#in this painting the wound is really downplayed you might not even notice it at first

[canisalbus]

Speaking of paintings, I always imagined Machete's assassination (or, how they found him) to be something like The Death of Marat  (amazing painting and last year I even got to see it in person.)

(The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, 1793)

Really cool that you got to see it in person!

For some reason Machete gets compared to this painting quite often, especially if there's a bath involved. Even if he's just. Chilling in the tub, very much not dead.

[amarantine-amirite]

Out of Words, Out of Songs, Out of Ideas

I got a real surprise today when I got the recording studio at my school.

No lie, when I first saw it, I actually said, "What the fuck?!" I was just lucky that there weren't any teachers around, otherwise I would've heard, "Language, Camille" and have to drop 25 cents in the swear jar.

I shouldn't have worried about a teacher overhearing me. I should've been worried about Zoe overhearing me.

I never got along with Zoe. Zoe is one of those people who refuses to take responsibility, gives pathetic excuses, and either ignores consequences or downplays them. Worse, she talks down to you like you're stupid. "Noticed the piano, huh?" she said.

I nodded quickly. "Why the hell are all the keys the same color?"

Zoe did the thing where she talked down to me like I was stupid. "The school district was worried that people would think the regular piano keys are racist, so they painted them to match the wood casing."

I couldn't believe what she said. In the name of racial harmony, they painted all the keys of the piano the same color. If it didn't actually happen, I would have thought it was a joke.

I should never put it past the school to do something like this. I remember we had twins in my fourth-grade class named Benjamin and Daniel. They went by Ben and Dan. We also had a Chinese kid in our class (James) that had a learning disability. Alphabetically, he came right before Ben and Dan.

I didn't play with Ben, Dan, or James that often. I only really remember their names because of this one thing that happened.

One day, when the teacher was taking attendance, he called James's name, but James didn't hear him. Frustratedly, he moved on to the next two people, Ben and Dan. He said, "Ben, Dan"

"Ben, Dan" sounds like the Chinese phrase for "idiot". When James heard the teacher say this, he ran out of the classroom in tears.

They had to put Ben and Dan in separate classes over this. I don't know what happened to them after that. All I do know is that people are far more willing to bend over backward to avoid stepping on toes than you think. "Do they not have a little voice in their head that says this might be a bad idea?" I squealed.

Zoe shook her head. "I understand that you're upset. I get that. Things are a little messy right now. But sometimes, things have to look a little worse before they look amazing," she said in her trademark condescending tone.

I need my visual signposts. Making all the keys on the piano the same color just takes them away. And I'm far from the only person that thinks that. The reason pianos have different colored keys so the person playing them can tell the difference between the natural and semitone pitches. "Zoe, this isn't a little messy;" I said way louder than I should have, "this piano is now unusable."

Dorothy walked in. "What's all the hubbub?" she asked.

I pointed to the piano. "The school thinks it can combat racism by painting the keys on the piano the same color." All they've managed to combat is the musician's ability to consistently play the right notes.

Dororthy looked at the piano. She looked at me. She looked at the piano again, and then she looked back at me. "You know, Camille" she said, "You can't come down from a high you were never on."

I nodded, even though I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Sometimes, people say something insightful. Other times, it sounds insightful, but it falls apart the minute you try and parse it. "You can't come down from a high you were never on" falls into the latter.

I guess it could mean that you could never come back to reality if you never left reality in the first place, but I'm not fully sure. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it's one of those phrases that sounds deep and meaningful, but when you really look at it, it's just painfully confusing. "I get that, Dorothy, but can you explain to me what that's supposed to mean?"

I think she tried to say, "for everything, there is a season. There is a time for everything, and now is not the time for that." Basically, she tried to respond to a thought terminating cliché with another thought terminating cliché. But try as she might, she just could not get the words out. She wound up saying, "For everything, there is a season, a season is time of growth"

That sentence made so little sense that I burst out laughing. "Excuse me, what? Care to explain what this is supposed to mean, because I think I just had an aneurysm trying to decipher this."

Dorothy repeated what she said. "Everything has seasoning, but if you special the time, it is a growth."

"You're not making any sense"

By now, she started to get frustrated. "I said, for every season, a season is time of growth."

"That made even less sense than before," I said. I wanted to say "I've listened to drunk people who were far more coherent than that," but kept it shut. And for good reason. When she tried to speak again, nothing came out. No sound. Radio silence.

All of a sudden, it hit me. She wasn't dodging the question or being evasive or anything like that. She was actually having a stroke!

It spooked me. One minute, somebody's brain works fine. The next, it just comes to a grinding halt.

It could have been much worse. Even though she couldn't talk, at least her face wasn't drooping. Now was still a good time to call an ambulance, as time wasted is brain wasted.

I called 911, and they put me on hold. The hold music was "Staying Alive" by the Bee Gees. In the time I was on hold, Dorothy downed an entire bottle of water and began frantically signing to anyone who was watching. This might sound weird, but I felt a huge wave of relief watching her sign. She signed with both arms, the ASL equivalent to speaking with both sides of your mouth. Zoe looked at her and said, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Helen Keller." Dorothy got all pissed off, gave Zoe the finger, and stormed off to that corner of the room with the bead curtains.

Once I finally got off hold, 911 put me through to this guy whose last job was probably working as a bellhop in a second-rate Torquay hotel. "Hello? Hello, 911. How are you today?"

"Uh," I responded, "my friend Dorothy is having a stroke, how do you think I am?"

He blinked in confusion hard enough that I could feel it on the other end of the phone. "¿Que?" he said.

Growing ever more frustrated, I repeated, "Dorothy is having a stroke!"

I thought he'd understand the second time. But no, he did not. "¿Que?" he said again after a long pause.

I grew frustrated. It was almost like he couldn't remember what his job was, let alone the nature of my emergency. "Dorothy. Stroke." I reiterated in an annoyed fashion.

"OK, I see," he replied. He seemed to finally understand what I had said. "You friend Dorothy having a stroke."

"Yes!" I said. Finally, we were getting somewhere.

Or so I thought. I couldn't believe the next words out of the guy's mouth. "We no have time for you wild goose chase"

"What?!" I said, completely taken aback.

"We no have time. We no believe you. Very, very sorry. Goodbye!"

I went behind the bead curtains and sat down across from Dorothy. "Well, that was a bust." I said.

"Why didn't you bring your guitar?" Dorothy signed.

"My amp still isn't working" I answered.

The amp broke in the first place because some moron plugged it into a car battery. If you plug a guitar amp into a car battery, it will explode. I took it to the repair shop to get it fixed. They said it was ready for pickup, but it was exactly the same as it was when I went to pick it up as it was when I brought it in.

"I thought you had it fixed."

"So did I." I showed Dorothy a picture of the amp before I took it in and after. She looked at it and laughed.

"So Dorothy," I asked, "what did you mean when you said you can't come down from a high you were never on?"

Dorothy nodded. Those were the last words she said before she had a stroke, and it seemed she couldn't hear them without crying. She steeled herself and signed, "It means that if you don't know what you're expecting, it doesn't make sense to get upset when your expectations aren't met."

Good, I thought, we're getting somewhere. That said, she still can't talk. "I might call 911 again" I said.

Dorothy nodded. "Yeah, I think that's a good idea."

The good news was, I didn't wind up on hold. The bad news was, I wound up dealing with Manuel The 911 Operator again. "Hello, 911, how are you, is nice day"

"OK, no" I said, "Not nice day. Dorothy can't talk."

"¿Que?"

"Dorothy have stroke. Now, Dorothy no talk."

Not only did he recognize me from before, he still didn't believe me. "Oh, it's you," he said in a very annoyed tone, "We no believe you. How many times? Where are you ears, you great, big, halfwit?? We no have time, listen?"

For a brief moment, the line went dead. The operator picked up again. "Now you understand! So bye bye, please, bye bye." Nice. Then they hung up on me again.

I came here to record a song. Not only did that not get done, I had to fend off political correctness gone mad, deal with a 911 operator who knows nothing, and witness a close acquaintance lose her voice because part of her brain stopped working.

I can't believe I snuck out of geography class for this.

@leopard-prompts

[tsarinastorm]

Old Wounds, New Roommates-Adam Sackler/Reader-Chapter 2

Chapter 1

ONE YEAR AND SIX MONTHS AGO

Ever since your hookup with Adam, he’s texted you every day, and you had had another intense fucking sessions.  You had thought things were going well, but tried not to think too much into it. He was clearly a damaged soul that was processing a lot lately. He had went from some girl before Hannah to Hannah to some other girl back to begging for Hannah back to Jessa to you. That’s why you were surprised and tried to act nonchalantly when he informed you of his ‘feelings’ one day.

               “I like you, I really like you. I never thought I could feel like this again but with you I feel it.” He tells you while holding your hand to his chest, his eyes never leaving yours. He was looking at you with such adoration, you fell for it. He then insisted on taking you on a real date, you reluctantly agreed.

               Now sitting at the restaurant, he’s already twenty minutes late. The waiter keeps coming to your table to ask if you need anything. More wine is definitely needed. You’re giving him ten more minutes then you’re leaving. You scold yourself because you should have never expected anything from him. Furthermore, you were growing furious because you were normally the one in control of your relationships and here you were getting played. You knew better.

               It had been three weeks since Adam stood you up and he never had the decency to shoot you a text with an explanation…

                                                                               *******

PRESENT

               A lot had changed since your debacle with Adam Sackler over a year and a half ago. Now, you had two best-sellers under your belt, granted they were closer to memoirs based on your life. You wrote them to joke and parody your own life. It wasn’t your best work, but you were still happy that they were published under a pen name. Your next venture was historical fiction, and writing history books, your true passion. The novels brought you enough cash to pay off a majority of your student debt, and pay for your travels. You had spent most the past year doing promotional work around the world then leisurely travel. Either way, it burnt through your bank account fast.

               At the moment you were crashing at a friend’s apartment with your dog, Salem, and cat, Olive, joining you while your belongings were still in storage. You had given yourself a week to find a place. It was proving to be difficult: you needed a roommate because you would become depressed living on your own, and you didn’t want to live in Manhattan, and you had a limited budget at the moment. To add to the problems, most of the potential roommates were not roommate material. You were near your breaking point, something had to give.

               On top of everything you already had going on, you were almost ran over by Adam Sackler on a bike. Talk about a blast from the past. You couldn’t deny that he looked even better than you remembered: his hair was now slightly longer and he was even more toned. He also threw out there that he and his girlfriend broke up pretty quickly in your conversation. He was your biggest mistake: you shouldn’t have gotten attached and you shouldn’t have let him play you like that. Now all was left of your feelings for him was a burning rage, and deep down below that, a desire for him.

               You walk into Ray’s coffee shop to re-caffeinate and catch up with him. As you wait in line, you notice that Adam is there near the register. You really can’t a catch a break lately. You order your usual and do your best to ignore Adam. Luckily, Ray keeps the conversation going.

               “Hey, Y/N, how’s the apartment and roommate search going?” Ray asks as he hands your coffee.  You take it and decide to let it cool, you needed caffeine but it wasn’t worth the mouth burn.

               “Horrible. You should see some of the options.” You admit and settle near the register. There’s not a line so you standing there it shouldn’t disturb much. You can tell that Adam’s purposefully eavesdropping on your conversation. Typical. Shouldn’t he be worried about his own acting gigs, or one of the many exes or future exes you’re sure he has around.

               “Why don’t you wanna live alone again?” Ray ponders as he cleans the counter top, before leaning on it with his elbows. Ugh, this again. You have to remind people how screwed up you are, how much you’ve screwed up your life.

               “Because I’m miserable living alone, and it’s better for me to split rent at the moment.” You’re silently praying that Ray takes the hint and drops the topic. You’d prefer not to talk about it at all, let alone in front of the banes of your life: Adam Sackler. Ray however, is not dropping it, instead he focuses in on one of comments.

               “Wait, did you fly through your profits already?” Ray gives you a judging look that resembles a scowl. You feel like you’re being scolded by one of your parents. You roll your eyes as you answer.

“Yeah between paying off my student debt and traveling, it went by pretty fast.” You grind your teeth, a bad habit, and give him a stern look in return. Hopefully, he’ll get the hint this time. To your surprise and chagrin, it’s Adam who chimes in next.

“I have an extra room you’re welcome to it. I just redid it.” He turns toward you now, both you and Ray stare at him shocked.  Adam then continues sipping on his drink like nothing happened.

“You serious?!” Ray shouts, and you add in with, “What?”

               “I added on, it’s a nice bedroom and has its own bath. You can stay there. The rent is fixed for me so the price shouldn’t be a problem.” The initial reaction is: fuck no, you would leave the city and go move in with your parents before you’d move in with Adam. Then, you thought that Adam was better than most of the roommate options you had met so far. He might be your last choice, but then again, you’re at your last choice.

               “Can I see the room before I make a decision?” You ask, because knowing Sackler the room could either be very nice or it could be a total disaster. There was little room for middle ground with Sackler. Also you’re curious if the place looks as disheveled as it did the last time (one other time) you were there. If so, you would need to do a thorough cleaning before moving in.

“Oh I have a dog and cat, is that okay?” You think that the apartment will have to be pet-proofed. Adam runs his hands through his hair before nodding saying, “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

               “Wait, are you really considering this? Have you lost your fucking mind?” Ray puts his hands up in the air, and waits for you tell him that you’re joking, that this is some kind of joke. Your face stays serious because you definitely need some place to live ASAP. You ignore Ray and keep your eyes on Adam.

               “Ya, want to go now?” Adam asks as he motions his head in the direction of the door.

“Yeah.” You gather up your bag and your coffee, prepared to go. Adam heads out the door, waits for you by the doorway, and you’re right behind him. Ray gives you an incredulous look and you explain, “I want to see if there are proper floorboards.”

“Why would the floorboards matter?” Ray asks before he turns back to cleaning the counter or whatever he’s doing.

“In case I end up having to hide a body…” You joke but it’s the truth, it might end up being reality. If you weren’t desperate you wouldn’t even consider living with Adam: it was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

****

When you get to the apartment, after a one-sided conversation with Adam on the walk over, you’re surprised that it’s cleaner than last time. Apparently, Adam is a nervous talker, and can actually clean on occasion. The apartment isn’t as well kept as when Ray was living there but you could live with it.

“Your room is back here.”  Adam leads you back through the hallway, and you find yourself checking out his book collection. You also notice that the yellow sofa hasn’t left even though it should probably be retired.

“My maybe room.” You correct him as you follow him. Of course the apartment smells like him and it brings back memories that you’d prefer to forget even though they’re sketched in your memory. When you walk into the added room, you can’t help but let out a sharp inhale as you take it all in. It’s stunning, and surprisingly roomy for New York.

“This is actually nice, did you do all of this?” You head into the bathroom, which has a new shower with tub, and a sink with decent counter space. In New York there was never enough space unless you were a billionaire, but you could see yourself living here. Though you might have to wear noise-cancelling headphones and blinders to avoid your roommate.

“Yeah, I like to do this kind of stuff.” Adam answers, downplaying his craftsmanship. When you walked back into the bedroom, you notice that the walls are still white, and not painted. Adam breaks your train of thought by asking, “What do you think?”

He waits for your answer, and you can tell he’s waiting for you to rip into the place. You turn to look at him, placing your hands on your hips. You tell him, “I have only one question: can I paint it?”

Adam gives you that goofy smile that you’ve always been fond of, before agreeing, “Yeah no problem. Just preferably not hot pink or some shit like that.”

And just like that, you’re going to be roommates with a former fuck buddy, who stood you up and played you in the past. Maybe Ray was right, maybe you had lost your damn mind.

******

The new living situation was tempestuous at best. Adam had a habit of being a slob and leaving glasses of milk around the apartment at all hours. Then, there was the case of his tools which were quickly spreading throughout the common areas of the apartment. The worst was the nights: he was in and out all night, up and down. You had to get up and be productive and he should be too but apparently he preferred to live like the struggling artist.

You were hoping that tonight would be different: he might go to bed at a decent hour like the rest of civilized society. All of those hopes crashed when you heard a woman’s voice talking on the other side of the wall. This was not going to be a fun night, at all.

“Do you like my cock, you fucking whore?” You hear Adam ask on the other side of the wall.

“I really like your cock,” you hear the unknown woman answer back.

You roll over to your side, and turn up the volume of your headphones. That works for a short period of time because soon you can hear the bed hitting the wall. The bed’s hitting the wall to the point it’s making your own headboard rattle from the vibrations. You try in vain to knock against the wall, hoping they’d get the hint. Sadly, it doesn’t even phase them.

Then, the moaning and screaming starts. Adam is groaning and grunting, while his companion is screaming his name like a chant. This continues for several moments until the woman says, “Adam, fuck, I’m cumming.”

“Fuck, fuck where do you want me to cum?” You hear Adam say, followed by a response, “Cum outside.”

               “You’d like that, huh, for me to fucking cover you in my cum?” The woman moans something intelligible back that you can’t discern. After a few thrust that you hear through the wall, it’s over as you hear Adam let out a guttural moan. Now, you just hope that it was a one round night, and hope that the girl doesn’t stay the night.

               Round two did happen, loudly, and right when you had just gotten to sleep. You did think that you heard the girl leave earlier, and did not want to ever encounter whoever she was. You would however make sure Adam knew how you felt. Some people actually have to wake up in the morning have some semblance of a routine. You put the food in Salem’s and Olive’s respective bowls then pour yourself a cup of extra strong coffee and make a bowl of cereal.

               Adam comes out of the room as if on cue. He’s only wearing a pair of black briefs, and you can’t help but ogle him just a little bit. He was toned and in shape when you met him, but now he’s built like Adonis, and his longer hair only adds to the likeness. You stop yourself from admiring his bulge, you already know what his dick is like, and know what he’s like in bed: mindblowing.

               That thought process reminds you that you’re still pissed that his escapades kept you up all night. You wait to say something when he’s sat down across from you and eating his own cereal.

“Did you have fun fucking the Banshee last night?” You ask as you sip your coffee. Shock goes across his face, he looks embarrassed for a moment then he covers it with cool arrogance.

“I did…thanks for your concern.” He answers. His cool, smug demeanor pisses you off more. Not only did he keep you up all night having to listen to him to fuck, now he has the nerve to pretend it’s no big deal.

“I could tell. I could hear it. You can keep it down, no one wants to hear a porno being made.”  You tell him sternly, squinting your eyes at him, and then getting up to put your cup in the sink. You put in there loudly, to exaggerate your frustration.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.” Adam has the nerve to say as you begin retreating into your room. His comment makes you halt and stalk back into the kitchen.

“Ha! Why would I be jealous? Have you forgotten I’ve already been on that ride?” You cock your head to the side and cross your arms. Adam is looking at you with eyes that are a hot amber, he’s trying to provoke you. You see his jaw twitch in frustration to your comment.

“Which is why you know you’re missing out. You miss me fucking your brains out.” Adam stands and is invading your personal space.  You’d almost forgotten how much taller he was than you. You hadn’t forgotten what kind of sexual chemistry you had, the chemistry has now turned to tension as your eyes stay locked on one another’s. You wanted to punch him, stay away from him, but you also want to kiss him, to fuck him so hard that he’s absolutely wrecked.

Instead, you provoke him by hitting him where you know it will hurt.

“Uh no…it wasn’t that good.” You know there are three possible results from what you just said. One, you’ll hate each other even more. Two, you’ll end up fucking right here and now. Or three, a combination of one and two. Adam’s eyes darken and his brow furrows as he takes a step closer to you.        

[zilbea]

Some FAHC freewood headcanons I promised! (kinda long)

Gavin has a back thing - it’s inconvenient, really. He’ll arch away from the touch of the occasional Fake accidentally brushing his back in passing. It throws him for loops, sending shivers shooting both up his spine and to his groin. Some might say it’s why he’s always fronting on people - exuding such arrogance and nosiness; no one can get extort his hypersensitivity if he faces them - no one can make him look vulnerable. No one except Ryan, who caresses Gavin’s back with strong warm hands after a long day of heisting. No one except Ryan can make The Golden Boy melt under their touch, and as Ryan pulls Gavin into a kiss, trailing his fingers up and down that tanned back, he’s the only one Gavin leans towards.

Gavin brings a kitten into the penthouse one day. Most of the Fakes don’t much care for it, but it brings The Golden Boy absolute joy. Gavin stumbles into the penthouse late one night, bruised and exhausted from a side job. The main room appears empty and Gavin blindly flops onto a couch, begging for sleep to swallow him. It almost does, until Gavin hears a low voice mumbling from the other couch. Opening his eyes, Gavin sees The Vagabond, still in heist face paint, cradling the small dark tabby. The kitten looks comically minuscule in Ryan’s large arms, and Gavin can’t help but smile. The tabby lets out a small mewl and kneads at Ryan’s belly. Ryan scratches the kitten’s head, chuckling softly. “Gavin,” he says, not looking up, “You’ve got some competition for my affections”

Ryan knows he’s scary. He knows The Vagabond is notorious around Los Santos, and he does little to downplay this fact. During missions, Ryan rarely checks his rage, letting it boil over and unfurl with vicious ferocity onto victims. Even so, Ryan thinks, as he watches the Golden Boy calmly snap the neck of a traitor of the Fakes, that Gavin Free should be the talk of terror. He carries out jobs with such silent offhanded energy and always manages to keep his clothes unmarred. Ryan won’t ever tell Gavin, but he looks up to The Golden Boy. Clean, calm, casual, and horribly cute. Ryan’s brain drops to his lap when Gavin winks at him - the dead traitor’s head between two pristine hands.

The Fakes know to give Ryan his space after big heists or dangerous jobs. They’ve seen the hostility that still burns in his eyes as he stalks around the penthouse, having killed and tortured just hours before. Ryan knows his limits, and for fear of lashing out at the crew, he often locks himself in his room to regain a sense of normalcy. None of the crew questions it, not necessarily willing to find out how the Vagabond de-stresses. One night, after a risky heist, Gavin realizes that Ryan’s door is cracked. He leans in close to the door and ragged shuddering breaths echo forth. Gavin peers through the crack - drawing lewd conclusions - but to his surprise, he finds the Vagabond hunched over on his bed, head in his hands. Gavin slips through the door against his better judgment, settling on the bed next to Ryan. Gavin puts an arm around Ryan’s shaking shoulders, and Ryan draws a slow, tense breath. He stares up at The Golden Boy with anguish in his eyes, face paint melted and smeared by tears. Gavin just gives Ryan a gentle nod, rubbing circles into The Vagabond’s shoulders until shaky breaths become measured once more.

           (I could go on and on about this one alone)

During heists, Gavin likes to switch to a separate intercom channel as he hacks from a distance. He taps into Ryan’s mic and listens to the sounds of Ryan’s carnage, offering unwelcome commentary directly into Ryan’s earpiece. Gavin hears Ryan grunting in a fistfight struggle and puts on his best pout. “Ryan, I thought those noises were only for me, Ryan!” Ryan grits his teeth and knocks his victim unconscious. Later, fingers flying across the keys, Gavin hears Ryan snarl, “Be good for me, and I won’t have to do this,” followed by a strangled scream. Gavin grins, saying “Not the first time I’ve heard that one.” Ryan, covered in blood that isn’t his, closes his eyes and sighs in irritation as Gavin loudly reminisces Ryan tying him to the bed. Gavin hears Michael and Geoff’s voices through Ryan’s mic; he types a line of code on screen and says, “Ryan, a million dollars, but every time you roll your eyes, a very small bald man hits your bum with a sexy paddle.” Ryan growls a shut up into his mic, and Gavin just grins when he hears Michael ask who the hell Ryan’s talking to. During the heist’s climax Gavin is left with little to do but monitor the crew - so of course he talks Ryan’s ear off. He asks Ryan if he’s a psychopath, when’s the last time he got off, why he didn’t water the plants, if he wanted to get a dog, how it feels to be buried deep inside Gavin - Ryan cuts him off with another growl into the mic; “If you don’t shut your smarmy fucking mouth right this minute I’m going to come back there and give you a reason to not talk for days.” Gavin quirks an eyebrow at this, languidly kicking his feet up onto the desk. “Ryan,” he says innocently, “If you want to fuck my mouth all you have to do is ask!” Ryan’s eye twitches.

Ryan really loves to dance. It’s a fact he never planned on sharing with the Fakes, but sometimes, after most of the crew have gone to bed, he’ll pull Gavin close - swaying to easy jazz music and the wail of sirens far below. With a smile, he spins the Golden Boy into a twirl, dipping him into a kiss as sax and sirens crescendo. 

Ryan isn’t known for his sense of danger during heists, and he and Jeremy are notorious for escaping bruised, bloodied, and battered. Ryan hates showing weakness and often refuses to seek treatment for his wounds. Because of this, Gavin corners Ryan on the couch one night, first aid supplies in his arms. Ryan frowns at the greeting, opening his mouth to protest, but Gavin just kisses him quiet. Gavin sinks to his knees between Ryan’s legs,  gingerly grabbing the larger man’s bloody hands in his. Begrudgingly, Ryan holds still as Gavin cleans his knuckles. Gavin’s eyes flick to Ryan’s as he smears ointment across the cuts, content to see the spark of agony fade from those icy blue eyes. Gavin kisses Ryan’s fingertips slowly and Ryan bites his lip. He gazes at Gavin kneeling between his legs, bandaging his wounds with a tenderness Ryan had never yet seen, and maybe, just maybe, The Vagabond is falling in love.

Ryan was a football star back before he turned to a life of crime and glory and sometimes when provoked, a little bit of his old offensive side creeps through. Gavin gets in rowdy moods sometimes, assaulting Michael or Jeremy with a surprise tackle in the penthouse’s main room, or running headlong into a mutual shove. Ryan usually stands by as the shenanigans unfold, shaking his head and laughing, but when Gavin runs at him, he’s prepared. He catches the Brit in strong arms, hoisting the squealing man onto a shoulder. Michael and Jeremy collapse into a fit of laughter as Ryan parades Gavin around. Gavin flails and squawks in Ryan’s grasp, putting up a monumental fuss, but really, he loves the attention.

During a heist getaway, there’s not enough seats in the small van to securely hold the whole crew. Geoff drives with Jack shotgun (literally). Trevor sits on Alfredo’s lap, Michael sprawls across Jeremy, and Gavin is seated on Ryan. The crew is in high spirits; blaring music and overlapping chatter recalling their best moments almost drowns out the police sirens. It’s a bumpy chase and Gavin is a malicious tease, accentuating each jostling pothole with an extra movement of his hips. The van rattles over a grassy hill and Gavin grinds his ass against Ryan’s lap. Ryan’s face is flushed and he just hopes the Fakes are too caught up in their conversations to notice. He places his hands on Gavin’s waist to settle the Brit’s squirming and leans forward, lips brushing Gavin’s ear. “Don’t do this here, Gavin, please.” His voice is low and he’s not sure if he really means his words. Gavin just cranes his head around, staring slyly at the Vagabond. He reaches backwards and grabs Ryan’s neck, moving his hips hard into Ryan’s lap as Geoff yanks the van off-road. His lips brush the larger man’s, speaking softly. “What’s wrong, lovely Ryan?”

[xoruffitup]

Marriage Story Thoughts (Round 2)

My full ~analysis~ with more plot and scene-level detail from when I first saw Marriage Story at TIFF is here!

Man. The second go-around on this movie hit me in completely new, wonderful, intimate places. It’s really a testament to the nuance and genius of Noah’s writing that the film once again succeeded in “playing with allegiances” (as Noah and Adam have said), even when I already knew what the characters had done and would do. I still think Nicole is justified in all she does to fight for “a piece of earth” to call her own; to determine her own existence and fulfillment on her own terms, separate from Charlie or anyone else. And yet, as the film progressed, I also felt complete frustration, heartbreak, and tenderness watching Charlie suffer through the tectonic shifts happening right beneath his feet; the reeling loss of everything he once valued and lived for in his life. 

Charlie is selfish and self-absorbed, there’s no arguing it. But there’s also no way to argue that he ever acted with willful disregard of Nicole’s desires or happiness. He was simply swept up in his passions - for his artistic endeavors and for his family. To him, they were one in the same. To him, his success and triumphs were also hers, and he genuinely never seemed to think that she might not see it the same way; that she might not feel the same sense of gratification. Of course, he should have. He should have stopped for a second to realize his wife might want more for herself than just to share in his exploits. In many ways, he did take her and their relationship for granted. He assumed what made him happy also made her so, and he failed to give full gravity to her voiced wishes to spend more time closer to her family in LA. Perhaps Nicole didn’t fully voice her growing unhappiness before the movie’s starting point, but that hardly detracts from the fact that Charlie should have thought to actively tend to her happiness and fulfillment, rather than simply draping her in his own. 

The one element of the film I’m not entirely satisfied by is the sidelining of the fact that he cheated. While that fact doesn’t alone skew or determine my opinion of him, I just think that aspect of the story and the hurt Nicole felt because of it wasn’t given the proper consideration it deserved. We do see that the affair didn’t mean much to Charlie, and upon my second viewing I caught him trying to downplay it by saying it happened “after he was on the couch” aka after he and Nicole stopped being intimate and their marriage was already more or less over. Still, this doesn’t excuse it and I wish it had been addressed more. His yelled “because you stopped having sex with me!” during their blow-up fight didn’t give closure to it at all. (Nor was it anywhere near a justification.)

I noticed the beautiful (and tragic) irony this time around in having Nicole start the film sure of her decisions intentions, while it takes Charlie the length of the film to arrive at his own. The irony is that Nicole’s unhappiness and lack of fulfillment stemmed from the fact that she feels she never had the chance to make decisions shaping the course of her own life. (It was all Charlie’s furniture, she didn’t even “know what her taste was”; “I just got smaller; I wasn’t ever alive for myself, I was just feeding his aliveness”.) So when it comes to the foreign, terrifying terrain of navigating this divorce, Nicole is the one who this time comes prepared and determined. Though she doesn’t anticipate the cutthroat tactics her lawyer will adopt; she does know the key things she wants - to start a more permanent life with Henry in LA; and to pursue her own acting/artistic endeavors for herself separate of Charlie. Nicole already knows at the beginning of the film what their marriage has meant for her, how it has affected and compromised her, and how she wants to move on from it in order to seize control of her own life for the first time.

Charlie, meanwhile, who was “always clear about what he wants” and “rarely gets defeated” - he is completely at a loss throughout the divorce proceedings and seems more and more defeated as the film progresses. He has never stopped to think about what his life might be like when untangled from his and Nicole’s union, and that unknown void near swallows him completely. Nicole might feel that Charlie dictated their life together, but almost all that he valued in his life came from her presence in it - not only their marriage, but his place of belonging in her family, as well as the inspiration and collaboration she provided for the theatre company. He is cut adrift, alarmed and helpless, by the speed of everything crashing to bits just before his eyes. No matter your opinions on his choices or his suitability as a husband, it’s impossible not to be moved to sympathetic heartache when you see how deeply the largest revelations shock and wound him - Nicole’s lawyer threatening to claim full custody; the moment when he fully realizes he’ll never return to the life he thought normal in New York with Henry and breaks down in silent tears. 

As the movie progresses, this struggle to process, respond, and adjust has broken him down so completely that we see it manifested physically in the scene where he cuts his arm with the pocketknife. It’s accidental, and yet his ensuing solitary struggle in the kitchen to stem the bleeding and dress his own gaping wound before collapsing could not be a more direct embodiment of how thoroughly the divorce proceedings have torn his life and very being asunder.

While Nicole was the one who had seemed to struggle with realizing, claiming, or even understanding what it is she wants - it isn’t until the scene towards the end where Charlie sings “Being Alive” that the realization and understanding of his new reality - the things he’s lost, the ways these losses have changed him - becomes clear to him. Nicole needed to separate from Charlie because she realized she had become subsumed in his being, and she knew she deserved to be more than simply an extension of him. While she explained to her lawyer towards the beginning of the film how she has felt “dead inside,” “Being Alive” towards the film’s close is the first time Charlie himself truly reckons with the future stretching before him independent of Nicole. While Nicole has finally claimed her own “aliveness,” now Charlie is left to be the one questioning what makes life worth living, and how he will maintain his own “aliveness” without the presence of that love that was once so grounding. 

His singing.... GOD it was even more heartrending than I remembered. Aside from his voice being way more lovely than is even fair, Adam’s delivery is somehow moving to the core without seeming even for a moment contrived or self-aware. You see Charlie literally losing himself in the words he’s singing - see the grief and loss creeping up higher within him until the song possesses him completely. He doesn’t shed a tear in this scene, but his eyes seem to hold all the anguish in the world.

What made this second viewing a bit extra painful were the moments when I asked myself “Damn, what did he tap into in himself to embody this character’s hurt and loss so deeply?” And then I’d think about the New Yorker article where Adam said this role made him think about his own father and all the things his father didn’t do or the ways his own father didn’t fight for him the way Charlie does. No thank you to those feels... ;______;

I’m still stunned by this film - by its nuance and humanity. By the way it paints multifaceted characters who come alive with the ease of people you’ve known your whole life. By the truly stellar, deeply moving performances by Adam and Scarlett. (It will be a long time before I see anything that will move me as profoundly as Adam’s “Being Alive” rendition.) By the way it highlights the beauty in everyday acts of love and human connection - and how enduring those moments are, despite whatever may come.

[every-last-inch-of-me]

Damage Control || Marginally Catholic

[Backdated: Shortly after the bar fight that resulted in the Hunter Deer closing]

Gaston helps the priest patch up his wounds.

Tw: abuse mention, blood, gore

@hellfire-damnation

GASTON:

The place looked like a bomb had rolled through and torn the building to shreds from the inside out. There were bits of chair half a room apart, someone had split a table in three and another had knocked a leg out. The floor was so littered with glass and drink, it sparkled when you moved. Which would almost have been beautiful if it didn't crunch beneath your feet and ruin the soles of your shoes.

Really, the most pressing question was whether or not it was covered by the insurance. Gaston expected not. That was his dreams of a summer holiday to Greece fluttering inelegantly out of the window.

He pulled a clean bar towel from beneath the counter, pouring a scoop of ice into the middle and twisting it shut as he watched the last policeman finish their statement. It was something he did quite a lot. Mostly with kids who'd whacked their faces tripping over the wonky floorboards, in hopes their parents wouldn't sue. Though this time, it was paired with a slight feeling of guilt. After all, Claude never would have been there if it weren't for him.

"How's it doing?" He asked, crouching down beside the priest who had hardly moved since the police had first arrived. A finger pulled back his hair and he dabbed the improvised ice pack gently against the swelling. "Looks like they did a bit of a number on you."

CLAUDE: 

The fighting that had gone on around him had continued like a blur, something half seen from a swelling eye. There was nothing for him to do except wait for it all to be over. The shaking had subsided some, but it still made his hands clumsy. It was always like this, after, something he had never been able to quite control. The officer who had taken his statement had noticed it, of course he had, just like he'd noticed the way Gaston was lingering and the way Claude himself refused to meet anyone's eyes. 

The priest was familiar with it all, even he should never have to be. 

They'd asked him if he'd wanted a medical transport, if he needed medical treatment, and that had been the first time conviction had entered his voice all evening. The refusal was not just for him, however. They'd asked Gaston to take him and, Claude knew, even with the knowledge of the bar fight on the hospital staff's minds, they would be obligated to ask questions he did not want to. 

At least this time, however, he wouldn't have to lie about Gaston not being his abuser. 

Claude's eyes refocused as that same man crouched in front of him, a hand coming up to move a piece of hair from his face. Then, a towel was pressed to his wounds. As gentle as it was, the priest still winced. He gave a bit of a laugh, tried to offer a smile, but it came out more like a pained grimace. Claude's fingers twitched, wanting to take the towels from the other man, but his hands were too raw from his scramble across the floor. 

"I have had worse, unfortunately. Do not be surprised when my face is black and blue tomorrow. It is...usually how this goes." He bruised easily, a product of being sick all the time as a child, he figured, and part of the reason there had never been any evidence left on his face. "But...tired. I feel like I've been stomped on which...probably is not the farthest from the truth." That, too, had happened before. 

GASTON: 

Gaston was fully expecting his face to start showing in the morning, regardless of how delicate Claude's skin was. He'd seen the hit and it had been hard. If the moment hadn't been so full, he was sure he would have winced when he saw it.

"Sparkles and shit, Claude. Sparkles and shit." He readjusted the position of the tea cloth and wiped away some of the melting ice with his sleeve. "Anything else hurt?"

There had been a considerable amount of time (though in the rush he couldn't tell if it had been ten seconds or ten minutes) where he'd lost sight of the slighter man. Somewhere in the crowd, anything could have happened. It didn't look like he had a broken arm, but really he wouldn't know otherwise. If there was swelling elsewhere, it was concealed by his clothes.

CLAUDE: 

Despite the way it made the cut above his eyebrow twinge, the priest rolled his eyes. "I am not making it better than it seems, Gaston, believe me. I am telling the truth. You would not have recognized some of me before." It left a bad taste in his mouth just thinking about it, really, so he didn't. 

Sitting more fully upright with a wince, Claude considered it for a moment. He knew he had been kicked in the ribs, the hit had been solid. But he didn't want to go to the hospital. "If I said no you probably wouldn't believe me anyway but, non, nothing is broken. However, everything hurts. I will not know until I can see the damage done. And I'd like to remove the glass from my arms." He lifted one aforementioned arm and watched as glass shards twinkled merrily to the floor to join all the rest.

The priest looked at the other man with a raised brow, as though to say "anymore questions?"

GASTON:

Gaston lowered the cool bag and sighed. It was embarrassing really, that it had happened in his bar. Sure things got a bit rowdy at times, as was the way in male spaces filled with booze. But he'd never imagined it would lead to a full frontal assault to a priest. He would have hoped his patrons might have a little more faith than that. Or at the very least, a greater fear of God. 

Apparently, they didn't.

His eyes followed the elbow upward, shimmering with blood and glass, and he absentmindedly plucked a loose shard free. "I'll run a hot shower." He met his gaze for a moment. "But I'd like to have a look when you're done. Because I don't trust you and because I want to know exactly how hard I'm gonna be kicking the culprit."

Not that he thought the priest would lie, per se. But there was an art in downplaying things and Claude seemed to have honed it to a T.

CLAUDE: 

Even though it made his skin pull tight around the edges of his wounds, the priest felt his lip curl up into a half-smile. The bruising on his face stung and he was fairly certain that he would have to scrub away much of the muck, but the thought of a hot shower brightened his spirits a bit. It would be a bit hard to maneuver, sore as he was, but it would be worth it. 

“Mmm that would be lovely,” he murmured, a bit drowsy from the adrenaline crash he’d gone through this entire evening. “Though I might need help getting some of these,” he winced a bit when Gaston pulled a shard free, the edges catching against his skin, “out.” He met the other man’s gaze, eyes steady, before he heaved a sigh, chuckling quietly. It was pointless to try to argue with the man, especially when he had that look on his face.

“Fair enough, nounours. Help me up would you?”

GASTON:

There was something about Claude that he just couldn't place. He wasn't like other people. He wasn't like Gaston, most importantly. Even in that moment, painted red and blue, somehow he managed to smile and the barman found it fascinating. God only knew how long he'd be brooding, if he was the one who'd got hit. Hours for certain, probably days working out just how to get the bastard back. Truth be told, he'd probably lock himself indoors and drink until his face looked pretty again.

But there Claude was, laughing. And teasing and calling him a teddy bear.

Gaston raised slightly and offered his shoulders as support. "Looks like it's my turn to play mum," he said with a slight smile, adjusting his arm under the priest when he was up. "Not catching on anything, am I?"

CLAUDE: 

The priest snorted at the quip, wincing silently at the eyeroll. He dug his fingers into the muscles of Gaston's shoulder as he heaved himself upright. His head swam for a moment and Claude had to lean heavily into his side for a minute before it went away. His hip knocked into Gaston's as he squirmed, trying to right himself without hissing at the contact at his side. 

He hoped it was only bruising. 

"Mm, you might be. Depends on if you're playing at mum or dad, though." He snickered quietly, eyes sliding to land somewhere around Gaston's chest. He tried to step and stumbled, fingers clawing into the other man's shoulder to keep himself upright. The sharo movement shot a lance of pain up his side and he panted a bit, a small whimper escaping him before he could stop it. 

GASTON:

As the priest tripped, Gaston caught his weight. It was difficult to keep the balance of trying his best to support the man and not gripping so hard he hurt him. Controlling his strength had never been something he’d put much effort in. The goal had always been to grow it. So when faced with the need to be delicate, he was rather at a loss. “I’m playing mum,” he said shortly, trying to heft him further upright. He was a man, of course. But he’d never seen his father care for anyone or wipe their brow when they were hurt. Not like that at least.

His brow furrowed and he gazed down as he felt the priest grow weaker in his arms, seeing the pain on his face. “Are you sure you can walk? ‘Cause it doesn’t look like it.”

CLAUDE: 

The offense that passed over Claude's face was as stubborn as the man himself was. He levered a look at Gaston that, if it were anyone else, could chill the blood. His jaw was set in a hard, determined line, but the way his face screwed up in pain the next step or five suggested that, perhaps, he couldn't. Not that he was going to admit it. He would sooner chew off his own tongue. "Just...just a moment. I will be fine…in a moment."

"Hmm, my father was a kind man, for the most part. Quiet. He liked to make my mother laugh. What I remember of him is...limited, but I remember that. He was tall but," he huffed a laugh against Gaston's neck, the arm around him keeping him upright. "That might have been because I was a child. They died when I was...six? Seven?" The time was always skewed. He could never remember. And after so long...did it really matter? "But you…remind me of him, oui? Oddly enough." 

He smiled, and it was fond, a hint of the stubborn edge slipping as the pain seeped in alongside the tiredness. His accent had thickened, words slurring with the effort of maintaining it, and he scrunched his brow at the effort, the top of his head pressed sideways under Gaston's chin as they continued moving forward.

GASTON:

Without a doubt, Gaston didn’t believe him. Even behind the stubbornness and the gaze intended to kill, Claude didn’t look like himself. He certainly didn’t look ‘fine’. Fine people could walk without wincing. And didn’t tell family stories to distract themselves from the pain.

Though, he had to say, in some parts it was endearing. It painted a nice picture at least, of a small happy family. He’d never seen his own father make his mother laugh, not that he remembered. Christian didn’t make anyone laugh. Their love hadn’t taken that shape. They had been quiet but passionate. Instead, he’d make his mother swoon and hold her tightly and bring her breakfast in bed. In his house, love sounded not like laughter, but the sizzle of something in the frying pan.

Though he found himself tilting his head curiously at the comparison. Gaston was tall, that was true, and funny. He’d take that. But no one had ever called him kind. “I think you’re a bit delirious, Claude. And I think you’re lying. You need to go to the hospital.”

CLAUDE: 

Snorting, the Frenchman shook his head, knocking into the other man a bit as he did it. "Non, I am not delirious. And you're not taking me to hospital." He winced a bit when his side twinged, amending his statement with a sigh. "Not now, anyway. I would like to see what was done first, yes?" He did not touch on the fact that he was, indeed, lying. Instead, he sighed and tightened his fingers resolutely into the back of Gaston's neck. 

"I do not want to have to answer all of the questions...especially not about you. Regardless of the bar fight...they will think you are the one who did this, because you brought me. And I do not want to hear that." His voice did not so much as plead with him as take on a note of desperation, willing Gaston to understand. His voice held a bit of sadness to it, but he tamped it down as harshly as he could. 

"Please just...get me into the flat. Please." 

GASTON:

It seemed a little dramatic. Gaston couldn’t believe that anyone would think that of the person who’d helped him there. But then again, he didn’t take people to A&E very often, if at all. He’d only been three times himself. Twice for a broken wrist and once for a broken leg. His father had taken him both times and had been asked to leave the room while they examined him. When he’d come out at the end of it, his father had been fucking livid. He’d slammed the door on car and told him it would be the last time he took him if he kept that shit up. For a long time, he’d imagined he’d just been worried about him. But now, it made him wonder.

He sighed, listening to desperation in his voice and the quiet breaths of pain. This was going to take forever at stubborn-old-priest speed and he was getting bored of it already. Not necessarily of Claude himself, but of the fact that he was still determined to keep his independence while he could barely move. After a moment’s consideration, he picked up the priest. After all, he didn’t have all day. “Ok. One flat coming up,” he said, as he walked him carefully through the corridor and pushed open the handle with his elbow.

CLAUDE:  One minute he was standing on his own two feet and the next he was being lifted into the air, a pair of arms around him. A noise of surprise left him abruptly and his hands tightened their hold, one on Gaston's arm and the other at the back of his neck, fingers edging into the curls there. The priest readjusted his grip after a moment, blowing out a semi-irritated breath against the side of Gaston's face.  He took a moment to let him walk in silence, adjusting to the fact that he was being carried through the door of Gaston's flat and he chuckled quietly, squirming a bit in discomfort when it pulled at his ribs and face. He knocked a hand into the side of the other man's head, an amused tilt to his mouth.  "If you'd wanted to carry me over the threshold you could have just asked to begin with, Gaston," he teased, the petulance of his tone from before fading away as he kept his eyes on the side of Gaston's nose, his jaw, and the side of his face. 

GASTON:

His gaze turned at the little smack to his head, eyes meeting Claude's with a quirk of his eyebrow, unsure whether he was annoyed by it or amused. "Too weak to walk, but not weak enough to stop being a fucking pest," he retorted with a faint smirk. Though there was something of guilt still settling in his chest.

At that distance, and with the moving light, he could see the damage a lot more clearly. Little blood spots were beginning to form around his eye, and out of the dim lighting of his bar, the swelling appeared far more prominent. Worst of all, was the faint smell of beer mixed with blood that replaced the priest's usual scent.

Once they found themselves in the bathroom, he carefully settled Father Frollo into the tub. "Need help with any of it, or will you be alright?" He asked, entirely seriously. While he didn't particularly want to take Claude's clothes off, he understood that undressing could be difficult and sometimes painful. He'd spend enough time caring for his Bonne Maman when dementia and arthritis finally caught up with her to know a few of the easier ways to take clothes off when someone was hurting - and occasionally not cooperating. 

CLAUDE: 

Snorting quietly at the other man's words, the priest chose to keep the commentary to a minimum. It was already painful enough to laugh, to breathe. He could save his words for when he actually needed them. Still, he saw the look on Gaston's face, the faint guilt there, and offered him a small smile, the fingers on his arm giving a bit of a squeeze. 

He knew what his face looked like, after all. It was probably far from a pretty sight. 

There was very little he paid attention to after, eyes sliding over the side of Gaston's face and the side of his neck and jaw for most of the walk. He knew what the flat looked like, anyhow, vaguely could tell the way they were walking even in his sluggishness. When he was deposited in the tub, Claude offered a quiet thank you, sitting up so he had his back propped up against the side of it for a moment. 

Sighing at the question, the priest winced internally. On one hand, he knew that he could possibly do it on his own. He'd done so before. On the other hand, every sharp movement sent pain lancing down his side and, truthfully, he knew what it was without needing to look. However, he also knew he could not hide it from Gaston forever. So, with a nod, he began to unbutton the shirt one handed, turning slightly to offer up the collar and the sleeve. 

"Just around the arms, please. It is...rather uncomfortable, with all of the glass. And," a guilty pause, another sigh, "my side makes it...difficult to move."

GASTON:

The barman popped the collar and peeled back the shoulders of the shirt, exposing the old scars. He hadn't seen them so close before, only sparkling from a distance like tiger marks. No rhyme or rhythm to them. Some bubbled, some dipped, some barely even registered under the glaze of his fingers. There were faint red lines and brilliant white streaks. There were marks that sat matte against his skin while others sparkled. They might have been beautiful, if they weren't all so sad. And soon he realized he was staring, both with his eyes and with his fingers, and quickly returned to pulling his shirt carefully free.

So far so good. His new marks didn't look like they'd be anywhere near as awful as the old ones at least. Well, apart from the huge spot of blue he could see shadowed under the body of the shirt. But that was a problem for later. For when the clothes were gone and he could have a proper look.

It reminded him a lot of his Bonne Maman. The way she flopped around as they undressed her. He'd stopped doing it after his mother died. People got funny about grown men alone with vulnerable women, even if she was his grandmother. It made him wonder just when the last time she'd had a decent wash. Ten years ago probably.

"I'll let you do your trousers."

CLAUDE:

The priest forced himself to breath evenly as he shifted around, the pain and discomfort of his arms and his side making it rather difficult. The feeling of hands at his neck made him curl forward, tilting to the side so Gaston could get his fingers under the collar. As the shirt peeled away from his shoulders, Claude felt the hands stop, resting somewhere around his ribs, hovering there, and he knew Gaston was looking at all the things that marked his skin. This close, they were a stark contrast, some of them so old they were barely there, others newer and less healed. It did not matter where you looked. Much of his skin was riddled with them. 

When a set of fingertips pressed against one, an involuntary shiver ran a course down the priest's body and he curled around the hand, eyes flicking briefly to the other man's face before sighing and looking away. 

This was the first if, perhaps, the only time any of his scars had been handled with such kindness. 

Eyes half-lidded, Claude eased the shirt off the rest of the way, carefully turning in the tub so he could drape it across the side, exposing the side of his ribs he had been hiding to the light. He grimaced, but shifted until he was able to wedge a hand down to his belt, fingers undoing the accessory one-handed. That, too, joined the shirt on the side of the tub, hands and forearms stinging as they brushed against the fabric of his pants. 

He huffed a quiet, tired kind of laughter as Gaston moved back, a brow arching, but he nodded, saying nothing. Toeing off his shoes carefully, Claude pushed them near the edge so Gaston could fish them out before lifting his hips and shimmying his pants down his legs. Those, too, pooled on the tub floor once they were off, and the priest leaned back against the side, an arm dangling and head pillowed against it as he waited. 

GASTON:

Gaston scooped the last of the clothes out of the tub and piled them in the corner. He'd clean the shoes and throw the outfit in the wash when the priest was settled. But, for now, he sat on the rim of the tub and started running the waters. 

Gaston himself didn't bathe much. Showers were more his style. Though he'd grown to recognise the benefit in a deep hot bath. That had always been his mother's cure for any ailment. Even if he suspected it wouldn't be quite enough to undo the damage that Claude had undergone.

"Let's have a look then," he said, offering his hand forward to take the priest's forearm. He'd get the easier bits first, the ones that he knew wouldn't take more than a good bit of picking and a dab of water. The blue blob would have to wait for now.

CLAUDE:  

The priest had his eyes closed when the sound of water flowing into the tub made him crack them open. Curling himself so that his legs were under his body, Claude waited until the water was waist or so deep before straightening himself out again. Sliding under the water for the briefest of moments, he came back up with a sigh, the heat of the water loosening muscles that had tightened up from the exertion of crawling across the pub floor, adrenaline coursing through his veins. 

Pushing his hair off his forehead with a hand, the Frenchman leaned against the side of the tub again and offered his arm up to the other man, wincing slightly when the overly tender skin brushed the calluses of Gaston's fingertips. 

"I think I crawled through a handful of bottles," he said, flexing his fingers to turn his arm over, showcasing the pieces of glass that had embedded themselves into his skin beneath the shirt. The palms of his hands were cut, though not deeply, but the priest knew those should be checked, too. Hesitating for just a moment, shoulders drawing tight, he sighed before muttering quietly, "And someone kicked me, too. In the ribs." 

He was staring at the side of Gaston's face as he spoke, swallowing thickly around the lump that had formed in his throat. It felt like a weakness to admit something like this, a bearing of a piece of himself that he, usually, kept hidden. It was not easy, telling people you cared about, that you felt defenseless, that the moment someone came towards you in aggression you curled up and hoped it went away. Claude was not proud of it but it happened. Therapy helped and would continue to but, for now, this feeling is what he lived with. 

GASTON:

Gaston raised an eyebrow at the 'I think'. There was no 'I think' about it. Claude had crawled through a handful of glass bottles. He'd seen him do it. What he hadn't seen, however, was someone kicking him. It was something that happened in crowds. People got hit, elbowed, trod on. Though the way the priest hid the mark made him question just how accidental it could have been.

He raised his hand and ignored the boot print for a moment, taking the other man's arm and beginning to pluck a few shards of glass from the wound. They were the most easily dealt with for now and likely the quickest to heal. By some fortune, most weren't too deeply embedded.

"Looks like we'll have to get you a seat behind the bar," he mused, dropping a piece of glass into the sink beside him. He wasn't really sure why he cared so much about keeping the priest safe. He was superstitious, of course. And all those months ago he'd been sure his mother had sent him a sign. He might have been a mother's boy in his heart, but nothing had come since and somehow he'd kept on going. Perhaps that was the sign he was on the right track. Perhaps he was wasting his time on the closest thing to a friendship he'd had in years.

CLAUDE: 

The Frenchman hummed tiredly, cracking open an eye as he watched piece after piece of glass be pulled from his arm, not even needing to look to know Gaston was skeptical about something. He forgot, for a moment, that the other man had been there. That he'd pulled him up off the floor and behind the bar, probably seen him crawling across everything in his mad dash to get away. It was a sobering thought, something that made him squirm unpleasantly on the inside. 

Wincing a bit at a shard that had gone in a bit deeper and, unfortunately, protested upon its extraction, Claude eyed the other man tiredly, taking a moment to process the words. The crash and the feeling of dread that loomed over him left him feeling a bit adrift. It took him longer process the English being spoken to him and he was far from able to process enough of his own words for a comeback of his own. 

Instead, Claude smiled and nodded his head, frowning slightly at the piece of hair that flopped into his face. He tilted his head but it didn't move so he merely sighed, turning his arm so the other man could get at the rest of the pieces embedded under his skin. 

After a moment, voice thick with drowsiness, Claude murmured, "That is alright. I'll work if you put me back there. Know how. Worked in a bar to pay for school."

GASTON:

Gaston's gaze peeled away from the shimmer of silver and red that occupied his fingers, and settled on the priest's face. He'd never seen him look so drowsy, so delicate, as his hair curled gently against his brow and his eyes drooped. It was comforting, in a way, to know that Claude was, perhaps, the one person in the town who trusted him in that way. And that he might be the one person who had the most reason not to. Gaston was hardly a saint in so many respects.

It was also a little concerning. After all, he'd seen more life in the man when he was asleep. There was a precarious balance in deciding whether or not it was a symptom of the day's excitement or a symptom of the mark that was slowly oozing blue over his chest.

"You're not working in my bar," he said, cupping a hand and dribbling some of the bath water over the marks on his arms until it ran clear. "You made me get the rest of those kids, I'm not paying you too." He met the other man's gaze, anticipating the response. "And I'm not letting you do it for free."

CLAUDE: 

The Frenchman opened and closed his mouth, wanting to protest but realizing that the words Gaston was saying had already cut to the quick of what his argument was going to be. Instead, he shut his mouth after a moment and glared balefully at the other man, brow pinched as he leaned a cheek against the side of the tub. He'd shifted around to edge his other arm out towards his companion, but that didn't mean he had to be happy about it. 

"I'll just do it anyway," he murmured, still glaring. There was no heat in it though, and after a moment Claude sighed through his nose and shifted, trying to relieve some of the pressure on his side with a quiet whine. It didn't matter how he twisted, or which way he went. There was a twinge or a pull of pain to go along with each movement. He was tired enough to start grumbling about it, too, rather than ignore it as he had been. 

All he wanted to do was wrap his ribs and his cuts and then face plant onto a conveniently located couch.

GASTON:

The barman let out a quiet laugh as he got to work on the second arm, washing it first this time in hopes that the force of the water would remove some of the smaller shards. "I know you will," he replied softly, smile still curling on his lips. 

With his face pressed against the side of the bath, the priest looked and sounded a lot like a child. And in some parts, Gaston imagined, he probably still was. There was something about tragedy that made you grow up so much quicker than you needed to. He'd felt it himself when his parents had died. And no matter how hard you tried to keep on top of it, there would always be parts that got left behind.

Of course, Claude seemed mature, seemed like he had it all sorted. But he'd seen him curled up in a ball so many times as he stared into blank spaces, Gaston couldn't help but think that there was something small and vulnerable there that hadn't been able to keep up.

"Was that me?" He asked as the other man whimpered.

CLAUDE: 

Even tired and sore, the priest's mouth still turned up into a hint of a smile when he heard Gaston laugh. The other man did so little of it. Despite it being about something Claude had said, it was still good to hear. Pressing his forehead down into the side of the tub, Claude tried to refrain from making another noise of discomfort. 

"You should laugh more. 'S nice," he murmured, voice heavy with tiredness and words slurred by the accent he was no longer attempting to control. The water on his other arm was nice and it seemed to he helping but the concern from the other man was palpable when Gaston reacted to the pain Claude expressed. 

"Non, it is not you. My side...is just uncomfortable. Hurts whenever I move." Sighing a bit, Claude picked his head back up and turned a bit, showcasing the darkening purple along his rib cage, part of his belly, and towards his hip. Peering down at it with a grimace, Claude shrugged the shoulder of his free arm. "I would say I am not familiar to the feeling but we both know that is not true. Once you are done with the arm...it might be wise to look at it. At the very least, to bind it." 

Usually Claude could do that on his own, but the potential severity of this injury made him balk at it. The glass was nothing compared to his side, a constant discomfort where the pieces in his arms was inky momentary. 

GASTON:

Gaston's eyes peeled up to the other man's face, eyebrows twitching a moment as something swooped strangely within his chest. He'd always been rather good at deciding not to listen to what people said to him. He'd always been a little too confident, a little too brash; and people liked to let him know because, he thought, it made them feel better about themselves. So it almost came as a shock to hear, possibly for the first time in years, someone telling him something nice about himself, not something he needed to change.

"I like to save it for special occasions," he said dismissively. He'd never really been interested in his laugh. It had never been as smooth as other part of him. It didn't have the sexy curl of a smirk or the edge of words. It was as it came and, suddenly, he was acutely aware of it.

"But ok, I'll finish this up and have a look." He plucked another shard free and dropped it carefully into the sink. He probably had a binder somewhere for the gym that he could use. If only to hold it in place for the time being. "Hopefully if you sleep on it, we'll work out how bad it is in the morning."

CLAUDE: 

"Lucky me then," he said, a considering hum making the priest scrunch up his brow for a moment in consideration, "remind me to not make a habit of this particular occasion, though. It is not very fun." 

Nodding his head, Claude settled back against the tub once more, watching quietly as glass shard after glass shard was fished from his arm. It had long since stopped hurting. Now it was merely a pulling sensation at the skin, uncomfortable and unwelcome, certainly, but no more painful than before. 

"Merci," he said, suddenly, voice startlingly loud in the silence that had fallen. "For helping. You did not have to. But I am glad you did." It was a simple thing, truly, to offer his thanks, but it was done all the same. "I think wrapping it will do, for now. Might be stiff in the morning but we shall see, yes?" 

GASTON:

A faint smile twisted his lips and he nodded. It wasn't very funny at all. Even now, he wasn't sure who started it or why. But it stood, at least, to show the other man's resolve in the face of anguish. It was almost admirable, if Gaston would ever admit he admired anything that wasn't himself.

His eyes glance upwards again, as the sounds of thanks broke his concentration. That was another thing he hadn't heard in a while. Not genuinely at least. Lady had said it, while batting her eyelashes at him, which rather stole its gravity. Quasi had said it, though he'd seemed so desperate he'd probably say it to a cat who'd thrown up on his shoes. Really, he'd almost forgotten what you were supposed to do.

So, for the sake of not admitting he was any parts great in case it lost his sparkle, he did nothing at all.

"Let's get you up," he said, washing his arm with the bathwater one last time and offering a hand for leverage, gazing at the boot print as he moved. It really was an awful thing, he thought, as the flat of his hand pressed gently to the blackness, only to find it burning hot. "I'll grab you some bits once you're in bed."

CLAUDE: 

The priest was almost too tired to hear the steady silence that came after the thanks he had given. Almost. He glanced up at Gaston's face, eyes heavy from fatigue but curious. He opened his mouth to ask, to say something, but thought better of it. Instead, he began tracking what Gaston was saying instead. 

Grimacing, Claude nodded his head once, already dreading having to move. The priest shifted, eyes shutting as he levered himself first onto his knees and then into a bit of a crouch. Reaching blindly, he wrapped a hand around Gaston's and squeezed when he straightened his torso, breath shallow as he hissed quietly in pain. 

"That is never the fun part," he said, trying to make light of the situation as he clambered from the tub. "Can I have a towel, please?" He nodded again, head lolled to the side as he watched the other man, back pressed against the tub where he leaned, gripping the edge with his free hand. He let go of the other after a moment, using it to prod carefully at the area around the blackening bruise.

GASTON:

Gaston winced slightly to himself as the man before him hissed in pain. He'd always been exceptional in the art of inflicting injuries, and occasionally tending his own. But he'd never really been present in the aftermath of someone else's. Not enough to feel real empathy. Not like this.

The closest he'd ever come had been once, as a teenager, when he'd shoved a stick through the spokes of another boy's bike and watched him flip face first into the pavement. He'd ended up with gravel in his lip and an arm so broken that the image of exposed bone would never burn out of Gaston's memory. For days, he'd felt horribly guilty. And then the kid had turned up to class with a cool new cast that everyone wanted to sign and he didn't feel so bad.

He reached out and arm and pulled a towel from the nearby rack, offering it forward. "Don't poke it," he said, tapping the hand away from the mark. "You might aggravate it."

CLAUDE: 

Claude took the proffered towel with a small smile, fisting the material in hand for a moment, thumb rubbing across the seams. He sat forward again, biting into his lip to keep the hiss quiet, and wrapped the material clumsily around his hips. Rolling it one-handed at his hip bone, the Frenchman gave a half-hearted glare as Gaston batted his hand away. 

"I am not poking the injury. Around it. Need to see if anything else is damaged." Nevertheless, the priest moved his hand to the side. He knew the other man was right, partially. All he would need would be to make it worse and truly need a doctor.

"Help me up, please?" 

GASTON:

"Right." Gaston doubted it. He knew himself that there was a kind of pleasure in testing the pain of a bruise, poking it until it ached, only to poke it some more. He'd been there, he'd done that, filled with a primal instinct that he didn't believe anyone was above. Even the priest. Christ, if only the world knew what a pain in the bum this man was.

At the request, he lowered himself, slinging the priest's arm over his shoulder and raising him from the tub before leading him across the hallway and lowering him back onto the great swirl of duvet on his bed. He'd never been one for making a bed unless it was strictly necessary. And for once it came in handy to have a cocoon he could lower another person into.

Leaving him a moment, Gaston moved to the wardrobe beside the bed, pulling from the drawers a pair of shorts and jumper of his that the priest had taken a liking to that last time he'd borrowed it. "Those any good?" He said, tossing the pile towards Claude.

CLAUDE: 

"Sound so reassured why don't you," murmured the priest, huffing a quiet breath and a slight, tired eye roll. Still, the slight curl to his mouth was enough to indicate he heard the other man. In a way, he'd come to expect Gaston to be contrary, words not always meeting actions. 

What he didn't expect was to be hoisted up in the air again. An arm flailed out to the side for a moment, caught off balance, before Claude settled his shoulder into the crook of Gaston's arm, another sleep-addled glare making an appearance. "I have legs. They mostly work. Could have walked across the hall." Once he was set down, Claude realized he was seated in the other man's room, on top of a comforter. 

He pulled the thing around him, tucking it carefully across his shoulders and watching quietly as the younger man dug about in his wardrobe. Claude didn't quite catch the clothing tossed his way, but it reached him, so that was all that mattered. "Should be. Merci," he murmured, voice muffled as he crawled into the jumper and shrugged the shorts on with as few movements as possible. The towel came off after he was done, and he tossed it carefully towards the wall by the door. 

"Mm do you have, eh, ice pack?" Claude sighed, wincing a bit at the way the breath in pulled at his side and attempted to adjust. His breathing was already careful, not shallow enough to hyperventilate but enough to keep his ribs from screaming on each inhale. "Or a..something to...wrap them?" He gesticulated in the air, voice thick and face screwing up as he tried to make the words come out.

GASTON:

Sure, maybe Claude could have walked. But it was time consuming and frankly, considering the hour, Gaston didn't want to waste his youth helping the priest edge across the hallway when there were much more effective methods. "Yeah, but you would've whinged and huffed the whole time," he retorted, crouching lower and pulling open the very bottom drawer of his wardrobe.

He wasn't a particularly organised person, but he kept a drawer dedicated to his gym stuff. There were pads and belts and supports for nearly any joint you could think of. There was every painkiller under the sun and little thin sheets that cooled or heated pains. When it came to working out, they'd become something of necessity. He'd never been one for restraint, it made him feel weak. It was no wonder he was prone to pulls and aches.

He rounded the bed and settled beside the priest, now bundled like a child in his jumper. Really, he didn't want to move him, to disturb the peace. So carefully, he raised the hem of the top to expose the mark. He hadn't seen something quite so bad in a long time. You almost see the rib of the sole against Claude's blue-black skin.

"It's gonna be cold," he warned, as he peeled the first sheet free and gently smoothed it over the soft, flat skin of the priest's stomach. He'd brought over another two, fully anticipating that one wouldn't cover the entire mark. And unfortunately, he'd been right.

CLAUDE: 

"Would not," Claude murmured, a bit of a sulk coloring his voice. He was virtually a bundle with eyes now,the comforter secured around his body like a cocoon. Tired eyes tried to track the movement of the other man, head tilted to the side to press his cheek into the arch of his shoulder. 

Gaston rounded the bed again and Claude was still watching him eyes drooping slightly as he tried to keep them on the younger man's face. It was difficult, regulating his breathing and staying alert, trying not to hurt himself more and finding a position that was comfortable for him to sit in. He cringed at the thought of what it would be like trying to sleep. When the larger man sat beside him, Claude wiggled out of the comforter, moving his arm to the side so Gaston could get to the injury. 

The feeling of fingers against his skin made him whine, a quiet sound, but nodded his head when Gaston warned him the next contact would be cold. He did not quite realize how cold it would be until the priest was sucking in a shallow breath, chest hitching at the feeling. He squirmed, wanting to shift away but, instead, somehow found himself pressing into Gaston's side tiredly. 

"Hurts," he mumbled, head dropping off miserably to rest against the slope of Gaston's closest shoulder. 

GASTON:

The barman shook his head, as he peeled the next sheet free and smoothed it into place. For his apparent protest, it sounded an awful lot like whinging. The first of his words at least. The last, however, sounded nothing more than exhausted.

His hand raised and he cradled the back of the other man's neck in his fingers. "It would, you just got kicked in the middle," he replied softly, carefully taking the support from beside him and strapping it into place around his waist, with as little contact as he could muster. He'd never liked the sound of people's pain. "You need to rest. Go to sleep." He gently leaned to one side and lowered the priest from his shoulder back into the bedcovers. The man was a stubborn old git, he was sure of it. But sleep was also grasping him and it would take him soon enough.

"I'll be in the other room. Shout me if you need me, yeah?"

CLAUDE: 

Claude sighed into Gaston's shoulder as the second cold sheet was pressed into his ribs, the contact making him flinch a bit. But even that was too much to do. He was exhausted, physically and mentally, and all he wanted now was to curl up beneath a blanket and sleep. 

The support band Gaston strapped around his ribs and stomach eased a bit of the pressure somewhat but it wasn't comfortable. There would be a bit of maneuvering until he found a good position to sleep in. And speaking of sleep…

Claude nodded slightly, allowing himself to be moved off the other man's shoulder back onto the place where the bed covers were. Even if he'd wanted to leave he couldn't have. They were comforting and his eyes already hung heavy. The priest made a noise of affirmation as he shuffled awkwardly under the nearest covering and finally listened to the siren's call lulling him into deep, black. 

[spookybooscarystorytime]

Princess | A Creepypasta

New Post has been published on http://www.scarystorytime.com/creepypasta/princess-a-creepypasta.html

Princess | A Creepypasta

Princess

Ever wondered if things can just be born evil? In this enlightened age of ours, concepts like good and evil are often painted as outmoded, archaic even. According to modern thought, people (animals too, obviously) are simply products of their environment and no more responsible for their actions than a twig in a stream. But I know better. Some things are just born bad.

About ten years ago, we had a German shepherd named Duchess that had a litter of puppies – seven in all. Six looked like any other shepherd you’ve ever seen, the seventh was a snowy white. Not a true albino, just white-furred with a black nose and blue eyes.

There was never any doubt about which one we were keeping out of that litter. We named her Princess.

Before the end of six months, any plans we had about giving away or selling the others became a moot point, as all of the others were dead. We’d just find them at a rate of about one a month, not mangled or anything, just dead as if they’d died in their sleep. At first, we thought maybe their mother, it being her first litter and all, was accidentally crushing or smothering them.

Later, we had no doubt as to what had killed them.

Within a year, she came to dominate her mother, her father (tough old alpha that he was), and to a degree, us too. Her parents shied away from her. When we put out their food, she ate till her heart’s content, unchallenged by the other two. Once I tried to shoo her away and let the other two eat. She snarled at me, baring those perfect white fangs to her incongruously black gums and loosing a growl so deep that I felt it in my guts more than heard it.

After that, I left her alone too.

I’ve often wondered if the parents of serial killers know they have a monster in the making. I mean, sure, some of them are to blame for how their kids turn out, products of fucked up households with systematic abuse of all possible flavors, but then there are the ones that seem to be true aberrations. It’s those families I’m curious about. Do they smile and laugh and pretend that everything’s fine?

I know that we sure did. We downplayed the weirdness around Princess, tried to rationalize her behavior, the bizarre things she’d do, like killing rabbits and leaving them hung up in the bushes behind our house.

“Some dogs do that to show they love you, cats too,” my father would say. “To them, it’s just bringing you food.”

To me, it looked like she was taunting us. Just like the puppies years earlier, not one of those rabbits ever had a mark on it.

Princess, just like her mom and dad, was well looked after and never hurt for a meal, so it wasn’t as if she were hunting for food. Her innumerable kills were always untouched. No, the only thing I ever saw her eat was a kitten.

We had some feral cats in the woods around our house and one momma cat had a litter in our tool shed. “Feral” really is stretching it; most of them were tame enough to be petted, this momma being among them. I returned home from school one day and headed around back to look in on them.

The door to the shed was open and inside I found Princess, her jaws pink from her feast. As she devoured that last kitten, her beautiful blue eyes never left mine.

The momma we found displayed on what I’d come to think of as the “rabbit bush.”

The tipping point came that same year when we found her sire dead. He was the best dog we’d ever had, that we ever will have. We woke one Saturday morning to find him in the backyard lying dead without a mark like so many rabbits before him. I can count the number of times I ever saw my father cry on one hand. That was one of them.

That was also when we found out how she killed so cleanly: she strangled her prey. Like a jaguar. The fur at her father’s neck was still wet with her saliva.

We spent that morning burying that good old faithful dog, and then he sent me and my mom away on some pretense. No words were spoken, but there was no doubt about what he intended to do.

I’m sure that there are some of you reading this that will find the notion of putting an animal down to be abominable, but what other options did he have, really? Take her to an animal shelter? Give her to some other family? Who could do that and go to sleep with a clear conscience?

As it turned out, we weren’t getting any sleep that night regardless of our decision.

We spent that afternoon at my uncle’s house. Once when I came in from playing to get a glass of water, I overheard my mom telling my uncle that she sometimes wondered if the dog was possessed or something. I’d sometimes wondered the same thing. Later that evening not long before sunset, we got a call from dad. Apparently, the deed was done.

By the time we arrived home, he’d already washed up and changed clothes, but there was little he could have done to hide his wounds, even less to hide the haunted look in his eyes. Both his arms and one leg were bandaged and that was bad enough, but what’s stuck with me all these years later was just how terrified he looked. It wasn’t until I’d actually been through combat that I recognized that expression – it’s how men look after they’ve stared death straight in the face.

My father never talked about it, but he’d drafted a friend from up the street to come help, and it’s from him that I get this part of the story.

Princess was many things – bloodthirsty and evil chief among them – but stupid wasn’t among them. In that, if nothing else, she took after her father. Her dad, Rocky, was famous for letting himself into the house if it was storming out. He’d figured out how to paw open the sliding glass door out to the patio. What was really astounding is that he also had the presence of mind to close it behind him.

Not being stupid, she knew something was up and made herself scarce, disappearing into the woods. Dad, not wanting to put this off and being in full-on revenge mode, called his friend from down the road and filled him in, so off on the hunt the two of them went.

In his own words, “She was laying for us.”

If it sounds absurd to say that Princess lay in ambush, then I’ve failed at conveying just how wrong everything about her truly was. She led them on a chase through those woods, barking whenever it seemed the stupid humans had lost her again. Then she laid up beneath an overhang on the creek bank just where the path crossed it and waited.

She was on my father the instant he stepped down into the creek, grabbing his leg and making him fall headfirst into the water. Then she went straight for his throat. My dad had already lost his rifle at that point and he grabbed her with both hands to try to fend her off, wrestling with 115 pounds of teeth, claws, and muscle in a foot and a half of water, Princess savaging his arms all the while.

At some point, he managed to work his legs up between him and the dog and kick her away from him, providing his friend with a clean shot, which he took, catching Princess through the chest. He put a second round through her head point blank. He then helped my dad back home and to the emergency room, telling him he’d go back to see after Princess once they got home.

“She can rot where she is,” was all my dad had to say on that subject.

After they got back from the hospital, our neighbor went back on his ATV to pick up Princess for burial. He was a dog lover like us and it just didn’t seem right to him to leave her. If he’d spent as much time tiptoeing around as we had, he might have felt differently.

“She flat wasn’t there,” he said. “No blood trail. Nothin.” He also said that after he’d been there poking around for a few minutes, he noticed something else strange – no birds. It was dead quiet the way the woods sometimes get right before a bad storm blows in. Wisely, he got right the hell out of there.

There was a storm coming, all right.

That night, Duchess came pawing at the back door wanting in, something she’d never once done in all the time she’d been with us, and I had a dream.

In it, I was playing football in the backyard with some buddies and ran over to where a bad throw had landed near Rocky’s grave. As I reached for it, Princess’s head shoved up out of the ground to grab my hand. I woke up with a jolt and was promptly scared out of roughly ten more years of life by the silhouette of a German shepherd in the hallway.

It was Duchess, of course. She was sitting in the hallway whining and wagging her tail nervously. She was looking back toward the front of the house. I walked over to her and placed my hand on her big doggy head and said, “What is it, girl?”

That’s when I heard the distinctive sound of claws on glass. Something was pawing at the patio door.

Thoroughly terrified, I grabbed Duchess by the collar and dragged her along with me to my parents’ room, shutting the door behind me. I was 14, I was terrified, but even in that terror retreating to my parents’ room wasn’t just for the security of mommy and daddy. That’s where the guns were.

I woke them up and told them what I’d heard.

“Oh sweet Jesus,” my mother said. Dad got up and locked the bedroom door and said, “Y’all lock yourselves in the bathroom.”

I heard the patio door slide open. If any of the rest of us had any doubts about what had just come into the house, Duchess sure didn’t. The only thing she’d ever feared in this world was her own pup. A deep rumble of a growl vibrated in the floor beneath our bare feet and Duchess’s bladder let go as if on cue. Mine wasn’t far from doing the same.

What followed was a six hour exercise in pure terror, punctuated by snarling attacks on the bedroom door, crashes through the rest of the house as Princess found more things to break, whispered prayers from my mother, and litanies of curses from my father as another of his attempted forays out of the bedroom were thwarted.

We were without a phone. The one on my parents’ nightstand was dead. We’d later find the phone line to have been ripped out at the main box. My mom suggested that we try to make it to the car and above and beyond everything else, it was my father’s response to that idea that really scared me. Of the three of us, he was supposed to be the rational thinker, but what we got instead was:

“Honey, I think that’s what it wants us to do.”

As the world through the windows turned from black to grey, a quiet fell over the house. Mom and I watched through the windows, craning our heads in an attempt to get an eye on the patio door, but try as we might, the best we could manage was a view of most of the patio – more than enough concealment for a dog to slink in or out, even a big one like Princess.

After an hour of silence, my dad quietly opened the bedroom door. I remember thinking what a useless gesture any attempt at stealth was. Dog senses are so much more acute than ours that he might as well have fired a twenty-one gun salute. Dad stopped in the hallway and shooed me back to the bedroom. “Don’t come out until I say, OK?” Carefully, he made his way through the house to the patio door. We heard him shut it before he shouted back to us to stay in the bedroom till he told us to come out.

Through the door, I could hear him moving around and what seemed to be him dropping things into a garbage bag. After about thirty minutes, he gave us the all clear.

What greeted us was a disaster – ripped up cushions and pillows, destroyed furniture, shredded papers and books all over the floor, but most terrible were the smears of gore all over everything. My mother wondered aloud at what she’d drug into the house. Grim-faced, my father did not answer. He simply turned and headed out the back to bury Rocky for a second time.

We cleaned up as best we could while dad drove down to our neighbor’s house to make all the appropriate calls. After all these years. I still wonder what portion of home owner’s insurance covers “attack by undead demon ghost dog”.

Unspoken, we all wondered what the night would bring.

As it turned out, we never got a repeat, but Duchess never left the house again.

Time rolled on.

Occasionally, we’d find a new “present” on the rabbit bush. Just a friendly reminder, another token of Princess’s abiding “love.”

About two years into college, my dad called to tell me that our neighbor had passed. “Heart attack in his sleep, the coroner says,” said my dad, but what we were both thinking was “Not a mark.”

There are plenty of nights where I wonder what the last thing was to pass before that old bachelor’s eyes. I can guarantee you it stared right back. I’ve seen firsthand how it feeds.

Not long after that, my folks put the house up for sale. I sort of acted as go-between on that deal. About a week after the new owners moved in, I received a call from the man of the house. He wanted to know if we’d left any pets behind when we moved. Already fearing the answer, I asked him why he asked.

“Oh, me and the kids keep seeing this white shepherd in the woods. Pretty!”

Pretty.

Original Story: Princess