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meadowclarke · 3 years

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For this week’s @flashfictionfridayofficial. I suffer from a serious inability to keep things short and sweet, so I went over the word limit. The first bit outside the read more still fits the prompt, though, so please feel free to read only that!

Title: One song

Characters: Marley and Brodie (lovingly borrowed from @emiltons) featuring Jessica as background noise. They don’t belong to a WIP per se, they’re just characters I love and write about because they’re dumb and do dumb things.

Summary: Marley is a hopeless romantic, a budding song writer, and a wedding singer. She’s always wanted to experience that show-stopping Love At First Sight people keep talking about, but when it actually happens it’s not exactly the way she’d pictured. This is a bit angsty because I like to branch out from my fluffy roots sometimes.

As a lifelong romantic, Marley had always been on board with the idea of falling in love at first sight.

She'd craved it, even. Written lyrics about it. Daydreamed -- and night dreamed -- about it.

And when it finally happened, it was exactly as she'd imagined it. Completely unexpected. One moment she was standing there, fingers loosely wrapped around the microphone as Jessica played the first few notes of A Thousand Years on the piano, and the next she was looking into the most beautiful eyes she'd ever seen in her life. Feeling lightning strike her heart. Making her miss her cue and force Jessica to replay the last few bars so Marley could try again.

It was exactly as she'd imagined.

The dim lights, the soft music, the beautiful woman looking straight into her soul. Her own heart tripping all over itself. Her voice coming out just a little shaky at first, until she managed to get a hold of her own emotions and do what she'd been hired to do: sing a lovely young couple's wedding song while they had their first dance as husband and wife.

What could possibly more romantic than falling in love at first sight at a wedding, of all places?

But Marley wasn't just a lifelong romantic. Oh, no. She was a lifelong hopeless romantic. So the fact that the woman whose eyes were making Marley's heart lose all sense of rhythm happened to be the newly married young bride?

Well. That was just the icing on the (tragic) cake.

So, feet firmly anchored in her belief -- her knowledge, really -- that this would remain strictly one-sided and likely fuel the next few months of her song writing, Marley went ahead and sang for her. She hadn't loved this woman whose name she didn't even know (but she could check in the signs by the venue's entrance, she figured) for a thousand years, but she could absolutely love her for a thousand more.

From afar, of course.

Marley was a hopeless romantic, not a homewrecker.

She could live off the way her heart thrummed with every glance the woman stole as she danced.

Gosh. Her first album was going to be a tear jerker, wasn't it?

***

"Hi."

Marley didn't know that voice, but it made her fingertips tingle like she'd been hit by some invisible burst of static and she'd zap anything she touched after that.

"Marley, right?"

Marley swallowed, staring at the espresso machine she'd just finished wiping down like it held the answer to life's greatest mysteries, such as the identity of whoever was talking to her, and the reason Marley had been frozen in place and couldn't just turn around and face the woman like a normal person. Sadly, the savant espresso machine seemed to be in no mood for helping, and after a second or two Marley forced herself to simply look.

"Oh."

Marley at least had the decency to blush at her own reaction when she turned around and found herself staring into the very same eyes she'd been writing about for the last five weeks. Oh. Who said that? Who actually said 'Oh' out loud? Good grief.

"I mean-- hi. Hey!" The little Jessica in Marley's head told her to stop being a weirdo, but sadly for everyone involved Marley listened to Brain Jessica just about as well as she listened to Real Jessica, which is to say not at all. "Yeah. I am Marley. Hi. You're married."

The woman's eyebrows seemed to be confused as to how to even process Marley's whole existence (Marley couldn't blame them), but she was smiling and Marley took that as a good sign.

"I am. I'm Brodie." A beat, which Marley used to ponder what words could rhyme with Brodie for her next song writing session. "I just wanted to stop by and thank you. For singing at the wedding? It was the highlight of the day."

If Marley had been better at listening to Brain Jessica and her masterful sleuthing gossip skills, perhaps she'd have stopped to consider how it was a little odd that Brodie had tracked her down at her day job, which was definitely not listed in her and Jessica's wedding singer website. Maybe she'd have given a thought to the fact that it was a bit odd for a bride to think the singing -- and not, you know, the marrying -- had been the highlight of her day.

But she didn't do any of those things.

"It was a pleasure. You looked beautiful." Oh, no. Marley's blue eyes widened in shock at her own inability to stay even just cool-adjacent under pressure. "Your husband! Beautiful." Oh, no, no, no. "Just-- the whole thing. I had a little pig-in-a-blanket. I mean I hope that's okay, I was just a bit hungry by the end. But even that, you know -- beautiful. As far as hors d'oeuvres go."

Once again, and against all odds, Brodie smiled.

"This is a lovely place," Brodie said, motioning around them at the tiny coffee shop, "is it always this quiet?"

Marley nodded.

"Can I have a cup of tea? I think I'd like to stay and do some work."

***

Brodie stayed that day. She had another cup of tea the next day, and the day after that, and at some point it became routine. Marley would go through the motions for the first few hours of her shift as she waited for the moment when Brodie would walk through the door with a smile on her face and say Good morning, Marley like it was nothing at all.

Like Marley didn't spend the other twenty-one hours of her day (Brodie always stayed for three hours, from ten to one) thinking about the next time she'd hear them.

And then one day, three months into their little friendship, Brodie didn't show up.

Not at ten, not at ten thirty, not even at noon. Marley spent the rest of the day thinking about it. Had she done anything to make Brodie uncomfortable? She didn't think so. She always stayed on her side of the counter, coming out only to bring tea refills and smiles. They talked about... well, about a million different little things, actually, but none of them in any way questionable. They hadn't even exchanged numbers, so Marley couldn't text to ask if Brodie was okay.

Not even Jessica, who'd started showing up around Brodie Time (that was the official name for ten to one) to snoop and scheme, could find anything to nitpick.

So when closing time hit, Marley told herself it was probably nothing. Maybe Brodie's moms were in town for a visit. Maybe she'd had a work meeting, or one of the pipes at her house had sprung a leak, or maybe she didn't feel like having tea. Brodie had a life outside that three-hour window she shared with Marley. It was no big deal.

Marley hummed a little tune as she finished sweeping the floor of the little coffee shop. She had the melody -- she'd even asked Jessica to spruce it up on the piano, and it sounded amazing -- but the lyrics were nowhere to be found. Brodie rhymed with coyote and Don Quixote but not even Marley and her hopeless romanticism could turn those into a song.

"Hi."

This time, Marley knew the voice and exactly why her heart skipped a beat or two at the sound of it.

"You're a bit late," Marley smiled, glancing at the clock that told her it was just past ten at night, "I should make your tea decaf."

Marley was surprised her joke didn't earn her the usual soft chuckle from Brodie. She was even more surprised when she turned around and saw Brodie wasn't smiling at all.

"Are you--" Marley rested the broom against a nearby chair and took a step towards Brodie, "is everything all right?"

"Yes," Brodie said, shaking her head 'no' at the same time.

"Okay." Marley just stood there, counting heartbeats, until Brodie took a step forward and then another and Marley lost count altogether.

"I'd like to dance. With you."

Brain Jessica told her to run away and never look back, but Marley nodded instead. "I can--" Marley pointed in the general direction of the laptop they used to stream music during the day, but her voice stopped working when Brodie took yet another step and landed right in front of Marley

Right in her personal space.

"No," Brodie shook her head, voice so low it may as well have been a whisper, and rested one hand on Marley's shoulder, "you sing. Please."

Marley nodded again. Her brain felt empty and full to the brim all at the same time as she placed her hand on Brodie's waist and held Brodie's hand and tried to keep her heart from giving out entirely at the feeling of touching Brodie for the first time.

At first she was just humming. That little melody Jessica had helped polish, the one with no words at all.

"Just one song," Brodie said, resting her temple on Marley's collarbone and getting closer still, "all right?"

Marley nodded, swaying to the rhythm of her own voice. She found words just for Brodie as they danced and sang and held her close and tried to figure out what the scent on Brodie's hair reminded her of. Something floral.

"We're moving away." Brodie's voice was barely above a whisper, and she didn't pull away or stop swaying when Marley's song ended. "Soon."

"Okay," Marley said. She didn't ask why or for how long because she had a feeling she already knew the answer to both of those things, and hearing them out loud wouldn't help.

"Was that all?"

"What?" Marley had just decided Brodie's hair smelled like roses, she just wasn't sure which kind. "What do you mean?"

"The song," Brodie said, lifting her head to look into Marley's eyes and steal her breath away, "is it over?"

Marley shook her head, and pretended she couldn't hear the relieved sigh leave Brodie's lungs in a rush of warm air.

"Okay," Brodie whispered, tucking herself against Marley's taller frame once again, "we'll keep dancing, then. Just for one song."

#my words #fff95 #writeblr #character: mr #character: bw #character: jsj

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residentlesbrarian · 4 years

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The First Book I Read In the Dark: Queer Witches and a Whole Bunch of Redwood Trees

The Lost Coast by Amy Rose Capetta

Let me set the scene...we start Day 1 of this experience curled up next to the white painted fireplace desperate for warmth with two blankets, an extra hoodie, a stocking cap, and my trusty lazy husband for that much needed lumbar support.

Now The Lost Coast was a book I had checked out multiple times over the past year of silence on this blog because every time I saw it on the shelf I would pick it up, flip to the blurb, read it and go, “Man, that sounds so good! I gotta read it!” Then I’d check it out and it would sit in my locker, or in my car, or on my desk for three weeks and I’d turn it in completely untouched. But this time...this time I swore I was reading this damn book! Even if I was reading 10 pages a day during my breaks at work I was gonna finally read this book, it wasn’t going unread sitting somewhere for three weeks again. Little did I know how right I would be!

So as a bit of a precursor this is the only book of those I read in the dark that I had already started. I was 90 pages in when I started reading on Day 1 and I only get more incoherent from here so let’s do this!

Unicorn Rating:

Blurb: Our protagonist is pulled across the country to the yawning redwood forest of northern California and discovers more than she could ever imagine. Her mom thought Danny kissing girls was the worst of her problems but now she has to deal with witches and magic and is that a dead body! This non-stop ride is just getting started!

Disclaimer: I will try my best to not spoil anything from the book, but my book loving rambles may give more away than a traditional review. Here we go! Ramble time!

Review:

Okay so I would say this book pretty firmly falls in a middle ground of okay for me. It was some really great escapism for me in a time when I really needed it, but the way the book was structured and written just didn’t really jive with my usual reading tastes. It felt to me like it was trying so hard to be poetic and artistic that it got a little lost at times, no pun intended with the title of the book.

Now for the plot, which I think was maybe the strongest element of this book. The driving plot of the book never changed and was always consistent and I really liked how the author wove the magic of the world and the unique structure of how she was telling the story while never losing the plot in that unique structure. It was always peeling away one layer at a time and showing us just a bit more without holding our hand. It was very well done and kept me guessing and trying to figure out what was going to happen and how it was all going to end. Next we have what is usually my favorite part of a review but this time...isn't.

I have so many conflicted feelings about the characters in The Lost Coast. On one hand holy giant redwoods I haven’t read a book since Not Your Sidekick that had this many casually queer characters just strutting about doing their thing, but on the other hand I feel the way the story was written leaves so much to be desired. The characters feel so thin and lacking when they had the potential to be so rich and diverse. Don’t get me wrong they are diverse in the bare bones definition, but we know so little about them at the end of the day it feels like it doesn’t really matter. We have our protagonist, Danny, who we know has a strained relationship with her mother but is close enough with she was willing to move her across the country in an attempt to try and give her a fresh start. Now there are somethings that take place in the story that explain a lot of the odd things about Danny’s character and made me a lot less unhappy with her by the time the book ended but it was really hard to get behind her as a protagonist at the beginning not because I didn’t like her but because I wasn’t motivated to follow her into the story. She was just going along from one event to the next with no real drive of her own, which brings us to the Grays: Hawthorne, June, Lelia, and Rush. They at least have a consistent motivation, but they had such potential to be really interesting characters but each one fell just short for me. The closest one to a compelling for me was Rush, we learned the most about her and I think that was mostly because Danny paid the most attention to her for obvious gay reasons. Now I can’t really expand too much more without going into massive spoiler territory for the plot which I don’t want to do, because the book is good and is an experience I don’t want to take away from anyone it just fell flat for me.

So yeah, this book wasn’t what I expected and I think a huge part of that was because the blurb is so much different than what is in the book itself. And I know, as a lesbrarian I should know not to judge a book by its cover or its blurb...but that is your first exposure to the story you are going to be reading and in this case the tone was so much different. Now let me reiterate this book wasn’t bad. There were parts that were so beautifully written I had to reread them several times to take in the layers of imagery and sheer poetry of the prose, but I feel like at times that style took away from the story itself and most of all it took away from the characters so that by the end of it they just fall a bit flat for me. I do recommend you give it a shot though because you won’t find a book with a queerer cast out there and maybe it will speak to you more than it did to me.

Queer Wrap-up: Alright lets look at the this stellar tally shall we. Even with my own lack luster feelings toward the characters from a story perspective you can’t over look the fact that all but one character we interact with on page regularly is queer. That is something I have never seen before, so it more than earned its five unicorns, even if the quality was a bit lacking on the tail end the quantity really pulled it out. So we have our protagonist who is unapologetically kissing girls from page one and doesn’t ever shut up about it but also doesn’t shy away from the fact she also finds boys undeniably adorable and cute. In a scene that makes this tally easier than most she defines herself as queer so we are gonna stick with that. Within the Grays we have Lelia who is a tiny nonbinary gray ace person who will get in your face and is not afraid to be called a weirdo, June is a “femme as fuck” lesbian who is also not white (I belive Danny describes her as vaguely pacific islander at one point. I swear it was more specifically stated what her ethnicity was somewhere later in the book but I didn’t write it down at the time and couldn’t find it in my quick flip threw the book when I grabbed it to jot down their stated sexualities, but she is definitely not white), Hawthorne is a bisexual black witch who states she has “a strong lean toward masculine folks” which is refreshing to see bisexual representation that isn’t just “gay but guys exist I guess”, then we have Rush who very succinctly sums herself up with “Fat. Queer. White. Cello Player.” She is also some add rep in the form of having synesthesia where she can taste words. We also have some disability rep as June has an injury to her leg from a fall out of a tree that never healed properly and it does cause problems for her throughout the book, not the greatest rep but it’s there and shouldn’t be forgotten or not included. Man, oh man, this is the longest wrap-up I think I’ve ever written but I am still not done yet. We have Imogen who is the missing Gray mentioned in the blurb and brought up pretty quickly in the story and without spoiling anything we do get confirmation she is also undeniably queer as well as another character that I can’t even begin to talk about without a giant redacted stamp for spoiler reasons, but just know this book does have queer rep coming out its ears.

Links:

Amy Rose Capetta’s Website

Goodreads

So yes here we come to the end of the first Book I Read In the Dark it was a whimsical journey through redwoods with witches and more queerness than you could shake a widowmaker at (if you don’t get that reference read the book). I finished this book on Day 1 and immediately dove right into Book 2 because well I didn’t have anything else to do and I was kinda reeling from the confusion of this book and wanted something to ground me. The next book was one I had wanted to read for a very long time. You’ll see whether it did the job or not.

As always if you want to read this but don’t want to spend the money without knowing for sure you are going to like it, go to your local library. You’d be surprised what they have on their shelves just waiting to be discovered. Trust me, I’m a lesbrarian.

#The Lost Coast #Amy Rose Capetta #resident lesbrarian #five unicorns #3 queer girls #1 bisexual black girl #1 gray ace nonbinary person #1 lesbian #1 queer [redacted]#wlw rep #ya novel #paranormal #magical realism #go to you local library #but wear a mask #and wash your hands #and stay 6 feet apart #be safe guys gals and nonbinary pals

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scottedwardfowler · 5 years

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Hey guys! In this post I’m to talk about the top three websites I’ve personally use to get work as a freelance video editor. If you’re just starting out, and you’re part time or on a budget, I’ve got a few places you can check out that won’t break the bank.

youtube

This post is a response to a question that I got on my last video, “How to Get Started Editing In Premiere.” Which you can find on my youtube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhj-GmQTgjs&t=1s

The question came from Izabela who asked, “Id love a video about getting started on becoming a freelance editor. What are the best freelancing websites to apply for jobs, tips, and suggestions for anybody who’s starting out. Thank you so much, great video!”

I think that’s a really good one to ask, a lot of people (including myself) when they’re first starting out struggle with how and where do we find work.

There’s actually tons of freelancing sites online that you can search for and try out. So here’s a couple of Honorable mentions:

Guru & Freelancer - Best suited for beginner freelancers on a budget

There’s a Low cost to get started and bid on jobs, with a decent amount of various editing jobs available. I haven’t used them as much, because when I was first starting out, I signed up for a bunch of freelancing websites, and I ended up having more luck landing gigs with these other sites first, so the first one is

Fiverr - is a website that’s normally Best for one time, or short term gigs. It has it’s advantages of being easy to sign up and start using, because Unlike other freelance sites, you Don’t have to bid for clients. After some time, and you’re established, Fiverr pushes clients to you by listing your profile near the top of searches. And Fiverr makes tipping very easy, so you can make extra money on top of what you earned for the gig.

However the cons are that Fiverr takes a 20% Commission, and Most gigs are low pay. So that 20 percent really eats into your profits. You get to set your rates, and what kind of editing jobs you can offer and what the turn around time would be. However, there’s a strict policy on no contact outside of Fiverr, so you can’t make a deal with a client outside of the platform and cut Fiverr out of their commission.

Now we come to UpWork, which is the site I’ve had the most success with. It’s the Most popular freelance site, and offers high quality gigs, as well as not so high quality. It sort of ranges all over the place. But once you’ve been on the platform long enough, you can sort of get an idea of what great job postings are before you even bid on them. I like to think of Upwork as a long term lead genitor, because I have several clients I met years ago who I still work with today. And it all started with one project. It can be difficult to get that first client however, because it is very competitive but once you do, it gets much easier to land future clients.

You also have the the Flexibility of what kind of projects you can do, such as getting paid hourly vs project based. The negatives of UpWork are that it’s kind of Expensive to get started, you can sign up for free, but in order to bid on any jobs it costs 15 cents per credit. And most jobs postings range from 4-6 credits. So if you were to bid on a ton of jobs, that 15 cents starts to add up. Also, Upwork has a complex Commission rate, I’m not going to go too deep into it but essentially it’s 20% for first 500 you make per client. And roughly 10 percent after that first 500. And that’s per client, so every time you land a new client, UpWork takes 20 percent of your earnings on the first 500 dollars.

Also, when it comes to disputes between freelancers and clients, Upwork almost always sides with the clients. So I would recommend doing hourly gigs, because typically hourly gigs tend to be more long term and Upwork has hour tracking features built into the platform that make it easier to prove disputes between yourself and a client over work done.

This next one may surprise you, I’ve also landed some great clients from Craigslist. The cool thing out craigslist, is that the jobs are local to where you live. So you can meet the client face to face and discuss the job in detail at that point. Meeting in personal and developing relationships, really drives what the ultimate goal is which is to create long term client relationships. Plus, there’s no bidding on gigs, or commission rates getting in the way. You look for gigs on the site, reply to a posting, and hopefully you can connect with some great people.

Now, on the flip side Craigslist does have a sketchy reputation for being a place where weirdos hang out so you have to be on guard there. Also, there’s no gig protection here so if a client stiffs you after you’ve done the job for them, that’s totally on you. There are things you can do such as ask for half of the project payment upfront, or even a quarter of it to protect some of your costs. But it’s definitely a risk you take. The last negative, is that it’s more of a time commitment to drive out and meet a potential client somewhere. If it doesn’t work out on a place like UpWork or Fiverr, oh well, you never had to leave your house. So those are some things to be aware of.

The thing about freelancing is, not everyone is doing it full time. Some may freelance as a part time- side hustle, others might be doing some every once in awhile as a hobby. And not everyone has the same budget in order to get started freelancing. So I understand that everyone’s situation is different, but I just wanted to list out my top three sites that I’ve personally used to get clients. There’s a lot more information I could deep dive into on each site, and Ill probably do that in future videos, so stay tuned for that, But I think those sites I mentioned are definitely a great place to start, if you’re looking to get into freelance video editing.

Ok so the next part of Izabela's question was about what tips and suggestions I have for getting started with freelancing. I think a great place to start is trying to have an understanding of what it takes to build a business. No one knows what it’s like to build a business when they’re first starting out, so you have to seek out sources and people who do have that information And I know it’s weird, especially when you’re first starting out, to think of yourself as a business. But that’s the reality, you have to go clients and try and sell yourself and your services in order to get jobs.

So I think a good way of becoming more confident in building your freelancing business is to actively learn as much as you can from different sources. So the fact that you’re here watching my video, is a great thing already. I’m always trying to learn what other people’s strategies are, and how they became successful so that I can pick up a few things here and there to apply to my own business.

In fact I recently just finished reading a book called “Three Simple Steps”, it’s by Trevor Blake. And I think it’s a really good book to inspire people who are just starting out freelancing or creating their own business. Ill just quickly read the description blurb from amazon:

“Despite stock market crashes, dot-com busts, and the specter of recession, the author started a virtual company from home, using a few thousand dollars of his savings. A few years later, without ever hiring an employee or leaving his home office, he sold it for more than $100 million. As the economy slipped into another free fall, he did this again with a company in a different field. He accomplished this through no particular genius. Rather, he studied the habits of the many successful men and women who preceded him, and developed three simple rules that, if followed diligently, virtually ensure success. Using them first to escape poverty, then to achieve a life of adventures, he finally turned them toward financial independence...

Written in a straightforward and no-nonsense style, Three Simple Steps shows you how to take back control of your destiny and reshape your mind for increased creativity, serenity and achievement. While building on the wisdom of great thinkers and accomplished individuals from East and West, Three Simple Steps isn't a new age text or guide to esoteric fulfillment. Rather, it's a practical guide to real-life achievement by a pragmatic businessman who attributes his incredible successes to these very simple ideas. Three Simple Steps, a 2013 Small Business Book Awards winner, is a must-read guide for everyone who wants to achieve more, live better and be happier.”

The three simple steps in case you were wondering is, number one is to spend more time thinking positively about the things you do want, rather than thinking about the things you don’t want. For example, in our case as freelancers, no one likes having to bid for jobs or chase down clients, you could reframe that as the more jobs I bid for the better practice Ill have at understanding what clients want.

Second, spend 20 minutes a day (preferably in the morning) in quiet time by yourself so you can clear your mind and from that, creativity and inspiration for your business can spring from it.

Third, the author talks about setting intentions rather than goals. The difference as the author describes it, as an intention is a goal but with the doubt of it’s attainment removed. So as freelancers, a goal might be I hope to make enough money this year to quit my regular job. An intention is, I know will make enough money this year to quit my regular job. You have to set your mindset to that intention everyday. Which is hard, but in the end that’s what will make it rewarding.

I would highly recommend this book, I found it be really insightful about starting and growing a business from the ground up. But I will say, the first couple of chapters were kind of slow because they were mostly about the author's life journey, which did tie into the rest of the book in the later chapters. But it gets into some really great stuff after the first few chapters.

So if you’re interested in that book, I’ll leave a link below that you can check out. And that about does it for today’s video, let me know in the comments below what freelancing sites you guys use or prefer the most? I’d love to get a comment thread going, so we can all help each other out on where and how to get jobs as freelancers. Three Simple Steps (Book): Amazon - https://amzn.to/3bS5uao (affiliate)

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comicteaparty · 6 years

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February 11th-February 17th, 2019 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from February 11th, 2019 to February 17th, 2019. The chat focused on Sombulus by Christina Major.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Sombulus by Christina Major~! (http://www.sombulus.com/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Remember, though, that while we allow constructive criticism, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic. Below you will find four questions to get you started on the discussion. However, a new question will be posted and pinned everyday (between 12:01AM and 6AM PST), so keep checking back for more! You have until February 17th to tell us all your wonderful thoughts! With that established, let’s get going on the reading and the chatting!

QUESTION 1. What has been your favorite scene in the comic so far? What specifically did you like about it?

QUESTION 2. At the moment, who is your favorite character? What about that character earns them this favor?

QUESTION 3. What do you think caused Rana, Astyr, and Sydney to wind up bound all together since Astyr didn’t do it on purpose? Do you believe the trio will be able to become unbounded? How might this affect their relationships?

QUESTION 4. Who exactly are Hannah and Vuudo working for? Why are the two so intent in spying on Astyr? Further, what about Kazar? What spying activity is Kazar doing and why was Yanell’s presence of interest to her? How will these spying activities affect the main trio?

Delphina

It's my comic! I'm so excited!

khkddn

I have not started reading yet but I wanted to say the website looks really nice. The archive is so neat looking!!

Delphina

Thanks! I know the archive is long, so having a nice-looking archive page that would be helpful for seeing where you left off was important to me. XD

varethane

I think Sydney is my favourite, but that is liable to change at any minute cuz I like Astyr and Rana and Tenge a lot too lol

kayotics

1. I think I like lot of the more recent scenes the best. I really like the emotional depth that's happening between the main characters, specifically Astyr and Sydney. The scenes where Sydney was actively working with Astyr are some of my favorite, just because it shows a lot of character growth. 2. I like Tenge a lot (I'm a sucker for nerds), but I think I like Astyr and Sydney the best! Mostly I like their dynamic and the emotional development that has started between them. Overall, the cast is really fun because they all have something unique about them. 3. I don't really have much speculation on how they became bound together, but I do think that they're going to eventually become unbound from each other, but I think that at least Rana will choose to stay with Astyr after becoming unbound. 4. Again, I haven't speculated too much on who they work for, but my guess on why they're intent on following around Astyr is he's caused some sort of significant disruption in magic before (it seems that he does that frequently enough), or he's important in some sort of larger plot that he's not aware of.

keii4ii

Can I just say I love the main trio a lot + Tenge? Also, I'm entertaining a vague AU idea about half-ascended Astyr with one blue eye.

kayotics

Oooh I like that AU

Delphina

He looks like that guy from My Hero Academia XDDD

kayotics

huh, you're right

RebelVampire

QUESTION 5. Do you believe that Tenge will destroy his own Morphid father? If not, what do you think he’ll do alternatively? Whether he does it or not, how do you think further contact with his father will affect him? What about his relationship with Astyr?

RebelVampire

1) its hard to pick so im picking two. the first one is the scene where sydney is confronted with the fact not all demshull can do magic. i felt at that point in the comic thered been a lot of build up for sydney being confronted with her own racism, and i felt that moment was a great pay off. especially cause sydney's facial expressions in the moment are just fantastic and like she got hit with a ton of bricks. for the second fave scene though, the one where astyr and sydney first meet rana and rana discovers that basically her life is a lie. there was something fantastic in the pacing and atmosphere that really drove home the fact that this was a life changing moment for rana. 2) Astyr. I like how Astyr is sort of this gray character where he's not terrible yet he causes lots of property damage that makes you think Sydney is kind of right about him. And I really just like this complicated dynamic cause it makes you feel unsure about whether to trust him or not. I also love though that deep down hes willing to risk a lot of people he cares about. 3) i actually think it was rana who bound them all, not astyr. theres one moment where rana is looking off into the distance getting internally emotional and then suddenly the alarm about essence going off triggers. and rana is shown to basically be kind of weird where thats concerned, so i think she inadvertantly bound them so she could leave with them. Regardless, I consider it inevitable that they'll become unbounded. While Rana and Astyr will probably be fine, Sydney I think is gonna be most affected. Cause at that point she's either going have to destroy the friendship or admit that Astyr isn't so bad. I assume she'll choose the latter after all the build up, but itll certainly strengthen the relationships since the relationships will have to become by choice and not force.

4) i actually think hannah and vuudo are working for whoever organized the experiments all the half-bred children were part of. cause hannah seems like the type whod do that. so obviously if that's the case, that's why theyre watching astyr. hes their favorite experiment kid and maybe someday hell do something useful. as for kazar, idk. at the moment it just feels like kazar is just doing generic spying, possibly charged with making sure there's no peace to be made (hence why yanell is of interest to her). As for the effect of hte main trio, I think theyre just gonna become public enemy number one for both groups for various reasons, cause theyre clearly super powered weirdos who know too much and should be stopped. 5) I don't think Tenge will go through with it. He'll certainly try, but I think Astyr's pleas are gonna haunt him and he'll hesitate wondering if there is some merit to his father. However, I kind of think Tenge will banish him and still not talk to him. Overall, I think Tenge is gonna start questioning his place in life more. Wonder why he continues when he has to hide out avoiding everyone. As for his relationship with Astyr, eh, it'll probably continue to just be strained cause Astyr has bigger fish to fry right now I think.

Stefan G

@Delphina I have to take additional time to read more comics ... but the first impression is [beautiful cartoons/drawing] ... and the website looks really nice [like how you added a store, archive and how to support your art - good job ... I might steal that ] ... did you code that website yourself or do you hire somebody to do that?

Delphina

Thanks so much! My coder buddy Kemayo built me a very simple webcomic CMS, and the store functionality is powered by Gumroad, but all the HTML/CSS was done by me!

lomcia (princess_lom)

1. DETAILS! It's the best detailed page, colors are nice for eye

2. I don't have yet fav character.... but for now Brendolyn looks ok

And I read it and I need to say, that seeing how your style changed make me impress. I got a question actually, everyone got move to do comic because of some event, movie, game etc. a] Who/what inspired you to do that comic? (I'm asking everyone that question, I just want and need to know!) b] What you feel now, when you look on your comic, how characters develop and how your style improved?

Delphina

Thanks so much! I really had a lot of fun with the colors in this whole scene, so I'm happy you like them! For me: a) Sombulus was a NaNoMango project (like a NaNoWriMo community except for comics) that I started when I was putting off what I thought was going to be my bigger, better story. The main trio of characters and the idea of world-hopping to lots of weird magical places just wouldn't leave me alone. The shape of it has changed a lot, but I'm really happy with where it's gone and it's exciting to be dropping some of the big big spoilers I've had in my head for years! b) I'm going through a lot of Act 3 right now preparing things for print, so I've been staring at pages I did 5 years ago a lot recently. Part of how I designed Sombulus was because I knew it would take a long time, I wanted to incorporate the idea of each world being in a different style. When I didn't have a lot of practice, it was much easier to get the story going in black/white until I got faster at art, but it's also nice to have a built in reason to try different software and brushes. Of course, there's a lot of loose and sloppy anatomy in the past, but I'm the kind of person who really values seeing that as a sign of growth so I'm trying not to update that much and just focus on making parts of the story clearer and more supportive of where it eventually went.

(I know this chat is specifically focused on the comic of the week, so if you want answers from people who aren't me, you might want to ask in #general maybe!)

lomcia (princess_lom)

Yeah, I asked, not everyone is answering, so I'm using week and thirsday bookclub to ask

rae

Nanomango is super good at giving people a kick in the ass for projects. You've done really good with getting it off the ground

Delphina

Thanks, Rae, it's been... whew... a while! Nanomango is a good little group project, though now that I've been at this comic for 9 years, I really think trying to do 30 pages in 30 days (even as sketches) was never going to work for me, and it's never fun to feel like you've failed to meet a goal. But one thing that I think was really good for me was participating year after year gave me sort of a drafting process? Letting what I had done stew and simmer for a few months let me see everything with fresh eyes when I came back, so I could come back the next time and focus on the parts I wanted and cut the parts that didn't seem like good directions anymore.

rae

i feel like it was easier to do 30 comics with the community we had

and yeah, editing is def a thing I wish I could do more for webcomics. >_>

RebelVampire

QUESTION 6. Who or what do you think Rana is? Why was Rana locked away in the Library? What does all this potentially have to do with Rana’s strange abilities that seem to have some ill affects on magic? How will Rana’s abilities affect the group further?

keii4ii

I don't have theories because I'm the type of the reader who just wants to see the answers as they come, but I wanna say I am super curious about this #6.

kayotics

I read the same way, but yeah I’ve been curious about Rana too. Considering some of the recent pages have shown that Sydney has a very strange origin story, it might be safe to assume that Rana is the same. I like that Rana seems to often get the group out of trouble too. Rana has a lot of mystery around her that makes me intrigued to see what the full extent of her abilities are, since I think there’s a lot more to her

Delphina

Rana is so problematic because I love coming up with ideas for her, but it also means I gotta find a million references for gadgets and machines to draw scenes where she does cool things.

kayotics

Rana, the problematic fav

Kezhound - What it Takes

Considering we just found out that Sydney is the daughter of a spear and a magic spring, I'm guessing whatever Rana is, it's a kind of spontaneous creation too. Maybe she's the result of a computer dropped into a magic volcano

it's always possible she IS a machine from another world, one so advanced no one can figure her out

but...have we ever seen her bleed? Or injured?

https://tenor.com/view/arnold-schwarzenegger-blood-leaf-flannel-shirt-gif-3519051

Delphina

I am so here for the Compucano ship

varethane

omg

RebelVampire

QUESTION 7. What do you think happened in the past that ruined Yanell’s peace talk progress? Do you believe that the Kanites and Demshul will continue their fear-mongering ways, or will Yanell advance peace again? What is your reasoning?

RebelVampire

@Kezhound - What it Takes I love this Rana is a machine theory. That is so far from something I would guess, yet would love to see be true to a degree. It fits with all the symptoms.

RebelVampire

6) I think Rana is some mega essence container or something. Like connected to the origin of it all or something like that. It adds up to me why Morphids are so super affected by her presence and why she'd be locked up in the library. You don't just leave your essence power house unattended. You lock them away where they can be "safe." As for future affects, I mean I figure at some point someone somewhere is gonna be like "Hey wait a second weird magic stuff? Isn't that the person we locked in the library?" And then more manhunts ensue. 7) I'm taking a stab in the dark and saying I think it's direct sabotage. Like Yanell's disappearance and entrapement wasn't just happen stance. There is a shadow puppet somewhere making sure that no peace will ever be had. I do think they'll get to peace though. Mostly because I'm an optimist and assume peace will prevail. And also because their entire conflict seems to be based more around fear mongering than actual things they should be that mad about.

Cheshire777

I think that Hannah and Vuudo are working for whoever is messing up Yannell's peace treatys; they're pretty much the only wild cards at this point besides the morphids.

RebelVampire

(the archive for Offshore Comic is now up! https://comicteaparty.com/post/182818407550/february-4th-february-10th-2019-ctp-archive @Stefan G )

so basically its all a giant conspiracy because ppl be hating on peace? O_O @Cheshire777

Stefan G

@RebelVampire Thanks for everything, RebelVampire ... 1) really enjoyed everyone’s comments and suggestions for Offshore. Thanks y’all 2) I also rewrote/fixed the js-code on my website [www.offshorecomic.com] ... now the strips flow smoother and I added a counter in order to better follow your progression. Check it out

Cheshire777

@RebelVampire I'm guessing that the "Big Bad Boss" has some ulterior motive/motives besides just indefinitely extending the war, whether the war is a side effect or that they will profit directly from it (I've just been reading back through the old Akatsuki storyline of Naruto) I have no guess.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 8. Given what’s shown of Astyr’s past, what do you think the experimenters were attempting to do? Why were they targeting half-breed children like Astyr, Cioara, and Tenge? What was their ultimate goal having Astyr explore the Weave?

RebelVampire

8) I feel like theres some power source theyre searching for in the Weave. Maybe a person, maybe just a thing, but they need someone super good at exploring the Weave to find it. I cant fathom why though, albeit i doubt it's anything good. As for why half-breeds, I think it's because they have a different sort of connection with essence and the Weave. Like we've already seen how Rana's strange relationship with essence affects Cioara, and i dont think that's entirely on Rana. I think it's just who Cioara's own strange relationship with it too since plenty of others interact with Rana fine. Either way, I think the experimenters are just trying to figure out if their atypical nature has practical uses for stuff like that.

Cheshire777

8. I think that they were probably recruiting/kidnapping anyone with odd powers, and those three just happened to be half breeds. I think that they briefly refered to other compounds? As for what they are looking for, at this point it could be a whole lot of different things, but a magic/essence/mana/etc store is quite likely.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 9. Do you believe that Astyr and Sydney will be able to successfully restore Sydney’s physical form? How might the ordeal change their relationship? How might it also change Sydney’s views on Demshul in general?

Cheshire777

They probably will, it has been established that Sydney is dissolving: a) Sydney is one of the main characters. b) we're right in the middle of finding out her backstory. She is finding reality at odds with her brainwashing (mosty through experiencing Astyr's memorys) and will have to come to terms with that.

snuffysam

1) act 3. acts 1 & 2 I was like "essence? jumping between worlds? currency? what the heck is going on?". act 3 was like "ohhhh i get what this comic is. it's a bread comic." and i love it.(edited)

2) the combo of vuudo and hannah. something about the way our heroes just keep falling for their lies, the pairing of hannah's planning and vuudo's acting... i just love them.

snuffysam

3) my interpretation is that binding is just something that happens when a demshul tries to bring someone world-hopping. since astyr is inexperienced, he goofed up and brought sydney along for the ride.

snuffysam

4) hannah's doing a truman show starring astyr. no further explanation needed. for kazar, I'm guessing she's just working for the government as a spy in general.

looking at #5, i'm wondering... is tenge & ciora's father a morphid, or the morphid? morphids seem to endlessly divide, and neither tenge nor the morphids seem to have a "hive mind". is it possible that there's just one morphid, and it happens to be in a lot of places at once?

Cheshire777

@snuffysam From what I've observed so far, the Morphid (and Tenge's) multiplication works vaguely like Naruto's shadow clones- when they split all of them have the same base memorys, they have separate experiences and basically act like different people (that are clones of each other ), and when they "regroup" the single has all the experiences of the doubles.(edited)

snuffysam

which would explain why astyr could say something along the lines of "oh, you're one of the ones that recognizes me"

RebelVampire

QUESTION 10. What are you most looking forward to in the comic? Also, do you have any final thoughts to share overall?

RebelVampire

i assume theyre a single being, but tbf i dont discount the possibility theres multiple morphid originals. in the sense that there were multiple "original" people who split into morphids. just cause it still fits with astyr saying one of the ones that recognize me. cause i highly doubt if theres multiple originals they know whose morphid is whos. again tho, just not discounting the possibility. i do get more of the sense that they were once a single entity.

9) yes because narratively i cant forsee the comic semi-killing off a main character quite yet. and sydney has unresolved matters as well, like her meeting with her old mentor and such. idk if the experience will change her view on demshul, but i think shell come to terms that astyr has some inner demons, is a weirdo, but also has a good heart. and that he isnt out to see sydney's demise. 10) im looking forward to more of everything. i wanna see all the inner turmoils, and i especially want to find more hints as to what the deal with rana is. cause astyr and sydney dont seem to care much rana is a weirdo outside of when she doesnt eat, so i will care enough for the both of them.

Delphina

I just want to thank you all for reading Sombulus! I know it's got... several pages, so I really appreciate folks who make it through everything, and such amazing thoughtful questions and responses!

keii4ii

My brain is a mush right now and I can't articulate my feels thoughtfully, but I really want to say Sombulus updates really help brighten my day, every time. I always look forward new pages and am glad it updates twice a week

Delphina

(Also this discussion made me draw Tenge as Naruto. Poor guy, I torture him so.)

snuffysam

before the chat ends, I just wanted to say that I really love sombulus, and I can't wait to see where it goes next!

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Sombulus this week! Please also give a special thank you to Christina Major for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Sombulus, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://www.sombulus.com/

Christina Major’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Delphina

Christina Major’s Store: http://www.sombulus.com/store

Christina Major’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Delphina2k

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic book club #webcomic bookclub #comic tea party #ctp #sombulus #christina major

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zenithgurugirl · 3 years

Text

4 more chapters...

That is how many chapters I have left to write in my book. I'll be turning it in as soon as I finish up editing. I have everything ready to go. I'm excited and scared at the same time. I have confidence that the first literary agent will take it. Not many are writing out stories at the moment with what is going on in the world. Everyone is more focused on politics and diving into Onlyfans and other money making tech marketing crap.

Tbh - I would rather put in hard earned hours and original creativity in my work than sit in front of a camera all day and use social media platforms to gain a buck. It's easy money yes but you are also burning yourself by doing something you'll regret later. Sure, open up a shop but do it out there in real life, not in here of the cyber world. Someday this will be obsolete.

Everyone is grabbing a Corona paycheck by staying at home even if the mandate is lifted. Vaccines are handed out like candy so that no one is thrown back into fear but techie guys are giving out websites and online shops for the sit on your ass forever experience. Sure writing books is a sit on your ass job - but - I have to go out there and experience things to write things. I have to explore places and have adventures to write anything out. What is the joy if you don't experience what you are writing?

I've experienced what war feels like on a military base. I spent a whole year on that base watching soldiers do their war games. I held guns and swords. I've sword fought before and shot guns. I've done many things that were unheard of just so I can share the experience with others through writing. I feel like writing is now considered an ancient or lost art. I also feel like everyone is going illiterate. Everyone wants to be called by "Them and their or they" when it should be "he, she, his and hers" . Illiterate weirdos. We all have a gender, it is not mindset - we were birthed with genitalia. I don't care if you chopped yours off or sewn one or many on - you are he or she but not it.

And for race. We are all different shades of skin. From albino to raven black. Don't give me that shit that we are different due to skin tones. We bleed the same dumb ass. We are 1 race. HUMAN. If I start bleeding yellow - then call me racist because I'm not human if I bleed a different color than human color OKAY. Everyone needs to chill the F out. Sit the F down and rethink their life decisions. Maybe Unlearn the things they just learned from degenerate retards who claim they are smart. Because clearly they are not smart and they are LAUGHING at your decisions! Making fun of you! Making you hate yourself even further than you think you are saving some form of grace.

It is like when every stupid American was taking anti-depressants during the late 1990's and UK was making fun of us for popping pills. Well now it is Americans hating on humanity and trying to kill each other over stupid shit and this time the entire world is making fun of us. GROW UP AMERICA... grow up.

Okay, venting is done. I'm back to working on my book. Hard work earns something more satisfying than Onlyfan porn shit or online store investing. What a waste of sitting effort. hehehehe! Bye bye.

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thewritingambition · 5 years

Text

Take Good Care of My Home

(I ran an online scam on Craigslist) I'm sure you are clever. Exceedingly clever. The kind of person who would NEVER fall for an online scam, isn't that right? Especially a ridiculous one. You know what I'm talking about. “You've just won a trip to Barbados, please give us your social insurance number!” or “I am a Nigerian princess and I have to get rid of all this gold!” No, you'd never fall for that. At the first sight of a red flag, you would turn around and run. Only naive idiots fall for such things.

Well, let me disenfranchise you of this comfortable notion. You can't run a successful scam hoping that only well-off idiots will come to you. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of those out there, but you'll be lucky to run across one of them, let alone dozens. An average conman like myself – a self-made man, really, who is only trying to get by – can only prey on vulnerable people. The usual targets tend to be grandmothers and the mentally ill, but that is something I could never do. If you scam a neglectful grandson out of his inheritance, he'll stop at nothing to make sure you pay for your crime – and, more importantly, pay granny back. I can't risk that.

My targets of choice are the illegals. Not that I have anything against illegals. Lovely people, the lot of them. They run away from violent situations and risk their lives to seek refuge in our country, where they are willing to do back-breaking labor for less than minimum wage. What is there not to love about a group of hard-working people who believe that all Canadians are kind and decent and would never try to take away their money? How could we not welcome with open arms these penny-saving folks who are usually too scared to go to the authorities? You've probably seen one of the dozens of adds I put up on Craigslist and Kijiji. They vary in pictures and tone, but the bottom line is this: AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY! Lovely one-bedroom apartment, perfect for international student or worker. My husband and I are missionaries going to South Africa next week and need to sublet our place URGENTLY! We don't care about the money, we just want someone who will look after our home. CAD $1,000.00. Utilities included. NO LEASE NECESSARY! Contact Mary Morgan at... The story changes, but I find that the missionary woman is wholesome enough to lure people in. The pictures have to look realistic, no fancy condo promotional ads. A nice picture of a basement apartment will do. The price has to be below average, but not so much so that it would raise suspicion. Then, you sit back and wait. You'd be surprised how many people will answer to something so ridiculous just to see what happens, but most of them lose interest when I tell them I can't meet them in person (the husband and I already flew to South Africa, you see). Some don't mind, though, and agree to meet with “my cousin” at the place once the transfer (which includes one month of rent, plus a CAD 200.00 deposit for the keys) goes through. You'd think that these websites would keep better track of this sort of thing, but they don't, and none of my targets is going to risk going to the police because they lost CAD 1,200.00 to an internet scam. Some of them come from places where the police are more dangerous than the criminals, while others don't want to risk deportation by calling attention to themselves, or they're just too embarrassed and too busy blaming themselves for falling for something so stupid. To be fair, I'm sure the police have better things to do with their time. Even if this got reported, they'd probably think I live somewhere in Nigeria and that I'm not worth the trouble. If anyone bothered to care, though, they'd find out that I live in downtown Toronto, and my little scam has been covering my rent for five months now. The last time I put one of my adds up, I got a reply within five minutes. Mrs. Morgan,

I am interest in rent your beautifull appartment for the six month. Is still available?

Amir I smiled at the broken English and hit reply immediately. Hi Amir,

Thank you so much for answering to the add. The apartment is still available but, unfortunately, my husband and I had to fly to South Africa sooner than we expected, so I can't show you the place. However, if you are willing to transfer the first month of rent to our account, my cousin Lisa will meet you at the address to give you the keys on Sunday.

You can come by and take a look at the lobby. That shouldn't be a problem.

God bless,

Mary I know what you're thinking: there's absolutely no way I've been running this ludicrous scam successfully for five months. To be honest, sometimes I'm a little surprised, too. I think it's all in the name I've chosen. Mary. Mary is a woman, and therefore harmless. Mary is a church-going white lady who loves Jesus. Mary is pious. Mary is good. Mary is definitely not a 6'foot tall 34-year-old guy named Richard who's only after your hard-earned money. Amir replied within fifteen minutes. Mrs. Morgan,

Is good. Do I transfer now?

I move Sunday, yes?

Amir I stared at my email. It's not that I was surprised he was willing to pay; I was surprised he was willing to pay so quickly. Even the desperate and the naive needed some reassurance. They pushed and tried to find solutions with you. Maybe they could meet Lisa? Maybe they could give Lisa the money? No one wanted to part ways with their money that quickly. Something didn't feel right, but I wasn't about to say no. Just to be cautious, I sent him another email. Why don't you tell me about yourself, Amir? Is your family moving in with you? Do you have a pet? How long are you staying?

God bless,

Mary Amir's reply reached my inbox just as quickly as his other messages. It was short and to the point. Hello Mary,

No family. Just me. I work as clean. I pay now and move Sunday, yes?

Amir I tried to picture Amir in my head. With that name, I thought it was safe to assume he was from the Middle East. He was probably nice and apologetic, so very glad to have the opportunity to come to this country. I work as clean. He probably meant “cleaner”. He could be an international student with a part-time job, but most students from the Middle East were teenagers being supported by their wealthy parents. It seemed safe to assume he was in the country illegally since cleaning companies don't care about the legal status of their employees and will often pay them under the table. He had to be either small or old because young immigrant men tended to work in construction. And he was eager, verging on desperate. Maybe his temporary VISA had expired and now he had to hide? Not that I was about to tell him to think carefully. I sent him my Paypal information and waited. The transfer notification came through and, immediately after, Amir sent me another email. I send the money.

I move Sunday, yes?

Amir I was a little shocked at how easy it had been. The whole exchange had taken less than thirty minutes. That had to be a record. You know what? I sorta felt sorry for him. I know I said targets aren't necessarily stupid, but he was way too trusting. He was probably some religious weirdo who thought the best of everyone. “Well, he'll learn a valuable lesson after this,” I said out loud. My dog looked up from the floor, head tilted to the side, slightly judgmental. I pointed a finger at him. “Not a word, Thanos. This will put food in your plate and beer in my fridge.” Thanos huffed as though he didn't approve of my life choices but quickly went back to sleep. There was no arguing with food nor beer. As a rule, I block my target's email once the transfer comes through since there will be no need for further communication. It was no different with Amir, and I went on with my life as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. To be honest, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Thirty minutes to complete a con that usually took three to four days? Clearly, my skills were improving. The very next day, I opened my email to find a message that read, “NEED NEW ADDRESS!” I frowned at that and opened the email. Mrs. Morgan,

I went to apartment but it was wrong address. Send new address, please.

I move Sunday.

Amir I smirked at the screen. I wasn't worried. There wasn't much that he could do about it now. I made sure to block him properly this time and continued halfheartedly searching for a new job. I had planned to spend the rest of winter scamming people from the warmth of my home, then find a more steady source of income in the spring, but the job ads I found online were so underpaid I was seriously considering extending my vacation. I was still in bed, thinking whether I should go downstairs for a cigarette when another notification popped on the top of the screen. New email. I saw Amir's email address. The subject line simply read: Found it! I deleted it without even thinking about it. That stupid app was always glitching. I could block him once I turned my laptop on. Whatever Amir had found, it didn't interest me in the least. On Tuesday, I got myself a new TV as a little reward for running such a quick and effective con. I admit that I am not at all frugal and have always had difficulty saving money, but at that point, I saw no reason to worry. It was evident that my little scheme was working, guaranteeing a steady flow of cash into my bank account. I would never be a millionaire, but I wouldn't have to worry about the bills anytime soon. I arrived home that evening in a pretty good mood, but it didn't last. I knew something was wrong right away. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was a little voice in the back of my mind telling me that not everything was in its proper place. Something had changed since I'd left that morning. Thanos trotted up to me, wagging his tail. “Did you do something?” I asked. Wouldn't

have been the first time I had gotten home to find out my clumsy mutt had ripped one of my pillows open or knocked over a plant. Thanos blinked up at me, as though wondering why I hadn't scratched his ears yet. I walked past him and took a look at the living room. Everything seemed to be in order and yet... it wasn't. I couldn't quite see why, though, and it was driving me crazy. A man knows his home. He can tell when something isn't right. I heard a sorrowful whine and felt the tip of a cold nose brush against my hand. I patted my dog on the head, but the feeling didn't fade. I must have stood in my living room for another five minutes, bewildered but unable to see anything out of place. Finally, I decided I was being ridiculous and that I had better things to do. I took a picture of my 24” TV and uploaded it to Craigslist, then I put it away to make room for the 50” that would be delivered the following morning. And no, I was not about to scam people again. I actually intended on selling my old TV. There was no reason to keep it around. Besides, I had tried something similar a few months before and it hadn't worked. I went into the kitchen to heat leftovers for dinner. I took a frying pan out of the cupboard and a plate from the dish rack. I stopped. Lowered my eyes to the plate in my hand. The penny took a moment to drop, but it finally did. It wasn't that there was something out of place in my apartment – there was nothing out of place in my apartment. I had left that same plate on the couch after having lunch, and the frying pan that was currently in its cupboard had been left in the sink since breakfast. I stared at the plate I was still holding, drawing my eyebrows into a frown. I hadn't washed either of these and had definitely not put them away. I never did. They usually just stayed in the dish rack until I was ready to use them again. How the hell had my tableware made its way from the living room to the kitchen and gotten itself washed? Found it! Something cold ran down my spine, but I knew right then and there that the thought was absurd. I had been careful. I had even asked my friend Daryl, who was good with computers, to ward my laptop against viruses and hackers. I was safe. My target hadn't tracked me down, especially not to wash my dirty dishes. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong and decided to take a look at the email I'd deleted the previous morning. I didn't have to, though, because Amir had sent me a new email that afternoon. In all caps, he announced, “WE HAVE PROBLEM!” Mrs. Morgan,

We have problem. House is dirty. Please clean house before Sunday.

And I can't live with dog. Dogs is dirty animal. You get rid of dog, yes?

I move Sunday.

Amir I stared at my phone screen feeling a pinch of fear crawling up my chest and setting camp there. I kept myself from having a panic attack by repeating a less than reassuring mantra: “If he'd actually found me, he'd have done much worse.” Horrible as that thought might be, it was also right. If Amir had managed to track me down, then he wouldn't have wasted his time washing dishes and sending emails. At the very least, he'd have confronted me. It made a lot more sense for me to have forgotten doing the dishes than for him to have gone through the trouble of tracking me down and breaking into my apartment just so he could criticize my cleaning habits and my dog. As for his email... I didn't have an explanation for that, but maybe he'd found the ad I'd stolen the pictures from? Maybe he'd gone to the address on the ad and seen a dog through the window of the apartment? It was unlikely, but not entirely impossible. “If he had found me, he'd have done much worse,” I repeated. Thanos came closer to lick my hand. I rubbed his ears. “It's fine,” I told him, as though he were the one who needed comfort. “Nothing bad will happen.” The furniture was moved on Wednesday. This time, I could see it the moment I opened the door. Someone had moved my armchair to the other side of the room so that it was the first thing I saw when I walked in. Not only that but everything I had left on top of the coffee table had found its way to drawers and cupboards. The curtains that were usually closed had been pushed open, allowing a lot of sun in. I hadn't been gone for an hour. I had smoked a cigarette, gone to the supermarket, then smoked another cigarette downstairs before coming up again. There was no way anyone would have had the time to do this. Besides, I had a brand new TV mounted on my wall. Who would break in and not even take that? “You're a useless guard dog,” I told Thanos, who barked happily at me, as though he'd done an excellent job protecting my home from invaders. I checked with the landlord to see if he'd come in unannounced, but he hadn't, and even if he had, I doubt he'd have wasted time returning my dirty underwear to its proper drawer. I hesitated, then I opened my email. The subject line of Amir's latest message announced, “Please open curtains!” Mrs. Morgan,

Please let sun in and get rid of dog. Dog is dirty.

I move in Sunday.

Amir I thought of replying. I went as far as to type down and angry message where I threatened to contact the police and get his ass deported to whatever shithole country he'd escaped from if he didn't stay away from me and my dog. The words felt good to write, but I didn't send it. What could I tell the police? That one of the people I'd scammed was harassing me? No, I couldn't call them for help. And I suspected that Amir knew that. I went to see Daryl the following day. He didn't appreciate me barging in on him while he was at work, but he relented after I told him someone had broken into my home and that I suspected I had been hacked. After twenty minutes where he divided his attention between my laptop and a tray of sushi, he declared that there was nothing wrong with my computer. Oh, and that I owed him CAD 200.00 for getting him involved in my ridiculous scheme. “Unlike you,” he told me, “I actually have a job I'd like to keep.” Daryl was proud of the fact that he could rot away in a nine-to-five working IT at a bank. Personally, I found that to be a waste of his talents. I returned home reassured that there had to be a rational explanation for everything that had happened even if I couldn't see it yet, but with every step, I became a little more anxious about going back home. By the time I got to the front door, I wasn't sure I wanted to go in at all. What would be waiting for me? Maybe I should call some friends and go have a beer before- Thanos started whimpering. He hurt my dog. I slammed that door open. The feeling a got when I walked into my apartment was overwhelming. It was like an icy finger had slid down my spine, leaving a trail of goosebumps and dread on its way. Something terrible had to have happened to provoke that sort of reaction. Then I realized it hadn't been dread – at least, not exclusively. My apartment was literally freezing. The heat had been turned off and the door to the balcony was wide open. Thanos was okay, but he was curled in the corner, shaking almost as much as I was. I could hear him whining over the sound of the wind and the snow blowing into my home. “Shit!” I shut the balcony door and turned the heat back on. Even with the mild winter we've been having this year, this is still Canada. Fuck, my dog could have frozen if I had taken a moment longer. Thanos ran over to me and I let him cuddle with me on the couch until we both stopped shaking. Unsurprisingly, Amir had sent me a new email: Mrs. Morgan,

Please turn heat of. Appartment is hot. Also, dog has to leave.

I move in Sunday.

Amir I rubbed Thanos' floppy ears with my cold hands while I fought the urge to launch my cellphone across the room. That little fucker. You can judge me all you want, I know I'm far from being perfect, but at least I'm not some sociopath who messes with people's heads and threatens their dogs. I'd had enough of this. The next time he came into my apartment, I was going to be ready. I paid for extra fast shipping and got a discreet nanny cam from Amazon. I positioned it so that it was pointing at the door and I left with Thanos. I sat at a coffee shop a couple of blocks from my house and sipped my coffee while keeping my eyes glued to the live feed on my cellphone. The moment Amir walked through that door, I would get a good look at his face. I might send the video to him by email and see if that would spook him. Or perhaps I would use his first name and picture to track him down. I knew I was going to have to wait for a very long time, but it didn't matter. I would sit on that cafe for hours if I had to only to get a glimpse at that fucker's face. Seven minutes later, I saw the doorknob on my front door turn. I held my breath. It couldn't be. It was to fast. He couldn't have known I was away from home yet. Had he been watching me? Did he know where I was? “I got you, you little shit,” I muttered under my breath. The door opened just a little, then it paused. Maybe he was listening in, trying to figure out if I was home. But the door stayed like that for a very long time. I even wondered if he'd gotten to his knees and crawled into the apartment since the camera didn't reach a good three feet off the floor. I quickly reminded myself that it was impossible. The door had to be only a few inches ajar. A person could never fit through. The minutes ticked by. My eyes were beginning to hurt because I wouldn't blink. I was too afraid to miss something if I looked away for just a moment. “C'mon, you fuck, come o-” The feed died. I ran. The barista screamed after me and Thanos yapped and pulled at his leash, bringing down the table I'd tied him to, along with everything on it. I didn't care. I wasn't about to let that man mess with my life any longer. I covered the two-block distance

in desperate, large strides that set my muscles on fire. I was so close now. So goddamn close. The first thing I saw when I burst into my home was that the camera was nowhere to be seen. The second thing I saw was a couple of ugly purple pillows on the couch. They didn't belong to me. On the coffee table, a cinnamon-scented candle had been lit and it was letting out a strong, unpleasant smell. No one was in sight. Inside my pocket, my phone chimed with a new message. Mrs. Morgan,

House smell nice now. Happy dog is out.

I move Sunday.

Amir I flopped on the couch. The run had left me panting and light-headed and I had to fight the urge to cry. This wasn't right. This wasn't fair. I'd had a camera pointing at the fucking door! He shouldn't have been able to get past that. I should have found out what he looked like. I should be the one in control. I wasn't though. I had no control over anything. I didn't leave Thanos in the coffee shop, though maybe I should have. I went back to fetch him and pay for the damage I'd caused. Let me tell you, the manager was less than impressed with my “I saw someone break into my house” excuse. I was asked not to come back. I cuddled up with my dog that night, though I was too scared to fall asleep. I had checked every nook and cranny of my apartment twice, but I still wasn't convinced Amir had left at all. My eyes kept jumping from one dark corner to the next, seeing faces in the shadows and imagining two long arms extending from under the bed to pull at my feet. What was he going to do next? Was he going to hurt my dog? Was he going to hurt me? This wasn't only a clever man who could work around surveillance cameras and keep an eye on me without being seen; this was a patient man. He could have done something horrible on that first day, but he didn't. He chose to wait and toy with me. This was all very amusing to him. I did consider sending his money back. I'm ashamed to admit it took me that long to even consider it, but I was finally running out of options. If I returned the money, then he might leave me alone and I wouldn't have to fear coming home every day. Why should he get your money back?, whispered a vicious little voice in my head. He's a psycho and he's probably doing this on purpose. No one that clever falls for a con as stupid as the one you're running. He wanted you to cheat him. He wanted to find someone to torture. He shouldn't get his money back. And you should do whatever it takes to protect yourself. I was angry. I dare say I was angrier than I was scared. I'd taken that man's money, but he'd taken away my peace of mind and my sense of safety. My punishment didn't fit my crime. It was four in the morning, but I got out of bed and got my baseball bat out of the closet. If he wanted to come back and harass me, I was going to deal with him myself. I wasn't going to go anywhere, and the moment he walked through that door, I would either scare him away or bash his head in – and I was hoping for the latter. I pulled up my armchair and waited by the door. I barely moved all day. Sometimes, I would stretch my legs or pace the space between the chair and the door, but I never turned my back to the entrance, too scared he might be standing there once I turned back around. I waited and I drank – and whenever I felt bored or ridiculous, I drank more. By noon, I was out of beer and drunkenly swinging my bat at empty spaces, muttering nonsense and ignoring my dog when he started whining to go for a walk. When he started barking madly, I thought someone was about to attack me, but he was simply barking at the neighbor's cat who had wandered into the balcony. It scared the shit out of me. I grabbed him by the collar and forced him into my bedroom, where his barking became louder, then thinned into a whimper, and then went completely silent. I didn't pay attention to him. All I cared about was the chance to cause that man as much pain as he had caused me. Any time now. He would make his move any time now and I would demolish him. As the minutes ticked by and as I sobered up, though, I began to realize the chances of him coming into my home were very unlikely while I was standing there. If he really was keeping an eye on me, he would know it would be dangerous to come in. I dared hope I'd scared him. He had to know I was armed with a blunt object and could cause severe damage. I unlocked the bedroom door and went to the kitchen to put some food on Thanos' plate. The sound of the food hitting his bowl didn't seem to entice him to come after me. “C'mon, boy. I'm sorry I was a dick.” Nothing. Not even a sound. “Thanos?” I went back to the bedroom and looked around. Then, I looked under the bed and inside the closet. Thanos was nowhere to be found, and a new email had made its way to my inbox. I move in on Sunday. Even though Amir had sent me those words many times before, it was the first time I saw the real threat in them. I don't think I'd ever been so scared in my life. There was a sense of fatality after Thanos was taken, the last shred of hope that was taken from me. Up until that moment, I could've explained everything rationally, but this I couldn't. I'd thought Amir had been coming into my apartment when he knew I was out, yet me being in the room had made no difference whatsoever. Worst of all, worse than losing Thanos, was that I had no idea how he'd done it. The windows in my bedroom don't open. Or rather, they do, but they're too small to allow a person in or my labrador-sized mutt out. I understood for that first time that this was going to happen. I just didn't know what this was. He couldn't possibly think I was going to allow him to move in. What was he going to do if I didn't agree to move out? Kill me? Take me to wherever he'd taken Thanos? It was possible. It was very possible. I didn't sleep that night. I didn't do anything except smoke and stare blankly at a wall with tearful eyes. Finally, I swallowed my pride and I sent the email I should have sent on Wednesday: Hi Amir,

This is Mary. I am very sorry I didn't have time to tidy up the house before you moved in and that I didn't get back to you sooner. This week has been very busy and the internet is spotty where I am staying.

I am writing with some bad news. My husband and I have just received news that the organization we work for is being dissolved, so our services won't be needed for the next six months. We are getting back to Toronto tomorrow, so we'll be moving back into our apartment. Evidently, I will reimburse you for the money you've sent immediately. If you need to go to a hotel, just send the check to me and I'll take care of it.

I'm so very sorry for the inconvenience.

God bless,

Mary I reread the email several times, feeling a weight in the pit of my stomach being lifted. Maybe this would be enough. It had to be. I had learned my lesson. There was no need to harass me anymore, especially now that I had transferred the money back to him. I waited for a reply, but it didn't come. That alone was strange. Amir had always replied within minutes. Maybe that meant he was going to leave me alone. Or maybe he was angry. I couldn't know. At five, just as the sun was beginning to set, I went downstairs to clear my head. I debated whether I should do it or not, but decided it would make no difference. Being in the apartment hadn't deterred that man from coming in. Besides, I'd run out of cigarettes and the stress was only increasing my need for nicotine. I took my keys, my phone, and my wallet. If he were in my home when I returned... I don't know, I suppose I'd have to talk to him. Or fight him. One way or another, this would be over. I hadn't taken five steps away from the building when I felt it. It's hard to describe it, but it was so intense I swear I could feel it in my bones. I think the best way to put it is heat. There was something as hot as anger being directed straight at me, piercing my back and hitting me as sharply as the cold winter wind. I turned around and I knew to look up at my third-floor window. There he was. Well, I say he, but I'm still not sure. The blinds were down, so I could only see the silhouette of what I think was a man. It was tall and lanky, its head as high as the ceiling. It had its eyes on me, staring through the blinds, projecting much more than just a glare. He was challenging me to go back upstairs. I didn't want to. I jumped when my phone chimed in. New email. When I looked up from my phone again, the blinds had been closed and I couldn't see that thing anymore. What he'd written made my blood run cold. Dear Richard,

We should all learn to live with the consequences of our actions. If you had no intention of vacating your apartment for six months, you shouldn't have put that ad up. As it stands, I have no intention of finding another place as the action of moving in – and cleaning your mess – was already strenuous enough.

Of course, you could always tell your landlord that there is a stranger in your apartment and refuse to pay rent from now on. That would eventually get us both evicted. It is your right to do so and I would understand completely. I can always follow you to a new apartment, though I don't think either of us wants that.

You have promised me a home for six months and you have told me that you don't care about the money as long as I take good care of your home. I intend to fulfill my side of the contract as long as you fulfill yours.

Respectfully,

Amir I must have stared at my phone for an hour after receiving that message. I didn't know what to do. Somewhere inside my apartment, my new TV was turned on. I've spent the last two days looking for cheap accommodations and I think I've found a depressing little basement in Mississauga that is within my budget. I can't afford much, though. I'm still looking for a job and now I am going

to have to pay twice as much rent. I'm not testing whatever it is that lives in my apartment now. I can only hope Amir keeps his word and leaves at the end of six months. God... I need to find a job.

#horror #horror story

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thegloober · 6 years

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How to freelance: 5 steps to profit

Learning how to freelance is the first step toward an unlimited earning potential.

It’s a wonder why more people don’t do it — especially when there are so many good reasons to:

Flexibility. Choose when and where you want to work, and who you want to work with.

Scalability. Earn as much or as little as you want. Eventually, you can even leave your 9-to-5 to freelance full time.

Creativity. Flex your creative muscles by diving into a freelance hustle that uses your passions. That means you can make money and *gasp* have fun while doing it.

Getting started isn’t as difficult as you’d think either. All it takes is the right systems.

How to freelance in 5 steps

Luckily, I have that system. It’s the same one that I’ve used to start I Will Teach You to Be Rich and it’s the same one that I’ve used to help hundreds of thousands of people to earn as much as six figures in their freelancing career.

And now, I want to show it to you too.

Step 1: Find a profitable idea

It’s amazing how many people get tripped up at this stage. In fact, it’s the most common reason I hear for why people don’t start their own side business.

“I don’t know how to find a good freelancing idea.”

When I hear this, I just want to grab the person by the shoulders and shake them while screaming, “But you already have a lot of good ideas!!!”

In fact, you can find your perfect freelancing idea by answering four simple questions about yourself:

What do you already pay for?

We already pay people to do a lot of different things. Can you turn one of those things into your own online business?

Examples: Clean your home, walk your pet, cook you meals, etc.

What skills do you have?

Now, what do you know — and know well? These are the skills you have that you’re great at — and people want to pay you to teach them.

Examples: Fluency in a foreign language, programming knowledge, cooking skills, etc.

What do your friends say you’re great at?

I love this question. Not only can it be a nice little ego boost — but it can also be incredibly revealing.

Examples: Workout routines, relationship advice, great fashion sense, etc.

What do you do on a Saturday morning?

What do you do on a Saturday morning before everyone else is awake? This can be incredibly revealing to what you’re passionate about and what you like to spend your time on.

Examples: Browsing fashion websites, working on your car, reading fitness subreddits, etc.

Find an answer to those questions and you’ll find a business idea.

Step 2: Find your first client

Finding clients can be a mystery of fantastic proportions for beginner freelancers. After all, where do these generous, money-giving gatekeepers of work live? How can we find them?

Luckily, there are a variety of different places you can look if you’re a beginner. Here are three great places that I’ve used and my students have used to find great clients.

Craigslist (yes, that Craigslist)

Networking events

Where your clients live

Contrary to popular belief, Craigslist isn’t just for sketchy encounters and weird sales listings. It can also be a great place to find quality clients.

Why? When a business posts a job listing for freelancers on Craigslist, they’re not getting top quality responses. In fact, the people who respond to them are typically so bad that you just need to be a little bit better than them to stand out.

This doesn’t just apply to Craigslist either. You can do this with any job board.

Here are a few suggestions of great sites freelancers can use to find business:

The second place you should look: Networking events.

I know, I know. Some of us would rather spend our time listening to a lecture about the importance of brushing your teeth than be at a networking event.

However, a good networking event will be flush with opportunities to find connectors. Notice I said connectors and not clients. A connector is someone who can introduce you to potential clients.

That’s right. You’re not going to actually be looking for leads at these events.

Here’s a good script you can use to connect with a connector:

“Hey, if you know of anyone who’s looking for a video editor, let me know. Here’s my card. You can pass it along to them.”

Of course, you should mold the script to fit your individual situation.

If you live in a big city, networking events are a dime a dozen. If you don’t, that’s okay. There might be a few in your area happening occasionally.

Be sure to check out event boards like the following for great opportunities for networking events.

The last place I suggest beginners look: Where potential clients live.

No this isn’t your potential clients’ physical houses, you weirdo. I’m referring to the places online and in real life where your potential clients might frequent.

Instead, you’re going to go online to the places where potential clients might frequent. It’s what Luisa Zhou, entrepreneur and writer for GrowthLab, did to help her earn $1.1M in 11 months.

From Luisa:

I started spending all my free time hanging out where my potential clients were online (free Facebook groups) and directly engaging with them by sharing valuable content and answering any questions I could about advertising.

That’s how I got my first client. A woman I’d been helping for free — answering her questions about how to set up a basic advertising campaign — asked me how she could work with me, and when I told her the price — $5,000 for six months — she said, without missing a beat, “I’m in.”

You can use the exact same framework for your potential clients.

Are you a graphic designer? Find a Facebook or subreddit group for small business owners who need your services.

Are you a writer for a niche industry? Start answering questions on Quora regarding your niche.

Maybe you’re a video editor. Find online groups for bloggers looking to expand their content media.

No matter what you choose, you need to make sure you stay engaging and provide high-quality answers to your potential client. By doing this, you build your brand and make connections you would never have otherwise.

Once you have a client lead, it’s time to use a script to vet them.

Step 3: Pitch your talents

Now we get to the fun stuff: Pitching. You’re now going to craft an email pitch that’ll sell your services to a qualified lead.

Yes, marketing and selling your skills can be intimidating — but it’s much simpler as long as you remember to sell benefits.

Remember the old marketing saying, “Buyers don’t want a new bed. Buyers want a good night’s sleep.”

Some great examples of this:

Here are the five things you need to sell the benefits of your services in an email:

The introduction. You’re going to want to build rapport by introducing yourself and how you know about the client.

The offer. Talk about them. What do you want to do for them? Why are you good for that role? You’re going to want to do some research on the organization to see what they need help with.

The benefit. Walk them through how your work will benefit their company. Are you going to free up more time for them? Are you going to maximize profits by X amount?

The foot-in-the-door. This is a classic technique that utilizes an old psychology trick to get the client to agree to a small agreement so you can ask for a larger agreement later.

The call to action. Be clear with this and ask them if they would like to proceed. The call to action is a critical part of this script.

When it’s all put together, it’ll look something like this:

CLIENT’S NAME,

[Introduction] I read your article about X and noticed that you’ve recently started using videos on your website.

[The offer] I’ve been doing video editing for three years and I’d like to offer to help you edit your videos and get them optimized for the web.

[The benefit] That would make them look more professional and load faster, which is important for your readers. And you’d free up time that you could use to create new content.

[The foot-in-the-door] We can discuss the details, of course, but first I wanted to see if this is something you might be interested in.

[The call to action] If so, would it be okay if I sent you a few ideas on how to help?

Best,

Ramit Sethi

Step 4: Charge a good rate

There are no hard and set rules when it comes to charging a rate, which makes it a perfect breeding ground for anxiety and nervousness for freelancers.

My suggestion: Don’t worry too much about this part — at least at first. It’s more important that you get started at all than making sure your rates are perfectly tuned.

With that said, there are three methods I suggest for finding a good starting rate:

Drop Three Zeros Method

Take your ideal salary, divide it by two, and then drop three zeros from it. Boom. You have an hourly rate.

For example, say you’d really like to earn at least $80,000. Just take out the three zeros from the end, divide by two, and you now have your rate: $40/hour.

Double your “resentment number”

I love this one because it’s both really interesting and effective. Ask yourself: What’s the lowest rate you’ll work for that’ll leave you resentful of your work?

Say you’ll work for $15/hour at the VERY LEAST. Just double that number so now you’ll earn $30/hour.

Do what the next guy does

This method is incredibly simple: Go to Google and search for the average hourly rate for whatever service you’re providing. You’ll get a good sense of where to start when you’re charging your clients.

Once you start earning, it becomes much easier to take on more or less work to get to an earning amount you’re comfortable with.

Step 5: Invest in yourself

Remember: You’re going to make mistakes when starting out and that’s okay! I’d rather have my students screwing up pricing or pitching than never getting started at all.

That’s why I want to offer you something to help you get started even more: My FREE 15-page guide to finding your first client: Hustle Your Way to the Top.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

How to get inside your potential clients’ heads

How to overcome the automatic “no” and score big wins by deeply understanding your prospects

How to use psychology to identify the most likely customers and get them to say yes

I’ll also show you the one huge mistake freelancers make so you can avoid it and separate yourself from the rest.

Just enter your info below and get the bonus lesson today.

Give me the free bonus lesson: Hustle Your Way to the Top

Source: https://bloghyped.com/how-to-freelance-5-steps-to-profit/

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theliterateape · 6 years

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For the Love of Little Broken Things: A Chicago Hairstylist Emerges Stronger After Fire

By David Himmel

“love breaks my bones and I laugh.” —Charles Bukowski, Fingernails; Nostrils; Shoelaces

Cassie Krepel had worked at plenty of different salons. In Chicago and Nashville and in different corners of Los Angeles cutting California locks. None of these were the type of place where she wanted to style, cut and color hair, so, she opened her own. Something different. Something welcoming. Something for the neighborhood and its creative freaks and weirdoes and straight-laced downtown nine-to-fivers and suburban empty nesters. Something that wasn’t limiting in possibility. She called it Little Broken Things.

Doors opened on Aug. 16, 2017. Right away, business was great. The art gallery concept was a success and word was spreading quickly. The neighborhood was responding. Eight weeks later, it all went up in smoke.

While the neighborhood slept through the pre-dawn autumn hours, the EyeVac used to vacuum up the clippings had gone haywire. The electrical fire quietly smoldered, heating up the split-level salon on the edge of Bucktown. The smoke grew darker, thicker, hotter. The walls, artifacts, appliances and Krepel’s dreams, future, chef-d’oeuvre melted — distorted into grotesque evidence of loss charred black.

Krepel had just returned from a weekend getaway in Nashville. It was meant to be an easy Monday to kick back and recover from the trip to Music City; coffee, read a book, listen to her boyfriend’s band, End It All — whatever people do on a day off, because no self-respecting hairstylist works on Mondays. Her phone rang at 8 a.m.

She and her boyfriend rushed over to Little Broken Things. Fire trucks lined Western Avenue. The large street-facing windows had been smashed out sending glass shards to litter the sidewalk. Her heart sank. Her stomach seized. Her face went numb. She squeezed past the firefighters and looky-loos. The remains inside were hardly recognizable. Dirt from plants knocked over turned to mud in the puddles left by the firehoses. Her hand-picked antiques and furniture and oriental rug were caked in soot and destruction. The large Chicago flag hanging from the wall in the waiting area stained with black smoke.

Little Broken Things was made to create beauty, cultivate artistry and convoke friends. But now, mere weeks after its ribbon-cutting, it was a taped-off crime scene. Do Not Enter. The investigation was underfoot.

Krepel had opened her business fast and furiously. It wasn’t easy. And as she stood among the soaked and smoked-out wreckage, she knew that she had to put it all back together again. What she didn’t know was how and how hard things were about to get.

Finding a place

Cassie Krepel never wanted to work in a salon. Not the kind most of us are used to, anyway. The ones that feel sterile, bleached out and void of personality. The kind where you’re made to feel lucky just to sit in their chair. Or the ones that are out of the box plastered with corporate-approved pictures of power-pop punk bands on the walls. The kind of salon where you’re greeted with arrogance and indifference, where your name isn’t remembered once it’s written down in the reservation system. She never wanted to work in places like that but she had because that’s what so many salons are.

“I was always the odd one out,” Krepel, 32, says. It didn’t matter where she went throughout the 12 years she’s been styling hair — the smug joints in the hipster ’hoods, the Hot Topic-like facsimile salons on any particular corner — she never quite fit in. But she was good at what she did. She built a clientele, which may well be the hardest part of being a hairstylist especially if you’re a rolling stone searching for the place you can comfortably brandish your shears.

In 2013, having grown tired of salon life, Krepel moved to Los Angeles to pursue her other dream of designing film sets. A friend of hers was connected to someone who was connected, and Krepel secured an internship working on a horror film. Hollywood internships being what they are, she spent most of her time doing grunt work, which did not require creativity, but did require a thick skin for getting dumped on by the set design director. If she was going to make it in the movies, it was going to be a long, hard road with next to no financial security along the way.

L.A.’s saving grace was romance. While still living in Logan Square, Krepel had reconnected with an old friend from high school, a guy she dated for a month their senior year: Eddie Hamel. He was earning his degree in audio engineering in San Diego so they did the distance thing for four months before they both moved into an apartment in East Hollywood. While Krepel toiled on set, Hamel made the commute by train to San Diego every school day. It wasn’t ideal but it was something — they had each other.

The set design grind continued to disappoint. She’d finally had enough when her boss sprung a last-minute demand to work a gig, refusing to let Krepel skip it or be late because of a prior commitment to drive Hamel to work. Bills needed to be paid and her dignity had taken enough of a lashing. She left the Hollywood backlot for a Floyd’s Barbershop in Venice. The horror film she was interning on… it was never released. Not even straight to video.

Happier at the chair, Krepel remained an unsatisfied seeker. “I think a lot of hairstylists have this moment when they say, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.’ But then, what else do you do? And I was like, I’m going to fucking open my own business.”

After two-and-a-half years and five different salons, she returned home to Chicago and took a job at a chair at Twisted Scissors in Logan Square. She foraged for money, re-animated and built on her Chicago clientele, and when a space opened up at 2137 N. Western Avenue, Krepel didn’t hesitate. She signed the lease on July 1. Six weeks later, Little Broken Things was open.

Into the blackness

The first days after the fire were a blur. Krepel was on auto-pilot — survival mode. She posted the temporary closing on social media; updated the website; called clients on the schedule and emailed the rest. She met with fire inspectors, insurance adjusters and lawyers. Afternoons were spent on hold or leaving voicemails with the adjuster. It was a slog. Insurance companies rarely pay out a policy holder with glee, especially if that policy is only 10 weeks old. Was something suspect? Had Krepel sabotaged her own salon for the money? Of course not. But Krepel was a young women, just 31, with pink hair and tattoos. They all looked at her like, Who is this little girl?

“I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing,” Krepel says. “I felt like no one was on my side, I had no one I could confide in professionally — I didn’t know anyone whose business had burned down.”

She worried about the big things like rebuilding her salon, and the little things like, could she take things out of the salon, was any of it salvageable… Is it all ruined? She knew how to run a salon but this, this was all new and she was alone — adrift rudderless in a sea of firehose water and burned, broken things. One of the stylists who worked there suggested to Krepel that she change the name of the salon to Little Burned Things.

The name of her salon was inspired by the Charles Bukowski poem, Fingernails; Nostrils; Shoelaces. “I was always going to call it Broken Bones — it’s all about resilience. We’ve all had broken bones and survived,” she says. “But as I got closer to opening it, Little Broken Things had a better ring to it.” That name was a repurposing of her Etsy shop where she had been making jewelry and unique trinkets out of broken stuff like watch parts. She was creating little things out of little broken things. And now, here she was, having to create yet another thing out broken things — her broken dreams.

Bukowski’s words and her own resilience got her only so far. Krepel is a doer. She needs constant momentum, true progress to feel anything even remotely like peace. So when the rebuilding’s momentum stopped, she found herself lost again. She sought out a therapist to help keep her from going mad.

“I knew I was repressing my feelings so that I didn’t have a total breakdown. It was important for me to stay level through this thing. But I didn’t want to just breeze past all of this. I wanted to experience my emotions and process them. I wanted this loss to resonate and always remember why I kept going.

“Day after day of having little to no control is my worst fear. I felt like I was drowning, like there was no point in getting out of bed. It came in waves… One rush of momentum when construction started — progress! Then, the next wave… no one does any work and I can’t get the insurance adjuster to call me back.”

Back to beauty

It took her a month-and-a-half to open Little Broken Things the first time around. Coming back from the fire took 11 months. She spent those 11 months trying to stay even keeled, afloat and fighting with insurance adjuster answering machines. She rented a chair in Lakeview. The kind of place she describes as politely as she can as “basically a big space with cubicles and plumbing… It’s where hairdressers go to die.”

But Krepel didn’t die. Her salon may have burned out, but she never did.

✶

It’s a hot Thursday morning in September. Dana Jerman and I are visiting with Krepel at Little Broken Things. She’s not open for business just yet. In two days, she’s hosting a grand re-opening. There will be food and booze, and I can bring my kid. She’s got a little baby fever. We’re not sure of Hamel’s feelings on that fever. As we chat, it’s difficult to imagine Krepel frustrated with her chosen profession or furiously hindered by the past 11 months of slow progress. She’s cool, measured, funny and hopeful. It’s the kind of attitude that comes only after understanding the darker, uglier side of life’s moments.

“By the time I open these doors, it’s going to be such a relief to me,” Krepel says. Normally, when you open the doors that’s when the work starts. But for me… it’s like now I can fucking relax. Because I know how to do this in here.”

It’s not fair to call Little Broken Things a salon. Yeah, salon things happen here but it’s more of an arthouse. Artists, musicians, jewelers, literary junkies are all on display. “I want artists who you might not see otherwise. I want to highlight people who are just playing with art. When you get a bunch of weirdoes together, cool things happen.”

Cool things are happening. As we talk, alternative music from the ’90s plays on the speakers. Most of the songs I had forgotten I liked. Paintings (for sale and several sold) by David J. Paha hang from long wires on one wall. The Chicago flag is now framed, hung back I place but with all of its smoke damage untouched and on poetic display. Framed photos from the fire line a corner. One eerie image has Hamel standing among the destruction, his long jet black hair hanging over his face. Protecting his eyes from seeing the horror? Advertising that he needs a haircut? Or just a man still standing among the rubble, a show of resilience.

Krepel has a thing for strong, sometimes scary men with artistry and brilliance in their veins. Hamel, for one is a musician, audio engineer and owner of Scripts Records who while kind, dabbles in art’s heavier forms. Hunter S. Thompson’s and Terry Gilliam’s Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is the theme of the bathroom. It’s bat country in there. Answering nature’s call in this bathroom makes you feel like you’ve ingested “two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.” It’s amazing. On the back wall, a large mural of Bukowski’s anguished grin oversees the chairs and art and metal band patches and vintage typewriters (as if there’s any other kind) and earrings made of little broken things. It tells us to “Find what you love and let it kill you.” Taken literally, it’s terrible advice, but the three of us standing at the front desk chatting away all fully understand the sentiment. Just about anyone can. Certainly Krepel’s clientele gets it. Because they get her.

That’s why we’re here, that’s why Little Broken Things exists. It is as much Krepel’s soul put into practice as it is a place to get a cut, color, piece of art or good conversation.

What’s missing is an EyeVac. “Never again,” Krepel says. She got a little too fancy the first time around. Now and forever more, she says it’s a dustpan all the way. And she says that the gods spoke to her during the 11 months of rebuilding. Slow down. Why are you hurrying such a big thing? Learn more. “Patience is something I struggle with,” she says. “I think that was a big part of it. The fire took everything away. I had to sit and think about my life. I’m braver now. I know a lot more. I’m not so meek about speaking up.”

Little Broken Things opened again on Sept. 25. It’s even more the kind of place Krepel wanted it to be than it was before. It’s even more her sanctuary. And more importantly, it can be a sanctum for any of us. A place to be made beautiful on the outside with the ability to beautify our innards by consuming the art and music and that unavoidable sense of strength and resilience.

“Being a hairstylist, you create change,” Krepel says. “It’s immediate gratification. The idea is to make someone look and feel their best. Your hands are moving, you’re standing, your brain is working to formulate and mold your shape. You’re talking and being social, courteous, conscientious, monitoring your client’s comfort levels. Firing on all cylinders. There’s no time to think about anything else but the person and project you are currently submerged in. I love being a hairstylist, but this fire has given me a chance to step away from behind the chair and learn the way the gears move.”

We’re all rebuilding. We all want to be beautiful. We’re all seeking gratification. Krepel went through the fire and emerged to give us a place that is as much ours as it is hers. A place where we can feel beautiful, where we can feel gratified, because when we feel good, we don’t want to burn the whole fucking thing down. She’s given Chicago a place that proves the most beautiful things often come from the things that were the most broken.

Little Broken Things 2137 N. Western Ave. 773-799-8828 littlebrokenthingschicago.com Tuesday–Thursday 12–8 p.m. Friday–Saturday 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Services Book online

✶

New Art Exhibition Premiere: Featuring Will McEvilly — “Down Faithful” Friday, November 2, 2018 6–9 p.m. @ Little Broken Things

McEvilly’s art will be for sale, as will copies of The Many Splendored (Scripts Records), the latest release from his modular synth/drone project, Holy Family.

If you are interested in consignment sales or sharing your work in an exhibition/performance, please email a brief proposal and links to your work at [email protected].

#Little Broken Things #Cassie Krepel #Chicago Salon #Hair Salon #Wicker Park/Bucktown Hair Salon #Bucktown Hair Salon #Wicker Park Hair Salon #Charles Bukowski #David J. Paha

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feelingsdusk-writes · 6 years

Text

Runes and all kinds of things

Chapter 7

“So, how’s France?” Stiles mutters through a yawn as he rubs his eyes with his free hand.

Allison smirks at the bedhead he’s sporting and rapidly captures the image. She’s so glad she talked him out of cutting his hair because not only does she like his look, but the screenshots are such a good blackmail material. She would feel bad about doing this if she didn’t know he does exactly the same all the time. He did tease her about putting the picture of her with the panda facemask she put on after the plane as his phone's background, after all.

“Haven’t seen much of it yet, we’ve been cleaning the house these past two days,“ she answers ruefully and shifts in her chair enough to bring her legs up close to her chest. She then lays her chin on her knees. “Dad’s the one that has gone grocery shopping and all those things. If he hadn’t brought those croissants, I’d be starting a mutiny.”

Stiles snickers at the mental image that produces and lies on his side, one arm under his head and another holding the phone in place. “I still can’t get over the fact that you guys own a house in France.” Allison giggles when he yawns again and grumbles. “You’re looking better, though; you were like shit just two days ago."

“That’s what more than ten hours flying and jet lag can do to you, genius.” She smiles fondly and he mirrors it. “Don’t make me regret sending you that pic, mister.”

"You have to admit you looked like a raccoon," he mocks.

Before she can reply to that her father signals to get her attention. She takes one earphone out and makes an inquiring sound. Chris mutters something about finally going out, face surprisingly pinched. She eyes him briefly, confused, but goes back to her call.

“Sorry to cut this sort, but we’re going out. Miss you,” she singsongs and Stiles sputters awkwardly and endearingly embarrassed. “You’re blushing? Aw, so sweet!“

“Miss you too, weirdo,” he mutters before he hangs up abruptly, prompting an amused laugh out of her.

When she gets up from the chair and walks towards her dad, Chris looks like he’s swallowed a lemon. She blinks, once again confused for a moment, and then, after realization hits, she contains an evil smile.

—

Stiles eyes the puckered skin of his wound with a pensive expression. He’s seen the police report and the pictures the deputy took, but this is different. The gunpowder’s imprint is gone, for one, and the angry red of the inflammation has almost disappeared too. The bruising and lacerations from Gerard’s hours long loving treatment are gone too.

As always, being at the hospital makes him really uncomfortable and he can't wait to leave it. It helps that his doctor is every bit as soothing as the first day, but being honest, he'll be happier when he doesn't have to come back. That will take some time, though, because he still has to go through rehabilitation. He tries not to dwell on it.

“The speed of your recovery is impressive, Stiles,” Dr. Mamsen remarks as he takes off the disposable gloves, which earns a distracted hum from the teen.

“He’s been like that since he was a little kid,” John answers when it’s clear Stiles’ mind is elsewhere. His dad shoots him a worried look because Stiles' eyes are fixed on the gunshot wound and haven't wavered from there since he pulled his t-shirt up to get the bandages off. “What do you think, doc?”

“If he continues at this rate, he’ll be able to start rehabilitation next week, I think. In any case, I don’t want to rush it. You still have a month until school starts, right?”

“Yeah, give or take.” Stiles snaps out of it finally and suddenly it’s like the stretcher he is reclined on is on fire with the way he starts to fidget. “Can I put my clothes on again?”

“Go for it while I update your pain prescription and I pencil you in for a, hopefully, last follow-up before rehab. Same time next week sound good?”

“Cool,” Stiles replies with a grateful smile.

John sighs when he springs from the stretcher like he’s been ejected. Neither of them like hospitals too much, but his dad is much more accustomed to covering it up than Stiles because his job has brought him back to one quite a few times since his mom died. He catches him offering an apologetic smile to the doctor for the borderline impolite behaviour of his son, but the thought of rebuking him for it doesn't seem to even cross his mind, which Stiles is insanely grateful for.

“No one likes the gowns,” the doctor explains while he waves it off good-naturedly and John snorts.

“What is it?” John asks when they’re back in the car, because Stiles is a little more agitated than normal and it hasn't escaped his notice. Stiles turns shiny exited eyes towards him, almost vibrating in his seat, and John rolls his eyes. “Yes, son, we can stop for curly fries if your stomach feels up to it.”

Stiles sputters for a few seconds because he doesn’t know where to begin addressing that blasphemous statement. John smirks, amused at the sight, and Stiles sniffs, faux offended as he fastens his seatbelt.

“I always feel up to curly fries. They are the food of the gods and I’m sure that if you’d let me have them from the start…”

“You’d have been puking your guts up much sooner.”

“No, you philistine! I’d have been cured already. But I wasn’t thinking about that.” He turns to look at him again, all puppy excitement, bright eyes and big smile, like when he was a kid, when he brought back a paint bomb some big kids had been playing with at the school yard and left it in the kitchen before he went looking for him to show him his treasure. To date, neither of them know how it went off. “I had an idea I’m dying to try. It may or may not involve tattoos. I’m not sure about the logistics yet.”

His dad visibly shudders but before Stiles can explain himself, his phone beeps twice in rapid succession, interrupting him. He cackles after he reads the messages.

From Ally: Lol I didn’t buy a thing :D

Attached to it there’s a pic of Chris sporting a kill-me-please exasperated slash stoic expression that looks sneakily taken from the inside of a changing room. The man has a huge pile of clothes on his hands and looks like he would rather be in a sewer up to his ears in fecal matter and being chased by ghouls. Good girl, Stiles thinks uncharitably.

From Ally: These I did buy.

There’s another picture of the man with his wallet in his hand, but this time a beautiful set of throwing knifes are on display. Chris' expression remains the same and Stiles is starting to suspect that is a default one.

To Ally: Nice. Didn’t know you knew how to throw knives.

From Ally: I don’t :)

“Son," his dad sighs, "can we go back to the part where you explain to me this thing about the tattoos, please?”

—

“It was so beautiful,” she sighs dreamily but dejected. “And the perfect color too. I don’t normally look good in that cut, but with this one…”

“Like I believe that.“ Stiles scoffs. He normally isn’t very into talking about fashion, but he doubts she’s very interested in hearing him rant about runes either and she actually makes an honest effort to participate in those conversations so… equal exchange and all that. ”You’d look good in a trash bag, Ally.“

“Don’t exaggerate.”

”I don’t and you know I don’t say things I don’t mean,” he says simply. Allison flushes but smiles at the same time pleased and embarrassed. That happens just as Chris goes to the fridge to get started preparing dinner and, just for a moment, he looks like he wants to turn around to save himself the pain. “Wow, just wow. I’m seeing the pic now. It really looks good on you. Why didn’t you buy it though?“

“I’m saving for something else,” she almost whines in answer.

“That’s too bad. Maybe they have an online shop available? Have you checked? That way you can try to buy it later when you save some money again.“ In the background, she hears his laptop starting and the press of keys. ”What was the name of the store?"

“Free ‘P'Star.“

“Okay… They do have a website but I can’t find… No, sorry, it doesn’t seem like you can buy online.” He sounds genuinely contrite and it lifts her mood.

“That’s okay. Thanks for checking, though.”

“Sure. On another note, I’m officially not grounded anymore. Yay for me!”

“You were grounded?” Allison asks perplexed, ignoring her father’s answering snort and muttering.

“Yeah, but I think it was more symbolic than anything, because the punishment was not going out, which, duh, not possible with the gunshot wound. Dad likes to pretend he’s all tough but in reality he’s a cinnamon roll.“

Allison laughs when Stiles turns the camera to show a fondly exasperated John, who has his uniform on and looks about to leave. She waves and the man nods back all long-suffering.

“You’re incorrigible,” she snickers.

“I know,” he cackles. “Miss you!”

“Miss you too,” she croons and then she blows a kiss to the screen for good measure, earning a delighted laugh from him.

She takes her earphones out in time to hear her father whisking the eggs with too much force and she has to muffle a laugh. She supposes it’s sweet that he respects her enough to not interrupt even though he clearly wants to. It almost makes her feel bad about trolling him into thinking she’s talking to Scott instead of Stiles.

Almost.

—

Stiles starts practicing with the mountain ash again. He could already use it like an extra arm to grab things (that has a catch, though, as the size of the thing he can move depends on the quantity of mountain ash he uses) and now he has an idea for another possible use. He remembers very clearly how Gerard took everything from him when he captured him and then locked it away. Of course, mountain ash is thin and he could now command it to come to him, but that takes time he might not have depending on the situation. So now he wants to make it stick to his skin in a thin layer, like a tattoo appearance wise. And it has to stay like that constantly, even asleep.

The first few tries over the course of two days look nothing like tattoos and fall the second he’s not paying attention. The next ones look like tattoos but don’t stay stuck unless he’s actively thinking about it. In the following few tries, he still can’t get them to stick, but to the touch they feel like normal skin. He rakes his brain until he finds a possible solution. It works and now Stiles is the proud owner of three fake tattoos.

“What the-?!” John exclaims startled, choking on his too hot coffee. After a long coughing fit, he manages to get back his voice. “What the hell is that?!”

“Uh... I can see how this could be a problem,” Stiles chirps sheepishly, eyeing his arm where a cat is idyllically chasing some kind of fluff thing down his arm. As he’s watching it changes into swirls and travels back up until it disappears under his sleeve. The three tattoos have become one that divides and combines itself with no discernible pattern. “Mmm, I think I’ve created sentient tattoos… which, for the record, was totally not my intention.”

It takes Stiles two more days to determine that it really is sentient and that apparently there’s no way to reverse what he’s done… because it’s supposed to be impossible in the first place. He shrugs, accepts it and moves on. The moment he does the tattoos settle somewhat and start acting as if they were a mix between a dog and a cat. He shrugs again and trains it like one would a pet. It works like a charm.

(Pun totally intended that makes his dad roll his eyes and call him a dork.)

(Nothing new there.)

—

Allison’s been awake for a couple of hours already, too unsettled to sleep, when she decides to call Stiles. It’s one in the morning in California, but she knows Stiles will be awake. She puts on her earphones and keeps her voice soft so she doesn’t disturb her dad’s sleep.

“Have I ever told you I’m good with languages? That they come easy to me?” Stiles grumbles directly, picking up just after the first ring and she's embarrassingly grateful for that.

“Hello to you too,” she drawls at the greeting. She can already feel her nerves settling just by the sound of his voice.

“I was totally lying.”

“I won’t accept a statement like that from someone whom I know learned to speak Spanish almost fluently in less than a month because he was bored in a his hospital bed. And just via watching novelas and using the Internet.“ She ignores his sputters like a professional. “Is this about the Rune book again? You know there’s an Old Norse dictionary on-line, right?”

“That would be totally cheating and just because you’re Cheaty McCheatersen….”

“So it’s no good?”

“No,” he whines mournfully. “It’s Proto-Norse, not Old Norse…“

“Wow, I can actually hear you crying from here. Nice.”

“You denatured bestie!” Stiles cries dramatically.

Allison’s still smiling madly in happiness when Chris comes downstairs. He pauses at the sight.

“Love you too,” she croons at the screen.

Chris groans.

—

Rehab is every bit as uncomfortable as Stiles thought it would be. Flesh wound or not, it tore a lot of muscle that he now has to train back to the way it was before. The exercises are boring as hell because he has to increase the weight very gradually so as not to hurt himself again.

(He thanks all deities that Pikachu is behaving itself (What?! It shocks people! It was that or Ash… as in Ash Ketchum, but that would make Stiles the pet monster so…) and hasn’t started dancing in the face of Emily, his helper today.)

After the session, he waits for a bit sitting on a chair until his body stops shaking before going to his jeep. It took a lot to convince his father that he was well enough to drive by himself but he succeeded in the end. As they agreed, though, he calls him before taking off.

“How did it go?”

“As well as can be expected, daddy-o.“ He continues before John can interrupt. ”No, really, it was okay. It just aches a bit.“

“Can you drive? I can come and pick you up.”

“I’m okay, really.” He rolls his eyes even though his dad can't see it. “I’m heading downtown to pick some things up and then I’ll get something for lunch for the both of us. How does that sound?”

“Sounds good… so long as not everything in that lunch is green.”

“I solemnly promise it will not be.”

“I’ll hold you to that. But, son, if you...”

"Feel like it hurts too much I'll pull over and call you to pick me up. I promise, dad."

In reality he doesn’t especially need anything but to stretch his legs after being cooped up at home for too long. He wanders for a bit, window shopping, before something catches his eye as he turns the corner. Scott and Isaac are walking down the street, right ahead of him. He ducks into the coffee shop beside him without even thinking. After a tense moment, he shrugs and decides he might as well buy something seeing that he's inside already. His phone beeps.

From Creeperwolf: You’re the pinnacle of subtlety.

Surprised, Stiles can’t resist looking around, trying to locate Peter.

From Creeperwolf: Cold.

To Creeperwolf: Seriously? Aren’t we a little bit old to be playing Hide-and-seek?

From Creeperwolf: But it can be so fun. Out and ahead.

Stiles snorts and pays for his order. When he leaves the store, he looks to the other side of the street and, sure enough, there’s Peter waving lazily. He wiggles his fingers back.

To Creeperwolf: What are you doing?

From Creeperwolf: I’m on petsitting duty.

To Creeperwolf: Have fun.

From Creeperwolf: Doubt it.

To Creeperwolf: They’re bound to do something stupid sooner or later.

From Creeperwolf: Now that’s an interesting thought.

To Creeperwolf: Wild guess: Derek didn’t say anything about helping them if things go south?

From Creeperwolf: Nope.

From Creeperwolf: One would think he’d have learned by now.

He snorts and looks at Peter pensively before he finally makes up his mind. He crosses the street and hands the surprised man the coffee and a cinnamon muffin before going on his way to buy lunch from his father’s favorite place.

(Peter's surprised blink shouldn't be this satisfying but it is.)

—

“Of course I left bras in your drawer too! And panties for that matter,“ she fake whispers and something falls in the next room, breaking spectacularly loudly. “And that’s my drawer now, you know?”

“I’m just telling you to give me a heads up next time. Dad came to put some of my stuff in and nearly had an aneurysm.” He sounds awfully amused at the whole situation despite his words. “I’m almost sad he hasn’t opened your bathroom drawer and seen the treasure that’s inside,” he whispers as in confidence to the camera. Allison snorts and Stiles cackles. She can hear a not funny! being shouted on the other side of the line that suggests that what Stiles has described didn't happen too long ago.

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll empty a drawer for you in my room too,” she concedes merrily, earning a clearly audible sputter from her dad, who almost instantly enters the living room with an epically thunderous expression, “Stiles. It’s only fair, after all.”

“Pleasepleaseplease, turn around the camera!” Stiles crows delightedly and Allison obliges him, capturing Chris in all his befuddled glory with her phone for her friend's viewing pleasure. She hears the tattletale distinct sound of a screenshot being taken. She grins. “Awesome! And deal about the drawer. See you in a few days. Love you!”

“Love you too!”

She looks at her father and then inevitably loses it again. Allison lets him gape in shock for a few minutes just for the entertainment value before she takes pity on him and explains. He looks torn between wanting to throttle her and being elated that she’s not dating Scott anymore. About Stiles, he doesn’t seem to know what to think but he seems to be willing to accept her word for it and trust her judgment… or at least watch her back while she tries this new thing. He has guns and knows how to use them, his face says clearly.

“We just click, dad,” she tries to explain. “We’ve been friends for real since the hospital and half that time I’ve been here and we’ve just talked on the phone and…“

It feels like it has been this way since forever.

Allison purses her lips as she suddenly remembers Stiles’ words before leaving about festering wounds. She’s been avoiding it, hoping to not have to be the one to bring it up and it’s obvious that her approach won’t work. She has to be the one to take the first step, she realizes, because her father will never do it with the way he keeps everything inside in a misguided way of protecting his daughter. And then it's like suddenly the dam has broken and she can’t stop talking. About Scott, about Kate, about Gerard. About her mom. She tries to make him comfortable enough to open up as well but it’s the sight of her earnest eyes that does the trick.

It’s comforting to know she’s not the only one that doesn’t like the decisions her mom made. It’s liberating to learn she’s not the only one that resents her for choosing death before life with her family. It’s consoling to find out that she’s not the only one that feels her absence left a void that will never be filled.

Above all, it’s calming (if sad) to share their immense love for her, which hasn't diminished one bit even after everything that has happened.

—

John is passing Stiles’ open bedroom door when he catches him doing what he calls the victory dance and singing yesyesyes. His son is in his cartoon pajamas with white gloves on his hands and a cloud of ash is continuously changing forms as it circles him like an exited pet, cracking with visible electricity. One of Stiles’ flailing arms brushes against it and he falls to the floor with a yelp and a bad Pikachu! that makes the ash sag contritely. John looks heavenward, takes a sip of coffee and very pointedly doesn’t ask.

—

Allison has had to leave the shop behind her to avoid giving in to the urge of smashing the shopkeeper’s face into the counter. She takes a fortifying breath before entering the fry again. They’re leaving today so he’s going to sell her those books or else. With all the trouble she has gone through to locate the damn shop she's so not going to leave empty-handed. Not a fucking chance. Now, if the aggravating shopkeeper stops feigning ignorance, please, it will all go much faster.

“Now, I feel that we started off on the wrong foot,” she chirps as she smiles brightly and saccharine sweet. On the edge of her vision she sees her dad trying hard to cover a smirk and then turning to start discreetly coughing.

Allison leaves with two journals in a paper bag, a spring in her step and all her savings gone. She is sure the bastard overpriced her but she doesn’t care. Chris shakes his head fondly.

“I hope they were worth being left financially dependant on your old man in a foreign country, even if it’s just for what remains of the day,” Chris grumbles.

“They were,” she answers simply before adding nonchalantly. “And I’ll always depend on you in some way, dad.” Allison does notice Chris' eyes are suspiciously wet, but she doesn’t comment on it. “Let’s go, I’m hungry. I want to try La Grenuille’s cuisine before leaving.“

“You know your mother hated that place,” he offers tentatively, which makes her pause very briefly, almost unnoticeably so. He continues as if nothing is out of the ordinary. "Or more like loathed, really."

Their talk didn’t solve everything, obviously, but it helped a great deal. Allison hopes that one day their pain will diminish enough to talk about her without it seeping into every thought they have of her.

“She did?”

“She used to say that they couldn’t cook their way out of a paper bag… and that if that was a bacheofe she was… I’d better not finish that,“ he cuts himself ruefully and she laughs.

The bacheofe turns out to be horrible all right, and they regret ever doubting Victoria in culinary matters when they almost get sick on the plane and they realize they don't have any medication for it at all. It's torture.

She calls Stiles when they land while they wait to pick up their luggage. He tries to lighten her mood and console her about the long hour taxi ride they still have to endure to actually reach home, but to no avail. Thankfully, they managed to get their hands on some medication before leaving the airport and it should kick in soon, making the whole experience more tolerable.

She feels warm inside when they find two Thermos filled with hot homemade chicken soup resting on their front step. There’s a sticker with a smiley face inside a speaking bubble and an oddly well sketched Pikachu. Even her dad looks relieved.

It's good to be home.

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#runes and all kinds of things #teen wolf fics #my writing #teen wolf #steter

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