#the warm gust of wind in the summer that smells of rubber

[fatehbaz]

one of those half-conscious lucid dreams around sunrise, just before you fully wake up, where i was in a landscape of tamarack forest, all of them orange in autumn colors. and there was light drizzling rain, everything wet, and the midday skies were dark grey, standing above a river channel, there were rubber boas slithering around everywhere you looked. i got down on hands and knees, gently held a boa, tried to show it to the other human beings present in the dream. i try to convey something like “an ancient relative of the anaconda, just creeping around in the forests of the Northern Rockies, isn’t that wild?” but i really mean: “please share this experience with me.” they murmur something in that dreamy way, where you know they said something but none of the words make sense. (boas wouldn’t really be out in rain, but maybe my brain put them in the scene since they’re my favorites and because they superficially look like the earthworms that would otherwise be drawn out by the rain.) felt realer than real. must’ve smelled the petrichor and influenced the dream, because woke up in actuality to drizzling rain, fog, dark skies, relatively cold, gusts of wind. love when late spring/early summer days are chilly and dark and wet, most plants deep green. season’s warm enough for plants to flower and reptiles to emerge, but it’s rainy and chilly enough for the subterranean bugs and amphibians to play, too. gusts of wind, creatures crawling across moss beds and pine needles, dark, wet, kind of ambiguous season: is it spring, summer, autumn? boundaries blurred. rain, refreshing, not heavy, glasses are foggy and you like it that way, you want things to be a little obscured. overthrown expectations of typical summer day. i had an umbrella in hand, about to head outside. “no!” oops, i “forgot” my umbrella. leapt into a puddle and made an unecessary sound effect when i did it. “psssh!” i say. today the land belongs to the slugs.

[inkstainedfanfics]

Have You Ever Seen a Man Break

Request: "Part 2 of Have you seen a heart shatter please!! It was so beautifully heart breaking oml we need a happy ending;_;" among other sweet reblogs and messages from all of you :)

Word Count: 2,521

Pairing: Newt x Reader

Requested by many. This is the sequel to Have You Ever Seen a Heart Shatter. Here is Part 3 to the series.

Requests are currently open! Feel free to send one in

Wind chimes dance and ring against one another in the slight breeze. You latch the screen door behind you and step onto the front porch, glass of iced tea slipping between your fingers, drips of condensation roll down the side of the glass and burst against the red wood beneath your feet. Songbirds chirp in the nearby bushes, passing news of some new visitor rumbling past the house in a flawless black vehicle.

You fall onto the two-person porch swing and pull your knees up as the world rambles on around you and the lazy birds. The smell of orchids and freshly turned dirt float by as another short gust of wind sends the wind chime tinkling again. The evening summer sun rains down onto you, warming your cold bones, loosening your tense shoulders.

A sigh drifts out of your mouth as you tilt your head back and close your eyes. Who knew the south could be so peaceful?

Cicadas buzz in the fields across the road as another car thunders past and spits pebbles out everywhere. The entire world is at peace here and has been since you arrived eight days before.

The only missing piece is Newt’s laugh. Which, you remind yourself before the tears can nip at your eyelids, you are perfectly okay with never hearing again.

“Get up.”

“Can’t you see I’m busy, Rosa?”

Your little sister wraps her bony hand around your wrist and tries to jerk you forward. “I’m serious. Get up.”

You pull your arm from her grip and frown. “Are you okay?”

“No. We need to go. Now.”

The swing sways as you jump to your feet. “What’s wrong?”

“Come on.” She slides her cold hand into yours and pulls you forward and into the house.

You hop from spot to spot on the floor, trying to avoid the various typewriters and balls of abandoned news stories strewn across the house’s blue carpeting.

“What is it? Are you hurt?”

“Just hurry up!” She’s already made it into her bedroom.

You consider a sarcastic remark on the state of the house slowing you but end up instead asking her again why she’s in such a hurry. She simply yells at you for “always being so slow.”

You’ve nearly reached the door to her bedroom when she comes hurtling around the corner. Her tiny frame flies backwards, sending her against the wall as you trip over a discarded typewriter and land square on your back.

That doesn’t slow your tenacious sister. She’s on her feet in a moment, wrapping her hand around your arm and pulling you to your feet.

“Get up!” She scolds. “We’re going to miss it all.”

“For the love of God, Rosa, what is going on?”

“Just hold on, okay?”

You notice the camera bouncing against her stomach before she apparates with you in tow.

A crowd of humans and goblins wander around the room Rosa pictured. “Where the hell are we?” You’re panting, hands on knees, staring down the goblin that glares at you. You’d lost your breath when Rosa knocked you over. The feeling of apparition did little to help you catch it.

“A stop. Stay here.” She strides into the crowd, shimmery gold dress disappearing amongst the other swaying dresses and tuxes in the room. You curse under your breath, watching people shuffle around, exchanging excited words. Loud cracks pop every few seconds as people apparate in and out of the room. You can already feel sweat beginning to roll down your back. Too many people in one room.

You choke on your breath. The area reeks of sweat, bad breath, and coffee. Another woman shoves you, sending you crashing into a table behind you. The room is so loud, you can’t even hear the man next to you curse at you when you grab his shoulder to try to balance.

You blink, trying to take in the reason behind the clamor. A blue-eyed woman with bright orange lipstick and green eyeshadow is in your face, spit sailing from her mouth and landing all over your chest.

“I’m sorry, what?” You shout over the noise.

Only a few of her words make it over the din. “You – I – Marcus will –“

“I can’t hear you.” You shake your head and cup your ear.

The woman clutches the front of your shirt in her hands and drags you forward until the stale smell of her perfume clogs your nose. You can’t tug away as she shouts directly into your ear.

“You had better get good coverage, sweetie. I don’t know who Marcus will assign, but I want you out there, got it?”

“I’m sorry, out where?”

“New York, sweetie! Don’t you pay attention to any of the news runners? This is huge! Now go! Go!”

“I think you have me mistaken –“

“Oh for – fine, I’ll take you!”

“For the last time-“

She cuts off your sentence and sends you back into the rubber tube of apparition.

The roadways of New York jar your knees as you land. You fall onto them, but the short woman from wherever Rosa had brought you wrenches you back up.

“You get us that cover story or you’re fired!”

She’s gone in a crack.

You fall back down. Apparating so far with so little warning twice leaves you lightheaded and struggling to catch the breath you lost minutes ago. You need to get back to Rosa, figure out what the hell is going on.

You scoot back to the brick wall of the building behind you and lay your head back against it, gulping in the stagnant air you’d breathed every day not so long ago. New York again. The very last place you want to be at the moment. Somewhere in this city, Newt is resting next to Tina, laughing with her, smiling at her.

The grief swells up in your chest again.

You clamp down on it. No thinking of Newt.

Booms sound from nearby followed by screams. You need to leave.

You’re about to stand and return to wherever Rosa left you when another crack thunders in front of you. You only get a glance at the crimson jacket flapping in the wind, covering a thin woman with a matching red bowler cap.

Well, there’s your sister. Running in the exact opposite direction of the panicking crowd. She lifts her black camera up, and if she hears you, she ignores you.

Typical.

You look back once, then take off toward where Rosa ran. Stupid little sisters always ending up in trouble. If she were to get hurt, maybe it would teach her to stay out of such dangerous situations just to earn a good story. Still, she is your sister, and you won’t be able to stand it if she ends up injured in whatever is going on. Plus, you’ll have a good story to hold over her if you do end up saving her.

A roar sounds from the street Rosa is rushing to, sending you into a sprint. Some people in the crowd don’t bother parting for you. You slam your shoulder into them, channeling all of your anger, unafraid of any harm that may come to you. Rosa needs help and gods be damned if you don’t help her after she took you in earlier and, despite her nosy nature, asked you nothing about Newt.

She doesn’t hear your shouts. You’re gaining on her, leaping over cracks in the road, shoving past the terrified people jostling through the narrow street, away from the deafening rumble sounding from the streets further in the city.

Rosa swerves, entering an alleyway. She disappears from view for a second before you shove a stranger down and hurdle another, landing in the alley’s entrance.

You curse. She’s gone.

“Rosa.” You growl, spinning. The street is emptying little by little as the mob bursts out of the city street and into side streets.

It’s much easier to find gaps between people now that you can dart in and out of, weaving through the crowd, desperately scanning every face and jacket for your dear sister.

None of them even resemble her. You force yourself around a corner and freeze. The street in front of you lays in shambles. Cars flipped on their sides smolder in the front as flames leap out the back. Giant signs once hanging onto walls now rest on the ground, metal bent, letters nothing more than a shattered mess. Chunks of buildings have crashed onto the road, holes puncture the ground in random spots, and broken glass coats the ground like grass.

You say nothing as you take off down the road, watching every building to be sure it doesn’t crumble on top of you.

The glass crunches underfoot and some of it breaks through your thin shoes, stabbing the bottom of your feet. Every step is agony as you continue forward, dodging flames, coughing on the smoke pouring out of the subway entrances.

What the hell happened?

A thunderous shriek shakes the entire street again.

A black ball zooms into the air above you, hovers for a moment, then rockets into the side street only a block in front of you.

Rosa’s red jacket flaps as she lifts her camera.

You run faster than you ever thought possible and the pain fades into nothing as you race the black mass.

You ram into her side, sending the both of you rolling over the ground just as the black thing crashes into the exact spot Rosa had stood a second ago. You shriek as your left shoulder slams into the ground first, cushioning Rosa’s landing.

“Are you crazy?” You gasp, kneeling over her.

“Me? You might have just cost me a hundred-dollar shot!” She isn’t even looking at you as she presses her camera against her chest. “If this doesn’t turn out, I’m going to kill you.”

“Kill me? You would be dead if it weren’t for me.”

“Your worrying is going to cost me my job one of these days.”

You thin your lips. “Rosa, you would be dead right now. Do you understand me? Dead.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re so dramatic. I’m not the one that deals with things that explode on a daily living.”

You grip her shoulders harder for a second before you roll off. “I know how to handle them. You were about to be trampled by that thing.”

“I was about to apparate.”

You scream in frustration. “Rosa, if you ever die doing something as stupid as what you just did, I am going to find you and dance on your grave.”

She laughs. “What a great threat. Gosh, you’re as horrible at that as mom always was.” Her eyes light up when she looks at you. “Hey, would you do your little sister a huge favor?”

“I saved your life. Aren’t you the one that owes me?” You grumble. The glass slices through your shirt and into your back as you shift.

“I know you two are on the rocks, but could you get me an interview with Newt? He must have something to do with this.”

You’re about to ask her if she’s crazy, if she really believes Newt would be behind such havoc, when it hits you. He would. He definitely would.

“You have to go.”

“It was just a question.”

“No, you have to go. This thing is dangerous. I don’t want you anywhere near it.”

“I have to earn coverage for the paper. This will be a headline story everywhere. It’ll catapult me into journalist fame.”

You roll onto your elbow, ignoring the burning sting of a cut. “I want you out of here.”

She frowns for a moment before her lips twist into a cunning smile. Great. You’d seen that smile plenty of times growing up. She has a plan.

“I’ll leave if you promise to get me an exclusive interview with Newt.”

You bite your tongue, fighting the insult perched on it. Breathe in, breathe out. You remind yourself that Rosa could die here.

“Fine. I promise. Now go.”

Her face shines with victory. “I love you!”

Then she’s gone, leaving you alone in the street to find your way out.

You push yourself to your feet and stumble down the road. You reach the end and already feel every burn and sliced open bit of skin hanging off of you as your adrenaline quickly drains. Exhaustion presses your eyes closed but first, safety. You need to get to safety.

You lean against the corner of the building when you finally reach the wider road, grasping your left shoulder, jaw clenched in pain.

You’re about to turn and walk back the same way the horde of bystanders had ran earlier when you spot a familiar coat—light blue in the flickering flames—and bowler hat. Tina.

A car thrown by the intense wind of the mass arcs towards her back. You try to shout, but over the racket of the howling mass, she hears nothing.

She may have taken Newt, but you won’t let her die.

You apparate with what little energy you have left, landing a foot away from her, taking that one step to gain momentum, and slamming into her body the same way you did Rosa’s. The car’s crash splatters pebbles onto the two of you.

Your head slams against the ground. You can’t see. You can’t breathe. You can barely hear Tina scream your name.

Every part of your body aches. You scramble enough energy together after a minute to force open your eyes and look at Tina.

“Is Newt alive?” You rasp, and you’re not sure you’re even saying the words you want.

Evidently, you aren’t. Tina ignores you and holds her wand out, eyeing your wounds. “What’s it called? The spell for broken bones?”

You suck in another breath. “Newt?”

“That’s not it. That’s for refilling a drink.” She murmurs, frowning.

You drop your head to the side and breathe out at the sight.

Running along a side street, shouting at the black mass, bobs a head of red hair.

Newt.

Unharmed. Untouched. Safe. But in need of help.

And no Rosa in sight. She held up her end of the bargain. At least your little sister is good enough for that.

You look at Tina again, draw up every ounce of clear thought you have, and force the next words out as clear as possible. “Newt. Save Newt.”

Her frown deepens as she follows your gaze. “I won’t let him get hurt.”

You need to leave now so she can focus on Newt.

You close your eyes, picture the first thing that comes to mind, and apparate with the only inch of energy you have left.

You land on your face. A scream breaks the area as your nose crunches against the concrete.

With your final breath before unconsciousness takes over, you look around, trying to figure out where you landed.

Right in front of your crooked arm, you realize, sits Newt’s unopened case.

By the time Jacob kneels beside you, you’re lost to a deliriously peaceful black mist.

[raphiot]

A hint of rain, tapping on the broken glass and the boards covering the window. A light gust of wind, pushing the cardboard fetters against the curtain. A cloud of intoxicating smoke, billowing its way toward me with malicious intent. I buried my head under my blankets and searched for sleep, though I knew I wouldn’t be finding any.

    “They’re all asians, even the Americans.”

    “Well, they’re just who’s the fastest.”

    “Yeah, I guess, but lookit them gooks. Real skinny ‘an shrimpy, even the men. Ya’d think olympic athletes would hafta eat, yano?”

    Two voices, one young and aloof, the other mature and filled with tobacco rasp, carried through the cobweb cave we called our living room and toward the television set. I lowered the blankets to the bridge of my nose and peered warily at the screen, its dim glow the only light penetrating the choking darkness of the room.

    Men and women in warm clothing, emblazoned with the logos of various sponsors, dug into the snow with oversized ice picks and slid on long sticks of wood down a frozen track. They drifted over the sleet and ice to edge their way between flags of red and green, gliding over the course as if flying.

    My eyes ached, heavy with the sand of a sleepless night. I glanced at the digital clock above the television, its thin red numbers reading 8:34 AM, and my head fell heavy onto my pillow. I’d only slept three hours.

    “... Thought I heard somethin’ in the attic earlier…”

    “There’s a cat that sleeps on my windowsill, I hear it all the time.”

    “No, this wasn’t like no cat. It was hoppin’ around, like a bunny rabbit or somethin’...”

    The voices passed through the air, floating over my head, and only a few managed to penetrate my sleepy skull. I tossed this way and that, throwing my blankets over my body and enwrapping myself in a cocoon of donated quilt and recycled dryer lint. Any drowsiness remaining in my head was soon shaken, however, as the flimsy door was rattled by the sound of knuckles on the wood.

    The older man, his face covered by an unkempt grey beard and his balding scalp covered by his black hood, approached the door with all the wary unease of a drug lord fearing a bust. He gripped the doorknob, held it still in trepidation, and then opened the door a tiny crack.

    “Ho there. Figgered you folks’d be watchin’ the oh-limpicks by now.”

    The voice from the door was nervous, accentuated by an uncertain chuckle. The man holding the door open stood there silently, staring into the crack.

    “An’ who said some goddamn illegal just over the wall could come here ta watch it? Get outta here, wetback!” the man shouted, mocking. He opened the door wide to let in the visitor and a torrent of cold wind.

    The visitor, in his faded green windbreaker, plain black hat and scruffy moustache, shuffled into the room and sat down at the armchair in the center of the filthy carpet. He lowered his backpack to the floor—clunking heavy against the floorboards—and looked this way and that anxiously, running his hands over his jeans repeatedly as if not sure what to do with them.

    The hooded man, his balding scalp shining against the lightbulb, retreated to the side of the ash-covered stove so he could continue to sear his skin and resist the cold wind coming from the many little cracks in the walls. Silence permeated the little cave of rickety boards and leaky ceilings for but a brief, blissful second, before the aimless murmuring continued.

    “Lookit them little asian boys go. Skinny little things…”

    “The only feed ‘em in rice an’ soy over there, after all.”

    The hooded man and his rotund companion snickered to one another back and forth for a while. Gathering his courage, the visitor raised his frail voice to join them.

    “This a Chinese-only event or summat? Everybody’s a slanty,” he commented.

    “Nah. If was a Chinese thing, they’d round up all the foreigners ‘an throw ‘em in a camp,” the hooded, bald man responded.

    My oily hair tendrils fell over my face in clumps. I brushed them aside and forced myself from the sinkhole of my blankets, a quiet but no less disgruntled acceptance of the fact that any further sleep was not likely to come. Slumping from one foot to the other like a shambling cadaver toward the bathroom, the two people standing in the hallway—a tiny space containing the wood stove, more akin to an ashtray with its strewn about cigarette butts—moved silently aside.

    The curtain of recycled lint covering the entrance to the freezing cavern of my kitchen parted, a short, homely fat woman emerging from beyond the threshold. From inside her mess of black and gray hair came a sound somewhere between vomiting and a cat coughing up a hairball.

    “Sorry,” she said, swallowing what she’d coughed up, “some crap stuck in my throat.”

    I tapped my finger against the tiny touch lamp that lit the bathroom and saw in the mirror wrinkles forming on my forehead, staring back at me. Behind my head in the reflection was a wall covered in ceramic butterfly and flower directions, covered in dirt and cobwebs from years of neglect. The floor was like a sliding tile floor from a funhouse, as it was covered in loose boards to protect you from falling into one of the holes in the floorboards and breaking your leg.

The only outlets in the room were near the light switch—a relic from a time gone by when the fluorescent light spider nest above my head was functional—and one of them powered the refrigerator in the next room. This meant the other outlet was for either the lamp or the heater, and in the freezing temperatures of mid-February, I would much sooner choose to sit in the dark than sit in the cold. The outlet itself was worn and burnt black, looking ready to burn this place to the ground any day now.

Thump, thump, thump. Above my head, the sound of something small moving around and waking the dust from the ceiling. A more paranoid person than I might have worried their house was haunted, but this place was too cold and miserable for any poltergeist with standards. The attic was no stranger to small animals seeking shelter from the rain; it was probably a cat.

I sat on my throne for a while, listening to the rain hit the tarps covering the leaky roof. The two men toasting their bodies next to the stove had gone back to their endless, aimless muttering at one another.

“Yeah, boy, I tell ya. Can’t take it when it gets this cold. Should only be this cold in my grave. You can’t get but a few feet away from the stove, ya just freeze if ya do,” came the older voice, strained by lungs full of smoke. I heard him exhale a cloud. “My dad, he said back from where he came from, it was three months of summer and nine months of winter every year, freezin’ temperatures the whole way. Yeah, hell, shit-fire. I couldn’t take that.

“But that’s what’s gonna happen, y’know? Once they bomb us, gonna be a nuclear winter. It’s best we start gettin’ used to it now, an’ it won’t even seem that bad when folks start beatin’ down our door for our guns an’ water. If I could just win the lottery, I’d build us a shelter, out in the woods somewhere…”

“Hey, I got this here pack ‘a grass I chewed up on the way here. You all wanna smoke a bowl?” the visitor asked, his squirrely, slurred voice edging its way in between the mutters.

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

And then came the coughing. Raucous hacking and wheezing carried down toward me, carrying the noxious smell of their vice. The hooded man coughed like he meant to vomit his lungs onto the floor.

I chose to remain in the bathroom for a while, hoping to wait out the smell and the smoke. While I could have easily sat there long enough to fall asleep and spend the next four hours sleeping on the toilet, a loud knock at the front door roused me from any potential bathroom dreaming.

“Who’s there?” the hooded man called into the flimsy wood of the front door.

“It’s Dan,” was the response of a much younger sounding man.

“Dan’s not here, man!”

“No, it’s me, Dan!”

“Yeah, like I said, Dan’s not here!” the hooded man shouted back, mocking.

I heard the sound of the door thrust from its latch, the hinges whining. The house nearly shook as the two stomped against the floorboards and made their way into the tiny house, then exchanged quiet murmurs I couldn’t quite make out.

The smell of smoke and soot consumed me into its haze as I made my way back into the small space the other occupants of my tiny shack dwelled. I gripped the coffee pot, grimy with black stains from overflow, and tipped it toward my similarly stained mug. A tiny trickle of the liquid swirled around the bottom before slowing to a drip. Sighing, I set the pot back down.

A dirt-encrusted hand gripped my shoulder and jerked me toward the stove. The beady eyes of the hooded man settled onto my face, his balding eyebrows shifted in distress.

“Hey, uh, you wanna…” he began, his pale green eyes shifting over my face skittishly, “you wanna go to the store?”

Behind him, the large man named Dan shuffled back and forth anxiously, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his cargo shorts. He wore a camo-pattern hoodie and cheap looking rubber sneakers, his toes exposed through a hole on his left foot. What skin wasn’t covered by his clothes was instead covered by tattoos.

“Dan needs some money…” the hooded man said, stuffing a twenty dollar bill into my pocket. “Break that, wouldja? An’ give him ten.”

“What should I buy? Do we need anything?” I asked.

“Uhhh… zingers. Get some zingers,” he responded. I rolled my eyes at him.

“Thanks Eugie, I really ‘preciate it,” Dan said to the hooded man quickly, already halfway out the door again. He pointed at me, but he was looking outside. “I’ll, I’ll meetcha out in the car, okay?”

A lucky drop of rain found its way between the holes in the pines above and fell onto my head, mixing with the grease on my scalp. White steam puffed from my nostrils as I left tracks in the mud, trudging through the wet swamp outside the front door.

There was a path of stone steps that lead to the driveway like little islands in a tar ocean, but using them was to postpone the inevitable; at some point, my socks were going to be soaked with muddy rainwater. Leaning against the chipped and rotting boards that made up the house were various knick-knacks the homely woman had collected: porcelain figures, like a little farmer boy and a white bunny rabbit, an angel statue missing its wings, beaten from its body years before, painted rocks that the stoned hippies around town liked to leave for people to find and all manner of other bits and bobs covered in dirt and forgotten.

Half of the driveway was occupied by firewood, the tiny shack’s only source of heat. It was slick with rain and sure to rot before winter was through. I crossed the pile of dead trees and passed the old man’s old beat up pick up truck to find a sorry looking red car sitting in the mud at the end of the front yard.

The paintjob was chipped and worn, lines of rain erosion and scratches everywhere you looked, until it ended abruptly in a large dent, the metal twisted and sunk into a crater. I leaned over to open the passenger door—only to find it had no handle. I tapped on the window to gain the attention of Dan, already inside and fingering his smartphone.

“Oh, sorry. Lemme get that for ya…” he mumbled, opening the door from the inside.

The interior was littered with trash. Candy and fast food wrappers, discarded mail, beer and soda cans. I sat in the fraying passenger seat, dragging the ends of my flannel in with me, as the car was so low to the ground we were nearly sitting in the puddle below us.

“You like it?” he asked, looking up from his phone for but a fleeting second. “Found it at the side of the road on the highway, just had to fix it up. So it was basically free, ‘cept for what I paid for new parts.”

He tapped his index finger against the cracked glass of his phone, cycling through text messages. Before I could reply, he had begun to slowly type something himself, methodically poking one letter at a time.

“Yeah, it’s... uh, cozy,” I remarked.

We sat there in silence for several moments as he tapped his finger against the notches in the glass. Eventually he stopped, murmuring to himself, “Fuckin’ bitch.” He set his phone down in the cup holder and looked around as if he’d forgotten where he was, and found me staring back impatiently.

“Err, sorry. Was talkin’ to the ol’ lady,” he said, giving a nervous laugh. “You know women—you’re gone for five minutes and they suspect ya of seein’ some other bitch.”

“Yeah.” My response was automatic and monotone.

“Maybe I have been gone for a while, I guess. I just need to get outta the house sometimes, get away from ‘er. She’s so demanding, ‘an it don’t matter how much I do, it ain’t ever enough. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, look at this,” he said presenting his hand to me. While his entire arm was covered in tattoos, most of them appeared to be years old while the inked skulls and snakes on the back of his hand looked fresh and new. “Just had it done. Ain’t it cool?”

“I guess.”

“Hurt like a bitch gettin’ ‘em on my knuckles. You ever thought about gettin’ a tattoo?”

“No.”

“Oh, well, that’s cool. Yeah, I suppose they ain’t for everybody. Did you see that new Avengers movie? Thought it was really dumb. I mean, the way they did Wonder Woman…”

He ran from one topic to the next, watching my reaction uneasily. It seemed like he decided to switch to something new whenever he thought he was boring me. I quietly looked on and nodded my head to signify I was listening, but his words were drifting in one ear and out the other.

It had been a month or two since he last had his head buzzed, judging by how his short hairs had begun to jut in a uniform point away from his forehead, and how his goatee had begun to escape his chin. It had likely been longer, still, since he had done his laundry; his camouflage-pattern hoodie was smattered with mud stains and his white wife beater had taken on a filthy grey color.

For a moment, I looked at him and saw a younger man, sporting fewer tattoos and fewer lines on his face. His expression was bright, his eyes full of hope for all the things he had to look forward to. A decade earlier, when I was a small and before he had gone to slave away in what they called ‘tours of duty’ in the desert. Though hints of this young man still lingered, that hope had since vanished.

He reached below the steering wheel and took two frayed wires between his inked fingers, touching the loose copper ends together.

“Never did get the ignition workin’ right. Gotta, uh, gotta do this…”

The little car sputtered to life for a moment, then choked on its exhaust and died again. He touched the copper wires again and pressed down on the gas, causing the vehicle to lurch forward and nearly collide with the bush in front of us before he hit the brake.

“Shit! Shit, uh, woops. Forgot to put ‘er in neutral. Sorry about that,” he mumbled his apology.

Putting the car into reverse, he backed up until branches from the bush were no longer scratching his hood, then spun the steering wheel to aim the car at the street, and pulled away with a sudden forward kick that pushed my back against the seat.

“So… Yeah, my old lady’s givin’ me trouble,” he said as his phone vibrated loudly against the cupholder. “Yeah, women, man. They’re nothin’ but trouble, am I right?”

“Yeah,” I replied flatly.

“You, uh, you probably have lots of girls givin’ you problems, don’tcha?” he said, giving his nervous chuckle as he tried desperately to force a conversation.

“No, not really.”

“Oh…”

A forest of overgrowth hung over the hill, roots and branches reaching down into the swamp like gnarled fingers. Raindrops dripped from their tips and disrupted the filthy water leading away into the sewer drains. At the edge of this verdant pile of dirt lie the local grocery store, a pile of cobblestone where the poor folk went to spend their food stamps on fat bathed in grease and sugar baked into more sugar, momentary little escapes.

“I’m gonna look if anyone left some cans...” murmured Dan, climbing out of the little car. He strode quickly over to the aluminum recycling machine to join several other vagrants in digging through the garbage.

Fluorescent lights and aisles of packaged plastic. Empty checkout lanes, save for the deep black wells under the checkers’ tired eyes. A giant display of little packets with one tiny confection each, a dollar a piece. I picked up what I’d been asked to get, a ‘Zinger,’ which was a little red tube of car seat foam covered with coconut shavings and filled with cream.

I presented them to the nearest checker, who stared back at me with eyes that had crossed the threshold to an infinite gaping void and could only groan in zombielike animal demand for my paper money. The transaction complete, they handed back a fistful of change, covered in torrents of drool flooding from their gaping black maw.

Dan then appeared behind me as if summoned, and asked, “Do you have the money?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

He stared at me for a moment, his expression somewhere between desperation and hunger.

“Can I have, it please?” he asked, his voice quiet, tone near begging.

I dug the money out of my pocket again, handed him a ten, and he departed for the alcohol displays as fast as his inked-up legs would carry him. Stuffing my hands into my flannel’s pockets, I rolled my eyes and left to wait near the door.

He just wanted the money for beer and smokes.

The rain, swept by the wind, thundered against the glass double doors. Occasionally they would open to let in a warmly dressed vagrant and a torrent of droplets would hail onto the welcome mat. Few things ever changed in this place, and the endless falling rain was no different.

Eventually I spotted Dan spending the entirety of the money I’d given him on cheap beer and cigarettes. He lumbered toward me with a grocery sack in hand, his expression as dour as ever. Plainly written on his face was the fact that there was no joy in those bags, only a temporary reprieve.

“You know,” he said, looking over his shoulder at me as we left out the sliding doors, “they really rape ya in places like this now. Can’t believe how much this shit costs. Six bucks for a pack of cigarettes?”

“Yeah, they suck,” I gave my automatic, flat response.

“Fuck ‘em. Fuck these shit shops—it’s all fuckin’ Chinese anway. They own the damn world.”

“Yeah.”

“An’ fuck women too! So demanding, so bitchy. Always givin’ ya shit. Why do I put up with ‘em?”

“Yep, they suck.”

“You know, all that’s left in this town I really like are you ‘an yer little group of people. Your folks are the only nice people around.”

“Nah. They suck too.”

“Thanks fer helpin’ me out. Maybe one day we’ll have to get you a tat too, huh?” Dan chuckled, smiling anxiously. “You, you see what I did there? You see… Ah, well, see you.”

“Bye,” I said impassively.

He stirred up the gravel in the driveway, the wheels spinning in place as they dug themselves out of the rocks and mud before speeding away down the street. Smoke from his exhaust flooded the air. I shook my head and turned around to cross the yard and go back inside.

Thump, thump, thump. The sound of something moving around in the attic—I could hear it even from where I stood outside as the rain pounded the top of my head. Curiosity getting the better of me, I circled around the muddy path and listened.

Old discarded furniture and bulging garbage bags lined the house from the side. Moldy old tables, dead television sets, appliances rusting in the rain. The bushes growing over the fence were slowly swallowing up the path, leafy green branches that swarmed with insects in the summer. They brushed against my arm as I passed, headed toward the backyard.

A ladder red with rust rested against the side of the moldy old house, leading to a moss-covered roof. Its rickety rails clattered against one another in protest as I lifted it from its spot and carried it with me to the side of the house, where the door to the attic could be found.

Each step up the ladder was more precarious than the last. It shook and shuddered as I climbed, feeling full ready to fall to pieces with each little movement I made. The door itself took some convincing to open, the ladder’s feet squirming and hopping as I pulled the wood free from its frame. The hinges wined and threatened to drop the door as it slid open.

A small square of an entrance, just enough for me to crawl through into the darkness and the dust. Boxes of discarded clothing, holiday ornaments, old electronics. The people here never threw anything away, they merely stuffed it in a corner somewhere to be forgotten. Inhaling a speck of dust, I sneezed loudly several times and kicked up an entire cloud.

Thump, thump, thump. Something moving, further on inside. I inhaled sharply—painfully sucking in dust—and the sounds swiftly stopped. Creeping forward, the boards groaned under my weight. The attic was not so large that I would need to look far to find whatever was hiding, I merely hoped I wouldn’t scare some animal into leaping from the attic and breaking its legs.

A chirping noise like a scared mouse came from the dark, soft and quiet. Squinting and following my ears, I knelt down and put my hands on a large box. The sound grew louder as I began to move it; a squeaking, squealing chirp that grew faster the closer I came. The box tumbled over as something moved behind it, dumping Christmas tree bulbs all over the floor.

Two red lights filled the attic. Difficult to see, yet blinding in their brightness. The chirping, the sound of rain, my breaths all grew quiet and faded away into those lights. Deep, dark pools that drained away everything around them. Whiskers and hair, fur and teeth—it was a rabbit, with dull, red eyes, and all my thoughts disappeared into those crimson voids.

Then, sitting on the boards in front of me, I could make out a man who looked to be around my age. He was covered in dirt and wore filthy clothes, rags that looked like they’d been fished out of one of the donation centers. He gazed at me with desperate eyes.

“Please don’t tell anyone I was here,” he pleaded, inching closer. He put his dirt-encrusted hands together and begged. “I was just usin’ your place to get outta the rain. I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

I was dumbstruck. The words had fled from my head. I could merely sit and stare at him and his disheveled hair, sporting what appeared to be long brown ears… like a rabbit would have. They were standing straight and taut, as if in alarm.

“Jack was looking for me. If he finds out I was here, you’ll be in trouble. I’m so sorry. Please, just forget you saw me,” he mumbled one apology after another.

Before I could stop him, he crawled toward the attic exit and disappeared through the square entrance. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, unsure of what I had just seen. I managed to fumble to the exit soon enough to spot a brown rabbit leaping through the grass and out of sight.