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bcimbatmandude · 4 years

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More Human Than Meets the Eye- A Study in Pink-part 2-chapter 3

Here’s part 2, chapter 3 guys! Thanks for the likes.

SHSHSHSHSHSHSSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

Adaline hummed to herself as she finished the last two bites of her garlic toast. Mrs. Hudson had taken pity on the young girl being left behind by her father, so she'd fixed up her favorite meal for her, other than ice cream of course. Spaghetti and meatballs.

Mrs. Hudson walked into her living room and chuckled warmly as she watched the young girl eat her dinner quite contentedly. Unlike her father, Adaline quite enjoyed eating. She did forget to do so sometimes when she got too caught up in something, but she was always more than willing to accept an offer for a meal or a snack. "Adaline dear," she began. "Don't forget to wash up when you're finished with your dinner."

Adaline looked up and smiled at her landlady. "Ok, Mrs. Hudson. Thank you again for dinner." Mrs. Hudson laughed and waved her off. "Oh it's not a bother sweetheart. Thank you for keeping me company!" Mrs. Hudson did not of course have children of her own, which was quite sad for the simple fact that the kind older woman had a sweet persona that was perfect for being a mother or grandmother. When Sherlock and Adaline first showed up at Baker Street, it wasn't very hard for Mrs. Hudson to fall in love with the child. She very quickly 'adopted' her as her grandchild, and Adaline was more than happy to act the part.

Adaline heard the front door swing open, and footsteps that could only belong to her father echoed through the flat. She looked at the time in confusion. It was still rather early, and hadn't her father told her he'd be out late? She shot up and shouted a goodbye to Mrs. Hudson, who peaked her head around the kitchen wall. "See you later dear!"

Adaline jogged up the stairs into the flat. She stepped into the living room and watched as her father went over to the kitchen area, placing a very bright pink suitcase into a chair. "You're back early, aren't you?" she asked him. Her curiosity took hold of her and she walked to the pink suitcase, examining it. Sherlock glanced at his daughter, noting that she was already dressed in her night clothes. "It didn't take as long as I thought it would," he answered her.

Sherlock looked at his daughter then and tried very hard not to laugh when she put her hands on her hips and began tapping her foot in an impatient manner. She was trying to be serious and would get upset if he laughed at her efforts. "I may or may not have left him…." he began.

"Dad!" she cried, her mouth falling open.

"Mr. John has a limp! You can't abandon a man with a limp!"

"Adaline," he sighed. "He's a grown man. He knows how to call for a taxi."

"It's still very rude to do something like that! Mr. John is a nice man. We don't do rude things to nice people dad," she scolded. He looked at her for several seconds, taking note of her pleading expression. He sighed, defeated. He supposed he wasn't setting a very good example for his daughter.

"Very well then." Sherlock took off his scarf and coat. He reached into his pocket, pulling out his cell phone and typed a quick text. He hit the send button and looked at his daughter, who was now wearing a smile on her face. "What did you say?" she asked, already having known what he was doing. "To come at once if convenient."

"What if it's not convenient?" she pointed out innocently. He paused and then scowled, sending another text out.

If inconvenient come anyway. SH

Adaline nodded, seemingly satisfied. She went over to her father's chair and plopped down, watching as he went into the kitchen. She rolled her eyes when she realized what he was doing. "How many are you going to use this time?"

"Three," he answered shortly. Sherlock pulled a box of nicotine patches out of one of the kitchen drawers. He took out the necessary patches and walked over into the living room. Rolling up his sleeves, he applied the patches on his arm and laid down on the sofa in his favorite praying position.

"Mrs. Hudson made me spaghetti," the child started, folding her feet up under her. Sherlock merely hummed and pressed on his patches, trying to release the substance more quickly. "She fixed that really tasty garlic bread I like."

Sherlock closed his eyes and listened to his daughter ramble on. He could easily block her voice out if he needed to, but he found he actually enjoyed listening to her speak about her daily activities. His eyes closed for a bit, and then snapped back open, staring at the ceiling. Adaline heard the door open and looked over to see John come through. She smiled at him in greeting and he smiled back for a second before looking over at her father.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "Nicotine patch. Helps me think." Sherlock showed John his patches and commented, "Impossible to sustain a smoking habit in London these days. Bad news for brain work." He clicked the 'k' on the end of his last word, and John looked at him incredulously. "Is that three patches?"

"It's a three patch problem," he explained simply. John looked at Adaline. "Does he do this a lot?" She simply shrugged and said, "He says breathing is boring." John rolled his eyes. "Well?" he prompted.

Sherlock opened his eyes and glanced at him in question. "You asked me to come," he continued, " I'm assuming it's important." "Oh yes, of course. Can I borrow your phone?"

"My phone.." John repeated slowly. "I don't want to use mine," Sherlock explained. "There's always a chance my number will be recognized."

"Does Mrs. Hudson not have a phone?" John questioned, voice rising a bit. "Mrs. Hudson is downstairs. I don't want to walk all the way down there just to use her phone.." he explained in a "duh" voice.

"I was on the other side of London," John exclaimed angrily.

"There was no hurry," Sherlock said innocently. John sighed angrily and looked up to the ceiling in exasperation. Adaline giggled at their antics from her father's chair. John dug around in his pocket, pulling out his phone. "Here."

Sherlock merely held his hand out towards John, palm up. John glowered at him and then stepped forward, slapping the phone into the detective's hand. John turned and walked towards Adaline before facing Sherlock again. "So what's this about the case?"

"Her case." Sherlock corrected softly.

"Her case?"

"Her suitcase, yes, obviously." Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at John. "The murderer took her suitcase. First big mistake."

"Okay, he took her case. So?" John asked.

"It's no use, there's no other way. We'll have to risk it," Sherlock quietly. His voice rose and he said, "On my desk there's a number. I want you to send a text."

"Wait a minute," John started, his temper building again. "You brought me here…to send a text?"

"Text, yes. The number on my desk."

John snatched his phone from Sherlock and ignoring his instructions, went and looked out the window. Adaline frowned, sensing John's unhappiness. "Dad," she started. "You're being very rude."

"It's alright Adaline," John soothed. "I met a friend of yours," he stated in Sherlock's direction. "A friend?" Sherlock said, wearing an expression of mild confusion. "Dad doesn't have friends Mr. John," Adaline informed him, shaking her head.

"An enemy then." Sherlock relaxed and nodded, but Adaline frowned at John. "Which one?" John looked down at her when she asked this question. She sounded quite serious. "Your arch-enemy according to him. Do people even have arch-enemies? Is that a thing?"

Sherlock looked at John, narrowing his eyes at him suspiciously. "Did he offer you money?"

"Yes."

"Did you take it?" he questioned, looking very closely at the shorter man.

"No."

"Pity. We could have split the fee. Think it through next time." Adaline nodded and John realized that they knew something he didn't. "Who is he?"

"The most dangerous man you've ever met, and not my problem right now. On my desk, the number."

John shot Sherlock a dark look, but dutifully moved towards the desk. He picked up a piece of paper taken from a luggage label. "Jennifer Wilson. That was…hang on. Wasn't that the dead woman?" "Yes," Sherlock confirmed. "Just enter the number." John shook his head but began to type the number into the phone.

"Are you doing it?"

"Yes." "Have you done it?"

"Ye…hang on!" Adaline looked at Sherlock disapprovingly. "Dad don't rush him." "Sorry dear," he replied absently. "Type these words exactly. 'What happened to Lauriston Gardens? I must have blacked out.'"

John started to type, but stopped when he heard what Sherlock was saying. He looked at him, briefly, mildly concerned.

Sherlock continued his narration. " 'Twenty-two Northumberland Street. Please come.'"

"You blacked out?" John asked, frowning at his new flat mate. "What happened?" Adaline questioned her father, her voice rising with her worry. Sherlock sat up and looked at the both of them. "Nothing happened Adaline. I did not black out." Sherlock stood up, walking over the coffee table to get to the kitchen. "Type and send it. Quickly." Sherlock went into the kitchen, grabbing the pink suitcase from the chair. He walked over to the dining table, lifting a dining chair and flipping it around, setting it down in front of the two armchairs near the fireplace. He put the suitcase into the dining chair.

Turning around, he shooed his daughter out of his chair with a flourish of his hands. She scowled, and instead of going over to the couch, decided to sit on the floor next to him and his chair. "Have you sent it?" Sherlock inquired.

Adaline looks inside, curious. She saw a few things of clothing and underwear, all an alarming shade of pink..big surpise, there…a washbag, and a paperback novel that was definitely not for young children. She picked it up to examine it, but before she could get a good look at it Sherlock had snatched it out of her hands. "I don't think so," he muttered, setting it to the side. She huffed.

John continued to stare, and Sherlock, becoming aware of the silence, looked up and studied him for a second. He rolled his eyes in irritation. "Oh, perhaps I should mention. I didn't kill her."

"I never said you did."

"Why not? Given the text I just had you send and the fact that I have her case, it's a perfectly logical assumption." "Do people usually assume you're the murderer?" John asked worriedly. Adaline nodded, and her father smirked. "Now and then, yes." Sherlock leaned back into his chair, lifting his feet up and under him. He clasped his hands under his chin.

"Okay." John limped over across the room and dropped heavily into the chair on the other side of the fireplace. "How did you get this?" he demanded. "By looking." "Where?"

Adaline listened to her father explain how he found the pink suitcase. She realized that her bottom was beginning to hurt because of the hardwood flooring, so she stood up, and plopped right into her father's lap. He grunted a little, glaring at her, as if to say, you did that on purpose. She merely smirked and cuddled back into his chest. "Took me less than an hour to find the right skip," Sherlock finished. He mindlessly began running his fingers through his daughter's hair, and John took a second to admire the sweet moment. "You got all that because you realized the case would be pink?" he asked, though he figured he shouldn't be too surprised by now.

"Well, it had to be pink, obviously," Sherlock stated. "Why didn't I think of that?" John muttered to himself. "Because you're an idiot," Sherlock stated plainly.

John looked across to him, feeling very wounded. Adaline sighed in dismay at her father's lack of tact, even as she snuggled deeper into his chest. It was definitely past her bed time…

Sherlock waved off John's shock with a placatory movement of his hand. "No, no, no, don't look like that. Practically everyone is."

"Everyone huh?" John repeated, nodding his head towards the little girl half asleep on her father's chest. Sherlock sniffed and hugged his daughter briefly. "Almost everyone." John rolled his eyes.

"Now, look. Do you see what's missing?"

"From the case? How could I?" John cried.

"Her phone," a small, very sleepy voice said suddenly. Both men looked down towards the girl. Sherlock smiled and hugged his daughter close to him. "Good job, darling," he whispered to her. "Her phone," he confirmed, a little louder so John could hear. "Where's her phone? There was no phone on the body, there's no phone in the case. We know she had one. That's her number there—you just texted it."

John shrugged. "Maybe she left it at home." Sherlock readjusted his daughter in his lap, shushing her when she murmured in disapproval. "She has a string of lovers and she's careful about it. She never leaves her phone at home." John looked at Sherlock, looked to the phone, and then back to Sherlock again. Realization came over his face. "Why did I just send that text?"

"The question, John, is where's her phone now?"

"She could have lost it," John suggested.

Sherlock nodded. "Yes, or…?" "The murderer," John started slowly, "you think the murderer has her phone?" "Maybe she left it when she left her case," Sherlock provided. "Maybe he took it from her for some reason. Either way, the balance of probability is the murderer has her phone."

John's heart beat sped up, and he could feel himself beginning to feel..panic? Yes, that had to be panic. "Sorry, what are we doing? Did I just text a murderer?!" His voice rose quite a bit for his last sentence, and Sherlock quickly reprimanded him. "Shh!" He glanced pointedly down at the child in his arms. "If she wakes up it'll be hell trying to get her to go back to sleep."

John sent him an apologetic glance, and lowered his voice. "What good will texting him do?" As if on cue, his phone begins to ring.

Withheld

Calling

He looked across to Sherlock as the phone continued to ring. "A few hours after his last victim, and now he receives a text that can only be from her. If someone had just found that phone, they'd ignore a text like that. But the murderer…" He trailed off dramatically until the phone stopped ringing.

"….would panic." Sherlock stood then, very carefully mind you, easily lifting his daughter off of his lap into his arms. He cuddled her close to his chest and headed to his bedroom. He passed John and then paused, looking back towards the man. "Do you mind?" he gestured. John instantly nodded, knowing what he meant. He pushed himself out of the chair and grabbed his cane. The two men walked towards the bedroom, John opening the bedroom door for the detective. Sherlock gave him a whispered thank you and walked over to the bed. He pulled back the covers and carefully laid his daughter down in the middle of the bed, just how she liked it. He pulled the covers around her tightly, tucking her in. John watched as Sherlock stepped back from the bed, looking around his room for a second.

He walked over to the corner of the room where a chair set, and picked something up out of the seat. When he turned around, John smiled softly at the stuffed kitten toy he held in his arms. Walking back over to the bed, he tucked the cat in close to his daughter. The girl smiled in her sleep and hugged it to her tightly. Sherlock smoothed the hair away from her face, kissed her forehead, and whispered a loving goodnight to her.

He walked out of the bedroom and grabbed the door, pulling it shut just enough to where the bedroom stayed dark, but making sure that a tiny amount of the hallway light could still be seen. He turned to face John then, and scowled when he saw the look on his face. "Not one word," he warned, eyes narrowing.

John snickered. "I wasn't going to say anything." Sherlock hummed disbelievingly. The two of them quietly walked back to the living room, Sherlock walking towards his jacket. "Have you talked to the police about all this?" John asked, watching him. "Four people are dead. There isn't time to talk to the police." "So why are you talking to me?" Sherlock reached behind the door, grabbing his greatcoat from its hook. He looked towards the mantelpiece then, noticing something missing.

"Mrs. Hudson took my skull." John huffed, "So I'm basically filling in for your skull?"

"Relax, you're doing fine," Sherlock praised, putting on his coat. John didn't move from his position. Sherlock, stopping his movements as well, lifted an eyebrow towards him. "Well?"

"Well what?" "Well, you could just sit there and watch telly," Sherlock began. "What, you want me to come with you?" John asked incredulous. "I like company when I go out, and I think better when I talk out loud. Adaline is asleep and the skull attracts attention, so…." John smiled then.

"Problem?" Sherlock questioned. "Yeah, Sergeant Donovan." Sherlock looked away in exasperation. "What about her?"

"She said you get off on this. You enjoy it."

Without missing a beat, Sherlock stated, quite nonchalantly, "And I said 'dangerous,' and here you are." Sherlock turned and walked out the door.

John sat there thoughtfully for several seconds, then angrily grabbed his cane, following his new flat mate out the door.

"Damn it!"

Thanks for reading!

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emptynarration · 4 years

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Host has power, more than anyone would think. He could manipulate reality. But how far could he take it? And what would his doctor do if he tried to manipulate him?

some of my twisted minds au!! i love my b ab i e ss ;;;;;

Tags: Fear , exploring powers , Manipulation , Swearing , lots of swearing , Choking , suffocating , Suffering , Temporary Character Death , Killing , Major Illness , Fever , Madness , Insanity , Angst and Hurt/Comfort , Sleep , Nightmares , Cuddles Words: 3612

@lamiasluck and @alvie-ashgrove and @ferociousfangirlofmanyfandoms (tell me if u wanna be tagged úwù)

He didn't feel well.

He was hiding in his room. It wasn't unusual, really. While he was usually in the doctor's clinic, he tended to hide in his room whenever the doctor became too much for him, and he just had to get away. Plus, he had collected every pillow and blanket he could from the mansion and gathered it in his room. He had a little pile of softness, and that was his favourite place to be, when he wasn't with Edward. Edward, rather than the doctor. Host had started to make a distinction between the two -Doctor Iplier was the mad one, the one who hurt him, and Edward was the “sane” one, the kind one, the one who genuinely cared about his well-being.

Host had gotten more used to his new powers. He was pretty good at the whole Seeing thing, as long as he kept narrating. And he was used to living a bit in the future now -always knowing what was going to happen a little bit before it was going to happen. And his visions... were still a mystery to him. They came unpredictably and randomly, sometimes so strong he was screaming and sobbing for an hour, sometimes as short as a minute, barely enough to make him gasp sharply. He didn't understand them, and he struggled with each one. Deciphering what they meant was nearly impossible for him; usually he was just guessing, trying to find some meaning for what he had seen. When they happened around the doctor, he had to try and explain what he's seen, even though he struggled to comprehend it all himself.

There was only one thing Host hadn't really explored yet. He knew there was something else he could do. He's.. done it, before. He remembered how he's accidentally done it to the doctor before, and.. he's tried it on his own, too. He could alter reality. He wasn't sure how well he could do it, but, he knew he could. He could do it. He was a little afraid about really trying it out though. Maybe he could... stop the doctor from hurting him. Maybe he could make sure Edward would be able to be there more, maybe Host could... make sure the doctor wouldn't come back. Host hugged his pillow tightly, afraid. Afraid of what? He knew the doctor would be angry at him if he used his powers. He knew he would be, if he used his powers on the doctor. But he should try it, shouldn't he? He could make his life that much better. He could make sure Edward would be alright, and maybe... maybe Host could even help all of the other egos as well. Could make sure they would all be okay.

“Ho~st~”, the doctor pushed open Host's door, happily walking inside. Host tensed, looking towards the man. Of course he'd come right when he thought of him. “There's my lovely! What are you doing here?”, Iplier hummed, walking over to Host. Host knew the doctor would grab his pillow to pull it away from him, and then get him to his feet to pull him along with him. “Iplier stops in his tracks.”, Host narrated softly, trying to put all his intent into it. Iplier would stop. He'd stop walking. Host wanted him to stop, so he would. And Iplier did stop, freezing in his tracks. Eyes widening as he looked at Host. “The doctor feels calm, listening to Host. He feels the madness slip from his mind leaving-”, Host gasped when Iplier wrapped his hand around Host's throat suddenly, glaring bloody murder at Host. He had broken through Host's narrations, seeing how unused Host was to narrating things that weren't yet true.

“You stupid little fuck.”, Iplier growled, his grip on Host's throat hard enough to cut off all air-supply for him, his hands moving to clutch onto Iplier's wrist. “You think you can manipulate me? How fucking dare you. You're mine, and not some high and mighty fucker.”, he grabbed Host's hair with his free hand, yanking his head back to expose more of his throat, letting the doctor see his thin skin stretch uncomfortably. “Stupid fucking brat. I'll teach you not to fuck with me again.”, Iplier's voice was an angry growl, and Host couldn't breathe, pulling at Iplier's wrist, unable to get it away. He was dizzy, he needed to breathe, but Iplier wasn't letting him. “I fucking dare you to try that shit again.”, Host heard Iplier say, before his consciousness slipped from him, and soon Iplier had managed to choke his pet to death. Even once Host wasn't moving any more, Iplier kept his hand wrapped tightly around his throat for a couple more minutes, before letting go and standing up.

When Host woke up about twelve hours later again, he could feel the hard steel table beneath him, the bright fluorescent light buzzing above him. He squirmed slightly, narrations slowly buzzing through his mind. “Iplier?..”, Host mumbled. He knew he was in the clinic. He could remember having angered Iplier, trying to narrate him. What had he done wrong? Maybe he hadn't wanted it enough? Maybe... he supposed he hadn't been confident enough in his words. He hadn't trusted himself enough. He hadn't trusted his powers to work. But they had, at first. “Ah, awake, are we?”, Iplier scoffed, walking over to where Host laid. “I hope you've learned your lesson now.”, he still sounded unhappy, making Host squirm uncomfortably. He didn't want him to be still angry at him, but maybe.. maybe he could help himself, now that he knew what he's done wrong. Iplier grabbed Host's chin, making sure the blind ego was facing him, his grip tight. He had something new to try out for Host anyways -he'd make sure his darling would suffer some more for what he's tried to do.

Letting go of Host, Iplier walked away to go grab the syringe he had prepared. Host's quiet narrations were still mumbled, but he was taking deep breaths to brace himself for what he was going to try and do. “Iplier was searching for the virus he's made to infect the Host with, struggling with finding it. It was frustrating, and Host's constant mutters behind him didn't help. He slowly felt his frustrations fade away, blinking confusedly. What was he doing again?”, Host narrated softly. He put all his confidence into his words, putting as much power into them as he could manage. His mumbled narrations told him that it was working, and he tried to continue. He needed Edward to be here, to help him, so that Iplier wouldn't continue to bother him. He was a little afraid of the doctor, but... he needed him. But Edward- Edward was good. Edward would love him properly, right? “The doctor feels confused, looking back over at Host. He had wanted to do something to him, right? Or with him? He slowly walked back over to Host, feeling something bubbling inside of him.”, Host kept narrating, tense as Iplier did what he was narrating. He was still a little afraid to fail.

Iplier walked over to Host, looking down at him with a blank expression. Host was afraid. He didn't know how to speak more, what to narrate. He was afraid. He didn't want to make Iplier mad at him, he only wanted Edward to be there with him and help him. “Edward?”, Host said softly. Maybe letting him forget about what he had wanted to do to him was help enough. Maybe Edward would be helping him instead of making him sick. “Host.”, a smile found its way onto the doctor's lips, making Host relax slightly. He sounded fond, kind. It was- it gave Host some hope. “Of course. There's my sweetheart.”, Iplier chuckled, running a hand through Host's hair, before letting it slide down to Host's neck. His free hand went into his pocket, grabbing something. Host wasn't narrating enough to know what it was. “How could I forget about you?”, Iplier hummed, leaning down over Host. He kissed him gently, Host relaxing at the gentle affection. Until suddenly Iplier stabbed the syringe into his neck, making Host gasp. “My stupid little fucktoy was supposed to host a new virus!”, Iplier smirked, holding tightly onto the side of Host's neck, fingers digging into the bruises there. “You're fucking stupid. Thinking you could try that little trick again on me. Not with me, cunt.”.

Host whimpered as he felt Edward inject whatever was inside of the syringe into him, gasping and whimpering as he felt it spread inside of his body. It hurt, it was uncomfortable, is squeezed through his veins. “D-doctor-”, he gasped, hands clenching into his coat, writhing on the table. It hurt, it hurt- it hurt! He was breathing in a panic, but all that Iplier did was laugh, loud and booming, echoing, filling Host's head with a headache. “That's what you get you stupid whore. I've told you, I'll kill you however often I have to. I'll burn it into your stupid little brain. You're mine.”, Iplier growled, gripping Host's hair tightly, yanking his head back, pressing his free hand hard down on Host's chest. “And a stupid bitch like you won't get to use any sort of powers on me.”, Iplier's voice was a dangerous growl, making Host whimper in fear. He had just wanted to be safe, and happy. He had just wanted Edward with him. “T-the- the Host's sorry- so sorry-”, Host sobbed, gasping for air he seemed to be unable to get into his lungs. It hurt, he felt like his lungs were being squeezed and crumbled up into tiny balls, ready to be thrown into the trash. He was hot and cold at the same time, he was sweating and wanting to get out of his clothes, but he was shaking and shivering.

“Shut the fuck up, stupid cunt. You better listen to me instead of thinking on your own.”, Iplier scoffed, leaning down over Host, putting his weight on his hands, pressing harder onto Host's neck and chest. “I-I'm sorry-”, Host couldn't help but sob breathlessly. He was gasping more and more, unable to breathe, his head full of stuffy cotton. It pressed against his skull a pressure behind his eyes trying to burst free. It hurt, extremely, and Host was yapping for breath, unable to get any air back into his lungs. “You're going to be when I'm done with you, stupid whore.”, Iplier smirked, chuckling in amusement as he watched Host struggling beneath him. He loved the pure panic Host was showing him, how he wasn't able to breathe, how he was choking and writhing in pain. Until there was no air getting into Host's lungs any more, and he was suffocating, throat closed up. Iplier chuckled and laughed at Host's state, until Host stopped writhing, growing motionless once more. It was always such an amusement, watching Host struggling until his life left him.

Host was out for more than a day, coming back to himself sometime in the evening of the next day. He felt horrible. He was nauseous, bile burnt in the back of his throat. He was dizzy, laying down wasn't helping it either. He was sweating, his clothes and hair stuck uncomfortably on him, but he was shivering terribly. His breaths were wheezing. He felt like he couldn't breathe, his throat felt too tight. He tried to move, but his limbs felt like lead. He wanted to curl up and die -but he knew he had just died, and it didn't help him in the slightest. It just made it worse, though at least he wasn't in so much pain any more.

“Ah, my little fucktoy's awake again.”, Iplier sauntered over, and Host could only whimper pathetically in reply. Iplier carded his fingers through Host's sweaty strands, touch almost gentle, if it weren't for how hard he scratched over Host's scalp. Host couldn't form any words, just little pained and breathless sounds leaving him. Iplier chuckled, moving to pick Host up off of the table -it made him whine painfully, laying limp in Iplier's arms. Every movement hurt, Host couldn't breathe when he was moved, but there was nothing he could do. “Lesson learned, I presume.”, Iplier hummed, carrying Host to a different room inside of the clinic -one of the private patient rooms, though they weren't really used much any more. Iplier laid Host down on the bed -which wasn't the most comfortable, but better than the metal table- and wrapped him into blankets so he was nice and warm. “Hh...”, Host squirmed, uncomfortable in the warmth, but there was nothing he could do at all. He was suffering, unable to grasp any thoughts and having no willpower to even attempt speaking. “Now now sweetheart, it'll be quite alright. You shouldn't be dying again from this. And if you do, oh well.”, Iplier chuckled, shrugging. Host most definitely had a fever, so he wouldn't be surprised if Host died from a too high fever. It had hit him full force when he gotten back to his body again, after all.

Host made a desperate and pathetic sound, unable to do anything. He could barely think, he couldn't get himself to speak. He was just suffering miserably, and all he wanted was some comfort, something good for him. But he wasn't getting that, and Iplier fully ignored him as he left again, leaving Host alone in bed to suffer. Host couldn't sleep with all of this. The fever, the inability to breathe properly, how hot and cold he was. He was extremely nauseous, feeling ready to throw up at any moment, but not enough he actually had to. He just hoped that it wouldn't get worse again, because he wasn't sure he could actually manage that again. He would have to suffer through this, until it finally got better. Too bad for him that it didn't get better any time soon. He was suffering for days, bound to bed and dependent on Iplier taking care of him. Which wasn't a lot, but at least Iplier made sure he stayed hydrated and got some food in him. That Host could barely keep anything down didn't exactly matter to the doctor.

After a week or so, it finally got better. At least a little bit -he could breathe a little easier, his fever was starting to go down again. He still couldn't leave the bed, moving was hard, he felt sluggish, his head was swimming when he did so much as sitting up. “Host?”, the doctor's voice was hesitant, and Host knew it must be Edward. He whimpered, shifting to reach out towards the man. Edward hurried over to Host, gently taking his hand and pushing his sweaty hair out of his face. “I'm here now Host. It's alright.”, Edward murmured softly. Host sobbed softly, still breathless, though at least he could breathe enough that sobbing was manageable and didn't leave him choking. Edward gently hushed Host's sobbing, reassuring him that he was alright. Once Host had calmed down, Edward gently and softly helped Host sit up, rubbing his back lightly. Host was sniffling, thankful when Edward helped him clean up. “I'll help you to the bathroom, okay? Let's get you cleaned up properly, and into some fresh clothes. And let's try and eat something too, okay?”, Edward spoke softly. Host whimpered softly, but he nodded lightly. He felt unsteady on his feet, clinging to Edward as they walked slowly.

Getting cleaned up was a lot of work, and Host had gotten close to throwing up, but he felt a bit better when he was clean and in fresh clothes. Thankfully going back to bed was easier, where he sat alone, waiting for Edward to come back. “There we are.”, Edward smiled when he came back with food, walking over to Host and sitting down next to him. Host leaned against Edward, shivering even though he had a blanket wrapped around him. “Come on. It's just some soup, it'll help you.”, Edward murmured. It was a hearty soup, and hopefully it'd help Host's nausea settle a little, as well as give him something easy to eat. “O-okay...”, Host managed. He let Edward help him eat, though he didn't get through much before he felt too nauseous to continue. Edward didn't mind, setting the bowl aside, and gently held Host against his side. “I'm sorry you have to go through this. I don't know about anything to help you heal faster.”, Edward murmured. He wished he could help Host, make sure he didn't have to stay so sick, but... he just didn't know how. He could help a the symptoms he knew Host had, but that was about it.

“Here, I have something for your fever. And then let's try to sleep a little.”, Edward said softly, gently rubbing Host's side. He wished he could do more, but there was only so much he could do, without knowing what exactly was wrong. “Ed..”, Host whimpered softly, holding onto Edward. He didn't want the doctor to leave him. He didn't want Edward's kindness to ever leave him. He didn't want Edward to succumb to his madness again. “It's okay. I'm here with you.”, Edward spoke softly, gently pressing a kiss to Host's temple. Even “sane”, Edward held a great fondness for Host, unable to help the slight possessiveness. It was just in his being, he couldn't help it. The doctor's madness was as much part of him as it wasn't, by now. Edward soon let go of Host, so he could help him take his medicine. Host whimpered, unhappy, but he knew Edward was just trying to help. And he knew it'd help, because Edward always helped him, no matter what.

Once the medicine was taken, Edward helped Host lay back down, gently tucking him in. He stayed at Host's side then, gently playing with Host's hair, murmuring soft reassurances to him. Host held onto Edward's free hand, happy to feel Edward's soft hand in his own. Until Host eventually drifted off to sleep. It wasn't an easy rest, his illness and visions making it hard to enjoy sleep. He was squirming and panting in his sleep, whimpering and whining. Everything was horrible, he was barely able to stay asleep -though he was more unable to wake up rather than wanting to stay asleep. When he woke up again, Host was sweating again, breath wheezing as he felt strangled. Which may be because of how Iplier was wrapped around him, holding him tight to himself. He seemed to be asleep himself, though he was holding Host tight enough he could be awake. Host knew it was better to let the man sleep. He didn't want to wake him up, afraid that Iplier would get mad at him if he did. He didn't want to anger Iplier again, he didn't want to suffer any more than he already had. He knew he would still get to suffer, because Iplier loved to make him suffer. “Mh...”, Iplier hummed, nuzzling into Host's hair, making the sick man tense and squirm uncomfortably. He didn't want to be in this position. He just wanted to be left alone, but he knew that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

He could save himself. He could use his powers, and- no. No. He wouldn't use his powers, not ever again. Iplier had made it clear that he shouldn't be using them, that he would kill him as much and often as he had to in order to keep him from using them. Host wouldn't use them again. He knew he could save himself, if he did use them. He knew that. He knew he had that power. But he also knew that he shouldn't. He shouldn't, and he wouldn't. He wouldn't use his powers again, because Iplier would murder him, over and over, and he would hate his whole existence even more than he already did if Iplier kept killing him. He curled up as much as he could, trying to get his breath back, trying to breathe and stay calm. Sadly he couldn't be calm, he couldn't be peaceful in this situation. He whimpered and clung to Iplier, letting him pull him closer to the other's chest. Even if Iplier wasn't... good, at least he kept him safe from the other egos. He kept him safe from everyone. And no matter how many times Iplier killed him...

Host sniffled, trying not to cry as he was held, cuddled into Iplier's chest. He'd keep him safe, he'd hold him, he'd let him cry. And sure, he made him sick and killed him, but he also made sure he got healthy again, and got what he deserved. And Iplier loved him, didn't he? In some capacity? And Edward too. And if there was no Iplier, there'd be no Edward either. So Host had to take what he was given, and that was usually whatever Iplier decided on giving him and doing to him. “Mhh... my lovely..”, Iplier murmured, nuzzling further into Host's hair, curled around the smaller male. He loved his little toy, and he'd make sure his little toy would always stay with him in turn. He caressed Host's arm lightly, happy to hold his pet in his arms. Host just let him, let this happen, sniffling and gasping for breath in-between, needing the reassurance that he wasn't alone. Even if all he had was Iplier, the madness that resided in the doctor. At least he was his. At least he belonged to him.

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#admin writing #twisted minds au #the host #dr iplier #dr iplierst #temporary character death cw #murder cw #swearing cw #suffocating cw #choking cw

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scrappydooisfoundaliveinnebraska · 4 years

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Nobody Had to Die: [Batman The Brave and Bold Fanfic]

To me, the saddest thing about ‘Mitefall’ isn’t that the show got cancelled. The saddest thing was that nobody had to die.

“POWER TO THE PUPPY!” Punchichi yells.

Bat-Mite giggles. “Sound familiar?”

He’s not talking to me. He doesn’t know that I’m here, yet. He’s just doing it for himself.

All the same, I answer him.

“It does,” I admit softly.

I’ve been watching this episode, and the more I watch it, the more unsettled I get.

And not for reasons that Bat-Mite seems to expect.

And I’ve finally had enough.

He’s not exactly unhappy to see me. He’s having too much of a blast to be bubble-burst that easily.

“Hello, stranger!” He says. “I don’t remember creating you! Are you Punchichi’s hip new babysitter?! Cousin Olive to his Cousin Oliver?!”

I don’t react for a moment.

Then I take a step forward.

Bat-Mite, intimidated, tries to zap away, only to find he can’t.

He is a reality warper, but I am the narrator.

I have the high ground.

He can’t escape.

We have to settle this.

“I remember Cousin Oliver,” I snap, as he stares at me, helpless with shock. “I remember learning his story when I was searching for Punchichi’s doppelganger,”

“And don’t tell me. You’re the one fan of him, a loon to be taken down. Well, I’m feeling merciful today, so allow me to teach you a little lesson.”

He snaps his fingers, and a small boy appears. The child is clearly very young, and he’s definitely from an era long past-with his long, pale blonde hair and bangs, and his round spectacles, he looks like a baby John Lennon, a figure that I’m a bit more familiar with thanks to my father’s musical taste.

“Welcome to the Cousin Oliver show!” He chirps at me. “Want to watch me forever?”

“Are you OK?” I ask him quietly.

Bat-Mite clearly expected either over the top cheering or over the top disgust, not quiet sympathy.

As a result of his surprise, Oliver spasms, and his round face is filled with pain.

“Do you really expect me to demonize this child?” I ask Bat-Mite. “He’s only eight.”

“Nobody knows, nobody cares,” Bat-Mite sings.

I step closer to Oliver, my hands stretched out to shield him from any horrible plan Bat-Mite has for him.

Oliver, for his part, just stares into space, grinning hugely.

My heart twists. It’s not right.

Bat-Mite rolls his eyes at my emotion. “Oh, still going all sympy-wympy on Cousin Oliver, are we?!” He grins like a loon. “Well then! now you can be stuck with him forever!”

I feel chains clasp around my wrists and ankles, as Bat-Mite forces my body into my chair. Less than a foot away, on a stage, is Oliver, but he’s changed.

Oliver’s face distorts and he begins to grow more deformed. He begins to sing about

Throwing money at the corporate executives. He’s on the part about money when I lift my hand a bit.

“Bat-Mite?”

“Yeah?” He snickers.

“Can you lengthen the chains on my arm a bit? And bring Oliver closer to me.”

Bat-Mite smirks. He thinks he knows what I’m going to do.

“Oliver! Your audience has a surprise for you!”

Oliver makes a noise that sounds like a dying bear and a lunatic before shambling to me.

I do something he doesn’t expect.

I place my hand on his shoulder. I was supposed to just watch him. Or, as Bat-Mite appears to hoped, punch him in the face.

He looks at me in surprise, but he doesn’t shake away my touch.

“I never knew Cousin Oliver.” I whisper. “I was born long after he was gone.”

“Well, if you think that we were wrong about him,” Bat-Mite cackles from somewhere nearby, “Then you’re in for a surprise!”

If he expected me to cringe and back away in fear, he’s dreadfully mistaken. I stand my ground and close my eyes.

“I don’t know much about the brady bunch, Oliver,” I whisper. “But I know that it was about a family of ordinary people. And I know that family is always changing. You’re just an ordinary kid, aren’t you, Oliver?”

Oliver nods quietly. He begins to return to himself, as he truly was.

The bubble bursts. I always had the power to escape, but that would mean leaving Oliver with his tormentor, which is unacceptable.

Oliver looks dazed, but his eerie robotic effect is gone. The ordinary little boy I knew he was is here.

Oliver looks around. “Wh-where am I?!”

“Oliver,” I say softly, trying to get his attention.

He squirms back.

“Ahh! Stranger Danger! Who are you?!” He screams, as he looks around at 2011

Malibu, as far from a fifties suburb as they come.

The eight year old boy begins to sob in confusion, as only eight year old children can.

I kneel down infront of him.

“I can help you,” I explain. I’m vaguely aware of Bat-Mite dropping a hydrogen bomb on us, but without even turning around, I turn it into a pomegranate and chuck it into the ocean.

“I want my mommy,” He whimpers.

“Ssshhhh,” I whisper. “Don’t worry. Just let me help you,”

“Take me to mommy,”

“Soon,” I answer, as soothingly as I can. “Soon, kid. Don’t worry.”

He buries his head into my stomach. I think about how much of an ordinary child he is, how he was always intended to be, regardless of the show or where or when he was added. I think about how much I want to protect him.

A bubble forms around him. “Trust me, OK?” I say. He nods. Between me and Bat-Mite, there is little conflict in his choice.

With Oliver safe for the time being, I turn back to Bat-Mite, who is just in the middle

of preparing to slam a chainsaw on my head. Since I’m really sick of this, I just poof it away

without ceremony.

“BATMITE! You have to stop this, NOW!” I yell. “I may not know Oliver enough to be a fan of him, but I know from the bottom of my heart that I am NOT a fan of murdering innocent children because some immature adults decided to blame them for everything they went wrong! Oliver Tyler died in a car-crash,” (I make sure the bubble around Oliver becomes soundproof, so he doesn’t have to hear) “And that nobody saved him because of you! You turned his family against him! People like you ostracised him! A little boy! Introduced in the middle of a season with the fate of the show set!”

“They weren’t his family! He wasn’t real!”

“If he’s NOT REAL, THEN WHY DOES HIS PAINFUl, LONELY DEMISE MATTER SO MUCH TO YOU!?”

Bat-Mite just stares at me. He’s completely at a loss.

I finally have him on the ropes. But I can’t rest now. I have to drive it home, before he bounces back.

“If they weren’t his family, then how do you know that Batman is your hero?” I say. “You’re a fictional character too.”

“That’s different! I am a well accepted part of the canon!”

“Well, even if he’s not, he looks, talks, and acts like a kid to me,” I say, pointing at him. “I could argue that Batman is secretly just a loon in a mental hospital and that every single story is just through his eyes of madness. Would that become the truth, if everyone believed it?”

“NOBODY WOULD BELIEVE IT!!!” Bat-Mite screams at me. “DESECRATOR!”

“How do you know that Batman isn’t just a man with a wonderful wife and daughter who he loves, and that this cold world where children and young women being murdered is celebrated-”

“THEY’RE NOT CHILDREN!” Bat-Mite screams. He is ripping the world apart, through the reality-warping equivalent of a massive temper tantrum.

But I keep a little piece safe, and the people of this world float and forget this strange twisting of dimensions.

Because I am the one telling this story. I cannot be touched if I don’t let him. And the little boy in my care won’t be, either. Or the ones whose heads Batman is messing with. Because I can NEVER let a child be hurt. This is more important then TV.

“I MADE THEM!” Bat-Mite cries, one last desperate plea to convince me to leave them to suffer at his hands. “Oh, you did, did you? They don’t seem to know you even exist.”

“They couldn’t! I needed to keep absolute secrecy-oooohhh...” He turns away in a gesture of petulant defeat.

I don’t fully trust him, no matter what his motives are at this point, so I don’t lower any boundaries.

Knock, Knock. I turn and see Oliver trying to get my attention, politely knocking on the bubble’s shield like the relic of a bygone era.

I let him out into my bigger bubble.

He skids up to me. “Miss? Can I go home now?”

I look at him, and I feel sad, because none of this needed to happen.

None of this was his fault; not in the past, and not in the present.

And even if it was, taking it all out on him wouldn’t do jack.

“Please Miss,” Oliver says, mistaking my hesitation for refusal. “You said you would help me. And I really want to go home.”

My eyes sting. “Of course you do, Oliver. Of course you do,”

I close my eyes, and, far away from Bat-Mite’s prying eyes, he’s home, with family who will truly take care of him. His parents came home.

Bat-Mite howls. His favorite punching bag of all is gone. He’ll never find him. I’ll never let him find him, not when he has murder and hate on his mind, when he seeks to blame an innocent instead of growing up and seeing the flipside.

The world of storytelling can be hard to define. What’s popular is not always right. What’s right is not always popular. Sometimes the crowd refuses to accept a bit of cannon, sometimes reality just clashes to hard, sometimes-and sometimes there is just far too much at stake to not stand firm for your own beliefs.

“No more dead kids,” I whisper.

Bat-Mite blows a raspberry at me.

I grab Punchichi just before Batman deals the final reality wiping blow. He’s here with me.

“Put ‘em up!” He yells. “I can take you!”

I reach into my pocket and throw a white hankie into the air; a sign of surrender. Then I kneel down and smile at him. “Hi, Punchichi,” I say.

He stares up at me. “Who are you?”

So sweet. So happy. Bat-Mite was counting on everyone being too wrapped up in themselves to see the character for who he was made to be.

“Don’t worry, Punchichi,” I tell him. “It’ll be OK. I just really wanted to meet you. You look so much like someone I know. I love him so much. I love how happy and noble and brave he was. I know you’ll be a great hero. I know you have the right heart.”

I touch his forehead, remembering every time Scrappy did something like crash through a solid wall or something noble or a heart-melting moment with him and Scooby. Now he has the puppy power too.

And then I bring in Kiki Wayne and Helen Wayne to my safe, safe bubble where nobody has to get hurt.

“This is Kiki,” I tell him.

The two children squeal at the sight of eachother.

“A puppy?!” Kiki exclaims.

“A neighbor?!”

And just like that, they’re friends.

I smile. It’s nothing like the Batman that anyone knows, but it’s beautiful in its own way to me. Innocent and joyful and full of so much potential. Not worth being created only to be thrown away. “Have fun, you two,”

They both grin at me. Bat-Mite thought of them, but he didn’t care about them. I won’t let him hurt them.

Next is Batman’s wife.

“Thank you for existing,” I say. “Thanks for being a good mom and a good companion to Batman. You must have done something right for him to develop as a character.”

She just looks at me. Oliver, Kiki, and Punchichi, with the child-like innocence, accepted me and thus, I could reach them.

“Who are you?” She asks. She has taken a fighting stance. She need not be worried. I’ll be brief.

“A friend,” I close my eyes. She’s not gone. She’s safe, where she can raise her cherished daughter in peace.

Punchichi and Ace are there too. Children do make a difference. But they are also the future. And no child should be treated as a tool of destruction.

“C’mon, I needed the realism,” Bat-Mite pleads. Given his nature, he heard my inner musings. “If I had just made them into empty minions, then nobody would’ve hated them. It takes a brave soul to take down a child who needs to-”

“No! Nobody in their right mind kills children! Nobody! Zilch! Zap!” I say. “And you know, Bat-Mite, I didn’t ruin anything. The show was already ending. This was the finale. The fate of this show was already set in stone when you started work on it. Even if you hadn’t played any of your mind games with Batman, then the show still would have been cancelled. The cancellation was part of the story too. You didn’t actually break the fourth wall at all.”

“WHHA?! NO!!-So what was the point of this?!” Bat-Mite demands.

I give him a bittersweet smile.

“Zilch.” I say. “Zippo. Goose egg. Just writers messing around.”

He gawks at me, and I need to do one last thing. I send Bat-Mite somewhere, anywhere, I don’t care, I just don’t want him to be able to hurt anybody anymore.

I only have one thing left to settle.

Later, somewhere else

“Batman.” I say. “I saw the show. I know it was already ending. The family you were given was a red herring, the writers knew the show was ending. I don’t know if Ambush Bug was lying to you, or if he was just another tool. But I know how happy you were to have a daughter. And I know that I don’t want you to be the kind of person who kills people for no reason. Even if you do it without guns.”

He gives me a long look, trying to place my face, and when he realizes he can’t, I’ve already made a nice tough force field. Being the narrator can do a lot of things, but it can’t give me the skills to believably beat Batman in a one-on-one.

So he just continues to look at me.

“Your daughter gave you the will to protect Gotham,” I said. “How do you know that wasn’t real?”

“She wasn’t mine,” “What about your wife? Did you even try to figure out if she was lying to you, or just as clueless a pawn as you were?”

“Was she?” Batman is quick to ask.

“No. She wasn’t. She was too kind to really be just a mindless puppet. Plus Bat-Mite is too lazy to actually put that much work into an illusion.” On this, Batman needs no convincing.

“Plus Bat-Mite is kinda messed up, so I don’t think that he could convincingly fake such well-adjusted individuals,”

Batman nods. “He would know what they looked like, though…”

“So he could copy the inner workings, and let them be real, to trick you better,” I press.

“Batman, is your job to protect Gotham, or be a star on a TV show?” “But all of this is a TV show!” Batman said. “If that’s the only thing I can count on, then that should be the only thing that matters.”

“......Batman, hit me,”

“...No.”

“Because if you did, then I would crumple like a paper tiger, and that would be bad for me.” I smile at him. “None of that would matter if we weren’t real,” “...So, am I real?” “Your story is real. Just think about everything. It doesn’t have to go dark. The story goes on even when nobody’s looking. It lives on in time and fate. It lives on in the words and drawings that remain, even when nobody pays any attention to them. It lives on in the seeds of fate woven in the narrative, that softly point to the future. If you pander to people who willingly kill children, you are no better then if you mindlessly plow on for the sake of money.”

“Batman, think about what it was like with your wife and your daughter. Don’t think about what the people watching felt, think about how you felt.” I’ve seen the episode. He loved them. He loved having worked past enough of his issues to have someone to protect. Punchichi’s skill with the surfboard and his companionship for Kiki was something any father and hero would want in a friend or a sidekick. And who cares how

flashy the new equipment is as long as it helps you do your job and protect them?

Batman gulps. “Helen...Kiki...can I get them back?”

“They’re both A-OK.”

Batman is quiet for a long time. “Can they ever forgive me?” “There’s only one way to find out,” I whisper.

“Thank you…”

He’s not a puppet for fans of the corporation. He’s a fleshed out character who wants his family back, after having an established bond with them.

And now, he has some fences to mend. Choices to make.

I know no matter what happens, no matter what Mrs. Wayne chooses, everything will be OK.

The kids are alright. Kiki will have her mom and Punchichi. Batman will not kill because random people tell him the fate of the world depends on it.

And best of all, nobody had to die.

Batman’s story lives on, maybe not in a way that makes the viewers happy, but in a way where Batman can grow, and isn’t just a toy in the hands of megafans. Oliver is reunited with his parents, the ones who truly cared about him.

It’s the best ending for me, and right now the story’s in my hands.

I feel happy.

And based on that, I can finally say, and they all lived happily ever after.

#mitefall #batman #batman the brave and the bold #fix fic #bat-mite #ace the bathound #Helen Wayne #Scrappy doo #punchichi

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angryteapot · 5 years

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Book One

Book One // Book Two // Book Three // Book Four // #tea reads Masterlist

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Stories (The Harlan Ellison Collection)

~ Harlan Ellison

Synopsis: This collection consists of seven “groundbreaking and inventive tales that probe the depths of mortal experience...” all packed into one relatively thin book. These short stories are unrelated, incredibly unique, and slightly disturbing. I was riveted from start to finish, and my morbid self loved every moment of reading this.

The title in itself is fascinating.

A/N: For those of you who missed my intro post, Here’s the gist of this thing: I’m trying to read more books this year, so I’ve taken to documenting them and writing out some of my favorite quotes from whatever I’m reading! Once I finish a book, I’ll make a post with a summary of the books and the quotes I like best!

If you’re interested in new reads or just quotes, and would like to be tagged, send me an ask or dm! If you have any reading recommendations, send them my way!

If you wanna blacklist these posts, I’ll be tagging them #tea reads

I’m always up for a discussion on whatever I post, or life in general, so come talk to me! Have questions, theories, complaints, deep thoughts? Come talk to me! x ~ Tea <3

*Synopsis and Quotes for each tale are below the cut!

[I HAVE NO MOUTH, AND I MUST SCREAM]

Synopsis: In an post-apocalyptic world, four men and one woman are all that is left of the human race. The cause of the apocalypse? An AI programmed to wage war on behalf of its creators. The AI (named AM) became self-aware and turned against humanity.

The five humans are held captive and tortured in a cyber world created by the AI, doomed to an eternity of horrors invented by the hateful and sadistic machine.

Quotes: Unless stated otherwise, quotes are taken from Ted, the Narrator.

“We couldn’t even see it, but there was the ponderous impression of bulk, heaving itself toward us. Great weight was coming at us, out o the darkness, and it was more a sense of pressure, of air forcing itself into a limited space, expanding the invisible walls of a sphere.”

“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.” ~ AM

“AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong.”

“He withdrew, murmuring to hell with you. And added, brightly, but then you’re there, aren’t you.”

““Give us weapons!” [Nimdok] demanded... and there were two crude sets of bows and arrows, and a water pistol, lying on the cold deckplates. I picked up a set. Useless.”

“In that instant, I felt terribly calm. Surrounded by madness... surrounded by everything but death, I knew death was our only way out... Not total defeat, but at least peace. I would settle for that.”

“There was an eternity beat of soundless anticipation...”

“Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. Here. Living. under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better.”

“I have no mouth. And I must scream.”

[BIG SAM WAS MY FRIEND]

Synopsis: Johnny Lee, the Narrator, is part of a circus composed of normies and enhanced folks. But this is no ordinary circus - the Teeper Circus travels the galaxy, performing for royalty and commoners on various settled worlds. Johnny Lee tells the story of how his friend, Big Sam, died searching for his true love. Big Sam’s lady love died on their home planet, but he says that she went to Heaven. And Heaven? Well Big Sam believes that Heaven is a planet and he’s determined to find it, and his lady love, as he travels the galaxy with Johnny Lee and the circus.

Quotes: Unless stated otherwise, quotes are taken from Johnny Lee, the Narrator.

“So what, you can always find another friend someplace around.”

“... had left her a jangle-nerved, heaped-up body of hate and fury.”

“... brought to the edge of tragedy...”

“... there was a deep, infinite sadness about him that sometimes made me want to cry...”

[EYES OF DUST]

Synopsis: In a “perfect” world, a blind man and a woman with a mole on her cheek do not belong. On planet Topaz, a world dedicated to beauty, imperfection cannot be endured. Broomall and Ordak, the blind man and the moley woman, married and lived on the outskirts of Topaz. They started their life together, and soon had a child - a boy named Person. The boy was defective, blind and grotesque, and was hidden away by his parents in a locked cellar. This is the tale of Person, the boy with sunken pockets for eyes... eyes of dust.

Quotes: Unless stated otherwise, quotes are taken from the Narrator. (none of the characters are the narrator in this tale)

“Each... was a note in a great symphony of perfection.”

“I have my shadows and my colors. And there is the smell of time passing. I need nothing more.” ~ Person

“The eyes of dust... The gray of storm clouds. The gray of feelings most unhappy, and of death. The eyes that seemed to see so deeply, yet could see nothing.”

“First there was light, and then there was no-light. First there was heat, and then there was no-heat. And - First there was love, and then there was no-love. But in its place did not come the absence of love, the emptiness that the going of the light and heat had left. Another moved to take its place. In its place came hate.”

“But the night sky rang out with the stifled and fading shrieks that would never entirely pass. And as the clouds passed before two of the moons, loosing so much like the eyes of dust, it was clear that Topaz had cursed itself with ugliness.”

[WORLD OF THE MYTH]

Synopsis: On a crash-landed spaceship with his companions Iris Crosse and Wayne Rennert, Cornfeld (the Narrator) must survive the unknown planet until a rescue craft comes. But the planet is inhabited - by a colony of massive ant-like creatures that twist and reflect deep, dark thoughts and mind images. Will the three crash survivors stay alive long enough to be rescued, or will they succumb to the madness shown to them by the ants?

* Warning: rape is mentioned and quickly/vaguely depicted in a scene or two, in case anyone was planning on finding the book and reading.

if anyone is triggered by rape, please skip this part. my chosen quotes are not about the horrendous act, but a few could be mistaken for that.

Quotes: Unless stated otherwise, quotes are taken from Cornfeld, the Narrator.

“... her face masked over with an expression of pain and torture.” - in reference to a hallucination after the crash.

“There had been death and sadness unable to be borne. A dam had burst inside her, and the world had lost all light... The misery, the aching, the loneliness and the hunger for no-sorrow.” - in reference to a creature-induced vision of a sorrowful being.

“The devils disappeared and a great death’s head was there, unmoving, with a quizzical expression on its fleshless face.”

“Ask them what you are. Ask them to show you what you are inside, the image of yourself.” ~ Cornfeld to Rennert

“The ants were all darkness and life ... and truth.”

“... They showed him the essence of himself.” ~ Cornfeld to Iris

[LONELYACHE]

Synopsis: Paul Reed, a lonely and bitter divorcee, tries to fill the angry void in his life. In a dark corner of his cold apartment, there is the beginnings of a nightmarish monster, and the monster grows with each sinful action Paul takes. This is the story of how the monster takes form.

Quotes: Unless stated otherwise, quotes are taken from Paul Reed, the Narrator.

“... hearing the vapors of night and time and existence passing by without purpose or validity.”

“... and timorously, fawn-like in a deep foreboding forest, it came...”

Genesis refers to sin that coucheth at the door, or croucheth at the door, and so this was no new thing, but old, so very old, as old as the senseless acts that had given it birth, and the madness that was causing it to mature, and the guilty sorrow - the lonelyache - that would inevitable cause it to devour itself and all within its sight.”

“But commercialism is the last sinkhole of love, and when it is reached, bu paths of desperation and paths of cruel, musused emotions - all hope is gone. There is no return save by miracles, and there are no more miracles for the common among common men.”

“How I wish I could forget Those happy yesteryears, That have left A rosary of tears.”

“They trembled there together in a nervous symbiosis, each deriving something from the other. He was covered with a thin film of horror and despair, a terrible lonelyache that twisted like smoke, thick and black within him. The creature giving love, and he reaping heartache, loneliness.”

[DELUSIONS FOR A DRAGON SLAYER]

Synopsis: Warren Glazer Griffin, a painfully ordinary man, dies an unexpected death. And this tale is one of his peculiar journey in an unexpectedly strange afterlife.

Quotes: Unless stated otherwise, quotes taken from Warren Glazer Griffin, the Narrator.

“Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.” ~Goethe

“... the air was alive with multi-colored whispers of delight.”

“Because it is dreams, special dreams, in which you exist. What you have to do is live up to them.”

“No, listen, please, because after this, all the magic stops, and you have to do it alone.” ~ The Wizard

“It was all the fireworks of another universe, just once hurled into an onyx sky, left to burn away whatever life was possible.”

“The colors came from the air and the island and the world itself, which hushed and hurried across the world to here, to meet when they were needed...”

[PRETTY MAGGIE MONEYEYES]

Synopsis: Kostner is a sad, lonely wash-up who’s down on his luck in Las Vegas. Maggie Moneyeyes was the woman that died at The Chief, the silver dollar slot machine at a casino. Kostner uses the last dollar to his name, on the very machine that now houses Maggie’s soul. This is a tale of love and treachery, an old game that goes way back.

Quotes: Unless stated otherwise, quotes are taken from Kostner, the Narrator.

“▪️ out of fog ▪️out of weightlessness ▪️ suddenly total cellular knowledge... ▪️ billows of forever ▪️ edges of the world as they splintered... ▪️ trapped and doomed alone in a mist-eaten nowhere”

“Now looking out from within, from inside the limbo that had become her own purgatory, Maggie was trapped... The prison of her final desires, where she had wanted to be, completely trapped in that last instant of life between life/death. Maggie, gone inside; all soul now; trapped for eternity in the cage soul of the soulless machine. Limbo. Trapped.”

“I’ve been waiting for you. A long time, I’ve been waiting for you...” ~ Maggie

“It’s on a cosmic scale of improbability with three dark planets crashing into our sun within the next twenty minutes.” ~ Jules Hartshorn (Casino Owner)

““Think nothing of it.” “I’m afraid that will be impossible.” “A lot of impossible things are happening lately.” ~ Kostner, Jules Hartshorn (Casino Owner)

“... blue eyes deep as the past...”

“Then it unrolled for Kostner. The past unrolled and he saw who he was. He saw himself alone... For years and months and days and hours, with no one... But no one to whom he could cleave, and cling, and belong. It was that way till Susie, and with her he had found light. He had discovered the scents and aromas of a spring that was eternally one day away. He had laughed, really laughed, and known with her it would at last be all right. So he had poured all of himself into her, giving her everything; all his hopes, his secret thoughts, his tender dreams; and she had taken them, taken him, all of him, and he had known for the first time what it was to have a place to live, to have a home in someone’s heart. It was all the silly and gentle things he laughed at in other people, but for him it was breathing deeply of wonder.”

“The final loneliness ...”

And that concludes Book One, my lovelies! If you managed to read through even part of this and found a quote you liked, my heart will be happy.

Thanks for stopping by my blog! x

~ Tea <3

#tea reads #book one #the harlan ellison collection #harlan ellison #book #books #quote #quotes #i have no mouth and i must scream #big sam was my friend #world of the myth #lonelyache #delusion for a dragon slayer #pretty maggie moneyeyes

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unsettlingshortstories · 3 years

Text

Black Man With a Horn

T.E.D. Klein (1980)

The Black [words obscured by postmark] was fascinating - I must get a snap shot of him.

H. P. LOVECRAFT, rOSTC~,RO TO r. HOFFMANN PRICE, 7/23/1934

There is something inherently comforting about the first-person past tense. It conjures up visions of some deskbound narrator puffing contemplatively upon a pipe amid the safety of his study, lost in tranquil recollection, seasoned but essentially unscathed by whatever experience he's about to relate.

It's a tense that says, 'I am here to tell the tale. I lived through it.'

The description, in my own case, is perfectly accurate - as far as it goes. I am indeed seated in a kind of study: a small den, actually, but lined with bookshelves on one side, below a view of Manhattan painted many years ago, from memory, by my sister. My desk is a folding bridge table that once belonged to her. Before me the electric typewriter, though somewhat precariously supperted, hums soothingly, and from the window behind me comes the familiar drone of the old air conditioner, waging its lonely battle against the tropic night. Beyond it, in the darkness outside, the small night-noises are doubtless just as reassuring; wind in the palm trees, the mindless chant of crickets, the muffled chatter of a neighbour's TV, an occasional car bound for the highway, shifting gears as it speeds past the house...

House, in truth, may be too grand a word; the place is a green stucco bungalow just a single story tall, third in a row of nine set several hundred yards from the highway. Its only distinguishing features are the sundial in the front yard, brought here from my sister's former home, and the jagged little picket fence, now rather overgrown with weeds, which she had erected despite the protests of neighbours.

It's hardly the most romantic of settings, but under normal circumstances it might make an adequate background for meditations in the past tense. 'I'm still here,' the writer says, adjusting to the tone. (I've even stuck the requisite pipe in mouth, stuffed with a plug of latakia.) 'It's over now,'

he says. 'I lived through it.'

A comforting premise, perhapsú Only, in this case, it doesn't happen to be true. Whether the experience is really 'over now' no one can say; and if, as I suspect, the final chapter has yet to be enacted, then the notion of my 'living through it' will seem a pathetic conceit.

Yet ! can't say I find the thought of my own death particularly disturbing. I get so tired, sometimes, of this little room, with its cheap wicker furniture, the dull outdated books, the night pressing in from outside ú.. And of that sundial out there in the yard, with its idiotic message. 'Grow old along with me...'

I have done so, and my life seems hardly to have mattered in the scheme of things. Surely its end cannot matter much either.

Ah, Howard, you would have understood.

That, boy, was what I call a travel-experience! – H.P LOVECRAFT, 3/12/1930

If, while I set it down, this tale acquires an ending, it promises to be an unhappy one. But the beginning is nothing of the kind; you may find it rather humorous, in fact - full of comic pratfalls, wet trouser cuffs, and a dropped vomit-bag.

'I steeled myself to endure it,' the old lady to my right was saying. 'I don't mind telling you I was exceedingly frightened. I held on to the arms of the seat and just gritted my teeth. And then, you know, right after the captain warned us about that turbulence, when the tail lifted and fell, flip-flop, flip-flop, well -' she flashed her dentures at me and patted my wrist, ' - I don't mind telling you, there was simply nothing for it but to heave.'

Where had the old girl picked up such expressions? And was she trying to pick me up as well?

Her hand clamped wetly round my wrist. 'I do hope you'll let me pay for the dry cleaning.'

'Madam,' I said, 'think nothing of it. The suit was already stained.'

'Such a nice man!' She cocked her head coyly at me, still gripping my wrist. Though their whites had long since turned the colour of old piano keys, her eyes were not unattractive. But her breath repelled me. Slipping my paperback into a pocket, I rang for the stewardess.

The earlier mishap had occurred several hours before. In clambering aboard the plane at Heathrow, surrounded by what appeared to be an aboriginal rugby club (all dressed alike, navy blazers with bone buttons), I'd been shoved from behind and had stumbled against a black cardboard hatbox in which some Chinaman was storing his dinner; it was jutting into the aisle near the first-class seats. Something inside sloshed over my ankles - duck sauce, soup perhaps and left a sticky yellow puddle on the floor. I turned in time to see a tall, beefy Caucasian with an Air Malay bag and a beard so thick and black he looked like some heavy from the silent era. His manner was equally suited to the role, for after shouldering me aside (with shoulders broad as my valises), he pushed his way down the crowded passage, head bobbing near the ceiling like a gas balloon, and suddenly disappeared from sight at the rear of the plane. In his wake I caught the smell of treacle, and was instantly reminded of my childhood: birthday hats, Callard and Bowser gift packs, and after-dinner bellyaches.

'So very sorry.' A bloated little Charlie Chan looked fearfully at this departing apparition, then doubled over to scoop his dinner beneath the seat, fiddling with the ribbon.

'Think nothing of it,' I said.

I was feeling kindly towards everyone that day. Flying was still a novelty. My friend Howard, of course (as I'd reminded audiences earlier in the week), used to say he'd 'hate to see a~roplanes come into common commercial use, since they merely add to the goddam useless speeding up of an already overspeeded life.' He had dismissed them as 'devices for the amusement of a gentleman'-

but then, he'd only been up once, in the twenties, and for only as long as $3.50 would bring. What could he have known of whistling engines, the wicked joys of dining at thirty thousand feet, the chance to look out a window and find that the earth is, after all, quite round? All this he had missed; he was dead and therefore to be pitied.

Yet even in de. ath he had triumphed over me...

It gave me something to think about as the stewardess helped me to my feet, clucking in professional concern at the mess on my lap - though more likely she was thinking of the wiping up that awaited her once I'd vacated the seat. 'Why do they make those bags so slippery?' my elderly neighbour asked plaintively. 'And all over this nice man's suit. You really should do something about it.' The plane dropped and settled; she rolled her yellowing eyes. 'It could happen again.'

The stewardess steered me down the aisle towards a restroom at the middle of the plane. To my left a cadaverous young woman wrinkled her nose and smiled at the man next to her. I attempted to disguise my defeat by looking bitter - 'Someone else has done this deed!' - but doubt I succeeded.

The stewardess's arm supporting mine was superfluous but comfortable; I leaned on her more heavily with each step. There are, as I'd long suspected, precious few advantages in being seventy-six and looking it - yet among them is this: though one is excused from the frustration of flirting with a stewardess, one gets to lean on her arm. I turned toward her to say something funny, but paused; her face was blank as a clock's.

'I'll wait out here for you,' she said, and pulled open the smooth white door.

q~hat will hardly be necessary.' I straightened up. 'But could you - do you think you might find me another seat? I have nothing against that lady, you understand, but I don't want to see any more of her lunch.'

Inside the restroom the whine of the engines seemed louder, as if the pink plastic walls were all that separated me from the jet stream and its arctic winds. Occasionally the air we passed through must have grown choppy, for the plane rattled and heaved like a sled over rough ice. If I opened the john I half expected to see the earth miles below us, a frozen grey Atlantic fanged with icebergs.

England was already a thousand miles away.

With one hand on the door handle for support, I wiped off my trousers with a perfumed paper towel from a foil envelope, and stuffed several more into my pocket. My cuffs still bore a residue of Chinese goo. This, it seemed, was the source of the treacle smell; I dabbed ineffectually at it.

Surveying myself in the mirror - a bald, harmless-looking old baggage with stooped shoulders and a damp suit (so different from the self-confident young fellow in the photo captioned 'HPL and disciple') - I slid open the bolt and emerged, a medley of scents. The stewardess had found an empty seat for me at the back of the plane.

It was only as I made to sit down that I noticed who occupied the adjoining seat: he was leaning away from me, asleep with his head resting against the window, but I recognized the beard.

'Uh, stewardess - ?' I turned, but saw only her uniformed back retreating up the aisle. After a moment's uncertainty I inched myself into the seat, making as little noise as possible. I had, I reminded myself, every right to be here.

Adjusting the recliner position (to the annoyance of the black behind me), I settled back and reached for the paperback in my pocket. They'd finally got round to reprinting one of my earlier tales, and already I'd found four typos. But then, what could one expect? The front cover, with its crude cartoon skull, said it all: 'Goosepimples: Thirteen Cosmic Chillers in the Lovecraft Tradition.'

So this is what I was reduced to - a lifetime's work shrugged off by some blurb-writer as 'worthy of the Master himself,' the creations of my brain dismissed as mere pastiche. And the tales themselves, once singled out for such elaborate praise, were now simply - as if this were commendation enough - 'Lovecraftian.' Ah, Howard, your triumph was complete the moment your name became an adjective.

I'd suspected it for years, of course, but only with the past week's conference had I been forced to acknowledge the fact: that what mattered to the present generation was not my own body of work, but rather my association with Lovecraft. And even this was demeaned: after years of friendship and support, to be labelled - simply because I'd been younger - a mere 'disciple.' It seemed too cruel a joke.

Every joke must have a punchline. This one's was still in my pocket, printed in italics on the folded yellow conference schedule. I didn't need to look at it again: there I was, characterized for all time as 'a member of the Lovecraft circle, New York educator, and author of the celebrated collection Beyond the Garve.'

That was it, the crowning indignity: to be immortalized by a misprint! You'd have appreciated this, Howard. I can almost hear you chuckling from - where else? - beyond the garve...

Meanwhile, from the seat next to me came the rasping sounds of a constricted throat; my neighbour must have been caught in a dream. I put down my book and studied him. He looked older than he had at first - perhaps sixty or more. His hands were roughened, powerful looking; on one of them was a ring with a curious silver cross. The glistening black beard that covered the lower half of his face was so thick as to be nearly opaque; its very darkness seemed unnatural, for above it the hair was streaked with grey.

I looked more closely, to where beard joined face. Was that a bit of gauze I saw, below the hair?

My heart gave a little jump. Leaning forward for a closer look, I peered at the skin to the side of his nose; though burned from long exposure to the sun, it had an odd pallor. My gaze continued upward, along the weathered cheeks towards the dark hollow of his eyes. They opened.

For a moment they stared into mine without apparent comprehension, glassy and bloodshot. In the next instant they were bulging from his head and quivering like hooked fish. His lips opened, and a tiny voice croaked, 'Not here.'

We sat in silence, neither of us moving. I was too surprised, too embarrassed, to answer. In the window beyond his head the sky looked bright and clear, but I could feel the plane buffeted by unseen blasts, its wingtips bouncing furiously.

'Don't do it to me here,' he whispered at last, shrinking back into his seat.

Was the man a lunatic? Dangerous, perhaps? Somewhat in my future I saw spinning headlines:

'Jetliner Terrorized ... Retired NYC Teacher Victim ...' My uncertainty must have shown, for I saw him lick his lips and glance past my head. Hope, and a trace of cunning, swept his face. He grinned up at me. 'Sorry, nothing to worry about. Whew! Must have been having a nightmare.' Like an athlete after a particularly tough race he shook his massive head, already regaining command of the situation. His voice had a hint of Tennessee drawl. 'Boy' - he gave what should have been a hearty laugh - 'I'd better lay off the Kickapoo juice!'

I smiled to put him at his ease, though there was nothing about him to suggest that he'd been drinking. 'That's an expression I haven't heard in years.'

'Oh, yeah?' he said, with little interest. 'Well, I've been away.' His fingers drummed nervously impatiently? - on the arm of his chair.

'Malaya?'

He sat up, and the colour left his face. 'How did you know?'

I nodded towards the green flight-bag at his feet. 'I saw you carrying that when you came aboard.

You, uh - you seemed to be in a little bit of a hurry, to say the least. In fact, I'm afraid you almost knocked me down.'

'Hey.' His voice was controlled now, his gaze level and assured. 'Hey, I'm really sorry about that, old fella. The fact is, I thought someone might be following me.'

Oddly enough, I believed him; he looked sincere - or as sincere as anyone can be behind a phony black beard. 'You're in disguise, aren't you?' I asked.

'You mean the whiskers? They're just something I picked up in Singapore. Shucks, I knew they wouldn't fool anyone for long, at least not a friend. But an enemy, well ... maybe.' He made no move to take them off.

'You're - let me guess - you're in the service, right?' The foreign service, I meant; frankly, I took him for an ageing spy.

'In the service?' He looked significantly to the left and right, then dropped his voice. 'Well, yeah, you might say that. In H/s service.' He pointed towards the roof of the plane.'You mean - ?'

He nodded. 'I'm a missionary. Or was until yesterday.'

Missionaries are infernal nuisances who ought to be kept at home. – H.P LOVECRAFT, 9/12/1925

Have you ever seen a man in fear of his life? I had, though not since my early twenties. After a summer of idleness I'd at last found temporary employment in the office of what turned out to be a rather shady businessman - I suppose today you'd call him a small-time racketeer - who, having somehow offended 'the mob,' was convinced he'd be dead by Christmas. He had been wrong, though; he'd been able to enjoy that and many other Christmases with his family, and it wasn't till years later that he was found in his bathtub, face down in six inches of water. I don't remember much about him, except how hard it had been to engage him in conversation; he never seemed to be listening.

Yet talking with the man who sat next to me on the plane was all too easy; he had nothing of the other's distracted air, the vague replies and preoccupied gaze. On the contrary, he was alert and highly interested in all that was said to him. Except for his initial panic, in fact, there was little to suggest he was a hunted man.

Yet so he claimed to be. Later events would, of course, settle all such questions, but at the time I had no way to judge if he was telling the truth, or if his story was phony as his beard.

If I believed him, it was almost entirely due to his manner, not the substance of what he said. No, he didn't claim to have made off with the Eye of Klesh; he was more original than that. Nor had he violated some witch doctor's only daughter. But some of the things he told me about the region in which he'd worked - a state called Negri Sembilan, south of Kuala Lumpur seemed frankly incredible: houses invaded by trees, government-built roads that simply disappeared, a nearby colleague returning from a ten-day vacation to find his lawn overgrown with ropy things they'd had to burn twice to destroy. He claimed there were tiny red spiders that jumped as high as a man's shoulder 'there was a girl in the village gone half-deaf because one of the nasty little things crawled in her ear and swelled so big it plugged up the hole' - and places where mosquitoes were so thick they suffocated cattle. He described a land of steaming mangrove swamps and rubber plantations as large as feudal kingdoms, a land so humid that wallpaper bubbled on the hot nights and bibles sprouted mildew.

As we sat together on the plane, sealed within an air-cooled world of plastic and pastel, none of these things seemed possible; with the frozen blue of the sky just beyond my reach, the stewardesses walking briskly past me in their blue-and-gold uniforms, the passengers to my left sipping Cokes or sleeping or leating through In-Flite, I found myself believing less than half of what he said, attributing the rest to sheer exaggeration and a Southern regard for tall tales. Only when I'd been home a week and paid a visit to my niece in Brooklyn did I revise my estimate upward, for glancing through her son's geography test I came upon this passage: 'Along the

[Malayan] peninsula, insects swarm in abundance; probably more varieties exist here than anywhere else on earth. There is some good hardwood timber, and camphor and ebony trees are found in profusion. Many orchid varieties thrive, some of extraordinary size.' The book alluded to the area's 'rich mixture of races and languages,' its 'extreme humidity' and 'colourful native fauna,'

and added: 'Its jungles are so impenetrable that even the wild beasts must keep to well-worn paths.'

But perhaps the strangest aspect of this region was that, despite its dangers and discomforts, my companion claimed to have loved it. 'They've got a mountain in the centre of the peninsula - ' He mentioned an unpronounceable name and shook his head. 'Most beautiful thing you ever saw. And there's some really pretty country down along the coast, you'd swear it was some kind of South Sea island. Comfortable, too. Oh, it's damp all right, especially in the interior where the new mission was supposed to be - but the temperature never even hits a hundred. Try saying that for New York City.'

I nodded. 'Remarkable.'

'And the people,' he went on, 'why, I believe they're just the friendliest people on earth. You know, I'd heard a lot of bad things about the Moslems - that's what most of them are, part of the Sunni sect - but I'm telling you, they treated us with real neighbourliness ú.. just so long as we made the teachings available, so to speak, and didn't interfere with their affairs. And we didn't. We didn't have to. What we provided, you see, was a hospital - well, a clinic, at least, two RNs and a doctor who came twice a month - and a small library with books and films. And not just theology, either.

All subjects. We were right outside the village, they'd have to pass us on their way to the river, and when they thought none of the lontoks were looking

they'd just come in and look around.''None of the what?'

'Priests, sort of. There were a lot of them. But they didn't interfere with us, we didn't interfere with them. ! don't know that we made all that many converts, actually, but I've got nothing bad to say about those people.'

He paused, rubbing his eyes; he suddenly looked his age. 'Things were going fine,' he said. 'And then they told me to establish a second mission, further in the interior.'

He stopped once more, as if weighing whether to continue. A squat little Chinese woman was plodding slowly up the aisle, holding on to the chairs on each side for balance. I felt her hand brush past my ear as she went by. My companion watched her with a certain unease, waiting till she'd passed. When he spoke again his voice had thickened noticeably.

'I've been all over the world - a lot of places Americans can't even go to these days - and I've always felt that, wherever I was, God was surely watching. But once I started getting up into those hills, well...' He shook his head. 'I was pretty much on my own, you see. They were going to send most of the staff out later, after I'd got set up. All I had with me was one of our grounds keepers, two bearers, and a guide who doubled as interpreter. Locals, all of them.' He frowned. 'The grounds keeper, at least, was a Christian.''You needed an interpreter?'

The question seemed to distract him. 'For the new mission, yes. My Malay stood me well enough in the lowlands, but in the interior they used dozens of local dialects. I would have been lost up there. Where I was going they spoke something which our people back in the village called agon di-gatuan - "the Old Language." I never really got to understand much of it.' He stared down at his hands. 'I wasn't there long enough.'

Trouble with the natives, I suppose.'

He didn't answer right away. Finally he nodded. 'I truly believe they must be the nastiest people who ever lived,' he said with great deliberation. 'I sometimes wonder how God could have created them.' He stared out the window, at the hills of cloud below us. ~hey called themselves the Chauchas, near as I could make out. Some French colonial influence, maybe, but they looked Asiatic to me, with just a touch of black. Little people. Harmless looking.' He gave a small shudder.

'But they were nothing like what they seemed. You couldn't get to the bottom of them. They'd been living way up in those hills I don't know how many centuries, and whatever it is they were doing, they weren't going to let a stranger in on it. They called themselves Moslems, just like the lowlanders, but I'm sure there must have been a few bush-gods mixed in. I thought they were primitive, at first, I mean, some of their rituals - you wouldn't believe it. But now ! think they weren't primitive at all. They just kept those rituals because they enjoyed them!' He tried to smile; it just accentuated the lines of his face.

'Oh, they seemed friendly enough in the beginning,' he said. 'You could approach them, do a bit of trading, watch them breed their animals. You could even talk to them about Salvation. And they'd just keep smiling, smiling all the time. As if they really liked you.'

I could hear the disappointment in his voice, and something else.

'You know,' he confided, suddenly leaning closer, 'down in the lowlands, in the pastures, there's an animal, a kind of snail, the Malays kill on sight. A little yellow thing, but it scares them silly: they believe that if it passes over the shadow of their cattle, it'll suck out the cattle's life-force. They used to call it a

"Chaucha snail." Now I know why.''Why?' I asked.

He looked around the plane, and seemed to sigh. 'You understand, at this stage we were still living in tents. We had yet to build anything. Well, the weather got bad, the mosquitoes got worse, and after the grounds keeper disappeared the others took off. I think the guide persuaded them to go. Of course, this let me-'

Wait. You say your grounds keeper disappeared?'

'Yes, before the first week was out. It was late afternoon. We'd been pacing out one of the fields less than a hundred yards from the tents, and I was pushing through the long grass thinking he was behind me, and I turned around and he wasn't.'

He was speaking all in a rush now. I had visions out of 1940s movies, frightened natives sneaking off with the supplies, and I wondered how much of this was true.

'So with the others gone, too,' he said, 'I had no way of communicating with the Chauchas, except through a kind of pidgin language, a mixture of Malay and their tongue. But I knew what was going on. All that week they kept laughing about something. Openly. And I got the impression that they were somehow responsible. I mean, for the man's disappearance. You understand? He'd been the one I trusted.' His expression was pained. 'A week later, when they showed him to me, he was still alive. But he couldn't speak. I think they wanted it that way. You see, they'd - they'd grown something in him.' He shuddered.

Just as that moment, from directly behind us came an inhumanly high-pitched caterwauling that pierced the air like a siren, rising above the whine of the engines. It came with heart-stopping suddenness, and we both went rigid. I saw my companion's mouth gape as if to echo the scream. So much for the past; we'd become two old men gone all white and clutching at themselves. It was really quite comical. A full minute must have passed before I could bring myself to turn around.

By this time the stewardess had arrived and was dabbing at the place where the man behind me, dozing, had dropped his cigarette on his lap. The surrounding passengers, whites especially, were casting angry glances at him, and I thought I smelled burnt flesh. He was at last helped to his feet by the stewardess and one of his teammates, the latter chuckling uneasily.

Minor as it was, the accident had derailed our conversation and unnerved my companion; it was as if he'd retreated into his beard. He would talk no further, except to ask me ordinary and rather trivial questions about food prices and accommodations. He said he was bound for Florida, looking forward to a summer of, as he put it, 'R and R,' apparently financed by his sect. I asked him, a bit forlornly, what had happened in the end to the grounds keeper; he said that he had died. Drinks were served; the North American continent swung towards us from the south, first a finger of ice, soon a jagged line of green. I found myself giving the man my sister's address - Indian Creek was just outside Miami, where he'd be staying - and immediately regretted doing so. What did I know of him, after all? He told me his name was Ambrose Mortimer. 'It means "Dead Sea,"' he said. 'From the Crusades.'

When I persisted in bringing up the subject of the mission, he waved me off. 'I can't call myself a missionary anymore,' he said. 'Yesterday, when I left the country, I gave up that right.' He attempted a smile. 'Honest, I'm just a civilian now.'

'What makes you think they're after you?' I asked. The smile vanished. 'I'm not so sure they are,' he said, not very convincingly. 'I may just be getting paranoid in my old age. But I could swear that in New Delhi, and again at Heathrow, I heard someone singing - singing a certain song. Once it was in the men's room, on the other side of a partition; once it was behind me on line. And it was a song I recognized. It's in the Old Language.' He shrugged. 'I don't even know what the words mean.'

'Why would anyone be singing? I mean, if they were following you?'

'That's just it. I don't know.' He shook his head. 'But

I think - I think it's part of the ritual.''What sort of ritual?'

'I don't know,' he said again. He looked quite pained, and I resolved to bring this inquisition to an end. The ventilators had not yet dissipated the smell of charred cloth and flesh.

'But you'd heard the song before,' I said. 'You told me you recognized it.'

'Yeah.' He turned away and stared at the approaching clouds. We were passing over Maine.

Suddenly the earth seemed a very small place. 'I'd heard some of the Chaucha women singing it,' he said at last. 'It was a sort of farming song. It's supposed to make things grow.'

Ahead of us loomed the saffron yellow smog that covers Manhattan like a dome. The 'No Smoking' light winked silently on the console above us.

'I was hoping I wouldn't have to change planes,' my companion said presently. 'But the Miami flight doesn't leave for an hour and a half. I guess I'll get off and walk around a bit, stretch my legs.

I wonder how long customs'11 take.' He seemed to be talking more to himself than to me. Once more I regretted my impulsiveness in giving him Maude's address. I was half tempted to make up some contagious disease for her, or a jealous husband. But then, quite likely he'd never call on her anyway; he hadn't even bothered to write down the name. And if he did pay a call - well, I told myself, perhaps he'd unwind when he realized he was safe among friends. He might even turn out to be good company; after all, he and my sister were practically the same age.

As the plane gave up the struggle and sank deeper into the warm encircling air, passengers shut books and magazines, organized their belongings, made last hurried forays to the bathroom to pat cold water on their faces. I wiped my spectacles and smoothed back what remained of my hair. My companion was staring out the window, the green Air Malay bag in his lap, his hands folded on it as if in prayer. We were already becoming strangers.

'Please return seat backs to the upright position,' ordered a disembodied voice. Out beyond the window, past the head now turned completely away from me, the ground rose to meet us and we bumped along the pavement, jets roaring in reverse. Already stewardesses were rushing up and down the aisles pulling coats and jackets from the overhead bins; executive types, ignoring instructions, were scrambling to their feet and thrashing into raincoats. Outside I could see uniformed figures moving back and forth in what promised to be a warm grey drizzle. 'Well,' I said lamely, 'we made it.' I got to my feet.

He turned and flashed me a sickly grin. 'Good-bye,' he said. 'This really has been a pleasure.' He reached for my hand.

'And do try to relax and enjoy yourself in Miami,' I said, looking for a break in the crowd that shuffled past me down the aisle. 'That's the important thing just to relax.'

'I know that.' He nodded gravely. 'I know that. God bless you.' I found my slot and slipped into line. From behind me he added, 'And I won't forget to look up your sister.' My heart sank, but as I moved towards the door I turned to shout a last farewell. The old lady with the eyes was two people in front of me, but she didn't so much as smile.

One trouble with last farewells is that they occasionally prove redundant. Some forty minutes later, having passed like a morsel of food through a series of white plastic tubes, corridors, and customs lines, ! found myself in one of the airport gift shops, whiling away the hour till my niece came to collect me; and there, once again, I saw the missionary.

He did not see me. He was standing before one of the racks of paperbacks - the so-called

'Classics' section, haunt of the public domain - and with a preoccupied air he was glancing up and down the rows, barely pausing long enough to read the titles. Like me, he was obviously just killing time.

For some reason - call it embarrassment, a certain reluctance to spoil what had been a successful goodbye - I refrained from hailing him. Instead, stepping back into the rear aisle, I took refuge behind a rack of gothics, which ! pretended to study while in fact studying him.

Moments later he looked up from the books and ambled over to a bin of cellophane-wrapped records, idly pressing the beard back into place below his right sideburn. Without warning he turned and surveyed the store; I ducked my head towards the gothics and enjoyed a vision normally reserved for the multifaceted eyes of an insect: women, dozens of them, fleeing an equal number of tiny mansions.

At last, with a shrug of his huge shoulders, he began flipping through the albums in the bin, snapping each one forward in an impatient staccato. Soon, the assortment scanned, he moved to the bin on the left and started on that.

Suddenly he gave a little cry, and I saw him shrink back. He stood immobile for a moment, staring down at something in the bin; then he whirled and walked quickly from the store, pushing past a family about to enter.

'Late for his plane,' I said to the astonished salesgirl, and strolled over to the albums. One of them lay faceup in the pile - a jazz record featuring John Coltrane on saxophone. Confused, I turned to look for my erstwhile companion, but he had vanished in the crowd hurrying past the doorway.

Something about the album had apparently set him off; I studied it more carefully. Coltrane stood silhouetted against a tropical sunset, his features obscured, head tilted back, saxophone blaring silently beneath the crimson sky. The pose was dramatic but trite, and I could see in it no special significance: it looked like any other black man with a horn.

New York eclipses all other cities in the spontaneous cordiality and generosity of its inhabitants - at least, such inhabitants as I have encountered. – H.P LOVECRAFT, 9/29/1922

How quickly you changed your mind! You arrived to find a gold Dunsanian city of arches and domes and fantastic spires... or so you told us. Yet when you fled two years later you could see only

'alien hordes.'

What was it that so spoiled the dream? Was it that impossible marriage? Those foreign faces on the subway? Or was it merely the theft of your new summer suit? I believed then, Howard, and I believe it still, that the nightmare was all your own; though you returned to New England like a man re-emerging into sunlight, there was, I assure you, a very good life to be found amid the shade. I remained - and survived.

I almost wish I were back there now, instead of in this ugly little bungalow, with its air conditioner and its rotting wicker furniture and the humid night dripping down its windows.

I almost wish I were back on the steps of the natural history museum where, that momentous August afternoon, I stood perspiring in the shadow of Teddy Roosevelt's horse, watching matrons stroll past Central Park with dogs or children in tow and fanning myself ineffectually with the postcard I'd just received from Maude. I was waiting for my niece to drive by and leave off her son, whom I planned to take round the museum; he'd wanted to see the life-size mockup of the blue whale and, just upstairs, the dinosaurs...

I remember that Ellen and her boy were more than twenty minutes late. I remember too, Howard, that I was thinking of you that afternoon, and with some amusement: much as you disliked New York in the twenties, you'd have reeled in horror at what it's become today. Even from the steps of the museum I could see a curb piled high with refuse and a park whose length you might have walked without once hearing English spoken; dark skins crowded out the white, and mambo music echoed from across the street.

I remember all these things because, as it turned out, this was a special day: the day I saw, for the second time, the black man and his baleful horn.

My niece arrived late, as usual; she had for me the usual apology and the usual argument. 'How can you still live over here?' she asked, depositing Terry on the sidewalk. 'I mean, just look at those people.' She nodded towards a park bench around which blacks and Latins congregated like figures in a group portrait.

'Brooklyn is so much better?' I countered, as tradition dictated. 'Of course,' she said. 'In the Heights, anyway, I don't understand it - why this pathological hatred of moving? You might at least try the East Side. You can certainly afford it.' Terry watched us impassively, lounging against the fender. ! think he sided with me over his mother, but he was too wise to show it.

'Ellen,' I said, 'let's face it. I'm just too old to start hanging around single bars. Over on the East Side they read nothing but best-sellers, and they hate anyone past sixty. I'm better off where I grew up - at least I know where the cheap restaurants are.' It was, in fact, a thorny problem: forced to choose between whites whom I despised and blacks whom I feared, I somehow preferred the fear.

To mollify Ellen I read aloud her mother's postcard. It was the prestamped kind that bore no picture. 'I'm still getting used to the cane,' Maude had written, her penmanship as flawless as when she'd won the school medallion. 'Livia has gone back to Vermont for the summer, so the card games are suspended & I'm hard into Pearl Buck. Your friend Rev. Mortimer dropped by & we had a nice chat. What amusing stories! Thanks again for the subscription to McCall's; I'll send Ellen my old copies. Look forward to seeing you all after the hurricane season.'

Terry was eager to confront the dinosaurs; he was, in fact, getting a little old for me to superintend, and was halfway up the steps before I'd arranged with Ellen where to meet us afterward. With school out the museum was almost as crowded as on weekends, the halls' echo turning shouts and laughter into animal cries. We oriented ourselves on the floor plan in the main lobby - •ov ARE HERE read a large green dot, below which someone had scrawled 'Too bad for you' and trooped towards the Hall of Reptiles, Terry impatiently leading the way. 'I saw that in school.' He pointed towards a redwood diorama. ~hat too' - the Grand Canyon. He was, I believe, about to enter seventh grade, and until now had been little given to talk; he looked younger than the other children.

We passed toucans and marmosets and the new Urban Ecology wing ('concrete and cockroaches,'

sneered Terry), and duly stood before the brontosaurus, something of a disappointment: 'I forgot it was just the skeleton,' he said. Behind us a group of black boys giggled and moved towards us; I hurried' my nephew past the assembled bones and through the most crowded doorway, dedicated, ironically, to Man in Africa. ørhis is the boring part,' said Terry, unmoved by masks and spears. The pace was beginning to tire me. We passed through another doorway - Man in Asia - and moved quickly past the Chinese statuary. 'I saw that in school.' He nodded at a stumpy figure in a glass case, wrapped in ceremonial robos. Something about it was familiar to me, too; I paused to stare at it. The outer robe, slightly tattered, was spun of some shiny green material and displayed tall, twisted-looking trees on one side, a kind of stylized river on the other. Across the front ran five yellow-brown shapes in loincloth and headdress, presumably fleeing towards the robo's frayed edges; behind them stood a larger one, all black. In its mouth was a pendulous horn. The figure was crudely woven - little more than a stick figure, in fact - but it bore an unsettling resemblance, in both pose and proportion, to the one on the album cover.

Terry returned to my side, curious to see what I'd found. ~ribal garment,' he read, peering at the white plastic notice below the case. 'Malay Peninsula, Federation of Malaysia, early nineteenth century.' He fell silent.

'Is that all it says?'

'Yep. They don't even have which tribe it's from.' He reflected a moment. 'Not that I really care.'

'Well, I do,' I said. 'I wonder who'd know.' Obviously I'd have to seek advice at the information counter in the main lobby downstairs. Terry ran on ahead, while I followed even more slowly than before; the thought of a mystery evidently appealed to him, even one so tenuous and unexciting as this.

A bored-looking young college girl listened to the beginning of my query and handed me a pamphlet from below the counter. 'You can't see anyone till September,' she said, already beginning to turn away. ~hey're all on vacation.'

I squinted at the tiny print on the first page: 'Asia, our largest continent, has justly been called the cradle of civilization, but it may also be a birthplace of man himself.' Obviously the pamphlet had been written before the current campaigns against sexism. I checked the date on the back: 'Winter 1958.' This would be of no help. Yet on page four my eye fell on the reference I sought: The model next to it wears a green silk ceremonial robe from Negri Sembilan, most rugged of the Malayan provinces. Note central motif of native man blowing ceremonial horn, and the graceful curve of his instrument; the figure is believed to be a representation of 'Death's Herald,' possibly warning villagers of approaching calamityú Gift of an anonymous donor, the robe is probably Tcho-tcho in origin, and dates from the early 19th century.

'What's the matter, uncle? Are you sick?' Terry gripped my shoulder and stared up at me, looking worried; my behaviour had obviously confirmed his worst fears about old people. 'What's it say in there?'

I gave him the pamphlet and staggered to a bench near the wall. I wanted time to think. The Tcho-Tcho People, I knew, had figured in a number of tales by Lovecraft and his disciples - Howard himself had called them 'the wholly abominable Tcho-Tchos' - but I couldn't remember much about them except that they were said to worship one of his imaginary deities. For some reason I associated them with Burma...

But whatever their attributes, I'd been certain of one thing: the Tcho-Tchos were completely fictitious.

Obviously I'd been wrong. Barring the unlikely possibility that the pamphlet itself was a hoax, I was forced to conclude that the malign beings of the stories were in fact based upon an actual race inhabiting the Southeast Asian subcontinent - a race whose name the missionary had mistranslated as 'the Chauchas.'

It was a rather troublesome discovery. I had hoped to turn some of Mortimer's recollections, authentic or not, into fiction; he'd unwittingly given me the material for three or four good plots.

Yet I'd now discovered that my friend Howard had beaten me to it, and that I was put in the uncomfortable position of living out another man's horror stories.

Epistolary expression is with me largely replacing conversation. – H.P LOVECRAFT, 12/23/1917

I hadn't expected my second encounter with the black horn-player. A month later I got an even bigger surprise: I saw the missionary again.

Or at any rate, his picture. It was in a clipping my sister had sent me from the Miami Herald, over which she had written in ballpoint pen, 'Just saw this in the paper- how awfull'

I didn't recognize the face; the photo was obviously an old one, the reproduction poor, and the man was clean-shaven. But the words below it told me it was him.

CLERGYMAN MISSING IN STORM

(Wed.) The Rev. Ambrose B. Mortimer, 56, a lay pastor of the Church of Christ, Knoxville, Tenn., has been reported missing in the wake of Monday's hurricane. Spokesmen for the order say Mortimer had recently retired after serving nineteen years as a missionary, most recently in Malaysia. After moving to Miami in July, he had been a resident of 311 Pompano Canal Road.

Here the piece ended, with an abruptness that seemed all too appropriate to its subject. Whether Ambrose Mortimer still lived I didn't know, but I felt certain now that, having fled one peninsula, he had strayed on to another just as dangerous, a finger thrust into the void. And the void had swallowed him up.

So, anyway, ran my thoughts. I have often been prey to depressions of a similar nature, and subscribe to a fatalistic philosophy I'd shared with my friend Howard: a philosophy one of his less sympathetic biographers has dubbed 'futilitarianism.'

Yet pessimistic as I was, I was not about to let the matter rest. Mortimer may well have been lost in the storm; he may even have set off somewhere on his own. But if, in fact, some lunatic religious sect had done away with him for having pried too closely into its affairs, there were things I could do about it. I wrote to the Miami police that very day.

'Gentlemen,' I began. 'Having learned of the recent disappearance of the Reverend Ambrose Mortimer, I think I can provide information which may prove of use to investigators.'

There is no need to quote the rest of the letter here. Suffice it to say that I recounted my conversation with the missing man, emphasizing the fears he'd expressed for his life: pursuit and

'ritual murder' at the hands of a Malayan tribe called the Tcho-Tcho. The letter was, in short, a rather elaborate way of crying 'foul play.' I sent it care of my sister, asking that she forward it to the correct address.

The police department's reply came with unexpected speed. As with all such correspondence, it was more curt then courteous. 'Dear Sir,' wrote a Detective Sergeant A. Linahan; 'In the matter of Rev. Mortimer we had already been apprised of the threats on his life. To date a preliminary search of the Pompano Canal has produced no findings, but dredging operations are expected to continue as part of our routine investigation. Thanking you for your concern -'

Below his signature, however, the sergeant had added a short postscript in his own hand. Its tone was somewhat more personal; perhaps typewriters intimidated him. 'You may be interested to know,' it said, 'that we've recently learned a man carrying a Malaysian passport occupied rooms at a North Miami hotel for most of the summer, but checked out two weeks before your friend disappeared. I'm not at liberty to say more, but please be assured we are tracking down several leads at the moment. Our investigators are working full-time on the matter, and we hope to bring it to a speedy conclusion.'

Linahan's letter arrived on September twenty-first. Before the week was out I had one from my sister, along with another clipping from the Herald; and since, like some old Victorian novel, this chapter seems to have taken an epistolary form, I will end it with extracts from these two items.

The newspaper story was headed WANTED FOR QUEST~ON~NG. Like the Mortimer piece, it was little more than a photo with an extended caption:

(Thurs.) A Malaysian citizen is being sought for questioning in connection with the disappearance of an American clergyman, Miami police say. Records indicate that the Malaysian, Mr D. A. Djaktu-tchow, had occupied furnished rooms at the Barkleigh Hotella, 2401 Culebra Ave., possibly with an unnamed companion. He is believed still in the greater Miami area, but since August 22 his movements cannot be traced. State Dept. officials report Djaktu-tchow's visa expired August 31; charges are pending.

The clergyman, Rev. Ambrose B. Mortimer, has been missing since September 6.

The photo above the article was evidently a recent one, no doubt reproduced from the visa in question. I recognized the smiling moon-wide face, although it took me a moment to place him as the man whose dinner I'd stumbled over on the plane. Without the moustache, he looked less like Charlie Chan.

The accompanying letter filled in a few details. 'I called up the Herald,' my sister wrote, 'but they couldn't tell me any more than was in the article. Just the same, finding that out took me half an hour, since the stupid woman at the switchboard kept putting me through to the wrong person. I guess you're right anything that prints colour pictures on page one shouldn't call itself a newspaper.

'This afternoon I called up the police department, but they weren't very helpful either. I suppose you just can't expect to find out much over the phone, though I still rely on it. Finally I got an Officer Linahan, who told me he's just replied to that letter of yours. Have you heard from him yet?

The man was very evasive. He was trying to be nice, but I could tell he was impatient to get off. He did give me the full name of the man they're looking for - Djaktu Abdul Djaktutchow, isn't that marvellous? - and he told me they have some more material on him which they can't release right now. I argued and pleaded (you know how persuasive I can be!) and finally, because I claimed I'd been a close friend of Rev. Mortimer's, I wheedled something out of him which he swore he'd deny if I told anyone but you. Apparently the poor man must have been deathly ill, maybe even tubercular - I intended to get a patch test next week, just to play safe, and I recommend that you get one too - because it seems that, in the reverend's bedroom, they found something very odd: pieces of lung tissue. Human lung tissue.'

I, too, was a detective in youth. – H.P LOVECRAFT, 2/17/1931

Do amateur detectives still exist? I mean, outside the novels? I doubt it. Who, af~er all, has the time for such games today? Not I, unfortunately; though for more than a decade I'd been nominally retired, my days were quite full with the unromantic activities that occupy everyone this side of the paperbacks: letters, luncheon dates, visits to my niece and to my doctor; books (not enough) and television (too much) and perhaps a Golden Agers' matinee (though I have largely stopped going to films, finding myself increasingly out of sympathy with their heroes). I also spent Halloween week in Atlantic City, and most of another attempting to interest a rather overpolite young publisher in reprinting some of my early work.

All this, of course, is intended as a sort of apologia for my having put off further inquiries into poor Mortimer's case till mid-November. The truth is, the matter almost slipped my mind; only in novels do people not have better things to do.

It was Maude who reawakened my interest. She had been avidly scanning the papers - in vain -

for further reports on the man's disappearance; I believe she had even phoned Sergeant Linahan a second time, but had learned nothing new. Now she wrote me with a tiny fragment of information, heard at thirdhand: one of her bridge partners had had it on the authority of 'a friend in the police force' that the search for Mr Djaktu was being widened to include his presumed companion - 'a Negro child,' or so my sister reported. Although there was every possibility that this information was false, or that it concerned an entirely different case, I could tell she regarded it as very sinister indeed.

Perhaps that was why the following afternoon found me struggling once more up the steps of the natural history museum - as much to satisfy Maude as myself. Her allusion to a Negro, coming after the curious discovery in Mortimer's bedroom, had recalled to mind the figure on the Malayan robe, and I had been troubled all night by the fantasy of a black man - a man much like the beggar I'd just seen huddled against Roosevelt's statue - coughing his lungs out into a sort of twisted horn.

I had encountered few other people on the streets that afternoon, as it was unseasonably cold for a city that's often mild till January; I wore a muffler, and my grey tweed overcoat flapped round my heels. Inside, however, the place like all American buildings was overheated; I was soon the same as I made my way up the demoralizingly long staircase to the second floor.

The corridors were silent and empty, but for the morose figure of a guard seated before one of the alcoves, head down as if in mourning, and, from above me, the hiss of the steam radiators near the marble ceiling. Slowly, and rather enjoying the sense of privilege that comes from having a museum to oneself, I retraced my earlier route past the immense skeletons of dinosaurs (These great creatures once trod the earth where you now walk') and down to the Hall of Primitive Man, where two Puerto Rican youths, obviously playing hooky, stood by the African wing gazing worshipfully at a Masai warrior in full battle gear. In the section devoted to Asia I paused to get my bearings, looking in vain for the squat figure in the robe. The glass case was empty. Over its plaque was taped a printed notice: 'Temporarily removed for restoration.'

This was no doubt the first time in forty years that the display had been taken down, and of course I'd picked just this occasion to look for it. So much for luck. I headed for the nearest staircase, at the far end of the wing. From behind me the clank of metal echoed down the hall, followed by the angry voice of the guard. Perhaps that Masai spear had proved too great a temptation.

In the main lobby I was issued a written pass to enter the north wing, where the staff offices were located. 'You want the workrooms on basement level,' said the woman at the information counter; the summer's bored coed had become a friendly old lady who eyed me with some interest. 'Just ask the guard at the bottom of the stairs, past the cafeteria. I do hope you find what you're looking for.'

Carefully keeping the pink slip she'd handed me visible for anyone who might demand it, I descended. As I turned on to the stairwell I was confronted with a kind of vision: a blonde, Scandinavian-looking family were coming up the stairs towards me, the four upturned faces almost interchangeable, parents and two little girls with the pursed lips and timidly hopeful eyes of the tourist, while just behind them, apparently unheard, capered a grinning black youth, practically walking on the father's heels. In my present state of mind the scene appeared particularly disturbing -

the boy's expression was certainly one of mockery - and I wondered if the guard who stood before the cafeteria had noticed. If he had, however, he gave no sign; he glanced without curiosity at my pass and pointed towards a fire door at the end of the hall.

The offices in the lower level were surprisingly shabby - the walls here were not marble but faded green plaster - and the entire corridor had a ~uried' feeling to it, no doubt because the only outside light came from ground-level window gratings high overhead. I had been told to ask for one of the research associates, a Mr Richmond; his office was part of a suite broken up by pegboard dividers. The door was open, and he got up from his desk as soon as I entered; I suspect that, in view of my age and grey tweed overcoat, he may have taken me for someone important.

A plump young man with sandy-coloured beard, he looked like an out-of-shape surfer, but his sunniness dissolved when I mentioned my interest in the green silk robe. 'And I suppose you're the man who complained about it upstairs, am I right?'I assured him that I was not.

'Well, someone sure did,' he said, still eyeing me resentfully; on the wall behind him an Indian warmask did the same. 'Some damn tourist, maybe, in town for a day and out to make trouble.

Threatened to call the Malaysian Embassy. If you put up a fuss those people upstairs get scared it'll wind up in the Times.'

I understood his allusion; the previous year the museum had gained considerable notoriety for having conducted some really appalling- and, to my mind, quite pointless - experiments on cats.

Most of the public had, until then, been unaware that the building housed several working laboratories.

'Anyway,' he continued, 'the robe's down in the shop, and we're stuck with patching up the damn thing. It'll probably be down there for the next six months before we get to it. We're so understaffed right now it isn't funny.' He glanced at his watch. 'Come on, I'll show you. Then I've got to go upstairs.'

I followed him down a narrow corridor that branched off to either side. At one point he said, 'On your right, the infamous zoology lab.' I kept my eyes straight ahead. As we passed the next doorway I smelled a familiar odour. 'It makes me think of treacle,' I said.

'You're not so far wrong.' He spoke without looking back. The stuff's mostly molasses. Pure nutrient. They use it for growing microorganisms.'

I hurried to keep up with him. 'And for other things?' He shrugged. 'I don't know, mister. It's not my field.' We came to a door barred by a black wire grille. 'Here's one of the shops,' he said, fitting a key into the lock. The door swung open on a long unlit room smelling of wood shavings and glue.

'You sit down over here,' he said, leading me to a small anteroom and switching on the light. 'I'll be back in a second.' I stared at the object closest to me, a large ebony chest, ornately carved. Its hinges had been removed. Richmond returned with the robe draped over his arm. 'See?' he said, dangling it before me. 'It's really not in such bad condition, is it?' I realized he still thought of me as the man who'd complained.

On the field of rippling green fled the small brown shapes, still pursued by some unseen doom. In the centre stood the black man, black horn to his lips, man and horn a single line of unbroken black.

'Are the Tcho-Tchos a superstitious people?' I asked. 'They were,' he said pointedly. 'Superstitious and not very pleasant. They're extinct as dinosaurs now. Supposedly wiped out by the Japanese or something.'

'That's rather odd,' I said. 'A friend of mine claims to have met up with them earlier this year.'

Richmond was smoothing out the robe; the branches of the snake-trees snapped futilely at the brown shapes. 'I suppose it's possible,' he said, after a pause. 'But I haven't read anything about them since grad school. They're certainly not listed in the textbooks anymore. I've looked, and there's nothing on them. This robe's over a hundred years old.'

I pointed to the figure in the centre. 'What can you tell me about this fellow?'

'Death's Herald,' he said, as if it were a quiz. 'At least that's what the literature says. Supposed to warn of some approaching calamity.'

I nodded without looking up; he was merely repeating what I'd read in the pamphlet. 'But isn't it strange,' I said, 'that these others are in such a panic? See? They aren't even waiting around to listen.'

'Would you?' He snorted impatiently.

'But if the black one's just a messenger of some sort, why's he so much bigger than the others?'

Richmond began folding the cloth. 'Look, mister,' he said, '! don't pretend to be an expert on every tribe in Asia. But if a character's important, they'd sometimes make him larger. Anyway, that's what the Mayans did. But listen, I've really got to get this put away now. I've got a meeting to go to.'

While he was gone I sat thinking about what I'd just seen. The small brown shapes, crude as they were, had expressed a terror no mere messenger could inspire. And that great black figure standing triumphant in the centre, horn twisting from its mouth - that was no messenger either, I was sure of it. That was no Death's Herald. That was Death itself.

I returned to my apartment just in time to hear the telephone ringing, but by the time I'd let myself in it had stopped. I sat down in the living room with a mug of coffee and a book which had lain untouched on the shelf for the last thirty years: Jungle Ways, by that old humbug, William Seabrook. I'd met him back in the twenties and had found him likable enough, if rather untrustworthy. His book described dozens of unlikely characters, including 'a cannibal chief who had got himself jailed and famous because he had eaten his young wife, a handsome, lazy wench called Blito, along with a dozen of her girl friends,' but I discovered no mention of a black horn-player.

I had just finished my coffee when the phone rang again. It was my sister.

'I just wanted to let you know that there's another man missing,' she said breathlessly; I couldn't tell if she was frightened or merely excited. 'A busboy at the San Marino. Remember? I took you there.'

The San Marino was an inexpensive little luncheonette on Indian Creek, several blocks from my sister's house. She and her friends ate there several times a week.

'It happened last night,' she went on. 'I just heard about it at my card game. They say he went outside with a bucket of fish heads to dump in the creek, and he never came back.'

That's very interesting, but ...' I thought for a moment; it was highly unusual for her to call me like this. 'But really, Maude, couldn't he have simply run off? I mean, what makes you think there's any connection -'

'Because I took Ambrose there, too!' she cried. Three or four times. That was where we used to meet.'

Apparently Maude had been considerably better acquainted with the Reverend Mortimer than her letters would have led one to believe. But I wasn't interested in pursuing that line right now. 'This busboy,' I asked, 'was he someone you knew?'

'Of course,' she said. 'I know everyone in there. His name was Carlos. A quiet boy, very courteous. I'm sure he must have waited on us dozens of times.'

I had seldom heard my sister so upset, but for the present there seemed no way of calming her fears. Before hanging up she made me promise to move up the month's visit I'd expected to pay her over Christmas; I assured her I would try to make it down for Thanksgiving, then only a week away, if I could find a flight that wasn't filled.

'Do try,' she said - and, were this a tale from the old pulps, she would have added: 'If anyone can get to the bottom of this, you can.' In truth, however, both Maude and I were aware that I had just celebrated my seventy-seventh birthday and that, of the two of us, I was by far the more timid; so that what she actually said was, 'Looking after you will help take my mind off things.'

I couldn't live a week without a private library. – H.P LOVECRAFT, 2/25/1929

That's what ! thought, too, until recently. After a lifetime of collecting I'd acquired thousands upon thousands of volumes, never parting with a one; it was this cumbersome private library, in fact, that helped keep me anchored to the same West Side apartment for nearly half a century.

Yet here I sit, with no company save a few gardening manuals and a shelf of antiquated best-sellers - nothing to dream on, nothing I'd want to hold in my hand. Still, I've survived here a week, a month, almost a season. The truth is, Howard, you'd be surprised what you can live without. As for the books I've left in Manhattan, I just hope someone takes care of them when I'm gone.

But I was by no means so resigned that November when, having successfully reserved seats on an earlier flight, I found myself with less than a week in New York. I spent all my remaining time in the library the public one on Forty-second Street, with the lions in front and with no book of mine on its shelves. Its two reading rooms were the haunt of men my age and older, retired men with days to fill, poor men just warming their bones; some leafed through newspapers, other dozed in their seats. None of them, I'm sure, shared my sense of urgency: there were things I hoped to find out before I left, things for which Miami would be useless.

I was no stranger to this building. Long ago, during one of Howard's visits, I had undertaken some genealogical researches here in the hope of finding ancestors more impressive than his, and as a young man I had occasionally attempted to support myself, like the denizens of Gissing's New Grub Street, by writing articles compiled from the work of others. But by now I was out of practice: how, after all, does one find references Go an obscure Southeast Asian tribal myth without reading everything published on that part of the world?

Initially that's exactly what I tried; I looked through every book I could find with 'Malaya' in its title. I read about rainbow gods and phallic altars and something called 'the tatai,' a sort of unwanted companion; I came across wedding rites and The Death of Thorns and a certain cave inhabited by millions of snails. But I found no mention of the Tcho-Tcho, and nothing on their gods.

This in itself was surprising. We are living in a day when there are no more secrets, when my twelve-yearold nephew can buy his own grimoire and books with titles like The Encyclopaedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge are remaindered at every discount store. Though my friends from the twenties would have hated to admit it, the notion of stumbling across some mouldering old q)lack book' in the attic of a deserted house - some lexicon of spells and chants and hidden lore - is merely a quaint fantasy. If the Necronomicon actually existed, it would be out in Bantam paperback with a preface by Lin Carter.

It's appropriate, then, that when I finally came upon a reference to what I sought, it was in that most unromantic of forms, a mimeographed film-script.

øPranscript' would perhaps be closer to the truth, for it was based upon a film shot in 1937 and that was now presumably crumbling in some forgotten vault. I discovered the item inside one of those brown cardbeard packets, held together with ribbons, which libraries use to protect books whose bindings have worn away. The book itself, Malay Memories, by a Reverend Morton, had proved a disappointment despite the author's rather suggestive name. The transcript lay beneath it, apparently slipped there by mistake, but though it appeared unpromising - only ninety-six pages long, badly typed, and held together by a single rusty staple - it more than repaid the reading. There was no title page, nor do I think there'd ever been one; the first page simply identified the film as

'Documentary - Malaya Today,' and noted that it had been financed, in part, by a US government grant. The filmmaker or makers were not listed.

I soon saw why the government may have been willing to lend the venture some support, for there were a great many scenes in which the proprietors of rubber plantations expressed the sort of opinions Americans might want to hear. To an unidentified interviewer's query, 'What other signs of prosperity do you see around you?' a planter named Mr Pierce had obligingly replied, 'Why, look at the living standard better schools for the natives and a new lorry for me. It's from Detroit, you know. May even have my own rubber in it.'

INT: PIERCE:

And how about the Japanese? Are they one of today's better markets?

Oh, see, they buy our crop all right, but we don't really trust 'em, understand? (Smiles) We don't like

'em half so much as the Yanks.

The final section of the transcript was considerably more interesting, however; it recorded a number of brief scenes that must never have appeared in the finished film. I quote one of them in its entirety:

PLAYROOM, CHURCH SCHOOL - LATE AFTERNOON

(DELETED)

INT: This Malay youth has sketched a picture of a demon he calls Shoo Goron. (To Boy) I wonder if you can tell me something about the instrument he's blowing out of. It looks like the Jewish BOY:

INT:

BOY:

shofar, or ram's horn. (Again to Boy) That's all right. No need to be frightened.

He no blow out. Blow in.

I see - he draws air in through the horn, is that right?

No horn. Is no horn. (Weeps) Is him.

Miami did not produce much of an impression... – H.P LOVECRAFT, 7/19/1931

Waiting in the airport lounge with Ellen and her boy, my bags already checked and my seat number assigned, I fell prey to the sort of anxiety that had made me miserable in youth: it was a sense that time was running out; and what caused it now, I think, was the hour that remained before my flight was due to leave. It was too long a time to sit making small talk with Terry, whose mind was patently on other things; yet it was too short to accomplish the task which I'd suddenly realized had been left undone.

But perhaps my nephew would serve. Terry,' I said, 'how'd you like to do me a favour?' He looked up eagerly; I suppose children his age love to be of use. 'Remember the building we passed on the way here?

The International Arrivals building?''Sure,' he said. 'Right next door.'

'Yes, but it's a lot farther away than it looks. Do you think you'd be able to get there and back in the next hour and find something out for me?'

'Sure.' He was already out of his seat.

'It just occurs to me that there's an Air Malay reservations desk in that building, and I wonder if you could ask someone there -'

My niece interrupted me. 'Oh, no he won't,' she said firmly. 'First of all, I won't have him running across that highway on some silly errand - ' she ignored her son's protests, ' - and secondly, I don't want him involved in this game you've got going with Mother.'

The upshot of it was that Ellen went herself, leaving Terry and me to our small talk. She took with her a slip of paper upon which I'd written 'Shoo Goron,' a name she regarded with sour scepticism. I wasn't sure she would return before my departure (Terry, I could see, was growing increasingly uneasy), but she was back before the second boarding call.

'She says you spelled it wrong,' Ellen announced. 'Who's she?'

'Just one of the flight attendants,' said Ellen. 'A young girl, in her early twenties. None of the others were Malayan. At first she didn't recognize the name, until she read it out loud a few times.

Apparently it's some kind of fish, am I right? Like a suckerfish, only bigger. Anyway, that's what she said. Her mother used to scare her with it when she was bad.'

Obviously Ellen - or, more likely, the other woman had misunderstood. 'Sort of a bogeyman figure?' I asked. 'Well, I suppose that's possible. But a fish, you say?'

Ellen nodded. 'I don't think she knew that much about it, though. She acted a little embarrassed, in fact. Like I'd asked her something dirty.' From across the room a loudspeaker issued the final call for passengers. Ellen helped me to my feet, still talking. 'She said she was just a Malay, from somewhere on the coast - Malacca? I forget - and that it's a shame i didn't drop by three or four months ago, because her summer replacement was part Chocha - Chocha? something like that.'

The line was growing shorter now. I wished the two of them a safe Thanksgiving and shuffled towards the plane.

Below me the clouds had formed a landscape of rolling hills. I could see every ridge, every washed-out shrub, and in the darker places, the eyes of animals.

Some of the valleys were split by jagged black lines that looked like rivers seen on a map. The water, at least, was real enough: here the cloudbank had cracked and parted, revealing the dark sea beneath.

Throughout the ride I'd been conscious of lost opportunity, a sense that my destination offered a kind of final chance. With Howard gone these forty years I still lived out my life in his shadow; certainly his tales had overshadowed my own. Now I found myself trapped within one of them.

Here, miles above the earth, I felt great gods warring; below, the war was already lost.

The very passengers around me seemed participants in a masque: the oily little steward who smelled of something odd; the child who stared and wouldn't look away; the man asleep beside me, mouth slack, who'd chuckled and handed me a page ripped from his 'inflight' magazine: NOVEMBER PUZZLE PAGE, with an eye staring in astonishment from a swarm of dots. 'Connect the dots and see what you'll be least thankful for this Thanksgiving!' Below it, half buried amid

'B'nai B'rith to Host Song Fest' and advertisements for beach clubs, a bit of local colour found me in a susceptible mood:

Have Fins, Will Travel

(Courtesy Miami Herald) If your hubby comes home and swears he's just seen a school of fish walk across the yard, don't sniff his breath for booze. He may be telling the truth! According to U.

of Miami zoologists, catfish will be migrating in record numbers this fall and South Florida residents can expect to see hundreds of the whiskered critters crawling overland, miles from water.

Though usually no bigger than your pussycat, most breeds can survive without...

Here the piece came to a ragged end where my companion had torn it from the magazine. He stirred in his sleep, lips moving; I turned and put my head against the window, where the limb of Florida was swinging into view, veined with dozens of canals. The plane shuddered and slid towards it.

Maude was already at the gate, a black porter beside her with an empty cart. While we waited by a hatchway in the basement for my luggage to be disgorged, she told me the sequel to the San Marino incident: the boy's body found washed up on a distant beach, lungs in mouth and throat. 'Inside out,'

she said. 'Can you imagine? It's been on the radio all morning. With tapes of some ghastly doctor talking about smoker's cough and the way people drown. I couldn't even listen after a while.' The porter heaved my bags on to the cart and we followed him to the taxi stand, Maude using her cane to gesticulate. If I hadn't seen how aged she'd become I'd have thought the excitement was agreeing with her.

We had the driver make a detour westward along Pompano Canal Road, where we paused at number 311, one of nine shabby green cabins that formed a court round a small and very dirty wading pool; in a cement pot beside the pool dropped a solitary half-dead palm, as if in some travesty of an oasis. This, then, had been Ambrose Mortimer's final home. My sister was very silent, and I believed her when she said she'd never been here before. Across the street glistened the oily waters of the canal.

The taxi turned east. We passed interminable rows of hotels, motels, condominiums, shopping centres as big as Central Park, souvenir shops with billboards bigger than themselves, baskets of seashells and wriggly plastic auto toys out front. Men and women our age and younger sat on canvas beach chairs in their yards, blinking at the traffic. The sexes had merged; some of the older women were nearly as bald as I was, and men wore clothes the colour of coral, lime, and peach.

They walked very slowly as they crossed the street or moved along the sidewalk; cars moved almost as slowly, and it was forty minutes before we reached Maude's house, with its pastel orange shutters and the retired druggist and his wife living upstairs. Here, too, a kind of languor was upon the block, one into which I knew, with just a memory of regret, I would soon be settling. Life was slowing to a halt, and once the taxi had roared away the only things that stirred were the geraniums in Maude's window box, trembling slightly in a breeze I couldn't even feel.

A dry spell. Mornings in my sister's air-conditioned parlour, luncheons with her friends in air-conditioned coffee shops. Inadvertent afternoon naps, from which I'd waken with headaches.

Evening walks, to watch the sunsets, the fireflies, the TV screens flashing behind neighbours'

blinds. By night, a few faint cloudy stars; by day, tiny lizards skittering over the hot pavement, or boldly sunning themselves on the flagstones. The smell of oil paints in my sister's closet, and the insistent buzz of mosquitoes in her garden. Her sundial, a gift from Ellen, with Terry's message painted on the rim. Lunch at the San Marino and a brief, halfhearted look at the dock in back, now something of a tourist attraction. An afternoon at a branch library in Hialeah, searching through its shelves of travel books, an old man dozing at the table across from me, a child laboriously copying her school report from the encyclopedia. Thanksgiving dinner, with its half-hour's phone call to Ellen and the boy and the prospect of turkey for the rest of the week. More friends to visit, and another day at the library.

Later, driven by boredom and the ghost of an impulse, I phoned the Barkleigh Hotella in North Miami and booked a room there for two nights. I don't remember the days I settled for, because that sort of thing no longer had much meaning, but I know it was for midweek; ~ve're deep in the season,' the proprietress informed me, and the hotel would be filled each weekend till long past New Year's.

My sister refused to accompany me out to Culebra Avenue; she saw no attraction in visiting the place once occupied by a fugitive MalaysJan, nor did she share my pulp-novel fantasy that, by actually living there myself, I might uncover some clue unknown to police. ('Thanks to the celebrated author of Beyond the Garve...') I went alone, by cab, taking with me half a dozen volumes from the branch library. Beyond the reading, I had no other plans.

The Barkleigh was a pink adobe building two stories tall, surmounted by an ancient neon sign on which the dust lay thick in the early afternoon sunlight. Similar establishments lined the block on both sides, each more depressing than the last. There was no elevator here and, as ! learned to my disappointment, no rooms available on the first floor, the staircase looked like it was going to be an effort.

In the office downstairs I inquired, as casually as I could, which room the notorious Mr Djaktu had occupied; I'd hoped, in fact, to be assigned it, or one nearby. But I was doomed to disappointment. The preoccupied little Cuban behind the counter had been hired only six weeks before and claimed to know nothing of the matter; in halting English he explained that the proprietress, a Mrs Zimmerman, had just left for New Jersey to visit relatives and would not be back till Christmas. Obviously I could forget about gossip.

By this point ! was half tempted to cancel my visit, and I confess that what kept me there was not so much a sense of honour as the desire for two days' separation from Maude, who, having been on her own for nearly a decade, was rather difficult to live with.

I followed the Cuban upstairs, watching my suitcase bump rhythmically against his legs, and was led down the hall to a room facing the rear. The place smelled vaguely of salt air and hair oil; the sagging bed had served many a desperate holiday. A small cement terrace overlooked the yard and a vacant lot behind it, the latter so overgrown with weeds and the grass in the yard so long unmown that it was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended. A clump of palms rose somewhere in the middle of this no-man'sland, impossibly tall and thin, with only a few stiflened leaves to grace the tops. On the ground below them lay several rotting coconuts.

This was my view the first night when I returned after dining at a nearby restaurant. I felt unusually tired and soon went inside to sleep. The night being cool, there was no need for the air conditioner; as I lay in the huge bed I could hear people stirring in the adjoining room, the hiss of a bus moving down the avenue, and the rustle of palm leaves in the wind.

I spent part of the next morning composing a letter to Mrs Zimmerman, to be held for her return.

After the long walk to a coffee shop for lunch, I napped. After dinner I did the same. With the TV

turned on for company, a garrulous blur at the other side of the room, I went through the pile of books on my night table, final cullings from the bottom of the travel shelf; most of them hadn't been taken out since the thirties. I found nothing of interest in any of them, at least upon first inspection, but before turning out the light I noticed that one, the reminiscences of a Colonel E. G. Paterson, was provided with an index. Though I looked in vain for the demon Shoo Goro~n, I found reference to it under a variant spelling.

The author, no doubt long deceased, had spent most of his life in the Orient. His interest in Southeast Asia was slight, and the passage in question consequently brief:

... Despite the richness and variety of their folklore, however, they have nothing akin to the Malay shugoran, a kind of bogey-man used to frighten naughty children. The traveller hears many conflicting descriptions of it, some bordering on the obscene. (Oran, of course, is Malay for "man,"

while shug, which here connotes "sniffing" or "questing," means literally, "elephant's trunk.") I well recall the hide which hung over the bar at the Traders' Club in Singapore, and which, according to tradition, represented the infant of this fabulous creature; its wings were black, like the skin of a Hottentot. Shortly after the War a regimental surgeon was passing through on his way back to Gibraltar and, after due examination, pronounced it the dried-out skin of a rather large catfish. He was never asked back.

I kept my light on until I was ready to fall asleep, listening to the wind rattle the palm leaves and whine up and down the row of terraces. As I switched off the light I half expected to see a shadowy shape at the window, but I saw, as the poet says, nothing but the night.

The next morning ! packed my bag and left, aware that my stay in the hotel had proved fruitless. I returned to my sister's house to find her in agitated conversation with the druggist from upstairs; she was in a terrible state and said she'd been trying to reach me all morning. She had awakened to find the flower box by her bedroom window overturned and the shrubbery beneath it trampled. Down the side of the house ran two immense slash marks several yards apart, starting at the roof and continuing straight to the ground.

My gawd, how the years fly. Stolidly middle-aged - when only yesterday I was young and eager and awed by the mystery of an unfolding world. – H.P LOVECRAFT, 8/20/1926

There is little more to report. Here the tale degenerates into an unsifted collection of items which may or may not be related: pieces of a puzzle for those who fancy themselves puzzle fans, a random swarm of dots, and in the centre, a wide unwinking eye.

Of course, my sister left the house on Indian Creek that very day and took rooms for herself in a downtown Miami hotel. Subsequently she moved inland to live with a friend in a green stucco bungalow several miles from the Everglades, third in a row of nine just off the main highway. I am seated in its den as I write this. After the friend died my sister lived on here alone, making the forty-mile bus trip to Miami only on special occasions: theatre with a group of friends, one or two shopping trips a year. She had everything else she needed right here in town.

I returned to New York, caught a chill, and finished out the winter in a hospital bed, visited rather less often than I might have wished by my niece and her boy. Of course, the drive in from Brooklyn is nothing to scoff at.

One recovers far more slowly when one has reached my age; it's a painful truth we all learn if we live long enough. Howard's life was short, but in the end I think he understood. At thirty-five he could deride as madness a friend's 'hankering after youth,' yet ten years later he'd learned to mourn the loss of his own. 'The years tell on one!' he'd written. 'You young fellows don't know how lucky you are!'

Age is indeed the great mystery. How else could Terry have emblazoned his grandmother's sundial with that saccharine nonsense?

Grow old along with me; The best is yet to be.

True, the motto is traditional to sundials - but that young fool hadn't even kept to the rhyme. With diabolical imprecision he had written, 'The best is yet to come' - a line to make me gnash my teeth, if I had any left to gnash.

! spent most of the spring indoors cooking myself wretched little meals and working ineffectually on a literary project that had occupied my thoughts. It was discouraging to find that I wrote so slowly now, and changed so much. My sister only reinforced the mood when, sending me a rather salacious story she'd found in the Enquirer - about the 'thing like a vacuum cleaner' 'that snaked through a Swedish sailor's porthole and 'made his face all purple' - she wrote at the top, 'See? Right out of Lovecraft.'

It was not long after this that I received, to my surprise, a letter from Mrs Zimmerman, bearing profuse apologies for having misplaced my enquiry until it turned up again during 'spring cleaning.'

(It is hard to imagine any sort of cleaning at the Barkleigh Hotella, spring or otherwise, but even this late reply was welcome.) 'I am sorry that the minister who disappeared was a friend of yours,'

she wrote. 'I'm sure he must have been a fine gentleman.

'You asked me for "the particulars," but from your note you seem to know the whole story. There is really nothing I can tell you that I did not tell the police, though I do not think they ever released all of it to the papers. Our records show that our guest Mr Djaktu arrived here nearly a year ago, at the end of June, and ]eft the last week of August owing me a week's rent plus various damages which I no longer have much hope of recovering, though I have written the Malaysian Embassy about it.

'In other respects he was a proper boarder, paid regularly, and in fact hardly ever left his room except to walk in the back yard from time to time, or stop at the grocer's. (We have found it impossible to discourage eating in rooms.) My only complaint is that in the middle of the summer he may have had a small coloured child living with him without our knowledge, until one of the maids heard him singing to it as she passed his room. She did not recognize the language, but said she thought it might be Hebrew. (The poor woman, now sadly taken from us, was barely able to read.) When she next made up the room, she told me that Dr Djaktu claimed the child was '~is," and that she left because she caught a glimpse of it watching her from the bathroom. She said it was naked. I did not speak of this at the time, as I do not feel it is my place to pass judgement on the morals of my guests. Anyway, we never saw the child again, and we made sure the room was completely sanitary for our next guests. Believe me, we have received nothing but good comments on our facilities. We think they are excellent and hope you agree, and I also hope you will be our guest again the next time you come to Florida.'

Unfortunately, the next time I came to Florida was for my sister's funeral late that winter. I know now, as I did not know then, that she had been in ill health for most of the previous year, but I cannot help thinking that the so-called 'incidents' - the senseless acts of vandalism directed against lone women in the South Florida area, culminating in several reported attacks by an unidentified prowler - may have hastened her death.

When I arrived here with Ellen to take care of my sister's affairs and arrange for the funeral, I intended to remain a week or two at most, seeing to the transfer of the property. Yet somehow I lingered, long after Ellen had gone. Perhaps it was the thought of that New York winter, grown harsher with each passing year; I just couldn't find the strength to go back. Nor, in the end, could I bring myself to sell this house; if I am trapped here, it's a trap I'm resigned to. Besides, moving has never much agreed with me; when I grow tired of this little room - and I do - I can think of nowhere else to go. I've seen all the world I want to see. This simple place is now my home - and I feel certain it will be my last. The calender on the wall tells me it's been almost three months since I moved in. I know that somewhere in its remaining pages you will find the date of my death.

The past week has seen a new outbreak of the 'incidents.' Last night's was the most dramatic by far. I can recite it almost word for word from the morning news. Shortly before midnight Mrs Florence Cavanaugh, a housewife living at 24 Alyssum Terrace, South Princeten, was about to close the curtains in her front room when she saw, peering through the window at her, what she described as 'a large Negro man wearing a gas mask or scuba outfit.' Mrs Cavanaugh, who was dressed only in her nightgown, fell back from the window and screamed for her husband, asleep in the next room, but by the time he arrived the Negro had made good his escape.

Local police favour the 'scuba' theory, since near the window they've discovered footprints that may have been made by a heavy man in swim fins. But they haven't been able to explain why anyone would wear underwater gear so many miles from water.

The report usually concludes with the news that 'Mr and Mrs Cavanaugh could not be reached for comment.'

The reason I have taken such an interest in the case - sufficient, anyway, to memorize the above details is that I know the Cavanaughs rather well. They are my next-door neighbours.

Call it an ageing writer's ego, if you like, but somehow I can't help thinking that last evening's visit was meant for me. These little green bungalows all look alike in the dark.

Well, there's still a little night left outside - time enough to rectify the error. I'm not going anywhere.

I think, in fact, it will be a rather appropriate end for a man of my pursuits - to be absorbed into the denouement of another man's tale.

Grow old along with me; The best is yet to come.

Tell me, Howard: how long before it's my turn to see the black face pressed to my window?

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ww1614 · 6 years

Text

Recap of Babylon Berlin: Episode 1

Babylon Berlin

Episode 1

All episodes begin with Production Credits

This episode begins with a voiceover during the credits, of a man speaking. "Breathe very calmly", he says. Fade in to a man, dressed like a doctor, speaking to a man we will soon learn to be GEREON RATH. They are in an enclosed, mostly dark space, we do not know where. As the man speaks calmly, brief images and scenes flash across the screen.

Gereon in a tunnel Gereon in a lake Gereon walking down a hallway Gereon and elevator People dancing at a club we will come to know is Moka Efti. A woman's eye opening. Someone holding a gun to the head of a hooded figure. Someone dragging fingers through the dust on a table. A man dragging a dead dog. A man kissing a woman A woman dancing. Gereon turning away. A man walking. A topless woman dancing in front of an appreciative man. A woman we will come to know as CHARLOTTE RITTER locking her mouth as if to say she is keeping a secret. Someone touching a train track. Gereon looks up. Gereon in the middle of riot between police and communists. A man's head crashes through a car window. A man and a woman under water Someone jumping or falling into the water Someone being thrown out of a train A man on a battlefield Gereon shooting a man A horse with a gas mask

Gereon praying in a church, a scene we will stay with longer than the short moments we've just seen. The voiceover continues: "You are in Cologne, your hometown. It is the summer before you are drafted."

Gereon walks back down the aisle of the church, as the voice narrator tells him what he sees. He passes the priest, then his father. The voice tells him he wants to get away. As he reaches the church doors, they open. A man and a woman are there, looking like they were just married. As Gereon stares at her, the voice says "There is the woman you love." Closeup on Gereon shaking. Then Gereon in a tunnel, screaming.

And the Opening Credit sequence begins.

RAILWAY IN THE SOVIET UNION A train rides through the Soviet Union and is stopped by a burning tree on the tracks.

Men emerge from the forest and take over the train, killing the previous train engineers. Another car is brought to and attached to the train.

NEUKOLLN, BERLIN The date is 29 Apr 1929. A man's hand is extended over a sink and is shaking. This is Gereon Rath, a police officer with the Vice Squad in Berlin. He removes a small vial from a case, opens it, and drinks the liquid (probably morphine) down. His hand stops shaking. He exits the bathroom to find his partner, BRUNO WOLTER, waiting for him. It's clear that Bruno does not know why Gereon was in the bathroom, i.e. to take the medicine. Bruno, Gereon and other police officers from the Vice Squad are conducting a raid on a porn movie operation. They watch for a few minutes, then Bruno pushes over part of the set, announcing that the operation is being raided. As chaos descends, Gereon looks through the films and confiscates everything. Bruno takes money from the cash box. Gereon confronts a man named König, who is being arrested.

When another man, whom we later learn is Franz Krajewski, escapes, Gereon and Bruno pursue him to the roof. Krajewski shoots at Gereon but is subdued by Bruno. Bruno digs the bullet out of the wall where it has embedded and pressures Krajewski into becoming an informant for the police. We also learn that Krajewski is also a "trembler," ie., a veteran of the Great War who suffers from post-traumatic stress manifesting tself in uncontrollable shaking, and we learn that Bruno has no respect for tremblers. We begin to understand why Gereon takes some sort of medicine to stop his hands from shaking.

A POOR BERLIN NEIGHBORHOOD A girl we will learn is named Toni Ritter awakes to find the bed empty next to hers. She goes to another room where there is a woman (Toni's sister Ilse) nursing her child. She asks where Lotte is. Other members of the household include Toni's mother, grandfather and brother-in-law, Erich. Toni finds Lotte (i.e. her sister, Charlotte Ritter) smoking a cigarette at the bathroom window. She has not slept because she was out all night. She does have a treat for Toni: a sugar cube wrapped in a colorful wrapper. Charlotte gets ready for work with Toni's help. Toni notices a bruise on Charlotte's neck but Charlotte says it is nothing. Erich uses the bathroom while Charlotte is getting ready, much to Charlotte's disgust. The family is poor and they need money for rent. Charlotte puts on a green hat and leaves, waving goodbye to Toni.

Bruno and Gereon are driving back to the police department, known as "The Castle," located at Alexanderplatz in Mitte, Berlin. Bruno gives Geron the bullet he dug out of the wall. He reveals that Krajewski used to be a police officer but couldn't work after the war because of his shaking. Bruno and Gereon talk about their military experience.

ALEXANDERPLATZ: THE CASTLE Charlotte exits the trolley at Alexanderplatz. A young boy tries to beg from her but she turns him away. Like Bruno and Gereon, she is headed to work at the police department.

Charlotte joins a group of women waiting to hear if there is any secretarial work for the day.

Councillor AUGUST BENDA, the head of the Political Police, arrives at The Castle.

As Charlotte is waiting to learn if there is work, a young man walks by and they share hellos. This is STEFAN JÄNICKE, who works for the Vice Squad. He is carrying several films (from the vice squad raid of the night before) and he stops to talk with a photographer (whose name is Graef) for the homicide squad. Gereon and Bruno also walk by, and Gereon and Charlotte notice each other. Graef and Stefan talk while the assignments are given out. At the end, Charlotte has not received an assignment. Stefan whispers to Graef, who then tells the administrator that another worker is needed, and he wants the girl in the green hat (Charlotte). The implication is that Stefan has asked Graef to give Charlotte a job. She will catalog homicide photos.

Bruno interviews Konig and asks him primarily about Gereon, which surprises König. König tells him Gereon's father is close to the Lord Mayor of Cologne and is a high-level member of the police department. Gereon finds out that Bruno is interviewing König and rushes to the cell, where Bruno is torturing König to find out more about Gereon. You get the idea Bruno either doesn't like or mistrusts Gereon. He leaves Gereon and König alone. König knows why Gereon is there. Gereon has been sent to Berlin to retrieve a film from König, a film that is being used to blackmail someone else.

ADLERSHOF At the Institute for Suggestive Therapy, Krajewski arrives. He goes to see DR. SCHMIDT, who is the same man with Gereon in the opening scene of this episode. Schmidt can't help Krajewski if he's not off the drugs. Krajewski then tells Schmidt that the police raided and arrested Konig. He tells Schmidt that the film was not destroyed despite Schmidt's order that it be destroyed. Why? Because someone wanted to blackmail someone else with it. Schmidt is unhappy.

BORDER OF THE GERMAN REICH The train that had been hijacked approaches the border of the German Reich. The Reichswehr arrives, with General Beck and Major General Seegers. They sign the proper documents for the train to cross the border. Someone has been spying on the train. He climbs a telegraph pole and sends a message to Alexey Kardakov.

BERLIN In an apartment in Berlin, the Countess SVETLANA SOROKIN smokes a cigarette and stares at a painting of her family. Kardakov arrives to tell her that the train has entered Germany as they planned. She tells him he is her hero.

MOKA EFTI, A RESTAURANT AND NIGHTCLUB At Moka Efti, Svetlana (a singer/performer) and Kardakov (a violinist) practice a number. Across the room, THE ARMENIAN walks to a table where a man (Goztony) is being served a meal. The man's brother has apparently been overcharging the Armenian, replacing quality alcohol with a cheap and inferior substitute. The Armenian warns Goztony not to allow his brother to do that, and implies that the food the man is eating is the tongue of the man's brother. As Goztony spits out his food, their conversation is interrupted by news that Dr. Schmidt is there to see the Armenian. The Armenian seems to be fond of and indebted to Schmidt. Schmidt tells the Armenian that König did not destroy one film as requested, and it's putting the operation in danger. The Armenian indicates that he will take care of it and gives his assistant, Saint Joseph (dressed like a priest) instructions to do something. (We do not hear what.)

THE CASTLE Gereon is staying late at work looking through the films that were confiscated. Bruno stops by to see him and ask him out for a drink. Gereon declines. Bruno doesn't seem happy about it.

Gereon finds one frame of film portraying a risqué bondage scene. The face of the man being dominated is scratched out. Gereon seems to think it may be significant and looks at it more closely.

It's time to go home. Charlotte and Gereon both exit the elevator (a paternoster) at the same time, bump into each other, and drop the photos they are holding, which then get mixed up. As they sort out the photos of dismembered limbs and mutilated bodies and pornography, he tells her he hopes she is from the homicide, and she says she hopes he is from vice. They part without exchanging names. Gereon takes one of the photos and puts it in his jacket pocket. While walking home, he notes a poster "Everyone once in Berlin"

Gereon heads back to his hotel and learns he cannot stay longer because the rooms are booked. He also has mail from someone in Cologne. As the letter is read in voiceover by its writer, Helga, Gereon gets ready to go out and checks his medicine.

A BAR IN BERLIN Gereon enters a bar and sees other people dancing. He goes to the bar and orders a shot and a beer. He notices a young girl is serving drinks, and he playfully pretends to swallow his cigarette to get a smile out of her. Then he joins the dancers and shows himself to be a good dancer, even doing a flip.

THE RED FORTRESS Meanwhile Svetlana and Kardakov enter a basement with a printing press, known as the Red Fortress, the meeting place for Communists (followers of Trotsky) in Berlin. We learn that the train car added to the hijacked train contains gold, which will arrive in Berlin and will be sent to Istanbul to aid in Trotsky's attempt to overthrow Stalin.

THE GERMAN COUNTRYSIDE The train continues on its journey to Berlin.

End credits.

#babylonberlin #babylonberlinrecaps #gereon rath #charlotte ritter

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maximumsuckage · 7 years

Text

Satan goes to the store

Word count: 1815

There are a lot of odd things that go on in the parking lot of the average Walmart. Over there, in the back corner, you can see a couple of teenagers. Look at them, all greasy, their faces covered in the red blemishes of puberty. One of them is counting cash- he thinks he’s being surreptitious, but in reality, the way he glances around, his floppy hair flopping with every motion of his head like a black and red streaked flag, is a beacon to any cop that might be sitting around that something shady is about to go down. Oh, look! There’s the cop now! He’s sitting a few parking spots away, noshing on a pastry he’d just bought, eyeballing the woman walking by with a look of disdain. And no wonder- she’s walking down the parking lot, enormous hips swaying in the tight yoga pants she has pulled up to just under her sagging bosom. She wears no bra- her nipples are currently fighting a winning battle to bust through the transparent fabric of the wife-beater she wears with the pride of a queen.

Although, the cop can’t really judge her, considering that he’s missed the drug deal that just transpired in front of him. Perhaps he’ll notice when one of the boys pulls a badly wrapped joint out of the paper bag? No, he doesn’t notice.

His attention, however, is turned to the sleek black car that speeds down the row of the lot. It’s a beautiful car, something old and yet well cared for, with a trunk large enough to fit a dead body in. There is no exhaust, no purr of engine. It speeds, and yet it is silent. Odd, I’m sure, but, like I said, a lot of shit goes down in a Walmart parking lot.

The cop considers flagging the car down, but there’s a dark feeling in the pit of his stomach, an ancestral fear that borders on genetic, it’s so old. Who is he to flag down such a glorious car? Who is he to stop the king of the road, the lord of the highway, the sultan of the interstate?

The black car slows, and pulls into a handicap spot.

What a scumbag, honestly. There is no handicap tag hanging in the windshield. I hope the cop works up the courage to go and ticket that asshole with the silent cool old car.

The door of the car opens, and out steps a man.

Well- I think he’s a man. He’s certainly man shaped- what a man, oh, what a man. His shoulders are rounded with deltoids of the gods; his white button-down clings to his pectorals. His waist is as slim as a woman’s, no doubt with more abs than Captain America himself, and his face- his face looks as though it was carved by God himself, with perfect cheekbones and a strong chin and lips that could only be described as soft, yet firm, kissable, and yet untouchable.

His eyes though- how can I describe those eyes? They are like…

No. I must refrain.

The scumbag parked in the handicap, remember. He is, somewhere beneath those muscles that any sane girl would love to run her hands slowly over as they glisten with sweat, the hole of an ass.

He reaches into the pockets of his jeans, which cling to his perfectly formed gluteus, and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. Let’s zoom in a bit to see what it says-

No, too close. Don’t let me get distracted by the perfume of sweetly burning incense that hangs around him like a fog of heavenly breath.

Too far, now I can’t see the paper.

There we go. Now let’s read together.

Eggs. Bread. Headphones. Pencil sharpener. Pens. Party lights. Chips. Salsa. Guac. Greeting cards. Knife sharpener. Stain remover. Nail clippers. Eyeliner. Toothbrush/toothpaste. Hair gel.

Wow, that’s a solid list. Let’s watch him try to find all the items. After all, there’s nothing more fun than watching a sexy beast of a man try to traverse through your average Walmart.

The greeter is an elderly woman who looks like she would be better off using the parking lot he stole. “Hi, how’s it going? Can we help you find anything?”

He ignores her and attempts to walk past. He’s not a very nice person, as we’ve already established. Perhaps this would change if he were to meet a nice girl, in her early twenties, who works hard in college and enjoys writing on the side. But, alas, that is not to be.

The greeter follows him. Her hair is like a wild white mane; her face is too wrinkled to even discern where her eyes once were. “Sir, it’s a beautiful day out! Let one of our friendly staff members help you find-”

“I know where everything is!” He whips around, and there’s fire in his eyes. Literal fire in his eyes… hmmm, that’s odd, wouldn’t you say? Now that I think of it, are there horns curling from between his luscious locks of thick black hair? Weird… but weird stuff happens at Walmart, so who are we to judge?

“Okay then.” The old woman raises her hands innocently, but there’s a sassiness to the flick of her wrists that belies her enormous age. “Just trying to help. You didn’t need to go all crazy on me, but who am I to try to do my job?”

“Who are any of us to do our damn jobs?” He mutters to himself, stalking towards the toiletries section.

What an odd thing to say? Would it seem that the hunky piece of man candy is not satisfied in his current career path? Let’s zoom in closer and see what else we can glean from his errand.

He’s standing in front of the tooth paste selection now. Apparently he can’t decide which one to choose. That’s an understandable conundrum- there’s so many! You can have whitening toothpaste, non-whitening tooth paste, toothpaste for sensitive teeth, generic toothpaste, toothpaste with baking powder, sensitive and whitening toothpaste…

He settles for regular Crest toothpaste. A solid choice sir- I applaud you! And then he moves to the toothbrushes. This time, he doesn’t spend that much time, and simply grabs a package of four cheap ones. That’s also a good choice. I, personally, don’t see much difference between toothbrushes, but I know some people care a great amount.

Now he checks his list and sighs, heading across the store to the food aisle. He takes a little detour though, jogging his path to cut through the makeup aisle, thereby avoiding the greeter. Hey, remember you need to buy eyeliner, you beautiful douchebag!

Nope. He forgot. He’ll have to make another detour.

He pauses to pick up a basket on his way to the bread, hanging it off his lean forearm so he can carry more items at once. Clever boy!

There’s a woman already at the bread. Hey, it’s the woman from earlier- remember her? Her nipples are like a second pair of eyeballs pressed against the fabric of her shirt. She studies the bread, picking up every loaf and reading the labels carefully, like getting the wrong loaf might make her blow up.

Our anti-hero walks up to the bread, his triangle-tipped tail flicking in irritation at being there. Did you see the tail before? I didn’t, but I was distracted by his pecs. I know, I know. It’s a weakness. But I’m a reliable narrator. I swear.

It’s a nice tail. It’s all feathered, with a sleek black that match his wings-

SHIT! I forgot to tell you this guy has wings too!

I’m just failing you here. I’m sorry. I’ll do better from here on out. Really, it’s just such an odd thing to see, even in such a place as Walmart.

He reaches around the woman for a loaf of whole wheat bread, and she turns so suddenly that her bosoms are set a-swinging. One enormous breast hits the end of its swing, bounces back, and smacks our hero right in his perfectly sculpted arm.

He freezes, and is that- it is! His cheeks, pale and white as a corpse in a coffin, pink a little, like the setting sun tinting the sky with rose, when he feels the nipple touch the bare flesh exposed by his folded sleeve.

“Excuse you?” The woman puts her hands on her hips, drawing herself up to her full height, which, to be frank, isn’t that impressive. “I was over here, trying to shop, and you just shove on through?”

He takes a half step back, taken by surprise, no doubt, by the suddenly irate woman.

“The nerve of people! You think that just because you’re a man, you can have whatever you want? Well fuck you!"

Now he’s had a moment to regroup. The blush vanishes and his feathers fluff up dramatically. “Do you dare berate me, woman? Be gone, foul slut! Take your admonishments elsewhere!”

“Are you yelling at me now?” She crosses her arms now, sticking her hip out like she’d seen somebody trendy do on the TV. “How dare you. How dare you? You think you can just come into my store and yell at me when I have just as much a right to shop here as you? Fuck you! Fuck you and fuck your life!”

“I want to buy a loaf of bread!” His eyes flared, and the woman suddenly gasped, bug eyed, clutching at her throat. “I came here to buy a loaf of bread, and-”

“Hey, uh, Satan?”

What’s this? Another person has entered the scene. He’s not a large man, and he looks a bit awkward interrupting the encounter that has been going down. Our delicious scumbag pauses, hand raised in the air, feathers fluffed in fight mode, and looks down at the newcomer, who happens to be wearing Walmart blue.

“What do you want?” His voice is a low growl, a sneer in vocal form.

“I’m gonna have to ask you to leave, man. You can’t choke out any of our customers again.”

“She yelled at me!”

“I know she yelled at you, bud, but sometimes you just gotta take the hit and keep moving.” The employee points. “You can come back tomorrow.”

Satan glares at him, and then glares at the woman, who is floating about four feet above the ground and gasping as her cheeks turn blue.

“Drop her, Satan.”

Still, he hesitates, as the woman clutches at her neck.

“Satan.”

Finally, he drops her. She falls to the floor, gasping, and then gets up. “You think you can just choke me? You pervert, I’ll have you know-”

But what she’ll have Satan know, he’ll never know, because he’s gone,leaving only the lingering stench of brimstone behind. Oh, unhappy day. I shall never see such beautiful musculature again.

#writing #writer #amwriting #nanowrimo #nanowrimo day 1 #satan #humor #fiction #original writing #idk even #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #spilled words #prose #artsy #aesthetic #story #words #my writing

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saveloadreset · 7 years

Text

The ask that turned into an essay: People seem to come to some funny conclusions about Chara based of some selective quotes

SLR INSERTION

Rather than putting it at the end, I’m going to be inserting my commentary all over this submission like this, in little ‘pockets.’ Now …

Trigger warning: suicide mention, self-harm mention

… on to our regularly scheduled submission

The ribbon description is not a hint at previous violence in Chara’s life. “If you’re cuter, monsters won’t hit you as hard.” = “Chara was subject to beatings before running away, long enough to be familiar with the experience” Is the ribbon description not plain and simple advice on how battles with monsters work? We later find out in the librarby that monsters really do hit less hard if they don’t want to fight. Putting the ribbon on and becoming cuter works against even Undyne the Undying,* so it seems that this really is a nature that monsters can’t help.** Narra-Chara uses descriptions to hint at their tragic backstory elsewhere, so the ribbon could be part of that pattern, but there are also examples of Narra-Chara giving us plain and simple advice.** So I see the ribbon description as honest advice, not a hint at abuse or whatever

* (at least, I’m fairly sure it does) ** (and isn’t sans clever for finding a way around it?) *** Some of the advice is snarky or condescending, but not all of it is.

SLR INSERTION

That’s a valid reading. I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong. But it’s really not any stronger than the readings of people who read it as a sign of abuse. And there’s a piece of info that I think you might find interesting … Did you know, this narration changed?

Here’s what it said in the demo.

Tells you most of what you need to know, really. But Toby looked at this, and decided … Nah, this has gotta change. And I would argue that what he changed it too was much less objective, and much more ominous.

Do with that knowledge what you will.

Chara didn’t necessarily develop their deep hatred for the humans whilst in the village; that could’ve grow in the underground, or at least been a lot more complex than simple revenge for a violent childhood. “Frisk, I’ll be honest with you. Chara hated humanity. Why they did, they never talked about it. But they felt very strongly about that.” = “Chara was treated badly by the humans and hated them for it” Is it not possible that Chara’s hatred developed AFTER falling into the underground? If tween-age me had ran away from home, found what Chara found, and learnt the history and plaight of the monsters, then I can imagine me falling disillusioned with humanity (and maybe even growing a martyr complex). “I hate humanity” sounds like a very angsty and tweenish thing to say. It could be so easy for a child to grow a very negative view of humanity, if first they lost a little innocence (maybe they learnt about war, or maybe they read a sad book (like Kitchen)), found a tragic race like the monsters, then learnt their story and their view of humans, at a time when they were still making sense of the world. Especially with the librarby comment about humans not needing compassion, monsters could very easily teach a child the wrong things about their kind. Maybe things would’ve been different if there was another human in the underground, who could be a good example to Chara, and show that humans can still have compassion, even if they don’t strictly need it. What’s more, Asriel says “humanity”, not “humans” or “the people of the village”. That feels very significant to me, as though there were some quality that “humanity” comes with that had that had Chara’s attention, not a personal hatred for the people of the surface. We know humans in Undertale differ in at least a few important ways from monsters, from their persistent souls and their physical bodies, to their lack of needing compassion and …. whatever’s going on with determination and time rewinding (if Chara knew about this). Could one of these qualities, unique to humans, be what Chara dislikes about humanity? I sometimes wonder (inspired by Underline), whether Chara could reset, and something about this, or something that happened because of this, sparked Chara’s strong hatred? Though, personally, I believe Gaster’s experiment caused the reset ability, somehow. If Chara’s/Chasriel’s soul survived death (both humans and boss monster’s souls persist at least briefly after death), perhaps Gaster took it and mucked about about with DT and gave himself the ability to play about with time and resetting. Perhaps playing about with that is what scattered him across time. Perhaps he used to soul to build the core (a machine that converts heat into magic?). Perhaps once he had used his ability, maybe something “broke”, and resets became possible for the most DT-filled creature behind the barrier, and only behind the barrier. All of this would have happened after Chara’s death, and Toriel’s comment about knowing previous children somehow makes me think she’s not including Chara when she says that. Or maybe Underline hit the nail on the head? Maybe Chara’s hatred for humanity happened after some bad timeline that Chara had to reset from. After all, something about Chara, even just “the look in their eyes”, inspires the monsters to not be afraid of humans anymore, and gives them hope. Yet this does not rub off on Chara? Or maybe Chara has a change of heart? …. Though, hope for what? Peace with humans? That not all humans are evil? Or maybe just hope of breaking the barrier? Maybe Chara made a scheming promise to break the barrier and the buttercup plan was what they had in mind, but I somehow doubt that. Maybe the hope was just the feeling of having found a happy place to live. Either way, there’s so many different things to say and think here, that I can’t think it’s as simple as Chara having a personal vendetta against the village for violence they used to receive.

SLR INSERTION

Let’s talk about why people think this about Chara, because that’s worth analyzing in greater depth. The first significant point–it didn’t happen while Asriel was around. This isn’t explicitly said, but if it had, Asriel would know about it.

Second, Chara is reluctant to actually talk about it. If they hated humanity as a result of schooling in monster schools and learning monster history … Why wouldn’t they tell Asriel at all? Even if they learned it in a reset, it’s hardly a surprise that they look at all these murals and go ‘golly gee, humans are horrible!’ That implies that there’s a specific incident that sparked this hatred in Chara. One big inciting incident. And one that they’re reluctant to share with Asriel, their best friend.

SO, it had to happen both while Asriel wasn’t there, and it had to be something Chara would be reluctant to talk about. Abuse on the surface is one of the very few things that would qualify for that.

And like, I love underline and everyone should read it (Hi dusty!!!) but they take a couple liberties in order to tell their story. For instance, their Chara needs to meet humans and encounter them, seeing their reaction to monsters, before they go ‘to hell with these guys I hate humans.’ In canon, that cannot happen. The barrier is impenetrable. If Chara had a personal encounter with humans that soured their feelings on the matter it happened before they fell. No question.

That’s not to say that there might be other things that might spark a deeper loathing of humanity. If, for instance, someone in particular groomed Chara into hating humans more, and seeing them as the enemy, to the point that they weren’t really eager to tell anyone about it … That could do it, too.

But at that point, we’re just dealing in wild speculation. People lean into ‘Chara hates humans because they had bad encounter with humans’ because it’s the Occam’s razor solution. It’s pretty strong. Personally, I imagine it might have had more to do with Gaster’s meddling, but speaking objectively, from what we know now, it’s more likely the humans Chara knew were garbage to them.

Dying was not on the table until the buttercup plan “Travellers who climb the mountain are said to disappear.” + earlier context = “Chara deliberately climbed Mt Ebbot to commit suicide” We know falling into the hole in the cave in Mt Ebbot was an accident, not deliberate. I also feel that it’s much common for children to run away from an unhappy situation, rather than think of suicide. Committing suicide and commiting self-harm, as some seem to think is implied, sounds like the actions of a teenager, not a child. Also climbing a mountain, one that people don’t return from, doesn’t sound very suicide-y. My intuition and experience with children is they get quiet and they run away. Well, Chara ran away from home. In the family photo, Chara is hiding their face shyly. Chara revealed private and important things to only their best friend, who kept them secret. Chara strikes me as a reserved, but bright child, who had a bit of sadness inside them. Falling into the hole in the cave was an a ccident, after apparently exploring said cave out of curiosity. That sounds more like a child who has run away from home with hopes of finding a better place and never having to return, than one who intends to end their life.

SLR INSERTION

Okay, let me get this out of the way right now before it riles me up too much. You’re entitled to your headcannons and nothing says explicitly that Chara wanted to kill themselves, but if you think someone is too young to self-harm and want to kill themselves, you’re dangerously wrong.

At risk of getting too personal, I was chewing on my arms so much they were more or less one big bruise by the time I was elven or twelve, and already chasing off thoughts of … You know. That’s a false assumption and a pretty dangerously wrong one. Whatever else you take away from this post, please at least revise your understanding of that. It’s important.

Secondly, we don’t really know how old Frisk/Chara are. If I had to guess, I’d throw it somewhere around thirteen years old, because that’s Ness’ age in earthbound. But ‘kid’ can mean a lot of things. Preteen? Prepubescent? Teenager? All kids. You can’t really narrow that down.

And like, we know that Chara’s fall was an accident, but … You don’t climb a mountain it’s said nobody returns from if you really think your life is precious. There’s more, but I’ll get into that next insertion.

The buttercup plan was not about a long standing wish to die buttercup plan + “I know why Chara climbed the mountain. It wasn’t for a happy reason.” + earlier context = “Chara was suicidal, even before falling into the underground” Surely, the buttercup plan was not about a desire to end their life, but about sacreficing themselves? I know self-sacrefice and suicide kind of functionally have the same end, but we all know the differing contexts makes all the difference. In suicide, your own death is the goal, in and of itself. In self-sacrefice, there is some end that your own death helps achieve (even if that end could be achieved through other means). I don’t think Chara was lying to Asriel about the buttercup plan being, at least partly, a plan to break the barrier. I can certainly imagine adult me, with all my fully functioning coping mechanisms, stable mental state and confidence in life, getting tempted (and tempted is the important word) to stand in front of a monster I trusted and offer my life to them, if I was in either Chara or Frisk’s shoes, stuck underground with these tragic people that deserves better. Not out of any self-hatred or suffering on my part, but out of sympathy for their plight. Who wouldn’t want to help these people if they could? I won’t ask who else would be tempted, but I think a child with less life experience and weaker coping mechanisms would quite possibly be more than tempted

SLR INSERTION

Why not both?

I think you may be ignoring some of the actual context of that conversation with Asriel. Like, let’s chart the followup to what he says. It begins with Asriel asking Frisk why THEY climbed the mountain. Was it curiousity? Was it fate? Or … ? And he trails off here. He had something to say, but then suddenly elected not to say it.

Let’s not kid ourselves, he was about to ask Frisk if they came to kill themselves, and then thought better of it.

And from that conversation he follows immediately into Chara’s mysterious, sad ‘reason’ to climb the mountain. Immediately after electing not to ask Frisk if they came here to die. It’s not proof. But. It’s kind of hard to shake that off.

I mean you’re right. CLEARLY Chara wanted to save monsters, and that’s why they came up with this plan. But this plan is stupid painful. Buttercup poisoning is awful. And a child who comes up with a plan to kill themselves like this never thought too highly of their life in the first place.

I think you’re right about why they did it. But I don’t think you’re correct about cutting Chara’s self-loathing out of the equation completely. It might not be why came up with the plan. But I think it’s definitely a factor in whether they thought it was worth it.

For instance, when Asgore sometimes kills himself at the end of the neutral routes, he’s killing himself because he wants to give Frisk the chance to find a way to free his people. But if he really believed that was the biggest hope they had, he would have killed himself when he came to trust Chara and given his SOUL to them. What changed?

He hates himself, he thinks he’s a horrible person, he doesn’t think he deserves to live. He wants to die, and that makes the decision to give up his SOUL easy. Sound familiar?

And it’s not like suicide isn’t rare here. It’s all over the place. Undyne meets Alphys as she’s staring contemplatively into a dark pit and if Mettaton or Undyne die, in the ending, Alphys mysteriously disappears. Toriel tries to trap you in a situation where if you DO get past her, she won’t be lonely and afraid anymore because she’ll be dead. As Flowey, when Asriel gives into despair he destroys himself and, in his own words, ‘decided to follow in your (Chara’s) footsteps.’

I don’t think Chara took Asriel for granted. That just doesn’t make sense to me. *the lab tapes* = “Chara took advantage of Asriel, and was mean and manipulative to him” Chara and Asriel really were best friends. Every source of information about their relationship, besides the tapes, makes that clear to us. The “walk of feels” tells us so. Geno-Flowey tells they played together in New Home. They shared clothes and a room. Asriel had all the toys on his side of the room, while Chara had just a photo, pointed at the head of their bed. Gerson tells us the Dreemurrs’ behaviour embarrassed Asriel and Chara. Chara had secrets about themselves that they privately revealed to Asriel, and only Asriel, given that none of the other monsters know what Asriel tells us. The kinds of things Asriel reveals to us about Chara are things that sad children keep secret, revealing only to those they trust. And I think Chara does trust Asriel. After all, he proves himself trustworthy, keeping the secrets, only ever revealing them privately to Frisk after some very significant events. Asriel even has an air of privacy in the last conversation, like he’s revealing private things that aren’t meant to be shared (to the person he says he would replace Chara with, I might add, which is gut wrenching to hear because I think Asriel was the best thing to ever happen to Chara). Asriel also comments repeatedly about how Chara being the only one who ever understood him. I think there were things Asriel told Chara that, either he didn’t tell anyone else, or the he felt only Chara truly listened to. I’m not saying there were no secrets between them (after all, Chara doesn’t talk about why they hate humanity). And what’s more it seems Chara’s (implied) interest in flowers failed them and, despite their knowledge of them, fed them to their new dad and got him really sick. Maybe Chara’s botany didn’t fail them and it was deliberate, but maybe it was a joke, the consequences of which Chara didn’t process and laughed away. Maybe it was when Toriel got upset at the two children, that Chara was forced to realize what they’d done. Maybe that sparked the martyr complex. Chara sounds like a fan of poetic justice, so I can easily see the way they chose to die, and the idea of becoming a martyr in the first place, being related to the poisoning incident. I can imagine a stubborn kid like Chara, and Chara apparently takes after Toriel, who is very stubborn, you don’t listen to your crybaby brother’s fears when you came up with a plan like the buttercup plan. I’m not saying Chara was or wasn’t the greatest person, but at worst, I imagine Chara as like one of the kids from The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson. It’s a story about a girl who lives in a care-home (think orphanage). The kids in the book are sometimes horrible to each other, but despite the kids literally having nothing in common with each other except that they live in the same care-home, there is clearly a shared sense of family between them. You might say some of them are trouble makers, but you wouldn’t (if you had any sense of empathy) call them bad kids.

SLR INSERTION

I have nothing to say here. I think Chara loved Asriel deeply.

#save analysis #save submissions #save asks #submission #suicide mention #self-harm mention

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mystorymylifemywords · 5 years

Text

Trying To Wake Up

It’s 5:15am on a Tuesday morning and the ascending alarm emitting from his Amazon Echo Dot wakes him from a restless slumber. Before the alarm reaches a volume too high for his now, awakening ears, he groggily bellows, “Alexa, snooze....” He knows it will only buy him 10 more minutes of faux sleep, but it delays the downward spiral of inner thoughts and anxious mindlessness.

As the alarm rises to yet another crescendo, he reaches for his iPad on the back of the couch. The metal springs in the old sofa bed in his mother’s converted basement squeak as they’re forced to adjust to his movement. When the tablet is in his grasp, the alarm reaches its peak volume. “Alexa, stop,” he says annoyed by the fact he needs to get ready for work. He fumbles to find the home button on the iPad in the near pitch-black room. The only light shining through is muted by the overhang of the outside alcove and the glass blocks covering what was once the left side of a two-car garage.

When the home button was finally found, and pressed, the time read 5:29am. He looked for excuses, in his mind, to stay in bed. He didn’t want to go to work. He didn’t want to hear the complaining and ineptitude of the people at his marketing job where he’s a senior analyst. He also didn’t want to make the 33-mile, hour plus long drive from Hatfield to Center City Philadelphia.

He often loses his temper during the drive to work, cursing people whose poor driving skills likely raised his blood pressure above normal levels. The only calming presence during those drives are his podcasts and his love for 90s New Jack R&B. He was never able to pinpoint why the music was so calming. In the rare times he was able to listen at home, he felt as though he could disappear into the music and visit a fantasy world he knew he could never live. A world where women listened to him, people adored him, and his presence was valued. It was also a time before he understood the meaning of hurt and pain, before those emotions, and their hellish wrath, followed him every waking moment. He felt trapped by those thoughts. Trapped like Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill just for it roll back to the bottom while believing the outcome will be different with each attempt despite the environment being unchanged.

He dragged his still tired body from the bed, pulled his shorts and boxer briefs down from his right leg, which rolled up amongst his tossing and turning, and then straightened the sheets before folding the bed back into the sofa. Before replacing the seat cushions, he groggily muttered, “Alexa, turn on lights” to give himself a jolt of brightness before he climbed the two flights of stairs to the spare bedroom where he kept his clothes. He made sure he moved quietly, aware of the creaks and squeaks of the floor boards in the old house, so to not wake his mother. She didn’t work on Mondays and Tuesdays, he couldn’t be selfish with the noise he would like to make in order to fully wake himself.

As he approached the spare bedroom, the house still dark, he blindly pushed open the door with an extended arm and then turned on the light on the left side of room next to the door. Quickly, he closed the door, then bent over to turn on his standing garment steamer, and allowed the hot steam to blow against his face.

Still trying to wake up....

The previous night, he left out the clothes he intended to wear as well as a sealed bottle of water. As the steam continued to outflow from the steamer, warming the room and raising the humidity level, he drank the 22 ounces of water. It was a routine he completed, daily. He needed the routine so he didn’t fall into the dark chasm of his thoughts. After he finished drinking, he said in a whisper, “Alexa, play audiobook.” The Echo Show sitting on a dresser began to play The Godfather written by Mario Puzo and narrated by Joe Mantegna. He took a deep breath, grabbed his light denim jeans, hung them over the hanger atop a bar protruding from garment steamer and began to meticulously remove the wrinkles.

His attention to detail was one of his forms of escape, albeit, short-lived. The others were writing, which he had not being able to do in an extended period of time due to, what he called being, “creatively impotent,” and cleaning. He used to escape by playing video games, watching movies, reading, playing basketball, and channel surfing between ESPN, The Food Network, and The Travel Channel. At one point, not too long ago, he was so happy to just sit and watch TV that he invested thousands of dollars into a new 75” Sony XBR Series 4K LED TV with HDR and full-array backlighting, a Sony 4K Blu-ray player, and a Pioneer Elite audio receiver capable of processing the 4K signal as well as outputting video with HDR and the Dolby Atmos spatial sound format. As soon as he bought all the equipment, something changed in him. He didn’t want to watch TV. He didn’t want to watch sports. He didn’t want to do much of anything. He made himself happy with the purchases, then felt empty.

After he finished steaming his clothes, he grabbed his Quip electric toothbrush, activated charcoal toothpaste, and alcohol-free mouthwash, then headed to the bathroom. He knew the time he spent steaming his clothes put him behind schedule, but he couldn’t skip any steps in his routine. Everything needed to be completed and completed in the correct order within his controlled environment.

Still trying to wake up....

When he finished his mouth care, he pulled down his shorts, backed up onto his Squatty Potty, and sat on the toilet for the penultimate, and most taxing, step in his routine. This was the time when his mind wandered the most, when he was at his most mentally vulnerable. He looked at his day and saw nothing to excite him. He knew his ex-girlfriend would text at 8am and they would go back and forth with casual conversation until about 3pm. He wanted to be friends with her but it was a difficult task. He didn’t trust her and believed she was just biding her time with him until she found the man she wanted. By around 9:30am, he knew would become frustrated with his coworkers for talking too much in their corner of the office. He didn’t understand how people can talk to each other, all day, every day, about the same nonsense. Also, he knew they weren’t completing their work, would not be held accountable, and he would have to pick up the slack. At 11:30am, he would start his lunch hour and watch a TV show or a portion of a movie on his iTunes or Vudu accounts. Sometime, he would watch the remainder of the previous night’s episode of Monday Night Raw through his Xfinity app. He knew he would leave work at around 3pm, make the almost 2-hour drive home, sit on his couch, and become paralyzed with angst and anxiety. This was always the most arduous part of his day. His thoughts would be ablaze with concepts, ideas, fears, frights, and neurotic meanderings. Often, the thoughts would bring him to tears, but he would never cry out because he didn’t want to draw attention, he didn’t want to disturb the house. He knew he could ask for help. He also knew he wouldn’t accept help despite believing it would never be offered. He knew his phone wouldn’t ring with someone wondering about his well-being. He knew he would be ready to fight anyone who tried to pierce his guard. He knew he couldn’t wait to go to sleep so could elude the constantly ticking second hand on the clock. He knew, one day, it would all be over and no one would know a thing. He knew only his family would show up to his funeral. He knew he was late for work....

Still trying to wake up....

After cleaning himself, he removed his shorts and underwear, and then jumped into the shower. Running late forced him to concentrate on washing, purging yesterday’s filth from his body in a futile attempt to start anew and rinse away the troublesome. While drying off in the bedroom, moisturizing his skin, putting coconut oil in his hair, and conditioner in his beard, he listlessly whispered, “Alexa, open my garage door.” Followed by, “Alexa, ask Lexus to start my car with the temperature set to 80 degrees.” When the command was confirmed, he turned off the bedroom light, exited the room, cautiously closed the door, and quietly walked down the steps to the kitchen to grab his lunch, a salad of spring mix, baby sweet peppers, white onions, black olives, cucumbers, raw broccoli, and red pepper flakes along with 2 small containers of Dannon Oikos Triple Zero Banana Cream yogurt, from the refrigerator and continued back down to the basement to so he could put on his coat, pick up his backpack, and throw his keys, money clip, and work badge in his pockets.

As he stepped outside, the cool, morning air was whistling through the open garage door as the shadow of sunlight crept in. When he opened the car door of his Matador Red 2019 Lexus LS Hybrid, his black leather, heated car seat automatically slid back so he could comfortably enter, then slide into place after the door was closed. He took a deep breath, fastened his seat belt, placed the car in drive, and headed down Tarrington Way to West Orvilla Road and ultimately to the PA Turnpike.

Still trying to wake up....

He got lost in his thoughts after entering the Turnpike from the EZPass lane. No music was playing or podcasts blaring through the Mark Levinson Reference speakers. The quiet cabin of the car retarded the sounds of the road and nature from his eardrums. He had no distractions. He was alone and silently terrified. He wanted to wake up from this bad dream. He wanted to know how he fell so far, so fast. He needed to find out why things went so wrong. His unhappiness was changing him, molding him into someone he feared. His invasive thoughts held his conscience, his true self, hostage. He was so lost within his vitriolic menagerie of discontent, he didn’t notice the car in the passing lane, slightly behind him, swerve to miss a deer who briefly darted into traffic before quickly receding into the wooded area. He was so overcome in his daze he was unable to react when the driver of the swerving car lost control and collided with his rear, driver’s side quarter panel, at 70 miles an hour, sending him spinning out of control, and, eventually, head on into a jersey barrier, causing a domino effect of wreckage in its wake. He felt nothing when the car behind him plowed into his rear with the force of a tsunami. He was numb, from head to toe, unable to feel anything.

When the firefighters pried open his door from amongst the massive debris, warm blood was tickling down his face from a gash atop his head and more of the life-sustaining substance leaking from his mouth caused by the impact of the airbag. His eyes were closed and motionless when he heard them trying to gain his attention.

“Sir, sir! Are you okay,” one of the firefighters exclaimed in a calm, yet urgent vibrato. “We’re here to help you,” he continued. “Can you respond? Can you hear me? We’re going to get you out here,” he said with a bit of strain in his voice as he began to cut the seatbelt. “You’re going to be okay!”

Many of his words were muted, all he heard was “help.” All he felt were multiple hands on his head, neck, and body. He didn’t need help. He didn’t want help. So, he fought with his eyes still closed, arms flailing, unable to see the people who were listening to him, cared about him, there for him. He fought through the pain of the teeth that were knocked out of his mouth and through the fog of the concussion he suffered during the accident. He fought despite having a compound fracture of his left fibula and a dislocated right ankle. He fought through a broken sternum, multiple broken ribs, and punctured lung.

He fought, blindly...

He fought in fear....

He fought for solitude....

While still trying to wake up....

#depression #creative writing #writing #pain #sorrow #hedonic treadmill

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bcimbatmandude · 7 years

Text

More Human Than Meets the Eye-Ch.3-A Study in Pink, Part Two

A/N: sup guys! sorry, I would’ve had this up a lot sooner but this weekend has been a little busy. I’m actually gonna post 2 chapters today!! Here we go!!

SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

Spaghetti and meatballs.

She looked around then, noticing that something, or rather someone, was missing. "Dad, where's Mr. John?" She became suspicious when he opted not to answer her question, and after three seconds when he still acted as though he hadn't heard her, she scolded him, "Dad…" Sherlock looked at his daughter then and tried very hard not to laugh when she put her hands on her hips and began tapping her foot in an impatient manner. She was trying to be serious and would get upset if he laughed at her efforts. "I may or may not have left him…." he began. "Dad!" she cried, her mouth falling open.

"Mr. John has a limp! You can't abandon a man with a limp!" "Adaline," he sighed. "He's a grown man. He knows how to call for a taxi." "It's still very rude to do something like that! Mr. John is a nice man. We don't do rude things to nice people dad," she scolded. He looked at her for several seconds, taking note of her pleading expression. He sighed, defeated. He supposed he wasn't setting a very good example for his daughter.

"What if it's not convenient?" she pointed out innocently. He paused and then scowled, sending another text out.

If inconvenient come anyway. SH

Sherlock opened his eyes and glanced at him in question. "You asked me to come," he continued, " I'm assuming it's important." "Oh yes, of course. Can I borrow your phone?"

"My phone.." John repeated slowly. "I don't want to use mine," Sherlock explained. "There's always a chance my number will be recognized." "Does Mrs. Hudson not have a phone?" John questioned, voice rising a bit. "Mrs. Hudson is downstairs. I don't want to walk all the way down there just to use her phone.." he explained in a "duh" voice.

"I was on the other side of London," John exclaimed angrily. "There was no hurry," Sherlock said innocently. John sighed angrily and looked up to the ceiling in exasperation. Adaline giggled at their antics from her father's chair. John dug around in his pocket, pulling out his phone. "Here."

"Her case." Sherlock corrected softly. "Her case?" "Her suitcase, yes, obviously." Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at John. "The murderer took her suitcase. First big mistake." "Okay, he took her case. So?" John asked.

"It's no use, there's no other way. We'll have to risk it," Sherlock quietly. His voice rose and he said, "On my desk there's a number. I want you to send a text."

"Wait a minute," John started, his temper building again. "You brought me here…to send a text?" "Text, yes. The number on my desk." John snatched his phone from Sherlock and ignoring his instructions, went and looked out the window. Adaline frowned, sensing John's unhappiness. "Dad," she started. "You're being very rude." "It's alright Adaline," John soothed. "I met a friend of yours," he stated in Sherlock's direction. "A friend?" Sherlock said, wearing an expression of mild confusion. "Dad doesn't have friends Mr. John," Adaline informed him, shaking her head.

Sherlock looked at John, narrowing his eyes at him suspiciously. "Did he offer you money?" "Yes." "Did you take it?" he questioned, looking very closely at the shorter man.

"No."

"Pity. We could have split the fee. Think it through next time." Adaline nodded and John realized that they knew something he didn't. "Who is he?" "The most dangerous man you've ever met, and not my problem right now. On my desk, the number."

"Are you doing it?"

"Yes." "Have you done it?"

John started to type, but stopped when he heard what Sherlock was saying. He looked at him, briefly, mildly concerned. Sherlock continued his narration. " 'Twenty-two Northumberland Street. Please come.'"

"What's the address?" "Twenty-two Northumberland Street. Do hurry up!" John finally finished the message. He looked up only to see Sherlock unzipping the case and flipping open the lid, revealing the contents. Adaline looks inside, curious. She saw a few things of clothing and underwear, all an alarming shade of pink..big surpise, there…a washbag, and a paperback novel that was definitely not for young children. She picked it up to examine it, but before she could get a good look at it Sherlock had snatched it out of her hands. "I don't think so," he muttered, setting it to the side. She huffed.

"That's….that's the pink lady's case. That's Jennifer Wilson's case." Adaline looked up at John then, her eyebrows creased. Did he just now figure that out? Sherlock, continuing to study the case, only commented, "Yes, clearly." John continued to stare, and Sherlock, becoming aware of the silence, looked up and studied him for a second. He rolled his eyes in irritation. "Oh, perhaps I should mention. I didn't kill her."

"I never said you did." "Why not? Given the text I just had you send and the fact that I have her case, it's a perfectly logical assumption." "Do people usually assume you're the murderer?" John asked worriedly. Adaline nodded, and her father smirked. "Now and then, yes." Sherlock leaned back into his chair, lifting his feet up and under him. He clasped his hands under his chin.

"Okay." John limped over across the room and dropped heavily into the chair on the other side of the fireplace. "How did you get this?" he demanded. "By looking." "Where?"

"Well, it had to be pink, obviously," Sherlock stated. "Why didn't I think of that?" John muttered to himself. "Because you're an idiot," Sherlock stated plainly. John looked across to him, feeling very wounded. Adaline sighed in dismay at her father's lack of tact, even as she snuggled deeper into his chest. It was definitely past her bed time…

Sherlock waved off John's shock with a placatory movement of his hand. "No, no, no, don't look like that. Practically everyone is." "Everyone huh?" John repeated, nodding his head towards the little girl half asleep on her father's chest. Sherlock sniffed and hugged his daughter briefly. "Almost everyone." John rolled his eyes. "Now, look. Do you see what's missing?"

"From the case? How could I?" John cried.

John sent him an apologetic glance, and lowered his voice. "What good will texting him do?" As if on cue, his phone begins to ring.

Withheld

Calling

"Mrs. Hudson took my skull." John huffed, "So I'm basically filling in for your skull?"

"Relax, you're doing fine," Sherlock praised, putting on his coat. John didn't move from his position. Sherlock, stopping his movements as well, lifted an eyebrow towards him. "Well?"

"Problem?" Sherlock questioned. "Yeah, Sergeant Donovan." Sherlock looked away in exasperation. "What about her?" "She said you get off on this. You enjoy it."

Without missing a beat, Sherlock stated, quite nonchalantly, "And I said 'dangerous,' and here you are." Sherlock turned and walked out the door. John sat there thoughtfully for several seconds, then angrily grabbed his cane, following his new flat mate out the door.

"Damn it!"

A/N: LOL I adore Sherlock and John's interactions. Very fluffy father-daughter time in this chapter. Thank you all so much.

#Sherlock #sherlock fanfiction #sherlock x reader #sherlock has a daughter #john watson #moriarty #mycroft holmes #mrs. hudson #221b baker street #the lying detective

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