#modern retelling

[peachesofteal]

The Acheron

An Ichor Veil (of Flower Kings) masterlist

Ghost/Soap/female reader 10.6k words - AO3 Warnings-tags: 18+ MDNI. Modern retelling - Greek mythology AU. Hades and Persephone. Two Kings of the Underworld. Abuse (by reader's mother). Bad BDSM etiquette. Dom Simon Riley. Switch John MacTavish. Impact play, spanking. Ichor (blood) play. Non-con voyeurism. Kidnapping. Submissive reader. Reader is named Persephone but has no physical characteristics. Alcohol. Praise kink. Biting. Anal play. Subspace. Dubious consent. First they're sour, then they're sweet, then... they're sour. Tags are for your health, not mine. .A meeting, a trick, a meal.

Hebe’s is humming.

You nod to her through the crowd, a gaggle of mortals waiting at the counter, the line of them moving swiftly as they order their pastry-coffee duo for this dreary, rain slogged morning.

Her perpetually young face lights with exuberance once she spots you, and you can’t help the smile that fights into place at the sight of her. Hebe is a cherub. Soft, curved for ages, like she had been sculpted by her father himself. Today, she’s dolled up in tones of pink; pink lipstick, fuchsia stained cheeks, magenta streaks in her otherwise dark, tightly coiled hair that sits at her shoulders.

For a while, before you were brazenly corrected, you wondered if maybe your mother wanted Hebe as a daughter, instead of you. A perfect picture of untouched purity and power, an eternal cupbearer, worshipped as the goddess of Mercy. She was sweet, like her famous Portokalopita, orange syrup cake that drew a group of wanting mortals at the door every morning. She’s a stunner. A mountain of sunshine, a ray of positivity.

Sometimes, you hate her for it, even if she is one of your best friends. 

Something about her cheerful demeanor can dig at you, scrape along the sticky matter of your brain, gnaw at the soft bits that you’re still trying to protect, tender pieces that match your heart.

You follow the hall to the back room, where bookshelves taper off and large floor to ceiling windows flank the east and west sides to allow as much light in as possible. There are others here, a few mortals curled in overstuffed armchairs, books and cappuccinos in hand, light jazz soothing the atmosphere through a few hidden speakers. Healthy clematis blooms along the stair rail, purple blossoms disappearing into the second floor, where more reading rooms wait, books and plants boundless inside Hebe’s.

A place for everyone. 

You feed the clematis a little spark of magic, enough that the vine stretches, shivering and sprouting more flowers. “Aren’t you stunning this morning?” The plant curls around your fingers eagerly, imbued with the essence of power, drinking up the magic drops you encourage into its cell structure. “So healthy and strong, you’ve recovered so well.”

“Good morning.” A wraith of a voice whispers, and you catch the iridescent flicker of a cloud, of Nephele. The clematis will need pruning soon, probably next week, or maybe you can make time in the next few days, you don’t really have too much going on, just your birthday, and that delivery to Hera- 

Ghostly fingers stroke the inside of your elbow, and the cloud nymph regards you with an insightful expression. “Earth to Seph.”

“Sorry.” Your apology is meek, and she shrugs.

“I asked what you’re doing tonight?” Oh.

“Dinner… with my mom.” She nods, and says nothing, jaw clenching, apologetic grimace lining her lips.

“And Friday… Aselgeia?” The club. Your muscles tighten. It’s been over a year since you’ve been to Aselgeia, the club of many vices, the ones where mortals and creatures and gods all mix interchangeably, chasing their own pleasure. The memory of last time heats your spine: A private room. A black chair. A stranger swinging a paddle towards your bare-

Nephele coughs.  

“Yeah, definitely.” You put the box down that you’re carrying, twelve small pots containing strings of pearls, all crossbred to produce different colors, emboldened by their proximity to you in the Greenhouse for these past few months. They’ll sell well, you have no doubt. “I’ve got a few more boxes to bring inside. Don’t supposed you could do something about this slag weather we’re having?” You gesture, and she snorts.

“Hebe says they’re fighting. Probably looking at weeks of storms.”

“They’re always fighting.” You whisper it, even though most know the truth. Zeus and Hera were explosive. Tumultuous. Which is fine, you suppose, for a private life. A public life, however, one that belongs to the Golden King and Queen, should probably be a bit more… restrained.

After all, why should you and everyone else have to suffer because Hebe’s mom and dad can’t get along? 

“I’ve got a lot of cataloging to do, so I’ll catch you around. Text me after dinner tonight, if you need to talk.” She finishes quietly, kindly, but without encroaching, and you squeeze her hand with affection.

“Thanks, Nell.”

The final two boxes stack comfortably for your dash inside. You're eager to get all the plants settled so you can get back to the Greenhouse, slink away to your personal temple, your place of refuge, somewhere quiet to prepare for your dreaded birthday dinner in peace.

“Hello.” A male voice calls, accented so strangely it’s impossible to place. He waves, trying to flag you down.

“Hello?” You turn, nearly stumbling back at the sight of him.

Who is this? 

He’s stunning. Brilliant blue eyes study you from a mountaintop, taller than you by more than a head or two. His hair is short on the sides, but long in the middle, a fashion of mohawk you’re unfamiliar with except for in Hoplites, warriors who sacrifice themselves for the sanctity of the state. He’s broad, built like there’s a Herculean amount of muscle underneath his immaculately tailored midnight black suit, and his cheekbones complement the razor edge of his jaw, framing a full set of dark, plush lips.

He looks like a dream you’ve never had. A fantasy that failed fruition.

Fairer than Adonis. Brighter than Apollo. 

Butterflies kick up a fluttering frenzied in your belly.  

“Sorry to bother ye, I’m looking for Hebe’s?” Ah. You smile.

“You’ve found it. This is just the backside. Front door is around the walk to the left.” He steps closer, and you’re about to introduce yourself when you hear the whinny of a screech owl’s tremolo, a tinned melody that whistles past your ears.

Olympus tilts. Axis trembles. And so do you.

The stranger is keen, and glances around. 

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I um… it’s just that owl, I swear I saw the same one a few days ago… I didn’t think they were too common around here.”

“Dinnae think they are.” His eyes twinkle, celestial light that has you drifting, floating through time and space into starlit irises. The air turns heavy, hot- fresh fired bricks weighing down your chest, and everything spins, day turning to night, night molting black, deep hues of purple and blues streaking past your vision, spinning like moon, twisting you up until your balance is faltering, and you sway. “Whoa, hey.” Fingers fold over your arm, surprisingly cool, chilled, and it pulls you back into your body, spine uncurling, brow smoothing.

“Sorry, I…”

“Ye alright?” He’s still holding your arm, directing you to a bench, relieving you of your box in a swift motion.

“Yeah, sorry… I… I skipped breakfast.” There’s no other explanation, right? The handsome stranger tsks.

“Can I get ye somethin’? Maybe from inside?”

“No!” You blurt, horrified. Hebe would have a cow if she thought you were feeling faint or had skipped a meal. She takes caring for her loved ones far too seriously. “No, I’m almost done, and then I’ll be on my way home. I’ll eat there.” He raises an eyebrow, completely skeptical. “I swear.”

“Alright then. Let me help ye with the rest at least?” He’s standing with a hand extended, and you track the veins on the inside of his wrist until they disappear beneath his t-shirt, golden, tawny skin just barely allowing them to be seen. You wonder if it’s mortal blood that catapults through his body, or the rich, golden ichor that also spills from yours.

“Sure.” He lifts the box, gesturing for you to grab the other.

 “I’m John, by the way.” John. It simmers in the front of your mind, stitching itself into the fabric of your magic.

“Persephone. My friends call me Seph.” Bold. Too bold. 

“Ye’re Demeter’s daughter.” He comments, and you blink, fresh wave of regret curdling the sourness of your stomach.

“Yes.” Fool. Give your name to a stranger, and this is what will come. “Do you know-“

“Only in passing, dinnae worry.”

“Who said I was worried?”

“Ye wear yer emotions plainly.” Your cheeks burn, embarrassed at the blatancy of his statement. “It’s refreshing. So many of us, we play too many games, hide our true selves.” Us. Golden ones. Gods. 

“You’re Cloaking.” You intend it to be a statement, an observation, but with a tight jaw and frowning brow, it’s an accusation.

“Aye. Wouldnae want to scare ye away, would I?” What? Your steps slow, gait pausing in concern. “Sorry, ah. Bad joke.”

“Oh, that’s alright.” He carries the boxes to the door, setting them down carefully, and then rising back to his full height. You swallow the lump in the back of your throat.

“Well, John,” you say it with a hint of sarcasm, and it conveys your doubt. That’s not your real name, is it? “It was nice to meet you.” You extend your hand, expecting a shake, but he holds it with both of his, back bowing, lips softly pressing the skin of your knuckles, tender touch making your knees weak, your heart swooping and swooning.

“The pleasure was mine, Persephone.”

“Have you given anymore thought to your role in the coming year? Your presence at harvest, or planting, would do-”

“I haven’t.” The wine is too oaky, so earthy it takes like dirt, the opus of your mother’s existence, and you swallow it down in silence.

“Persephone.” She chides, like she has a million times before. “If you just tried, a little harder-“

“I am Spring, mother. Life. Rebirth. Fertility.” You ignore her wince. “But that doesn’t mean I’m well suited for crops, and grain, and harvests.”

“It means exactly that. Otherwise, the Greenhouse would not exist.” Her knife slices into a bloody piece of meat, red dripping down the sterling to her fingertips. “Why must you fight your destiny?” Your mind wanders to your visitors the other day, the sisters. The Moirai. Does she know? Is that why she’s saying this? Did she send them? “You spend so much time actively trying to deny me, holed up with your flowers and silly little house plants-“

“It is you who denied me.” Her eyes narrow. “You who didn’t want me to become a fertility goddess, who wanted me to be some weapon of green light, to be the spitting image of you. You raised me to be a threat!”

“Is it so wrong, that I did not wish for my daughter to become a common whore? That I had hoped to prevent her becoming such a failure? That I dreamed of her becoming so much more than… what sits before me now?” The words do not shock you anymore. You’ve grown to expect them.

That does not mean they do not sting.

“It is wrong that you kept me locked in this house, away from the world, until I was too strong for you to control.” You spit, fork clattering against your plate. Rage sears white at the edge of your vision, overflowing bouquet of flowers in the center of the table blooming into massive blossoms, edges of petals beginning to curl inward.

“Control yourself.” She warns. “Or I will do it for you.” Your pulse thunders. The air in the dining room crackles.

You do not relent. Rationally, you know you should. You know this will only end one way, that this will sever another tie to your past, to your mother, one you won’t be able to repair… but you can’t stop. The magic itches under your skin, screaming.

The ivy that covers the outside brick shatters a windowpane above her head, springing through the opening like a virus seeking a host, sticking to the inside wall. Glass falls to the floor, rain pelts the roof.  

“Persephone.” Shining silver spools, churning across the table, through the air until it takes form-

The Whip.

Your mother’s favorite.

It licks your skin, your fingertips, your knuckles. A different touch, from the reverent kiss you received only hours ago. It cracks through the air like the lightning.

“That’s enough.” She vows.  

You will not cry. You won’t. You won’t let her get to you like this anymore. You’re a woman now. An adult. You’re not a child, you’re not, you’re not- 

She sighs. Your fingers clench the stem of the wine glass so firmly you think it might shatter.  

You finish your meal in stiff silence. Its heaviness droops all around you, blanketing the entire table, your fork, the distance between you and your own mother. It’s an eon. A millisecond. Never enough because you always crave more. More space. More time. More distance. Her eyes spark, anger burning hot behind them, but she says nothing.

When she’s finished, she rises from the table without another word, disappearing down the hall.

Happy Birthday, you guess.

In the middle of the night, the Greenhouse is quiet.

Even the plants slumber, most of the daylight seekers, pistils, stamens, all covered by their petals, lying in wait. In the back, you pad along the floor of moss, allowing the tiny tendrils of green to skim along your bare skin, pulling opulent, indulgent specks of power into themselves. Wisteria lines the walls, tiny blooms of purple and white falling like curtains of stars, only parting for the archway that leads to the spring, a small freshwater lagoon that spills from the crust of the earth as hot as tea, bubbling eternally, waiting for you.

Tonight, the water is ethereal. Steam rises from the pool, slicking its stone home, and you bask in it, muscle and bone turning languid, supple in the roiling spring. It’s nearly sublime, almost perfect.

Your mother’s voice still echoes. Even now, hours later, you can hear her.

A failure. A disappointment. 

Your knuckles sting from the salt of the Whip, the silver crust that slices so effortlessly, just as it has since you were a child.

You cried a lot, then.

Now, it’s few and far between. You’ve grown, rebelled, retaliated. You’ve become a lost cause.

Ungovernable Persephone. 

The pain still sits so heavily in the bottom of your soul, a wretched, tangible thing that sprouts blackened vine from the earth and a whole manner of other things.

You eye the marble encasement, the walls that harbor the spring. They too, are black. Born from your rage, your sorrow. Your uncontrollable, ungovernable power that grew from the depths of your despair and built you a temple.

The Greenhouse. Your home.

Everyone called it a wonder. A feat, proof of your power. Trees and vines and branches all twisted together, building a harbor, solidifying your presence, your Golden light.

You took your first offering in this place, the glass for the windows and the roof, the final piece of your shelter from the storm, the first stake of your life as a goddess, your life of freedom.

You left your mother’s house that day, only returning now on occasions. You never looked back.

Though, you can still feel the Whip, can still hear it whirl through the wind against your supine form. Can still feel the ridges of scar tissue that never fully healed.

You could have called Nell. Or Hebe. Or Melia. Anyone of them would be here for you. Would listen. Understand. 

Outside the window, an owl hoots.

You sink beneath the water line, magma rushing over every inch of your body, washing you clean of her, of the Whip, of the wounds on your knuckles.

A trembling fawn. Still to this day. 

A wicked daughter to have, they tell her. A vengeful soul. Rotted to the core. 

Ungovernable Persephone. 

Olympus is buzzing, even on its ninth day of rain. It’s a vibration that all manner of beings can feel, creatures, gods, even humans. The ground rattles like there’s a lightning bolt shoved into the center of the rail system, electrifying the wires and tracks, zinging from pole to pole between the buildings and above the streets where cars putter alongside those who walk to their destinations.

When you were a child, the name of the city was almost dirty. It made your mother’s nose turn skyward, disgust and disdain clear as the day on her delicate features. “The golden city is anything but.” She promised, on her knees before you, gentle hand at your back. “Those who live there are heathens, and naught else. They would seek to destroy you if they knew the truth.”

For many, many years, you never step foot here.

Not until University. Once you graduated, the rope around your neck, the bit in your mouth began to loosen, and you had already lost your taste for the expanse of metropolis, more interested in your own space outside city limits where you could feel your connection to the earth, where you could indulge your power in privacy.

“It’s not the city she fears.” Melia told you one night. “But Aphrodite. Demeter’s worried ‘Di will knock you right off the whole bloody planet.” She peered over your shoulder, catching the gleam of Apollo, his bright eyes tracking her from across a crowded bar. “Trust me. She’s a jealous bitch.” 

Tonight, the city is waterlogged, soaked to the bone, raindrops splashing as you slide from the car to the black door tucked inside a black wall, a soft faced Harpy standing in front of the passage.

“Hebe. Persephone.” She greets, turning to your other companions. “Nephelle. Melia.” You pull your power through the earth that sits beneath cracked concrete and heavy asphalt, spinning your Cloak up and over your body, adjusting your appearance just so. Your mask slips into place, obscuring nearly all your face, both Nell and Melia pulling together something similar.

“Ocypete.” Hebe pauses. “Is there a riddle tonight?” The Harpy grins, flashing rows of too sharp teeth, fine points that can cut the flesh from bone in a clean bite.

“No riddle.” The door creaks wide, and she steps aside. “Enjoy your evening.”

You don’t notice the way her eyes linger after you’ve passed.

Aselegia is one of the safest places in the Olympus. Here, Golden ones must be Cloaked, mortals must be masked, and creatures must go to great lengths to hide their identity. All intermingle with one another, safe in the anonymity. Gods and Goddesses usually choose to mask as well, a practice, you believe, stemming from common occurrences of violent jealousy, an effort to prevent becoming the target of one’s wrath.

The club itself is big enough to get lost in. The first floor houses the lobby, and a set of elevators. The walls are covered in shiny waxed mahogany, red wine rich carpet covering the floor, and it smells different, sweet and smoky, cigars and finely spun sugar. Intoxicating.

The elevators will take you anywhere you have access, and most can visit three floors. There’s a dancefloor on the main level, with a giant bar, private rooms in the wings, bottle service, tables. Very standard. Other floors have gambling tables, quieter music, even a dimly lit pool and sauna.

It isn’t until you get above level three that things change. Endorsements or sponsors are required. Waivers need to be signed. Negotiations begin.

Pick your poison. 

You start on the main level tonight. Melia insists, and you agree, grateful to the Oceanid for suggesting starting slow, the low rumble of nerves still present in your magic, your body. The music thumps, high to low song and symphony synthesized into something electronic, and it draws you into a sway, shoulders against shoulders, hips moving in time with the melody.

“Shots?” Hebe brightens, waving over a cocktail waitress, a pretty thing who eagerly does her bidding, enraptured with the way she moves in the skintight, cornflower blue dress. Her Cloak has disguised her well enough that no one would know who she is, but she does not ever manipulate her body. A cherished rule of her own, you’ve learned.

“You’re beautiful.” The girl coos, and Hebe nods, singing over the explosion of Nephelle’s laughter.

“I know, sweetheart.”

A slick sheen of sweat coats the space between Melia’s breasts. You’re both on the dancefloor, moving with the music, Melia perfectly in time, like she was born to it, and you pull her close, slinging an arm over her neck to whisper in her ear.

“He’s here.” A god’s dark eyes glint in the night, between the passages of writing bodies. He wears a white mask, stitched with the threads of glowing sun, but his obsessive gaze gives him away. He’s transfixed, focused solely on the Oceanid in the middle of the dance floor, and she giggles, turning so that her ass is pressed against your pelvis, her head tipped back on your shoulder.

Her hand extends, an invitation. A request.

He’s by her side within a second.

“Apollo.” You nod, and he barely spares you a glance, too busy cradling his Oceanid’s face.

“You have been ignoring my calls.”

“I’ve been busy.” He tenses.

“You’re still angry with me.”

“Of course, I am.” She rolls her eyes. “We’re here for Sephy’s birthday, not this.” He peeks towards you, sliver of regret flashing across his face.

“I’m sorry, Persephone.” You wave him off, not wanting to be in the middle of… this.

“It’s fine, we’re just… out. It’s not for anything special.” You look away from them, casually glancing around. You look, but you do not see. Not until…

There’s a male, wearing a pitch-black suit. A god? A mortal? He’s taller than anyone else in the room, broadest shoulders and proud posture, everything about him drawing you in, like blood in the water.

The room stands still. Silent. Empty, save for two.

Tempered water like glass, undisturbed. An undertow vicious beneath the surface, unknown to all.

“Hello.” The pitch of his voice is familiar, almost dreamlike, something that’s never been real, yet startling all the same.

“H-hi.” You stammer. His hand reaches, a magnetic force pulling yours from where it’s clawed against your thigh, and he grasps it like he’s cupping a dahlia bloom, a fragile collection of so many petals that make up an entire beautiful blossom, a universe unto itself.

Black leather caresses your skin. Clear, golden-brown eyes pin you in place, anthracite spiking around his pupils in a halo. You cannot see his face, or his skin, only what’s barely visible of his eyelids and dark spun lashes.

Still… 

His beauty is terror. It’s the throat of a lamb, freshly cut. The mutilated carcass of a doe, feeding a forest. Dark. Dangerous. A wolf, circling a kill.

It drags you out into a river, where your feet no longer touch the bottom. It sings to you from the depths.

You cannot tear yourself away.

He does not let go. Even when that same voice fills your mind.

“My darling. You shall rule all that lives and moves, you shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished for evermore.” *

Warmth slips from your hand, sand flitting through your fingers, a fleeting touch of comfort and confusion fading into the night.

My darling. 

My darling… 

When the light comes back to you, the male is nowhere to be found. Only Apollo and Melia stand to your side, still in their own world.

“Will you let me take you upstairs then?” He croons, and your heart dances, nerves and anticipation all spiraling together like a sailor’s knot. You know what comes next.

“Only if the girls can come.”

You try to forget the strange encounter on the main level and focus on your needs instead; you’ll know what you’re looking for when you see it, and you say the same to Hebe, too, when she disappears with a male who seemed much too large to not be the son of a giant, leaving you alone on a small, velvet couch, Nell and Melia already long gone. Your second martini sits untouched, and you keep yourself from looking at any one being too closely, lest you get caught staring.

That’s when you see him.

Light blue eyes. Handsomely styled mohawk. Even with a Cloak and mask, he’s hard to forget.

John.

His mask is a red skull, covering nearly all his face, the sculpted brow severe, almost angry.

His eyes glow behind it, locked on yours.

Oh. Shit. You vibrate like a live wire, hanging onto yourself for dear life.

“Hello.” Your mouth doesn’t work. “I’m Soap.” He extends his hand, and you blink. Oh, right. The alias. Because what is the point in all this, if you give your real name?

“K-kore.” You manage to stammer, and the corner of his eyes crease.

“Why are ye here?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What are ye looking for, little goddess?” He still has not dropped your gaze, and you can almost taste him on your tongue, feel him in your mind, your body.

Myself.

Your teeth dig downward, pressing hard before you whisper the truth.

“Pain.” His eyes flash, and then he tugs.

John- Soap, takes you to a private room. You follow, numbly, shivering with a million emotions, stumbling through the chances, the possibilities of seeing him twice, when before he was a stranger.

A coincidence, you decide, putting it out of your mind. You’re dwelling on it too much, picking it apart, riling yourself up… over nothing. Over a handsome god, existing in the Golden city? Like you’ve never seen those before… like it’s so unbelievable.  

“Are ye alright?” He murmurs, stepping up to your back. You can feel the heat of him, his warmth bleeding from beneath the suit to your exposed skin, the dress you chose wholly exposing your spine, your skin.

Your nipples tighten. Your heart races, and your thighs press together inadvertently.

“Yes.”

“Dinnae lie.” He’s gentle in the reminder, and you fill your lungs.

“I’m just… nervous.”

“Ye’ve done this before?” He’s assuming. You nod, quickly, and he motions to a very comfortable looking lounge chair, where you perch on the edge of the cushion. “What would make ye happy tonight?” Anxiety unsettles your posture, and you choke down the embarrassment that tries to claw its way up your throat.

“A… a spanking.” You whisper, pushing flimsy confidence forward. Far away, a piece of your mind, your magic, pleads. It cries, it begs for release. It urges you forward, and you lift your face to his, seeking approval. Comfort.

Reassurance.

The cold hand of doubt rears. It snickers at you. It laughs.

Reassurance from someone, anyone but yourself? Comfort? 

No. 

“Do ye-“

“My safe word is flower.” You spit, motioning to the stool that waits between you.

It’s an act. A song and a dance, something fake and forced. But he doesn’t know that.

He freezes. Thick tension runs the gamut, heavy and exhausting, and you smother yourself, your emotions, your reactions to this very moment.

Pain. The desire burns. It pushes you to the zenith, until you’re down on your knees, folding yourself forward.

Pain, to turn it off. Pain, to make it all stop.

Pain, to release you into yourself. 

What matter of creature are you, that you can only feel whole, when parts of you are carved away? 

“Up.” John commands, and you lean back, confused. “Ye’ll do this over my knee.” He bends you, with grace, back towards the soft cushion, laying comfortably, your palms flat.

A hand coasts over the swell of your ass.

“Ye’ll count.” His voice has shifted. Gone is the feather’s edge, now replaced by steel. His accent still rings true, but there’s a firmness to it, a finality. Dominance.

“Yes.”

“Ye’ll tell me yer name, and today’s date, when asked. If ye cannae answer, we’ll stop. Immediately.”

“Okay.”

“I need a yes.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll go to ten, then.” We.

“I can take more.”

“We’ll decide what ye can take, when we get there.” You acquiesce, fingers digging down into the cushion before forcibly relaxing. “Big breath.” He coaches, and then-

The first slap stuns you. Only with his hand, and yet still so much stronger than last time with a paddle. It punches air from your lungs, the noise that rockets out of your throat a mix between a scream and a moan.

“F-fuck.” You croak. “One.” He doesn’t hesitate and rains the next one down on your opposite cheek. Again, it robs you of oxygen. “Two.”

“Good girl.” The praise is very small flame at the bottom of the darkest well. It barely lights the path ahead, desperately trying to catch, to grow, but it’s too easily snuffed out. His palm rubs the base of your spine to the tops of your thighs.

Crack. 

The sting sizzles outward from impact, and you gasp. “Three-“ Another, same cheek. “Four!” The whistle of the swing alerts you a second before the next, and when you shout “Five!” it sounds off kilter.

“What’s yer name?”

“Seph-Persephone.” Raw warmth simmers beneath your dress and underwear, and the fire at the bottom of the well starts to rage, growing larger, eating what it’s been given, hungry, seeking, trying to build momentum. He asks you the date, satisfied at the lack of delay, and swings so high, you can see the shine of his palm from the corner of his eye. Your toes curl.

Whack. Two, too quickly.

“Six!” A choked cry. “Seven.” Your face is wet, saltwater tracing the plush swell towards your mouth and chin. You sniffle.

“I know, I know. Ye poor thing.” He bunches the fabric of your dress, scratching it across your scorched cheeks. “Ye’re doin’ so well, almost there.” The words barely register, only the sentiment cuts through the haze. Your thighs are pressed so tightly together, slick dripping from your cunt, the aching throb of your clit rubbing against your panties. You’re desperate… to be touched, to be hurt, to be whole. You need it. Crave it more than anything else.

He delivers two more strong, healthy, swift blows. Eight. Nine. They enflame you completely, fire burning in the pit of your soul, encasing you in a coffin where no one can hear you, or see you. Safe and tucked away, floating into a dark cocoon of eternal night.

At the tenth, the room changes. The air grows colder, nearly frigid, shadows clinging to the walls, and you barely register being moved, held like a child, tucked into a chest. There’s talking, somewhere, in your mind or maybe behind you, two pitches at war, a dance of wills.

“Beautifully done, darling.” Somewhere far, far away, in the last sliver of your sane mind, you realize it’s a different voice, a voice echoed in gemstones, ruby and emerald and pearl, before that too, slips into space, and you drift deeper inside the luxurious praise. A warm bath. A sunlit meadow with thousands of Narcissus dotting the hill, soaking up every ray. A golden fawn, taking her first steps to freedom.

John’s face looms into your line of sight, maskless, no Cloak.

“We need a yes.” He murmurs, cupping your cheek. “Persephone.”

“Hmmm?”

“Need ye to say yes, so we can take ye home, take care of ye.” The words don’t match. They don’t click, they catch, they bump against each other, trying to lock into place, failing over and over.

“Supposed to go… home with my friends but-“ Your tongue is heavy, weighted beneath a giant sequoia, and you shiver. The chest that your head bobbles on catches, an arm securing you in place. It’s warm, and firm, heavier than a tree. Who…

“Little goddess.” He prompts, and you sigh, already wistfully unaware.

“’kay, yeah. Yes.”

You’re already slipping away when the world goes dark.

Your eyes open to a strange place.

You don’t recognize any of it, from the massive four poster bed with lithe, gauzy curtains drawn closed on three sides, to a fireplace the size of a giant, roaring, sizzling flame burning endlessly in its hearth. You don’t recognize the room, the black marble floors, polished to a brilliant gleam, one that you can nearly see your reflection in, or the vanity, dark oak housing a hand carved mirror. You’ve never seen the ornate stained glass window before, stretching from floor to ceiling, the size of ten men. You don’t know the bed, sized for a king, emerald silk sheets and a matching duvet, with a million pillows that were just cradling your head. The robe you’re wearing matches, the green only a shade lighter, and you tuck it tight across your body, realizing you’re fully nude.

The fire pops. It pushes a gasp from you, caught off guard, and at the sound, another being in the room stirs from the plush rug just beneath the bed.

A three headed dog.

It, they, stare at you, tongues wagging, eyes wide. Jet black fur, darker than midnight, white teeth so sharp they could rip your throat free in an instant.

You’ve seen this dog before… in pictures. Schoolbooks. You know their name.

Cerberus.

Panic races through your veins, ratcheting your heart rate higher and higher, your body and mind separating, all synapses dizzy with fear.

Oh gods. Where… where are you? What happened? You were just… you were just having some fun, at Aselegia, with John… weren’t you? Where…

Are you dead?  

You reach for your power, digging deep, trying to drag as much as you could to the surface-

Nothing.

You bleat, a scared lamb, in panic. It’s a cry. A scream. An awful sound. You need your rage now, but all you find is fear. You cannot reach your power. There is a blackened lock around it, a casing that holds it away from you, out of reach.

Cerberus whines. They hold their position, tail swishing back and forth, and you scramble towards the middle of the bed. Your ass protests, skin warm and tender against silk. Your knees tuck to your chest, and you force your eyes closed, trying to take long, measured breaths without success.

You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re-

The door clicks. John appears, two palms out, hesitant, and cautious. Your voice shakes, no matter how hard you try to reinforce it with iron will. “G-get away from me.”

“Ye’re alright, Persephone. We’d never hurt ye.” We?

“We need a yes.”

“Need ye to say yes, so we can take ye home, take care of ye.”

Something flickers behind him. A figure, a shape of shadow, shifting.

Dark. Dangerous. A wolf, circling a kill.

The male from the dance floor. He wears no mask now, but the feel of him, the threat of his power, is unmistakable… and familiar. You sputter on it, choking on him and John, the threat of their power combined looming, suffocating. “Oh gods.” You clutch the robe tighter. “Wh-where am I?”

“You know where you are, darling.” The other one says, and you moan.

“N-no. I… I can’t be. I can’t dead. I can’t be here… I-“

“You’re not dead, Persephone.” He cautions. “You’re very much alive.” And shaking, alive and trembling so vigorously you can hear your teeth chattering, chest heaving up and down, desperately trying to suck air inward. Cerberus whines again, and he rubs a thumb behind one of their ears. “Easy, Cerberus. She’s alright.”

“I ca-can’t be here. I have to… I have to go home.” The room seems wet, dollops of tears falling from your lashes, sticking to your skin and the sheets. Reality slams forward, rushing right up against your nonsensical mind.

It takes one gentle pulse of their power, to realize the truth. 

Hades. They’re… Hades. They’re Hades and you’re… you’re in the Underworld. 

Beg. Beg them for mercy. Whatever it is you’ve done, you must try. 

“I’m s-sorry. I don’t know… I don’t know what I did but I swear, I’m sorry, I-“ John tries to reach, seeking your hand, but you curl up into a tighter ball.

“Shhh. Ye hae nae done anythin’ wrong, sweet Persephone. Ye’re alright. Ye’re safe.” Safe? Safe in the Underworld? With them? 

Oh gods. You let Hades spank you. 

“You… you tricked me.” You whisper, raw betrayal and pain weeping profoundly in your heart. You trusted him and…

You are a fool. 

“We did what was necessary.” The wolf-like one says solemnly, gaze heavy.

“Necessary?” You squeak. “What’s… necessary about this?”

“We will explain everything, after we’ve eaten. Or maybe had some more rest? It’s the middle of the night, for you.” What? 

“No… I can’t… I can’t stay here. I have to-“

“Go home? So, you can hide away in your temple, kept company only by your plants and the occasional friend you let inside?” You blink, stunned, mouth dropping open.

“How do you... have you been watching me?” The stained-glass window on the far side of the room shifts, drawing your attention, morphing slowly from a tawny blur to a… screech owl.

“Oh, my gods. Oh…” The room shudders. “You can’t keep me here, I have to go…” Wolves circle, flanking where you sit, precarious and hopeless, a hand in front of your body like it will save you. “Please.”

“It’s alright, darling.” The dark one moves, blurred in shadow, magic blanketing you in a warm, comforting hold, heating your bones, encouraging your eyes to slowly shut.

The last thing you see is the ceiling, your body cradled in the embrace of a stranger.

Morning comes slow.

At first, you don’t open your eyes, even though you’ve been long awake.

If you open them, your fear will be real. It will be valid.

So, you keep them closed. Keep them shut long enough you drift in and out of twilight, until someone clears their throat.

Fuck. 

“Are you going to open your eyes?” His voice is ruby and velvet. You shudder.

“Hades.”

“Technically. One half of a whole, but my loved ones call me Simon.” Your brow flexes at that, and there’s a soft chuckle in response. “Will you wake? It’s well past morning now.”

“Are you going to render me unconscious again?” you hiss, cracking an eyelid. He’s sitting in a posh armchair, oiled black leather beneath his black suit, eyes steady on yours. His face is a map of scars, but instead of seeming rough, or out of place, they naturally suit him, complementing his broad jaw, severe expression, perfectly sculpted bone structure. His nose is crooked, like it had been smashed and rearranged once or twice, but still sits as if it was meant to be, and you wonder how anyone could do anything of the like to Hades.

He's handsome, in a way you expect to die from. 

“Only if you cannot behave.”

“Perhaps I could show you how I behave.” You smile with a full set of teeth, words ending in a snarl, and he huffs another gentle laugh.

“I have seen the victims of your wrath, Persephone. I have no doubt you’d strike me down if you could.” You swallow the nausea in your stomach. Your magic. 

“I want my magic back.” You blurt the demand, not even pausing to consider a more tactful way.

“We did not take it, only… bound it, for the time being. It’s still within you, we would never separate you from your power.” He sighs, a golden pearl rocking in his palm, glinting in the fireplace’s gleam. “Contrary to popular belief, we are not a monster.”

“Then let me go home, if you’re not as they say you are.” His eyes harden, face twisting sour, and then… sad.

“I’ll give you some privacy. There are clothes in the closet. Johnny and I expect you for breakfast, and then a tour… if you’re good. Cerberus will show you the way when you’re ready.”

If you’re good.

Cerberus leads you through a maze of decadent marble and arches.

You follow behind them hesitantly, cautious, and they mind you, slowing when you’ve lagged too far behind.

You can’t help it. You’re mystified.

You expected the Underworld to be dark, and dingy. And while maybe it is on the dark side, with glossy, polished marble, giant onyx columns that blot of the sky, and black stone everywhere… when you peek out the windows, you’re gob smacked.

Beneath wherever you are, which you’re beginning to suspect is Hades’ palace, is lush greenery. A verdant, fertile field lays to the south and the east, wrapping around to the edge of a forest, where you can just barely make out a large variety of deciduous trees. To the North, a river winds, separating the palace from a large meadow and… a town? You shake your head, as if to clear your addled mind and cloudy vision. Is that truly… a town? 

“Asphodel Meadows.” Someone says from behind you, nearly jumping you from your skin.

“Fuck.” You gasp, hand clutching your chest. It’s a man, not John, or Simon, but a stranger, clad in all black.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“It’s… okay. I- what did you say?”

“The town. It’s Asphodel Meadows. A place for mortal’s souls.” He bows. “I’m Thanatos.”

“I’m… Persephone.” He smiles, just slightly.

“I know who you are, my lady.” My lady?

“What do you…” words nearly fail as you grapple. “What do you do here?”

“I am a child of Nyx. The god of Death.”

“I thought Hades…”

“They are the Kings of the Underworld. I am the personification, the embodiment of Death.” Oh.

“You reap.” You whisper. His jaw tightens, and then smooths.

“Your escort is impatient. I think he’s probably ready for his bacon.” He eyes Cerberus, who whines, tapdancing on slick marble.

“Bacon?”

“Yes. He’s very spoiled. Eats better than the Kings themselves.” He motions down the hall. “It’s just that way. Lovely to meet you, my lady.” He gives you another bow, and then turns down a corridor, one that had not been there before, leaving you and Cerberus alone in the empty hall.

“I- you too.”

The Kings, as Thanatos called them, are both seated when you push the incredibly heavy door open. At the sound, John rises, Simon behind him, and the three of you stare at one another for a minute, until Cerberus barks.

“Please, sit.” John motions to the only other place set, a third chair between them. You swallow.

“Uh…”

“We don’t bite.”

“Not unless ye want us to.” John smiles, sinfully handsome in the morning light. It streams into the surprisingly cozy dining room through a group of five windows, all facing east, capturing the light of… a sun?

“Is that a sun?”

“It’s a sun of sorts.” Simon offers. “We have a sky, weather. A sun, a moon. Clouds. Everything that exists in Olympus.”

“Are ye hungry?” You hesitantly lower yourself into the chair, surprised at the array of food displayed. “We ah, weren’t sure what ye liked so, got a bit of everything.” Meats, yogurts, sweets, cereal, fruit, anything you could want laid out in front of you, but it’s something so near to your heart that catches your eye. Portokalopita.

“They are Hebe’s.” Simon murmurs.

This is a trick. They kidnapped you. They’re holding you hostage. You have to convince them to let you go. The warning resounds, and your stomach thrashes.

“I want to go home.” You push the plate of orange cakes away, disappointment flickering across John’s face, exasperation on Simon’s. “Please. I… I appreciate your hospitality and you… you bringing me home for… aftercare,” you grit the word, shame rocketing up your spine. This is what happens when you trust. You let Hades spank you, for fucks sake. And then they abducted you. “but I need to go home. The plants, they need me. My friends-“

“Your friends are used to going days on end without contact from you.” Simon cuts you off, and the blood drains from your face. “Are they not?”

“N-no. They’ll know I’m missing, they will.” Lie. He knows. You know they both know, just by the way the regard you. Half pity. Half amusement. It makes your blood boil. “Fuck you.” You hiss, shooting up in the chair.

“Seph-“ John tries to soothe you, calm you, using your nickname like he knows you, and it only makes you more irate.

“Don’t call me that.” You whirl on him. “I trusted you! I don’t even know you and I let you-“

“That is the nature of Aselegia, is it not?” He counters, cutting you off. You gape like a fish. “The anonymity. Dinnae turn it on me now.” His tone melts from ice to warmth, sympathy bleeding from his irises. “I assure ye, we are more than trustworthy. We would never, ever hurt ye. We would never let anythin’ happen to ye. Ye’ll see.”

“Then let me go home.” He shakes his head sadly but says nothing, and rage snaps in your heart like the drawback of a rubber band, stinging and sharp. “What do you want from me?” John opens his mouth, and then abruptly closing it, deferring to Simon.

“You are our guest. We’d like to get to know you. I promise, just as before, you will not be harmed in our care. We will never hurt you."

"How do I know that?" You’re incredulous. “You expect me to take you at your word?”

“Let us strike a deal then.” He declares, and John nods supportively.

Don’t, your good sense screams. Don’t be an idiot.

“What kind of deal?”

“You will stay here for two days, forty-eight hours exactly. We will show you this realm and get to know one another in that time, and at the end, we will reveal the doorway that leads back to Olympus.” You raise an eyebrow.

“Two days? And then I can go home?”

“Two days.” John echoes. Sapphire eyes gleam, and you carefully, quickly, try to pick apart every word in the proposal.

“My magic.” You demand, and they both answer immediately with a resounding,

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Your power is wild, Persephone.” Simon tells you, not unkindly. “We do not know how the Underworld will react to it, and we must think of our residents, all the souls we care for here. We cannot let something upset the balance that is so delicate.” Your mouth goes a little dry. You were expecting more of an answer about control, domineering you, your magic, keeping you contained. Not… care for souls.

“Yer mother raised ye to be her weapon.” John says softly, kneeling before the chair where you sit. His hand rests on the cushion, and you wonder if he means to touch you. “We dinnae regard ye as such, but until we understand ye better, we need to protect-“

“I understand.” You cut him off. You don’t need some forced sympathy, pity, thrust upon you by Hades, of all gods. They exchange a long glance, one that gives you a small peek into their lives, layers on layers of words and sentiment, communicated with a single glance.

Simon reaches for John, pulling him to his feet and into his body, chest to back.

“Do you agree?” Two days. Two days and you can leave. You can do two days of anything. You certainly cannot fight them, or your way out. What choice do you have? 

“Sure.”

“We need a yes, darling.” Darling. The pet name makes your toes curl. You take a big breath.

“Yes.”

The valley outside of Asphodel Meadows is one of the most stunning places you’ve ever been. It’s lush and lively, covered in Narcissus and Asphodelus, like a meadow one could only dream of. You're not sure why it feels so familiar, like the cusp of another life, or a nightmare, but it takes root inside you. You lay in the field of flowers, letting them cover your body, wishing so desperately to touch your magic, so you could truly feel them, the grass and the dirt and the stems here, all things that seem like they’re so full of life, so opposite your expectations of the Underworld.

“Shall we continue?” Cerberus perks up at the sound of their master’s voice, head popping over the flowers to spot both Kings standing on the path, a good distance away. They peek at you, heads tilted, and you sigh. It seems you’ve been assigned a minder, in the form of a three headed dog.

You join them on the road before long, walking silently, sullenly, John sneaking glances at you nearly every chance he gets, and you can pinpoint the heat of his gaze every time, the throbbing intensity of his focused power nearly bowling you over.

“So, there are two of you?” What are you supposed to talk to the Kings of the Underworld about, anyway? 

“Aye. It’s a little-known secret. One realm, two gods to rule.” You frown, perplexed.

“But… you haven’t always been that way?”

“No.” Simon answers. “We were once Golden brothers in battle, long before your time, before becoming this. When we fell in love, our souls split. They merged with our magic, tied us together eternally. Now, we rule as one.”

“So, you’re married.” You deduce.

“In the most permanent way you can think of.” They stop short of a bridge, one that crests high over a roaring river, and Simon gestures broadly. “Persephone, this is the Acheron.”

The Underworld is a place of rivers, you learn. Waterways that hold power, that possess the ability to cleanse you, free you, burn you, punish you. There is a river of fire, a river of weeping, a river to forget.

The Acheron is the river of woe.

Fitting, you think, standing on the bridge. Below, bright turquoise water rushes by, crashing into rock and boulder, each sound more akin to a scream than the thunder of a tributary. Mouths, long and full of despair, wail beneath the current, wraith like creatures with bone white skin and eyes skimming along the top.

You get lost in them. Lost in the irreversible cycle of woe, desolation creeping up inside your own self as you peer down into the depths. Are you not like them? Despondent. Bleak. Isolated. Is that not what you’ve made with your life, what was chosen for you? Hidden away, sharpened like an axe never to be used. Are you not alone, like them? Trapped, like them? 

You don’t even realize you’re leaning forward until pressure rests at your back. “Easy. Dinnae want ye fallin’ in.” John murmurs, stepping away the edge, bringing you with him. Your limbs feel shaky, and you wonder if it’s because you just almost went over… or because you didn’t eat earlier.

“Sorry. I uh-“ you don’t know how to explain it, that feeling. The agony that bubbles up in the back of your throat.

“We know.” Simon regards you with empathy, understanding, and you shake the attention loose, pushing ahead of them, down the bridge and into town, into Asphodel Meadows itself, eager to leave the river and its woe behind.

In town, the Kings are well received. It surprises you, to watch them in the street, welcomed by the souls who live there. They take you on a tour, introducing you to residents, explaining the structure, the magic and the infrastructure that makes it all work. Souls take their preferred form in Asphodel Meadows, allowed to choose for themselves, whatever they feel most comfortable in, and you’re shocked that such benevolence would be bestowed upon anyone in the Underworld.

Why are they showing you this? Why go to such great lengths? What is the purpose? 

“Hi.” A small voice breaks you from your confusion, and you find a small girl at your feet, bouquet of Narcissus clutched in her tiny hands. You crouch.

“Hello.”

“I’m Phoebe.” She giggles, cheeks round and rosy.

“I’m Persephone.” You incline your head. “Phoebe is a beautiful name.” Your heart pangs. She’s so small, so… fragile. How did she die? Where is her family? Is she here alone?

“Thank you, my lady.” She tries to bow, and you rush to stop her, stilling her with a hand.

“Are those for me?”

“They are. Johnny said they’re your favorites.” Johnny? You glance over to where they stand, both turned your way, something unreadable in their reflections.

“Well, thank you. They’re lovely.” She wishes you well, skipping off in another direction, and you meander across the street, unable to hide your quizzical expression.

“Johnny? Not Hades?”

“Ach. The kids they’re… they’re usually a wee bit scared, first thing. It’s better for them, if we’re friends.” He shrugs, but Simon watches him in reverence, pure love and light beaming from his gaze, adoration in every slow blink.

Your heart skips.  

Fuck. 

“Are you not hungry?” Simon muses, walking beside you and John in the castle. Your shoes tap along the way, echoing, and Cerberus barks. John glares at them.

“I… I am afraid to eat here.” They both stop short.

“Why?”

“I have always heard… a myth. That if you somehow find yourself here and you eat, you’ll become trapped, stuck here forever.” Simon chuckles, dry and warm.

“No, darling. Please, we do not wish for you to starve.”

“The legend isnae true. Only by eating whole pomegranate seeds that ye pluck from the flesh of the fruit yerself, can ye become bound to the land. And we dinnae serve those.” He winks, stepping a little closer. “Ye can eat, little goddess. Please. Join us for dinner, we insist.”

“Okay.”

Simon is not at dinner.

John makes no mention of it, and only when you’re halfway done does he offer an explanation, something important that needed to be tended to.

“Ye look stunning.” He hums, and you have half the decency to smile. You chose a dress from the never-ending closet, black to match their suits, for fun. Its back is open, and the front offers a generous view of your breasts, but not quite enough.

You felt like sin. Johnny has been staring like you are. And maybe, you didn’t want sex, but you did want to punish them for their treachery. If only a little bit.

For making you a fool. 

“So, no Simon?” He swallows a mouthful of red wine.

“He apologizes. Somethin’ came up.”

“That’s alright.” You shift, legs crossing. The transition is unintentional, but it draws Johnny’s eyes to your knees, and up. You lift your glass, the largest goblet of red wine you’ve seen, and allow a small river of red to run from the corner of your mouth to your neck. It traces the valley between your breasts, and Johnny growls.

“Persephone.”

“What?” You ask, innocently.

“Ye’re playing with fire.” He grits, the gleam in his eyes one of a predator.

“I’m not playing with anything,” you hiss, slamming the glass down. It shatters, it sloshes, it spills onto the table and into your lap. “You’re the ones playing with me. Kidnapping me, holding me hostage.” Your anger builds, overflowing inside your soul, clawing at the locked box of your magic. Cerberus whines, galloping across the floor and out the main door, but you hardly notice, too focused on spitting as much fire and venom at your captor as you can. “Touring me around the Underworld, making yourselves look like some benevolent, beloved rulers when really all you are… are gods of death and decay.” John stares at you, wild eyed. Your chair clatters to the ground as you stand, fury rocketing through every vein in your body, ichor pulsing beneath your skin. You’re so, so close to your power; you can taste it. Can feel the way it screams, how it howls to you, churning in the depths of your being, rattling the cage it’s trapped inside.

Trapped. You’re trapped. Like always. 

Your vision blurs, and you take a step towards John. It all happens so fast, so lightning quick that it doesn’t even register until your hand is swinging through the air and across his face.

He does nothing. You feel the rumble of his power, pushing and pulling at the seams of your very being, waiting to tear your apart, but he holds himself at bay.

Only watches you with cold, wrathful eyes.

The air chills.

“That’s enough.” Simon stands between your bodies. Power, so potent, so strong, wraps tight, shoving your wrists together, Golden cuffs immobilizing you, holding you still. “You want to be a disobedient little brat, is that it?”

“YOU STOLE ME!” You scream it, raw and agonized. It tries to burst through your skin. Tries to explode your vessels. Your very heart. Your chest heaves, eyes wide, and John flanks you, coming closer and closer until you can feel his heat against your side.

He’s hard.

“What did ye think ye were doin, sweet Persephone? Did ye really think you could strike me?”

You don’t have an answer. Words die on your tongue. Guilt burns. Did you want to hurt him? 

Did you?

The cuffs yank you forward. They singe your skin, dragging you to the table. “What’re you doing?” They drag you across the food until you're climbing on top, until your whole body is prone, feet dangling above the floor, bent at the waist.

“Is this what you wanted?” Simon mocks. Hands grip your hips, and your traitorous body clenches. “This what you need, little goddess? Need to be punished?” Your dress is shoved up around your waist, exposing your skin to the frigid air, and you force away a small moan. “You need your pain, darling?” Yes. Fingers pinch the back of your neck. “Answer me.”

“Yes.” You snap, darting daggers with your eyes over your shoulder. His answer is a chuckle.

“Turn your head.” He hisses, hand on the back of your skull. When you do, you come face to face with Johnny’s hips, the length of his cock freed from his suit pants and bobbing right in front of your mouth.

Oh, gods. 

He strokes it slowly, the pink- nearly red tip oozing pre-cum, long and thick in his fist, his size enough to make your thighs press together, cunt throbbing with delight. Traitor.

“Open, darling.” He smears it against your lips. You tuck them in tight, trying to keep them closed, and he looks over, to the god who stands at the curve of your ass.

Simon takes a handful each of your cheeks, spreading you wide. He kicks your feet too, knocking your legs into an A-frame, fully exposing your weeping cunt.

“She’s dripping.” He announces, a finger sliding through your folds, body jolting with his touch. He circles your clit, barely, not enough, and you whine indignantly. It’s enough to loosen your lips, enough for Johnny to grasp your jaw, shove the tip of his thumb between your teeth, and then pry you open.

Once he gets the tip of his cock against your tongue, it’s over. Salt and earth dab along your tastebuds, and you drool on the table, trying to breathe through his rhythm, trying to focus as Simon tucks a finger into your hole, slowly pumping in and out, occasionally pulling free to swirl it around your untouched rim.

One finger inside you is enough to burn, heat rising through your belly, walls clenching tight, and John groans, pressing into the back of your throat, cutting off your airway.

“So good, all day.” Simon grits, stroking your clit in tiny circles. “Sweet Persephone, and now,” he’s building you closer, so close to the precipice, to the top of the mountain where you’ll hope he’ll throw you off.

But it’s not enough. 

“I know darling, don’t worry. I’ll give you your pain.” He croons. John thrusts hard, drives into you vigorously, head thrown back. There’s a sheen of sweat on his neck, and you watch a slow rivulet dip beneath his collar. He’s so… they’re so…

A hand cracks across the tender skin of your ass, rippling out like a shockwave. You choke.

You clench. The tide rises.

“Fuck. There you go.” Light dances in front of your eyes, small pinpricks of stars, and you gurgle on the dick that shoves down your throat. Another strike, the same side, and you cry out, gasping for air. The tip of his finger gently pushes against your rim, and then it’s replaced with a mouth, a hot, intrepid tongue, swirling around as your hips buck and he plays with your clit.

You’re going to die. You’re going to explode. You need more. 

You try to tell him, try to choke it out around John’s shaft, but it’s like he knows, like he’s reading your mind, and he pulls away to dig his teeth into the plump swell of your ass, biting down so hard you think you’re bleeding.

No. You are. 

You scream.

Rivers of ichor paint your skin. The next spank comes directly over the puncture wounds, and instead of screaming in pain, you moan in pleasure, head held in Johnny’s hands, your face a tool for him to fuck, your pussy squeezing down around the single finger stroking in and out of your body. He swings again, and again, fire lighting behind your eyes, explosions going off one by one, your orgasm cresting, rising in the swell of an enormous wave, and just as you’re about to come, Simon plunges a finger deep into your ass, shoving you off the mountain.

To where they catch you below.

The rest is a blur. John finishes down your throat, salt and sweat and tears all mixing in your mouth, and he moans your name as he gives you a belly full of seed.

You’re limp, floating, drifting higher and farther than you ever have before, not in your body, not even in your own mind. Hardly cognizant when you’re picked up, tucked away in the shelter of a chest and carried down the hall. You close your eyes.

You come back a little bit when you’re placed in shallow hot water, a steaming, rocky pool, your face settled in Johnny’s neck. Cloth and deft fingers rub your shoulders, your waist, anywhere you might feel sore, even the bottoms of your feet.

All the while, they talk.

It starts simply, sweet words that fills you up until you can’t take anymore. “Did so well, darling. So good for us.” John murmurs in hushed tones as Simon shifts you, turning you on your belly to run the cloth between your legs and over your ass. It stings, and you hiss, but you’re soothed with an apology, gentle kisses down your spine, each one pressed with praise.

It’s not long before you’re tucked into bed, turned over on your side, some sort of magic and salve being applied to the bite in your skin. You’re gone now, barely aware, barely awake, but with it enough to catch the little bits here and there.

“-talk about it tomorrow.”

“If they’re from Demeter, I’ll-“ No. Not this. Anything but this. Distress catches in your chest, and fingers stroke your cheek.

“Shhh, sweet one. Rest now.” There’s a little touch of magic, a barely there pulse of power, and you let it take you into the soft comfort of sleep, bedded down like a fawn, cradled between two Kings.

*Hymn 2 to Demeter, line 347

[cannibalistic-vampirefag]

romeo and juliet modern retelling where instead of poison juliet jumps off a cliff and then romeo follows her but she actually had a hidden parachute so there's the split second where they're looking at each other and then she opens the parachute while he keeps falling. and post.

[catihere]

Alternative Hades and Persephone retelling idea (a comedy):

- After asking Zeus for advice, Hades kidnaps Kore like in the myth: black horses, magic and not consensual;

- he kinda regrets it for the moment because he thinks the lovely Kore would reject him terrified after what he did, but Kore turns out to be a bad bitch. She’s like ‘Okay, where the actual fuck did you bring me?! For a king, you’d say you’d have better cOuRTiNg strategies… At least greet me properly, you pathetic motherfucker! You just take me like that? Like I’m some kind of prize? Do you think I haven’t got better things to do than ruling your silly little realm?’ And Hades is just… baffled. And head over heels.

- we get tiny glimses of their interactions, but the main focus is Demeter, being devastated by the sudden loss of her daughter and going onto a detective-like quest in the mortal realm to find her. Hecate helps Demeter interrogate gods and humans to slowly make their way to the truth. It culminates, in like seventh out of eight episodes, with the meeting with Helios. After that, they return to Olympus in order to demand justice from the god of justice himself.

- meanwhile, Kore isn’t that sassy anymore because she can feel how she’s slowly breaking into pieces because of the separation between her and her world. Her mother and everything she’s loves. And I don’t really know how to characterize Hades in this scenario so I’ll leave it up to you.

- at the end, Demeter wins a fight with Zeus and manages to obtain the compromise we all know about. Persephone slowly starts her journey to finds herself again and balance her new life. The end.

Bonuses: Demeter and Hecate are a power couple of badass women;

Persephone builds her garden in the realm of Hades to comunicate with Demeter when they’re away from each other;

Hermes is an awkard fluffball when he has to transport Persephone because he once tried to court her and… let’s say it didn’t go really well (for him)…

Let me know what you think of this idea and what I can improve! 💜

@0lympian-c0uncil @incorrectgreekgods

[misscrawfords]

I'm reading Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne, a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice and I'm struggling.

I actually find what Payne has done with the characters and setting really interesting and there are some touches I really like, especially turning Mary into Maurice - an "activist" who changes his activism regularly and lectures others on what they should be doing. (Any interpretation of Mary that isn't "misunderstood, shy, nerd girl who isn't-like-other-girls and is actually just like me, a misunderstood, shy, over-looked nerd girl" gets a positive vote from me.)

However, I really very much dislike her interpretation of Darcy (Dorsey) and Elizabeth (Liza)'s relationship and that is... kinda crucial!

It's waaaaaay over sexualised. Like, I get this is a romance book, but, like, I'm reading along enjoying the story and plot and then suddenly Dorsey is thinking about burying himself in Liza's breasts and I'm like "wooaah!" It's like it's impossible for the author to show them having feelings for each other without it being explicit and I find that out of place both with the source material and with the rest of the narrative.

Secondly, it is sexual... immediately. It commits the cardinal sin of saying "Darcy and Lizzy were hot for each other from the start and all the tension is ~ s e x u a l tension". The 2005 abomination does this too with the near kiss in the rain. And pretty much every single P&P inspired enemies-to-lovers narrative out there does it too. The problem is... this is a really, really inaccurate interpretation of the original book. Darcy is, admittedly, attracted to Elizabeth very quickly. Something that he manages to show not at all to anybody. Only Caroline Bingley, who is intensely interested in Darcy's romantic feelings, spots it. Later on, arch observer Charlotte and good friend Col Fitz also suspect something but by this point in Rosings Darcy has given into his feelings and is trying, albeit terribly, to court Elizabeth. Not that she notices. Darcy is completely able to conceal his sexual attraction to Elizabeth from everyone who isn't thinking about Darcy sexually. He is not quite so able to conceal his romantic interest later on. But crucially, at no point does Elizabeth notice a thing. She has LITERALLY NO IDEA. This is because Elizabeth has no concept of Darcy as a romantic prospect for her at all. She laughs at thinking what a good match he'd be for Anne de Bourgh, a probably sexless in appearance invalid. She doesn't hate him in a ~sexy~ way, she just really does not like him and does not consider him as a romantic option.

If Elizabeth is aware that Darcy has the hots for her, this changes the dynamic completely. If she is actually attracted to him in the first part of the story, that changes the dynamic completely. And both of these changes alter and potentially cheapen Elizabeth's character. If she is aware on some level that Darcy likes her and is interested in her, then she ends up looking like an idiot when the first proposal comes around. Or she ends up looking coy and like she is actually flirting with him. Yes, there is banter but Elizabeth is not consciously flirting or trying to attract him! Elizabeth spends the whole first part of the novel with a crush on Wickham. Austen is perfectly capable to showing to the audience without needing modern explicit language that a character has the hots for another character. Elizabeth fancies Wickham, not Darcy! As the meme goes, Darcy and Elizabeth are experiencing two very different kinds of tension! That's part of the comedy. And if Elizabeth is aware that she is attracted to Darcy, it just becomes a different story, and a less interesting one. Elizabeth becomes yet another romance novel heroine who likes the "bad boy" and tries to persuade herself not to, until the tension is sooooo strong and she ~snaps.

But one of the major points is that Elizabeth doesn't like bad boys! She falls for (well, crushes on) Wickham because she thinks he's good. She dislikes Darcy because she thinks he's bad. She only starts to consider Darcy positively when she understands and sees for herself the truth of his character. That is what she finds attractive, not him being a buttoned up jerk! "One has all the goodness, the other all the appearance of it." That is central to P&P's story and its message.

Unfortunately, in the aims of writing a "romance" novel, Pride and Protest gives us heaving busoms and erections and almost-kisses and therefore completely destroys my interest in Dorsey and Liza's relationship at the same time as well as finding it just a bit tasteless because it feels like there are two stories going on: an interesting exploration of how the context and characters of P&P would work in a highly politised and racially diverse modern USA - and a very generic romance novel story which doesn't do either Darcy and Elizabeth justice. A shame.

It does make me wonder about how to update Austen's novels in terms of sex. Because obviously one of the major changes between the 1810s and now is that having extra-marital sex is totally normal and people date and break up without social repercussions. So unless you are setting the update in a community where that is not the case, you've got to deal with sex being freely on offer. I guess there are different ways around it but I think if how you deal with sex means that the fundamental beats of the narrative and character development are changed, then something's gone wrong somehow. And I feel that Elizabeth's total obliviousness to Darcy having any positive feelings towards her at all until the moment he proposes to her is a crucial part of the plot and a source of unending humour.

[lunacreativeacademy]

How To Write A Modern Retellings Course (90 Mins)

During our ‘How To Write a Modern Retelling’ Course we’ll discuss the current boom in modern retellings and their status in the market place as well as the difference between retelling a story and ‘writing back’.

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[bethanydelleman]

Do you have any headcanons about a modern day Charlotte Lucas?

She's a very rational and intelligent woman (also probably ace / aroace though I might be biased) so to me she seems like she'd work in a leading position in either business or science, keeping the Mr. Colinses on the board in check and making sure her employees are treated well.

But apart from that it's really hard to come up with stuff because 1) we see so little of her and 2) you can't just plop a 19th century woman in a 21st century environment like that wouldn't fundamentally change her personality and behaviour. We're a product of our environment after all.

This is a good question, and the fact is, I'm not sure about Charlotte Lucas. While I agree that she is rational and intelligent, I don't know if she's actually a good person or someone you want in charge.

We see very little of Charlotte so it is hard to judge, but a lot of her motivation seems to be mercenary. She tells Lizzy not to snub Darcy in favour of Wickham given Darcy's consequence. It is good advice, but it's not actually moral advice, she's telling Lizzy to make more prudent connections. She cannot tell if either Darcy or Colonel Fitzwilliam means to propose, but she hopes that Lizzy will marry Darcy because he has more influence in the church so that she can take advantage of that connection.

Now the reason people like Charlotte and hate the similarly motivated Caroline is that Charlotte doesn't step on other people to achieve her goals. She waits until Elizabeth has said no to Mr. Collins to pounce, she doesn't insult others behind their backs (as far as we know, except maybe for Lydia but those observations were more than fair), and while she does help her husband toady to Lady Catherine, that harms no one. But not displaying bad actions doesn't mean you are good, and her motivations are fundamentally greedy. We don't even know if she is actually a good clergyman's wife, we never see her engage in charity.

It does seem that Charlotte is the kind of person who enables a bad leader for her own benefit. Mr. Collins is not a good clergyman and she's trying to help him get more livings And she also seems content to emotionally manipulate Mr. Collins for the rest of his life, which is a bit chilling (I think he does believe that Charlotte loves him).

But you are right, while many aspects of Austen's characters ring so true to people we know today, Charlotte is defined by having very few options. Modern Charlotte can totally get a job and move away from her annoying parents. It's hard to say exactly what she would become in a world with far more opportunity for women where she is not forced to be ambitious through a man.

[canary0]

July 24th - Dracula 2023 Addendum

Jonathan's Whitby Abbey Photos

[Photos by iSAW Company on Unsplash]

[Photo by Yaopey Yong on Unsplash]

[belpheg0r-luna]

Why must Wickham be the most awful person in every retelling as well?! THE scum of this earth

[willowuponavon]

My review of an amazing movie that may become my favorite movie ever

[beatriceflorence]

I just heard someone say Anyone but you (starring Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney) is a modern retelling of Much Ado About Nothing??????

I'm so exited now

[lexxwithbooks]

📖: 𝑪𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔 (𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑟 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑠 #3) 🛰💇🏼‍♀️🏜

✍🏽: 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐚 𝐌𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐫

Get the book! 🌟

[gr8k877]

If you love, or even really tolerate, Shakespeare, watch this 2018 King Lear on Amazon. It is one of the best adaptations of Shakespeare I've ever seen. The cast absolutely EATS: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Andrew Scott, Florence Pugh, and that's just the top layer. Everybody in it is AMAZING.

Lear has long been a favorite play of mine for several reasons:

--It has all the family drama and biting dialogue of something like Six Feet Under.

--It has some of the most quotable lines, like this exchange early on:

Lear

Dost thou call me fool, boy?

Fool

All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast

born with.

--The older sister's are so EVIL.

--The Edgar/Glaughster story is just so heartbreaking.

--Cordelia is just so GOOD.

[theclassicsoflife]

In a modern retelling of The Iliad ,Patroclus would have killed that one youth, that got him banished, over a game of Monopoly.

[alarawriting]

52 Project #48: Hoodie

Does anyone remember the fairy tale "Tatterhood"? This is a modern retelling.

***

Perhaps you have heard a story, much like but not exactly the same as this one, about twin sisters, one beautiful and one very strange. These sisters were not princesses, but the daughters of a Congresswoman, which is a little bit like princesses, but not exactly.

The young Congresswoman had had a difficult pregnancy. The ultrasound showed clearly that she was having one baby, a little girl, but her stomach was distended as if she was having twins. Her doctor suggested a Caesarian. The Congresswoman rejected the idea, determined to have a natural birth… but after her labor began, it lasted an entire day without the baby’s head crowning, and this time, the Congresswoman listened to her husband and doctor pleading with her, and agreed to the c-section.

It turned out this was a good idea, because there was nothing about the first baby they lifted out that was not strange.

On the table, with an epidural numbing her and a sheet blocking her view of her child, she heard her husband and her doctor speaking in frantic whispers, of which she could make out nothing but “What the hell—” She demanded to see her child, and when her husband demurred, saying she’d just been through surgery and she needed to rest, she demanded it again. So the doctor, having just cut the cord, brought her the baby.

The Congresswoman had certain entirely reasonable expectations for her newborn daughter. Such as, her daughter would look like a baby, without teeth, without hair, with plump bent legs that could not walk. Also, that her baby would be born naked. Also, that she would not be wearing roller skates and carrying a pool noodle.

All of these expectations were dashed. Her child had a monkeylike face and a full head of curly hair, clown-red. She was the size of a baby, but her proportions were those of a child of five or so. She was wearing a yellow hoodie that was somehow entirely clean and untouched by bodily fluids, and roller skates, and she was waving a purple pool noodle, baby-sized, in her hand.

“Yo, Mom, don’t sweat it!” the baby said. “My sister’s still in there and she’s a perfectly normal baby! A real sweetheart. Best baby ever. You’ll love her!”

And so it was. There was, indeed, a second baby in the Congresswoman’s womb. It seemed that the ultrasound had seen her, the perfectly normal baby, but not her sister.

“Hey, can I get some food around here?” the first baby said. “None of that colostrum junk. I want formula until Mom’s milk is in and she’s strong enough to feed me. Anyone got some of that?”

A nurse nervously took the first baby and fed her. Meanwhile, the Congresswoman racked her brain trying to remember if there had been anything that could explain the first-born girl. She finally recalled that day at the farm rally.

***

The Congresswoman represented a state that had many farms. When she succeeded in getting a bill she’d proposed and helped to write passed, which subsidized farmers for growing produce like fruit and vegetables, and gave aid to family farms, a celebration was scheduled for her at a large family farm in the state, and farmers from all over the state came to thank her and speak with her.

She’d just been telling a group of women that she would truly love to have a baby, but her schedule was so busy and she had so much work to do, she didn’t know when she’d have time. An old woman had pushed through the group and handed her two fruits. She didn’t recognize them; they looked like apples, but had the soft fuzz of peaches, and the color of cherries. One of them was large, obviously ripe, soft with the promise of juiciness, and absolutely perfect looking. The other one was missing some of its fuzz and was small and a bit twisted looking.

“You need to eat one of these!” the old woman said. “That’ll solve your baby problems, for sure!” She pressed them both into the Congresswoman’s hands. “But only eat the nice one. If you eat the weird one, there’ll be no telling what will happen.”

“Ma’am,” the head of her security detail said, “give those to us.”

But the big juicy one did look delicious, and the Congresswoman hadn’t had time for lunch. “I’ve never seen that kind of fruit. Let me try that,” she said, and bit into the big one. It was so soft, juicy and delicious, with a tiny pit, cherry-sized. The Congresswoman had just intended to take a taste, but instead she devoured it. She looked up to ask the old woman what it was, and if she could have another, but the woman had faded back into the crowd.

It had tasted so good. The second one wasn’t as appetizing, and the old woman had said not to eat it, but why had the old woman even given it to her if it wasn’t good to eat?

The Congresswoman set it aside, but later, when her aides were packing up the table and her mouth was dry from all the speechmaking she’d done, she saw the fruit again, and this time couldn’t resist biting into it. It was a little more bitter than its delicious sister had been, and a little less juicy, but it had a tartness to it that she liked and it was just a little buzzy on her tongue, as if it had just barely started to think about maybe fermenting. Quickly, before her security detail could see her and tell her to stop, she ate the whole thing.

Three weeks later she missed her period, and there were two pink lines on the pregnancy test. Her birth control must have failed. It was close to the election and she was very, very busy, but in nine months’ time either she’d no longer be a Congresswoman or she’d have made it through another election cycle and could afford to take some time off for a baby.

***

It made no rational sense for a fruit to have made her get pregnant, let alone give birth to a child on roller skates and in a hoodie, but on the other hand, nothing about her older daughter made rational sense, so the Congresswoman decided to just roll with it.

She named the older one Katherine, after her mother-in-law, and the younger one Anne, after her own mother. “Katherine” was quickly shortened to “Kate” by her and her husband, but no one else called the child that. The aides, the family friends, and even the grandparents all referred to Kate as “Hoodie”, for the yellow garment that she never took off and that seemed to grow with her.

***

Hoodie’s prediction that Anne would be a perfectly normal baby was slightly off. Anne was in fact an unusually beautiful baby. She was healthy and plump, looking more like a two-month-old than a typical scrawny little newborn, and everyone who saw her had to smile at her, or make a funny face to entertain her, or tell her parents what a beautiful child she was.

Anne hardly ever cried. When it seemed like she might and her babble took on a distressed note, Hoodie was there to translate for her. “She’s hungry!” “Yo, Mom, Anne wants a diaper change! She just laid down a real stinky one!” “Mom, Anne’s bored, can I play with her?”

Hoodie was not quite as mature as her ability to talk – and roller skate – implied. She still wore diapers. Roller-skating and talking were apparently not nearly as challenging as the potty. There were many words she didn’t know. She refused to take off the hoodie, and would bite anyone who tried to remove it from her. And she refused to abide by a bedtime, or instructions that she shouldn’t climb the refrigerator. While she very quickly graduated to solid food she could chew, since she had teeth, she didn’t stop asking for bottles or her mother’s breast. She could also entertain herself for some time by throwing her food on the floor and making her mother or father or the babysitter pick it up.

In addition to her hooded sweatshirt, her pool noodle grew with her, somehow. As did her roller skates, when they reappeared on her feet from time to time.

The Congresswoman, her husband, and her aides discussed whether to allow Hoodie to be photographed. Her strangeness might hurt the Congresswoman’s re-election campaign, but a Congresswoman having a baby while serving in Congress was news – it had happened before, but rarely. Concealing both their children would look odd. Concealing just one seemed reasonable… but the Congresswoman knew that treating children differently could lead to resentment, and as ugly and strange as she was, Hoodie was her daughter too, and she loved both her children.

So she asked Hoodie. “Would you like reporters to take your picture and show you in the newspaper?”

“What’s a newspaper?”

The Congresswoman showed Hoodie a USA TODAY, and the photographs on the front page. “This is a newspaper.”

Hoodie shrugged. “I can’t read. What’s it saying?”

“It’s the news. It’s talking about all the important things that are happening right now.”

“Am I an important thing?”

“You’re very important to me,” the Congresswoman said. “But it’s not important for the whole world to know about you. If you want to be in the newspaper, you can be, when they interview our family, but if you’d rather not be in the newspaper, you can be in your bedroom playing with your toys.”

“My toys are boring,” Hoodie said. “But, Mom… I know I’m a weirdo. If the whole world knew about me would that be a problem for you?”

“It might be. It might not be. I would fight for you if it’s what you wanted.”

“Naah, let my sister get in the newspaper. But don’t leave me alone with baby toys. I want video games.”

The Congresswoman was secretly relieved. “I don’t know if your hands are large enough to work video game controls…”

“I’ve got two hands,” Hoodie pointed out. “And my pool noodle.”

The Congresswoman wasn’t really sure what Hoodie’s pool noodle could do in the context of video games, but she didn’t question it. “We’ll get you a Nintendo Switch. The joycons are small, you’ll probably do fine with them.”

***

When she wasn’t playing with her Nintendo Switch, Hoodie was either getting into trouble or playing with her sister.

“Getting into trouble” generally entailed climbing on things she wasn’t supposed to climb on, skating on surfaces she wasn’t supposed to skate on, going places she wasn’t supposed to go, or running through the house, diaperless, shrieking and hitting people with her pool noodle. “Playing with her sister” involved pattycake, peekaboo, funny faces, and other adorable activities age-appropriate for a baby. Perhaps because she was a baby herself, Hoodie never seemed to get tired of doing these things with her sister, but she also didn’t sleep as much, so there were many hours when Anne was napping and Hoodie had to entertain herself.

Riding a bicycle down the banister of a Washington townhome was right out. The Congresswoman and her husband didn’t even know where Hoodie had gotten a bicycle sized properly for her tiny body, but no matter where it came from, it was to stay in the back yard with the locked fence, and also, do not climb the fence. Do not climb the one tree in the back yard, whether or not you’re going to use it to get over the fence. Do not get the garden hose and a large Rubbermaid bin and fill it with water because you’ve decided you’re old enough to learn how to swim. Hoodie, stop rolling in the mud and get back in the house right now for a bath. Pretending you’re a cat is a fine game for a child, but actually catching mice is not acceptable, and especially not actually eating them. Also, do not feed oatmeal to the DVD player, that is not a place for you to put a plate.

At least, unlike Anne, Hoodie slept through the night.

***

The two girls grew. Hoodie just got larger, like she was a photograph on a computer being sized up in proportion. Anne grew like a perfectly normal baby, with some exceptions. She was quicker to roll over, crawl and walk than most babies, with a patient older-by-two-minutes sister who already could do those things and was eager to see her sister learn. But she was slow to learn to speak, because Hoodie could translate her baby babble and always knew exactly what she was trying to say.

Eventually the Congresswoman had to separate her daughters for Anne’s own good. “She’ll never learn to talk if you’re always talking for her,” she said, relaying what the speech therapist had warned her.

“But Mom! Don’t you know how hard it is to be a baby who can’t talk yet? All she can do when she wants something is cry, unless I’m there!”

“That’s how it works, Kate,” the Congresswoman warned, as patiently as she could. “All humans go through this… except you, I suppose.”

“That’s because I’m a space alien! Beep boop baap, take me to your leader, Earthling!”

The Congresswoman laughed, though privately she thought, That would explain things. “Anne needs to learn how to talk, and she never will if you always do it for her, because it’s hard.”

“What if I tell her she has to learn to talk?”

“You can certainly try, but she needs to spend most of her time around people who don’t already know what she’s saying.”

The Congresswoman tried to keep Hoodie confined to her bedroom, where she had her Nintendo Switch and a large number of games for it. This didn’t work very well, because Hoodie could reach the doorknob, and when the Congresswoman had a lock installed on Hoodie’s door, she learned that her strange child was as accomplished a lockpick as she was with her roller skates. Nothing would help except teaching her how to read. When she was occupied with learning her letters and how to turn them into an understanding of books, she was willing to settle down and listen, and not go haunt her little sister’s room.

Still, they spent many hours together. When Anne finally learned to talk, her first word was “hoo-hee”… or, translated from Baby, “Hoodie.”

***

Eventually the girls caught up to each other, Anne becoming old enough to match Hoodie’s proportions and Hoodie growing tall enough to appear as a normal child her age… if you could call a child with a monkey face “normal”. Usually she was covered with so much dirt, it was hard to make out her face. The Congresswoman couldn’t get Hoodie to ever take off her hooded sweatshirt, either; its immunity to the fluids of birth hadn’t extended to mud and grass stains and chocolate ice cream, but Hoodie wouldn’t take it off even to take a bath. The solution was to make Hoodie take showers with non-toxic detergent sprayed on her hood and liquid soap drizzled down her body from the opening at her neck, to try to wash her body and her sweatshirt at the same time. The problem with this was that Hoodie hated water, unless she was trying to swim, climb into a fish tank, or get into her sister’s bathtub. The solution to that became to bathe the girls at the same time, and when Anne was old enough, encourage her to tell her sister to wash. It didn’t help much; it got the filth off, but Hoodie was usually dirty again within half an hour of the bath, and her yellow hoodie was permanently stained all over.

When the girls were old enough, they went to kindergarten at a very expensive, exclusive private school that catered to the children of celebrities and politicians, and kept them away from the paparazzi. This lasted about three months before Hoodie was expelled for beating up some older boys with her pool noodle. The principal acknowledged that the boys had been taunting Hoodie about being ugly, and that Anne had yelled at them to defend her sister, and one had pushed Anne and so Hoodie had been defending her sister. But given the strength she demonstrated and the violence of the attack, they simply couldn’t allow Hoodie to remain. And if Hoodie couldn’t stay, then Anne refused to.

The Congresswoman’s husband was a college professor. He took a year on sabbatical to homeschool the girls, and arranged for tutors for future years. Anne was a remarkable student, studious, hard-working and intelligent. Hoodie… was not. Though she was equally as intelligent, and had a keen memory, she didn’t bother to do any of her homework,  she couldn’t be bothered to do classwork, and she wouldn’t sit still long enough to fill out any of the little pencil circles on standardized tests, which homeschooled children were still required to do in most states. Her grades, such as they were, were almost unmeasurably low. But she knew the material she’d been taught. Her parents felt that they had to accept that.

***

The years passed swiftly. The Congresswoman was now of fairly high rank in the House, on multiple committees, and had easily won re-election many times. Hoodie’s existence was known, but when the news media asked, the Congresswoman said that Hoodie was shy and did not want to be in the public eye, and as a mother she respected her daughter’s wishes more than the wishes of people who just wanted to sell newspapers or get clicks.

Hoodie had appeared in a few family videos, wearing her ubiquitous hood pulled up so far over her head, it was impossible for anyone to get a clear look at her face. Her loud voice didn’t seem particularly shy, but when the Congresswoman did an AMA on Reddit and people asked about her older daughter, she gave the keyboard over to Hoodie, who said things like, “Mom dusnt want me 2 say but u are dum. I am speshul & you peple R meen 2 speshal kids so Y wood I wanna see u? My mom and mi dad are grate but esp my SISTER best sister in world! I lik been with them. You peple not so much.” Or “Im not SHY. I just don lik you cuz your meen to peple lik me.” One time when she was thirteen she answered (with slightly better spelling than she had had previously), “So sorry you don get to see this face cuz your dyin to, I know, Im just too cool for y’all. So suck it.” After this the Congresswoman did not allow Hoodie to answer AMAs about why she refused to appear with her family.

Anne, on the other hand, always appeared with the family. She was charming and beautiful and said adorable things. When asked about her sister, she said, frowning, “My sister is wonderful, but people in this world don’t like people who are different from normal. And she’s super different, so she’s afraid if you look at her you’ll make fun of her. And I won’t let you do that. You don’t get to see her unless I know you’re good and you won’t let anyone tease her.” No photographer ever met Anne’s rigorous criteria for being good enough to see her sister, though some interviewers without cameras got to meet her a few times.

The news media’s general consensus was that “Kate”, the Congresswoman’s oldest daughter, was a special needs child who did not want to appear on camera because she was afraid of being mocked. The right wing news media’s general consensus was that the Congresswoman was deeply ashamed of her daughter and refused to allow her to appear, or possibly that the child had been murdered by the Congresswoman and she was just trying to hide her crimes by making it look like her daughter was shy. The right wing news media also relentlessly mocked her for what little they knew about her, validating all of Anne and Hoodie’s concerns, but since the Congresswoman wouldn’t let her daughters read or listen to any of the kind of media that made fun of them, they remained blissfully unaware of this.

The Congresswoman’s profile rose higher and higher. She made enemies. Some of those enemies were happy to weaponize that kind of media, and useful idiots who believed in it, against her.

One day when the Congresswoman was at home, and her girls were sixteen years of age, her house was surrounded by armed protestors, loudly chanting angry slogans. Many of them called her a child murderer, on the basis of the rumor that she had killed Hoodie, or because she supported a woman’s right to abortion, or both. The Congresswoman didn’t usually have a security detail at home, so she was very frightened of this, and wanted her daughters to lock themselves in their bedroom.

Hoodie said to Anne, “I’m gonna go out the window and take care of this, but don’t show your face at the window, ok? You could get hurt.”

“So could you! I don’t want you to take risks like that! Those people have guns!”

“Yeah, but I have a pool noodle.”

Anne allowed that this was true. If the Congresswoman or her husband had been present, they would have argued that a pool noodle was no match for a gun, but the Congresswoman was on the land line in the kitchen calling 911 and her husband was seated in front of his daughters’ bedroom with a gun of his own, declaring that if armed intruders came up the stairs he would pick them off one by one. Neither of them were actually in the locked bedroom they were trusting to protect their daughters.

Hoodie opened the window, instructing Anne to stay behind the bed and well away from the window, and ran out onto the roof of the porch. Protestors saw her and shouted. Some shouted terrible, cruel insults. Some said that since her mother was a baby murderer, it would only be fair if her baby was murdered too.

One shot at Hoodie. She whipped her pool noodle through the air so fast no one but the news cameras recording could even see her do it, knocking the bullet away. Then she jumped down on top of the man with the gun, slapping the gun away with the pool noodle as she did so. Next, she hit him in the head with the pool noodle. One would expect that hitting a man in the head with a pool noodle would be a minor annoyance, and the man himself expected that to be true, right up until the moment the pool noodle struck him and he went down like a stone.

At this close range the armed protestors knew at least enough about the weapons they carried to know they couldn’t shoot the girl without hitting their friends, so they tried to use fists, or use their guns as clubs. It seemed obvious that a teenage girl, even one wearing a hoodie that mostly hid her face, could not possibly fight off an entire mob of protestors. But things that seem obvious aren’t always as true as they seem, and Hoodie used her pool noodle to thrash protestors, gleefully, yelling out fake names for attacks that were inspired by the anime she and her sister watched, such as “Noodle Great Jutsu!” and “Spinning Helicopter Noodle Strike!”

Anne heard the commotion through the open window, and could not help but go to the window to see her sister fighting. She was amazed at Hoodie’s ability. Hoodie, for her part, could not tell her sister was at the window because she was too busy looking at the protestors she was beating the living daylights out of. One of them tried to shoot at her, got knocked over by the pool noodle… and the bullet went into Anne’s chest instead.

Hoodie heard Anne’s cry, cut short. She turned to look, saw her sister fall… and turned back to the protestors. Her hood fell off her face, and protestors cried out. On her monkey-like face, Hoodie’s rage looked like animal savagery, as if she was a gorilla who was about to tear them all limb from limb.

Fortunately – for the protestors, and perhaps for Hoodie’s police record – the cops arrived and started arresting protestors. Explanations of “The girl is crazy! She started beating people to death with a pool noodle! We had to act in self defense!” were met with raised police eyebrows and comments like “Sure, buddy, whatever” or “Shut the fuck up and get on the ground!” depending on how generally sympathetic the officer in question was to the protestors’ cause.

Hoodie ran back inside – the door was locked, but somehow, it opened for her – and raced past her mother, still on the phone. “Call an ambulance! They shot Anne!”

“What?!” the congresswoman screamed, relayed this to the 911 operator, and then dropped the phone entirely to run up the stairs after Hoodie.

Hoodie and Anne’s father had heard the shot, and Anne’s cry. He had run into the room and was trying to stanch the bleeding with a pillowcase pressed to Anne’s chest. The Congresswoman and Hoodie found him there, and Anne unconscious and covered in blood.

For the first time in her life, Hoodie knew fear. Not the unease of being seen publicly by unsympathetic people who might try to use her strangeness against her mother, but fear.

***

The doctors at the hospital had news that was not good. Not the worst, but still not good. They came out and told the anxious family that Anne was in a coma, and while she was stable and recovering physically, there was no way to know when she would wake, or even if she would.

Hoodie demanded the right to see her sister. The Congresswoman requested that they all be allowed in to see her. Upon being told that only two could come in at a time, she insisted, politely. With the implication that there might well be some very bad publicity if they didn’t let the Congresswoman and her whole family see her comatose daughter. The doctors told the nurses to make an exception, and the nurses let all three of them come in.

When Hoodie saw Anne lying in the hospital bed, she sucked in a breath. “This is bad,” she said.

“Yes, a coma is an awful thing,” the Congresswoman said, “but Anne is strong. I’m sure she’ll make it.”

“Not without help,” Hoodie said. “She’s not even in her body, that’s why she’s in a coma.”

“Uh, what?”

Hoodie had never had much patience for grownups’ ignorance when matters were important. “I need to take the car.”

Her father said, utterly discombobulated, “What would you need the car for? You don’t even have a license!”

“You don’t even know how to drive!” the Congresswoman said.

“If I can’t use the car, Anne will never wake up. This is important.” She looked both parents in the eye, one by one. “Mom, Dad… you know I don’t know what I am. And I don’t know what I can do, until it’s time to do it. But I wouldn’t joke or be weird about a thing like this. Anne’s spirit is trapped, and I have to go to her in the car.”

“Why the car?” her father asked helplessly.

“Because the train doesn’t go where I need to get to.”

“I’ll drive,” he said. “I can take you.”

“No, you’ll never get there, and neither will I if you’re driving.”

“But you don’t know how to drive!”

“I actually do,” Hoodie said. “Check the records on the EZ Pass.”

North and west of DC, many of the roads had tolls, and the same was true in the area the Congresswoman lived when she wasn’t in DC. So she had an EZ Pass, a device that could let her cross tolls and would automate her payments, in her car. She logged into her EZ Pass account, using her phone, and saw multiple trips, to places in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and others, all in the dead of night. “Kate! How did you—”

“I needed to practice driving,” Hoodie said. “Don’t worry, Anne was with me to keep me from doing anything stupid.”

“If you were taking the car out without having a license, then you already failed at not doing anything stupid,” her father said angrily.

“Oh, yeah, but actually I do have a license.” She rummaged around in the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt, and pulled out a driver’s license. “See?”

“How—”

“When—”

“It doesn’t matter! Let me have the car to go save Anne, or I’ll just steal someone else’s.”

The Congresswoman and her husband recognized that Hoodie was more than capable of stealing a car, most likely, and it would be far worse publicity if their daughter was caught with a stolen car than if she was caught driving the family car with a fake license, which… surely that had to be. Right? Hoodie was 16, so she could have gotten a license, but she’d have needed parental permission and when had she had time?

Her father drove her back home and gave her the keys to her mother’s car, since they had driven to the hospital in his. “Now you be careful. And no speeding! They can look up your license in a database, and if it’s fake it won’t be there, and you’ll end up in jail.”

Hoodie rolled her eyes. “I was born with roller skates and a pool noodle, and you think I can’t have a real license? I know you’re stressed out over Anne, Dad, but come on.”

“Well, don’t speed anyway. They’ll throw the book at a novice driver. Which you are, I don’t care how many hours you’ve driven, you’ve only been 16 for three months and the cops will be able to see that because there’s your birthdate right there. You can’t have been legally driving very long. Besides, you have a minor’s license, so you’re not supposed to be driving at night.”

“I won’t do anything I don’t have to do, Dad,” Hoodie said, and her father sighed, because he knew Hoodie would do whatever she thought was right, regardless of his or anyone’s advice.

So Hoodie took the car. The family did not actually reside in DC proper when Congress was in session anymore; they had moved when Hoodie and Anne were ten. Like many Congresspeople, the Congresswoman’s new second home, the one she lived in when she was working, was in southern Maryland right near DC. Hoodie drove in a full circle around the highway that circles DC, called the Beltway, in the direction of widdershins, three times. Then she drove in the opposite direction and got on the northbound highway heading for Baltimore.

On this highway, to get into Baltimore, one had to go through down into a deep, long tunnel that went under the harbor. Hoodie took the rightmost lane, and when an exit appeared to her at the deepest point of the tunnel, she took it. Now, you or I would never see that exit, but Hoodie knew it was there already, and so she was able to see it.

The exit took her into a different, deeper, longer tunnel, which went down and down and down, and then up and up and up, getting narrower and narrower until it was only one lane wide, and finally out into a world lit by an eerily close moon, which was full, despite it having been a quarter moon when Hoodie drove into the tunnel. The one lane highway crossed through a toll plaza. There was no EZ Pass there, only an old and wizened toll taker.

The toll taker stuck his head out the window as Hoodie approached. “What the hell, kid! You don’t belong here!”

“No, I don’t,” Hoodie agreed, “but neither does my sister, and she’s stuck here. I’m just coming to pick her up.”

“Well, you’d better have the toll! I don’t care what your reasons are, no one comes in this way without paying the toll.”

Hoodie handed over her mother’s entire collection of CDs in the car, which were largely 1970’s rock and roll with a little disco mixed in, and some Best of the 80’s hits. The toll taker scowled. “What use is this to me? I don’t have anything to play them on!”

So Hoodie parked the car, got out, and crawled back in to the back seat. She fished around on the floor until she found her mother’s old Sony Walkman, the one that took CDs, and a pair of rather ancient headphones. “Here you go! Figure this job is pretty boring. Maybe you’d like to listen to some tunes while you’re waiting for the next car to come in.”

The toll taker tested the Walkman. It played CDs, and he could hear through the headphones adequately well. “I have to admit, this is a better toll than most people give me,” he said. “All right, kid, you go on. Hope you find your sister.”

So Hoodie drove on, until the highway ended at a plaza. There were concrete cylinders blocking the car from going any further. All over the plaza, people were dancing. Some were dressed in pajamas, and some were naked, and some were wearing ordinary clothing, but they all waltzed about to the sound of weird music that didn’t quite sound perfectly like music, but if you listened to it, you couldn’t identify it as any kind of sound other than music.

Hoodie got out of the car, pushed past the cylinders, and onto the bricks of the plaza. “Scuse me, coming through!” she said, shoving dancers out of the way when they tried to take her hand and pull her into the dance. The dancers were very light, like paper, so Hoodie had no trouble getting them out of her way.

Finally, in the center of the plaza, she saw a man. Now, many have described this man, but all of their descriptions are different, so all we’ll say is, a man with glowing eyes. Hoodie watched a lot of anime, so glowing eyes didn’t particularly impress her. The man was dancing with Anne, or rather, dancing while holding onto Anne. Anne wasn’t dancing; she was shuffling to keep her balance as the man pulled her this way and that, but she was obviously trying to yank her way out of the man’s grip.

“Hey!” Hoodie yelled at the man. “That’s my sister, and she doesn’t belong here! Let go of her!”

“I don’t think so,” the man said in a voice like liquid… something. “Dear Anne came to visit us here, and she was so beautiful, I couldn’t possibly let her leave us.”

“Hoodie! I can’t get loose!” Anne yelled.

“I’m coming!”

“Are you sure that is wise, dear Kate?” the man said. “Perhaps you, too, will join our dance.”

“Not gonna happen. I’m a great roller skater and I absolutely shred on a skateboard but I can’t dance worth shit,” Hoodie said.

She tried to run toward her sister, but it seemed like the distance between her and her sister grew longer for every step she took. The man laughed. “Join the dance! You’ll be able to come close if you dance, but not if you run.”

“Huh. So how about I don’t run or dance?” Hoodie said, and her sneakers were now roller skates. She skated, with great skill and agility, over to Anne and the man, who was plainly very surprised that that had worked.

“I think he’s Death, Hoodie,” Anne said urgently, still trying to pull free.

“Yeah, I figured that out,” Hoodie said. “You better let my sister go. She’s still alive and she belongs in the world of the living.”

“Ah, but wouldn’t you say she brightens up the place? So many of my dancers are… well, they were beautiful once, but…” And now Hoodie could see that the dancers were almost all either rotting, or fully skeletal. Only a scant number of them were intact, and of them, several were bloody, disfigured by whatever injury had killed them, or burnt, or bloated.

“Look, dude, my sister’s prettier than pretty much any other person on the planet, let alone in here, but that doesn’t give you the right to hold onto her if she isn’t dead.” Hoodie grabbed her sister’s hand as they swung past each other, Anne not-dancing in Death’s grip and Hoodie roller skating.

Death pulled, and Hoodie pulled, but Anne pulled toward Hoodie, and that made the difference. She tumbled free of Death and into Hoodie’s grasp.

Death scowled at Hoodie. “Very well, then, but there are conditions! Your sister must sit in the back seat in the ride back, and you cannot look at her in the mirror or turn your head to look back, or she will be lost to you forever! Only when the car is fully out of the tunnel can you look at her or speak, and she will be unable to speak until then as well! If you fail to meet this challenge, Anne will return here and dance with me for the rest of eternity.”

Hoodie said, “You have got to be shitting me.”

And then she hit Death with her pool noodle.

Using her sister’s weight as a counterbalance, Hoodie skated this way and that, back and forth, smacking Death over and over with the pool noodle. Every time he staggered in one direction, Hoodie was there, slapping him back to the other direction. He tried to back away, but Hoodie hit him in the legs with the pool noodle, and he fell to the ground, whereupon Hoodie really started whaling on him.

“All right! All right!” Death yelled. “No conditions! Just take your sister and go!”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Hoodie said. She tried to take a step away from Death, but the distance to the car only became greater.

Hoodie looked back at Death. He smirked. “That’s not a rule I can break. That’s just the way this place works. You can’t walk here, you can only dance. Or skate, I suppose, but your sister has no skates!”

And Hoodie knew that to join the dance meant joining the dead, with all that meant.

“Anne, get on my back, you’re gonna piggyback ride on me.”

“How is that going to work? You’re the same size as me.”

“It works because I say so,” Hoodie said. “You’re my sister and I’m not leaving you here.”

So Anne got up onto Hoodie’s back, piggyback style, and Hoodie skated away toward the car, with some effort. The car had already started fading out of this reality a little bit, but as soon as Hoodie reached it, she thumped the hood and said, “This is a great car! Really nice styling! And Mom hasn’t even finished paying for it, so we’d better be able to drive it back!” After she said this, the car was entirely real again.

Anne got into the passenger seat, and Hoodie, no longer wearing roller skates, got into the driver’s seat. Hoodie started the car, and backed it up, and they drove back the entire way, past the toll taker who waved them through (a sign said TOLLS ONLY COLLECTED INBOUND), and down the highway. Because it was only one lane, it was dangerous, because any cars coming this way would be on a head-on course toward them, and the area outside of the road didn’t quite look real enough to risk driving on. But when cars came their way, Hoodie somehow managed to get the entire car onto the shoulder, where it really didn’t look like it should have fit.

They merged back into the tunnel out of Baltimore safely and drove all the way home, talking about the sorts of things they always did, like what the characters they liked in the TV shows they watched should have done or might still do, and the colleges Anne was planning to apply to, and other things like that. When they got back to the hospital, the sun was coming up.

Hoodie went through the emergency room lobby and demanded to be allowed in to see her sister. The security guard apparently could not see that her sister was right behind her. He buzzed her in, and Hoodie and Anne both went straight to where Anne’s body was lying in bed. Then Anne jumped into her body like she was jumping into a swimming pool, and opened her eyes.

“Mom? Dad?” she asked weakly.

“Anne! Oh, thank god!” her parents said, and fell all over her apologizing for allowing her to get shot, and swearing they would never let something like this happen again. Anne embraced them, and then looked at Hoodie. Hoodie winked. So Anne didn’t tell their parents anything of her trip to the land of the dead, the way Death had tried to force her to dance, or Hoodie showing up in the car.

***

The Congresswoman and her husband began lobbying for gun control – a cause the Congresswoman had always believed in, but had never actively thrown all her political power into – while Anne worked to recover her physical and mental health, and then took the tests that would allow her to graduate and go to college. Because she had been homeschooled, Anne couldn’t get a state diploma; the procedure was to go straight to taking the GED test for high school equivalency. She also took the SAT and the ACT, the tests most American children who wanted to go to college had to do. Hoodie, for her part, worked on getting very good at video games.

Anne applied to several of the best colleges, and was accepted to several of them, with nice scholarships offered as well. She visited the colleges, along with Hoodie, who had many opinions about which college Anne should choose. The Congresswoman felt a pang when she saw her strange daughter talking to Anne about college, because of course Hoodie couldn’t go; her grades had been consistently terrible her whole life, and she had never tested well on standardized tests because she got too bored, or played Connect the Dots with the little ovals she was supposed to fill in with a No. 2 pencil. The Congresswoman and her husband had never even pushed Hoodie to take the GED. But she had always hoped, in her heart of hearts, that her children would go to college. What would Hoodie do with her life? The Congresswoman had a hard time imagining any job that Hoodie would want to do that would allow her to do it. Would she have to live off her parents and sister forever?

But when Anne finally picked a college and sent off her acceptance letter, Hoodie told her parents that she was going, too.

“Kate.” The Congresswoman tried to break it to her gently. “You can’t go. I know you don’t want to be separated from Anne, but you can’t go to college without a GED.”

“You don’t think I could get a GED?”

As tactfully as she could, the Congresswoman said, “Well, it doesn’t play to any of your strong points.”

“You might want to consider a career in the trades,” her father said. “You’re strong, and talented with your hands.”

“No, I’m going to college with Anne.”

The Congresswoman sighed. “I just said you would need a GED, at the least, to even begin thinking about going to college.”

“Hang on.” Hoodie went to her spot on the sofa, where she and Anne sat to play video games or watch TV or surf ridiculous videos online. There was a tall, disorganized pile of random papers, comic books, notebooks full of notes and sketches about video games and fan art of anime, and, apparently, a GED certificate, which Hoodie pulled out to show her parents.

“When did you get that?”

“How did you get that?”

“I took the test. It wasn’t hard. I mean, just because I never bothered to do any homework doesn’t mean I wasn’t listening when you guys were teaching me.”

The certificate showed that she had a score even higher than Anne’s. Both of them were in the range where they might be able to get college credit based on their high scores.

The Congresswoman sighed. She supposed she should have expected this kind of thing from Hoodie. “Well, all right, but the college that Anne is going to requires high SAT scores, and you haven’t even taken the SAT.”

“What makes you say that? Hang on a mo.” Again Hoodie dug through the pile, and retrieved a piece of paper from the College Board, stating her SAT scores, which were again slightly higher than Anne’s.

“I’m not even surprised anymore,” Hoodie’s father said.

“All right, that’s wonderful, but Kate, you never even applied to this school. You’d have to wait until next y—oh, come on.” Because Hoodie was digging through her pile of random paper again, and eventually pulled out multiple college acceptance letters, including one from the school Anne had chosen to go to. Hers also offered a good scholarship, again slightly better than Anne’s. Although that part was relatively normal, for the second child from the same household to apply to a given school.

“So, I’m going to college with Anne,” Hoodie said again, as if it had never been in question.

“Honey… are you sure that’s what you want?” The Congresswoman wanted Hoodie to go to college, but she was afraid for her. She tried to find a way to phrase her worries tactfully. “You’re, uh, very different looking. I’ve always supported you being in the public eye as much as you want to be, but you’ve always chosen to avoid it and stay home. You won’t be able to do that in college. There’s no homeschool option, no way to avoid going to classes and being seen by everyone.”

“Because I look weird, right?”

“I never wanted to actually describe it that way…”

“Mom, you can’t hurt my feelings. I’m a weirdo. I’ve always been a weirdo, right?”

“Well, you’ve always been an unusual child.”

Hoodie grinned broadly… and her face was suddenly different. There was no moment of visible change, no transition – between one blink and the next, she went from a monkey-like face to a face much like Anne’s, though not identical. Now Hoodie’s face was beautiful, just like her sister’s, but with a sparkle of mischief and danger in her eyes where Anne had intelligence and charm. “How about this?”

The Congresswoman and her husband just stared. Finally the Congresswoman said, “Have you had the ability to look like this all this time?”

“Would you rather I have, if I did have that ability?”

“…No,” the Congresswoman finally said. “If you had the ability to look like this the whole time, but you chose not to use it, there must have been a reason. And for a moment I was thinking of the fact that your sister was shot, in part, because some of those protestors seriously believed I had killed you, because we kept you out of public at your request… but if it hadn’t been that, it would have been some other slander, because that’s the way those people operate. If they have nothing they can distort into a terrible rumor, they’ll literally make things up. So no. If you’ve had this ability but you haven’t used it, I have to assume you had a good reason.”

Hoodie laughed, and hugged her mother, and then her father. “You guys are the best,” she said, and shucked off her hooded sweatshirt for the first time in her life. Underneath she was wearing a clean pink t-shirt that said “Let your FREAK flag fly” in blue sparkly cursive, and a pair of designer jeans. “I don’t know how long I’ve been able to do this. I didn’t exactly come with a manual. I have a lot of abilities that I don’t know I have until it occurs to me to try.”

“Is this how you want to look from now on?” the Congresswoman asked.

And suddenly Hoodie’s face was her own again, and the Congresswoman felt a strange sense of relief. “Just in public, in places where I care about anyone’s opinion. If you guys don’t mind, around my family I’d rather be the self I grew up being.”

“That’s fine,” the Congresswoman said. “What about your hoodie?”

Hoodie sniffed it and frowned. “I think I’m gonna go put it in the laundry. It could use a wash.”

***

So Hoodie and Anne both went to the same college. In public, Hoodie wore her pretty face, and did not always wear her hooded sweatshirt, although she had managed to get all the stains out, somehow. In their dorm rooms, in front of her sister or either of their roommates – for the school did not allow sisters to room together – she wore her old face, the one she had grown up with.

And they both had great fun at college, and made many friends. But this is the story of how they grew up, so now it’s all told.

[lunacreativeacademy]

Do you ever come across a song that just sets the perfect mood for one of your characters?

For me it was ‘a good a reason’ by Paris Paloma.

The whole mood of the song gives dark Snow White vibes and that’s something I want to play with in my new writing project ‘Rose Red’.

Tell me in the comments below if there’s any songs that set the mood for your characters.