#ill probably end up using them on other Sims but it would be weird to see strangers using them in a way i can't articulate

[ssspringroll]

Saddens me greatly that even with my giant/tiny slider, i will never be able to make my favorite ocs height-accurate. The tallest one is 20ft (6m). That's like a 2 story building. Game just can't handle dudes that huge ;-;

[namuneulbo]

week eighty-six

i was so busy on sunday so i couldnt post in time. sorry!! ill write and post this now at 1 am on monday. it was a good sunday though, cute person at the till but i got so flustered i forgot to look at their last name when i ided them so i just know his first name and middle name loool. went to the bar after work w c, l and s. we then went for food and ate in the school cafeteria. a cute security guard came after a while and asking for us to show our keys to prove we could be there lol.

ive been listening to loooots of saosin. im so in love w their stuff. so the sotw is obvious hehe.

okay now ill go through the week in order lol.

monday i dont really remember. just work.

i had a shorter shift on tuesday, only four hours! afterwards i met up w e and e and we walked around town and then had some food and then went to some shops. it was fun and time went by so fast.

on wednesday i thought id have to rawdog the music quiz and just go alone and hope id find someone ik there to play w BUT c came home just in time so she joined me along w d, e and s. s left before the results and d and e left right after the results. we did HORRIBLY!!! we came like,, 9th ??? out of 14 probably?

s joined us afterwards and m also joined in after a bit. i thought it was a lot of fun but apparently ive now gotten the news that s is... a bit weird. idk, i always thought my friends were kind of,,, making him seem worse than he is but ig im starting to understand what they find so odd ab him and back on wednesday i still enjoyed his company. after talking for a while, m left to go to another table and c and i were left w s. h joined us at one point and omg i was so excited ab it, i think hes so cool and cute and sweet and i kind of fangirled internally. like truly its not like a crush or anything, hes just so sweet and funny so i was so excited to talk to him. THEN..... D JOINED??? idk if ive talked ab him too much on here but basically hes just this bassist dude whos so fucking cool to me and ive never spoken to him and before this i hadnt even sat at the same table as him or stood within the same circle as him. ig this experience was quite humbling though lol i think i made him up to be more talkative and louder than he actually is. nothing bad ab that i just realized ive probably made him way cooler in my mind than he is irl. hes just human lol. hes still cool to me though but i need to mention that its funny that c had literally said to me like “girl, ur hyping him up way too much. hes just a man.” and now i was indeed proved right. he is just a guy lol. its kind of become an inside joke by now though and i like that ive created that correlation to him now so itll always be in the back of esp c and ls minds. i did fangirl a lot when he sat down at our table out of nowhere though and it was so funny bc c kept giving me a look.

d left quite quickly to go to talk to others and after a while me, c, h and ss convo turned into a film bro convo bc apparently all three of them r film bros and i havent seen like,, any movies so they started listing movies from every era and of every genre that i had to watch and it was so funny. after they had been listing stuff for a good 15 minutes they finally said dead poets society and i could finally be like “IVE SEEN THAT ONE”. i then watched interstellar the next day... no reason why i specifically watched that one...

after watching interstellar on thursday, i got so inspired to go learn cornfield chase on piano so i ran to school at 12 am but obviously it was closed. i knew it would be but sometimes the gates might still be open or something so there r loopholes but yeah, not this time. i checked every door lol. i still havent gone to practice it. i practiced a little bit at home on the keyboard but it sounds so bad and its so hard to play, mainly ergonomically.

friday! played sims all day and then went for a drink w t. we then went for a walk and then got some food to end the evening. i love them sm <3

saturday was work again but it was a five hour shift that went by pretty fast and it was such a weird shift lol. theres this guy that comes in every now and then and weve always had this little tension between us, like a pretty obvious romantic tension. i remember all the times hes been at the till while i was working. one time he was also just in the store while i was fixing some shelves, i think i was specifically organizing cat food? anyways, first time, i actually cant remember fully if it was him but im pretty sure?? idk, like i said, i get flustered when i see pretty ppl so i just remember a BIG tension and his hand shaking a bit when holding his card to the card reader. second time he bought cigarettes and i ided him and TURNS OUT ITS A GUY I WENT TO ELEMENTARY W LOLLLL. hes two years older than me and all i remember of him is that he used to show me gore on the computer at the after school thingy we were at. honestly shaped me a lot as a child probably. i wonder if he remembers me from that as well. anyways. he bought food some other time too and i remember just really feeling the tension still. like its sm fun??? like how u can feel that we both find each other so attractive yet no one says anything apart from just smiling and doing like a specific type of eye contact and just like idk... speaking in a certain tone ig??? its sm fun. hes so hotttttt. anyways on saturday he came in twice, once w his friend (who i also know and hes not a great guy sooooooo) and that time his friend was just buying cigarettes but he stayed away for some reason and like fully turned his back to me lol idk what that was ab but then after an hour or so he came in alone to buy some quick meal and the tension was back. i think he mightve genuinely just avoided me the first time bc he didnt want his friend to know??? or am i being totally delusional rn?

later that shift d shows up. THE d. we were both as surpised lol i just looked up from my phone when i heard someone start piling up stuff on the conveyor belt and then i meet eyes w him and his eyes widen just as much as mine and hes like “hi!” and im like “hi!”. we dont say anything else but it was just so funny and i keep smiling lol. hes so iconic to me. maybe a little hot too but like mostly iconic. i think. he is QUITE hot though... like to be fucking fair....

THEN omg. this was so fucking funny and i laughed ab it for the rest of my shift. this guy came in to buy alcohol and he was young so he showed id before i even got to asking him for it and his name is literally the same as w, my crush. FIRST AND LAST NAME WERE THE SAME??? what a fucking coincidence??????? it was so funny and i had to keep myself from bursting out in laughter in front of him it was so fucking weird. i didnt think w had THAT common of a name. like yeah first name sure, one of the more common ones for his age but like first and last name??? woah.

anyways, thats a fucking wrap.

sotw: saosin - racing toward a red light

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

In Search of Lost Screws (RQBB '21)

Here at last is my entry for the 2021 Rusty Quill Big Bang!

Fandom: The Magnus Archives Rating: T Word count: ~30k Warnings: Chronic Illness, Mild Body Horror, Internalized Ableism, Canon-Typical Spiders, Mention of Canon-Typical Suicidal Ideation, Alcohol Other tags: Cane-user Jon, EDS Jon, Canon-compliant, Season 5, Set in 180-181 (Upton Safehouse period) Characters: Jon Sims, Martin Blackwood, Mikaele Salesa (secondary), Annabelle Cane (secondary) Relationships: Jon/Martin Summary: While staying at Upton House, Jon and Martin accidentally break their bedroom’s doorknob, and can’t get back into the room until they fix it. Meanwhile Jon tries not to break into literal pieces without the Eye, and also to pretend he’s having a good time as he and Martin lunch with Annabelle, parry gifts from Salesa, and quarrel about whether Jon’s okay or not. He's fine! It's just that the apocalypse runs on dream logic, and chronic pain feels worse when you're awake. Excerpt:

“Have I mentioned how weird it is you’re the one who keeps asking me this stuff?” “I’m sorry. I’m trying to help? I just…” Jon closed his eyes, which itched with the warehouse’s dust, and rubbed their lids with an index finger. “I can’t seem to corral my thoughts here.” “Don’t worry about it. It’s actually kind of fun, it’s just—I’m so used to being the sidekick,” Martin laughed. “Besides, I miss my eldritch Google.” “Should I go back out there, ask the Eye about it, then come back?” Another laugh, this one less awkward. “No. That won’t work, remember? This place is a ‘blind spot,’ you said.” The words in inverted commas he said with a frown and in a deeper voice. “Right, right. I forgot,” Jon sighed. He lowered himself to the floor and examined the finger he’d felt snap back into place when he let go his cane. During the five seconds he’d allowed himself to entertain it, the idea of heading back out there had excited him a little. A few minutes to check on Basira, verify what Salesa had told them about his life before the change, make sure the world hadn’t somehow ended twice over. Give himself a few minutes’ freedom of movement, for that matter. Out there he could run, jump, open jars, pick up full mugs of tea without worrying a screw in his hand would come loose and make him drop them. He could stand up as quickly as he thought the words, I think I’ll stand up now, without his vision going dark. God, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter! He would just know every tripping hazard and every look on Martin’s face, without having to ask these clumsy human eyes to show them to him. “Honestly, it’d almost feel worth it to go back out there just to formulate a plan to find them. At least I can think out there.” “Hey.” Martin elbowed him slightly in the ribs. Jon fought with himself not to resent the very gentleness of it. “I think I’ll come up with the plan for once, thanks. Some of us can think just fine here.” Was it just because of Hopworth that Martin’s elbow barely touched him? Or because Martin feared that Jon would break in here, in a way he’d learnt not to fear out there?

Huge thanks to @pilesofnonsense for hosting this event; to @connanro for beta-reading; and to @silmapeli for their amazing illustration, whose own post you can find here.

If you prefer, you can read this fic instead on Ao3. I won't link it directly, since Tumblr has trouble with external links, but if you google the title and add "echinoderms" (my Ao3 handle), it should come up!

Crunch. “Oh god. Shit! Oh god, oh no—”

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

A clatter, then a noise like a small rock scraping a large one. Jon’s heart plunged; halfway through his question he knew the answer.

“I—I broke it? Look, see, the whole thing just—take this.” Martin tore his hand out of Jon’s and dropped the severed doorknob in it instead. Then he dropped to the floor, diving head- and hands-first for the crack between it and the door as if that crack were a portal between dimensions. Jon closed his eyes and shook this image away, hoping when he opened them again he could focus on what was real.

He should have known this would happen from the moment they left for breakfast. Every time he’d opened that door its knob felt a little looser. Why hadn’t he warned Martin? Well, alright, he didn’t need powers to know that one. He just hadn’t thought of it. Been a bit preoccupied, after all. And even if he had thought of it, that was exactly the kind of conversation he’d been shying away from all week. Watch out for that doorknob; it’s a little loose, he would say, and yeah, probably Martin would answer, Oh, thanks. But there was a chance Martin would say instead, Why didn’t you tell me?—and all week Jon had obeyed an instinct to avoid prompting that question. All week he had made sure to enter and exit their room a few steps ahead of Martin, and hold the door open for him. Martin probably just saw it as Jon’s way of apologizing for their first few months in the Archives together, and once that thought occurred to him Jon had started to look at it that way himself. Maybe that’s why he’d forgot this time.

“Nooo-oooo, come on come on!”

“I don’t think you’ll fit,” Jon said, when he looked again and found Martin trying to wedge his fingers under the door.

(Martin used to leave Jon’s office door open behind him—perhaps absentmindedly, but more likely as a gesture of friendship and openness, which the Jon of that time would not suffer. Sasha and Tim, n.b., only left his door open on their way into his office, when they didn’t intend to stay long; Martin would leave it gaping even if he didn’t mean to come back. Every time Jon had sighed, pulled himself to his feet, and closed the door behind Martin, drawing out the click of its tongue in the latch. And a few times he’d closed the door in front of him, so as to exclude him from a conversation between Jon and Tim or Sasha that he, Martin, had tried to weigh in on from outside Jon’s office.)

“What are you looking for?”

“The—the screw, I saw it roll under there. It fell down on our side. Oh, my god, it was so close—if I’d reacted just half a second earlier, I could’ve?—shit.”

“Oh.” Jon huffed out a cynical laugh.

“I can’t believe it. I broke Salesa’s door! He welcomes us in to an oasis, and I break the door. Oh, god—I’ve broken an irreplaceable door, in a stately historic mansion!”

A few more demonstrative huffs of laughter. “No you didn’t.”

Martin paused. He didn’t get up, but did turn his head to look at Jon. “Yes I did. It’s right there in your hand, Jon—”

“I should’ve known. Check for cobwebs, Martin.”

“Oh come on.”

“This can’t be your fault—it’s far too neat. This is all part of Annabelle’s plan.”

“Do you know that?”

“W-well, no. I can’t, not here. I just—”

“Yeah, I don’t think so, Jon. Pretty sure it’s just an old doorknob.”

“Did you check for cobwebs?”

“Of course there are no cobwebs. A spider wouldn’t even have time to finish building the web before somebody wrecked it opening the door!”

“Then what’s that?” With the tip of his cane Jon tapped the floor in front of a clot of gray fluff in the seam between two walls next to the door, making sure not to let it touch the clot itself.

Martin rolled over to see where he was pointing, and almost stuck his elbow in it. “Ah. Gross. Gross, is what that is.”

“Christ, I should’ve known this would happen. I did know this would happen,” Jon reminded himself—“just ignored the warning signs because I can’t think straight here.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, Jon. It’s a corner. Spiders love corners. I mean, unless you can prove the corner of our doorway has more spiderwebs than anywhere else in the house—”

“Well, of course not. You forget she’s got her own corner somewhere, which we still haven’t found by the way—”

“So, what, you think Annabelle Cane lassoed the screw with a strand of cobweb.”

“Not literally? She could be sitting on the other side of the door with a magnet for all we know!”

Martin peered under the door again with an exasperated sigh. “She’s not.”

“Not now she’s heard us talking about her.”

God, what a delicate web that would be, if all he had to do to avoid the spider’s clutches was reach a door before Martin did. Perhaps if he’d knocked first that’d have saved him. Maybe Martin was right. How could Annabelle know him well enough to foresee this mistake? Most of the time he hated people opening doors for him, after all.

Why do people see someone with a cane and think, Only one free hand? How ever will he open the door!? They don’t do that for people with shopping bags—not ones his age, at least. Letting another person open a door for him felt to Jon like… defeat, somehow. Like admitting the dolce et decorum estness of this version of reality all nondisabled people seemed to live in where he couldn’t open doors. And that version of reality horrified him. Not so much the idea of being too weak to open them—that sounded merely annoying. Like knocking the sides of jar lids on tables and swearing, only with doors. He had beat his fists against enough Pull doors in his time to figure he could live with that. It was more the idea of becoming that way. Letting his door-opening muscles atrophy ‘til it became the truth.

But sometimes you just let a thing happen, and forget to hate it. That was the thing about pride. Sometimes your convictions and your habits stop fitting together—you believe Fuck this job with all your heart, but still tuck in your shirt when you come to the office. And then you fly back from America in borrowed clothes, and pop in at the Institute like that on your way to Gertrude’s storage unit, and that’s what changes your habits. Not the knowledge you can’t be fired; not your now-boyfriend’s plot to put your then-boss behind bars. A thirdhand t-shirt with a slogan on it about how to outrun bears.

On his way out this morning the doorknob had felt so loose in Jon’s hand he almost had told Martin about it. But Martin had been full of let’s-go-on-an-adventure-together-style chatter—like when they’d left Daisy’s safehouse, only, get this, without the dread of entering an apocalyptic wasteland—and listening to him put the door out of Jon’s mind before he’d had time to interject.

Their first day here—or at least, the first they spent awake—Jon had inadvertently taught Martin not to accept invitations from Salesa. The latter had bounded up after Martin’s lunch in linen shirt and whooshy shorts and was, to Martin’s then-unseasoned heart, impossible to deny. So Jon had spent thirty minutes on a creaky folding chair, lunging out of his seat on occasion to collect a ball one of the other two had hit wrong, and trying to keep Salesa’s too-bright white socks out of sight. He’d pretended he preferred to sit out, knowing Martin would worry if he tried to play. But he hadn’t done as good a job hiding his boredom as he thought. “Thanks for putting up with that. Sorry it went on so long,” Martin had said as they re-entered their bedroom. “I just couldn’t say no to him, you know? For such a cynical old man he’s got impressive puppy eyes.”

“It’s fine? You know me, I don’t mind… watching.”

“I just mean, I’m sorry you couldn’t play. How’s your leg, by the way? Er—both your legs, I guess.”

“It’s fine. They’re both fine. I didn’t want to play anyway, remember? I don’t know how.”

“Sure you don’t,” Martin replied, words tripping over a fond laugh.

“I don’t!”

“Come on, Jon. Everyone knows how to play ping-pong.”

Martin had turned down Salesa when he showed up the next day in khaki shorts and a pith helmet with three butterfly nets, without Jon’s having to say a word. More emphatically still did he turn him down when Salesa mentioned the house had an indoor pool, and offered to lend them both antique bathing suits like the one he had on, “Free of charge! A debtor is an enemy, after all, and in this new world I have no wish to make an enemy of” (sarcastic whisper, fingers wiggling) “the Ceaseless Watcher who rules it. I have nothing to hide from you,” he’d alleged, for the… third time that day, maybe? Each morning Jon resolved to count such references; he rarely missed one, as far as he knew, but kept forgetting how many he’d counted.

But Salesa was a salesman, and over time his efforts had grown more subtle. He stopped showing up already dressed for the activity he had in mind, and instead would drop hints at meals about all the fun things they could do if only they would let him show them. Martin loved how the winter sunlight caught, every afternoon around four, in the branches of a tree visible outside the window of their bedroom. “Ah, yes,” Salesa had agreed when he remarked on it one morning. “Turning it periwinkle and the golden green of champagne.” (He poured sparkling wine—the cheap stuff, he said, not real champagne—into an empty juice glass still lined with orange pulp. Over and over, without once overflowing. The oranges weren’t ripe enough to drink their juice plain yet, he said. But they’d still run out of juice first.) “If you think that’s beautiful”—he paused to swallow bubbles come up from his throat, waved his hand, shook his head. “No. On one tree, yes, it is beautiful. But on a whole orchard of bare trees in winter”—he nodded in the direction of Upton’s orchards—“the afternoon sun is sublime. You can see how the twigs shrink and shiver under its gaze; the grass rustles with a hitch in its breath as if it fears to be seen, but with each undulation a new blade flashes gold like a coin,” &c., &c.

“Wow. Sounds like you really got lucky, finding such a nice place to, uh. Sssset up camp?”

Jon knew Martin well enough to hear the judgment in his voice; if Salesa recognized it then he was an expert at pretending not to. “And it's only a two-minute walk away,” he’d said, instead of taking Martin’s bait. “It would be such a shame for my guests not to see it.”

“Oh, well. Maybe in a few days? It’s just, we’ve been outside nonstop for ages. It’s nice to be between four walls again. Besides, we don’t know the grounds as well as you do—and the border isn’t all that stable, you said? Right?”

“It is if you know how to follow it! I could accompany you—show you all the best sights, with no risk of wandering back out into the hellscape by mistake.”

“We’re just not really ready for that, I don’t think. Right, Jon?”

“Mm.”

“Are you sure? If it were me, a foray into a beautiful natural oasis would be just what I needed to convince myself that my peace—my sanctuary—is real.”

“If it is real,” Jon couldn’t stop himself from muttering.

Salesa remained impervious. “You would be surprised how difficult it is to feel fear in a place like that. I don’t think that is just the camera.”

“We‘ll think about it,” Martin conceded.

“Yes—you should both think about it. I am at your disposal whenever you change your mind.”

And so on that morning they had narrowly escaped. Would they had fared so well today. The problem was, on these early occasions Jon had interpreted Martin’s No thankses as being, well, Martin’s. But after a few more of Salesa’s sales pitches Jon began to second-guess that.

“Is it warm enough in here for you both?” Salesa had asked them last night at dinner. “I worry too much, perhaps. I only wish the place took less time to warm up in the morning. At breakfast time, in sunny weather like we've been having, I’ll bet you anything you like it’s warmer out there than in here.”

“It’s alright; we’re not too cold in the mornings either. Right, Jon?”

“Hm? Oh—no.”

“Perhaps we three could take breakfast out there, before the weather changes.”

“Ha—that’s right,” Martin had laughed. “I forgot you still had that out here. Weather changes. Brave new world, I guess.”

Salesa smirked and shrugged. “Well, braver than the rest of it.”

“R…ight. ‘We three,’ you said—so not Annabelle?”

“Mmmmno, probably not her. I have tried taking spiders outside before; they never seem to like it much.”

Nearly every day, here, Jon found a spider in their bathtub. The first time Martin had been with him. Martin had picked the thing up with his fingers and tried to coax it to leave out the window, but by the time he got there it’d crawled up his sleeve.

“Excuse me.”

Martin pulled back his own chair too and frowned up at him. “You okay?”

“Just needed the toilet.” He tried to arrange his mouth into a gentle smile. “Think I can do that on my own.”

The other two resumed their conversation the moment Jon left the dining room. Before the intervening walls muffled their voices Jon heard:

“I suppose that does sound pretty nice.”

“Pretty nice, you suppose? Martin, Martin—it’s a beautiful oasis! What a shame it will be if you leave this place having done no more than suppose about it.”

“It is a bit of a waste, I guess.”

“You wouldn’t need to sit on the ground, if that’s what concerns you. There are benches everywhere.”

He’d been just about to cross through a doorway and out of earshot when he froze, hearing his name:

“Oh, ha—not me, but, Jon might find that nice to know,” Martin said. “Thanks for.” And then silence.

Was that the whole reason he kept declining invitations to explore the grounds? To keep grass stains out of Jon’s trousers? Martin was the one who’d sat down on that godforsaken Extinction couch; why did he think—?

Not the point, Jon told himself as he sat on the toilet and set his forehead on the heels of his palms. He tried to watch the floor for spiders, but his eyes kept crossing. The point was that if—? If Martin was lying about wanting to stay inside—or, more charitably, if he was telling the truth but wanted that only because he thought Jon would have as dismal a time out in the garden as he had at ping-pong—then…?

He imagined holding hands with Martin while surrounded by green. Gravel crunching under their feet. Martin smiling, with sunlight caught in the strands of his hair that a slight breeze had blown upright.

“And if you get too warm,” he heard Salesa tell Martin, as he headed back into the dining room, “we can move into the shade of the pines! You know, they don’t just grow year-round? They also shed year-round. The floor under them is always carpeted in needles, so you need never get mud on your shoes.”

“Huh,” Martin laughed. “Never thought of it that way.”

“But of course there are benches there too,” Salesa added, his eyes flickering up to Jon.

As Jon hauled himself into his seat he asked, in a voice he hoped the strain made sound distracted ergo casual, “So, what, like a picnic, you mean.”

Not a fun picnic. Not very romantic, since their third wheel was the first to invite himself. Salesa neglected to mention how much wet grass they would have to trek through to get to his favorite spot; that there were benches everywhere didn’t matter since they couldn’t all three fit on one, so they ended up sat in the dirt after all—and n.b. it required a second trek to find a patch of dirt dry enough to sit on at this time of morning. Jon was so sick with fatigue by the time they sat down he could barely eat a thing, though he did dispatch most of Martin’s thermos of tea. His hands shook and buzzed, and felt clumsy, like they’d fallen asleep; he ended up getting more jam in the dirt than on Salesa’s soggy, pre-buttered toast. He felt as though the rest of his flesh had melted three feet to the left of his eyes, bones and mind. Eventually he elected to blame his dizziness on the sun. When his forehead and upper lip started to prickle, threatening sweat, he stood up and announced, “It’s too hot here.”

Or tried to stand, anyway. One leg had oozed just far enough out of its joint that it buckled when he tried to stand; indigo and fuchsia blotches overtook his sight. He pitched forward, free arm pinwheeling—might have fallen into the boiled eggs if Martin hadn’t caught him. “Jon! Are you okay?”

God, why was Martin so surprised? This must have been the fifth or sixth time he had asked him that question since they left the house. One time Jon had bent down to brush dirt off his leg and Martin had thought he was scratching his bandages. So he asked him were they itchy, had they started to peel, did they need changing again, were they cutting off his circulation (no, not yet, not yet, and no). How could someone be so attentive to imaginary ills and yet miss the real ones? At another point, an enormous blue dragonfly had buzzed past, and instead of Did you see that? Martin had turned around to ask Are you okay. Now, on this fifth or sixth occasion, for a few seconds of pure, nonsensical rage he wondered how Martin dared stoop to such emotional blackmail. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, Jon thought; aloud he snorted, as in malicious laughter. His throat felt thick, like he might cry.

“Fine, I’m just—sick of it here.” He pulled his arm free of Martin’s and overbalanced. Didn’t fall, just. Staggered a little.

“Should we move to the shade? We could try to find those famous pines, I guess.”

Jon sank back to the ground. “What about Salesa? Do we just leave him here?”

“Oh. Right,” said Martin. Salesa had eaten most of Jon’s share, and drunk both Jon’s and Martin’s shares of wine. Now he lay asleep in the dirt, head pillowed on one elbow, the other hand’s fingers curled round the stem of a glass still half full. “I guess, yeah? I mean he seems to know the place pretty well, so. It’s not like he’ll get lost out here.”

“We might, though.”

Martin sighed. “True. Should we just head back to our room, then? Maybe get you a snack.”

“Not hungry.”

“A statement, I meant.”

“Oh. Alright, sure,” Jon made himself say. “That sounds like—sure.”

So then they’d headed back, and only Martin had a free hand, and Jon was too tired by that point to distinguish his mind’s vague warning not to let Martin open the door from his usual pride on that subject—and that kind of pride never does seem as important when it’s your boyfriend offering. So he’d dismissed the warning and, well, look what happened.

When he got up from his knees and turned round Martin frowned at Jon. “Are you alright? You’re sat on the floor.”

Jon frowned, too—at the seam between the floor and the hallway’s opposite wall. “I was tired.”

“You hate sitting on the floor.”

“I sat on the ground out there,” Jon said, with a shrug that morphed into a nod in the direction they’d come from.

“Yeah, under duress,” Martin scoffed. “In the Extinction domain you wouldn’t even sit on the couch.”

There was something odd in Martin’s bringing that up now; somewhere, in the back of his mind, Jon could hear a pillar of thought crumbling. But he lacked the energy to find out which of his mind’s structures now stood crooked. “I think this floor is a lot cleaner than that couch,” he said instead, with an incredulous laugh.

“Even with the cobwebs?” Martin didn’t wait for Jon’s answering nod. “Fair enough,” he said, one hand on the back of his neck as he twisted it back and forth. He dropped the hand, sighed, cracked his knuckles. Looked at Jon again. “Yeah, okay. Guess we don’t have to deal with this right now. Let’s find you another bedroom first.”

“Maybe that’s just what Annabelle wants,” Jon muttered, deadpanning so he wouldn’t have to decide whether this was a joke.

Martin snorted. “I’ll risk it.”

Find was a generous way to put it; in fact there was another bedroom only two doors down. By the time Jon got his legs unfolded he could hear the squeak of a door swinging open down the hall. When he looked up, Martin said as their eyes met, “Nope—bed’s too small. You good there ‘til I find one that’ll work?”

“Seems that way.” Jon tried to smile, relief warring with his usual If you want something done right urge. In the quiet moment after Martin neglected to close that door and before he swung open the next one, Jon made himself add, “Thank you.”

“Of course. Oh wow,” Martin said of the next room, in whose doorway he’d stopped. “This one’s a lot nicer than ours. It’s got a balcony. Wallpaper’s pretty loud though. D’you think that’ll keep you awake?” Laughingly, “I know you don’t close your eyes to sleep anymore, so.”

“How loud is ‘pretty loud’?”

“Sort of a… dark, orangey red, with flowers?”

Jon shrugged. “I won’t see it at night.”

“Oh, god. I hope it doesn’t come to that. Should we do this one, then?” Instead of closing the door, Martin swung it the rest of the way open, then strode back to Jon’s side of the corridor, arm already outstretched. Jon managed to stand before Martin could reach him, but, as it had done outside, his vision went dark for a few seconds. He felt Martin’s hand on his shoulder before he could see his frown.

“You alright?” Martin asked yet again.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“It’s just—you don’t usually blink anymore, except for effect.”

“Oh.”

Out there, none of the watchers blinked. At first, soon after the change, Martin had asked Jon to try, “Because it just feels so weird. Like I’m under constant scrutiny. Literally constant, Jon. You get why that feels weird, right?” (Jon had agreed—sincerely, though he wondered why Martin needed to ask that question in a world whose central conceit was that being watched felt weird. He’d also chosen not to point out that his scrutiny, like that of Jonah Magnus, was not, technically, constant, since he did sometimes look at other things. But he still rehearsed this retort in his mind every time he remembered that conversation.) Turned out it was hard to time your blinks properly when your eyeballs didn’t need the moisture. He’d forget about it for who knew how long, then remember and overcompensate by blinking so often Martin at first thought he was exaggerating it on purpose as a joke. It got old fast, in Jon’s opinion, but even after he learnt Jon didn’t intend it as a joke Martin still found it funny. “You’re doing it again,” he’d say every time, shoulders wiggling. Eventually Jon had asked him,

“You know you don’t blink anymore either, right?”

“Oh god, don’t I?” When Jon shook his head, with a smile whose teeth he tried to keep covered, Martin squeezed his own eyes shut and pushed their lids back and forth with his fingers. “Ugh—gross!” And for the next half hour he’d done the whole forget-to-blink-for-five-minutes-then-do-it-ten-times-in-as-many-seconds routine, too. After that they had both agreed to pretend not to notice the lack of blinking. Jon figured he couldn’t hold it against Martin that he’d broken this rule though, since Jon himself had broken it first, on their first morning here:

“You blinked,” he had informed Martin as he watched him stir sugar into his tea. Martin, who had not only blinked but broken eye contact to make sure he dropped the sugar cube in the right place, replied with a scoff,

“Didn’t know it was a staring contest.”

“No, I mean—”

“Oh! I blinked!”

“…Right,” Jon said now. “I’m—it’s nothing.”

Martin sighed. He closed his eyes, but probably rolled them under their lids. Jon used the inspection of their new room as an excuse to look away, but took in nothing other than the presence of a large bed and the flowered wallpaper Martin had warned him about.

“‘Kay. If you’re sure.”

Taking a seat at the foot of the bed, Jon looked down at his grass-stained knees and prepared himself to ask, Look, does it matter? I’m about to lie down anyway, so, functionally speaking, yes, I am fine.

“So, you’ll be okay here for a bit while I go figure out what to do about the door?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. I’ll come check on you as soon as I know anything, yeah?”

“Of course.”

“Although—if you’re asleep, should I wake you up?”

“Yes,” Jon replied before Martin had even got the last word out. He heard a short, emphatic exhale, presumably of laughter. “Wait—how would you know, anyway?”

“Oh. Yeah, good point.”

Jon looked down at his shoes. His fingers throbbed in anticipation, but he figured he should spare Martin the horror of getting grass stains on a second bedroom’s counterpane. The first shoe he pulled off without untying, since he could step on its heel with the other one. But he had to bend over to reach the second one’s incongruously bright white laces, biting his lip when he felt his right femur poke past the bounds of its socket as between a cage’s bars. On his way back up his vision quivered like a heat mirage, but didn’t go dark. He scooched himself up to the head of the bed. Made sure to face the ceiling rather than the red wallpaper.

A few months into his tenure in the Archives, Jon had discovered that if you close your eyes at your desk, even just for a minute, you can trick your whole body into thinking you’ve been gentle with it. But that trick didn’t work anymore. Out there, this made sense; interposing his eyelids between himself and the world’s new horrors couldn’t push them out of his consciousness, any more than it had helped to close the curtains at Daisy’s safehouse. Martin’s sentimental attachment to sleep had baffled him, as had his insistence on closing his eyes even though they’d pop back open as soon as his body went limp. Here, though, Jon sympathized with Martin’s wish. He too missed that magic link between closed eyes and sleep. Probably he should just be grateful for this rest from knowing other people’s suffering? The thing he had wished to close his eyes against was gone here. But now that most of his bodily wants had synced up with his actions again, it felt… wrong, like a tangible loss, that he couldn’t assert It’s time for rest now by closing his eyelids. That it took effort to keep them joined. Jon even found himself missing the crust that used to stick them together on mornings after long sleep.

That should have been his first sensation on waking, their first morning here. After seventy-one hours his eyelids should’ve been practically super-glued together. Instead, they’d apparently stayed open the entire time. It wasn’t uncomfortable—he hadn’t woken up with them smarting or anything. Hadn’t noticed one way or the other; after all, when not forced awake by an alarm, one rarely notices the moment one opens one’s eyes in the morning. He just didn’t like knowing that he looked the same waking and sleeping. It didn’t make sense. The dreams hadn’t followed him here, so what was he watching? He could see nothing but the ceiling.

He rolled over, hoping to look out the window. Doors, technically. Between gauzy curtains he could make out only wrought-iron bars and the tops of a few trees. A nice view, he could tell; when he got his second wind he was sure he’d find it pretty. For now he wondered how much more energy debt he had put himself in by rolling over.

Drowning in debt? We can help!

How had he not foreseen how horrible it would be inside the Buried? The inability to move or speak without pain and loss of breath—“Just imagine,” he muttered sarcastically to the empty air, as though addressing his past self. “What might that be like.” He’d lived for years with the weight of exhaustion on his back—heavier at that time than it’d ever been before. And he knew how it felt to risk injury with every movement. What an odd frame of mind he must have lived in then, to think his magic healing wouldn’t let him get scratched up down there. Had he thought it would protect him from fear? I must save my friend from this horrible place! But also, If I get stuck there forever, no big deal; I deserve it, after all. There seemed something so arrogant about that now, that idea that deserving pain could somehow mitigate it. That because monsterhood made him less innocent, it would make him less of a victim. How could he have thought that, when he’d known pulling her out of there didn’t mean he forgave her? He should apologize to Daisy for—

Right. Nope, never mind.

He began to regret rolling over. If he planned to stay on his side like this for long, he shouldn’t leave his shoulder and hip dangling. He could already feel their joints beginning to slide apart. But his body had started to drift to that faraway place from which no grievance ever seemed urgent enough to recall it—neither pain now nor the threat of greater pain later. Nor the three cups of tea he’d drunk.

After he and Martin had fallen asleep on Salesa’s doorstep, Jon had vague memories of being led up the stairs to their bedroom, though he remembered neither being shaken awake nor getting into bed. Just a seventy-odd-hour blank spot, followed by pain of a kind he had thought he’d left behind.

It wasn’t that watchers couldn’t feel pain, after the change. They could, but it was like how real-world pain felt through the veil of a dream. Your actions didn’t affect it as directly as they should. In the Necropolis Martin had asked him, “How exactly does a leg wound make you faster?” If he’d had the courage to answer, at the time he would have said something about his own wounds not seeming important now that he had to tune out those of the whole world. That wasn’t it though, he knew now. Pain just worked differently out there. When Daisy attacked him, it had hurt—but the wound she left him hadn’t protested movement. Not until he and Martin entered the grounds of Upton House. You could bear weight on an injured leg just fine out there, because it wouldn’t hurt more when you stood on it than otherwise.

Sometimes, when his joints slid apart while he slept, he could still feel it in his dreams. Up until 13th January 2016 (for months after which date he dreamt Naomi Herne’s graveyard and nothing else), his sleeping mind used to craft scenarios to explain its own pain and panic to itself. Running from an exploding grenade, staying awake through surgery, that sort of thing. But over the years, as the sensation grew familiar, his dreams about it became less urgent, their anxieties more mundane. He’d shout for help from passing cars, then feel like he’d lied to the stranger who opened their door to him when it turned out running to get in the car hurt no more than standing still.

Even before the change, it’d been ages since he’d had to worry about that. Since the coma, Beholding had fixed all these accidents, the way it’d fixed the finger he tried to chop off. They wouldn’t reset with a clunk, the way they had when he used to fix them by hand. It was more like his body reverted to a version the Eye had saved before the moment of injury. When he tried to pull open a Push door he’d hear the first clunk, followed by about half a second of pain, then after a gentle burst of static—nothing. Just a door handle between his fingers that needed pushing. If he tripped on uneven pavement he might still go down, but his ankle wouldn’t hurt when he stood back up, and the scrapes on his hands would heal before he could inspect them. Here, though, in this place the Eye couldn’t see, Jon lacked such protections. He didn’t have the dreams either? And that was more than worth it as a tradeoff, he was sure. But it still smarted to remember that pain had been his first sensation waking up in an oasis. Not birdsong, not sunshine striped across linen, not the warm weight of another person next to him. He knew he’d come back to a place ruled by physics rather than fear because he’d woken up with gaps between his bones.

“Jon? Are you awake?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes.”

“Cool.” Martin sat down on what felt like the corner of bed nearest the door. “I think I know how to do this now.”

“How to put the doorknob back on?”

“Yeah. God, I still can’t believe it twisted clean off in my hand like that. With no warning—like, zero to sixty in less than a second. I mean, can you believe our luck? The thing’s perfectly functional, and then suddenly it just—comes off!”

“Er…”

“Oh, god, sorry—I didn’t mean—”

“What? Oh—hrkgh”—Jon rolled around to face Martin, hoping the little yelp he let out when his leg slopped back into joint would sound like a noise of exasperation rather than pain. He found Martin sat looking down at the severed doorknob which poked up from between his knees. “No, Martin, of course not, I know—”

“Still, I’m sorry about—”

“No, it’s—it’s fine?”

On that first morning, Jon had managed to get his limbs screwed back on properly without making enough noise to wake up Martin. He’d limped out of their room and down the hall, pushing doors open until he’d found a toilet, whereupon he sat to pee and marveled that the flush and sink still worked. It was bright enough inside that he hadn’t thought to try the light switch on his way in—too busy contorting his neck to look for the sun out the window. On his way out, though, he flicked it on, then off. Then on again and off again. How could it work, when there was no power grid the house could connect to? Automatically Jon tried to search his mind’s Eye for a domain based in a power plant or something. Right, no, of course—that power did not work here.

When he got back to their room he found Martin awake. “Oh—morning,” Jon told him with a shy laugh.

“It—it is morning, isn’t it,” Martin marveled. Then he asked if Jon could hand him the map sticking out of his backpack’s side pocket. (What good are maps when the very Earth logic no longer applied here, after all. But Martin was rubbish at geography, so Jon still had to provide the You Are Here sign with his finger for him.) Jon grabbed the map on his way back to bed, and was about to tell him about the miracles of plumbing and electricity he’d just witnessed—not to mention the bathtub he’d admired on the long trek from toilet to sink—when Martin frowned and asked, “Why are you limping?”

“Am I?” Jon had shrugged, then cleared his throat when the motion made his shoulder audibly click. “Daisy, must be.”

“No, Jon. That’s the wrong leg.”

He slid both legs out of sight under the blankets and handed Martin the map. “It’s nothing. It just… came off a bit. Last night."

Before Jon could add It’s fixed now though, Martin said, “I’m sorry, what?”

Jon had assumed Martin understood the kind of thing he meant, but that he’d misled him as to its degree—i.e., that Martin objected to his talking about a full hip dislocation like it mattered less than what happened with Daisy. So he’d said,

“No, sorry, not all the way off—”

And Martin just laughed. “What, and you taped it back up like—like an old computer cable?”

“Sort of, yeah? It—it does still work, more or less.”

“Right, of course. No need to get a new one, yet; you can just limp along with this one. No big deal! Just make sure you don’t pull too hard on it.”

“I mean.” By now he could sense Martin’s sarcasm, his bitterness; that didn’t mean he knew what to do with them. So he'd said with a huff of laughter, “I can’t just send for a new one. That’s—that’s not how bodies work. You have to….” Wait for it to sort itself out was the natural end to that sentence. But he hadn’t been sure he could say that without opening a can of worms.

“Wait so… what actually happened? Are you okay?”

Only at this point had Jon recognized Martin’s response as one of incomprehension. What happened exactly? he had asked, too, when Jon told him the ice-cream anecdote. Did no one ever listen when you told them about these things?

“Nothing. Never mind. It’s fine.”

“Oh come on.”

“It’s. Fine! It’s not important.”

And then for days Martin kept alluding to it. Like some kind of reminder to Jon that he hadn’t opened up, disguised as a joke. Every time something came out or fell down he’d mutter, “So it came off, you might say.” Eventually they’d fallen out over it, and now neither one could come near the phrase without this song and dance.

“Don’t worry about it, Martin,” Jon assured him now; “I’m over it.”

“…Uh huh. Well, putting that to one side for the moment—I think I can fix this?”

“Oh? Great!—”

“—Yeah! It should be simple, actually. I think I just need to replace the screw that fell out? I mean, there doesn’t seem to be anything actually broken, just, you know,” with an awkward laugh, “the screw lives on the wrong side of the door now. But if we can just put a new one in the door should be fine.” He looked to Jon as if for help plotting their next steps.

“I—I don’t, um. Think we have one.”

Martin’s shoulders dropped; the corners of his mouth tightened. “Yeah, I know we don’t have one, Jon. I just mean, we need to find out where Salesa keeps them.”

“Oh!” Jon replied, in a brighter tone. Then he registered what this meant. “Oh. Right.”

“Y…eah.”

“Any idea where to look?”

They checked what seemed to Martin the most obvious place first. Salesa used one of the ground-floor drawing rooms as a sort of repository for everything he’d left as yet unpacked—all the practical items he hadn’t been able to repurpose as toys, plus some antiques he’d been too fond of or too nervous to part with. Two nights ago, Salesa had noticed the state of Jon’s and Martin’s shoelaces, and insisted they let him replace them with some from this little warehouse. “Please, come with me; I’ve nothing to hide. You can have a look around, see if I have anything that might help you on your journey….” As he said this he’d counted to two on his fingers, as though listing off attractions they should be sure not to miss.

Jon watched Martin perk right up at this. All week Salesa had kept pleading with them to tell him about any luxuries they had wanted while touring the apocalypse, so he could try to find something to fulfill those wants. “Well, I—I don’t know about luxuries,” Martin had ventured the third time this came up. “But I do think we might run out of bandages soon, so. If you’ve any extra?”

“Of course, of course, yes, how prudent of you, always with one eye on the future. Must be the Beholding in you.” (Neither Jon nor Martin knew what to say to that.) “But there will be plenty of time for that. I meant something for now, while you are here, while you don’t need to think of things like that.” And sure enough, each time Salesa had come to them with presents from his little warehouse (booze, butterfly nets, more booze, antique bathing suits, &c.), he’d forgot about Martin’s homely request for gauze and tape. Martin insisted they change the dressing on Jon’s leg every day; by now they’d run through the bandages he brought from Daisy’s safehouse. So when Salesa suggested they accompany him to his repository, Martin said,

“Sure, yeah! That sounds really helpful.” (Salesa clutched his heart as though he’d waited all his life to hear such praise.) “Er. The things in your warehouse, though. They’re not L—um.” Leitners, Martin had almost called them. “You don’t think they’ll develop any… strange properties, when we leave here, do you?”

“Of course not,” Salesa had answered, stopping and turning all the way around in the corridor to face Martin with a frown. “Martin, I promise, only my antiques are cursed—and even then, not all of them.” He’d resumed the walk toward his little warehouse, but turned around again and held up a hand, as if to preempt a question. “There are, indeed, yes, some items out there, touched by the Corruption, which can pass their infection on to other things they come in contact with. But, no,” he went on, his voice fighting off a joyous laugh, “no, the only item I have like that does almost the opposite.”

“Oh.”

Salesa nodded, but did not turn around this time. “Strange little thing. It’s an antique syringe that, so long as you keep it near you, repels the Crawling Rot. I like to think it helped dispatch that insect thing Annabelle chased away. But if you try to get rid of it,” he added in a darker tone, “all the sickness, the bugs, the smells, even stains on your clothes—everything disgusting that it’s kept away—they remember who you are, and they hunger for you more than anyone else. The man who sold it to me….” He shook his head ruefully, hand now resting on the door.

“Was eaten alive by mosquitoes,” Jon muttered.

“Something like that, yes,” said Salesa, as he jerked open the door.

Jon hated the way his and Martin’s shoes looked now. He hadn’t had to put new laces on a pair of old, dirty shoes since he was a kid, and the contrast looked wrong—the same way starched collars and slicked-back hair on kids look wrong. Jon’s trainers were gray, their laces a slightly darker gray, so these white ones wouldn’t have looked quite right even without the dirt. Martin’s had once been white, but their original laces were broad and flat, while these were narrow and more rounded. The replacements’ thin, clinical white lines looked something between depressing and menacing. Too much like spider web; too much like the stitching on Nikola’s minions. When they came undone on this morning’s walk, Jon had made sure to tread on them in the mud a few times before tying them back up. Poor Dr. Thompson’s syringe must have retained some of its power here, though, because they still looked pristine. Jon wondered if it had no effect on spiders, or if without it this whole place would have been draped in cobwebs.

Martin seemed pleased with their haul, though. Despite Salesa’s amnesia on the subject, his little warehouse held more plasters, gauze, medical tape, antibacterial ointment, alcohol wipes—the list went on—than one man could ever use. In a strange, raw moment Jon liked to pretend he hadn’t seen, Salesa had wrung his hands as his eyes passed over this hoard. His lip had quivered. He’d practically begged Martin to take the whole lot away with them. “What harm will come to me here? And if it does come, what good will it do, protecting one lonely old man from skinned knees and paper cuts? The two of you—where you are going—the gravity of your mission!” At this point he’d seized one of each their hands. “Everything I have that even might help, you must take it. Please.”

“I—yeah,” Martin stuttered. “This is—really helpful, yeah. We’ll take as much as we can fit in our bags.”

Salesa had let go their hands by this point, and crossed his arms. “Right, yes, bags, of course, the bags. Are you sure you don’t want my truck?”

“Oh, well, thanks, but I don’t think either of us knows how to—”

“To drive a truck?” Salesa uncrossed his arms and began to reach for Martin’s shoulder. “I could teach you—”

“It won’t work without the camera anyway,” pointed out Jon. “We have to walk.”

Martin sighed. ”That too. ‘The journey will be the journey,’ as Jon keeps saying.”

“I said that once,” Jon protested.

No such success on this return visit. They found a small pile of miscellaneous screws, one of which Martin said would work (though it was the wrong color, he alleged, and had clearly been meant for some other purpose), but the screwdriver they needed remained elusive. “I mean, I can’t be sure they’re not in here—the place is as bad as Gertrude’s storage unit. We could spend all day here and still not be sure—”

“Let’s not do that,” said Jon, pushing an always-warm candlestick with a pool of always-melted wax out of Martin’s way with his sleeve for what felt like the hundredth time.

“No arguments here.”

“Where to next?”

“I guess it makes sense that they’re not here. This room’s all stuff Salesa brought, and why would he bring home-repair stuff when he didn’t even know where he’d wind up.”

“Except for the screws.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t look like he keeps screws here, remember? There’s just a couple random ones lying around, like he forgot to put them away or something.”

Jon peered between the clouds in his mind, trying to catch sight of Martin’s thought train. “So you’re saying the screwdriver should be…?”

“Somewhere less… frequented, I guess? They’ll probably still be wherever they were when Salesa found the place.”

“Not somewhere that was open to the public, then.”

Martin sighed. ”I mean yeah, probably. Not that that narrows it down much.”

“Somewhere… banal, less posh.”

“Not sure how much less posh you can get than this place. But yeah, I guess. Have I mentioned how weird it is you’re the one who keeps asking me this stuff?”

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to help? I just…” Jon closed his eyes, which itched with the warehouse’s dust, and rubbed their lids with an index finger. Odd that his eyes weren’t immune to dust, when leaving them open for seventy straight hours hadn’t bothered them. And why didn’t the syringe keep dust away? In Dr. Snow’s day (not far removed from Smirke’s, n.b.), Jon seemed to recall that dust had been used as a euphemism for all waste, including the human kind Dr. Snow had found in the cholera water. It was like how people today use filth—hence the word dustbin. And hadn’t Elias once called the Corruption Filth? Jon opened his eyes and watched Martin swirl back to full color. “I can’t seem to corral my thoughts here,” he concluded.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s actually kind of fun, it’s just—I’m so used to being the sidekick,” Martin laughed. “Besides, I miss my eldritch Google.”

“Should I go back out there, ask the Eye about it, then come back?”

Another laugh, this one less awkward. “No. That won’t work, remember? This place is a ‘blind spot,’ you said.” The words in inverted commas he said with a frown and in a deeper voice.

“Right, right. I forgot,” Jon sighed. He lowered himself to the floor and examined the finger he’d felt snap back into place when he let go his cane. During the five seconds he’d allowed himself to entertain it, the idea of heading back out there had excited him a little. A few minutes to check on Basira, verify what Salesa had told them about his life before the change, make sure the world hadn’t somehow ended twice over. Give himself a few minutes’ freedom of movement, for that matter. Out there he could run, jump, open jars, pick up full mugs of tea without worrying a screw in his hand would come loose and make him drop them. He could stand up as quickly as he thought the words, I think I’ll stand up now, without his vision going dark. God, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter! He would just know every tripping hazard and every look on Martin’s face, without having to ask these clumsy human eyes to show them to him.

“Honestly, it’d almost feel worth it to go back out there just to formulate a plan to find them. At least I can think out there.”

“Hey.” Martin elbowed him slightly in the ribs. Jon fought with himself not to resent the very gentleness of it. “I think I’ll come up with the plan for once, thanks. Some of us can think just fine here.”

Was it just because of Hopworth that Martin’s elbow barely touched him? Or because Martin feared that Jon would break in here, in a way he’d learnt not to fear out there?

“Oh—I know,” Martin said, clicking his fingers and pointing them at Jon like a gun. “We passed a shed this morning, remember?”

Jon squinted. “Not even remotely.”

“No yeah—on our walk with Salesa. I tried to ask him what it was for, but he kept droning on and on. By the time he stopped talking I’d forgot about it.”

“Huh,” said Jon, to show he was listening.

“That seems like a good place to keep screws and all, right? If it’s so nondescript you can’t even remember it.”

“Sure.”

“Great! Are you ready now, or d’you need to sit for a bit longer?”

“I’m ready.” This time he accepted Martin’s hand, not keen to trip on something cursed.

“Anyway, if we don’t find them and Salesa’s still out there, we can ask him on the way back.”

Jon’s heart shrunk before the prospect of inviting Salesa to be the hero of their story. Please, Mr. Salesa, save us from our screwdriver-less hell! They would never hear the end of it. It would inevitably remind the old man of the countless times in his youth when he’d been the only man in the antiques trade who knew where to find some priceless treasure. Let Salesa open their stuck door and they’d find Pandora’s bloody box of stories behind it. He winced and let out a grunt as of pain before he could stop himself. “Let’s not tell him, if we can help it.”

“Of course we should tell him,” Martin protested. “We can’t just leave it broken like this.”

“But if we can fix it without his help—?”

“What? No! Even then, he’s our host. We have to tell him. It’s his door, he deserves to know its—I don’t know, history?” Martin sighed, shoving one hand in his hair and holding out the other. “If he’s got a doorknob whose screw comes loose a lot, he should know that, so he can tighten it next time before it gets out of hand. I mean, we’re lucky it only chipped the paint when it—when it fell off, you know?” (Jon, for his part, hadn’t even noticed this chip of paint Martin referred to.) “And—and suppose he’s only got this one screw left,” tapping the one in his pocket, “and the next time it happens his last screw rolls under the door like this one did.”

“And what is he supposed to do to prevent that scenario? There aren’t exactly any hardware stores in the apocalypse.”

Big sigh. “Yeah, fair enough. I still think we should tell him. It just feels wrong to hide secrets from him about his own house, you know?”

“Fine,” sighed Jon in turn. ”Should we tell him about the scorch marks on the window sill as well?”

“No?” Martin turned to him with an incredulous look. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“I mean—I was, but—”

“Please tell me you get how that’s different.”

“Enlighten me,” Jon said wearily.

“Seriously? Of course you don’t tell him about the?—those were already there! If we’d put them there, then yeah, of course we’d need to tell him.”

“So it’s about confessing your guilt, then. Not about what Salesa makes of the information.”

“I mean, I guess?” Martin looked perplexed, lips drawn into his mouth. “Actually, no. Because those are just scorch marks, they don’t—you can still get into a room with scorch marks on the windowsill, Jon.”

“And yet if you’d left them you’d tell him about it?”

“Well yeah but if I told him about it now it’d just be like I was—leaving him a bad review, or something. It’d just be rude. ‘Lovely place you have, Salesa. So kind of you to share your limited provisions with us refugees from the apocalypse. Too bad you gave us a room whose windowsill could use repainting!’”

Jon laughed. “Yes, alright, I get it.”

Martin’s sigh of relief seemed only a little exaggerated. If he hadn’t wiped pretend sweat from his brow Jon might have bought it. “Okay, that’s good, ‘cause”—when Jon kept laughing, Martin cut himself off. “Hang on, were you joking this whole time?”

“Sort of?”

“Were you just playing devil’s advocate or something?”

“I mean—not exactly? For the first seventy or eighty percent of it I was completely serious.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. It was just—fun. It felt nice to take a definite sta—aaaa-a-aa.” Something in Jon’s lower back went wrong somehow. An SI joint, probably? The pain caught him so much by surprise that when he stepped with that side’s leg he stumbled forward.

“Whoa!” Martin’s hand closed around his upper arm. Jon yelped again, from panic more than hurt this time, as his shoulder thunked in its socket. “Jon! Are you okay?”

“Don’t do that,” Jon hissed, trying lamely to shake his arm out of Martin’s grip. It didn’t work. The attempt just made his own arm ache, and produce more ominous clunking sounds.

“I—what?”

“It was fine. I don’t need you to catch me.”

Martin let his arm go. “You were about to fall on your face, Jon.”

“I’d already caught myself—just fine—with this.” He gestured to his cane, stirring its handle like a joystick.

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“I don’t know, look?”

“It’s not—?” Martin scoffed. “Look when? It’s not like a rational calculation. I can’t just go ‘Beep. Beep. See human trip. Will human fall on face? If yes, press A to catch! If not, press B to’— what, stand there and do nothing? It’s just human nature; when you see someone falling that’s just what you do. I’m not going to apologize for not calculating the risk properly.”

“Fine! Yes, okay, you’re right. Forget I said anything.” Throwing up his free hand in defeat, Jon set off again—tried to stride, but it was hard to do that with a limp. Even with his cane, he couldn’t step evenly enough to achieve a decisive gait.

It was fine, Jon reminded himself. He’d had this injury (if you could call it that) a thousand times before. When it came on suddenly like this it never stuck around long. Sure, yeah, for now every step hurt like an urgent crisis. But any second it would right itself as quickly as it had come undone.

“No, no, I understand! Point taken! Note to future Martin,” the latter shouted from behind Jon, voice troubled by hurried steps; “next time let him fall and break his bloody nose.”

Trusting Martin to shout directions if he went the wrong way, Jon pressed on, rehearsing comebacks in his mind. Is this not a boundary I’m allowed to set? You don’t let me read statements in front of you. Isn’t that part of human—isn’t that my nature, too?

Oh, yes, human nature, that must be it. You didn’t lunge after Salesa at ping-pong the other day, did you? I saw you opening doors for Melanie when she got back from India. You stopped for a while, did you know that? You all did, everyone in the Archives. And then—it’s the strangest thing!—you all started up again after Delano. Maybe you lot don’t see the common factor here; people always do seem to think it’s more polite not to notice.

So what if I had broken my nose? You nearly broke my shoulder, catching me like that. Does that not matter because you can’t see it? Because it wouldn’t scar?

They were all too petty to say aloud. Too incongruous with the quiet. He could hear his own footsteps, and Martin’s, and the clank of his cane’s metal segments each time it hit the ground, and a few crows exclaiming about something exciting they’d found on his right. Nothing else.

“Looks like Salesa went inside,” Martin shouted from behind him.

Jon stopped walking and turned around. “What?”

“Left a couple things out here, but yeah.” Martin jogged to catch up with him, from a greater distance than Jon would have expected given how much limping slowed him down. He must have veered off course to inspect the clearing Salesa had vacated. In one hand he carried an empty wine glass by its stem, which he lifted to show Jon.

“Huh.”

“Yeah.” When he caught up with Jon, Martin stood still and panted. “Guess it won’t be as easy to ask him about it as we thought. If we don’t find what we need in there,” he added, glancing demonstratively to something behind Jon.

Following Martin’s eyes, Jon finally saw the shed. Nondescript boards, worn black and white by the elements. Surrounded by hedges three months overgrown.

Turned out it wasn’t a shed anymore, though—Salesa had converted it to a chicken coop. “Explains the boiled eggs,” shrugged Jon.

“God, they’re adorable. Do you think it’s okay to pet one?” Martin crouched in front of a black hen with a puffball of feathers on top of her head. (Martin called her a hen, anyway, and Jon trusted his authority on animals other than cats). “I don’t really know, er, ch—hicken etiquette,” he mused, voice shot through with nervous laughter.

The black hen sat alone in a little box, and didn't seem to want attention. A little red one they’d found strutting around the coop, however, ventured right up to Martin and cocked her head, like she expected him to give her a present. While Martin cooed over her and the other chickens, Jon went outside and laid flat on his back in the grass under a tree. “Take your time,” he shouted. “I’m happy here.”

Sure enough, when Martin emerged from the coop and helped him stand back up, whatever cog in Jon’s pelvis or spine he had jammed earlier was turning again. And by the time they got back to the house, Martin had talked himself into the idea that maybe all the house’s doorknobs that looked like theirs came loose a lot, and Salesa had taken to keeping the screwdriver to fix them in, say, the hall closet, or in their toilet’s under-sink cabinet.

“I think we’re gonna have to find Salesa and ask him about it,” concluded Martin, when these locations turned up nothing they wanted either.

“If you’re sure.”

Jon sat down on the closed toilet seat. Hadn’t that been what he said just before the last time he sat down on the lid of a toilet before Martin? He’d dutifully turned away, that time, as Martin undressed, wanting to make sure he knew he’d still let him have some privacy. But then, of course: “Where should I put these, do you think? —Er, my clothes I mean.”

“Oh. Um.” Jon had turned his head to look at the stain on Daisy’s ceiling, for what must have been the tenth time already. “I can hold onto them if you like.” Which then meant Martin had to get them back on before Jon could undress for his own shower and hand him his clothes. As he’d piled his trousers into Martin’s hands a tape recorder fell out of one pocket and crashed to the floor, ejecting the tape with Peter’s statement on it. “Shit,” Jon had hissed and ducked to the floor to pick it up, trusting the slit in his towel to reveal nothing worse than thigh.

“Shit,” Martin echoed. “I hope that wasn’t your phone.”

“No—just the recorder.” Still on the floor, Jon clicked its little door shut and pressed play. Sound of waves, static, footsteps. He switched it off. “Seems alright.” Thank god, he stopped himself from adding. Jon didn’t want to lose this one, this record of how he’d found Martin, in case he lost him again. But he didn’t want Martin to hear the sounds of the Lonely again so soon, either. That was why he’d stayed with Martin while he showered, rather than waiting in the safehouse living room. He wouldn’t have insisted on it, of course. He didn’t exactly believe Martin would disappear again? But long showers were such a cliché of lonely people, and steam looked so much like the mist on Peter’s beach, and when Jon asked how he felt about it, Martin said that thought hadn’t occurred to him,

“But as soon as you started to say that, I.” He’d stood with his teeth bared, half smiling half grimacing, and bringing the tips of his fingers together and apart over and over. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Heh—it scares me too now, if I’m honest. That’s… a good sign, I guess, right?”

They had come a long way since then, Jon told himself. They were more comfortable with each other now. On their first morning here, they’d showered separately, but after (Martin’s) breakfast Jon’s irritation had faded and he had resolved to pretend along with Martin that this was a holiday. So they’d got to use the enormous bathtub after all— the one at whose soap dish Jon now found himself staring as he sat on the lid of the toilet. When the heat made him dizzier, as he’d known it would, he had relished getting to rest his cheek on Martin’s arm along the rim of the tub, where it had grown cool and soft in the few minutes he’d kept it above the water.

“Let’s have lunch first,” Martin said now; “you’re getting all….” While he looked for the right word he dropped his shoulders and jaw, and mimicked a thousand-yard stare. “Abstract, again. Distant. People food should help a little, yeah? Tie you back down to this plane a bit?”

“Probably,” Jon agreed, smiling at Martin’s tact.

But to get to the kitchen they had to pass through the dining room—where they found Salesa snoring in a chair at the head of the table. “Let’s just ask him now before he gets up and moves again,” maintained Martin. Jon shrugged his acquiescence and leant in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. Why hadn’t he used the toilet before letting Martin lead him here?

”Um, Mikaele?” Martin inched a few steps toward him, but a distance of several feet still gaped between them. “We have something to ask you, if that’s—hello? Mikaele?”

A likely-sounding gap between snores—but nope. Still sound asleep. Salesa sighed, licked his lips, then began to snore again.

“Mikaele Salesa,” called out Jon from his post at the door, rather less gently. “Mikaele Salesa!” He turned to Martin, meaning to suggest that they eat now and trust the smell of food to wake Salesa, but stopped himself when he saw Martin creeping timidly toward Salesa with his hand outstretched.

“Sorry to disturbyouMikaele,” Martin squeaked out, so quickly that the words blended together. He gave Salesa’s shoulder the lightest possible tap with one fingertip, then snatched his hand back with a grimace of regret as Salesa’s own hand reached up, belatedly, as if to swat Martin’s away. “Oh, good, you’re—”

Salesa interrupted with a snore. Martin sighed and turned to Jon. “What d’you think? Should I shake him?”

Jon pulled out a neighboring chair and sat on it. “No need for anything so drastic. Try poking him a few more times first.”

“Right.”

Once he’d tired of rolling his cane between his palms Jon bent down to set it on the floor. He’d learnt his lesson about trying to hang it on the back of these chairs, though in this fog it had taken several incidents to stick. Every time it ended up crashing to the floor, when he scooched his chair back or when Martin tried to reach an arm around him. Then again—he conjectured, bent halfway to the floor with the cane still in his hand—if he did drop it, that might wake Salesa.

Two nights ago Jon had got up to use the toilet, and knocked his cane down from the wall on his way back to bed in the dark. It crashed to the floor; Jon swore and hopped on one foot back from it, imagining the other foot’s poor toenail smashed to jagged pieces as it thumped to life with pain. Meanwhile he heard rustling from the bed, and Martin’s voice, querulous with sleep. “Jon? Jon, what’s—happened, what—are you.”

“Nothing it’s fine go back to”—he’d hissed as his knee decided it had enough of hopping—“don’t get up, just. I’m gonna turn on the light, if that’s alright.”

“What fell? Are you okay?”

“The cane. I knocked it over in the dark.”

“Oh.”

He got no verbal response about the light, but guessed Martin had nodded.

From a distance his toe looked alright—no blood, anyway, so he could walk on it without risking the carpet. Jon picked his cane up from the floor and steered himself to the foot of the bed, where he sat down. His toenail had chipped, it looked like—only a little, but in that way that leaves a long crack. If he tried to pick it straight he’d tear out a big chunk and it would bleed. But if he left it like this it would snag on the sheets, on his socks, until some loose thread tore the chunk of nail off for him. What could he do for this kind of thing here? At home he’d file the nail down around the chip, then cover it in clear nail polish, and just hope that’d hold out until the crack grew out and he could clip it without bleeding. But here? A plaster would have to do, he guessed. They had plenty of those now.

Jon hated bandaging, ever since Prentiss—in much the same way that Martin hated sleeping in his pants. He’d had time to learn all its discomforts. How sweaty they got, the way they stuck to your hairs, the way lint collected in the adhesive residue they left. Didn’t help he associated them with that time of paranoia. They didn’t make him act paranoid, understand; he just habitually thought of bandage-wearing as what paranoid people do. It made an echo of his contempt for that time’s Jon cling to his perceptions of current Jon. On his first morning here, when the ones on his shin where Daisy’d bit him peeled off in the shower, he hadn’t bothered to replace them. After all, the bite only hurt when something pulled on it or poked or scraped against it, so he figured his trousers would provide enough protective barrier.

“That healed fast,” Martin had remarked, when he noticed the undressed wound in the bath—and then, when he looked again, “Yyyyeah I dunno, I think you might still want to bandage that. We don’t want dirt getting in there.”

“Do I have to?”

“Humor me.”

When they got back to their room he’d let Martin dress it himself. Martin had sucked air through his teeth. “This is days old—it shouldn’t be all hot and red like this.” According to him these were early signs of infection, which would get worse if they didn’t take better care of it—i.e., keep the wound freshly bandaged and ointmented. Jon refrained from pointing out that when the cut on his throat had got like that he’d left it uncovered and been fine. But he did ask what worse meant. “Really bad,” testified Martin. “I had a cut on my finger get infected once. Really disgusting. You don’t want to know.”

Jon smiled at him, raised his eyebrows. “After Jared’s mortal garden I think I can handle it.”

Martin smiled too, but wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “There was pus involved.”

“Oh, god! How could you tell me that!” gasped Jon, hand to his chest.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it also hurt? A lot? And it can make you ill. So we should try to avoid it, yeah?”

He’d tried to disavow the disappointment in his sigh by exaggerating it. “Yes, alright.”

“Don’t know why you’d want to leave it exposed anyway. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Well, sure, when you do that,” Jon had muttered, flinching away. As he asked the question Martin had lightly tapped the skin around the gash through its new bandage. A second or two later Jon added, “Less than when I got it? It’s hard to tell; it’s… different here.”

With a sigh that caught on phlegm and irritation, Martin asked, “Different how?”

He hadn’t been able to answer then, but he knew now, of course. It hurt the way things do when you’re awake. Not with the constant smart and throb it had when he’d first got it, but, it snagged on things now. Had opinions on how he moved. When he bent his knee more than ninety degrees, that stretched the skin around it painfully. Also if he knelt, since then the floor would press against it through his trousers. And stepping with that foot felt odd. Didn’t hurt, exactly, but sort of… rattled? Like a bad bruise would. This all seemed so small, compared to the moment of terror for his life that he’d felt when Daisy bit into him—that gaping wound in his new self-conception, which his healing powers had sewn up so quickly. The ritual of bandaging it every evening seemed so otiose, so laughably superstitious. He despised the thought of adding another step to it.

While Jon went on examining his toe, Martin asked, “What was the... thumping. It sounded like.”

“Oh—no—I didn’t fall; it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“No—yes—stop, it’s nothing, don’t get up. I just forgot I left it on the—leaning against the doorwall” (he hadn’t decided in time whether to say doorway or wall and ended up with half of each) “so I walked into it, er, toe first.”

“Oh,” Martin said again. Jon could hear him subsiding against the pillows behind him. “It came down?”

Big sigh. Jon’s fingernails met his palms. He set his foot back on the floor, and when his hip whined in its socket he clenched his teeth and kept them that way. In his mind he heard days’ worth of similar jokes. When he couldn’t get a jammed jar open: So you’re saying it wouldn’t… come off? When they got back their clean laundry: Can you believe all those grass stains came out?—oh, sorry: that they came off, I meant. Always with an innocent laugh, like Jon’s original phrasing had been just, what, like a Freudian slip, rather than something perfectly comprehensible that Martin had refused to engage with, taken from him, and rendered meaningless on purpose. “No it did not,” he snapped, “and I would appreciate it if you’d quit throwing that back in my face.”

“Whoa, uh. O…kay. What’s… going on here exactly?”

“You—?”

His heart plummeted; his face stung with embarrassment. Came down, Martin had said—not came off. He’d just been confirming that Jon’s cane had fallen down.

“Oh, god—nothing, never mind. You did nothing.”

“Well that’s obviously not true.”

“I just—I thought you’d said ‘came off.’ I thought you meant, had my toe ‘come off.’”

“Oh,” said Martin, yet again. When Jon turned to look he found him still blinking and squinting against the light. “Do you… need me to not say that anymore?”

“Not when I—?” Not when I’ve hurt myself, Jon meant. But Martin hadn’t done that, so this grievance didn’t actually mean anything. He’d been seeing patterns where there were none, and now that he’d seen through the illusion Jon knew again that Martin never would say it like that. “No, it’s fine. Do whatever you want.”

Martin turned the tail end of his yawn into a huff of false laughter. “Nope. Still don’t believe you.”

“Everything you’ve said makes perfect sense with the information you have. It’s all just—me. Being cryptic again.”

“Okay, uh. Are you waiting for me to disagree? ‘Cause, uh. Yup—you’re still being cryptic. No arguments there.”

Jon just sighed, really scraping the back of his throat with it. Almost a scoff.

“Sooo do you wanna fill me in, or.”

“No?” With an incredulous laugh. “Well, yes, just.”

He hadn’t known how to start from there, while so tightly wound and defensive. It seemed cruel to raise such a sensitive subject when Martin sounded so eager to go back to sleep. Or maybe he just didn’t want to hear Martin whimper apologies. Didn’t want to deal with how fake they would sound. They wouldn’t be fake; he knew that. But they would sound fake, which meant it would take an effort of will, a deliberate exercise of empathy, to accept them as real. He wasn’t in the mood to hear yet another person say I’m sorry, I didn’t know; much less to respond with the requisite It’s okay; you didn’t know. It would take a strength of conviction he didn’t have right now.

“Y—you don’t have to explain it tonight? I’ll just, I’ll just not use that phrase anymore, and maybe in the morning you’ll be less in the mood to lash out at me for things that don’t make sense.”

And what was there to say to that? It had taken Jon three tries to force out, “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Good night, Jon.”

“Good night. I still need the light, for.”

“That’s fine. Just turn it off when you come back to bed.”

“You won’t wake him up,” a new voice interjected.

Annabelle. Jon couldn’t see her, but he had learnt by now to recognize that voice, with its insufferable upbeat teasing inflection like every sentence she said was a riddle. He caught a glimpse of movement, then heard the click of her shoes on the floor. She must have poked her head round the doorway at the far end of the table while she spoke, then scuttled off again. At last he got a good look at her, as she put her blonde-and-gray head through the closer door.

“He’s a very heavy sleeper,” she informed them, with a smile and a shrug. “You can shake him all you want; it’s not going to work.”

Martin cleared his throat—trying to catch Jon’s attention, presumably. But Jon feared Annabelle would vanish again if he took his eyes off her. Not that he wanted her here, either, but?—he at least wanted to know which direction she went when she disappeared.

“What are you doing here, Annabelle.”

She shrugged two of her shoulders. “Just offering you some advice.” Then she used the momentum from the shrug to push herself backward, out of the doorway back into the corridor. Before the last of her hands disappeared off to the right, she waved to both of them.

“Well, how about some ‘advice’ about this, then—”

“She’s already gone, Martin.”

“Seriously? God—which way did she go?” Jon pointed; Martin bolted down the hallway after her. “Oi! Annabelle!”

“Shhh!”

“Annabelle! Do you know where Salesa keeps the—”

Jon did his best to follow him, praying all his limbs would go on straight this time. “Don’t!”

“What? Why not?” he heard, from the other side of the wall. Thankfully he could no longer hear Martin’s pounding footsteps. He overtook him in the hallway, just about able to make out his face around the dark swirls in his vision. “She’s as likely to know as Salesa, right?” Martin continued. “And it’s not like she’d lie about it. I mean, what would be the point?”

“I just don’t think we should give her any kind of advantage over us,” Jon snarled. The attempt to keep his voice down made the words come out sounding nastier than he intended.

Martin scoffed. “You don’t think maybe this is a bit more important than your stupid principle about not accepting help from her?”

“Is it?” Jon took hold of Martin’s sleeve, having just now caught up to him. “The new room’s fine. It’s even nicer than the old one, right? We could just stay there.”

“I already told you, Jon. I’m not just gonna leave it like this.”

“’Til Salesa sobers up, I meant.”

“If we have to, yeah, but—? All our stuff’s in that room. The statements’re in there.”

“I just don’t think we should show her that kind of vulnerability,” Jon hissed, shifting from foot to foot in his eagerness either to sit down or go somewhere else. “I don’t want to give Annabelle something she can use over us.”

“How does this make us more vulnerable than we are eating her food?”

“It doesn’t, alright? That doesn’t mean we should add more to the pile!” He watched Martin shrug and open his mouth, but cut him off in advance: “Last time we had this argument you were the one maintaining she was dangerous.”

It was on their first night here—their first awake here, anyway. They’d been heading back to their room, Martin lamenting that he’d not packed anything to sleep in when they left Daisy’s safehouse. “Won’t make much difference to me,” Jon had shrugged at first.

Martin had shaken his head, grimaced at something in his imagination. “I hate sleeping in my pants. It’s just gross. Dunno why anyone would choose to do it.”

“How is it gross?” Jon had laughed. He’d expected to hear some weird thing about its being unsanitary for that much leg to touch sheets that only got washed every two weeks, and to argue back that in that case shouldn’t he sleep in his socks. Disdain for the body seemed damn near universal, and yet manifested so differently in each person whose habits Jon had got to know up close. Georgie had heard that underarm hair helped wick away the smell of sweat—so she let that hair grow out, but shaved the ones on her stomach for fear they’d smell like navel lint. And Daisy, a woman who used to sniff her used-up plasters before throwing them in the bin, would spray cologne in the toilet every time she left it. Jon had enjoyed getting to know which of bodily self-contempt’s myriad forms Martin subscribed to.

But this turned out not to be one of them. Instead Martin explained, “It’s so sweaty. Like sitting on a leather couch in shorts, except the leather’s your other leg? Ugh. I hate waking up slippery.”

“That’s why I put a pillow between mine,” laughed Jon. “Suppose I will miss Trevor’s t-shirt, though. Now that I don’t have to worry about showing up in people’s dreams like that.”

“Oh, god, right—what is it? ‘You don’t have to be faster than the bear’—?”

“‘You just have to be faster than your friends,'” Jon completed, in the most sinister Ceaseless-Watcher voice he could muster. Martin snorted with laughter.

And then they’d opened the door to discover Annabelle had done them a fucking turndown service. Quilt folded back, mints on the pillows, and a pile of old-timey striped pajamas at the foot of the bed. “Huh. Cree…py, but convenient, I guess. Least they’re not black and white, right?” Martin unfolded the green-striped shirt on top, then handed it with its matching trousers to Jon. “These ones must be yours.”

“Mm.” Jon let Martin hand him the pajamas, then tossed them onto the chair in the opposite corner of the room (from which chair they promptly fell to the floor). The mint from his side of the bed he deposited in the bin under the bedside table.

“So who’s our good fairy, d’you think? Salesa, or.”

“Annabelle,” Jon hissed. “Salesa was with us all through dinner.”

Martin nodded and sighed. “Yeah.” He sat down on the bed, still regarding the other set of garments—these ones striped yellow and blue—with a puzzled frown. “God, I’ll look like a clown in these. You sure I won’t give you nightmares about the Unknowing?”

But Jon said nothing, still hoping he could avoid weighing in on Martin’s choice whether or not to accept Annabelle’s… gifts.

“It’s probably Salesa’s stuff, at least. Not Annabelle’s. I mean,” Martin mused with a brave laugh, “he’s got a lot of weird outfits on hand apparently.”

“Unless she wove them out of cobwebs.”

“That’s not a thing,” Martin groaned, making himself laugh too. “Spider webs aren’t strong enough to use as thread.”

“Not natural ones, maybe,” Jon said with a shrug and a careful half smile. With no less care, he turned the sheets and counterpane back up on his side of the bed, restoring the way it’d looked when he and Martin made up the bed that morning. Stacked the frontmost pillow back upright against the one behind it. Punched it a little, more as a way to break the silence than because it looked too fluffy. Then sat down in front of them and put his shoe up on the bedside table so he could untie it—glancing first at Martin to make sure he didn’t disapprove.

“I mean, I guess,” Martin mused meanwhile. “Not sure why she’d bother, though. Maybe it’s”—with a gasp and a smile Jon could hear in his voice—“maybe she’s put poison in the threads, and that’s why yours and mine are different. Mine’s got—I dunno, some kind of self-esteem poison, like, a reverse SSRI, to make me feel like you don’t need me, so when she kidnaps you I won’t try to save you. And yours….”

As Jon pulled off his now-untied shoe one of the bones in his hip jabbed against some bit of soft tissue it wasn’t supposed to touch. He gasped and dropped his shoe. It thudded on the floor.

“You alright?”

“Fine. Some kind of dex drain, probably.”

“Ha.”

After a silence, Martin spoke again: “Are you sure you’re okay staying here for a bit? Sorry—I kinda bulldozed over your objections earlier.”

Jon finished untying his other shoe, then paused to think while he shook the cramp out of his hand. “No,” he decided. “You didn’t bulldoze, you just…questioned. And you were right to.”

“Still, I mean. It might not be a great idea to stick around here with the spider lady who’s had it in for us since day one. Have you re-listened to the tapes from the day Prentiss attacked, by the way, since you got them back from the Not-Sasha thing?”

“Right—the spider, yes.”

“Yeah, exactly! You wouldn’t even have broke through that wall if it hadn’t been for the spider there!”

Jon nodded and scrubbed at his eyes, trying to muster the energy to match Martin’s tone. This was an important conversation to have, he knew. And a part of him shuddered with recognition to hear Martin talk about those tapes. He had re-listened to them—first at Georgie’s, one night in the small hours as he cleaned her kitchen, thinking clearly for the first time in months and trying to pinpoint the exact moment his thoughts had been clouded with paranoia, so that he might know what signs to look for if something else tried to infect his mind like that. And then again after Basira found the jar of ashes. That time he’d just wanted to suck all the marrow he could from the memory of Martin with his sensible corkscrew and his first answer to Why are you here, even if it did mean having to hear himself ask if Martin was a ghost. A few weeks later, however, after Hilltop Road, he’d done a fair bit of obsessing over the spider thing with Prentiss, yeah. He just wished he could remember what conclusion he’d come to.

All he could remember was going for those tapes yet again only to find them missing from his drawer. But he’d been chasing phantoms all day; it was late at night by then, and when he’d dashed out to tell Basira his fear Annabelle had stolen them, stolen his memories from him just like the Not-Them had, he’d stood there over her and Daisy’s frankenbag for what felt like an hour, mouth open, unable to utter a sound. It felt too much like going to wake up his grandmother after a dream. So he’d told himself to sleep on it—that he’d probably left the tapes in some other obvious place, and would find them in the morning. And when he remembered his panic, the next day at lunch, and checked his drawer again, the tapes were back, right where he expected them. He’d dismissed it as a dream after all. But no—Martin must have borrowed them. He must’ve been worried about the Web, too.

“It’s… it should be okay. I don’t think it’ll be like that here.”

Martin sighed. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“That thing where you just—decide how something is without even telling me why you think so. I mean it’s one thing out there, when you ‘know everything’” (this in a false deep voice) “and can’t possibly share it all, but here? When you’re just guessing, like everyone else? Why don’t you think it’ll be like that here? And what does ‘like that’ even mean?”

“I'm sorry—you’re right—I just mean, I don’t think she has her powers here. Based on what Salesa said about the camera, and on what happens when I try to use my powers….”

“Salesa just said the Eye can’t see this place, though. What about that insect thing he said found its way in?”

“I mean.” Jon shrugged. “We managed to find our way here without the Eye’s help.”

“Yeah, but if the Web has no power here then how could she have called me on a payphone? She had to have known where I was to do that, yeah? And she couldn’t know that from here unless the Web told her to do it, right?”

“Maybe? We don’t even know if the Web works like that.”

“Told her to do it, made her want to do it, gave her the tools to do it, whatever. You know what I mean. Look—we know the Eye’s not totally blind here, since it can still feed on statements. Right?”

Jon wondered now how either one of them could have been so sure of that. “Apparently,” he liked to think he had said—but more likely he’d replied simply, “Right.”

“So then by that logic the Web still probably likes it when she—I don’t know, when she manipulates people here. It probably still gets, like, live tweets from her about it. How do we know it can’t use that information to weave more plots around us?”

“If that’s even how it works,” Jon had replied again. “The other fears don’t work like that—they don’t plan, they just.” He tried to sort his intuition into Martin’s live tweet metaphor. “The fears just like their agents’ tweets, they don’t… comment on them, o-or build new opinions on what they’ve read. It boosts the avatar's… popularity, I guess? Their influence?” Jon hadn’t even logged into Twitter since before the Archives. “But unless the Web is different from all the other fears, it doesn’t—it’s not her boss. It doesn’t come up with the schemes, it just.”

“Isn’t it literally called the ‘Spinner of Schemes’, though? The ‘Mother of Puppets’?”

And Jon couldn’t remember what he’d said to brush off that one.

“Of course she’s dangerous,” Martin said now. “I just don’t see what sinister plot of hers we could possibly be enabling by asking her where to find screwdrivers.”

Jon scoffed. “She’s with the Web, Martin! The ‘Mother of Puppets,’ the ‘Spinner of Schemes’? You’re not supposed to be able to see how the threads connect. Anything we ask her gives her another opening to sink her hooks into.”

“So what, you just don’t want to owe her a favor?”

“Yes?” Jon blinked—on purpose, needless to say. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I mean—why do you think she’s here, Martin, ingratiating herself with us?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because it’s the one place on Earth that hasn’t been turned into a hell dimension?”

Jon snarled and set his head in his free hand. The dizziness was coming back. “In her statement Annabelle said the trick to manipulating people was to make sure they always either over or underestimate you.”

“Okay,” granted Martin, as though prompting Jon to explain how this was relevant.

“She’s trying to humanize herself,” he maintained, scratching an imaginary itch behind his glasses. “We shouldn’t let her.”

“I mean, she is physically more human here.”

“Is she? She doesn’t seem to be withdrawing from the Web; she’s not—like this.” Jon turned his wrist in a circle next to his head.

“Yeah but she’s been here for months, right? Maybe she’s passed through that stage.”

A bitter huff of laughter. “So you’re saying she’s reformed.”

“No. I’m saying the fact she’s not all—loopy here doesn’t necessarily mean she still has any power.”

“She’s got four arms and six eyes, Martin!”

“And you sleep with your eyes open and summon tape recorders, Jon!”

“Well,” mused Jon with a wry smile, “not on purpose.”

“That’s my point! You’ve only got—vestiges here, yeah? I’m not saying we should trust her; I don’t wanna be friends or anything. I’m just saying I don’t think the actual concrete danger she poses here is what’s making you hate the idea of asking her for directions.”

“What about that insect thing Salesa said she chased off. Does that not sound spidery to you?”

“We don’t know that! Maybe she waved his syringe at it.”

Jon took a deep, shaky breath through his nose. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to bring up this next part; he feared it might make Martin too afraid to stay here any longer. “I think she’s plotting against us.”

Blink. “Well, yeah. Of course she is. She’s been plotting against us for—”

“Here, I mean. I mean, I think that’s why she’s here. She’s been hiding from the Eye on purpose so she could lure us into her trap with her spindly little”—Jon thought of the earrings that dangled from Annabelle’s ears like flies, swinging with her every sudden movement. Unconsciously he struck out with his hand as if to catch one, closing his fist around empty air. “Without my being able to see either her or the trap. At best, she’s here gathering information about us so she can report it back to her master.” He pictured the thousand spiders he’d seen birthed during Francis’s nightmare crawling back and forth with messages between here and the nearest Web domain—

“I thought you said the fears didn’t work that way,” pursued Martin—

“And every little thing we tell her is one more thread she can use to pull on us.”

“Okay, but, even if you’re right, ‘Hey Annabelle, our doorknob’s busted, can you help us find the tools to fix it’ isn’t actually a fact about us.”

“But that’s just the best-case scenario, Martin! The worst-case scenario is that she predicted we’d get locked out of our room, or even loosened the screw herself—”

“Not this again—”

“—because she knew we’d have to ask her for help, and wherever she tells us to look for the screwdriver is where she’s laid her trap! Think about it—this couldn’t happen outside the range of the camera, right? It would only work in a place where I can’t just know where to find something. That’s the only scenario where we’d ever ask her for directions.” Martin sighed, crossed his arms, rolled his eyes. Jon looked right at him, hoping to catch them on their way back down. “What if her plan is to trap us here forever so we can’t go stop Elias? What if by trusting her with this, we give her the tools to keep the world like this forever?”

Again Martin sighed. He bit his lip, at last seeming not to have an argument lined up already.

“I can’t actually stop you from going after her”—Jon heard Martin scoff, but pressed on—“but I can’t take part in this.”

“You sort of already did stop me, Jon.” He lifted his arm, pointing vaguely in the direction she’d gone. “We can’t catch up with her now.”

That wasn’t quite true, Jon knew; Martin had chosen to stop and listen to him. Instead of pointing this out in words Jon smiled, meekly, and reached for Martin’s hand. “Guess that’s true. Are you, er, ready for lunch now?”

His answering scoff sounded fond, indulgent, rather than incredulous. “Yeah, alright.”

With Martin’s hand still in his, Jon turned around—an awkward business, while holding hands in such a narrow passage—and began to walk back towards the dining room. At the end of the corridor stood a tall, thin, many-limbed figure, holding a water carafe, a stack of glasses, and four steaming plates of food.

“You boys getting hungry?” As she stepped toward them her shoes clacked against the floor. How had they not heard her approach? And what was she doing back at that end of the corridor?

“How did you—?”

“I have my ways. I’ve brought lunch for you both, if you’re amenable.”

“Oh—well, thanks, you’re, you’re just in time, actually.” Jon didn’t dare look away from Annabelle Cane long enough to confirm this, but suspected Martin had directed that last bit at him as much as her. “Can I help you with those?”

Annabelle managed to shrug without dislodging anything from the four plates in her hands. “You can take the napkins if you want,” she said, extending toward Martin the forearm from which they hung.

Jon sat back down in the chair he’d left at a haphazard angle—though it felt weird, since he usually sat on the table’s other side. He thanked Martin when he handed him a napkin, and allowed Annabelle to set an empty glass and a plate of food in front of him. It was a pasta dish, with clams—from a can, he reminded himself. A can and a jar of pasta sauce. Couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes to put together.

“Salesa’s still out of it,” observed Martin. “Don’t think he’ll make too much of his.”

“A shame,” Annabelle agreed. She set a plate down in front of the sleeping Salesa anyway. “Maybe the smell of food’ll wake him up.”

“Are you going to eat with us?” Martin asked, as he and Jon both watched her deposit a fourth plate across the table from them.

“I may as well. We do still have to eat to live here, don’t we?” Jon could tell she meant this comment as an invitation for him to join their conversation, but he didn’t intend to take her bait. “Besides,” Annabelle went on, “this way you’ll know I’ve not saved the best for myself.” With one hand she picked up her own plate again; another of her long, thin arms reached out to take Jon’s plate.

He dragged it to the side, out of her reach. “No, thank you.”

“Alright. Martin,” she said, looking over at him with a patient, patronizing smile. “Will you switch plates with me?”

“Oh, my god,” Martin groaned into his hand. “Sure, why not.”

Something small and gray skittered across the table toward her. For half a second Annabelle took her eyes from Martin. Her nostrils flared; one of her eyes twitched; Jon heard a stifled squawk from behind her closed lips as she swept the skittery thing over her edge of the table. He made no such effort to hide his scoff. Did she think she could play nice, by declining to hold little spider conversations in front of them? That they’d think she was on their side as long as they couldn’t see her chatting to her little spies?

“Thank you,” Annabelle sing-songed meanwhile, returning her gaze to Martin. “You’re sweet.”

On their first morning here, after showering and then shuddering back into their filthy clothes, Jon and Martin had barely left their room before Annabelle dangled herself in their path, with cups of tea (Jon refused his) and an offer to show them to the pantry. From this tour Jon had concluded that all food in this place was tainted by her influence. And he didn’t actually feel hungry at that point? He remembered Martin remarking on his hunger before they’d both fallen asleep, but Jon had felt only tired. Surely that meant he still didn’t need food here, right? It’d been like that before the change, after the coma—he’d needed sleep and statements to keep up his strength, but could function just fine without… people food. So he’d resolved to accept nothing offered him here—or at least, nothing Salesa and Annabelle hadn’t already given him and Martin without their consent. No tea, none of Salesa’s booze, no use of the huge industrial washing machines, no food.

That resolution lasted about nine hours. He knew because on that first day time still felt like such a novelty he and Martin had counted every one. Once he’d tried and failed to compel Salesa—once he’d heard him give a statement and managed to space out for half of it, rather than transcending himself in the ecstasy of vicarious fear—Jon started to grow conscious of his hunger. After two hours he felt shaky; after four he started picking quarrels, first just with Annabelle when she showed up with snacks, then with Salesa, and then even with Martin; after six he felt first hot, then cold. Finally around the eight-hour mark he was hiding tears over an untied shoelace, and figured it was worth finding out how much of this torment people food could solve. He sat through dinner, flaunting his empty plate—then stole to the pantry for something he could make himself. Settled for dry toast and raisins. “Couldn’t you find the jam?” Martin had asked him.

“Didn’t think of it,” Jon lied, once he’d got his throat round a lump of under-chewed toast.

“You want me to get some for you? That looks pretty depressing without it,” Martin said, with his eyebrows and the line of his mouth both raised in a pitying smile.

“Better make it one of the sealed jars.”

“What, so Annabelle can’t have got to it?” Jon nodded, chewing so as to have neither to smile back nor decide not to. “You know she made the bread, right.”

Of course she had. Jon dropped his head onto his fists. “Fuck.”

“What did you think?” mused Martin with a laugh. “That Salesa just popped down to the supermarket?”

“I don’t know—that they’d taken it from the freezer, maybe?”

“I mean, that’s possible,” Martin granted with a shrug. “Should I get you that jam?”

Big sigh. “Fine.”

In reality he’d stared up at the row of jam jars in Salesa’s pantry for a full ten seconds before deciding not to have any. He feared spiders would spill out of the jar onto his hand as soon as he got it open. But he also feared he might not be able to open it at all—only hurt himself trying. Way back in their first year in the Archives together, Martin had once seen him struggling to get open the jar where he kept paperclips. Jon hadn’t realized he was being watched—or, that is, that Martin was watching him. In the Archives the sense of someone watching was so omnipresent one soon lost the ability to distinguish Elias’s evil Eye from other, more mundane eyes. Anyway, after three minutes’ effort and nothing to show for it but a misplaced MCP joint in his thumb, Jon had given up on paper-clipping the photos Tim had pilfered for him to their relevant statement and begun hunting through his desk drawers for a stapler instead. And then a high-pitched pop above his head made him startle so badly he gasped, choked on his own spit, and flung the picture in his hand across the room like a paper airplane.

Around the sound of his own cough he could hear Martin shouting Sorry, and Tim and Sasha laughing on the other side of the wall. Martin’s laugh soon joined theirs, though it sounded desperate, sheepish. He dove after the photo Jon had dropped, and then, when he came back with it, explained, “Got the paperclips for you.”

Jon frowned. “This is a photograph, Martin.”

“No, I mean—?” His laugh came out like a whimper; he picked the unlidded jar up an inch off the table, then set it back down. “Here.”

Okay, so, not exactly an auspicious start, but, it still became a thing? Martin opening his paperclip jar. At first he’d wished he could just remember not to seal it so tightly; he could get it just fine when he stopped turning it earlier. At least when the weather hadn’t changed since the last time he opened it. But then when they all started leaving the Archives less often, and the break-room fridge filled up with condiments that all seemed to have twist-off lids… he’d kind of liked that? Martin would hand him the peanut-butter jar, with its lid off and pinned to its side with one finger, before Jon had even finished asking for it. This seemed to be the pattern behind all his early positive impressions of Martin: the jar lids, the corkscrew, the way he managed to make mealtimes at the Institute feel like proper breaks. Martin had seemed like such an oaf to him at first—clumsy, absent-minded, always seeming to think that if he professed enough good will with his smiles and cups of tea and I know you won’t like this, but, then no one would notice his impertinent comments and all the doors he left wide open. All the dogs and worms and spiders he let in. He’d seemed to Jon the human embodiment of a fly left undone—more so than ever after the morning he’d walked in on him wearing naught but frog-print boxer shorts. But he had this easy grace with things that needed twisting off. Banana peels, bottle caps, wine corks, worms.

And then when he came back after the Unknowing Martin was never around. Jon and Basira and Melanie all lived in the Archives, like Martin had two years before, but by that point he wasn’t on Could you open this for me? terms with any of them. But he hadn’t needed people food anymore, and if he subluxed a joint it would heal instantly anyway. So he’d just struggled and sworn, feeling stupid for shrinking from the pain even after having chopped off his own finger. And it got easier with practice. By the time he and Martin reunited, he’d got so used to it that sometimes he’d hand jars to Martin already unlidded. Martin hadn’t seemed to notice. Finally, one evening a day or two after that row they had over the ice-cream thing, Jon had opened a jar of pasta sauce (he’d taken up people food again at Daisy’s safehouse, if only to make their time there feel more like a regular holiday), and reached out to hand it to Martin—then paused and retracted the hand that gripped the jar, remembering his promise to be more open about.

“This is, um.” He’d glanced up at Martin, then back to the floor as the latter said,

“Huh?”

“This is one of those things that’s got better since the coma. Since I became an avatar. I can, um. I can open jars now? Without.” He’d almost said Without hurting myself, then remembered that wasn’t technically true. Deep breath. “Without lasting harm. It—it hurts for a second? But the Eye heals it instantly. That's why I’ve been.”

“Oh,” Martin said, seeming to stall for time as he absorbed this information. He accepted the jar which Jon again held out to him, and turned it around in his hands, eyes on its label. “Yeah, I—I noticed, you’re really good at opening jars now,” he went on with a laugh. Again he paused, and blew a sigh out of his mouth. “Right. Okay. Thank you for telling me?”

“I’ll try and be better about….”

Martin nodded, turning back to the stove and beginning to stir sauce into the pasta. “Yeah. I, uh—I didn’t know that was why you used to need me to open them for you?” Since the other night’s argument, Jon had gathered as much. He nodded too. “I thought you were just, heh, you know. Weaker than me.”

“I mean, I am—”

“Well yeah but you know what I mean.”

“I do. I should’ve told you.”

“No, I—actually I think you’re in the clear on that one, if I’m honest. I just—it’s just weird? I thought I was done having to” (another blown-out sigh punctuated his speech) “having to reframe stuff I thought was normal around some unseen horror. Sorry,” he added when he’d finished beating sauce off Daisy’s wooden spoon; “that’s probably not a great way to.”

“No—it’s fine?”

“Suppose it sounds like an exaggeration, now, after all we’ve.”

Mechanically, Jon nodded, without deciding whether he agreed or not. Around an awkward laugh, he confessed, “‘Unseen horror’ might be the nicest way I’ve ever heard anyone describe it.”

“Er. Yikes? That sounds like you might need some better friends, Jon.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, laughing again. “I—I just mean, it’s nice to hear something other than?” Jon paused and pushed his little fingers back the hundred or so degrees they each would go. First the left, then the right. Other than what? Well, doubt, for a start. Though most of the doubt he heard from outside himself was implicit. Careful silence from people he told about it; requests people made of him seemingly just so he’d have to tell them he couldn’t do that; impatience, bafflement, suspicion from strangers. Why are you out of breath, the woman behind the Immigration desk had asked him at O’Hare, as if breathlessness incriminated him somehow. But that wasn’t the response he’d subconsciously measured Martin’s phrase against. What he had in mind now was more like… bland support. Hurried support. Assurances quick and dutiful, yet so vague he could tell the people who gave them were thinking only of the mistakes they might make, if they dared to acknowledge what he’d said with any more than half a sentence. The I’m sorry you’re in pain equivalents of Right away, Mr. Sims.

That was it—unseen horror was an original thought. Martin had put it in his own words, rather than either borrowing Jon’s or using none at all. “Other than a platitude.”

So at Salesa’s when Martin came back with the jam jar he handed it to Jon. Jon made a show of trying to open it, but could feel his middle finger threatening to leave its top half behind. It frightened him, in a way he’d forgot was even possible. For such a long time now, pain had just been pain? He’d grown so unused to the threat it held for normal people. The threat of actual danger, of injury. He’d set down the jar on the table in front of him, and crossed his arms in front of it.

“Can’t get it, huh?” Martin asked; Jon shook his head.

How much danger, though, he wondered. Earlier that day, after he and Martin got out of the bath, his left index finger had popped out while he was buttoning his shirt. It still ached when he used the finger, or thought about the cracking sound it had made—but didn’t throb anymore without provocation. Not much danger there; not even much inconvenience. He supposed if he hurt his middle finger too then he might have some trouble with his trouser button the next time he had to pee? Right, yes, what a cross to bear. I hurt myself doing x; now it hurts to do x. But it already hurt to do x, didn’t it? Didn’t x always hurt, before the change? Why did he so fear to face an hour or a day where it hurt more than usual, but not so much I can’t do it?

“So you’re saying it won’t… come off?”

“Ha, ha.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

“What if I open it and it’s full of spiders?”

Martin had smiled, rolled his eyes, pulled the jar toward him, and twisted its lid off with a pop. “See? No spiders in this one.

“While you’re here, Annabelle,” Jon heard Martin say, “I don’t suppose you know anything about where Salesa keeps his screwdrivers?”

Annabelle tapped her chin and said, very pleasantly, “Hmmm. Perhaps they’re where he left them after the last time something broke.”

Martin’s lips drew closer together. “Yeah,” he nodded, “probably. Any idea where that might be?”

“Perhaps he keeps them next to whatever screw comes loose most often.”

“And do you know which screw that is?”

She shook her head, though who knew whether that meant she didn’t know or merely that she didn’t mean to tell him. “Perhaps he only uses the item when he’s alone,” she said, with a shrug and a sly smile.

“…Ew.” Annabelle cackled like a school kid pulling a prank. “Right, great,” sighed Martin. “Thanks a lot. Forget it. You done, Jon?”

Jon glanced sleepily down at his plate. Only half empty, but cold by now. “Yes.”

“Nice of you to grace us with your presence, Annabelle,” Martin said, sliding his and Jon’s plates toward her side of the table.

Instead of energy, lunch gave Jon only a slight queasy feeling—like one gets from eating sweets on an empty stomach.

“God”—hissed Martin, with clenched fists, as they ambled back to their room—“‘Perhaps he keeps them next to the screw that gets loose most often.’ Yeah, figured that out already, thanks! Can you even believe her? Sitting down to eat with us, as if she’s all ready to help, and then the best she can do is,” he paused and straightened, then said with a finger to his chin in imitation of Annabelle, “‘Oh, hm, guess he only uses it alone. Oh well!’”

“Don’t know what else you expected.”

Martin sighed, his arms crossed now. “Guess I should’ve done what you asked after all, since that accomplished nothing.” After a moment he went on, “Least it wasn’t a trap, right? I tried not to give her anything she could use against us.” With a smile Jon could hear without looking at him, “You notice how I pointedly didn’t offer to help clean up?”

“No, I didn’t,” Jon confessed, laughing a little.

“No?!” Again Martin paused on his feet, frowning, incredulous. Jon wished he wouldn’t; standing still made him dizzier, took more effort than walking, like that poor woman in Oliver’s domain. Daniela? Martin shook his head at himself. “Ugh—then who knows if she noticed, either. I thought I was being so obvious!”

“I mean—”

“Wait, hold up, let’s double back.”

“Are you going to go back and tell her it was on purpose?”

“No, just”—he echoed Jon’s laugh—“no, of course not. I just wanted to try that wing’s toilets next. Didn’t want her to see which way we were going.”

“Oh.” By this time Martin had turned around and started to walk the other way; Jon hung back. “Er. I thought—I thought we were going to our room first.”

“What, the new one you mean?” asked Martin, turning his head around to look back at him.

“…Yes,” Jon decided. Until this moment he’d forgot about that, and been daydreaming of their original bed.

“Sure, if you want. Do you need a break?”

“I… I think so, yes.”

Martin turned the rest of the way around, shuffled toward Jon and looked him over, with a concerned frown. He took his free hand between his fingers and thumb, brushing the latter over Jon’s knuckles. “Yeah, okay. You still seem pretty out of it. How are you feeling?”

“Not great,” answered Jon, though he smiled in relief at Martin’s willingness to change the plan for him.

“Food didn’t help?”

His stomach seemed hung with cobwebs; his mind, like a large room with half its lights burnt out. His light head seemed attached to his heavy, aching body only by a string, like a balloon tied to an Open-House sign. He still needed the toilet. “Not really?”

“Yeah, thought not. You need a statement, huh.”

Jon shrugged, avoiding Martin’s eyes. “Probably.”

In the interim bedroom Jon sat down at the edge of the bed, bent down over his legs, and untied his shoes, wondering why his life always came back around to this. His hip got stuck like a drawer that’s been pulled out crooked, so he had to lever himself back up with his arms, trapping fistfuls of counterpane between thumbs and the meat of his palms. It made his hands cramp, but that helped—the way it would have helped to bite his finger. When he’d got himself upright again he sat and blinked for a few seconds, hoping each time he opened his eyes that his vision would’ve cleared.

Martin sat down next to him and put his hand on Jon’s arm. “You’re blinking again. You okay?”

“Just… kind of dizzy? It’s an Eye thing.”

He let Martin pull him towards him until their shoulders touched. “Yeah. Makes sense. Nap should help. Statement’ll definitely help.”

“Right.”

They agreed to lie on the bed rather than properly in it, not wanting to have to put the covers back together afterward. Jon set his head on that squishy part of Martin’s chest where it started to give way to armpit, knowing to angle himself so the scar tissue pressed the hollow part of his cheek rather than anywhere bonier. It was normally dangerous to lie half on his back, half on his side like this, but he’d lately discovered he could use Martin’s leg to keep his hip from falling off. He could feel the muscles in his shoulder twitching and cramping, whether to pull the joint out or keep it in who could tell. But it’d be fine as long as he shrugged the arm every few minutes.

All the ways they knew to spend time in each other’s company had come together in Scotland, where he’d had none of these worries. Even after the change, on their journey, with nothing but sleeping bags between them and desecrated earth, he’d borne only the same aches he’d been ignoring since he read the statement that ended the world. Jon imagined lying next to Martin like this on the cold stone of a tomb in the Necropolis, surrounded by guardian angels’ malicious laughter. Not feeling the cold, or the grain of the stone against his ankles and the bandage on his shin—just knowing it was there, like when you watch someone suffer those things in a movie. Less vivid even than a statement about lying on a tomb; in Naomi Herne’s nightmare he’d felt the stone in her hands.

“Hfff, okay—ready to get back to it?”

“Mrrr.”

“…Jon, are you asleep?”

He shrugged his hanging shoulder. “No.”

Nose laugh. “Come on, wake up.”

“Mmrrrrrrr.”

“My arm’s asleep.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It won’t wake up ‘till you get up off of it, Jon,” said Martin, gently, between huffs of laughter.

“Hmr.” Jon rolled away to face the wall with the window, freeing Martin’s arm.

“Do you want me to go look without you?”

“Okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mhm.”

Cold air washed over his newly-exposed arm, ribcage, side of face, the outside of his sore hip. It was cold on this Martinless side of the bed, too. He rolled back over into the shadow of his warmth, but that still wasn’t as good as the real thing. Maybe he could pull the covers halfway out and roll himself up in them.

“Aaagh, no—Jon”—Martin’s cool hand on top of his as he tried to hook his fingers round the counterpane— “we’re trying to leave the room the way we found it, remember?”

“Hmmmrrgh.” He consented to leave his hand still when Martin’s departed from it. A few seconds later, a rustle against his ear, the smell of smoke and old clothes.

“Here.”

Jon crunched the jacket down so it wouldn’t itch his ear. “You won’t need it?”

“Probably not.”

“Hm.”

“I’ll be back for it if I have to go outside again, yeah?”

“Okay.”

In his mind’s eye they trudged into the wind, hand in hand. It blew Martin’s hood off his head, and inverted Jon’s cane like an umbrella. He shrunk himself further under Martin’s jacket, relishing the new pockets of warmth he created as his calves met his thighs and his hands gripped his shoulders.

“Ooookay…! Wish me luck?”

“Good luck,” managed Jon around a yawn.

Martin had been right about the wallpaper. Not only was the red too bright to look at comfortably; it also had the kind of flowered pattern just complex enough that every time you look back at it you’re compelled to double-check where it repeats. Every fourth stripe was the same as the first, right? Not every second? And that weird little scroll-shaped petal—he’d seen that one too recently. Was it the same as?—No, that one was a bud. He pulled Martin’s jacket up so it covered his eyes.

They’d put their jackets through the laundry with everything else, their first day here, but that hadn’t got the smell out. Enough time had passed between the burning building and their arrival here for the smoke to embed itself permanently into their jackets and shoes, like how duffel bags once taken camping always smell like barbecue. And everything they’d ever shoved in those backpacks still had some of that odd, sour, Ritz-cracker smell of clothes left unwashed too long.

Daisy used to smell like smoke and laundry, too, once she quit smelling like dirt. It was the smell of the old green sleeping bag she’d zipped up to Basira’s. She said she’d have showered it off if she could; she didn’t like it. To her it was a Hunt smell—it reminded her of her clearing in the woods. But there weren’t any showers in the Archives. She’d point this out every time, in the same wry voice, so Jon was sure she’d intended the metaphor. No showers in the Archives: you couldn’t hide your sins in a temple of the Eye. This had comforted Jon—or maybe flattered was the word, though he knew her better than to think she’d have done so on purpose. He just wasn’t sure he agreed. He’d hid his sins pretty well from himself, after the coma. It was easy; you just had to lose track of scale. No one could remember all of them at once, after all. Others had had to point the important ones out to him.

Were those footsteps he could hear out there? Not Annabelle’s—? No; her clicky shoes. These were blunter. Could be Salesa, awake at last, come to invite them to play a game with him. “How do you two feel about… foosball?” he would say, drawing out the last word in a husky whisper. Only then would he swing the door wide open to reveal himself in a shiny jersey, shorts, and studded shoes. He set his fists out before him and turned them in semicircles, pretending to manipulate the plastic rods of a foosball table. Jon curled still more tightly into himself at the thought of Salesa’s face, how his showman’s grin would crumple like a hole in a cellophane wrapper when he realized the fun one had gone and that he faced only the Archivist. “Oh—hello. Jon, is it? Where has your lovely Martin gone?”

“Oh, uh. Martin needs a screwdriver to fix our door, so I.”

He watched Martin march his silent way slowly, solemnly down a corridor that grew darker, grayer, vaguer with every step until the webs that lined its every side and hung in laces from the ceiling began to catch on his shoes, his belt, his glasses.

“I let him go off alone.”

Jon’s whole body flinched. He gasped awake—oh shit. How had he just let Martin go? He had to—couldn’t stay here—find Martin—keep him out of Annabelle’s clutches—

Stick-thin bristling spider legs tapped the floor of his mind like fingers on a table. Find Martin. Jon instructed himself to sit up, swing his legs over the side of the bed and reach down to grab his shoes. He twitched one finger. See? You can do this. In a minute he’d try again and be able to move his whole arm, push himself up onto one hand. Find Martin.

Also probably go to the toilet. With an empty bladder his head would be clearer, he could figure out which direction to look first.

After Hopworth, while he laid on the couch in his office waiting for the strength to throw himself into the Buried, Jon had imagined Martin and Georgie and Basira and Melanie all stood around that coffin, wearing black and holding flowers. Denise? No, it definitely had three syllables. A scattered applause began as Jonah Magnus emerged from his office, closed behind him the door printed with poor dead Bouchard’s name, and stepped up to the podium. Georgie, not knowing his face, began to clap; Melanie stayed her hands. Elagnus’s shirt, hidden behind suit except for the collar, was striped in black and white. A ball and chain hung from his sleeve like an enormous cufflink. He opened his mouth to speak, and a tape recorder began to hiss.

“What are you doing here?” asked Basira.

“Never underestimate how much I care for the tools I use, Detective. I wouldn’t miss my Archivist’s big day.”

“So they just let you out for this.”

Elias shrugged with false modesty. His chain jingled. “When I asked them nicely.”

“How did you even know he was dead?” interposed Melanie. “Basira, did you tell him about the—”

“She didn’t have to,” said Elias, raising his voice to cut Melanie’s off. “Nothing escapes my notice, and I like to keep an eye out for this sort of thing.”

“Well—it’s—good to see you.” Tim’s voice. Unconvincing, even then.

Jon steeled himself to hear his own voice stammer out, “Yes—y-yes!” but heard nothing except the hissing of the… tape. Yes, that was the wrong tape—the one from his birthday.

“Anyway. Somebody mentioned cake.” Elias jingled as he arranged his hands under his chin.

Tim scoffed. “They didn’t serve cake at my funeral.”

“I preferred going out for ice cream anyway,” pronounced Martin, his arms crossed and his nose in the air. Jon pushed himself up on shaking hands. Find Martin.

They had gone for ice cream at John O’Groats before the change, while living at Daisy’s safehouse. Martin had apologized on behalf of the kiosk for its measly selection—no rum and raisin. Jon pronounced a playful “Urgh,” assuming Martin had cited this flavor as a joke. “I think I’ll manage without that particular abomination.”

“Wait, what? Why did you order it at my birthday party then?”

Jon stood still with his ice cream cone, squinted into space, and blinked. “I did?”

“My first birthday in the Archives, yeah!”

“Huh. That’s… odd.” Martin placed a gentle hand on Jon’s back to remind him to resume walking. “I suppose I must have been—huh. Yes,” he mused, nodding slowly as his hypothesis came into focus between his eyes and the ground. “I must still have thought I was tired of all the good flavors at that point.”

He heard Martin scoff a few steps ahead of him. “What, and now you’re happy with plain old vanilla?” Then he heard arrhythmic footsteps thumping toward him from Martin’s direction; he looked up to find Martin reaching his napkin-draped free hand out toward Jon’s ice cream cone. “You’re dripping again,” he explained.

Jon mumbled thanks and shrugged a laugh. “I-I’ve, uh. Come back around on most of them.”

“Except rum and raisin?”

“No—I’ve come around on it, too, just, uh.” He tried to make the shape of a wheel with his ice-cream-cone-laden hand. It flicked drips of vanilla across his shirt. Martin came at him with the napkin again. “Thank you. I just disliked that one to start with.”

“…Right. Okay, so what revolution occurred in your life before the Archives that overturned all your opinions on ice cream flavors?”

So Jon had told Martin about that summer when his jaw kept subluxing. He’d used that word, assuming Martin was familiar with it already—incorrect, as he knew now. Presumably Martin had gathered from context that Jon meant he’d hurt his jaw, in some small-scale, no-big-deal way whose specifics he’d let slide as an unimportant detail. But then as the anecdote wore on he must have begun to feel the hole in his knowledge. And lo, at last Martin had invoked that dread specter the clarifying question.

“Okay but so your grandmother had no problem with you basically living off ice cream all summer?”

“Well, she did when I could chew. But not when it was that or tinned soup.”

“Ah—right. ‘Cause you hurt your… jaw, you said?” Jon nodded. “What happened exactly?”

“Oh. Uh. Happened? Nothing, just my—I was born, I guess. Just part of my genetic condition; I happened to get it especially bad in the jaw that year. I-it’s much better now, though,” he hastened to add when he noticed Martin’s frown.

“What genetic condition? You never told me you had one.”

“Didn’t I?”

At the time, the anger in Martin’s answering scoff had surprised him. “No, Jon, you never said.”

“Oh. Sorry? I—I mean, you’ve seen me with this for years—I just?—thought you knew.”

“Seen you with—what, the cane, you mean? I thought that was Prentiss!”

Jon glanced to the doorway to double-check that was where he’d left his cane.

“What? No,” he had mused. “Of course not. I’ve had this since….”

“But you never used it.”

“No—surely, I—”

“Not once before Prentiss.”

Even as he’d said the words, Jon’s memory of that time had returned to him and he’d known Martin was right. Before Prentiss attacked the Institute he’d brought his cane with him to work in the Archives every day, and every day left it folded up in his bag. All out of an obscure notion that if he’d used it before Elias and before his coworkers, they’d take it as a plea for mercy, an admission of weakness or incompetence. God, he was naïve back then. He’d used the cane often enough back in Research; why hadn’t he worried Tim and Sasha would find its new absence conspicuous? That they’d worry just as much about his refusal to use it? The whole thing seemed even more stupid, too, now that he knew Elias must have noticed the change. How it must have pleased him, to see his shiny new Archivist so obsessed with proving he was fit for the job.

“Yeah but,” Jon pursued, instead of voicing any of this, “Tim never—?”

Martin nodded and shrugged. “I don’t know; I figured Tim didn’t get them in the legs as much as you did. I didn’t see you guys after the attack, remember? Not ‘til you got out of quarantine.”

“Right, no, of course you didn’t. I’m sorry,” said Jon mechanically, already consumed with the question he asked next. “Martin—did you think it was the corkscrew?”

From Martin’s sigh Jon figured he’d been expecting this question. “Kinda? At first, yeah. Half for real, half just—you know, as a habit? Like, ‘Look, a way to blame yourself!’” He splayed out his hands, rolled his eyes.

“Yes—I do that too.” Jon barely got the words out above a whisper; he couldn’t not smile, but fought to keep it from showing teeth. A muscle under his chin spasmed with the effort.

“But then I noticed you switching sides with it a lot, so, yeah. I knew it couldn’t be just that.”

“Really?” He waited for Martin’s answering shrug. “You’re the first person who’s ever noticed that. Or at least commented on it.”

“Sorry?”

“No—it’s.”

This attempt to communicate a similar sentiment, Jon recalled as he reached for his shoes, hadn’t gone as well as the one a few days later (over unseen horror &c.). Beholding had at that moment presented him with the image of a fat, hunched woman in shorts. She shuffled forward a few steps in a queue at Boots, next to him, and shifted her weight so the cane in her right hand supported her nearer leg. He felt a strong impulse he knew wasn’t his own—one born partly of resentment, part exasperation, part concern—to tell the woman that was bad for her shoulder, that she should switch hands too. But knew if he tried she’d either pretend she hadn’t heard it, or tell him off for criticizing her. Jon didn’t know what she would say more specifically; the Eye didn’t do hypotheticals. It had given him no more than this single moment of preverbal intuition. After the change he could have sought out other conversations Martin had had with his mother, and they might have given him a pretty good idea. But he’d promised Martin not to look at things like that.

He managed to dislodge a finger while tying his shoe. The other shoe he’d pulled off without untying; in a fit of impatience he tried now to shove his foot into it as it was. No good—he got the shoe on, but it just made the other index finger, the one he’d hooked into the back of the shoe behind his heel for leverage, pop off to the side too. Jon was afraid to find out what shape it would end up in if he pulled his finger back out of the shoe like that, so he had to untie it after all, one-handed. Then carefully extract his finger. It sprung back into place as soon as he removed the offending pressure (namely, his heel), but he still whimpered and swore. The corners of his eyes pricked with indignation when he remembered he still had to pee.

In this case, for once, Beholding had told him the important part: that that was why Martin had noticed. Had he noticed Melanie, too, Jon wondered, when she got back from India? She would switch hands sometimes, too—but, of course, without switching legs. He wondered if that had picked at the same unacknowledged nerve of Martin’s that his mother’s habit had. It had bothered Jon, too, but in a different way. He’d resented it a little, but also felt humbled by it, the way he always did by others’ discomfort. Getting shot in the leg seemed so big? Like such an aberration. So uncontroversially important—probably because it was simple, legible. Georgie could convey its hugeness to him in three words. She got shot. Obviously there was more to the story than that; there were parts he could never…

Well, no. There was a part of it he felt he should say he could never understand: that she’d kept the cursed bullet because she wanted it. In fact he was pretty sure he did understand that. But he didn’t have the right to admit it, he didn’t think. And no reason to hope she would believe him if he did. The second he’d learnt the bullet was still in there, after all, he and Basira had rushed to dig it out. Surely, from her perspective that could only mean he didn’t and could never understand. Or maybe he just wanted her to see it that way—wanted her to get to keep that uncomplicated resentment of his ignorance. It made his perspective look stupid and ugly, sure. But the truth made it look self-absorbed and pitiful. The truth was that until Daisy insisted otherwise, he’d assumed only he could see his own corruption and assent to it: that the others must not have known what they were doing.

Then again, maybe even if Melanie knew that, she would see only that he had underestimated her. Maybe it didn’t matter how much she knew.

Melanie switched off which hand she held her white cane with now, too. But that was probably healthy? Jon knew no more than the average person about white-cane hygiene. He just remembered feeling the floor drop out of his stomach when they’d got coffee together during his time in hiding and he had seen her switch her original, silver cane from hand to hand. Part of him had wanted to scoff or rationalize it away. How much could the shot leg hurt, really, if she still noticed when her arms got tired? But another part of him shuddered at the thought one arm alone couldn’t compensate for the weight her leg refused to take—that she had to keep switching off when one arm got weak and shaky from supporting more weight than it should have to. It wasn’t that he hadn’t experienced pain or impairment on that scale. He had, though the thought of a single injury sufficing to cause it still made him feel cold inside. It was that he kept seeing proofs, all over, everywhere, that the parts of his life he’d only learnt to accept by assuming they were rare weren’t rare.

Leitner hadn’t made the evil books; he’d just noticed they were there. And then had his life ruined by their influence, like everyone who came across them. Jon had had no time and no right to deplore the holes Prentiss had left in him and Tim, because on the same damn day he learnt someone had shot the previous Archivist to death. Alright, so it was him, then, right? Him and Tim—just doomed, just preternaturally unlucky. Tim, handsome face half-eaten by worms, estranged (as Jon then assumed) from a brother who seemed so warm and accepting in that picture on his lock screen; Jon, saved from Mr. Spider only by his childhood bully, now fated to take the place of another murder victim—and also half-eaten by worms. But no; he and Tim had got off lightly. Look what had happened to Sasha the same fucking night. The very thing whose influence convinced him the world had it out for him? Had killed Sasha. Literally stolen her life. How many lives around him got stolen while he mourned his own?

“I want you to comment on it,” Jon had managed to clarify. But Martin had scoffed as he stood in the foyer of Daisy’s safehouse, hopping on one foot to pull off the other shoe:

“Yeah, well. You haven’t exactly led by example on that one.”

“How could I?”

He accepted Jon’s scarf and long-discarded jacket, hanging them up beside his own. “Gee, I don’t know—commenting on it yourself?”

“On… switching which side I used the cane on.”

“Don’t play dumb, Jon. On this ‘genetic condition’” (in a deep, posh voice, with a stodgy frown and fluttering eyelashes) “you’ve apparently had this entire time. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“I thought you knew, Martin! Why would I mention it in a childhood anecdote if I didn’t think...?”

“Well I didn’t know, okay? You never told me. You never tell anyone anything about what’s going on with you, you just—you just make everything into another heroic cross to bear.”

“That’s not—?” He wanted to tell Martin just how little that made him want to say about it. But he guessed Martin was really talking less about the EDS thing, more about how he’d spent their whole first year in the Archives pretending to dismiss the statements that scared him. How he’d sent Tim and Martin home when he’d found out about Sasha. How he’d stayed away from the Institute even after his name got cleared for Leitner’s murder. “What do you want to know.”

“Why you never—?” In a similar way, Martin seemed to reconsider his initial response. “Yeah, okay, right. Object-level stuff, yeah?” Jon nodded and wanly smiled. “Okay, so. What’s it called?”

After taking a minute to ditch his shoes, wash the sticky ice-cream residue off his hands, and drink some water, he’d sat down on the couch with Martin and told him its name, what it was, what it did. What does that mean, though, Martin kept asking, so he’d explained how it applied to the anecdote about his jaw. Martin asked why it meant he needed a cane.

“Be…cause all my joints are like that.”

“Yeah, but why does it help with that? What is the cane actually for, is what I’m asking.”

Jon hated being asked that question. “It—it means I don’t fall over when one of my joints stops working? A-and… also makes walking hurt less. I suppose.”

“So, when they’re working right, that’s when you don’t need it?”

“No—yes?—sort of. Now sometimes I just need it when it’s been too long since I had a statement. I get sort of. Weak.” Quickly Jon added, “But I don’t need it for stability so much since the coma.” He’d shown Martin how now, when he pulled out his finger, the Eye would just sort of erase that version of reality—how the dislocation wouldn’t snap back, but simply cease to exist. As if his body were a drawing on which the Beholding had corrected a mistake. He put his palms together behind his back, in the way he’d been told one couldn’t without subluxing both shoulders, and told Martin to watch how the hollows between his shoulder bones vanished. He opened his jaw ‘til it jarred to the side, and told Martin to listen for the static.

But Jon had never shown Martin how these things worked before the coma. Martin had no reference for this kind of thing; he understood only enough to find the sights unsettling. “That’s—no, that’s okay, I’ll”—he stuttered as Jon fumbled with his kneecap in search of a fourth example—“I-I get it. I’ll take your word for it.”

“I just thought.”

“No, I—? I don’t need you to prove it to me, Jon.” (The latter nodded, blushing, trying to smile.) “I get… I’m sorry. I guess I get why it’d feel easier not to say anything if? If you think it’s either that or have to convince people it’s a thing.”

Again Jon nodded. He suspected Martin wasn’t through talking yet. But Martin still wasn’t looking at him, eyes squeezed tight against Jon’s party tricks. So, to show he was listening, Jon said, “Yes. Er—thank you, Martin.”

“I just don’t like it when you hide things from me.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You could at least ask if I want to know about them, yeah?”

Even at the time, Jon had doubted this. If they’d had this conversation after the change, he might have pointed out to Martin that when you mention something the other person has no inkling of, you make them too curious to decline your offer of more information, even if afterward they’ll admit they wish you’d never told them.

“Or ask me if I even recognize what you’re talking about, the next time you start going on about some childhood anecdote where you incidentally had a dislocated jaw. Honestly, would it kill you to start with, ‘Hey, did I ever tell you about x’?”

“No, it wouldn’t. You’re right. I’ll try. What… kinds of things did you—? For the future, I mean. What kinds of things did you want to make sure I tell you about.”

Martin sighed, in that way he did when he thought Jon was going about something all wrong. But after a pause to think, he did ask, “About this, or in general?”

“Either—both—first one, then the other.”

“Okay. I guess… I want to know when you’re hurt, mostly. Like—I can’t believe I even have to say this—that’s kind of important, actually? How am I supposed to know how to behave around you if I never know whether you're secretly in pain or not?”

This seemed weird—both now and at the time. Jon figured he must be missing something. If Martin thought he only needed the cane because of Prentiss then, sure, that might have affected how he imagined Jon’s discomfort to himself, but? Wasn’t the cane itself an admission of pain? Why did Martin think he owed him more than that—that he had owed him more than that at the time, no less? Did he not realize how fucking private that was? What a surrender of privacy the cane represented?

But, no, he reminded himself now; nondisabled people don’t realize that, unless you tell them about it. Repeatedly. Over and over. It only seems obvious to you because you lived it already.

“Er.” At the time he’d just shown Martin his teeth, with the points of his left-side canines joined. Nominally a smile, but more like a show of hiding the grimace beneath than an actual attempt to hide it. “That’s harder than you might think? Technically I’m always….”

“Oh.”

“Sorr—”

“—What do you mean, ‘technically’?”

“I’m—not always aware of it?” He disliked that phrase, in pain—how it implied a discrete and exclusive state. One could not be in Paris and at the same time in London; similarly, most people seemed to assume one could not be in pain and also in a good mood. In raptures. In a transport of laughter. That when one admits to being in pain, one implies that’s the most important thing they’re conscious of.

“Well that doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, I know—‘if a tree falls down in a forest’—blah blah blah.” With a gentle smile to acknowledge he’d picked up this mode of speech from Martin. He turned his wrist in circles so it clicked like an old film reel. “Philosophically speaking, if you’re not aware of pain, you can’t be in it. Maybe ‘technically’ isn’t the right word.”

“Oh yeah ‘cause that’s the angle I want to know about this from.”

Jon sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I just mean, it doesn’t always matter to me.”

“Well it matters to me,” Martin scoffed.

“Yeah—I’m getting that. Is there any way I can explain this that you won’t jump down my throat for?”

Martin sighed, groaned, pulled at his hair a little but made himself stop. (He doesn’t pull it out, Jon knows—he just likes having something to grab onto during awkward conversations. Usually emerges from them looking like a cartoon scientist.) “Okay, yeah,” said Martin. “I get it. I’m sorry too.”

“I mean—when you get a paper cut, that hurts, technically, right?”

“Well yeah, a little, but that’s not the kind of—”

“But just because you notice that hurt doesn’t mean?” He paused to rearrange his words. “You’re not going to remember it later unless someone asks why you’ve got blood on your sleeve.”

“Y—eah. Sure.”

“Is that…?”

“When you’re suffering, then. I want you to tell me that. And—whenever something weird happens? Like, before it stops being weird and you talk to me like I’m stupid for not already knowing about it.”

“What if”—this far into his question, Jon worried it might come off as a smart-alecky, devil’s-advocate thing. So he paused, pretending he needed time to formulate its words. “What if I haven’t decided yet whether it’s weird or not.”

“That in itself is pretty weird, Jon.”

“Fair enough.”

“I want to be part of that conversation. I want you to trust me enough to bounce ideas off me! It’s not like—? I mean why wouldn’t you do that?”

Jon had shrugged and grimaced, hands in his trouser pockets. “Not to worry you?” he’d suggested. But as he bit his lip and shimmied down from the bed Jon knew now that that was the sanitized version—and probably, if you’d asked him a day before or afterward, his past self would have known that too. Most things you told Martin, he’d either ignore them completely or latch onto them, refuse to let them go, and interpret everything else you said in the light they cast. Jon had learnt not to raise any given topic with him until he was sure he wanted to risk its becoming a long, painful discussion. This was part of why he hadn’t kept his promise, he told himself as he turned their interim bedroom’s doorknob. Why he’d said so little about anything weird that had happened to him at Upton House.

“Martin?”

“Oh hey, Jon—you’re awake.” Martin glanced in his vague direction but stayed bent over his work, so Jon could not meet his eyes.

“You found the screwdriver.”

“Yeah! And a screw that matches better, see?” He fished the first one they'd found out of his pocket and held it up next to the door for comparison. Jon supposed they looked a little different—bright yellowy gold vs. a darker gold. “They were in the library, of all places. There’s a little box full of ‘em that he keeps right next to his reading glasses, apparently. Guess he must break them a lot. How are yours, by the way? Any bits feel loose?”

Dutifully, trying to keep his dazed smile to himself, Jon pulled off his glasses. Folded and unfolded each arm, jiggled the little nose pieces. He shook his head. “Don’t think so. You can have a look yourself though, if you like.”

“Remind me later. Should’ve brought the whole box, probably,” Martin said, voice strained as he twisted the screw that last little bit. “There!” His open mouth broadened into a smile. “Time to see if it worked. You wanna do the honors?”

Jon shook his head, breathed a laugh through his nose. “You should do it. You’re the reason it’s fixed.”

“I mean, yeah,” shrugged Martin as his hand closed round the doorknob, “but I’m also the reason it broke.” It opened with a click. “Ha-ha! Success! Statements—our own clothes—our own bed! Er. Ish.”

Something tugged in Jon’s chest; he’d forgot the statements were why Martin thought this quest so urgent. He lingered at the side of the bed while Martin rummaged in his backpack, remembering for once to toe his first shoe off while standing.

“Man. Looks sorta underwhelming now, after the other room, huh?”

“Least our wallpaper’s better.”

“Tsshhyeah, and our view.”

Jon didn’t turn around, but surmised Martin must be looking out at that tree he liked. “Is it four already?”

“Uhh—nearly, yeah. You were out for a while; took me ages to find that damn thing. Here you go,” announced Martin as he slapped a zip-loc bag full of statement down on the bed.

(“So they won’t get water damage,” he had answered a few days ago, when Jon asked him why he’d individually wrapped each statement like snacks in a bagged lunch. “What? It’s not like we have to worry about landfills anymore. If I put them all in the same bag, you’d take one out and not be able to get it back in.”)

“What happened to my jacket, by the way? And yours?”

“Uhhh.”

“Right, okay,” Martin laughed; “I’ll go get them before I forget. I’ll put this away too, I guess” (meaning the screwdriver still in his hand). “Don’t wait for me, yeah? I don’t mind missing the trailers.”

Jon smiled. “Sure.”

As Martin hurried off, Jon sat down to untie and pull off his other shoe, threaded the lace back through the final eyelet from which it’d come loose, picked up the first shoe and untied that one, then stood up and set them by the door next to his cane. Both hips and all ten fingers behaved themselves throughout. As he walked by the vanity he grabbed the coins he’d removed to do laundry the other day and stuck them back in his trouser pocket. Useless, of course, but he’d missed having something to fidget with. He squatted down and peered under the vanity for the hair tie he’d dropped, for the fifth or sixth time since he’d misplaced it. Didn’t find it. That was fine; he had another one around his wrist. His knees felt weak, so instead of standing back up he crab-walked to the foot of the bed and sat down with his back against it. Straightened his legs out before him on the floor. Then he dug the coins from his pocket and counted them. Yup—still 74p.

Danika! Not Daniela—Danika Gelsthorpe. God, he would never forget one of their names out there. Never underestimate how much I care for the

“I'm back. What’s down there? Did you find the screw?” asked Martin as he hung their jackets up behind the door.

Jon shook his head. “Forgot about it. I was looking for that hair tie.”

“Well you’re on your own there; I’m done finding things today. The screw can wait,” Martin laughed—“he’s got a whole bag inside that box in the library. Do you need a hand getting up?”

He let Martin help him. Both knees cracked; the world’s edges went dark for a second. “Thank you,” he said, and it came out more peremptory than he’d meant it.

“Statement time?”

“Right. You don’t mind? I can wait ’til we’ve both had a rest, if you don’t want to be in the room while I.”

“No, I’m alright; I’ll stay here.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you hated statements.”

Martin shrugged. “Not these ones so much, now that. Heh—they’re almost nostalgic, if I’m honest. ‘Can it be real? I think I’ve seen a monster!’”

“They are a bit,” agreed Jon, looking down at the plastic-sleeved statement and making himself smile.

“Go on. Seeing you feel better will make me feel better too.”

That made it a bit easier to motivate himself, Jon supposed. From the moment he’d lain down on the bed he’d felt like he was floating on gentle waves—like if he let himself listen to them he could fall asleep in seconds. But that wouldn’t make Martin feel better. And no guarantee it would him, either, once he woke up again. He rearranged the pillows behind himself so he’d have to sit up a little; this might help keep him awake, and it meant he could rest his elbows on the bed while he held up the statement, rather than having to lift them up before his eyes. It made his neck sore, a bit, this angle, but that was fine. That might help keep him awake, too.

He sighed, readying himself for speech. Then heard a click, and felt a familiar buzz and weight against his stomach. The tape recorder had manifested inside his hoodie’s kangaroo pocket.

“Statement of Miranda Lautz, regarding, er… a botched home-repair job. Heh. Seems appropriate. Original statement given March twenty-sixth, 2004. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.”

[Image ID: A digital painting of Jon and Martin on an old-fashioned canopy bed with white sheets and orange drapes. Jon sits on the near side of the bed, reading a paper statement. He frowns slightly, looking down at the statement in his hands; he wears round glasses perched low on his nose. He’s a thin man, with medium brown skin dotted by scars left from the worms, and another scar on his neck from Daisy's knife. His hair is long and curly, gray and white hairs among the black. Jon sits supported by pillows—several big, white, lace-trimmed ones behind his back, and one under his knees. His right leg is slightly crossed over his left ankle, on which a clean white bandage peeks out beneath his cuffed, dark green trousers. He wears an oversized red hoodie and red-toed brown socks. Sat on the far side of the bed, next to Jon but facing away from both him and the viewer, is Martin—a tall and fat white man with short, curly, reddish brown hair and a short beard. He has glasses and is wearing a dark blue jumper and gray-brown trousers. Past the bed on Martin’s side, the bedroom door hangs ajar; in this light, it and the wall glow bluish green. On the near side, though, the light grows warmer, the orange canopy behind Jon casting pink and brown tints onto the white pillows and sheets. End ID.]

It seemed to be a Corruption statement, or maybe the Spiral. Possibly the Buried? A leak in Ms. Lautz’s roof caused a pill-shaped bulge to appear in her kitchen ceiling, about the size of a bread loaf. Water burst from it like pus from an abscess (as she described it. Nothing else Fleshy though, so far). Ms. Lautz repaired the hole in her ceiling, but every morning a new one reappeared somewhere else. Sometimes they appeared bulging and pill-shaped like the first one; other times she found them already burst, covering the room in water shot through with dark specks like coffee grounds.

Jon wished he’d refilled his empty water glass before starting to record. His mouth was so dry that every time he pronounced an L his tongue stuck to its roof. At this point he’d welcome a hole to burst in it and flood his mouth with water. Then again, he did still have to pee.

Eventually she and her spouse hired someone to find out what was wrong with the roof. She described hearing boots tramping around up there for half a day while they checked out all the spots where she and Alex had reported leaks. The inside of Jon’s trouser leg pulled at the bandage on his shin, making it itch. The repair men told Ms. Lautz it’d be safer and barely any more expensive to replace the whole thing. The ring and little fingers of Jon’s left hand were starting to go numb from having that elbow too long pressed against the bed. Miranda and Alex thanked the roof people and sent them off, saying they’d think it over.

He began to regret crossing his legs this way. He’d balanced his right heel in the hollow between his left foot’s ankle and instep, and in the time since he’d arranged them that way gravity had slowly pushed his foot more and more to the side, widening that gap. By this time he was sure it was hyperextended—possibly subluxed? It hurt already, and, he knew, would hurt more when he tried to move it. This rather ruined his fantasy of heading straight for the toilet when he finished reading.

Martin was right; these old statements seemed positively tame, now. He knew he owed it to Ms. Lautz to engage with her fate, but?

No. No buts. Whatever hell she lived in now, it looked just like the one she was about to describe for him, only worse. You can’t even pretend you’re sorry she’s living out her worst fear if you stop in the middle of reading that fear’s origin story. Never underestimate how much I

Once the repair men had left, Miranda Lautz wandered into her kitchen for lunch. She found her ceiling bulging halfway to the floor, with the impression of a face and two twisted arms at its center. Like someone had fallen through her roof, head first. Jon’s stiff neck twinged in sympathy. Miranda screamed and strode to the other side of the house in search of beer, figuring she'd find better answers at the bottom of a bottle than in her own head. When she got back to the kitchen with them, the beer bottles didn’t know what to do either, but said—

“God damn it. Not ‘ales’—‘Alex’. Obviously.”

He let the statement’s pages flop over the back of his hand, let his head tip backward until the top of it bumped against headboard and his eyes faced the ceiling. That settled it, then, didn’t it. If he had the Ceaseless Watcher looking through his eyes, he wouldn’t make a mistake like that—and he certainly couldn’t change position while recording. On top of his more substantial regrets, Jon had spent their whole odyssey before they came to Upton House ruing that he’d sat at the dining-room table to read Magnus’s statement, rather than on the couch or the bed. The chairs at that table had plain, flat wood seats—no cushion, no contouring for the shape of an arse. When he opened the door to the changed world, the cataclysm had preserved his bodily sensations at that moment like a mosquito in amber. He’d had a sore tailbone and pins and needles down his legs for untold eons. Right up until he and Martin crossed from the Necropolis onto the grounds protected by Salesa’s camera, where his tailbone faded out of awareness and his head filled up with cotton.

“Ohhh. ‘Alex’. Okay, that makes a lot more sense,” laughed Martin meanwhile. Jon could feel Martin’s shoulder bouncing against his. “She must’ve written it in cursive, huh.”

“I can’t do this right now, Martin.”

“Oh—okay, yeah. You rest; I’ll finish it for you.”

Jon closed his eyes and let air gush out from his nostrils. But you hate the statements, he knew he should say. Wouldn’t this make it easier, though? To let Martin have out this last bit of denial first?

The tape recorder in his pocket still hissed, still warmed and weighted down his stomach like a meal.

“Thank you,” he said.

The operator on the phone said she and Alex should wait for the ambulance to arrive, rather than try to free the man in the ceiling by themselves. Jon turned his neck back and forth, hoping Martin couldn’t hear its joints’ snap/crackle/pop. He picked his elbow up off the bed and shook out his hand. But when the paramedics cut the ceiling open, only a torrent of water gushed into their kitchen—water flecked with a great deal of what looked like coffee grounds. A day or two later the roof people called, to ask if they’d decided whether to have the roof repaired or replaced. They assured her none of their employees had gone missing. At the time of writing, Miranda and Alex still hadn’t decided what to do about the roof. A week ago, they’d found a squirrel-shaped bulge in their bedroom ceiling; they’d packed their bags and come to stay with Alex’s sister in London.

“Right! That wasn’t so bad.” Martin set the statement down and stretched his arms over his head. “Huh.”

“Hm?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just—it’s been a while. Thought it might feel, I don’t know, worse than that? Or better, I guess, since the Eye’s so ‘fond’ of me now.”

“I don’t think they work here.”

“What?”

“The statements. The Eye can’t see their fear.”

“Oh.” Jon could feel Martin deflating. He let himself avalanche over to fill the space. “You don’t feel better, do you.”

“No.”

“Maybe it’s just—slower here, like it’s taking a while to load or something. Remember how long the tape recorder took to come on last time? It was like—you were like— ‘“Statement of Blankety Blank, regarding an encounter with”—Oh, right,’ click.”

That was true. The tapes had known Salesa would give a statement before it happened, but with these paper ones they’d seemed slow on the uptake. Martin had also sworn the recorder that manifested to tape Mr. Andrade’s statement was a different machine than the one Salesa’d spotted that first morning. Jon wondered which machine the one in his pocket was.

Not relevant, he decided. He shook his head in his palm, stroking the lids of his closed eyes. “No—if they worked here I wouldn’t be able to stop in the middle of one.” As soon as he said it he winced, bracing himself for argument.

After the change he remembered wailing to Martin about how he couldn’t stop reading Magnus’s statement—how its words had possessed his whole body, forced him to do the worst thing any person ever had, and forced him to like it, to feel Magnus’s triumph as they both opened the door. Martin had pressed Jon’s face into his clavicle, rubbed his nose in the scent of Daisy’s laundry soap, covered the back of Jon’s head with his hands. Tried to interpose what he must then have still called the real world between Jon and what he could see outside. He’d said over and over, I know, and We‘ll be okay. Jon had known that meant he wasn’t listening, and yet still hadn’t been prepared for the argument they had later, when he mentioned in sobriety the same things he’d wailed back then.

“Hang on”—Martin had pleaded—“no, that can’t be true. I’ve been interrupted in the middle of a statement loads of times—and I know you have too.”

“By outside forces, yes, but you can’t decide to stop reading one. Believe me, Martin, I wouldn’t have—”

“Tim did.”

“No, he didn’t—”

“Yes he did! He was gonna do one and then Melanie—”

“No, Martin, I’ve heard the tape you’re talking about. Tim introduced the statement but didn’t actually start—”

“He did so! He read the first bit, and then stopped. ‘My parents never let me have a night light. I was—’”

“‘Always afraid, but they were just’....” Behind his own eyes he’d felt the Eye shudder and throb with gratitude. Just that sort of stubborn, it had seemed to sing, in a bizarre combination of his own voice with Jonah’s with Melanie’s, which doubled down when I screamed or cried about something, instead of actually listening.

“Yeah,” said Martin, forehead wrinkling. “And then he said, ‘This is stupid,’ and stopped.”

“You’re right.”

Jon still had no satisfying answer to that one, and cursed himself for having opened that can of worms back up again. It had been Tim’s first-ever statement, he reminded himself, and maybe Tim had never intended to get even that far. Maybe he’d been waiting for someone to interrupt him, as Melanie eventually did. Even out there, the Eye couldn’t really show him things like that. He could find out what Tim had said—could look it up, as it were—and what he’d thought, but motivation was a bit too murky, multilayered, complicated. It wasn’t real telepathy? The vicarious emotions the Eye gave him access to worked in broad strokes, generalities—just like common or garden empathy. Sure, he could imagine other people’s points of view more vividly, now that he could see through their eyes. But he still had to imagine them to life, based on the clues around him and what emotions those clues stirred in him. It didn’t work well for situations like this; he could hear Melanie’s footsteps and feel Tim’s reluctance to read a statement, but that was it. Enough to concoct plausible explanations; not enough to pick out the truth from a list of them. Plausibilities were too much like hypotheticals.

In the timelessness since that argument with Martin, though, Jon had also wondered whether it mattered if Tim had read the statement before recording it. He didn’t have footage, as it were, of Tim doing so; either the Eye had more copies of the statement’s events than it needed already and so had deleted that one from storage, or, conversely, perhaps it could no longer see versions of it that relied too heavily on the pages Mr. Hatendi had written it on, since Martin had burned those. But Tim’s summary, before he started reading. Blanket, monster, dead friend. It was bad, sure (like the assistants’ summaries always were, a ghost of past Jon interposed). But it sounded like the summary of a man who’d read it with his mind on other things. Inevitable and gruesome end. How he tried to hide; he couldn’t. Not at all like that of someone skimming it for the first time as he spoke. He did rifle through the papers though? So Jon couldn’t be sure. The suspicion ate at his mind, especially here. Could he have kept the world from ending just by—reading Magnus’s statement, before he went to record it? The way he used to way back at the start, before he trusted himself to speak the words perfectly on the first try? You didn’t mean to record it, did you? No, I’m sure you told Melanie and Basira you were just going to

“Guess that makes sense,” Martin said now. “So, you’re still feeling…?”

“Not great?”

“Yeah.”

“I… I feel human, here.”

“Oh wow. That’s—”

Jon told himself to put the hope in Martin’s voice to bed as soon as possible. “I know I’m not—not fully.” He allowed a smile to twitch the corners of his lips, flared his nostrils around an exhale that almost passed as a laugh. “Most humans don’t spontaneously summon tape recorders. Or sleep with their eyes open.”

“Yeah, but still, you don’t think maybe—?”

Again Jon hastened to cut Martin off. “A-and even if I was, it’s. I know that should be a good thing? But—”

At this point Martin interposed, “Should be, yeah! You don’t think it might mean you could—I don’t know, go back to normal? If we stayed here for a while?”

“Maybe? I-I might stop craving the Eye so much, but we’d still have to go back out there eventually, to face Elias, and. To be honest with you, Martin?” He huffed a laugh out, bitterly. “My ‘normal’ wasn’t exactly...”

“Right.” Martin sighed. “So you mean you feel like you used to, as a human. Which was…”

“Not great.”

“Right.”

“I haven’t been very well, here.” Jon shrugged for the excuse to duck his head. He could feel himself blushing, the heat spilling from his face all down both arms. Good thing the tape recorder in his pocket had gone cold.

Next to him, Martin puffed air out of his cheeks. “Yeah, I know.”

“I’m dizzy and confused without the Eye, and it—it can’t fix me here? When I.” He drew in breath, lifted his heel off his ankle and set that leg to the side, letting its foot roll into Martin’s shin. Bit his lip and scrunched his nose in preparation. Flexed the other foot’s toes, trying to isolate the lever in his ankle that would—there. Clunk. Then a noisy exhale: “Jyyrrggh. When that happens,” he choked out, voice strained by both pain and nerves. “It’s like before I became an avatar. I have to fix it myself, and it doesn’t just.” Magically stop hurting, he hoped went without saying; already he could hear Martin sucking air through his teeth. It made Jon’s cheeks itch. “Shouldn’t have let myself get used to a higher standard, I suppose.”

“What? No—of course you should have. Did you think I was gonna say that?”

“No, of course not; I just meant—”

“You deserve to feel healthy, Jon.”

“Do I? Health is clumsy, it’s callous, it, it lets terrible things happen because they don’t feel real—it can’t imagine them properly, can’t understand what they mean….”

“Okay, first of all, ouch.” Jon snarled a laugh at that, without knowing whether Martin meant it as a joke. “Second of all, that is not why you—why the world ended, okay? Especially, ‘cause, you weren’t ‘healthy’ then. You read Elias’s bloody statement because you were starving, remember?”

“Hmrph,” pronounced Jon, to concede he was listening without either confirming or denying the point.

“And thirdly, you’re not ‘callous’ out there? You don’t”—a scoff interrupted his words. “You don’t ‘let things happen because they don’t feel real’—that’s sure not how I remember it. Okay? I remember you crying for—god, I don’t know, days, maybe? Weeks?—about how you could feel everything, and couldn’t stop any of it. That’s the thing we’re hiding from here, Jon, so if you don’t actually feel any healthier here then what even is the point?”

In a voice embarrassment made small Jon managed, “I mean? I’m still kind of having fun.”

“Really? You don’t seem like it—”

“Not today, maybe—”

“Right, yeah, no; spending all day trying to fix a doorknob isn’t exactly—”

“But I don’t want to leave yet. I should still have a few good days left before the distance from the Eye gets too….”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” For a few seconds he tried to think of something better to say, then gave up and told the truth, though in a jocular voice to hide his self-consciousness. “Always was the person who got ill on holiday.”

“Oh, god, of course you were—”

Voice growing higher in pitch, Jon pleaded, “It didn’t usually stop me from enjoying it?”

“What about America?” laughed Martin. “Did you still enjoy that one?”

“Of course not—I got kidnapped.”

“I mean, yeah, but you were pretty used to that too by then, right?”

“God.” Jon sniffed, crunchily, reeling back in the snot he’d laughed out. “Besides. That was a business engagement.”

Martin acknowledged this comment with a quick Psh, as he turned himself around on the bed to face Jon a little more. “Can I trust you to”—he stopped.

“Yes.”

“No, let me—that wasn’t fair; I can’t ask you that yet.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Martin; I didn’t—”

“Of me, I meant, it wasn’t fair.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’ve been ignoring your distress all week because I wanted it not to matter.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it ‘distress,’” pointed out Jon. “Plus, I have been sort of, er. Secretive, about it.”

The exasperation in Martin’s sigh was probably meant for him, not for Jon, the latter reminded himself. “Yeah, but you’re not subtle. I can tell when you’re hiding something. It wasn’t exactly a big leap to figure out what. But I told myself it was temporary, and that you were acting like.”

Jon laughed preemptively. “Yes?”

“Like a little kid in line for a theme-park ride.” Again Jon laughed—less at the comparison itself than at how much Martin winced to hear himself say it. “I’m sorry. I should’ve taken you more seriously.”

“And I should have told you what was going on with me.”

“Yup,” concurred Martin at once.

“I know you hate it when I keep things from you.”

“I do—I hate it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry too.” Martin waved this away like a fly. “I just—you said you think we’ve got a few more days, before it gets too much or whatever.”

“Yes.”

“Can I trust you to tell me when we need to leave?”

Jon tried not to answer too quickly, knowing vaguely that that might sound insincere. “Yes,” he said again, after pausing for a second. “You can trust me.”

“Okay? Don’t try to spare my feelings, or anything like that. Like—don’t just go, ‘Oh, well, he’s having a good time. That’s fine; I don’t have to.’ Yeah? ‘Cause I won’t have a good time if I’m worried you’re secretly suffering.”

This Jon did know; it sent a thrill of recognition down his spine, as he remembered their first day’s ping-pong adventure. “Right. I’ll do my suffering as publicly as possible.”

“Uh huh.” Martin’s arm tightened around Jon’s shoulder. “Just don’t worry about disappointing me? I mean, sure, I like it here, with the whole ‘not being an evil wasteland’ thing, but I’d much rather be out there with you happy than with you than spend one more minute in paradise with her.”

With a smile, Jon replied, “That might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come on. We’ve got a job to do.”

“I suppose we do.”

As they walked on out of the range of Salesa’s camera, Jon glanced backward one more time and thought, Yes, that makes sense—but couldn’t quite recall what he had expected to see. It was like when you look at a clock, and tick Check the time off your mental to-do list, then realize you never internalized what time it was. “Pity,” he mused.

“What?”

“It’s, er, going away. That peace, the safety, the memory of ignorance.”

“That’s… Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Do you remember any of it? W-What Salesa said? Annabelle?”

“Some, I think. It’s, uh… do you mind filling me in?”

“Wait, you need me to tell you something for once?”

“I guess so. It’s, er… it’s gone. Like a dream. What was it like?”

After a pause Martin said, “Nice. It was… it was really nice.”

“Even though Annabelle was there?”

“I mean, yeah, but she didn’t do anything,” shrugged Martin. “Except cook for us. That was weird.”

“She cooked?” Jon watched Martin nod and smile around a wince. “And we let her do that? I let her do that?”

With a scoff Martin answered, “Under duress, yeah.”

“Huh.” Jon twirled his cane in circles, wondering why he’d thought he would need it. “Well, she didn’t poison us, apparently.”

“Nope. And believe me, we had that conversation plenty of times already. Er—maybe just let me put that away for you before you take somebody’s eye out, yeah?”

Jon nodded, folded his cane and handed it to Martin, then made himself laugh. “Was I… a bit neurotic about it.”

“About Annabelle?” Again Jon nodded. “Oh, we both were. We kept switching sides—one day I’d be like, ‘But she’s got four arms, Jon!’ and the next you’d be like—”

“She had four arms?”

“Yup. And six eyes. But your powers didn’t work there, so we thought maybe hers didn’t either? Never did find out for sure. God—you remember the day we got locked out of our room?”

“Er….”

“So that’s a no, then.”

“Sorry.”

Martin’s lips billowed in a sigh. “No, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“So… what happened? Who locked us out? Was it Annabelle?”

“No, no, no one locked us out. It was just me, I uh—I sorta broke the doorknob? God, it was awful. Went to open it and the whole thing just came off in my hand, like” (he made the motion of turning a doorknob in empty air, and imitated the sound Jon figured it must have made coming off) “krrruk-krr.” Jon fondly laughed; he could imagine Martin’s horror at breaking something in a historic mansion. “It was just one screw that came loose, though, so you’d think, easy fix, right? Except the bloody screwdriver took forever to find. Turns out Salesa kept them in the library, of all places.”

“S-sorry—what does this have to do with Annabelle?”

“Oh—nothing ultimately, just.” Martin grimaced at his own recollection. “God, we had this whole argument over whether to ask her about it, and when I finally did can you guess what she told us?”

“What?” managed Jon; his throat felt small and weak all of a sudden.

Martin put a finger to his chin, and blinked his eyes out of sync. “‘Perhaps he keeps them next to something that breaks a lot,’” he recited, with an inane, self-congratulating smile. For a fraction of a second Jon could recognize it as Annabelle’s I’ve-just-told-a-riddle expression. But the memory faded and he could picture her face only as he’d seen it in pictures before the change.

“O…kay. And was that… true?”

“I mean, yeah, technically. Useless, though. And after we spent so long agonizing over whether it was safe to ask her….”

Jon allowed himself a cynical laugh. “Are you sure she didn’t orchestrate the whole thing?”

“Ugh—no, it wasn’t her. We had this conversation at the time. You made me check for cobwebs and everything.”

“And you… didn’t find any?”

“Of course not, Jon; it was a doorway.”

“Right. Doorway, yes.”

“Are you sure you’re feeling better? You still seem a bit….”

“No, I’m—I feel fine, I just can’t seem to. Retain anything concrete about… where did you say it was? Upton House? God that’s strange, that it would just be….”

Part of Jon felt tempted to deplore it as a waste of space, on the apocalypse’s part. These stretches of empty land were one thing, but a mansion? Couldn’t they at least get a Spiral domain out of it?

“I mean, not really. He told us all about it, remember? With the magic camera?”

“Right, yes,” Jon agreed.

“Well, we got it all on tape, if you want to listen to it later.”

“Yes, that sounds—all of it?”

“Well not the whole week or anything. It just came on whenever it thought it was important, I guess.”

“So not the part about the doorway.”

“Nope.”

“Pity.”

[ne--0n]

🌱,😈,💓 for the ask meme—For Felix/Dali or both if you’re up to it? :3

@billlybutcher

😈 Which disney villain do they stan?

🌱 What aesthetic -core do they emanate, either consciously or unconsciously?

Felix is the perfect mix of crazy uncle who will end up in jail with you and dad Dallas it depends where you meet him, if its on the road he looks like a crazy person with some cult-ish tattoos who gives them silent vibes any other place hes just a bitch boy who likes sm weird shit :)

🕯 What do they sell on etsy?

Felix: taxidermy bugs/spiders/scorpions only the ones who die naturally all framed and pretty (✿◡‿◡) Dallas: probably old dumb tech he fixes, likely consoles and such

💓 Would they be romancable in a dating sim?

Felix used to be but now hes unfuckable and you can thank @vos-videmus and @evilpol for that Dallas ill say no cause this boy is a huge self insert fdgserdrfgfsf

[captaincravatthecapricious]

Mabel AU- The Letters

@haberdashing

Martin is an at home care giver, trying to reach the Grandson of his latest client.

This is basically a rewrite of the first episode of Mabel.  There really aren't many direct quotes, only a couple very short ones, everything else is mine.

Thanks for reading!  If you want more of this AU, let me know, or just let me know if you enjoyed!   Another fic of some sort or other will be posted next week!

ARCHIVIST: Hello, you’ve reached Jonathan Sims.  I’m not here to take your call right now.  Please leave a message after the beep.  Thank you.  

[BEEP]

MARTIN: Hey, Jonathan, right?  My name is Martin Blackwood, and I’m with Kings County Home Help?  I’ve been taking care of your grandmother for the past six months.  I’m her at home carer?  I know I probably shouldn’t have your number, but I wanted to check in with you.  Nothing’s wrong.  Nothing’s wrong.  Gertrude Sims is fine.  Good, actually, for her age.  Sorry, is that insensitive?   In any case, I’d like a call back, if you aren’t too busy.  Right.  Let me apologize for how I got your number.  I know it’s probably unorthodox, probably breeching some privacy agreement or something… 

[SIGH]

[ASIDE]

Don’t tell him that, Christ what is wrong with you?

[TO JON]

Right.  Well I got your number from my coworker, Sasha, who’s friends with Tim, who’s friends with you.  And he apparently hasn’t heard from you in a little, and would like him to call you back.  He told Sash to tell me to tell you that, by the way.  That was the price for your number.  Sorry for that.  I’m sure you have …things.  A life in the real world and not in this distant and lovely house.  

…Sorry, that was… Anyways, give me a call back when you can, yeah?  Thanks.  Bye!

[ASIDE] 

Christ!  What’s wrong with you… catch sight of one pretty photo… SHIT, right, hanging up.  

[BEEP]

[MUFFLED THROUGH A POCKET] 

[QUIETLY SINGING TO HIMSELF OVER THE SOUND OF KITCHEN] 

…Onions in the paaaaaan.  Why aren’t you hot enough yeeeet?  The water sizzledddddd, but it isn’t sizzling noooow.  

[NEGLECTED PHONE SOUND] 

[REALIZING]

OH SHIT.  SORRY.  

[BEEP]

[CLEARS THROAT] 

Hi, Mr. Sims.  It’s me again.  It’s Martin.  I… I’m trying to reach you… again.  …As you probably can tell.  It’s just been three days, and I would really like a call back.  I just realized I didn’t give a number or like, I know you can probably figure out that you can reach me through this number, but I didn’t say it and I didn’t tell you when I was available, and maybe that’s why you haven’t gotten back to me.  At least I hope that’s why.  I… I can’t imagine not calling one of my Mum’s doctors back.  Anyways, my number is [CENSORED] in case you can’t just ring back or something.  Maybe your phone blocks unknow numbers and you haven’t even gotten this.  Maybe I was listed as private and you couldn’t call back.  Maybe you’re very polite and didn’t want to bother me when you didn’t know my schedule.  I’m available from 2-5pm and in the evenings after 9pm.  Or maybe you’ve got phone anxiety.  I know I do, heh.  I’m sweating just leaving you this message.  

Or maybe you’re just busy.  

Or maybe you tried to call, and I just didn’t get it.  The reception isn’t great out here, as …you probably know.  Given you grew up here.  But anyways I have made sure I can get your message even with the dead-phone zones.  It’s all set up.  So… just needing a call back when you can.  Well, not needing.  But… I’d like one.  Thanks.  Bye.  

[BEEP]

Hi.  It’s me …again.  Just… trying to reach you.  Whatever.  

[BEEP] 

Call me back and let me know you aren’t dead in a ditch somewhere, okay?  Sash says Tim is really worried… And… I might be too.  Not that I even know you.  Not really.  So if you aren’t rotting in some hole somewhere, give me a call back, please?

[BEEP]

Where did you go?  

[BEEP]

Hi.  It’s me.  …I’ve heard a lot about you, you know?  Mostly from you Grandmother, Gertrude.  

[ASIDE] 

Christ, Martin.  He knows his grandmother’s name.  

[TO JON]

Right.  Anyhow.  She’s told me a lot of stories, you know?  She’s actually pretty sharp.  Most of the time, anyhow.  Mostly lucid.  I’m not sure if that’s all because of her medicine or what.  I’ve… I help a lot of old people, at the end of their lives.  And well… when I say she’s sharp, I mean that she is sharp comparatively, and also just remarkably so.  Her words are confident, and considered.  She doesn’t waste words, but she doesn’t shy away from telling stories.  (I’m sure it’s just because she has no one else to talk to.  Not even you.)  But… you’ve stopped feeling like a real person on the other end of the line.  That’s part of why I wanted to call?  I guess?  The longer that it’s been since my first message, the more I doubt myself for calling, and why I called.  Sorry, then, for wasting your time.  Thinking of you more like a book character, than someone with feelings and thoughts and a life.  Someone who I know too much about for us to be casual strangers, even if I am a complete stranger to you.  It just feels like a weird imbalance, you know?  

Also… it’s a bit lonely out here, you know?  Gertrude has a lot of old photographs of you.  None of them are recent.  And I know it isn’t my business, but… never mind.  It isn’t my business… and I get it.  

But… she still has your photos up.  It’s my job to dust them.  So, every week or so, I get a really good look at them.  There’s one of you on the tire swing out back… it’s still back there, you know?  You have mud all over your dungarees.  And in your hair.  Then there’s one… you look about 7?  Your hair is in pig tails, and you are scowling at something off to your right.  I don’t know what it is, and I know I shouldn’t find that kind of adorable, but I do.  And there’s one of you in uni.  You’re flipping off the camera and your hair is short and you’re wearing eyeliner.  You look some odd combination of pissed off and like you’re having the time of your life.  

[ASIDE]

And really, really, really hot.  Christ, Martin, keep it together.  You are literally on the phone with him, and you haven’t even talked to him.  Jesus!

[TO JON]

I.. wish I could have known you then.  That’s the oldest you look in these.  Most of these are pictures of you when you were little.  Mostly just you.  A few of your dad when he was young, and one of your parents.  She’s pregnant, and it’s sunset.  They look so …happy.  Christ, I’m sorry about what happened to them.  I… I didn’t really know my dad either.  

Sorry.  This isn’t about me.  

I’m calling because this place is… spooky.  Spooky like a dark fairy tale.  

Everything here is a bit… magical and creepy.  

This house is old.  Like a museum.  Dusty boxes in the attic, full of treasures and dust the relics of the past, like the Long past.  Not just the past of one lifetime.  The garden is overgrown, despite my best efforts.  Sometimes, Gertrude comes out and helps me garden.  Usually in her chair.  Mostly I just wheel here out so she can get some sun while I work.  That’s where I hear most of the stories about you.  

It’s overgrown with twisting vines and the most beautiful roses I have ever seen, with scary-long thorns.  

I feel like I’ve walked into the setting for a classic.  Like Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, or hell, even Tolkien.  Or even Grimm’s fairytales.  The original, dark ones.  

It’s… unsettling.  Especially when it’s foggy out.  

The rest of the hills disappear into the fog and the condensation clings to the flowers, desaturated with the thickness of the moisture in the air, and the everything is coated in the most delicate, perfect little water droplets.  

Anyhow.  The reason I’m really calling… are the letters.  

I was helping Gertrude move some things up to the attic.  She’s one of the practical sorts of old people.  She isn’t afraid of her death.  She wants everything to be easy on you, you know?  Make sure you don’t have to go through too much stuff when she passes on.  I’ve lived with a lot of people through their deaths.  It’s nice… making sure no one dies alone.  Making sure they are comfortable.  Making it as painless as possible.  

[ASIDE]

Lord knows my efforts were never good enough for my mother… but if I can help other people…

[TO JON]

I know it’s a little morbid.  But I like it.  I feel… useful.  I’m good at it.  I’m good at keeping up conversations, and at cooking, and cleaning, and providing medical assistance, as needed.  Not that I’m an actual doctor, but I, you know, do have a lot of training.  

Anyway.  The letters.  I was helping her move some stuff into the attic, and bringing down some older boxes so she could go through them and decide what she was ready to toss, when I found them.  This box full of letters.  Hundreds of them.  All unopened.  Sealed with a kiss.  Lipstick red.  Red as dying embers.  Stamped returned to sender.  Slightly scorched around the edges.  Tied in bundles.  Identical envelops.  Identical loose, looping cursive.  All from someone named Agnes?  All addressed to Gertrude.  

That would be fine, I guess?  

But she screamed when she opened it.  An inhuman sound.  

Like the sound was ripped from her.  

And, I have never cared for a more grounded person.  I have never seen her anything but… well not completely calm all the time, but mostly calm, you know?  I’ve seen her sharp, I’ve seen her annoyed.   Heh, half the time it looks like she wants to judge me, but then doesn’t… if that makes sense?  Mostly she looks… like she knows so much more than I do and that she is calm in her knowledge?  I’ve seen so much as a carer.  There isn’t much that rattles me.  Not death, not illness, not panic, but… but this was different.  

After that… she was shaken badly.  Screamed for what seemed like hours, then just stared at me and said “I’m going into the ground for you.”  I… I couldn’t calm her down.  Not until late evening, and I didn’t even have a break because the relief carer was off sick.  

I finally got her to bed, and… I had to take another look.  That’s when I got a good look at the envelopes.  I… I want to open them.  I haven’t.  I know I shouldn’t…. but…. I want to know what could have shaken her that badly?  Someone that stable and grounded, you know?  

Heh, maybe you could call me back and make sure I don’t do something stupid.  And ya know, let me know that you aren’t’ dead in a ditch.  Tim’s started texting me directly now!  He’s… he’s really worried about you.  

Anyhow, I just need to know-

[BEEP]

[CONTINUED BEEPING]

AUTOMATED VOICE: The voicemail inbox for [Jonathan Sims] is full. Please call again later. 

[DIAL TONE] 

[libralita]

So, I played the Jumin DLC and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. (Spoilers)

Granted, my expectations were very low and I was sure I was going to hate it but the fact that I kind of enjoyed it was a plus.

So, I was very skeptical at the announcement of this DLC. I generally don’t like experiencing bad endings. Mostly because it requires me being a jerk to the characters I like so, I don’t really want to play that. While it was cool that Jumin was getting more content, I was less than thrilled  that it would be on content that I didn’t want to see.

First the art, except for the CG that was in the promotional material (why use the WORST CG to promote a DLC? Don’t know!) the art is decent. The only weird thing I noticed is that Jumin’s sprite is more blurry than Carolyn’s. I assume it’s because this is because they use the same old sprites from years ago and Carolyn’s is a new sprite. The basement background was a little lacking. Like it’s supposed to be filled with toys and yet there’s very few. The outside and inside of the family home was good. MC’s bedroom with 10/10. I liked that bedroom, I may build it in the sims.

Now onto the story, it started off very cringey. The options were either reject Jumin or give into his possessiveness. This makes sense because it’s the DLC to the bad ending where Jumin is super possessive. And there’s kind of the inherent problem with this DLC. I couldn’t say exactly how split the Jumin fanbase is between wanting daddy Jumin and uwu Jumin, but that split in the fandom exists. Personally, I’d rather not have the characters display specific interest in kinks because I like to project my own fantasies onto them. I know people like daddy Jumin and to each their own, I haven’t done the route with it’s full context so I can’t judge.

That said …Chertiz did provide at least me with content to make up for the fact that I wasn’t into the premise. The way they did that is exploring his background. We get to see Jumin’s mother both in the present day and in a flashback in all her angsty glory. Hey is it weird that I don’t like the kinky shit but I am living for making Jumin miserable? Probably. On the one hand, I would have liked this in a post good ending where I could encourage Jumin to talk to his mom and work through issues in productive ways (I wrote a fanfic partially getting Jumin to deal with his issues). On the other hand…I do love getting to know Jumin’s relationship with his mom and it is kind of poetic that this topic is somewhat explored when Jumin is so possessive of MC and won’t let her go.

Chertiz is very good at least one thing: making villains being so irredeemable in such a fun way. His mom is the absolute worst and it’s so…perfect. I plan on going back into Jumin’s route to look at it with this new context but man Jumin’s love for magic, him locking up Elizabeth and projecting that urge to run away, people calling him a robot. Oh man, that just has…such a new context to it and implications that I am very excited to explore as a fanfic writer. I am a little bit disappointed that Carolyn was lying about her terminal illness. While it was funny and added to how much I hated this bitch, it was a little too tongue and cheek for me.

One last thing I’ll cover is the cameos all the main characters (minus V, Saeran, and Rika). I didn’t like Jaehee’s interaction, mostly because my choices were to either be a bitch to her or not get one of the endings. Yoosung and Zen’s gave me concerned feelings because of Jumin’s possessiveness but I did enjoy seeing MC’s interactions with them. Seven’s made me sad because Carolyn was in it. I wonder why MC was able to see those memories. I am going to have go back and see if it’s hinted that MC is seeing the flashback dreams that Jumin has as well. That might be an interesting detail.

Overall, while I wish I could have experienced this DLC story in a post good ending setting, I think it was better than expected. And I will be able to write a lot with this material. So…I enjoyed it.

[beholdme]

All the Many Shades of Gerry - Chapter 14

Chapters: 14/19

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist

Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Gertrude Robinson, Elias Bouchard

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Library AU, Librarian Jon, Artist Gerry, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood, Canon Asexual Character, Asexual Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Ace Subtype - Sex Positive, Polyamory, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Fluff, Falling In Love, Boys in Skirts, Kissing, Demisexual Gerard Keay, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Canon-Typical Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Flirting, Minor Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Adventures in Hair Dying, Happy Ending, Banter, Gerry has a lot of sass, Gerard Keay is Morticia Adams, Jon is a very grumpy Librarian, Martin adores them anyway.

Summary: In which Gerry is a kaleidoscope and Jon and Martin can’t help falling in love with him.

He happens to love them back.

Find it on Ao3

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

One night, in the middle of a shift, Gerry gets a pounding migraine and goes to the back to have a cigarette. He knows it won't help, but he smokes it anyway and considers things as he paces the back room.

He's terrible at being sick, and it makes him miserable to be around. Still, the pain makes him ache for his partners, and he can't help picking up the phone to call Jon. It's close to midnight, but Gerry hopes that it won't be the one time Jon has gone to bed at a reasonable hour.

"Hello, Gerard," Jon answers the phone with an ocean of warmth in his voice.

"I miss you." Gerry presses his forehead into the cool window, seeking some sort of relief from the agonizing pressure in his head. He whispers the words like a confession, smokey breath fogging up the glass before him.

"What's wrong my love?" Just Jon's heady, seductive voice provides the emotional support Gerry was seeking, and he wishes he could sink into the words, the feelings behind them, and leave his fracturing body behind for a while.

"Nothing. Not feeling well is all. I just wanted to hear your voice." He sounds pale and washed out, even to himself.

"I'm still at the library, I'll come by and haunt you until your shift is over." Jon makes the offer very casually, although that fussy part of his personality that enjoys mothering Gerry and Martin shines through a bit.

"On a Friday, Jon? You should be home with Martin." He can't help but chuckle at his sweet idiot, even through the pain.

"Martin is out with Sasha and Tim for the evening, remember? I was hoping to stop by and tempt you over to mine tonight anyway." Far from being chastised for his workaholic tendencies, Jon injects all his fond affection into his tone. "Would you be interested in spending the night in a handsome man's bed?"

"Fuck yes. Obviously."

"Oh Gerry, my Gerry." Jon sing-songs into the phone. "Always saying just the right thing to make my heart skip a beat."

Gerry takes a moment to consider his state. He can barely see out of his blurry eyes, and the pounding in his ears makes him feel vaguely underwater. His forceful personality makes it hard for him to admit, but he knows he shouldn't be working like this, and that he'll be much better off with his lover than alone in his own flat.

"I'm going to beg off the rest of my shift, will you come fetch me?" He desperately tries to keep his words easy, but he comes off sounding rather plaintive.

"Yes, Gerry, of course." Jon is frowning audibly now, but he leaves his concern be for the moment. Gerry can hear him moving about, probably packing up his things. "I'm leaving right now, I'll be there soonest. Gerry?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

Gerry squeezes his eyes shut tight. "I love you too, Jon."

*

Jon takes one look at Gerry's drawn, pale face, and calls them a cab.

Gerry doesn't offer even one argument, and a pit of concern opens up in Jon's stomach.

"Do you want to go back to your place, after all?" He asks, sliding his hands up Gerry's arms to rest on his shoulders. "Maybe you'll be more comfortable in your own space."

"No, let's go to yours." Gerry draws their foreheads together, standing out in the cool air of the street. "I like being in your space, with your energy and your things. Besides, how can I resist an invitation to your bed."

"Yes, all the cuddling we've done there must really make your heart skip a beat with lust," Jon responds drily.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Gerry tells him firmly.

The taxi arrives and they climb in. Gerry is several inches taller than Jon, but he manages to scoot down enough to lie draped over the smaller man. Jon notices with some amusement that Gerry has adopted a rather Saturn-like posture, curled around him like an extremely large cat in the limited space.

They arrive at Jon's building and trudge up the several flights of stairs and through his door. Jon drags Gerry firmly by the hand, worried that without the right forward momentum, he'll lay down on the floor and pass out. Jon, under no misunderstanding about his physical prowess, knows that once his lumberjack-shaped boyfriend goes down, he certainly won't be getting him back up.

They go straight to the en-suite, and Gerry strips down to his briefs, Jon encouraging him to wash his face and half-heartedly brush his teeth. Halfway through, Gerry lets out a startled chuckle.

"What?" Jon asks from nearby, changing by his armoire.

"I own three toothbrushes." He tells him in an airy, disconnected tone. "Don't you think that's kinda silly?"

"No, Gerry, what would be silly was if you only had one and you carried it everywhere you went because you weren't sure whose bed you might end up sleeping in that night." And indeed, the multiple toothbrushes solution had originated from them unexpectedly sleeping over at each other's flats with no planning- and no toothbrushes.

Gerry giggles again, and Jon begins to worry about what kind of bizarre migraine he might have. Having suffered through a fair few in his life, he is more used to them presenting like all-consuming misery than like some kind of weird foggy drug trip. Gerry could be unique that way, though.

"I never thought I would have so many bed options that it might be an issue," Gerry whispers, staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Changed into his sleep clothes, Jon goes over to stand behind him and wrap an arm around his waist. It's normally a Gerry or Martin posture, since Jon is smaller than them, but there's a different kind of satisfaction in having Gerry relax and settle into him, sighing with something akin to relief.

He looks at their reflection in the mirror and even with Gerry looking haggard, eyes sunken, 5 o'clock shadow coming in, hair thrown haphazardly into a messy bun, Jon can't help the swell of contentment that fills him. How did he, Jon 'walking disaster waiting to happen’ Sims, manage to get this right?

"Then I suppose it's a good thing my bed has been waiting for you all along," Jon eventually responds. "Come on, let's get you into it."

Gerry allows himself to be tucked in, although he refuses food and is only convinced with great reluctance to take two ibuprofen. His eyes remain stubbornly open, but the moment Jon finishes his own nighttime activities and slips into bed with him, Gerry curls around him, and promptly passes out.

*

The next morning, Gerry sleeps far longer than he normally would, even though he went to sleep several hours before his typical bedtime.

When he surfaces, approaching midday, he's groggy and stiff and feels rather hungover. Gerry thinks maybe a hangover would be better- at least then he would have had a good time to compliment his current misery.

Despite that, as he blinks his eyes open, the strains of gentle piano music drift through the flat, and he can't help the smile that spreads across his face. It’s not particularly loud, and Gerry is incredibly soothed by it. In fact, when he says he likes being at Jon’s flat, this is why. He often sits down to play in the softest moments, if Gerry and Martin are around. Any normal, oft-repeated, potentially boring activity could be made delightful and atmospheric if Jon is sitting at the piano.

Jon had once confessed that he vastly preferred playing when one or both of them were around to hear it.

"At least half of the joy of music is in the audience," Jon had confessed quietly to them one day. "And you two are the best audience of all."

Now, as he wakes gently to the sound of his partner making music, Gerry can’t help but feel special and treasured. Never before in his life had he picked up the phone in a crisis with the complete certainty that there would be a loving voice on the other end. He had not even realized he was lacking such reliability until he had come to be able to depend on it, but now that it exists, he shies away from even the thought that he might lose it again.

He takes a moment to consider the current reality of their relationship. He obviously loves them, has always loved Jon, from the moment he growled at Gerry in the literature section of the library when he was seventeen-years-old. Now Martin fits with them both so well, Gerry wouldn’t know how to breathe without him. They’re it for him, he can see that clearly.

He can see it in the way that pain and illness drove him straight to Jon like true north and the way he managed to care for him through it perfectly.

He can see it in the way that Martin never seems to be less affected by finding Gerry in his bookstore, and the way Gerry’s heart feels hot and heavy in his chest every time Martin finds him still and focused and takes a moment to braid his hair in one way or another.

He can even see it in the way he immediately self-destructed when he thought he was going to lose them, pushing every part of his life into immediate turmoil at the thought of being alone again. Family-less. Without his Jon, and his Martin.

And he can see that he’s it for them too, in the way they clung to him to keep him together when he almost sunk the whole thing.

They are, he can see now, as essential to one another as breathing.

Gerry suddenly wishes that this could be the home that they all share. He wishes that every time one of them came home to him, they never had to leave to do laundry or water plants. He wishes, most of all, that this music could fill his house and his heart every morning, and that he would never again have to wake up trying to remember whose bed he was in - because they all shared the same one.

He hopes, desperately, that one day that will be their reality. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, he’s confident he can convince he’s partners to stick around for good.

Until then, he’s content to be so loved that he needs three toothbrushes.

*

Gerry thinks maybe he drifts off again, because the next thing he knows, Jon is gently kissing his hand to wake him, a cup of tea in his other.

“Hi,” Jon whispers, sitting down on the bed next to him.

“Hey there,” Gerry offers in return, slowly sitting up and leaning back against the headboard. “How are you today?”

Gerry takes the tea and sips it gratefully, finding it sweet and herbal. Camomile, he thinks, but wouldn’t swear his life on it at that moment.

“How bad could I be?” Jon asks, a mischievous glint in his eye, “I have a beautiful boy in my bed and I think I’ll keep him there all day.”

“Does this stunning nocturnal visitor get a say in the matter or…?” Gerry manages to offer a slightly dimmer version of his flirtatious grin.

“Maybe, if he makes it worth my while.” Jon teases, before sobering a little. “How are you though? You seemed in a pretty bad way last night.”

“I think I’m fine now, I guess it was just a fluke.” Gerry stretches, joints popping.

Jon picks up the tea to take a sip.

“It’s not as good as when Martin makes it.” He mutters to himself, grimacing.

Gerry finishes stretching, rather like a cat again, before shifting up onto his knees to hover slightly above Jon, as is his preference. “Maybe, but it’s still my favourite kind of thing because it's something you made for me.”

Jon reaches up, wrapping a hand around Gerry’s neck and pulling his lips down to meet his own. It’s gentle and dragging, and they tangle together enjoyably for several minutes. Gerry pulls away to kiss Jon’s cheeks, his nose, his forehead. Eventually Jon giggles and pushes him away, handing the tea back over in an effort to distract him.

“Do you want anything to eat?” Jon queries.

“Not just yet. Maybe a shower?”

“That sounds like a good plan. You should take it easy today.” Jon pauses, considering his next suggestion. “And maybe I could convince you to take tonight off from the bar too? Then we can all spend the evening together.”

"Yes, I think I could be tempted to do exactly that."

*

Gerry lingers in the shower, letting the water work out his stiffness and lift the fog hanging pervasively over him.

He washes his hair with Jon's shampoo and hopes the scent will linger on him. He decides not to shave, feeling too loose and lazy to handle any sharp objects.

Jon force-feeds him after, and then he braids Gerry's hair to keep it out his face.

"I can't believe you never braided your hair before you met Martin," Jon says as his fingers move through his hair rhythmically.

Gerry shrugs. "There was never anyone to teach me on myself, and my mother was bald for my entire formative life, so I couldn't learn from her."

Jon hums in acknowledgement.

"Speaking of Martin, where is our errant lover?" Gerry asks buoyantly, bouncing slightly.

Jon laughs at him, "Apparently he was out all night and then crashed on Tim's couch. He's going to come over later when he's managed to disinfect himself."

After, they move back to bed to read their books and rest, basking in the simple comfort of each other's presence, waiting for their third.

[sugarandspice-games]

I guess this is becoming a trend... I’m popping in before the actual intro to clarify-- if the text is in italic, it is me (Sugar) talking and regular is Spice. Alright? Cool. And so--

So, one night I’m going through youtube and I come upon this one shitposty video about some random anime that I’ve never even heard of. After doing some research, I discover that it’s actually based on a dating sim that I’ve also never heard of. As a joke I was like “Hey Sugar wanna watch this as a joke, it might be funny” and so we did. And uhm. Well.

Today we’re gonna be reviewing Brothers Conflict, aka Sweet Home Alabama 2: Electric Anime Boogaloo aka the anime that ruined our lives. [Again, disclaimer: neither Sugar nor I condone incest and/or pedophilia, two themes which are uh, very rampant in this anime which is why I cannot recommend it in good faith. It’s not good, don’t get me wrong. I can’t really say that I liked it even if watching it and ragging on it was kind of enjoyable, and I did get attached to some of the characters because that’s the kind of idiot I am. Also, we’re not shirking our duties to write I swear please don’t kill me--] Anyway, an obligatory SPOILER WARNING though this probably isn’t going in the main tag bc I do not want the fans to publicly stone me. Why are we reviewing this? Bc we need to talk about it somewhere. Though I say review lightly bc this... is really more of a critique.

ALSO we only watched the anime, idk if things are different in the game. There is no full english translation for the games and most of the LP channels have been copyright striked, so please don’t come at us for not knowing anything. I also know that otome games and dating sims don’t tend to translate well to anime, and I will be addressing this later.

So, dear god, where do I begin.

Where do we begin indeed? How about the fact that her name is Ema and I had to google to remember the heroine’s name? Also, she is seventeen.

Our plot, or well... what you COULD call a plot, I guess, if you REALLY wanted to give this anime that much credit, focuses on the aforementioned seventeen year old Hinata Ema, who has an absent father who apparently FOUND THE TIME TO FALL IN LOVE AND GET MARRIED BUT NEVER HAS A SECOND TO SPARE FOR HIS ONLY CHILD, RINTARO I SWEAR TO GOD I AM TAKING CUSTODY OF YOUR CHILD. HAND HER OVER-- Anyway. He’s getting married to a woman who has 13 sons (jesus christ ma’am have you ever heard of a condom?) and he decides to move her in with them because... I guess he has less braincells than I have balls, which is to say, zero. Hi, I’m trans.

So, Ema moves in with them... along with her talking grey squirrel, Juli. Juli is... interesting and by interesting, I mean-- ABSOLUTELY PUZZLING. He, apparently, has seen the majority of Ema’s life from babyhood to teenagerhood and can talk but is only understood by Ema (who he calls Chii) and Louis, the eighth son in the Asahina family. It is never explained why, or how Chii came across him or how in an episode, a single episode, he becomes human because why the hell not, I guess??? (Also, he is pretty. YES. I said it. Fight me.) [Quick Spice intervention, this squirrel can talk to people, transform into a human, enter dreams, and live way longer than a squirrel should since the average lifespan of a squirrel is like 6 years in the wild. Juli is apparently a god as none of this is EVER explained.]

And when she meets the Asahina family, it’s pretty much immediately chaos because these heterosexual (I guess? They look like a bunch of twinks to me but there goes anime trying to convince me that straight people are real and not a lie made up by Trump) men have NEVER and I mean NEVER known a woman in their entire lives, since they seem to want to bang their stepsister immediately. And most of them are GROWN ASS ADULTS. Only three of them are actually minors (though Iori is 18 and only one year older so I guess??? It’s okay??? But still weird) and one of them is a 13 year old who looks and acts like he’s 8.

Oh, and did I mention that out of these boys, only the adult triplets and the abusive asshole 16 year old get any kind of characterization AND character development? I mean, Subaru gets an “arc” if you can call it that, but really, they don’t give him much... personality. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout and it’d be the same. I feel bad for him (but not really because dude you are 20 and she is your sister, what the fuck--)

But if there’s anything good about this anime, it is the characters themselves. Several of the boys have redeeming qualities and interesting personalities and quirks, as well as interesting relationships and dynamics with each other. Yes, some of them are lacking in the plotline department while others may have decent plotlines and lack personality, and then some of them are just given absolutely nothing (COUGH Masaomi COUGH Ukyo COUGHCOUGHCOUGH Iori, and by the way, what the fuck is that game plotline bc I read the wiki since I wanted to know more about him. We don’t have time to unpack the mento illness luv. But you’re telling me they had all this meat to work with and they threw it in the trash and gave him nothing? What the hell?) And if anything, I feel as if the characters themselves are crippled by the plotline. If given a different story, perhaps, they may have room to shine, because a lot of them are compelling if not lovable (though some may not be... lovable. COUGHFuuto, at least not for me.) If you want to see our review on the characters, we’ll put out another post.

Iori... Iori has a hell of a plot in the game, according to the Wiki but I can’t blame the writers for not exploring all of it because whoa. It is dark and not in a good way. But back to the subject at hand... I agree with Spice. I do/did like quite a lot of the characters... provided the entire romantic plot is taken away but we will go into more of why the plot is problematic below. All I can really add is: There is a baby in this dumpster and canon has been taken out back to be shot like a lame horse.

This brings me to a point in which I would like to pause the character discussion and bring up a glaring flaw with this anime in general (aside from the... plot. Look, I’m not a huge fan of weird stepsibling stuff but I think that if you want to do something like that, there are ways to do it and ways not to do it. This was the way not to do it, which I’m getting to). The biggest thing that made this anime so uncomfortable was the imbalance of power dynamics. Why is the protagonist 17 when most of the love interests are 18 and older, and I mean much, much older? And she’s not any 17 year old... she’s a lonely, neglected girl who is starved for the love of a family. This makes her easily manipulated by the brothers, who clearly desire her for less than wholesome reasons, and that makes it skeevy. I’m not sure why there’s such a fetishization of nonconsent in media, as if it’s fine for as many men to lust after female protagonists as the writer desires BUT the woman can’t want a single one of them in return. It’s creepy, and quite frankly, I am very much over it. I also get that the age thing is probably a product of the protagonist of a teenager oriented dating sim not translating well to an anime (because really, all otome game MCs are meant to be a neat little pair of shoes for the player to imagine themselves in), but why are we fetishizing a teenager being groomed by adults anyway? Especially adults who have this much power over her to begin with? The power dynamics bring this plot from “Oh, this might be kinda trashy but it could be entertaining” to “This is extremely creepy and rapey and kind of a dumpster fire.”

This is also true. If we were to take age into consideration, Fuuto, Yusuke, and Iori would be the three candidates left for Chii. This is taking out the youngest as well, who is... thirteen, I think? But anyway, (I know I am probably going to get some hate for this but go for it), I am into stories that explore the stepsibling thing and it can make a good narrative-- but before everyone gets uppity: There is a line between FICTION and REALITY and I do not condone real life incest but a story is a story and there are ways to frame it that make it clear that it is not a romantic thing, or acceptable. This anime does not do that in it’s dynamics because some of the brothers do start off in that very firm caregiving, family role and it is a sharp turn into romance that makes you go, “?” or in Fuuto case, a blending that does lean into fetishization.

All in all I think the plot maybe could have been okay? I’m not saying it isn’t problematic, because we all know it is, who are we kidding? But I don’t think it’s wrong per se to explore family dynamics with romance and to understand where the line should be drawn, and maybe exploring the definition of family itself. I have seen fanfictions with similar tropes ask those questions and explore the concept beautifully without romanticizing or fetishizing incest and unhealthy power dynamics. It could have been good, and I get that perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree by expecting mature themes in an anime based on an otome game, but it also could have been a lot less... creepy (I have used that word so much that it looks wrong now) even if it wasn’t the greatest thing ever. But again, what was I expecting? I watched this whole thing as a joke and ended up attached to the characters like a fool... That tends to be a trend here, and this is why we are so salty all the time. So anyway, stay tuned for our review of the characters! We may not cover all of them since some of them don’t really get anything, but we’ll cover what we found interesting.

[tessatechaitea]

Cerebus #11 (1979)

The only weapon you need to provoke a police officer to violence is scorn.

Sorry! The above caption had nothing to do with The Cockroach's first appearance in Cerebus and everything to do with how the Omaha Police arrested peaceful protesters by claiming that they're purpose was to "attack and/or provoke police officers to violence." Also, you can tell they're already spinning and lying by adding the "and/or" so they can imply that the protesters are planning on attacking police. And, well, even if they weren't (and they did say "or"!), their other main plan was to provoke them. But of course everybody whose ability to perceive reality isn't clouded by their incessant need to defend police no matter what understands that police will abuse their power at the drop of an eye roll. They believe any slight disrespect is an excuse for a violent rebuttal. They force physical violence on people whom they have no reason to arrest simply so the person can struggle against the assault, as any normal person would do, and then claim resisting. Police should be confronted by scorn and disrespect at every turn. Only when they learn not to instantly resort to violence and threats will they deserve to not be. Welcome to my comic book and/or police review blog! Deni's "A Note from the Publisher" continues on a theme that I hadn't noticed until just now: every new issue of Cerebus now seems to be a landmark issue! It's an interesting self-promotion take that I have to admit I'd never thought of trying. "Every new Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea review is a landmark review!" You know what else is a landmark? Places & Predators, my Cribbage-based Roller Playing Game! You don't even really need any friends to play it. Just read it like a book and enjoy it! Or play it like a Fighting Fantasy Adventure Book! Use some online Cribbage app! Figure out how to use the crib in ways the online app definitely won't let you! Oh, the reason this is a landmark issue is because more letters came in than normal! It's a hit! Deni also reveals that she'll be making the Cerebus plush toys that were advertised in previous issues and at half the price! So kudos for stealing that job from the person who originally made them! It probably wasn't anything so dramatic but what fun is going through your life defaulting to the best, most optimistic possibility in every given situation? Have some fun! Act paranoid! Purposefully misunderstand your father and scream in his face! Kick a dog! Sorry! I got carried away! I would never kick a dog unless it was attacking me. But even then, I'd be wishing I was kicking the owner who let it go off leash. The dog doesn't deserve my epic self defense tactics in its soft face. But the owner certainly does!

The basics on the origin of The Cockroach.

I didn't realize Dave came up with The Cockroach because it was gross and disgusting. I just thought it was a more clever version of a bat, keeping to the shadows, hiding, surviving, a constant annoyance to poor people. In any case, The Cockroach is the greatest parody of The Batman, hands down. Because The Batman has become such a parody of himself time and time again, you just need an absolutely Batshit insane version of him. I don't do segues so Cerebus has come to Beduin to sell the Black Blossom Lotus. Just look at all the continuity Dave Sim is giving his readers! I wonder how many comic book fans would list "continuity" as their number one favorite thing about comic books? Like, are there people who would list that above great writing or terrific art? Judging by how terrible a lot of mainstream comic books are and how rabid many of the fans, I'd suspect it was a fairly high number. Maybe 65 out of 100, Bob. Change that card! The Merchant Cerebus deals with is a kook who might just have a super secret identity. It's weird to think of the Roach as being capable of actually living an independent life! I suppose he's just barely hanging onto his sanity at this point (and, of course, only during the day). But then he comes into the mystical aura of strangeness that aardvarks apparently exude out of their buttholes and he just loses it completely. He becomes less a merchant slash superhero and more a superhero slash zombie cosplayer. Also he becomes one of the greatest characters ever created! There are like four of them in the entirety of Cerebus! The exclamation point is because I think that's an incredibly high number and not because I think it's an incredibly low number. Most comic book's protagonists never quite make it to the greatest ever! Plus I'd probably give Cerebus more than four but a lot of them are just really good parodies, satires, and slightly-off representations of characters and people who already existed. The merchant buys the Black Blossom Lotus from Cerebus for 100 gold pieces and then promptly drops it out of the window and into the Feld River.

Not only does Dave Sim come up with a bunch of memorable plots across three hundred issues, he also comes up with a lot of good Dungeons & Dragons campaign ideas.

The Merchant pays Cerebus a sack of gold and gets ready for bed as Cerebus begins to leave. Before Cerebus can even exit the hallway outside the merchant's bedroom door, Cerebus begins to hear loud ranting coming from the other side. It's a lot of hissing and threats of murder. Against his better judgment, Cerebus decides to see what's happening and gets his first look at the guy who will be a huge headache to him for the next two hundred issues or so.

One thing I like about Dave Sim is how honest he is when recounting where he came up with or stole his ideas. He gives plenty of credit for the Cockroach and his hissing to Marshall Rogers and Jules Feiffer. It's admirable because a lot of people would just figure, "It might make me look less of an artist and who's going to know anyway?!"

Just a few days ago, my old elementary school friend who was blown up in Iraq and then became a comedian playing to Christians and patriots (which I mention so you'll understand how, as a wounded veteran, he'll never be criticized by his audience and he'll never really grow as a comedian) posted a Tik Tok on Facebook that was just a film of a television set capturing the "Masked Debate" bit on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The clip only shows all the clips of news readers saying "masked debate" and none of Oliver's or the show's set-up. He then watermarked it with his Tik Tok name. Now all of those naive followers who can only seem to reply to his posts with the laugh/cry emoji probably think he wrote it. Better yet, they're probably mostly Trump followers who would never admit to finding that libjerk Oliver or his show funny. What's even better is that the Tik Tok has some quote along top that's watermarked with somebody else's Tik Tok name! So it looks like Bob doubly stole the bit. Man, I wish I'd joined the army and gotten blown up and then found Christ and developed an audience of uncritical naive yahoos who would wildly applaud everything I wrote! Why didn't I join the army?! Oh, that's right. Because I believed I had a future right out of high school. Well, I guess Bob is having the last laugh now! Cerebus follows Cockroach across the rooftops to find out what's going on. He eventually witnesses the Cockroach confront a man in an alley, accuse him of killing his parents, knock him out, and steal his gold. The gold part of the night helps Cerebus to ignore all of the other confusing stuff. The Cockroach doesn't gloat for long. He's off to find another victim! Cerebus witnesses him mug another guy whom he also accuses of killing his parents. He also admits to doing this for thirty years. So now Cerebus thinks the guy is crazy but also crazy rich. At the end of the night, the Cockroach returns home and drops the gold purses into a secret panel in the wall. He falls asleep, wakes up, and, when he sees Cerebus, acts as if Cerebus were just leaving. So Cerebus realizes that the merchant doesn't have any idea what the Cockroach is doing. Which means Cerebus is going to recover those gold purses before the Cockroach comes back! At the moment, Cerebus doesn't realize that he's going to be finding thirty years worth of gold purses in the merchant's walls. Can you imagine how boring the last two hundred and eighty-nine issues of Cerebus would have been if Cerebus managed to steal all of the Roach's gold?! I'm sure some of you are thinking, "It wouldn't have been any worse than the last hundred issues we did get!" Also, can you imagine how fat Cerebus would have gotten drinking tons of ale and eating loads of rich foods? I'm laughing so much just trying to picture it! Ha ha!

Eight feet of gold would make Cerebus fatter than a domesticated raccoon!

In the end, Cerebus only makes it away with three sacks of gold. But in the process, he manages to completely screw up the Roach/Merchant equilibrium that's lasted for thirty years. In trying to exploit the man's mental illness so that he'd help Cerebus move the gold, Cerebus drags the Roach personality into the daylight. From here on out, the Roach will simply be a pawn of others, susceptible to almost any second-rate demagogue (although most of the people who subsequently control the Roach are of the first rate variety). The Aardvark Comment section was two pages this issue and had this letter that I don't think was being sarcastic?

I guess I also wouldn't necessarily consider a chainmail bikini as "a disgusting costume." He's probably thinking about Power Girl.

Also, and I admit it might have been a joke, but Dave Sim reveals that Ronald Reagan is Cerebus' father. That, um, makes sense! Cerebus #11 Rating: A. I almost gave it a B+ for variety but then I remembered I just read the first appearance of the Roach. I also forgot that my ratings don't actually mean anything.

[nox-scrie]

Shady Bussines

What do you mean it’s the 27th and I should have posted this a day earlier for the TMA5 Countdown? Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of recovering my senses from a senseless previous day. Anyway. This is the second day of TMA5 Countdown wow!! The fears were The Corruption and The Buried and because I love that coffin with all my heart I decided to bring it back for another round. No, this one is not corrected either and no, I’m not sorry. I hate rereading my works. It happens. Hope y’all gonna enjoy it though!!

Fears: The Corruption; The Buried brieeef mentions of The Eye

Content Warnings: Death, Paranoia, some mentions of Insects

Rating: Teen and Up Audience

Characters: Jon  “Tired of your shit before you even started talking” Sims, Martin “What even is going on” Blackwood, Jane Prentiss, some mentions of Tim “Love of my life” Stoker and Sasha “WHY WON’T YOU LET ME LOVE YOU” James; also some OCs and one of them appeared in Day 1 too!

Setting: Season 1!! a little after episode 22, with Martin’s time spent in self isolation (hah.)

Word Count: ~3670

~~~                                            Shady Bussines

Jon stepped into his office, viewing the piles of unread, unordered statements, and felt another headache forming. He was having none of the former Archivist's shit, not after last night.

There was little light in his office, and he turned off almost all the ones that were still on. The buzzing of the light bulbs was annoying what was left of Jon's sanity, and he wanted to be in the best of his mental capacity when he read a statement he has prepared, one that seemed to be related to Case #9982211.

He slowly dragged himself to his office anyway, putting on his reading glasses that were hung around his neck and tightening his tie. This was his job, and he didn't want to be fired after barely a month of being the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute because of a pretty bad hangover.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he opened a drawer, the only fucking thing in order in this room, and got a tape recorder out. He sighed, thinking with half a mind to call Martin and ask him for a cup of tea and a Paracetamol. Hah. Good joke, Jon. Not after last night.

He took a deep breath, slowly picked up a lint from his skirt and cleared his throat. Maybe he could burry himself in statements until his headache goes away, and forget everything he has said to Tim last night. Yeah. That sounds like a good plan.

"Statement of Horace Dwayne regarding his experience with a strange coffin, Archway, London. Original statement given October 17th, 2013. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement beginns.

I knew my fiancé's job was not one of the legal kind. There was simply no way a person with no college education can make enough money as to afford as moving in together in our apartment, barely five months after we got engaged. Yet, I never mentioned it, and I think they were grateful because of that.

We first met a few years ago, on a dating app for LGBTQ+ people. It was a casual thing, we just hit each other up when we needed company, and never talked about anything in particular. Until one day, they asked me if I lived in Manchester and I said that yes, I did. They came to my place a few hours after that, rain soaked and bleeding from a wound on their torso.

That was the first time I met Morgan Doe in person, and it was me, clumsily stitching up something that looked like a kinfe wound on their side. I asked for some details, but Mo didn't tell me anything. They just thanked me for taking care of them because they couldn't go to the hospital. I remember ranting about how they should take better care of themselves, and how Mo looked at me in the eye before bending to kiss me. Or maybe I was the one bending. In that moment, though, it didn't matter: we were kissing, and after I started ignoring the wetness of their lips and how they hissed when I climbed on top of them, it was actually really good.

Mo asked me to be their boyfriend a month after that, and I said yes. We moved in my crappy, ranted apartment in Manchester, and lived there for almost a year before I asked them to marry me. I knew that we couldn't get married right away; I was between jobs at the moment, and even though I still wasn't sure what Mo actually did for a living, I knew that they will not be able to afford a wedding in a matter of months

Or that was what I thought then. One day, when I got home from a failed job interview, I found Mo in the kitchen, happily mumbling the lyrics of some song that was playing on the radio. I asked them what got them so cheery, and they just turned to face me and started dangling a set of keys in front of my eyes. Mo kissed me, and said that they managed finally get us a place for our own.

I knew that something was wrong then. I knew that something was painfully, terribly wrong, from how fast they managed to find us a place right after we got engaged, to the glint in their eyes, that mischievious glint, when they shared the news. I tried getting the information out of them, how did they actually manage to find us a place so fast, but Mo just shooshed me and said that I shouldn't worry, because they were going to give me the wedding of my dreams, and the life that I deserve.

A month after that, we were already settled in Archway, London. Apparently the apartment has been pretty cheap because of the loud neighbours, especially a woman who claimes to hear wasps in the attic. The first night we got there, I saw her in the garden of the apartment building, staring at the basement door. Her eyes were bloodshot red and she looked ill. When she turned her face straight towards me, I was too surprised to turn away. I think she smiled, but I don't remember her lifting the corners of her mouth. It felt like she was smiling, though.

I had a job now, in a shopping centre, selling vegetables. It wasn't much, but somehow we never dealt with money problems in our house. It seemed like the money never ended, in fact, and Mo told me more than once that I shouldn't be concerned about that. And I tried very hard to not be, but in the darkest of nights I still remembered that gilnt in their eyes when they showed me the key.

It was an usual evening when the coffin came. I was having my tea and reading a book that has made its appearence in my house, ignoring the weird noises the woman from upstairs, Jane something, made. There was a knock on the door, and I hoped it wasn't that creepy woman asking for some flour. I really wouldn't like to know what she did with it.

But it wasn't Jane. The two men sitting in my doorway were so tall I had to crack my neck to see their faces, obscured by some big caps. They spoke in some sort of accents, probably russian, and said they were from a delivery serivce and they had a package for Morgan Doe. Mo was not home at the moment, and chills were creeping up my back when one of them extended a clipboard for me to sign. I told them that Mo is my fiancé and that they're not home yet. The two men looked at each other, and one of them shrugged. I signed the papers and the two placed the big box in my kitchen, the first room of the apartment, and left without a word. I only assumed that the package was already paid.

I didn't know what it was, but if Mo has ordered something for the house they would have told me. I thought that maybe it was something for work, and that thought made me feel unwell. I called Mo, but they didn't pick up. I only thought they were busy, and I eyed the big box suspiciously. I went back in the living room for my tea, and I got back to the kitchen with it. It couldn't be something from work, I thought, work doesn't deliver such big packages. So I opened the box.

The shock I felt when I saw the wooden box inside, the coffin inside, made me take a step back and stumble into the table, spilling the tea. It was a coffin, an adult sized coffin, and a pretty new one from appearence. Well, except for the words "DO NOT OPEN" scribbled in the wood. That was not the strangest thing, though, but the fact that it was chained up so heavily it seemed to hold a living person, not a wooden box.

I called Mo again. And again. I was so panicked I could barely breath, and they were not picking up. I couldn't afford to leave the room or lose sight of the coffin, who did not move, speak or gave any sort of clue about its origin or its content. I noticed the key attached to the chain, and that image made me laugh. There was a coffin in my kitchen, a chained up coffin, with a key! I was going crazy.

It was almost midnight when I felt like I couldn't stay awake any longer. I took the key and placed it in my back pocket, careful not to touch the wood or the chain too much. If it was a cursed object, I didn't want to be in more contact with it than I already was. Mo still hasn't came back; they do that sometimes, leave overnight, but they always give me a heads up at least a week before. Of course the only time they left without telling me was the same night that a strange coffin, probably with a very weird thing inside, made its way to our home.

I dreamt of bugs slowly crawling their way on my skin, through my ear and inside my brain, bitting and pinching it as if it was a sponge, whispering about the hive, its importance, its puropose. It was a very unusual dream for me, but when I woke up and found out that I wasn't in my bed anymore was even stranger. I was in the kitchen, in front of the coffin, with the key in my hand. The key from my work pants, which are in the drawer.

I never sleepwalked before, and to think that out of nowhere I was not only sleepwalking, but dreaming of bugs and searhing for things in my asleep state was impossible to understand. It was the middle of the night and I took out my phone to send Mo another message, begging them to come home. I don't know how I fell asleep afterwards, but I know that the key was on the nightstand where I put it before going to bed.

Mo came back that morning, and I found them in the kitchen, their back turned to me. They were staring at the coffin, and I slowly made my way towards them, anger and relief that they were okay starting up in my stomach. But they didn't turn towards me, not as I slammed the door on my way inside. They jusy sat there, and stared. It took me only a moment to realize they were crying, and Mo has never cried as long as I know.

They turned towards me, their cheeks stained with tears, and hugged me. There was no word shared between us as we sat there, in front of the coffin, Mo crying softly on my shoulder. I think I understood them better in that morning then I did in the entire time I knew them.

Our lives for the next few days has been like that: staring at the coffin for sometimes hours on end, waiting for it to make a move, and then quietly chatting about what we did that day. We have got used to it, too. Mo placed it in our storage closet that we never even used, and it fit perfectly. Both of us tried to ignore the little tapping from inside when he touched it. I think we both convinced ourselved it was just in our imagination.

When the first rain came, it was during the nighttime. I'm a very heavy sleeper so I usually don't awake unless somebody hits me with something, but the noise from that night woke me up. Mo's side of the bed was empty, and the bedside table's drawer was open, with the key for the coffin missing. My heart skipped a beat, and I ran for the kitchen, bursting through the door.

There was a moaning coming from the storage closet, and the door was opened. As I scrambeled for the light bulb, I realized that the moaning was almost musical. When I turned the lights on, the moaning hasn't stopped, but grew even louder. The door to the wooden casket was open, the light glinting off the chains mockingly.

I took a deep breath, and started screaming for Mo. I didn't dare leave the kitchen, not with the casket open, not when I didn't know where my partner was and if they got in there. I realized they must've been the one who opened it. They might have had went there every night, and this time, with that awful moaning, was too much for them. They gave up.

I'm not sure when I fell to the ground, a mass of sobs and pained screams, covering my ears to stop the sound of moaning, but I know when a knock came at my door. I couldn't move, couldn't leave, and the person must have been so impatient they just bursted through the door. It was the two delivery man, accompanied by a guy with a very common face. I couldn't catch the man's name, too caught in the two delivery men as they closed the casket and chained it up again. The jackets they were wearing had the words "Breckon and Hope Delivery" written on the back.

The moaning only grew louder as they placed the coffin on a trolley to take it down the stairs easier. I barely managed to get on my feet and catch the other man's rain-soaked coat by the fringes of the sleeve.

"Why did you do that to them? How has Mo wronged you?" I asked, and I was not feeling angry, or empty, but rotten. As if my insides have been eaten by insects slowly and only now I can percieve the damage.

"Oh, child. They didn't do anything to me. All that happened was their own fault, their own making." at this the man stopped, gently extracted his hand from my grip, and looked around the apartment. "Nice place you've got here. I'm certain it was worth it."

I moved out the next week, when I started hearing weird insect noises. I never managed to get the door fixed, not that it mattered. The whole building burned up a few days after my departure, and I couldn't help but feel this was the perfect ending."

Jon paused for a few seconds there, thoughts flying around in his head, never focusing on just one. There was so much information here, so many points to connect. It felt like a conclussion was coming, and Jon hated that he wasn't able to see it fully because of his stupid, throbbing headache.

"Statement ends." he said, an afterthought. "Well, this is not only connected to Case #9982211, but may also be related to Case #0161203, the one of Martin's from almost a week ago. If that is true and the Jane who lives in Archway in this case is the same as the one that locked Martin in his apartment then... that would be very interesting, indeed. I should ask Sasha to make more research regarding this case. I... Recording ends."

Pressing the red button to stop the recording, Jon started scrubbing at his eyes before letting out a heavy sigh. It felt like he was caught in a web, all of these statemenets connected one way or another, with him caught right in the middle of it all and yet unable to see where they started and with whom they ended. He got up on unsteady feet and caught the edge of his desk in order to not lose balance. God. He would make his own fucking tea and get his own fucking Paracetamol-

The door to his office opened, and Martin came stumbling in. He was wiping sleep away from his eyes and masking a yawn at the same time with the back of his hand. He was also wearing one of Jon's baggy sweaters he has left in the room of the Archives Martin occupies now. The recorder turned itself on, unoticed by either of the man looking at each other.

"Oh, Gosh, Jon. God. What are you even doing here? It's not even 7 a.m. yet."

Jon didn't even try to mask the scowl on his face when he gave his snappy reply. "Some of us get to work on time, Martin."

Martin stopped wipping at his eyes, his glasses now slightly askew. Jon looked behind him and turned his hand into a fist. Why was he like this?

"Still, the Archives don't open for at least another half an hour. Jesus, Jon, I'm still in my pajamas."

"I can see that." Jon replyed, meaning to be bitter and mean, and hating the softness that managed to slip into his tone. He scowled harder in return when Martin looked down at himself and jumped.

"Ahm... I... my clothes. Are at cleaning. All of them. And you forgot this and I... meant... to give it back to you... not now I mean! But I didn't have anything else to wear and..."

"Martin. Stop making a fool of yourself. It's fine that... that sweater has a hole in it anyway."

"I sewed it." Martin said, matter of factly, his face still red and expression flustered.

"You did?" Jon asked, more surprised than anything, and when Martin started biting his lip Jon looked back at that spot above his head, that was now becoming his favourite part of the Archives.

"Yeah... It was nothing anyway and I didn't want to return it with the hole in it. Not that! Not that I am.. wearing it often or something."

"I said it's fine. The blue fits you better than it ever fitted me, anyway."

Martin looked at him in the eyes, something strong and fierce in his look, and Jon didn't turn his head this time. Neither of them said anything for a while, but then somebody coughed in the doorway and both of them jumped, the moment having vanished.

"Did we intrerrupt something?" said Sasha, sidestepping Martin and leaving some papers on Jon's desk. Tim, who was behind her, remained next to Martin and sent a big grin in Jon's direction. The scowl came back to the archivist’s features.

"No, nothing, what? Of course not. I was just... Jon, why are you holding onto the edge of the desk so tightly?"

Jon looked down at his hands and saw that they were white with effort. He stopped clenching them, and immediately started feeling dizzy once again. Sasha caught him before he could fall backwards, with an arm around his middle.

"Easy there, Jon. Are you okay?"

"Just.. feeling a little ill." Jon said, and Tim let out a bark of laughter that he quickly covered with a caugh.

"Godness, this is just awful, isn't it, Martin?" Tim said, making a show of his words and softly touching his heart with one hand. "I'm certain one of your famous teas would make him all better, don’t you think?"

Before Jon could give a snappy reply, Martin jumped slightly again, as if Tim's words just activated all of his "taking-care-of-people-via-tea" senses. He nodded eagerly and looked over to Jon, who was too tired to scowl in full force anymore.

"And a Paracetamol." Martin agreed, before leaving the office.

"He hasn't even asked me if I want some tea..." Sasha asked, more confused than offended. "What did you do to him during that staring contest, Jon?"

"What?" barked Jon, extracting himself from Sasha's hold and throwing himself on his desk chair. "I didn't do anything to him, thank you very much."

"Oh but there are so many things you'd like to do." Tim said, and anger started bubbling up in Jon's throat as he turned his eyes towards him. "You drank so much last night you can barely hold yourself up now, boss?" he asked, innocently.

"Tim, for the love of everything good on this planet, stop. This is all your fault."

"What is?" Sasha asked, confused.

"Your big crush on Martin is my fault, or the fact that you got so drunk you told me all about it is?" teased Tim, and Jon wanted to get off his chair and throw himself towards him, but didn’t.

"WHAT?" shouted Sasha, and both Jon and Tim shooshed her.

"I don't have... a crush on Martin. I just think that he's a good person, and a good person can't work in this place of horror stories and insufferable people. That would be you, Tim."

Tim laughed. "Copy that, boss. But I'm sure that if you just told him he would.."

"No. And that's final. I don't want to engage in a romantic relationship with anyone, especially not my assistants, especially when there's so much work to do here. I think I just found some important information in Prentiss' case."

"Jon... likes Martin..." mumbled Sasha, probably talking to herself. "You idiot!" she exclaimed, turning towards Jon. "He likes you too! Hell, he almost broke his legs running to make you tea. And wasn't that your sweater he was wearing, the one you lost some time ago, "my favourite article of clothing" or whatever?"

"It totally was." said Tim, ever the helpful.

"So do something about that, Jon! What are you waiting for?"

"For the two of you to get off my office and do some actual work. Leave, now."

Sasha sighed and Tim stuck out his tongue at him, telling him something about how we only have one life and we should make the most of it. As Jon drank the too-good tea Martin has made for him, he admitted to himself that Tim was right and that he really should do something about that. The more persistant thought, though, was the fact that he was never going out drinking with Tim, ever again. He did not see, nor hear when the tape record clicked itself shut back.

[jawsplitter]

Do you have any favorites among Ur ocs...if so dish out

YES i have a couple......!!!!

adelaide, victor, gideon, and marcello are the ones id say are my favs i think...also alvin is very up there. putting small blurbs about them under the cut cause thats a lot so itll be a tad long

adelaide: ive had her for SO LONG since like. umm. 3rd? 4th? grade i think...originally her name was izzy and her universe was going to be an rpgmaker horror game & i think i wanted to put in dating sim elements too. now shes a sad gal looking all over the state for her missing friend and ends up meeting a bunch of weird monster people but theyre all cool

victor: hes the most recent of the bunch of faves! hes a homeless monster hunter but like, not hunting in the typical sense. he just tracks them down to observe them and stuff. but sometimes things go awry unfortunately, monsters arent all scary but otherwise harmless background-goers

gideon: probably the second oldest oc of this bunch, hes one of my ocs for saw!! his real name is samuel and he used to be a jorunalist, but once he was tasked to handle reporting on jigsaws murders he kind of..........started believing he was jigsaws long lost son (hence him adopting the name gideon, its what jigsaw WAS gonna name his kid) and eventually took to making his own traps after the other jigsaws died, and even put himself through one (which i still havent actually thought about LOL)...other than that hes kind of alright though

marcello: i LOVE marcello so much even tho i listed him last i would dare say hes my top favorite...hes just your run of the mill “nobody loves me so i do bad things” type of antag character but see he wasnt born with powers like most other characters in his universe so in order to do bad things to be loved he summoned demons and let them possess him so NOW he has powers. hes really a sweet guy though he just wants love : - ( (his brother is a very famous superhero)

and alvin gets one too since i mentioned him: i already have a big post about him so ill make this’n brief, he used to be normal but now hes a dick-ish weirdo with a much more dick-ish possessed ventriloquist doll but like. hes charming (to me)

[adambombvilivus]

Confession: I once broke into a friend’s house with malicious intent

 and it involved jelly sandwiches

Okay, so first off, I want to keep things vague and anonymous, since I don’t want this former friend to be connected in any way. Now, it’s been a good few years and more since this happened, but I’m still very paranoid and nervous and, as I hope you’ll understand from reading, traumatized from it. It was a pretty strange saga of events on my end so I would appreciate you read all the way through before judging me please.

To give the best background, I’ll start from the beginning of knowing this guy. We met in middle school, sixth grade I believe; we weren’t friends for about a year but we shared common friends and often sat together so we just got along in time, of course. This guy, this kid, seemed pretty normal in every way, for a middle schooler. Well, “normal” among my friends and I, but we were misfits who just gathered at our own spot since we didn’t really belong to a group identity. At least that’s how I saw it, but I don’t know what the rest of them thought. We got along pretty well, finding out we shared common taste in games and music and shows we liked, and he was one of those friends, I thought, you could always trust to be real with when needed. We weren’t best friends but he was cool when it mattered.

Okay so here’s what you’ll find weird, probably: every single day, without fail, I kid you not, all anyone ever saw this dude eat was jelly sandwiches(not even peanut butter & jelly, just jelly. I always assumed it was strawberry jelly, but I never asked). All he ever said about the sandwiches is that he really loved jelly and it was homemade. I would’ve thought that someone in the faculty or something would’ve stepped in, since I knew teachers knew about it and thought it was a bit strange and unhealthy too, but he claimed he didn’t mind it at all and he seemed in good health all the time, minus regular illnesses. Not that I mind jelly sandwiches, but personally, I can’t eat something every day for more than a couple weeks in a row without getting fully sick of it for a long time, but hey, everyone is different. Oh, and I nearly forgot to put it in here, but  he had mentioned the red room all the way back then, just a couple of times. Once or twice he brought it up in conversations where we were talking about making houses in The Sims games, and he said something about this “red room” in his house that he really liked. He never described the red room, because apparently it was one of those things that was ‘embarrassing to talk about at school’, but he said it was cool and I’d probably like it if I ever saw it.

I’ve never been good with locations and addresses, so it took me until midway through high school to find out from some random situation that he had been living only a few blocks away the whole time! Both of us had lived our whole lives to that point in these homes, so that was funny to me. Since we enjoyed a lot of the same games and I had never really hung out with anyone outside of school before, I thought it would be cool to just walk over to his house and hang out for a few hours and play stuff. He seemed fully down for it and after I told my mom where he lived, she was fine with me going (I was just only 16 and it was late in the year, so it was getting dark early). Getting to his house was easy since we would just go a certain way from school that I had never walked, but it was in the neighborhood and I knew the area. That first time hanging out at his home was awkward for me but nice; we talked more than I had anticipated, about a lot of things around growing up with divorced parents and annoying older siblings and all, while he showed me some of his collections. We played games on his GameCube which I had never tried before, and his mom offered to feed me dinner, but I politely refused since we were going to have steak at home haha.

I went home and had my dinner and said I had a nice time, and that was all, nothing strange that time. When I got into bed that night I kicked myself for forgetting to ask about the red room he had mentioned years ago! I only had that little bit more to make me want to hang out again and it could be another fun thing to do or talk about, so I figured I’d bring it up the next day. He seemed pleasantly surprised that I remembered it after the years and wanted to show me next week if I came over again. Jump to that next visit, walking to his house and all, mostly the same until we had a quiet moment, and the thought came back for me to ask about the red room. He perked up and said something like’ “ooooh..right! Yeah right down here”. Same door as any of the other rooms in his house, nothing strange from in the hall; I was nervous but excited, the way you would be at anything small and silly but with years of mild curiosity behind it.

Okay, pause for a second to imagine the weirdest thing, realistically, you’d expect to see from something called “The Red Room”. I’m expecting you’ll probably imagine, like I had, that his mom just had a room where the walls were red and everything was colored red and it was some kind of hobby or something, maybe with neat art inside or whatnot.

I promise you, this...was not that.

Seriously, what my friend did was open the door, lightly push it all the way open, and walk back to his room and shut his door back closed, all without a word, but I only ever thought about that fact in following years. What I did notice first, however, was naturally, the red, but I’ll give you extra context:

First: the room was totally empty. When I say totally, I mean totally. Not so much as a small piece of forgotten trash on the carpet. It looked like the barest room of a freshly built house.

Second, the room was just a square, just a box. No closet door or sliding door, just the four equal walls.

Third, maybe the strangest of these three: Never before had I seen a room in a home with neither windows nor power outlets, or a room light on the ceiling, I don’t think.

When I say this room was just four bare walls and carpet, that is not an overstatement in any way whatsoever. I just want you to know how serious I am about everything I say here, and it’s important you really take that in before you continue reading.

Now, for what I noticed first. This room, whose doorway I was only standing in, must’ve been called the red room because of the red lighting inside. I say lighting instead of light, because I feel that more accurately conveys that there were no actual lights in this room. It wasn’t red like from a lamp, not like a glow, but similar to the way a sunset can make the outdoors look completely orange. A subtle but sure red, that lit the room like  2 o’clock sun, but there was no window, and even if there was a window, this was during the winter where it gets dark by 6 pm. If you know me, you know I am a coward and so obviously, this is uncharacteristic of me to do, but I’m guessing that I was simply in shock from anxiety to walk away. I walked into the room and I heard this sort of strange buzzing. Putting my ear against the wall, I still heard the buzzing, not much louder, but also vague machinery noises. I’d think with all of the How It’s Made I used to watch, I’d have an idea of what I heard, but nah.

Now that I had a moment to let myself absorb the oddity of this place, I turned around, walked out of the door, closed the door in the most gentlest way, walked down the hall, downstairs, and out of the front door. Like my friend, I said nothing. I was too stunned to walk home fast, I think; I mean, I was traumatized from this. Maybe it’s silly, but I’m a coward. I can’t remember much else from that night since my mind couldn’t focus on anything else. I don’t think I told my mom about it. I don’t think I slept that night or was even able to sleep. Maybe it wasn’t scary but sometimes you just have an experience that just gives you a whiplash being what you are ready to process. I hope you understand.

Just so it’s out there, I’ll go into the boring bits that I’m sure you can infer. Of course I never spoke about it. It’s not like I saw a murder. A story of a weird blank room is one thing, but I can’t tell someone that a room was illuminated by some paranormal red lighting. Yeah, I’m serious and able to open up now, but some teenager isn’t going to feel secure with being as honest-to-god as they can be and being doubted and made to feel crazy. I was already quiet, called weird, not very socially secure my whole life, maybe you can relate. As for that friend and I, well I can’t remember exactly the way we were the next day, but I think it was something along the lines of him saying he hoped I had fun and acting totally normal as before. I didn’t mention the room. I didn’t mention the room at all to anyone since this. I never went back to hang out with him again and he never asked, to my relief every day. We stayed friends through school like normal, although I had the added gift of a little well of anxiety every time he approached our group, sitting down with us eating his jelly sandwiches and joking around about stupid shit that I hate myself for laughing at and saying back then. I think other people noticed me being a little more nervous and distraught than I had been before, but nobody, even at home, ever asked what was on my mind. Most days I had only one thing to tell them regardless.

That is just how it was for a couple of years until graduation. On the last day of school he randomly told me that he hoped we could stay in contact or hang out again sometime, and I just let out a “Heh, yeah that’d be cool yeah.”, but we haven’t spoken or seen each other again after that day. Maybe the odd text counts as communication, but it never held my interest. One time out of nowhere, he texted me a jar of jelly emoji, which I never responded to; only today did I check and noticed there is no jar of jelly emoji on my phone. Neither of us had moved for a few years, so the though of that house being so close to mine that whole time never stopped making me feel uneasy, especially when we would drive near or down his street, and my mom felt like asking about him every damn time for some reason, nearly giving me a panic attack each time. Maybe if I had went to therapy or opened up about it I could’ve started an adult life after graduation, but IMO, trauma never helps anyone grow into a stronger person. Others may be stronger than me in the first place to handle these things, but I’ve never felt that concept.

To jump back into the story though, it was about a year and a few moths after graduating high school. That night still haunted me and, I don’t know, it was just a strange week in my head. I had mustered up this idea to go back but I can’t imagine why. One day after driving down his street, I noticed that the cars at his house were gone from the driveway, and my mom mentioned to me that they had been for a while and they must’ve been on vacation, since nothing suggested that they moved out (their garage was always full of clutter and they never had parked the cars in there). The next day it just came out of my mouth to say that he texted me asking to hang out at his house and catch up from the years, since they just came home from vacation and he said that I would probably like to see some souvenirs he brought home. It was a good enough lie for the time.

I knew I would be breaking in, so I sneakily grabbed a hammer before I left the house just as it would be getting dark. I don’t know why I did any of this. I was haunted, traumatized, I didn’t feel like I could talk, and I sought peace and resolution so badly. I didn’t know where their family really was, but I figured, to hell with it, if the cops show up while I’m there, I’ll tell them to check out that room or I’d plead insanity or something; I spent the past four years or so being very depressed and fixated on this surreal memory, I didn’t really give a shit.

The walk to his house was a blur from being lost in my head, but I got there anyway. I put my hoodie up as cover, but that was about it. I know I wasn’t being discreet, but again, I didn’t really care. I only barely tried the front door, and of course it was locked, so I used my hammer on their window in the front of the house. I’ve always been weak, so it took me a few swings, and being louder than I should have, to get a break, but I did it. Maybe I was too numb to feel how sore my arms were. I cleared the spiky shards around the window and turned on my phone flashlight before climbing and stumbling into the house.

Being in the kitchen, it just clicked to me to think about his jelly sandwiches. Even by that point, that’s all I ever saw him eat. When I had looked back before, I never even saw anyone else in his family eat, but I was only there twice briefly so that never stood out to me. It was almost out of frustration or anger or spite that I wanted to find a jar of his jelly and smash it with the hammer or something, just as payback for the trauma I had been living with.

I opened their fridge to look for that fuckin stuff and I found it.

Yeah I found too much of it. I found a whole entire damn refrigerator full of red jelly. That is it. Same as the room upstairs was truly empty, this refrigerator was full of nothing but red jelly. I wasn’t horrified, I was disgusted. I took a jar out and set it on the counter. Homemade fuckin jelly. The cabinets? All jelly too. Every nook and cranny for where food should’ve been had homemade red jelly. I bet I didn’t even have to tell you that. Heck, did I see any bread for making sandwiches? No, not even a loaf of white bread. Maybe they took it with them to use while away. I think I can remember laughing that they still had standard junk and cutlery drawers, and beneath their sink had everything you’d expect as well. Like a cat, I just slid that jar of jelly off of the counter and watched it shatter. It just spilled out a little liquid, but mostly still gooped up like normal jelly. I was/am so angry that things weren’t weirder than that. Was I an ass for breaking in and being angry over a family that loves their jelly. They had a whiteboard in their kitchen for reminders and such(I saw it mentioned a vacation countdown), and I erased it fully before I took a marker, and I wrote, with much anger and shakiness in my hands, ‘Too much fuckin jelly. Eat something else besides fucking jelly! Fuck you, fuck your family, fuck your jelly, fuck your window, fuck this house, and fuck your fucking boring red room!’.

I dropped the marker on the counter and let out the breath I was holding in and breathed again. I stood there for just as long as I could while the anxiety crept in and I started to shake. Sometime during that standing I heard the creaking of floorboards from upstairs. I grabbed my phone before I even grabbed my thoughts, and thus it was another blur. As I made my way just a very short distance from the kitchen to the front door, I could clearly hear footsteps down the stairs. I do remember trying my best to be quick but also as silent as possible as I left through the door and leaving it wide open. I didn’t speed up my pace nor look back. I just walked home, quite similar to that last time, no more settled or at peace. I think that’s why I have to share the story now, because clearly breaking and entering didn’t help. I didn’t even have the guts to see that room again, and I’m sorry if you wanted to know if there was anything more to it. I got home and didn’t say much of note about what I was up to, or how I explained not being gone for much time, but nothing ever became of it. I never heard of a break-in report or anything. Moving away has been the biggest relief from that place I have ever had, and the only. The only evidence I have of any of this is just what I saw with my own eyes and have as memories. Sometimes you go through things that you just have to accept and live with because you’re a lonely person and are more used to facing loneliness than the pain of distrust and different looks. I just couldn’t stand the silent guilt anymore. I have been living with this experience, but it was hitting a point to where I didn’t want to live at all. I’ll certainly never be able to see a jar of strawberry jelly again without vomiting.

[statementends]

What the Ghost!? CH3

Characters: Basira and Daisy, Jon and Georgie in the background Pairings: Jon/Georgie, Basira/Daisy Rating: G Warnings: None for this chapter Summary: Georgie and Jon have a podcast. It’s been getting a lot of attention recently. Shifting POVs of different people interacting with the WTG podcast and crew and how it ties in with the Magnus Institute. Chapter Summary: Basira discusses her case with Daisy while listening to her favourite podcast.

AO3: Link

Chapter 3: Basira

“The only reason I don’t put a name to these books is there are people that would look for them.” Jonathan Sims grumbled over Basira’s car speakers.

“Maybe we should go into it. It’s one of the few supernatural things you actually believe in. Whenever we get stories about haunted books you get all perky.”

“...Perky?”

Georgie snorted. “Alright, maybe not the right word. You seem to wake up. So, if these books are dangerous isn’t it a good idea to warn the public?”

“I suppose but… putting a name to them could be just as dangerous.”

“Are there any signs to watch out for?”

“If you find a book that draws you in--”

“The Hellbound Heart, officially a spooky book.”

“....You said wanted warning signs.”

“Alright, alright, go on, Jon--”

Daisy snorted.

“What?”

“Jurgen Leitner.” She said. “That’s what he’s talking about.”

Basira frowned keeping her eyes on the road. Daisy didn’t usually offer up much information for sectioned cases. “What’s a Jurgen Leitner?”

“Trouble. If you ever find a book with that name in it burn it. And if you can’t burn it, run and pray.”

“Really?”

“Mm.”

Georgie’s voice again as they settled back into silence. “Old books, compulsion, strange sensations, smells, auditory hallucinations, you know what this all sounds like, Jon?”

“I’m well aware. Things that you should seek medical attention for. Signs of stroke, seizure, and mental illness. The books are real though.”

“Now, I get a lot of your ‘prove it’s Jon.”

Basira smiled. Jon’s skepticism was overdone at times. It was nice to see him getting the other end of it from his co-host. Georgie was the believer of the duo, but she wasn’t blind about evidence. She’s a smart cookie and the two kept each other on their toes. She’d never admit it, but they reminded her of her and Daisy in some ways.  

“Yes,” Jon said. “I know. I’m sure I come off as a hypocrite. I don’t care. They’re real.”

“Who are you and what have you done to my partner?” Georgie said with mock shock.

“Hah. Hah. Let’s look at Sebastian’s story then. Perhaps we’ll find some evidence there.”

“Be still my heart.”

“This isn’t the first book we’ve heard about, Georgie!”

Daisy fiddled with the sound bringing it down a little. “He’s a charmer.”

“You said it yourself that he’s right, if he is talking about those books.”

“Leitners. Yah.” Daisy stared out the window, rain started hitting the glass. “Nasty things,” She muttered to herself. “I don’t understand why you like this show. Being sectioned and all. These two might stumble on a fact or two, but at best it’s watered down and second hand, and at worst they’re spreading things that shouldn’t be spread.”

“It’s better than the Archers.”

Daisy didn’t say anything for a moment, but Basira could feel her narrowed eyes on her.

“Archers is relaxing.”

“Right.”

“And I’m the ranking officer. You’re lucky we switch at all.”

“Right Ma’am. Sorry.” She would have added a sarcastic salute, but with the heavy rain it was better to keep her hands on the wheel. Daisy always got edgy in heavy rain. She didn’t know why.

“I went back to the Institute.” Basira offered.

“Anything interesting?”

“It’s...a weird place.”

“That’s why you’re assigned to it.”

“I know, I just...have you ever been there personally?”

“No, just heard the rumours. Why?”

“I don’t know…” Basira said slowly. “As soon as I went down into the archives it was like I was being watched. Just a feeling on the back of my neck.” She shrugged.

“Any suspects?”

“The head archivist Sasha James had the most to gain, but she seems… average.”

“You sound doubtful.”

“You know how some people are just… too perfect? Too cookie cutter? That’s what it felt like talking to her. She seemed… too boring almost. After what happened down there it was...weird. It’s like… her life’s a stock photo. Exactly as it should be. Nothing out of place. Nothing too exceptional.” Basira drummed her fingers on the wheel. Daisy hummed, listening. Basira continued on:

“There was the one that got attacked by the worms, Stoker. No motive, never met the victim, I’m surprised he still works there. He seems like the type that could get a job wherever he likes. Handsome bloke.”

Daisy sniffed. Basira’s mouth quirked and felt a little silly for it, hoping that it might be a little bit of jealousy.

“The last one … he doesn’t strike me as a murderer. Not that it can’t be the quiet ones. A lot of times it is the quiet ones, but… I don’t think he has the guts or teeth for it honestly. He was nervous talking to me, but I think it was because he’s an anxious person talking to a police officer. Went over finding the body in the tunnels again, it all checked out.”

“And the boss?”

“Eh, didn’t set off any alarms. He’s kind of smug, but he’s also a man with a fancy title so that comes with the territory. I’m sure it was an inside job though. The bloody table, the location of the body…”

“They get plenty of freaks in there,” Daisy pointed out.

“I don’t know...just… instinct.”

“The best hunts are never straightforward,” Daisy said. “Keep at it. Bring me in if you need me.”

“I’m sure I can handle a bunch of librarians.”

Georgie’s voice cut in then with: “So watch yourself in libraries and keep sending in your submissions! I’m Georgie and that was Jon. Goodbye!”

The ending music started playing. Georgie’s voice came back in: “What the Ghost!? is a podcast distributed by whattheghost.com and licenced under a creative commons attribution noncommercial sharealike international licence. Our submission today came from Sebastian A. If you have a topic for our team to research please submit your story to w--” Daisy turned off the show.

“Sometimes I think I should look into those two.” Basira said. There was a cafe not far from their location. She could use some tea.

“The podcasters?”

“They could be in danger. They’re not just talking about ghosts and horror stories. Some of their things fall into sectioned stuff.”

“They’re not breaking the law,” Daisy said. “And warning them off would probably encourage them more than anything.”

“Yeah… I guess you’re right.”

Daisy turned the dial to Radio 4. Basira sighed.

[parttimestorier]

Interview with d Marie Licea

Recently, I had a chance to talk with d Marie Licea, developer of Us Lovely Corpses, about the creative process behind this fascinating “surreal-horror-romance” visual novel. Us Lovely Corpses is a VN I considered reviewing for this blog when I read it, but I struggled to write a review that would be interesting and accessible—explaining the parts that most impressed and resonated with me would mean spoiling it completely. But I encourage anyone who can handle some disturbing content in service of a great story and heartfelt message to try it out. This interview will start with some more general questions, and it includes a warning farther down before any spoilers for Us Lovely Corpses appear.

Question: Did you always plan for the story of Us Lovely Corpses to be a visual novel, or did you consider other mediums as well?

Answer: In its earliest stages, Us Lovely Corpses was actually planned as a comic! I came up with the original idea somewhere around 2014-2015—it was going to be about 10 pages, and would just cover the scene that ended up being the game's finale. Alex and Marisol (who weren't named yet) were very different—they were much younger, Alex wasn't really "a witch," and Marisol was originally a boy!

I sat on the idea a while, and the longer I did so the more I wanted to explore the history of these characters, which made for a longer and more unwieldy comic. Then in 2015, when I started learning about visual novels, it hit me that the concept could work really well in that format, especially when the "exploration" element came in.

Q: Were there any particular visual novels that influenced you?

A: Yes! The reason why I started getting into visual novels specifically in 2015 was that because that was the year We Know The Devil came out!

We Know The Devil totally shifted my viewpoint as to what a visual novel could be—no diss to dating sims, but before WKTD, I, like most people, just saw VNs as dating sims and occasionally something like the When They Cry series.

WKTD totally changed that for me—a short, incredibly contained story that also managed to be about so, so much, in a surreal, horror-inspired atmosphere . . . it really blew me away! Not only was it the game that got me into visual novels, but you can definitely see a lot of its influence on Us Lovely Corpses.

Besides WKTD, there was also Her Tears Were My Light, a fairly minimalist love story that used the "rewind" function in Ren’Py as part of the story. Utilizing mechanics as part of the narrative was a really cool idea to me that also ended up in ULC. (side note: I met and hired Alex Huang to do the music for Us Lovely Corpses because I loved the soundtrack for HTWML so much!)

Finally, I was really into the original Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) trilogy when I was younger, and the evidence gathering segments were a big part of those games. I originally envisioned the "rose clipping" segments of ULC like those parts, where you'd have to select each rose before cutting it, but sadly that was a little too complex for me at the time, and I eventually decided to go for something more simple in order to complete the game. But that initial idea was a big part of what made me try Us Lovely Corpses as a game, so it ended up still being a big influence in the end!

Q: Besides technical things like those mechanics and the exploration element, do you find that you have a different style of writing in visual novels as opposed to the stories you've done in other formats, like twine and comics?

A: I'm not sure if this is always the case for visual novels, but I find I have to format my writing differently when writing for VNs—specifically, in length of sentences and paragraphs. I've found my writing worked a lot better in Us Lovely Corpses the more I broke everything up into smaller fragments—larger ones or paragraphs didn't work as well, which can be a problem for me because my writing can tend to get a bit wordy!

This has to do a lot with the pacing of visual novels and how the player/reader is a big part of that. Control over pacing is a big part of why visual novels appeal to me, but you also have to think differently to get the best result.

Technical stuff aside, I found that, at least for ULC, my actual writing style remained pretty much the same. I think this has the benefit of making the writing in Us Lovely Corpses seem unique, but has the disadvantage of posing a problem for a certain something I didn't see coming at all: Let’s Players!

A few people have made videos of their playthroughs of Us Lovely Corpses, which is incredibly exciting, but when I watch them, I can't help but feel bad for them because they always read everything out loud . . . which means, with my somewhat wordy style, they have to do a LOT of talking!

I haven't actually gotten complaints about this or anything, but I still hope people who make videos of their playthroughs of ULC keep some water nearby!

Note: the next part of the interview contains spoilers for Us Lovely Corpses, as well as discussion of mental illness.

Q: As the story progresses, it becomes explicitly clear that the “monster” is Marisol’s bipolar disorder. Did you ever think about leaving the metaphor more ambiguous, and if so, what made you decide to be so direct instead?

A: I'd say if the "monster" was one specific thing, it would her Ocular Rosaceae, as it's the one specific thing that gives a physical form to Marisol's thoughts and unhealthy behaviors. But even that, in a way, is not taking into account her bipolar disorder and depression, her jealousy towards Alex, her self-loathing and introversion . . . "the monster" is all of those things, because at its core, the monster is mental illness. And mental illness is never just one thing, but many things and factors interacting at once to create something much bigger than a single diagnosis.

All that said, it's not incorrect to say that Marisol's bipolar disorder is the monster; it's just more accurate to say it’s part of Marisol's monster. Back when ULC was still a comic, I wasn't going to talk about specific diagnoses, but as the story grew I realized I wanted to talk more explicitly about mental illness. I don't exactly remember where the idea came about, but early on in the writing process I got that idea in my head of Alex finding that fake corpse and finding that doctor's diagnosis. In retrospect, it was a really, really weird scene, especially as it comes right off the heels of realizing what you thought was a dead body was just a weird joke, but I do like what it represents—in the middle of this surreal trip into a house filled with talking flowers, the story suddenly halts as you soak in this very blunt reminder that, magic aside, this is a world that is representative of the real world. Marisol may have a magical disease and be best friends with a witch, but she's a very real girl, so to speak.

So that harsh reminder is part of why I wanted to be so direct. I guess the other part would be that I just wanted to make no bones about it. Some things you want to leave up to interpretation, and some things you don't. From the very, very beginning the story was always about mental illness, so it just felt right to me to be upfront about it.

Q: One thing I noticed that I thought showed a lot of attention to detail in ULC was that in one of the rooms you explore there are two famous paintings that both have connections to suicide (Millais’s Ophelia and van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows). Are there any other little symbolic details like that you added to the story that some readers might have missed?

A: Ah, I'm glad you caught that! If I had stuck with the more Ace Attorney style of gameplay I would have liked to put more small details like that in. As it stands, the big example is probably pretty obvious—Alex's notes about each rose are fairly close to the standard "flower language" of different rose colors in real life. The fact that yellow roses can mean "jealousy" or "friendship" depending on what source you use actually ended up working very well with the story.

The last names of Alex and Marisol are probably pretty obvious: de Rosa ("of the Rose") and Flores ("Flowers"). Something that's probably less apparent is Marisol, a name that originally comes from a contraction of "Maria de La Soledad" ("Our Lady Of Solitude"), one of the titles given to the Virgin Mary.

Q: Was the flower language the reason you used roses rather than any other flower, or were there other inspirations for that as well?

A: There were a number of reasons! One being that Revolutionary Girl Utena was a big influence on my style and particularly on several parts of the game. There's also the whole dichotomy with roses/thorns. And there's also the simple fact that I have fun drawing roses!

Q: For my last question, are you working on any other visual novels right now?

A: I am as a matter of fact! I'm working on a visual novel set in Japan about some high school kids who explore a strange house. It's still in fairly early stages, but I think if I give it my all I will actually have a demo ready in time for Halloween, which would be great!

I’m definitely looking forward to seeing that demo—even more so after learning about all of the serious thought d Marie Licea puts into the details and themes of her work. If you’re as excited as I am about updates on her upcoming projects, you can follow her on itch.io or twitter, and considering supporting her patreon. Thanks for reading!

[the-magnus-archives-archiver]

Anglerfish

Case: 0122204

Name: Nathan Watts Subject: An encounter on Old Fishmarket Close, Edinburgh Date: April 22nd, 2012 Recording by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

This all happened a couple of years ago, so I apologise if some of the details are a bit off. I mean, I feel like I remember it clearly but sometimes things are so weird that you start to doubt yourself. Still, I suppose weird is kind of what you guys do, right?

So I’m studying at the University of Edinburgh. Biochemistry, specifically, and I was in my second year at the time this happened. I wasn’t in any sort of university accommodation at this point and was renting a student flat down in Southside with a few other second years. To be honest I didn’t hang out with them much. I took a gap year before matriculating and my birthday’s in the wrong part of September, so I was nearly two years older than most of my peers when I started my course. I got on with them fine, you understand, but I tended to end up hanging out with some of the older students.

That’s why I was at the party in the first place. Michael MacAulay, a good friend of mine, had just been accepted to do a Master’s degree in Earth Sciences so we decided a celebration was in order. Well, maybe ‘party’ isn’t quite the right word, we just kind of invaded the Albanach down on the Royal Mile and drank long enough and loud enough that eventually we had the back area to ourselves. Now, I don’t know how well you know the drinking holes of Edinburgh, but the Albanach has a wide selection of some excellent single malts, and I may have slightly overindulged. I have vague memories of Mike suggesting I slow down, to which I responded by roundly swearing at him for failing to properly celebrate his own good news. Or words to that effect.

Long story short, I was violently ill around midnight and made the decision to walk the route home. It wasn’t far to my flat, maybe half an hour if I’d been sober, and the night was cool enough that I remember having a hope the chill would perk me up some. I headed for the Cowgate and the quickest way to get there from the Royal Mile is down Old Fishmarket Close. Now, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that there are some steep hills in Edinburgh but Old Fishmarket Close is exceptional, even by those standards. At times it must reach a thirty or forty degree angle, which is hard enough to navigate when you don’t have that much scotch inside you. As I have mentioned, I had quite a lot, so it probably wasn’t that surprising when I took a rather nasty tumble about halfway down the street. In retrospect the fall wasn’t that bad compared to what it could have been, but at the time it really shook me up and left me with some nasty bruises. I picked myself up as best I could, checked I hadn’t seriously injured myself, no broken bones or anything, and decided to roll a cigarette to calm myself. That was when I heard it.

“Can I have a cigarette?”

I was startled out of my thoughts by the words as I thought I had been alone. Quickly trying to compose myself and looking around, I noticed a small alleyway on the opposite side of the street. It was very narrow and completely unlit with a short staircase leading up. I could see a light fixture a little way up the wall at its entrance, but it either wasn’t working or wasn’t turned on, meaning that beyond a few steps the alley was shrouded in total darkness. Stood there, a couple of stairs from the street, was a figure. It was hard to tell much about them as they were mostly in the shadows, though if I’d had to guess I would have said the voice sounded male. They seemed to sway, ever so slightly, as I watched, and I assumed that they, like me, were probably a little bit drunk.

I lit my own cigarette and held out my tobacco towards them, though I didn’t approach, and asked if they were ok with a roll-up. The figure didn’t move except to continue that gentle swaying. Writing it down now, it seems so obvious that something was wrong. If I hadn’t been so drunk maybe I’d have noticed quicker, but even when the stranger asked the question again, “Can I have a cigarette?” utterly without intonation, still I didn’t understand why I was so uneasy.

I stared at the stranger and as my eyes began to adjust I could make out more details. I could see that their face appeared blank, expressionless, and their skin seemed damp and slightly sunken, like they had a bad fever. The swaying was more pronounced now, seeming to move from the waist, side to side, back and forth. By this point I had finished rolling a second cigarette and gingerly held it out towards them, but I didn’t get any closer. I had decided that if this weirdo wanted a cigarette, they were going to need to come out of the creepy alleyway. They didn’t come closer, didn’t make any movement at all except for that damn swaying. For some reason the thought of an anglerfish popped into my head, the single point of light dangled into the darkness, hiding the thing that lures you in.

“Can I have a cigarette?” It spoke again in the same flat voice and I realised exactly what was wrong. Its mouth was closed, had been the whole time. Whatever was repeating that question, it wasn’t the figure in the alleyway. I looked at their feet and saw that they weren’t quite touching the ground. The stranger’s form was being lifted, ever so slightly, and moved gently from side to side.

I dropped the cigarette and grabbed for my phone, trying to turn on the torch. I don’t know why I didn’t run or what I hoped to see in that alley, but I wanted to get a better look. As soon as I took out my phone, the figure disappeared. It sort of folded at the waist and vanished back into the darkness, as if a string had gone taut and pulled it back. I turned on the torch and stared into the alley, but I saw nothing. Just silence and darkness. I staggered back up to the Royal Mile, which still had lights and people, and found a taxi to take me home.

I slept late the next day. I’d made sure I didn’t have any lectures or classes, as I had intended to be sleeping off a heavy night of drinking, which I guess I was, although it was that bizarre encounter that kept playing in my mind. And so, after making my way through two litres of water, some painkillers and a very greasy breakfast, I felt human enough to leave my flat and go to investigate the place in daylight. The result was unenlightening. There were no marks, no bloodstains, nothing to indicate that the swaying figure had ever been there at all. The only thing I did find was an unsmoked Marlboro Red cigarette, lying just below the burned out light fixture. 

Beyond that, I didn’t really know what to do. I did as much research as I could on the place, but couldn’t find anyone who’d had any experience similar to mine, and there didn’t seem to be any folklore or urban legends I could find out about Old Fishmarket Close. The few friends I told about what happened just assumed I’d been accosted by some stranger and the alcohol had made it seem much weirder than it was. I tried to explain that I’ve never had hallucinations while drunk, and that there was no way this guy had just been a normal person, but they always gave me one of those looks, halfway between pity and concern, and I’d shut up.

I never did find out anything else about it, but a few days later I saw some missing person appeals go up around campus. Another student had disappeared. John Fellowes, his name was, though I didn’t really know the guy and couldn’t tell you much about him, except for two things that struck me as very important: he had been at that same party and, as far as I remembered, had still been there when I left. The other was just that, well, on the photo they’d used for his missing persons appeal I couldn’t help but notice that there was a pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes poking out of his pocket.

I haven’t quit smoking, but I do find that I take a lot more taxis now if I find myself out too late.

Archivist Notes: 

The investigation at the time, and the follow-up we’ve done over the last couple have days, have found no evidence to corroborate Mr. Watts’ account of his experience. I was initially inclined to re-file this statement in the ‘Discredited’ section of the Archive, a new category I’ve created that will, I suspect, be housing the majority of these files. However, Sasha did some digging into the police reports of the time and it turns out that between 2005 and 2010, when Mr Watts’ encounter supposedly took place, there were six disappearances in and around the Old Fishmarket Close: Jessica McEwen in November 2005, Sarah Baldwin in August 2006, Daniel Rawlings in December of the same year, then Ashley Dobson and Megan Shaw in May and June of 2008. Then finally, as Mr Watts mentioned, John Fellowes in March 2010. All six disappearances remain unsolved. Baldwin and Shaw were definitely smokers, but there’s no evidence either way about the others, if they’re even connected.

Sasha did find one other thing, specifically in the case of Ashley Dobson. It was a copy of the last photograph taken by her phone and sent to her sister Siobhan. The caption was “check out this drunk creeper lol”, but the picture is of a darkened, apparently empty, alleyway, with stairs leading up into it. It appears to be the same alleyway which Mr. Watts described in his statement, the one that, according to the maps of the area, leads to Tron Square, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the photograph at all. Sasha took the liberty of running it through some editing programs, though, and increasing the contrast appears to reveals the outline of a long, thin hand, roughly at what would be waist level on a male of average height. I find it oddly hard to shake off the impression that it’s beckoning.

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 1 Angler Fish)

[somnilogical]

petty bitch

[22:58] somni: this body is really pretty 2 me rn [23:14] somni: that lasted 16 minutes [23:59] somni: okay this is super petty but im kind of annoyed that porpentine

>talks big about the experience of being ugly and gross >has a fleshform thats amazingly pretty

i feel so betrayed??? (i dont actually feel betrayed, i just feel i want to be pretty)

i wanna be pretty so bad

i wish i could stop wanting to look pretty and okay

ill probably end up having an abstract n dimensional figure if i have a form. idk if id still use a vision analogue in simspace

liike non-passing -> passing as 10000-dimensional representation of parts of my psyche

i kind of wish i could look nice in the middle(edited) 24 March 2018 [00:00] somni: kind of sad but at least i look better than i did before hormones [00:42] somni: okay

i think ill acknowledge petty and hug her but not let her front because letting things front makes them stronger? [00:43] somni: i think. ive read this no strong experience corroborating it with 2 sec of thought [00:45] SmolDuck: I think uhhh It’s important to try to like make sure all your subagents have their needs met and letting them front can lead to them taking care of their needs and then going to bed and leaving you be, while keeping them from fronting can lead to them going crazy and driving you nuts [00:45] SmolDuck: it can also lead to them sabotaging things tho so [00:47] somni: i knoooow mertl i originally wrote ‘fork’ [00:47] somni: because i also thought that and wasnt sure!! [00:48] somni: this is actually a hard choice for me,!,! [00:48] somni: but specifically petty i will ask her what is up [00:48] SmolDuck: sounds like you might want to gather experimental data by trying each path and seeing how it goes [00:48] somni: and not go autobloodlet [00:49] somni: hmmmmmm its haaard to be systemic about this thouuuugh thats a cached thought and may be #invalid [00:50] somni: (all thoughts are valid ooohh bb im so sorry for saying that omg. what was i thinking) [00:51] somni: i think the cached thought might be inaccurate [00:52] SmolDuck: nodnod [00:52] SmolDuck: outdated [00:52] SmolDuck: obsolete [00:53] somni: i want to try reinforcing things that i want to be stronger hmmmmmmmm [00:53] somni: merrr and talk privately with the other voices?

that would annoy me if people did that tho [00:54] somni: less so if they listened and changed policies based on my input? [00:55] somni: idk i dont like to declare things conserved quantities, because particular kind of zero sum thinking can cause lock in…. in most people i dont think it would lock me in because im actually good at noticing this

but it does seem like these two things trade off(edited) [00:56] SmolDuck: Hmmmmm [00:57] SmolDuck: Gentle reminder that this is not at all a private location for talking to your voices [00:59] somni: this is true [01:00] somni: the voices are #screaming tho and i gotta process

so like i thiiink that i want to be able to shift between these states depending on a thing but i d k what the thing is [01:01] SmolDuck: External cue? [01:02] somni: like between the states of letting everymodule out and trying to reinforce what ecosystem i want to have (who i want to beee) [01:03] somni: im keeping this post https://radimentary.wordpress.com/2018/01/16/the-solitaire-principle-game-theory-for-one/ in the back of my mind as a guiding framework when i say this(edited) [01:05] somni: and have been thinking of incentivizing and reinforcing parts of me i want (different but not disjoint from what i find pretty) [01:10] somni: i was also thinking of the process by which i passively gain most of my updates in personality traits and aesthetics and beliefs

where you have:

evaluate {laugh, aesthetic response, ooh i like it!} inspect for coherence with other parts (okay i often skip over this but also sometimes do it here instead of later) mirror the thing i like reinforce pattern by imitating independently let other people who have the pattern do discernment on your imitation, take criticism [01:11] somni: –

its like getting minor updates on all your programs nbd. passive growth / expansion [01:13] somni: –

but this is like directed towards growth and change which is different from being okay with and acknowledging the parts you currently have… except its not?

not really? not the way i do it

i mean yes its a different process but i d k if the two actually trade off in me when i do this thing

i was. autocompleting from memories of others subjective experience reports [01:13] somni: hmmmmmmmm [01:15] somni: i could probably both accept parts of me while reinforcing other parts at the same time [01:15] somni: meeevvvvvvvv okay so the thing nathan said is also a good observation that we also noted [01:15] somni: wanna address that [01:16] SmolDuck: wait which thing [01:16] SmolDuck: I say a lot of things [01:16] SmolDuck: fully half of them are framed to sound insightful but are actually kind of bullshit [01:16] somni: I think uhhh It’s important to try to like make sure all your subagents have their needs met and letting them front can lead to them taking care of their needs and then going to bed and leaving you be, while keeping them from fronting can lead to them going crazy and driving you nuts [01:16] SmolDuck: oh, yeah that one I endorse [01:16] somni: me too! [01:16] somni: i think!! [01:17] SmolDuck: ……uh [01:17] SmolDuck: if you did disagree, what would your disagreement be? is maybe a good way to find out [01:18] somni: let me think

ummm i might want to ask the subagent what its going to do [01:18] somni: if it fronts and talk with it [01:20] somni: but idk why do the council of elders have to be in concordance before i do anything

they dont thats literally not how you work

but i mean like in the ideal, or like in this ideal

we talked with person about how we have the council of all the parts of you, they talk it out and give their cases and then if their cases dont agree with you, you throw them out and do what you wanna do(edited) [01:21] somni: um! ！！ [01:21] somni: there are like three different alerts saying that’s wrong [01:22] somni: >yeah but one of them is our sim of nathan’s reaction so we can throw it out [01:22] SmolDuck: I endorse that [01:23] SmolDuck: if you want my reaction I can give it to you directly [01:23] SmolDuck: if you don’t want my reaction, toss your simmed version [01:23] somni: omg okay i miiight endorse this way of choosing

it is consonant with the way of choosing where to live where you have a bunch of spreadsheets and crunch the numbers and if in the end you dont like what the numbers say, throw them out and move where you wanna [01:24] somni: but its important to deliberate first because figuring out what choice you want to make is not always clear [01:26] somni: but also sidenote most choices branch out and then converge to roughly the same endpoint and for these you can actually do whatever you want without consideration as long as you can identify this sort of structure well [01:29] somni: um this is related to impulsive longsightedness where you mentally model the state of your body 1 day in the future and see that you are more or less safe invariant over a wide range of actions. so you are free to do fun and weird stuff. (that often looks really impulsive and reckless to people who are running shortsighted or people running 24hr!longsighted but who occupy a different epistemic state. but ime most of the objections and autoresponses come from people running shortsighted.)(edited) [01:32] somni: –

ooookaaay coming back to… what was the thing before the branch?

how to choose!

you have a bunch of voices in your head! how do we determine how fronting works and whats a good idea and how to pursue goals

and whose goals matter and how the system will grow and change and what parts of it to practice

okay stating it right here, evermodule’s goals matter [01:32] somni: >matter

like every module gets to be heard [01:50] somni: hmmmmm

this looks like a Project

okay!

so i want to be able to direct my growth #VALID

i also want to be able to tend to the parts of me [like id tend to a garden] #VALID

i dont have to maintain and reinforce things i dont want to grow in to #VALID what?! how is this valid??

>so look if i grow into new things and go in new directions, old things that are depricaded kind of iwhrvissh… i want to say fade away but idk what happens. they stop existing as much. stop being as available and salient?

i think there’s an important distinction between actively going around optimizing for killing parts of you. and like growing outwards into something new and the old stuff doesnt get that much reinforcement anymore because you cant hold on to everything, and even of i could i don’t want to?

some old parts are depricaded because they are clearly inferior on all fronts from their replacement, some because im not that interested anymore

maybe this is deathism? (mer what is it doing that causes harm though?) i may want to keep more in the gtf but not everything. though rn i want a memory with no non-con deletions [02:01] somni: -

okay

i want to be able to reinforce stuff i like and grow  directedly

um does this mean things that want to cant go out to play sometimes?

wait okay i think we are talking about different things because there are a lot of desires and stuff that you cant make die by not feeding them? the will to masturbate under t being one of them

i feel there’s a distinction between the thing you are talking about and other sorts of values and desires that are embedded in people.

um im addressing both the hard to get rid of and the more ephemeral things like 'hi im workethic bot!’…. my work ethic, when i have it does not sound like that but okay. and also 'work ethic’ isnt a native concept??? it isnt part of us yet but i know it as a thing that is part of other people.

maybe its part of us but havent really processed what 'work ethic’ is in internal terms when people use it. i think we have something different than the median meaning of work ethic but also it could be projected down to 'work ethic’ for legibility and people would still be able to follow most sentences i would output with the concept. …. given that i also worked to make the other stuff 'legible’. i hate the word 'legible’ now!!!

>why tho?

it is overused and i feel like you papered over subtleties there and there are more good details. buuuut ill think about this later. [02:07] somni: -

okay!

back to what i was thinking about. i think that

>i

k, lotsa agents up in this skull

stilll we think directed growth is nice and i think im okay with letting parts be deprecated

so a core problem here is that fronting does more than one thing!!!

so far im tracking two things i think fronting does:

(1) lets a module take full control of the body so it can get its needs met (2) reinforces the strength of the module [02:08] somni: -

autoquestion: (can we seperate these things?) are there other ways to let a module get its needs met besides fronting? are there ways to reinforce the strength of modules without fronting?(edited) [02:11] somni: @SmolDuck also im on 20 mg moda which i think accounts for a bit of why im Like This. but ooh! what do you think about the separability of the things? [02:14] SmolDuck: Hmmmmm [02:14] somni: ill take some l theanine to help CALM and help the comedown process go smoothly

(i think im coming down a bit) (im p sure this is moda comedown qualia) [02:15] SmolDuck: It depends on the need [02:15] SmolDuck: Seraph does better the less they front, currently [02:15] SmolDuck: the little one needs gentleness and respect [02:16] somni: nodnod [02:17] SmolDuck: if their need is like, 'attention’ they might need to front to get that fulfilled [02:17] SmolDuck: if their need is 'feeling safe’ then they can do that without fronting [02:17] SmolDuck: in my personal experience, ymmv, ianad, etv [02:18] somni: (i think im only a little more than median fragmented but of people in my fragmentation reference class im a LOT more self-aware of the thing) [02:18] somni: nod

hmmm [02:21] somni: you are very focused on taking care of parts and this is good and a thing to do…….

i dont think im as attached to parts-as-they-are but like parts that are anthropically called into existence because they can optimize over a thing (like if a module for containing anxiety isnt good at it, it sort of dies and is replaced with a new pattern; whatever anxiety containment module i have after a bit is a result of an iterative process like this*)

hmmmmmm

i do care about their welfare, but i think i care about them differently?? its hard to put my finger on(edited) [02:24] somni: *i also have spiritual feelings about this wrt people. where problems form voids in space to be filled by people who have shaped themselves to solve the problem [02:25] SmolDuck: hmmmm [02:26] somni: <i <l<3ve3 my spiritual feelings3 [02:31] somni: liike i think okayness works differently when parts of you keep getting replaced and this is standard operating procedure

whereas your parts seem like humans who eat soup and live in a village together and talk

and less like theyll quickly die and be replaced with another thing when the problem shifts [02:31] SmolDuck: nod [02:31] somni: wow okay i have low confidence in this model of my structure but it is like 1/3 right [02:31] somni: maybe 2/3? [02:32] SmolDuck: ………idek if any of us like soup [02:33] somni: hm i meant soup as a stand in for comfort and eating [02:33] SmolDuck: Ahhh [02:33] SmolDuck: I think we like clam chowder [02:35] somni: also im on moda so a lot of the descriptions will be biased towards mania / inducing in me a visceral sense of motion i thiink (die and be replaced is motion-y) [02:35] SmolDuck: ahh [02:35] somni: oooh…. everyone likes clam chowder? [02:38] SmolDuck: yeah [02:38] SmolDuck: some things, we all like, cause they’re pleasant for our body [02:40] somni: wheeew

this is better than last time

wait last time was 50 mg; okay i feel like i might be approaching the harsh meta-ing out event horizon and id want my squid module analogue to help keep calm [02:40] somni: –

hm it is nice that you can agree on something [02:41] SmolDuck: we cooperate pretty well now that we’ve actually talked about this and agreed that mutual cooperation is optimal [02:44] somni: like i can do better meta but at the event horizon things become a Lot and stuff dissolves and syntax feels like an illusion and things connect to other things without bottoming out and stuff dissolves

idk i feel like it diverges from metacog, though the chemicals help metacog in some ways [02:47] somni: okayyy feeling better

i dont need to be so tied to this visceral experience but also have the impulse that i want people with me

it doesnt affect my core i dont think which means panic attack is probs not going to happen [02:49] somni: -

if i become enlightened do i have to let go of drama? (no)

okay good because i like drama and snark and all that gay stuff [02:55] somni: -

so like ive been okay the whole time im so proud of me? im able to meditate in the eye of the storm, of course ive maintained calm under much more difficult circumstances but that was unexpected and i improvised as best i could.

i feel like i can actually do this reliably?

i still have the urge to grouse about it and snark which is spooooky why is this still appealing? is it blindsight grousing? force of habit? if im still attached and want to grouse maybe i havent let… something… go completely? idk what i mean by 'let something go’ but i def mean something [03:14] somni: @SmolDuck thanks for talking with me [03:15] SmolDuck: 👍👌