#put rpm on the jackets PUT RPM ON THE FUCKING JACKETS

[mo-ok]

On page 184 of the Power Rangers Ultimate Visual History there is some early concept art for Scott's jacket and

I'm mad and sad and dissapointed that we didnt get jackets covered in patches.

Especially for Scott tho?? Like, he'd totally pick off the patches from his old air force uniform and sew them back onto his ranger jacket - it makes him feel special

[ranger-ribbons]

Changing into a hospital gown. + RPM; Ziggy?

Oh fuck yeah, I can do that. Thank you, friend!

~

Come on, scaredy cat. What are you afraid of?

His hands tremble as he reaches for the sleeve of his jacket. He doesn't technically need that damn thing, not since the Series Operators finally defeated Venjix and gave up their morphers until the next time they were needed, but it felt so strange to not be wearing his signature jacket, so he'd kept it and he'd worn it and-

"Zig?" Dillon asks from behind him, from behind the door. A soft knock followed. Dillon's been unbearably soft since they got the news, since he returned from the wastes with his sister and Summer in tow, down a romance, but with a better perspective of his friends- of Ziggy- and he'd been so- "You okay?"

Soft.

"Mm-hm!" Ziggy replies, strangled. He hopes Dillon doesn't notice. Oh, he probably will, who does Ziggy think he's kidding. "Yep, all good!" His voice cracks. Ziggy swallows back a sob.

"You need help?"

"Nope!" Ziggy replies immediately. "Nope, I got it! Thanks!" It's not that he doesn't want Dillon by his side, that's what Ziggy's been wishing for since Dillon drove off with Tenaya and Summer and left with nothing but a hug and a quiet good-bye- left Ziggy behind and-

It's not that he doesn't want Dillon there. It's that if Dillon's in the room with him, Ziggy will start crying. Ziggy's faced down Grinders, Attackbots, Doc K on a caffeine binge, but he's never been so scared in his life.

"Okay," Dillon says. "If you change your mind," he offers, voice trailing off. Ziggy adores Dillon for what he's willing to put himself through so Ziggy can be comfortable. He hates Dillon for being willing to do it.

Come on, scaredy cat, Ziggy tells himself, looking himself in the eyes with the cracked mirror of the hospital bathroom he's using to change. What are you afraid of, huh? He grabs his sleeve and tugs it off, inspired by a sudden bout of courage. Before he knows it, his jacket sits folded into a neat square on the sink, followed by his shirt and jeans. His green sneakers he settles under the sink and prays it's okay he leaves on his boxers and socks, 'cause he refuses to go around the hospital showing off his white ass for all the poor grandmothers and grandfathers to ogle at.

Ziggy’s hands tremble again as he reaches for the pale blue hospital gown. An unwanted whimper slips past his lips, tears welling in his eyes. If he puts this on... All the denial, all the "No, it'll be okay"s, all the time he spent hoping and wishing will be wasted. Ziggy’s hopes dashes, his wishes unanswered, his time running down the drain, his worst fears come to life. Nothing will be the same! Everything will change! Ziggy can't handle the looks he'd receive, the pain he'd be feeling, the pity in Scott, Flynn, and Summer's faves will only grow and...

And...

And if Ziggy puts on this hospital gown, everything Ziggy's been told about his diagnosis will only be confirmed for good.

Ziggy meets his eyes in the mirror once more. Come on, scaredy cat, he tells himself. You're a Ranger. Why are you scared?

Why wouldn't Ziggy be scared?

Another soft knock at the door. "Ziggy, the doctors are back. Are you ready?"

No...

"Yes," Ziggy whispers. He slowly unfolds the gown and slips it over his head with shaking hands, leaving the back untied because he couldn't tie it himself. His hands don't stop shaking as he gives himself a long, last look in the mirror. He prays it's not the last time he looks in a mirror.

Ziggy steps back and puts a hand on the doorknob, tears welling up in his eyes. Time to face the music.

"Come on, scaredy cat," he whispers, ignoring the tears spilling down his cheeks. "What are you afraid of?"

~

@augment-techs

[trikeyaredilfs]

Flare Gun

Summary: First assignment ever, Michael manages to fuck it up. Trevor’s knee jerk reaction causes more trouble for the two of them.

CW: graphic, emetophobia, death

“Fuck. Fuck.”

Michael slams his hand against the dash. “Go you piece of shit!”

Insane in the membrane blares from the car’s speakers as Michael struggles to keep the car steady on the dirt road. The engine roared as he ground his foot into the pedal. He anxiously monitored the RPM gauge doing his best to not blow the engine, but he needed that fucking car to go.

Suddenly it happened, the car jumped, ramming the steering wheel into Michael’s chest as the smoke began to billow from the hood, a soft knocking followed as the car skidded to a halt. Michael’s heart felt as if it was beating in his throat and his mouth was too dry to swallow it back down. He watched as the car behind him finally caught up to him.

The man got out, his face beet red, making his ghost white hair almost look pinkish. His chest heaving as he got out of his car. “You little punk! You think you can just fucking take off in my car?!” He waved his hands madly, “Do you know how much that engine costs? More than your fucking paycheck at fucking Cluck’n Bell will cover in 10 fucking years!”

Michael just locked the door. Staring at the man, he didn’t know what to do. He could open that door, and try and take him on but right now? After his final fiasco with his football career, he would not win. He mentally kicked himself, he knew he couldn’t run with that stupid fucking knee brace. And here he was! Because he couldn’t outrun some old wind bag. This wasn’t a part of the plan and even better, he had no clue where the hell the other party was that was supposed to be helping him get this shit over the border.

Suddenly the older man turned around, “You! You there! Call the cops! This teenage prick stole my car and totaled the damn thing! I need your help!”

Michael groaned, resting his forehead against the steering wheel. Teenager? Great. He was going to get arrested, and have to listen to the cops grill him because he was somehow mistaken for a teenager at the ripe age of 28, by some cataract ridden grandpa, in the middle of the desert all because of his stupid decision to try and race some old dick bag with a fucked up knee. A race he lost, to put the icing on the cake.

Well, that was until he heard the guy hit the side of his car, Michael’s head shot up, looking to the window that was now spattered in blood. He pales, he unlocks the door and looks down at the man who was currently making a gurgling noise, his eye socket fizzling and smoking. Michael stared down in horror, he slowly looked up to an equally pale man. Holding a flare gun in shaky hands. The man was scrawny, wearing a beaten up pilot jacket, a stained tanktop and skinny jeans with some yellowing air maxes. His black hair fell into his face as he stares at Michael.

“Wh…what did you just do?”

The other man seems to shake out of his stupor, now looking more pissed than anything. “What did I do?! You brought- you brought him here! What if he says something? We can’t just…he can’t be alive!”

Michael looks down to the man, who was now completely still, aside from the subtle jerks of his head as the flare popped inside of his skull.

Michael gags, stumbling back. He trips over himself falling onto his ass. Dust surrounding him momentarily.

The other stares down at him, briefly looking back to the body, then back to Michael. He drops the gun, shakily holding a hand to Michael. “I-I…uh…Trevor.” He manages to make out. Michael takes his hand, steadying himself as he stands.

“We can’t…leave him there can we..?” Michael asks, his voice still trembling. “I don’t know I’ve…never had to…” Trevor makes a soft noise, Michael looks to him. His eyes were still fixed on the body.

“We…we gotta get going.” Says Michael, “we can just…put him in the trunk and then we can just throw him out.”

“Throw him out where?”

“I don’t know, okay dude? We just gotta get going or we’re gonna get thrown somewhere!”

Michael and Trevor make their way back to the car, they quickly work to get the man in the trunk of the car the older man brought. Both of them holding their breath the best they could before tossing him in the trunk. Closing it.

“The suitcases are over by my truck. We just…gotta put them in here.” Trevor says, trying his best to ignore the smell that was now embedded in their clothes.

Michael nods, as he quickly walks to the driver’s door of the man’s car. Rather, the newly ownerless car. He rolls down the window, working the crank as fast as humanly possible. He climbs in, watching Trevor do the same. He makes the quick stop by Trevor’s truck, Trevor loads the few suitcases in. And Trevor directs him through the thicket, the barely visible path his truck had made as he traveled the route to get to their meeting spot. About 20 minutes in, came a clearing to a large lake.

“Wait wait. Stop here.”

Says Trevor, putting his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “We gotta meet them, dude! Lester is going to-“

“We have to get him the fuck out of here, Michael! He’s going to keep rotting and he’s going to completely fuck up the cargo! I know what I’m doing!”

Michael closes his eyes, he then puts the car in park, hurriedly getting out. “Okay! Alright come on!” Trevor follows along, as they open the trunk. The smell hits the both of them, they both struggle, grabbing his arms and legs before getting him to the shore. “Fuck…fuck he’s gonna float!” Says Trevor, struggling to keep the contents of his stomach down. “Rocks! Just get rocks!” Blurts Michael. They both begin to stuff rocks into the man’s clothes. A few seconds later Michael shakes his head, looking at Trevor whose face looked a similar shade of white. They both heaved the man into the lake where he fortunately sunk, but the ghastly glow of the flare still lodged in his face fizzled as he descended.

They both lost it, both were on either side of the path retching and gagging. Every last bit of the contents of their stomach now laying on the ground. Michael holds onto a tree, belching. Unsure of whether he had anything else to bring up. Trevor wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket.

“Fuck…man we…we gotta get to the airstrip.”

[faunusrights]

library of faults (RWBYDUB AU)

set in RWBYDUB AU, which is if rwby rock was abt bedroom producers and DJs and electronic music instead. blake uses they/them pronouns don't fuck it up.

_

"You know, I used to think my dad had the best record collection this side of Vale," Yang says as she watches Blake pull boxes of records out from their shelves, all packed so tightly together as to not jostle at all, "but damn, you put him to shame."

"Buying vinyls was cheaper, at the time," Blake admits, although they jab a thumb at one particularly old looking set, with their dusty jackets and faded print. "Or, uh, I stole them. From my parents, I mean. Don't know if they ever noticed, but..."

Each box is organised alphabetically and by genre; Blake's collection of jazz--ranging from bebop to more modern jazz-fusion--is extensive, but it's only superseded by dancehall favourites, more suited for a party crowd than easy listeners. Some of the records are so old and so loved that their sleeves are either crumbling into nothing or are missing entirely, replaced by plastic covers marked up in permanent ink with the name of the artist written in bold, the RPM underlined thrice over. If anything's clear, Blake's taken real good care of them all at best they could.

"Cheaper, huh?" Yang muses aloud, neatly stepping over the topic of their parents--an awkward thing to talk about at best and downright painful at worst. "Let me guess: you were such a hipster you spun vinyls before it was even cool, right?"

Blake rolls their eyes, flipping through their records with familiar ease. They're looking for a specific track to sample, and despite Yang's insistence they could just buy a digital version to work from, Blake is, and always will be, a big believer in not paying twice for something you already own. "It wasn't because I was a hipster, idiot, it was because you could buy like ten vinyls for fifty Lien when I was a teenager. I would go to antique stores or dig through the bargain buckets at charity stores and take as many as I could carry. Then I'd go wherever home was and play them on just the world's shittiest set of fourth-hand decks and chop up samples onto a laptop that got so hot I could cook eggs on it." They pause their search, and wrinkle up their nose. "That's not hyperbole, either."

Reaching the end of the current box, Blake accepts that what they're looking for isn't inside this particular one, closing the latches of the lid with a pair of solid thunks. Sure would help to remember the artist at the very least, but c'est la vie.

"At least you were making stuff as a kid," Yang points out, settling herself down next to Blake on the carpet. "I didn't take doing music seriously at all until Ruby started really pumping out tracks and she asked me to help out. I'm starting to regret all the years I wasted not practising my rudiments."

"That implies I made anything half-decent," Blake points out as they open crate number two: H--L. "Most songs I made back then were born at seven in the morning after DJing for the better part of twelve hours straight and still drunk on free beers I was too young for."

Yang just looks impressed, which isn't quite the message Blake was trying to impart. "Yeah, but that's what I would've rather been doing at... what, sixteen?"

"Fifteen, actually," Blake mumbles. "Travelling across Mistral playing for whatever illegal rave would have me."

Yang's eyebrows almost touch the brim of her snapback, and for a second she sort of looks Blake up and down like she can't quite believe that Blake--who wears button-ups and dark slacks and looks almost every bit like a pretentious jazz student when they've got their glasses on--would ever be doing something like underage drinking in a condemned warehouse in the south of Mistral as they blasted music through a DIY soundsystem until there were alleged noise complaints up to ten miles away, but, hey. The truth is weird sometimes.

"Gods," Yang says after a moment. "You are so cool. Like, don't get me wrong; that can't have been, like, good for you. But also--"

"It wasn't," Blake cuts in, and then they give Yang a wry smile. "But thanks for liking my mental illnesses anyway."

[sandalepieleelvis]

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[alarawriting]

52 Project #18: Thirteen

NOTES IN ALL CAPS: THIS STORY HAS TRIGGER WARNINGS AND THE WARNINGS MAY THEMSELVES BE TRIGGERING SO HERE IS A PICTURE OF AN ALBINO KIWI:

OK, now for the trigger warnings:

This story contains references to the incestuous rape of a child, an attempted rape of a child, underage prostitution, child abuse aside from the sexual abuse, discussion of racism, drug abuse, and multiple murders. If any of this triggers you, DO NOT READ THIS STORY.

For those attempting to decide whether these triggers are deal-breakers or not, a brief synopsis: A thirteen-year-old abuse victim suddenly develops superpowers. Unfortunately the first one she gets is death touch. By the end of the story she is able to use her powers to heal as well, but this does not stop her from being an asshole.

***

Meg Santoro wanders aimlessly through the Brooklyn streets.  The sun is coming up, and she’s tired and cold, her feet aching and her stomach growling.  She has no idea where she’s going to get food, or a place to sleep.  Home is not an option.  Home no longer exists.

Earlier in the night she turned up her nose at a bag of McDonalds she saw sticking out of a trash can.  Now she’s hungry enough to fish trash out of cans and eat it, except that the garbagemen have already come around and the city trash cans are empty.  She sits down on a park bench to rest her feet, and her eyes flutter closed in her exhaustion.  But when they close all the way, she sees the earlier events of the night spooling out in front of her.  Her eyes snap open, trying to stop seeing, trying to stop remembering, but she’s too tired to keep walking and when she stops, the memories come back.

Tears well up in her eyes.  I’m sorry, Daddy.  I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean to…

It’s all her fault.  She shouldn’t have said no.  She shouldn’t have made a fuss.  If Mom hadn’t heard, none of it would have happened.

She doesn’t want to remember, but she can’t stop.

***

Dad wanted to do it with her again, but things were different since last week.  Her thirteenth birthday was two months ago, and she just got her first period four days ago.  In health class they took all the girls aside back in September and taught them about sex and babies and the important thing was that after you get your period, if you do it with a guy you could get pregnant.  Dad didn’t want to do it with her while she was having her period, but now it was over and he wanted to do it again.

Meg didn’t like doing it with Dad.  He first started asking her to do it when she was nine, and it hurt most of the time, and she’d never liked it.  It made her feel dirty, and embarrassed, and even when parts of it felt good she felt bad about that too, because if she liked it that made her a gross person.  As she got older she heard girls older than her in the locker rooms and bathrooms talking about girls who were sluts, and she knew that meant her because she wasn’t a virgin.  But she couldn’t say no to Dad.  He said she would do it if she loved him, and she did love him, because he was her Daddy and he loved her and he praised her and he took care of her.  She’d do anything for him.

Now, though, she’d been sure that Dad wouldn’t want her to get pregnant, and she’d finally had a reason to say no.  But Dad didn’t want to hear no.  He cajoled her and flattered her and promised to get her birth control pills and told her it would be okay, and he lied and said she couldn’t get pregnant so soon after her first period, and she said she knew that was wrong, and he said her teachers just told kids scare stories because they were afraid of children enjoying themselves, and the whole time he was maneuvering her onto the bed and taking her clothes off and she couldn’t make him understand that she really meant it this time, that she had to say no.  And she started to try to push him away, but he was bigger than her and he could pin her down easily and he said, you don’t really want to hurt me, do you Meg?  This could get ugly, you don’t want things to get ugly, do you?  And she didn’t, but she wanted him to stop because she didn’t want to get pregnant, and she was afraid and she felt betrayed because this time she had a really good reason to say no and he still wasn’t listening, and she started to cry.

And Mom heard her.

Meg had never tried to tell Mom what was happening.  Dad had said that Mom would tell the police and then they would take Dad away and send him to jail and make her live with Mom, and that would be horrible.  Dad only hurt her when he wanted to do it with her.  Mom was mean all the time, always shouting at her or being sarcastic or cutting or cruel, and Mom used to spank her all the time even for things she really didn’t do, and nowadays Mom was always calling her names, saying she thought too much of herself and she was stuck-up and she was stupid and she was fat, and she hated the idea of being alone with Mom.  And in the true life stories she had read about girls who were in the same position she was, a lot of the time their mothers blamed them for their fathers wanting to do it, and sometimes called them sluts and threw them out of the house.  So she’d never wanted to tell Mom anything about it.

But Mom heard her crying, and came upstairs and threw open the door, and she saw.

Mom screamed, and dragged Dad off her by his hair, and hit him.  And she kept saying, “You bastard!  You filthy bastard!  How could you do that to your own daughter!”  And Dad kept saying it was okay because Meg wanted it, she’d asked for it, and Mom was screaming that a little girl couldn’t ask for it, Dad was a filthy child molester, how dare he try to blame Meg for his perversions, and for the first time since she was four or five Meg felt like her mother actually loved her.  Mom was defending her, telling Dad how wrong it was for him to have done it with Meg and that it wasn’t her fault and she was just a little girl and it was all Dad’s fault, and it was what she’d wanted all her life to hear from her mother, that it wasn’t her fault, that she was a good girl.  That Mom loved her and would protect her.  And then Mom said she’d call the police.  And Dad said, don’t call the police, Stacy, please.  And Mom said no, Richie, you’re a fucking child molester and I’m calling the police. 

And they were arguing.  And Meg tried to say no, Mom, don’t call the police, it was my fault, and Mom cried and said it’s not your fault Meggie, it’s not your fault, never listen to a man when he makes you do something and then he says it’s your fault, you’re just a little girl, it’s not your fault, your father’s an evil man and I’m going to call the police.  And Dad said it would ruin all their lives if she called the police, and he was shouting and he was obviously angry and afraid.  And he said don’t touch that phone or I will hit you.  And she said I’m calling the police and if you hit me that’s one more thing they can arrest you for.  And then she reached for the phone in the hallway at the top of the stairs, and he hit her and she fell down the stairs and her head was lying at a weird angle and she wouldn’t move even when Dad called Stacy? Stacy? and Meg yelled Mom, Mom!

Dad got down the stairs first and was cradling Mom’s head in his lap and he was moving it in ways heads should not move and he was saying it was an accident, Meg, you saw it was an accident, right?  I didn’t mean to throw her down the stairs, I didn’t mean to kill her.  And he couldn’t have said kill her because that would have meant Mom was dead and she just was defending Meg for the first time ever, ever in her memory, first time Meg knew Mom loved her ever, and she couldn’t be dead but she was dead because Dad had killed her because he wanted to do it with Meg bad enough to kill Mom and Meg screamed.  She threw herself at him, screaming that she hated him and she wished he would die too.

And something came up inside her, some power to wrench and twist, something responding to her desire for her father to die.  She was so angry that she reached inside him and she twisted something with hands that didn’t exist, hands she’d never known she had, she went right inside him and wrenched, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and when she touched him she heard a song like an orchestra playing music and she twisted that thing because she was mad and now he sounded like a music box winding down, like a broken calliope, like a 45 played at 33 rpm on a turntable g o i n g s  l  o  w  e  r and then it stopped and there was no more music.  No music in Mom.  No music in Dad.  He didn’t move.  He didn’t speak.  His eyes were open and there was blood trickling out his mouth and nose and he didn’t answer her.

She broke him.  With the invisible hands she broke him.  She wanted him dead and she reached inside him and she didn’t even know she could do that so she didn’t know that she shouldn’t and she wasn’t even thinking and she was just angry and she broke him.  And now her daddy was dead.  Mom was dead and Dad was dead and Dad killed Mom and Meg killed Dad and it was all too much for her.  Meg screamed, and sobbed, and pleaded with God to roll back time, let none of this be happening, let it be a bad dream, please God, let me wake up and none of this is real. 

God didn’t listen.  Mom and Dad were still dead.

She didn’t know where to go, what to do.  She didn’t want the police to put her in jail for killing Dad.  It was an accident, she didn’t mean to, she hadn’t known she could even do that.  She had to get away.  Meg went back upstairs and put her clothes back on and her jacket and then she ran out the door of the rowhome, out into dark city streets and the bright spots of streetlamps, no idea where she was going but she couldn’t stay here, she couldn’t come back here ever again.

***

Meg sits on the park bench and cries brokenly.  She wants her Daddy.  She wants Mom.  She’s thirteen years old and she knows she’ll never have them again, they’ll never take care of her again, never feed her dinner, never pet her hair.  The things they did that she hated, the pain between her legs when Dad did it with her and the sting she felt when Mom screamed insults at her, she doesn’t think of those things now.  She thinks of the things they did for her, the ways they cared for her, the trips to the museum and Dad telling her what a special smart girl she was and Mom making dinner and then pie or cannolis for dessert and Dad’s hugs and Mom defending her finally, and she cries.

A man sits down next to her.  He’s old but not super old, like maybe in his 30’s or something. A white guy, brown hair, wearing jeans, a plain blue t-shirt and a black windbreaker with white piping. “Hey, smile, kid.  It can’t be all bad.”

She looks over at him dully.  “It is that bad,” she retorts.  “It really is that bad.”

“Oh, that’s got to be rough then,” he says.  “You running away from home?”

“Yes,” she says, because it’s sort of true, although the thing she’s running away from is more like the broken corpse of home, because Mom and Dad are dead and there will be no home anymore ever.

“Got someone to stay with?”

She shakes her head mutely.  She has friends, but she can’t go to any of their houses.  Not for something like this.

“Well, I tell you what,” he says.  “I got a few other runaways staying at my place.  I could take you in for a while, help you get a job so you can take care of yourself.  How’s that?”

A job?  She’s in junior high.  What kind of a job could she get?  But she needs one, she realizes, because she needs money.  “Sure,” she says uncertainly.

“Come on.  I’ll buy you some McDonald’s for breakfast and take you home, let you take a shower and get a nap.  I bet you haven’t slept all night.  Bet you haven’t eaten much either.”

She shakes her head mutely, because it’s true.  She hasn’t slept at all, and she hasn’t eaten since dinner last night.

“I’m Rodney.  What’s your name, kid?”

“Meg,” she whispers, but she doesn’t want to give her last name, because she doesn’t want anyone to find her.  “My name is Meg.”

***

Rodney gets her hotcakes and sausage and scrambled eggs at McDonald’s, and she has two helpings. Rodney laughs. “Whoa! Slow down, kiddo, food will still be there later!”

Except she doesn’t know that anymore. She doesn’t know why Rodney is being nice to her, so she doesn’t know if it might spontaneously stop. “I used to be a gymnast,” she tells him, apropos of nothing. “I was really good at it. My coach thought maybe I could go to the Olympics.”

“The Olympics? The ones last year?”

Meg stuffs eggs into her face and talks with her mouth full. “Gymnastics, yeah. I could have been there instead of Mary Lou Retton.”

“I’m sure you could have,” Rodney says. “You look really fit. Really good shape.”

She could not have. It was never an option; her coach had thought she was good enough, but Mom made it clear that she was never going to be allowed to compete in gymnastics, saying she was too stupid to be able to keep her grades up and train. Spitefully, Meg had trained anyway, at school, and kept her grades up, because she was a lot smarter than Mom ever acknowledged –

(--but now Mom was dead--)

“I work out a lot,” Meg says proudly, yanking her mind away from where it was about to go.

“You look good,” Rodney says. “Really cute.”

Meg stiffens, because that sounds like the kind of thing Dad might say (have said), but probably Rodney is just being nice. He seems like a nice man. Who but a nice man would buy a runaway some breakfast and offer her a place to crash?

After breakfast, Rodney takes her to his house, in a car. Meg’s a child of Brooklyn; she hardly ever gets in a car, and she doesn’t like it. The streets, so clear and easy to track on foot, become so confusing when she’s in a car, and she can’t keep track of where she is.

His place is a brownstone townhouse, a big, fancy one. Meg whistles. “You have a nice-looking house.”

“Thanks,” Rodney says, unlocking four locks before he can open the door, but that’s normal in the city. Crime’s everywhere.

There’s two girls inside, both of them older than Meg. One’s white, with a spray-stiffened feathered haircut, and one’s black, with hair in cornrows and shining beads on the ends of her locks. They’re both wearing a lot of makeup. One’s smoking, and the house smells like booze, tobacco and weed. Meg knows what weed smells like because she got sent to the high school once for a week for special gifted science classes, before Mom found about it and said she couldn’t go, and the kids at the high school used to smoke and drink behind the dumpsters in the parking lot, and one of them offered her some weed one time, but she smoked it and nothing happened at all. It just smelled bad.

“Girls, this is Meg,” Rodney said expansively. “She’s gonna be joining us here.”

The white girl’s eyes narrow. “What, we’re not enough for you?” she snaps. “You need another girl?”

“Honey. Jessamyn. I’m just looking out for you,” Rodney says. “I don’t wanna make you work too hard, but we all like having money, right? So I’m just getting you some help.”

Meg doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about. Does he mean her? She’s thirteen, she can’t get a job. She looked at that once when she was actually thinking about running away. She can’t get working papers and a job until she’s fourteen. “I’m thirteen,” she says again.

The black girl scowls. “Rodney, damn it. That’s disgusting.”

Meg scowls back. That black girl doesn’t know her. How dare she call Meg disgusting?

“She’s a runaway, Rhonda,” Rodney says, sounding patient. “She’s got nowhere else to go now. What’s she going to do, starve on the street?”

Rhonda sighs ostentatiously. “You do what you want. You know I can’t stop you,” she says.

“That’s right, you can’t,” Rodney says. “Better remember it.”

He takes Meg up the stairs. “Here’s your room,” he says, “and here’s the bathroom. You can take a shower. I’ll get you a nightgown.”

“There’s no shower curtain,” Meg objects.

“Oh, yeah, but you can lock the door. No one’s going to come in and see you. It’s fine.”

Meg does really want a shower. Though she doesn’t like the smell of the soap, or the shampoo – they’re full of nasty-smelling perfumy chemicals. After Rodney brings her a nightgown – no underwear, he apologizes that he hasn’t got any clean ones in her size, smiling weirdly at her – she locks the bathroom door and searches the bathroom for a different soap or shampoo.

She doesn’t find any worth using – the alternate soaps and shampoo smell just as bad, except with the kind of chemicals men like to put on instead of the ones women do. She does discover that there’s a second door out of the bathroom, that it’s facing the shower directly, and that there’s a peephole in it. Gross. Who would put a peephole in a bathroom? Especially when there’s no shower curtain? Meg smears the stinky soap all over the peephole, obscuring it.

It’s weird. The soap has a smell, but the smell has a feel. Not the feel of the soap. It just feels like soap. The smell in the soap is different from the soap itself and she can feel it when she touches the soap. It feels… sharp. But not in a way where it’s sharp on her skin. It’s sharp… inside her, somehow. Or her insides are touching it inside the soap.

She snaps off the sharp parts. She doesn’t know how she’s doing this. The same way she made the song inside Dad slow down and stop, the same way she broke him inside. But she snaps off the sharp parts and squeezes the rest until it all breaks, and then the soap doesn’t smell like anything but soap.

In the shower, she does the same thing to the shampoo she puts on her hair, and the conditioner. If she can’t make them smell nice, at least she can just make them smell soapy, not perfumey. Meg doesn’t like perfume. It smells sharp, like it’s going to cut the inside of her nose. It used to make it hard to breathe, too, and that was bad because her English teacher wore way too much of it, but she must have gotten used to it because she doesn’t feel like she can’t breathe around Mrs. Sommer anymore.

Not that she’s ever going to see or smell Mrs. Sommer again.

She dries off and puts on the nightgown. No underpants. She doesn’t like not wearing underpants but she doesn’t like the way the ones she has smell or feel. They’re crusty and yucky. They always get that way when Dad—

--she doesn’t finish that thought.

Meg’s very, very tired. She climbs into the bed, and despite the fact that this is a strange place and it’s kind of weird and the smoke smell is kind of gross, she falls asleep very quickly.

***

She wakes up with a weight on her and the overwhelming smell of man-chemicals. Like cologne or aftershave or the other nasty things men put on. “Wha—”

“Hey, baby girl,” Rodney says. “Just relax. You’re gonna like this.”

This sounds so much like something Dad might say. Meg goes completely rigid. “I don’t – I don’t want you on me. I’m trying to sleep.”

“Don’t be like that, honey,” Rodney says. He’s pulling down the blankets. She tries to pull them back up, but he’s stronger. “You can go back to sleep later if you really want to. But I gave you food and a place to sleep, didn’t I? I was nice to you. Don’t you wanna be nice to me?”

That sounds exactly like the kind of thing Dad would say. “No!” Meg squirms, trying to get out from under Rodney, but his body is pressing her down against the bed. “Get off me!” She’s hyperventilating. “You’re not my dad and I don’t love you!”

“Babe, you don’t need to love me,” Rodney says, chuckling. “You just need to be warm and soft and wet, and I’ll bet you’ve already got that covered.” His hand slips under her nightgown, where she’s not wearing underpants, and runs up her leg. Toward the place Dad used to touch her, the place where he would do it with her, and Meg screams in rage and fear. Because it’s so unfair, she thought Rodney was nice, she thought he was going to take care of her, but all he wants is the same thing Dad wanted, and he’s not her Dad. She doesn’t love him. She doesn’t have to care about hurting his feelings if she says no.

“I said get off me!” Meg snarls, and digs her nails into Rodney’s hand so he can’t keep stroking it up her leg.

Rodney yelps. “You little fucking bitch!” he says, and slaps her in the face, hard.

Meg sees red. She shoves her hands against Rodney’s chest and she can feel his shirt, she can feel it like it’s a road she can travel to get to his skin and then inside him, and she can hear the orchestra, playing a different tune than it was playing inside Dad but it’s the same kind, she recognizes it, and she makes it stop, she makes it slow dooooown. Rodney’s eyes bulge. He gasps, and pushes himself off her, his hands against his chest.

“Help!” he shouts, gasping. “Jessie! Rho-Rho! Help me!”

Meg climbs out of the bed, wide awake now. Her nightgown falls back down, covering her. “That’s what you deserve,” she snarls at him. “That’s what everyone who tries to do something to me if I don’t want it is gonna get.”

He’s turning blue, literally. She always thought that was a metaphor, but no. His lips are blue, his tongue is blue. He’s panting and gasping but it’s obvious he can’t get enough air.

Because she made something stop inside his lungs, she realizes. Whatever she did to Dad, it happened so fast and then he was gone and all the music stopped. But when she puts her hand on Rodney’s shoulder as he kneels, struggling for air, she can hear the music still slowing down and the part that’s broken is the part where his lungs should be bringing in air but she can feel them, they’re all crumpled up, the air is trying to inflate them like a balloon but they won’t straighten out and inflate, and she did that. She crushed his lungs, and now he’s dying.

Meg laughs savagely. “Yeah. Try to breathe. Go on, just try.” She kicks him. “I thought you were nice, but you’re even worse than Dad, and I – and I killed Dad.”

The white girl kicks the door open. She’s holding a gun. “Freeze!” she yells, but her voice is shaking. “Oh, God! Rodney!”

Rodney’s breath rattles a final time, and he falls onto the floor, limp. “Rhonda! Call 911!” Jessamyn yells, still pointing the gun at Meg.

“What’s going on?” Rhonda yells from downstairs, and Meg hears her running up the stairs.

“What did you do?” Jessamyn screams at Meg.

“He tried –” She can’t say it. She’s never been able to say it. “He did something I didn’t like, and he wouldn’t stop.” She kicks his body again. “I said no.”

“What the fuck! You bitch, you killed him just because he wanted to fuck you? You’re supposed to let guys fuck you if they do something nice for you!” Meg is fairly sure that this is not true. She doesn’t have time to say so. “You fucking bitch!” Jessamyn screams, and fires the gun.

The pain tearing through her chest and abdomen enrages her, and without any conscious awareness of what she’s doing, she knits torn flesh back together, healing herself, even as she leaps at Jessamyn.  The older girl barely has time to scream before Meg is on her, making the symphony of her life slow and stop in a jangled mess of missed notes, disharmonious and desynchronized.

Rhonda’s there, standing in the doorway. Meg doesn’t know how long she’s been there. “Is she dead?” Rhonda asks, her voice more calm and even than it probably has any right to be, given that Meg has just killed two people.  “Am I next?”

“Not if you don’t mess with me,” Meg says, and then it occurs to her that if she wants to sound tough, she needs to use stronger language. “Don’t fuck with me,” she says, tasting the harshness of a word good little A-student Margaret Santoro has never before said, “and you’ll be fine.”

“You healed yourself,” Rhonda says, still even and calm. “And you killed Rodney and Jessamyn.  Can you heal them, too?  Can you bring them back?”

“Why should I? Rodney tried to-“ She should be able to say it. She’s a killer. She’s murdered three people, she should be a badass. But she’s not tough enough, yet, to say what Rodney tried to do. She’s too used to never using the words to say what Dad used to do.  “And Jessamyn just shot me.”

“No one’s gonna cry for Rodney,” Rhonda agrees.  “But Jessamyn just got scared.  She thought Rodney loved her, you know.  Do you have the ability to save her, or do you just kill people?”

What if she does? She healed herself.  What if she can make the symphony start up again?  Can she fix what she’s broken?  She touches Jessamyn again, and easily identifies what it was she broke.  She doesn’t know the words to describe it, but she can feel it, and she can perceive how to put it back together again.

The music starts up again, the orchestra playing the symphony of Jessamyn’s life, slow at first and then gathering strength, gathering rhythm.  The young woman’s eyes flutter open, and Meg feels a keen sense of power and triumph.  “Don’t fuck with me,” she says again, as the girl’s eyes go wide.  She’s liking that phrase more every time she says it.  “I just killed you and brought you back to life.  You try shooting me again or anything, and I’ll kill you for good. Capisce?”

“Yeah,” Jessamyn says hoarsely, eyes huge, with the whites showing around the edges.

“Good, then we get each other.” She stands up.  “Get me something to eat.  I’m hungry.”

While she’s waiting for her food, she puts her clothes back on. They’re dirty, but she hasn’t got anything else, yet. She leaves Rodney’s body in place as she heads down the stairs to the kitchen.

Only when she’s eating the sandwich Rhonda brings her does it occur to her.  If she brought Jessamyn back, maybe she could have brought back Mom and Dad.  Maybe she still can.

She finishes choking down the sandwich quickly.  “I’m going out.  Gimme bus fare,” she demands of Jessamyn, who shrinks away.

“I ain’t got any money,” Jessamyn whimpers.

“Rodney never let us have our own cash,” Rhonda says.  “But I know where his lockbox is.  Gimme a sec.”

She comes back with eleven dollars in singles.  Meg says, “Thanks,” without thinking, because she was taught to be polite.  A badass killer shouldn’t be thanking people for obeying her orders.  She scowls at Rhonda.  “I’ll be back,” she says, pocketing the money, and heads out.

She doesn’t know where she is, exactly – Rodney brought her here in a car.  But she’s in the city, and she knows how to find her way.  Orient to the nearest street corner.  Find a bus stop.  Read the bus map, find a subway station, ride the bus there, read the subway map.  Between the bus and the subway she’s back home in an hour and a half.

There’s police all over her apartment building.  And yellow tape.  And all the police have guns.  What if they know she’s the one who killed Dad?  What if they think she killed Mom, too?  Jessamyn’s bullets hurt like hell, but there were only two of them.  Can she really heal herself if she gets shot by a lot of cops?  What if they shoot her in the head?  And then she sees an ambulance pulling out from the front of the building, no siren on.  If Mom and Dad’s bodies are aboard that ambulance, she’s missed her chance.  She knows dead bodies get locked up in drawers in hospital morgues.  She can’t do anything, now.

Meg runs three, four blocks before she can’t run anymore because she’s crying too hard.  She knows, now, that she has the power to undo what she does, when she kills.  She could have fixed Dad.  And she healed herself from gunshot wounds.  Maybe she could have healed Mom, too.  But it’s too late.  She’s found out too late.  Her parents are dead and she can’t fix it anymore.

***

She returns to the apartment a few hours later, having wandered around in a park crying for half an hour and then spending the rest of the time trying to retrace her route back. “Yo, bitches,” Meg says, because that’s what badass people say. “There any dinner yet?”

Rhonda isn’t there. Jessamyn trembles. “Rodney always ordered food,” she whimpers. “I don’t know how to order food. I was waiting until Rhonda gets back.”

“Where’d she go?”

Despite her obvious fear, Jessamyn manages to pull a disbelieving look. “You that naïve? Did Rodney even tell you what we do here?”

“He said you were runaways, that was all.”

Jessamyn rolls her eyes. “We’re whores,” she says. “Rhonda’s out on the street or fucking some guy for money. She said I could stay home tonight because of – because of what you did.”

Meg sneers at her. “What? Does it still hurt where I brought you back to life?”

“You fucking killed me!” Jessamyn gets off the sofa and backs away from Meg.

“Yeah, well, you shot me.”

“Because you killed Rodney!”

Meg musters up everything she has to be able to say the words without choking. “Rodney was gonna rape me.”

“You’re supposed to let them fuck you if they take care of you and give you food and shit! That’s not rape! That’s what you’re supposed to do!”

Meg lunges at Jessamyn. Despite being significantly shorter than the older girl, Meg slams her into a wall and pins her, because when she feels Jessamyn’s muscles inside starting to move, like maybe she wants to fight Meg, Meg just makes them stop doing that. Jessamyn’s eyes are wide, and she’s whimpering. “You listen up, bitch,” Meg says. Bad words make her feel so powerful. Why did she go her whole childhood being a good little girl and never using them? “My dad used to fuck me, and I let him do it because he was my dad, and I loved him.” And because he wouldn’t take no for an answer. But Meg wasn’t going to mention that. “But then my mom caught him at it, and now they’re both dead. You think I’m gonna fuck some total stranger just because he gave me McDonalds’ and a place to sleep? My dad gave me everything.” And she took it all from him, she made him stop and she’ll never be able to fix it even though it turns out she can fix it when she kills people and if she had known – no. No. She has to stop thinking about this. She can’t cry in front of Jessamyn. “Any man who thinks I’m a whore and I’ll fuck him just because he gives me stuff, I’ll kill him. Rodney or anybody else.”

“Please don’t kill me,” Jessamyn whimpers.

Meg lets her go. “I told you. Don’t fuck with me, and you’ll be fine.”

There’s milk in the refrigerator and cereal in the pantry. Cheerios. They suck, but they’re food. Meg loads them up with sugar to the point where her milk is almost a sugar sludge and gulps them down. Then she finds the lunchmeat Rhonda used to make her a sandwich, and she makes one for herself. The tomatoes in the fridge are sad and pathetic, and there’s no lettuce or spinach or anything green, but there’s ham and turkey and bologna. No cheese worth eating, only American, which in Meg’s opinion is not a cheese. She loads up a sandwich with some of every lunchmeat, and eats that. Then she moves on to the canned food, and makes herself a can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli. It’s hardly worthy of even calling ravioli – Meg’s Italian, she knows what good ravioli tastes like – but her stomach feels like a bottomless pit. She’d even eat the American cheese at this point if she had to.

“Your food sucks, you know that?” she says to Jessamyn.

“Well, excuse the fuck out of me, I never did the shopping,” Jessamyn snaps. “That was Rodney, who is still dead by the way, and upstairs, and what are we gonna do about that? If we call the cops they’ll arrest all of us. They’re not gonna believe some little kid did it.”

“I’m not a little kid,” Meg says. “I’m thirteen.”

“Oooh, you’re such a big girl,” Jessamyn mocks her. “I’m sixteen. You’re a little kid.”

“I’m a kid who can kill you by touching you and then bring you back to life. How about you stop calling me a little kid?” Meg grabs a Chinese menu off the fridge. “Find the menu for a pizza place, and find some cash.”

“I told you! I don’t get to keep any of the cash!”

“You didn’t look when Rhonda went to the lockbox to get some?”

“No!”

“You’re a moron,” Meg says. “I’m not gonna starve because you can’t find Rodney’s money. I bet he’s got a wallet.” She goes back upstairs. Funny, she’s read that bodies get stiff when they die, but Rodney is still as flexible as a living person. And he does in fact have a wallet, and it does in fact have money in it, lots of money. Meg takes the money. She’s a badass killer. She’s in charge now.

She demands that Jessamyn order pizza, while she writes a grocery list on the back of the Chinese menu. Meg knows how to cook eggs, grilled cheese, French toast, and spaghetti. That’s about the extent of her cooking expertise. She puts the supplies she’ll need for those things on the list.

“Are you even listening?” Jessamyn whines at her, after calling for pizza. “We can’t just leave Rodney dead upstairs! Someone’s gonna come around to find out what happened to him! And he’s gonna start stinking!”

“I’ll figure something out,” Meg, who has no idea how to dispose of a body, says.

***

Rhonda gets back in while they’re eating the pizza. Her eyebrows go up. “I hope you saved some of that shit for me,” she says.

“Of course we did,” Jessamyn says. “I wouldn’t order a pizza without getting enough for you.”

“You wouldn’t order a pizza at all,” Meg says with her mouth full. She finishes swallowing. “I had to find the money and then make you do it.”

“Well, I’m glad you both got a pizza ordered, because I’m starving.” Rhonda takes two slices of the Supreme pie and one of the pepperoni. “What’d Rodney say your name was? Meg, I think?”

“Yeah.”

“You got anyplace else to stay? Relatives you can go to? You don’t want to get involved in the business. You’re way too young.”

Meg scowls. “I don’t want to be a prostitute, if that’s what you’re saying. If you guys want to, then fine. You can give me part of your money and I can kill anyone who tries to hurt you or doesn’t want to pay you.” She’s pretty unclear on exactly how prostitution works, but she knows it’s having sex for money, and she knows that having sex can hurt if the guy’s not careful. She’s looking forward to killing guys who aren’t careful.

“Uh, yeah, no, that’s not how this is gonna work,” Rhonda says. “Rodney’s boss is named Mike. He’s gonna come by tomorrow or send someone over, and they’re gonna expect to see Rodney and they’re going to be pissed that he’s dead. And if we tell them you did it, they’ll shoot you.”

“And then I’ll kill them,” Meg declares.

“Maybe, but I dunno. Can you heal up a head shot like you did when Jessie got you in the chest?”

It occurs to Meg that she doesn’t know the answer to this, and she doesn’t want to find out, in case the answer is ‘no.’ “I could just kill them first, before they can get their guns out.”

“You can’t just keep killing people, girl!” Rhonda shakes her head. “I ain’t gonna cry for Rodney. He was a motherfucker and he got what was coming to him.”

“Rhonda!” Jessamyn sounds horrified.

“Sorry, but it’s the truth. He tried to fuck a thirteen year old girl who didn’t know jack shit. No offense to you, Meg, but you didn’t know Rodney was gonna fuck you and make you turn tricks, did you?”

“No,” Meg says, the reality of it hitting her. It sobers her, what would have happened if that power hadn’t come up inside her and made Rodney stop the way it made Dad stop. On the other hand she wouldn’t be in this situation without that power.

“And I was fourteen when he got me. Fucking pedophile. But he’s gotta be the last one, okay? Mike, he’s like, Mafia or something. He got pimps answering to him and they give him most of their money and he gives them drugs. And Jessie and I need those drugs. I’m hooked on smack, girl, you know what happens when I run out of it? So we gotta play nice with Mike.”

‘Just say no to drugs’ had been most of Meg’s education when it came to drugs. She knew smack was heroin and that it was very very very bad. “Why don’t you quit it? It’s gonna kill you one of these days if you don’t.”

Rhonda rolls her eyes. “What they teach you in school, white girl? You get hooked on smack, you ain’t quitting. Rich guys who can go to expensive rehab clinics can maybe quit. Some people get themselves on methadone and they manage to quit. But ain’t no one gonna help a couple of whores get off it.”

“What are we gonna do with Rodney?” Jessamyn asks again. “He’s gonna start rotting and stinking if we don’t do something.”

“Huh. Can you help me get him to the car, Jessie? I wanna make it look like he was partying hard with us and now he’s drunk, but I can’t carry him myself.”

Meg thinks about an experiment she read about in her science textbook but never got to try, about frog legs and electricity. She pushes back from the table and runs upstairs.

Rodney’s symphony is gone, and in its place there are occasional instruments playing jarring discordant notes, too slowly. Meg reaches into him. She made Jessamyn not move a muscle. Maybe she can make a dead man move one.

Under her command, Rodney lurches, and falls over immediately because she’s not touching him anymore. It looks like this only works when she touches people. His shirt didn’t get in the way, so it’s okay to touch their clothes, but if she’s not making contact at all, she can’t keep controlling their bodies. She tries again. It’s hard to make a man stand up by manually making his muscles move. Meg has her arm wrapped around his middle, but he’s still lurching and jerking all over the place.

Rhonda comes up the stairs and sees what Meg is doing. “Wow. Shit, you can do that?”

“Yeah,” Meg says. “I’m not gonna get him to get down the stairs this way, but if you hold him up once we get him downstairs, I can make him walk.”

“Okay. Here’s the plan. We get him into the car. I drive him to the East River. We point the car at the river, get him into the driver’s seat, tie his foot to the gas pedal, turn the car on and jump loose as soon as it’s in drive, and he drives it straight into the river. When they find his body they’ll assume he was drunk and he had an accident.”

Meg shrugs. She’s never disposed of a body before. “Sounds fine to me.”

“But then we won’t have a car!” Jessamyn whines.

“You can’t even drive it anyway,” Rhonda says. “And who the fuck needs a car in New York City? We can manage.”

***

It’s Meg, in the end, who turns the key in the ignition, coached by Rhonda while she’s sitting on Rodney’s lap, and then puts the car in drive – it’s not a stick shift, whatever that is, so she doesn’t need to use a clutch, whatever that is—and then makes Rodney’s leg press on the gas, hard.

The car lurches forward. Meg jumps out of the window, which is rolled down all the way. It’s a big car, one of those big old boats from the 70’s, not one of the small gas-conserving little boxes driving around today. She has no trouble getting clear of the car and rolling on the pavement. The car drives directly off an empty dock and into the water.

It’s 3 am, but New York City never sleeps. There are bystanders who see it happen. Rhonda screams theatrically. “Rodney! Nooooo!”

People gather on the docks, five or six people who saw the car drive off the dock. One guy offers to jump in the water and try to rescue Rodney. “Thanks, mister!” Meg says, and hugs him… and gives him an asthma attack. His lung spasms won’t last long, a moment or two. Not like Rodney’s, that didn’t stop until he was dead. But he’s not jumping in the water and rescuing anybody.

She and Rhonda slip away as soon as they can, after some more theatrics from Rhonda, and return to the house.

***

When the cops show up in the morning, Jessamyn identifies herself as Rodney’s girlfriend, and throws convincing hysterics when the cops tell her he’s dead. She doesn’t appear to be a suspect; it’s probably impossible for the cops to imagine that anyone could have gotten Rodney to drive into the river after he was already dead, considering that they’d used Meg’s powers and not Rhonda’s original plan of tying his foot there. Meg and Rhonda stay upstairs, and the cops don’t search the house.

After the cops are gone, Meg goes to Rhonda to get her to go to the grocery store. Rhonda, however, is blissed out, drug paraphernalia next to her. Irritated, Meg touches her, trying to identify the differences in the symphony of Rhonda’s body from what she had been like before she’d shot up. She didn’t touch Rhonda earlier for a baseline, though. So she checks on Jessamyn, who has also shot up, and from her, Meg can identify what parts of the body symphony are caused by heroin being there.

She goes back to Rhonda and turns those parts of the symphony off.

Rhonda jacks forward, gasping, and stares at Meg with wide bug-eyes. “What did you do? What did you do to me?”

“I wanted you to go to the grocery store, and you can’t do it if you’re high,” Meg says.

“Jesus fucking Christ. Did you just – shit. You just got rid of my high! You just – god fucking damn you, I paid for that shit!” Rhonda gets to her feet, wobbling, and screams at Meg. “Do you have any goddamn idea how many cocks I had to suck to get that shit, and you just – you just made it fucking go away because you want me to go to a goddamn grocery store!”

Meg just listens to the rant, arms folded. If Rhonda hits her, Rhonda will regret it. But as angry as she is, Rhonda seems to remember not to touch Meg.

“You done being a big baby about it?” Meg says, trying to sound bored. “Get me groceries so I can cook spaghetti, and I’ll give you your high back.” She doesn’t actually know if she can do that, but the offer pacifies Rhonda.

“Yeah, okay. Goddamn you fucking procks anyway.”

“Prock?” Meg blinks. She’s heard a lot of slurs in her life, but that one’s new. “What’s that?”

“Shit, no one ever called you that before? You have superpowers.”

“Yeah, so? What’s a prock, someone with superpowers then?”

Rhonda sighs. “It’s short for Proxima. You hear proxy sometimes too. How are you one but you never heard this?”

Meg considers revealing that she’s only had these powers for a couple of days, and decides not to. It would make her look weak and maybe make Rhonda think she can challenge Meg. “Maybe I just don’t hang out with shitheads who call people names, most of the time,” she says, which is completely untrue, because the girls in her class call other girls bitches and sluts and whores, and sometimes the white ones use slurs for the black ones, and occasionally someone gets called a dyke. “What’s Proxima got to do with superpowers? Proxima means ‘next.’” She knows this because her Catholic middle school is big on teaching kids vocabulary by connecting it to Latin, and she read ahead in her textbook and got the words ‘proximate’ and ‘approximate’ at one point.

“I don’t fucking know, I ain’t no dictionary.” Rhonda seems to think about it. “I guess, it’s like, ‘next human’. You know how Homo sapiens means smart man, right?”

Meg blinks again. “Yeah, but how do you know that?” Rhonda has seemed to her like the kind of girl who would fall for the ‘are you a homo sapiens’ joke where the target thinks it has something to do with ‘homosexual’ and says no.

Rhonda snorts. “White bitch. You think I don’t know nothing? I went to school too. Probably more than you did; I was fourteen when I ran away. You even in high school yet?”

The answer to this is ‘no’, but Meg’s not going to admit that. “Okay, fine. You went to school, you’re smart. Great. Peachy.”

“Yeah, well, you asked. Homo proximus means ‘next man’ or something like that. So it’s like you’re more evolved or something because you got superpowers.” She shakes her head like that’s the dumbest idea she ever heard. “You know you ain’t more evolved than me just ‘cause you got powers, right? That’s a dumbass idea. The way you’re acting, you’re just like any thirteen-year-old white girl.”

“Any other thirteen-year-old white girl wouldn’t’ve been able to kill a pimp like I did.”

“Yeah, but then you still wanna eat a pizza and brush your teeth. Why don’t you go to the grocery store? Why you want me to do it so bad? Just ‘cause you don’t feel big unless you pushin’ someone else around?”

This was uncomfortably close to the truth. Also, Meg had never gone grocery shopping, in a supermarket, by herself. Drugstores and convenience stores, yes, but she didn’t even know where the grocery stores were in this neighborhood, or if there even were any. Some places in the city didn’t have them. “I’m not from this part of town. I don’t know where the grocery store around here is, and no way I’m gonna go back to my old neighborhood. Fuck that.”

“Then I tell you what. I’m gonna go to the grocery store, because you ruined my high, so fuck, I got nothin’ better to do. But you’re coming with me.”

“And what if I don’t want to?” Meg sneers. “You gonna try and make me?”

“No, I just ain’t goin’ to the grocery store for your white ass. You gonna kill me ‘cause I won’t do your goddamn shopping like I’m your maid?”

“I could if I wanted to.”

“Yeah, and I could dance in the toilet if I wanted to, but fuck that.” Rhonda sits back down, but she’s still looking at Meg, holding her gaze. “Listen up. You, a white girl, just asked a black chick to do a chore for you, and then threatened you could hurt me if I don’t. So you a racist or just ignorant?”

Meg glares. “I’m not a racist! I’d do the same thing if you were white! Jessamyn’s an idiot and I don’t trust her to get what I asked for.”

“Well, here’s some knowledge for your ignorant little ass. If you told a white girl to do it then fine, that ain’t a problem, but you tell a black girl to do it, you don’t get out of the implications just because you’d have done the same if I was white. ‘Cause I ain’t white, and both you and me gotta deal with that. In a world where your great-great-great-granddaddy might’ve had mine as a slave, you don’t get to treat me like you’d treat a white girl, because it means something different when it goes from you to me than from me to you or you to Jessamyn. You get me?”

“My great-great-great-granddaddy came over on a boat from Italy and slavery was already over by then, so no, none of my ancestors had yours as slaves.”

“Yeah, no, if your family’s been in America a long-ass time you probably got some long-term old-timer white in you somewhere. You too pale to be all Italian.”

“Northern Italy. Naples.”

Rhonda laughs. “Who told you Naples was northern, girl? That’s like, north if you’re from Sicily.”

“How do you know that?” Meg demands.

“’Cause I’ve looked at a map of Europe once or twice in my life.” She shakes her head as if she’s disappointed in Meg, somehow. “And it don’t matter anyway. You gonna come with me to the grocery store, or you gonna decide to be a racist bitch?”

This is how Meg ends up accompanying Rhonda to the grocery store. The plus side is that she gets to pick out the exact groceries she wants – the specific brand of spaghetti Mom used, the right brands of tomato sauce and tomato paste, the freshest green peppers and mushrooms, the ground beef with the lowest fat content. Also, she gets ice cream, which she hadn’t put on her list, and toothpaste and a toothbrush, because Rhonda reminded her during their chat that yes, actually, her teeth were gross and she hadn’t brushed them since --- well, since. The minus side is that she feels like she’s losing control of this situation, because Rhonda refuses to be scared of her. She can push Jessamyn around all day, but Rhonda apparently doesn’t think the fact that someone can kill you is a good reason to do what they say.

Rhonda picks up groceries Meg didn’t think of or didn’t know they needed – fresh cereal, milk for lactose-intolerant people, sliced cheddar cheese, wheat bread, several more packets of lunch meat, and so on. “So I got a business proposition for you,” she says, loading the cart with shampoo, conditioner, and some hair care products Meg doesn’t recognize that have pictures of black women on the boxes.

“Yeah?” Meg is wary. Also embarrassed. She hopes Rhonda doesn’t start talking about being a prostitute here in the grocery store.

“The way things worked before, Rodney made sure other girls who wanted to use our corner would step off, and kept other operators from trying to take us over... but he took all our money. If we wanted to buy Pop-Tarts, we had to ask for the money.” She puts five boxes of Pop-Tarts in different flavors into the cart. “He gave us drugs, and booze, but only when we worked. You don’t work, you don’t bring in cash for Rodney, you don’t get to get high or even drunk.”

“I can see why you don’t care what I did about him,” Meg says, carefully choosing words that don’t sound like she’s even euphemistically implying that she killed him. This is a grocery store. “Maybe we should save this conversation for when we get back to the house?”

Rhonda looks at her. “Rodney said you had nowhere else to go. That true?”

She has cousins in the city. She could go live with them. But she doesn’t want to. How is she going to go back to being a kid, going to school and going to bed when Aunt Carlotta says and watching sitcoms with laugh tracks and lame cartoons that are just trying to sell her dolls, when she’s killed? When she’s controlled someone who’s older than she is? She may not be able to fully control Rhonda, but she can control Jessamyn. When she’s brought someone back from the dead?

“True enough,” she says.

“And you don’t wanna be in the business Jess and me are in. And that’s fine, but you gotta do something to earn your keep, you know? But I got some ideas.”

“I’m not doing what you do.”

“And you don’t have to. You got a talent, girl. Ain’t no one else I know of can do what you do. So I’m gonna ask you some questions about what you can do.”

“Okay.”

Rhonda stops her as they’re heading toward the cash register. “That thing you did to me. Could you make it so I don’t even want that shit anymore?”

“I -- yeah, maybe?”

“’Cause I was craving really bad, and you made my high just, go away, just like that, so I should still be craving hard. But I’m not. I’m really not. Maybe you can make it so I’m never craving again. So I can do it if I want to but I never have to.”

“I never tried that before, but it sounds maybe doable.”

“’Cause if you can do that, shit, we’ve got no fucking use for Mike and his pals. We can be independent. You said some shit earlier about protecting us, like Rodney used to. You can do that, right?”

“I think I know how to hurt people without killing them, yeah. And if you need someone killed, I can totally do that.”

“Can you fix Jess and me up? Like, a john gets rough, you fix up the bruises? If we get a cold, you can make it go away? Or that AIDS shit. That’s scary stuff. You never know when a guy goes for other guys on the down low unless you see him in the park with the gay guys, and Rodney would’ve made us go with them even then.”

All Meg knows about AIDS is that it’s a horrible fatal illness that only gay men and drug users get and that is why you’re supposed to just say no to drugs and not be gay, also because you’ll go to Hell if you are, but it’s occurring to her now that with the murders, she’s going to Hell anyway, and maybe she doesn’t know enough about what Rhonda is talking about and maybe she needs to go to the library and read up on this. “Never tried that either, but if you can find me someone who’s got it, maybe I can find whatever’s causing it and stop it.”

“HIV. It’s a virus called HIV.” She shakes her head. “You’re just a kid, ain’t you? You learned what they taught you in school but not much else.”

“That’s not true! I read a lot!”

“Well, maybe you’re gonna need to read a lot more, ‘cause you ain’t going to school anymore if you’re staying with Jess and me.”

“Yeah, well, am I?” She meant that to be a sneering challenge, but it comes out uncomfortably close to a genuine question.

“That’s the business proposition. Anything Rodney could do to drive folks off our corner or keep some other operator from taking over... you could do. They wouldn’t be scared of you, looking like a cute little schoolgirl like you do, but if you kill someone’s ass or make ‘em freeze up like you did to Jess or you could probably even beat them up, but like, from the inside... and then they’ll be scared. Other thing is, if you can fix someone who got shot I bet there’s a lot of shit you can fix.” She’s speaking quietly, and putting rustly crunchy bags of chips and pretzels in the cart, and this is New York so no one’s paying attention anyway, but it still unnerves Meg to have her talking about any of this openly, even with euphemisms. And ‘kill someone’s ass’ is hardly a euphemism. “So, here’s the deal. You live with us as a roommate. You can cook your spaghetti, and we order pizza or Chinese or we cook if we feel like it. We pay for everyone’s food out of the take, and the rent and shit. And then we give part of the take to you. Not as much as we gave Rodney, but Rodney had to give a lot of it to his boss.”

“Mike?” She seems to recall Rhonda or someone telling her about a guy named Mike who was Rodney’s boss.

“Yeah. Him. He comes around trying to get us back under his thumb, we tell him to fuck off ‘cause we’re independent operators now... and if he doesn’t like it, you hurt him. Make him run squealing back to his momma. So Jess and I pay you to protect us, and fix us up if we get hurt. And if it turns out you can get rid of that AIDS shit? Gonna be a lot of guys I know willing to pay big money to get some of that.”

It sounds good. It sounds good enough that Meg’s afraid there’s a catch. “I gotta do experiments,” she says. “Like when I made it so you weren’t, uh--”

“High. You can say it. Ain’t no cops shopping around here,” Rhonda says, grinning.

“Yeah, okay. I had to feel you and Jessamyn to find what’s the same in both of you that’s different from Jessamyn before. You want me to fix a bruise or a cut or something? Pretty sure I can do that, no problem. Disease, though, I gotta find the disease. I gotta compare someone with it with someone who doesn’t, and then someone else with it, because people are a lot different from each other on the inside. But I bet I could do it. I made the soap stop smelling like chemical shit so I can probably do anything.”

“I get that. And there’s gonna be issues with you looking like a kid, so maybe we try out some makeup on you, see if we can figure out how to make you look older. You should dress punk. Those clothes need a wash and they’re too preppy besides.”

Her clothes are the school uniform she was wearing before Dad came to her and wanted... what he’d always wanted. He didn’t make her take it all the way off, so she’d pulled it up and straightened it out and gotten her shoes on before she ran. “Yeah? Where’s a good place to buy clothes around here?”

“Let’s get this shit back to the house and into the fridge, and then we can go out and I’ll show you some good places to buy clothes. Not the kind Jess and I wear, you’re not about that. We’re gonna make you look like a badass.”

“I am a badass.”

“Sure are, but you got to look it, too, because we can’t be driving every fucker’s car into the river who looks at you funny. You gotta not kill people unless there’s no other way, you get me?”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t have to kill people if she can figure out how to hurt them without killing, and how hard could it be? She’s already figured out how to paralyze people; she did it to Jessamyn. 

“So how about it? We got a deal?”

She offers her hand for Meg to shake, there in the snack aisle, and it occurs to Meg that this woman is really brave. Like, almost stupidly brave. Meg can kill by touching people and Rhonda is offering to touch her, to shake on a deal where she’ll pay Meg to be her protector.

Meg wants people to be afraid of her. But not everybody. She’s too alone. No parents, no friends from school, no family, and she’s been thrust into a world she knows she doesn’t really understand, straight from Catholic middle school to living with prostitutes who abuse drugs, and also, murdering people and dumping the bodies in the river. She always figured she was harder and tougher than her classmates because they were probably all virgins and she hadn’t been since she was nine, so most of their problems just sounded stupid and trivial... but in comparison to Rhonda, she’s an innocent little baby.

She wants a friend. She wants a mentor. She wants someone to show her how to live with what she’s become.

Meg takes Rhonda’s hand and shakes it. “Deal,” she says.

[babystevie]

Crossing Paths

Chapter 5: Lies

Find on AO3: Here

The Chapters a bit different on AO3 but no Major changes

Billy stood in the shop staring at the remains of Dustin’s beautiful 350z.

It sat sadly on the tow truck that brought the residue back to the shop where Dustin and Jonathan were just sitting there, staring at it.

Like it betrayed them.

The car was mutilated. Dustin had been sent a notification as soon as the car crashed, the panicked system within, letting the driver know that an accident had occurred, and something was now wrong with its system.

The right side of the car was smashed into itself, like someone ran a red light but the car wasn’t near an intersection, not when it was hit, and not when it stopped fuckin’ rolling down the street. The roof was caved, and the windows were smashed by the impact. They’d found the car, upside down in the middle of the street and called Billy,

He recalled their conversation,

His phone rang and the unknown number popped up in the darkness of his car, and without much thought, answered it with a gruff, “what.”

Dustin’s voice filtered though the receiver, “Are you still with Steve?”

Confusion filled his chest, worry following close behind the feeling, “No? I’m almost home now.” Billy gripped his steering wheel, “Why kid?”

He heard a shuttering sigh in the background, and the panic started to engulf his lungs as Dustin muttered out a harsh sounding, “Shit.”

“Kid.” He slowed his car at a stoplight and waited for Dustin to fuckin’ answer him.

“Can you come to the shop?” Dustin asked quickly, “I can explain better if you’re here.”

And proceeded to hang up the phone.

Billy growled violently in his car, and turned his car around, not ever caring about the red light and blowing smoke off of the tires to go towards the shop, and he knuckles grabbed the shifter of the Camaro, shifting into each gear, taking the RPM’s high into the reds until he pulled into the shop to see a tow truck in the first bay,

His face was still white.

Steve had been in that car, he’d been driving that car less than two hours ago, with Billy inside with him.

And now there was no Steve, and a car in pieces.

Billy felt like he was vibrating out of his skin, where the fuck was Steve?

  That was Sunday night, It’s Thursday morning now.

His teeth are still itching, and the veins running through his body, he feels the blood running through them every time he walks into class and Steve’s seat is empty.

And Robins seat in the class he has with her is empty.

He’s been tryin’ to hear that voice all week, and he’s gotten nothin’, no phone call, no text message, nothin’.

He wouldn’t be so worried, he shouldn’t be fuckin’ worried, but he didn’t get a fuckin’ reply.

And

This friendship is new, but Billy would’ve noticed if Steve Harrington stopped comin’ to class before all this happened, before they started hanging out, before he felt those lips on his cheek,

But that was Sunday

And its Thursday now

It’s cold, and he hasn’t seen Steve in 4 fuckin’ days,

And

Dustin told Billy that Steve was fine, but no one would explain anything else to him, ‘cause Billy saw the car that was wrecked, demolished, with Steve inside,

And

Billy didn’t get a reply, no response to his endless phone calls.

He feels crazy. He hates feeling like his skin is in control, as it constantly hums over itself as he walks to the parking lot and he sees, he sees

Steve’s motorcycle

And

Its Thursday, and Billy’s been waiting for Steve to let him know he’s okay, and his motorcycle is sitting in the parking lot. And its Thursday, and class doesn’t start for almost 3 hours, but the bike is parked where it always is like it never left but Billy knows it was missing.

Missing for 4 fuckin’ days

Billy went to class and was physically aware of the empty seat next to him and Steve’s here now, on campus like he didn’t miss classes, and he knows that the professors would let someone with a last name like Harrington slide.

He’d heard all about King Steve falling far from his throne before he arrived, because people talked and then he’d met King Steve and all Billy could think of was Princess, the word King, left his brain when those doe eyes found his for the first time on the second day of class because the prettiest face he’d ever seen, sat in class like he was present but wasn’t ever really there. On the second day he’d noticed that Billy was seated right next to him, and those eyes widened, and Billy forgot how to breathe.

And

Billy walked into the building and Steve is standing right there. Talking to the professor they share, in the class he hasn’t been to all week, in clothes that he never wears in class, and he has a brace over the entirety of his knee. His right leg has a brace on it, allowing him to walk without crutches, but it is the kinda brace that prevents some motion.

And

Steve shifts around where the professor gestures for him to walk with and Billy, Billy sees red.

His face is fucked up. He’s got stitches in his fuckin’ cheek, right under his eye, his eye that’s purple and blue and fading into a sickly yellow down his face. And the skin that’s visible he sees little markings of what looks like piercings from glass, in little bruises and pricks, but but his black eye, looks like someone put that there,

And

Billy needs to talk to him right now.

“Harrington!” he yells out, and he can tell that Steve instantly stiffens, stiffens so tight that the professor looks at him in concern, and Billy could give less of a fuck about the man that teaches them three times a week, and they don’t even have that class today, but Steve’s here and he walks right up to him and intertwines their hands and turns around and walks out of the building.

Ignoring the professors calls like they aren’t even happening.

And

Steve’s walking a little slow, because he’s got a brace on his fuckin’ knee. And they get outside, when the cold hits his face, he ignores the fact that Steve rode his bike with that shit on his leg, in this weather and faces those wide brown eyes, and watches pretty mouth open in surprise as he sees him excel his breathe by the white smoke it produces, because its cold outside,

And

Grabs his chin with the entirety of his hand, and tries not to growl, go feral like an animal when Steve winces under the pressure of his hand, and looks into those brown eyes and asks,

“Who hurt you?”

And he feels Steve’s heart stutter under the pulse where his hand grips his wrist, tightly and Steve’s hand shakes a little bit and he looks down where the sleeve has ridden up from his jacket – and Billy’s vision goes back to the blood red haze it was before, when he sees that the skin is raw, and opens his mouth again,

“I know Dustin’s stupid fuckin’ car got wrecked, with you inside.” He seethes out, “Do not bullshit me Stevie.”

And

Billy knows that Steve wants to run. Can see it in the way his body shakes with anxiety and Billy does feel a little bad, but he needs to know what happened,

And

“Steve!” Robins voice yells out, and Billy hears the audible sigh of relief come from those pretty pink lips and he grits his teeth in frustration,

“You get everything you need?” she asks, and she has a cast on her wrist.

And

Steve speaks quietly, “I’m sorry I missed class, Rob and I went back home for a few days.” And Billy’s head whips back up to look at him again, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

And Steve squeezes Billy’s other hand, the one that’s not holding his wrist, feeling the pulse quicken under his calloused palm, “I didn’t mean to worry you… my phones not doing so hot.” He said letting go and putting his hand into his pants pocket and pulling out the phone and showing Billy the phone and the screens destroyed,

“Kinda got messed up in the wreck…”

And

Billy knows a lie when he hears one.

[smoothshift]

Slow Car Fast vs. Fast Car Slow: An Experience via /r/cars

Slow Car Fast vs. Fast Car Slow: An Experience

TL;DR: Fast car slow more fun than slow car fast. Jimmies rustled.

Though not as often parroted as it used to be on here, perhaps due to the ever increasing performance of cars across the board, "I'd rather drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow" is one of the most common mantras of r/cars, second only to Miata Is Always The Answer (M.I.A.T.A.) Last week, I got a taste of both back to back and would like to share my perspective.

Let's start with the slow car. The 1988 Ford Mustang LX. How slow can that be? Well have you ever heard of the 2.3 Lima engine, probably most famous by the Ford Pinto? Yes, that Ford Pinto. This isn't the EcoBoost 2.3 we're talking about. This two valve iron pig wheezes out an anemic 88hp. With the free-er flowing exhaust and intake we might by up to a whopping 90hp on a good day. Slow car? Check.

bUt ThAt'S nOt A rEaL sLoW cAr, It'S hEaVy AnD cAn'T hAnDlE.

Maybe in stock trim, but not this particular one. It's far from heavy. The stock weight comes in at around 2700lbs. But this one has been carefully slimmed down. By which I mean it was missing a whole lot of stuff when we I bought it. Not much interior to speak of, no luxuries, and even the modern trend of no spare tire. Last weigh in it was just a hair under 2500lbs, no driver, so we're in NB/NC Miata weight range. Now for the handling. It's anything but stock there as well. It's got the benefit of a whole lot of upgraded suspension parts, mostly secondhand from my other Mustang. It's biggest weakness is it's still running a 4-link rear. Not quite the certain death and turning radius of a Nimitz class carrier people would make it out to be, particularly at this power level.

But enough about this heap. On to the driving. It's everything the cult of Miata worships. That engine has anything but a broad torque curve. It's gutless below 2500 RPM, and thanks to its archaic design runs out of steam by 4500 RPM. It's that skinny, asthmatic kid in your gym class that gets out of running the mile, begging for his inhaler. And with that narrow power band, you have to be very conscious, and really hammer it to keep it there. It reminds me of driving an old 2-stroke Detroit Diesel. Just like the old saying about those Detroits, the first step to driving it was to slam your nuts in the door to get you good and pissed off so you would flog the piss out of it just to get anywhere. With that total lack of power it was a momentum car. You had to carry speed with you as much as you could (and not just for corners, but for any hill larger than a speedbump for fear of rolling back down.) So you really had to wring it out and push it in every corner just to keep up your speed. With the stiff suspension and graciously wide 225s on it, it stayed planted. You sure didn't have to worry about overpowering it coming out of a turn, as even mashing the throttle to the rusty floorboard (weight reduction, right?) wouldn't emit so much as a chirp, even on a wet road. There was much more tire than there was power. And so, true nirvana of slow car fast was achieved, working an underpowered, light, well handling car through the turns.

...and I fucking hated it. It was novel at first with this car, giggling as I floored it, feeling like outright abuse. It was that same Beavis and Butthead laugh of doing something you weren't supposed to be. But that feeling soon faded. It felt like a chore. I shouldn't have to work this car so damn hard just to get somewhere. It wasn't fun. Angrily mashing the accelerator, slamming through gears, running a racing line through corners, then you look down and...I'm only doing 25 mph? What the hell? I felt like I accelerated and shifted more than a Fast and Furious chase scene. And even when you're on your A game, giving it everything it's got, Eurobeat thumping in your ear, you're still liable to get your doors blown off by an impatient Camry, or cyclist. Not one of those Tour de France give me all your steroids types either, little Suzy with her streamers on her handlebars and training wheels will blow past you. You briefly contemplate holding your jacket out the window as an impromptu sail. And it's so pitifully underpowered, yes you can push it to the limit [80's music intensifies] but it's so much damn work to get it there. Granted this might be partially due to the suspension set up and more tire than it needs in this case, but everyone talks about how euphoric it is to have a car that just sticks to the road like that. I find it incredibly disappointing. It never feels that wild or dangerous. It's like driving a go-kart at a birthday party, but there's none of the gifts and heat lamp warmed greasy pizza that comes with it.

After all that frustration, I had to jump over to the fast car; the 00 Mustang. Yeah, yeah, yeah...another gutless pig that can't handle, right? Not this one. There's no engine from an economy car known for erupting into a ball of flames. Instead it's a thoroughly built all aluminum DOHC V8, with a screaming roots blower atop it. But that was never enough. That blower is fed by twin Nagasaki noisemakers for a rather tame 15psi in street trim that will be discussed here. That's more than enough for that fast car feel. But don't think that handling hasn't been addressed. This one is even more decked out than the 88, complete with a fully independent rear suspension and a whole lot more tire. This car is the antithesis to the slow car 88. Not only does it boast such a potent powertrain, but it's got a full interior and then some, a true decked out street car, worthy of sailing carrier escort missions with the U.S.S Challenger, tipping the scales above 3800lbs. Though weight distribution has been carefully managed, with lots of components relocated rearward to offset the Shanhai Spoolie-bois up front.

You get in this thing, and it instantly wants to go. Even letting out the clutch is a different experience. With its power and tall gearing it leaps out to 15mph almost instantly. There's no stopping it. It is just pure hate. If the slow car is a Pomeranian, a little angry under just the right circumstances, but ultimately non-threatening because you can yeet it into the next zip code, then this is a Belgian Malnois, straining at the leash, barking, razor sharp teeth gleaming in the moonlight, just begging to be set loose and eviscerate the road ahead. You have to lean back and put your weight into it to hold them back, the leash cutting into your wrist, and they're restrained for now...but just barely. ...or instead of all those flowery words, I could use a language you'd prefer, memes. It's the nice, soft SpongeBob versus the ripped, Rambo SpongeBob one.

Most of the driving is rather pleasant. Driving city streets are fine. In fact you barely need any throttle. It's nice and smooth. There's no lugging it, the power is there all the time. You can putter along nice and easy. It's relaxing. There's no frustration of having to work it hard. Now part of the whole argument is that you never get to use the power of a fast car "slow", or on average streets. But that's a lie. Driving it on the exact same routes as the slow car there are little opportunities here and there. Overtaking cars, on ramps, or just plain getting up to the speed limit from a stop light. And holy hell is it a totally different experience. When you let go of that leash, all hell breaks loose. The power is there across the entire rev range. It's not as violent as a roots blower or big block car. You don't get whiplash, but you get slingshotted to speed. Your knuckles are white as you grab on tight and hold on for dear life. Even if you romp on it barely above idle, already rolling, that red tach needle screams up as the tires spin. Not pizza cutter all seasons like the slow car either; these are 315 drag radials. You don't even really notice them spinning, just the sensation of the back end skating around like an ice rink. You might make it into another gear or two before hitting the speed limit, but with that tall gearing it doesn't take much. And it's so fast. You blink your eyes and you already have to be on the brakes. It's the opposite of the slow car. You're not asking how you're only doing a certain speed, you're shocked that you're already doing a certain speed. How did that happen? You have to slow it down, the engine burbling and crackling as it revels in its evil work, a mechanical maniacal laugh.

Now at this point you're probably taking a sip of your smug-a-cola and thinking "See? That proves my point. Slow car fast is always fun because you can push it hard, and fast car slow is only fun for that split second." After this I'm thoroughly convinced of the inverse. The slow car fast is never fun. It's infuriating. You have to work it hard and you never really get a reward out of it. With the fast car, even if you limited it to 5% throttle, just cruising around nice and slow, it's more enjoyable. Even if you limited it to just one 50% throttle blast up to the speed limit, that second or two is infinitely more enjoyable than a thousand miles of winding roads in a slow car.

I'm prepared for the disagreement. I know I'm in the church of the slow car fast, where Mazda died for our sins, where we live by Jinba Ittai and the altar is adorned by a golden Miata. The trinity of slow car, handling, and manual transmission is symbolized by the holy rotary Dorito, and we make the sign of the manual shifting in an H-pattern as a blessing. But I'm going to be down the road at the church of fast car, with blackjack and hookers. You can spot it by the burning E85 pentagrams.

[mintyvan]

S M I R K

summary unlikely friends in unexpected circumstances. a younger bondy AU fic i’ve been working on for a year and a half. hope you enjoy the first part! 

a/n This one goes out to the woman, the myth, the legend, @flouraie​. 

_____________________

PART ONE of SIX

“Light me up.”

The match flame danced around your cigarette in the chilly autumn breeze behind the school, curling the edges of the little hand-rolled thing as it set it afire.

“What’ve you got for me this week?”

He started to pull a 45 rpm record out of his otherwise empty backpack. “Will yours play these?” he asked, cigarette bobbing up and down in his mouth as he struggled to free the record’s already tattered corner paper from the zipper. You nodded.

The wind blew by, crisp, and whipped at your faces. His cheeks started to redden, and his lips parted when it was too cold to breathe in through his nose. His curls fluttered around his neck. He pulled the collar of his brown jacket tighter.

“This one’s Charlie Parker. He’s very croony.” He handed it to you, and your numb fingers brushed his, sending warmth and electricity up your hand. You stuffed the record in your own backpack, letting the cigarette fall from your lips; you crushed it with your boot.

“Another?” he asked, holding one of his own cigarettes up to your face. He’d been the reason you started smoking in the first place.

“Might as well.”

You smoked in silence, leaned up against the frigid bricks of the school, watching others walk home.

“Eventually I’m going to have to give all these back to you,” you said, eyeing him cautiously.

He smirked in silence, and took a drag.

****

You don’t really remember how you met. You just know that before, he wasn’t in your life, and then one day, he was sharing cigarettes and musical knowledge and cynical little life philosophies with you. You never knew when he would be waiting there for you after school, and sometimes a week would pass by before you saw him again. You’d wander through the hallways aimlessly then, hoping he’d be around every corner and hoping you’d just happen to stumble upon him; you’d walk home unsuccessfully with something somewhere between numbness and dejectedness prickling at your scalp.

But on the days he was there, shoulder tacked nonchalantly against the wall, you felt a sprig of friendship, and maybe something else, forming ever so slowly in his wake.

“I think we should hang out sometime,” you’d hesitantly asked him one particularly brisk afternoon, after a wave of silence had passed between you and you felt the courage plucking the words from your lips.

“How about today?” he’d asked, blowing smoke, only to have it rushed away by the wind.

“Okay,” you’d said, and tried not to play up how much it meant that he was willing to see another side of you other than the shivering little thing in the school uniform reluctant to speak more than a few words to him.

He’d taken your quaking hand and led you down the winding cobblestone streets to his quaint garden shed, shrouded in overgrowth of shrubs and vines. The door creaked when he shoved open the rusty deadbolt.

The ground had an old Russian tapestry rug in the middle, far corners unseen due to the old couch and chairs he’d positioned around it. The windows were crusted in sallow layers of dust, and the cloudy light that passed through them came in splintered rays. The clutter made it feel all the more homey.

He had hundreds of records, all seemingly unorganized, atop every surface. Bookshelves, bins, end tables, chairs --- they were piled high. The recently used ones were stacked against and under the table his record player rested atop. You understood why he let you borrow the others indefinitely; he wouldn’t miss them.

You gazed around, the curiosity evident in your eyes. A soft smile descended on your lips.

“Want to play one?” he asked, facial expression mirroring yours as he stepped over a low-rise stack of 33 rpms. You nodded, and let him thumb through a few records before he selected one. You sat on the rough couch, fingers fumbling with the frayed ends of a matching pillow as you watched him.

The room was silent but for the rustling of his clothing, and then a scratch of the needle sounded. The melody started to play. Smooth, sensual jazz. John Coltrane’s I’ll Wait and Pray.

Saxophone hummed in your ear as Bondy sat next to you, searching for his lighter. You silently took yours out and handed it to him. Hands brushed again. You felt something tick inside you.

He pulled a hand-rolled cigarette out of an old wooden cigar box under the couch, and lit it without placing it between his lips. You wanted to laugh at the odd sight. Sweet smoke wafted between you. He watched the tip burn for a few seconds, reflection of the soft curling ends of the paper mirrored in his eyes.

He licked his fingers and put the thing out with saliva alone, content with his decision to not smoke it. You stared at him, hoping for an explanation. He put the cigarette back in the box, and slid it under the couch again.

He sat back up next to you, and you both watched each other in silence. The slow rise and fall of his chest, the icy blue of his eyes, his parted lips and the slight tilt of his nose. His face moved a millimeter toward yours, and you sucked in a sharp breath. You could imagine the lines between friends and lovers blurred in the coming seconds, and it quick-started your heart’s beating.

He leaned in, and he smelled musky, but sweet. Like the woods after rainfall, or cloves at Christmas. You closed your eyes and let your lips part to bump his. They met in midair. It was the first time you’d ever really touched each other.

It was short, and by the time you could think to process it, it was over. A bit of wetness lingered on your lips. You went back to memorizing every detail of his jacket, or his boots, or this shed.

The record needed to be flipped; you rose to complete the task. Your shaking, dainty fingers slipped under it and flipped it over as you contemplated the kiss. You gently laid the needle on top of it. Sound.

A knock on the door surprised you, but not Bondy; he let whoever it was come in.

“Oh, who do we have here?” a boy you recognized from school, Craig, shuffled in, rubbing his hands together from the cold. You were still moving languidly from the kiss.

“Y/N,” Bondy replied, stating your name. And then to Craig: “You reek.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I’m not saying your cologne is strong, but the birds were alive before you got here.”

“Fuck you,” Craig said, taking off his burly jacket and ushering another friend of theirs inside.

“Hey, Y/N,” Jack, a boy in your maths class, said as he entered the room. The sound of your name broke you from your cloudy stupor.

“Hi,” you answered nervously, not sure what to do in the presence of his friends.

“Ay, John, got any new shit?” Craig asked, ignoring you, rifling through some of the nearby records and papers.

“Yeah, but nothin’ for you,” he shot back, twinkle in his eye. He lit a cigarette and let it hang from his mouth as he fingered the hem of his pant leg over his boot.

“Come on, mate, give me somethin’,” Craig stood above Bondy on the couch, crotch way too close to his face. Bondy used his hand to shield his eyes, laughing, “No thanks, I’ve just become vegetarian.”

The three boys erupted into raucous laughter. You stood, uncomfortable. “I think I’m going to go now.”

Bondy stood too, and his demeanor quickly changed to what it was before the boys arrived. “Pick any one of these to take with you,” he said softly, almost at a whisper, cupping behind your ear with his hand before smoothing the rest of the hair down your back.

“Thank you,” you said in an equally small voice. You already knew which one you had your eye on, so you quickly stuffed it in your bag with the other one he’d given you. On your way as you hurried out, you heard Craig shouting something at Bondy.

“Oi, you fuckin’ her or summat?”

You didn’t want to know his reply.

****

“My parents aren’t home this weekend,” you’d blurted out to him one uncharacteristically warm Friday afternoon weeks later against the bricks of the schoolyard.

He smirked at your outburst, and he raised his eyebrows.

“Do you want to come over?” you asked him pointedly. He nodded, and pulled the cigarette from his mouth and crushed it on the gravel.

There was no record today, just intermittent chatter between puffs of wintry smoke. It was becoming easier to speak to him. He smiled more often. Things were comfortable.

You took his warm fingers in yours and walked him down the streets to your house. You didn’t have to drag him along; with long footsteps he straddled the curb between the narrow sidewalk and road, letting you have the sidewalk to yourself. It made you smile into your jacket collar.

You slid the key out from under the mat, and opened the creaky door, checking that your parents were truly away for the weekend. Bondy followed behind, looking around your house with silent curiosity.

“Do you want a snack or anything?” you asked him. You plopped your backpack down at the door, and he did the same.

“No, I’m fine,” you heard him say as he walked into your lounge. “These your dad’s?” he said from around the corner. You peeked your head around from where you were cutting green apple slices for yourself. He’d asked about your family for the first time last week; it made you smile that he remembered your dad’s jazz obsession.

“Yep.”

He nodded, chocolate brown curls wobbling with the motion, and continued his silent walk around the lower level of your house, still eyeing the records - some of them given to you by him. You finished cutting up the apple slices. You put them in a bowl and moved to go up the stairs.

“You coming?” you teased him, and as soon as your playful eyes met his, you ran up the stairs quickly, almost dropping your apple slices as you careened into your bedroom and landed on the bed. You heard his rumbling footsteps up the stairs chasing after you, and chuckled when he didn’t know what bedroom was yours.

“In here!” you called around the apple slice in your mouth, and he walked through the door and jumped on your bed, jostling you about. He landed on his side next to you, picked an apple slice out of the bowl that was on your stomach, and took a bite.

“Oi! You said you didn’t want any!”

He just smiled around chunks of apple slice in his mouth.

“Ugh.”

He leaned over the bowl and licked a long stripe across all the apple slices, rendering them inedible by your standards.

“Are you serious?” Appalled, you stared at him with lips parted.

He smiled, and leaned his plump lips in to touch yours, as a cheeky apology. Your heart stuttered. He hadn’t kissed you since the time in the shed, a few weeks ago. You’d chalked it up to him being high, or whatever -- but you knew he’d not even taken a hit off a joint that day. You didn’t ask about it then, and you weren’t going to ask about it now.

“You taste fruity,” he chuckled, drawing back.

“I wonder why,” you giggled.

He moved the bowl off of your stomach and placed it on the bedside table behind him. Your heart started beating faster, and your palms started sweating. You wanted him to kiss you again, harder, but you were on your bed, and your parents weren’t home, and you’d never done anything as scandalous before. You bit your lip and waited for his next move as your heart beat hard against your ribcage.

He turned toward you, and saw the look on your face. Something flashed in his eyes, and he reached over to rub your cheek softly with his thumb, tilting his head. It visibly relaxed you, and the corners of his mouth turned up. You sighed in content. His baby blue eyes seared yours in the best way.

He leaned in to kiss you again, but this time it was slower, like the first time in his shed, lips barely touching, and carefully moving. You let him tangle his fingers in your hair; his thumb rested behind your ear. You sighed into his mouth, and the pressure of your lips together increased. He leaned further into you, and your heart fluttered at how much his body was touching yours.

His lips were so soft, and then, you wanted to bite one of them. Your heart hammered in your chest due to inexperience, but you decided to go for it. Your teeth tugged at his bottom lip, and he let you pull his flesh away until it released. You felt him smile against your lips, and he started kissing a line across your cheek and down your neck. Your hands went in his curls, and he moved from being at your side to rest part of his weight on top of you.

Your stomach was doing flip-flops as his other hand came to rest on your hip, and then under the small of your back. You shakily breathed into his mouth before his lips rested on yours again. His tongue swiped out to taste your bottom lip, and you felt like your heart was going to burst.

The nervousness of kissing your friend was starting to overcome the pleasure of his lips on you, and you were about to put a hand on his chest when he broke the kiss and rubbed his nose against yours softly. It calmed the both of your breathings down.

He nuzzled his nose and lips in the crook of your neck, arms still holding onto you, and rested his full weight on you. His legs entwined with yours a little. You both sighed, and listened to the sound of rain start to pitter-patter against the roof as your eyes drifted shut.

When you woke up, it was past dinner time, and he was gone.

*****

You spent your Saturday doing laundry and looking online at old fashion shows, trying to distract yourself from the previous night’s events.

You were particularly interested in runway fashion and designing clothes, but not many people knew it because you couldn’t afford a sewing machine or anything designer. Your favorite collections were always the more spacey shows, the ones that didn’t make sense to people unless they looked hard enough at the social and political contexts the designer was amplifying. Yves Saint Laurent did everything and more, and you loved him for it.

You searched through a slew of runway videos until you found one of the ‘71 YSL collection, your favorite. You’d never found an actual runway clip of the show until now, and were eager to see the designs you’d swooned over at the museum, in action.

The first woman catwalked down the platform to a sleazy jazz number, and you were instantly hooked. The women of the show sauntered to the beat down the runway, in wild hats and slinky dresses. You searched the description box under the video for what you needed, and despite the hammering in your heart and the attempt to distract yourself, you dialed the phone.

After two rings, he picked up.

“You know that record store off the one side street near school?”

“Course.”

“Meet me there in thirty.”

When he’d arrived, smiling slightly and squinting his eyes at the sun peeking through the clouds, you felt the butterflies erupt in your stomach again; you could feel the boundary between friends and something more profound teetering back and forth. You’d never met him anywhere outside of school; you’d always bring each other places, starting from the brick wall. And so you excitedly pulled him inside the record store and shook in your boots as you explained to him what you wanted.

“So what we’re looking for today is L'Enfant assassin des mouches by Jean Claude Vannier. It played on this old fashion collection video I have got to show you when we get back to mine.” He smiled at your enthusiasm.

You both split up and scoured the record store for it, flipping through hundreds. You had no idea if it was a large or small record, or even what the cover looked like. You checked through almost the whole store before a lightbulb went off in your head.

The “exotic rhythm” section was a part of the store you and Bondy loved to search through the most, because the people who worked at the music store would put anything they’d never heard of or couldn’t decipher in the bin, and so it made treasure-hunting easy for the both of you. Today, you flipped through the bins allocated to everything miscellaneous, and squealed when you found a lone copy of L'Enfant assassin des mouches.

“Oooh! I found it, John!” you yelled across the store. It was in that moment you realized his name had never come out of your mouth before. You liked the way it sounded between your teeth, so you called for him again. “John?”

Ducking around shelves and bins of records, you finally found him close to the back of the store, laughing with someone you’d never met before.

“A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel good, is what I always say,” the unfamiliar person cackled, and Bondy chuckled.

“She wasn’t your type, mate,” Bondy responded.

“And what’s my type?” the unfamiliar guy asked.

“Inflatable,” Bondy quipped with red cheeks and a smile before bursting into laughter, his little teeth on full display as his eyes wrinkled.

“Oh, fuck off,” the unfamiliar guy rebutted, before noticing you were standing there, looking very uncomfortable. Bondy turned around to see who was standing there and smiled softly when he realized it was you.

“You got it then?” he asked, voice calmer than before. He brushed a stray strand of hair behind your ear, noticing how timid you were.

“Mhm. It was in the exotic rhythm section. Guess I should’ve checked there first, since the cunts that work here don’t really know music” you said, blush creeping up on your cheeks. He put his arm around your shoulders.

“Shall we?” he said to you, and then nodded to his friend, who was staring at him like he’d grown an extra leg.

You paid for the record with his arm still around you, and walked off into the street clutching his waist and the bag.

“Who was that back there? Friend of yours?” you asked him offhandedly.

“Yeah, he’s in my band.”

“You’re in a band?! And you didn’t ever tell me.” You stopped dead in the middle of the street.

“I thought you knew,” he said, scraping the toe of his boot on a stray piece of asphalt. “Thought the whole vast music taste thing was a clue.” He let a cigarette dance in the flame of his match before letting you take a puff. When you blew the smoke in his face, he took it back and started walking down the street again, arm cast over your shoulders.

“What do you do in the band?” you inquired.

“I sing and I play guitar.”

“No way. How did I not know this about you?”

“You really should’ve guessed,” he chuckled, and waited for you to ask another curious question.

“What’s it called?”

“Detroit Social Club.”

“Cool name.”

“Better than Newcastle Social Club,” he said, and you laughed into his neck.

You stumbled all the way home like that, snickering in the middle of the road, arm over arm. People stared, but you didn’t care.

This time, when you entered your still empty house, you bounded straight up to your room with him in tow.

“Should I let you listen to the record first or show you the clothes video first?” you said as he spun around in your rolling desk chair.

“Let me listen first,” he said. “I want to imagine the clothes and compare later.”

You pulled the record out of its sleeve, and the crackling of the paper was the only noise that broke the silence that descended on both of you.

“Y/N,” he said in a voice you didn’t recognize coming from him. It was almost a plea. You placed the record on your player, moved the needle to the song you wished to play, and the notes of L’Enfant la Mouche et Les Allumettes cascaded through the air. You turned around and danced to where he was in the chair.

“Hmm?” you asked him, twirling around your room, dancing slowly in the empty space of your room. You held your hand out to him, and he took it, but instead of you pulling him out of the chair to dance, he pulled you on top of him in it and crushed his lips to yours.

He kissed you hard, and desperately to the alien sounds of the record; your fingers went to his hair, tugging at the roots, and he sighed into your mouth, sending tingles up you from head to toe. You were hyper aware of his hands running up and down your back. You tightened your legs around him, and moved slightly, attempting to reposition yourself so it wouldn’t be so sexual, and despite your efforts to turn the situation back to safe territory, he groaned as you accidentally ground straight into him.

You pulled out of the kiss to survey his cherry red lips and hooded blue eyes. You stared into his eyes with surprise and curiosity as the odd music resonated against the walls. His hair was ruffled and his cheeks wore his signature red, but he wasn’t one bit embarrassed by the noise he’d just made. You, on the other hand, were burning temples and nervous panting.

He looked up at you and brushed the tangles out of your hair, smiling. The reveal of his little pointed teeth made you smile too, and then you were just nose to nose, straddling him in the chair. He kissed your swollen lips once, softly, and then again, before letting you step off the chair.

You wiped your lips on your sleeve, and grinned into the fabric before turning back to your computer screen. Bondy stopped the record on your player.

“So, here we go…. The, uh, show.” You fiddled with the controls for a moment, still out of breath, cheeks dusty rose. You raised the volume on your computer to max, making the video full screen on your monitor.

The woozy sounds of Jean Claude Vannier filled the room as women in sleek dresses paraded down the runway, donning headgear and shoes that would define a generation of design.

“Fuck that’s cool,” Bondy uttered, mouth closer to your ear than you’d expected. You shivered.

You both watched in silence as the video played on.

When it was finished, you sat back in your computer chair. “I’d love to have a dress like that,” you confessed, eyeing the screen.

Bondy’s eyes trained on you, letting out a soft breathy laugh at the dreamy look on your face. “Which was your favorite?”

“Honestly? The black one with the red lips on it.”

Bondy smirked. “Racy.”

You blushed, and punched his arm lightly. “Wouldn’t you like to see that.”

[bluebirdzykaysies]

5.14 - day before momma leaves

Goddamnit I hate to admit it but I’m already thinking and crying like a baby in my head once my mom leaves me to go back home to sf. the feeling is mutual like melissa said cause she’ll probably be just as a wreck and all this time I’ve been spending with her, I’m cherishing even more. I’ve never felt like this and Victoria said the same thing; expecting that while I transition. But everyone needs to experience this. I DO, especially. I need the time away for a bit to miss them and I already miss those interactions with my brothers too of just lounging in the living room watching NBA games all night, or youtube videos like its judyslife or ustheduo.

Our lives have changed already and itll be so hard as I am bawling my eyes out, sitting in my newly mounted dining table my mom and I put together, facing outwards my window with the Chicago sun, beaming through at a whopping 54 degrees.

This is my life now, I will be on my own and making decisions on my own. Ive told a few folks that I’m sad yet annoyed my moms time here was a bit much. But I know it was perfect for what it is. We’ve been tired each and everytime, her actions speak volumes and our conversations arent as deep as I want, but I know this quality time was one that will impact my life forever. Even though I hate to admit it or will say this to her face. i love my mom. so much, she means so much to me and my brothers. The amount of things she does unselfishly aka drive my freaking car with just her and hector for 5 days cross country. do what she did to make me help settle, there is no one like her. and I will forever appreciate her and love her.

She is opinionated and still felt like I couldnt decide for myself but this will be also a time where I speak up and use my voice. Saying NO.

ugh the tears keep falling down but some highlights from this past week were:

- Silly vlog videos that I actually may put together when I get the time

- 5/6; arrived - went to container store to buy my elfa shelving for my closet. Super nice lady that worked there Hector spoke to. Went to world market to check out their furniture and standing mirrors. TJ Maxx/HomeGoods and picked up some bathroom essentials, shower curtain, mats and beddings, Facetimed Yan/Ronz/Brent+Rick at night (10pm CST) 

Mom stayed with Hector at Courtyard Marriot til Saturday 5/8. So I wanted to stay at the apartment for the first time alone and enjoy the moment and soak it all in. Parking at my garage alone, randomly waking up to the SUNRISE at 545am and just being in awe of my new city... I could just cry

Didn’t get my wifi set up yet so the struggle was real a bit. The air mattress we got from costco has been tough to sleep on but eventually Ill get my mattress. Just have been torn with my furniture not being here since everything was rushed and happened so quickly. Learnings from the move thus far:

-Write a damn list, I DID NOT. Aka thats why a bunch of junk and unnecessary things were with my mom and hector in the car. All couldve been bought here. I ocouldve taken more clothes and shoes

-Alot of my clothes aka my favorite jean jacket and pink/mauve henley was left at home. My running shoes - I decided not to prioritize idk fucking why *rolls eyes* and alot of my other valuables. Brendan is nice enough to ship it. Its not worth to buy a RT flight and go there and take it all back with me... no. :( I would though tbh if I was in LA. lol make couple trips but I’m far enough that its like.... whewww is it worth but one day I will come back and visit. For now, its slated for Oct

5/7 Friday; I had it off started the day late at 12pm and booked my mom, hector and myself tickets to the skydeck. my mom was HILARIOUS, she was scared at first and thought it would be a huge platform to see under but once she saw its just a small piece of glass over 105 floors, it wasnt THAT bad. Her and hector are hilarious together and annoying a little LOL. but I guess they’re cute

Went to Wrigley Field while there was a game and that was an experience. Fans at the top of their houses, Security all over the block, streets closed, fans everywhere. Its such a historical building in the middle of a freaking neighborhood so it made itself unique vs att/oracle park being so secluded down in mission bay.

RPM Steak for dinner in River North. Valet’d the car and Hector treated us to a Missouri Steak? it was bomb though but I wanted Medium and he wanted medium rare... cream of spinach, mac and cheese, asparagus and for dessert topped with a Baked Alaskan. Whatever that is. (It was good) and my first time trying it.. me and mom. Our waitor was a nice lady in her 30s, gave me tori kelly vibes. Then another worker stopped by our table who looked filipino for sure (Rox’s ex Dennis look a like) but I already for got his name. He told us how he lived in West Town too and would eat at this bomb restaurant called “Uncle Mikes” maybe the ‘superstar’ of chicago :) hectors jokes were a bit much saying climbing up the coconut tree and asking if he can make halo halo in the back for dessert. No sir....

5/8 Saturday; Plan was to visit Macys downtown to check out furniture at around 930am. But they werent open til 11am. We checked out the Bean at Millenium Park and my mom got to see all the tulips and flowers. We waited in line for a while at Stans Donuts since Wildberry was just too WILD and packed, so we walked a block down and had ourselves some coffee and donuts for the day. After we headed to Macys and were greeted by a tall man name Hilary. he’s THEEE BEST. he knew we didnt have to buy anything from him at macys but he’s such a sales guy and has been in this business for so long that he kept tlaking about Quality of furniture and making yourself feel comfy and at home. Being in a small apt, or living out alone for the first time, separating each section once winter hits so you’re not bored out of your mind in the small place. He was so friendly and nice, I took his business card. Went to Ashley’s on the way to the airport and got gas. Feel in love with the small dinette table they had but the one I’m sitting on now I feel like is just perfect. Soletren couch will forever be out of stock and I will never let this go :( honestly dont know how itll fit in my door but i guess i will settle for something reasonable and decent in size

IVE BEEN SPENDING SO MUCH MONEY. . . . . . . I cant even. I got paid today so todays check will be sponsoring all of my credit card funds. Gna just pay it off in full so I dont have to deal with it. But going forward a budget will be set. and luckily some of the things I bought work can reimburse so I’ll do expenses sunday perhaps.

Saturday evening after dropping off hector, we did errands in the suburbs and went to a walmart. a bit ghetto lookin but its fine. Decided to go to costco after but had an incidentn with this white man who bumped my car and didnt apologize. I was going to say something but we’re so far out in the suburbs Idk what the hell he wouldve done to me. And if they’re racist out there. took the long way home and it was prob not through the safest neighbor hoods but my mom didnt have to know since traffic on the freeway was just ALOT. omg and the roads are just so bumpy, my poor car. Becca said she has a guy at a shop her family always goes to so hopefuully I wont need him but just nice to know the option is there.

Went to the costco up by roscoe village and bought food and more essentials like medicine i have a whole pharmacy.  again throughout all this, my mom is the MVP. I wouldve been like, Ill go get it when I need it vs mom stocking up beforehand. We ended up setting my living room with a japanese style seating using my elfa shelving as the table and a towel over it. Leftovers from RPM for dinner and ribs/salad from costco. (I keep eating, and we’re not walking alot so....... I’m def gaining wait and will need to lose this asap)

I’ll be back more to cover this past week; mothers day, ikea, seafood city, hanging with becca, azul mariscos, drunk at ross and dollar tree, pants falling (mom) unbuttoned pants cuz we’re so ‘stuffffffed’ hanging with the boys via facetime cause I do miss them :( I need to havea schedule with them.

kk toodles. time to go back to work. no more crying (maybe) then an architecture tour with my mom <3 and dinner at a steakhouse at MJ’s on Michigan Ave BYeeeee

[imaginaryculturepress-blog]

TFTP: Alice Cooper in Perth, WA

In which I lose my photo pass, and Alice Cooper rocks out Perth Arena.

Hi, hello, and welcome!

My name is Skyler and my cause of death will probably include birds. The ibises are seriously out to get me. Speaking of dramatic deaths and questionable phobias, Alice Cooper recently (not really - it's been almost a month) captivated and massacred the hearts of his Perth fans, even going so far as to behead himself onstage. Oh, what an evening it was. After Placebo cancelled their Perth show, I was left seeking another arena gig to call "the largest concert I've ever photographed". It took a while, constantly refreshing emails and waiting for replies that would never arrive, though finally, after over a month, some luck: through the wonderful staff at Revolutions Per Minute, I managed to obtain a photo and review pass to Alice Cooper at Perth Arena. And, as always, one hell of a drama ensued. But before we begin, this disclaimer is definitely required: Please be advised that I am not attempting to blame Revelations Per Minute, TEG Live, or any of their staff for the issues that occurred at this show. Whilst the choice to minimise the photographer list was at the discretion of event management, I'm sure they had a justifiable explanation behind it, thus I fully understand and accept their decisions. Note that any and all complaints listed below are aimed at me and I am only making fun of myself; I am not indirectly blaming or judging the aforementioned parties. We're here for a good time, so laugh at my luck - or lack thereof – and direct any negativity towards… uhm… okay yep direct any anger towards Camera House and Supposed Manager. Thank you kindly. Less than a week later, we were off to see Alice. I’m inclined to say Alice in Wonderland. At some point between receiving the passes and the event itself, however, there seemed to be a miscommunication: an email – and later a follow-up – were apparently sent out from RPM, stating that management decided to reduce the amount of photographers on the photography list. Problem was, I only received said emails well after the concert actually occurred. So I blindly went to the AC show, completely unaware of the troubles that lay ahead. After a short train trip and a Grill’d (sponsor me) stopover, we found ourselves passing hundreds of AC fans on our way to the Arena. Most were heading towards pubs, beginning their pre-drinking shenanigans, though you could find a couple non-alcoholics in the area. But they were all aged eight or under so they don’t really count. At the box office – which was thankfully open for once – a young woman assisted us in gaining our tickets. Except… “You’re not on the photographer list.” Hahahaha yeah. Good one. “Ma’am…” Don’t “ma’am” me… “You’re not on this list.” “That’s impossible.” Though then again, knowing my luck – or lack thereof – anything was possible; I wouldn’t be surprised if Hitler sprung out of the ground and beheaded my dog with his teeth, spitting its dismantled body at Trump’s face. It wouldn’t be unusual for Adolf to then rip off one of the Maltese’s balls and supplement it for his missing one, or to have my best lens run over by stampede of oxen the middle of the CBD; and it certainly wouldn’t be shocking if Supposed Manager led the oxen (or Hitler, for that matter). However, the allegation still stunned me. More so, it frightened me; despite my limited experience with large shows, I knew as well as the next person how fluid the industry was. But I had no clue as to why I wasn’t on the list. Perhaps there was a simple miscommunication? Surely. It would be fixed within minutes, right? No stress? …Right? She went to check with someone else, Ticketek’s own Supposed Manager. Though, to be fair, their version was far kinder and of far more assistance. Bonus: she didn’t sigh with every sentence! So let’s call her the actual manager – even if she wasn’t. Actual Manager: Hi. Hello. What seems to be the issue? Me to myself: Well, for one, you’re using my line… most of it, anyway… All right, perhaps her first impressions weren’t the sightliest. Me: I was supposed to be on the photographer list for this event, however I’m… not…? Actual Manager: Ah, okay… let me just check one more time. I’ll spare us both some time by skipping their frantic dashes to and fro the room. T’was a simple conclusion: I’d have no camera to shoot with. I’d have to cloak $1.5k worth of gear. Another photographer soon joined the queue, a lovely lady I’d seen at a couple other shows. Whilst they were sorting out her requests, I decided to ask her a thing or two – after all, she’s at all the large shows and knows what she’s doing. Me: *Awkward/weird/creepy introduction.* Her: *Doesn’t seem to find it as awkward, weird, or creepy as it was.* As stated in a previous post (With Confidence’s TFTP, I believe), I dislike disclosing conversations, no matter how generic they may be; if it’s personal or business-y, it won’t be publicised. However, if it’s a debate or quarrel regarding passes, lenses, or the like, then it’ll be on every platform the Internet has ever hosted. With that said, our conversation wasn’t anything secretive but I’ll call it common courtesy to not write it out in length. She did mention, though, that: 1. Photographers meet outside the venue before each set to be led into the pit, and that I could join if I wanted to talk to fancy people about my issue; and: 2. She had over ten grand of gear in her backpack. The professionalism made me quiver; I was in the presence of a music photography god. (And sentences like that, my friends, are why nobody ever talks to me for a second time). So that's what I'd do; I'd cloak my gear, retrieve it after the Strangers' set - for they didn't allow photography whatsoever - and meet up with the crew prior to Ace Frehley's performance. But before any of that could happen, I had yet another line to join. There were some... interesting... people: the guy with better hair than I could ever dream of, the SFX queens, otherwise well-dressed and well-presented people, the alcoholics, the seventy-year-old women already dying of fangirl feels, and naïve kids with metalhead parents. Then there was me, your socially-challenged fifteen-year-old tirelessly pleading for a pristine sponsorship from the snazziest companies around, and whose entire persona revolved around her denim jacket and the camera gear that lay in her Lowepro backpack. I sensed pity from every direction, the sort of pity you'd expect Shane Dawson to have received at age ten. Not fun. But t'was the same reaction I got from every public encounter so I was rather immune to it. Rather. The bag checks soon followed. It would've be difficult to explain why I had relatively professional camera gear covering every inch of my bag, since I had no photo pass to delight their gazes with, however the employees were understanding and had no issues letting me through. Hallelujah. Up next: metal detectors. Every time I stepped forth to one of those things, the security guards scan me at least three times. And I get it; I've got a concerning facial expression and seem pretty damn shady. But I'm not smuggling anything illegal (besides camera gear) into the venue, so chill the fuck out. Furthermore, stop looking so shocked when you find nothing illicit on me! Jebem vam mater bezobraznu... Don't google that. Soon enough we went through the ticket scans and headed for our seats. But before we could do that, we had to stop over at a few places, the first of which was the cloaking facility. The woman was extremely kind, especially considering what I put her through: Me: *Handing backpack over* Here you go. Me: Oh, wait, I need that... Me: Yep, okay. Me: Wait nope, I'll need that too... Me: All good. Five minutes later... Me: Shit, I forgot my glasses... Me: Yes, yes - no hold up I need my earplugs. Me: Please don't kill me. Our second destination was the merch table, at which I had a mini heart attack. $100 for one vinyl? One? I could purchase the red variant online for $45 - including shipping! They did, however, offer patches. And knowing me and my denim jacket, I had to invest a few dollars. And by "few" I mean fifteen painful bucks. All that was left for me to do was to pester the cloak lady once more before locating my seat. This was my first official reviewer pass and I didn't know what to expect; our tickets would probably provide a satisfactory view of the stage, there would be three too many miscommunications, and I'd get lost trying to find the merch table. Thankfully, none of this happened; we received outstanding seats, the only miscommunication regarded the photo pass, and the merch areas were easier to locate than most of my classes. We were in the fourth row from the front, nearly centred. I didn't feel worthy of it, especially since this review is being published almost a month after the event (I can explain), though I wan't about to waste this opportunity due to my self-proclaimed lack of entitlement. So after taking a long moment to fangirl ruthlessly and carelessly run into a few people (I'm truly sorry), we impatiently anticipated The Strangers. And that's when the phone photography began. Look, it's been a while since I've used a mobile to cover an entire set. I've grown too close to my cheap DLSR and pricey lenses, and this was a downgrade like no other. So let's all poke fun at my horrendous attempt at concert photography! Did I mention that these images are set to be painful? Yeah. You've probably noticed. My phone photography game isn't up to scratch; it's not even existent. The lads delivered quite the set, though the audience seemed rather... dead. Don't get me wrong; their music and stage presence was exquisite. But the Arena was still filling in, and those present didn't show enough support. PSA: When a band plays a song, your only excuse not to clap is if you're holding either a baby or camera gear. An no, phones do not constitute as concert gear. You show the guys some respect, for they were playing the largest show of their careers. At least have the decency to slap your goddamn palms against each other. So for fuck's sake, even if you've heard better artists or aren't a huge fan, either pretend to care, or leave. There's no third option. This applies to my mother as well. I see you. Support acts need more support. Especially guys like this. If they're ever in town again, I'd love to shoot their gigs. I genuinely enjoy their music. Intermission. Time to go find the group of photographers. I'll cut to the chase: I wasn't getting into that photo pit and would have to continue my life with a reviewer pass. It's not that I'm complaining, it's just... well, yeah, I'm complaining. When it comes to music, I consider myself more of a photographer than a writer. I see myself as more of a writer than photographer in general life, though in terms of music I'm more of a photographer. I believe the managers minimised the lesser-known companies/blogs/etcetera from their list, which is understandable; they'd rather have the larger ones shooting their gigs. However, the photo pit contained six people. Six. SOTA's contained an excess of twenty. So there really was no use of shortening a list of what, fifteen-ish? It's harmful for your up and coming photographers, especially since we hype up the matter so much. So let's try something out: on average, this blog receives an excess of sixty reads per article, which is more than you and I both expected. Quite frankly, I appreciate those statistics immensely. That's a considerable amount of people bothering to click on these things - even if they do so accidentally. But let's try to improve those numbers. For this article, I want to see the most positive results we've ever received. I know it's almost impossible, though I just want to prove that minuscule, upcoming blogs influence readers. So let's go - comment something down below, share this around the web, and don't leave me in that awkward scenario of not having anyone give a fuck. Make my hours of procrastination worth it! C'mon, please. I'm desperate. Regardless, I trekked back to my seat in the lovely fourth row, belittled and slightly dead inside. Ace Frehley had already commenced his set and was quick to change my mood; within minutes I'd gone from "fuck off, I hate everyone" to "FUCK YAAAASSSS!!!! AAACEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!" I'm asexual so that contributed to my excitement. Because, you know, publicly outing yourself at a high volume is fun, especially when people don't realise you're outing yourself. But I digress... Ace is one of those dudes that take you back to a time before your years, a place somewhere in a carefree land where you're rocking out to his songs whilst driving down some dusty highway in the middle of some random American state (one with lots of red sand and dusty highways - oh wait, that perfectly describes every Australian highway... Sponsor me, WA). He raises your spirits, shreds the living daylights out of his guitars, and ensures everyone has a killer evening; all whilst appearing excessively blurry in each of these images. Intermission. The Arena was full, yet more people were somehow managing to squeeze in. The excitement was growing, everyone was tense and ready to scream their lungs out, when one dude noticed someone rather interesting... One Dude: Hey... is that David Gilmour? Technically, he whispered it to his partner. Ultimately, everyone within a six kilometre radius heard and was having a panic attack; the woman beside my mother was about to pass out. So, naturally, we all had the same question: WHERE?! One Dude pointed to a secluded area beside the stage. My mother thought she spotted him and began raging at my face: "OVER THERE, YOU BLIND FUCK!" (To be fair, she was far kinder than that.) Me: Well he hasn't aged gracefully, has he? The frantic exchanges continued throughout the following ten minutes, with everyone eyeing "that corner over there" with their phones at the ready. Fun fact: if I was in the photo pit at the time, I could've gotten within a one metre proximity of royalty. Another fun fact: he wasn't actually Gilmour. One Dude figured that out soon after. That'd explain the facial differences. The updated version of the story now ran: "SIR BOB FUCKING GELDOF IS IN THE BUILDING!" And do you think that changed the fangirls' excitement levels? Not one bit. For those of you still trying to figure out who David Gilmour is - and I hope that's not a lot of you - he was a member of the best classic rock band out there: Pink Floyd. Bob Geldof was closely linked, for despite not being in the band himself, he starred as Pink in the group's 1982 film, The Wall. At this point, half of us wanted Alice to take to the stage and the other half were contemplating how they were going to catch up to Geldof after the show. Their plans would have to be postponed, though, as the lights dimmed and we were summoned to spend the night with Alice Cooper. I don't understand why they decided to have a seated floor section; why couldn't we just have general admission? Because the older people would have issues? Mate, they were jumping around more than the guys at a Homebrand show! Yeah, creepy. They could've - and should've - begun crowdsurfing. That's one thing I want to see: a frail, heavily-aged grandmother riding on top of the audience with a determined expression as her mortified daughter stares at her and her grandchildren cheer her on. But we're not here to discuss grandmothers. It's Alice that we're [supposed to be] focusing on. From the moment he hit the stage, the sixty-nine-year-old was ready to rock. However, as I said, he's sixty-nine. Walking is an issue for a bloke of his age. As you can imagine, he had a few difficulties manoeuvring about the stage. There were moments where you could see him struggling, where you knew that the show wasn't supposed to be that way, where you could tell that there was some lacked energy. Regardless, everyone adored and motivated him, because that's what true fans do; he wasn't about to end his career, he loved what he was doing, and a few weak moments weren't about to wreck it all. So perhaps the dramatic acting element wasn't executed too well, though that doesn't mean the music parts were equal; each band member played dextrously and exquisitely, creating a profound atmosphere and one hell of a night. And yes, to answer your dying questions, there was a guillotine; how could there not be? The show was soon over and everyone was pleading for an encore. And they got it - but not the one they expected. As the band reached the stage for a second time, Alice roared: "Please welcome my friend... BOB GELDOF!"Everyone went insane. The entire Arena was cheering, applauding, and falling to the ground like Ms. F. There were streamers and other inexpensive though awesome party props flying around as Alice and Bob did a duet of School's Out and Another Brick in the Wall (Part II). It was genuinely one of the most memorable moments I'd ever witnessed. It was also far more affordable than purchasing tickets to Roger Waters. Before anyone had come to their senses, the show was over (for good), tears were filling peoples' eyes (for the eighth time), and those fangirl grandmothers were tackling each other for every handful of confetti they could g So that was that. Up next: WAMFest 2017, two rather odd days that saw me photograph at a church, hang out at a bar, and win a bet. Stay tuned. I left the Arena with the streamers around my neck mimicking a noose and hugged my lenses for longer than natural. The other train passengers kept giving me weird looks. MUSICAL SUMMARY: The Strangers: under appreciated/5 Ace Frehley: aaaaaceeeeeeee/5 Alice Cooper: ageing but still killing it (and himself)/5 Bob Geldof: the meaning of life/5

PHOTOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY: Lenses: Apple has never heard of f1.4, evidently/5 Lighting: pretty though useless/5Camera: *snivels* iT WAS A FUCKING iPHONE/5 (coincidentally an iPhone 5) Editing: never happened/5 My sanity: as dead as Google+/5 Check out the bands! Cooper doesn't have long left so get into him quickly: Alice Cooper Ace Frehley I couldn't find the Strangers' Facebook page, sorry. Live long and headbang, xx-Skyler Slate

[meisteralready]

A Supermarket at 45 rpm

1982. Reagan was still just an actor in the white house, my hometown baseball team would win the World Series, and I was turning nine years old. We didn’t have cable, my Mom and I lived in an apartment in Fenton, Mo, St. Louis County. South of the city. That summer was awesome. I think it was sunny everyday. I went camping for a whole weekend for the first time with someone other than my family. I also kissed a girl for the first time. It was on a trampoline late one afternoon in Eddie Weber’s backyard. That summer, I bought my first record as well, a 45 rpm.

All summer long, we kept hearing the same song, at the pool, in movie theater parking lots, at the field house where we would go or sno-cones after soccer practice. It started off weird, the song did, with what sounded like someone hitting empty coke bottles. The guy singing had a strange accent. It was a rock song, but it had a lotta flute in it and no, it wasn’t Jethro Tull, In the lyrics, he talked about vegemite sandwiches. I found out the name of the song was “Down Under” and the name of the band was Men At Work.

I remember being in the car with my Mom and the song came on. I quickly asked her to turn it up, which caught her attention, for this was not something I did on the reg. She chuckled at various references in the song especially “where the beer would flow and men would chunder", which I only found recently meant to puke. Mom stated, halfway in the song, “I think these guys are from Austraila”, and when the famous vegemite line was uttered, she laughed, “Oh, yeah, they’re Aussies,” adding, “your father and I knew a lot of blokes like that.”

I didn’t quite know what that meant, but she beamed with pride. My Dad and Mom, when they were first married, lived in Sydney for a few months, then Melbourne, before having to come home because my grandfather got sick and Mom found out that she was pregnant. It was hard for them to leave Australia, they were a young couple in the prime of their lives, living abroad in a friendly country (Well, friendly at least to white people at that time, aside from how they treated aborigines), and they seemed to be deeply, madly in love.

Their photo albums from that time were like highlight reels for happiness with pictures that made it seem like they’re living in heaven on earth. After they moved back, Grandpa did die and grief-stricken, Mom miscarried. Three years later, I was born, but they were miserable together and eventually got divorced. Yet Australia, was this gem of their time together and, even today, the greatest times of their lives.

Back in 1982, The DJ on the radio in the car confirmed that, indeed, Men At Work were from Australia and that they were HUUUUGEEE there. Now at that time, the only other band I knew that was from Australia was AC/DC and I was told by John Hrdlicka, my next door neighbor with the most christian mother i had ever met, that AC/DC actually meant After Christ, Devil Comes. My cousin Kathy had an album of theirs with Angus displaying his devil horns, so that, in essence, confirmed it. To a eight year old, Satan was some heavy shit.

A week or so later, Mom and I went to Schnuck’s, our neighborhood grocery store. This was the early 80s, we didn’t go out a whole lot, and going to the supermarket was a BFD. A Big Fucking Deal. Sometimes we’d see a friend of mine from school or Mom would flirt with the store manager to get double coupons on a week where there wasn’t double coupons. And Mom usually let me get something, like candy or a comic book or the like. But this time it was different.

Mom, by now six years divorced, still beautiful, and very liberated, was talking it up in the meat aisle with a guy wearing a wide-open, chest-hair-filled polyester shirt. I didn’t know him and it didn’t seem like anybody else did as well. They displayed all the signs of attraction between two people, something that, years later, I would come to recognize. He would lean in to her to tell a joke, my Mom would lilt in her laugh and shift her hips side-to-side. I didn’t even know if the jokes were good, and, being nine, kicked at the rollers on the shopping cart, and was generally, loudly bored. After an elongated “MoooOOOoooM,” she turned to me, quickly dug into her purse and handed me four bucks.

FOUR BUCKS. That was pretty incredible. Outside of Christmas cards or birthdays, it was the most money I had ever held in my hand. I was dumbfounded. “What do I do with this?” I asked. Mom, never breaking her gaze from her Meat Market Adonis shooed me away with a “whatever you want.” I walked away amazed and let them continue their budding romance next to the pork steaks. I had to get one more meat joke in.

The supermarket was now, a whole new world to me. I was willy wonka and this was my chocolate factory, everything seemed at my disposal. WHAT TO BUY WITH ALL MY RICHES? I went to the comic books - nothing new there, I had all the latest editions that were on the shelf. I looked at the candy and nothing was overly biting me - I believe I had one of those sno-cones only an hour or so earlier. I went closer to the liquor aisle, no, i was pre-pubescent wino. Near the liqour, Schnucks was trying out something new, something I had never seen before outside the local Sam Goody - a section for 45 rpm records.

Now, in the history of vinyl, these were the waning years of the record single. Tape and later CD singles would be the 7 inches’ demise, falling to an all-time sales low in 1985. And supermarkets, being the dinosaurs of change, added a 45 record section in the last dying breaths of the medium. It is though, historic to me for it was where I bought my first record, next to a guy buying a fifth of Seagram’s Gin and Similac.

I looked through the two rows of singles - Hurts So Good by John No-One-Had-Yet-Heard-of Mellencap Cougar, Abracadabra by Steve Miller Band which did not reach out and grab me, and many, many copies of Always On My Mind by Willie Nelson, which I almost bought because Willie looked like a space cowboy on the cover wearing a silver jacket, changing out his regular red bandana for some teal blue sari-looking one, all the while with weird sand dunes in the back that made him look like he was one Mars. He probably picked the album cover while stoned. Who I am kidding, everything done by Willie Nelson was done while he was stoned. Shit, if I could do that, damn right, I would. But all of us can’t be Willie Nelson. I think. What was I talking about?

Right, the record. So, I’m flipping through the singles and come across Men At Work. I knew I like the song and I distinctly remember the price tag reading $3.30. Right in my wheelhouse. So I walk up to the register and put in on the conveyor belt, and right as it was getting zapped by the mysterious green light that under the glass plate that somehow knew all the prices of everything everywhere, the cashier asked me if I was interested day-old roses that were on sale for a quarter a piece. She listlessly waved her hand toward it in such a way that I still have hope today that she finally found a job that fulfills her. Feeling rich and proud of my very unlike-eight year old purchase, I think I literally said, “Throw it on my tab.” My flirt with the cashier didn’t go as well as did the older gentleman with my mother. She sighed and I was immediately embarrassed, my only wish was to be back in the meat aisle.

I turned, defeated, to find my Mom. She and Mr.-70s-held-over were near the front of the store by the half-priced store-brand cereals that were on the endcap. I sauntered over with the rose hidden behind my back. Mom was tearing what I guess was her phone number on a piece of paper from a pad in her checkbook. This pad, usually used only for to-do lists, now included romantic encounters. As she handed it to this poor-man’s-Chuck-Barris, I pretended to be interested in a box of knock-off fruity pebbles, which I think they were called Fruit Rocks. He swaggered away and i presented my Mom with the rose. She smiled so brightly. I can still feel that kiss she gave me on my forehead.

I don’t know if that guy, who I will now always call Fruit Rocks, ever did get a hold of Mom, but what I do remember is getting home and Mom happily loading up that single on the record player. you see, I was not able to touch the hi-fi for at least another two years. The first time was when I bought my first long-playing record, which Prince’s Purple Rain, but that’s a whole other story.

That night, though, I had Mom play Side A of that 45 over and over. “Down Under” definitely brought the Thunder, which, coincidentially, is now the name of an Australian all-male stripper revue. Mom & I danced and laughed at each other for hours. I never got the drug references in the song, of which there are many, for example, “Lyin’ in a den in Bombay. With a slack jaw, and not much to say”? Really? You do the math.

OPIUM.

Dancing the night away back then with Mom is a great memory. I HATED the B-side of the record, though. I can’t even remember the name of it. It was pure crap. Some song that I have erased from my memory. I detested it so much that I got a steak knife and intentionally scratched “I HATE THIS” into the grooves. I mean, I could do it, right? It was mine. I BOUGHT it. Over the next couple months, I lost interest in the 45 and eventually, lost track of the record.

Fast forward to 2009. My Mom, after a long and truly courageous battle with an illness, passes. Yet, she lived long enough to see her only grandchild born, something she always wanted. My daughter Evangeline, who adored her. Evie looks just like Mom, and is just as funny as she was, just as kind, and is just as beautiful.

It took me a long time to go through Mom’s stuff. It sat for years. In 2015, I began. God forbid anything ever happened to me, my kid wouldn’t know what any of this stuff was. I catalogued things, wrote a bit about each box I would go through, made little quicktime movies. It helped a lot. Tremendously cathartic. One night last summer with Evangeline visiting, I open up a box marked “silverware”. It was in my Mom’s handwriting, which was always beautiful, the way all Mom’s seem to write.

Inside was no cutlery at all, instead, loose odds and ends and on top was something small, flat and wrapped in bubblewrap. I opened it. It was that old Men at Work forty-five, one side still scratched to hell with the price tag reading $3.30 staring me dead in the eye. I had never mentioned it before, in all conversations I ever had with Mom, even as an adult, that this was my first record. But she knew. She protected it. She cared.

I began to weep, softly. Evie, a little alarmed, stopped playing with her toys on the floor, came over and hugged me. She asked me what was wrong. Kinda just like what Mom would do. I told her this very story. She cried a bit as well. Eve was only two when my Mom died. She has fleeting memories. She said that she missed “Meemaw”, what she could recollect of her. She said she was sad because she could not remember her voice. We, regrettably, neglected to take many videos of her and Mom.

After a bit, Eve reached into the box and pulled out a small package. It was a rubber banded manila envelope of cassette tapes. it was marked “Austraila”, again in Virginia Meister’s expert penmanship. These were taped audio letters, sent back and forth, from Mom & Dad to each of their parents in America, while they lived abroad. One side would be of my parents’ adventures in Oz, with the other being the whole family relaying stories of back home.

Evie and I sat the rest of that night and listened to them while flipping through the treasured photo albums. She remembered her grandmother’s voice and for the first time in my life, I heard the voice of my grandfather whom I had never met.

And we played that Men At Work 45. And we danced and we laughed at each other. But we only spun “Down Under”, never that B-Side, because that other song? That was pure crap.