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gryfflepuffinthetardis · 9 months

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Creep (Sweet Jane Part Five) — Campbell Bain x Reader

Sweet Jane Episode One: Hey Jude

Sweet Jane Episode Two: Fly Like an Eagle

Sweet Jane Episode Three: You Always Hurt the One You Love

Sweet Jane Episode Four: Fool on the Hill

Sweet Jane Episode Five: Rainy Day in Georgia (But not Georgia Tennant.)

“You are not the darkness you endured, you are the light that refused to surrender.”

Warning: Mature — Mentions and Descriptions of underaged rape (mid to late teens) and descriptions of stalking. (I’m not sure if this counts as explicit.); Funeral

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Fergus’ funeral had finished and the mourners whom none of them had ever seen in their lives were leaving while the loonies—Eddie, Rosalie, Francine, Y/N, and a very, very drunk Campbell—stayed at his grave.

“Some wake, huh?” Campbell asked.

“We can go on back to the house with the others. His da invited us.” Eddie said.

“Did he hell! An invitation is when you say, ‘Would you like to come back to the house for a wee whisky?’ No ‘I s'pose you can come back t'the house if ye want.’ I mean, who were all those folk? Rental mourners? Never saw any ae them come to visit Fergus in hospital.”

“Right enough.” Francine said.

“And that minister! Don't think he'd even met the guy. Talking about "the tragic death of a young man of only thirty years". Fergus was twenty-seven! Getting us up to sing Fergus's favorite hymn! Fergus was a rabid, card-carrying atheist! And that bit about "the terrible illness that eventually killed him". Fergus didnae have cancer, he was a loony!” He started to fail his arms about, drunkenly, “A bam, crazy, mental, out tae lunch, of another planet...!” He fell against Eddie and Y/N who caught him.

“Babe.” Y/N said, taking the drink from her boyfriend before taking a swig herself.

Campbell snatched it back, “I’ll give this to you when you tell me who that boy you beat was.”

Y/N’s eyes became cold and she shook herself away from him.

“You are pished, my friend.” Eddie said and took the bottle of whiskey from him.

Campbell seemed insulted and affronted and said, his words slurred with alcohol, “That's rich comin fae you.

“Aye, but I'm no an amateur.” Eddie said.

Campbell looked back down at the coffin, “He was a genius. He could have done anything.”

“Aye. So he could.”

Campbell’s face screwed up with pained grief and he made his drunken exit. Y/N didn’t notice her exe, fresh from the hospital after a month of treatments for the injuries she had inflicted upon him limping his way over to Campbell.

“You Campbell Bain?” He asked.

“Who are you?” Campbell asked.

"The real love of your girlfriend's life." Campbell glared as her exe got closer to him, realizing “She will never love you like she loved me and you could never love her like I love her. The harlot.) And then Campbell saw red.

Y/N looked up when she heard a thud and saw Campbell standing over a boy on the ground.

Y/N ran over and stopped her exe from hitting Campbell back but her exe threw a punch aimed at her and Campbell pushed her out of the way… the next thing she knew her exe was being arrested with a bloody nose again.

Eddie, Francine, Rosalie, Campbell, and Y/N reentered Saint Jude’s hospital and they approached the radio station where they heard Rainy Night in Georgia playing and they found an electrician in the studio.

“Who the hell are you?” Eddie asked.

“I could ask you the same thing.” The electrician said.

“I'm the guy who owns that record.”

“Some collector. That's an original Brook Benton version fae nineteen-seventy-eight.

“Nineteen-sixty-nine.” Eddie corrected, “How did you get in here? Naebody's supposed to be in here except authorized staff.”

“I'm the electrician.”

Eddie’s glare hardened, “Right, that's it.” And he started to stuff the electrician's tools in his case.

“What? They don't go in like that!”

“They do the night!” Eddie snapped and he grabbed the electrician by his collar and pushed him out.

“What are you on, pal?” The electrician complained.

“Eddie, Eddie!” Isabel yelled, coming up to them.

“Daft bastard!” The electrician cursed.

“What's the problem?” Isabel asked.

“‘What's the problem’?! Why is he no sedated?”

“He's not a patient!”

“Well, he should be!” The electrician said and then he stormed off.

Isabel turned to Eddie, “It doesn't matter to Fergus now. You're only storing up trouble for yourself!”

“Aye? Well, IT'S EASILY DONE ROUND HERE!”

Y/N took Campbell’s hand and tugged on it, Campbell followed her to her room as she started to take buckled boots off as he awkwardly stood there with his hands stuffed into his pockets.

"So… who is he?”

“Electrician that, I wager.” She said, though she knew he wasn’t referring to the electrician.

“Y/N.” Campbell said as Y/N struggled to reach her zipper behind her back. “I get he’s your exe but there’s more to it , isn’t there?” He gently took her zipper and started to pull it down but then she stepped away, hugging her arms across her chest in a defensive manner to keep them from shaking.

She thought about her transition from the incident, how she stopped talking for nearly a year and after only two months of knowing Campbell she started to talk again, she became more… like her but not like she was before. Campbell was the only person who made her feel like her while EX/N tried to make her into someone else. She knew she could trust him; everyone did tell her how utterly smitten he was with her.

She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. She didn’t turn around she just stared her copy of How To Kill a Mockingbird.

(IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE OR DON’T WANT TO READ DESCRIPTION OF UNDERAGED RAPE, SKIP)

"He was my best friend... or more like… he was my only friend. He was nearly four years older than me and for some reason he was my babysitter because my parents didn't trust me. Looking back—I-I should've seen the signs, the red flags. He never knocked even when he knew I would be changing, not even when he would hear me in the shower. He would just stare at me sometimes. He would touch me in inappropriate places but I thought they were innocent. As we got older, it became more sexual, it wasn't just him being a hormonal teenager but him being perverted and actively interested in performing sexual activities with me.”

Campbell dug his nails into his palm with outrage. He had a feeling he knew where this was going and he hated it.

“Then he became obsessed with me when I got into high school and started wearing bras. I was fourteen when he started doing things with me, never over second base but still... I wasn't at the consent age yet. He told me that it was for science and sometimes I woke up to find him... doing things. He pushed my limits, even when I begged him to stop. Sometimes, he brought his friends and whoever they'd invite over, the oldest had to be in his thirties, twice my age and he took pictures of me. He threatened to tell everyone that I had forced myself upon him, if I told anyone. My parents already didn't like me."

"Jesus..." Campbell breathed in horror.

"If I did something he didn't like... he would..." she shuddered, "When he would go too far. He would apologize the next day, and I would always forgive him. Because I was so kind..." She laughed, bitterly with tears in her eyes. "He told me that no one else would ever love me like he did. No one would do things that we did. I hated myself for my compassion but even when I managed to numb myself of my emotions, it was still there."

Campbell both wanted her to stop talking yet keep talking at the same time.

"It wasn't until I was eighteen when he first... on my eighteenth birthday. Coming on a year ago. He promised that things would be different, that he loved me and would show that he loves me. He... he got me drunk but when I still wouldn't consent and fought back, he pretended to sustain and got me some more alcohol, I didn't see him slip in the drug."

Campbell wished he had done something worse than just punch him in the face.

"I was conscious the whole time. He must've cut the pill or something. But I couldn't do anything. I couldn't move. I pleaded for him to stop but he wouldn't, insisting that I wanted it and when I tried to scream for help, he choked me as hard as he could and banged my head against the floor, and I blacked out but I know he continued. When I woke up, I ached so much and there was so much blood. I was so horrified by what he did to me. I stopped talking. Eight months later, they sent me here. That's why I was so scared when you crashed into me when we first me, why I was so scared of you long after, why I scream whenever any man, especially Stuart would get too close to me. And I was so scared because he found me. I thought he was going to do it again." She started to sob and Campbell pulled her into his lap and she sobbed into the crook of his neck.

"No, he won't. I won't let him. I won't let him near you."

(END OF SKIP. THIS WAS THE MOST HORRIBLE THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN AND I’M DISGUSTED THAT MY MIND CAN GO SO DARK.)

“I don’t think that’s what he wants. He worked with Hollis, he called Fergus’ job and he painted him in a bad light. He drove Fergus to suicide…” She broke into sobs, “What if he goes after Rosalie or Eddie or Francine… or you. I can’t let him hurt you.”

“He won’t. He got arrested for assault. And if you want, you can go and tell the police what he did to you and Fergus and he’ll be in jail, and then I can hire a bodyguard for you when I become a famous DJ.” He said, gently, “do you… do you think you can do that?”

Y/N pulled back and looked at him, her irises several shades of E/C lighter than usual and she nodded and kissed him gently before saying, “You do look good in a suit. Very James Bond.”

“James Bond?” He laughed and then straightened his tie, “Really?”

About a week later, Eddie was sitting rather morosely still as a record spun.

Campbell and Y/N exchanged looks and Campbell grabbed a blindfold and covered Eddie’s eyes with it.

“Freeze! Don't look. What was the name of that record?

“Dream Lover.” Eddie and Y/N said in unison.

“Which was in the British charts for?”

“Nineteen weeks.” They said.

“In?”

“Nineteen-fifty-nine.”

“See? Told you they could do it. Did I not tell you?

“They’re geniuses, they are.”

“Of course, Y/N is. I’m dating her!” Campbell said and kissed Y/N, grinning into the kiss.

“You're still here?” Eddie asked, turning away from the kissing teens.

“Oh aye. If they want to get rid of me, they'll have to catch me first.” Rosalie as the teens parted with Campbell’s arm around her and her head, resting on his shoulder.

“Rosalie's got us all organized for the pilot tomorrow,” Campbell said, “Eddie; it's gonna be brilliant, and I have just come up with the perfect angle.”

“Which is?”

“We are going to be playing a number one hit fae every year from nineteen-fifty-six to nineteen-seventy, aye?”

“And I've got a list here of every number one hit in every one of those years, Eddie.” Rosalie said.

“So at the end of the hour, we invite our listeners to phone in and,” Campbell put on a cheesy American accent, “pit their wits against the master of hits, Doctor Boogie!”

“Who's Doctor Boogie?” Eddie asked.

“You! That's the angle!” Campbell said, enthusiastically, “So, if they can ask a question about any of the hits we've played that you cannae answer, they win a major prize.”

“He's a genius.” Rosalie said.

“Yeah, he is.” Y/N pecked Campbell on the cheek.

“Campbell, this is a recording we're doing. The only folk who are gonna be listening are Paula and a couple of bored guys on their dinner break.”

“Then we'll get them to phone in.” Campbell said.

“What's the major prize?” Eddie asked.

“We just kid on there's a prize. So it can be anything we want! A trip to Graceland by time machine to meet Elvis.”

“Tardis.” Y/N said.

“Lunch with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don't have to conform to the vagaries of time and space. I'm a loony, for God's sake! Look, a full moon!” He unwrapped his arm from his girlfriend and leapt to the window and imitated the howl of a wolf.

“Get back in here, Doctor Who.” Y/N said, pulling him back in. “You know you do look Gallifreyan.”

“Thought you wanted to keep quiet about that.” Eddie said, referring to Campbell’s pride on being a loony.

“They're no gonnae do to me what they did to Fergus, Eddie. Nobody's gonna find me in a heap on the pavement. I'm gonna flaunt it. I'm gonna exploit it for all it's worth. Because we are loonies and we are proud!”

He started to chant as he exited with Rosalie and Y/N following and chanting along with him, “We are loonies and we are proud! We are loonies and we are proud!”

Then Y/N spotted Rosalie’s social worker down the hall through the doors, “Rosalie, get back in!” Y/N said, backtracking so fast her boots squeaked against the floor. Social worker! Quick! Social worker!”

The three of them ran back into the radio station and helped hide Rosalie in the cupboard, taking the boxes out.

“I shouldn't have tidied the boxes!” Rosalie stressed before they got the boxes out and Rosalie crawled inside the cupboard and Campbell and Y/N closed the doors.

“Act casual!” Y/N said and then Campbell pulled her into his chest and kissed her slowly, gently, and passionately.

Eddie rolled his eyes, though this was accurate with Campbell being outgoing and deeply affectionate to the antisocial and detached Y/N. They some how helped each other. Campbell helped Y/N heal, be more social, and begin to trust again and Y/N helped calm Campbell down and helped him focus on being in the moment… as long as that moment was him being with her and looking at her like she was his whole universe.

Isabel then entered with Stuart and the social worker.

“Ahem.” Isabel said, politely as Campbell made no move to part from Y/N.

“Break it up, you two.” Stuart said, harshly and was about to physically break them apart when Isabel stopped him and wisely Y/N broke the kiss.

Campbell, licking his lips slightly as Y/N fidgeted with her semicolon open bracelet that Campbell had given her a few days ago for their three-month anniversary.

“Have you seen Rosalie? The social worker's here.” Isabel asked.

Campbell briefly puckered his lips out in an innocent fashion as he shook his head, “She's no been in tonight.”

“Haven’t seen her.” Y/N lied, looking at them.

“She came in at half past seven; I saw her.” Stuart said, sharply.

“Well, she's not here now.” Campbell said pointedly.

“Did you not notice?” Y/N snarked, innocently, looking around the rather small space and giving Stuart a pitying look.

“Are you calling me a liar?” Stuart challenged.

“No, Stuart, I'm calling you stupid!” Campbell shot back.

“That’s an understatement.” Y/N said.

“Eddie, what are those boxes doing out?” Isabel asked, referring to the boxes they had taken out.

“Ehm,” Eddie said, hesitantly, “Campbell, Y/N, and I have been doing some organizing.” Campbell and Y/N nodded.

“Well, could you put them back in the cupboard now? They could be a fire hazard.” Isabel asked.

“Uh... we're still working with them.

“Nurse said tae put them back in the cupboard!” Stuart demanded.

“It's all right, Stuart.” Isabel tried to push him back but he moved forth towards the boxes.

But Campbell moved in front of Stuart and defiantly said, “But we're still working with them. How low an IQ do you need for your job?” He pushed Stuart in the chest

Stuart then seized Campbell, shouting, “I'll break you like a matchstick—!”

Isabel, Eddie, and Y/N tried to wrestle them apart until Y/N voice thundered above the rest.

“DON’T FUCKING TOUCH HIM!” Y/N roared, grabbing Stuart’s arm and then kneeing him in the stomach, kung fu-style.

“OOF!” He stumbled back as Isabel pushed him back as Eddie pulled Y/N back before she committed her third act of physical assault.

“All right! No one's going to break anyone else like a match!” Isabel said and then went to the cupboard where Rosalie was hiding and knocked, “Rosalie? Do you want to come out now before we end up with blood all over the floor?

Rosalie conceded and emerged from the cupboard as Campbell took Y/N from Eddie, glaring at Stuart.

“Rosalie, this is Linda Foster, the psychiatric social worker; she'd like to have a word.” Isabel introduced.

Rosalie nodded without enthusiasm and left with the social worker, Isabel, and Stuart.

At night, Campbell was on Y/n's bed and was strumming his guitar before stopping as he noticed Y/N starting to get tired.

“Hey, come here.” He pulled her into his chest and pulled the blanket over the both of them. It was quiet as he pondered something, ““Where’d you learn to do that? What you did to Stuart?”

“After EX/N, I took some classes.” She mumbled and he pulled her closer against him.

“Come with me to Radio Scotland. I want you there. Please.”

Y/N looked up at him and nodded before snuggling into his neck. “Mmm-hmm.”

Soon he felt her breathing get deeper and slower.

“Y/N? Y/N?” He said, softly but nothing. “I love you.” He kissed her forehead and closed his eyes to sleep.

Y/N stood with Campbell stacking a box of Uncle Ben's rice, an alarm clock, a box of beans, and a fire extinguisher on the mixing desk while Eddie was in the bathroom.

Then Eddie came back and Y/N turned to Campbell, “Good luck.” She smiled and kissed his cheek before turning but Campbell pulled her back for a loving and soft kiss. He broke the kiss and she turned to leave, entering the control room with Paula as Paula’s assistant handed her a cup of hot chocolate like she asked.

“Thank you, um, what was it?”

“Um, River.” He said in an American accent.

“River, thank you.” She said and sat next to Paula.

Paula pushed the button and spoke into the microphone to them, “You ready, boys?”

Campbell looked at her and nodded, grinning before his eyes going to River, making his smile falter and his eyes narrow but he forced himself to brush it off.

“Is it me or does Eddie look like he died ten minutes ago?” Y/N asked in a rather sardonic tone.

“Eddie, you okay?”

Eddie turned to look at them, “Aye, yeah.”

“Then let's do it. Four, three, two, one, go.” Paula said.

Campbell started the intro in a confident voice, “This is Campbell Bain and this is my alarm clock. It's also a clue. Doctor Boogie has just ten seconds to guess our first number one hit. The year is nineteen-fifty-six.” He set off the alarm clock.

When they got back to Saint Jude’s hospital, Campbell and Eddie sang loudly as they entered.

“WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! BECAUSE WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! ‘CAUSE WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!” They passed Francine and Rosalie, “OF THE WORLD!”

“You got on okay, I take it?” Francine asked.

“Okay?! We practically set fire to the place!” Campbell exclaimed.

“Which explains the fire extinguisher.”

“And you'll never believe what happened.”

“They sectioned the both of youse.” Rosalie teased and laughed.

“Sectioned? You don't section a genius! You say,” Then he imitated Paula, ‘You did really well.’ You say, ‘Come see me on Thursday, Eddie.’ Because you know what I learned today? That the only difference between lunacy and genius is timing! Set off a fire extinguisher in a shrink's office and he'll have you locked up. Do it in front of an audience and it's high farce!” He grabbed Rosalie’s notebook. “It's time to start making lists full of the great things you're going to do, Rosalie. Instead of, ‘twelve bottles of disinfectant spray’, put” He punched his fist in the air, ‘climb the highest mountain’! Instead of ‘large box of scourers’, put ‘cross the deepest ocean’! Instead of ‘one case of Dettol’.” He had kept looking down to read what she had written before pausing to ask in an incredulous tone, “—what the hell are you planning here, Rosalie?”

“It's just my discharge.” Rosalie said.

Campbell’s smile faded and he exchanged looks with Eddie, Y/N, and Francine.

“When?” Eddie asked.

“Friday. They've found me a place in a bed and breakfast.” Rosalie said with false brightness.

“What about the supported accommodation?” Francine asked.

“I'm still on the waiting list.” Rosalie said and then she got a reminiscing look in her eyes.“There used to be this bed and breakfast in Bundoran, where Jim and me used to take Robbie every summer. It was all whitewashed, with wee brass ornaments in the hallway. I don't suppose this place'll be like that, though.”

“You'll still be station manager. You know that.” Eddie told her.

“Aye. It's nice to belong somewhere.” Rosalie said, trying not to cry. and then she looked at Y/N, “Oh, and Y/N, Isabel said there was someone here for you.”

“Oh. O-okay.” Y/N stuttered and she looked at Campbell who nodded at the door like, go. We got this.

Y/N walked down the hall before Stuart grabbed her arm, “You, loony. Come with me.” He jerked her along with him and pushed her into Isabel’s office.

“Ah, Y/N. I would like to speak to you about your section.”

On Thursday, Campbell was badgering Eddie so he turned to him and said, “I told you, I'm just going to go and find out what they thought of the pilot.”

“But what if they make us an offer on the spot?” Campbell asked.

“Then I'll take it on the spot!”

“On what terms? We've gotta be clear on this!”

“Aye, I've written it all down for you, so I have.” Rosalie agreed.

“I've got to go!” Eddie exclaimed and walked down the hall with them following, Y/N staying silent.

“Number one: what exactly is our offer? Number two: will there be a trial period?” Rosalie said.

“I'm telling you, Campbell, there's no gonna be an offer at this meeting.” Eddie sighed.

“Number three, if so, for how long?” Rosalie continued.

“And do you have to wear that jacket?” Campbell complained.

“What's wrong with it?” Eddie asked.

“Number four, if there is a trial period, will the contract be non-exclusive during that time?

“It makes you look like a double-glazing salesman!” Campbell answered.

"Number five, what will the format of the show be?”

“This is gonna be it, Eddie—"

“Look, is nobody listening to me? I took the trouble to make this list and I don't want you going out of here without it, all right?” Rosalie complained.

Eddie then grabbed the list out of Rosalie’s hands, “I'll treasure it always.” He kissed the paper, “See you tonight.” Then he left.

Campbell smiled, he looked at Rosalie and then Y/N, raking a hand through his hair before seeing the blank look on Y/N’s face.

“You alright? You’ve been quiet all morning.”

“I have to make a phone call.” She said and turned around towards the phones but Isabel stopped her.

“Y/N, it’s time for your appointment.”

“Y/N L/N.” A man’s voice called thirty minutes later.

Y/N got up and walked towards the voice, “Hello, I’m Doctor Cairns.” He held out his hand to shake her and she hesitantly did so before going to sit down as he went to the other side of the desk.

“How long have you been with us? Fifteen weeks?”

“About so yes.”

“And until about two weeks ago, you finally told the therapists why you went silent. Because your ex-boyfriend…”

“Boyfriend’s a bit of a reach. More I was constantly taken advantage of and blackmailed into being silent.” She said, bluntly.

“Y-yes. But you’ve been talking for over two months now and I hear you’ve been dating another patient, the manic depressive, Campbell Bain in that time.”

“Yes."

"And your... your ex was recently imprisoned and he’s being sent back to (H/T/N) to be tried.”

“Yes, that is correct.” She nodded, staring determinedly at her semicolon bracelet.

“We’ve decided that you’re ready to go back in the outside world.” Y/N didn’t react, her heart just jumped into her throat. “Unfortunately, your parents… they don’t want you to move back in with them.”

“Because their daughter was raped by a family friend’s son who they let babysit her and they had publically defended him?” Y/N smiled with sardonicism. “Yeah, I expected that.”

“Something along those lines. But we can set up living accommodations with you somewhere else.” Cairns said. “Perhaps one in Glasgow.

“I have some family money that I became eligible to use when I turned eighteen. Maybe I could buy a house.”

“The thing is, I would prefer you to live with someone else in case there’s an incident.”

“An incident in which I punch someone.”

“You hospitalized two people.”

“Doctor Hollis killed Fergus!” She snapped and leaned back into her chair. “I have some cousins living in Edinburgh, one of them knew what had happened, I could ask her.”

“Babe, are you okay? You’ve been quiet all day.” Campbell asked that night. “Is it because Rosalie’s being discharged tomorrow.”

“I’m being discharged.” She said, quietly and prepared to watch his reactions but they were anything but subtle.

He dropped his guitar with a series of discord notes as his jaw dropped too.

“You’re… you’re leaving? Back to H/T/N?” He sounded heartbroken.

“Yes. Um… this week. They decided since I had started talking and because EX/N was sent back to H/T/N, so there’s no reason for me to be scared anymore. Because I’m better. You made me better, Campbell.”

“But I don’t want you to go…” His voice trembled.

“Here’s the thing. Sit down.” She patted her bed but he didn’t move. “My parents don’t want me back in H/T/N. They don’t want to be judged as the parents who let their friend’s son rape and blackmail their daughter.” He furrowed his eyebrows out of judgement for her parents and confusion and wonder for where she was going with this as he sat down on the bed next to her. “And when I turned eighteen, I was eligible to some family money and I called my cousin and she agreed to come down and transfer to Glasgow University and we could share a house. So I could be close to you… and-and the radio station.”

“You-you’d do that for me?” He asked, uncharacteristically shyly.

“Yeah. I mean, I know it’s only been two months but I like you. Unless you don’t… if you think that’s too much…”

He quieted her with a kiss, “I’d love it. I don’t want to lose you. We have passes tomorrow, we can go look at houses together after Rosalie leaves.”

She smiled and he kissed her sweetly, “Just don’t leave me.” He said, pulling back, “Before you… no girl would even look at me twice, and barely once. But then I met this impossibly shy and beautifully broken girl. And I knew she was just the kindest soul because I would talk constantly and she would listen. Not hear me, but actually listen. And it was the best day of my life. Because that girl was you.”

The next morning, Campbell and Y/N were helping Rosalie make sure she had everything, reading off her list.

“Dettol.” Campbell read.

“Check.” Y/N confirmed.

“Scourers.”

“Check.”

“Toilet bleach.”

“What does toilet bleach look like?” Y/N asked.

Campbell reached for pick it up from beside the suitcase when Rosalie appeared and snapped sternly, “Don't touch it! I'll get it. Check.”

“Toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, and hairbrush.” Campbell finished.

“Check, check, check, check.” She started to close the suitcase as Campbell tossed the notebook into the case, “Well. Suppose this is cheerio.”

Then she held out her hand to Francine who then shook it, then she did the same to Campbell, Y/N, and Eddie.

“Good luck, huh?” Eddie asked.

“Now, I want youse to notice that I shook hands with you lot without the use of major tranquilizers, which just goes to show how well I am these days.”

“Come on. I'm going tae work. I'll give you a lift in.” Eddie said and he left with Rosalie.

Isabel came in and said, “Y/N, your cousin’s here.”

“Great, let’s go!” Campbell grabbed Y/N’s hand and pulled her along.

“Well. That place was depressing.” C/N declared, driving away from the place the obvious drug dealer had up for rent.

“I liked that first house. The blue one with the two rooms.” Campbell said, “It was only like a fifteen-minute drive from the hospital.”

“Yeah, I did too but could we stop at the first spot on the list.”

“Oh, Y/N even with our family money, that’s a bit pricey.”

“I-I know but it might be within our price limit someday.”

C/N drove them to a house—well, it was more of a mansion. A rather quirky mansion.

“This cannot be within your price limit.” Campbell shook his head, “Unless are you rich?”

“I, uh, actually found this house while I was researching real estate a few weeks into our relationship. For when you become a famous DJ and if we make it.”

Campbell looked at her, “We? As in you and me as a couple?”

“I know that’s freaky as we’ve been dating two months and I’ve hospitalized two people and my ex harassed you. And I’m probably messing it up now but…”

“Hey.” Campbell said, taking her hand, “I love it. I mean you’ve met me right, I’m a total loon. I bugged you for a month and a half until you talked to me.”

Eddie entered the studio later where he had been heatedly discussing something with Y/N when he spotted Eddie approaching the studio and pushed him into the studio, “Eddie! Jesus! Where have you been?”

“Working. What's up?”

“How did you no tell me about this? How'd you not warn me?” Campbell demanded.

“About what?”

“Paula has been on the phone to me today.”

“Oh.” Eddie said,

Campbell started to pace back and forth, while gesturing, “She seemed to think I knew all about it. ‘Aye,’ I said, ‘He told me all about your meeting.’ But it seems there was a few wee details you left out.” He put his hands on his hips.

“I'm sorry. I—” Eddie stammered.

“I know what you thought. You thought, I'd just get agitated. I'm a manic-depressive, so how no?”

“That's not what I thought.” Eddie defended himself.

“But did you never stop to consider that one day a fish bone might get stuck in the throat of history, and that we'd be standing here, like we are now, at the door of destiny, and totally unprepared for it?

“What are you talking about?” Eddie asked.

“The fish bone? The one that got stuck in David Thompson's throat?” Campbell clarified.

“Who?”

“Their Sunday afternoon DJ! He got a fish bone stuck in his throat last night, was rushed to Casualty, and they've asked us to take his Gold Show! Today!” Campbell said, excitedly.

Eddie swallowed nervously, “...I'm no ready.”

“Well neither am I, but we're gonna have to go for it!” Campbell said, his voice squeaking with excitement.

“No, no, I'm really no ready!” Eddie refused.

“Paula said we could use David's running order, but if we leave now, we can choose some stuff ourselves.” Campbell said.

“I'm no ready.

“She said she'll be there to take us through everything. And you don't have to worry about here; Francine's gonna taking our show straight off the air. Y/N’s coming with us, of course.”

“I'm no ready, Campbell!”

“Eddie, you've been waiting for this moment most of your life. When exactly did you think you'd be ready? Now let's go!” Campbell exclaimed and grabbed his jacket and then Y/N’s hand and they rushed out of the station.

Campbell left Y/N to thrust records into Eddie’s arms.

“Eddie! Come on!” Campbell complained.

Campbell looked up at Y/N through the glass, seeing her give her an encouraging smile that melted his insides.

He pushed the fader up and spoke with his usual insane enthusiasm, “Kicking off the Gold Show and standing in for David Thompson is me, Campbell Bain, and Doctor Boogie, professor of pop, soul, and rock and roll! In today's competition we invite you to pit your wits against the master of hits himself!

"If you can ask me any verifiable question on any of the titles that we play today that I cannae answer, you win... the grand prize!" Eddie said.

"What is the grand prize, you ask? I am holding in my hand a rare copy of 'Mandolins in the Moonlight' by Perry Como, from nineteen-fifty -eight. And unless you can stump Doctor Boogie,” Then he imitated a scary gravelly voice, “we're actually going to play it! How about it, Gold-Diggers? Just phone 041-357-9719 to try and stop me!”

He put on Don’t Play That Song For Me (You Lied) by Aretha Franklin and started the challenge.

“Uh, no, caller, I'm afraid Jim Morrison couldnae have written Bright Side of the Road—” Eddie told the caller.

“Because he was dead at the time, right, Doctor Boogie?” Campbell finished.

“Aye, a definite liability, but it did give Van Morrison a chance to write it instead.” Eddie added.

At another caller called with something and Campbell responded with,“Well, unless you can prove that Wilson Pickett had a boa constrictor called Hugo, I'm gonna have to disqualify that!”

Another caller asked about an Elvis song and Eddie said, “And it's become one of the most covered songs in rock 'n' roll since Elvis' death.” Eddie said and apparently the caller questioned Elvis’ death because Eddie then said as Paula laughed while on the phone and Y/N laughed along with her, “Aye! 1977! It was in all the papers!”

He looked at Campbell who made an incredulous face to both Eddie and Y/N.

At some point, Eddie looked at the clock and said, “And it's 3:47—

“Still thirteen minutes left to try and stump Doctor Boogie,” Campbell declared and put on the gravely voice again, “if you cannn!”

Y/N looked at Paula who seemed to be making quite a few phone calls and she turned to tugged on River’s vest and said something to him while nodding at Campbell and Eddie and then to Paula.

Thirteen minutes later in which both River and Y/N spoke to Paula which Eddie kept glancing nervously at, before Paula gave Campbell and Eddie a cut-off signal.

They had Eddie drive them back as Campbell kept eyeing Y/N suspiciously after seeing how she was with River and couldn’t help but be jealous.

“So, Y/N… getting cozy with the cute assistant.”

She looked at him as he preteneded not to care.

“River?”

“Oh, he has a name?” He grumbled.

“I’m just meeting him for lunch tomorrow…”

Campbell turned to her, now getting a bit agitated and definitely jealous, “You’re going on a date with him.”

“No. We’re going to talk about you two. They wanted an opinion by someone that wasn’t either of you but close enough to you two to get the full scoop.” Y/N said, “Besides he has a girlfriend. She’s planning on being true crime radio dramatist. She’s going to have her own station where she talks about true crimes.”

“Oh.” Campbell seemed a lot happier by now as Eddie turned up the radio to drown them out.

It was awkward before Campbell said loudly, “So, Y/N’s being discharged this week!”

The brakes screeched as Eddie stopped the car in shock.

Once they reentered Saint Jude’s, they were greeted with applause and cheers.

“Friends, loonies: as Neil Armstrong said on that fateful day when he first put his foot on the moon...” He announced and then shouted, “WE ARE LOONIES, AND WE ARE PROUD!”

The crowd and Y/N chanted along with Campbell, “We are loonies, and we are proud!”

Y/N spotted Stuart who didn’t try to restrain anyone and that’s when she realized something was wrong. Stuart wasn’t being violent towards innocent mental health patients.

The door opened and a Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (or SSPCA) officer entered. Y/N’s smile fell.

Francine’s kittens.

Francine spotted it too and cried out, “NOOO!”

She tried to stop him but Stuart restrained her as she screamed and the chanting stopped.

“NO! LEAVE THEM ALONE! STOP! YOU CAN’T TAKE THEM! NO! YOU CANNAE TAKE THEM!” Francine screamed while Y/N picked the lock to Stuart’s office.

Eddie tried to help her but some of the patients held him back, “Easy, easy!”

The SSPCA officer carried the kittens out in a cage as Y/N emerged from Stuart’s office with a belt—one for particularly violent patients that he hasn’t used as much as he thought he would. Not even close.

Y/N whipped Stuart’s back, making him shout in pain and release Francine as Campbell grabbed Y/N’s hand and pulled her away from Stuart before he realized what it was her who had done it as she dropped the belt.

Francine didn’t get far before Stuart grabbed her again.

"Let her go, will ya!” Eddie shouted, “Let her go!”

Campbell’s pride and happiness had faded into terrified worry.

Eddie managed to push Stuart off of Francine and onto the ground, but then he got up and grabbed Eddie by the lapels and snarled out, “I've waited ages to do this!” Then he headbutted Eddie in the face, cracking his nose, Eddie collapsed, smearing blood on the doorframe as Francine kept screaming.

Y/N was by Eddie’s side as Isabel was the only other person to show sympathy, asking gently, “Do you want me to do something for that?”

“Do you no realize what you've done?” Eddie demanded before shouting, “DOES NAEBODY REALIZE WHAT THEY'VE DONE?!”

“What are you going to do about that, princess?” Stuart sneered at Y/N as she calmly examined Eddie and the patients drifted away.

She looked at him. He wanted her to be violent so her section would be renewed so he could torture her longer. But she didn’t.

She stood up with fury in her eyes, it was hard to tell whether it was more ice-cold or fiery hot.

“You’re pathetic. You’re not helping, you don’t try to help. All you do and every ‘sane’ person does is crush our hopes and dreams by destroying the very things that help us heal. You give us no chance to show that we’ve gotten better and declare us as violent when you’re the violent one. I only hurt people who hurt people I love. Hollis only saw Fergus as a guinea pig and he fucking died because of it. You took those kittens from Francine because they made her happy. They started to heal what was broken unlike you because you will never be able to heal what has been broken in you. Because you don’t care. You don’t care for the patients and you ignore our needs and feelings and are completely and utterly blind to our skills.”

“Skills?” Stuart scoffed like it was the most ludicrous thing he had ever heard, “What skills?”

“Remember Campbell’s first broadcast? You doubted that Fergus could fix the mixer. What was it you said? ‘He couldn’t get his brain going again’? And it turns out he had a master’s degree and was a genius. Because he was a loony, you assumed he was stupid. But he wasn’t you’re the one who can’t get his brain working. You shouldn’t be restraining loonies, you should be locked up in your own solitary room in a straightjacket.”

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theywrites · 4 months

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Heavily inspired by in the eye of the snowstrom.

***

Before they locked him up in this confinement where he would spend the rest of his life, they'd given Light a choice - he could surrender his memories and walk freely with surveillance on the surface.

***

He wears plain white clothes with no pockets and no way to hide any weapons. The walls are plain, the bed is fastened to the wall and floor. There are no objects that can be used as weapons, no metals, and absolutely no news from the outside world. He is only nineteen. This is how he'll live the rest of his life.

The only accessory he has, which stands out against the plain walls, floor, furniture, clothes, and even the bland food, is the bracelet on his left wrist where his watch used to be.

It's made of dark leather strips, plaited into an armband.

The only thing that connects him with his memories.

Before they locked him up in this confinement where sunlight will never shine and where he would spend the rest of his life, they'd given him a choice - he could surrender his memories and walk freely with surveillance on the surface.

He does not regret picking up the Death Note, nor does he regret killing the criminals. He will never regret being Kira.

***

On his fourth birthday in prison, L visits with a cake, as usual. The moment is fine, until L destroys it. He asks Light again; Does he want to surrender his memories?

Light yells at him and he almost yanks at L's shirt and punches him like when they were chained together. The only reason he does not is because he knows there are guards watching, that will enter if he as soon as he grazes L.

That damn bastard.

***

Light is proud to be Kira, and he will not under any circulumstances give up this.

***

Some nights Light clasps his hand around his left wrist, feels the leather secured around his skin//and is soothed by the security of the leather against his skin// but then remembers knows that this is what's keeping him here// this is why he is still here. But it is also all he's worked for, all he believes in, and the reason he ended up within these walls to begin with. Without this he-

***

When Light is sixty-eight, he wakes from a dream. In his dream, he was in a garden, he was looking at the blue sky with the green grass underneath him and the sun shining down on him. The first thing he sees on waking is the dull, grey prison wall that's accompanied him for almost half a decade.

He decides that this is it.

When L comes by the next time, Light asks L if it's too late now. L does not answer before he leaves.

L comes back a week or so later. "Is Light-kun certain he wants to give up his memories now?"

He can understand the doubt in L - why now, after all these years in this place. If he'd end up chosing this, why not do so earlier?

But L does not understand.

Light will never regret being Kira, as he will not regret living. He's just tired of the dull walls, of the boredom, of having spent half a decade inside these four walls // of having spent more time within these walls than on the outside.

Soon, he'll be too old. He wants to see the sun again. (Just like in his dream.)

***

It only takes a day. L is nothing if not effective. Light confirms that he is going to give up his memories of the Death Note, of a choice he made when he was eighteen, and his five (?) years as Kira that are the reason for an eternity in this cell. The next day L comes into his cell and tells him to surrender the wristband. The black leather is worn, but the colour doesn't fade. Maybe due to magic. Light half-expects L to take the wristband away and get rid of it somewhere Light cannot see, but L burns the leather in front of Light-

And Light looks at L, unbelieving, that he'd spent 50 years in this cell, asking what L is doing with a lighter and why it smells of burnt hair.

***

Outside-

The sunlight is bright. And warm against his skin.

***

Light fights to keep his memories, he refuses to give them up because Kira is a deciding part of his person and deleting this will create huge gaps in his life. Because he is proud of his achievements and his pursuit of justice in his own way. Even though he hates the downfall, and does not want to be imprisoned. He is too proud to admit his faults and give up his identity as Kira, thereby admitting his wrongs. He'll stand up for what he's done, even if he'll be confined for the rest of his life.

// In a way Light is his own worst enemy because he's proud, stubborn and will not allow himself to regret or go back on what he's done.

#.mine #death note #.id #light yagami #l lawliet #.toedit

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denimbex1986 · 5 months

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'Forty years on from the year in which it is set, and released on the date of Winston Smith’s first diary entry, George Orwell’s seminal dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (not 1984, despite how this most recent retelling has chosen to style the title) has received perhaps its highest-profile adaptation since Michael Radford’s film. Andrew Garfield plays the reluctantly rebellious Winston, and man-of-the-moment Andrew Scott is a smoothly vicious O’Brien. Cynthia Erivo makes for a suitably feisty Julia, and Tom Hardy reprises his Bane boom as Big Brother, although his contributions are wisely kept to a minimum. The talented supporting cast includes What We Do In The Shadows’s Natasia Demetriou and Black Mirror’s Alex Lawther, and the score is co-composed by Muse’s Matt Bellamy. Lavish cinema and television ads have brought the show to worldwide attention, and yet it’s likely to receive a fraction of the interest that, say, Ripley will obtain. Why? Because it’s an audio drama.

Granted, Audible’s new production of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is billed as a disturbing, adult-focused and immersive experience, is a million miles away from a distinguished actor reading an audiobook version of Orwell’s novel. At times, it goes further than you might expect in terms of the sex and violence quotient; there is a love scene between Garfield and Erivo that, somehow, manages to be wildly explicit without showing anything visual (one can only imagine what it was like for the actors to record that particular scene), and there are nasty scenes of torture and violence that are none less chilling for being conveyed through a mixture of dialogue and sound effects. (Yes, Room 101 gets its full measure.) Muse fans, meanwhile, will be thrilled by Bellamy’s score, co-composed by Ilan Eshkeri and performed by a sixty-piece orchestra, that blends somber strings and piano with percussive electronic beats.

Director Destiny Ekaragha and screenwriter Joe White should be commended for a faithful and smoothly gripping adaptation that adds in a few successful set-pieces, such as Winston having an attack of paranoia on the train that his minor acts of rebellion are about to result in his immediate arrest. If it’s listened to on headphones in a public place, as it no doubt is supposed to be, Nineteen Eighty-Four becomes a deliciously chilling immersion in literary paranoia; you’re standing around your fellow citizens wondering which of them you’re going to fall in love with, which of them will betray you — and whether that will be the same person.

Clearly, Audible intends this to be a marker in a series of blockbuster literary adaptations that will change the face (or, rather, ear) of the genre. There was a Sam Mendes-overseen David Copperfield last year, with Helena Bonham Carter as Betsey Trotwood and Doctor Who’s Ncuti Gatwa as Copperfield, but it barely shifted the dial in terms of audience awareness. Ninety Eighty-Four feels different, and not just because of its A-list participants, rock star composer and dread-laden subject matter.

In a year where the word “Orwellian” is likely to be used more than usual in the course of the British and American elections alike, and where any tech blogger will write lazy articles talking about the way in which Big Brother, Newspeak and the rest have become part of our daily social media culture, it’s good to be reminded of the power of the original, translated into this new form.

Yet I remain unconvinced that this will be the crossover blockbuster success that Audible so clearly believe it will. Enjoy it for what it is — a few hours of sumptuously conceived and acted Orwelliana — and let’s leave the question of whether this will eventually come to replace visual entertainment out of the equation. Until, that is, Christopher Nolan is recruited to write and direct an immersive audio adaptation. Then we’re talking.'

#George Orwell #1984 #Audible #Andrew Garfield #Winston Smith #Cynthia Erivo #Julia #Andrew Scott #O'Brien #Tom Hardy #Big Brother #Natasia Demetriou #Alex Lawther #Muse #Matt Bellamy #Destiny Ekaragha #Ilan Eshkeri #Joe White

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neonatenecromancer · 6 months

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Widows of Normandy

I'm on my sixth civil war documentary, And I can't take anymore US history, Is it the adderall or what your leaving did to me, Would things go differently if we, If we were eighteen sixty-five, Two states north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Would you love me in a different time, Would you return from war to pick more fights, If I wrote four years of letters hoping you weren't gone forever, Would we grow old together, Would you treat me better, I read an article of women in forty-three They left their fears at the door of the factory, I heard the interviews from the widows of Normandy, Who still can't afford to sleep, if we, If we were nineteen forty-five, And we've just turned that one last flag white, Praise God that you're still alive, Would you return from war to pick more fights, If I wrote four years of letters hoping you weren't gone forever, Would we grow old together, Would you treat me better, Delusion, insanity, lost love, Life isn′t a period drama, The end was the bloodshed, the trauma, the hardship, The end was enclosed in a casket, At the hand, break the bones of another man, At the foot of a God and his ugly plans, So obsessed with the past out of selfishness, If we were, if we were nineteen forty-five, So convinced there's still a winning side, You wouldn't′t love me in a different time, You'd return from war to pick more fights, One-hundred years of letters, War still rages on forever, So human, so untethered, You won′t treat me better, You can't treat me better, Would we grow old together, Would you treat me better?

#literature #poetry #art #philosophy #existentialism #commentary #aesthetic #love #expression #poetry of tumblr #music #lyrics #beautiful #beauty #god

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talia-rumlow · 1 year

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My Saviour Masterlist!

The first story I ever wrote. I´m still in love with this one.

My Saviour is a Rumlow X Reader story. This story will contain Graphic Sexual Description, Graphic Description of Violence, Death, Murder, angst, trauma, Domestic Abuse and Past Abuse. Read on own risk. This is a story where I portray Brock Rumlow as a decent human being. He also has a backstory. If you don´t like Brock Rumlow yet. You will, after reading this story.

Chapter One - We Don´t Treat Women Like That!

Chapter Two - Can I Tell You A Little Secret?

Chapter Three - What Someone Like Me, Does To Little Brats Like You

Chapter Four - Who Is In Charge?

Chapter Five - Good Girls Gets Rewarded

Chapter Six - The Morning After

Chapter Seven - First Day At Work

Chapter Eight - I Want To Protect You

Chapter Nine - That´s Right, You Disobeyed Me!

Chapter Ten - Pick One!

Chapter Eleven - Mine! Say It!

Chapter Twelve - I´ll Find Him!

Chapter Thirteen - Want To Play A Game?

Chapter Fourteen - Pull Over!

Chapter Fifteen - What Do You Want Me To Do?

Chapter Sixteen - Want Me To Look For It?

Chapter Seventeen - Did You Lock The Door?

Chapter Eighteen - That Girl You Like So Much!

Chapter Nineteen - It´s A Date!

Chapter Twenty - When You Call Me Brock

Chapter Twentyone - See What You Get When You Ask Nicely

Chapter Twentytwo - Come For Me, Brock!

Chapter Twentythree - Please Don´t Leave Me!

Chapter Twentyfour - I Fucking Love You!

Chapter Twentyfive - Are You Alright?

Chapter Twentysix - You Disobeyed Me, Brock!

Chapter Twentyseven - Will It Be Dangerous, This Mission?

Chapter Twentyeight - Have You Ever Used A Gun Before, YN?

Chapter Twentynine - SHIELD Is The Safest Place To Be!

Chapter Thirty - Alexander Pierce

Chapter Thirtyone - Why Is This Happening To You?

Chapter Thirtytwo - How Did You End Up Here?

Chapter Thirtythree - This One Is Not!

Chapter Thirtyfour - Please Don´t Be Mad At Me!

Chapter Thirtyfive - Who Said Anything About Winning?

Chapter Thirtysix - I Love You, YN!

Chapter Thirtyseven - Good Agents Don´t Disobey Orders, YN!

Chapter Thirtyeight - You Are Fired Though!

Chapter Thirtynine - What´s Wrong With You, Brock?

Chapter Fourty - Well Played, YN! You´re Still Dead Though!

Chapter Fourtyone - What Did You Do To deserve This Treatment?

Chapter Fourtytwo - She´s Messing With Your Mind, Brock! Be Careful!

Chapter Fourtythree - I realise that I know nothing about him

Chapter Fourtyfour - You´re worth nothing. NOTHING!

Chapter Fourtyfive - He Really Does Like You!

Chapter Fourtysix - You´ve Done This Before, Haven´t you?

Chapter Fourtyseven - Red!

Chapter Fourtyeight - Do You Have A Child?

Chapter Fourtynine - Get Away From Me, YN!

Chapter Fifty - How can you be so calm about this? I stabbed you!

Chapter Fiftyone - We´re Gonna Play!

Chapter Fiftytwo - I Love You, YN!

Chapter Fiftythree - Where Are Your Parents?

Chapter Fiftyfour - Anything You Want. Brock!

Chapter Fiftyfive - Good Girl!

Chapter Fiftysix - Not You, Agent!

Chapter Fiftyseven - NOT HER!

Chapter Fiftyeight - You Should Listen To This!

Chapter Fiftynine - I´m Gonna Kill Him!

Chapter Sixty - Have You Thought About Names At All?

Chapter Sixtyone - Get Caught!

Chapter Sixtytwo - I Wouldn´t Do That If I Were You!

Chapter Sisxtythree - I´m So Sorry!

Epilogue!

#brock rumlow #rumlow #rumlowfiction #rumlowsmut #rumlowxreader #fanfiction #jack rollins #My Saviour (Rumlow X Reader)

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sarcasticsciencefictionwriter · 1 year

Text

I wrote a Sanctuary story for Helen Magnus's birthday! (It's still her birthday my time). Wrote it on day of posting, cross posting on my fic accounts as well. I thought about only posting part of it and linking the rest, but I don't feel like struggling with the link right now.

Enjoy!

____

And (How) Many More

____

It was only because of the newspaper that she realized what day it was.

Really, Helen ought to have known well before she saw the paper being sold on the street, but she'd had other things on her mind.

She had to stop and stare at the paper, picking it up and staring at the front page. Right there, under the name of the paper, was today's date.

August twenty-seventh, nineteen sixty-three.

Helen had to stare at it, do math in her head, even though the evidence was right in front of her. She hadn't thought of it, even though she knew it was that time of year. That time of year hadn't truly crossed her mind either, because it was so cool.

August was winter here and Helen usually associated heat or humidity with her birthday, so that may have had something to do with it.

The boy selling the newspapers cleared his throat and Helen paid him for the paper, taking it with her as she continued walking, breathing in the salty air blowing off the ocean.

Helen wasn't certain why it mattered, really. She hadn't celebrated her birthday in decades. She had not truly celebrated it long before she had pursued Adam into the past. It shouldn't have mattered now. But, for some reason, it did.

Because it reminded her of Henry and Ashley.

When they had been children, they had insisted on celebrating her birthday with slightly sloppy, homemade cakes her old friend had helped them make and homemade gifts that were, in the future, still stored in a drawer in her room.

Helen's heart ached as she thought of her children, the memories rising to the point where she could taste the frosting and see their eager and pleased faces.

Tears burned her eyes. She pressed a hand over them and let out a deep breath.

Two hundred and twenty-six years old and she was about to be crying in the street. Sixty-five years since she had arrived back in the past. So much time alone.

Oh, she had done things in that time. Met people, established things, earned degrees. But it had always been at a distance and her heart ached as she thought of the people she had left behind. People that hadn't even been born yet.

Sixty-five years out of one hundred and thirteen. Sixty-four birthdays.

Helen started walking again, her shoulders curling slightly as she did.

Birthdays didn't matter, but time did.

Helen knew that well. She'd had far more than her allotted time on this Earth.

She felt sometimes that she was being punished for it.

She recited the names, conjured their faces, as she walked. It was a habit Helen had developed. Due to the Source Blood and what it had given her, she had a very remarkable memory for how much was in her mind, but she was terrified she would begin to forget.

She needed to hold on to these things or going home would be so much harder.

Helen made it back to the small house--really, it was barely more than three rooms--that she was living in on the edge of town. Streaky Bay was a small town, but she was always afraid that she was taking the place someone else would have needed. Should have had.

She was altering things for the future, but she was terrified of altering things in the past.

Helen sighed heavily as she walked into the house. It was nearing evening and she needed to do some shopping.

Even that was risky business, filled with doubts of what she should and should not do, because she was an extra person. Someone who shouldn't have been here.

Helen gathered some more money and headed out.

She had had to leave Bolivia earlier this year. She had established what she needed to establish and things had been unstable for quite some time. It had been time to move on.

So she had come to Australia and, honestly, Helen wasn't certain what to do with herself yet.

As she shopped, Helen's mind was on her past birthdays with her children. She was almost tempted to make herself a cake, just to try and capture the memory, the love, but she knew it would just hurt her more.

She did indulge herself slightly, however, purchasing some freshly made short-bread and tea.

Whether she cared for birthdays or not, two hundred and twenty-six was something hardly anyone had--or would--reached.

She found a package, slightly battered from the journey it had taken, had arrived from James. He did that sometimes. He kept track of her, to make sure to guide her younger self away. He always seemed to know when she might need something to cheer her up.

He'd send her little things, meaningless really, but a slight indulgence in a busy life that sometimes didn't leave room for her herself. He'd laugh if he saw what she was considering a luxury on her birthday now.

Walking 'home', she continued to recite the names and imagine their faces.

Ashley.

Henry.

Her old friend.

Will.

Kate.

Declan.

Nikola.

The list went on, but those were the people she would see again.

Others she would never see again, in this life or in the future.

Nigel had died just months ago.

A sob escaped Helen's throat as she reentered her temporary home, tears welling. She had known the date and it hurt all over again, as if it had happened again. Because it had.

She put her groceries away, opened the package, and drew herself a bath, placing James's gift in the water.

Perfumed rose petals.

Expensive and a definite luxury, but they reminded Helen of times long gone. And better yet, they didn't smell like melting wax or sugar sweetened vanilla and they did not bring forth memories of other people.

Helen slid her body into the hot water and closed her eyes.

Closing her eyes brought forth images that she didn't want in her mind. In her mind's eye, Ashley died again. Will, as a child, screamed for his mother. Nikola's face as he became human all over again.

Tears rolled down Helen's face.

She was weary. Bone and soul tired.

She still had so far to go before she could go home. Before her plans could come to fruition.

Helen was sick of it.

And it wouldn't end when she finally went home.

Oh no. Things would be hard in a different way. Her Sanctuaries needed her. Her family needed her. So many people would need her.

She would still have to go on.

More birthdays lay ahead of her, stretching infinitely. She didn't know when it would stop. She didn't know if it could stop by natural means. She just knew that she had to go on, for as long as she walked the earth, she had a duty.

The tears spilled faster.

In truth, the tears were the indulgence, not the perfumed petals.

Helen was a woman that hardly ever let herself cry, even in private. She couldn't remember the last time she had cried. Not in this lifetime.

Her heart throbbed. Her throat ached. The sobs escaped her throat unbidden.

Helen had taken on the mantle of responsibility. No one had forced it on to her. But sometimes, especially in her second lifetime, it stretched too far and weighed too heavily for her to feel all right.

Sometimes it suffocated her.

It had more and more lately, so alone and waiting her meaning, her duty, to come back to her.

Today just made it worse, reminding her of how much time was gone and how much still lay ahead of her.

The tears stopped and a part of Helen was tempted to just stay in the water. Give up, somehow.

But she never could.

Helen soaked in the scented water until it was truly dark outside, until the water was cold. She hadn't used all of them and she supposed she had something to look forward too now.

She lit a candle because the electricity was finicky in the night, made herself some tea and bit into one of the cookies, savoring the sugar-and-butter taste of it as she skimmed the newspaper.

Nothing of interest, not truly. Helen was trying to settle her mind and her emotions. Crying had left her feeling wrung out, but better, somehow.

She paused on a small piece about Coober Pedy and its mining. How remote it was and how the people there struggled to procure the basic things they needed, how it was overpopulated for what it was currently able to sustain.

It was unlikely the problem would be resolved, due to the attraction of the opal mines.

Hmm.

Images were already conjuring themselves in Helen's mind. Of what could be done to help those people, because things wouldn't just go away. Of how useful it might be to be in such a place.

Coober Pedy, Helen decided, was worth a trip out. It wouldn't be hard to procure land, not with the funds in Helen Bancroft's name.

Despite herself, Helen found her mouth twitching towards a small smile.

She had been feeling lost and alone on her birthday, thinking of how much time still stretched ahead of her, but somehow a solution for the now had presented itself to her. Perhaps the day still meant something after all.

It was late now, however. Coober Pedy and whatever it had to offer could come tomorrow.

That small smile on her lips, Helen set the paper down, leaned forward, and blew out the candle.

#sanctuary #fanfiction #helen magnus #my writing #fanfic #cross posted on ao3 #happy birthday helen magnus!

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wcnderfulthings · 2 months

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Was that [SOFIA CARSON]? No, that was just [KAY “KALEIDOSCOPE” CHALLIS]. They are a [CANON CHARACTER] that was pulled out of [DC’S DOOM PATROL]. How weird is that? At this time, they are [SEVENTY FOUR APPEARS TWENTY SIX] years old, and use [SHE/THEY]. Hopefully they learn to love it here on Naporia!

What point of canon were they brought here from? Season 4, Episode 12 of DC's Doom Patrol; After being thrown into the Timestream, she, along with the team, travel to different places in time to try to regain their longevity. While in 1996, she reunites with Niles who inspires her to reconcile with Kay and the other personalities, recognizing that they are all one. She completes the complex puzzle she was working on then all personalities left the destroyed The Underground to ascend to a new world, merging together with her, becoming Kaleidoscope. Returning to the present, they regain their longevity and eventually disband the Doom Patrol after losing their team leader. Kaleidoscope makes the decision to move out of Doom Manor and rent an apartment where they can paint, find their new purpose and peace. As they search for an apartment, they reunite with Casey, a previously fictional space traveling superhero who was brought to life, who tells them about her plan to take a trip to space in Niles' space ship. Kaleidoscope asks if they can accompany her and they take off on their trip through space. They spend their time on the ship painting, Casey adopts a black kitten and the two begin a love relationship.

How long has it been since they arrived? Just arrived. (August 5th, 2024)

Will they be working at any of the island’s establishments? I imagine they'll open up their own stand at Grand Naporia Mall where they'll sell their paintings. I imagine they will also get some of their work displayed in Naporia Arts And Culture Museum.

Anything else that you think is useful: Kay Challis was born in 1950 and grew up very religious with an abusive, in all ways, father. Eventually, Kay's mind fractured from all the abuse, developing multiple personalities to cope with her lost innocence. The personalities, distinct from one another and inhabiting a construct within Kay's mind called "The Underground", vowed to defend Kay - the original personality and the body they inhabited - by any means necessary. When Kay was a teenager, her pious Christian mother, struggling to understand the psychological damage that had been done to her daughter, interpreted the multiple personalities as a demon inhabiting her daughter and held an exorcism for Kay at the local church. To avoid the scorn and hatred of the ritual being thrown her way, Kay retreated into The Underground, this time for good, assigning a new "primary" personality. But even with the new primary's assistance, she still couldn't escape her father's abuse. Eventually, she ran away and grew up on the streets. When she was nineteen, she was taken to a mental institution, but escaped on multiple occasions, only to be recaptured each time. She was in and out of institutions for seven years until one day, while at the institution, she was experimented on by a scientist, Niles Caulder, which resulted in her having longevity and each of her personalities developing meta-human abilities. She moved into Doom Manor with Niles and the Doom Patrol. After a rough start and constant leaving and returning, she found a home and a family within her team. Kay had been in a constant battle with herself and her sixty four personalities for decades until recently when recognizes that they are all one and they learn to coexist, renaming themselves Kaleidoscope... Kay for short. Some of their powers include immortality, telekinesis, enhanced sense of smell, mind control, teleportation, superhuman strength, sound manipulation, electrokinesis, enhanced intellect, energy construct creation (can create solid, sharp and moldable silver words and objects), size alteration, psychic link, adhesion and multilingualism. They are advanced in hand-to-hand combat and swordsmanship. They like to dance and sing but their true love is painting and they can interact psychically with their paintings.

#naporia.intro #kcintro #kay challis #death tw #child abuse tw #mental illness tw #religious trauma tw #mental hospital tw

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casicroaks · 10 months

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Tiffany Valentine has two things in her mind: love and murder. The origins of the brains behind the infamous Lakeshore Strangler and the string of broken hearts she left along her way to Chicago, interwoven with the development of the tempestuous relationship between her and a certain Charles Lee Ray.

CHAPTER 10

[ CHAPTER 1 // CHAPTER 2 // CHAPTER 3 // CHAPTER 4 // CHAPTER 5 // CHAPTER 6 // CHAPTER 7 // CHAPTER 8 // CHAPTER 9 // CHAPTER 10 // CHAPTER 11 // CHAPTER 12 // CHAPTER 13 // CHAPTER 14 // CHAPTER 15 // CHAPTER 16 ]

NEW YORK, 1986

We both had some experience with packing, but this was on another level. I was one to keep all sorts of junk for sentimental reasons, it had to be said, so choosing what to take with us and what to leave behind was all kinds of torture.

“We should pack light…” Chucky reminded me, for the umpteenth time.

We couldn’t take any furniture with us, obviously, but we didn’t have enough luggage or boxes to take too many things regardless. No bedsheets, no appliances, nothing but clothes and other essential personal belongings. What, exactly, was an essential personal belonging was up for debate.

“Alright, but I can’t leave behind my dolls,” I said, wrapping the more fragile ones in newspaper. “Or the magazines –I’ve been collecting these since nineteen-seventy-seven. They don’t take up as much space as your books, anyway. And also, I have my cutlery and dishes… They’re so pretty, I can’t not take them with us.”

“They got dishes in Chicago too, you know—”

“Well, I don’t know if they got these ones!”

There was always a chance they would arrive at our new place all in pieces –but I’d rather take my chances, I decided, and end up with only one whole pretty dish among a bunch of broken china, than never seeing any of them again. After some heated arguing, we managed to agree on taking our favorite mugs, and one dish each, but leaving the glasses and the cutlery behind. Except for the carving knives, of course. Couldn’t leave without those.

Once it was done, and all the cardboard boxes were full and taped and ready to go, it was only a matter of choosing our ride –or, at least, that was what I had thought. To my delighted surprise, as if the trip by itself wasn’t enough of a gift, Chucky had another early birthday present up his sleeve.

“Nineteen-sixty Pontiac Parisienne, four-door wide-track. Back when bigger was unapologetically better,” the pasty old guy told us, walking around the car.

My attention shifted between it, shiny even under the gray cloudy sky, and the salesman himself. How did he get it? Had he just lucked out? Was it a gift from rich parents? This was a nice neighborhood, nicer than the one I had grown up in.

“Comfortably seats six. Perfect for the growing family, by the way.”

I stifled a giggle, shooting Chucky an amused glance. Did we look like expecting parents?

“Three-eighty-nine V-eight engine topped with Tri-Power carburetor, making it the ultimate cruiser of its day.”

He did have that right. I did my best to curb my enthusiasm, but I couldn’t stop grinning at the sheer sight of it. It was a truly nice car, the sort you just don’t get the chance to hotwire. The sort I would have never had the chance to get. The sort not even Heath would have a chance to get his hands on.

“Superior handling, and just the quietest purr from this pussycat.”

Yeah, it had been his , I concluded. You can say the script if you were just a random car salesman, but you couldn’t fake the fondness this guy had for it. I wondered if, with him mentioning family, it had been where he got to plant the seed of his. He looked like your typical suburban dad, with his hideous pastel shirt, the barely-disguised beer gut. His kids were probably teenagers, or even maybe our age, by now. Maybe he had thought they weren’t worthy enough of daddy’s precious cruiser. Maybe his wife had talked him into selling it for a summer house in Florida.

“And I love the color,” I chimed in with a smile, running the tip of my finger over the top of the headlights. It was glossy, shiny, clearly freshly-painted. It was so new-looking that, if it hadn’t been about to be mine, I might have keyed it out of sheer envy.

“Coronado red,” the guy explained proudly. Now that was a color I didn’t remember reading in the label of a nail polish. “Just put on a fresh coat last month.”

“Chucky, it’s perfect .”

He gave me a little smile before turning back to the salesman. “You heard the lady. How much?”

“Just a thousand bucks.”

I think he said that, I’m not sure. I wasn’t listening anymore –I was too busy peeking inside, checking the leather seats, the chrome steering wheel. I wanted to get my hands on it so bad. I only perked up when the guy mentioned having to legally disclose something –that did sound pretty interesting.

“What’s that?”

The guy wasn’t very comfortable talking about it, but he seemed to want to get over it as quickly as possible. “Um, unfortunately… This car was... There was an accident.”

Chucky’s attention was piqued as well. “What happened?”

“Young couple got killed.”

“How, exactly?” I asked him.

“Well… If you must know, I believe they were decapitated.”

I leaned in through the window. How do you even get decapitated inside a car? It wasn’t a convertible. Did it get through a particularly nasty crash? Against what? And just how big was the reconstruction job on the Pontiac, for it to be looking spitting new again? More proof of the guy’s love for it. Not even death could taint it in his eyes. He would rebuild it, as if nothing had ever even happened in the first place.

Or maybe that death was why he wanted to sell the car. He might be unable to shake the unsettling feeling of sitting where someone else had died, despite his fondness for it.

“ Ooh, ” Chucky said with fake shock. He peered through the side window at me, while I examined the upholstering of the front seats, wondering if they had been sitting next to each other when they died, and barely glanced back at him, far too fascinated with the idea of owning a haunted car.

But I stood up, allowing myself just one more little question. “Both of them?”

“More or less,” the guy muttered. No idea what he meant by that. I hoped they did, though. If you’re gonna die a gruesome car-related death, a run-of-the-mill sudden impact wouldn’t cut it. Decapitation was really the way to go.

I looked back inside. If there had been a crash in it, you wouldn’t be able to guess. An amazing reconstruction job indeed. Whoever had done it was a hell of an artist.

“We’ll take it,” I declared, as if I hadn’t already made up my mind a few minutes ago.

“Really?” The guy sounded surprised. “Great! Good for you!”

Chucky took another drag of his cigarette. I went back to filing my nails. Now that we had confirmed it, I just had to wait a little. See how the scene played out. Scour the area, make sure there were no witnesses. And be ready to step into position, when the time came.

“It’s a stunning automobile,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard me just saying we were already sold on it. “And a true classic never goes out of style.”

Chucky frowned, moving away from the car for a second.

“What’d you say?”

The guy kept his salesman's smile plastered on his face. “I said, you got a real classic here.”

“Liar.”

I grinned, turning aside, pretending to focus on my nails.

“Pardon?”

“Technically, it isn’t even an antique,” Chucky argued.

The guy chuckled nervously. “Well, sure it is. It’s… It’s vintage. Retro!”

I wondered where he had heard those terms applied to a car from nineteen-sixty. How old must he have been, back then? Twenty-something, thirty, already? Maybe it wasn’t quite the car of his youth. Maybe it was his early midlife crisis solution.

“It’s not vintage, or retro,” Chucky continued, now stepping towards him, and gave me a look. That was the sign. I smiled and went on filing my nails, walking up to the guy as well. “ Or an antique. It’s just plain old.”

The salesman was baffled. He was too baffled, in fact, to notice me creeping up behind him.

“Kinda like you.”

I flicked little pieces of dry nail polish off the blade, and gave the neighborhood one quick last look. No witnesses. Everyone else was off to school, or at work, or fixing lunch. That would make things much easier. And I was itching to get to it.

“But don’t worry, we’re gonna give you another paint job, too.”

He stood just beside the salesman. Enough talk , I thought. Let’s get on the road.

I reached my arm right in front of the guy, and with one swift flick of the wrist I sliced his throat with the edge of the file. Didn’t need to hold his head back –not that he had any hair for me to do so –didn’t need to get him on his knees –just one clean slice. I was getting quite good at it. There was a spray of blood right over the windshield, like a swarm of bugs all splattering against the glass at the same time. Chucky cackled, as the guy fell to the ground like a puppet whose strings were cut, still somehow clinging to life. While he was too busy gurgling and trying to stop the gash, Chucky leaned over and pulled the keys from his pocket.

“Here you go,” he said, handing them over to me, giving me a quick smack on the butt, hurrying me along.

“That’s… A –a thousand bucks—” the guy somehow managed to blurt out.

“That’s real cute,” I laughed, stepping over him and tossing the ‘For Sale’ sign to the side.

We climbed in. It felt good, sitting in a car that was finally, really ours. Yeah, well, we would have to change the license plate, of course. No biggie. I quickly checked whether we had enough gas to get back to the apartment and pick up our stuff… But my attention drifted off to the bright shade of the blood on my nail file. I smiled. It was really close to that Coronado red. If someone dared to ask, we could just say that the car’s paint job had gotten a little messy.

“I just love that color,” I commented.

“Yeah, it matches your lip gloss,” he chuckled.

I started the engine, and we got cracking. In a matter of minutes we were in front of my old apartment, loading the moving boxes in the trunk, struggling to close it, setting a couple bags over the back seats –and before three o’clock we were already on the highway, on our way to the great state of Illinois.

“Hey, you chose the music last time,” I said when I saw Chucky taking out the bag with the tapes.

“Did I?”

I wasn’t sure, but I was pretty positive I was right. “Yeah. It’s my turn.”

“… Alright,” he huffed. “But I’m choosing the album.”

I nodded, giving the road ahead one more quick look before adjusting the rearview mirror. “We got Heart’s latest, don’t we?”

“Oh, that’s a good one,” he agreed, pulling the tape out of the bag and putting it in, turning the volume as loud as it could go.

It had been his idea, funnily enough, to move to Chicago. At first I had assumed some old skirmish had resurfaced –maybe he owed someone money, or had pissed off the wrong person –something that he couldn’t just stab away and that would really force him to leave behind our darling New Jersey. When I asked him about it, though, he just said he thought I might like that, the change of scenery, and that Hackensack was getting too small for us anyway. And then, of course, there was the fact that an old acquaintance of his had to skip town and, coincidentally, had a place in Chicago he could leave us. Everything lined up just perfectly for us, so in a week or so we got all our stuff sorted out, gathered all our savings, bought a road map and, just in time for my twenty-eighth birthday, we finally had that cross-country (well, close enough) trip I had been wishing for.

“ If looks could kill, you’d be lying on the floor, ” we sang along, me rocking my head, him drumming on the dashboard. “ You’d be beggin’ me please, please, baby, don’t hurt me no more— ”

The first half hour or so passed us by in a flash, singing along to the music, racing through the open road, discussing what we would do once we got to Illinois. Chucky had unfolded the map and marked where we had passed, telling me which exits to take and where I needed to turn; but, at some point, he had gotten tired of that, and told me to just keep straight ahead going west, that we would eventually end up in Illinois. After Heart was over, he chose the next band, I chose the album, and he had a smoke, leaning out his window, watching the view zooming past us, of forests and factories and rivers and a few other cars, just as anonymous as we were, with their own journey’s ends. I gestured at him to share the cigarette. He did, and while I took a drag, he seemed to remember he had brought along some reading material for the long trip, and took out a little black book from his coat pocket.

“You know, you’ll get dizzy if you read in the car,” I told him.

Chucky scoffed. “Yeah, sure.”

I reached out and grabbed the book he was reading to take a better look. ‘ The Ultimate Book Of Voodoo’ . I frowned. I didn’t remember that title in the spine of his shelves.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a hobby,” he snapped, suddenly all testy, pushing my hand off the dustjacket.

I raised my eyebrows. “Jeez, how touchy…”

Chucky didn’t reply to that. I shrugged, and turned the music back up. A minute or so passed before he finally huffed and tossed the book into the glovebox. I snickered.

“So –voodoo, huh?” I said, glancing at him. “Isn’t it, like, a whole religion?”

“Yeah, but it has some…” He made a vague hand gesture. “Some interesting specific practices.”

“And you’re gonna enter the church of voodoo just for a couple specific practices?” I laughed. “That’s like getting into Catholicism just for confessions and wafers.”

“I never said I’m gonna enter any church. It’s just a hobby.”

“Why can’t you get into more mainstream stuff?” I asked, speeding up to get ahead of a minivan that was moving at a snail's pace. “Like Buddhism, or Satanism.”

“Tried both. No results.”

“Well, what results were you looking for?”

“Slow down, Jesus…”

We soon got close to the state line. I was suddenly reminded of when dad would stuff me and Bri in the old family ride and take us to Newark, to visit our uncles. That was the closest thing to holiday trips we got. We’d always complain about the other being on our side of the backseat, or about the other chewing the Rice Krispies mom had packed for us too loudly, or having to pee and ask how long before we got to a gas station, and annoy dad enough for him to start yelling at us to stay quiet and hold it in. I chuckled to myself. We were really insufferable, back in the day. It was a miracle neither one of our parents had killed us in the crib, especially Bri.

“What’s so funny?” he asked me.

“You wouldn’t get it.”

Chucky looked at me like I was crazy. I just gave him a little shoulder shove.

“Say bye-bye, hun,” I said, speeding up, as we neared the back of the welcome sign, where someone had spray-painted ‘ good riddance ’ in big red letters. “I don’t think we’re gonna step foot back in the Garden State for a long, long time.”

I held my breath in, like I used to do when we passed by a graveyard. Chucky leaned out the window. Once we were close enough, he spat at the sign.

“Did you get it?” I asked him once I breathed again.

“Think so!”

I chuckled. “Boy, it’s been a while since I’ve been out of Jersey.”

“Right –you lived in New York for a while, right?” he said, plopping back into his seat. “Lucky you, hanging ‘round in the heyday of The Damned, Misfits and Blue Oyster Cult...”

I grinned proudly. He was so jealous, I thought, imagining how bored he must have been, back in our sleepy little town. “And you, sweetface?” I asked him. “Always been a Jersey boy?”

“I mean, I moved around,” he shrugged. “You know how it is, you get what you can get. But... Yeah, I think I never really crossed the state line.”

“Won’t you feel homesick?”

Chucky stared at me for a moment, before cackling like mad. “For fucking Hackensack, New Jersey?”

I laughed along, realizing just how stupid I sounded. “But really, sweetface –don’t you think you’ll miss it, at least a little bit?”

“Fuck no,” he grimaced. “Did you miss it, back then?”

“I guess I kinda did,” It wasn’t that I had any kind of real deep love for my hometown, though. “It was more of a feeling of being away from home for the first time.”

“Huh... And how long did that homesickness last?”

I slowly smiled to myself. “A week. Two weeks, tops.”

He cackled again. I couldn’t help but laugh, too. And with our goodbyes out of the way, we were fully on the road, ready for our new lives.

We had spent quite a while packing our things, having a cup of coffee each, and then we had spent another while putting all the boxes in the Pontiac, and then we had wasted even some more time, when Chucky somehow managed to get us lost by telling me to take the wrong exit. So, by the time we finally found our way back to the highway, I was starving and couldn’t cheat my stomach anymore with bubblegum and cigarettes. Just an hour or so had passed since we started our trip, but Chucky was already feeling rather restless and fidgety. Luck would have it that we passed a little roadside convenience store just after crossing the Delaware.

This time, we didn’t forget the gun.

I started things off slitting the throat of the customer standing closest to me, a middle-aged woman who opened her eyes wide and let out a really funny, deep croaky gasp. Before giving her any time to do anything, Chucky got the clerk girl away from behind the counter, just in case she tried to pull any funny shit. But she didn’t put up a fight at all. Another customer, a big trucker sorta type of man, tried to play hero, brandishing a crowbar he got from who knows where like an idiot, swinging it at Chucky who just stared at him, pretty amused. He hadn’t seen me kill the other customer (and one of the advantages of throat-slitting from behind was avoiding unseemly bloodstains), so I pretended to scream and cry in panic, moving closer behind him, while he yelled at me to take cover. Too many Arnold movies, I guess. Just to mess with him a little more, Chucky pressed the muzzle of the gun against the clerk girl’s temple and shouted at the guy to stop fucking around, get on his knees and drop the crowbar, or the bitch would get it. The man finally got some sense knocked into him, and slowly left the crowbar by my feet, kneeling down, turning back to look at me and softly promising me everything would be alright. I smiled, and nodded, and fluttered my eyelashes at him –then I grabbed the crowbar and got back on my feet –and clobbered him, beating him over and over and letting loose, still careful not to hit him too often on the head, just so he wouldn’t die too quick. I laughed brightly at the shock he had in his eyes just before he began flinching and writhing like a worm in the mud. You don’t get that kind of unbridled fun with a quick throat slit.

“Wanna deal the final blow, darling?” I asked Chucky, once the man had stopped squirming.

The clerk girl stood still and silent, barely trembling, as the gunshot echoed in the little store. She remained just as well behaved (if not a bit snotty with her sobbing) while Chucky emptied the cash register, and watched us pick up a whole bunch of snacks without saying a word, even offering to give us directions when Chucky and I began arguing again about the quickest way to get to Cleveland. It seemed like she really believed we would grab the stuff, leave her alone and drive off. Honestly, I found her rather pleasant, despite the sniveling.

We did have a strong no-witness policy, unfortunately for her.

Since the day’s body count for me was already at three, it was Chucky’s turn to stab the girl to his heart’s content. I watched him have his fun while checking out the postcards and deciding which ones Molly and Annie would like.

As our disposal expert, I always made sure that, if it was someone we could possibly be linked to, or that we could have been seen with, the body would be as hard to find for as long as possible. Dumping the body in a field where nature could run its course, or chopping it up in smaller pieces we could put in different garbage bags, or leaving them in a hotwired car in some neighborhood far away from ours, or dissolving the meat off the bones in a chemical bath, if I managed to have all the necessary ingredients –these were all some of my favorite methods. I knew that, if it was up to Chucky, he would just leave whoever wherever they had kicked the bucket. Sometimes I really wondered how he had managed for so long without me.

If we left no witnesses, and were somewhere in the middle of nowhere, though, there was no reason to make too much of an effort.

“Is this a murder spree, or just your garden-variety serial killing?” I asked him, leaning back against the hood of the Pontiac.

Chucky shrugged, tearing open a packet of green apple Pop-Rocks. “Bah, I never bother with the details.”

He’d shown an unusual amount of restraint while offing the girl, getting it over with pretty quickly. Possibly because the woman didn’t seem scared enough for him to enjoy it, possibly because he knew that it wouldn’t be the smartest choice to look too sloppy so early in our drive, and especially with him as convinced as he was that we would end up getting pulled over for speeding. Whatever the reason, at least we were well supplied with a whole bunch of snacks that, while not really satisfying the hunger, was good enough to nibble on, for the time being.

“You think this might reach the news?”

He frowned in confusion.

I laughed and elbowed him, gesturing towards the trail of destruction we had left behind us. “C’mon, never wanted to be famous?”

“Of course,” he smiled. “Hell, I wanted to be the next Morrison.”

“Really? So, what happened?”

“I can’t sing for shit.”

We laughed. I had only heard him singing a few times, along to his music –never on his own –but I believed him. Not that being tone-deaf ever stopped quite a few big rock stars from getting to the top of the charts.

“That’d be really nice, though,” Chucky said, chewing thoughtfully. “Maybe not Morrison, but perhaps the next Manson.”

I snickered, and took a bite off a cookie. “The family’s far too small."

“Give it time.”

I shot him a glance. He was just joking, right? I was about to question him further, but decided not to. It was probably just a joke. Still, I went over his comment in my head a few more times while we doused the bodies of our three kills with gasoline and improvised a cremation. Just in case we had left any evidence, we emptied a couple more gallons over the store’s sticky linoleum floor, had one more smoke, and let the place burn to the ground. And once that was done with and we had our daily fix of sugar and salt, the Pontiac’s backseat filled with enough snacks to last us a week, we got back on the road.

Chucky had insisted on trying to make it to Chicago before the sun went down, even though I knew it was basically impossible, considering how much time we wasted on finding our way –when he had been the one who got us lost –and with how little attention he paid to the map.

“I told you we should have gotten that travel guide,” I huffed.

“It cost an arm and a leg!” he claimed. “Besides, we’d never use it again.”

“You never know when it might come in handy...”

Despite all this, the snack break had really been a blessing. We talked for a while about the new apartment, and what we were gonna do once we arrived in Illinois; we played Twenty Questions, and then Would You Rather, and then I Spy, and then we argued about which was the best Runaways song –which was obviously either Cherry Bomb or American Nights .

“God, but you ever seen that picture of Currie, during this one performance of Dead End Justice ? With her, all covered in blood…?”

Chucky gave an appreciative wolf-whistle. I laughed.

“That awakened something in you, huh?”

He chuckled, scratching his head. “Yeah, guess so...” he said, and turned to look at me. “What about you?”

“I’m not telling,” I answered with a quirk of my eyebrows. “You’ll just get jealous.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.”

“No, I won’t!”

“Yeah, you will! I know you.”

“I’m not gonna get jealous of whatever damn teenybopper crush you fantasized your kissing practice to, Tiff,” he insisted.

I rolled my eyes and said nothing. Chucky kept silent as well, for once, waiting for me to finally talk. Now that he had brought it up, and I didn’t budge, I could tell it was eating at him.

“Fine. I’ll just guess,” he said while putting his feet on the dashboard. “Robert Plant?”

I shook my head.

“Too far off the mark?” he asked, but I didn’t say a word. “Alright then… Uh, Michael Gray.”

I shot him a look. He frowned back at me.

“Don’t fucking tell me you were into one of the Brady Bunch guys, for God’s sake.”

I snorted. “You don’t know shit about me, or my tastes. Clearly.”

“Huh... I thought you liked this little birthday gift,” he said, patting the passenger’s seat’s door. “But we can change it for something else, I guess, if you hate it so much—”

“Like hell you will, Charles.”

He laughed out loud. “I do know you, Tiff. You know I do.”

I turned to look at him. He was still smiling, eyes shining, when he looked back at me. I kept gazing at him for a little longer than I probably should.

“... What?”

“Nothing, I guess...” I chuckled to myself, looking back ahead to the road stretching in front of us. “I guess you do kinda know me.”

He chuckled, too. I smiled a little wider, giving him a look out the corner of my eye. I don’t know exactly what he understood by that –but he leaned forward to me, brushed a curl over my ear, and gave me a kiss on the temple, so I wasn’t gonna complain.

“Hey,” I muttered when he began to move away, and laid a hand on his cheek, and he came back to me to kiss me again, a real kiss.

“Eyes on the road, babe,” he told me, but stayed right by my side, kissing the edge of my mouth. “So, then, what d’you say?”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for the car, sweetface.”

“Hm,” he said, slinking a hand over my thigh, his mouth going down to my jaw. “I think you can do better than that to thank me.”

“Thank you very, very much...” I said in a sigh, cocking my head so he could go on kissing my neck. “Very... Very... Very...”

It had been quite some time since he tried something on me, so I should have seen it coming. Truth be told, I had been expecting something like that ever since we left the convenience store. His hand on my thigh started to squeeze a little, and I wondered what his end goal was. If he asked me, I could definitely just pull over to the side of the road so we could fully christen the new family member. He was in such a hurry to get to Chicago –but at the same time, he knew I was looking pretty damn good that day, and it would be a shame for him not to acknowledge this, in his own way.

“Hey, Tiff...”

With one hand still on the shiny chrome wheel, I reached out my left hand to grip his knee.

“Watch the road.”

“You’re asking too much of me, hun...”

“Oh, so you’d rather I stop–?”

“No, no,” I said, shaking my head, moving my hand further. “Keep going...”

He slowed down for a second, rethinking whether or not it was a risk he was willing to take; but then he most likely decided that it was not the sorta thing he liked to mull over. He grabbed my thigh, spreading it to the side. I arched my neck and breathed, looking down through the windshield that had begun to look hazy, with the sounds of the world outside the car becoming lower, and focused entirely on the hum of the engine, my panting and his own little anxious groans...

His hand had begun to move slower. I was getting impatient. I blinked, still making an effort to pay attention to the road, but I just needed it closer –and in the end I just shut my eyes and released the steering wheel and gripped his hand with a moan–

“Tiff – look out —!”

I looked back ahead and turned the wheel before we ended up rolling off the road. There was a thump! –I didn’t see it, but it sounded just like Chucky getting his head bumped on the side of the door again. Another car darted past us, honking furiously. I laughed. Chucky didn’t seem as amused.

“Jesus, woman, you’re gonna get us both killed—”

“Aw, relax,” I said, still giggling, stretching my fingers back over the steering wheel. “I’m just breaking it in…”

I interrupted myself with an unexpected yawn. I was already feeling a bit worn-out, but only then did it really hit me just how beat I really was. I’d never driven for as long as I was driving right then. My eyes were tired, and I could feel them having started to glaze over. Lights seemed brighter than a couple hours ago –though that might have been because it was getting dark out already and the cars dashing along with us had their lights turned on, drawing glowing trails behind them. I chewed on my rather dry lower lip. Most of the time I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but right then I was in some real need of a break, at least to make sure I wouldn’t somehow end up crashing my beautiful new car.

“Sweetface, keep your eyes open for a stop,” I told Chucky, slowing down.

“What? You’re tired already?” he protested. “But we’re so close!”

“I’ve been driving for about nine hours straight,” I insisted. Easy for him to complain, all he did was annoy and distract me from the passenger’s seat. “I’m not tired, I’m exhausted !”

“Fine… Let’s see,” He unfolded the map again and took a moment to find us in it. “There should be a stop coming up, in the next three miles.”

A large blinking sign lit up the night road, advertising a roadside motel: the Starlite Motor Inn, with cable TV, pool, air conditioned, honeymoon suites and whirlpool tubs. Sounded just about perfect. I turned at the exit and the car skidded right into the motel’s parkway.

The lobby-slash-office was small, but much, much nicer than the old Hotel Broslin, which was barely a hotel anyways. This place actually had carpeted floors, and pleasant soft lighting, and curtains on the windows, and pretty framed pictures of birds decorating the walls. The only person in there, an employee sitting behind the reception desk, was reading a magazine, feet crossed over the desk, with a radio beside him that blasted the latest Peter Gabriel single. When he saw us walking in he hurried to put his feet down, brush off the desk, lower the music and put away the magazine.

“Hello there! Welcome to the Starlite,” he greeted us with a well-practiced smile. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I think you can,” Chucky said, resting an elbow on the counter. “Me and the missy are looking for a place to crash in for the night.”

I noticed a silver call bell on the desk, and rang it. Behind the guy, a whole bunch of keys dangled neatly from rows of nails. By the look of it, they had plenty of rooms available. Only two of the nails in the board had no key: room four and room twelve. I wondered if the guests came on their own, or with their partners, or with their whole families. Maybe they were going on a long cross-country trip, like we did.

“Ah, fantastic,” he nodded, before facing me and gesturing to the board. “You can have your pick. Perks of traveling in the off season, right?”

“So, they’re all the same?”

“They all have double-size beds, cable TV, air conditioned and central heating—”

“Yeah, yeah, we know all that,” I said, gesturing with my nail file. “Isn’t there any one that’s better than the rest, though?”

“… They’re all truly clean and fine, if that’s what you’re asking—”

“Well, if they all have the same stuff,” Chucky asked with a frown. “Then what’s the point of having our pick?”

I shot him a little smirk, before looking down to file my nails.

“So!” the guy said, knocking on the desk, after a nervous chuckle. “Where are you two lovebirds headed to?”

“What about the honeymoon suite?” I asked, looking up for a moment.

“Ah, I’m afraid the honeymoon suite is currently being occupied, ma’am,” he said, still in his chipper tone.

“That’s okay,” I grinned, leaning forward over the counter. “The sign outside said honeymoon suites . We’ll just have the other one.”

He still smiled, but his voice faltered just a little. “Oh, um… We only have one, actually, ma’am.”

I lost my smile. Chucky and I exchanged a glance. He sighed.

“Well, now that’s just false advertising.”

In the blink of an eye, Chucky grabbed the bell and hit the guy on the head with it. Too shocked to even react, he just stumbled backwards, trying to hold onto the desk. Chucky climbed over it, shoved him down to the floor, and smashed his head in, over and over, ringing and ringing, leaving a large wide open gash. I went around behind the counter as well. Chucky tossed the bloodied bell to the side with one last bright ring! , and gave me a look.

“Service’s not what it used to be, huh?”

I giggled. The guy sputtered some blood.

“Whose turn?”

“Go ahead, hun.” I said, leaning over his shoulder and giving him a kiss on the temple. “Knock yourself out.”

Chucky turned his attention back to his victim, with a big smile. He took out his hunting knife from his pocket –and the man whimpered, his eyes open wide, shaking in terror, and tried to crawl away –and Chucky sank the blade in the middle of his chest, cleanly and quickly, and twisted his wrist, pushing deeper, and the blood soaked the man’s shirt and it gushed out like a fountain –the man tried to scream –and I grinned wider, watching his arm shoot back up, splattering blood all over the pink walls –and gave his little satisfied exhalation that I already knew so well –and plunged back down, going even deeper, up to the handle –and pulled it back up, with a brief grunt –and back down, back up, swinging the knife, over and over…

I knocked on the door of room four: “Room service!”

A guy in his plaid pajamas opened the door. He looked at me, and blinked, and frowned –but before he could say anything –I raised my nail file and sliced his throat. The man stumbled backwards, tripping over his own legs, and landing with his back to the blue carpeted floor. By that point I knew very well just how close I needed to be, how deep I needed to cut, depending on what I wanted to do. A quick death would’ve been really easy, with how close he was standing to me –but where’s the fun in that? All I needed was for him to keep nice and quiet and die choking on his own.

I peered inside his room. There was an open suitcase on a chair, a pair of worn shoes beside the bathroom door, and a suit stretched out on the neatly made bed. By the look of it, seemed like the guy was a salesman of some sort. While he twitched and his body bled out, I walked in and glanced around for anything worth something. Sure enough, on his bedside table, beside a pair of reading glasses, there was a brown leather wallet waiting for me to pick it up.

“Won't need it much now,” I hummed to myself, as I opened the wallet and checked the nice fat wad of cash stuffed in it. “Such a shame to see things go to waste.”

“C’mon, Tiff, we can raid the place later!”

Still riding the high of his last kill, Chucky hurried me out of room four and towards room twelve. Cabin fever must have been affecting him worse than he let out. He’d released some of the tension back at the lobby, but he needed more.

“Time to check out!”

Chucky kicked the flimsy door open. A curly-haired woman screamed, throwing her blue nail polish on the sheets of the bed. A short man, standing beside her and halfway through unbuttoning his shirt, was a bit slower to react. He stared at us for a second, before realizing Chucky was carrying a gun. When he did notice what was going on, he became pale, and raised his hands.

I looked around the room: so this was the honeymoon suite. Dusky pink wallpaper, fuzzy purple carpet (that must be hell to clean up), polished white furniture, and a big bed with deep red sheets and a pretty sheer canopy.

“That fucker lied,” I said when I realized just how different the suite was to room four. “That’s not a double –that’s a queen size!”

“Please,” the man said in a shaky voice. “Please, we’re not doing anything, we’re… We’re just celebrating our anniversary—”

“Shut up, and get over here, you two,” Chucky ordered. I smiled. Seemed like we were gonna have a little fun. “Sit on the floor, right here.”

The woman went first, hands raised, and walked towards us. The man, walking behind her, partly hid by her night robe and her big curls, appeared to do the same –but when he passed by the bathroom door he thought he could make it –and tried to hurry and sneak in –but Chucky was quicker, and fired a warning shot that just about grazed his nose.

“Hey! You deaf?” he yelled. “Or just fucking stupid?”

“Alright… Alright. No need to go nuts.”

I closed the door to the bathroom, just in case the guy thought of giving it another shot. The man and the woman sat side by side on the floor, hands still up, trembling a little.

“Listen… Please, I don’t know why you’re doing this, but –but I’ve got my children, they need me…” the woman sobbed. “Please, please, don’t do this to my children—”

“You two got kids?” I said brightly. “Hope you got a good babysitter for them.”

The man looked down. I found the woman’s bag over the open suitcase, and picked the wallet.

“Yes, they’re these three little angels…” she said with a nervous smile. “The youngest one’s barely two years old… Please, I’m begging you—”

“Who’s that?”

I took out a little photo from the wallet, and crouched in front of the woman, raising the picture for her to see. She blinked. Her eyes were already red.

“That’s… That’s my little girl, Kristin, and my baby Ned—”

“I mean the guy, you silly,” I insisted. There was a smiling man in the photo, holding the baby in one arm and the girl in the other. “Who’s that?”

The woman looked down at the photo, then up at me, and the first tear rolled down her cheek. “T-that’s my husband… Freddie.”

The man hung his head even lower. Whoever he was, he was certainly not Freddie.

“Oh… So we got a cheating situation over here,” I said, getting back up to my feet, tossing the photo to the side, and turning to the man. “You married, too, asshole? I bet you are.”

“You done, Tiff?” Chucky grumbled, gesturing at them with the gun.

“No. No –you know what? Let’s play a game. See if you can win fair and square,” I said, getting all worked up, waving around my nail file. “We choose what you two are gonna play, and the winner gets to live. How’s that sound?”

Chucky thought for a moment. Then he nodded in agreement. “Not too bad. What game, though?”

“Tic-tac-toe?”

“Hm,” he shook his head. “Rock-paper-scissors sounds better to me.”

“That’s too quick.”

“Well, they’re not gonna play fucking chess for their lives—”

“I know how to play chess,” the man mumbled.

“You got your cards at hand?”

“I got the deck somewhere in my suitcase,” I said. “What about a game of rummy?”

“Nah, that won’t work either.”

“I like the idea of chess—” the woman muttered.

“Thumb wrestling?”

I snickered.

“Alright, we’ll go with rock-paper-scissors,” he decided with a clap of his hands. “Two outta three.”

Chucky leaned against the window, resting the hand with the gun on his leg. I stayed by his side, watching the two cheaters, filing my nails. There was a moment of silence. The woman and the man exchanged a little nervous look, but stayed still.

“Go on,” I hurried them. “Get playing.”

They looked into each other’s eyes again, as if trying to find something to say. An apology, maybe, though it was hard to say how much they really cared about the other, especially when they were about to play to win. There were no doubts about that.

In the first round, the woman had rock –the man had scissors. A smile twitched in her lips. I wondered which one of them I would rather have losing, but at the end of the day, it didn’t make much of a difference to me. In the second round, the man had scissors –the woman had paper. She lost her smile as he breathed and thanked his God between teeth. I glanced at Chucky, who despite looking rather stone-faced, was clearly paying close attention. He leaned forward a little as the cheaters punched their open palms, ready for the next decisive round. Me, I already knew what the woman was gonna choose. She had already signed her death warrant. Indeed, in the final turn, the woman had scissors –and the man had rock.

The man shut his eyes and let out a shaky relieved sigh as his whole body loosened up. The woman began sobbing again, looking up at us two, sniffing and chewing on her lip.

“… Three outta four?”

“That’s just changing the damn rules of the game,” Chucky said.

“Please –you want money? I can get you more!” she shrieked on her knees. “I’ll give you anything! Anything you ask for! If you let me go –I won’t tell a soul, I’ll forget everything, I’ll –I’ll do anything! Just –please, please, kill him …! Let me live!”

“ Sandy !”

The man stared at the woman in complete disbelief. The woman looked back at him, all confused, as if it hadn't been the normal response to being threatened. And then the man quickly turned back towards us, eyes wide open in sheer panic.

“ I won – I get to live!”

Chucky and I burst out laughing.

“Please,” the woman kept blubbering. “Please, give me another try… I’ll do anything. Please—”

“C’mon,” I finally said, wielding my nail file. “Don’t be such a sore loser.”

I crouched in front of her, grabbed her face and carved a deep line, from the corner of her mouth to the ear. The man let out a loud, terrified scream. The woman just stared at me with big, wet eyes, whimpering and quivering, weakly trying to pull away or push me off her –but I had sunk my nails on her, pinning her down with my knee on her torso, and wouldn’t let go for anything –and I kept drawing the line, moving slower, the skin breaking like butter. With a brand-new smile on her face, the woman blubbered and tried to cover the bleeding gash with her shaky hand. I heard Chucky’s little snicker behind me, and remembered that he was also itching for some: so I got mine done with. I grabbed the woman’s curls and yanked her head, and hacked at her neck with my nail file. It wasn’t a blunt instrument –it was fantastic for delicate work, but not the best for stabbing, it had to be said –but I always manage. It did make quite a mess. The blood spurted out the slit, spraying my face, and when the woman tried to turn around and away from me, the man got caught in the splash zone. He screamed even louder. I laughed, and backed off to admire my work, letting gravity and pressure do the rest of the work of finishing her off. As much of a show it was, to watch the woman bleeding out her throat like a burst pipe, the guy was quite entertaining himself –trying to cover his red face with his hands, twisting and squirming and screeching like mad.

Once the man was done screaming and calmed down a bit, though, and had managed to strain through a few sharp shaky breaths, he forced a smile, and looked up at the two of us.

“Thank you –thank you, thank you for letting me live… Thank you—”

“Hey, we said ‘gets to live’…” Chucky said. “We never said for how long.”

I laughed again, high and giddy with adrenaline. Still on my knees, I leaned towards the man, and pushed the blood-soaked hem of his shirt to the side with the hooked tip of my nail file, watching his chest going up and down. I ran the edge of my file, carefully shaving a few hairs, smearing a couple droplets of blood. Searching where his heart was, I laid the tip of my file over his skin, pressing gently, careful not to break the skin yet. He was Chucky’s kill, after all… I was just warming it up for him a little more.

“You... Like this, don’t you?” the man muttered.

“I have my fun.”

“Listen, I... We could...” he said, quirking his eyebrows. “We could reach an agreement, here.”

“Tempting,” I smiled, pushing the tip of the file deeper into his chest, as he winced, and I made the smallest wound in his chest, just a tiny little prick. “But sorry, I’ll pass. I’m just not into short guys.”

A tear trickled down from the man’s cheek. “You two are crazy—”

“Crazy…?” I heard Chucky say behind me. When he spoke again, his voice was lower –almost a snarl. “You wanna see real crazy?”

I giggled, about to move back and let him do his thing. And then –the man shoved me to the side –and I tumbled over the carpeted floor with a little oof! –and he rushed to try to escape out the front door, somehow thinking he could get out faster than Chucky could aim –and he was mostly right –as soon as he managed to stumble away from me and almost make it out, Chucky stepped back and took his shot –and it blew right through the man’s thigh.

“ Bastard !” I yelled at him, standing up again, once he had stopped screaming his head off, grabbing the sides of the bleeding hole he had now in his leg. “You broke my nail—”

Before I could pick up my file and get him to pay for that, Chucky shoved the gun down the waistband of his pants, and grabbed the man by his shirt’s collar –and gave him a pretty damn good punch.

I blinked, without even realizing I was holding my breath. It sounded real painful. The man tried to sit, coughing and groaning.

“Do it again,” I said.

Chucky glanced at me. He picked him right up, and punched the guy once more. I smiled.

“Harder.”

While the man tried to prop himself up again, nose broken and bloody, with shaky arms, Chucky stared at me. I looked up at him, staring right back. He knew what I was thinking. He liked the idea.

Chucky grabbed the man once more, gripping him by the neck, and pulled his arm back, and threw a punch right to the mouth. He groaned once he let go –the teeth must have hit his knuckles. I watched it all with wide-open eyes, fascinated. He kept going. Kneeling on the carpet, he breathed in and punched again, beating him harder, blood splattering, the skull cracking, him panting by the effort. We rarely if ever used just our hands. We both knew we could get better results with tools. But maybe the thrill of the previous kill had him worked up enough to ignore the wounds on his knuckles. Maybe it helped him focus. Maybe it just helped him get in the mood.

Whatever it was, he had his eyes wide open and the biggest grin on his face, as he beat the man til his face was a red battered pulp.

Once he was done, Chucky stood up and stretched his fingers, opening and closing his fist, finally feeling the bruises. He gritted his teeth, and let out a deep breath. It surely hurt like a bitch.

I got up back to my feet –backed him up against the wall –grabbed his jaw –and kissed him. He was surprised, but he certainly didn’t turn me down or put up a fight. With his hands already gripping my waist, pulling me closer, I pressed myself against him, feeling his racing heartbeat under his stained shirt and the outline of the gun under his belt.

“I thought you said you were tired—” he smiled, when I took a moment to breathe.

“Shut up,” I told him, and he grabbed my nape and kissed me back.

Along with the bags of snacks and drinks we had brought over from the convenience store, we also took our sweet time finding and bagging soap, towels, sheets and pillows from the honeymoon suite. I know, it may seem like a bit much, but it really wasn’t –not when one keeps in mind that our new home was, most likely, absolutely empty, and that sooner or later we would have to find all these basic goods ourselves somewhere else. All in all, it was just smart of us to ransack the place.

Sometime after midnight, by the early morning, I decided to fix myself a bath. I hummed to myself, sitting and splashing around in the heart-shaped whirlpool, amused by the quiet whirring of the motor under my legs and the gently bubbling streams that hit my skin. Not even Cesar had had a whirlpool in his flashy bathroom, I don’t know why. It was the sort of thing I could totally imagine someone like him having.

Back in the bedroom, Chucky had turned on the TV and was watching some news program. I stopped humming for a moment and listened carefully. Maybe there would be some interesting newsflash on the violent robbery of that convenience store –but there wasn’t any, just an old piece on one of the guys from Mötley Crüe who had pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter.

“First on the list of things to get when we get to Chicago,” I said out loud from the bathroom. “Is a good lightweight TV. The kind you can take with you places.”

“Places?”

“Yeah, so that we can watch in the bedroom, in the bathroom… Places, you know?”

His chuckles reached me through my half open door. We were both in a pretty good mood. For it being our first cross-country trip, it had gone a lot smoother than what I had expected. I smiled, soaking my legs. Chucky came into the bathroom, scratching his head, still a bit groggy, stumbling over one of the dead bodies. I smiled wider, dipping my feet back in, lowering my head until the top of my nose just barely touched the water. There was still some blood splatter on his face and neck, and a bunch of dry blood clumps in his hair. He noticed at least some red dots on him when glancing at the mirror over the sink, but apparently didn’t think it was anything urgent. I had thought he had come into the bathroom to watch me, or to talk to me, or at least to keep me company. It turned out he had just come over to piss. Regardless, I stayed very still, as if stalking him, as if he didn’t know I was there at all.

“Put the toilet seat back down…” I whispered, as if casting a hypnotizing spell. “You want to put the toilet seat back down so badly…”

Out of the corner of his eye, still standing in front of the toilet, he shot me a glance. I grinned. He gave me a little smile.

“What’re you doing?”

“No-thing,” I replied innocently, in a sing-song voice.

Once he finished, he flushed; he didn’t put the toilet seat back down; and washed his hands. I stared at him for a moment longer, waiting for him to remember. Then I gave a sudden kick, splashing water all towards him.

“Hey!”

“You forgot about the toilet seat,” I told him, pointing at it. “Besides, you could use a little water. You’re all filthy.”

He looked back at his reflection. “Am I?”

“Being covered in blood may fly in Hackensack,” I said. “But we don’t know how Chicago cops might react.”

“Huh… You do have a point.”

He took off his briefs and got into the tub as well. With a big grin, Chucky took a deep breath, closed his eyes and dipped his head in the water. I stretched out my hand, and almost grabbed his head to hold it under for a couple seconds more, thinking back to when me and my sister were small enough to bathe together and I did the same to her –only for her to start screaming and crying, every single time –but before I could even try, I felt a pinch on my thigh.

“ Hey! ”

Chucky’s mop of sopping wet black hair came out of the water. I splashed him again. He just cackled.

“Great,” I laughed. “Now we’re both stewing in the same dirty water.”

I picked up the sponge, soaked it up and wringed it over his head. Chucky bore it for a moment before he shook the water off, like a dog drying itself, showering me with little water droplets. I screamed and laughed, and he laughed along with me.

“So what’s it like, being twenty-eight?” he asked me. “Feeling old yet?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

He chuckled, and threw his head back, letting the remaining water drip down from his scalp. I watched the movement of the pale wet skin stretched over his throat and collarbone. Sometimes, I tried to imagine what he would look like in the future. I thought of my dad, and of Cesar, and the few older guys I had had one-night stands with. The sprinkles of dark spots, the drooping flesh, the white hairs. It all sounded so foreign to him, to us.

“You know where I’d like to go someday, for some other birthday?” I said, eyes fixed on a spot on his neck. What I had thought was a bloodstain was actually just a hickey that had turned a deep red. “Las Vegas. Bet we could have some fun there.”

“Well, we could go for… For our thirtieth. What d’you say?” Chucky suggested, sprawling his arms over the tub’s edge. “By then we’ll have enough dough to actually afford a room someplace nice.”

I beamed. “You mean it?”

“Sure!”

“You think we’ll still be together, by then?”

I regretted asking this as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Something about even mentioning it was like jinxing it, like saying your birthday wish out loud. What was more, it terrified me to think he might think it over and decide that it was actually unlikely.

But Chucky just smirked. “I don’t think so. I know so.”

I grinned at him, giving him a couple little playful kicks under the water’s surface. He gestured with his head.

“C’mere.”

I dove over to his side, snuggling him and resting my head against his chest. He placed his arm over my shoulder, and I closed my eyes, letting out a deep breath.

“Life should always be like this,” I sighed.

He planted a little kiss on my forehead. “We'll make it so.”

This time we decided to leave things as they were. I was kinda proud of my work with the woman’s smile, and I knew that he was pretty happy with the beatdown he gave to that guy. We both liked the idea of it showing up in the news someday soon, us two being the only ones in the world who knew what had really gone down at the Starlite.

There was also all the money we got from the three guests at the motel (which wasn’t much, but it was something, alright), their valuables (each one of the cheaters had their wedding ring hidden out of sight among their belongings), some clothes (not a lot, since the three of them had pretty bad taste), and a few things we found in their cars (some decent tapes, a nice pair of spare leather shoes, a little case of good-quality makeup): a nice loot for our first days in the city. That, added to all we had gotten at the convenience store, and to what we had taken from the Starlite rooms, made for a pretty tight ride the last miles, yeah –but the Pontiac could take it, and what was most important, we’d be nicely set for the time being. Whoever said that crime doesn’t pay must had been shit at being a criminal.

The Pontiac was soon running out of fuel by the time we reached Indiana. We stopped at a gas station, and after a brief moment in which we considered robbing it too, we decided there were far too many witnesses there and too much of a risk. We were running out of bullets, mostly. It would have to be up in the shopping list, once we got to our new place.

We waited for a while, among the crowd of drivers and their cars, for someone to show up, until I remembered we had to fill the tank ourselves.

“Oh, shit. Right.”

Examining my options, I hoped I could more or less wing it by sheer intuition. Meanwhile, Chucky went over the last few tapes we hadn’t listened to yet during the trip, before deciding that was way too boring and getting out the car.

He lit a cigarette, watching me unhooking the chosen pump. “Premium?”

I glanced at him. “Yeah. It deserves it.”

“Tiff, are you really gonna spend that much just on gas?” he said, playing with his lighter, turning it on and off.

“It’s my damn car, Chucky,” I said, turning around to look back at him. “I’ll put whatever the hell I want in the tank.”

“ Your car, but it’s our money!”

“Well, I’m not putting shitty regular in the Pontiac!”

He tried to grab my arm and pull the pump away from me. I gave him a shove. He instinctively shoved me back, and I hit my elbow against the door of the car. I tried to give him a kick, but he dodged my heel. I fixed the coat over my shoulders, pretending that just didn’t happen. A couple people were giving us weird looks already.

“Jesus...” Chucky huffed. “Listen, just... Just leave what’s in there, and fill the rest with regular.”

I stared at him as if he was stupid.

“You don’t mix gas types, you dumbass!” I replied, gesturing with the pump and waving it around, splashing a couple drops his way. “It’s not a fucking cocktail!”

He jumped back to avoid the squirt, and looked up at me with eyes open wide. “God, you bitch –are you blind or something!? I got a cigarette on! Are you trying to set me on fire!?”

“It’s your fault you’re enough of an idiot to be smoking at a gas station!”

We kept arguing over stupid stuff like that for a while, until some employee at the gas station finally came along and tried to tell us to keep it down. Bad choice: if there’s something Chucky doesn’t like (who does, after all?) is to be told to keep quiet. Of course, if someone else was being loud, he’d be the first to complain, but when it was him who was making a racket...

“Please, sir,” the employee told him firmly. “I’ll have to ask you to leave–”

“Where the fuck you think you are, some high-class shithole!?” he yelled at the poor son of a bitch who had provoked him. “This is a damn gas station! So get off my dick, and mind your own damn business!”

Usually I would just let it play out; but with the couple adventures we had had on the road already, and with the amount of people around us who would be ready to identify us to the cops if Chucky’s outburst got out of hand, I wasn’t sure if I was as ready to face the consequences as he was. “Hun, just leave it–”

“Oh, you’re scared people won’t be stopping by for your wonderful service anymore?” he kept yelling, and I looked around us, at the faces of the other drivers who were already appearing to be pretty concerned. “I’ll give you a damn fucking reason to be scared–!”

“Okay, that’s enough,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged me right off.

“And another thing–!”

“ Chucky !” I cried, since that was the only way to get his attention, apparently, and he finally turned around to face me. “Don’t you think that’s more than enough?”

Only then he seemed to notice all the people that were staring at him, at us , because of his tantrum. His expression didn’t change, but he did, at the very least, give a couple steps back. I got into the driver’s seat and started the car, our cue to leave.

“You’re pretty fucking lucky, asshole,” he hissed at the employee. “You got that?”

He got in, slammed the door, and I drove us away as soon as possible. I could still feel the eyes of the crowd staring at us through the rearview mirror.

“... You really didn’t need to do that.”

“Huh?”

“You really think you can solve anything by just screaming at it?” I told him. “Or stabbing it until it stops moving?”

“Babe, c’mon, you know I was right–!”

“Do I?” I said, raising my voice to match his tone. “‘Cause I know you weren’t thinking about how now there’s a whole crowd of people who know what you look like!”

He rolled his eyes and groaned. “Don’t tell me you think anyone’s gonna suspect–”

“No, I guess they won’t, ‘cause I managed to pull you back in the car before you actually did anything stupid!” I claimed.

“You were the one waving the pump around like a fucking waterhose in July!”

“Well, you weren’t exactly helping me out there!”

So far in our trip, we had had a couple little squabbles, sure. I mean, you can’t be trapped inside a metal box with someone else for so many hours straight before you start to get sick of the other. But this one was different. I hadn’t yelled so much at someone else since I was still sharing my room with my little sister. And, unlike Bri, who had our parents’ support and her innate child annoyingness, Chucky had a much more colorful vocabulary and always went for the throat.

“You know how fucking hard it is to stand you!?” he ended up shouting at me. “You’re impossible! Everything’s a damn issue! I don’t even know how I got this far with you!”

That was it. I swerved off the road and onto the shoulder of the highway. As usual, with him not wearing his seatbelt, Chucky got a pretty rough shake before I stepped on the brakes.

“The hell are you doing!?”

I stopped the car. He kept yelling, so I got out and locked the doors. That really got him to lose his shit.

“Tiffany! Tiffany! ”

He banged on my window, gesturing at me to open the door, and I just shrugged, mouthing a mock apology, pretending I was saying I couldn’t hear him. He shook the door handle, trying to force it open. Good to know the Pontiac had nice sturdy doors.

I walked far enough for me to be able to focus on the sounds of the woods on the sides of the road, instead of Chucky’s muffled screaming. At last, some peace. I lit a cigarette and took a long drag, breathing in and out, mumbling curses between my teeth. A faint squeaking made me finally turn around. He had gotten the passenger’s window open, and somehow managed to climb out of the car through it. I barely stifled a grin when he clumsily fell onto the ground butt-first with a loud oof!

“Tiffany!” he kept yelling, once he managed to get himself back on his feet. “Get back in the car!”

“Fuck you!” I shouted back.

“Jesus fucking Christ–”

Chucky started walking fast, stomping in anger like a kid throwing a hissy fit. I immediately tossed my cigarette to the side and picked up a pebble.

“Don’t you fucking touch me!”

He kept coming towards me, truly thinking I wouldn’t dare. I raised my hand and threw the pebble right in front of him, as a warning. That got him to flinch enough to stop.

“I said –don’t you dare fucking touch me!”

He remained fuming for a few seconds, glaring at me, having to reconsider his strategy. Just in case, I picked up a large branch laying around on the ground and swung it as if scaring off a wild animal. He moved back, but burst out laughing.

“Oh, well, isn’t that cute!”

“Shut up!” I cried.

“Who’re you trying to scare with that, huh?”

“Shut up, you asshole!”

I kept swinging it, fast enough so that if Chucky even attempted to get a hand on me he would end up with a nasty scratch. The dumbass he was, he indeed tried to grab the branch –with such luck that I got him a big scrape on the back of his hand. He hissed and flinched again. He looked at his new wound. And he glared at me and I knew I had really pissed him off.

“Well, that about does it–”

I swung the branch again but he covered his face with his arm, and before I could do anything he had grabbed my wrist and was trying to shake the branch off my grip. Since he clearly didn’t get the message, I just did the only thing I could do right then: I bit his hand, and not a playful little nibble –a full-on, clenched-jaw chomp. He screamed and let go of my wrist and tried to shake me off, but I sank my teeth a little bit deeper before finally releasing him, for good measure. See if that taught him not to fuck around with me.

“You’re fucking insane! You know that!?” he yelled, holding his wounded hand. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he was making it out to be. The branch graze was barely bleeding, and the teeth marks weren’t deep at all. Hell, he’d given me worse bruises on purpose. “You crazy fucking bitch!”

“Leave me alone!”

“ Get back in the damn car! ”

“Go away!”

Chucky charged once more towards me. Jesus, that man just didn’t give up. I tried to punch him in the chest but he grabbed my arms and tried to pick me up. I screamed and kicked and struggled, enough for him to lose his balance and almost trip onto the overgrown grass. Once I got my feet back on steady ground I elbowed him off me and tried to run away again. This time he was smarter, and grabbed my ankles and pulled and made me trip and fall on the ground as well. I was quick enough to land on my side, and when I managed to sit on the grass I saw him crawling towards me.

“You come any closer and I’ll kill you!” I cried, trying to get a good kick to his face. He gripped my ankles again, dragging me to him. “Let go!”

He managed to climb on top of me, straddle my hips, and grab my upper arms. I kept struggling and trying to break free, moving the rest of my arms and landing little punches on his sides. He winced and huffed, but didn’t let go. Instead, he shook me furiously, as if trying to get some sense into me, as if I was the one acting foolish.

“Jesus, just stop it! Fucking... Stop !”

He shook me again, a bit rougher this time. And unable to kick him, shove him, or bite him, I did the next best thing, the sort of thing a lady shouldn’t really do. I spit as well as I could (which wasn’t very well, since I was lying on my back and being shaken back and forth) and it landed somewhere near his chin. He flinched as if I had spat snake poison at him, as if I had gotten him in the eye. I blinked, waiting for him to react to it, maybe decide he had had more than enough and let me go. Instead –Chucky closed his hand in a fist –and threw his arm back, ready to throw a punch. I gasped. That was his main goal, after all, to scare me into submission. But he didn’t hit me. He just stayed like that, fist up in the air, aimed at me, gritting his teeth, really, really wanting to follow through with his threat. The fear gave way to fury.

“You wanna hit me? Huh?” I cried, showing him my teeth, too angry to even smile mockingly. “C’mon, sweetface, don’t be a pussy and bark without biting.”

He kept his fist closed, but his arm faltered. The fact that he still had his fist up, though, made my blood boil.

“You dare land a punch on me, and I swear, baby,” I said, my voice trembling with pure rage. “You’ll never see me again in your damn life!”

“Oh, please, that’d be a fucking improvement!” he yelled.

I finally managed to push him off me. He gave me a little kick in response, but that was the end of it. I looked down at my stockings, all ripped from the dumb fight we could have easily avoided if he just stayed in the car and waited till he calmed down, instead of making a stupid scene by the side of the road, and I sighed.

“Of course,” he said with a scoff. “You’re only really upset when you mess up your outfit.”

“You’re a complete bastard,” I said quietly. “And you know that, and you’re just not in any hurry to change, is the worst thing.”

“Listen, just get back in the car. We’re wasting our fucking time here.”

“I fucking hate you,” I insisted. “And, clearly, you hate me too.”

He got up from the grass. A few cars passed us by. It was a quiet afternoon, despite everything, and slowly my breath became steady again, and my blood stopped pumping like wild, and I closed my eyes and threw my head back and exhaled, doing the best I could to relieve the tension I had been building up.

“Goddammit, Tiff...”

I could feel a sob coming. I didn’t want to cry, not in front of him. Instead, I thought of his fist up in the air, and how much he had wanted to hit me, and how happy that would have made him, and I kept chewing on my anger until I swallowed any sadness I had trying to climb up my throat.

“Go away. Isn’t that what you want?” I muttered, gesturing at him to leave me alone. “Go away.”

There was a silence. I swallowed and wiped some of the spit that I still had on my lower lip with the tip of my nail, wondering if Chucky was really considering ditching me there in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.

“I can’t,” he sighed, clearly annoyed about it. “No matter how much I wanna. Not without you.”

I turned my face to look up at him.

“I mean, you still got the keys.”

I gave his legs a little shove, and he chuckled. I chuckled too. We were really being two knuckleheads right then, and we both knew it. Problem was, I also knew that I was right, and that he was wrong, and that just as I wouldn't change my mind, neither would he.

“Is your hand okay?” I asked him.

He checked it quickly. There was a little bit of swollen redness around the cut, but at least the bite, the one that had him actually screaming, seemed to just leave a bit of a bruise. “Bah, I’ll live.”

Chucky reached his other hand out to me, and helped me get back up on my feet.

“How long do you reckon, till we make it to Chicago?”

“Couple hours, at the most,” I replied, shaking the grass blades off my skirt. “If you don’t get us lost again, that is.”

He scoffed. We walked back to the car in silence. He picked up the cigarette I had thrown aside before our fight, took a drag, and handed it back to me.

“Y’know,” he said, while I changed my skirt for a pair of tights. “The ripped-up-stockings look isn’t so bad on you.”

We arrived in Chicago just before Powerage was done, around six in the afternoon. Chucky leaned out the window with a smile, his eyes squinting from the wind whipping past him, biting down his cigarette to keep it from flying off his mouth. I glanced at him from time to time while I drove us through the lakeshore. No matter how much I wanted to stay mad at him, I never succeeded for long. The city was unfolding in front of us, and there was so much to do and see, and I couldn’t do any of that if I got all stubborn and refused to have fun. Not that I couldn’t –just that I didn’t really want to anymore. So we didn’t mention it. It was as if we hadn’t even argued in the first place.

The Wood and Lake Street apartment building was pretty big, almost like a hotel; it probably was so, before it was eventually bought by some rich guy and remade into a rental. When there’s so many people in one place you don’t really get a lot of neighborly affection: everyone’s minding their own business, which suited us just fine.

Ours was the apartment two-three-seven, on the third floor. Chucky beamed at the sight of it, dangling the ring of keys in his finger.

“Hey, like the room in that one movie!”

“What movie?”

“That one, with the… Uh…” he insisted, staring up at the ceiling and trying to focus. “… You know, with the elevator full of blood!”

“Huh?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve not seen it.”

“How can I know if I’ve seen it or not, if I don’t even know what it’s called?”

He thought about it for a moment longer. “… Meh, I’ll remember, eventually.”

“Just open the damn door,” I said, rolling my eyes, with a smile on the corner of my lips.

Chucky unlocked the door and pushed it open. I walked in first, carrying my suitcases, admiring our new place.

“Home, sweet home,” he declared.

I had a good look around, just short of gasping out loud. I’m not really sure of what I was expecting; probably something much smaller, like my cramped little apartment back in Hackensack. But here –there was a kitchen, and it was separated from the rest of the rooms by a wall and a door. And it was a whole kitchen, with enough counter space and with a window looking out into an alley and all. And the roof –it was so tall –and it all appeared so new, as if with a fresh coat of paint –no stains, no clutter, nothing but possibilities. I opened the door to the next room: either a living room, or a bedroom, or both, with wall trims, an open fireplace, and a big beautiful window. Much classier than anywhere else I'd lived.

“It’s just darling ,” I grinned, barely able to hold back my glee.

I dropped the bags. He turned on the lights of the room with a loud click! that echoed in the empty walls.

“Not bad for our first rattrap, huh?”

Delighted as I was with the place, I couldn’t really see his expression. Regardless, I could have sworn I heard a smile in his voice. I peeped inside the little bathroom, and switched on the lights. Pity it didn’t have room for a proper bathtub, but oh well –win some, lose some. Still, it was miles better than what I could have imagined.

“Nothing a few throw rugs can’t fix,” I commented, drumming my nails against the doorframe, as I began a mental list of things we should get to make the apartment a proper home. “Maybe some wallpaper…”

He patted the mantle of the chimney. I could already picture my dolls on the box downstairs, right at home on their new spot, sitting all pretty over the black wood.

“We could even get a plant,” I said brightly, thinking about his sad half-dead pot sprout that he had to part with. Thank God. Some actual lush greenery would do the space some good, after all. Give a little extra life to the place.

“Hey, uh, Tiff,” he said, peering out of the windows. “I’m feeling kinda hungry… Wanna order a pizza?”

During the whole trip we had been nibbling on snacks, nothing really hearty. We hadn’t had breakfast, and I was pretty hungry too… But then I understood what he actually meant.

I smiled, and bit my nail. “I think that’s a great idea.”

He chuckled, wrapping his arms around me and nuzzling my neck while I laughed. Yes, there was nothing I could do. I really hated him –but I really, really, really loved him, too.

“Hello? Good afternoon,” I said, twirling the telephone cable around my finger. “I’d like to order a pizza. Oh, and two beers, please.”

“ Alright, what’s the address? ”

I was about to tell him, but I thought it over. I looked at Chucky, and then through the window, looking out into the city.

“ … Ma’am? ”

“Yes, yes, it’s… Uh, Wood and Lake Street. Number two-six-seven, apartment two-three-seven.”

Chucky shot me a confused glance, and mouthed the correct number. I shooed him off.

“ … Alright, that would be Wood and Lake Street, number two-six-seven, apartment two-three-seven. ”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“ Alright then, it’ll be there in twenty to thirty minutes. ”

“Thank you.”

“ You’re welcome. Have a good one, ma’am. ”

I hung up. Chucky was still staring at me.

“So?” he frowned. “Someone else’s gonna get our meal!”

“Calm down. I’ve got a plan,” I said. “Dinner and a show.”

I told him what I had in mind. It took a minute to explain it to him, thick in the head as he was, but once we had discussed the details it seemed pretty good enough for him. Only thing we had to decide was on how to finish it. And, for once, Chucky and I disagreed in that regard.

“Strangling’s clean,” he argued, opening his suitcase and digging around. “No blood, no fingerprints, no evidence—”

“It’s so boring , though. So… Procedural. So surgical –but if you were like an ear doctor, or something,” I complained. “You don’t get to see real guts!”

Chucky finally pulled out a spool of fishing line from under a pile of t-shirts and underwear, and smiled. “Well, you just haven’t seen a good strangulation yet, Tiff.”

I crouched behind him and leaned against his back, resting my arms on his shoulders.

“You know, Chicago’s much bigger than Hackensack…”

He turned around to look at me. “Yeah, I’d figure—”

“What I mean is, we have to be careful,” I explained. “We aren’t used to this place, and it could get… You know, tricky.”

“Like you said, it’s a big city,” he said, putting the spool down and looking for something else. “One more dead body’s not gonna make a difference.”

He had a point. I still had a right to worry. We were both so used to Hackensack, knew the streets well, the daily police rounds, and the ways to dispose of our victims. Chicago wasn’t like that. At least not yet.

I dragged my bags to the bedroom –the room I assumed was the bedroom. It was bigger, with the same large windows as in the living room, though with no fireplace. It didn’t have any furniture either, so we would have to live out of boxes and suitcases for a while. There was no bed, not even a bedframe in there, just a big old table lamp on the floor and a couple dusty pillows against a corner. The window was about the same size as the one in the living room, this one with blinds instead of curtains. I peered out. Sun was already setting over the skyline. A few windows in the neighboring buildings were already glowing. Whatever tiredness I had when we first arrived was soon gone. Soon the whole city would be lit up, and we needed to be out there when it happened –as nice as our new nest was, I was definitely not gonna stay locked in when there was so much to see.

“This guy who left you the place, whatshisname… He didn’t just drop the load for you to carry, right?” I asked out loud, coming into the kitchen where he was looking around inside the cabinets. I was obviously thankful, but a nice whole apartment wasn’t exactly a normal gift. That sorta generosity often hid other intentions. “You sure he took care of all the leads to this apartment?”

“If anyone comes asking, Tiff, we’ll just tell the truth: we are a young happy couple who have just moved into the Windy City, and got the place from a friend of a friend whose name we can’t recall,” he said simply. “No need to worry or point fingers.”

Taking off my heels, I wondered if he had any steady friends in the city. We could use some locals to help us out during the first few weeks or so. But we had plenty of time to worry about that later.

I changed into my black lace slip, my nightrobe, and put on some slippers. I had told Chucky to wait up in the apartment for me to bring our meal –but he insisted on staying around, to keep an eye out in case anything happened –as if anything could happen with such a foolproof plan. But we couldn’t waste much time, so I finally agreed, as long as he would stick to what we’d discussed.

It turned out they don’t call it windy for nothing. I sucked on the filter of the cigarette, fidgeting with my nails. With the excitement of moving in I had barely noticed the sudden drop of temperature, and how everyone else had their scarves and coats on, with me looking like I had come down in a hurry and thrown on whatever I could find. I tied my flimsy nightrobe as tight as I could, wrapping myself in it, feeling the cold settling in my knees, and hoping the delivery didn’t take much longer…

A noisy motorcycle stopped right by the lamppost. I flicked the butt of the cigarette and put on my best smile. The delivery guy took off his helmet, pulled out the pizza box, and was about to head to the building next door, when I rushed to meet him.

“Excuse me! Mister?”

He turned around and gave me a look. He was barely more than a kid. “Yes, miss?”

“I’m sorry… You came with the pizza, right?” I asked, fluttering my eyelashes. “For Wood and Lake Street, number two-six-seven?"

“Uh—”

“I’m so sorry, I called again at the place, but they told me you had left already… I’m Christine, I made the call?”

The delivery guy looked around him, before turning back to face me. “Y-yeah, Christine—”

“I just moved here, and I’m still not used to the address change… Two-six-seven, two-six-four, it all sounds the same to me,” I giggled with a little shrug, and pulled a strand of hair behind my ear.

He smiled back at me –and his eyes wandered down for a second.

“It’s alright.”

I smiled a bit wider. He took the bait.

I fumbled in the pocket of my nightrobe and took out a bunch of bills. I pretended to count them, double-checking to be more convincing.

“Ugh, I’m just short on five bucks…” I whined, before looking back up at him. “Um, would you mind coming along? It’s getting cold out here, I’d hate to make you wait…”

“Please, miss, I—”

“And I also wanna give you a tip, of course, since, you know, you had to go through all this trouble…”

“Please, it’s no trouble—”

“Still, I insist…”

I gave him one more smile, and a little wink. That sealed the deal. He smiled back at me, nervously, knowing this wasn’t exactly normal; but didn’t protest. He just followed me along.

“Hold the door.”

Once I had unlocked the door, let the delivery guy come in first, and then slinked behind him, Chucky hurried to slip through the crack. I gazed at him out the corner of my eye. He returned the gaze, pushing his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. The delivery guy barely even glanced at him, distracted as he was with me.

We all went up to the elevator in silence.

“… Hey there, Mr Ray,” I finally said after a moment, with a little smirk. He smiled back, reaching out to brush his hand against my nightrobe.

The coldness of the street was replaced by the nice warmth coming from the pizza box in the delivery guy’s hands. I realized just how hungry I really was. I raised my chin and looked up at the flickering overhead light, resting my back against the wall of the elevator, drumming my nails. I knew he had a fishing line in his coat pocket, but my own pockets were far too small to carry anything bigger than a little wad of cash. Taking a deep breath to disguise my impatience, I looked back to the delivery guy, offering him another syrupy smile. He didn’t even notice. He was staring down my chest, and not even subtly. I glanced at Chucky. He wasn’t smiling anymore. I heard –and I assumed the delivery guy didn’t –him cracking his knuckles.

We got out of the elevator, me first, then the delivery guy behind me. I crossed the hallway, dangling the keys in my hand. I had enough experience to know when someone was staring at me, even without directly looking at them. You can feel it with enough practice, like a tension in the air, in the silence of the watcher, holding their breath. There’s an anticipation, a hesitance, as the watcher wonders if they are satisfied with just looking, or if they want to do something about it, to act. I knew the delivery guy’s mind was racing with thoughts and fantasies. But I knew what was going to happen. I had no doubts about it at all. And I could barely wait.

I opened the door to the apartment. The delivery guy was almost breathing down my neck. I turned around with a big grin, stepping back, letting him in. He gave a couple steps forward towards me –and then Chucky walked right in behind him –slammed the door shut –and circled his throat with the fishing line. Jolted, the delivery guy dropped the pizza box, gasped and tried to reach for his neck –but Chucky pulled tight –and the line sank into the guy’s skin, choking him hard. I laughed. Even Chucky, unable to properly see the delivery guy’s face as he was, let out a laugh, too.

“Isn’t she breathtaking?” he said to the delivery guy, pulling his head against his shoulder, glancing at me before turning to look at him. The kid tried to scream, his mouth wide open, with only a silent wheeze coming out. I laughed even harder.

After a few seconds, though, when I calmed down, and the delivery guy was turning half purple and Chucky’s hands were almost completely white, I realized something.

“Stop…!” I shouted. “Stop, stop !”

Chucky shot me a glare, but he relaxed his arms a bit, and in the end, he let the delivery guy drop to the ground, still clinging on to dear life. Writhing on the kitchen floor, panting between hacking coughs, in too much pain to even stand, still with the mark of the fishing line pressed on his neck, he tried to crawl away. Chucky gave him a kick to keep him in his place. I punched his shoulder.

“Hey! The hell was that for!?”

“Can’t you see, you idiot?” I said, pointing down at the half dead guy by our feet. “He’s still alive, alive enough so that we can really do a number on him. It’s much more fun that way.”

He didn’t seem as excited as I was about this opportunity.

“Why didn’t you suck him off, while you were at it?” he asked me, raising his voice.

“What—?”

“Back at the elevator—!”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on, don’t be so dramatic… It worked, now, didn’t it?”

“There had to be another way that didn’t involve you flashing your tits.”

“Well, what do you suggest?”

The pizza delivery guy let out a long groan. Both me and Chucky gave him a harder kick.

“ Stay out of it! ” we yelled at him.

Chucky huffed, rubbing his temples. His hands were still a bit too pale and marked from the strain of the fishing line.

“Something less complicated?”

“Can’t you just appreciate a good thing, instead of always trying to find the fault?” I said, pulling out my nail file. “Jesus Christ, what matters is it worked. Didn’t it?”

He muttered something under his breath.

“And come on,” I said, with a little satisfied smile. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t well planned.”

“… It wasn’t your worst plan yet, I’ll give you that.”

“Is it so hard to just pay me a straight compliment?” I sighed, walking over the delivery guy, and giving him a look. “And besides… Now we got him all to ourselves.”

He finally smiled back at me, and pulled me to him for a quick kiss.

Nail file in my hand, I got on my knees and slashed the delivery guy’s chest, opening gash after gash, over and over, making sure not to finish him off yet, while Chucky watched. Soon he ended up looking like a newbie lumberjack’s messy first job. Once I decided I was done, sucking on my nails, it was his turn. He surveyed the bleeding gashes for a moment, as if considering what his options were, before surprising me and deciding to go with stomping on the guy’s arm –breaking it with a loud cracking noise. The guy tried to scream, but Chucky had done a good job on his throat –he could only let out a thin croak, barely interrupted by some coughing. Once the delivery guy was already a gurgling and sobbing mess, only then he took out his knife.

I watched him work for a while, sitting on the kitchen floor, and took a peek at the pizza. The cheese had spilled a bit over the edges, but it was still warm. It was much taller than I thought it would be; I had forgotten it was that weird local deep-dish thing. I had just been wondering if it would be enough, one large pizza for the two of us. It appeared it was more than enough. I had a slice, having to use both hands to keep it from spilling even more cheese, while I watched Chucky use the guy as a pincushion.

“He’s dead already, sweetheart…” I told him, standing up beside him, by the point in which the delivery guy was no longer even twitching. “Dinner’s gonna get cold.”

Finally, Chucky moved away from our kill, with a big, weary, thrilled smile, slightly breathless, wiping his face with the sleeve of his coat. He took it off and dropped it to the side. We were gonna need to get some hooks for the door, when we eventually went shopping for furniture.

Chucky brought the pizza box and the beers I’d forgotten about into the main room of the apartment. I remembered I had brought a couple wine bottles from the store, which I preferred much more to that cheap beer he liked to guzzle. In the meantime, he sat on the hardwood floor, with his back against the wall. Once his breathing got steadier, he took a pizza slice out of the box –and was startled by the big oily chunk of tomato and cheese dripping off of it, half of the whole slice dropping onto his pants.

“Ah, shit …!”

I laughed, coming back from the kitchen. “We already got a fresh batch of clothes to take to the laundromat, it seems.”

I took a swig of the wine bottle, shrugged off the nightrobe from my shoulders, and sat on his lap, facing him.

“There’s plenty of floor to sit on, you know,” he said, mouth full, stuffing his face with the greasy pizza and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Yeah, well… Until we get some proper chairs,” I said, leaving the bottle beside us, next to the beer and the pizza box, and lit a cigarette. “Guess this is the most comfortable seat in the house.”

He chuckled, washing down the slice with a gulp of beer. I smiled and took a drag.

“You were jealous,” I noted, tilting my head to the side. “Back there at the elevator.”

“… Maybe,” Chucky grumbled, while he ran his hand over my thigh.

“You needn’t be.”

Chucky gazed up at me, his face half in shadows, half lit by the red glow of the only lamp we had in the living room. Even then I could see the blue and silver in his eyes.

“You like it?”

I gave him a little frown, unsure of what he meant. He nodded toward the box, taking the cigarette from between my fingers.

“Hm. Deep dish is good,” I said, with the tiniest pout. “But I miss Jersey pizza.” It was hard to call deep dish a pizza at all. It was more like a cheese quiche than anything else, pretty difficult to eat without fork and knife, something that would take some getting used to.

“I don’t know,” he said, holding my hand by the wrist and examining it, dirty as it was with pizza grease, tomato sauce and who knew what else. It probably got deep under my nails. “I kinda like the mess it makes.”

Chucky sticked my index finger in his mouth, looking up at me, and sucked it clean. I giggled, feeling a flush creeping up my cheeks. Even almost three years later, he could somehow still find ways to make me blush. He pulled it out of his mouth, with a little pop! sound. I laughed –he laughed too –and he bounced his knees, threatening with shaking me off his lap, and I kept laughing, holding onto him, and he embraced me back.

I knew we were gonna like it there in Chicago.

Once we were satisfied, after dinner was done and over with, we decided that, given our current lack of real tools, our best option to dispose of the dead body we had on our kitchen floor was to drop it in the lake. First off, we needed to make some space for the stiff: so we took out a few of the boxes we had squeezed into the trunk and brought them up to the apartment, and did the same a couple more times until we had enough room to fit a folded-up, scrawny six-foot load in the back of the Pontiac. Not without some light complaining first, I finally agreed to use a couple of the red bedsheets we had gotten at the Starlite to wrap the lump with.

It was dark outside already when we dragged the dripping body out the building and inside the trunk. The road map wouldn’t be of much use to help us get to the shore, but I more or less remembered having seen some nice scenic spots where we could throw something in without being bothered.

“Y’know, I thought you’d be sick of driving for the rest of the year,” he commented while I drove us back home. The disposal was done with, and with minimal bloodstains: a real success.

“Like I told you –I’m breaking it in,” I smiled, speeding up after the red light changed to green. “It’s just wonderful, darling. Best birthday gift I’ve ever had… I don’t think I’d ever get sick of it.”

“Well…” He turned to me with a smile. “Your birthday’s not over yet, is it?”

I glanced at him. Still smiling, he took out another map from the seemingly endless pockets of his coat, unfolded it, and searched where we were.

“Where are we going now?”

“Just keep on straight by the lakeshore,” he said, gesturing towards the road ahead. “You’ll see.”

We passed by a large park, and a boardwalk, and then another little boardwalk –when, coming up over the treetops, I finally saw what he had in mind. An amusement park glowed just a few miles away from us, big and bright and colorful.

“Wait,” I gasped. He smiled wider. “Really!?”

I parked the car as quickly as I could, and hurried out. I sprung back and forth, my heels clicking on the concrete, hopping in place, just barely repressing squeals, and I ran around, all excited, unable to choose where to go first. I was fifteen again, back at Coney Island, dazzled by all the lights and the sounds.

“Come on !”

Behind me, Chucky was still walking, taking his time to glance around, completely expressionless behind the sunglasses. I huffed. I rushed back to him, gave him a little playful shove, and pulled him by the arm, hurrying him along. He laughed, pulling back, trying his darndest to stay behind, just to tease me.

All lined to the sides of the boardwalk on the way to the rides, rows of carnival stands were waiting to swindle customers eager to try their hand at winning all sorts of cheap prizes. I was feeling pretty lucky: I went straight to shooting the ducks.

“Bullshit,” I cried. “This is rigged!”

Apart from being impossible to hit anything with it, the worn-down air rifle got jammed after taking every shot. I shook it around, hit it against the counter, did everything I could to unjam it –and, of course, after each time I managed to take another crappy shot, it jammed again.

Chucky clicked his tongue, and took the rifle from my hands. “Here, let me show you how it’s done.”

“Oh, I’d like to see you try—!”

He made a whole show of it, taking off his sunglasses, squinting to fully focus on his aim. He had told me once that bright lights annoyed him, as a sort of excuse for wearing them so often, come rain or shine, as if I didn’t know he wore them just to look cool. And, after taking in a deep breath, measuring the speed of the wind and the angle in which he was standing and whatever else he could do to stall it, he finally squeezed the trigger. Somehow, the pellet hit the roof of the stand.

“Fucking bullshit !”

Chucky began yelling at the carnival barker, who stayed stone-faced, probably pretty used to these outbursts. Even when he tried to grab and shake him by the collar, almost climbing over the counter, the guy didn’t even flinch. I wondered how the barker would’ve ended up if I hadn’t managed to drag Chucky away from the stand before he did anything reckless.

It didn’t matter much; there were plenty other things to try out. He chose the next one, throwing darts at balloons. He was really, really good at it, certainly better than either of us were at duck-shooting. With bullseye after bullseye, and me cheering him on, he got in a good enough mood that he offered to teach me his secret foolproof techniques. I didn’t burst them all like Chucky did –but I really liked it when he found the patience to try to teach me something. And besides, I’m not gonna deny it, I also liked it when I gave him a reason to hold me up close like that in public, one hand on my waist, pushing my back forward into the best position, another hand under my elbow, telling me how light I had to hold the dart, how I had to stay facing straight ahead. Even if I didn’t learn anything, I could tell he got a kick out of getting to boss me around without me complaining for once.

“Well, you do have promise…” he said proudly, when I finally burst two balloons in a row, all by myself. “And a pretty good throwing arm.”

I chuckled, aiming for the next shot. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Not half as good as mine, of course—”

On my second try I didn’t quite get all the balloons, so he took over and cleaned up the board. Being given the option to choose whatever prize he wanted from the assortment behind the barker, Chucky picked out a teddy bear, strikingly similar to that one I had brought with me and lost to New York so many years ago. I’d been gathering so much stuff over time, but even with my doll collection, I hadn’t had a plushie in more than ten years. Grinning until my cheeks felt sore, I giggled and hugged the teddy tight, kissing its head over and over, as if it were Chuckyʼs. I caught him staring at me with this little smile of his I knew so well: the one he had when I told him a joke and he didn’t want to admit how funny it really was; the one he had when I made his favorite for dinner; the one he had just before telling me I looked good.

“… Why’re you looking at me like that?” I asked him with a chuckle.

“How can you be so damn excited over a cheap toy?”

“It’s not just a cheap toy,” I frowned, mock-serious, squeezing it protectively against my chest. “It’s a cheap toy you won for me.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

I stuffed the teddy in my bag, his fluffy little head popping out the zipper, so I could have my hands free. Chucky said that if I just relied on holding it everywhere for the rest of the night, I’d eventually forget about it, and lose it, and I’d be left a sobbing mess. I scoffed, but I couldn’t really argue with that. Honestly, though, I don’t think anything, not even losing his little present, would have pulled me down from the big fluffy cloud of joy I was floating in.

We bought a candy apple to share, so we could have more money to spend on the attractions. Taking turns chomping down on it, he wandered off ahead of me for a moment, and walked up to the high striker, looking up at the top, calculating in silence. An automatic voice called out ‘ Test your strength! ’ and ‘ Who are the men out of the boys? ’. I grinned, knowing full well that, now that I had gotten close enough to hear the dare, Chucky wouldn’t be able to move on without giving it a try.

“You think you can get the bell to ring?” I asked him casually.

“You can’t trust any of the games here,” he said, barely turning around to face me. “You know that.”

“How rigged can this really be, though?” I teased him, grabbing the mallet’s handle, feeling its weight. “It’s just a puck, a lever, a bell…”

He looked down at my hands holding the mallet, then back at me. I raised my eyebrows.

“Well, let’s see how well you fare.”

So I gave it a try. I didn’t have much experience with the high striker, but I could clobber someone up real good, and I had tenderized a few steaks in my life. That should be experience enough. Putting my weight into the balls of my feet, I swung the mallet –shifted it all to my arms –as I smashed the lever. Eighty-seven, the blinking lights declared. I let out a triumphant laugh.

“But I didn’t hear any bell ring,” Chucky said, with a shit-eating grin. I stuck my tongue out at him.

After I’d done it, it didn’t take long for him to pick up the mallet. He curled his fingers around the handle and took in a deep breath, staring up at the bell, as if he could get it to ring out of sheer force of will. The mallet swung over his shoulder, he raised it high above his head, and…

“Put your back into it!” I yelled out of a sudden, breaking his concentration.

He shot me a glare. “Shut up!”

I snickered, taking another big bite of the candy apple. He huffed –adjusted his grip –took a deep breath –and raised the mallet high once more… And slammed it against the lever –the puck shot up –and hit the bell with a loud clear ding! I whooped and clapped. He turned around, gave me a smile, and bowed.

“What’s the prize?” he asked me, sticking his hand in the back pocket of my tights.

“A nice boost of your ego,” I laughed, patting his chest. “As if you were really needing that.”

Once we got past the carnival stands, it was time to really choose what we were gonna go in first. We decided to start with the Gravitron –his favorite attraction, he told me. I had no idea what it was all about, and he insisted he wanted it to be a surprise. There were no seats in there, no warnings, no safety measures. A motor began humming and moving beneath our feet, and soon it got spinning like mad, and the floor somehow lowered, my heels hovering above it and leaving us glued to the walls like a fly. Chucky hollered and grabbed my hand, and, pulling the other one up as best we could, being twirled inside that hellish washing machine, we both made a huge effort to stand on the wall, arms stretched out into the center of the wheel, laughing our heads off. A rainbow of lights flashed across our faces as the wheel spun even faster, and I gripped his hand tighter, trying my best to keep standing up straight, till I couldn’t anymore, and tumbled over him, pushing him back against the walls of the Gravitron with me. We laughed, and I grabbed his hand again, and we clumsily crawled around till we were upside down, howling and feeling the pull of the whirl hard enough we could barely move anymore.

We got off the ride with wobbly legs, dizzy and hoarse from screaming. It was exhilarating. All that, and we were just beginning.

We gave everything a spin. We went into the funhouse, where we got separated in the mirror maze, bumped into each other’s reflections and became lost for quite a while; on the pirate ship, where my favorite purple scrunchie flew off into the night, never to be seen again; and to the Ferris wheel, from the top of which we could see all of Chicago, glittering from above. The tunnel of love was closed and undergoing repairs after some kind of incident, so instead we went into the ghost train. It was much more fun than I’d expect: not scary, per se, but it was crammed with bright, neon fluorescent ghouls, demons and zombies popping against the pitch-black darkness under flashing lights, and there was spooky music booming under a choir of groans, moans and screams. There, we necked until the ride was over. Then, we went back in again four more times.

And after that we found a nightclub at one end of Navy Pier, which didn’t charge much at all and played good enough music for us to go and dance. I had turned twenty-eight, but I didn’t feel it at all. To me, I was still a teen, able to go through the night without a single yawn, wanting nothing but more and more light and noise –more life –more movement –more thrills to make it a real night to remember.

“ The fire in your eyes… Keeps me alive… ”

The strobing lights captured little moments in time, funny still images of us thrashing madly. We kicked around, rocked our heads, flailed our arms, all in godawful impressions of dances we had seen on TV. We danced badly, but we didn’t care. If it had been only me on the dance floor, making a fool of myself, I’d probably have held back a bit. I would’ve cared more about doing smaller shoulder movements, little steps, imitating the other girls there. With Chucky along with me, making a fool of himself too, I didn’t really have any reason to give a shit.

“ I’m sure in her you’ll find… The sanctuary… ”

We spun around, with him twirling me first, holding my hand over my head, before I did the same with him, and we laughed, tripping over ourselves and holding onto each other, laughing again and again, louder, but never louder than the blaring music, the electric guitars and the drum beats. We were there to have fun, and we were determined to have the time of our lives.

“ And the world, and the world, the world turns around— ”

By the time we stumbled out of the dance floor, we were like drunks, giggling like crazy, staggering and grabbing the other to stay more or less upright. We linked arms and made our way through the pier, away from the crowd, towards the edge. It was colder there than what I had expected, especially with the thin layer of sweat that was covering my neck and brow. The wind was no longer a little breeze, and the waves crashed and shook the shadowed boats. I leaned against the old wooden handrail, taking a deep breath of the frozen air, staring out into the night.

It was sort of strange, to think of how much I had dreamed of leaving my neighborhood, my family, everything that had me so fed up back at home. And then I had my misadventures in New York, where I had become so disillusioned with it all, with the promises of a brighter future, of something like real true love. It had all been just an endless series of disappointments. I would’ve been amazed to know I’d live past twenty-seven. And then –then, there I was –in a dazzling new city, with a promising new life, doing what I loved, living for the day. As if, all along, this is where I was supposed to be. As if I was, just now, truly living.

No more hiding. Just being myself, doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, for as long as I could.

Chucky’s arm circled my shoulders, pulling me close and wrapping me with his long black coat. I snuggled against him, thankful for the warmth.

The bright lights of the pier reflected on the water. It was a beautiful sight, almost as beautiful as the one up the top of the Ferris wheel. Even with my heart still racing in my throat, there was a kind of joyful peace. A complete satisfaction. Bliss. I felt breathless –not tired , just breathless –as if I was so full there was nothing else that could possibly bring me any higher than where I was.

He took off his sunglasses and offered me his cigarette. I accepted it, and took a deep drag. To someone else in the distance, I thought, we probably looked like a freakish, black-clad two-headed creature, leaning against the rail and sharing a smoke.

“There was this thing, back in the day… A music festival, performed right here at Navy Pier…” he said. I could hear his own breathlessness in his voice. “The Chicagofest.”

“Is that so?”

I handed the cigarette back to him. He took one last drag, and his white hand peeked out the lapels of the coat to flick the little glowing stub into the dark water. “That would’ve been a better birthday present, huh?”

He was just talking nonsense now, too dizzy after all that fun. I looked back at him over my shoulder.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, and turned around, and gave him a little peck on the nose. “This is perfect.”

Still holding me close under his coat, he stroked my cheek, pushing stray hair strands away from my face. The wind was really blowing now, sweeping my platinum curls and his black waves and tangling them together, and I was feeling rather close to feverish, my body nice and cozy but my head turning cold. His hands, though, were warm.

I slipped my hand behind his nape, pulling him closer, as close as possible, and he rested his hand on my hips, leaning forward –and we kissed, softly at first, like a little sigh of relief, barely tasting the sickly sweet-and-sour taste of the apple that’d been lingering in each other’s tongue –before he opened his mouth a bit more –and I held him tighter, and went in for longer, deeper. It really was perfect. It was just where I was supposed to be.

“Happy birthday, Tiff.”

#chucky series #childs play #fanfiction #tiffany valentine

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xtruss · 1 year

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Queen of Crime! How Agatha Christie Created The Modern Murder Mystery.

— By Joan Acocella | Published: August 9, 2010 | September 13, 2023

Christie at her home in Devon, in 1974.Photograph by Lord Snowdon/Camera Press/Retna

They are assembled—maybe eight or nine people—in a small place: a snowbound train, a girls’ school, an English country house. Then—oh no! A body drops. Who did this? And why, and how? Among those gathered, or soon summoned, is a detective, who says that no one should leave, please. He then begins questioning the people concerned, one by one. In the end, he collects all the interested parties and delivers the “revelation”: he names the murderer and the motive and the method. Almost never does the culprit protest. Occasionally, he goes off and commits suicide, but as a rule he confesses (“God rot his soul in Hell! I’m glad I did it!”) and exits quietly, under police escort. Anyone who has ever seen a Charlie Chan movie, or played Clue, or, indeed, read a detective story of the past half century will recognize this scenario, created by Agatha Christie, the so-called Queen of Crime, in the nineteen-twenties.

The detective story was invented by Edgar Allan Poe, though he wrote only four of them before he lost interest. Other writers picked up where he left off, but the first “career” practitioner of the genre who is still important to us today is Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes series appeared from 1887 to 1927. By Christie’s time, at least two conventions had been established. First was the detective’s eccentricity. (Holmes, when he is not chasing a criminal, lies on his couch, felled by boredom and cocaine, shooting bullets into the wall of his study.) A second rule was the absolutely central role of ratiocination. The detective, when he is working, shows almost no emotion. What he shows—and what constitutes the main pleasure of the stories—is inductive reasoning.

Christie, who began publishing detective fiction thirty-three years after Conan Doyle, generally followed these rules, but she elaborated on them, creating the scenario described above—the small place, the interrogations, the revelation—and used it, fairly consistently, in sixty-six detective novels published between 1920 and 1976. According to a number of sources, her books, in the approximately forty-five languages they have been translated into, have sold more than two billion copies, making her the most widely read novelist in history. There is also a continuing output of books about Christie. In the past year, we got two more: “Duchess of Death: The Unauthorized Biography of Agatha Christie” (Phoenix; $25.95), by Richard Hack, who has previously written lives of Michael Jackson and J. Edgar Hoover, among others; and “Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making” (HarperCollins; $25.99), by John Curran, a devout fan. With Christie, then, we are dealing not so much with a literary figure as with a broad cultural phenomenon, like Barbie or the Beatles.

Christie was born in 1890 and grew up in a large house in Torquay, a seaside resort in Devon. Her father, Frederick Miller, had a modest inheritance, and it sufficed. In her 1977 autobiography, published posthumously, Christie describes her father’s day: “He left our house in Torquay every morning and went to his club. He returned, in a cab, for lunch, and in the afternoon went back to the club, played whist all afternoon, and returned to the house in time to dress for dinner.” She adds, “He had no outstanding characteristics.” Her mother, Clara, did have characteristics. She wrote poetry, and she was interested in the soul. During Agatha’s youth, Clara went through Unitarianism, Theosophy, and Zoroastrianism. Agatha adored her, and spent hours poring over her jewelry and ribbons.

When Agatha was a child, she had no companions to speak of. Her sister and brother, Madge and Monty, were more than a decade older. She had no schoolmates, either, because, for the most part, she didn’t go to school. (She taught herself, out of books.) She was paralyzingly shy; even as an adult, she wrote, she could hardly bring herself to enter a shop. Her social world consisted mainly of the family’s three servants. She also communed, for long periods every day, with imaginary companions: kings, kittens, chickens. Enthusiastically morbid, she adored funerals, and often went to put flowers on the grave of her late canary, Kiki. “I had a very happy childhood,” she wrote.

In one respect, it was not happy. When Agatha was five, Frederick was informed that, apparently as a result of mismanagement, there was almost no money left in his estate. He tried to find a job, but, Christie wrote, “like most of his contemporaries”—she means contemporaries of his class—he “was not trained for anything.” He died young (fifty-five) and discouraged. Agatha and her mother soldiered on. Dinner was often rice pudding.

As a young woman, Agatha had no thought of a career. All she wanted was a husband, and when she was twenty-four she got one: the dashing Archie Christie, a member of the Royal Flying Corps. They married just after the First World War began. Archie was then sent off to France; Agatha worked in the dispensary of a makeshift hospital in Torquay. After the war, the couple settled in a London suburb. They had one child, Rosalind. Archie went to work in the City; Agatha began writing novels. It eventually dawned on her that there was something a little wrong with Archie: he was unapologetically self-serving. She quotes him saying, “I hate it when people are ill or unhappy—it sort of spoils everything for me.” As Agatha, in her thirties, lost her youthful looks and became increasingly successful as a writer, he spent more and more time on the golf course.

In 1926, Clara died, plunging her daughter into the kind of sorrow that Archie found so obstructive to his happiness. Agatha moved into her mother’s house, to ready it for sale. Archie visited occasionally. One day, he arrived and told her that he had fallen in love with a woman they knew—Nancy Neele, a good golfer—and that he wanted a divorce. Thereafter, he lived mostly at his club, seeing Neele on weekends. For months, when he was home, Agatha tried to persuade him to change his mind. Then, one night, she got in her car and drove away. It took the police ten days to find her.

What happened, insofar as it could be pieced together later, is that she abandoned her car near a small town in Surrey, about an hour’s drive from home, then took a train to Waterloo Station, in London. There she saw a poster advertising the Hydropathic Hotel, in Harrogate, a spa town in Yorkshire. That night, she travelled to Harrogate, where she checked into the hotel under the name of Theresa Neele. She spent her days reading and shopping and taking walks.

Meanwhile, a manhunt had been launched. The Surrey constabulary, enlarged to five hundred men, combed the downs and dragged the ponds in the area around her abandoned car. When the weekend came, they were joined by a mob of volunteers, plus bloodhounds. Ice-cream venders set up stands to serve the crowd. Most of the major newspapers carried a daily story on the matter. Christie’s fellow-guests at the hotel looked at the photos of her in the papers, but none of them made the connection. Indeed, she later recalled playing bridge with them and discussing the strange case of the missing novelist.

Eventually, a reward of a hundred pounds was offered. Christie liked to go to the hotel’s Palm Court after dinner and listen to the band. After a while, the drummer and the saxophonist recognized her, and they went to the police. The police called Archie; he arrived and stationed himself in the hotel lobby. When Christie came downstairs, he identified her.

A number of theories have been advanced to explain this episode. One is that the disappearance was Agatha’s bid to regain Archie’s affections. According to another scenario, her flight was a way of boosting sales. Finally, it was hypothesized that she had experienced fugue, a form of amnesia in which a person travels to another place and may assume another identity. This last was the explanation that Christie and her family settled on. She claimed to have no recollection of what had happened, and her autobiography says not one word about the incident. If it was a ploy to get Archie back, it failed. (He persuaded Agatha to give him a divorce. He soon married Neele, and they are said to have been happy for the rest of their lives.) But if Agatha’s flight was an effort to get the attention of the public, it was successful. She had produced six detective novels by that time, the last of which, “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” (1926), was extremely popular. That success, in part, was why her disappearance received so much attention. Conversely, her disappearance, with its interesting link to detective fiction, made her a celebrity. Her earlier novels were reprinted, and they sold out.

For people of Christie’s time and class, writing was not an uncommon pastime. Her sister, Madge, had a play produced in the West End long before she did. But why detective stories? Again, this was not a remarkable choice. The period between the First and Second World Wars has been called the golden age of the detective story. Practically everyone who wanted to write had a go at it. Such books were adored by ordinary readers—according to Colin Watson, a historian of the genre, housewives brought them home in the shopping basket—but they were just as popular with educated people. W. H. Auden said that when he picked up a detective story he couldn’t put it down until he had finished it. In T. S. Eliot’s “The Family Reunion,” the mystery is solved by a character named Agatha. The intellectuals didn’t just read detective stories, they wrote them: G. K. Chesterton; C. Day-Lewis; Ronald Knox, the Roman Catholic chaplain of Oxford; S. S. Van Dine, a distinguished Nietzsche scholar. Because the form was so popular, almost any detective novel stood a good chance of getting a contract. That fact was no doubt in Christie’s mind as she went to her desk—Archie’s salary was small. At the start, she was a clumsy writer. But she was able to offer her readers what they wanted, a whodunnit, also called a “puzzle mystery”—a story that is a contest between the author and the reader as to whether the reader can guess who the culprit is before the end of the book.

Though Christie’s novels sometimes have colorful settings—a Nile steamer, an archaeological dig in Mesopotamia—most of them are set in England. The corpse may be discovered in its time-honored location, the library, or it may be stuffed into the cupboard under the stairs, with the tennis racquets. As for the weapon, golden-age mystery writers exercised great ingenuity over this. In the words of Christie’s colleague Dorothy Sayers, victims were brought down by “licking poisoned stamps; shaving-brushes inoculated with dread disease . . . poisoned mattresses; knives dropped through the ceiling; stabbing with a sharp icicle; electrocution by telephone.” Christie was less fanciful. Now and then, the victim is shot or stabbed, and poor Agnes, the one stored with the tennis racquets, has a skewer driven through her brain, but Christie favored a clean conking on the head or—her overwhelming preference—poison. That choice was surely a product of her war work in the dispensary, with its many shelves of potentially lethal drugs. But poison probably appealed to her also because it did not involve assault. Christie disliked violence. When, in her novels, someone starts to look dangerous, her detective does not pull a gun. He doesn’t have a gun. Bystanders may wrestle the malefactor to the ground. In one case, where there are no bystanders, the detective squirts soapy water into the murderer’s face. It works.

The murder that sets the plot in motion is rarely shocking. For one thing, we almost never see it happen. Furthermore, the victim is ordinarily someone with whom we do not sympathize, even when we feel we should. Christie did not mind bumping off a child or two. One is driven off a cliff; one is drowned while bobbing for apples. In “Murder Is Easy” (1939), little Tommy Pierce, the town sociopath—he tortures animals—is among the victims. “I shall never forget Tommy’s face when I pushed him off the window sill that day,” the sweet old homicidal maniac who dispatched him says. Much more often, however, the victim is a rich, nasty old person who enjoys taunting his prospective heirs with the accusation that they wish him dead, so that they can collect their inheritances. He’s usually right. Rather boringly, the most common motive for homicide in Christie is money.

This rule—that Christie’s murders do not touch the heart—admits of one curious exception: the murder that the culprit commits, after the main murder, in order to get rid of someone who knows too much. Here the victim is often a nice or in any case blameless person, and we do witness the crime, or at least its prelude. In “A Murder Is Announced” (1950), Miss Murgatroyd, who knows that Letty Blacklock wasn’t in the dining room when the gun went off, is taking the washing off the line when she hears someone approaching. She turns, and smiles in welcome, obviously to a neighbor. It has started to rain. “Here’s your scarf,” the visitor says. “Shall I put it round your neck?” One shivers.

Christie created two famous detectives: Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. Poirot, formerly a member of the Belgian police force, is retired, but he is willing, occasionally, to interest himself in a case. Poirot’s most obvious characteristic is his dandyism. He dyes his hair; he smokes thin, black Russian cigarettes, often regarded with alarm by those to whom he offers them; he wears pointy patent-leather shoes ill-suited to walking the grounds of the country houses where he must often do his sleuthing. He deplores the English preference for fresh air, thin women, and tea. Poirot says that, in interrogations, he always exaggerates his foreignness. The person being questioned then takes him less seriously, and in consequence tells him more. His Franglais is a treat. “I speak the English very well,” he says proudly.

Miss Marple is the opposite of Poirot. She comes from a sleepy village, St. Mary Mead, and she seems a “sweetly bewildered old lady.” She has china-blue eyes; she knits constantly; nobody thinks anything of her. They should, because she is a steely-minded detective. When she is on a case, she says, she makes it a rule to believe the worst of everyone—in her words, she has a mind “like a sink”—and she reports with regret that experience has confirmed her in this point of view.

Miss Marple presents the inconvenience that, since she is not a professional detective, she cannot interrogate. But, by seeming a dotty old lady, she—like Poirot, with his pointy shoes—tends to be discounted and therefore can get people to say more than they should. Her method is to murmur platitudes. In “A Caribbean Mystery” (1964), we find her at a beach resort, with nothing to do, no homicide in sight. Then she gets the news that Major Palgrave, the old man who has been boring her with recollections of his service in Kenya, died in the night. She goes into action. Here she is, having a little chat with Miss Prescott about Mr. Dyson, a fellow-guest whom she doesn’t like the look of. Miss Prescott speaks:

“It seems there was some scandal when his first wife was still alive! Apparently this woman, Lucky—such a name!—who I think was a cousin of his first wife, came out here and joined them. . . . And people talked a lot because they got on so well together—if you know what I mean.”

“People do notice things so much, don’t they?” said Miss Marple.

“And then of course, when his wife died rather suddenly—”

“She died here, on this island?”

“No. No, I think they were in Martinique or Tobago at the time.”

“I see.”

“But I gathered from some other people who were there at the time, and who came on here and talked about things, that the doctor wasn’t very satisfied.”

“Indeed,” said Miss Marple with interest.

“It was only gossip, of course, but—well, Mr. Dyson certainly married again very quickly.” She lowered her voice again. “Only a month, I believe.”

“Only a month,” said Miss Marple.

A Christie story goes more or less as follows. By means of interrogation—or, in Miss Marple’s case, snooping (she does not eschew field glasses)—the investigator determines two things for each suspect. First, did he have a motive? Was he, for example, the victim’s son, and deeply in debt? The second question is whether the person had an opportunity to commit the crime. Where was the impecunious son at the time of the murder?

The answers are rarely definitive. Sometimes, people with motives nevertheless have firm alibis. Conversely, innocent-seeming people may have utterly flimsy alibis. In “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas” (1938), when a young man says that he was in the ballroom, by himself, playing records, while the family patriarch was upstairs having his throat cut, Poirot takes this as an indicator of innocence rather than of guilt. It is, he says, “the alibi of a man who did not know that he would be called upon for such a thing.” Eventually, this man does come under suspicion, but soon the finger points to someone else instead. This mystification game is a standard device of suspense literature, but nobody did it quite like Christie.

She tries to help the reader, or she pretends to. Often, the detective has a confidant, to whom, as with Holmes and Watson, he or she will summarize the findings so far. Detectives who have no one to tell things to will often make a list (which Christie prints) of the evidence for and against each suspect. By such devices, Christie keeps the readers thinking that they will be able to solve the mystery.

Then she begins confusing them further. A classic trick is the red herring. When Violet faints at the mention of Jim’s name, or when Pilar throws her passport out the window, experienced readers know that they should ignore this. It is too showy. But when Poirot notices that, since Roger Ackroyd’s death, a chair has been moved in his study—that is, when the occurrence is trivial but nonetheless mentioned—this is potentially a real clue. Or it may be a red herring, masquerading, by its modesty, as a real clue.

A related subterfuge is the “double bluff.” Here, Christie gives us, near the beginning of the book, an obvious culprit. In “Murder at the Vicarage” (1930), the town vicar arrives home one evening and sees Lawrence Redding, a local painter, running out of the vicarage looking pale and shaken. The vicar then enters his house, goes to his study, and finds the town’s widely hated magistrate, Colonel Protheroe, slumped over the desk, with a bullet in his head. Christie seems to be telling us that Redding is the culprit. But we know her by now, so we say to ourselves that Redding is too obvious—and too obvious too early in the book—and so we cross him off our list. Soon, it seems, we are justified. Redding goes to the police and confesses to the crime. Then Anne Protheroe, the colonel’s wife, confesses, saying that Redding, her lover, was only trying to shield her. But then the suspicion shifts again, and again—until it comes full circle. The murderers, it turns out, were indeed Redding and Anne. Of course, the double bluff may be a triple bluff. In guessing that Christie is fooling us, we can be fooled, as with the red herring.

But, in truth, the guessing that we are asked to do is almost fruitless, because the solution to the mystery typically involves a fantastic amount of background material that we’re not privy to until the end of the book, when the detective shares it with us. Christie’s novels crawl with impostors. Letty is not really Letty; she’s Lotty, the sister of Letty. And Hattie isn’t Hattie. She’s a piece of trash from Trieste, who, with her husband, Sir George, killed Hattie (who was also married to him) and assumed her identity. The investigator digs up this material but doesn’t tell anyone till the end.

In response to protests that the resulting dénouements were unguessable, and therefore “unfair,” Christie replied that the reader should have been able to figure them out. The culprit, she said, was always the most obvious person; he just didn’t seem so. That is a brazen falsehood. In most of Christie’s books, the killer turns out to be a most unlikely person. In one, he is a dead man; in another, a child. In yet another, amazingly, it is Poirot. In one virtuoso performance, all twelve suspects, together, committed the crime. This is not to speak of a more common problem: killers who are likable people, and whom, therefore, we don’t suspect. I read all sixty-six of Christie’s detective novels, and I guessed two of the culprits. I’ll bet that this is a fairly typical record.

How did Christie come up with these ingenious plots? In John Curran’s recently published “Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks,” the notebooks in question are school exercise books in which Christie worked out her plots. In many, some pages had already been used. In one, her daughter had done her penmanship practice; in another, the family had recorded their bridge scores. But Christie was a thrifty woman, and she used the remaining blank pages to work out her plots. She made lists of possible victims, culprits, and M.O.s. Then she picked the combinations that pleased her. Curran thinks that this shows the fertility of her imagination; I think it shows her willingness to work by formula, and thereby to forgo depth in favor of the puzzle. If she had given her characters any psychological definition, we could have solved the mystery. But as long as they are kept suspended, opaque—as they must be, in order for the book to be a puzzle—any one of them could be the culprit.

This practice exposed her to the contempt of some critics. Edmund Wilson wrote of detective stories, “I finally got to feel that I had to unpack large crates by swallowing the excelsior in order to find at the bottom a few bent and rusty nails.” The same point is actually made by Christie, via Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, a recurrent character who is a detective-story writer. “When it all comes out,” Mrs. Oliver says, the killer “seems, somehow, so inadequate. A kind of anticlimax.” If a character isn’t interesting, who cares if he killed Colonel Protheroe?

What we get instead is not just a puzzle but a comedy. When characters are informed of a murder, they tend to say things like “Very unpleasant” or “Most distressing for you, Elspeth.” That may sound like standard post-Wildean wit, but Christie can work it up into lovely scenes. In “4:50 from Paddington” (1957), a decomposing corpse has been found in the barn of a great estate. The family’s grandson, Alexander, is home from school on vacation, with a friend. The two boys, thrilled by the news, come tearing up to the barn on their bicycles in the hope of seeing the body. The policeman at the door says no. Alexander pleads:

“Oh sir, please, sir. You never know. We might know who she was. Oh please, sir, do be a sport. It’s not fair. Here’s a murder, right in our own barn. It’s the sort of chance that might never happen again. Do be a sport, sir.” . . .

“Take ’em in, Sanders,” said Inspector Bacon to the constable who was standing by the barn door. “One’s only young once!”

The murderers, too, are funny. One of them worries that he may botch the job of eliminating his chosen victim, so he kills someone else first—the town rector!—to practice.

A year after Christie’s divorce from Archie, she went on a trip to the Middle East and visited the famous dig at Ur, in Iraq. There she met an archeologist, Max Mallowan, whom, soon afterward, she married. She was thirty-nine. Mallowan was fourteen years younger, but he saw no impediment. He was an intelligent and easygoing man, and it was an affectionate marriage. For years, Christie went with him on digs in Iraq and Syria, countries that she came to love. At most of these outposts, a writing room was erected for her. She was also given responsible jobs to do, removing dirt from the relics (she used facial cleanser) and photographing them. At night, the whole team dressed for dinner, and the cooks produced nice things, like walnut soufflés.

Max and Agatha made this yearly migration until 1960. In his later years, Max held a chair at the University of London; then he was elected a fellow at All Souls, Oxford. Christie, of course, grew old sooner than he. In her memoir she depicts herself as “thirteen stone”—a hundred and eighty-two pounds—“of solid flesh and what could only be described as ‘a kind face.’ ”

Some people say that Christie’s shining period was her middle years. I find that she wrote her best books, in alternation with her worst books, until near the end. She was not a great writer, and some of her admirers, including Janet Morgan—in the authorized biography—say that she wasn’t even a particularly good writer. I disagree. She could produce a bad book, and when she did she usually knew it. Halfway through “Death Comes as the End” (1944), she wrote to Max that she was “despondent about it.” (This is indeed her worst detective novel.) But, from the beginning, she was perfectly fitted to her genre. Not only were her plots tight but she wrote excellent, natural dialogue. As the years passed, she developed a good feel for detail. In one book, the Bishop of Westchester, meeting Miss Marple in a hotel lobby, has a sudden memory of his childhood, in a Hampshire vicarage. He remembers himself calling out, “Be a crocodile now, Aunty Janie. Be a crocodile and eat me.” The vision flashes, then vanishes.

When Christie was in her mid-forties, however, she began to weary of writing. For a long time, she had been averaging at least one novel a year. She felt like a “sausage machine,” she said. She now described Poirot as an “ego-centric creep.” Like Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, she tried to eliminate him, but the fans, and hence the publishers, protested. She also lost her taste for sin, perhaps because of the Second World War, next to which her little murders may have seemed to her frivolous. Wickedness, she says in a novel of 1961, has “no black and evil splendour.”

As she lost interest in fiction, she turned to drama—and then to film and television—for which she adapted her novels and stories. But much of the time, in her late years, she didn’t want to do any writing at all. She drafted her books, Janet Morgan writes, “in interludes between other occupations—gardening, cooking, outings, helping Max—and she would willingly abandon a chapter for a walk.” You can tell. The characters get thinner; the pacing slackens; some of the plots are preposterous. (In one, a house labors under a Gypsy curse.) Eventually, delirium set in. She died in 1976, at eighty-five.

In her last years, ironically, she became more and more popular. Her books, even in hardcover, sold between forty and fifty thousand copies in their first few weeks of publication. She received the C.B.E. in 1971. The Nicaraguan government put Poirot’s face on a postage stamp.

For today’s readers, one pleasure of Christie’s books is her portrait of the times: the period between the two world wars and, above all, the changes that took place after the second war. Her people are upper middle class or, sometimes, upper class. They gaze with astonished disgust at housing developments and supermarkets. They complain bitterly about how heavily they are taxed and how they can no longer afford to maintain the grand houses they saw as their birthright. Eventually, they sell these huge piles to the nouveaux riches. (Christie’s own home in Devon, a lovely Georgian house on the River Dart, was turned over to the National Trust in 2000.) In a wonderful scene, a visitor to the apartment of an old major sees large rectangles of high polish on the parquet. That is where the Oriental rugs were that the major has just been forced to sell.

Social inequality seems to have meant nothing to Christie, or to most other golden-age detective novelists. Julian Symons, in his “Bloody Murder,” an erudite and witty history of the detective story, sums it up: “The social order in these stories was as fixed . . . as that of the Incas.” On the other hand, if we consider Christie within the context of her time and social class, she was a proto-feminist. Miss Marple is far from the only plucky female investigator in her novels. And though Poirot is allowed to make condescending remarks about women (“Women are never kind”), such comments, like his pointy shoes, are part of her satire of his silly, Frenchy ways. Furthermore, his aspersions are as specks compared with Christie’s portrayal of the difficulty of being a woman. “I always had brains, even as a girl,” one of her old ladies says. “But they wouldn’t let me do anything.” (She is the one who pushed Tommy Pierce out of the window.) Another woman, accused of being a gold-digger, answers, “The world is very cruel to women. They must do what they can for themselves—while they are young. When they are old and ugly no one will help them.”

Racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia turn up constantly in Christie’s books. In one, a hostess serves a special dessert called Nigger in His Shirt (chocolate pudding covered with whipped cream). We also get dagos, wogs, and Eye-ties. Most frequently commented on, however, are the Jews. In an early novel, “The Secret of Chimneys” (1925), Herman Isaacstein, who is, of course, a financier with a big nose, is invited to a political meeting at a country estate. When the host, Lord Caterham, is told who Isaacstein is, he says, “Curious names these people have.” Caterham starts calling him Nosystein. The others take this up and shorten it to Nosy.

The treatment, then, is intended as comic. It is part of Christie’s satire, from book to book, of her countrymen: their obsession with their gardens and their dogs; their stiff upper lips; their cucumber sandwiches; their inimitable village names (Much Deeping, Chipping Somerton). After the Second World War, some readers, especially Americans, were not amused by her characters’ views on ethnic difference. Christie’s publishers received letters, including one from the Anti-Defamation League. Her agent probably figured that such letters would seem ridiculous to her. In any case, he didn’t forward them to her. He simply gave Dodd, Mead, her American publishers, permission to delete any potentially offensive references to Jews or Catholics. She apparently didn’t notice the changes.

Some people have come up with subtle explanations for Christie’s popularity and for the general enthusiasm for the detective novel in her time. Auden thought that the fundamental appeal was religious. At least in Protestant countries, he wrote, the solution of the crime vicariously relieves our guilt, restores us to innocence. Others have said that the solace is political. The interwar years were marked by terrible political upheaval. The detective story may have reassured people that disruptive forces lay not in the social order but just in one bad person, who could be removed. According to John Cawelti, in “Adventure, Mystery, and Romance,” a probing history of the detective story, the genre is still doing that duty. Another proposal is that the loss and the recovery are literary—that readers of the twenties onward, assaulted by modernism, were grateful to find in detective literature sentences with subjects and predicates, and stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Borges said that after you read a detective novel other fictions seem to you shapeless. At bottom, all these arguments are the same: the appeal of the detective story is the restoration of order.

Miss Marple doesn’t quite agree. Or, in her view, order is restored only till the next time. She says that since the Second World War you don’t know who your neighbors are, but she doesn’t really believe that there’s a cause of modern unease. “You could blame the war (both the wars),” she thinks, “or the younger generation, or women going out to work, or the atom bomb, or just the Government—but what one really meant was the simple fact that one was growing old.” As for crime, she seems to think that it’s been around forever, and that small, stable communities offer no protection. “One does see so much evil in a village,” she says. She enjoys describing the poisonings, clubbings, rapes, stickups, and so on that have occurred in St. Mary Mead. This is comical, and the comedy is there, as the theorists have claimed, to tame evil. But always, in Christie, there is a melancholy note, a skepticism. In “The Body in the Library” (1942), the body belongs to Ruby, a dance instructor in a hotel. She has been strangled with the satin waistband of her party dress. “She may, of course, have had some remarkable qualities,” a police commissioner says of the girl. “Probably not,” Miss Marple answers. ♦

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