your open window, his hair loose (just the way you liked it) and toppling into the open air of your room, the light of the moon catching on the locs like sun on water.

You search your soul for every reason to be cross with him, trying desperately to cling to the crumbling remnants of your anger that were slipping through your hands like sand at just the sight of him, but your body– dammit, your body. It betrays you, craving him like sunlight. You scramble out of your bed and to the window, leaning out to toss your arms around his neck, melting into him as he chuckles mischievously, his hands finding your sides to hoist you out of the window, spinning you around like children celebrating a hard won game of marbles.

“Now just how did you manage to snake your way up here without alerting the likes of Archie?” You question, leaning your hands against the broad stretch of his shoulders to look at him. Your father had found the ol’ hound in a burlap sack by the river the summer prior. He grew into a fierce protector, for better or for worse.

“Seems even dogs’r charmed by my delicate sensibilities.” He smirks, and you can't help the soft smile that creeps across your face, your fingers affectionately tracing over the embroidery of his shirt, carefully crafted delphiniums threaded in various lilac hues painted across his shoulders. He did always have a thing for fashion.

“Charmed only by the dog biscuits in your pocket, surely is what you intended.”

He snickers, setting you down in your still-open windowsill so your bare feet don’t touch the moist earth below, stuffing a hand in his pocket as he speaks,

“Cain’t blame a man, honestly-” he produces something from his pocket and expertly tosses it into his mouth, too smooth for you to catch sight of it before it was crunching and cracking between his teeth. “Better’n any human biscuit I’ve ever tasted--”.

You gasp, wide-eyed and astounded at such a disgusting act carried out by such a beautiful man right in front of your eyes.

“Suguru Geto, you truly forget yourself!” your scold carries out over his wheezing, a mixture of hushed complaints about how you were sure to get the two of you caught if you didn’t pipe down intermingled with chuckling. He tries to muffle it by leaning his arms on the window, caging you in by the hips and burying his face in the crook of your neck. The rumble of his chest lights a fire inside you as you attempt to playfully push him away to no avail.

“I mean it, Mr. Sure Shot if you even so much as attempt to toy with the idea of putting your poor misfortunate dog lips anywhere near me--!”

“Shhh!” He begs, cupping your head on either side and bringing your forehead down to rest against his own, still laughing lightly “It’s a mint, I swear! See? I’m only hackin’ on ya’.”. He blows a gentle cooling breath against your face and despite yourself you breathe in deeply, swallowing a lungful of his breath and something distinctly fresh, hoping he doesn’t notice the cheek-ache you’ve gained from the tingling sensation.

You mimic his giggles, though whether it was due to humor or the way he stole your breath so effortlessly was up for debate “You’ve gone mad.”.

“Yes’m, sure have.” He confirms, his smile fading from one of amusement to one of reverence, “T’love an’ be sane ain’t possible, after all”.

Your smile fades as you lean back slightly, shaking your head with a dry scoff, “You, Suguru Geto, do not love me.”.

His brow scrunches in confusion, eyes bouncing back and forth across your face as he chews his cheek. What you’d give to be able to see into his head.

“Now, ‘at dog jus’ ain’t gon’ hunt.” He huffs, displeased with your response to his confession. You roll your eyes and go to slide backwards into your bedroom only to be caught in his hands, one on your waist and one clutching your chin between his calloused fingers, rough from years of roping and riding “If I ain’t earnest, then ‘m dead, y/n. I lov-”.

“Stop it, and stop it now.” You spit, reaching up to grab him by the wrist and toss it back at him “You do not-”.

“Who ’re you to try’n tell me how I feel?” He cuts you off, nostrils flaring and lips cementing themselves into a tight line as he grows increasingly wrought-up over your dismissal. You’d never, not even once, rejected his advances or affections before. Typically you were malleable, pliant to his wills. It was obvious he didn’t know how to handle it.

You hold up a hand to signal him to settle, and he does a bit, finally backing away just a few feet and allowing you some much needed room to breathe.

“My apologies. It might be better to say you cannot love me-”

“I’ll do whatever‘n the hell I damn well please-”

“Suguru.”

He huffs and turns away from you, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation, “Sorry, I guess. Go ‘head.”. A frustrated sigh.

You set your gaze anywhere but at him, your mouth opening and closing several times as you struggle to say the words you know you need to, your heels kicking softly against the wooden framing of your family home.

“Well?” He prods, growing impatient, and you shoot him a glare, sending a clear signal; that he needs to relax. This is hard enough without him becoming chewed up.

“I am set to begin courting tomorrow.” You breathe, trying to remain steady, your head growing fuzzy as the confession seems to set the reality of it all into stone. You were going to start courting tomorrow. With a man that was the polar opposite in nearly every fashion of the one before you, the one you wanted.

He stills for a moment, hooded eyes widening in shock momentarily before he relaxes entirely, following that with a snort and a chuckle, “Very funny, but don’t yank my chain like ‘at. You got no idea what I almost-”.

“It is no laughing matter, I fear. He talked to my father this morning. They discussed funds and… and the dowry-- a-and, children.” You have to stop yourself and manually fill your lungs with much needed oxygen, hanging your head low and gripping to your makeshift seat until your knuckles turn white, caught off guard by how badly you ache more and more with each passing word.

When you lift your head to meet his form once again, he’s stock-still, entirely unreadable. The once cool and open night air now felt stiff, stale, and impossibly hot. Eventually, he breaks first, huffing and rolling his lips between his teeth, nodding as if to confirm his own thoughts.

“Well, y’just seem plum thrilled, babe. By all means, don’t go lettin’ my nonsense stop ya’.” You’re certain he wants this to come off unbothered, but his voice absolutely drips sarcasm and venom. The sound is almost foreign to your ears. “Who’s the lucky bastard, huh?”.

“Luck?!” You evade answering that question entirely, deciding it better to focus on the relationship he knew versus the one he didn’t. You weren’t callow enough to lose sight of Suguru’s tendencies. You needn't sweet Nanami Kento’s blood on your hands.

“It hasn’t anything to do with luck, Suguru. You could have done it just as easily as he, but the path you chose was different. You just as simply could’ve gone to my father and–!”

“And what?!” He steps closer, his voice barely a harsh whisper, pushing through clenched teeth, “Introduce m’self to the beer bottle? ‘Howdy, I’m Suguru Geto. I got nothin’ to m’ name, dead parents and a barrel’a women under my belt but please force your daughter into allowin’ me to court ‘er.’. You ‘n I both know-”

“I will have you know I am most certainly not being forced into anything-”

“Then why not say ‘no’?”

“Because I cannot!”

“Sounds awful forced t’me.” He deadpans. You hadn’t paid much attention to how close he was again until his breath was fanning your face. 

“You’re impossible.” Unwilling to let him back you into a corner, you slide backwards into the room, fully intent on turning around and slamming your window right down on his ridiculously large hands.

He beat you to the punch, though. Hopping through the open space right behind you, giving you no time to shut him out before you’re chest to chest with him, standing on your tiptoes to try and cut down on the height advantage, much like one would go about handling a bear.

“This is your fault, you know? What’s forcing my hand here is that you’ve-” you jab a pointed finger into his chest “-devalued me! Without Nanami Kento’s consideration I would surely be left to the hands of some- some dizzy-aged cretin with a wad of gold and a lobcock that hasn’t worked since before I was born!”.

He smirks, and you immediately realize your mistake, your eyes widening as he cocks his head and dips down to your eye-level, his body language telling you that your attempts to dominate him were all but futile.

“Nanami Kento, huh?” He questions, smugness plastering his unthinkably handsome features. A tense few beats pass, and he relents, seemingly satisfied with the new information. The moonbeams that cascaded in through the window caught and glimmered on his holstered pistol strapped to his hip by way of his gun belt, reminding you of the weight of your mistake.

“Do not. Suguru, I’m gravely serious, do not do this-” You weren’t sure what you were begging for.

“Nanami Kento.” He repeats the name slowly, his voice coated with malice as he stops and turns to look at you. His eyes were narrowed and sharp, nostrils flaring and jaw clenched tight as he fought to keep his voice low and his breathing even.

“Let me tell ya ‘bout Nanami Kento. ‘At man ain’t ever worked’fr nary a damn thing ‘n his entire life, and when it comes to fightin’? I bet on ev’r dollar I got ‘at prick’s all hat, no cattle. He wants ta take ya from me? Fine. But he’s gon’ have to do a lil’ more for it than just givin’ yer ol’ man a lick n’ a promise.” He nods the affirmative at his own words and turns to leave, but you lunge forward and catch him by the shirtsleeve.

“Just of what exactly do you speak?” You demand, and the smile he gives you could shake the shit from the pants of Satan himself.

“Real simple, peach. He can duel me for it, like a gentleman. Better be grateful, too. ‘Cause the way ‘m feelin’ right now- I got half’a mind to sharpen’at silver spoon he’s graced with’n cut him with it.”

You scan his face with the providentness of a surgeon, blinking a few times before you finally just ask,

“…You can’t be serious?”

“Oh, simon pure, m’afriad-”

“You will ruin me!” You grit your teeth and slap a flat palm against his chest out of pure instinct. He flinches a bit, less in pain and more in pure shock at your outburst. You’d never had a legitimate reason to be cross with him before.

“Accordin’ to you, I’ve already gone on an’ beat that bull-”

“Oh, you rat! You know what my intention is! How am I to explain why Sure Shot Suguru Geto desires to duel for my- my-” You let go of him, your hands flailing as you search for your words. You’re so mad you can’t even articulate.  “Well surely not my honor! If anything, for my-! My madge!”.

By the time you finish your outburst, you’re effectively tied up in knots, your fists clenched at your side and your jaw jutted like a bulldog as your chest heaves with fiery, angry breaths. He’s tense too, but for an entirely different reason. His lips are pressed in a tight line, eyebrows damn near flying off his face and cheeks turning crimson with effort.

“Don’t you dare.” Your warning is the thing that sends him over the edge. It starts with a snort, and then evolves into a fit of wheezing and whickering as he tries with conviction to keep his volume low, doubling over slightly and catching himself with one hard palm on the window frame, the other clutching at his jerking abdomen as he laughs. 

You can’t hold yourself to the conviction of not laughing along with him, tears brimming in your eyes as you cover your mouth with both hands and give him a swift kick to the shin as if he were the one who said the offending comment in the first place. It earns a girlish yelp from him, and then you’re both laughing harder, cascading to the floor in a heap as you  attempt to get the reins back on this metaphorical horse.

“See?” He coughs obnoxiously and draws a deep breath, flipping over onto his back on the hardwood flooring of your bedroom and swiping at some tears that had formed in his eyes “Now how’n the hell do ya expect me to let’cha walk away with a mouth like ‘at?”.

You sit up straight and shake your head at him incredulously, sighing as you feel your hostility leave with your breath. He looks just as mesmerizing as ever, with his hair fanning out across your floor like splattered paint and his face flush from laughter, stripped of his hat, vest, and overcoat. He must’ve left them with Cinnamon, his trusty palomino steed who was undeniably tied up somewhere on the corner of your parent’s property. He claimed that a horse was nothing more than a form of transportation, but you'd caught him draping his over layers across her back more than once before. It wasn't even that cold outside.

You reach forward and grab his hand in yours, running your thumb along his knuckles, noticing the scrapes and fading bruises but choosing not to bring it up. Who knows what kind of hogwash he’d gotten into since the last time you'd seen him.

“I'm serious. You cannot duel with him. The shame it would bring my family would be odious.” You whisper, avoiding his gaze and choosing instead to focus on his hand in yours, his warm skin working wonders to ground you.

He shifts until he's sitting, pulling your hand to his lips for a quick kiss before he's kicking off his boots, an action your body has an inherent reaction to, muscle memory causing your heart to pick up pace and your face to light fire in anticipation.

“What can I do, then? Tell me, y/n. Jus’ say the words an’ I’ll flatten the Appalachians for ya’.” He murmurs after setting his shoes aside, careful not to let the iron spurs clang against the floor. He reaches forward and tucks your hair behind your ear, letting his palm rest against your cheek, holding you in a gaze that could’ve pinned you down without the help of his warm hand.

You lean into him, bringing your hand up to hold him there, lips falling loose and open as you search for words, finding none. What could he do? The damage was irreparable, it seemed. You couldn’t be selfish over the matter. Your head shakes slightly and the hand that cups his own grips at his fingers and attempts to pry him away from you. You couldn’t. You couldn’t--

“Anythin’, doll. Ya want the sun? I’ll bottl’it. I’ll stop the clouds from rainin’ and ‘is ol’ earth from turnin’ if’n it jus’ means I can have ya.” His harsh whisper cuts through you like glass and he refuses to let you go, instead shifting to his knees and bringing his free hand to mirror the one in use. Leaning over you, desperately caging you in that fucking gaze; eyes a somber and honest amethyst. Your hands come up to grip his wrists as you attempt to blink away sentimental tears, silently begging for reprieve from his overwhelming attention.

“Please, y/n.” He breathes, beckoning you to give in, lips so close to your own that you can feel every syllable, “Please let me have ya.”.

You break, of course you do, capturing his bottom lip between your own, your breathing steadily growing heavy as he jerks your body flush against his, guiding your arms around his neck to free his hands. They roam every dip and valley of your frame over your bedtime linens, resisting the temptation to pause and play along the way before trailing their way down over the globes of your ass, stopping only once they’ve reached your thighs. He picks you up with a bruising grip, your legs locking around his abdomen. He stands, as if you weigh nothing at all, and carries you to the bed. All the while he’s swiping, pushing, curling his tongue against your own like he has something to prove; and maybe he does.

The minute he sets you down your fingers make way to his gun belt. Starting at the string around his thigh, you find yourself smirking cheekily as he tenses at the contact.

“Are these those ‘delicate sensibilities’ you spoke of?” You tease, smiling up at him as you undo the knotting, making sure to let your fingers make as much contact with his clothed inner thigh as possible.

“Don’t go stirrin’ up a hornets nest, now-” He teases right back, his smirk only lasting a fraction of a second. You run a flat palm up the inside of his thighs and across the half-formed tent in his pants, massaging over the area before continuing onto his waist buckle. He hisses, throwing his head back in gratification “Shit, baby, I mean, how long’s’it been now? Four months? Six?”. His fingers dance into your hair, clinging to the locks for some sort of purchase, and the way he seems so desperate for you has you clenching your thighs together.

“Now, do you expect me to clean-handedly believe you travel like you do and don’t bed women when you’re gone?” You ask, rolling your eyes as your fingers dance upward to tug at his waist buckle, the plum stained leather smooth against the pad of your fingers. He shoots a look down at you, tutting disapprovingly.

“ Wh’Kinda guff is ‘at?” He fusses, “Ain’t ever been no other woman. Not since the first day I had ya.”

The words cause your cheeks to flush deeper red than they ever had before, and you have to fight yourself not to loose sight of the task at hand. “No?” you ask cheekily, finally wrestling off his gunbelt and sitting it off gently to the side, iron still in the holster.

“Why would I?” He asks, clenching his teeth and hissing as your hands find his waist and your lips place hot, open mouthed kisses across the front of his pants, loving the way you can feel him twitch and grow harder beneath the confines of the fabric.

“You’re spinning yarn,” You accuse, running a flat tongue against him once, twice before continuing, “Not even have you stopped at a brothel?”.

“Ain't no need, when I got my own right hand ‘nd yer mem’ry.” He’s losing all reverence, the deft fingers on his leftmost hand gripping tighter against your scalp and hips rocking in time with your movements, his right hand coming up to undo the buttons of his shirt, seeking reprieve from the heat that had washed over your tiny little bedroom.

“You are the slyest of stray alley cats.” You can't allow yourself to believe his words, though the thought of him satisfying himself under a blanket of stars makes your pussy throb. Sweaty, dirty, one hand covering his mouth so that he doesn't accidentally call out for you and wake his associates. Jerking himself hard and fast, hips rutting into his fist--

“Dumplin’. On m’ iron n’ what tiny bit’s left o’ my honor; the fuckin’ Virgin Mary ‘erself could offer t’bed me an’ I’d turn ‘er down for you-- shit!” He cuts himself off with a gasp as you take the opportunity provided to you by his freshly unbuttoned shirt, not even allowing him a moment to shed the off-white fabric from his shoulders before you’re running your tongue along the thin trail of hair along his lower abdomen. You unbutton his tight-fitted trousers, whimpering against your own will as his toned muscles twitch and jerk beneath your lips. His body was confirming his convictions. He wanted you.

Hooking your fingers under his pants and underwear, you pull them down until they’re hugging his thighs, squeezing the toned flesh there just right. You're practically panting as his cock springs free, slapping against his abdomen with a wet thud.

For a moment, all you can do is stare with heavy lidded eyes and parted lips. This is why sex was a sin. There was no earthly explanation why something could make you feel such elation; it had to be unholy by nature. Shaky fingers reach up to stroke him, nimble pads running through the coarse tufts of hair at the base before tracing up, up, up the underside of his shaft. You try not to think about how this is the last time you’ll ever see this view, focusing instead on committing every fat vein to memory, hoping you can recall it on the off chance you ever get a bed to yourself again following your dreaded marriage. Your index reaches the very tip and you find yourself swiping away the bead of precum that's formed there, bringing your finger to your mouth and closing your eyes as you do the same with the taste.

“Angel-” A raspy voice from above you has your eyes snapping open, looking up to find Suguru panting, sweating, swallowing hard and desperate “M’an outlaw, not a priest. Ain’t got patience like ‘at-.”.

“My sincere apologies, handsome.” You wrap your hand around him and stroke him in earnest, drinking in the way his face falls open from satisfaction. “I assure you, I didn’t mean to tease you so.”. You hang your mouth open, tongue hanging out and swiping upward against him from base to tip, absolutely adoring the way he sucks air through his teeth. You’re ready to take him in earnest, just as soon as you explain yourself:

“Simply ensuring I can remember, for when I-!”

You’re cut off by his fist slamming your head down on his cock, and low growl leaving him as he bottoms out against the back of your throat, loosening slightly as you slap at his hip, wordlessly reprimanding him as you choke and gag on his girth. He mumbles out an apology, pulling you back halfway and allowing you to pull air back into your lungs through your nose.

“Y’ain’t gon’ half’ta remember anythin’, baby - shit, ah-!” He’s all but face-fucking you, but at least he’s being gentle, shallow little thrusts and much slower than he originally started with. “J-just, fuck, y/n, ya’ cain’t leave, ‘kay? I’ll figure it out, I-”.

It’s your turn to shut him up, taking him deeper and bobbing your head faster, ignoring the tears in your eyes as you watch him slowly lose his composure above you, shedding off his shirt and tossing it behind you as he pants and grunts, his pupils blown wide and a slick sheet of sweat beading on his forehead, causing little strands of hair to stick to his face.

You know you’ve won when his hands grip the side of your face and one leg gets thrown up on the bed bedside you, his mouth open in a silent moan as he takes back control of the pace, bobbing your head up and down on himself erratically as he gasps for air.

All that loose jaw he was spitting is now replaced by a whispered little mantra of “Yes! Yes, Yes- fuck, baby. S’good. Always s’good f’me-”. You hollow your cheeks and flatten your tongue as much as possible, trying desperately not to gag and ruin his pleasure as a mixture of spit and pre-cum drips form the corners of your mouth and down your chin.

A string of curses escape him as he pushes you all the way down until the tip of your nose is buried into the dark hair at his base, holding you still there as his cock jumps and writhes in your throat, your fingernails digging into his hips in protest. Surely they were cutting into his skin by this point.

Just when your vision starts to go dark around the edges, he pulls out of your mouth, cooing at you as you suck in air like you were hungry for it, looking up at him with vulnerable eyes as you swallow thickly, the tears that had been pooling in your eyes finally slipping down your face. He catches them with his thumbs, guiding you backwards on the bed and shuffling out of his pants in tandem. Once he's fully nude, he settles between your thighs on his knees.

“Y’okay?” He asks, and you nod, smiling weakly up at him as he cards his fingers through your hair, pushing it back away from your face with the gentleness of a sunday morning rain, like he hadn’t just bruised your esophagus. He smiles, honey sweet, and leans down to kiss your forehead first, and then your lips, groaning lowly as he tastes himself on your tongue, hips rutting as if he couldn't stop them.

Leaning back on his haunches, he taps on the outside of your knee twice.

“Strip f’me, doll.”

And so you do, trembling fingers trailing up your body to undo the buttons on your nightgown one by one, starting at the top and working your way down, your eyes studying his sharp features and wandering gaze as he gathers his hair and secures it back with the elastic band he forever kept on his wrist. You couldn’t remember a time before them, but your mother swore tying hair with silk ribbon was a pain when she was a girl. You pondered now if he'd look just as mesmerizing trying to wrangle all that hair up with a ribbon.

His cat-like eyes trail down your body as you work, and he sucks on his teeth when he realizes your barren underneath the white cotton of your bed clothes. Once your gown has been properly parted, his hands roam their way around the new expanse of your exposed skin, starting at your thighs and working their way up, pushing aside the fabric with his wrists as his rough hands tend to a garden he’s harvested time and time before.

It was by his own design, the way your body reacted to being tended by him. Goosebumps erupted along your skin and flames danced in your abdomen. Your core dripped with anticipation, every swipe of his rein-worn fingers reminding you that he'd yet to touch you where you desired him most. His hands meandered up your sides until he was cupping your breasts, rough thumbs languishing over the feeling of your stiffening nipples beneath him as they swiped and toyed with the flesh. Your back arches from the corn husk mattress and your hands try their best to quell the sparks he was lighting in your tummy; one of them gripping at your sheets above your head and the other covering your mouth to stifle the whimpers that escaped you.

“I ever tell ‘ya how pretty y’are?” He half-murmurs, half-whispers as one hand leaves your breast to traverse back down across your abdomen, never ceasing until he reaches your core, one thumb shallowly dipping into your entrance and stretching your folds apart so he can watch the way she winks at him with every movement, spitting clear arousal with every clench.

“Perhaps only every-- ah!” His fingers shift to pinch and roll your nipple, “-chance you’ve gotten. Still though I am-- nngh!” His thumb pushes deeper into you, “-certainly honored to receive such praises!”.

He smirks at your inherent tendency to keep your wording polite even in the most devilish of circumstances, and he must’ve decided he could take it no longer because before you can blink he’s hiking your legs up and across his sun-kissed shoulders, practically folding you in half and lapping away at your pussy like a man starved.

You would've complained about his so-called “delicate sensibilities” when it came to handling your body in such a manner, but your face was frozen in an open silent moan, your eyes blowing wide and struggling to keep contact with his in the way you knew he liked. If you so much as dared to let any sound escape you, you'd wake not only your parents, but the entire town! 

He knew you too well, everything about his conduction of your body had been fine tuned. The way he toyed around with your clit in his mouth had your body temperature rising to concerning levels, your arousal absolutely coating his face in a matter of moments. Not that he didn't expect it, you knew. In fact, it was probably precisely why he'd pulled his hair back. He adored it too, this you could also tell. From this angle, you got a front row seat to how his eyes rolled back in his head as he flicked and swiped his tongue against your core, up and down and back and forth and something you couldn't care to ponder on- stars, maybe? Never the matter.

A familiar tightness was building in your stomach, your panting growing faster and more needy as you think to yourself,

My god, please help me! How am I to go the rest of my life without this wrong I do?

Suguru pushes a flat hand against your mouth before slipping two fingers inside of you, and praise heaven for the man as well as his forethought because you lose your battle with your own throat the second he begins pumping in and out of you in perfect harmony with his tongue, crying out into his hand as your hips begin to rut against him in a desperate plea for faster, harder, more.

He happily obliges, curling his fingers against that god-forsaken spot inside you you’d never been able to find on your own in all your nights waiting for him, leveraging into you with a pace and force that reminded you of his deviant side. This version of him wasn't Suguru, the man who brought you rocks and flowers and exotic wines from his travels. This was not Suguru, the boy breezing by you at the market with sharp features and tempting eyes. No, this was Sure Shot Suguru Geto, the man who robbed and killed and gambled. Save your soul, you loved him.

Your hands fly into his hair as your hips betray you, all but humping his face in time with his movements as the tension inside you rises to a boiling heat, your knuckles gripping his hair beneath his bun so cruelly but you know he doesn't mind, not only from experience but from the way he groans directly into you as his eyes flutter shut. He transitions from licking to suckling on your clit and it's the final nail in the coffin for you. Your orgasm fires off like a gun shot, sharp and unfathomably intense as you scream into his hand, your legs absolutely spasming around his head with the force of it alone, your whole body tensing and jerking so hard that you fear you may have torn something as he continues his ministrations to push you through your high, never ceasing until you bite at his hand and kick at his shoulder.

He makes his way back to your face, chuckling as he captures your plush lips with his own, not leaving even a breaths span of time before he's nudging his tip into your tight entrance, swallowing your gasps and whines as if he may never taste them again.

“More, baby, more- please?” You manage to choke out between swipes of his tongue. He stills momentarily, pausing to scan your face, something unreadable plaguing his sweat lined features. You attempt to rut your hips and give yourself some reprieve, but one rope-warn hand grips you at your bare hip, holding you against the mattress effortlessly.

“Suguru!” You scold, and his lips quirk in the slightest of ways.

“Call me that again.”

“...Your name?”

“By god ‘m so glad yer pretty.” He giggles and pushes into you a few more inches harshly, his smile growing wilder as you yelp, both of you immediately pausing to listen for noise from the other rooms. 

Silence.

“Not m’name, peach. ‘At lil’ thing you said before-” His voice is quieter now.

“Baby?”

He pushes into your further, more gentle this time, the hand that was on your hip snaking up to grip your face and hold your gaze “Atta girl. You keep callin’ me that and I’m gon’ put a baby in ya’, swear solemn.”.

Your face contorts as his words hit you and he bottoms out, tip pressing against your womb and girth stretching you so wide. It burns, it hurts, it feels so good-- and his words? You knew they held no weight but the thought had you gushing around him. You needed him to move, and move now.

“Always naggin’ ‘bout my mouth, but look at ya’ now, darlin’- droolin’ on my cock all’f’r some nasty words.” He demeans as he begins to roll his hips into you, smirking as your hands grip at his biceps and your legs fall open wide for him, “Mmm y’like’at idea, huh? Stuff ya so full’a me that ol’ fuckin’ Nanami Kento has t’ raise my kid if’n he wants to take my wife?”.

You don't reply to that, you can’t because he’s steadily picking up pace, fucking you with determination that you knew was coming from somewhere other than his cock. No, of all the times he’d taken you prior, this one was different. Stubborn, vivace, and oh so frantic. You find yourself biting down on his shoulder as he slams against your soft walls, each time pulling almost entirely out before pounding back into you again, bruising your cervix like he wanted to mark you from the inside out. He’s spewing guttural rumbles and low moans from above you, and each one only makes you want him more. Not just here, not just now, but forever and then some.

“I love you, y’hear me?” His voice is deeper than usual, husky, somewhat of a moan in your ear, “Don't’cha ever tell me I cain’t ever again.”.

Each word is accentuated with a sharp thrust, desire and want and desperate prayer rearranging your very being. All you can do is whimper his name in response. He trails kisses along your neckline, they almost feel apologetic.

How absolutely inhumane time was, only the night left to claim every part of each other before it was ripped away, burnt to nothing but a memory of a flame that once shone so brightly in the darkness. Despite the way every stroke has your mind melting away, you find yourself realizing that perhaps this wasn’t Sure Shot at all, but instead just Suguru, a helplessly enamored man on the verge of losing his love on top of everything he’d already lost in the past few years. You choke out a sob, unsure if it’s the pleasure or the pain or the realization that has you blubbering, but it didn’t matter all the same. You were still adulterated, he was still taken with you, you were still duty-bound to marry another, and he was still hammering into you like his life depended on it.

You feel your body begin to contract, thighs starting to squeeze around him as he beats against your favorite spot so deep inside, the feeling almost tormenting you into another release.

“Aht, aht, now don’t go tensin’ up on me, babydoll.” He doesn’t stop his arietations, though, as he leans back to encase your tender throat with his fingers. The simple action is enough to have that coil inside you winding tighter at an exponential rate, “Ya’ know by now it’s better when ya relax f’me. Thought I had ya well trained, mm? Now be good f’me and loosen up- atta girl, atta girl-”.

You do your best to let your thighs fall slack and all you can feel is the way he’s piledriving into you, closing your eyes and zoning in on that place inside where his cock is shooting sparks across your body over and over and over. His fingers begin to tighten around your sensitive throat and your pussy follows suit around his shaft. You think you hear him breathe out a string of whispered curses, but you can't tell with the way your vision is beginning to go white and fuzzy. His free hand reaches around to flick across your clit in quick, frantic motions, and you’d be so appreciative of his hand on your throat if you could think anything at all. You gargle out a strangled noise as you come undone beneath him for the second time that night, your hands coming up to grip at his wrist, your head pounding backwards into your sheets and hair bouncing wildly as his thrusts become somehow stronger, but all the while more erratic. He was close behind you, this you knew.

A few more pumps and he’s pulling out of you, letting go of your neck to lean back on his haunches and fist his cock with ferocity, hissing as his seed splatters across your abdomen, hot and sticky. You gasp for air, feeling like you’d just run a few miles in the summer heat, gargling and sputtering as you attempt to re-ground yourself.

A tender hand finds your cheek, and your eyes flutter open to find his dark features gazing at you longingly, his bottom lip pushed out in a small pout.

“M’okay.” You assure, turning to press a kiss into his palm and smiling up at him lazily. He mirrors that and leans down to plant a gentle kiss against your lips, mumbling an apology for being so rough.

“Thank you most kindly for refraining from sowing your oats in me.” Your brain feels numb.

He lets his head fall into your shoulder to stifle his giggles “C’mon, ditz. Let's get ya’ cleaned up and light us a hand roll.”. A tender kiss against your shoulder.

A few minutes later you're curled up between his spread legs on the floor just by your window, him in nothing but his pants and you wrapped in his shirt. You watch over your shoulder as he produces a single cigarette from his pocket, striking the match he’d stolen from atop your armoire against the rough grain of your window, marveling at the way the light paints his skin orange as he puffs a few times to get the stick lit. When he’s done, he shakes away the flame and disposes of the match on your windowsill, draping one arm around you and pulling you backwards until your back is flush with his bare chest.

He is careful when he blows the smoke away from your face, but you’re not as you snatch the cigarette away from him as soon as he’s finished the first drag, bringing it to your lips and drawing in a breath of smoke just as big as his own.

“Woah, Nellie!” He teases, resting his cheek against the crown of your head, “Didn’t know y’was such’n avid smoker.”.

“I most certainly am not!” You tease right back. “I only do such unfavorable, unladylike things in the presence of scoundrels such as yourself.”.

He chuckles, leaning forward to puff on the cigarette as you hold it up for him. You scold yourself for craving the plush of his lips again so soon. Not only did you just finish bedding him, but you also could never do so again. Well, at least not after the night was through. For a while, the two of you stay like that, silently watching the stars and smoking your cares away to the best of your ability. The eastern crickets sang a song of farewell as you sat comfortable in the quiet serenity of your darkened room, a place that had been only for the two of you to share for so long, but would be no longer come dawn. Neither of you, it seems, wants to acknowledge it, savoring the calm before the raging storm of forever comes for you with the rise of the sun.

It’s just after he’s lit the third hand roll of the night that he suggests something so foolish, so childish and stupid, that you aren’t sure you heard him correctly the first time.

“Come away with me.”

You shift so that you’re setting sideways in his lap, looking up at him like he’d sprouted a third eyeball right in the center of his suntanned forehead. A beat, and then two passes, and you realize he’s serious.

“Surely you’ve gone mad. Out west?”

He nods “Yes’m.”.

“And just where shall we sleep? Eat? Make love?” If your eyes were to grow any wider they would certainly pop out of your head.

“Wherever the wind carries us, that’s’a best part-”

“Suguru!” A scoff and a laugh of disbelief escapes your gaping mouth, shaking your head at him in such unconvincibility.

“ ’M stone cold, baby. On my Ma-!” His tone sounds pleading, and he’s smiling hopefully, like a child who really hopes that Santa will leave a tommy gun under his tree.

“Good thing she's already under, bless her soul.” You snatch the cigarette from him and puff like your life depends on it. Truly, he would be the death of you.

“You hush’up.” He laughs, taking the hand roll back and clenching in between his teeth, using one hand to pull you by the bicep until the both of you are on your knees, elbows resting on the window as he speaks.

“Y’ain't ever gon’ know the things I’ve seen ‘less-n ya light a shuck with me. Baby there’s deserts, canyons, caves that shoot right down t’hell itself and fields a’ clovers ‘n wildflowers just as far’s yer pretty lil’ eyes could ever see-” As he talks, his hands make dramatic gestures in front of the two of you, as if he could physically paint the views into the open air before you.

“There are also snakes, and bears, and bandits-” You argue, but he cuts you off with a wink and a nudge.

“That's why yer com’n’ with me, cain’t no varmint catch ya’ if you're tucked under my arm!”

A defeated sigh escapes you, uninterested in playing these childish games of possibilities with him, “Pray tell, does your jaw ever ache from how much you jabber on?”.

His face falls slightly, but he’s still smiling. Softer now. Begging.

“Only for you, if’n ’m honest.”

You glare at him with knowing eyes, trying your best to simply look some sense into him, but of course your attempt is unsuccessful, the both of you erupting into giggles.

“Oh,” You take a long sigh as you calm yourself, “How am I to carry on without you?”.

“Y’ain’t. Because yer comin’ with me.”

“Suguru.” Now you sound like the one pleading, looking up at him with sad eyes as you steal the cigarette directly from his mouth and take another drag. And then, on the exhale; “My family, hopeful lover. Why is it can’t you understand I have a responsibility to-”

“I do.” He reaches forward and grabs your jaw, leaning inward, “I can acknowledge the corn. Ain’t claimin’ no ignorance here. But to see ya’ sell yerself for the good graces of society? I cain’t hang my hat on ‘at. I’m beggin’ ya, baby. ‘N Imma real proud man. Be selfish, just this once. Come away with me.”.

For a moment, all you can do is stare, your stomach sinking as you realized he was right. Your whole life you'd been a proper young lady. Honing your craft with your mother in the kitchen while the neighborhood boys played soccer in the fields. You learned to cook, to clean, to play piano forte in hopes to one day secure a rich husband, not for yourself, but for the hope that one day he could provide them more than this cottage on the outskirts of town. Sitting here now, though, you realized that was never what you wanted. It was what everyone else wanted of you.

“...Tonight?” You whisper, and immediately he’s lighting up from the inside out, his grin wild and wide as he surges forward and captures you between his arms, squeezing the life out of you as you giggle and do your best to hold the lit cigarette away from the two of you. He captures your lips in a kiss, and then another, and another, until you’re fussing at him to answer your question.

“Not tonight, tomorra. Gotta get some things’n order. Stock up on sum fixin’s. Shoot a letter to ‘ol Six Eyes out west and pray it arrives before we do-”

Oh, right. You scrunch your face up. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all.

“Ya have my blessin’ t’shoot him.”

Okay, you’re excited again “I get a gun?!”. 

He snorts and steals the cigarette back from you, drawing in the last of it and nodding hesitantly “Affirmative, tho I gotta wonder if it’ll be the death a’ me.”.

You hum, your eyes wandering out into the night as you ponder aloud.

“If I am to be completely vulnerable, I do not wish to shoot anyone.”

He presses a kiss to your cheek “The gun ain't f’people, peach- it's for ‘em bears n’ snakes ya’ mentioned. I'll handle the people, don’t worry yer pretty lil’ head over’it.”

***

You couldn’t sleep after he left that night, a sure case of the morbs settling over you as you packed according to Suguru’s instruction. That is to say, lightly. A simple change of clothing and a leather bound journal for writing was basically all you would leave with.

This house, though not one of grandeur, had held you since you were but a babe. Your first steps were taken on this very hardwood, your height from every year notched into the frame of your bedroom door by your Pa’s pocketknife- up until you stopped growing at sixteen or so, that is. The crops from the garden had nourished you, the trees from the wood line knew your deepest secrets. You’d chased and caught frogs here, learned to read and write here, laughed and cried here, been bedded by a ill-fated outlaw here, and ultimately decided to make haste with him on westward winds. Here.

You hadn’t allowed yourself to think to hardly on your parents, reminding yourself of Suguru’s words:

“Be selfish, just this once.”

Right. He was right. From now on, you are living life for you. Not for your Mama and Pa. Not for what the pew regulars would think of you. Not for the coffee-sisters, nor the gossip in the marketplace.

…That was, until you snuck as silently as possible through the door of all you’d ever known, only to find your Mama leaning against the wooden railing of the porch, watching the sky ever-so-slightly lighten with each passing moment.

Your heart plummeted through the floor as you nearly dropped your bag from your shoulder in despair. Suguru would be arriving any moment. Surely if she were to see him she would simply fall dead.

“The coffee-sisters at tea last Saturday were just gushing about how there's quite a bit of wide open space out there in the unclaimed west.” is her version of a ‘goodmorning’. She doesn’t even turn around, keeping her stare set off into the distance.

You swallow thickly, trying to keep as normal as possible, “Mama? Why are you awake at such an hour?”.

She ignores you, staring, staring, staring still into the horizon, boring holes into the mountains in the distance. The same ones that hand held you, and her, and her mother, and the mother before.

“You know what's so grand about so much open air?”

You deflate, tears welling to your eyes as the realization dawns upon you that she must know. The one day you decide to run away with a vagabond outlaw is the one day she happens to be up before the sun, standing on the porch, waffling poetic about the unclaimed west? Nonsense. You could only hope this didn’t end in a shootout between Suguru and your father. Anxiety builds and pressurizes in your chest and you stay stone silent, trying to think of a way to de-escalate the aforementioned confrontation before it had even begun.

“There's so much space to grow. A gentleman at the market mentioned to me of his brother who ranches cattle out there. In his most recent letter, he spoke of cacti that grow to three times the height of your average man. Isn't that lovely, my girl?” Finally, she turns to look at you, smiling gently. Her face looks so much like your own but older, wiser.

Your brow dips in confusion. Was this or was it not the part where she was supposed to call you a harlot? Was she not to disown you? To tell you the very thing you’d been telling yourself since Suguru first bedded you; that you were a wretched, wretched, woman and surely when the roll is called on high you will be sent southward?

“Mama, of what do you speak?” The tears brimming your eyes are threatening to fall, but you tell yourself you must remain brave. You were a grown woman, making grown woman choices now.

“Add to that wonder, if the rumors are to be believed they grow flowers! Big, beautiful vibrant blooms from the toughest of plants this world has to offer. I thought unto myself; ‘My good Lord, how fitting. It must be by design.’. Do you understand me, daughter?” she cocks her head at you, and you come to lean beside her on the railing.

“No, Mama. I’m afraid I’m terribly lost.” You aren’t sure why it is you’re whispering, you’d already been caught, after all.

She takes your hand in her own, smiling at you, chuckling lightheartedly, as if she were watching a baby child dance about, “I'm saying to you, girl, that good things come from sharpened situations. There may come a time that you prick yourself to find something brighter than your eyes have seen… but you know of that already, no?”.

The tears begin to fall from the corners of your eyes and you mimic her smile back at her, elation washing over you like fresh spring rain. She was giving you permission. She knew, and still-

“Ma, how did you discover me?” you breathe, and she laughs genuinely, patting your hand.

“I take night strolls in the garden when your father's fog horn snoring keeps me awake. It was just this time last year that I turned to see a rather handsome young man leaned against your open window.”

Your cheeks go red and you hold a palm to your face, shaking your head lightly before you wipe at your tears.

“I must admit, I considered waking your father. You're the upmost of lucky he sleeps like a rock, by the way. A word of advice from an old maid? Tuck a pillow between your headboard and the wall to still the bed--”

“Mama, please! I never meant to bring you shame, of this I swear-!” You cut her off, taking both of her hands in your own, threatening to fall back into the treacherous place your mind had been just moments before.

“My love, everyone beds before they're married these days. They simply do not speak of it, and then there is nothing to say of the matter. I myself was two courses missed when I married your father. The world kept spinning, much contrary to the belief of your Nan.” She shrugs dismissively as you let go of her hands, and all you can do is stare at her; awestruck. Who was this woman standing in front of you now?

“Anyway, If I may continue. I stood out there for quite some time, weighing upon my options. The two of you never even noticed me, so lost in each other that I think I could've marched right up to him and pinched his tight little ass cheeks before either of you took note--”

“Mama!! My word!!!” You gasp, and bark out an incredulous laugh at her words. Your mother, never once in all your live days, had been so crass in front of you.

She laughs too, slapping at your arm and hushing you, “Hush, child! You’ll wake your Pa!”.

Your laughter settles into tender smiles. You were going to miss her most furiously.

She grips both of your shoulders as she speaks.

“I knew that the clock had been set in motion by the way he looked at you. What I saw that wonderful night was the sweet smile of a man that had made up his mind standing by the window in the moonlight. And what of you? Oh glory in the highest, I hadn't seen that look on your face since you were a babe! Not since before this world had taught you it isn't polite for ladies to laugh with no regard for looking proper.”

“I love him, Mama.” You admit, chuckling lightly with watery eyes, “And he loves me, too. Of this I am most certain.”.

“I know.” She pats your shoulder, and then continues, “I had never seen you look so miserable until Nanami Kento showed up on our doorstep, either. A shame, but your heart is already tucked deep in someone else's pocket, I fear.”.

You nod, slow and grave. “If there’s one thing of which I must apologize, it is that. I am terribly sorry for poor Nanami.”.

“Do not be so. Perhaps I will strike lucky and your father will keel over when he wakes to find you gone. More for me.”

“Oh, do not curse him so!” You both snicker again.

She pulls you into a tight hug, squeezing you for all you’re worth, which is maybe more than you knew. It’s around that time that you hear a familiar sound, both of your heads turning to watch as Suguru slowly fades into view, the steady thump of Cinnamon’s hooves against the soft earth growing rhythmically louder as they approach in a slow trot.

You turn back to your mother, your eyes apprehensive. She grabs your head and presses her lips to the center of your forehead, “Go now, child, before your father wakes. Do not forget to write, we will be here should you return. We will be here until the roll is called on high. As for you, though, adventure awaits.”.

With her graces, you step away from the porch, and it feels like you’ve stepped off a ledge into something beautiful. You run to meet him, your shoes padding against the grass and your dress billowing against the motion, never ceasing until he’s bringing Cinnamon to a halt so he can dismount and catch you as you fly into his arms, wrapping you in a hug as if he hadn’t just seen you a few hours prior. He looks good, he always looks good, but it’s a rarity for you to see him in his full get up. You wonder if you, too, will require such gear, and even more so if your bandana and gun belt will be stained purple to match.

He eyes your mother from the considerable distance and she waves. He returns the greeting by way of removing his stetson from his head, pressing it to his chest and bowing lightly in her direction, revealing his hair had been wrangled back into two tight plaits on either side of his head. While he’s distracted, you snatch his hat from his hands, plopping it on your own head, an action that has him laughing, his eyes crinkling up and twinkling with lovesomeness.

“Ya’ wear it much better’n I ever could, dumplin’. Now lets brush th’ breeze ‘for someone decides ‘ta kill me for this.”

***

“Y’know what ‘at ol’ Six Eyed bastard tells pretty young things like you?” Suguru asks through a mouthful of apple, and you’d chastise him for his manners if he wasn't graced with such beauty and you weren't cursed to be so sleepy.

You’d made it about twenty miles before Cinnamon needed to rest. You're all shaded by a tall oak tree, you and Suguru leaning against its base, your hands holding onto his bicep and your cheek rested against his shoulder, his hat still on your head.

“Mm?” You question, barely lucid, and he chuckles, holding the core up for Cinnamon which she's more than happy to accept, crunching almost as obnoxiously as her dear handler had been just moments before.

“He tells’em, ‘You wear the hat, you ride the cowboy--’.” 

You lift your head to ensure he sees you roll your eyes, and he laughs, dipping beneath the brim of his own hat to steal a kiss from you, soft and slow.

[lunarvampz]

In Bloom (Arthur Morgan x Reader

Word count. 6038. this is a big one.

Chapter 4 Hawthorn

The last week was utter chaos trying to get the final things in place for the annual harvest festival: preparing booths, organising equipment, and figuring out who was running what. Much to your dismay, you had been stationed on the corn maze with someone else, fishing out the kids who would undoubtedly get lost.

The afternoon breeze was too nippy for your liking, but the physical exertion of hoisting pumpkins into crates counteracted the chill. Your father had asked you to round up the last of the supplies and load the wagon so he could take them to the stalls in town. He, very conveniently, had ‘too much paperwork’ and couldn’t do it himself.

You loaded the last of the pumpkins before going back inside, calling out to your father that you had finished. Moments later, you heard the familiar thuds against the stairs and the opening and shutting of the door. Not even a thank you.

Besides helping out and doing chores, you hadn’t been allowed to leave the house unless instructed, which wasn’t that different from the rest of the time. Mother had callously warned you about trying to ‘show off’ your bruises to attract attention and risk you ruining her pristine reputation and pulled you into her bedroom to cover the marks she had left to the best of her abilities before you even thought about stepping foot out of the front door, including today.

——————————

The best way you could describe the makeup was clownish at best. Sighing, you turned on the tap and splashed the water on your face, washing away the pinkish liquid she had covered it in. Wincing slightly, you gently dried your skin and examined the yellow and green clouds of pigment that stained your cheeks and the almost-healed split on your lower lip; it was less noticeable today.

You were called to dinner, ate, blocked out the conversation and then slinked back to your room, not wanting to provoke your parents into banning you from the festival tomorrow altogether.

The outfit your mother had laid out on your chair stared at you obnoxiously. A pear-coloured taffeta dress, ruffly and laced, with cream gloves and a matching coat, all topped off with the dreaded corset she liked to force you in and tighten so you could barely breathe. After all, appearances matter. 

Sitting on the pile of clothes was a hat with a lace trim that went with the dress, and all you could think about was how you were supposed to pull kids out of a corn maze in that outfit. It made sense because the church was running it, and you’d be standing up on stage with the rest of your family in front of the whole town.

Deciding not to nitpick the details, you rolled over to face the wall and pulled the covers over your shoulder, too tired to care about what was to come the next day.

——————————

Warm. Warm? Cold? Cold! Jolting awake to the sudden change in temperature, your eyes shot open to see your mother standing over you, holding your duvet and practically pulling you out of bed.

“Up! Up! Now! We have things to do!”, You groaned and caught the edge of your bed before she could drag you onto the floor, looking over at the clock. 8:17 am.

“Alright! I’m getting up. Just give me a second.”

She let go of your legs and hurried downstairs, presumably to start baking her ‘famous’ blackberry tartlets. 

The wooden floors were cold and hard against your feet, and the draft coming through your window ran up your back, nipping at your neck. Your body began to ache just thinking about all the things you had to do today and, on top of all that, dealing with screaming children. You’d rather eat a pound of salt.

The clanging in the kitchen grew louder with each stride you took, and when you turned the corner, you saw your mother elbow-deep in pastry dough, rolling, shaping and baking it into perfect little cups that filled the countertops. She looked like she had been baking for hours already. However, she still roped you into the kitchen and stationed you in front of a bowl and a gigantic pile of blackberries.

——————————

No matter how hard you scrubbed your hands and fingers, the indigo stains didn't budge; you had washed your hands four times. You became frustrated and decided just to leave it, and you had to be ready in an hour and “Heaven forbid” we were late. Much to your protest, your mother had bound you into the corset so tightly that you felt as if you were going to burst with one too many sharp movements and she asked you to do the same for her, as always. It astonished you how she kept telling you to pull tighter and tighter, to the point where you thought you’d snap her in half.

You dressed in the rest of your outfit and tucked away any loose hairs that fell astray. Pulling a few flowers from the vase on your vanity, you slipped them into the ribbon on your hat and took a deep breath. The image in the mirror was so far from what you usually looked, and it warped your mind; the enhancement of your figure and whatever powders and liquids your mother had caked on your face made you look like the pinnacle of high-class refinement and innocence. 

It had turned out that word of your overnight stay with an older man in the middle of town had crept through the cracks of the alleys and made its way subtly through the hushed corners of town, so your presentation today had been fabricated meticulously by your parents to ensure your best behaviour.

“We’re leaving in twenty minutes, no more, no less!’

Your mother shouted from the bannister, echoing throughout the top floor.

Shaking the nervousness, you sat at your vanity and fixed some of the makeup. She tried, but your skin was much softer and had far fewer wrinkles.

You knew it was time to leave when you heard the coach roll onto the front grass. Your father only called this for events, and it was just as awkward and confining as packing a bear and a snake into a pet cage.

——————————

Each time you rode in that godforsaken carriage was worse than the last. Smushed against the door was your fate because your sister needed space for her ‘friends’. Her plush toys, that was. 

You bunched the fabric of your dress in your hands and pushed yourself out of the door, taking in the bustling noise of something other than maids or dishes or your mother’s consistent blithering. It brought you a sense of calm… almost.

It wasn’t long until you were dragged by the wrist and ushered behind the stage curtains whilst Mayor Baker welcomed guests. Your mother gestured to the corners of her lips, smiling in a way that was so obviously fake and surface level that it was closer to pain than actual content; though you had grown closely familiar with it, you understood why the town couldn’t tell.

Following your mother and father out from the curtain with your little sister tailing you, you took in everyone’s faces, and your eyes landed on someone familiar. Like that, you felt every nerve tense and every hair stand on end. That face. That fucking face. That sense of freedom you felt swiftly exited faster than it could enter, and your smile faltered; the burning sensation sat in your sinuses, and everything around you became foggy and disoriented.

The clouded rays that were once soothing your skin and embraced you against the cold now blinded you, the winds that flowed over gently now lashed harshly at your skin and the noise you were so grateful for turned into your heartbeat, overtaking your eardrums and it was tormenting.

You felt your mother elbow you and hastily pull you off stage with the rest of your family, who had already taken a few steps before turning to your father and taking his arm to set off to their designated booth. You stumbled a little before regaining some sort of awareness, and you watched as your sister ran off with the other young church kids.

It felt like your heart would jump out of your throat, and your tightly woven corset only accentuated the pressure on your lungs.

You thought he left town for good.

——————————

Clawing at the fabric on your back with haste, you only managed to unhook a few notches while your uncontrollable sobs turned to something more like panic-stricken gasps. If only your mother had not insisted on the laces being so tight.

The gloves you wore had been strewn onto the grass, and the coat you had practically torn off lay under you, pressed into the grass by your knees and the tips of your shoes. Each breath you took was shallow and choked, and you felt like you were losing yourself and any focus you had was directed at being able to breathe.

You had run off to the outside of the corn maze, just far enough away from everyone to where they couldn’t hear your pained cries, or so you thought.

Faint footsteps turned to hurried strides that grew louder by the second, along with indistinct shouts that sounded quiet compared to the breaths that blocked your ears. Your fingers kept getting caught between the hooks, and they started hurting. You felt the world closing in and your vision narrow as you tried to get the last hook undone.

The footsteps stopped behind you, and a pair of hands shooed yours away, quickly undid the latch and asked you what was going on repeatedly, unaware of you being asphyxiated.

You squeaked out a few words using whatever air you left in you.

“Corset… Tight.” 

The hands yanked the bow, loosened the laces, and pulled it apart in a matter of seconds. 

Oh my god.

Nothing felt better than actually being able to breathe. You groaned in relief, collapsing onto your elbows and heaving and coughing as your head hung down, causing your hat to fall off. The coat underneath you had cushioned your thud as you rolled onto your back, and the soft grass tickled your feet.

A laugh escaped your lips briefly while you held your face in your hands; it was almost comical the way that that was so close to being the death of you… Then it all hit again like a wave crashing down on you, and you started sobbing again. It wasn’t till you finished rubbing your eyes that you realised the mystery person was probably still standing there. 

You quickly wiped your eyes only to open them to a tall, well-dressed cowboy. Oh. My god. The laughter came on again as it mixed with the sniffles, and you sat up, dusting yourself off and massaging your ribcage. Sucking your teeth, you spoke.

“Nice to see you.”

He chuckled and bent down to pick up your gloves.

“Always lovely to see you, Miss.”

There was a brief pause where you soaked in the awkwardness of the situation and fiddled with a bit of grass in your fingers. The leaves from the trees rustled in the wind, filling the void.

You cleared your throat.

“Thank you for the help back there. That was… Yeah.”

Arthur stood back up with gloves in one hand and extending the other. You took it, and he pulled you up gently. You smiled at him but were met with a look of solicitude; confused, you asked what was wrong.

“Yer’ face. What the hell happened?”

Frozen in place, you realised your makeup must have run off with the tears and debated on telling the truth or not. You didn’t know if he’d tell anyone.

“My mother's gift to me after my hotel ‘rendezvous’. She didn’t break anything this time, at least.”

Arthur’s face was one of pure shock, mouth slightly agape, and he seemed to try to process what you just said. It was scary how silent he was, the silence being filled by the breeze once again.

“Your MO-”

He calmed himself, stepping towards you and reaching his hand to your chin, tilting your cheek towards him.

“She did this to you? Yer’ own damn mother?”

He shifted to your lip, running his thumb across the split, sighing. Pulling away from you, he shook his head.

“I’m so sorry that happened. Really, I didn’t mean for you to get that drunk.”

You picked up your hat and coat and shrugged; you didn't want him to feel bad since he could’ve just left you at the saloon, and who knows what might’ve happened to you if he did. Realising that you’ve been missing from the corn maze for a while, you mentioned having to get back to Arthur.

“The corn maze? That’s where I’m stationed.”

He was your supervisor. 

“I was wondering who I was with… Wait- How?”

How was a question that seemed like it was about to have a very long answer, so instead of waiting to hear what he said, you asked him to help you tie your corset, wanting to get back before someone noticed you were missing. Before he could answer, you had already turned your back to him.

“Miss, I… I don’t know how to…”

Holding the loose laces, you put them in his hands and told him to start from the top and pull tightly, but not too tight. It took him a few seconds to register what you said, but he finally moved towards you after a few seconds.

You moved your hair out of the way and looked over your shoulder to see his face slightly puzzled, and you chuckled before facing forward again.

His hands briefly brushed your spine and made their way to the first cross. He pulled gently, edging the laces tighter until you said stop. He stopped and made his way to the next cross, pulled to the same tightness and stopped again. Slowly but surely, he worked his hands down the rest of the laces, drawing them through the eyelets until he hit the bottom.

“I can’t tie bows…”

Your hands met his, and you took over, finishing up. Arthur shuffled a little closer, hooking the back of your dress, and you swear you heard him mumble another apology; you questioned him, but he said nothing. You turned around to get your gloves off him without realising how close he was. Everything clicked for a moment; for just a split second, you felt this intense sense of… something. It was a feeling that warmed your blood.

Clearing your throat, you grabbed the gloves from his belt and slipped them on, along with your hat and coat. Arthur stood there awkwardly, staring off into nothing whilst playing with the hem of his jeans pocket.

It struck you that the makeup was still smeared with streaks of blushed tint running down your cheeks and smudged lip paint that dragged down your chin. Searching for something to wipe it with, you expressed to Arthur that you couldn’t go into town without covering the marks and then pulled out a small handkerchief and tried your best to wipe away the remnants.

“Hold on, I’ll be right back,  jus’ stay here”

The cowboy had already begun briskly walking away before you could protest, but you were stuck here, so it didn't matter. A few minutes later, he returned with a dark brown-haired woman in tow carrying a toddler playing with a small teddy bear.

“This is my friend Abigail. She’ll fix yer makeup for you.”

The woman gave the little one over to Arthur before reaching into her purse. You watched as Arthur sat down on the grass and played peek-a-boo with the bear whilst the child watched in awe, giggling and clapping.

“Don’t mind my son. His dad was busy.”

She seemed slightly annoyed but continued to rummage for a few seconds before pulling out a small compact, a bottle filled with a wine-coloured liquid and two brushes, one big and one small. 

“So, you’re Miss Hotel. Yeah, I saw y’up on that stage earlier. You’ve got a pretty face. Ain’t that right, Arthur?”

Arthur's head snapped up from the boy with a startled look; he sputtered out a ‘Yeah’ and turned his attention back to the boy. Abigail snickered quietly and started to apply the rosy powder to your cheeks, brushing it over the mark and matching it on the other side; then, she painted the liquid onto your lips, carefully smudging it with her finger.

“Well, I’m all done here. It was lovely to finally meet you.”

Swiftly, she packed away the cosmetics and swept up her son and his toy before wishing Arthur a good day and returning to the fair. You slightly adjusted your clothes while Arthur got up and suggested that you two get going; you agreed.

——————————

Throughout the day, kids and adults alike filtered in and out of the maze, though you hadn’t paid much mind to it. You signed them in and waited ten minutes, and if they hadn’t come back to the front, you went in and guided them back out.

“I think it’s been ten minutes since that couple went through. I better go fish ‘em out. You’ve already done enough today. I’ll take over from here.”

Arthur stood from his chair and entered the maze, disappearing into the husks. The two of you had been talking since you returned, sharing stories and asking questions. You thought it was a great way to kill time and get to know each other better, considering you weren’t allowed to participate in anything until the last hour when most of the activities closed and the music and dancing started.

You had learnt about his upbringing, that he lives with a camping group that travels frequently and is essentially one big family, and about his hobbies, which included hunting, journaling and the occasional sketching and poetry. The last one surprised you a bit, and you asked if you could hear some, which seemed to get him flustered before he explained that it was kind of private, which you understood.

Fiddling with the sign-up sheet on the table, you looked around at all the stalls and activities and eyed your parents, one that was being swarmed for tartlets just like every other year. They’d be sold out in the next twenty minutes.

Sounds of rustling filled the air along with crunching footsteps from behind; you looked over and saw the couple giggling and dishevelled, with Arthur trailing behind, looking stunned and shaking his head. It took you a few seconds to put together what had occurred, and your face twisted in disgust, earning you a glare from the man before his wife dragged him away.

“You definitely do not see that every day.” 

Arthur thunked down onto the chair next to you and leaned onto the table, dragging his hands down his face in disbelief.

“Jesus. People don’t have any sense these days. What if a kid saw ‘em?!”, He exclaimed.

“It’s entirely unsanitary and unholy.”

You rolled your eyes, people should leave that for their bedrooms. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Arthur's eyebrow raise in confusion but, he didn’t say anything else.

Time passed slowly for the rest of the afternoon, with more people coming and going and lighthearted conversations that ranged from ‘Favourite animal?’ to ‘Best flavour of pie?’, in which the only valid answer was apple-cinnamon, in his opinion.

——————————

It was later in the evening when you finally packed up the stall, the sun was going down and the band your father hired had begun setting up. Arthur offered to take the table and chairs to the piles on the other side of the town square whilst you took the donation jar and sheets to the crates that sat near your family’s wagon, you agreed and hoisted the jar into your arms and grabbed the stack of papers and made your way over.

Your mother was there organising the money and filing various papers into envelopes when you reached the wagon, though she was too distracted to notice you. It wasn’t like you were very big on talking to her at the moment. 

You returned to the plaza where everyone was gathered, the place was lit by street lamps and candles that sat atop the highest tiers of the fountain and the stands surrounding the outer edge of the town square. The music had just started a few minutes prior and people were already dancing, though mostly children.

Sitting on a bench on the far side of the square, you watched everyone enjoy themselves, you thought you would’ve been more excited to participate but honestly, you couldn’t get that face out of your head. The image had been burned into your brain since you were fourteen and seeing it again today terrified you just as much as it did all those years ago.

The feeling weighed on you like ten sacks of flour and clouded your thoughts like a thousand hurricanes. Out of all days. It was more than what you wanted to deal with and you were pretty sure Arthur had picked up on it too, but chose to say nothing after your near-death fiasco.

“Not dancin’?”

A woman’s voice broke your train of thought. You looked up to find Abigail standing with her hand on her hip, looking down at you.

“Maybe later.”

She sat down on the bench next to you and you thought you smelled alcohol on her breath as she talked.

“Y’know, Jack’s father is horrible. Took off on me and my boy after I gave birth. Still isn’t very involved at all. Hell, Arthur has been more of a father figure to him than he has, and it’s not even his kid.”

As much as she tried to hide it, the pain and anger in her voice was clear. You couldn’t imagine having to raise a child, let alone without the help of the father. Abigail looked at you with tear-welled eyes for a moment before sniffling and wiping them with her hands.

“But I love him, I love that stupid bastard. He may not love me back but this feeling isn’t something I can shake. It’s like when you first meet someone and there’s this little lantern of hope that lights within you, and that flame just keeps burning, whether it gets bigger or not, that flame burns.”

There was a pause before she looked back to you.

“I saw the way you look at him. I see that flame, and I don’t even think you notice it yourself.”

You stared at her, a little dumbfounded. The two of you had just been friends. Yes, he is a very striking man, but that didn’t correlate to fondness or likeness, right?

“Yeah, I don’t think so. Arthur and I are friends. That’s all.”

She rolled her eyes at your statement, chuckling.

“Hey, I’m serious. I think I’d know if I had a thing for someone.”

“Whatever y’say, Sugarplum.”

The snarky remark mixed with her expression almost earned a laugh out of you but you took into consideration what she was saying for a moment. No way.

“Well, however you feel is however you feel, but I’ll tell you something. That morning he came back, John asked him where he’d been and Arthur, bless his heart, he said he spent the night hopin’ and prayin’ that the girl he got drinks with didn’t hate his guts!”

She laughed so hard after that, you thought she’d fall off the bench onto the ground. Did he really think that? You thought that he would’ve moved past it casually, that he did that kind of thing often, you guessed not.

“Well I don’t, and he was very gentlemanly about it. Put me to bed and all.”

A smile crept onto your face as you thought about that night, it was neither’s fault, you didn’t know your limit and he didn’t know you were such a lightweight.

“He’s spent the last week worrying about you so much, we thought his hand would get fused to his forehead from all the time he spent sitting in the damn same position!”

Abigail proceeded to ramble about Arthur's antics for a few minutes, mentioning all the details he told her about how the first time you two had met was purely coincidental and what you talked about and about a billion other incoherent things you couldn’t hear because of the speed she was talking.

“And get this! I asked if you were pretty, considering how much he talked about you, and he-”

She paused with a laugh, clutching her chest.

“He said ‘pretty enough’. Little shit was lying, and I could tell, though I suppose anyone could considering how much he was avoiding eye contact, and how any time someone mentioned your name, he got all dopey and such.”

You barely comprehended what she was saying before she was holding your face in her hands and staring at you intently.

“Look at you, you’re gorgeous! A gorgeous piece of forbidden fruit.” A smirk grew on her face and her voice became hushed.

“Pastor’s daughter. Arthur better tread carefully.” She giggled, dragging out the last syllable in a teasing manner.

The thought of your father finding out you had even been in any sort of intimate vicinity of a cowboy who looked about old enough to be your dad himself was terrifying. You could just imagine the beating you’d receive, your mother's sobs about you being a disgrace and a scandalous harlot. However, a small part of your mind wondered about the possibility of becoming close to Arthur. How well did you know him?  

From what you had seen of him today, you wouldn’t have thought twice about his behaviour towards you or your behaviour towards him, but the more your mind replayed each interaction, it made more and more sense.

Maybe you did have a little thing for him. It’ll probably pass.

You heard your name and turned your attention away from Abigail to see none other than the man himself, standing there with a somewhat annoyed look on his face.

“Ladies.”

He cleared his throat twice before Abigail took notice, and when she did, she was nothing but cheery and smiles. A look was exchanged between all three of you before you broke the silence.

“Hey, Arthur. Did you get those chairs and table back, alright?”

Abigail snickered, pushed herself off the bench, and slowly slunk away, whistling and looking back at you before disappearing into the crowd.

“Yeah… Yeah, I did. Don’t mind Abigail, she jus’ likes to stir the pot. Did you she yap yer ear off? When she drinks, she gets talkative.”

You weren’t about to question him on anything she had just told you, absolutely not. Could you imagine? Actually, funny you say that. She told me that you have some sort of obligated sense of care for me, even though you’ve only known me for about two weeks . It wasn’t like you weren’t drawn to him at all, but you felt it wasn’t the time or place to discuss such a matter.

“She was just talking about Jack. Apparently, you’ve been a great help to her.”

Arthur leaned onto the back of the bench and looked at you. You felt like there was something behind his gaze that you couldn’t quite pick up.

“Well, someone’s got to do it, and no one else wants to. John doesn’t believe it’s his child, but I don’t really want to get into it.”

Oh. Oh. Poor Abigail.

“Of course, but it’s really sweet of you.”

The light danced in his eyes, and he stared at you intently for a few seconds, tilting his head ever so slightly.

“Thanks…”

He seemed mesmerised by the way the candles illuminated your skin and how your lips curled into a smile when you complimented him. For a few seconds, your eyes searched his while he searched all of you. You felt that same warmth grow inside your chest, making your heartbeat heavy and deep, and your lips parted when Arthur’s gaze drifted to them. He’s so…

Arthur snapped out of it, and his eyes met yours again, and the corner of his mouth stretched into a half-smile. He broke the silence and nervously spoke.

“Would you, uh, care t’ dance?” 

The statement surprised you and the abruptness of it confused you before your mind registered what he said.

“I don’t think I can, my parents would see and-”

“No one will see you. Look at how many people there are, and I think you deserve some fun after all your hard work today.”

You looked out at the large crowd and debated his offer for a moment before answering.

“Alright. Just for a bit”

Your answer made Arthur grin before standing up and extending his hand out for you to take, which you graciously accepted and the two of you pushed your way through to the crowd’s centre. 

The quartet was playing upbeat music that you didn’t recognise, and you slowly started to tap your foot to the beat, Arthur did the same. After a few minutes, the both of you began twirling and stepping along with everyone around you and getting caught up in the music. Dancing and jumping and swinging each other around, you let enjoy the moment and all you heard was your laughter mixing with the song and the sound of feet hitting the ground.

The song came to an end soon after and you stopped jumping to catch your breath, thinking that the next song would be equally as fast. You looked up at Arthur who was slightly sweating and smiling and started smiling yourself.

Much to both of your surprise, the next song flowed like water, delicate and slow, and everyone around you two partnered up and began swaying. The two of you looked at each other awkwardly and stood still while everyone else was getting up close and personal, and you looked away and began to dance by yourself.

“What’re you doin’? Don’t be silly, come ‘ere.”

He moved closer to you and gently pulled you in, moving your arms the rest on his shoulders then holding your waist. Oh my god. You took a deep breath, exhaling and relaxing into his touch as you both danced.

Your heart’s pace quickened and for the first time in a long time, your face flushed pink and you avoided eye contact at all cost. The closest you’ve been to proper slow-dancing was was you did group line dancing as a sport in school and that was nothing like this. Arthur was looking down at you and for a split second, you looked back.

“You okay? This too much?”

His tone was sweet and slightly concerned when he spoke. You nodded, feeling that if you were to talk, it wouldn’t be words, just a jumble of sounds. And maybe a squeal.

The feeling of something unknown bloomed in your heart, shooting down and blooming out throughout your body, it was only mild, but thrilling. For the second time today, you were breathless, and this time, it was for a good reason.

He stepped closer, hands drifting down to your hips while he looked at you and smiled.

“I must say, you are a pretty girl.”

Your eyes met and you didn’t look away. God. Something had changed in you like those words activated a switch. You noticed his tan skin glistening in the candlelight, the way his shoulders felt under your hands, broad and strong. The way his hands firmly enveloped your hips and the way he looked at you desirously, wanting.

“Thank you, Mr Morgan.”

He chuckled, bowing his head when you called him that. You thought it was the polite way to address someone, especially when they were older than you. He looked back up and began to speak.

“You don’t have to be so formal, y’know?”

“It’s how I was raised, my daddy said it’s the proper way to address someone.”

“Yer daddy ain’t here. Just call me Arthur.”

“Arthur. Thank you”

The two of you shared a laugh and he drew your hips in, gently pressing you to his body. Despite the cool weather, Arthur was warm and inviting, and his body was like a firm pillow. Talk about leaving room for Jesus.  

You held your gaze on him, admiring his pretty, teal-coloured eyes and zoning out from everything around you. Nothing felt real, instead a mere fantasy and you were wondering when you were going to wake up, not that you wanted to.

Just as soon as you find bliss, it gets violently ripped away from you. Two hands yanked you backwards, causing you to stumble to the ground and all you heard was screaming, and when you looked up, your mother was getting ready to backhand you until Arthur caught her arm, causing her to scream even louder. 

“Let go of me this instant!”

Somehow she managed to wriggle out of his grip and began swiping at you with her other hand, managing to land a few hits before your father came to restrain her, whispering something inaudible in her ear.

Whatever he said made her stop in her tracks and slowly look around at the people staring at the scene she caused. Her face was pale and she was silent for a while before grabbing you by the ear and dragging you away. You saw Arthur’s face, which was one of complete shock, and you mouthed ‘I’m sorry’.

——————————

“What on our Lord’s holy earth were you doing with that man!?”, Your mother sat across from you in the carriage.

Your mother had left your father and sister at the fair to damage control, and so she could chew you out without worrying about hurting her ‘precious angels’. Golden childs. Feelings.

“I was just dancing.”

You looked out the window at the sunset, too annoyed with her to give her your full attention. For once, one goddamn time in your life, you truly felt at home, but no, she has to go and cause a scene. 

“Dancing? You call that dancing? More like rubbing fronts!”

Gross. Rubbing fronts? You never wanted to hear that term again.

“Ew, No.”

Part of you wanted to argue back, but the better part of you knew the consequences. It would end in another beating and you were still healing from the last one and now, the brand new scratches from her nails too.

The carriage came to a halt and you knew you were home, pushing open the door, you got out and made your way to the front door. Go to your room.

“Go to your room. I don’t want to see your face again until tomorrow.”

You just pushed the door open and went straight up the stairs and to your room, pulling off the uncomfortable clothes and collapsing on your bed. Tears formed in your eyes and you began to sob quietly into your pillow, smearing the makeup all over the crisp white linen.

How could she embarrass you like that? In front of everyone? She has officially lost it.

You lay there, listening to your clock tick and wishing that things went down differently. Tick. Minute after minute, you seethed in anger and had to remind yourself to breathe. Just breathe. Tick. The sun had gone down by now, plunging your room into almost darkness, only lit by the moonlight that filtered in through your thin curtains.

By the time you realised you were no longer crying and fading in and out of awareness, you guessed it was late at night and rolled over to look at your clock. 11:24 pm. Tick. You groaned when your stomach grumbled and mentally kicked yourself for not grabbing something to eat when you came in, but you just ignored the feeling and tried to go to sleep, not caring about the state you were in.

Tick, Tick. Tap?

[butmakeitgayblog]

Midwestern Lexa and Clarke dancing to “can’t take my eyes off you” by Lady A 😍😍.. it’s one of the best country love songs out there and this is coming from someone who hates country music 😂 And just imagining Lexa slow dancing with her wearing a cowboy outfit head to toe and softly singing along with that twang ughh my heart

The thing is, in a town of 200 people, Clarke was fully expecting to have to keep her queerness tightly under wraps. It'd been part of what made her hesitate to accept the job at the local clinic in the first place. The knowing just how much she was probably going to have to hide this huge piece of herself.

But then Lexa went and boot-scooted her way into Clarke's life with those eyes and those lips and that god awful accent, and that smile that manages to make her agree with damn near anything. Which is exactly how she found out that not all small towns in the heart of the ol' sprawling USA treat queerness like it's something that makes a person defective. There's still bigots of course, and the few regulars about town who send them a look of disgust whenever they walk by hand in hand. There's even a few who refuse to go to Clarke's clinic once they find out who the new resident is dating. But she had to deal with that occasionally back in the city as well. So, nothing new. Not really.

And she knows it helps that Lexa knows everyone. Like... literally everyone. Knows them, knows their siblings, their children. Hell, even their grandparents.

Lexa's such a central piece of the way their little town survives that Clarke sometimes kinda feels like she dating corn-fed royalty. Or the commander of prairie grass and butter cows. The queen of neverending soybeans.

Or well... The homecoming queen of soybeans feels more apt...

So it's not entirely surprising when Lexa makes her tag along to the end of summer community "get together" they have her first year living in town. It's not surprising when she tells her to dress for the heat of the day and then the chill of the evening. And to wear comfy shoes.

"Cuz I'm takin' you dancing."

It's all beer coolers and picnic tables weighed down with an assortment of homemade dishes that people keep referring to as "salads" despite every last one of them containing a generous amount of mayo. There's a designated dancefloor in the middle of all the hubbub that consists of nothing more than a particularly arid patch of main street's only lawn, sectioned off by nothing but four bare lumber posts that have been driven right into the ground. But they certainly class it all up with a few strings of white Christmas lights stretched overhead that twinkle once the sun goes down.

These people are nuts.

But Clarke kinda loves it.

Especially getting to enjoy it from the comfort of Lexa's arms. Because that's how they spend the majority of the afternoon: waking around, talking to whoever, eating whatever plate of food someone sticks under their noses. They listen to the farm folk complain about the weather, and the town folk complain about the price of gas, and of course Lexa guides them by the table full of sullen teenagers forced to be there just to listen to them complain about how stupid this whole town is.

The trials of dating a natural born diplomat.

They let the church ladies wrangle them into helping set treats out for the kiddies after supper is done. They play some game horrifyingly named 'cornhole' (which Lexa is disconcertingly good at 🤨), and Clarke learns the correct way to shotgun a beer from a very nice gentleman apparently only known by everyone as 'Big Ed'.

It's a nice evening with her new community. A real salt of the earth kind of experience. And she enjoys it all with Lexa's arm resting loose around her waist for everyone to see.

It's not until the sun's fully set and the fireflies have already gone to bed that the music gets a little more soulful. A little more twangy. The kind that Clarke's only just grudgingly starting to appreciate. And when a particularly slow song starts playing she already knows exactly what's coming, the only surpise is that she wants to dance to it just as much.

There's just something about the way Lexa holds her when they dance to this kind of song.

The Christmas fairy lights twinkle overhead and the quiet chatter fades to the background as they sway together among the few other couples dancing. Lexa holding Clarke's hand against the steady thumping of her heart in her chest. Relaxing into the feel of Lexa's other hand rubbing circles on the small of her back, while she rests her cheek against the faded shoulder of Lexa's flannel.

Lexa had told her it used to be her dad's before he passed. That it always reminds her of watching him and her momma when they used to slow dance late at night in the cramped space of her childhood kitchen.

Clarke is kind of in love with running her fingers over its time-worn softness every time she wears it.

And there's really nothing for it when Lexa pulls back just far enough to look into her eyes at certain parts of the song. The way the green of her own has darkened to nothing but midnight and stars as they barely move, song almost forgotten, so lost in each other they are. The way those damns lips that can talk Clarke into enjoying so many things she always thought she'd never want to be a part of twitch just at the edges. As if they want nothing more than to sing the words just for her.

I love when you tell me that I'm pretty when I just wake up

And I love how you tease me when I'm moody, but it's never too much

I'm fallin' fast, but the truth is I'm not scared at all

You climbed my walls

So lay here beside me, just hold me and don't let go

This feeling I'm feeling is something I've never known

And I just can't take my eyes off you...

It just feels right to lay her head back down and nuzzle into the crook of Lexa's shoulder, pressing a barely-there kiss to her neck just to say, "I know. Don't be scared, baby... I feel it too."

[usasapeople]

‘The Slaves Dread New Year’s Day the Worst’: The Grim History of January 1

Americans are likely to think of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as a time to celebrate the fresh start that a new year represents, but there is also a troubling side to the holiday’s history. In the years before the Civil War, the first day of the new year was often a heartbreaking one for enslaved people in the United States.

In the African-American community, New Year’s Day used to be widely known as “Hiring Day” — or “Heartbreak Day,” as the African-American abolitionist journalist William Cooper Nell described it — because enslaved people spent New Year’s Eve waiting, wondering if their owners were going to rent them out to someone else, thus potentially splitting up their families. The renting out of slave labor was a relatively common practice in the antebellum South, and a profitable practice for white slave owners and hirers.“

‘Hiring Day’ was part of the larger economic cycle in which most debts were collected and settled on New Year’s Day,” says Alexis McCrossen, an expert on the history of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and a professor of history at Southern Methodist University, who writes about Hiring Day in her forthcoming book Time’s Touchstone: The New Year in American Life.

Some enslaved people were put up for auction that day, or held under contracts that started in January. (These transactions also took place all year long and contracts could last for different amounts of time.) These deals were conducted privately among families, friends and business contacts, and slaves were handed over in town squares, on courthouse steps and sometimes simply on the side of the road, according to Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South by Jonathan D. Martin.

Accounts of the cruelty of Hiring Day come from records left by those who secured their freedom, who described spending the day before January 1 hoping and praying that their hirers would be humane and that their families could stay together.

“Of all days in the year, the slaves dread New Year’s Day the worst of any,” a slave named Lewis Clarke said in an 1842 account.

“On New Year’s Day, we went to the auctioneer’s block, to be hired to the highest bidder for one year,” Israel Campbell wrote in a memoir published in 1861 in Philadelphia, in which he describes being hired out three times.

“That’s where that sayin’ comes from that what you do on New Year’s Day you’ll be doin’ all the rest of the year,” a former slave known as Sister Harrison said in an interview in 1937.

Harriet Jacobs wrote a particularly detailed account in “The Slaves’ New Year’s Day” chapter of her 1861 autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. “Hiring-day at the south takes place on the 1st of January. On the 2[n]d, the slaves are expected to go to their new masters,” she wrote. She observed slave owners and farmers renting out their human chattel for extra income during the period between the cotton and corn harvests and the next planting season. From Christmas to New Year’s Eve, many families would “wait anxiously” to find out whether they would be rented out, and to whom. On New Year’s Day, “At the appointed hour the grounds are thronged with men, women, and children, waiting, like criminals to hear their doom pronounced,” Jacobs wrote.

Read more

Another fact:

“’Watch Night Service’ in the Black Church in America symbolizes the historical fact, that on the night of Dec. 31, 1862 during the Civil War, free and freed Black people living in the Union States gathered at churches and/or other safe spaces, while thousands of their enslaved Black sisters and brothers stood, knelt and prayed on plantations and other slave holding sites in America — waiting for President Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation into law.”  (Source)

SN: Thought I’d include that part too because sometimes Black Americans tend to do things out of tradition without realizing the significance that tradition upholds. I’m not a part of a particular religion anymore, but when I used to go to church with my family (out of tradition), I never knew the meaning of Watch Night, which is also known as “Freedom’s Eve,” because the meaning behind it was never talked about. It should be noted that non-Black Christian who also acknowledge “Watch Night,” which is also spelled as one word, upkeep this tradition for different reasons: 

Here’s more historical context on Watch Night:

The first Watch Night service began with the Moravians, “a small Christian denomination whose roots lie in what is the present-day Czech Republic” in 1733 on the estates of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf in Hernhut, Germany. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement, picked up the tradition from the Moravians and incorporated it into Methodism as a time for Methodists to renew their covenant with God and to contemplate their state of grace in light of the second coming of Christ. Wesley believed that all Christians should reaffirm their covenant with God annually. He held Watch Night services between 8:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. on the Friday nearest the full moon and on New Year’s Eve.

The first Methodist Watch night service in the United States probably took place in 1770 at Old St. George’s Church in Philadelphia, a church of which Richard Allen, the founder of the African American Episcopal church, was a member. African American Methodists celebrated Watch Night prior to Freedom’s Eve because Allen and other African Americans celebrated Watch Night Meeting services at St. George’s Church and also at Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

While acknowledging the Methodist starting point, many African American Christians link their celebration of the tradition to December 31, 1862, “Freedom’s Eve.”

Source

January 1, 1863 - Most of the enslaved ancestors were set free from US chattel slavery.

June 19, 1865 - All of the enslaved ancestors were set free from US chattel slavery.

793 notes

[encrucijada]

@moonssugar i said i wanted to do all the questions so i'm doing that ✨️ let's go, haze dogs!

👀 - an excerpt from my WIP

in the morning you walked home crying and covered in after-party remnants — glitter in your hair, a ripped dress, gashes on your black stockings, no shoes on, and blood artistically on your neck.

👑 - a random fact about one of my ocs

connor and ángel do archery! this is in part because i do archery but also because they really needed a hobby. i think it's also gonna be how they become close and eventually start dating.

🦀 - a favourite piece of dialogue

yay church scene!!

ángel pressed his smile to your cheek, compelled you to smile in kind. you felt the edges of his teeth like he intended to bite your cheekbone off. “you’re going to hell for blasphemy.”

“we’re all going to hell for it, my sin was being named an idol against my will.”

“and desecrating the house of god.”

“this hasn’t been god’s house for a decade, i had nothing to do with it. the place was empty,” you said, “ripe for the taking. so, i did.”

☀️ - current word count

2678 if we include the church scene and the scene of connor going to ángel's house after getting a little bit bloody. of the actual manuscript i have 474 words lmao

❄️ - toughest aspect of my wip

actually getting the ball rolling has been the hardest part. i'm banking on actually writing whenever i get to it to help me with character dynamics and connecting the plot points in my head.

🍕 - my characters' favourite foods

i feel like connor would really enjoy an empanada de papa. ángel feels like the type to say pasta with white sauce is his favourite. acacia Loves ice cream. benjy could live off of spicy chicken wings.

⚽️ - genre of my wip

low fantasy horror. at least i like to pretend it's horror but i get easily freaked out so it's might just be a little spook.

🤔 - what's the inspiration behind my wip

it's a combination of things. i wanted to write horror for reasons i forgot but the only good idea i had for a horror story couldn't lean all on the horror because of what i wanted it to do (aka disasters to sleep through which is more about healing your inner child and loneliness and love). so i had to find something new. i have a half-finished short story titled homeward & bound about two friends driving home down a creepy road with one of the girl's niece and the other's dog, and no matter how far they drive they never seem to make any progress. it's got subtle horror elements, all encompassed in the dog, inspired by a prompt i saw in one of those "southern gothic aesthetic" lists on tumblr about having to walk your dog so it's not restless and something bad happens. i decided to go from there with haze dogs, though i made without the two friends or the spooky car ride and just kept the dog. i've had recurring nightmares of being chased by creatures that want to kill me with their teeth no matter what, i used that and what little i know of stephen king's children of the corn from youtube videos with their ritualistic sacrifices to an entity that basically lives in their backyard. the cult stuff appeared when i decided to introduce ángel into the story, he's regulus black in a different font because stealing from terfs is encouraged. with his family situation coming straight from the blacks i skewed it slightly to the left and now you have a rich, manipulative mother who wants influence over the town. connor is inspired somewhat on wren from the podcast spines, most especially that initial sacrifice with her waking up in a pool of her own blood looking up at people she knows (in connor's case it's her classmates).

🎁 - prologues or no prologues, why?

none! it's better to just jump straight into the action with this one.

🎶 - wip playlist

the fruits by paris paloma

animal by pvris

you should see me in a crown by billie eilish

the unwanted animal by the amazing devil

which witch by florence + the machine

arsonist's lullabye by hozier

take me to church by hozier

the tradition by halsey

in the woods somewhere by hozier

[mcdonoughplacestovisit]

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Woody's Leap N Play is a thrilling family redirection focus spilling over with inflatables, games, slides, level screen TVs, a gatekeepers' parlor, and a warm staff. Woody will presumably drive a positive and safe climate and to make an environment where guards and youths love to come!

[darlingsdevil]

Of The Valley (Joel x Reader)

Chapter 9: I Sense There’s Something in The Wind (Part 1)

Summary: Life in Jackson is never easy. Consoling angsty teenagers, wading through the mysterious waters of Joel’s romance language and with a child of your own on the way? Life is about to get a lot harder.

Masterlist

RDR2 Masterlist

Tag list (comment to be added): @sidepuff @joelsheartache @fangirl-inthe-us @scarletpines @mikah-writes @sleepylunarwolf @mr-robot-x @shybookdragon @heughan @writer-jamie @nelliecraine

A/N: *sigh* so much has happened since I last updated. School royally beat me up, I’m constantly tired and have no motivation to write, left a toxic boyfriend! Life has not been kind to me recently but I am trying my best to live it up and learn, but at least I am doing well in school. Sacrifice your sanity to do well in school I guess. I got a guitar too.. okay now I’m just rambling. Updates will be slower as time continues. Constantly fatigued and getting four hours of sleep a night doesn’t work well.

Happy spooky season

This chapter will be in two parts since I couldn’t find the motivation to write the rest of the chapter on Halloween.

•••

Life was quiet until the festival and party, like it had been for months prior. Decorations were put up, apples were picked from the orchards just outside town, costumes were made, pumpkins carved, ghost stories told. The festival was only two days, the first day being the children’s night and day activities, the second being the Halloween party.

Maria gave everyone who’s job wasn’t totally necessary the day off. Which meant the bar closed. You were more than happy to have two days of rest. You purchased two pumpkins this year, carving a ghost into one and a goofy face into another, you were going to light them the night of the party. The first day of the festival — children’s night, where the kids threw a mini parade around town in their costumes and carved pumpkins and got a free bar of candy from the confectionar. They played games, ghost in the graveyard being a popular one when it got dark outside, of course however, Maria limited their playing field. You watched the parade during the day and then you went home. The kids made makeshift noise makers and adults lined the streets as the kids walked by, laughing, smiling, shouting, it was all good fun.

You weren’t sure whether you were going to dress up or not, no ideas came to mind. Last year you went as an angel and a devil with Mark, hence his nickname Devil Boy, his birthday was October 30th, the first day of the celebration.

Today was his birthday. You hadn’t spotted Joel or Ellie at the parade, you briefly said hi to Maria and Tommy, as well as Dina. You were sure Ellie and Cat were dreading cleanup, as well as the other teenagers. You wondered if Ellie and Dina had made up yet, or had her and Cat.

After the parade, there wasn’t much to do. You took down the flowers on your porch, you trimmed the bushes outside, cut the grass, washed the windows, dusted the house, scrubbed the floors. Your house was beginning to feel lively again, like a brand new fresh start. It took a few hours to complete all your tasks, taking short breaks in between. By the time you were finished, night had fallen. You were nervous about tomorrow, were things going to end up like the last night you had spent with Joel? Mark was gone.. you didn’t need to worry about him. Were you ready for that? Sure, you had asked for him to take you.. but were you ready to go that far? There was uneasiness between both of you, feelings wouldn’t change that. You would have to talk, have him listen, pray he would understand. Was now a good time to tell him everything?

You rested your hand over your bump as you sat on the couch, watching an old soap opera you had on DVD. The baby was definitely getting bigger. It was hard to think about it, but a small part of you was excited. There was the thought of names, baby clothes, toys. You wondered if it was a girl or boy. It was strange to think of a baby who looked like Mark.. it would be hard to look at the baby and not see him in his final moments. You already occasionally thought you saw him for a fleeting moment, down the corner of the street, in the crowd of the filled bar, a passerby holding themself the same way he did.

How would you even tell Joel? There was so much you needed to say, there was time, there was just too much that needed to be said. Joel had enough on his plate, maybe you wouldn’t tell him at all and continue on for the rest of your life blissfully ignoring him. That was too cruel though. Your relationship with Joel was.. complicated. You left things off for three months on an unfinished note, at least he was open to going on a date with you.

There were other people to tell too. If you gave birth, people would begin asking around for Mark. The truth would come out eventually. You always knew it would. Perhaps you will have thought of a lie by then. Perhaps he left to join a group of free spirited clicker killing hippies. That seemed like a good enough lie as any.

But for now, you wanted to rest. You wanted to sit back and watch the tide roll in, without a worry in your mind.

•••

“Welcome miss..?” The man began.

“Y/N,” You replied, reaching out your hand to shake his.

“Tommy. Welcome,” He smiled warmly. You had finally found the esteemed settlement after weeks of travel.

“Mark,” Mark said, shaking Tommy’s hand, marveling at the sight of the town. Tommy had stopped you while you checked in and got acquainted with the town, already having a talk with Maria.

“Where you guys coming from? Always good to see some new faces round here.”

“I’m from Denver,” Mark told him.

Tommy’s face paled very slightly, not even you or Mark noticed.

“How are things there? Heard some stuff went down a while back.”

“Not too sure, I left right when things got messy.” He shrugged nonchalantly.

“And you?” Tommy looked towards you, waiting for your response.

“Oh, all over. Living on my own last few years, besides Mark here of course.” You beamed at Mark.

“How did you two meet?” This was starting to sound more like an interrogation, but you pushed it to the side, they were only being cautious. Maria already heard your and Mark’s story, others would want to as well.

“I found her a few months ago, passing through a town when I saw a group get overrun by a horde. I was trying to hide in an apartment building when I fell right into her camp. Almost blew my head off, but hey, gotta stay sharp,” Mark chuckled.

“He told me about a settlement up in Wyoming, I decided it was worth a shot so we ended up here, had nowhere else to go,” You finished.

“Well glad you two made it safe and sound, welcome to Jackson.”

You woke up in a coldsweat, dazed from sleep. Your hand on your bump, you realized, you must have done it in your sleep.

Mark. His baby. You glanced over at your clock. 11:34 PM. Technically still his birthday.

Last year, you managed to find vintage band posters for him for his birthday. You made him cake too, then you snuck out and went to the lake and watched the stars. They looked different than what you remembered, even though you lived under them, there was something serene about being there. Silence, waters reflecting the moonlight, and stars, the only thing you could see for miles. It was peaceful, quiet, yet it was full of life.

And so when you found yourself climbing the steps into his loft, sitting on his dusty bed with his dog tags resting on your neck, the moonlight streaming in from the curtains, just a sliver open, far enough to see a star. Perhaps they looked the same, maybe they were the same. Maybe you were the one who had changed.

“I’m pregnant,” You whispered into the silence.

“I’m pregnant and it’s yours, Mark.”

No echo, no cabinet slamming shut down stairs, no creaking footsteps. Silence.

“Happy birthday,” You said out loud as you closed the door.

•••

The night of the party, you lit your pumpkins when it got dark and headed to Joel’s house. You hadn’t seen much of him since he had been over, you talked to him briefly one morning, but your schedules were always conflicting. You were nervous about seeing him. Being close to him again.

You found an old cat costume from years ago. A cat headband, a clip on tail, all black clothes. It was simple enough. Since you had been wearing Mark’s dogtags so much, you decided to opt with them, not wearing them felt like you were missing some part of yourself. You doubted Joel would dress up, he wouldn’t be out of place if he didn’t, and you wouldn’t be out of place in your costume either. It was 50/50.

You were surprised to see pumpkins out by Ellie’s house as you entered through the gate, your heart strumming loudly. It looked like she had carved some strange face into a pumpkin, you would have to ask her what it was supposed to be later.

You knocked on Joel’s door, starting down at your shoes, the cold air nipping at your skin. He answered almost immediately.

“How do I look?” You said smugly, turning so he could see your tail, doing a little twirl as you did. He wasn’t wearing a costume — like you expected.

“Dashing. You ready to go?” He smiled.

“Of course. Let’s go.”

It was an exceptionally short walk to the church and bonfire. Jackson was a small city, especially considering Joel lived right next to Main Street. They had decorated the streets quite nicely, pumpkins, hay bales, corn stalks, squash, a warm glow seemingly in every window. The leaves twirling around like fire.

The church came into view, the bonfire in the backyard of the church. Groups of people walked in, you could hear the music from here. Joel walked close to you, which you noticed. Close enough, but far enough to not be super suspicious.

He held the door open for you, the music becoming loud as he did. Mark told you once that he loved the rhythms of music, that he could feel the pulse in him, that’s why he liked music so much. Perhaps you could get the person in charge of music to play Bill Withers..

Shit. What if someone asked about Mark? Would they notice? What would you even say? That he was sick? How long until someone would really go looking for him?

Would Joel notice your small bump? You tried to wear baggy clothes. You didn’t have to worry about Maria spilling your secrets — she was trustworthy.

Inside of the church, the party was booming. It smelt of cinnamon and leaves, whiskey and good times. It seemed like all of Jackson was there. People in simple costumes, others dressing normally. You spotted Maria and Tommy, Tommy nodded at you two when you entered.

The song they played was very folksy and upbeat. A crowd had already started dancing, you couldn’t stop the smile from spreading on your face. No sign of Ellie, but you did spot Cat, as well as Jessie and Dina. On opposite sides of the room of course.

“So, what do you want to do? Drinks?” Joel asked as he led you to the side of the room.

“Oh no, I’m good for now, but don’t stop yourself from getting one.” .

“Sure thing,” Joel replied, setting off to the makeshift bar table that was set up.

You watched the people dance, remembering how Mark used to pull you into the circle.

“Come on Y/N! It’ll be fun!” Mark laughed, trying to pull you over to the circle.

“Nope. I’m not doing it.”

“Well you’re going to. I don’t care, you have to.” He yanked you forward, pulling you to the dancefloor.

You stood stiffly as a rock. You felt like every eye in the room was on you, even though you really knew they could care less, caring more about nursing a drink or trying to hear the latest gossip.

The music was upbeat and fast, good dancing music. He slowly began to dance, one eyebrow cocked to invite you to join him. The room was orange and bright, it seemed like it was glowing.

“Come on,” He said with a singsong tone. Grabbing your arm and shaking it to the beat.

His dancing became more loose and free, smiling the entire time, a twinkle in his eye. He took your arm and twirled you and leaned you into his arms.

“It’s pretty easy.”

“Not for me,” You grumbled as the music ended.

A slower song came on and Mark groaned, his devil horns tilted slightly on his head. “Alright, looks like we have to slow dance now.” He grabbed your arms and locked them around his neck, then placed his hands on your waist. His hands were like tiny firecrackers on you, every touch sparking as his fingertips gently rubbed against your hips. He was passion.

“You know it’s easier if you just give in.”

“Never,” You hissed playfully.

“Well then just sway with me. That’s all we gotta do, sway,” He told you softly. You rolled your eyes, but you gave in.

The music channeled through him. You liked watching it overcome him, his eyes becoming distant like the music was speaking to him.

“Do you think everyone is looking at us?” You asked, glancing around the room.

Mark gently returned to the surface, “Why would they be looking? Only you and me and the music right now.”

You fought the urge to kiss him. You didn’t want people looking. You had kissed him so many times before, but there was that nagging feeling in you. Like a shadow that trailed you. A thought pushed to the back of your mind.

As if on cue, Mark’s eyes trailed lower to your lips, he leaned in gently to you, as if he were to break under your touch. His lips met yours and a heavy feeling underneath a spark set in. An undercurrent of rapid waters that threatened to pull you under.

Who was watching you?

Joel came back with his drink, a glass of whiskey.

You glanced over at the drink, humor in your voice, “Heavy hitters so soon?”

Joel chuckled lightly, taking a sip from his drink.

“You sure you don’t want anything?” He asked you. You shook your head.

“Alright well a few more drinks and I’ll be out there on the dancefloor in no time.”

“Didn’t take you as much of a dancer, cowboy.”

“Oh, I’m not. More like a dying chicken with its head cut off,” He laughed, shaking his head. Couples bounced to the music. You couldn’t remember ever having seen Joel dance, then again at parties you were almost always preoccupied.

“Do you want to head outside to the bonfire?” You asked him, seeing the glow through the windows.

“Yeah.”

You led him to the backyard where the more mellow crowd was. It was crisp outside, and awfully cold, you wished you would had brought a better jacket.

The sky was crystal clear and the stars were brilliant. The only truly good thing you could think of that came out of the apocalypse was no more light pollution. The stars were true and had looked that way for years.

The fire was large and powerful, it crackled and hissed but the warmth was inviting. Groups of people chatted around the fire, Joel led you to a fallen log by the fire where you could sit.

The party chatter and the muffled sound of the music could still be heard from outside, the looming walls right next the church wasn’t the best view, but the stars were all you needed.

“Nice night, huh?” Joel asked, looking up to the sky.

“Yeah,” You said, your teeth chattering slightly. You rubbed your hands together and aimed them towards the fire. Joel had brought a jacket at least.

“Do you want my jacket?”

You blinked. “No, no, it’s fine, I’ll just uh..” You trailed off, you wanted his jacket.

Joel chuckled quietly, shaking his head. He shrugged off his leather jacket and placed it around you. You felt your cheeks grow warm, and it wasn’t just because of the fire, you turned your head away and looked down briefly.

You looked back up at the stars, receiving courage from those little stamps of light. You leaned your head against his shoulder. He was warm, he felt safe, like a blanket wrapped around you. It was a natural feeling. You pulled his jacket up so it covered your neck. You wanted to stay like this forever.

God, you wanted to kiss him. You wanted to tilt your head up and place a gentle kiss on his lips. You wanted to kiss him in front of the stars, you wanted to kiss him in front of the fire, you wanted to kiss him on the dancefloor. You wanted to kiss him, you wanted to feel the way he felt against you, you wanted to share that sacred feeling like you’re the only two people in the world again.

But no, you couldn’t. Three months and you ghosted him. He was rightly upset with you. There were things you had to say. But he was here now, going on a date with you, giving you his jacket. The feelings were still there it seemed. A part of you was relieved.

You let yourself fully relax, he placed an arm around your shoulder.

You stayed like that for awhile, simply watching the fire crackle and the stars twinkle. Time was no foe anymore.

In a way it felt like Mark was there too, maybe it was the fact that it was Halloween, maybe it was the strange imbalance of practically everything in your life. It felt like he was there and he was smiling at you.

Joel was smiling too.

•••

[thechanelmuse]

'The Slaves Dread New Year's Day the Worst': The Grim History of January 1

Americans are likely to think of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as a time to celebrate the fresh start that a new year represents, but there is also a troubling side to the holiday’s history. In the years before the Civil War, the first day of the new year was often a heartbreaking one for enslaved people in the United States.

In the Black American community, New Year’s Day used to be widely known as “Hiring Day” — or “Heartbreak Day,” as the Black abolitionist journalist William Cooper Nell described it — because enslaved people spent New Year’s Eve waiting, wondering if their owners were going to rent them out to someone else, thus potentially splitting up their families. The renting out of slave labor was a relatively common practice in the antebellum South, and a profitable practice for white slave owners and hirers.“

‘Hiring Day’ was part of the larger economic cycle in which most debts were collected and settled on New Year’s Day,” says Alexis McCrossen, an expert on the history of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and a professor of history at Southern Methodist University, who writes about Hiring Day in her forthcoming book Time’s Touchstone: The New Year in American Life.

Some enslaved people were put up for auction that day, or held under contracts that started in January. (These transactions also took place all year long and contracts could last for different amounts of time.) These deals were conducted privately among families, friends and business contacts, and slaves were handed over in town squares, on courthouse steps and sometimes simply on the side of the road, according to Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South by Jonathan D. Martin.

Accounts of the cruelty of Hiring Day come from records left by those who secured their freedom, who described spending the day before January 1 hoping and praying that their hirers would be humane and that their families could stay together.

“Of all days in the year, the slaves dread New Year’s Day the worst of any,” a slave named Lewis Clarke said in an 1842 account.

“On New Year’s Day, we went to the auctioneer’s block, to be hired to the highest bidder for one year,” Israel Campbell wrote in a memoir published in 1861 in Philadelphia, in which he describes being hired out three times.

“That’s where that sayin’ comes from that what you do on New Year’s Day you’ll be doin’ all the rest of the year,” a former slave known as Sister Harrison said in an interview in 1937.

Harriet Jacobs wrote a particularly detailed account in “The Slaves’ New Year’s Day” chapter of her 1861 autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. “Hiring-day at the south takes place on the 1st of January. On the 2[n]d, the slaves are expected to go to their new masters,” she wrote. She observed slave owners and farmers renting out their human chattel for extra income during the period between the cotton and corn harvests and the next planting season. From Christmas to New Year’s Eve, many families would “wait anxiously” to find out whether they would be rented out, and to whom. On New Year’s Day, “At the appointed hour the grounds are thronged with men, women, and children, waiting, like criminals to hear their doom pronounced,” Jacobs wrote.

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Another fact:

“’Watch Night Service’ in the Black Church in America symbolizes the historical fact, that on the night of Dec. 31, 1862 during the Civil War, free and freed Black people living in the Union States gathered at churches and/or other safe spaces, while thousands of their enslaved Black sisters and brothers stood, knelt and prayed on plantations and other slave holding sites in America — waiting for President Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation into law.”  (Source)

SN: Thought I’d include that part too because sometimes Black Americans tend to do things out of tradition without realizing the significance that tradition upholds. I’m not a part of a particular religion anymore, but when I used to go to church with my family (out of tradition), I never knew the meaning of Watch Night, which is also known as “Freedom’s Eve,” because the meaning behind it was never talked about. It should be noted that non-Black Christian who also acknowledge “Watch Night,” which is also spelled as one word, upkeep this tradition for different reasons: 

Here’s more historical context on Watch Night:

The first Watch Night service began with the Moravians, “a small Christian denomination whose roots lie in what is the present-day Czech Republic” in 1733 on the estates of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf in Hernhut, Germany. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement, picked up the tradition from the Moravians and incorporated it into Methodism as a time for Methodists to renew their covenant with God and to contemplate their state of grace in light of the second coming of Christ. Wesley believed that all Christians should reaffirm their covenant with God annually. He held Watch Night services between 8:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. on the Friday nearest the full moon and on New Year’s Eve.

The first Methodist Watch night service in the United States probably took place in 1770 at Old St. George’s Church in Philadelphia, a church of which Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal church, was a member. Black American Methodists celebrated Watch Night prior to Freedom’s Eve because Allen and other Black Americans celebrated Watch Night Meeting services at St. George’s Church and also at Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

While acknowledging the Methodist starting point, many Black American Christians link their celebration of the tradition to December 31, 1862, “Freedom’s Eve.”

Source

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: His Name Is Alive

While Warren Defever’s name is perhaps less recognizable than that of his band His Name Is Alive, he’s also been connected with a seemingly endless array of other projects: Princess Dragon-Mom, Elvis Hitler, ESP Beetles, Control Panel, and far more. This doesn’t get into his recording and production credits for the likes of Michael Hurley, Iggy and the Stooges, and Mdou Moctar. Forever associated with Michigan’s weirdo-underground music scene, Defever has recently been issuing a series of long-buried recordings as His Name Is Alive. In February, the Disciples label released Hope Is a Candle, the third and final volume in the "Home Recordings" trilogy exploring Defever's teenage tape experimentation as well as A Silver Thread (Home Recordings 1979 - 1990), a four-volume collection of many of Defever’s solo home recordings prior to His Name Is Alive releasing their debut album Livonia on 4AD in 1990. In his review of A Silver Thread, Tim Clarke writes “For a collection of home recordings, what’s most striking about this music is how fully realized and carefully executed it sounds, comparable at times to contemporary artists such as Grouper, Benoît Pioulard and Tim Hecker. This is not the 1980s that I remember.”

Defever gives us his “What Else Is New” list, a set of personal snapshots, memories of a life spent in music, warning the reader that “the descriptions don’t always have an obvious correlation to the video, but welcome to my nightmare brain.”

In The Line of Fire

I started performing when I was five. My grandfather was a self-taught musician from Saskatchewan in Western Canada and he showed me and my brothers how to play banjo, guitar and fiddle. One of my earliest memories is having a full size 127 lb. accordion placed onto my lap and my grandmother voicing her disappointment when I refused to play. I did learn slide guitar from her later though. I have many, often terrible, memories of performing at square dances with his band and we would play old timey country music, folk songs, polkas and waltzes. There were also gigs at the trailer park, old folks homes and a convent. Although my grandfather believed that popular music died with Hank Williams in 1953, he still found room in his heart for Lawrence Welk and Slim Whitman.

Meet Me By The Water

By age ten I had a tape recorder and was using it to capture the sounds of nearby lakes, thunderstorms, and my older brothers LP collection played at the wrong speeds. I recently found the cassette, Echo Lake (1983) which features waves crashing onto the beach on the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair but it was recorded right after I got an echo pedal so it’s got a heavy dose of dreamy delay. Tape loops of the next door neighbor raking leaves and shoveling the driveway would be repurposed a few years later as rhythm tracks on the first His Name Is Alive LP, Livonia (4AD, 1990). Detroit in the late 70s and early 80s had totally insane radio and one of the highlights was Met-Ezzthetics, a late night show on WDET hosted by Faruq Z. Bey who also played saxophone in Griot Galaxy. Shortly before his death he played with His Name is Alive and we had a chance to formalize our student-teacher relationship.

Search For Higher Energies

In high school I was studying Bach Chorale harmonization and counterpoint during the day but recording and touring with the band Elvis Hitler at night. The other guys in band were older but at 16 I was a familiar sight at shitty Detroit punk clubs and Hamtramck dive bars, the nerdy teenager reading a book or doing homework sitting at the bar waiting ’til midnight or 1am for our slot to play our hellbilly hits, “It’s A Long Way From Berlin To Memphis,” and “Hot Rod To Hell.” I was still trying to make sense of the post 1953 music scene and when I met the guy with a giant afro and shiny super hero outfit complete with shiny cape I had no idea he was Rob Tyner of the MC5. We released three records before I was twenty one and played shows and toured with Devo, the Dwarves, the Dead Milkmen, Reverend Horton Heat, the Beat Farmers, Helios Creed, Babes In Toyland, the Cro-Mags, Corrosion of Conformity, the Frogs, the Gories, Pussy Galore, the Unsane and way more I can’t remember I was just a kid. It was some kind of education.

You Don’t Have To Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here

When I signed with 4AD I thought I was a composer and they let me write my own bio, so I called His Name Is Alive the work of a “fucked up, irresponsible teenage composer.” I had only been writing music for three years. When I heard “Tom Violence” by Sonic Youth I thought for the first time in my life, “I think I could do that.” In 1988 I made a mixtape with Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, Leadbelly and some of Big Star’s third album and I tried to arrange it like it was an album, then I made my own album in that same shape, it was called I Had Sex With God and I sent it to 4AD. Our first album contained three of the first five pieces of music I had ever written. Within a few years I was playing festivals for contemporary classical composers and new age artists who were thirty or forty years older than me. His Name Is Alive played the Musicas Visuales Festival in Mexico with Harold Budd, Paul Horn and Jorge Reyes. The mayor of the city presented me with a guitar but then dramatically walked out of the theater during our performance realizing he had made a terrible mistake. I remember the surreal moment when from across the room Harold Budd walked in and greeted me as “Mr. Defever.” He had a cold and was sniffling during his set, the audience thought he was crying. I recorded his show and when I got back home to Livonia I added my own guitar to some of his songs and then edited the tapes, looping my favorite parts and editing out the parts I didn’t like, also adding additional layers of reverb and echo. More recently I did a concert in a five hundred year old temple in Japan where the unamplified meditation music never rose above a whisper and the monk had to turn off the furnace because the heat molecules were too loud. The show was recorded and released under the name Mountain Ocean Sun and features Ian Masters and Hitoko Sakai.

Energy Dealer

Both my parents were born in Canada, my mother in Saskatchewan, my father in Ontario. I have dual citizenship as my father was American and my mother had Canadian citizenship. I spent summers, holidays and weekends in a tiny cottage on Lake St. Clair that did not have a telephone and had curtains instead of doors separating the two rooms. Myrt Fortin who lived next door would receive phone calls for my mom, walk over to our place and yell into the window, “Hey wake up your ma, your dad’s on the phone.” My mom took a lot of naps, so she was always asleep when something important was happening. I remember always getting cut on broken glass while swimming in the lake or getting stabbed by one of the neighbors and having to go wake up my mom to take me to the hospital.

Lord I Don’t Believe You Exist

When I was ten my parents sat me down and told me it was time that I got a summer job. There were only two businesses in town, a gas station and a hardware store so I walked up to the hardware store and asked the owner for a job and immediately fell to the ground crying. Completely fell apart. He asked me why I wanted to work in hardware. I didn’t know what to say, I was only ten but I knew not to tell the owner that his store was stupid and I didn’t think he could handle the truth. It turned out he also owned the gas station so that didn’t really work out. Later that summer, I began working for the Pickseed Corporation as corn de-tasseling season was just beginning. All the moms would drop off their kids in the church parking lot in Tecumseh, just outside of Windsor, around 4:30am where an unmarked windowless cargo van was waiting that had cinderblocks and 2'x4' boards instead of benches so they could squeeze in the maximum amount of children. There were three job requirements to work in a cornfield, the child (it was only children, no adults) needed to show up with a baseball hat, a thermos with water and a large black plastic garbage bag. I think this was before sunglasses were invented. Upon arriving at the cornfield, we were separated into pickers and checkers, younger kids each taking a row of corn (a row could extend a mile or more) and a slightly older kid would organize and manage several of the younger kids. In the morning we were instructed to poke two arm holes and a head hole into our garbage bags and put it on like a raincoat because the corn was covered in dew and kids wearing wet clothes would walk slower than dry kids. So almost every day there was a point, usually around 11am when the dew would dry and we would be roasted alive from the summer sun coming down on our ridiculous shiny black plastic outfits. We worked from sun up until sun down. I received three dollars and thirty five cents an hour. For all you city folks, corn is planted in alternating rows of types of corn so that when the top part of the plant is removed, or “de-tasseled,” it can seed or cross-pollinate easily. It’s a terrible job with a high turnover rate and every day I would hear the sound of kids in nearby rows that had given up hope, sat down in the middle of the field and crying for hours. The following year, at age 11, I was promoted from picker to checker, and was put in charge of a group of about ten sixteen year old’s.

Sleep It Off

Mostly I like to record – His Name is Alive has over a hundred releases and I’ve done another fifty records under various names, Control Panel, Warren Michael Defever, ESP BEETLES, ESP SUMMER, Forest People, Infinity People, Jeepers Creepers, Layla al-Akhyaliyya, Mirror Dream, Princess Dragon-Mom, the Dirt Eaters, the Fishcats, the Whales, plus way more I can’t remember probably because the names were so dumb. I’ve recorded about four hundred records for other bands at my house or other studios. I’ve worked on records with Danny Kroha, Ida, Fred Thomas, Elizabeth Mitchell, Wild Belle, Michael Hurley, and when I was a teenager I helped record the first Gories album which was especially unique as I was the junior assistant engineer who helped move their equipment into the dirt floor garage next to the studio where it was decided the acoustics would be way worse. Also, I helped collage about a hundred Destroy All Monsters tapes from the 70s for a couple of their releases which led to remastering a bunch of tapes from the John Sinclair White Panther Party archives. I’ve done remixes for Thurston Moore and Yoko Ono and when Iggy and The Stooges started touring again I got a phone call from Ron Asheton seeing if I would help them record demos for their reunion album with Mike Watt on bass. They wrote the songs together while they were recording in Niagara’s basement sort of simultaneously. Iggy didn’t have a notebook with all his lyric ideas, instead he just sang about whatever happened that day – one song was about the airline losing his luggage, one about ATM machines and another was about reading in a newspaper that Ray Davies of the Kinks had been shot in New Orleans. In the end they weren’t terribly excited by my suggested song titles including “No Shirt” (you know because it’s like “No Fun” plus you know Iggy never wears a shirt) and they didn’t seem to love the mixes that I did that sounded kind of like those crappy Raw Power bootlegs.

Cost Of Living

Two summers ago I recorded an incredible concert by Mdou Moctar live at Third Man Records in Detroit. They’re wild hypnotic Hendrix style jammers who live in the desert. The band didn’t speak much english but I think I was able to communicate to them how excited I was about their amazing fingerpicking and hot guitar solos after the show by screaming and replaying the best solos over and over again and then screaming the word fuzz and pointing at their fingers. It’s insane and having seen them a few times since then with a different drummer and the addition of a bass player, I’m convinced it’s their best album. It’s wild but it’s still not Tchin-tabaraden wedding wild.

Licked By Lions

Jonathan Richman walks into Ethan and Gretchen's studio and asks if I can remove all the rugs, take the acoustic treatments off the walls and strike the baffles which normally separate the instruments, drums and amps, so the room will have the most echo possible, he has also invited about ten friends including Johnny Bee Badanjek the drummer from Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and Mary Cobra from the Detroit Cobras to dance, sing and play percussion in the studio while he records. He has two vocal microphones set up at either end of the room and has brought his own microphones for the drums along with his own desired placement for them. He notices a tamboura near the control room and asks if I know how to play it or if I know how to tune it. Within seconds he’s tuned it and proceeds to sing Indian classical music accompanying himself on tamboura drone for about thirty five minutes. It’s beautiful and very surprising. He asks me if I recorded it, I lie and say no. Later he asks me not to play it for anyone. We record for hours. Some songs are quite long – ten and fifteen minutes, some are medleys of oldies or soft rock hits from the seventies segueing into new songs of his. It’s a confusing session as it’s not clear when songs are starting and ending and he often plays guitar and sings nowhere near a microphone. The distance between him and the microphone seems to have some meaning, there’s some formula to when he chooses to walk away in the middle of a verse but I am unable to determine the secret code. At the end of the session three or four songs are deemed usable, edited and mixed, although, sadly, an attempt at a completely insane and unexpected fuzz guitar solo is left unreleased. (The Harold Budd piece is at the opposite end of this spectrum.)

Calling All Believers

Shortly after Tecuciztecatl was released, I received an email from Dr. James Beacham at CERN inviting us to perform at a series of concerts that would combine experimental music with experimental science at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. He didn’t contact our booking agent, which would be how we generally receive offers for gigs, instead he sent an email to me, which would be how we generally receive crazy messages from our completely insane fans (murderous, delusional, poetic, threatening messages usually). I assumed the invitation was fake or a prank and replied that we would prefer to wait until they had successfully opened a pathway to interspatial dimensions and we’d play on the other side or that if that was unlikely to happen at a convenient time then perhaps we could set up our equipment right on the edge of a mini-black hole and perform as the Earth is being destroyed so we could release the concert film “Live At The End Of The World.” After a few messages back and forth, it was clear that he was legit and I apologized for being such a jerk. Soon I discovered poetry within the language of particle physics as well as a certain beauty in the idea that these scientists have devoted their lives to dreaming, searching and discovering basic principles that connect all things in existence. The song “Calling All Believers” refers to this devotion. “Energy Acceleration” compares the scientists to monastic life in medieval times and mystics trying to find and define the line between this world and the next and at the same time invoking the incredible amounts of energy needed to create the collisions experiments. The Patterns of Light LP was released in 2016 on London London Records and is about interpreting visions of light, trying to find universal truth with whatever tools available, it’s about the search for how everything works, why it works and how it got that way but also about being inspired on a basic level by the way a thing looks and how all your senses take in a thing. A thousand years ago Hildegard Von Bingen was writing about this same thing in letters, songs, medical texts, and had even developed her own language to use in her mystical writings, similar to Magma drummer Christian Vander using his own language for their concept albums or French black metalists Brenoritvrezorkre and Moëvöt.

The Light Inside You

We get a lot of letters from fans, mostly weirdos though. I think it started when we released Song of Schizophrenia, that sort of connected us to a certain demographic I suspect. Here’s a recent typical message we received. “Growing up in Panama City, Mouth By Mouth and Livonia were like passages to other realms. I drank a ton of cough syrup at the time but those albums helped make life more livable. I was about to go to art school for sculpture and graphic design and the textures I heard on those records had actual shapes to them. Most music I knew at that time was flat or linear. I got them on cassette via mail-order from an ad placed in a bmx magazine. Mouth By Mouth arrived just before going to work at the amusement park and I was able to listen to it twice on the way thanks to the never-ending beach traffic. As luck would have it, I worked on “The Abominable Snowman” ride, basically a tilt-a-whirl inside a dome with lots of fog machine action, blue lights, mirrors, and lots of air conditioning. It took about 10 listens that day before it wasn’t as weird as when I first put it on. Maybe it was my bubblegum flavor/robitussin combo slushie on top of no-doz that pulled it all together, but it was probably a weird ride for a lot of vacationing beach tourists and townies when all they really wanted to hear was “Naughty by Nature” by O.P.P. I had no business running those rides at the age of 17 but I really loved how disorienting that ride could be with all the mirrors, the fog, the cold and for the final 90 seconds the ride would go in reverse. I had a buddy named Kevin that did acid at work and would repeatedly run the mini-train off the tracks and all the riders had to walk back through the woods for about a half mile that summer.”

[aloysiavirgata]

Petrichor

Title: Petrichor

Rating: Explicit

Summary: He could tell her that her prefrontal cortex was the revelation to the thief on the cross.

Spoilers: Early S7

Author’s Notes:This is a casefile inspired by many things. The Season 7 timeline is a mess, I don’t know what else to say about that.

Early November in the temperate mountain valleys of southern Appalachia. The ground is carpet-soft with plush moss, and the hidden pools are still riotous with life. Ree needed only a pullover that morning, her doll Cordelia peering out of an old tote-bag stuffed with scraps of bread and feed corn. Her mother sent a lunch for her too, tucked in with her books and binoculars and a thermos of hot chocolate.

Ree in faded jeans and a lavender sweater picking her way over rocks and pine needles and fallen leaves, watching for the birds she can name and trying to mimic their calls. She points them out to Cordelia, who stares solemnly with blue-glass eyes. There are foxes, but they hide still. Ree dreams of befriending them. She can lure some of the deer within twenty feet now, and wishes she were Fern Arable, from Charlotte’s Web.

She takes a right instead of her customary left, wanting to test her new binoculars from a different vantage point. She skips over tree roots and rocks like a mountain goat, scarcely needing to look at the ground to keep her footing. The path curves sharply for a hundred feet before Ree finds herself at the edge of a wide pond, dense with duckweed. It is bordered with stands of ancient pine, with mossy boulders and half-sunken logs furred with algae. The silence is deep, but not frightening. It feels holy, like church. Godlight filters through the evergreens, the color of new peas. Somewhere, not far, falling water.

“Ohhhh,” Ree whispers to Cordelia. The beauty makes her chest hurt a little. She fumbles in the bag for her binoculars, laying Cordelia on a rock. Bread crusts and pencil ends spill from a loose seam. A rattle of deer corn on the stone.

Binoculars in place, Ree spots a heron across the pond, squirrels peeping from between the gold and red leaves of elm and sugarberry. She recognizes a deer she’s seen many times before, with a wide white blaze down her nose. Sudden movement catches her eye - a slim figure with long hair moving among the trees. Ree adjusts her lenses but cannot focus properly; the figure is blurred, always moving among the evergreen boughs.

The heron again. Squirrels. The deer now much closer. Then a pale ankle, a woman’s laugh.

“Helloooooooo,” Ree calls, braver than she feels. “I’m just lookin’ at birds and stuff! I’ll go if you want.”

Silence. 

She chews her lip, uncertain. The woods don’t belong to anybody on paper, but there are chancy folk out here with their own laws. “Cordelia?” she whispers. “What do we do?”

Cordelia offers no opinion. Ree grabs a handful of corn and climbs onto a flat boulder. Just beside it is a little patch of grass, and she hopes the doe will come into it. 

The laugh again and this time it’s much closer, just to her left. Were those fingers at her neck? Ree turns to look but tunnel vision sets in, the binoculars slapping hard against her chest when she drops them. The strap twists at her throat and she gasps, her hands springing open in surprise. She slips on the fallen corn and goes down hard on her spine against the rock. 

The deer steps into the glade, her unusual face cautious but curious. She knows Ree will not make sudden movements like the others do.

Ree, dazed, watched the deer nibble the corn with her velvet lips. She tries to sit up, but it’s like her brain will not connect to her body. Her feet seem very far away. 

Something pulls her hair and she manages a thin cry of pain. She’s freezing suddenly, the world glassy and distorted. Ree opens her mouth to call for help but she can’t; the greenness of the glade is in her throat now, and behind her eyes and inside her blood. The laugh again, so pretty, and then long arms are wrapped around her and Ree thanks Baby Jesus for saving her but oh!

Such teeth.

***

A quick glance in the rearview confirms once more that his hair’s pretty well grown back from the surprise birthday neurosurgery, and at thirty-eight such victories cannot be taken for granted. He tries to peer around the tight curve along the mountain road, but can make out only shadows. The bag of sunflower seeds ran dry twenty minutes ago, but he’s got a couple more in the trunk.

Beside him comes a rustle of paper. Scully’s printed out directions from MapQuest, checking off turns like a shopping list. “Still another three miles before the access road,” she says, not looking up from her trim navy-blue lap. She takes a sip of coffee.

Mulder coughs, says nothing. Things aren’t strained exactly, it’s not that. It’s more a liminal space. Everything’s fine, he tells himself. Everything’s fine.

He  checks his hair again.

***

The town is shabby but proud; the roads are clean and there are no cars propped up on the trimmed lawns. On this block a hardware store, a stone church, a fire station, and a bakery. Despite the Fannie Flagg charm, Mulder expects the local homeowners are dying for a Wal-Mart and a McDonald’s. There’s a billboard advertising a newly opened Cracker Barrel, which must count as progress to some.

The Ross home is a small, weatherbeaten clapboard in a stretch of small, weatherbeaten clapboards. Many of the houses have elaborate neo-classical porticoes taller than the actual roof. At the Rosses’, the mailbox is shaped like a dog, with a moveable tail instead of a flag. There are purple balloons hanging limply from its neck. Mulder noses the Crown Vic up the cracked asphalt of the driveway, engaging the parking brake before turning the engine off. 

Scully gathers their files, straightens the picture of Rhiannon Ross paperclipped to the manila envelope. Her little face is joyful in the school photograph. She wears a sweater with purple hearts and has sun-bronzed skin. Her big hazel eyes are laughing, framed by golden braids. 

“You ready?” he asks Scully.

She sighs. “Are we ever, with kids?” 

“Nope.” Mulder straightens his tie. So strange to do these little rituals again, to convey authority and professionalism through a strip of ornamental fabric. 

“You sure you’re okay?” Scully asks him again, fussing with a Post-It. “You know I still don’t think you should have been cleared for this, Mulder. You’re scarcely three weeks past severe trauma, and you haven’t even been back to the office.” She looks up, concern furrowing her brow.

He could tell her that when the gyre widened and spun out, it was she who held the center for him. He could tell her that the cool silver stream of her unvoiced voice stemmed the hellish tide of thoughts and premonition that threatened to drown his sentient mind. He could tell her that her prefrontal cortex was the revelation to the thief on the cross. 

Instead he crunches on a peppermint LifeSaver, washing it down with the rest of his cold coffee. “I get in the most trouble when I’m left to my own devices. You should be glad for a federally mandated excuse to keep an eye on me.”

She smiles at that. “Fair enough.”

They leave the stale air of the car for the fresh autumn breezes of northeast Alabama, the air so crisp it tastes like spring water. Mulder, a devout New Englander, is wary of the South, but cannot deny this to be a beautiful patch of it.

He puts his jacket on as Scully clips several paces ahead of him, bandbox fresh as always. He joins her on the little porch, and the front door opens before they have a chance to knock. Before them is a lanky blonde woman in worn jeans and a striped blouse. The shadows around her eyes look like bruises, lips papery and dry. For 26 years, these mothers have always been his mother, their homes his house in Chilmark.

“Y’all the FBI people?” she asks. Despite her stretchy vowels, brittle tension suffuses her voice. 

“Yes ma’am,” Scully says. They display their badges for her perusal.

The woman nods, then ushers them in. She gestures to a floral couch, taking the chintz armchair across from it. Mulder settles at one end of the couch while Scully, less leggy,  perches at the edge of the other. She is a slim smudge in the pastel room.

“I’m Iona Ross,” their host begins, rubbing a chewed thumbnail across raw knuckles. “I’m Ree’s mama.” 

Behind her, on the wall, are family photographs. Ree has three older brothers. The largest photograph shows the four children arranged on a park bench, smiling in white shirts and blue jeans. Ree is missing her two front teeth.

A man enters the room, rawboned, with the same wheat colored hair as his wife. He’s got on a gray sweater beneath Carhartt overalls and carries a coffee tray. He has big hands with ropy tendons standing out, and it's clear he’s not used to playing host. His face is haggard.

“This is my husband Wyatt,” Iona says, as he puts the tray on the small table between her and the couch.

Mulder looks at the pristine coffee cups and saucers. He guesses this is their wedding china, only brought out for “best.” That it will be carefully placed back into a breakfront after hand-washing.

Wyatt sits in a blue La-Z-Boy, relieved to be finished with his task. “They told us y’all were the best ones to find Ree,” he says in a choppy voice. He reaches out to grip his wife’s hand. 

Mulder, as he always does, longs for this to be true. “I can promise you there is no one at the FBI who will work harder for you,” he says.

Scully smiles sadly in his peripheral vision. “We have the police report, Mr. and Mrs. Ross. But it’s always better if you can walk us through the events yourself.”

“Iona and Wyatt, please,” Wyatt says. “Anyhow, it was Sunday morning and Ree had just got new binoculars for her birthday on Saturday. She, uh, she’s nine now. Real smart little thing, likes nature and all, really likes birds.” His voice breaks. He scrubs at his face with his hands.

Iona takes over, voice raw but steady. “Well, she packed up her little bag with some bird food you know, and her binoculars and some nature books and all. Her doll Cordelia of course, and I made a lunch. She’ll go out for hours in the woods. And whatever, uh, happened it was before she ate ‘cause all the food was there.”

Mulder glances at his notes, just to look at something other than Iona’s desperate face. “The police report says her doll and her bag were found by a pond with the lunch still inside, but her binoculars were missing. The items were found Monday morning by a search party. That’s correct?”

“Yes sir,” Iona replies. “And there was algae all over Cordelia and the bag and the food, even though it was still wrapped up. It was even in the hot chocolate in the thermos.” She looks eagerly from Mulder to Scully. “Y’all think that means something, the algae being on closed-up food? I never heard of it. Maybe it’s like a, whaddya call it, an MO.”

“Unusual details are always good details,” Scully says in her gentle way. “Unusual facts can certainly help narrow things down, Mis- Iona.” She leans forward now, palms splayed over her sharp knees. “I know this next question is painful, but I do need to ask. It says that the pond was searched and that neither Ree nor any of her clothing have been found. But, from the photographs, it seems like there’s a bit of debris in the pond. Logs and large rocks, mostly, and lots of algae and duckweed. Is there any chance that Ree would have gone into it on her own?”

Wyatt gets to his feet. “She ain’t stupid,” he snaps, pacing. “She didn’t do nothing wrong, and despite what you may think, we’re not backwoods morons too ignorant to raise children.” His pain seeps a dark aura into the air, ink through clear water. “Our other three are still fine, you notice. Police report say that?”

“We don’t doubt you at all, sir,” Mulder says. “No one is trying to blame Ree or your family for her disappearance. Agent Scully and I just have to review all lines of questioning to make sure the police have done everything they can thus far. We want to make sure we’re starting from a helpful place as we take over the investigation.”

Wyatt leans against the wall, looking hollow. “Jenny Greenteeth,” he mutters.

Iona, with shaking hands, pours four cups of coffee. “Wyatt,” she hisses. “Not now.”

“Jenny Greenteeth?” Scully repeats, writing it down. “Is that som-”

“It’s an old story,” Mulder says, surprised. “A nursery bogey.”

He is met by three blank stares.

“A nursery bogey is a story created by adults with the specific goal of making children avoid certain behaviors, or to encourage generally good behavior,” Mulder says. He is intrigued by Wyatt invoking the name. “The Namahage of Japan, the Scottish bodach, Russia’s Baba Yaga - all of these legends are about mythical beings who will in some way harm misbehaving children. Sometimes they get specific. Jenny Greenteeth, like the kappa and bunyip, is said to snatch children who venture to close to dangerous water.”

Wyatt is staring at him. “How’d you know all that?”

Mulder spreads his hands in a vague gesture. “These kinds of stories have always interested me.” He feels it best not to elaborate.

“He’s an internationally recognized expert,” Scully chimes in, rather generously. “Can you tell us why you mentioned this particular legend?”

“Don’t mind him,” Iona says, passing around the coffee. “We’re just both about to fall to pieces.”

Wyatt scowls. “I’m telling you,” he says stubbornly. “It’s her.”

Mulder adds cream to his coffee and takes a sip. It’s worlds better than the gas station dregs he just finished. “I know the story of Jenny Greenteeth comes from the north of England and from Scotland. This area has a big Scots-Irish influence, doesn’t it?”

“Yessir. There’s a big Scottish festival hereabouts, and both our families are Scottish from way back. Ree’s named after my Granny Rhiannon. You think that means something?” Iona’s voice is strained, hungry for any morsel.

Mulder shakes his head. “No, not necessarily. Probably not, and I apologize for getting off topic. Wyatt, tell me more about this, uh, theory you’ve got.” He finishes the coffee in a long gulp.

Wyatt rubs his face. “Well, listen. I know how it sounds to me, and I reckon it sounds even crazier to y’all. But growing up around here, every kid knows about the little pools in these hollers. Real deep ponds will spring up practically overnight, I guess ‘cause the ground is weak from all the mining. In the spring you get these real fast streams from the snow runoff. So kids run wild through the woods but they know to be careful. All the meemaws tell ‘em if they aren’t careful, Jenny Greenteeth’ll grab ‘em at the water. She’s got, you know, long black hair and real long arms and green teeth.” He shrugs, a bit sheepish.

“And you think this, uh, this creature took Rhiannon?” Scully asks, managing to sound both compassionate and deadpan at the same time.

Iona and Wyatt exchange a glance.

“Well, there’s a bit more than that,” Iona says, turning her mug in her hands. “Over the summer a woman moved in out in the woods. She, uh, took over some old hunter’s shack not real far from where Ree went missing. Her name’s Tallulah Church. She’s real tall and skinny, probably at least six feet, and I’ll be damned but she’s got green teeth.”

“Green teeth,” Mulder repeats, intrigued. He glances at Scully, who’s scribbling.

“Pale green like jade,” Wyatt says, warming up to his subject. “The kids are all scared of her, call her Jenny Greenteeth ‘cause they know the story. They say the dogs won’t go around there even.”

“A few hunting dogs have gone missing up that way,” Iona adds, her reluctance clearly fading. “Tallulah comes into town every month or so in her station wagon, gets some supplies, then rattles back up into the mountains. She seems okay I guess, just never really talks to nobody.”

“She gives every kid around here the evil eye,” Wyatt asserts, returning to his recliner. “She’s bad news. There’s things going on with her.”

Iona shoots him a hard look. “I’m sure the FBI isn’t interested in a bunch of mountain superstition.”

Scully pipes up. “When you say there are things going on with her, is there anything specific you can point to? Anything stand out in your memory?” 

A glance between Wyatt and Iona. “Just gives me a bad feeling,” Wyatt says. “You ever meet people like that?”

Mulder is curious as to what they won’t tell him, but decides not to create conflict just yet. These things always out themselves, but for now it’s clear he’s learned all he can. 

He exchanges a quick nod with Scully, who has already closed her notebook. “Wyatt, Iona, we’re going to do our best to find out what happened to Ree. It sounds like talking to Tallulah Church may be a good start. If she lives nearby she may have seen something or someone involved in the disappearance.” 

Wyatt snorts. “The police already talked to her. Doesn’t know a thing, they say. Search parties are still out though, and we’re heading out again when we’re done here.”

Scully gets to her feet, and Mulder follows. “Thank you for talking to us,” Scully says. “We’ll review all of this information and be in touch as we can. We’ll let you get back to the search.”

The Rosses rise, hands are shaken. Iona runs her fingers through her hair before crossing her arms tightly back across her chest. “Please bring her home,” she says. “Even - even if…” She trails off, weeping.

Wyatt draws her close, and Mulder and Scully slip past them, barely noticed.

***

It’s just past six by the time they get to their motel, but the sky is black. The parking lot gravel smatters against the fenders as Mulder parks in front of the little office. He gets out to contemplate a luggage cart when Scully emerges. She promptly turns her ankle on the uneven ground, but Mulder manages to grab her by the upper arm before she falls.

“You okay?”

She stares up at him, her breath quick. 

Scully glances at his hand and he remembers to let go. She looks away, tests her footing on the gravel. “I’m good,” she says. “I’m fine.”

“Scully fine, or regular fine?”

She smooths her jacket. “How’s your cranium?”

Mulder goes to the office at that, and retrieves their room keys from the drowsy clerk. A part of him hopes the reservation got messed up, that there’s only one room. But both are available, a queen en suite for each. They’re on the first floor around back, next door neighbors, the clerk says. Mulder swipes the bureau plastic and heads back out to Scully, who has found safer footing on the sidewalk.

He passes her the key. “You want to get some dinner? I saw a Cracker Barrel back yonder.” He drawls for her amusement.

“Sure. I want to take a shower first though. Give you a call when I’m done?”

“Okay.” 

“Okay.”

He wants to kiss her but won’t. He wants to suggest a joint shower to conserve water, but won’t. Her eyes do a quick scan of his face, perhaps reading these thoughts. It would only be fair if she could, really.

Scully grabs her bag and heads to her room. He waits until her door clicks shut before heading to his own.

***

Mulder thought of Jenny Greenteeth in the shower, of skeletal arms grasping at him through the drain. It made the tops of his feet tingle, and he hurried out to towel off. 

From what he’s read, Rhiannon Ross seems like a steady, responsible child, unlikely to go haring off through dangerous parts of the woods, or testing the limits of a slippery embankment. And the algae troubles him, the presence of it on her belongings. 

Mulder dresses in jeans and a t-shirt, pulling a parka on for warmth. He forgot his hair gel, and his head looks a bit like a startled sea creature. Scully doubtless has something in her portable salon.

She meets him in front of the car, Scully-casual in grey slacks and a black sweater. Her hiking boots put her shoulders about level with his ribs, and he is reminded that the love of his life is built on a songbird’s frame. Mulder recalls the fine velveteen skin at her inner thigh, like the breast of a chickadee.

“Nice hair,” she says. 

“Thanks, I’m trying to channel Lyle Lovett.” He strums an invisible guitar.

She slouches against the rough brick of the building, backlit by neon. At her feet are bunches of plastic flowers jammed into the white quartz around the ragged boxwood hedge. “So. Cracker Barrel, huh?” 

“Sure, I figured we could sit in the rockers and talk about the old days. Those kids with their jazz and soda pop, am I right? Spit some chaw, vote Republican. Besides, it seems to be either that or a dubious establishment called A-1 Panda Kitchen. The diner closes at 7.”

Scully wrinkles her nose. “Cracker Barrel it is.”

***

There’s a MISSING! flier of Ree on the table, dog-eared and slipped into a plastic page protector. It’s sporting the same school photo from their dossiers. Mulder pushes it gently aside, feeling like he should apologize.

Scully frowns at the menu, taps at it with an immaculate fingernail. “I don’t see how anyone eats here regularly and lives long enough to reminisce about the old days in a rocker. Even the salad has fried chicken in it.”

He remembers when she would cheerfully put away a plate of ribs, but now she cares about fiber and antioxidants along with her tailoring. And her stupid bee pollen crap. “Aw, Scully, you’re citified. Surely you’ve got some kin in these parts. Hardy mountain folk descended from fleeing Irish potato farmers. You can hand le these vittles, little lady. It ain’t possum.” He considers the chicken-fried steak with interest. It comes with gravy.

“Stop talking like you’re on Hee-Haw.” She looks thoughtful. “I suppose there probably are distant cousins out this way, but none that I know of.”

He blows a straw wrapper past her shapely nose, which she ignores with practiced dignity.

“Pork tenderloin, that seems all right.” Scully closes her menu with an air of resignation. She does not like being fussy with her ordering.

The waitress comes by and he commits to the fried steak over Scully’s clear distaste. 

“Re-myelinating,” he assures her, handing over the menu.

“That’s not-”

“Shhh.”

They amuse themselves with several rounds of a little peg game, and Mulder decides to purchase one before they leave. 

“Mom was pretty calm there, don’t you think?” Mulder drums his fingers on the table. He doesn’t really suspect the parents, but the sad fact is that they’re most often the perpetrators. It at least bears discussing.

Scully shrugs. “Police don’t seem too concerned. Growing up in a house with four kids, I remember my mom keeping her cool in completely insane situations. Charlie had a compound fracture once, when my dad was away. His femur was poking out the front of his thigh, he was in shock, and mom just handled it like a skinned knee until the ambulance came.” She shakes her head, remembering.

“Must be a dominant trait.”

She squeezes lemon into her water, then picks out an errant seed. “Hardy mountain folk. So there’s no body in the pond, she probably wouldn’t have wandered off without her food and doll, and there’s no ransom demand or strange footprints at the site. So where the hell did she go, Mulder? Where’s Ree?”

“I think she was in the water at some point.”

Scully narrows her eyes, suspicious. She twirls a peg between her fingers. “At some point? Not terminally?”

“You know I hate to speculate, Scully,” he says, in tones of wounded innocence.

She snorts. “At last we come to Jenny Greenteeth.”

“It was Wyatt’s idea,” he reminds her, chewing his straw. He is excited by a new monster to mash with Scully.

“Sure, blame the other kid,” she says, with a kind of weary amusement.

“I’m withholding judgement until we talk to this Tallulah Church tomorrow. I’m interested in those teeth.” 

“It’s always teeth with you,” she says. She captures two pegs, then looks up at him. She is well pleased with herself, smirky and bright-eyed.

He doesn’t want to say anything. He wants to find Ree, dead or alive, and go home. But he feels pretty sure he can’t do that until unburdened. Holman Hart’s repressed emotions may have controlled the weather, but Mulder knows his own can control the fate of this case. He brushes his fingers against her palm. “Scully.”

Her expression tightens, but she doesn’t respond.

“We have to talk this out.” He is concerned with where it may lead, but this particular truth is in her. He no longer doubts her feelings at this juncture, only her willingness to do anything more with them.

Scully sighs. She toys with a sugar packet. It amuses and aggravates him that she can pore over dead infants and handcuff mutants to her bathtub with little discomfiture, but talk about emotions and she squirms like a kid in church. 

“I don’t think there’s much to talk out, really,” she says, terse.

She wouldn’t, of course she wouldn’t, and there are times he could wring her swan-like throat. 

“Well, humor me then,” he says, with exaggerated patience. “Because you woke up in my bed two weeks ago wearing nothing but smudged makeup, and we’ve been avoiding any real mention of that. And now that I’m properly back to work, I’d kind of like to know what the hell we’re doing.”

She looks around, like anyone’s listening to two weary Feds on a Wednesday night. “I really don’t see any reason to have this conversation right now, Mulder.” 

The waitress delivers their food and, sensing tension, scurries away.

In the past few weeks he’s thought back to that hellish summer when a bee had saved Scully from addressing the fact that she’d clearly been willing to jump his bones before skipping town. Well, anaphylaxis wasn’t going to rescue her this time. “Why are you being like this?” he asks, as though she’s ever different.

She leans forward, piqued. “Like what? Not wanting to talk about my… my… personal life in the middle of an Alabama Cracker Barrel while looking for a missing child?” 

Her personal life, Jesus fucking Christ. “You’ve been avoiding me other than some medical check-ins since you left that morning, so I’m trying to figure out what happens now. Come on, Scully. It’s not like I left those underwear on the desk for you before we headed out here.”

She blushes, bless her, and talks to make him shut up. “I can tell you that I don’t regret what happened.” Scully applies herself to the tenderloin with an intensity usually reserved for the mysteriously deceased. 

Mulder knows it’s the best he’s likely to get from her at the moment, that he’s pushing her to give him something he can’t even define. But he remembers with longing the intricate ocean of her thoughts, the fractal beauty of them as they wove into his own. He was still bathing in the quantum entanglement of her when she’d checked his pupils that evening, when he’d kissed her in the certainty that she’d drop both her little flashlight and her guard.

Scully had kissed him back like a mermaid with a half-drowned sailor.

He looks at her again, knows that he sees only the surface of her now. “Scully, I’m not asking you to go steady.”

She laughs a little at that, looks up at him with wary interest. “So what do you want, then?”

It’s a damned good question. He has general ideas of lying in bed with her while she declaims on the marvels of the quadrupole ion trap. He would like to map her freckles, like a star chart.

“For now I’m just glad to know you don’t regret it,” he hedges.

She searches the ceiling for inspiration before returning her cool gaze to him. “It was absurd of me to act like nothing happened, to treat you like any other patient since you weren’t back at work. It was easy to ignore what we… what happened. I’m sorry, Mulder.” 

She still can’t say it, he notices. But it’s something. “Your other patients are dead, Scully. So I’m a special case no matter how you look at it.”

There is warmth in her eyes. “You really are,” she says.

***

Scully’s got their peg game in a Cracker Barrel bag on her lap. Mulder had wanted to stockpile cheese blocks and sausages against future car trips, but she had put her foot firmly down. “Do you think we’ll find her, Mulder? Her remains, probably, but still. It would be something for the family.”

He shrugs. It’s hard to separate hopes from expectations sometimes, especially in their line. “I really don’t know. We need to get a better look at the area she went missing, and I’m pretty curious about this Tallulah woman.”

“Children can have green teeth if their mothers took tetracycline during late pregnancy,” she tells him. “It crosses the placenta and binds to the calcium in the fetus’s developing teeth.”

He grins at her. “Only one alternate explanation? You’re slowing down in your old age, Scully.”

Scully bares her little fangs. “Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia.”

“Attagirl.”

***

He parks around back this time, right in front of their dreary rooms. “I figure we’ll head out around 9 or so tomorrow,” he says. “Let the air warm up a bit before we hit the woods.”

Scully nods, yawning. “Pond first, or Tallulah?”

He considers this. “I think it’s best if we have the lay of the land when we talk to her.”

“Okay.”

Mulder turns the car off, but they stay in their seats with the inertia of food and time difference and mental exhaustion. Even the lost children they manage to bring home are haunted afterwards. It’s hard to imagine a good outcome here. 

Scully unbuckles her seatbelt, turns to him with sleepy eyes. She yawns again, then reaches out to muss his hair. “Come by in the morning,” she says. “I’ll help you out.”

She goes to her room then, the bag dangling from her fingertips. She doesn’t look back at him before she shuts the door.

***

He stretches out on the bedspread, mulling over her words at dinner, and annoyed at himself for the distraction from Ree Ross. What could he have expected from this, though? Scully’s not Diana. Scully wouldn’t flaunt their shared bed to other agents, wouldn’t drape herself over his desk while reading grimoires and classified documents. Christ, he could marry her and she’d probably think a wedding band was unprofessional at work, his uptight darling.

It’s strange for Diana to be dead. He’d stopped trusting her in the final hours of her life, but he didn’t want her dead. She was a rare and capable creature, however dangerous. She was solitary and sleek and fast.

He recalls the choices he’d made what she glided back into his life, her ruthless intellect and legs as long as a midwinter night. He recalls Scully’s face when he swore Diana was playing a long game, all for a nobler cause.

He recalls the dusky labyrinth of her mind and what he saw at the center of it; a beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

***

Diana slips through his dreams again, but not in bridal white, not with the round belly of Taweret. She is dead, but not the dead of his other visions. She is weeks dead, greying and skeletal. He can see patches of bone through her ragged dress but her eyes, her eyes are vivid and whole and the color of cabochon emeralds. They are luminescent in the nightmare forest of his dream, beckoning him. It is a leafless forest, bleak, with bony-armed trees looming over him. 

He finds her in a blackwater creek, standing in the middle of it as the water surges past her calves. She smiles at him with too many teeth. “Hello, Fox,” she says. She bats her lashes. “I apologize for my appearance, but they didn’t embalm.”

“Do you need help?” he asks her, casting about for a long branch.

She shakes her head, hair still lush and glossy. The water rises up her legs.

“Is this real? I mean, are you a ghost or is this all in my head?”

The water whips around her thighs. “What’s real?” she asks. “Perception is reality. If you believe it to be true, it’s true enough for government work.” Diana laughs at her own joke.

A white deer walks up to him, with softly furred antlers like fresh snow. It looks at him with black-irised eyes, wet and bottomless voids. There may be constellations in them. Mulder reaches out to stroke its muzzle as Diana looks on. The deer opens its mouth and dried corn comes pouring out.

The water swallows Diana then, before receding fully. She lies on the bank as he remembers her, whole and striking. Her dead eyes are their usual smoky blue, her dress no longer decomposed. 

He wakes up when the ground swallows her.

***

Morning, bright and chilly in the mountains with light of a purity that never touches DC. He remembers a dream with Diana, with water and deer and a general sense of Jungian dystopia. It’s nice to see his subconscious branching out from its usual reruns of family fare.

Wary of fungal spores embedded in the matted carpet, he steps into his untied dress shoes and clomps to the bathroom wearing nothing else but his boxers. He brushes his teeth in the tiny sink, then wets his unruly hair. 

There’s a knock at the door and he groans. “Just a minute!” he yells around the toothbrush. He hopes it’s someone with the extra towels he asked for.

Mulder clomps back towards the door and, lacking a peephole, he pops it open a fraction to accept his linens. Instead of the housekeeper he’d been expecting, he finds Scully kitted out for a hike, brandishing a canister of mousse.

Cold air sweeps in with her laugh.

“Good morning to you too,” he grouses, ushering her in. He secures the chain when he closes the door.

“Nice outfit,” she says brightly. “What’s with the shoes? Is this a formal hike? I wasn’t sure because you’re not wearing pants, but…”

He scowls, sitting on the bed. “You’re mighty chipper. I’m trying to avoid athlete’s foot, if you must know, and I couldn’t find my socks.”

Scully rummages through his bag for a pair of thick socks, which she tosses to him. She gestures at the bed. “May I?”

“Not if you’re going to be mean.” He kicks the shoes off and tugs the socks on.

Scully sits beside him, shaking the can of mousse. “Thought I could do your hair before we prank call some boys. French braid?”

Mulder stands to pull his jeans up, and the weight shift makes her bounce a little on the mattress. “Let me have that mousse.”

She gestures for his hand, then sprays a lilac-scented pouf into his cupped palm. 

“Thanks,” he says, and scrunches it into his hair. He styles himself before the dresser mirror while she watches, amused.

“You left before my beauty regimen last time,” he remarks.

In the mirror, Scully shakes her head but doesn’t seem bothered. “I made some calls this morning about Tallulah Church. There’s no phone or plumbing up there, but the sheriff’s office said she’s usually right around her home. And the motel clerk drew me a map of how to get to the pond from the access road, then how to get to Tallulah’s.” She waves several crumpled papers.

He pulls a t-shirt over his head, then a fleece. “Aren’t you a busy little bee? Looks like someone’s getting her cartography badge this week.” Mulder returns to the bed to put his boots on.

“I’ve got evidence vials too,” she says, producing them from her pockets. “We’re going to find out what happened to Ree.” Her eyes are big and solemn.

Scully masquerades her tenderheartedness as honor, but Mulder didn’t need a God Module to know why she took that terrible dog in years ago. The depth of cold Dr. Scully’s compassion would shock their colleagues, and he likes this secret knowledge about her. Even Skinner, who reveres her only just below the Constitution, underestimates the fierceness of her empathy. 

“What?” Scully asks.

Mulder cups her splendid jaw, thumb at her sphenoid bone. He kisses the space between her eyebrows, and she makes a small noise.

“We have to go,” she breathes, and is outside before he can stand.

***

Not a word about it in the car, just miles of silence broken only by Scully giving directions. The drive ends in a flat patch of dirt by the forest’s edge, a scrubby path poking out from the ferns and overhang.

“Our little forays into the forest never end well,” she observes. “But at least tick season is winding down. After you, Mulder.”

He pushes into the woods, holding branches back so Scully doesn’t get smacked in the head. “Been a while, though. We’re tougher now. We’re hardened woodspersons.”

“And I have a lighter,” she adds.

He grins. “Show off. Hey, how far is it?”

Scully consults her map. “Well, we’re coming at it from a different angle than Ree would have probably taken, but this is the most direct. Looks like maybe a hundred yards up ahead before it opens into a clearing.”

The path unfolds as she said, and suddenly a storybook pond is before him. Squirrels frisk in the branches and birds call to each other across the glen. The surface of the water is velvety with duckweed, like a perfectly clipped baseball field. Shafts of sunlight illuminate red and white mushrooms at the bases of oaks, the feathers of golden-green ferns. He sniffs the air, lush and tannic.

“Oh, wow,” Scully says, coming up behind him. “Mulder, this is unreal. It’s like a Waterhouse painting.”

They pick their way down to the edge of the pond, startling several fat bullfrogs and a garter snake. “Imagine being a kid here, Scully.”

She shakes her head, admiring. “It’s a Wonderland. I’d be out here all the time too.” Scully crosses her arms, staring upwards with a rapturous expression. “From what her dad said, Ree’s a lot like I was as a kid. I didn’t have my own binoculars though. Had to steal Bill’s.”

“Fuck Bill,” he says cheerfully. “You deserved them.”

They circle the perimeter, looking for...what? He never quite knows. The pond makes gentle rippling sounds as the local fauna heads for deeper water under his scrutiny.

Scully pauses at a section of churned-up dirt. She squats for a better view, pokes delicately at the earth. “They made a mess of this, Jesus. At least they had enough sense to band their shoes.” In the dirt, distinct tracks marked with horizontal rubber band lines around the soles distinguish the CSI team’s prints.

Mulder crouches bedside her, spots something golden half-buried in the soft ground. “Tweezers, Scully?”

She passes them over and from the ground he plucks a kernel of deer corn, half coated in dried algae. “Mulder, look. There are more of them, maybe twenty, all pushed in or smashed on this rock. And most of them have algae on them.” She frowns. “The footprints on the ground over it, they’re not marked and they’re too small for an adult.”

Sure enough, there’s a mess of kid-sized sneaker tracks all over where the greenish corn is, muddy smears on the rocks adjacent. They’re algae-covered as well, and too far from the water for such a coating. He stares, thinking.

Scully, meanwhile, is labeling tiny evidence jars in pencil, filling them with samples of algae and earth and corn. She finds the cap of a glittery marker. “Who processed this crime scene? Ray Charles?” She seals it up, tags it. 

“No kidding. Hey, look. There’s a gap between those two big boulders over there. If you wanted to watch someone and hide, it would be a good spot. You think they searched it?”

She snorts with derision. 

“Me too. I’m gonna go take a look. You stay here. Sit on that rock there, it’ll put you at about Ree’s height.”

Scully passes him a few vials and a pencil, settles on the rock. “I think this is where she left Cordelia, based on the photos, though they were mostly closeup. I don’t remember any good overviews.” Some algae remains on the rock, and Scully looks sad.

Mulder jogs around the pond as best he can, but the bracken is heavy and he has to climb over a few logs. Is it really so crazy to think Ree tripped and fell out here, slipped quietly into the pond and snagged on a submerged rock or branch? Lots of little nibbling things in the water; it happens.

His mind returns to the algae. But if Ree went in, how did it come out? Who stepped all over that deer corn?

He’s between the boulders now, with a clear view of Scully across the way. He walks a little grid by the boulder, looking for bits of trace evidence. Snagged hair, footprints, forgotten belongings, anxiously chewed nails. But there is nothing. Either he misjudged the hiding spot, or the perpetrator has been very mindful of Locard’s Exchange Principle

.

“SCULLY!” he calls, setting off flurries of birds.

“MULDER?” She scans the area where he’s hidden.

“CAN YOU SEE ME?”

“NO!”

He climbs up one of the rocks, waves to her. She waves back from her perch. From atop the boulder, he scans the ground below. There aren’t any footprints but, squinting, he can see trails of dried algae along the edge of the ferns, where the rocky area begins.

He calls Scully over, and she moves through the forest as lightly as the squirrels. He points at his finding when she arrives. “That’s weird, right?”

She scoops some up in a vial, the holds it to the light. “Maybe she was playing at the edge, got her hands dirty, went to wipe them, and slipped.”

Mulder shakes his head. “That doesn’t explain the algae on the unopened food, Scully.”

“It could have been simple contamination. Her parents say she’s out here all the time. If she uses the same thermos and bag, brings the same books and toys, it’s not exactly far fetched to think some of it remained from last time and grew in the sun. Busy mom with four kids, how thoroughly is she going to scrub everything down for a kid who’s always outside? Algae are extremely tenacious, and it was out here in the sun for about 26 hours.”

He gazes at the duckweed, lets his vision swim until everything is a green blur. “Maybe,” he says. “But I want to talk to Tallulah.”

“Greenteeth was my delight,” Scully sings, appallingly off-key. “Greenteeth was my heart of gold.”

“You’re a riot,” he says dryly. Delightedly.

“Exposure to copper or nickel,” Scully says, clambering over a log. “Septic cholestasis.”

He might marry her after all.

***

Tallulah’s little shack looks old as the mountains, with log walls and a shake roof. There’s a tiny porch tacked on the front, and a wall of firewood being gnawed by two spotted goats. They stare at Mulder with their rectangular-pupiled eyes.

He reaches out to pet them and startles when they bleat loudly at his overture. They scamper off behind the house.

Scully pokes the toe of her boot into a plastic bucket, rights it. “Her car seems to be here,” she observes, indicating a battered old Volvo wagon. 

“A European car, no wonder everyone here hates her.”

Scully smirks.

They walk up to the house, Mulder withdrawing his identification. It generally gets a snappier reaction the further West and South it travels, but Mulder is also wary of a demented libertarian streak that runs through the country at odd intervals. Seams of it appear throughout Appalachia, and federal agents of various stripes have been fired on by feistier residents.

Scully, thankfully, is a quick draw and a dead shot.

They don’t get the chance to knock before a woman who must be Tallulah Church stands before them on the other side of the screen door. She’s close to Mulder’s height, thin to the point of emaciation, and pale enough to make Scully look freshly tanned. She has beautiful black hair to her waist, and eyes the color of ferns. They seem too bright in her gaunt, colorless face. She’s dressed in a Huck Finn ensemble of castoff men’s work clothing. On her hands are faded canvas gardening gloves.

Mulder shows her his badge and introduces them. Scully wordlessly displays her own identification.

Tallulah grins widely, her teeth perfect and straight and pearly green. “Well come on in,” she says, turning back into the house. Her feet clomp loudly in their heavy boots.

Mulder glances at Scully, who still seems taken aback by this gawky apparition. He holds the door open and they follow Tallulah into the house. 

The little shack creaks with every step, and smells of woodsmoke and earth and herbs. The interior walls are the same weathered gray as the outside. The whole thing is just one room, with a bed in one corner and a kitchen consisting of a fireplace, a dry sink, and a table with several mismatched chairs. Tallulah is occupying a black metal one, and her impossibly long, thin limbs make Mulder think of Jack Skellington. He can’t tell if she’s twenty or fifty.

“Sit down, please,” she says. “The table’s not much but I reckon it would be weird to offer you the bed.” She smiles again. Her voice is as drawling as everyone else in town, but there’s something different about it, something strangely polished and almost British. 

They take their seats. “Miss Church,” Scully begins.

“Tallulah, please.”

“Tallulah. Agent Mulder and I are investigating the disappearance of Rhiannon Ross. She went missing on Sunday morning. Given that you live not far from the area where her belongings were found, we wanted to ask you some questions.” Scully opens her file folder, pen poised like a hovering dragonfly.

Tallulah levels her remarkable eyes with Scully’s. “No ma’am. I know who Ree is, it’s a small town and she’s out here a lot, but I didn’t see her that day. Real nice little girl though. She feeds the deer sometimes.”

Mulder perks up. “Yeah? We saw some deer corn out where she went missing. Did you see her feeding them that morning?”

Tallulah sighs. “No, I’m sorry. As I’ve told the police, I didn’t see a bit of her on Sunday. Which is sort of odd itself, because she’d always be out on a day like that. Too shy to come up to the house, but she liked to watch the goats. They’re not even mine, but I leave them food and water, so we’re friends now.”

Behind her, on the dry sink, Mulder notices green smears of moss or mildew. Or algae. 

“I know you’ve spoken to Sherriff McLeod already,” Scully continues. “So we appreciate your patience.”

“It’s a terrible thing for a child to go missing,” Tallulah says, shaking her head. “I wish I did have something to tell, but I just don’t. I’ve seen the search parties around - I guess they searched the pond.”

“You say you knew who Ree was because it’s a small town, but I got the sense you didn’t mingle much with the good townsfolk,” Mulder observes.

Tallulah chuckles at this. “No sir, not much, which suits them and me just fine.” She lifts her hands to eye level and wiggles her bony gloved fingers. “They think I’m spooky.”

Mulder smiles in spite of himself. “I know a little bit about that. So tell me, Tallulah, you from around here?”

She shakes her head. “Not from anywhere, really, but I was raised outside Savannah in a rich ladies’ orphanage. That’s why I sound like Dixie Carter.”

“An orphanage?” Scully repeats.

“Yes ma’am. I was left at the Baptist Ladies’ Home when I was a day or so old. Nothing with me but a plastic laundry basket and a gingham tablecloth. They said I was a frightful looking little thing.” She smiles ruefully, showing them her green teeth again.

Scully, true to form, tackles that bull head on. “Tallulah, I’m also a doctor, and I’m compelled to ask about your teeth. Do you know why they’re green?”

An expansive shrug. “Oh, the doctors that saw us there had all kinds of ideas of what was wrong with me, but I never got anything official. Marfan Syndrome, that was one.” She snorts. “‘Course, the other kids heard Martian and with the green teeth they decided I was an alien.”

“There’s a genetic test for it now,” Scully says. “You could find out for sure.”

Tallulah chuckles again. “Thanks, Doc, but it doesn’t matter much. I feel just fine. Always have, and I don’t plan to have any kids. I’m twenty-six and haven’t had anything worse than a cold.”

Mulder watches the Doc jot this down and he returns to the subject at hand. “So you moved here over the summer. Where’d you live before this?”

“Oh, gosh, just lots of tiny towns like this one. I find these empty little cabins, you know, and stay for a while. Then I move on when I get restless.”

“The Rosses said you come into town every so often to get supplies and gas. May I ask where you get the money for that?” Scully looks up to ask this.

Tallulah looks sly. “I don’t know that I want to discuss that with the FBI,” she says.

Mulder exchanges a glance with his fellow narc, who nods imperceptibly to any eye but his own. “We’re just here to find Rhiannon,” he reassures Tallulah. “Not do the DEA’s job for them. Neither Agent Scully nor I wish to fill out extra paperwork.”

Tallulah considers this, glancing between them. “Well,” she says at last. “I reckon you could say I’m real good with plants; I can coax anything to grow. And in boring little towns there’s, uh, a lot of people who like plants.”

Scully looks unimpressed by this attempt at euphemism. “Plants,” she repeats.

Tallulah shrugs. “I’ve said as much as I’m going to on that subject without a lawyer. But anyhow, what’s that got to do with Ree?”

“Just trying to get to know a bit about you,” Mulder says. “Sometimes we find witnesses have seen things they don’t even realize they’ve seen, and talking generally can help.”

“I know everything I’ve seen,” Tallulah asserts. “You live out here like this, you don’t miss much. It’s not like I have a lot to distract me.”

“What were you doing last Sunday morning, then?” Mulder asks.

She shrugs. “Woke up, ate, got dressed. Went over to the pump for some water.” She gestures at some distant point through the back wall. “Then I went looking for some mushrooms and things to eat. Eggs. Lots of greens out there.”

Scully narrows her eyes. “Ree was in the woods that morning too. You’re certain you didn’t see or hear anything?”

Tallulah scoffs. “The woods are pretty big. Might as well say we were both in Alabama.”

“Wyatt and Iona are under the impression that you don’t like children,” Scully says. “Have there been any particular incidents that would make them feel that way? Any encounters with Ree? It must have been irritating to have her running all over the edge of your property.”

“No, she’s all right and besides, it’s hardly my property. Scared of me like the rest of them, but all right. I like the way she is with animals, real gentle and all. Got a kind heart, that girl, and I wish more were like her. But here’s the plain facts. My mama didn’t want me, none of the parents who came to the Home wanted me, the other kids thought I was an alien, and I learned to just keep mostly to myself because I can take a hint. I go walking outside a lot, do some fishing in the little ponds and all, and that’s how I know who Ree is. You know the kids call me Jenny Greenteeth.”

“We’d heard that, yes,” Mulder says, feeling uncomfortably sorry for Tallulah. He knows empathizing with suspects is his weakness, and that it drives Scully up the wall.

“It’s not the first time, won't be the last. But I know Ree’s daddy thinks I hurt Ree. He’s pretty disapproving of my...plant business and I think he half believes that stupid old fairy tale.” She rolls her eyes.

“I saw you had a whole lot of firewood,” Mulder says, shifting gears. “You staying here all winter?” 

“I never know, but I’d like to. Doubt I will though, with this, uh, situation.” She picks at her gloves. “People can start to get unkind.”

Mulder gestures to the dry sink. “Seems kind of damp. Looks like you have some mold or something growing over there.”

The three of them follow his finger with their eyes, where bright green streaks the wall and sink. Mulder sees that there is far more than he originally noticed, spread over much of the wall all the way to the bed.

“Oh, yeah, these places always are,” Tallulah says. “You can always find these old cabins if you look a little, but it’s hard to keep them snug. Part of why I move so much. They just sort of collapse around you.”

Mulder glances at Scully, and they agree in a blink. 

“Well, I wouldn’t move any time soon, Tallulah,” Scully says in her Bad Cop way. “And I’d take a break from business until the situation - as you called it - is sorted out.”

Tallulah looks uncomfortable, but nods. “Yes ma’am.”

“Thanks for your time,” Mulder says. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

They rise from their rickety chairs and head out the front door. On his way past the bed, Mulder opens an evidence vial and scrapes it along the wall to gather a film of algae. If Tallulah notices, she doesn’t remark.

The sun feels over-bright after the dim cabin and, squinting, they pick their way carefully back to where they parked. One of the goats is on the hood of their rental.

Mulder is delighted by this, if only because he can write “GOAT ATTACK” on the return form. He hopes it will find its way across Kersh’s desk and make him chug Mylanta straight from the bottle.

Scully, far more vexed, begins throwing fallen pine cones at it. 

“Nice arm,” Mulder says. “Try bringing your knee up next time.”

She glares at him, exasperated. “Where’s a chupacabra when you need one?”

***

They’re back at the Cracker Barrel, playing Pegs, with Ree’s flier propped up against the napkin dispenser. Scully is picking at an anemic salmon fillet, and eyeing Mulder’s chicken fried steak with disdain.

“You know you want a bite,” he says around a mouthful of mashed potatoes and gravy. 

She looks irked. “I didn’t have time for a run this afternoon because I was on the phone with the eponymous Baptist Ladies.”

“I wasn’t going for leisure,” he says with an air of wounded dignity. “Talked to a lot of people while I was out and about. The crotchety old ladies on their porches love me, I’ll have you know. I’m charming, for a Yankee.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “They just thought you looked good in your running shorts.” She pauses, then looks mortified.

“Oh yeah? How about you; you think I look good in them?” She’s so easy to torment sometimes and besides, he’d kind of like to know.

“Your vanity needs no help from me,” she says primly. “So what did you hear?”

“Nothing official, of course, but there are rumors that the oldest Ross siblings, the twin boys, were getting weed from Tallulah, so Wyatt has it in for her.”

“Plants,” Scully corrects. “Geraniums, probably.”

“Doubtless. Some people think Ree stumbled onto Tallulah’s crop and Tallulah killed her, but given the fact that the geranium sales are an open secret, it’s pretty unlikely.”

“Plus I doubt Ree would know it if she saw it,” Scully adds. 

“She might if her brothers are dope hounds with the reefer madness, Scully. Mary Jane. Grass. Wacky tobaccy. It’s ruining good Christian families.” He shakes his head somberly. “Ganja.”

“Devil’s lettuce,” Scully adds and, for whatever reason, this undoes them both and they dissolve into laughter.

This earns them startled glances from nearby patrons who seem to generally disapprove of their dark clothing and clandestine ways.

It feels incredible to laugh. Less than a month ago his head had been cracked open like an oyster while Scully and Diana played Spy vs. Spy. And here he was now in this awful little town, safely away from all major conspiracies, having had carnal knowledge of the enigmatic Dr. Scully, and he had just won at Pegs.

And Scully thinks he looked sexy in his shorts.

She is glaring at the peg board when he asks about her phone calls. “So what’d you learn, other than a tuna casserole recipe and how to tease your hair?”

“Weird stuff, your favorite.”

“Lay it on me, mama.”

Scully settles back in the booth. Delivering information is her comfort zone. “Well, Tallulah’s basic facts were right enough. She was left on the front steps of the Home in a white laundry basket. By the look of the umbilical stump, she wasn’t a hospital delivery. No one was ever able to identify her parents. But about a week before she appeared, a baby girl went missing from the Home. There were no signs of a break-in, and the baby never turned up. Everyone just assumed her parents had taken her back and the whole thing was swept under the rug.”

Some quick math, and Mulder realizes this wasn’t long before Samantha went missing. He frowns, and Scully’s expression makes it clear that she’s done the same calculation.

“It was April,” she offers gently. “In the South.”

“Go on.” 

“The woman I spoke to said Tallulah did have lots of problems with other kids, but not just for her appearance. She did get teased for the teeth, but apparently she was an aggressive kid. Biting, pulling long hair. They went to the Y once a week for swimming lessons, and Tallulah would drag kids under the water under the guise of playing. She was banned from the pool eventually.”

“Jesus,” Mulder says. “Someone needed more time with Mr. Rogers.”

“Oh, is that how they addressed abandonment issues at Oxford, Dr. Mulder?” Scully asks, archly.

He grins. “Hey, the NHS budget isn’t unlimited. So how’d she end up here?”

“Well, apparently when a kid turns 18 they give them some money and set them up with a job in the community, which isn’t a bad situation. But Tallulah took off at 15, said she was sick of handouts. The Baptist Ladies put the word out, but Tallulah was good at hiding and was 19 before anyone found her. And only then by sheer accident - a former employee bumped into her in Macon, Georgia.”

“Were they able to tell you about her movements at all in the intervening decade? Places she’s lived?”

Scully shakes her head. “No, and there’s no records on her at all. No arrests for anything as minor as vagrancy or trespassing, much less dealing. Her fingerprints aren’t in the system. She’s like a ghost. I was going to call the sheriff’s office to ask about the weed, but I thought better of it. I don’t want to walk into anything unprepared.”

He sighs. “I’d like to look at missing child cases in the past ten years, ones where the kid went missing around freshwater. We’ll narrow it to prepubescent girls.”

She nods. “I’ll see what Danny can scrounge on ViCAP. The Baptist Home is supposed to be faxing Tallulah’s medical records, thin as they are, and I want to see what I can pull out. Oh, and here’s another thing. Marjorie - that’s the woman I spoke with - Marjorie said Tallulah was always going out at night to wander in the woods. Her bed and storage cabinet were always covered with green stains and - get this - what appeared to be gold dust. Her hair was wet and had algae in it, like she’d been swimming in a pond or lake. No matter what they did, she’d manage to get out. Eventually they gave up because she kept returning and it seemed to keep her violence down.” 

Mulder considers this. He’s had an idea since yesterday that he’s been hesitant to voice, but what the hell? “I was thinking about her gloves when we visited this morning.”

Scully raises a non-committal eyebrow.

“Hear me out. All of Ree’s stuff was covered with algae, right? And there was algae where it shouldn’t be at the crime scene and all over Tallulah’s wall. She said she’s good with plants too, right? What if algae grows when she touches things? What if that’s why she was wearing gloves when we came by?”

Scully puts her fork down. “She’s an algae witch?”

He sighs. “I’m saying it’s maybe a...like a manifestation of something else. It’s something she can’t control.”

“Let me guess. You think the missing baby was taken by Tallulah’s unearthly mother and that Tallulah is actually a changeling left in her place. She’s from a race of some kind of evil water fairies, and has stolen Rhiannon Ross as her mother stole the other child twenty-six years ago.”

A slow smile spreads across Mulder’s face. “Scully, are you trying to get me back in bed?”

She reddens, rolls her eyes. “Textbooks could be written about your deviance.”

“Oh, no doubt. But details aside, you have to admit there are some weird details there.”

“All our cases have weird details. But the algae is notable. I’d like to take some samples from Tallulah’s cabin and compare it to the algae on Ree’s belongings. I’ll have to see what equipment the sheriff's office has. We’ll need to send some out for DNA testing to be sure, but I could at least do some microscopic analysis. It could place her at the scene.”

Mulder passes her the little vial he’d collected that morning. It’s fuller than he remembered.

“Sneak,” Scully says, approvingly, sipping at her Diet Coke.

“I know you like bad boys. Apropos of which, why do you think the sheriff has left Tallulah alone about this weed thing? I mean, this doesn’t seem like a hip and swinging town, does it?”

“I was wondering that too. And Wyatt never mentioned it either. I’m also wondering why, if we go with your hypothesis, Tallulah would steal a grade schooler rather than a baby. And Mulder, that cabin was one room. There’s nowhere she could have stashed a child. What’s more, shouldn’t some changeling child should have shown up by now? I mean, by your logic.”

Mulder wipes his plate with a roll. “I admit there are complex facets involved here,” he allows. He has ideas percolating, but they need more time to steep. “But whatever the reasons she may have had, there’s no one else who even seems remotely likely. No dubious strangers in town, no evidence of any kind at the crime scene. No one I talked to today indicated there were any grudges with the Rosses.”

Scully curls back into the corner of their booth, looking modish with her dark clothes and sleek hair. “I hate this,” she says. “Autopsies are so clear. Manner and mechanism. You just read the body and it tells a story. Sometimes it’s a challenge, but it’s always there. Missing persons are nightmarish, especially children.”

Mulder, as he is prone to do, thinks of Addie Sparks. “Missing still has hope, I guess.”

She looks chagrined. “I didn’t think, Mulder. I’m sorry.”

He hates that his missing sister has consumed her life too. Hell, Melissa was murdered and Scully’s moved on in a relatively healthy fashion. “No, don’t be. I just mean that there’s cruelty there, in that hope. Schroedinger’s crime, you know. That last heart of Roche’s is the end of someone’s hope, only they’ll never know.”

She reaches across the table to take his hand in hers. “The sense that an answer exists but isn’t knowable is a miserable feeling,” she says. “Especially if it’s an answer that could redefine one’s status quo if only it were revealed.”

He’s pretty sure she’s not talking about the case now, and traces her fingers with his thumb. “So you wanna kill this thing, then? Perform a post-mortem, write it up, and move on?” He doesn’t want this, but at least he’d know.

Scully draws infinite circles on his wrist with her nail, and gooseflesh rises over his body. “Hope doesn’t have to be painful,” she murmurs to the table. She looks up at him with her summer sky eyes in the fading autumn light.

Mulder’s heart squeezes hard, then expands. “It’s kept me going for a long time, even when it is,” he tells her. 

She nods, lets go of him. “The motto of my first  profession is hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. But I tend to forget the maxim that should drive the second one.”

He has a flashback to scanning the plasma-vivid mind behind that perfect face. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“Dum spiro spero,” she says.

“While I breathe, I hope.” He smiles.

They get the check and go to the car.

***

The drive holds the easy silence of a pizza hangover, the kind when they’re wiped out on Scully’s couch with half-eaten slices and paperwork on the coffee table and floor.

Scully has her feet propped up on the dash and her seat reclined. She has a manila folder on her face, her eyes closed.

He thinks, as he sometimes does of late, about what a shit he was to her after Philadelphia. He’s never asked if she knew then that she was dying, but he’s always suspected she must have. 

All he’d known at the time was that she’d blown him off for a good-looking psychopath, let the man brand her like cattle, then poured her herself into his bed. He’d hated Jerse for the bruises on her face and body and psyche, but the man was under guard and therefore beyond his rage. He siphoned some of it onto Scully instead, for daring to need more than him and for seeking it. He wanted it to be about the desk because he could have given her the fucking desk. He could have easily fixed that without having to fix anything else between them. He could have kept going in a straight line instead of trying to make a map.

He thought of her in Jerse’s arms, in Jerse’s bed. Beaten by Jerse’s fists. He imagined the needle biting into the flawless canvas of her back and leaving that turning serpent there. He noticed that it went in a circle and at the time, he’d let that be about him too.

Later, when he understood that she was even more ephemeral than he feared, fits of self-pity left him wondering why she went for Jerse instead of him. Surely she knew he was available for emotionally destructive sex if that’s what she craved before dying. 

But it turned out that sleeping with her had been like losing his virginity all over again. In twenty years or so, if they were still alive, he might find the balls to tell her that.

***

Scully yawns when he parks the car, batting the folder off her face. “I was awake,” she insists.

“Very convincing,” he assures her. 

She swats his arm, straightens her seat. “I’m wondering if she was dealing elsewhere, maybe giving a kickback to LLE. Someone gets wind, she gets kicked out of town and moves along to another friendly hamlet. You know how these networks run.”

“Local law enforcement,” Mulder sighs. “The eternal bane of my existence. It would certainly explain a few things.”

“And if the Ross twins really are buying, you can see why Wyatt wouldn’t mention it to us. He can throw her under the bus without dragging his kids in too.”

Mulder rubs his eyes. “But how does it all come together? I mean let’s say Tallulah slides into these little towns, she deals to make ends meet. Pays some kickbacks. But why risk it on a serious crime like kidnaping or murder? This is the South, Scully. They do not fuck around, and kidnaping’s federal.”

She shakes her head, still frustrated. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait for Danny, I guess. I’ll leave him a message when I get back to my room. The internet connection out here is a nightmare, so maybe he can dig it up while I’m at the lab.”

Scully unbuckles her seatbelt, but makes no move to leave the car. She plays with the edge of the folder. “I know you said you weren’t looking to go steady, but now that I’ve put out I was hoping I could get your varsity jacket.” 

He feels some of the tightness leave his neck at her willingness to play. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s a pretty sweet jacket. That’s more than a one-nighter. Maybe if you swing by in a cheerleader outfit I’d think about it.”

She looks up, smiling one of her rare smiles that show her teeth. “I think my mom still has my high school uniform in mothballs somewhere.”

He tosses his phone onto her lap. “Call. Now.”

Scully laughs her throaty, chuckly laugh. “Good night, Mulder,” she says, opening her door. “See you tomorrow.” She passes his phone back and slips into the dark.

He grins all the way to his room.

***

Diana comes to him again that night. He finds her at the edge of a meadow on a large rock, a vivid rainbow overhead. She wears a floor length evening gown of shimmering gold fabric, and her flesh is whole. She pats the rock, inviting him to sit.

“Hello, Fox.” 

He scowls, sitting. “As a manifestation of my subconscious, you could have the decency not to call me Fox.”

She laughs. “As an alleged manifestation of your subconscious, maybe you just want to be acknowledged as a fox by a desirable woman. How is Agent Scully this evening?”

“Spare me. Nice dress, Diana.”

She stands up and twirls. The gown flares out from her graceful waist into a narrow bell. Her feet are bare. “It is, isn’t it? It’s cloth of gold. Very Eleanor of Aquitaine, I think.”

“Is it heavy?”

Diana sits back down. “Oh, yes. Terribly heavy. And costly.”

He rubs it between his fingers. The fabric is stiff and itchy, like tweed. “Well, nothing’s too expensive when you’re dead, I guess.”

“Not expensive. Costly,” she corrects.

He furrows his brow. “Okay. What’s the difference?”

She shrugs. “It’s just that the cheapest way to pay is usually money. Some things cost much more than money. Surely you know that by now. But there’s no need to be dour, Fox. It’s beautiful out, and look at the rainbow.” 

He does. “Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me,” he sings softly. Even in his dreams his voice is terrible.

Diana gets to her feet again, spinning in the grass. She starts to twirl faster, her hair whipping out around her. Her skin greys again, her face turning cadaverous, and little crawling things flying from her into the grass.

Mulder scuttles back from her on the rock, repulsed but captivated as she becomes a formless blur. 

Then she stops, stares at him from her cavernous eye sockets. Her bony chest is panting.

“Diana?” he breathes. 

She steps towards him and flickers back to her earlier smooth-skinned appearance.

Step.

Flicker.

Step.

Flicker.

He is transfixed.

“Is it real, or is it Memorex?” she muses.

Step.

Flicker.

He wakes up gasping before she can touch him.

***

He’d hoped this kind of shit would end with his neurosurgery, but apparently his subconscious is tenacious. Unless it’s not his subconscious, in which case he needs to get some tips from Scully, who sees an awful lot of ghosts for someone who doesn’t believe in them.

Yawning, he gets the in-room pot gurgling and clunking with whatever factory sweepings pass for coffee in the sticks. The room fills with an aroma reminiscent of burning tires.

A knock at the door distracts him and he opens it to find Scully holding two styrofoam cups steaming from their plastic lids. “Went for a quick run,” she says, stepping under his arm into the room.

He shuts the door.

“Mulder, prop that door open. It smells like wet asphalt in here.” She sets the cups down and turns the coffee pot off with a look of contempt.

“Ah, Scully,” he says, sipping from the cup marked M.

“You can take the car today,” she says. “Someone from the sheriff’s office is giving me a lift to the lab in Huntsville. It’s about an hour each way, so I doubt I’ll be back before dark. What are your plans?”

“I want to talk to Tallulah again,” he says. 

“Watch out for those goats,” she warns darkly. “I think the little one cost us the deposit.”

“I’ll bring pine cones.”

Scully frowns, steps closer to him. “Mulder, you don’t look so good. Are you feeling alright? Maybe you should have them bring her into the station for questioning instead.”

He waves her off. “Bed’s not great,” he says. “I’m just tossing and turning some, but the coffee should perk me up.” He takes a large gulp. “Mmmm, perky.”

She narrows her eyes. “You’re a liar, but if I try to actually examine you you’re just going to be cranky or perverted. At least make sure your phone’s charged so you can call me if you keel over or something.”

He pouts, preemptively deprived of the opportunity for a predictable playing doctor joke. Damn her. “You suck the fun out of everything,” he informs her, sitting on the bed.

She walks over to him, standing between his knees. She puts her empty coffee cup on the night stand, then grips his t-shirt with both hands.

He swallows.

“As your physician, I ask that you try not to die in a stupid and avoidable fashion,” Scully says. Her mouth is inches away. She shakes his shirt for good measure before leaving.

He goes to the shower and stays there for some time.

***

Mulder stops off at the farm store where Scully obtained the coffee. He selects a raspberry danish, then adds a loaf of fresh bread and some local milk in a quaint glass bottle. 

“Five dollar deposit on the bottle,” the clerk informs him. Fahv dahlah dipawsit.

“What’s it made of, crystal?” he grouses, swiping his card.

“You that FBI guy?” the clerk asks suspiciously. “It’s pasteurized, it’s perfectly legal milk.You can test it.” 

“It seems fine,” Mulder assures her. He’d had no idea that there was a black market in milk. He takes his bag and makes for the door.

“It’s not homogenized though,” she calls after him. 

Mulder takes his unhomogenized, perfectly legal milk up into the mountains.

***

Tallulah’s chopping wood when he pulls up. She has on the same Carhartt overalls Wyatt did, and thick leather gloves this time. There are splinters and sawdust in her long braid. She’s not a bit beautiful, but has an appealing serenity.

“Hey,” Mulder says to the goats, who have come to sniff him. He scratches the big one behind the ears. The little one makes for the car.

Tallulah straightens up, wipes her wrist across her brow. “Mornin’, Agent Mulder. Where’s your partner?”

“She’s the science half of this outfit,” Mulder says. “She’s peering at things through microscopes and running them through unpronounceable equipment.”

“Like that algae you scraped off my wall?” Tallulah sounds amused.

“That would be one of the things, yes.”

She frowns thoughtfully. “You sure that doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment?”

“California v. Greenwood says I can search your trash,” Mulder informs her. “Besides, you invited us in.”

“Like vampires,” Tallulah observes, and adds the split wood to her growing pile.

Mulder holds out the bag containing the bread and milk. He ate the danish on the way up. “Here,” he says.

She takes his offering and peers in. “What’s this?”

“Call it a belated housewarming gift,” he says. 

Tallulah looks at him for a long moment. “You know, some of the old mountain women believe it’s wise to leave a little offering of such homey treats to the Good Folk. Oh, they go to church of a Sunday and preach the gospel just fine, but come Saturday night, there’s little biscuits and butter at the forest’s edge, wrapped all in leaves.”

“I heard something about that,” Mulder says. “I guess it’s like wearing suspenders and a belt.”

She wipes down her hatchet with a faded bandanna, then puts it in a little storage bin next to the house. “Funny what people believe, isn’t it?”

“Funny.” He doesn’t take his eyes off her, even when the little goat jumps on the hood of his car.

Tallulah opens the milk and takes a deep gulp of it from the bottle. “That’s very good,” she says. “Now your partner would roll her lovely eyes at such a thing as you’ve brought, but she’ll kneel for wafers and wine.”

Mulder doesn’t ask how Tallulah knows this. “There’s a five dollar deposit on the bottle,” he says. “All yours, since you’re out of business at the moment.”

She smiles greenly at him. “Come in, Agent Mulder.”

He follows her up the steps and into the cabin, looking at her round-bellied stove, the faded patchwork quilt on the narrow brass bed. Mulder sees the appeal of this simplicity, a pared down life to strip away all foolish distraction. He recognizes his own romanticization of it, a rich boy with summer homes and an Oxford education wanting to play at Saint Jerome. He also considers that the Unabomber went to Harvard and lived this way too. Minimalism may not be inherently enlightening. 

Tallulah is sprawled in a chair, her steel-toed boots kicked off. Mulder sits at the table across from her, bread and milk between them. A ham and a cleaver are out as well.

“You hungry?” Tallulah asks. “That ham is from Sam Oakley out by the grain elevator. Just delicious.”

Mulder shakes his head. “Can she come back?” he asks, without preamble.

“Agent Scully? Any time she likes, though I’d ask for more of that milk if she does. I’ll pay you the deposit.”

Mulder senses a shift in her demeanor. She’s not the friendly, country orphan any longer. There’s mischief rising in her, something tart and maybe wicked. Her posture is languid rather than awkward now.

“You know what I mean, Tallulah.”

She works on loosening her braid. It’s hard in the thick gloves. “You mean Ree. You still think I know something about that.”

Mulder realizes that she is enjoying herself, remembers that the fay are supposed to love riddles and wordplay. “Well, we can talk about something else. I heard the Ross twins are customers of yours.”

She laughs. “The thing I absolutely love best about people is that they make rules to stop themselves doing everything they long for, then do it anyway while pointing their lying fingers at the next fellow for the same. I don’t really need the money, but I do think it’s funny to watch these fine upstanding people condemn me with one hand and pay me with the other. It’s pleasurable money to spend, and it passes the time.”

Mulder’s anarchic soul cannot deny the schadenfreude. “I notice you used third person instead of first.”

“I don’t make those kinds of rules. I just sell the devil’s lettuce to all comers without judgement. I do like to watch them chase themselves in circles, but I’m not a hypocrite.”

Devil’s lettuce. His neck prickles. “No? What are you then?”

She smiles, and her mouth has too many teeth in it. They seem very thin now. “I’m the apple in the Garden,” she says. “This realm has made nothing but trouble for my folk, and I like to pay back mischief as I can.” 

Tallulah slowly takes her gloves off and balls her hands into fists. She opens them and pieces of gold ore are in them. Closes her fists, opens her fists. She pours the gold onto the table and the pieces are streaked with algae.

He stares, awed. Shaken.

Tallulah holds his gaze. “Do you want some of it, Agent Mulder? Everyone else does, and it only costs a little. Can you offer me a most beloved child? The ring finger of each hand? All the memories of your sister?”

“Where’s Ree?” he chokes out.

Tallulah continues as if he hasn’t spoken. “Maybe there’s something else you want? A love spell?” She winks a green eye. “But you don’t really need it. She wants this as much as you, Mulder. When you kissed her she felt only relief and lust in equal measure. My god, she rode you like it was the Kentucky Derby, skirt around her waist and her breasts tight to your chest.”

Tallulah reaches up to stroke his cheek and he jerks his head away, appalled.

“How do you know all of these things?” His voice is scarcely a whisper and his stomach is lurching.

“A little ghostie tells me,” she says, and mimes an hourglass woman in the air. “Don’t think she realizes she does it though.”

Fingers trembling, Mulder retrieves three iron nails from his pocket. He’d pried them out of the floor at the motel, and now he brandishes them, hoping. Dum spiro spero.

Tallulah looks at them and hisses. “Cold iron!” she shrieks. “It binds my magic!” 

Then she snatches them from his hand and eats them, laughing.

He is too shocked to be frightened.

“Don’t feel bad,” Tallulah says, consolingly. “You’re not the first. Listen, you’ve looked through lots of one-way mirrors, right? Interrogating?”

He nods, not yet trusting himself to speak.

“Okay, well, imagine stacks of it. If you were standing on a tower of it, shiny side down, you could see to the bottom.”

Nods again.

“Attaboy. Now, if you were under that tower, looking up, you couldn’t see through up to the top. Hell, you wouldn’t even know there was a tower. One layer or a hundred would look the same. All you’d see was your own reality reflected back.”

Something is starting to coalesce in his brain. “You… your people are looking, uh, through to us, but we can’t perceive you.”

“Oh, looking down is much more accurate,” Tallulah assures him. “Like how you know ants exist and find them interesting, but they have no understanding that you exist because they’re tiny and stupid.” She looks smug and takes another drink of milk.

“Why are you telling me this?” He hates her, but he still wants her to talk.

She reaches across the table, caresses his hands with gentle fingers before he pulls them back. “Because no one will ever believe you and so it amuses me for you to know,” she says sweetly. “You can see up through the worlds  piecemeal, I think. Bits of the whole, like the Louvre through a keyhole. Your partner will say this was a hallucination brought on by recent brain trauma. Your superiors will laugh at you - at least aliens are masculine and slightly scientifically respectable. But fairies? Oh, dear.”

For a fraction of a fraction of a second, she wears Diana’s skeletal face.

Mulder feels hot bile rise in his throat, but forces it down. “Where’s Ree?” 

“The sheriffs in these silly towns never even remember our bargains, of course. They harass for my little game with the ganja, but then no one can recall why I’ve been picked up, and they apologize and I go. Some like babies, to start fresh, but not me. I like to know what I’m getting. I only take one a year, and they’re good ones. Sweet girls who love the woods and water. I was nineteen before I could make the gold come, so that’s only seven. You’ve seen worse then seven. Remember Roche, Mulder?” She changes her face to remind him.

The bile does come then, and he vomits on her floor.

“Rude,” she says mildly, and water pours from her fingers to wash it away and out the front door.

He fights nausea and dizziness. “Give them back. Give me Ree, Tallulah. Just let me take Ree home.” His hair is soaked with sweat and he’s terrified it will be Goldstein all over again. He pulls his gun anyway. Can she turn it on him like Pusher? Scully will be very angry with him if so.

Tallulah is unconcerned. “I don’t hurt them, you goose. I take them up through the looking-glass, so to speak. It’s beautiful there. It’s safe for them. They deserve better than to live with the people who look the other way for thirty pieces of gold. A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. Or is it a Catch-22? I’m not much of a reader.”

“Ree,” he grinds out between clenched teeth. He puts his finger on the trigger.

Tallulah grabs the cleaver and chops her hand off. There’s no blood. “Shoot me,” she giggles, and he passes out.

***

It’s still light out when he awakens in his car, just past two-thirty by the dashboard clock. There’s a glass of sweet tea and a slab of pound cake on the console. Feel better, reads a note in a fine copperplate. Sorry for the shock. Had to run an errand, but you should eat and drink before you drive or you might crash. Don’t worry - there’s nothing wrong with it. But no need to die in a stupid and avoidable fashion. Thanks again for the gift. I might return the favor.

Mulder eats and drinks. He figures if her food is poisoned or enchanted, he’ll be spared explaining to the Rosses that their daughter was kidnapped through an interdimensional portal as a sacrifice to the greed of public officials and the amusement of a wicked fairy.

The cheapest way to pay is money.

The snack is revitalizing and he sits until he feels his blood sugar level out. He wonders if Tallulah would have killed him if he’d met her empty-handed. He wonders if Ree is really alive somewhere, or if it’s just a game.

A headache has begun pulsing deep in his temple, like the throbbing brain of IT on Camazotz. Mulder fumbles his sunglasses out of the glove box.

He puts them on, filtering out the worst of the light. He breathes through his nose, massages his temples like Scully used to do when her tumor became rowdy. He begins to relax, the nausea and pain subsiding. His eyes slide closed as he digests the morning’s events.

“I’m sorry,” Diana says, her hand on his thigh.

He sits bolt upright and she’s next to him, her long legs cramped in the Scully-configured seat. 

“I’m not asleep,” he insists to both of them, looking wildly around. Tallulah’s house, the mountain, the forest - none of it has the surreality of a dream.

Diana strokes his cheek gently with her cool grey fingers. “I’m going now,” she says. “I thought I was helping, making it up to you after a last betrayal. But it turns out…” she shakes her head.

“Diana, wait. Are we here or am I sleeping? Do you know where Ree is?” He hears his own panic and fights it. “Diana, just help me find her. Don’t leave yet.”

She presses her lips to his temple, murmuring. 

“Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;”

Agent Diana Fowley fades away then, into the quiet peace of nothingness.

Mulder never feels himself waken, never feels a shift in consciousness. She’s simply vanished and he’s alone to finish the rhyme.

“Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?”

***

His drive back has a frenzied, febrile quality with saturated colors and echoing sounds. He is sweat-soaked and shivering when he gets back to the motel.

Mulder kicks his boots off and crawls into the bed. He draws the covers up under under his chin and falls away into the dark.

***

He wakes to her light fingers smoothing hair from his forehead. The sky outside is dark and starry, but it’s not even seven.

Mulder blinks, confused. “Scully?”

She’s sitting at the edge of the bed, in her dark trousers and a grey top. Her face is serious. “Mulder, I’ve been trying to wake you for an hour. You were burning up, but the fever seems to have broken. Did something happen?”

Everything. “No. I think you were right. I just came back to work too soon.” He gives her what he hopes is an appealing look.

Scully smells a rat but doesn’t push. She presses her fingers to his wrist. “I want you on antibiotics. I’ll call the pharmacy in the morning. They closed at five.”

He nods. “What did you find on the algae?”

She strokes his hair again and he feels like purring. “Nothing much. There were a few different strains at the pond but only one in her house. And a common one at that. It’s no good for linkage, I’m afraid, though I had them run a couple other tests. Nothing in the medical records they sent either - she’s as healthy as she says.”

“Well, did you get anything from Danny on disappearances?” 

She stops petting him to get up and retrieve a piece of folded paper from her jacket pocket. “I found a dozen that look possible, and six that match the details of this case pretty closely.”

He pats the blanket. “Come back and show me some more of that famous bedside manner.”

She snorts, but returns to her perch. “Here, look. I highlighted the six that look best. Called them too, and gave Tallulah’s name and description to LLE. None of them recognized the name or description.”

Of course, Mulder thinks. Of fucking course. “Betcha we’d get a different answer if we asked people who live there.”

Scully frowns. “What does that mean? You really think police departments from 6 towns are all embroiled in an elaborate web to protect a very low level weed dealer? Mulder, come on. I know you love a nice sexy conspiracy, but I think the best answer is that there’s some kind of drifter active in the area. I say we turn the whole thing over to NCMEC and go home. You look awful and there’s nothing else we can do here.”

He presses his hands to his face. Fuck, fuck. He looks back at Scully.  “I mean this lovingly, but please do not say anything condescending until I finish my undoubtedly insane rambling, okay?”

She narrows her eyes. “I should have let you sleep.”

Mulder props himself up against the pillows. He’s still chilly. “Okay, so there’s this concept of something called the Teind. It’s um…shit.” He stares at the bathroom door for a moment.

“Mulder, when you’re hesitant to share a theory, it gives me grave concern.” She scoots higher on the bed, crosses her legs. “But go on. The Teind.”

“So the idea is that there are other worlds - other simultaneous realms - that are layered over this one. Like a multiverse, okay? Like Schrödinger. You love Schrödinger, right? And Brian Greene?”

She purses her lips.

Mulder barrels ahead. “Okay, so. So one of these realms is what is sometimes called Faerie, or Elfhame. And our world, the so-called Christian realm, is constantly encroaching on theirs. Every seven years the Lords of Elfhame must pay a tribute to the Lords of Hell. This tribute ensures that the Christian realm with not destroy Elfhame and that the Lords of Hell will keep the Christian realm in check. I think that’s what these seven girls are - I think they’re tributes, or possible tributes. Maybe there’s a big pool created, I don’t know.”

Scully says nothing and it makes him nervous.

“Scully?”

She flops back beside him on the bed, gazing at the ceiling. “It’s a prettier story than drowning or murder or sex trafficking,” she says. “I mean sure, it’s essentially a complex pagan mafia real estate kidnaping scam, but it’s still better.”

He pulls the blankets up to his chin.

Scully turns, props herself up on her side to look at him. “What in the hell did Tallulah say to you, Mulder? Because I have to say, this is pretty far down the garden path even for you.”

He wonders if it’s even worth it. “She was able to conjure objects, Scully. Gold in her bare hands.” He has enough sense not to mention the cleaver.

Scully scoffs. “My dad could pull a quarter out of my ear.”

“She said that LLE knew she was taking these girls and she gave them gold for looking away. That the weed thing was just for her amusement, stirring the pot. So to speak.” He grins at his own unintentional joke. 

Scully scoots closer. “Mulder, what am I going to do with you? Don’t you think it’s much more likely that this woman is part of a larger drug and prostitution ring, tasked with procuring children for those up the chain? I believe there could be payoffs - small town cops are overworked and underpaid. But payments to the Lords of Hell? Realms? If she did show you gold, she was probably trying buy your silence as well but didn’t realize you’re too incorruptible to even notice, you stupid noble idiot.”

He feels oddly pleased by this assessment. “Well, can we at least agree that she probably is involved?”

Scully runs her finger down the bridge of his nose. “Yes.”

“And that whatever the source of funds, there are payoffs happening?”

She traces his eyes, his brows, his lashes. “Yes.”

“And that 1977’s Elvis in Concert is grievously underrated in terms of both quality and significance?”

She strokes the corner of his mouth. “Absolutely.”

If he does have a brain infection, he couldn’t care less if it means dying in bed like this. “Get under the covers,” he demands. 

She sits up. “I’m afraid not.”

“No, Scully, we were doing great while you kept saying yes to everything I said. Let’s try again and get back in the groove - can we agree that Kate Capshaw in Temple of Doom was a tremendous step down from Karen Allen in Raiders?”

She smiles. “Not even negotiable. But really, I’ve got a fax coming in up at the office and you need to rest. If we get stuck here because you end up with some exotic encephalitis, so help me god.”

He takes her hand as she gets up. “So you’re really ready to hand this off?”

Scully sighs, squeezing his fingers. “Look, the fax I’m waiting on is from Danny. I asked for a ViCAP cross reference on any unsolved sexual assaults or attempted abductions that dovetail with those missing girls. If nothing else, I think there’s a real case there that needs to be put together. It was a good call, Mulder.”

“If I go to sleep like a good boy, will you let me have one more chance with Tallulah?” He bats his lashes at her.

“One More Chance With Tallulah sounds like a Barry Manilow song. I’ll tell you what - I’ll check on you later and if you still haven’t got a fever I’ll allow it.”

He crosses his heart and lets her go.

***

He dreams a memory. 

Two weeks past, and he’s sprawled on his couch while Scully afflicts him with acts of medical science. She’s administering neurological tests, bruising him halfway to gangrene with a pressure cuff, and siphoning off enough blood to keep her bucktoothed sheriff happy.

“Scully,” he laments. “Your healing will be the death of me.” 

“Don’t be such a baby,” she says, with her usual bedside warmth. “You’re a week past a very serious brain trauma, and you refused to stay in the hospital because you’re an idiot. So you’ll put up with me and you’ll like it.”

He does like it. Looping into her mind with that fungus had been nothing like this. Her heart is an open wound that she constantly stitches back together to make it through another day. The amount of fight in her is enormous, and she channels into a broken and thankless world. 

She loves him, and what surprises him is that it isn’t the inevitable pair-bonding of proximity and isolation. Scully thinks about that sticky June day in the hallway too. Finishes the thought, sometimes, pinned to the wall like a butterfly with his fingers in her hair.

Pretty hot, Scully.

She’s bent over him with her tiny flashlight to check his pupils and his tracking, a corner of her lower lip tucked behind her front teeth. She leans forward, her brow furrowed at some minute anomaly. He stares at the arabesque of her collarbones, the two lines that circle her white throat. 

“Mulder, keep your eyes up,” she says in doctorly annoyance.

He does, and he doubts it takes psychic ability to read what’s onhis face

She runs her tongue over her top lip, and it’s like a circuit closes.

His hands are at the back of her neck, her waist, pulling her towards him as he sits up. He kisses her like should have ages ago, reckless and open-mouthed and decisive.

Scully drops the flashlight and kneels next to him on the sofa. She sips at his mouth with her cool little tongue, slides her fingers through his hair. She stops short  at the bandage and pulls away. “Mulder,” she says, ashamed, and moves to get up.

He grabs her upper arm, far harder than he means to. She gasps, and not at all unhappily. He had not seen this in her directly, but he had suspected.

“Let me go,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I was thinking. You’re not well.”

She’s close enough for him to see her hard nipples through the silk, her dilated pupils. He keeps his eyes on hers while uncurling his fingers from her bicep. 

She swallows.

He reaches out to undo the minuscule pearl buttons on her blouse. He’s always loved the high drama of women’s clothing, like a puzzle box.

Scully says his name again.

“Go,” he tells her, as her shirt falls open. He slips his hands under the fabric to plane her back and waist. He’d touched her here in Antarctica, but not like this. He tongues the tight stretch of her navel, breathes in the hot scent of the skin beneath her bra. It’s astringent with her tea-tree soap, sharp with her sweat.

She’s on her knees still, her fingers back at his stubbled jaw, his earlobes. She’s dipping her head to kiss his hair while she makes little animal noises.

“Go,” he repeats, and she doesn’t.

He unhooks her bra, a simple white satin affair, and she lets go of him long enough to pull it off with her shirt. 

It is with difficulty that Mulder sits back to look at her. Her belly is flat and taut, her breasts full above them. They are lightly veined with the blue of her eyes, her nipples the color of late raspberries. Around them is the fine, crepey skin of her areolae, puckered tight. Her head is tipped forward, glorious flame of hair falling around her fine Roman face, full lips parted.

He’s hard to the point of pain.

Scully watches him watch her, reaches behind her back to unfasten her skirt. She laughs.

“What?” 

“It’s stuck, Mulder. The zipper’s stuck.” She tugs more forcefully, her breasts shifting as she moves.

He half assumes this is the ghost of Ahab at work, denying the FBI the last vestige of his daughter. Mulder pulls at the zipper too, but it doesn’t budge.

Scully reaches under the hem of her skirt and works her stockings and underwear down. She tosses them away like snakeskin. 

His cocks twitches in his jeans with seven years of potential energy. No pretending he hasn’t wanted her since she stripped down to her good-girl cotton panties in a panic, but it’s so much more now.

Pulls his shirt off, then tugs her onto his lap. She’s infertile and knows his medical records better than he does, but he asks anyway. “Condom?”

She shakes her head, runs her light hands over his chest. He could come from this alone, the weight of her bare ass on his lap and the sensory overload of breasts and hands and scent.

He groans when she sucks at the tender skin below his ear. “Scully, I’m pushing forty and I think it’s only fair to warn you that-“

She’s opened the fly of his jeans. Mulder raises his hips, Scully still on his lap, to work them down with his boxers. The cool air on his cock is torment.

Time slows, drips like honey, then stalls entirely. Scully’s eyes are wide, focused, as she moves herself over and around him. Her head rolls to the side, then forward. She sighs something blasphemous from flushed lips.

Mulder bites his tongue until it bleeds to ensure he’ll last longer than the average teenager. Perhaps her next thesis can be on the frictionless surface of her own body, the impossibly slick heat of it. He wants to taste her too, but that would require not being inside her and god help him, he hasn’t got the willpower for that right now.

Scully’s head is against his neck, panting humid nonsense into his ear while her breasts are flattened to his chest. He holds her at the hips, letting the sinuous flexion of her spine have its way with them both.

He’s embarrassingly close to ending this, and clenches his nails into his palm. Scully bites at his neck, his earlobe, and there’s no resolve left. He groans something mindless as he clutches her body, shudders and twitches as she squirms around him. Mulder holds her tight to his hips, grinding up into her with the kind of surging napalm pleasure he’d forgotten was possible. Her little bare feet squeeze his thighs, and the universe condenses to her hundred and ten pounds of exquisite physiology. His head falls to her chest and he slips out of her with a groan.

He could sleep for days, but instead reaches between them under her skirt to find her clitoris. She so wet his finger slips at first. Scully squeaks, a little chirp, and finds a rhythm with him that pleases her. 

She arches her back away from him, her hips forward, and he is awed anew. Her hair tumbles between her shoulder blades, her breasts bouncing softly as he strokes her. 

He says her name, sotto voce, and slips two fingers inside her. He shifts his thumb to her clitoris, presses his fingers to the ridged tissue of her g-spot. He writes his name there a dozen times.

She whimpers, and he leans forward to draw the hot little bud of her nipple into his mouth. He sucks at it, grazes it with his teeth. Scully comes with a gasp and falls against him, shuddering. She licks his neck, mouth on his ear and his lips. 

He envelops her with his arms and draws the Navajo blanket around her narrow shoulders. He holds her, listening to her heart and lungs as they slow to normal. He smooths her tumbled hair.

She runs her fingers along his bandage again. “Are you okay?” 

He has literally never felt better in his life. He feels like a lord of creation, like Adam striding through the Garden of Eden to survey his dominion. “I’m fine,” he says, in her snippy voice.

She laughs, burrowing closer. “You have a bed, don’t you?”

Mulder slips an arm under her legs and another behind her neck. He lifts her as he gets to his feet, carrying her like a bride. She’s such a central force in his life, the mass around which he orbits, that it is odd for her to be so light. 

He kicks his bedroom door open and lays her out face-down on the comforter. “Let’s work on that skirt,” he says.

Somehow he’d forgotten about the tattoo. The burning red mouth that marked the beginning of their darkest times together, that portal to her lonely trip north. He pushes aside the memory of what he’d said, the photographic evidence that came home with her. There be dragons, the old maps say.

He kisses it and she flinches. He prays it isn’t shame. Or fear.

With careful maneuvering, he breaches the zipper and tugs the skirt away. She rolls to her back again, her body spilled across his dark blankets like a shaft of  errant starlight. He is pleased to note she has eschewed the recent fashion for shaving oneself utterly bare. 

He gets to his knees, pulls her to the edge of the mattress by her hard little ankles. She starts to speak, but he cannot hear once her thighs are tight against his ears. 

In the morning, she will disappear with the dew.

***

Her cool palm on his cheek wakes him and it takes an unhappy second for the dream to snap away. He’s uncomfortably hard and rolls onto his side for some relief. It’s eight by the bedside clock.

“Hey,” she says, sitting down. “You okay?” 

He clenches his left thigh until there’s pain, and it helps. She looks tired, he notices. Drawn and weary from too much bad coffee and too little proper sleep and feeding. He ought to make her take a vacation where she gets wrapped in seaweed and fed organic mangoes by beautiful castrati.  

But for now, they’ll have to manage on motel moisturizer and takeout. “Do I smell pizza?” 

“Indeed. Just wanted to see if the fever was gone first.” She squints at him. “You look a hell of a lot better. Did you take something? I might be able to hold off on the antibiotics; I know what they do to your stomach.”

He stretches. “Well, just in case, thanks for checking my forehead instead of going rectal,” he says. “Sometimes you have a slight sadistic side.”

“When was your last prostate exam?” she asks sweetly.

Mulder sits up. “I didn’t know that was your scene, but I’m open-minded. Let’s go.” He peels the covers back, feeling like he needs a long run to revive himself from the day. He hates being idle for so long, and his clothes feel stale.

Scully realizes she’s overplayed her hand and wrinkles her nose. “Let’s preserve the magic on that for now. You okay to get up, or should I bring the pizza here?”  

He’s not freezing anymore, and his head isn’t throbbing. “I’ll get up,” he says. “I’m starting to 

feel like one of those consumptive Victorian heroines.”

“Mmmm,” she says. “Maybe I should leech you and give you some cocaine for that.” Scully goes to the little table where the pizza box is sitting. She opens the lid, and hot greasy air wafts out.

Mulder gets up and walks over, scuffing his socks along the drab oatmeal carpet. He zaps her with his finger and she scowls.

“Ugh, go back to bed.”

He can’t help himself when she’s his favorite toy and part of his brain will always be an arrested 12 year old idiot. He flips the chair around to straddle it, resting his elbows across the back. “What’s that, mushroom and pepper?”

“And pepperoni on half for you.” Scully disdains the greasier meats herself, but will treat him on occasion.

Mulder realizes he’s starving and rolls a piece up like a burrito, demolishing it in four bites before Scully’s done blotting the grease off of her own.

“I’m not performing the Heimlich maneuver if you choke on that,” she says, delicately peeling off two slices of pepperoni that have contaminated her mushrooms. She holds them out to him.

Mulder snaps them out of her fingers like a trained seal. He rolls another slice up, gesturing with it. “So I’m cleared to go nose about more tomorrow, right?”

She tweaks his nose with her oily fingertips. “You’re certainly equipped for it.”

“Right for the gut. We can’t all look like we were carved from marble, I’m afraid. You’ll have to deal with my hideous deformity as nature presents it, Roxanne.” He eats half his pizza, then wipes his face.

Scully finishes her slice. “Did she really show you gold this morning, Mulder?”

He nods, swallows. “Yep. And you said that woman you talked to told she’d show up after nights out streaked with algae and gold dust. Maybe she was, I don’t know, developing her powers. You said she was missing for a few years.” 

She considers this. “I think indicates that she herself was being abused or exploited in some way from a young age, Mulder. I mean, if you can access it, unmarked gold is a nearly untraceable currency and good in any market. They start giving her little cuts, get her dealing in her teens to build trust and rapport with kids. It’s a trafficker’s dream.”  

He hates that she’s not wrong, and it’s got nothing to with defending his theory. He’s got a reputation as a bleeding heart in many corners, but would happily support supplying child predators as involuntary organ donors. Punching Roche had been a career highlight. 

“You have to concede that the linkage between fairies and gold goes way back.” Diana’s rainbow suddenly makes sense to him, and he feels stupid. “I mean, leprechauns, of course. And Rumplestiltskin - who wanted a baby in exchange for gold, I might point out. The original story of Cinderella features bewitched golden shoes instead of glass. Jack climbs the beanstalk for a golden harp and a golden harp and golden coins; there are dozens.”

She rolls her eyes. “Mulder, for heaven’s sake. These stories are all about wish fulfillment. And gold was the ultimate wish, it’s a universal currency. Of course if people are going to create stories about strange, powerful beings with the ability to fulfil desires, those desires will be about financial freedom. I’d say those tales represent far more about human longing than fairy powers.”

“I saw her do it,” he says, but doesn’t press the issue. “You hear from Danny?”

“Yeah, nothing. It’s like whomever took the girls vanished along with them. No reported drifters, no unfamiliar cars, no uptick in petty thefts or break-ins.”

Mulder jabs at the table with a finger. “It’s not a drifter, Scully. We agreed on that.”

“Right, but if it’s Tallulah, then these girls have to go somewhere. She has to be meeting someone, she can’t just - I don’t know - keep them in her little cabins like a stray dog indefinitely, then drive out of town in her Volvo.”

“Well, on that point I cannot argue. I’m going to talk to her tomorrow, see if there’s anything else she wants to unburden. We need to touch base with the Rosses too, I guess.” He eats her discarded crust.

“I can stop by while you’re charming precious metals out of Elfhame.” She’s looking up at him through her sooty end-of-day lashes, the tip of a pizza slice between her teeth.

His stomach flips. Leave it to Scully to arouse him at the weirdest possible times. “Scully, why’d you leave?” he asks, because he wants to know and because she let him put a chip in her neck, and because she smells like tea tree oil and jasmine, and because he made her drink sardine juice to save her life, and because she shot him once, and because she saved him after having his skull drilled into twice, and because she tastes like saltwater taffy and the sea.

She frowns. “Well, you had a fever, and I wanted to-”

“That morning,” he clarifies. “Why’d you go?”

She sighs. “I suppose I knew this was coming,” she says. “Of course you couldn’t possibly be a gentleman and mind your business about it.”

He’s stung until he sees the smile in her eyes. “I’m only a gentleman in the parlor,” he says. “This is most definitely a bedroom.”

Scully leans back in her chair, crossing her legs. “It’s what I did after Dallas, don’t you remember? It’s what I did to Jack Willis, it’s what I tried to do in Philadelphia that time. My journal to you, when I had cancer, it was just a long Dear John letter, Mulder. When I was in med school, there was this man…” she trails off, staring at the cheap tile ceiling.

Mulder tries to process this. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself, Scully. You weren’t running after Dallas - they transferred you.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “That’s not what you said at the time. You said I was quitting. You said you would too, if I left.”

He winces inwardly at the memory of what he’d said. “Well yeah, but I was trying to guilt you into staying, so you have to cut me some slack.” 

She laughs, throws a wadded-up napkin at him. “Is that all you were trying to do, Mulder? I remember something else, in the moment.”

He doesn’t tell her that he knows exactly how well she remembers. “You’re incredibly good looking,” he says, with an air of confession. “Sue me.”

She smiles, looking down at her hands. “Mulder, I left the way I did the other morning because I didn’t know how else to leave. I didn’t know what it meant, and I still don’t. Was I… were we supposed to eat breakfast in bed and clean our guns together?”

There’s something bitter in her voice that he sets aside for later. He reaches across the table to take her hands. “Scully, why does it have to be anything? We could have had some coffee, tracked down your underwear together. They’re still in my sock drawer, incidentally.”

She blushes and punches his arm for that.

He laughs. “But seriously. What good does it do to worry in advance about how things will go wrong? I mean, look at me. I’m a total fucking disaster by many metrics, but I get by. I wing it most of the time, sure, but I manage.”

Scully laughs, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Truly a ringing endorsement. But I don’t know what you expect me to say, Mulder. I was a physicist before I was a doctor, you know. So I guess I just leave before entropy can fully take over.”

“I know,” he says. “But you can’t fail at this. There’s no checklist. There’s no test to pass or form to fill out.”

She makes a noise of frustration. “Mulder, do you not understand that that’s exactly the part that’s impossible for me to handle? That I can’t ever know, empirically, if I’m doing all the things that...that...I’m supposed to?”

He stares at her in confusion. “That you’re supposed to? I don’t even know what that means. There’s no supposed to. You just do.” He says this with the confidence of a man whose six-month marriage hadn’t fallen apart, of a man who hadn’t had a one-night stand with a blood fetishist, or an extended disaster with a British sociopath. 

Scully shakes her head. “I make lists and five year plans.”

He refrains from asking her how well that’s panned  out. “Take your shirt off,” he says.

She freezes, startled. “Mulder, we’re on a case, I don’t-”

“Trust me,” he says, knowing she considers it the most dangerous phrase in his lexicon. “You’re stressed. You’re exhausted. I was going to rub your back.”

She smirks. “I think my mom fell for that and got pregnant with Charlie.”

“Indian Guide’s honor,” he says. “I’ll get the lotion from the bathroom.”

Scully eyes him suspiciously, but goes to the bed and smooths the blankets out.

He retrieves the little bottle of lotion and reads it. Scully will have to settle for “Alabaster Gardenia,” this evening. It occurs to him that Padgett would have referred to her as an alabaster gardenia and he rolls his eyes. 

When he emerges, Scully is facedown on the bed, head on the pillow. Her smooth back is bare to the waist of her trousers, where the serpent lives, and her sock feet small and dark. Her shirt and bra are folded neatly on the night table, as though he is an actual masseuse.

Mulder straddles her hips, kneeling, and pours the lotion into his hands to warm it. Close up, he sees red marks from her bra straps on her shoulders and decides to start there.

“Wouldn’t this have been a nice morning?” he asks, working the lotion into her skin. “I could have done this for you. And with better lotion - you know I’m knowledgeable on the subject.”

“Shut up,” she mumbles into the pillow. 

He feels deep, hard knots in her back and attacks them with his thumbs, following the muscles down the sides of her spine. He’s not sure it’s effective, but then Scully groans happily into the bedding.

He’s pleased, working back up to the delicate muscles of her neck and base of her ears. “Is this good?”

“Don’t stop.”

He refrains from innuendo, wanting to prove to her that this is about so much more than sex. He kneads the folded wings of her shoulder blades, her handspan waist. There is lotion on her trousers and in her hair, but he doesn’t think she’ll mind.

She’s dozy and pliant now, breathing slowly. He’ll pet her to sleep like this every night if it suits her, like a little feral cat.

“Mulder?”

“Hmmm?” He traces the tattoo again, trying to bond with it and love it because it’s part of her. The work is admittedly beautiful.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you when I left. I don’t know how to be easy with things like you are.” She turns on her side, an arm draped across her breasts.

“Well, one of us has to have a plan,” he says airily. “Poor Walter’s always been afraid of me corrupting you. I never felt like he was angry, you know? Just disappointed. My god, this would kill him.” He thinks Poor Walter might be more than a touch in love with her too, but keeps this to himself.

She turns fully onto her back now and, to his dismay, works herself under the sheets. “Well, Kersh just thinks you’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

“Put it on my tombstone.”

“Of course you’d take that as a compliment. Lord Byron was really awful, but at least we got Ada Lovelace out of him. Mulder, why are you pulling clothes out?”

He hunts for his favorite t-shirt amid the wreckage of his suitcase. “I’m going for a run. I’ll be up all night otherwise.”

Scully frowns disapprovingly. “You really shouldn’t after today, Mulder. Can you make it a casual jog, at least?”

“Brisk trot. Leisurely gallop.”

“It’s AMA,” she warns him, but doesn’t argue further.

Mulder changes quickly while she drowses, limbering himself against the night table where her clothing sits. He opens the door, and the night air is invigorating.

“Hey Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t promise you anything, but I want to try to...you know. This.”

“Okay,” he says, and hopes she’s too sleepy to hear the thickness in his voice.

***

She’s out cold when he gets back, occasional little Scully-snores in the silence. He rinses in the shower, making excessive noise to alert her to his presence.

Mulder dries off and wraps himself in the undersized motel towel, putting his shoes back on against the dubious carpet. He walks over to Scully and strokes her hair.

“Mmmfff,” she says, bleary-eyed. “Am I still here?”

He holds out her shirt. “You’ll want this before you head next door,” he says.

She blinks. “Okay.” Then she promptly falls back asleep.

Mulder is not one to beg. He pulls his boxers on, toes the shoes off, and climbs in next to her. He is delighted to find that she has kicked her socks and trousers off, now clad only in her little grey bikinis.

He strokes the violin curves of her, from her shoulder down the sweep of her waist to her thighs. She sighs in her sleep.

He knows Scully would explain that he’s evolutionarily primed to be attracted to her full breasts and rounded hips. She’d tell him about how pelvic girdle width is an advantageous adaptation for such a melon-headed species.

He’d counter with the Golden Ratio. Sometimes beauty is its own justification.

Mulder snuggles in next to her. If he dreams that night he doesn’t remember. And if she wakes, she doesn’t leave.

***

His alarm goes off at six. Scully is an immovable lump next to him under the bedding, her exposed hair the only sign that she isn’t a heap of pillows or an extra blanket. He strokes the fine vellum of her belly until she stirs. “Time to get up,” he murmurs.

She pokes her head above the comforter and looks at him, confused. “What time is it? Did I spend the night?”

He smoothes her hair back from her brow. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Scully sits up, holding the sheet to her chest with one hand. “Where are my clothes?” She feels around under the blankets with evident agitation. 

Mulder points at the night table. “I put your shirt and bra there, but I don’t know about the pants and socks. You lost those while I was running, but I can give you a hand.”

She puts a hand to her forehead and looks tense. “This is what I was afraid of, Mulder. This… this chaos.”

He rubs her thigh and doesn’t laugh at her idea of chaos. Scully may sometimes think of him as a giant untrained Weimaraner who is either destroying her life or nosing her crotch, but he’s also got a DPhil from Oxford and occasionally he picks up on social cues. He moves the blankets around, keeping her covered, and eventually finds her belongings wadded up between the pillows.

“Here,” he says gently, and hands them to her. 

She nods, biting her lip. “I need to go.”

“Okay,” he says, and doesn’t touch her. “I’m going to get in the shower. Come back over when you’re ready?”

Here smile is lukewarm, but present. “I’ll bring some coffee.”

Mulder tosses her the keys. “Get me one of those raspberry danishes too, if you don’t mind.”

He turns his back to give her privacy, then heads into the bathroom. He must have missed it yesterday, but sees that Scully’s left her little can of mousse on the sink for him. When they get home, he’s going to buy some of those velvet hangers she likes, to keep in his closet. He thinks of Ree, holding out dried corn for her deer. 

They’ve spent so long in the dark together it’s daunting to walk into the light.

***

Mulder takes a scalding shower, burning sweat and dead skin directly from the pores. He scours himself like a penitent until the heat becomes nauseating. When he steps out onto the little rug, the air feels nearly Arctic, and it perks him up. He feels purified of something nameless.

Scully’s lilac mousse in his hair, and he’s back in a suit for seeing Tallulah today. He thinks it’s best to remind her that he has a badge and a gun. He tries not to think about her hand, for once hoping he had experienced a hallucination.

He sits on the bed to tie his shoes when Scully comes back in, carrying a paper bag. She’s got on last night’s clothes still, her hair tucked behind her ears.

“They were out of raspberry, but I got you blueberry. Me too, actually. They looked good.” She holds out the bag, fragrant with coffee.

“Keep the change,” he says, taking the bag from her with happy anticipation.

“You should be doing stand-up, really.” She joins him on the bed.

Mulder passes her food to her, wishing he could make a breakfast-in-bed quip without sounding desperate. “So what’s your game plan today, then?” he asks around a mouthful of pastry.

She licks blueberry filling off her thumb. “Back to the lab, then I’ll see after that. We grew some of the algae samples at different temperatures to see if that could explain it being in Ree’s thermos in particular.” She blinks. “Oh! That reminds me! The lady at the store said to tell you not to forget about your bottle deposit.” 

“Thanks,” he says, hoping it doesn’t incite further questioning.

But no such luck with his inquisitive inamorata. “What bottle deposit?” she asks, puzzled.

He shifts, rolls his steaming cup between his palms. “Brought some groceries up with me to Tallulah’s yesterday. I figured it might grease the wheels a little.”

“Hmmm,” Scully says, and sips her coffee. “Well, it does sound like she had a lot to tell you. Anyway, I’ll be in Huntsville for the morning at least if you need me. Then I figured I’d - we’d, depending on your schedule - touch base with the Rosses, see if the search teams have found anything that hasn’t made its way to us.”

“Sounds good.” He brushes crumbs off his lap onto the floor, and supposes the mice will find them sumptuous.

Scully finishes her danish, clearly pondering something.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he offers.

Scully scoffs. “I’ll add it to my tip. I was just thinking; I did a little research while you were asleep yesterday. Apparently the term name Jenny Greenteeth applies not only to the creature in the legend, but has been generalized in some areas as a name for duckweed. In can make a pond surface look like inviting moss to walk on, like we saw down at the pond where Ree disappeared. Why not just...I don’t know. Why not just warn your kids about drowning instead of making up a - what did you call them?”

“Nursery bogey,” he replies. “The prevalent theory is that most kids will overestimate their abilities against natural dangers. They believe they can swim across a pond, or navigate through a forest, or climb a very tall tree. But if the supernatural is introduced, children are less likely to believe they can overcome the danger. So the deterrent is more effective.”

She shudders. “What a grim way to parent. Though I suppose it’s all just a variant on ‘don’t do that or you’ll die.’ And not so different from the Tooth Fairy or Santa, I guess.” Scully drinks her coffee, musing.

He considers this. He always found Santa creepy in a Panopticon way. “But Santa doesn’t provide a specific deterrent from naughtiness, only a reward for good.”

She sets her cup on the night table, presses her hands between her knees. “Well, there’s Krampus.”

Mulder loves the deranged chaotic energy of Krampus. “Krampus is good.”

“When I was taking German we were, you know, learning all the cultural bits of Germany. And Krampus is a companion of Saint Nicholas, which I thought was just terrible. Saint Nick gets all the credit for presents and just has Krampus do his dirty work.” She shakes her head at the treachery of Bavarian Santa.

He grins. “Santa’s that shitty friend who makes him carry out all the bullying so he can keep his hands clean and be teacher’s pet.”

“Ugh, I always hated that kid,” Scully says. She drinks her coffee, looking dark.

Mulder is joyful. Talking with her like this is the brightest spot in any day and he doesn’t want it to end. But there’s still a lost girl to find. “Well,” he says, slapping his thighs, “we’d best be off.”

She nods, serious again. “Depending on how the lab results look, we might be able to bring Tallulah in for questioning.”

He doubts it will do a particle of good, but they all need something to cling to. “Keep me posted.”

Scully reaches over to pat his hair. Heat radiates from her, and the warm cotton smell of her skin. Her coffee-and-danish breath is sweet in his mouth. “You can keep that mousse,” she says.

Mulder clears his throat. “I’m going to,” he assures her. “So much hold, but not sticky or stiff.”

She kisses him, close-mouthed, and flicks his ear before leaving.

***

The car shimmies up the unpaved road, rattling spent sunflower seeds in the empty Quik Mart cup. He grips the wheel against the uneven drive, against his anxiety over facing Tallulah again. Scully had come undone with Pfaster, her hard varnish becoming brittle and crumbling in the cold. Mulder fears Tallulah may leave him similarly disarmed.

He pulls up the last stretch of road to the meadow below the cabin, and stares in confusion. Instead of the weathered shack is a tangle of kudzu, ivy, strangler fig, and splintered planks. Mulder parks and slowly gets out of the car. He pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead, picking his way up the path in gripless leather-bottomed dress shoes.

He crouches in the waist high grass, looking for...he’s not sure what. The floor of the cabin is utterly destroyed, existing only as a series of foot-long splinters. Large sections of the walls are collapsed inwards, algae-covered and snarled in woody vines. Tallulah’s few possessions, including her bed and kitchen furniture are gone. The big goat wanders over to chew on a section of the door. 

Mulder stands again, circles the wreckage with his hands on his hips. “Son of a bitch,” he says, kicking at it. He puts his sunglasses back on and stares into the woods.

Typical, absolutely fucking typical. He wants somewhere to put his anger, somewhere righteous and useful, but there is nothing. He longs for the congested grittiness if DC, where he can yell at corrupt officials or aggressive drivers or at least a noisome pigeon. But here there is nothing except unspoiled beauty as far as the eye can see. 

Looking back at the wreckage, he sees something glinting in the bright morning sun. He tugs at a swath of thorny vines hanging over the remains of the porch, and the milk bottle rolls out from beneath the greenery.

Mulder picks it up and sees a slip of paper inside. It slides out when he inverts the bottle. I guess we’re even, it reads, in a familiar hand.

He looks at the paper for a long time then, carefully, sets the bottle back on the ground. He begins running towards the tree line.

“Ree!” he calls. “RHIANNON!”

 Birdsong and silence.

He shouts her name again and again, receiving no reply. Mulder stops to take in his surroundings, never once doubting his interpretation of the note. “REE!”  he yells once more, and has only his echo for a reply.

He paces at the edge of the wood, looking, but there is nothing. Then, a hundred yards or so off, he sees a rock, like the one beneath Diana’s rainbow. He races towards it, loosening his tie. 

She’s still when he gets to her, a small bundle wrapped in a quilt that Mulder recognizes instantly from Tallulah’s bed. He crouches beside the girl. Twigs and leaves are snarled in her cornsilk hair, and her face is hollow and dirty.

Mulder reaches out to touch her cheek. “Hey,” he whispers. “Rhiannon?”

She stirs slightly, then opens her eyes. They’re far greener than they looked in her school picture. He tells himself it’s the light

“Mama,” Rhiannon says. She reaches out a thin, filthy hand.

Mulder gathers her up in his arms, head tucked against his neck. She weighs next to nothing, and he wants to run but is afraid of internal injuries or losing his footing. He moves as quickly as he dares back to the car.

Ree whimpers softly the whole time, her dry little fingers clutching at his collar. She calls for her mother and father.

He comes to the ruined shack and wants to show it to the child, to ask her a hundred questions, but he passes it in silence and arrives at the car. Still holding Ree’s little body close, he opens the back door. She begins to cry and clutch at him when he tries to lay her down.

“Please,” she begs, he can feel his heart break anew  when he pries her away, sobbing, onto the seat. Ree curls into the fetal position under the tattered quilt, mumbling to herself. 

He’d have laid rubber if there were any road to lay it on when he peels off towards town. Steering with his knee, he fumbles for his phone to call Scully, but there’s no service. He swears, flooring the gas.

A thin, awful, wail from Ree and he thinks of Emily dying by inches, dragging Scully down with her to the grave again. Emily’s burning body in his arms, staring mutely at him with her mother’s eyes.

He squeals onto the main road, eliciting a chorus of angry horns, when he realizes he has no idea where a hospital is. Scully’s off in Huntsville and he isn’t qualified for anything beyond CPR.

Mulder remembers the fire station from when they first arrived, and runs several red lights to get to it. Someone throws a rock at the car, but it bounces away.

Ree wails again, sitting up to scrabble at the window. Mulder glances at her in the rear view as he swerves onto MacNeill Street. She is thinner than he realized, and very pale. He didn’t think to check her gums and wonders if she’s in shock.

He calls back a flurry of reassuring nonsense to her, but she seems not to hear him. “I’m with the FBI,” he repeats. “You’re safe, Ree.”

She claws at the glass, whimpering.

Mulder finally sees the fire station up ahead on the left. He swerves across oncoming traffic and pulls halfway into the engine bay, narrowly missing four guys cooking hotdogs on a flimsy portable grill. They rise, yelling and waving their arms.

He’s waving his badge when he gets out, shouting Ree’s name over their indignant bellowing. 

“What the fuck do y-“

He opens the back door, catches Ree before she hits the ground. That’s all the conversation they need. The EMTs are yelling to one another, getting Ree in the ambulance, telling Mulder he’s a goddamn hero but he’d better get his fucking car out of the fucking way.

He backs out along the curb as the sirens scream. The ambulance howls past him, lights flashing, and disappears from view.

Mulder sits in his car for a moment, feeling strangely deflated. Then he gets his phone to call the sheriff with the good news.

***

Scully calls him from the hospital. She met the ambulance and the family there, figuring it was the easiest way to get the details for their report. Mulder is sprawled across the sagging expanse of his motel bed, propped up on one elbow. He is playing solitaire on his laptop as Scully fills him in.

“So anyway, she’d dehydrated and malnourished and had some bad bruises and scrapes, but nothing serious, which is impressive. They’re keeping her overnight at least for observation, but she seems fine, Mulder.”

He drags a queen of hearts across the screen. “Mmm. So is she talking yet?”

“Not much,” Scully says. “She’s still pretty freaked out. From the few things she has said, it sounds like she followed a deer into the woods and got lost. That’s why she didn’t have any of her things.” 

In the background are the beeps and echoes of hospital noises. Mulder finds them strangely soothing. “Okay, so where’d her clothes go? Where’d she get that quilt?”

A frustrated noise from Scully. “Mulder, they’re doing their best to get her story, but she’s very traumatized right now; you should know that. Maybe she found the cabin all collapsed and dragged the blanket out. Maybe it’s a different blanket entirely - this one was pretty beaten up. There’s no sign of sexual or other physical trauma, that’s the main thing.”

He knows it’s the main thing, but still. Still. “Scully, you listed a bunch of conditions that would make your teeth green. Anything that does it to the eyes?”

“Mulder,” she says warningly. “Why?”

 He rolls onto his back, abandoning the  game. “When I found her, I noticed that -”

“No,” Scully says. “Absolutely not.” Her voice is hard.

Mulder closes his eyes. “Is it real, or is it Memorex?” he asks.

“Don’t you dare,” Scully says, her voice a hiss. “Mulder, go for a run or take a shower or make use of the lotion or whatever it is you need to get this out of your system, but I know what you’re thinking and I absolutely forbid you to say a solitary word on the subject.”

He can envision her pacing furiously, black and white and red against the soft hospital neutrals. He imagines holy rage on her Botticelli face. “I won’t say anything,” he promises her.

“Good,” she replies, mollified. “The family wants to thank you in person, if you’re game to head over. I’m hanging out for about another half hour to look at some test results.”

He really, really isn’t game to head over, because he’s afraid he will fail to keep his mouth shut. “Tell them I was recently diagnosed with cranial rectal inversion, and I’m afraid of exposing them to a flare-up,” he says.

“Hilarious. I’ll tell them you turned your ankle during your daring rescue and you’ve got it up on ice.”

Mulder knows the fib is for the family’s sake rather than his, but he’s still grateful. “How many Hail Marys is that lie gonna cost, Dana Katherine?”

“I got a special dispensation from the Holy See for matters involving you,” she says. “It’s like EZ Pass. I go into the confessional, show my badge, and the priest just tells me not to worry about it.”

He’s grinning. “Yeah? You think the Pope’ll write a note to Kersh for me?”

“Even the Holy Father has no oversight over Alvin Kersh. Mulder, I’ve got to run, but I’ll be back at the motel within two hours. Call around for a flight, would you? I really don’t want to spend another night at the motel. Everything feels sticky.”

He turns to his side and pulls his laptop over. “I’m on it,” he tells her. 

She hangs up

“True enough for government work,” he says to no one.

***

Mulder goes for the run she suggested. His feet pound mindlessly against the pavement, past tidy lawns and mom-and-pop stores. He remembers the Samantha clones, the hive of identical girls who were in the world but not of it, and how he wanted to save just one of them. Scully would tell him that good works alone are not enough for salvation, that grace is required first. She might make a Catholic of him after all - he could use a little grace.

He glances through the window of the farm store and resists the urge to stop in. Past the church (CHRISTMAS BAZAAR BOOTHS STILL OPEN!) and two giggly teen girls. He’s coming up on the fire station when a hand claps him on the shoulder. He whirls around, reaches for the gun he didn’t bring.

“Whoa, hey, sorry,” says the guy who told him to move his fucking car earlier that day. “Just wanted to say thanks again.” The man’s about his age, more heavily muscled, and sporting a scruffy beard. His shirt reads VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTER across the front.

Mulder holds his hands up in apology. “All good. I’m glad she’s home.”

“Owen Cylburn,” the man says, holding out a hand. 

Mulder shakes it. “Mulder,” he says. “Agent Scully’s still at the hospital.”

Owen hooks his thumbs through his belt loops. “Yeah, I heard she was a doctor. Real nice of her to look in on our girl.”

“You family?”

“Naw, but I live a few houses down and she plays with my son Simon sometimes. It’s a small town, you know? Anyway, I heard she’s doing fine.” Owen looks like there’s more he wants to say.

“Anything else on your mind, Mr. Cylburn?” Mulder asks.

He looks sheepish. “Oh, uh. Well, I guess I heard some talk, you know, about whatsername up in that old shack? You don’t really think she was involved, do you? I mean, I checked in on her a couple times and all, made sure the stove was safe. She seems nice. Just sort of strange.”

Mulder considers this for a moment. “Even if she were, clearing her house of fire hazards doesn’t mean you were aiding and abetting, you know. You do anything else while you were up there?”

Owen’s face darkens. “I don’t know what you’re implying, but I’m a happily marr-”

“Not what I meant. Sorry.”

“Oh,” Owen says, looking confused. “No, just the stove.”

Mulder tries again. “What I’m asking is, well, I heard some rumors too. That Tallulah was selling a little weed to supplement her income. Now listen, I’m not looking to hassle anybody. I’m a legalize it man myself, just trying to see if people were heading up there with any frequency to, uh, go shopping. And if they might have seen anything while they were there.”

“Ohhhh,” is the reply. “No, not my thing but I think I’m in the minority. I reckon she could blackmail half the upstanding members of the town if she wanted to, one way or another. Them or their spouses or their kids.” He shrugs. “It’s a dry town, so…”

Mulder nods. “I get it. Like I said, just trying to see if anyone might have been around, might have seen anything. But not trying to make a federal case of it.”

“Mighty decent of you. But anyhow, all’s well that ends well, I guess. My sister’s a nurse up at the hospital, she says Ree looks pretty good, all things considered.”

“Yeah, that’s what my partner said too. She’s a real pretty little girl, isn’t she? Golden hair, and those big green eyes.”

Owen frowns. “All the Rosses have that hair, but I don’t think she has green eyes.”

“My mistake,” Mulder says. “Anyhow, you have a good one.” 

He jogs off, thinking.

***

Scully’s getting out of a patrol car when he returns. There’s a German Shepherd in the back seat, muzzle against the grating.

“This is K9 Officer Jangles,” Scully says, introducing Mulder to the dog. “She’s new.”

Officer Jangles sticks her head out of the open rear window. Her tail is wagging and her ridiculous ears are tilted against one another.

“Brought Jangles up to see Ree,” says the cop. “She’s my niece. Ree, I mean. My brother’s girl.” He has the blonde hair of his clan.

“How is she?”

“Pretty good,” Officer Ross says. “Starting to talk a little more.”

Mulder is genuinely glad to hear this and says so. “It’ll be nice to have your green-eyed lassie home, I’m sure.”

Scully kicks him hard in the shin with her deadly shoes. “Officer Ross, thanks for the lift. Agent Mulder and I have a lot of paperwork to take care of, so I hope you’ll excuse us.”

The officer nods. “I can’t thank you enough, none of us ever could. Can we call your boss for like, uh, a commendation or something?”

Scully smiles. “That’s very kind, sir, but we’re really just doing our job.”

“Alvin Kersh,” Mulder calls, as Scully hauls him into her room. “Extension 44-”

The door slams shut.

***

She punches him in the arm. “What is wrong with you?” she demands. 

Mulder sits on her bed, which is identical to his. Her room smells nicer though, distinctly Scully-ish. “I’m sorry,” he says. He genuinely wishes he were different.

Scully sighs, rubbing her temples. She sits next to him. “I am covered in dog hair, I have listened to hours of conservative talk radio, and now you are in direct violation of the one thing I asked you not to do.” She leans over to sniff him. “And you smell like a stable.”

“I’m trying to keep my ass shapely,” he says. “I want to look sexy in my running shorts for you.”

She punches him again. “Go...go take a shower. I’ll call around for flights. Maybe we can get out of here tonight.”

“Done,” he says. “There aren’t any until tomorrow evening.”

Scully groans. “Please don’t tell me that. I need to get out of here. The water smells like pencil shavings, did you notice? Go shower though.”

Mulder turns and takes her hands. “I know that I am sweaty and disgusting but I think you’re going to want to hear me out before I go shower.”

“It better be good, Mulder, because you’re competing with Jangles right now.”

“So there’s a hotel near the airport with a day spa. It’s not exactly the Four Seasons, but the website looked pretty good. I thought we’d let Alvin spring for another night here, and we’ll luxuriate in Dead Sea mud.”

She laughs, crossing her arms. “Mulder, you can’t be serious.”

“I'm extremely serious. My treat. You know my policy on my father’s money.”

Scully rolls her eyes, mimes a little hand puppet with a talking mouth. “My paychecks are for living expenses, my inheritance is for my side projects.” She does a credible impression of his monotone.

“I’m glad at least some of what I say stuck with you. Seriously though, Scully. Let me do something nice for you.”

She considers this. “Mulder, your ‘side projects’ generally refer to subverting the government in some way or another. Are you trying to get me in bed again just to lob a stone in the eye of the government?” 

“Yes,” he says. “You are my ultimate middle finger to The Man. That is literally my only motivation here. Come on, Scully. You once told Congress to go fuck itself - surely you’ve got room in your arsenal for a moisturizing salt scrub and Swedish massage.”

“We’re like Bonnie and Clyde,” she says, and bumps her shoulder against his. She’s right about the dog fur, he notes.

“Whaddya say?” he asks. It feels silly to have his heart in his throat over this, to worry that she’ll turn him down like a long-shot prom date. “Two empty hotel rooms in Hooterville on the federal dime while we sneak off to live it up on room service. You know you want to, Bonnie.”

Scully drops her chin for a second, then looks up at him, resigned. “What the hell, Clyde.”

He kisses her hair. “Attagirl. I’ll have you fully corrupted in no time. Soon you’ll be stealing office supplies and blowing off mandatory training seminars of your own volition”

She shakes her head, grinning. “Is this where you remind me that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step?”

He shakes his head. “No, this is where I point out that a journey of a thousand miles is pretty intimidating, so maybe starting with smaller day spa trips is more manageable. Hell, Scully. Even The Pretenders broke it into two five-hundred-mile walks.”

“Go take a shower,” she says.

***

When he comes out of the bathroom she’s sitting in his room with her luggage, looking like a waif at a train station.

“Jesus,” he says, flustered. “Glad I still had a few clean towels.” He rifles through his bag, looking for underwear. He wasn’t expecting an audience.

Scully looks politely away as he tugs them on. “I changed out of that be-dogged suit and figured I’d just pack up and we’d head out when you were ready. I already turned in my key.”

He notices now that she’s in a pair of leggings and a black sweater. Somehow she still looks chic. “You’re in quite a hurry to leave this charming hamlet,” he observes. “Or is it just the lure of the forbidden?”

“Mmmm, maybe both. Mostly it’s the lure of the sauna.”

“Fair.” He sniffs his jeans and, dismayed, pulls them on anyway. Fuck it, he’s a rich man. He’ll take them both shopping. Scully is an indulgence he’ll happily spend his father’s ill-gotten gains on. He’s long suspected some distant connection between his parents’ money and her chip; it would be poetic justice to spoil her.

She curls onto her side in the middle of the bed, watching him dress. “Mulder.”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.”

When she’s ready, he knows. When she’s ready. Mulder ties his shoes, then retrieves her mousse from the bathroom. He styles his hair in the mirror above the dresser, waiting.

“Mulder.”

“Hmm?”

“When I was a kid, my Aunt Olive would tell us stories about this farm she grew up on outside Killarney. She lived with her grandparents, pretty staunch Catholics you know, but they believed in a lot of the old stories too.”

He’s listening attentively now, but she has a tendency to be skittish when discussing the intangible. He pulls a pair of tweezers out and plucks at imaginary stray hairs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. After milking, Aunt Olive knew to leave a bowl of milk out for the Tuatha de Dannan. And a slice of bread from the new loaves.” She pauses, thinking. “I mean, I don’t know that they actually believed it, but you know how these things are.”

“Belt and suspenders,” he says.

She chuckles. “Something like that, yeah. Anyway, Mulder, I was thinking about that milk bottle. And then I started thinking about my Aunt Olive’s stories. And I wondered if maybe you bought Tallulah some new milk and fresh bread.”

Mulder puts the tweezers down. He joins her on the bed, sitting in the curve made by her body. He pets her side, her shiny hair, and savors the sheer pleasure of touching her. “It wasn’t super new,” he says. “It was pasteurized.”

“Oh, Mulder,” Scully says. She rubs his thigh.

He stretches out onto the bed, facing her. She has aged with obscene grace. Distilled more than aged, really, he thinks. Refined to a more essential Scully-ness. “Sometimes all that people need is to be seen,” he says. “I figured even if she’s just some weird transient hillbilly who sells weed and tells horrifying lies, she might appreciate a snack.” 

Scully smiles and scoots closer to him. She strokes the bridge of his nose. “Fox Mulder, you big softie.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Should I take that as a personal indictment?”

“You’re a riot.”

He strokes her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I don’t know, when I was a kid I read To Kill A Mockingbird for school, and the part where Atticus said you had to walk around in someone’s skin to know them really resonated with me. I guess I wish I had been extended that courtesy.” 

Scully smiles. “Mmm, I used to think about how I would have made Boo Radley come out.”

Mulder laughs, imagining a tiny, serious Scully laying artful traps. “Like Bugs Bunny?”

She laughs too. “Something like that, yeah. I guess I just connected with the idea of the unknown being concretely knowable if only the right methodology were applied.”

“Nerd,” he says.

“Always. You would have snuck into the house and said, ‘Hello, Mr. Radley. I’m Fox Mulder.’ No tricks for you.” 

He probably would have, at that. “Yeah, but then comes my usual trouble. No evidence, no witnesses.”

She kisses him softly, bumping his nose with hers. “Maybe I need to walk around in your skin more. You say you got to walk around in my head.”

“I didn’t peek anywhere untoward,” he says, and wraps his arms around her.

She regards him seriously. “I trust you. But I do wonder what you saw. I’m not an angel, Mulder.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be.” He runs his thumb over her lips, and she nips at it. “You’re incandescent, Scully. Like a lighthouse at the edge of a vast, nighttime sea.”

She looks pleased and shy. “Well,” is all she says. “Well.” She tucks her head beneath his chin.

He holds her there, in this bland little room in the heart of nowhere. Her body is warm and compact and trusting, her fingers soft on his neck. She doesn’t always believe in his ideas, he knows, but she believes in him, and it’s more than enough.

Eventually he rouses her, the promise of more luxurious accommodations his only motivator for breaking this gentle peace. They gather their belongings and head to the car. The sky is purple and orange around them and ahead, an infinite sea of stars. He drives west, towards the setting sun. Scully takes his hand and smiles; a flame in the dark.

[mail-me-a-snail]

In the Woods Somewhere

the Hugo Wallace fic, as promised :3

tag list: @crypticphantom17​ @immabethehero​ @iv0ry-keys​

In the deep, secluded wood surrounding the small village of Honeycliff, which has quite the low literacy rate, there walks a Bird Man, using his lantern to guide himself through the night and ward off preying souls. He offers flowers and useful, charming plants, but never gets too close. He is kind. His voice sounds like the wind passing along the branches in the overhang, or as the frightened novice hunter told the townsfolk, the soft padding of a wolf prowling through the undergrowth.

 The hunter tells them all about his encounter with the Bird Man in the town square, where any willing ear has formed a circle around him.

 "First, a bloody plague," complains the farmer's wife, once the hunter finishes his story, "Now a bloomin' bird man in these woods. I don't want the kids runnin' around there no more."

 "Perhaps he's our cure," the lumberjack suggests, "Them herbs might do us good."

 "What might do you good, good sirs and madams," A new voice interrupts, his cane clacking against the cobblestone, "is keeping ten feet away from each other. This plague transmits through touch, don't you know."

 "Docta Wallace," the farmer's wife exclaims, and that is indeed who the stranger is. "We didn't see you there. The hunter was just telling us a story about the Bird Man of the woods."

 "The what of the woods?" Hugo Wallace, the plague doctor dispatched to Honeycliff a few months prior, swings his beak around to look at the hunter. He doesn't miss the big gulp that bobs the hunter's Adam's apple, even through the yellow tinted lenses of his goggles.

 “The Bird Man, doctor," the man explains, and retells the story. Hugo fiddles with the raven topper of his cane. "I swear it on me mum's gravestone, Dr. Wallace, he's real! He has a beak like yours and this great lantern, bright as the sun, it is!"

 "And on what night did you see this?"

 "Last night, sir!"

 Hugo's heart sinks, and then shoots up as he realizes what's exactly going on; they've mistaken him picking herbs in the dead of night as some sort of woodland monster. It all makes sense. He should say that it is actually him, but he doesn't. He feels that some sort of mystery would liven things up around Honeycliff.

 "Fairytales," Hugo sniffs, "Pish-posh. If I were you, hunter, I wouldn't spread such stories. As the farmer's wife said, we have enough trouble on our hands—my hands—as it is with the plague. We don't need a corvid walking around on two legs as well."

 "But it was real," the hunter shakes his head frantically, "Saw it with me own two eyes."

 “Those two eyes of yours better be seeing the door to your home soon," Hugo turns to the townsfolk, who have since made the circle bigger. "That goes for all of you! You are to return to your homes. Contact is highly dangerous."

 He taps his cane on the cobblestone. Everyone takes it as a sign to leave and they do, heads hanging and stomachs grumbling for the night's supper. The hunter trudges back into the woods with the lumberjack by his side.

 Hugo sighs in relief.

 "Bird Man," he scoffs, "Balderdash."

 ----

 The lumberjack goes home. He tells his seven sons and his wife the hunter's story over supper. His wife barely believes it, while the two twins of the seven children are in awe.

 The next morning, after school is let out, the lumberjack's twins tell their friends all about it. Being children, they believe that the Bird Man is real. They make up stories to scare each other, like the Bird Man being an actual raven who comes and steals people from their beds, or even that the Bird Man is a demon straight from Hell.

 Sister Bellum, a teacher at the school, is shaken to her core when she hears such utterance, and she doesn't take it lightly. The children get a scolding and are sent home.

 ----

 Hugo picks dandelions tonight. He has more than enough stores of yarrow and nightshade to last him a week. He thinks dandelions are beautiful. His lantern hangs from a stick, swinging as he walks through the woods. He ducks into a grove with curtain of lichen, spotting clumps of mycelium growing at the base of one of the trees. He puts the lantern behind him as he starts picking them gently.

 He freezes when someone speaks.

 "Oh, Lord—" a woman gasps, and the grass shuffles where she steps back. Hugo can't see anything but her silhouette from behind the lichen. But for the woman, she can see Hugo's large, sharp beaked silhouette against a lantern's light, like a shadow puppet show. "It's you! You are the Bird Man! I've found you."

 Hugo pauses. He's sweating under his mask, more than usual. He tries hard to remember how the hunter described the Bird Man's voice; croaky and soft. It wasn't his fault he had had a sore throat that night.

 "It is I," he croaks like a fat toad, "The Bird of these woods. What have you come for, human?"

 "My husband is as dead as a nail," she says, "There's no joy in his eyes anymore! It is like he's lost the life in them eyes. He doesn't attend to the crops!"

 Hugo realizes it's the farmer's wife from earlier. It sounds like her husband's drained of vitality. He knows just the herb. He digs around his bag and brings out a root of ginseng. He throws it onto the grass in front of her. She jumps back.

 "What is it?" She asks.

 "One of my herbs, my dear," Hugo explains, "It will revitalise your husband and bring him back to life, so to speak. It goes very well with tea."

 "T-thank you," she stutters, "Truly, this is a gift from God. I will never forget your kindness."

 Once she leaves, he comes out of the grove and puts his hands on his hips. "Bloody mess, this is." He shakes his head.

 ----

 Another woman interrupts his foraging the next night.

 "What is it?" Hugo croaks in frustration, "What do you want?"

 "Not herbs, good sir," she speaks well, especially for a citizen of Honeycliff. "But...to keep good company."

 “What are you saying?"

 "You are an attractive mystery, sir, and I have...thought about you, so to say. In ways the church might have me hung for—"

 Hugo's cheeks catch on fire as he blushes. "No, no!" He squawks, "I d-do not mingle with humans in such ways! Begone!"

 "But..."

 "I beg of you, begone!" He spreads his hands out like wings and curls his fingers into claws to make a big, scary shadow.

 The woman turns tail and runs away. Hugo settles down, everything neck up completely warm with embarrassment. He can't believe it. He just can't. A mysterious stranger turns up in the woods and someone from town just wants to bed it? The plague has made everyone truly lose their minds, Hugo would say.

 ----

 It is the baker that finds him the following night in the same grove.

 "Mr. Bird Man," the baker greets politely, a hint of Scottish on the tongue. "I believe you know why I've come."

 Hugo doesn't have to see him to know it's him. He's had the baker in his mind for quite some time. It makes his heart thump against his chest.

 "And what is that, dear baker?" Hugo says over the sound of his heart shaking. "Herbs? A cure for your ailment?"

 The baker, with his thick, muscular arms for lifting sacks of flour and rough, strong hands that he kneads dough with every day, and every one of those days Hugo watches from the bakery's display window, as the dough is folded and flattened and coated with flour then flattened again, always with those beautifully freckled knuckles worrying at it. The bread comes out golden brown and beautiful, because he's mastered his craft. Hugo longs for the days when he can go inside and actually pick up the bread instead of having it delivered to his house at the edge of the village. His hair is a fiery, shaggy red, like a sheepdog, as is his beard. His freckles are numerous.

 "No. Not plants, not weeds." The baker wrings his hands. "I've come for you."

 Silence. "What?" Hugo prompts, not daring to hope that he's asking what he thinks he's asking.

 "I find you are rather a beautiful mystery. A mystery I would like to unfold, if you'd have me. Unfold, as in...You already know."

 His heart explodes. He's dead, he's sure of it. This must be heaven. It's everything Hugo ever could've wanted.

 And yet...

 Even to the baker, despite the way he smiles so brightly and the charming puff of flour still in his beard, even to him Hugo (reluctantly) says, "No, thank you." As much as he wants those calloused hands to sandpaper his own and ruin him, he can't have it.

 In the morning, the baker claims the Bird Man had sent him away with mysterious and supposedly blessed herbs. They weren't mysterious or holy; they were clumps of yarrow, corn mint, and dandelions. He doesn't expect them to know them, though. He never lets anyone see his medical process or stashes. Hugo passes by the bakery and is surprised to find it completely packed. Everyone wants to hear about the latest encounter with the Bird Man.

 The doctor couldn't care less. He just wants a loaf of bread.

 He's pissed about the whole affair and rightly so. He can't stop the thoughts of the baker that enter his head—thoughts that would make Father Avery and the Sisters thump him over the head with their bibles and have him pray for a month straight.

 Hugo goes out again that night to the forest, picking another batch of herbs, mumbling angrily to himself the whole way.

 ----

 It is a hodgepodge of people who visit him over the next few nights, an even balance of men and women townsfolk. Even the hunter was among them. He said no to each of their sexual advances, though some by personal distaste rather than touch aversion.

 The ones he sends away spread all sorts of rumours.

 The Bird Man's voice changes with your personality! Hugo had forgotten to do the voice a couple of times. He had been tired!

 The Bird Man walks with a limp. He might've tripped over a rock trying to get into the grove one of those nights.

 They are all very amusing, in retrospect. Still, Hugo thinks they're amusing in the silly, childish way. It's a lot of good fun, even with the embarrassment of the one thing they all want.

 Eventually, the baker comes back, and keeps coming the next few nights.

 He doesn't talk at first, but Hugo knows it's him by his large silhouette. Hugo sits and so does the baker, and they stare at the approximate location of where the other would be. They want to talk, but what is there to say? Hugo's already declined. Hugo cannot have him and vice versa. It's too dangerous. His clothes—they're filthy with sickness. He doesn't know what he'll do if the baker gets sick.

 They see each other in the mornings and afternoons. The baker smiles at the doctor as he passes the window. It always does something funny to his stomach, but leaves a sour taste in its wake, like yarrow. He wishes they could stop playing this cat and mouse game. Hugo wants so badly to yell in the square that he is the fabled Bird Man, and it was nothing but balderdash this whole time, so the baker would snap out of it and fall in love with Hugo Wallace instead of this...shadow.

 In that scenario, love is possible, and there is no plague. It amuses him to no end.

 In the quiet of the nights, the time after, when Hugo heads home and lies in bed, staring up at his ceiling, he has...ideas.

 Thoughts.

 Thoughts of calloused hands holding his cheek like a warm ray of sunlight, ruffling his closely shorn, messy hair, the hair that his mother had affectionately told him reminded her of a, "Shaggy black sheepdog."

 Thoughts of those hands holding his, fitting so perfectly; the doctor's palms were smoothened soft by leather gloves.

 Thoughts of those hands going...farther. Holding him down by the wrists, taking what is theirs...ruining him entirely. If they can handle sacks of flour and turn dough into beautiful pieces of art, they can shatter Hugo into billions of pieces.

 It's hard to sleep that night when warmth pools in the doctor's stomach and doesn't go away.

 On the last night of the week, the baker comes again, but this time he speaks.

 ----

 "A demon?" Hugo stands in his doorway, clutching his teacup tightly. "That's a little extreme, don't you think?"

 Father Avery stands in his yard, looking very grim indeed. "A demon, Dr. Wallace, that's what this Bird Man is."

 "He—it—hasn't hurt anyone!"

 "Demons needn't physically harm mortals to be called demons. They are masters of influence—do you know what they're saying, the townsfolk, concerning the Bird Man?"

 "What?"

 "They are saying...well..." Now, the Father looks flustered, pink round cheeks pinker. "...they would very much like to invite the Bird Man into their beds."

 "Oh, my." Hugo tries to act surprised. It's one of the mornings after he's been met with a crowd of townsfolk thirsting after him.

 "It is sin, doctor! Sin! To practice premarital sin with a...a demon, of all things—why, it's preposterous. That is why it is a demon—it's an aphrodisiac!"

 ----

 "It is a sin to love you," is what the baker says when he speaks, quiet. "That's what the church says."

 "Then, do not commit it. You are not a man of sin," Hugo says, "You are a pure, kind-hearted soul."

 "Then, I will pray," The baker speaks quickly, breathlessly, "I will pray every verse I know, that I've been taught. I will attend every one of Father Avery's less than joyful Sunday services and I will pray to God above for forgiveness. I'll spend the rest of my days as a man of God to repent for this sin that I am guilty of."

 "What are you saying?"

 "I love you, with all my heart. I do not know your name, or what you look like, but I love you."

 "You love the mystery of me. The story. You don't love me." Hugo is ecstatic his hopes are true but would rather ingest nightshade than have this conversation. "You love this shadow—" he gestures to the canvas of lichen that separates them. "—not the man behind the curtain."

 "...then show me. Show me your true form."

 "Is that really what you want?"

 "Yes."

 Hugo takes a breath.

 Another.

 He turns off his lamp. The area grows dark around him. He faces the curtain of lichen and pulls it aside with one gloved hand.

 In the woods somewhere, the baker finally sees the true form of the fabled Bird Man, and he gasps,

 "Doctor Hugo Wallace. It's you—you were the Bird Man this whole time?" His hazel eyes are wide in shock and his bushy red eyebrows are raised. The surprise in his eyes reminds Hugo just how stupid the people of this town are—they couldn't even connect the dots.

 "Do you still love me?" He finds himself saying through gritted teeth.

 “I cannot believe this—"

 "Do you still love me?" Hugo grips his cane tightly.

 The baker furrows his eyebrows. He takes his time to answer.

 "I don't know."

 Hugo's heart sinks. "I thought as much," he mutters, and grabs his lantern and goes. The baker springs up to chase after him, but the doctor yells behind him, "Do not follow me! Tell no one of this."

 A painful warmth is building behind his eyes. Fool he was to hope that love would stay true. In the woods somewhere, Hugo Wallace, puppeteer of the Bird Man and plague doctor, runs away and doesn't look back.

[begitalarcos]

100+ Years of Horror

This is not a definitive list. These are just the films I believe every Horror fan should see at least once. I’ve excluded any sequels that I didn’t feel needed including. I hope you enjoy.

For @mechamag​

1922 – Nosferatu

1925 – The Phantom of the Opera

1927 – The Cat and the Canary

1931 – Dracula, Frankenstein

1932 – Freaks

1933 – The Invisible Man

1934 – The Black Cat

1935 – The Bride of Frankenstein

1939 – The Cat and the Canary

1941 – The Black Cat, The Wolfman

1942 – Cat People

1945 - Dead of Night

1953 – House of Wax

1954 – Creature from the Black Lagoon

1955 – Night of the Hunter, Les Diaboliques

1956 – Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Bad Seed

1958 – The Blob, Macabre, The Fly

1959 – House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, The Killer Shrews

1960 – 13 Ghosts , Black Sunday, Eyes without a face, Peeping Tom, Psycho, Village of the Damned

1961 – The Pit and the Pendulum

1962 – What ever happened To Baby Jane?

1963 – The Birds, Black Sabbath, The Haunting

1965 – Repulsion

1966 – Island of Terror

1967 – Wait until Dark

1968 – Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary’s Baby, Spider Baby

1970 – Mark of the Devil, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

1971 – The Cat O’ Nine Tails, Let’s scare Jessica to Death, What’s the matter with Helen? A Bay of Blood, Play Misty for Me

1972 – Ben, Children shouldn’t play with dead things, Deathdream, Don’t torture a Duckling, The last house on the left, Night of the Lepus, What have you done to Solange?

1973 – The Crazies, The Exorcist, The Legend of Hell House, Sisters, The Wicker Man, Don’t look now

1974 – Black Christmas, Deranged, It’s Alive, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Vampyres

1975 – Shivers, Trilogy of Terror, Jaws, Deep Red, The Stepford Wives

1976 – Alice Sweet Alice, Burnt Offerings, Carrie, Eaten Alive, The Omen, Squirm, To the devil a daughter, The town that dreaded sundown, The Tenant

1977 – Audrey Rose, Day of the Animals, Demon Seed, Eraserhead, Exorcist 2: The Heretic, The Hills have Eyes, Rabid, The Sentinel, Shock, Suspiria

1978 – Damien: Omen 2, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, I Spit on your Grave, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jaws 2, The Legacy, Magic, Martin, Piranha

1979 – Alien, The Amityville Horror, The Brood, Phantasm, Prophecy, Tourist Trap, When a Stranger Calls, Zombi2, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Salem’s Lot

1980 – Alligator, Altered States, The Changeling, City of the Living Dead, Fade to Black, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Hell of the Living Dead, The House on the Edge of the Park, Humanoids form the Deep, Inferno, Maniac, Motel Hell, Prom Night, The Shining

1981 – An American Werewolf in London, The Beyond, The Black Cat, The Burning, Dead and Buried, The Entity, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th Part 2, The Funhouse, Galaxy of Terror, Halloween 2, Happy Birthday to Me, Hell Night, The House by the Cemetery, The Howling, My Bloody Valentine, Omen 3: The Final Conflict, The Pit, Possession, The Prowler, Wolfen, Scanners, Blow Out, Ghost Story

1982 – Alone in the Dark, Basket Case, The Beast Within, Cat People, Creepshow, Friday the 13th Part 3, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, Madman, Pieces, Poltergeist, Q: The Winged Serpent, Tenebrae, The Thing, Visiting Hours

1983 – A Blade in the Dark, Christine, Cujo, Curtains, The Deadly Spawn, Eyes of Fire, The House on Sorority Row, The Hunger, Mortuary, Nightmares, Sleepaway Camp, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, Twilight Zone: The Movie

1984 – C.H.U.D., Children of the Corn, The Company of Wolves, Gremlins, Night of the Comet, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Razorback, Silent Night Deadly Night, Firestarter, Starman, Ghostbusters

1985 – Cat’s Eye, Day of the Dead, Demons, Fright Night, Ghoulies, LifeForce, Phenomena, Re-Animator, The Return of the Living Dead, Silver Bullet, The Stuff, Cut and Run, The New Kids

1986 – Aliens, April Fools Day, Chopping Mall, Critters, Deadly Friend, The Fly, From Beyond, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Hitcher, House, Invaders from Mars, Little Shop of Horrors, Maximum Overdrive, Monster Dog, Night of the Creeps, Poltergeist 2: The Other Side, Rawhead Rex, Terrorvision, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Trick or Treat, Troll, Vamp, The Wraith

1987 – Angel Heart, Bad Taste, Creepshow 2, Dolls, Evil Dead 2, The Gate, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2, Hellraiser, The Hidden, House 2: The Second Story, The Outing, The Lost Boys, The Monster Squad, Near Dark, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Opera, Prince of Darkness, Predator, Stage Fright, The Stepfather, Street Trash, The Witches of Eastwick, Lady Beware, Fatal Attraction

1988 – Bad Dreams, The Blob, Child's Play, Dead Heat, Elvira Mistress of the Dark, Fright Night Part 2, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, The Lair of the White Worm, Maniac Cop, Night of the Demons, Phantasm 2, Pin, Prison, Pumpkinhead, Return of the Living Dead Part 2, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Uninvited, Watchers, Waxwork, They Live

1989 – 976-Evil, The Church, Grim Prairie Tales, The Horror Show, Intruder, Leviathan, Night Life, Pet Sematary, Shocker, Society, Warlock, Dead Calm, The Forgotten One, DeepStar Six

1990 – Braindead, Bride of Re-Animator, Child’s Play 2, The Exorcist 3, Frankenhooker, Graveyard Shift, The Guardian, Hardware, IT, Jacob’s Ladder, Misery, Night of the Living Dead, Nightbreed, Predator 2, The Reflecting Skin, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, Tremors, Two Evil Eyes, Arachnophobia

1991 – Body Parts, Cape Fear, The People under the Stairs, The Pit and the Pendulum, Popcorn, Scanners 2: The New Order, The Silence of the Lambs, Sometimes they Come Back

1992 – Army of Darkness, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Candyman, Demonic Toys, Dolly Dearest, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Innocent Blood, Sleepwalkers, Spilt Second, Man Bites Dog

1993 – Body Bags, Carnosaur, Cronos, The Dark Half, Leprechaun, Return of the Living Dead 3, Trauma, Kalifornia, Man’s Best Friend

1994 – Brainscan, Cemetery Man, The Crow, Death Machine, Hellbound, In The Mouth of Madness, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Stand, Wes Cravens New Nightmare, Wolf, Interview with the Vampire

1995 – Castle Freak, Demon Knight, Lord of Illusions, The Mangler, Mosquito, The Prophecy, Species, Village of the Damned, Screamers, Dolores Claiborne

1996 – Bad Moon, The Craft, The Frighteners, From Dusk till Dawn, Jack Frost, Scream, Tremors 2: Aftershocks, Mary Reilly

1997 – An American Werewolf in Paris, Anaconda, Campfire Tales, Cube, The Devils’ Advocate, Event Horizon, I know what you did last Summer, Mimic, The Night Flier, Nightwatch, The Relic, Quicksilver Highway, The Ugly, Wishmaster, Kiss the Girls, Se7en, Perfect Blue

1998 – Blade, Deep Rising, The Faculty, Ringu, Strangeland, Urban Legend, Vampires, Sphere

1999 – Audition, The Blair Witch Project, Deep Blue Sea, The Haunting, House on Haunted Hill, Lake Placid, The Mummy, Ravenous, Sleepy Hollow, Stigmata, Virus, The Sixth Sense, Idle Hands

2000 – American Psycho, Bless the Child, Blood: The Last Vampire, Cherry Falls, Final Destination, Ginger Snaps, Hollow Man, Ju-On, Pitch Black, Python, Versus, What Lies Beneath, The Gift, The Cell, Shadow of the Vampire

2001 – The Attic Expeditions, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Dagon, Jeepers Creepers, Mulholland Drive, The Others, Session 9, Thir13en Ghosts, The Devil’s Backbone, Frailty, From Hell, Hannibal

2002 – 28 Days Later, Blade 2, Bubba Ho-Tep, Cabin Fever, Dog Soldiers, Eight Legged Freaks, Ghost Ship, May, Queen of the Damned, Resident Evil, The Ring, They, The Mothman Prophecies, Red Dragon

2003 – Darkness Falls, Dream Catcher, Final Destination 2, Freddy Vs. Jason, Haute Tension, House of 1000 Corpses, A Tale of Two Sisters, Undead, Underwold, Willard, Wrong Turn

2004 – Alien Vs Predator, Club Dread, Dawn of the Dead, Dead & Breakfast, Exorcist: The Beginning, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, Godsend, Saw, Shaun of the Dead, The Village, Taking Lives, The Forgotten, Enduring Love

2005 – 2001 Maniacs, The Amityville Horror, Constantine, Dark Water, The Descent, The Devils’ Rejects, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Land of the Dead, Wolf Creek, Hard Candy

2006 – Abominable, All the boys love Many Lane, Black Sheep, Fido, Final Destination 3, Hatchet, The Hills have Eyes, Slither, The Woods, The Host, Silent Hill, The Tripper, Wild Country

2007 – 28 Weeks Later, 30 Days of Night, 1408, Grindhouse, I am Legend, The Mist, My Name is Bruce, Nature of the Beast, Paranormal Activity, Primeval, REC, Skinwalkers, Teeth, Trick r’ Treat, An American Crime, Rogue, Funny Games

2008 – Book of Blood, Cloverfield, Deadgirl, Diary of the Dead, Let the right one in, The Midnight Meat Train, Mirrors, Quarantine, The Ruins, Splinter, The Strangers, Eden Lake, Outlander

2009 – Case 39, Grace, The Haunting in Connecticut, Heartless, The House of the Devil, Jennifer’s Body, The Loved Ones, Orphan, Pandorum, Splice, Triangle, Zombieland, Carriers, Dread

2010 – Black Swan, The Crazies, Exorcismus, Frozen, Insidious, The Last Exorcism, Let me in, Primal, Tucker & Dale Vs Evil, The Wolfman, Troll Hunter, Devil

2011 – The Awakening, Don’t be afraid of the Dark, The Innkeepers, Livid, The Thing, The Woman, The Rite

2012 – American Mary, Bait, The Cabin in the Woods, The Devil Inside, The Possession, Prometheus, Sinister, Byzantium, Compliance

2013 – The Conjuring, Evil Dead, Jug Face, Mama, Under the Skin, Only Lovers Left Alive, Warm Bodies, Horns, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Contracted, Stoker

2014 – Annabelle, As Above So Below, The Babadook, Deliver us from Evil, A Girl walk home alone at Night, Life after Beth, Starry Eyes, Tusk, It Follows, Goodnight Mommy, The Voices, Digging up the Marrow, When Animals Dream, Gone Girl ,The Remaining, Late Phases, Cub

2015 – Crimson Peak, Krampus, The Lazarus Effect, Maggie, The Visit, The Witch, Bone Tomahawk, Green Room, Regression, The Devil’s Candy, The Lure

2016 – The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Belko Experiment, The Boy, The Conjuring 2, Don’t Breathe, The Eyes of my Mother, Split, The Forest, The Love Witch, The Neon Demon, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Raw, Train to Busan, The Void, What We Become, 10 Cloverfield Lane, A Cure for Wellness, The Shallows, Pet, Hounds of Love

2017 – IT, Get Out, Mother!, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Ritual, Thelma, Veronica, It comes at Night, Life, Gerald’s Game, Revenge, 1922

2018 – Annihilation, Halloween, Hereditary, Mandy, Mom and Dad, The Nun, Overlord, Possum, A Quiet Place, Suspiria, The House that Jack Built, Bird Box, Apostle, The Meg

2019 – Brightburn, IT Chapter 2, Midsommar, Ready or Not, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Us, I am Mother, Crawl, The Dead Don’t Die, Extremely Wicked Shockingly Evil and Vile, Glass

[theliterateape]

Why We Gave Our Son Away

By David Himmel

Parenthood requires sacrifice. Lots of it. A more optimistic person might say it’s not sacrifice but compromise, and to that I say they don’t know what they’re talking about. Over the last several years, my wife and I have been parents to a wonderful little human named Harrison. He’s intelligent, strong, funny, helpful, and kind. Most of the time anyway. He’s also a three-year-old toddler so he is also erratic, neurotic, sullen, mercurial, and violent. Why, just yesterday, he slapped me across the face after telling him I loved him. In a very tiny nutshell, that right there is parenthood. You give love, you get smacked in the face.

Parenthood also comes with judgement. Judgement from friends, family members, other parents, kids, and your own. There’s a constant vice grip of pressure to not screw up—not do anything that will come back to twist the truth or skew the perception in a tell-all book or on a fancy, blogsite hosted by Squarespace.

Being a parent is living in constant fear or failure, retaliation, and getting slapped in the face, kicked in the nuggets, and broken at the heart. And that is why my wife and I decided to give our son away. This Easter, Harrison will go to live with and be raised by his grandparents in the small rural town of Hammond, Illinois.

No doubt we’ll be judged for this decision. Brutally judged. Cast out of our circle of friends because, after all, what kind of monsters just, like, give their kid away. Perhaps you’re judging us now as you read this confession/explanation. But as you build your disdain and formalize your level of offense from our decision, you must know that we did not come to this decision easily. We agonized over it for days after a string of very difficult bedtime sessions.

He just refused, well, everything. Refused to brush his teeth. Refused to put on pajamas. Refused to sit and read the three books he picked out. Refused to stay under the covers. It has been exhausting. My wife and I have both seen what too many years of parenting has done to too many people. It breaks them. It robs them of their individuality, assaults their sex drive, slaughters their ability to make rational decisions, strips them of the vibrancy and curiosity that occupied them before they were parents. Parenthood removes the will to live a life—an actual life. Parenthood leads to buying items with sayings about coffee to decorate your house. Parenthood breaks your brain into thinking “Live, Laugh, Love” is a clever and inspiring mantra.

My brain is so burned out, I haven’t managed to read a single book since becoming a father. That’s more than three years now. I haven’t been able to watch a movie or enjoy a new TV series. All I have capacity for is watching Friends and Marvel films up to Infinity War. New things require energy and capacity I just don’t have.

But it’s not like we drowned the kid or left him to bake in a hot car or let him fall out of a window. We’re not monsters. We’re humans who want to live a good life. And we want our son, whom we still love, to live a good life. And he will do just that in Hammond, Illinois.

He’ll be loved. He’ll be with his grandparents, closer to his aunts and uncles and cousins. There’s a family park a stone’s throw from the house he’ll grow up in that he already loves. There’s a pool there. He loves swimming. He’s so brave and strong, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he becomes an Olympic swimmer like Michael Phelps. I may never know because my wife and I will likely be drunk and stoned making art in Paris or sleeping off a lazy afternoon on a Caribbean shore or murdering a cop in Portland, Oregon. Who knows where we’ll be because without the responsibility of parenthood, the world is once again our oyster. And we plan on devouring the whole goddamn thing. 

Harrison will have fields to play in. Outside of a big city, he’ll grow up surrounded by nature, or, rather, fields of soy and corn that’ll be used to make the foods that are slowly killing us. He’ll belong to a good church. And with his half-Jew blood, he’ll be respected because he’s a Jew like Jesus. He’ll grow up appreciating bro country—something I continue to do but never succeed. And I blame my northern Illinois living for that.

We will still see Harrison. At holidays, just like we already see my in-laws at holidays. And it’s not like we’re sending him to live with old-ass grandparents. These grandparents are not much older than I am. They’re younger than Don Hall even.

Will we miss Harrison? At first. But then the drugs and booze will kick in and we’ll be fine. And we’ll finally get to watch Euphoria with that young woman from the Spider-Man movie. We might even read Infinite Jest!

We’re giving our son away because we love him. But we also love ourselves. This is a win-win for everyone. This is the best thing for Harrison. His life will be full and free, not empty and confined like it would be living in the city with two withering creatives. Oh, sure, we could take him to a museum, but what kind of idiot takes children to museums? Parents, that’s who. With Harrison gone, we no longer have to be idiots. And he no longer has to be a witness to our withering demise as intelligent human beings.

We, on the other hand, will get to see Harrison grow up and thrive. But from a distance. That’s why we gave our son away.

[fenfyre]

Apocalypse

Day 1 of @erejeanweek - Injury/Apocalypse

The morning air tasted of ash when Jean crawled out of the partly caved in basement he had used as shelter last night. He was careful not to skim his knees on the rubble he had to climb over, then made sure there were no signs of life around the destroyed village before setting off on his path again.

The sun was still hanging low above the horizon but the heat was already sweltering, adding more sweat stains to his threadbare tunic as he wandered the winding roads through burnt farmland.

He remembered this area from his youth, remembered the golden ocean of wheat swaying in the warm wind. Remembered playing hide and seek with the village kids in the towering corn fields on the other end of the forest.

Remembered Armin's bright blue eyes when Jean snapped and made colourful sparks explode from between his fingers. Remembered long nights of studying scrolls and dusty books just so he could make those green eyes he adored so much shine with the same fascination.

Nowadays when Jean snapped nothing happened, no sparks emerging, no spells manifesting his will. And certainly no pretty green eyes sneakily watching him with wonder.

With the sacrifice of the Iris many years ago humanity had given up their chance to control the Flow. A sacrifice greater than even those who made it had been able to predict at the time but a necessary sacrifice nonetheless. It had bought them the months they needed, had protected them until they could take care of everything. Had pushed the Greekin back long enough to retrieve those still alive.

But it was never supposed to be a solution. Before long their enemies had torn down the protective barriers and laid waste to the land they had not yet destroyed, forcing the humans to retreat even further behind the walls they had been able to build. Walls that would stand at the very end of Jean's journey. Once he had found what he came for, out in the barren wasteland of Shiganshina.

He had been travelling for most of the day, the sun beating down on his burnt neck, forcing him to work his way through his water supply more quickly than he had calculated for, and the only sign of life he had seen were the hulking, moving outlines far on the horizon. The danger of being detected by the monsters was ever present but never did any of the shifting shapes move closer, keeping their distance as they roamed the once fertile land.

It was close to nightfall and hunger was stabbing painfully through Jean's stomach when he finally saw the familiar shapes of Shiganshina's gates appear behind the top of a flowing hillside. The town was much smaller than he remembered. Partly due to him having been barely fourteen years old the last time he had visited, partly due to entire streets of houses having collapsed under the onslaught of the Greekin.

As he made his way through the rubble Jean recognized certain corners and buildings, memories of the happy summers he had spent out here, so far from the cold, dark walls of the academy. He remembered the stairs leading to the market place that he would race up and down while playing catch with the other children, remembered Armin's house where they would sit on the steps in front of the door and read together. Remembered the old church, the bells ringing out around dinner time. Remembered the street corner where he had first run into the green eyed boy he would kiss many summers later, under the shade of the sturdy oak tree just outside the gates.

The oak tree had long since been burned down, only a charred stump remaining where it had once stretched its mighty crown into the sky.

Jean was not able to make out where Armin's old house had once stood, among the rubble of the buildings that had collapsed during one of the attacks. The church had been reduced to burnt out remains, the bare skeleton keeping part of the structure upright, threatening to collapse at any gust of wind strong enough to shake it.

But the corner where he had first met Eren, barrelled straight into him running to make it to his lesson on time only to get right into a brawl with the moody boy, that corner he found almost untouched. And when he rounded the corner and peeked into the alley that lay behind, a leaden weight began to loosen its tight grip around Jean's heart.

The house was not exactly like he remembered it. The roof had partly collapsed but the walls seemed to still be intact. If he was lucky, and Jean always hoped to be, he would be able to find what he was looking for. The front door was barely hanging on its hinges, creaking ominously as he pushed it open and stepped into the house. In his memory it had been much larger but memories could be deceiving. He had been just a boy back then, enjoying his summers without a care in the world about what was creeping up on the horizon. Now he knew better and he needed to be prepared.

The steps leading down into the basement were creaking under his boots, the noise loud enough to make him flinch. He dearly hoped there was nothing hiding in the ruins around him that might be interested in investigating the disturbance.

Once he reached the bottom of the stairs Jean wrapped a careful hand around the door knob and tried to turn it, but of course the door was locked. Examining it for a moment he decided that it seemed to be much more sturdy than the front door and had survived the years of decay without much damage at all.

Years ago, when Jean had still spent carefree summer in Shiganshina he only had to reach out and mutter an incantation for locks of any kind to spring open for him. This one had posed as little a problem as any other ordinary lock and he remembered sneaking down here at night with Eren, eager to find out just what his father was hiding behind that unusally sturdy door. Neither of them would have expected just what they found after Jean had whispered the door open.

Nowadays Jean had to use much more traditional methods.

The lockpick was a familiar weight between his fingers as he pulled it from his bag and inserted it carefully into the keyhole. But he had only been working to pry open the rusty old lock for a few minutes when he heard the creak of floor boards behind him.

Before he could compute the cold shiver running all the way from the back of his head down his neck and spine, let alone try and turn around to see who or what was approaching, he heard a familiar metallic clicking noise. Then there was a voice coming from the upper landing of the staircase.

"Step away from the door."

With no real way to defend himself, gun strapped to his thigh but too hard to remove and whirl around before a hole was blown through his skull, Jean followed the command. He went so far as to slowly raise his hands above his head, making sure the man at the top of the stairs could see the object in his hands was not a weapon. Then he took a slow step back, still facing the heavy basement door.

"Look, I don't want any trouble. I just came here for a book and then I'll get out of your hair."

A dry laugh full of sarcasm.

"You're gonna get out of my hair, period. There's no way I'll give you anything behind that door."

That gave Jean pause. He took a shallow breath, narrowed his eyes. If the basement still contained what he had come here for it would be useless to most people. Dusty spell books and incantations only those with a suitable background would understand. Only those practised and well versed in the arcane who had studied the subjects long before humanity had lost the Iris.

Aside from fellow former sorcerers there were few people who would care if Jean broke into this basement to retrieve a dusty old book. And only one his mind immediately jumped to.

"Eren?"

His lips had formed the name, so familiar yet distant like a memory almost lost to time, before he could consider just how likely that suspicion was.

The floor boards upstairs creaked like the other man had shifted his weight. He gave no indication if Jean was right, though.

"Turn around", the voice bellowed and Jean slowly followed the command.

On the top of the stairs, backlit by the orange glow of the setting sun, stood a man of roughly the same age as Jean. His clothes were stained and tattered, his hair a mess, his jaw stubbled. But those eyes Jean would recognize anywhere.

The man seemed to recognize Jean in turn, his hard expression shifting into confusion as he slowly lowered the gun that had been steadily pointed at Jean.

"What ... what are you doing here?", Eren asked, his voice much quieter than the command he had snapped before.

This was not at all like any reunion Jean had ever pictured in the privacy of his bed. Yet his heart was thumping against his ribs all the same and it was not just because of the barrel he had stared straight into moments ago.

"I told you: I'm looking for a book." A brief pause. Then he added: "I heard your father won't need it anymore. I'm so sorry."

For a second Eren's face twisted into something hard and unforgiving that almost turned him unrecognisable to Jean. Maybe he should not have mentioned the old man. Or his death.

The message of Master Jäger's end had reached Jean mere weeks ago even though the event itself had come to pass months before. The old sorcerer and the handful of his guards had been attacked by Greekin on their way to Shiganshina, caught outside without shelter and overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies crossing their way.

But the circumstances of his death had made Jean suspicious. There were whispers on the streets about something in the destroyed settlement that would tempt the old man to hire personal guards and leave the secure walls of the Bastion. Something that would help him rebuild what had been lost. Even though nobody Jean talked to seemed to believe in any of the rumours they still circulated. They still gave hope to those who had lost it.

Maybe it was the most foolish thing Jean would ever do but he could not resist undertaking the same journey, needing to find out just what Master Jäger had been on the hunt for. What he had not gotten the chance to rescue from his basement while fleeing the city.

"His books are not here anymore", Eren said, his voice still cold. But there was something in his eyes, still as expressive as they had been all those years ago, in the blistering summer heat under the old tree just outside the gates. "I took them away."

"Away...", Jean mindlessly repeated, then blinked once, twice. "Where did you take them?"

Eren had never seemed very interested in his father's research. Even when they had been kids quietly sneaking into the basement the intrigue on his part had stemmed from the secrecy, the hidden things he could uncover where his father went to work without him. Once they had broken in and his father's lab had turned out to be a whole lot of books and not much else of interest to him he had been disenchanted rather quickly.

Unlike Jean who would have spent hours upon hours sifting through the notes and scroll and books on topics he could not even find in the grand library of the academy if it hadn't been for Eren's mother catching them in the act. What he had caught glimpses of during their brief foray into the basement though had stayed on his mind for all the years to come. And he still remembered it now, well enough to leave the secure walls of the Bastion in search of the knowledge he had once been kept from soaking up.

Enough time had passed after his question that Jean decided Eren wouldn't answer him like that. Not without being properly persuaded at least.

"Back in the Bastion of Dawn there was word on the street your father worked on restoring what we lost. A kind of ... artificial Iris that would allow us to connect with the arcane again, that would give us a fighting chance against the Greekin. Whatever he wanted to come here to look for was important enough he risked being killed. It must be something valuable, something that can help."

Instead of showing the reaction Jean had hoped for, maybe relief or excitement, Eren only scoffed, rolled his eyes. That he did not raise the gun again out of sheer annoyance was the only good thing Jean took from that kind of reaction.

"Because sorcery helped us so well the first time we got attacked", he mumbled, voice dripping with sarcasm.

And with that Jean understood the sudden hostility.

He had heard about the fall of Shiganshina, how the few villagers gifted with a connection to the Iris had stood in the way of their attackers, had tried to defend the settlement long enough for a successful evacuation. But they had fallen much too soon, leaving the village defenceless as the Greekin approached. More than half of the population had been razed, Eren's mother among them.

Grisha Jäger had travelled for an emergency meeting at the old capital mere days before the attack, leaving the less trained magic users to fight for themselves. Had there been more sorcerers, or simply ones that were better trained, maybe Shiganshina would not have fallen that fast. Maybe more people could have been saved.

But the tragedy had gotten lost among the many others and Jean had pushed it away, assuming Eren had fallen alongside his mother and their childhood friends, slain on the dusty streets of Shiganshina.

"I had a feeling some thief would come to search for his old stuff sooner or later. But I never expected it to be you..."

Jean's arms and shoulders began to ache but he didn't yet dare lower them. Not while Eren was still holding that gun and was this obviously pissed. He did try to gave a nonchalant shrug though, not sure if he really projected the ease he wanted to with the movement.

"Why not? I learned from him, I know his work. If there's anyone who can finish what he started it's me."

Another scoff but this one did not carry quite as much heat.

"You always were a cocky asshole." The grumble was low but Jean liked to imagine it carried traces of old fondness. It was the only thing giving him the bravery to utter:

"And you always liked that about me, if I remember correctly."

Eren didn't visibly react to the words but, once again, neither did he raise his gun to shoot Jean for his audacity. That was as good a sign as any, Jean supposed.

"The only thing I liked about you was how you'd leave me the fuck alone come autumn."

The words were harsh but they didn't bite Jean the way there were probably supposed to. Not when he remembered their kisses underneath the oak tree and the way Eren's eyes had glistened suspiciously the last time they said goodbye to each other standing underneath the sturdy gates.

That had been the last autumn of peace before the Greekin attacked in the following spring, weeks before Jean was supposed to travel to Shiganshina to continue his studies with Master Jäger.

Jean let out a tense breath through his nose. Eren had always been more stubborn than anyone else he'd known. This song and dance didn't help and time was ticking by fast while they were standing here. The sun was already dipping low against the horizon and he really had not planned to be here after it set.

"Are you gonna tell me where you took the books or not?"

For a moment Eren hesitated and it seemed like he would evade the question, dance around the subject even more. Tell Jean to mind his own business, to leave and never come back.

But in the end he let out a long, slow sigh, shoulders sagging.

“It’s quite a way. Didn’t want anyone to just stumble over them while searching the ruins.”

So Eren had taken them away from the village? Several backpacks worth of old books and scrolls? No matter what he said he had to see the inherent value in his father’s notes or he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to protect them. Let alone from made up thieves.

He wouldn’t have done that, taken the books to a secure location instead of destroying them, if he didn’t think someone could make good use of the collected information.

“How far did you take them?”

“Two days west”, Eren shrugged, his piercing eyes trailing down Jean’s body, bruised and dirty from his travels. “Maybe three, considering the state you’re in.”

Of course. It was suitable to Jean’s luck that just after reaching what he thought was his destination he would find out he still had three more days of travel before he could find what he was looking for. But then again it had been his inherent luck that Eren even found him here. Otherwise he would have broken into an empty basement and never found what he set out to retrieve at all.

In the end, Jean gave a grim nod, ready to keep going on his journey until he had found the valuable information he was hunting.

“I’m not going back before I have the notes”, he said and Eren’s expression shifted again. His challenging stare softened, a smirk appearing on his lips that could almost be called proud. There was still that old fondness lurking behind his green eyes as he stepped back and nodded for Jean to follow.

“We should get going, then. The sun is setting and the next suitable shelter is at the other end of the village.”

He didn’t have to tell Jean twice. Taking two steps at a time he climbed the stairs until he had reached his childhood friend at the top. As they turned toward the open door they fell into a rhythm of quiet steps that was more comforting and familiar than anything Jean had been able to build even in the safety of the Bastion of Dawn.

~

Commissions | Kofi | AO3 | twitter | pillowfort

[shadowknight465]

Lunar seer

June 19, 1517

Today I decided to cut myself,  so I can numb the pain I feel almost every single day. Now thinking about it; it was the most stupidest thing I have ever done. Luckily my brother was there to stop me, in fact there should be more people like my brother in the world then anything else. Maybe I am needed after all.

Nightmare put down his quill, and close his journal entry. He looked out to his window to see his brother playing with a couple kids. To him children are pure beings that has more common sense than adults. He should know he was the village children's secret teacher. All because a little girl asked him to read her a story that her mom neglected to read for her. As he thinks for a writing prompt in his own stories, he heard the parents of the children calling for them, it's way past their bedtime. Dream came back holding a book. "Brother, can you read me the story? The girls told me that you're the best storyteller in the world." Dream ask with stars in his eyes. "I can teach you to read that book if you want." Nightmare responded.

"Well I don't want anyone to see me as a grown baby anymore." Dream reason with himself.

That night under a full moon, on Dream's bed.  As Nightmare help Dream read a Greek mythology about how Leto gave birth to Artemis and Apollo. They discover like many of the towns people Dream has difficulty reading. However it doesn't mean he won't give up on it.

"Let-o struggle for 9 d-ays try-ing to give Ap-o birth, then her first-born daughter Art-e-mis who was born mer-ely a few days.. Brother, how come it's forbidden for anyone, but the priest and the king to read?" Dream asked putting the book on his lap. Both of them knew Nightmare broke the sacred law of literacy. Nightmare scratch his head then said. "I wish I knew, Dream I was I knew. Plus I was very curious when I was young."

Dream chuckled. I know I promise everyone that I'll keep it a secret, but everyone believed that you were a cursed."

"What do you mean?" Nightmare responded. Just because he one of the a few people who knows how to read, doesn't make him cursed. "Well you're not very good at socializing, not very well at being empathetic, and you never look at anyone in the eye."

"I looked at you in the eye."

"Plus, now this is the only part where I and everyone else agreed on, you never really pay attention to any of your surroundings; you just have your nose-hole in a book." Dream turned at Nightmare with a smirk on his face. "Also you keep rubbing with your hands, even as we speak."

Nightmare look down at his hands and put them behind his back. "Do you see me as cursed?" Nightmare asked. "Nah, you're just different." Dream answer as he snuggle in his bear skins blanket inside a rope hammock.

"Well, Bonne nuit." Nightmare walk to his room. "Bonne nuit.." Dream respond as he drift off to sleep.

Nightmare headed to his hammock and wrap himself into his bear skin. Letting the tiredness to take over into a deep sleep.

~~~

He found himself in the same valley at the stars again, this time he shall white figures that resembles children playing which later turned into a whole village celebrating a festival. Curiosity took over and he went to see what the festival is all about. Only to see a version of both him and his brother but his doppelgänger felt a bit off. Not right off in the 'this is not normal' way. Off as an eerie feeling. His hunch was right when he saw the doppelgänger killed the tree by accident. Yet here the other him, being hated.  Things got worse when the doppelgänger got corrupted with the negative apples by eating them and started killing everyone, later turning his brother into stone. Nightmare tried to get the lookalike to stop, but as if by invisible chains, he cannot move or speak. He than felt a cold chill on his shoulder blade and turn around seeing himself with black substance pouring from his eyesockets as he smiled a crooked grin, muttering. "Hope is useless, dispair forever there."

Nightmare jotted up in cold sweat as silence filled the room. He look around to see if everything is still here. It was. He groun to himself. He's the prince of nightmares, he shouldn't be afraid of them. Because he don't think he'll go back to sleep anytime soon, he decided to make himself some coffee with milk cream. After making the fire, he took a look at the tree and he's doesn't know if he shouldn't do this, but he doesn't care. He admired his side of the tree, for resembling the night sky. If is was blue instead of purple of course. Then again a purple night sky wouldn't be so bad. As he traced the Orion constellation he heard the sound of crunching leaves, which turns out to be his brother.

"Dream, what are you doing up so late?" Nightmare asked. Usually he was night owl and Dream was the morning bird.

"I had another nightmare. This time I was being burned alive." He answered. "I guess your dreams are trying to tell you to not play with fire often." Nightmare responded.

"But fire is so beautiful."

"I know, but it's very dangerous as well." After a few seconds of silent Nightmare offer his brother some coffee. Dream was shocked when he heard that. His brother is a coffee addict and will get angry at anyone who interrupted his coffee time or try to steal his coffee. "You mean it?" He asked. "Sure." Nightmare said as he pat the other side of the log he was sitting on. Dream had coffee before, so it wasn't a huge shocker that he didn't go crazy and disturb the villagers sleep. Nightmare did notice that he was paying attention to the fire instead of the hot spilled drops on his shirt. "Just got a word from the messenger that the fire wizards are now calling themselves pyromancers." Nightmare jested. "Brother." Dream chuckle for a bit while embarrassed. As the two brothers laughed at the jest.

Nightmare suddenly saw a flash of light and saw a beautiful church that was famous throughout centuries because of a singular book. "Notre Dame." He whispered the church's name. " is something wrong brother?" Dream asked. "In April 15, 2019, Notre Dame will be set on fire."

"Brother don't destroy the beautiful church and plus it's impossible to live to see that year." Dream responded. Snapping Nightmare out of his dream like state. "Hmm? What happened?" Nightmare asked.

"You just said that Notre Dame will be set on fire in 2019." Dream reminded. Nightmare couldn't believe what he heard. Did he really said that? Before he could say anything else another flash appeared. This time he saw a queen portrait, but her head was off. He looked at the name he saw Marie-Antoinette. Nightmare shook his head violently and asked Dream did he say something weird. Dream nodded and said. "You yelled 'Let them cake' as you rip the head of a snake from its body." Nightmare quickly look down at his hot blooded hands with one of them still holding the head of the poor snake. He dropped it and immediately pour out his coffee to make a new batch. This time no cream.

"What's happening to me?" Nightmare asked himself. "Maybe you just need some sleep." Dream said. Nightmare quickly forgot that Dream was sitting right next to him. Regardless Nightmare nodded and decided to wash his hands in the cold river water. Just before he got onto his hammock he asked. "Hey, Dream can you sleep with me?" in an embarrassing tone. Dream nodded happily as the two brothers climb onto the hammock. Maybe just had to do something with the moon.

~~~~

Nightmare regret about drinking coffee at midnight. He felt the bags forming in his skull already as soon as he woke up. It didn't stop him from going out on his day however. After he was done brushing his teeth it dried corn and water, got dressed, and took his stickle for hunting. He saw a bright fire on the house. He knows it one of his bullies house, but it doesn't mean he can't prove that he's not evil after all. He dropped his stickle and grabbed a random bucket and headed straight for the village water well. After he was done filling the bucket he ran to the house while looking around, wondering why is nobody's reacting to this at all. After some effort he threw the water on top of the house. Big mistake. He could only stand up clutching his teeth and forming fists as he was being scolded at, while trying his best to not cry. What's going on me?

Nightmare asked himself. Until the priest got to the crowd yelling. "I'VE TOLD DREAM THAT HIS DEMON BROTHER IS CURSED WITH THAT  HEINOUS JEWEL ON HIS BACK!" The crowd then try to rip his shirt, but he quickly got away to the woods. Knowing that nobody goes there out of fear of the Pooka. After a while of running he stopped to catch his breath.

Am I really cursed?

He thought to himself. He later try to think back on what he did before the events. Maybe one of his bullies cursed him. Maybe it could be the priest after Dream didn't listen and took his side. He then thought about his own nightmare. Is it true that despair is forever here? He heard the sound of running water and followed it. Maybe a splash of cold water will help him. As soon as he was done. He felt something hot the second time he dip his hands in the water. He later opened his eyes and saw that the water is stained with blood in some type of substance that apparently can be light on fire even if it's in water.

What the hell is going on?

He thought to himself .

"You are seeing the future." A familiar voice said. He turn and saw one of those ghost people. "I'm seeing what?"

"The future that's why your eyesight been acting strange and so is your behavior." The ghost said. Nightmare sigh and got up. "Look I don't know what your little plan is. Making me scared on being your emperor-king? I don't care, but making a fool of me means that you had to explain yourself." Nightmare rant. It becomes more terrifying from the fact he's actually taller than the little ghost.  "As the moon emperor it's important for you to see the future. Even if it means no one will believe you."

"You still should've picked Dream. He'll make a greater emperor than me." Nightmare continue. "I understand that you are confused, but just like everyone else said you are not needed in this world."  It reply. "You're wrong again because my brother needs me."

"Remember that dream you had last night? We were showing you what will happen catch up if you continue your miserable path."

Nightmare couldn't believe what he is hearing. So, he left. The part where the ghost said no one will believe him actually reminds him of what he would consider one of Greeks saddest tragedy  Cassandra Ulysses. He will admit that even though her death was kind of sad, it was also kind of happy knowing that she would be free from all the pain she went through.  He went back to the village hoping that maybe that they're going to forget about the little incident. They didn't, and called him a 'mad skeleton'. He remembered that he dropped a hunting stickle, and try to look for in the grass.

That's when one of the bullies he scared the other day stabbed him in the back with it. "This is what happens to demons like you." The bully said. Nightmare just shook his head. If the bully was going to stab him in the back he should've done it with his own weapon. "You're still a hypocrite. And don’t think that I didn't saw you trying to groom a 11-year-old girl." Nightmare said. "Well who is going to believe an aspect of evil like you?" The bully reply. Nightmare will admit he does have a point, but he didn't say it. So he just replied it with. "God will, if you try to kill me."

"Do you think God will ever care about a evil being like you?" Nightmare didn't reply. And walk towards his home, and of course the priest forced the little ones to throw rotten fruit and vegetables at him. While the adults called him evil and that his life doesn't worth anything. Not thinking about public appearance anymore he ran across the stream without rolling his pants up or taking off his boots. And of course he kept his eyes closed the whole time and bumped into their cottage. He quickly rubbed his nose-hole and got inside. Knowing that all the adults are laughing at him. He hated the adults are hypocrites that the children will get tainted with ignorance as they grow older. The world seem scary when the younger generations have more common sense than the last one. He threw himself to his hammock to take a few breaths.

"Brother, are you OK?" He heard the gentle voice of his twin. "Come in." Nightmare reply. "Everyone told me about how you ran around like a maniac, and some of them saw you sobbing. Did something happened?" Dream said.

"I think I'm really am cursed. I keep seeing horrible events, and I believe I'm going insane." Nightmare told Dream. " How can you be so sure?" Dream asked. "I don't know." Nightmare sigh. "Hey Nightmare can I ask you something again?"

"Sure, what did you need?" Nightmare sat up from his hammock. "Do you think we're horrible brothers to each other?"

Nightmare got confused. Why out of all people Dream would ask that?

"What makes you say that?" Nightmare asked.

"Well, everyone keep comparing us to be polar opposite's with each other. And every time I'm not around you always ended up getting hurt one way or another. And you were so distant from me lately." Dream answers, trying not to cry in front his brother, but failing. "Dream, no sibling is perfect for one another, but that's why we had to stay together. In a way we balance each other out."

"But why were you avoiding me? Don't you trust me?" Dream asked. Nightmare sigh. " I do trust you I always thought you want to play with your little friends like we always said ' I need to get out of my little shell more'." Nightmare reminded Dream. "Plus I'm not always avoiding you. As long you are wearing that cape, always know that I'm here." He reminded Dream about that stormy night. Dream blush embarrassingly.

"And you would've made friends with the Village's children if they actually see that you are the best brother ever." Dream joked a little. Nightmare chuckled. Sometimes he feels like the only reason he kept on living was because of Dream. "Oh, I almost forgot our hammocks are going to be replaced with actual beds. And this is the fun part we get to design our own bedrooms." Dream cheered.

"What?" Nightmare responded.

~~~~

After half the day on room designing Nightmare went to his new bedroom. Which is shades a silver,purple and hues of blue. The only thing that seems to be the odd one out is the giant light yellow crescent moon on his spring blanket. And he felt lucky that the villagers are sort of nice when they gave him his own writing desk. He set his book down and began writing his thoughts.

June 20, 1517

Lately today I began seeing visions of what the spirit told me to be the future. However they also said no one will believe me like the story of Cassandra. I still don't know what their intentions are, but my visions told me that if I continue on my suffering path I'll become the evil being everyone believed me to be. I know that in the Bible that I should be afraid of God, but I don't think I am. I am more afraid of people, yet not their children. It's scary to think how the elders are supposed to be the wisest, but it was actually them.

Nightmare closes his book and went to his bed. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

[jakattax]

You wanted a scary story, I’ll give you one

May I introduce you all to St. Botolph’s Church, Lincolnshire (aka Skidbrooke church, aka demon church)

A 13th century Anglican church near the market town of Louth in my home county. As you can see the church is disused, abandoned and was declared officially redundant in 1973.

Like all abandoned buildings, especially places of worship, ghost stories abound. The church is widely regarded as one of the most haunted locations in Lincolnshire with tales of phantoms, demons and satanic activity.

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1891120/the-most-haunted-derelict-demon-church-in-the-uk-has-been-cursed

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bostonstandard.co.uk/news/offbeat/lincolnshire-s-top-8-terrifying-and-bizarre-paranormal-cases-1-8190903/amp

https://hauntedhistoryoflincolnshire.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/surrounding-areas/skidbrooke/

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.louthleader.co.uk/news/experts-claim-church-is-paranormal-paradise-1-1015932/amp

https://youtu.be/mZdlERW6iJI

So the story goes is that a coven of satanists performed dark and profane rituals in the church in the 1970’s and 80’s and there was a resurgence in 2004 of animal sacrifices, occult symbology and evidence of fires being burned. Now any self respecting occultist will know that just because a pentagram is involved and a few chickens were sacrificed it does not make it satanic (well certainly not LaVeyan Satanism which was at its most popular in the 60’s and 70’s as killing an animal goes against the tenth Satanic Rule on Earth) and that the deeds could have been carried out by any magical practitioner. It just sounds more dramatic and spooky to blame the satanists.

Anyway.

Skidbrooke church has a very menacing and a very infamous reputation among pretty much every one in the county, it becomes a rite of passage almost to go there and check it out. And so I did.

It was perhaps 4 years ago around midsummer and my best friend Dom decided he wanted to drive to the church and see what ghosts and ghouls we would encounter. This was a point where my occult side was just one of my many eccentricities, I certainly wasn’t an open magician yet so I was asked to tag along. It was myself, Dominic, Laura, Yas and Sam.

The drive from Grimsby to Skidbrooke isn’t long , probably around 40 minutes through the gorgeous Lincolnshire wolds, just expansive farmlands and rolling hills of woodlands. Proper farmers country. I remember the drive profoundly well because I was desperate for the toilet, and these long country roads don’t really have lay-bys. I was genuinely on the verge of pissing myself and Dom refused to stop until I threatened to piss in his new car and he eventually found somewhere so I could relieve myself. Weird diverge i know but I need to recount the tale from memory.

So we got to the church, or should I say the gated road that leads to the church. It was twilight so the sky was that beautiful dark orange colour, just as it meets the pale blue. The sun was setting and darkness was coming. The thing about Skidbrooke church is that it’s in the middle of fielded land and the only way to it is to park by the road and walk down a small country road to it. The road towards the church is gated off so driving there is not an option. The fields were wide and open so the sound of the wind and rustling of nearby trees were quite loud. Sound carried very well. It was very children of the corn, as in the grass in this field was huge. Very daunting, very atmospheric.

So off we went. There was definitely a sense of fear among us all, but we were quite jovial about it all, it was thrilling, fun almost. Dom and Sam are sceptics, they were adamant nothing was going to happen. Yas and Laura weren’t really 100% comfortable, especially when I was boasting that I was going to stir the supernatural pot. In all honesty I had no intention to perform a ritual as I didn’t have any tools or books with me to do so, I was just trying to spook my friends.

The thing about the church grounds is that they’re well kept and groomed. It’s a grade I protected building so I imagine the national heritage employs some poor bugger just to keep the grounds tidy. And it was a functioning church until the 70’s so it’s only respectful to keep the graves nice and clean. It was quite an awesome sight to be honest, the building is quite beautiful. Dom and Sam weren’t so much afraid of ghosts and Demons but more if the church was used by homeless people who might take umbrage to us poking around. We swept the graveyard before entering, just to make sure no one was around who’d fuck with us.

And we were indeed all alone. And so we entered the church proper.

An abandoned church is a bizarre thing. No pews, no altar, no stained glass, just a large bowel of rotting stone and pigeon shit. That’s what hit us, just the smell of dirt and decay. The only features that remained was the heavy oak doors, everything else was gone. From a place that is steeped in centuries worth of devotion and joy is now just a stone skeleton, forgotten in the middle of a field in England.

What struck me probably more than my friends was the heavy atmosphere of the place. Not saying necessarily negative but certainly a strong, musky and intense heavy energy attached to it. We explored the building briefly but honestly it was just a big empty room. It was getting progressively darker and I think we were all starting to spook ourselves a little.

So me being me, I rallied the troops and said I was going to call out. Now I applied no serious occult method here, I just gathered my friends and did the whole “I call beyond the veil, make a noise if there are spirits present” routine. I specified that if Spirits were present they should make themselves known by knocking on the oak doors. I added some flourishes to my calls, adding the names of Malach Ha’Mavet (an angel of death) and some other terms just for the dramatic effect. In hindsight very silly of me to do, but I just wanted a thrill, a bit of a spook. The worse thing was is that it was enough for Yas and Laura and they wanted out. Very douchey thing of me to do really, just to scare them for the sake of it.

We decided it was probably best to leave now. We were all realising that we’re in the middle of nowhere in the dark and me being that weird occultist was trying to commune with the dead (again in actuality I did no real magic here, bit of foolery) and me realising that I’ve scared my friends I didn’t feel too proud of myself so we go.

Our pace is significantly faster as we go back down the road to the car, now it is fully dark so we’re relying on our phones to light the road. Sam walks ahead with the girls, me and dom walk slower behind as we smoke. We decide to look back on the church, and it looked just damn ominous now under cover of night. And that’s when we saw something, or perhaps someone.

On the small belfry tower to the left of the picture, standing on top of it was the distinct figure of a dark shrouded man. It was faint to see with the figure being black against a dark sky and it was very small but it was there. It’s horribly cliche to see a dark hooded figure but that’s what we saw. Hard to define as we were a distance away but it moved and swayed in the wind violently. We thought it was a flag but as you can see there is no flagpole.

It’s fair to say we lost our shit and pelted it to keep up with Sam and the girls. We told them what we saw and they thought we were fucking with them. We were all now running back to the gate and the car. I did look back a few times but couldn’t make anything out. Back to the car and were out of there to a local pub to calm our nerves.

Was it a ghost? Was it a flag or natural phenomenon? I don’t know. It could entirely be a trick of the mind, and it could have easily been a ghost upset at petulant kids poking around his church. Or it could have been demonic, a force stirred up by the sorcery which profaned the hallowed ground. Even though I’m a practising magician and I’m use to stirring up spirits to some tangible form, it’s still chilling to see something out of the blue. Did I unintentionally summon something with my pseudo-magical calls?

In all honesty I put this one to a case of psychology. I think due to the atmosphere, the fame of the building, the situation we put ourselves in we were simply seeing things the mind wanted us to see. We went looking for s ghost and we got one. In the darkness the mind plays tricks, let alone when your in the darkness in an abandoned ‘satanic’ church with a history of haunts and black magic. Yet also as an occultist and magician I must acknowledge that places do indeed carry on the scars of magical influence, a church is such holy and sacred ground that it inherently carries vast potency, especially a church that has been there for 700 years. And i must acknowledge that “satanist” or not, groups of people do gather at the church and vandalise it with pentagrams and carry out rituals, so it is soaked in the supernatural.

Whatever we saw, if we saw anything at all was more than enough to scare away. I haven’t been back to Skidbrooke, but being a more responsible, learned and all around proficient magician makes me want to. Not to try and stir anything up, just to investigate with a more clear head.

Want to come with me?