#something like 'gone girl' but with a lot psychotropics

[jisatsu-draw]

💊💊💊

[consumedkings-archive]

ancient names, pt. xi

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt xi: what kind of man

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~8.2k (I’M SORRY)

Rating: M for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop.

Warnings: Gore/violence, Still Under The Influencer of drugs, uhhhh blood. There's a lot of mentions of blood and death and what have you. Elliot has a meltdown (surprise). Joseph is creepy (surprise pt. 2 electric boogaloo). People are confused about How To Feel. I don't understand how laws work and so I'm just literally out here trying my best, you know? Don't @ me.

Notes: I wanted to start off by saying THANK YOU everyone for your feedback! I was having a real hard time hitting my stride with the last chapter but all of your kind words has given me life. There's some still in these old bones yet and I really hope that you enjoy this one.

 Anyway I'm a clown and I'm sorry this chapter took so long. Joke's on you, it's always clown hour here! Thank you forever and always to @starcrier ​ for being the best proof-reader and somehow managing to make my incoherency readable?? Manageable??? You're an angel and ily! Also, @empirics ​, my writing aspiration forever, and @baeogorath ​ who makes me cry literally every time I read anything they have to say about my writing. Thank you thank you thank you!

John had never seen a person’s head blown in with a shotgun, and he wasn’t sure that he really needed to.

Ase’s blood had splattered when Jacob fired the shotgun at what he was sure could be considered point-blank range, the spray of it nearly catching them in the process. But no, it was mostly on Elliot, like she was some Carrie at her first prom, a real tried-and-true Scream Queen.

“I knew you’d find a way to fuck it up,” Jacob said, no absence of venom in his voice as he stepped away from Ase’s dead body like she was nothing—and sure, she was nothing, and John didn’t necessarily have any qualms with getting rid of her (he had blown a shell straight through her spine), but that wasn’t what was making him nauseated.

It was Elliot. Baby-blues eaten away by her pupils, blown wide with hallucinogens, drenched in blood, making a noise something close to a rabbit that thought it was going to die.

He didn’t have the energy to tell Jacob that the blow to her skull had been unnecessary, that there was no way someone could walk away from their entire stomach being blown through by a shotgun. That Jacob’s idea of “fucked up” was greatly, massively warped if he thought that Ase hadn’t been finished after shot number one. Even if he’d had the energy it wouldn’t have mattered, because the next words out of Jacob’s mouth were, “You put Faith at risk going back for her.”

The eldest Seed didn’t need to say what it was he meant; John knew. The words were “you put Faith at risk going back for her”, but what he meant was, Joseph’s going to be furious when he finds out.

“Get your pet,” Jacob bit out, “and let’s fucking move.”

John’s limbs moved of their own volition, kneeling down in front of Elliot and turning her face away from the grisly scene laid out next to her. If she recognized him, it didn’t show; she trembled, and her eyes never stayed fixed for very long, as though everything in the entire world was assaulting her senses at every second.

“Elliot,” he said, pulling her to her feet as the sound of voices rising in the distance peppered the air, “we have to move.”

Some kind of guttural sorrow welled up and out of her as he pulled her along and down the hill, her feet stumbling. Around them, the night hummed with gunfire and shouting. John was certain that he heard something like grief wracking the air at the hilltop above them, and he couldn’t bring himself to look back, afraid of what he’d see—that redheaded monster of Ase’s bent over her nearly-decapitated corpse, or worse: coming after them.

He kept one hand on Elliot’s arm and the other out in front of her case she tried to plummet headfirst down the hill—whether by chance or accident—and by the time they had reached the bottom, the strange agony sounds that had tried to burrow out of her had mostly ceased; her gaze was still glassy and dark, and there was an odd sway about her, but she looked only shell-shocked now.

Oh, John thought, absently, if that’s all.

Joey’s dark gaze darted between the two of them. He released Elliot to her without a word, his hand dropping from the blonde as Joey fussed over her. Faith swayed dreamily just a few steps away from Joey, humming a song mostly to herself; beyond her, Jacob stood, his arms crossed over his chest while he toted the shotgun in one of his hands, before he apparently got tired of waiting and grabbed Faith’s hand.

“If you want to stand around down here and chit chat, that’s fine,” he said, tugging Faith—clearly still drugged, clearly unaware of the carnage occurring around them—off to the trail that led away from the lake. “ We’re leaving.”

“Jacob—” John started. It was too late. The redhead had set for himself and for Faith a brutal and punishing pace to return them to wherever it was Joseph waited, and though he was loathe to admit it, Jacob was on the right track; pretty soon, the members of Eden’s Gate that had been sent up to wreak havoc on the Family would be dead, and he was certain that once Ase’s death was fully recognized, someone would want revenge.

“Are we going home?” Faith asked, giggling as she toddled after Jacob, barely able to keep herself upright. “That lady said John was going to come and rescue me.”

John’s chest tightened at the sound of her laughter. She was so completely unperturbed by everything—everything she had been through, had seen. He wondered how heavily they’d had to drug her, and if she would even remember half of it come the moment that she sobered up.

He exhaled, glancing at the top of the ridge above them where the lights of the cabins and flashlights and whatever-the-fuck-else those monsters had at their disposal glimmered.

“When,” Elliot said, the word grinding out of her mouth haltingly, “when... did Jacob-”

“Drink some water,” Joey murmured. She uncapped the half-drank water bottle and pushed it into Elliot’s hand and added, “And we’ll talk about it later, but right now we need to move, Elli.”

Elli, John thought, and felt a faint glimmer of amusement at the absurdity of such a soft, round nickname for a girl who was only sharp edges. Well, but she wasn’t so sharp now, was she? As he led them along the dark trail, her fingers brushing his on occasion, he would glance over at her and find her staring at him like he was a stranger, like she didn’t recognize him. Maybe she didn’t; he wasn’t familiar with the drugs they’d put her on, anyway.

“What the fuck happened up there?” Joey hissed, her hand firmly rooted in Elliot’s as she tugged her along—not unlike the way Jacob was pulling Faith. She had taken the water bottle back when it became apparent Elliot wasn’t interested in it. “Why is Elliot covered in blood —”

“She’s alive,” John snapped, “isn’t that what’s important?”

“I suppose you’ll be wanting a fucking award.”

“Stop it,” Elliot managed out. “Stop arguing. You both are so fucking loud.”

Joey’s lips pressed into a thin line. They ducked into the treeline far below Sacred Skies Camp, picking their way as quickly as they could through the underbrush, but the journey was slow and arduous; guiding Elliot through the trees had, in the last twenty minutes, become no easier than guiding a toddler. A blind, deaf toddler, who spared no interest in staying upright, and also had a metric fuck ton of psychotropic drugs in her system.

The walk there seemed to take much longer than it had going up, but John was sure that was his own adrenaline crash happening. He’d been stressed—about getting Faith out, about what he’d find, if he’d find anything at all or if they’d have done away with Elliot seconds after getting her.

Fuck . The thought filtered through his brain with dismay at the realization that he had been worried about her. Jacob was right; he’d really only needed to get Faith. But Elliot had been—she’d gone in there for them , and Joseph wanted her alive, and—

“Tired,” Elliot said, her voice hoarse and cracking with exhaustion as she took agonizing step after agonizing step. “I’m so tired, J—”

“I know,” John and Joey said, both cutting Elliot off and overlapping each other at the same time. Of course, John already knew what it was like to handle Elliot like this. They’d toddled through one field with Elliot clutching him like an anchor, drugged to the gills, once already; this was new territory for the other deputy.

Joey gave him a dark, turbulent look—the kind that implied murderous intent—and John turned his attention back to the task at hand: getting the fuck out of there.

As soon as the truck came into sight, running with the lights off, John let himself breathe a sigh of relief. He hadn’t thought Jacob would really up and leave them, but it also wasn’t impossible that he would have insisted and said fuck off if Joseph had protested. His eldest brother had been notorious for pushing back, for picking fights, and maybe—just maybe—he was pissed enough to follow through this time.

“About time,” Jacob said from the driver’s seat. Joseph did not give his input, which only served to further John’s personal unease as he opened the tailgate of the truck. Joey climbed in first, swaying just a little. He’d noticed that her pupils looked blown, too, though not quite as much as Elliot’s, so it must not have been fully out of her system yet.

John glanced up the hill absently. The sound of Eden’s Gate members still echoed. Not quite done yet, he thought absently, and then said, “Alright, Deputy, let’s get a move on.”

“Too high,” Elliot sighed, and he wasn’t sure if she meant the tailgate or herself. John turned her around from trying to clamber into the back and gripped her hips; her hands fluttered unsteadily before holding onto his arms.

“Don’t throw up on me,” he said.

She looked tired. Each second her eyes spent open seemed to demand more and more energy from her. “Expensive shirt, huh?”

“That’s right.”

He hoisted her into the back of the truck; she sat on the tailgate for a second only, and swayed forward like she was going to tumble right off; she steadied her hands on his shoulders, fingers gripping his shirt and bleeding warm against his skin.

“You did it too fast,” Elliot muttered, her voice verging on spoiled brat. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, John climbed in after her as she scooted to the farthest spot away from the tailgate. Jacob didn’t wait for the tailgate to close before he pulled out of the brush; the truck hit the dirt road with a heavy thunk that had his teeth rattling around in his skull. Fucker, he thought, slamming the tailgate shut before the dust kicked up beneath them.

Elliot had her back pressed against the window into the truck. Blood covered her face and matted strands of her hair where they’d stuck to her cheeks; the vicious edge to her was dulled, whittled down to the bone until she was just a small girl folded up into the side of Joey Hudson.

When her eyes had fluttered shut and the night had settled a chill over them, Joey’s gaze flickered across John for a moment before landing on his face. She was silent, studying him—in a most infuriating way, wordlessly —before she finally said, “What happened?”

John glanced out at the Montana wilderness stretching out behind her, late into the night; he thought about the way Elliot had balked at the sight of the treeline, like there was something in there only she could see, something horrible.

“Well, the boys and I thought it’d be a nice night to go out,” he replied flatly, cocking his head before looking at Joey. “It’s been a while since we’ve done anything fun, you know, so it was nice to get the gang all together again for a little fun .”

The brunette’s expression flattened. “The devil rebuking sin.”

“I shot the psycho and I got Elliot out of there,” John bit out. “What did you expect?”

“You, to leave her,” Joey snapped. “That’s what I would have expected out of you.”

The words shouldn’t have stung. They were coming from Joey Hudson, after all, the only person that Elliot really cared about and so clearly the only person that John could use against her. But these facts were minor details to him now, carefully pinned out somewhere in the back of his mind—always accessible, but no longer important. Hudson had stopped being very important at all when she stopped being something to dangle in front of Elliot. Now they stung for a different reason, something that John couldn’t put his thumb on.

That’s not very true, something in him said, rattling against the bones of his rib cage. You know exactly why that bothers you.

“Well, that’s on you, isn’t it?” John replied, keeping his voice sickly sweet. “I’ll have you know I took very good care of your hellcat.”

“Yeah,” Joey ventured dryly, “having her shoved into a cult that shot her so full of poison it was coming out of her eyes really showed some TLC.”

“I’m sure she told you the plan was different,” John bit out.

“She tried. Which is why I’m wondering why you even fucking came back for us at all, Seed.”

Though Joey’s voice was soft so as not to rustle Elliot, it was pounding with venom. Hatred. That was to be expected, he thought; after all, in the short time that she’d been his ward, he’d done his very hardest to lure Elliot in with her fear and then passed her off almost immediately to Faith. But still, the wording struck him—it was the same sentiment that Jacob had flung in his face after blowing Ase’s brains out.

You put Faith at risk going back for her.

I’m wondering why you even fucking came back for us at all.

It was never the plan to save Elliot. It was always: get Faith, get out, and if you can get the deputy too—sure. Why not? She’d be indebted to them. Even more so if they got Joey out with her. But Faith should have been the absolute priority first, and he’d left her down at the lake to go back up into the middle of a firefight to get Elliot and Joey out.

If we’re partners, you have to trust me.

“I don’t know why it bothers you so much,” he managed out, trying to keep his voice as clipped as he could. “Normally, when people are rescued, they’re thankful. ”

“You did kidnap me,” Joey snapped, “so you’re closer to us being equal than my being grateful, and even that’s pushing it. I just don’t know if the rescuing still counts as a good deed if you only did it for yourself.”

John stared at her, eyes narrowing and jaw setting, tense and tight until pain radiated up into his skull. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, Deputy Hudson —”

“Then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”

Elliot stirred, eyelashes fluttering. She coughed into Joey’s shoulder—the gesture not lost on the brunette, who grimaced a little—and when her eyes landed on John there was an eerieness about them, like she was trying to pull him open and peer inside, peel back the vibrating tension and hostility that Joey Hudson’s interrogation brought of him.

“What?” John asked, barely masking his irritation. It shouldn’t have bothered him so much, but it did because he couldn’t get the way she’d said, John? out of his head, small and wounded so very afraid, with Ase’s blood drenching her.

“Just trying to figure out which John you are,” Elliot replied, her voice slick with exhaustion and the words rolling out of her mouth in something close to a slur. They sent an uneasy jolt through him. It was the drugs, surely—she probably said all kinds of weird shit while she was high. He didn’t know what she was seeing, anyway.

(—fucking hate you, John Seed, John Duncan, whatever the fuck your name is, whoever the fuck you are—)

The blonde sighed again. The breath sounded like some kind of exertion for her; she squirmed and tried to get more comfortable against Joey’s shoulder, the blood on her face staining the forest-green of the deputy’s shirt. John’s head ached. The memory of Joseph, silent while Jacob debated the logistics of getting a killing shot through Elliot, flickered through his mind, venomous.

(—should see yourself whenever Joseph says anything. You practically fall over to kiss the ground he fucking walks on—)

“Well,” he replied, settling more comfortably in his spot across from the two women, “let me know when you find out, why don’t you, Rook?” He let his head loll back against the lip of the truck bed, a dark, cloudless night spreading out above him. He wanted to brush aside the way Elliot looked at him, but he had learned long ago that was the quickest way to underestimate her.

“I’m just dying to know.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The truck came to a halting stop. John hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until the strange inertia-pull of the truck stilling rustled him from his sleep. It was hard to say how long they had been on the road, but if he had to guess—and, taking into consideration how Jacob liked to drive—he’d wager it had been only thirty minutes.

Across from him, Elliot was awake, murmuring something to Joey that he couldn’t hear over the sound of the engine giving one last kick before Jacob turned it off. There was a higher clarity about the blonde, now, one that implied that sleep had done her well—though the pupils of her eyes stayed wide, there was now a sliver of baby blue that he could see, if he looked close enough.

He grimaced as exhaustion burned through his body, and for a brief second, their eyes met; like before, they pried at him, tried to see something that maybe he didn’t want her to. 

As he lowered the tailgate of the truck and slid out, John turned around and instinctively reached to steady Elliot as she tried to climb down.

“I’m fine,” she said, more biting than he anticipated. Just coming down, John thought absently, his hands only remaining in the air for a second after her assertion before dropping to his sides again.

“Oh, yeah,” John replied, “I forgot that you’d rather I let you eat shit than keep you from falling over.”

She’s always been willful, he mused. The thought occurred as though John had known Elliot for a long time. In a way, he supposed that he did; fuck, he’d tried every goddamn trick in the book to lure her in, and she’d still spit her venom into her walkie at every chance she’d gotten. There was nothing that John didn’t try and dig up, nothing that he hadn’t racked his brain for in the brief moment that they’d visited all those years ago. And still— and still, and still —she—

“Hudson,” John said, offering his hand to her because he was a gentleman and certainly not because he enjoyed the way the gesture made her squirm.

“Fuck off, John,” Joey replied tersely, sliding off the truck bed as well. John smiled dryly.

He said, the needling coming to him like second nature, “So nice to have both of you here at one time. It’s what I always wanted, you know.”

Elliot shot him a look, one that sucked the wind right out of his sails. It was a wounded look, like he had suddenly reminded her of the things he had done, and John felt an uncomfortable twist in his stomach. He didn’t know why the words came out—a force of habit, maybe, or the way that Joey Hudson’s animosity (and closeness ) to Elliot made his hackles raise. As though Joey’s presence made a choice immediately clear for her, and she chose Joey.

The clench of his jaw sent pain radiating up into his skull. He thought that things had been much simpler pre-Joey Hudson, and he was regretting having helped her.

“I knew you’d come and save me,” Faith said, her voice breaking him out of the turmoil of his thoughts. She smiled at him, and it would have almost been endearing if her pupils weren’t absolutely blown to hell, reminding him that they’d probably done more than just drug her with some weird hallucinogen—the way she’d been acting when he’d seen her on the road had been something more akin to the kinds of things Faith had partaken of before.

He reached up, pulling her into a one-armed hug. “Yeah?” he replied. “You listened to those crazies?”

“They’re not crazy,” Faith sighed. Her voice bloomed with something like affection, and when she looked at him, there was a startling clarity about her expression—keen, and a little sly. Not so innocent, our Faith, he thought absently. “Just different, John. And you came, didn’t you?”

A prickling sensation crawled up the back of his neck. John glanced away from Faith, his gaze meeting Joseph’s from where he stood in front of the car; per usual, his expression was unreadable, obscured behind a mask of tranquility that provided no insight on what his brother was thinking or feeling.

“Go on,” John said, patting Faith’s back, “get some sleep. You’re going to feel like hell in a few hours, you know.”

She laughed, like maybe she didn’t quite hear what he actually said, and slid out of his half-embrace to wander around to the front of the car where Joseph was waiting. He turned his gaze away, swallowing back the feeling that he’d somehow failed a test—something that only Joseph knew the meters and results of, that he’d have to sweat until he found out about.

Elliot had already started walking away with Joey, taking her back to the same bunkhouse that she’d been holding up in prior to their little excursion. They spoke in low voices to one another; Elliot’s expression was even soft, softer than it had been when he’d found her sobbing into the grass in the field, when she’d been terrified out of her skin. Softer than when she’d had Ase’s brains splattered all over her.

John sucked his teeth, pushing the tailgate of the truck up until it latched. The adrenaline crash was starting to hit him hard, now. Every muscle in his body ached with the effort of moving, as though they’d all tensed and held for hours at a time; maybe they had. Gunfire and screaming still echoed in his head, while corpse after corpse, and Ase’s shattered head, lingered just behind his eyelids. They didn’t bother him, these images of glory and gore—but he couldn’t shake the way that Elliot had looked at him from the ground, drenched in blood, terrified.

Terrified of him.

“It’s always going to be like that, you know.” It was Jacob’s hard, steely voice that pulled him now, like his siblings wanted to take turns interrupting his train of thought. “She’s always going to pick Hudson over us.” His brother leveled him with one swift, hard look. “Over you .”

“Funny,” John muttered, “I didn’t realize you were a psych professional, Jacob.”

“Faith could have died because you went back for that girl,” Jacob bit out, his voice low but vibrating with something more venomous. “I know you know that, you aren’t stupid. And you went back for her anyway. So—”

“So, what?” he interrupted, trying not to let the frustrated venom from watching Elliot take Joey’s hand and walk off bubble out of him. “Faith’s alive, that crazy bitch is dead. What else do you want?”

“For you to get your shit together,” Jacob snapped. “Like I said, I know you’re not stupid, but do yourself the favor and prove it to me anyway. That girl —”

That girl, Jacob said, like the words didn’t suddenly fill John with some kind of poison. The eldest Seed gestured toward the bunkhouse, where inevitably, Elliot and Joey were conspiring; to leave, to kill. At this point, John wasn’t sure, and he didn’t think that either would surprise him.

“—is nothing. Don’t let nothing fuck everything up for us.” Jacob’s words were hard and cold. He gripped John’s shoulder and added, “Don’t let nothing fuck everything up for Joseph.”

That’s what it really boiled down to at the end of it all: that Joseph had seen like he always did, because nothing went without Joseph’s seeing, and maybe he wasn’t sure that Elliot was really worth the trouble anymore. Before, Joseph had wanted her to add to their little collection of misfits, just like he’d added the sheriff’s receptionist, just like he’d picked up Faith when she was Rachel, just like when he let Jacob tap into the worst parts of him for use, just like just like just like . Joseph was hard-pressed to find a vicious misfit that he didn’t want for himself, and Elliot Honeysett had been no different.

But a hard-to-break will cost time, and resources, and maybe with these locusts in their garden, that just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Not for Joseph. Not right now. Where was this, anyway, back at the start of it all? Back when John had wanted to do things his way?

“Whatever Joseph’s opinion on the usefulness of the deputy, Burke’s gone,” John said after a minute. Jacob’s hand still sat heavy on his shoulder; he passed a hand over his face and sighed. “That marshal, the one that was—”

“I remember.”

John grimaced. “He was with Faith, and Hudson, but he wasn’t at the camp that I could see.” He paused again. “Jacob, if he got out and he made it out of Hope County, he’ll be a problem.”

The red-headed nodded once, brisk. “A big fucking problem.” Another pause, and then: “Tell me you’ll get this whole issue with the deputy wrapped up.”

John’s jaw clenched. Tell me you can do this, Joseph had said. Tell me you’ll get this whole issue wrapped up. Hadn’t he proven he was capable of handling her? Hadn’t Joseph himself said that?

“There’s no issue,” he replied flatly, stepping around Jacob and heading to the church. “Never was.”

“Good.”

It was easy to say, and harder to believe. He knew—the rational part of his brain, somewhere inside of him—knew that he was jealous of Hudson. That he knew exactly what Hudson thought of him, and he hated that someone who hated him had Elliot immediately trailing after her like a puppy, as though the last three days—all of those moments hadn’t meant—

And what was he supposed to think, then, about the way that her lashes had fluttered when his fingers brushed her skin, the way the heat crawled under her freckles when he slid into her planetary pull? That it was just—passing? Nothing?

Does it matter?

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━  

Elliot was having a hard time.

That was to say, there were a lot of conflicting emotions that were welling up inside of her, crashing down like tidal waves. Normally, she’d be able to bottle those pesky things up and bury them deep inside her, to access later (which could be minutes, or days, or years—whenever); but with the drugs still wreaking havoc on her, she felt like all of her normal defenses were crashed and battered, maybe even beyond repair. Maybe even permanently decimated.

It was lucky that she had Joey, she supposed as she closed the bunkhouse door behind them, letting the noise of it soothe her over-worked senses; lucky, because Joey had always been her lighthouse in the times that she needed it the most.

“We have to get out of here,” Joey said, and the words immediately exhausted Elliot further. She took in a long, suffering breath and sat down on the edge of one of the bunk beds, rubbing her hands against her face. She was far from out of the woods; she thought maybe she was starting to come down, or even crash, because it felt like electrical pulses kept ricocheting through her body and they wouldn’t stop.

Elliot managed out, “I’m in no shape to go anywhere, Joey, you know that I—”

She saw the look on Joey’s face. Distress. John had kidnapped her, and terrorized her with whatever it was he had originally planned to do to her, and now they were here, in the compound, where it had all began. And yes; John had kidnapped Joey, and her, and yes, he was a fucking psycho, and—

And yes, he knew her well enough to shove a cigarette in her hands when she was stressed, and he didn’t complain when her nails dug into him when she thought the world was going to split in two around her, and yes, he did come back for her when he didn’t have to, and yes and yes —

‘And yes’ what? A nasty voice inside of her head said. A man so much as looks at you and all of a sudden you’re on the other side?

“I can try,” she offered weakly. “I can try, if you want to go now, but I don’t know where Boomer is and everyone from Hope County is—hopefully—already gone. I don’t have anything.”

When the words came out of her mouth, she felt the last thread holding herself together snap. I don’t have anything, the words echoing hollow inside of her, reminding her that everyone was gone, maybe they were dead, that she didn’t know where her dog or her mama were and maybe that meant that she didn’t have anything left inside of her, either, nothing left to give. That she had scraped and scraped to the bottom of the barrel and now she’d have to start breaking herself into pieces to have anything worthwhile to give anyone.

“I don’t have anything, Joey,” she said again, her voice wobbling and wet and fuck, she hated it so much, the burning of her eyes stinging against blood and viscera collecting in the tears. “I don’t, I’m sorry—I’m really sorry—”

Joey crossed the small space of the bunkhouse to crouch in front of her. She pressed her hands into Elliot’s shoulders, and she was saying something, but Elliot couldn’t hear it over the pounding of blood in her head.

She pressed the heels of her palms against her eye sockets, but the gesture brought no comfort; each time she closed her eyes, she kept seeing Ase, skull caved in. Surely, one shot had been enough? Surely, the second shot to her head was just—

Just John being himself.

“God, he fucking—he mutilated her, Joey,” Elliot managed out, her voice breaking on something like agony as the panic started to set in. Her hands trembled and she pushed the hair from her face, a movement that she was sure was just packing the dried blood in. She couldn’t get her eyes to focus on anything; everywhere she looked, she thought she could see the dark flicker of Ase’s clothing, the haunting corpse come to finish what she started. “She was dead—all of her, just falling—spilling out of her, like she’d been gutted, and I thought that he was done, and we’d go home, but then he shot her again—God, fuck, Joey, she’s all over me—”

“Hey,” Joey said firmly. “El. Take a breath and look at me.”

“I am.”

“A bigger breath,” Joey insisted, taking her hands away from her face and pulling her to a stand. “Just one.”

She did. I see, she thought and failed. I smell, I hear, I feel, but nothing came. She was drowning in it, whatever it was; Ase’s blood and guts on her, the memory of her glassy eyes as Ase reached for her, the feeling of Kian’s hands on her neck, the horrific monster lurking in the woods, and…

“Take another,” Joey reiterated. “Just one more.”

Elliot knew this trick. It was the oldest trick in Joey’s book. Just ask for one, and then just one more, and then just one more, until she was breathing like normal. She did as the brunette bid her anyway, and because her normal grounding methods had failed her, she instead thought, I’ll just count to ten. If I can make it for ten more seconds… And then another ten…

“You’re still sweating hallucinogen,” Joey murmured, squeezing her hands to help bring her back down. “You should take a shower. Come on.”

The journey between the main room of the bunkhouse and the felt both like it took years and happened without her knowing, as though she’d blinked and suddenly found herself standing in the bathroom, the fluorescent on the ceiling digging into her irises.

Her gaze flickered up to the mirror hanging over the sink. The person that looked back was a stranger to her; blood splattered every inch of her skin, matted in her hair, staining her in dark, carmine gore. Elliot thought about the strange voice in the woods, crackling and snapping and trying her on for size as it slid under her skin.

As the glass of the mirror seemed to pulse and stretch, the sound of running water snapped her attention elsewhere, hands limp at her sides. Joey pulled the knob that turned the water into a shower and said, “Okay, Elli, you call if you need me.”

“Okay,” Elliot murmured tiredly.

“Okay,” Joey repeated, watching her for a moment. And then she pulled her into a tight hug, and whispered, “For the record, I never doubted you’d be able to get me out. From John, or from the other place.”

The words didn’t offer her any comfort, but they were nice, nonetheless. She nodded her head and waited until the brunette had left the room before she started to undress, her movements methodical but unsteady; it wasn’t until water hit her skin and she saw the streams of thinned blood touching down on the floor of the bathtub that she finally felt some relief.

Even if it was only a little.

I don’t have anything, she thought tiredly, her eyes closing as she ducked her face under the stream of the shower. I don’t have anything left. What am I supposed to do now?

She had Joey. She didn’t have any idea of how to find Boomer. Hope County was gone, if they were lucky, and dead if they weren’t. She hadn’t heard from her own mother in--weeks? Or was it days? How long had this been going on?

It felt strange, to not be able to trust her own memory—to not know when the last time was that she got a full night’s sleep, or the last time that she curled up in her own bed, or the last time that she spent doing something that she enjoyed. As Elliot scrubbed the blood off of her face and out of her hair, staining her fingernails rusted-red, she thought that the idea of continuing on , of doing more, was so very exhausting.

They didn’t hurt you? John had asked, his fingers brushing the bruises on her throat where Kian’s fingers had gripped. It bothered her, when people touched her—grabbed her like they owned her, like she wasn’t in control of her own body—but when John did it, it was different. Even when he’d dragged his finger under her collarbone and said, I think it’ll fit nicely right here, don’t you? Just over your heart.

John was only doing what he was meant to do all along: draw her in, keep her there, and Ase’s gruesome death was just a reminder of the person that he really was. She had forgotten that.

But she wouldn’t again.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The night felt sticky, sitting like a second skin on him. When John stepped into the church to find Jacob and Joseph talking in low voices, he felt a strange sensation prickle down his spine. It was anticipation, he realized, nearly a moment too late; by the time he was bracing himself, Jacob had turned and walked out the side door, leaving himself and Joseph alone.

“How is our deputy?” Joseph asked, his voice light and mild. John tried to lessen the tension in his jaw.

“Which one?” he replied dryly. “She’s fine.”

Joseph said, “You were worried about her.”

“Well, I did work really fucking hard not to kill her,” he bit out, and then sighed at the way Joseph’s brow arched, a visible change in his expression even in the dim, intimate lighting of the chapel. “Look, Jacob already gave me the whole speech about—”

“I think you’re doing a great job with the deputy,” Joseph interrupted, firm but not unkind, “and I want you to continue.”

John stopped. Maybe it was the adrenaline crash, or the way that he’d come into the conversation at what appeared to be the end of it, but he couldn’t wrap his head around what Joseph was telling him; especially after what Jacob had said to him.

So he said, very intelligently, “What?”

“Our friend the marshal got out,” Joseph supplied. “Hope County has evacuated, if they’re lucky. But you know, John, even if they come for us—even if they arrest us—there are…”

A pause lingered between them, just long enough for something close to dread to knot and writhe between his ribs.

“... ways,” his brother continued, placing each word meticulously, “to make a legal case like this one fall apart.”

I don’t know what you mean, John wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out of him. If Hope County was on the run, they might not ever look back; if the U.S. Marshal brought his buddies back, that would make Elliot the key witness in their case, while the other members of Hope County and the Resistance were…

“It’ll be all of them testifying against us,” John said after a moment. “I appreciate your confidence in my abilities, but—”

“You can convince people not to talk,” Joseph replied. He paced away from the table at the center of the chapel’s front room, absently scratching at his jaw, as though he were only just coming up with this idea; John knew that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t ever the case with Joseph. Nothing went without careful deliberation. “There are particular brands of persuasion that work better than others. But we’ll need more than just silencing our neighbors. We’ll need…”

Positive testimony, John thought, when the words didn’t come out of Joseph’s mouth.

“Yeah,” John murmured tiredly. “I know.”

“Good.” Joseph gave him a small smile. He reached out, gripping John’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, John.”

He stared at the wood paneling of the floor. Maybe he was tired; maybe it was the exhaustion from the last few hours, but Joseph’s words didn’t strike the same match in him that they had before. If Joseph noticed—and he almost certainly had—he didn’t let it show; rather, he let the distance between them grow, hand dropping from his shoulder as he walked for the door.

“You were going to let Jacob kill her.” The words came out of John’s mouth before he could think to stop them, before he could say to himself, it’s not worth the fight. He’s your brother, John. He gave you everything. Don’t you always say that you waited your whole life for something to say yes to?

He felt, more than he saw, Joseph pause in the doorway leading out of the chapel. A strange silence stretched between them; it was one where John thought he might have felt the scrutiny of his older brother’s gaze on him.

And then, in a voice casual and light, Joseph said, “You’re tired, John. You’ve had a long day. Get some rest, won’t you?”

John was tired. Tired enough to think that he might fall asleep standing up if he wasn’t careful. “You’re right,” he said after a moment, turning his head to look at Joseph over his shoulder with a small smile. “I will.”

“Goodnight, John.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Night passed more quickly than he would have liked. By the time morning had arrived, he thought maybe his conversation with Joseph was a dream; that he’d hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe some of the Family’s weird drugs had rubbed off on him while he was in there.

By the time early morning had rolled around, he’d dragged himself through a shower and into cleaner clothes. He half expected to find the bunkhouse completely vacated by Elliot and Hudson by the time he walked out with an armful of clothes, pleasantly surprised that Elliot was leaned against the door. Smoking, naturally.

“You look more like yourself,” John said as he approached. Her gaze flickered over him absently. She looked tired, but had since washed the blood and guts off of her face and out of her hair; as she took a drag of her cigarette and tapped the ash out of the end of it, her eyes turned away from him. Weird, he thought. He added, “I know you’ve got the whole blood-stained look, but I thought you might like to get into some clothes that are a bit cleaner.”

Elliot smoothed her boot over some ash on the ground, waiting for a heartbeat longer than normal before she said, “Thanks.” She sounded sour , like John’s mere existence was a chore for her, and not the way that it had been before—like she really meant it.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, watching her curiously. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, and the sickly rasp in her voice—it had probably felt nice to be high in that regard—she looked clear-headed. Normal. “How are you feeling?”

“John,” Elliot sighed, “let’s not.”

“Fine,” John snipped. “Where’s Hudson?”

“She went to walk the perimeter to try and call Boomer,” Elliot replied tiredly. “And then we’re leaving.”

Fuck, he thought, remembering his conversation with Joseph. Fuck fuck fuck. “Well, isn’t that lovely.” The biting venom welled up in his voice. There was a strange panic setting in now. She wouldn’t look at him, not for longer than a second, and her tone rang hollow and empty. He swallowed thickly, teeth clenching as he continued, “And how do you intend to leave, then? On foot? You sure seem like you’re in peak physical condition to be walking cross-country, Elliot. But I suppose if you have Hudson, then it won’t matter, because Hudson rescued you from those cultists and—”

“I don’t know, John ,” Elliot bit out, a real flex in her voice this time. It was comforting, to have her be anything—anything but ambivalent, anything but absent from their conversation. “I think I could get pretty far if I decide to start blowing people’s fucking skulls in with a shotgun, don’t you?”

John stared at her. “Pardon?”

“Oh, fuck off,” the blonde snipped, dropping what remained of the cigarette and stomping it out with her shoe. “Don’t give me your fucking clothes. If I change out of these I might forget that you splattered me with that woman’s brains.”

She turned and opened the door to the bunkhouse, going to close it, but John shoved his foot in the doorway to stop her, tossing the clothes onto the bed the second he got inside. 

“I didn’t ,” John seethed. “Maybe you were too fucking high out of your mind to tell—”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Elliot’s voice was flinty. “It completely slipped my mind that you’re incapable of taking responsibility for yourself. Remember, John, that time you rubbed it in my face that your fucking family made me into a murderer? Because I do, and the pure fucking irony —” She jabbed a finger into his chest, the anger seeping out of her now. “—of you trying to make me feel like shit for killing your idiotic little cultists and then obliterating a woman’s skull onto my face is palpable!”

“Are you deaf?” John snapped, snagging her wrist before she could turn and try to walk somewhere else again. “I didn’t shoot Ase in the head, Jacob did. I put both my fucking hands on you to get you off the ground. How am I going to do that holding a fucking shotgun, Elliot?”

“I don’t know!” she replied furiously. There was a reckless, high-color in her cheeks, her voice cracking and breaking on something that John couldn’t quite pin down, couldn’t quite get his hands on. Even now, he thought, even when she was spitting her venom she was so — 

“I don’t fucking know, John, you do—crazy fucking things all the time,” she insisted, and there was an uncomfortable wobble in her voice as her lashes fluttered. “Half the time I don’t know which John is going to open his fucking mouth—I don’t know if it’s—if it’s the John that kidnapped my best friend or if it’s the John that… That can be… With me, he’s...”

Her voice trailed off, weaker now, her fire spitting furiously as it tried to stay alight. John’s fingers loosened around her wrist, but didn’t let her go.

“There’s only one John,” he said, and his voice came out hoarse. “It’s just me.”

“I hate you,” the blonde managed out weakly, her lashes dark with unshed tears, soft and doe-like. “I’ve never—”

“Elliot,” John, tugging on her wrist, pulling her forward until she was in his space, until he could feel the warmth of her body and smell the wild on her—pine trees and ash and the mild shampoo she had used, “you’re going to have to come up with a new slogan that you actually believe.”

“John,” she tried again, and she was soft, soft and tired, “please, I’m—so tired of trying to figure you out—”

He closed what little space remained between them to kiss her; for a second, her entire body tensed like an animal ready for flight, stony and immovable against the affection, but he let her wrist slide from his hand, concerned that any moment he might spook her, that she was frozen because she was deciding when to run.

Her wrist slipped through his grip, catching at the base of her hand. She knotted her fingers into the front of his shirt and when his hand came up to the slope of her jaw, she leaned —like a flower to sunlight, blooming under his touch, just like that. Just that easy. John’s other arm slid around her waist to tug her up closer, and her mouth parted against his like instinct, like it had never not been this way between them.

The moment stretched; reality swung back in, the warmth of her mouth against his leaning back until a bit of space stretched between them. Not a lot, just enough for their noses to brush, and Elliot said, “I don’t know which—”

“I told you,” he replied, threading his fingers through her hair, “there’s just the one. This one, El, me. I want—”

“John,” she started, her voice overlapping his, "tell me that you're not lying when—"

He went to say, I want you to stay, I want to kiss you again, you hellcat, I’ve wanted to kiss you for days, but he didn’t get the chance because the sound of Joey’s voice outside the front door had broken the magic of the moment.

“Elliot,” Hudson called, “guess who I...”

The door opened, followed quickly by a scattering of dog nails as Boomer came racing inside. Without a second thought, Elliot had crouched down to wrap her arms around the dog John immediately took a step back and cleared his throat, feeling as though he’d been caught-out. Maybe, in a way, he had. He wouldn’t have cared, if he didn’t think that the idea of Hudson catching them would have made Elliot bolt instantly.

I should have kissed her again, he thought absently, watching Elliot fawn over Boomer with the kind of delight that she reserved only for him, her lips kiss-reddened. Before Hudson.

“He must have followed you here and waited,” Hudson said, looking at John with a narrowed, suspicious gaze. “Everything okay, Elliot?” she asked, even when she was looking at John. “I heard arguing.”

“Fine,” Elliot insisted, crouched on the floor to get as close to the Heeler as possible. “Everything’s fine. John was just—”

“Just dropping off some clean clothes for the deputy,” John interjected, despite the anxiety he felt sliding around inside of him when Elliot looked at him. The flush in her cheeks remained, and he knew that it wasn’t just anger there, anymore. Not really. 

Joey crossed her arms over her chest. “Great. So you can leave, then? We’re done with you.”

We’re, she said, like she spoke for the both of him, both herself and Elliot. We’re, like just seconds ago, John hadn’t been thinking about the way Elliot’s breath hitched when his fingers brushed her skin.

“Sure thing,” he drawled, taking a few steps toward the door. He almost walked right out the door, even with his hands itching for her again, but he stopped. I should just say it, he thought. I should just out it right now.

“What is it?” Joey prompted, her voice hard and flinty.

Elliot wouldn’t ever forgive him if he did.

“Nothing,” John replied after a moment. A little smile ticked the corners of his mouth upward, and for a second his gaze met Elliot’s. “Hope you get some well-deserved rest, you two.”

The brunette watched him with a dark, inscrutable gaze, and he stepped out of the bunkhouse, letting the door swing shut behind him. For just a moment, he paused outside the door; long enough to hear Joey go, “What was that about?”, and he started off across the yard.

Not done with me yet, deputy.

[mentalcurls]

3.  Una festa in cui nessuno ti vuole

Here we go, my thoughts on episode 3 of season 1! Finally the whole girl squad is together and out there having fun. The topics I’ve managed to ramble about about this time are double standards, fandom, Mom friend™ Giovanni Garau and the mysterious Francesca Mirabella, as well as the results of the Bechdel test for this episode  ✌🏻

“Eva, mi guardi?” was the precursor to “Martino, guardami Martino!”

Gio really doesn’t get it. He keeps saying he’s doing things for Eva, when actually he does them to appease her so she won’t bust his balls, so he’s doing them for himself

Cerami and Bea sound exactly like all couples of middle schoolers I knew when I was in middle school myself. The shoes thing especially. It’s hilarious.

I understand Gio’s frustration with Eva, I do, cause it’s hard being the only point of reference for a person when you have a much more diverse social life. I’ve been on both sides of their situations actually. When Gio says “Couldn’t you try to make some friends?” I know his intentions are good, he’s coming from a place of wanting happiness for this girl he’s in love with, despite being frustrated with her just then; but I also understand Eva a lot, the feeling of isolation, of not knowing what to do or who to turn to because everyone just seems too distant or too busy with their lives (and of course there’s some condescension there too, cause she’s a teenager, she’s got standards, especially since she was popular before fighting with Laura), and the frustration she must feel, because it’s not just Laura ostracizing her, she made scorched earth around Eva for several degrees of acquaintances; and I’m 100% sure that deep, deep down Eva is a bit angry that she had to bear most of the brunt while Gio came out of the situation unscathed

Eva’s disdain for her classmates who like manga and k-pop wounds me deep into my fangirl heart, not because I’m specifically a fan of those things myself, but because she’s using those example to say they’re loser nerds because they have that strong passion for those things, the same passion I am, as a matter of fact, pouring over Skam Italia and Eva’s own story right now. Plus she’s basically shitting on fandoms included among those mostly made up of teen girls and LGBTQ+ people, so there’s that. Are you a fangirl of anything, Eva? Do you know what it means to fell such a pull towards something, a book, a movie, a song? Have you ever felt it? Do you know how nice, how rewarding being a part of fandom is? How fun? My wish for Eva at the end of the season, for when she decides to focus more on herself, on understanding who she is, is actually to get in one of those fandoms she seems to dislike, cause it’s a wild ride, yes, but it’s also an opportunity to learn so much about other people, places, worlds, and ultimately about yourself.

“Eva, it’s nice to be around you. Maybe you forgot, but when someone is around you, it feels nice. Trust me.” And this I think is the first real taste of that Mom friend™ Gio we’ve come to know and love in season 2, that protective, supportive, loyal person who gives good advice and just knows how to lift your spirits. This could have 100% been a conversation he had with Marti in S2, if Marti had been feeling insecure after he pushed everyone away. More importantly, this could 100% be something Gio tells Nico at any point ever in which he’s feeling low. Can you imagine that? Oh my God. Especially with the joke about smelling afterwards. (Aaand I made it about S2 rather than about Eva. Ops.)

poor Eva, she tries so hard. Too hard, in fact. If instead of that whole three-messages-and-a-sticker explanation she’d just gone “*Hey” it would have made her cringe less at herself and it would probably have prompted more of a response from Ele. I understand the panic though.

those theatre kids look just like the twins from “The Shining”! The girls is even wearing light blue like them! And they walk in sync and call Eva’s name repeatedly and ask her to come act in a play with them! OMG, LudoBesse’s mind, honestly.

Ele is so bad at fake crying, really. And the fact that theatre guy, a person who’s supposed to know something about acting/pretending, falls for it kills me.

Evanora for the win, honestly, look how cute they are together. I mean, Ele definitely looks pretty smitten here, immediately noticing Eva from afar, making her smile and reassuring her in a roundabout way about her fumble on Facebook a few days before

poor Gio, the Anglo-Spanish War is kind of a bitch, though to be fair the only things about it history professors usually care about are who was ruling those countries and the Invincible Armada; the Thirty Years’ War is much more interesting (defenestration of Prague, anyone?)

how cute is Silvia??? BRB going to throw myself into a volcano

Gio and Marti doing the parent thing over Eva like Gio and Elia will do in S2 over Marti himself

then Martino catches Federica’s eye and we have the infamous spoon scene; Fede sort-of-pretends-to-fellate the spoon and Marti looks away, embarrassed and uneasy. I love how Skam (both the og and Italia) have taken the trope of the guy ogling the girl from afar (or not so afar) and her feeling uncomfortable under the attention, and have reversed the gender of who’s looking and who’s looked at.

What I don’t like is how it’s framed, in the shots and in the discussion between the characters, like it’s creepier than most of the stuff boys do to girls during the series (I’m thinking especially of guys at parties in general and of the Villa boys). The vehemence Martino uses to express his discomfort over Federica sexualizing him and making her interest evident is basically the same with which the girls react to finding the tally on the wall behind the boys’ bathrooms. This would kind of be fine, despite the fact that the two things are imo on different levels of disgusting, if it was discussed somehow that boys doing disturbing stuff are considered normal, just hormonal teensagers, but when girls do a fraction of the same thing they’re demonized, considered really weird and too horny. There’s no discussion of the double standard and that’s what bothers me.

Something else that would have been interesting to explore, maybe not with Marti, but later with possibly Chicco Rodi, since we see Fede talk to him at a party and even kiss him (if I remember correctly) is the follow-up from that trope: the guy usually goes up to the girl and makes a comment and she turns him away, but oftentimes after he insists a while she concedes and she ends up dancing/going out/going home with him. Which is a shitty thing that happens in a lot of media. It’s actually kind of what happens with Edoardo and Eleonora later. And it would have been super interesting to see Fede doing the ogling thing (which would have never been as rude, graphic and uncomfortable as guys can get, anyways), being turned down, then actually getting her way, and what kind of reactions she’d have from the guy and from the girl squad.

Martino is such an asshole! Silvia obviously extends her invitation to him and Gio out of politeness because they’re friends with the girl who helped her in a bad situation, she doesn’t know them and she was not obligated to invite them along. And while Gio manages to keep an appearance of politeness, Martino straight up mocks Silvia who’s been nothing but nice and enthusiastic towards Eva. That, in my book, is even worse than the two boys being their unsupportive selves yet again and telling Eva to get new friends, then not helping her make some. And that’s such a boys thing, honestly, to spot a problem and tell others to solve it but not help along!

and Silvia is so nice, she’s so good at driving the conversation along, keeping track of the social cues: she feels Eva doesn’t agree with the guys, so she extends her invitation again, then elbows Fede for some support, but she just makes things awkward so Silvia has to smooth things out, then she invites Eva again and is finally able to make plans, but she still has to diffuse the situation when she sees the boys are uncomfortable with Fede’s suggestive actions. So much emotional labour for just one conversation. Thankfully Eva helps her along a bit, cause no-one else does.

by the way, I totally understand and share Federica’s kind of humor and I love her

Marti’s face at Fede’s joke about psychotropic drugs though. Completely blank, just for a second.

I think it’s telling, though, that Federica is one with the weird actions and the weird humor nobody gets, because she’s the fat girl, so she gets pigeonholed as the comic-relief character: she does whatever comes to her mind, she doesn’t seem to pick up on social cues and she’s there mostly to make the other characters laugh or to make them look more refined, more clever or to say how cool they are; sure, she’s a good friend who stands up for Sana and Eva when it’s called for but her character could be way rounder

oh, guys. Marti and Gio’s reaction as soon as Silvia and Fede are out of earshot, it makes my heart bleed. The mocking, the casual fat shaming, the way Martino looks absolutely disgusted about that girl showing an interest in him

Ele acting aloof and dismissive of Silvia is not my favorite thing, I mean, I get not liking a person from the get go, but for God’s sake, come up with an excuse or something, there’s no need to be so blunt when she’s just inviting you to a party

you can actually subtly see Ele kind of relax when Fede arrives, she’s obviously much more her speed

and of course we have Sana, scathing Sana, picking up on Silvia’s racism straight away and calling her the fuck out but diffusing the situation with humor anyways

Silvia is looking for cool girls to make her own group since she’s been more or less kicked out of Laura’s; Silvia probably used to be the popular girls in her class, but Laura has taken that role from her, first integrating with Sara in Silvia’s friend group, then “overthrowing” her, despite only being in her class a few months, given that the transfer from Succursale, when Laura, Eva and Gio’s class was separated into groups that were merged with pre-existing classes, happened the previous September

(btw, Eva, Gio, Marti and Elia are in 4B, Ele in in 4A, so Silvia, Fede, Laura and Sara are in another class; Sana is probably in yet another class; and Luca could be either in the same class as Ele, as Silvia and Fede, as Sana or in another completely different class)

Eva hasn’t picked up on Silvia’s desperate desire to be one of the cool people yet, and Eleonora hasn’t explained it to her either? Pffft

OMG Silvia has an older sister???? I completely missed that the first time around! Hi Francesca Mirabella! You seem to be older and popular since you get into Villa guys’ parties, so you explain so much about Silvia

Ele has been at Kennedy high only for a month, so she might not know yet who the most popular people are yet, I can get behind that; but Eva? After 7 months? Not having the perception of the internal hierarchy of her school? Girl, please.

Eleonora dubs Edoardo “faccia da cazzo” and “capelli di merda” right away 👏👏👏

on the other hand, Sana seems to know the social hierarchy of both the school and her year very well, probably because she absolutely needs to in order to avoid at least some of the discrimination

Sana clearly has plenty of ideas about how to be popular, but she’s much better at preaching than at doing; Silvia wants to be liked by everyone, probably because of some complex she has about being in her sister’s shadow, but her solution is to be at the same time judgemental and a pushover; Sana’s brutal honesty and “advice” is meant more to hurt than to help Silvia become a better, more genuinely likable person; Sana’s probably lashing out because she was hurt by Silvia’s behaviour towards her

Federica is so clearly the comic relief in this scene, not one of her lines pushes the conversation along plus she acts like she’s completely oblivious to the tension between Silvia and Sana

yas for Eleonora who has the common sense to actually look for an alternative solution since they’re obviously not going to Martucci’s party, I like a practical girl

even at the club, Sana shows diffidence until the girls (probably Ele with some help from Fede) pull her in, drag her away from the bar so she can take selfies and dance with them; is she uncomfortable? Is she just trying to act cool? Is it a defense mechanism? Is she trying to keep away so people won’t look weirdly at the girls because they associate with the “terrorist”, is she afraid someone will say or do something?

seeing the girls dancing and having fun like gives me such a nostalgic feeling for those few (because I’m a really self-conscious motherfucker) parties in high school in which I was really able to have fun with my friends

Bechdel test: the episodes passes the test, with flying colors I might add, since there’s the conversation between Eva and Eleonora in the corridor after the theatre guys leave; Silvia thanking Eva and inviting her to the party; the whole scene with the girl squad in the courtyard, both when it’s just Ele and Eva, when Silvia arrives, when all five girls are present and when Sana leaves; finally, the first part of the conversation at the Baretto, when they’re talking about the party, then Edoardo is mentioned and it stops passing the test.

This post is part of my complete series of meta about Skam Italia season 1.  If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the other episodes, you can find the mastepost linked in the top bar on my blog under SKAMIT: EVA. Cheers!

[therapybg]

The Fall of the Emerald City

There are a number of different impressions on the work of L. Frank Baum in the The Wizard of Oz. You may know that between the book, the stage play and the muslcal versions are lots of multi-dimensional elements. Knowledge "The yellow brick road is a symbol for knowledge: it is a rabbit hole that takes you to wisdom and, which is shaped as a spiral, becoming wider and wider as you go along on it. Dorothy takes the pointed road, but she soon discovers that the yellow brick road splits into more directions."  https://lievarts.com/the-psychology-of-philosophy-an-analysis-of-the-wizard-of-oz-1939/ It is this fragmenting of persepctives which makes it useful for the MK Ultra spooks, politics and mythic narrative, imagery and vivid colors ... Political "Taylor also claimed a sort of iconography for the cyclone: it was used in the 1890s as a metaphor for a political revolution that would transform the drab country into a land of color and unlimited prosperity. It was also used by editorial cartoonists of the 1890s to represent political upheaval." (The Storm) "The 1902 stage adaptation mentioned, by name, President Theodore Roosevelt and other political celebrities. For example, the Tin Woodman wonders what he would do if he ran out of oil. "You wouldn't be as badly off as John D. Rockefeller", the Scarecrow responds, "He'd lose six thousand dollars a minute if that happened."" Subversion " Good Witch Glinda" used an innocent, ignorant patsy (Dorothy) to overthrow both her own sister witch (Witch of the West) and the Wizard of Oz, leaving herself as undisputed master of all four corners of Oz" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz FragmentationFragmenting personalities, creating mirrors, reorienting characteristics, taking a fable and by turns moving it into multiple independent structures, to be called up at will. Useful toolkit when aided by psychotropic drugs and emotional torture. But, I digress......the cyclone that carried Dorothy to the Land of Oz represents the economic and political upheaval, the yellow brick road stands for the gold standard, and the silver shoes Dorothy inherits from the Wicked Witch of the East represents the pro-silver movement.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz Allegory "Quentin Taylor, for example, claimed that many of the events and characters of the book resemble the actual political personalities, events and ideas of the 1890s. Dorothy—naïve, young and simple—represents the American people. She is Everyman, led astray and seeking the way back home." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz Music and Emotion The song "over the rainbow," the character of Judy Garland and the three other main characters are iconic elements of popular culture.  The same fantasyscape echoes Alice in Wonderland and Charley and the Chocolate factory, a sense of hyper - reality that is intensely colorful, hence memorable (see it's use as a mind control device).

Suggestion If we move the "plotlines"to the current day, where do we see the Emerald City? Who are the "Wizards" of Oz behind the curtain, beside the throne?  In an intel sense it's Comey, Clapper, Obama and Hillary directing their events behind the scenes. Why does Hillary Clinton appear so often in the color green?  That one was a trick question, I know the answer to that one and I think you do too. Green represents everlasting evil, she is the high priest (Wizard). In the banking sense it's vipers, but a rabble of vipers, rather than a cohesive enitity. They were a gutless rabble even in 2007-2008 when all thier pieces were in play,  but people never saw thru it at the time. Their media is rapidly deflating as we go to print. All of their channels, megaphones and toyboys are in the shitter.  Note my use of suggestive imagery :) #Don'tForgetoFlush

Plotlines But, let's say the cabal do destroy Seattle (The Emerald City). The need to pin it on a patsy. They can't claim credit directly, it is to be used for another purpose. What have they waiting in the wings? At the beginning of the plot Dorothy kills a witch by dropping a house on her head.  Just on a simple level let's look at "housing drop kills"as a  motif. https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3011960/china-showing-signs-similar-japanese-housing-bubble-led-its Script Having grown up in a country where a housing bubble was used to transfer our national wealth to the "troika" (the cowardly lion, tinman and scarecrow of IMF, EU and ECB), I'm aware of the technique, but they've used it already in the USA? "Fool me twice, shame on you." GWB It will not work with  property developer in the White House. They might want to bring in a financial crash, but Trump has them stymied on that too, the economy will not implode if a city explodes. He already wants them to collapse, so in that sense they play into his hand and pass over direct control to Him. Discount that one in the short term (you don't have to, I would).

They need a massive event to bring in the NWO bullshit. What would a mass killing by bombing achieve currently(remember they never anticipated Trump's multiple successes, he is a major curve ball)? In the current moment, I don't know (it's still behind the curtain). I do know how they used 911, attacking arab countries in plain sight. That game is already spent too, so what exactly is left? I think they're in checkmate actually. Me The only short term value is killing lots of people, but politically they've been destroyed, financially they're waning, manpower is way down (if you can't pay scumbags, they won't work for you), the terror stuff is gone now the police are doing police work. On the media side we've got them on the run. Christianity is popping up all over the place destroying their secular defeatism.  So whatever they want to bring in is not going to work (in this moment). My best guess is they pull something smaller, to "save face" with their global crew of scum and pull an "abort." Of course, we can't work on that basis (...that bad people won't do bad things), we need to face the facts at hand. If there is a massive event, they get to call in the UN following an Obama EO. That would trigger something alright, uniting already pissed off patriots. It looks like the old civil war gambit (again the republicans win). For that, they'd need to plant the bombing on a Trumpkin. It seems a stretch, nobody I know would believe it. It would be hard to pin it on Putin, so China is the fallguy, but that would simply unite both countries and they lose by default. We've already had that before as well.  Their media assets are pretty much out of credibility at this time. So it's 5th and down deepstate. The "real" Lion has his boot on your neck.

https://twitter.com/ginnylourn/status/1190772435462823936 Forces of Good and Evil One last thing to note. God is already here this time round. " “We dare not harm this little girl," he said to them, "for she is protected by the Power of Good, and that is greater than the Power of Evil. All we can do is carry her to the castle of the Wicked Witch and leave her there.” ― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz The witch is dead (in the water) https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1993810-the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz?page=2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz_(1939_film)#/media/File:Wizard_of_Oz_lobby_card.jpg https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3011960/china-showing-signs-similar-japanese-housing-bubble-led-its https://lievarts.com/the-psychology-of-philosophy-an-analysis-of-the-wizard-of-oz-1939/ https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Project+Monarch (Monarch) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra (MKUltra) http://kommoncents.blogspot.com/2015/05/mk-ultra-laurel-canyon-and-birth-of.html (Laurel Canyon) https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=504 https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/populism-oz https://illuminatimovies.net/wizard-oz/ Read the full article

[salvina299]

I am a Mean Bitch

I’ve realized that I have been a really mean bitch. 

I’ve been mean to people who may not have done anything wrong. 

Who have not done anything at all, for that matter.

I was mean to a girl back in high school when she and I were partnered for a pseudo-research project. She contributed absolutely nothing to data gathering, the write-up, and final presentation of the project. The only thing she did was ask her brother to make a questionnaire for our project and distribute it to people she knew and then returned it to me. I told all this to my teacher and asked if I could just work on the project alone but she told me that she couldn’t do that since my classmate would fail. I had to carry the burden all through the semester, as if I didn’t have anything else to worry about (I was failing in Physics, for the life of me). 

I confronted her about it but all she did was flaunt the fact that she was ‘disabled’. Sure, she wore thick eyeglasses but she wasn’t mentally or physically impaired that she couldn’t think of a way to compensate for her so-called ‘disability’. I showed her that I was angry because she wasn’t making an effort to offer me help or even think of a way to do something to contribute and it really made things difficult for me. It was unfair because it was supposed to be a project done by a pair, not just by one student. I wasn’t nice to her because hell, I believed in equality and equity. If she was so impaired, then how the hell had she been able to reach high school? She wasn’t even apologetic at all that I had to do the brunt of the work! She dwelt on her misfortunes and her brother ‘having it all’.

I finished the project and never spoke to her again.

I was also mean to a girl in college.

She was a friend of my friend so I immediately tried to befriend her. She was a bit eccentric and haughty, but it was all cool. I’ve met people who were eccentric and a bit arrogant but who participated in group work and pulled their own weight.

I did not expect though, for someone who went to a prestigious national science high school, to not participate in group work during a laboratory experiment. 

Her inability to read instructions and participate as a group member in the two laboratory classes (microbial ecology and microbial genetics) I was enrolled in with her left messes I took part in cleaning up.

One time, she failed to show up without providing a valid excuse during an outside lab session her group was in charge of in our environmental microbiology class. They were to prepare materials for the following lab session so as to save time and this was mandated by our lab instructor and since it required a lot of work, they were shorthanded, not to mention that they were newly assigned to the degree program and were concurrently taking the basic lab technique course. I already knew my way around the lab and so I offered to help. Mind you, she was a higher batch than I was and this was part of her group work and yet she didn’t even have the decency to apologize for not being able to make it. 

Another time, only the two of us remained to inoculate plates since we both had free time after the lab session. It was then I realized that she didn’t know how to read instructions. She made what could be considered a stupid, not a rookie, mistake.

We were using pipettors to incoulate plates for our ecology class and I used the appropriate pipetor for the tips that we had. She, on the other hand, was banging the pipetor on the tips placed in the box that just wouldn’t fit. If she had gone through the basic technique course, which I suspect she already had given her seniority, she would know that there are certain colored pipetors for certain colored plastic tips. It was also common sense that if it doesn’t fit, then most likely you got the wrong match! She continued banging away on the tips, deforming some of them and complaining loudly about the pipetor she was using, until I told her her mistake. I resisted rolling my eyes at this point since I was already aggravated and was trying my best to be civil though I was exuding hostile vibes. I ended up inoculating all of the plates since the pipetor that I was using was the only one available for the tips that we had. I thought that would be the end of it but she did something even stupider, hard as it is to believe. 

After inoculation, we were supposed to incubate the plates at 27 degrees celsius, according to the laboratory manual. That was at room temperature, if it were any other month aside from summer months in the Philippines. We had pseudo-incubators around which did not really have a controlled temperature set-up but since we got it from environmental samples, then placing it at room temperature was all right, aside from the fact that we did not have much of a choice. I asked her to incubate the plates since I took it upon myself to disinfect the laboratory table, which she did (because how can she fuck up placing the plates in a covered storage box, am I right?) and then left without so much as a goodbye. I finished cleaning up, and already had one foot out the door, but got a creeping feeling that something was amiss. I decided to see if she had at least properly labeled the plastic bag which contained our plates but when I tried to find it among the (4) incubators in the lab, it was nowhere to be found. 

I started to panic. 

Where in the world could she have placed it? 

I thought back to before she left and remembered the sound of a refrigerator door slamming shut as I was disinfecting the tables. Could it be?, I wondered. Was a microbiology major student really dumb enough to put plates inoculated with raw samples from a non-psychotropic environment in a refrigerator which was, at best guess, at 14 degrees Celsius? 

I saw our laboratory instructor who was coming to check up on us and asked if we could really use any one of the incubators in the lab even though it wasn’t exactly at 27 degrees Celsius. He said yes and asked what the problem was. I opened the refrigerator and sure enough, there were our newly inoculated plates in its shiny new plastic bag, without a label. My professor shook his head and sighed but made no comment, as I had already explained that it was Zoe who had placed the plates there. We found an incubator with enough space to incubate our plates and that was the end of it. 

Throughout the semester, she was the problem of her groupmates and the rest of the class pitched in to help with cleaning up whatever havoc she wreaked. To be fair, I wasn’t only mean to her, but also to my own groupmate who I thought was under-performing. In the end, he pulled through for me and it was water under the bridge after that semester. We manged to stay friends. Still, that female classmate of ours was truly something else. Admittedly and obviously, I was hostile to her but only in our microbial ecology class since there were less experienced people there and more preparations to take care of, i.e. obtaining raw environmental samples in a specified time duration. She was a problematic student, to begin with, since she missed classes from time to time with stupid reasons until she maxed out and went beyond her allowable absences. Though it was not an excuse, I was rude and curt with her. I couldn’t believe and hated the thought of a joyrider who would pass without doing the minimum required effort in a group just because there were others who could bear the weight. This was the case for both of the classes I was enrolled in with her.

She did get her revenge though because she tattled to our microbial genetics laboratory instructor. I was obviously mean to her in ecology lab, as I’ve mentioned before, but did not interact with her at all in our microbial genetics lab class since it was less stressful (unless it was your turn to head the lab exercise). Despite the fact, she tattled on me to the lab instructor of our microbial genetics lab class. I’m not sure if it was because she thought it was all the same, or because the lab instructor was kinder and more sympathetic to the well-spun woes, or if she got the lab instructors mixed up. She lied and said that she was dropping the microbial genetics course altogether because I was mean to her. As a result, I was reprimanded by the professor without airing my side of the story. At the time, I was very hurt that I cried. 

Another girl I was mean to was in medical school. 

She got passing grades, despite zero class and group participation. Despite finishing her degree in a national university in Taiwan, when I asked her for material for a group report, she gave me a link to an internet source. When I asked her to summarize it and give it in a way that could be presented, she copied and pasted the content of the article and sent it to me via messenger and not in a word document or powerpoint presentation. To say that I was livid was an understatement. Presumably, she was well-equipped enough to give me material made by a learned professional since she graduated from such a prestigious university. It enraged me that someone like her, who has very, very rich parents had bought her way in medical school and that professors were being nice to her just because she was considered a foreigner. 

She appeared diligently in class but I heard the disgruntled complaints of her groupmates in the trans system. I didn’t believe that she was underperforming then, because I myself had trouble submitting my part of the trans on time, but when she became my groupmate, I immediately suffered the pain of all those who had become her groupmate for our Community and Family Medicine presentation. I was rude and obviously angry at her, so much so that she asked why I was acting the way I was, and I told her that what she gave me was crap content and that I had to redo her part of the report, on top of everything else. She may as well have just gotten her grade for free and paid us off in helping her get it since she was so rich, she could afford a tutor for Physiology, Anatomy, Histology and Biochemistry. Talk about privileges and entitlement! 

I know I’m biased when I say that she thinks she’s innately superior to us because of her race, but apparently, because of her socio-economic status, a few of the doctors think so, too! Or maybe her mother was a close friend of the dean who, in turn, asked the doctors to be kinder on her since she would also be adjusting to her Filipino classmates, on top of being in medical school. This did, in fact, reflect on her grades. So much so that where I failed in one of the minors we had in medical school, she passed. The grading system in that minor subject was already faulty to begin with and the course matter dubious, so, in my best guess, the passing and failing of a student had more to do with whoever was more of a familiar face to the doctor. I was never actually able to gauge my performance so my opinion on my own performance remains subjective, unlike in the other subjects that I failed because I know I deserved to receive a failing grade. In any case, I was mean and somehow, I regret it.

I was also mean to a thieving bitch who I had the unpleasant experience of being roommates with. 

I asked if we could rent a room together so that I could have a place to stay closer to work but in addition to the squalor conditions that surrounded the room I was renting, I was also subject to her thieving and lying ways, her inability to ask for permission when taking my household (my tupperware and basin) and consumable items (body lotion), at one point, piss on the lid of the plastic storage box which contained all my clothes. Indeed, as sordid was the conditions surrounding the little room I rented, so was her personality. I confronted her about the missing consumable items, went into a tirade because I trusted her and because I was nice to her and respected her that I emphasized we had a joint responsibility in keeping our living quarters clean and neat and then moved out after consuming my deposit. That time, I did not regret being a bitch because she deserved it. At the very end, she still did not admit to her thievery.

In all of the instances that I had been a mean bitch to people, I only regretted it once. This is not to say that I don’t regret my short temper when I lash out on my family, but I regret being mean to my former classmate in medical school because I never apologized. Of course, with or without my apology, she will still live her life of extravagance but I were to be true to the person I aspire to become, I should still apologize. 

And promise to count to ten when I get the urge to mean and spiteful just because things aren’t going my way. 

[ricandhaiz]

#LostSouls, Part 2

Week 2

It was a little past noon by the time Emma finally got around to getting out of bed. She was wearing the same white t-shirt and shorts that she had put on over forty-eight hours earlier and felt absolutely no motivation to change or shower at any time in the near future. What’s the point? she thought as her eyes drifted back and forth between the grimy popcorn ceiling directly above her and the gloomy skies that lay beyond her bedroom window. My baby’s gone.

Emma groaned aloud as she reluctantly swung her legs over the side of the bed and sauntered over to the bathroom. Once there, she bent over the sink, splashed her face with ice cold water from the faucet, and then glanced at her reflection in the mirror as she toweled her face off. She hardly recognized the pale-faced woman with greasy brown hair staring back at her. And yet, she chose to do nothing as she pulled her hair back with her hands and opened the medicine cabinet to find a scrunchie. As her eyes scanned the shelves, they fell upon the bottle of Prozac that she’d been prescribed by her doctor shortly after Eva’s death. He had assured her that it would make her feel better. When it didn’t, she had to tell her doctor, “Thanks, but no thanks,” when he tried to suggest that she take another psychotropic drug to treat her depression.

When she finally made her way to the kitchen to get something to eat, she saw a note from Miguel pinned to the refrigerator door with a magnet. It read, “Went to Home Depot to get some paint and a few other supplies. Will be back soon.” A wave of guilt overtook her as she thought of all the big and little things he had done in the days and weeks since their daughter’s death to try to support and comfort her and of how little she had done for him in return. It’s not his fault, she reminded herself despite the persistent voice in her head that told her otherwise. Give him a break. He lost her too.

While this internal debate was raged on, she took a large mug off a shelf and poured herself a cup of coffee. After adding some cream and sugar, she was about to take a sip when she saw a young girl sitting on the tire swing not far from her kitchen window.

The girl was barefoot with long, black hair and was wearing a navy-blue sweater over a pleated jumper. Emma guessed that she was probably no more than ten years old. Curious as to why she would be there rather than in school, Emma decided to step outside and have a word with her.

As Emma got closer, she began noticing certain things about the girl’s appearance that hadn’t caught her eye at first blush. Upon closer inspection, she saw that the girl’s hair was tangled and matted while the skin on her legs appeared to be caked in dirt. Her clothes also looked ragged and stained. Given the girl’s physical state, Emma opted to tread carefully so as not to startle or frighten her away. Once she was within a few feet of the girl, she stopped and cleared her throat to make her presence known.  She quickly found herself stifling a gasp when she saw that the girl’s lip was cut and that her left eye was badly bruised and puffy. What kind of monster could have done this to her? she thought, enraged.

“I’m Emma. What’s your name?”

“Mary,” the girl said in a guarded tone.

“Do you live around here?” No response. “Are you okay? Do you want me to call your parents?”

“My mommy’s gone,” Mary said matter-of-factly. “She went away.”

“What about your dad?”

“My daddy’s dead,” she replied. “Mommy said he died in the war. I live with Sam.”

“Who’s Sam?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” Mary said with an assessing glance.

“I’m sorry,” Emma replied. “It’s just that…shouldn’t you be in school?”

Mary smiled. “Sam doesn’t think so. He says it’s a waste of time, especially for girls.”

Does he? Emma thought with some concern. “Well, I suppose that he’s entitled to his opinion but I think that most people would disagree with him.”

“Are you worried about me?” Mary asked.

After a brief pause, Emma said, “Frankly, yes.”

At that, Mary’s smiled broadened. “You seem nice. I like you.”

“Thanks. Is there anyone else besides Sam that I could call?”

Mary shook her head. “No one cares about me.”

“That can’t be true,” Emma replied as she tried to think of what she could say or do to assist this unfortunate soul. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

Mary furrowed her brow in thought and then asked, “Can you stay and talk to me?”

“I sure can,” Emma said as she edged closer before sitting down in the grass beside her. “What would you like to talk about?”

Mary shrugged. “I dunno. Anything really. I usually don’t get to talk to anyone other than Sam.”

“Why is that?”

“That’s just the way things are,” Mary replied in a slightly anxious tone. “I don’t ask why. It makes him mad when I ask too many questions.”

“Does he hurt you?” Again, silence. “Do you want me to take you to the police?”

“They can’t help me. No one can.”

“Why not? My car’s in the driveway. We can go right now if you want.”

“NO!” Mary screamed as she got up from the swing and looked like she was about bolt at any second. “It’s too late.”

“Okay, okay,” Emma replied as she rose to her feet. “Calm down. No police. I promise.”

“I gotta swear you won’t. Or else…”

“Or else what?”

“I’ll go away and never come back.”

“Don’t do that,” Emma replied as she tried to think of a way to calm the girl down. “What would you like me to do then?”

“Just stay with me. I’m tired of being alone.” When Emma nodded, Mary added, “I want to hear about you.”

“What would you like to know?”

“Anything. Everything. Whatever you want to tell me.”

Where do I start? Emma thought and then said, “I had a little girl once. She was just a couple of years younger than you are now. Her name was Eva. She had the biggest brown eyes and the most beautiful smile.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died suddenly,” Emma replied as she fought the sudden urge to cry.

“Did her daddy hurt her?”

Why would she say that? Emma wondered. “No, Eva’s daddy loved her a lot. It’s just that she went onto the street when his back was turned and…”

“You blame him, don’t you?” Mary cut in. The bluntness of the girl’s words instantly rendered Emma speechless. Mary added, “I would too. Most men are pigs, aren’t they?”

“Why would you say a thing like that?”

“Because it’s true,” Mary replied. “They lie and cheat and do vile things.”

“Some maybe, but definitely not all.”

Mary stared at her a moment and then said, “You seem like a good mommy. Eva was lucky.”

“Thanks, but I think that I was the lucky one. She was my everything. But now that she’s gone I just…”

“You’ll be okay,” Mary interrupted. “I’ll make sure of that.”

 Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Miguel had just walked into a local coffee shop to buy a cup of coffee before heading home when he spotted Casey Wick, one of the neighbors that he had met a week earlier, standing by the counter. He waved. She smiled in return and then walked over to him and said, “Hello there. It’s so nice to see you again.”

“It’s Casey, right?”

“Yes,” she replied as she shook his hand. “You have a good memory. I usually forget a person’s name the minute after they tell me what it is.”

Miguel laughed and said, “Don’t worry. That happens to me a lot too.”

“How are you? I bet all that work you’re doing on your house is probably keeping you pretty busy.”

“Yes, this past week has been very hectic, if you must know. There is just so much to do. I try fixing one thing and then end up finding five other things that are wrong with the area of the house that I am working on.”

“Well, don’t kill yourself trying to get everything done all at once. Take your time and just make sure that you get things done right. Believe me, all your neighbors will thank you for it.”

“I certainly hope so,” he said. “It has been a dream of mine to own my own home since my wife Emma and I got married.”

“How is your wife? Is she doing any better now?”

Miguel stopped for a moment to consider what he should say to Casey about Emma before answering. “She took our daughter Eva’s death very hard. I think that she is still in shock and is having a difficult time copping with what has happened.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Casey replied as she gave him a quick pat on the arm. “But at least she has you to lean on. You seem like a very nice young man to me and I’m sure that you’re doing all you can to help her through this.”

“I hope you are right,” Miguel replied with palpable uncertainty. “Eva meant everything to her. To both of us.” Casey nodded and said nothing else even though he could tell that she was curious to know more. Sensing that she was someone that he could trust and confide in, he quickly added, “I came here on a student visa and was planning to go back to Spain as soon as I earned my degree. Emma changed all that. We met at a party and hit it off right away. From that night onward, we became nearly inseparable. We found out that she was pregnant just a few weeks after we had started dating.”

“Things like that happen all the time,” Casey replied sympathetically.

“Even though I was scared, I asked her to marry me right away…”

“Obviously, she said yes.”

“Actually no,” Miguel replied with a slight smile. “I had to ask her three times before she agreed to be my wife. She wanted to make sure that we were doing it for the right reasons and not simply for the baby’s sake.”

“Sounds like a girl with a good head on her shoulders. I probably would have done the same if I’d been in her shoes.”

Just then, the barista called out Casey’s name. Before heading over to the counter to pick up her drink, she said to Miguel, “Do you have time to chat?”

Miguel nodded and said, “Yes, of course. I apologize for not getting back to you. I really am interested in hearing what you have to say about my house’s history.”

“Good. I’ll go and find us a table then.”

A few minutes later, Miguel took a seat directly across from Casey. After placing his coffee and blueberry muffin on the table, he took a bite of his pastry and then sat back in his chair and asked, “So what is it about my house that concerns you?”

“Umm…well it’s hard to know where to begin. How much time have you got?”

Miguel glanced at his watch and said, “About fifteen minutes. Is that enough time?”

“It’ll do,” Casey replied as she took a sip from her coffee cup. “Like I said before, I used to play with a girl that lived there.”

“Yes, yes. I remember you telling me that,” Miguel replied as he took another bite out of his muffin. “What does that have to do with the house now?”

“Maybe nothing. But, over the years, I’ve heard stories, rumors from friends and neighbors alike about sightings of a ghost-like figure of a young girl in and around your place.”

“But I thought you said that your friend left with her mother?”

“That’s what my parents told me, but there’s always been a part of me that didn’t quite believe that story.” After a brief pause, she continued. “She used to come to school with bruises on her arms and legs. There was one time she even came to school with a black eye. But whenever I’d ask her how she got them, she’d tell me that she fallen or bumped into something.”

“Did you try to talk to your parents about it?”

“I did,” Casey insisted. “My dad told me to stop sticking my nose into other people’s business and to leave well enough alone. And for a while, I did do that but when she stopped showing up for school, I got scared and begged my mom to see what was going on.”

“And did she?”

Casey nodded. “She’s the one that told me that Mrs. Rhoades had left her husband and taken my friend with her.”

“If that is true, then why did you seem so nervous while you and your husband George were standing on my driveway?”

Instead of answering his question, she asked one of her own as she nervously drummed her fingers against her coffee cup. “Have you noticed anything odd or strange about the place since you moved in?”

“Why do you ask?” Miguel asked. “Please tell me. I want to know.”

“You’re probably going to think I’m crazy but I think that the stories I’ve heard about your place might be true.”

Miguel furrowed his brow as he placed his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. Is Casey really suggesting what I think she is? Could my house really be haunted? As the import of her words began to sink in, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as he recalled the night he thought that he saw a young girl on the other side of the picture window. “Have you seen this ghost yourself?”

“No,” Casey replied. “But I thought that I felt her presence on your property on more than one occasion.”

“What do you think might have happened to her?”

“I…I think that her mom left her with her stepdad.” She then shuddered, adding, “Just looking at him made my skin crawl. I can’t imagine what it was like for her to live with him.”

“But why would her mother do that? Even if he was only half the monster that George had described to me the other day, I don’t see how any she could have left her child in the care of such a man.”

“I see what you’re saying but Mrs. Rhoades was...different. My mom told me that she’d always been a drinker but that it got a lot worse after she found out that her husband had died in Vietnam.”

“It sounds like your friend lived a very tragic life,” Miguel said as the need to rush home and check on Emma grew within him.

“She did,” Casey replied with an air of regret. “I just wish that I could have done more to help her. But that’s all water under the bridge, isn’t it?” A brief silence ensued.

After downing his last bit of coffee, Miguel said, “I am sorry to cut this short but I really think that I should be going now. I was already running late to begin with and my wife might be wondering where I am.”

“Of course,” Casey replied. “Don’t let me keep you.”

As Miguel stood up, he shook Casey’s hand and said, “It was a pleasure to see you again.”  

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

Miguel paused and then said, “To be honest, I do not know what to believe or think at this point.”

“Fair enough,” Casey replied. “I know that what I’ve just told you is a lot to take in. Just think about what I’ve said and call me if you have any questions.”

“I will do that,” Miguel replied as he turned away from her and then hurried out the door.

[2centsofsilver]

10/16/17

Anytime I type here, I feel like I'm repeating the same empty content over and over.

It's 3:38am. I have an interview at 11:30. I basically have to get this job.

I have therapy at 3:30 which is good. I really need to see her. I'm just at a standstill and so numb. Like, my best friend abandoned me and doesn't even care. I have no emotion, so my affect doesn't make sense. I'm worried it's the benzos numbing me. Or am I just so used to this? NO. Because she wasn't just anyone. This plot doesn't make any sense. The other ones make sense in retrospect. This one isn't comparable. Like, I cried when we said goodbye and she hugged me. We were in her apartment and I was crying and she was telling me it was going to be okay and that nothing would change between us. We went out to lunch before that and talked at the park and we texted about it too. She knew I was struggling with said goodbye months before I moved. This was a major, major transition approaching. She had become my best friend with N. We even had 3 way conversations in group messages on FB in regards to my mental health. My therapist was working with me to help me stabilize my relationships and I was learning and growing and she knew that. She even suggested the 3 of us check in together once a week.

She cat sit for me frequently. She was always there when I needed her and I was there for her too. The day we went to lunch she was in pain and I went to the drug store and got her things to help. She taught me how to lap swim once. We used to go to the Y together. We went out for lunch and dinner quite a few times. Full City, Main St Pub, Olive Garden. She helped me when I started dating. She even called me once before I went in my first date to calm me down. Her mom was super sweet. "Be yourself, what's not to love?" she had said in the background.

She talked to me about work a lot, vented. Because she knew I knew what it was like. She went with me for a flu shot once because I was scared. We went downtown once and went in stores like Terrapin and she held my hand while I got 2 piercings at KFB. She spent my birthday with me. We went to the art fair and Hop Cat and she told me, when M didn't show for my birthday, that I "shouldn't have to be used to people doing this to me."

We used to go to GTPC together. I brought her a pie for the holidays. We got coffee at Biggby together and WSCJ where she gave me advice on a girl who worked there that I liked. We shopped LLR sales together all the time and I won her free clothes. We wore eachother's clothes all the time. It was so fun. Once I brought down all my LLR and we tried it all on. We loaned each other clothes frequently and I ended up giving her my Sarah to keep.

When I went to Portland, she was there for me via text and FaceTime every day. We talked at the airport. I texted her when I got in those stranger's car and she told me to "please be careful ok?" We FaceTimed on Hawthorne and she talked me through the decision to pierce my septum right before it happened. I was in Oregon and she was in Michigan and she helped me get through that trip by myself. She was so proud of me. She ended up giving me her scarf and jewelry.

I wrote tumblr blogs about Portland and she read them and told me I should be a writer. She always told me she was there for me when I was struggling with anything. When I came out of the closet to her, she told me "love is love" and that she was really proud of me for my confidence in telling her.

She invited me to her PR party where I bought products! She knew I was nervous to be there and talked to the consultant prior to me coming. I talked to her after about some self-conscious sex stuff and she told me "everyone had their own preferences" and there was nothing wrong with the things I was into. I had gone into depth because she told me she was there if there was "something I wanted to open up about."

She loaned me her massage cushion because I had a bad back. She told me I could keep it long term for a while. I came over a lot and we talked on the couch. I was there when she was asked to be Maid of Honor. She invited me to her wedding where I danced even though I had severe anxiety. She had said she was surprised and so happy to see me on the dance floor.

We got super drunk together twice, once at her place where we each drank 6 cans of whatever and I almost fell and said it felt like being on a boat. She took care of me and watched over me and didn't pressure anything. I was scared since I take psychotropics but she made sure I was careful and cut me off eventually. She also invited me to Hair Mania at Shakespeare's with C, A, and M. We ran into Meagan who gave us all hugs and we helped pull her mother and law off the ground.

She referred me to her hair stylist and friend who is a massage therapist and I saw both of them. They both remain friends of mine that I not only see for services, but also hang out with. She also stayed in close texting proximity to her phone when I got high in GR with G and J. She was worried about me and I told her that I'd control my inability to filter/stop texting excessively by handing my phone over to my friends. They texted her letting her know and she thanked them and we went kayaking. The same happened with me and Dan.

She communicated with N quite a lot in efforts to ensure my well-being. They often worked as a team, when my mental health wasn't strong.

Her relatives knew my family through hockey and were from the same town, so small world. We lived in the same building. We saw each other in passing nearly every day.

She never stopped being there for me even when my mental health became bad. She always promised she wouldn't leave. She WATCHED what 3 losses plus an emotionally abusive relationship did to me. She promised she'd never leave. Even when I doubted her; "You're stuck with me no matter what," she said.

She was always there when I needed a hug, someone to talk to, and a shoulder to cry on and I hope she knew I was always there for her too.

She supported my weight loss journey. We were even each other's accountability for a while. We made each other shakes.

When I was scared we'd fade when I moved away, she assured me nothing would change. I asked her to be in my wedding. She always said yes.

She was one of the sweetest people I'd ever met. I used to call her an angel and a fairy, she liked that. We talked about her kind heart. She told me it can be hard sometimes to give so much to everyone all the time; that sometimes it doesn't translate.

She watched me go through 3 jobs. When I got layed off from BT, I knocked on her door. I walked in and she opened her arms out and hugged me. We sorta sat on the couch for a while and she held me. She did the same on her lunch break in A2.

She was my best friend. I never ever ever called her friend a bitch and I don't know who did. I don't know what happened to us between the time we FaceTimed in the Diag and when she stopped talking to me 2 months ago. I know that my mental health got bad and I went to the hospital. I left her a message during break from orientation. She texted that she'd text me later and never did.

I KNOW I went overboard with the long and desperate texts to save our friendship. But what does "overboard" mean when the person's your best friend? There's no such thing. But I couldn't give up. I just couldn't give up. I had to stay strong like she always taught me to be. I didn't actually realize she was leaving. She never communicated that to me. She never communicated anything to me. Until her friend/supervisor texted me 1.5 months post silence telling me to "knock it off."

"Don't you ever contact Lisa ever again, do you understand?" she said. My life crashed, world froze. What was happening? I started violently shaking. I texted S.

"What are you talking about?" I asked M.

"This is the third company member you've done 'this' to. It needs to stop. This conversation is over."

I texted S. Panic attack set in.

"Everything is going to be okay. I'll be there in 15. Stay put."

I waited. Foot tapping. Freezing cold. I had died, it felt like.

S showed up. She helped me calm down. I was crying. She made me a list of everything in my mind broken into categories. School, depression, family, Lisa, roommate, etc. It included bullet point lists of ways I was feeling, things I could do about the situations, things in my control and things not in my control, fears, and positive affirmations.

We went to Panera.

"It's okay to cry," she said.

"I feel like my mom just died and I have to start school," I said. And when I looked up at her my eyes were welled with tears.

"COMPANY MEMBERS?????"

What was happening? Who told? Did someone report my SI to my boss after ties were split and I was no longer an employee???? Did the COMPANY tell them to stop talking to me and that's where the abrupt silence came from? Was I just now getting the memo 1.5 years later? Had I completely destroyed myself trying to figure everything out, not knowing it was "THE COMPANY" involved in my personal life???? My personal life of mental health issues. Medical issues. Documented medical records. Confidential documented medical records.

I know where this stemmed from officially and I hate her. I hate all of them. They ruined my life. They worsened my depression. They have no business affiliating themselves with my personal mental health. This was my personal life, not a company's.

Suddenly, this was now an ethical issue.

A company I'm no longer with, prohibiting past friends from contacting me for confidential medical issues. These friendships were outside of work and continued past my employment.

If my heart was invested and my brain not burned out, I would take actions in protocol. But my heart isn't in it. I hate them. Instead, its best for my health to forget them. Despite non-compliance with EEOC, mental health makes everything a hard battle. It's best I try and let go.

I don't know where all of this came from. I don't know why L wanted to cut ties. She didn't even talk to me about it. Was it mental illness? Did it scare her? Did she really think I called her friend a bitch???? How does THAT do it? How could she not believe me? We are 26.

This wasn't a product of me screwing up. Our history of friendship was solid and real. She promised and assured and encouraged and insisted she would always be there for me. WHY LIE about it? I honestly don't know. I didn't think she was lying. Sure, things got rocky in the end but I left on good terms. She knew I was getting help. She knew mental illness was not my fault.

I thought she cared about me. I KNOW SHE DID. Someone out there wasn't telling her the truth. Something happened, a twist. I don't know what or who. If she wanted me to disappear, why did she lead me on for almost 2 years? Had she always planned to leave me when I moved? If so, then WHY did she hold me while I cried in her arms THE DAY THAT I MOVED OUT? The actual day. All the way till the end and then that actual day.

I've been numb for a long time. But when I recall everything we've been through together, all the amazing times, and my GRATITUDE, I can feel again. I feel hurt. I can feel again.

4:48am