#was supposed to give a creepy but a peaceful sort of vibe at the end | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

missorgana · 3 years

Text

hate me (but don’t)

pairing: bucky barnes/sam wilson, background pairings

fandom: marvel cinematic universe

rating: teen and up

word count: 4521

warning: swearing, smoking, alcohol

summary: Steve's planned a game of secret santa for the team, but Bucky's got other things on his mind. Like his crush on perfect, ridiculously hot Sam. And how he hates his guts. (university au, secret santa)

(my second 12 days of fanfiction fic!! which is totally not two days late... really hope this isn’t too messy. thank you @brandtwilliam for the prompt, i really hope you enjoy this ❤️ and don’t forget, you can still send me prompts if you haven’t already!)

read on ao3

Bucky is going to die.

Is that too dramatic? Maybe so.

But if your stupid secret santa turns out to be your stupid, ridiculously hot, too kind for this cruel world crush, Sam Wilson, who’s given you every perfect gift you could ask for, you’d feel like that too.

The only detail missing? He hates your guts, most likely.

…

Of course, the brilliant idea of a game of secret santa belonged to his best friend.

Steve’s always been social like that, which he guesses can be seen as a good thing, if Bucky was the same kind of extrovert and wasn’t dragged to everything by his friend.

Well, that he was being dragged to events might be a little harsh. Steve didn’t mean to force him, really. If the blonde just didn’t look so disappointed when he said no, Bucky might not give in every time.

And now, as the football team captain, Steve’s suggested a game for the holidays. It gets mixed reviews.

Generally positive, at least Thor and Scott’s in on it, Nat laughs sarcastically but doesn’t intervene, and Clint simply nods.

Rhodey shakes his head, and Bucky feels the same, but why not, he finally says.

T’Challa’s just as tired as he is of Steve’s games, surely. Alas, despite not everyone cheering, it’s settled. Hell, even Carol’s in on it, and she hates Christmas as a known fact.

And then there’s Sam.

Beautiful Sam, who transferred to Steve and his dorm, who his best friend met at a history nerd convention, of all things.

It’s not surprising that he got in on the team this semester. Because holy fucking shit.

Bucky likes to think he’s pretty fit, he can keep up with Steve, at least. Sam, however, just feels like he’s mocking him.

Because he’s too damn attractive for his own good, that is.

And seriously, he’s tried not to stare, still tries, during practice, but does he have to make it so difficult?

His arms, hands, calves, everything.

Like even just his jawline is perfect, come on!

And it’s been long since Bucky’s last relationship, he’d gotten over her, and a ridiculously hot friend of his best friend might be good for him.

Only problem, said hot friend hates him, first thing when they meet. No, he’s not exaggerating.

It was even before he got on the team, when he moved in the dorm, and Steve suggested the three of them have a game night. Bucky still has no idea what he did to Sam, but that evening, let’s say he got the cold shoulder.

And this guy only talks to him when he has to. Seriously.

“Hey, I, uh, I’m Bucky.”

“I know. And I’m Sam, by the way.”

Shit. All that’s spoken between them the first day, and this guy who may or may not look like a Greek god avoids him at every game.

Steve’s certain he’s imagining things, but it’s obvious, really.

Way to go, Bucky, crushing on the one person you’ll never have a shot with. But he’s learned to live with that loss.

It’s not like he got a realistic chance with him, anyway.

…

First week of December, and Steve seems to think ice skating is a good idea.

It’s supposed to be a whole team friendship thing once again, but a slight malfunction in the planning of it all, ends up having only Nat and Sam along with them.

Nat’s surprisingly sociable once you become friends with her. Believe it or not, Bucky thought she hated him too, in the beginning, but that’s the vibe she puts up around everyone.

Sam, on the other hand, seems like he’s pointed Bucky out as his mortal enemy.

When he’s watching this boy, which is probably distracting him too much during games, and class, and everything else, he’s never seen someone smile as much as Sam.

It gives Bucky this funny feeling in his stomach.

He sort of wishes he could make him smile like that. Or at all, really.

Sam’s always helped out Steve extensively with the last few parties he set up, because he might be an angel. He’s pointed this out to the blonde, who insists Bucky’s helped a lot too. Which, lie, but his friend won’t admit that.

And yes, he has confided this crush to his very friend. Bucky knows Steve wouldn’t tell a soul, he trusts him with his life, but the blonde’s also getting pretty impatient with him.

“If you’d get over yourself and ask him out.” is something his best friend’s told him too many times, believe it or not, Bucky has a hard time keeping quiet about just how ridiculously beautiful Sam is.

“Yeah, like that’s ever gonna happen.”

“Why not?”

“He literally avoids me, I told you this!”

“No, he doesn’t!”

“Have you ever even seen him look at me?!”

Nat’s always there when he zones out, too many people and Bucky needs some peace of mind. He appreciates that more than she knows. Like he’s ever gonna tell her that.

This constellation they’ve made on the rink makes sense.

Steve and Sam’s testing their abilities on the skates, cus they’re annoying like that, and the redhead’s joined him by the sidelines.

The boys’ begged her to join them, because it’s somehow destiny that Sam should like everyone but him, and maybe, Bucky felt a little smug when she favored him and declined the offer. He’s not gonna tell that, either.

Twenty minutes pass by before she elbows him, “If I ask you why you own a handbook about butterflies, will I get a sensible answer?” Okay, that does sound weird. He’s allowed to have interests though, right?

Like Steve’s obsession with the British royal family is any better.

And this is a fairly new interest, to be fair, despite that he’s always had a liking for biology. But honestly, bugs are fucking badass. Steve didn’t judge him, at least.

“Well…” he starts, just pausing long enough to witness his best friend nearly falling on his ass, glorious, “It’s from my secret santa.”

She laughs.

“One of those dummies gave you a book about bugs?”

“I like bugs.”

“Fair enough, still funny.”

He even tries to give her a mean eye, but she pats his head like a child. Bucky supposes that honesty’s part of her charm, at least he’s always felt that way.

Steve pretends to be offended, despite being used to it, and Clint just snarks right back at her. He’s never met two best friends so similar, to be honest.

“Tell me,” Nat speaks up again, even though she’s definitely going to ask Steve when they’re done here so they can eat, which Bucky will wholeheartedly tag along with, “What’s up with you and Wilson?”

If Bucky was drinking something, he’d choke. Maybe he chokes on oxygen for a second.

“I don’t know you’re talking about.” is the answer, he even tries a laugh but it comes out anything but casual.

Damn her, she can always look through him so easily.

She lifts a sharp brow, “For how much you both hang around each other, you spend an awful lot of time avoiding him.”

Oh, if only she knew.

…

The second week of December, the Christmas cheer just increases. In the dormitory, anyway, since Steve and Thor’s in charge of decorating.

Makes sense, given his friend’s eagerness in social gatherings, and Thor being the tallest university student ever, probably.

And in extension, the dorm’s having a Christmas dinner. Once again, Steve’s idea.

This is nice though, Bucky has to admit, when everyone’s bringing food and there’s not the pressure of a dance floor or ice breaker games.

And since Steve’s idea of Christmas cheer is “the more, the merrier”, plus ones are more than welcome.

Rhodey’s brought Tony, who’s a bit of an asshole, but his girlfriend Pepper’s nice, and he’d probably say Bucky can be an asshole too, so it’s whatever.

Carol would probably be alone with her girlfriend Val (who’s also a bit of an asshole, but like, less than Tony) than be here, but seems like she’s taking a liking to Thor’s new boyfriend.

Bruce, he’s from the science department. Doesn’t seem like the party type, and Bucky for once doesn’t feel totally alone.

But all his pessimism aside, this is not totally awful. Might even call it enjoyable.

He doesn’t feel pressured to make conversation, which is nice, and one Christmas beer doesn’t hurt.

Except he may or not become sulky, when, surprise, he spends his night trying not to stare at Sam, collect the courage to talk to him and then fail to do so.

The boy actually catches Bucky looking at him. Midst eating. He just might have hid under the table.

It’s not like anything dramatic happened, really, but he probably looked creepy. He just can’t help staring when he’s so pretty, can he?

And, weirdly enough, Sam raises a brow at him questioningly. The most interaction they’ve ever done, probably.

Well done, Bucky, as if he didn’t dislike you enough.

What boggles his mind is when he, after the dinner, finds a bag placed neatly on his desk. Secret santa, he almost forgot, it’s the end of the week.

Inside said brown paper bag is a bracelet.

Awfully similar to the one he broke last week, he thinks, and the obvious suspicion falls on Steve. He hasn’t told anyone about that besides his best friend, so who else could it be?

It’s sweet of him. And a bit stupid, given that these things have to remain a secret.

But Bucky will play along. Besides, this wasn’t exactly cheap, isn’t this breaking the rules? Maybe the blonde just used this opportunity for an actual Christmas present, all games aside.

He shakes his head with a smile.

Steve’s an idiot, but he means well. And Bucky makes sure to hide the wrapping just before someone, who he assumes to be his friend, walks in.

Only it’s a different blonde.

“Bucky! I was wondering-” Thor sounds excited, however, he stops in his tracks and stares. Right where the evidence of the gift is hidden. Not so hidden.

“Oh, your secret santa!” the giant exclaims, twice as excited, and Bucky nods. “What’d they get you?”

He fumbles with the bracelet, now around his wrist, “Uh, this.”

Thor squints, like this task takes all his concentration, and giggles. Bucky doesn’t really understand that, but the blonde boy takes a seat beside him on the bed before he can question it.

“Seems like someone on the team’s trying to impress you. Anyway, look what I got Bruce!”

…

It’s the third week of December, and because Steve is just the right amount of stupid, he’s broken his ankle. Ice skating, of course.

So, today’s going to be a weird day.

It was already weird from the get go, because Bucky was still thinking about last week’s secret santa gift, but after lunch, the signal for his best friend goes over his phone.

Immediately he’s greeted with, “Bucky?”

The voice is just an octave deeper than Steve’s, and he doesn’t fully register the situation before his “Steve?” is answered with, “No, man, he’s in the hospital.”

Long story short, Sam called him.

It makes sense, because the blonde’s got Bucky listed in his emergency contacts, parents being out of the country and everything, and he’s got Steve in his, but something about actually talking to a certain, ridiculously hot friend makes his brain malfunction.

And it’s not like he has much time to respond before the boy in the other end hangs up, opting to text him the hospital room number.

And now here he is.

He made sure to leave a chair between the two when he sat down, because Sam finding another reason to hate him would only add to the anxiety he’s already feeling.

Steve’s fine, he assures himself, but Bucky has a hard time looking away from the boy beside him. Well, more than usual.

“People ever tell you that you stare a lot?” Sam’s voice pipes up, and he jumps just a bit in his seat.

God, he’s really not subtle at all, huh. Not surprising, given how many times Steve’s told him.

“I, uh- no.”

That’s all you have to say? Come on, Bucky, you absolute idiot.

“Sorry, I’m just worried.” he shakes his head at himself. And somehow, because the world is being weird in general lately, the other boy looks back at him.

Okay, it wouldn’t be that weird, if he didn’t sigh, “You’re fine. He’s fine. I promise.”

Holy shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Bucky can’t let himself get too excited, most of all due to them currently being in a hospital, but the fact that he couldn’t find a hint of malice in Sam’s voice feels like a surreal dream. Not to mention this is by far the longest conversation they’ve had, ever.

Maybe this is one of those things his stupid best friend would consider a Christmas miracle. Your crush maybe doesn’t absolutely despise you, that’s something, right?

Less than ideal, but oh well. Bucky’s allowed to dream.

This makes it considerably harder not to stare at the boy, with the added bonus of Sam now being aware of it. Just his luck.

But noticing the other boy’s hands tightly clasped in his lap, this odd blinking that’s a little more rapid than usual, suggests that Sam’s just as nervous.

Strangely, that gives Bucky some peace of mind. Usually, this ridiculously hot guy is a picture perfect example of being calm, collected and patient. Except with himself, of course.

Steve told him they do yoga together, so it makes sense, but it’s like he’s got everything under control, you know?

Bucky wishes he had that sense sometimes, God knows how behind he is on studying, and maybe he’d actually have the courage to flirt with anyone (sitting next to him, preferably) if his nerves weren't such a mess.

He wants to reach out and touch the other boy’s arm.

Maybe that would ruin the moment, though. Definitely will ruin the moment. Who said they were having a moment, anyway?

“Thanks.” Bucky finds himself saying.

And now, Sam looks surprised.

“What for?”

“You know, uh… for calling.”

Sam is officially a ridiculously hot pain in the ass.

Because they’re having eye contact. For several minutes. Like humans do, you idiot, is what he thinks to himself, maybe he should really just get laid already like Tony told him once.

The other boy looks at him like he’s got something on his mind, mouth slightly open, but looks away before Bucky can think too much about his lips and how soft they may be.

He bites his cheek.

And it’s like the world started spinning around them again when the doctor lets them in Steve’s room, but not before Sam hands him a bag.

“Steve was gonna give you this after skating, man. Your secret santa- it’s so stupid, but they told us to get it. Don’t look at me like that.”

It takes Bucky a minute. Staring at the bag of plums handed to him. Watching the back of the other boy’s head as he leaves.

Too goddamn weird.

…

The fourth week of December comes too fast for Bucky’s liking.

In fact, it’s Thursday night, and Steve’s rambling from the other side of the room, convinced Natasha is his secret santa, when Bucky just wants to fucking sleep .

He loves the guy, but seriously.

Of course, he hasn’t told his best friend his suspicion that he’s his secret santa, because duh, but also, he’s not all that sure since last week.

Sam told him whoever it is gave it to them. And it kind of makes Bucky feel insane.

Of course, Sam could’ve lied to cover up for his friend, because he knows he’d do that. Damnit, his crush is possibly the sweetest, truest person he’s met in his relatively short life, and he just so happens to hate his guts?

Typical. But Bucky also feels like something’s changed in their dynamic.

He hopes he’s not imagining things. At least, Sam’s started greeting him at practice, and that alone is a major change, believe it or not.

They don’t even uncomfortably look away from each other while playing games with Steve, and God knows they’re doing a lot more now that the blonde needs to rest.

Last night, he had another genuine conversation, and their friend has never looked more confused in his life. He did also tease Bucky for a solid hour about it after Sam left, so there’s that.

Ultimately, near 2am, he gets out of bed and tells Steve he’s going for a walk.

Bucky hates the fact that this secret santa thing’s getting on his nerves, which isn’t his friend’s fault at all, he just needs a break.

Going for a walk usually means going to the roof for a smoke. Yeah, Bucky’s not proud of it, but it is what it is.

It’s helped him de-stress during exams, mostly, and it’s been two months since his last, but he knows Steve’s right when telling him to quit for good.

Sometimes Nat and Clint join him, which is nice, cause they’re not that big on late night conversations, either. He’s mostly looking to be alone right now, though.

Bucky’s putting the cigarette to his lips when he hears the door opening behind him, and who he’s expecting to be Nat and Clint or a shocked Steve turns out to be the very guy that’s been on his mind for too damn long.

He might know his voice immediately. Shut up.

Sam gives him a nod as a silent greeting, which he replies to of course, and standing next to him, with considerable distance, of course, asks him for a lighter.

Seriously, his crush lighting a smoke shouldn’t be so fucking hot.

Bucky feels kind of pathetic, but oh well. This is nice. It makes him nervous as fuck, but after ten minutes, it’s like the knot in his chest unwinds and nothing can be heard in the silence apart from the night traffic.

Until, suddenly, “You and Steve dated, right?”

He might have a small coughing fit after that comment. “I-I, well, uhm, yeah, but like, when we were fifteen!”

It comes out more defensive than he wanted, and Bucky might’ve just gone to the nearest wall and banged his head.

Sam chuckles, but he’s got this sincere look in his eyes.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, man. Sorry.”

And because Bucky’s too tired to think rationally, he lets his guard down and smiles. He’s learnt to control his love struck smiles, as Nat once called them, very, very well around Sam, but fuck it.

It’s dark anyway, let’s just pretend they won’t remember this in the morning.

“No, it’s fine, really.” he scratches his neck, “I love him, really do, but he’s my best friend. Now I can’t imagine thinking of him like that.”

The shorter guy nods.

“Y’know, my ex, Riley,” Sam starts, because, suddenly, the air between them is changing, and it’s becoming a little more personal, “Think that’s same as you two. He’s like my brother now, honestly.”

They share a laugh on that, and Bucky tries to stop the butterflies forming in his stomach, he really does.

It’s on that the silence settles again, until Sam’s finished his smoke, too fast for Bucky’s liking and squashes it with his boot.

He did want to be alone, of course, so it’s whatever.

Just felt nice connecting, or something. He’s not sure that is what this is. December’s really changed his relationship with his crush, and albeit Sam doesn’t seem to hate him anymore, he’s a bit disappointed in this Christmas miracle.

The shorter boy turns before he leaves, however, “I mean, I’m more into long hair on guys, anyway.”

Well, he can’t just say that and not expect Bucky to look like one big question mark. What the fuck?

And as he makes his way back to this room, shaking his head, surely Sam didn’t mean anything by that off-hand comment, he finds not only his best friend soundly sleeping, but also a box of peppermint candies, his favorite, on the dresser.

…

And as by a whirlwind, here Bucky is, the last week of December, and Steve decided on an extravagant finale party, where the team would reveal their secret santa identities.

He hasn’t talked to Sam since that night on the roof.

Unwillingly, because the shorter boy’s started avoiding him again. Seriously, Bucky’s desperate.

His own foolery, thinking things had changed and they maybe could be friends, only his crush seems destined to hate him for eternity.

Bucky doesn’t even complain to Steve, he just accepts the fact.

In fact, he’s been nursing the same beer for the last two hours, still not being able to take his eyes from the ridiculously hot, and annoying, guy on the other side of the common room.

He doesn’t even care about the thought of getting laid with anyone.

Bucky’s too lost in this to think about getting over Sam, god forbid.

Besides that fact, he guesses the evening’s going alright. Natasha reveals herself as Steve’s gift giver, as suspected, his friend exclaimed in glee, Carol had Sam, Rhodey to Carol, Scott to Thor, T’Challa to Scott, Thor to Clint, Steve to T’Challa and Clint to Rhodey.

And see, that’s what ultimately leaves Bucky in the weirdest, stupidest, most ridiculous situation. He was, still, fully convinced Steve was his own secret santa.

At least he’d never figured Sam to reveal himself as the one.

Bucky wants to die.

How does the stupid hot, real life angel even expect him to react? He must know Bucky’s crushing on him. That’s probably what made him hate him again.

Fuck, this guy volunteers at homeless shelters, helps out every single one of his friends, he’s perfect , of course he’d give Bucky perfect gifts.

Well done, honestly, despite the apparent dislike.

They gloss over the revelation, anyway, Bucky himself too anxious to react besides the thank you’s, of course, and Sam looks at him the same way he did in the hospital that night. He’s officially going crazy.

That relation’s in the grave, more or less, given how quiet the other boy is. When he realises this, finally grabbing a second beer, Bucky just feels like crying a little bit.

Until the party’s well over, Steve’s puking his guts out in the bathroom, and he’s just tired.

Of course, that’s when his crush decided to find him.

He’s surprised, of course, but tries to fix his clothes and hair regardless. Who’s he kidding, he looks like shit right now.

“Hey, man-”

“Sam!”

Stupid interruption, goddammit. Bucky has the mind to apologize before rambling on, “Thank you. For all the presents, that is. You didn’t have to.”

Sam’s laughing. Not out loud, like, almost shy. In a Sam way. Fuck, he can’t explain it any other way.

His smile is almost smug when he answers, “Well, I kinda did in that game.”

First time his crush ever told him a joke. Cool, cool, cool.

Seriously, Bucky needs to calm down. He’s been here before, and after the night on the rooftop, he clearly did something wrong.

Must have, to make the angel hate him. There he goes, referring to him like a celestial being in his head. Anyway.

“I know, man. I just,” he’s almost interrupted by another groan from the bathroom, nevertheless, “I’m just Steve’s annoying friend. I mean, I assume you got help on that bracelet-”

“You’re what now?”

Update, said ridiculously hot friend of Steve’s now frowning at him. Probably the first time Bucky’s seen him confused, too, lots of new things happening. He can’t do anything other than shrug.

“Yeah. Man, it’s pretty obvious you don’t like me. Which is fine! Or it’s not, cause I've been... crushing on you ever since we met, but listen-”

Really, he could’ve continued for eternity, if his crush hadn’t walked right up close and grabbed both his shoulders.

Holy shit. Perfect Sam is so fucking close to him right now, Bucky looking right into his deep brown eyes. He never wants to look away. This is real life, somehow.

Even Sam doesn’t seem to know what to say, shaking his head, and Jesus, he’s pretty up close-

“Bucky,” he then says, “What did you think… was going on?”

That’s a weird question, so he furrows his brow. Steve’s probably still hurling, but he’s kinda zoned out all sound apart from their breathing.

Too dramatic. Like a sappy romantic drama. Shut up, brain.

“Like, with us.”

Okay, this is just ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as how hot Sam is, but it’s close. Must be a damn joke.

“Us? Sam, I’m not an idiot, you’ve been avoiding me ever since we met, and-”

“I’ve literally been flirting with you.”

What?

Now Bucky knows it’s a joke. Or maybe he’ll pinch him and he’ll wake up from this hangover dream.

Whatever it is, he sure knows what flirting looks like. Can’t do it himself very well, but not the point!

“Flirting?”

“Yeah!” he exclaims, suddenly seeming unsure of himself, which isn’t something Bucky wants to see ever again, making his stomach hurt, “Well, I thought so. That I was being cool, you know? But Steve suggested these gifts, and I admit, it’s better.”

All he has left to do is nod.

“Ugh, sorry.” Sam’s hands tragically leave his shoulder, scratching his forehead, and it’s official, confused Sam is adorable, “I see the misunderstanding. But also, I never got you alone, so.”

“Yeah, cause I thought you hated me!”

Well, this December’s much more interesting than Bucky would’ve bargained for. Ever.

Least of all that his stupid, ridiculously hot crush somehow liked him back. Damn, all this time he thought he had a nemesis, too?

“To be honest, thinking I had an enemy was kinda cool.” he tells the shorter boy with a laugh, because fuck it, this has turned into the messiest love confession ever, and it’s too late for Sam to take it back now.

Might as well ride with it. And of course, his angel of a crush rolls his eyes. But he’s smiling, just like on the rooftop.

He does also return his hand to the back of Bucky’s neck instead. Okay, cool. He can definitely keep going. Please keep going.

“You want me to take it back, or?”

“Oh my God, no.”

“Good.”

They’re so fucking close. Bucky’s head screaming at him. Those butterflies are probably fainting from exhaustion, at this point.

And they’re certainly having a moment now. Actually, they’re moving even closer, which he can’t complain to, and he doesn’t even care that he’s staring at his lips, until-

“Guys. I’m happy for you, but literally dying in here. Go away.”

Way to ruin the goddamn moment, Steve. He’s this close to cursing at the blonde boy, he loves that little shit, but seriously?!

Luckily, Sam’s in for the whole rescue.

“My room?”

“Definitely.”

29 notes · View notes

sophiepowers · 4 years

Text

since @petrlosingwendy is mad about me talking about jordan here’s my anger in an essay under the cut

All right, Petunia. Wish me luck out there. You will die on August 7th, 2037. That’s pretty good. All right. Hello. Hello, Chicago. Nice to see you again. Thank you. That was very nice. Thank you. Look, now, you’re a wonderful crowd, but I need you to keep your energy up the entire show, okay? Because… No, no, no. Thank you. Some crowds… some crowds, they have big energy in the beginning and then they run out of places to go. So… I don’t judge those crowds, by the way, okay? We’ve all gone too big too fast and then run out of room. We’ve all made a “Happy Birthday” sign… Wait. You get that poster board up, and you’re like, “I don’t need to trace it. I know how big letters should be. To begin with, a big-ass ‘H’. Followed by a big-ass ‘A’ and… Oh, no! Oh, God! Okay, all right. Real skinny ‘P’ with a high hump, and then we’ll put the second ‘P’ below the hump of that first ‘P’, sort of like a motorcycle sidecar situation. And now I have no room for the ‘Y’, so I’ll do a kind of curled-up noodle ‘Y’. Block letters and cursive look good together.” And then you go to write “Birthday” and you totally forget the lesson you just learned with “Happy.” You’re like, “Yeah, but the past is the past. Big-ass ‘B’. Surely more letters will fit in the same space.”You’re very friendly here in Chicago. I mean, we’re all violent here, but you’re very friendly. No, really. And I don’t like confrontation, ’cause I’ve never been in a fight before. Though, maybe you could tell that from the first moment I walked out on stage. I don’t give off that vibe. Some people give off a vibe of… Right away, they’re like, “Do not fuck with me.” My vibe is more like, “Hey, you could pour soup in my lap and I’ll probably apologize to you.” When I walk, for real, my feet go out like this. I’m so open and vulnerable. I look like a doll that you point out molestation on. “Show us on this white comedian where the man touched you.”It’s been a while since I’ve been home to Chicago. I got married since then. Thank you. I married my wife. I love saying “my wife.” It sounds so adult. “That’s my wife.” It’s great, you sound like a person. I said it even before we were married. We were just dating, and we were once getting on an airplane, and Anna’s ticket didn’t say anything and my ticket said “priority access.” It doesn’t matter why. But we were getting on and I said, “Uh, can my wife board with me?” And they were like, “Yes, of course. Right this way.” And I was like, “Oh, that is so much better than all those times I was like, ‘Can my girlfriend come?'” And, yeah, I shouldn’t have said it that way, but still. “My wife” just has some kick-ass to it, you know? “Get away from my wife! No one talk to my wife!” Marriage is gonna be very magical. “I didn’t kill my wife!” That’s like, “Ooh, who’s that fella? I bet he did kill his wife.” Being married is so nice. I never knew relationships were supposed to make you feel better about yourself. That’s not really a joke, that’s just a little sweet thing I like to say. ‘Cause I’d been in relationships where I got cheated on, like, long ones. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a long relationship where you got cheated on, but it changes your whole worldview. ‘Cause when I was a kid, I used to watch America’s Most Wanted. You know how kids do. And I would always think to myself, “How could another person kill someone? How could a human being kill another human being?” And then I got cheated on, and I was like, “Oh, okay.” “I’m not gonna do it, but I totally get it.” And I don’t mean in that way of, like, “No one else can have you.” I don’t care about that. It’s just creepy to have an ex out there after things have ended badly. They have a lot of information. Anyone who’s seen my dick and met my parents needs to die. I can’t have them roaming around.I talked to a lot of people before I got engaged, you know. And I heard this expression about whether or not you should get married. This is an old expression. People say this. They say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” You ever heard that before? It’s a bananas insulting expression… to an entire gender. But also, it makes no sense. “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” You’re not allowed to milk a cow that you don’t own. That’s not even a situation. Was that a problem at one point? Like, in the dairy community? Was that happening a hundred years ago in some village? Some Dutch prick was sneaking in at night being like, “Ah-ha-ha, I take your milk.” And the farmer was like, “Well, then, this is your cow now.” And he was like, “No, no proof of purchase.” And he ran off into the night. That sounded Dutch, right? You know what that… you know what that expression means? It means, “Why would you marry a woman if she’s already having sex with you?” Which has nothing to do with what relationships are even like anymore. Now, it’s like, “Why buy the cow?” Uh, maybe because, every day, the cow asks you when you’re gonna buy it. And… … you live in a really small apartment with the cow, so you can’t avoid that question at all. And also, the cow is way better at arguing than you are. And the cow grew up in a family that knows how to argue. “Why buy the cow?” Uh, maybe because every time another cow gets bought, you have to go to the sale and you have to sit next to your cow at the sale, and your cow looks over at you the entire time like… And does not enjoy the sale at all… even though she’s the one that wanted to go to the sale. And she’s especially mad because that farmer and cow met, like, eight months after you guys met. “Why buy the cow?” Well, let’s be real here. You’re very lucky to have the cow that you do have. “Roping in cows and getting milk out of them was never anything you were known for, John.” By the most liberal of estimates, there have been about eight cows total, several unmilked, and… a lot of people think that you like bulls, and if you just bought… They assume it. When you search your name, the third thing to come up is like, “John Mulaney bull?” And if you just bought the cow, nobody would say that anymore. They’ll still say it. ‘Cause there are those guys who, they buy a cow, and then on the side, total matador, but… But, for real, Chicago, why buy the cow? Let’s be real. Why buy the cow? Because you love her. You really do. And, yeah, yeah… Sure, she’s a bossy little Jew, but… … she takes care of you. And you don’t wanna be some old man stumbling around, like, “Hey, you seen any loose milk?”My wife is Jewish. She’s a New York Jew. I did it! Now, I was raised Catholic. I don’t know if you can tell that from the everything about me. My wife is Jewish, I grew up Catholic, so we got married by a friend. Being married by a friend is a beautiful ceremony that alienates both families’ religions, while confusing the elderly people at the wedding. “What’s the name of the bishop?” “That’s actually stand-up comedian Dan Levy. He was the host of MTV’s Your Face or Mine?” I saw a lot of Catholic weddings, though, because I was an altar boy… And a hush falls over the room. Isn’t it weird how that became a scandalous thing? That was just some boring shit I had to do on weekends. But now, it’s like saying, “I was a French maid for a period of time. I was treated well in my day. I worked for a variety of sirs.” No, being an altar boy was just a boring gig, you know? You’d serve Mass and then you’d serve weddings sometimes. My brother was once an altar boy at a wedding, and he was standing there with another altar boy in this big, packed church in Chicago where we grew up. And the bride was coming down the aisle, and the organ was playing, and all the pews were filled, and the bride got all the way to the altar, and the groom lifted the veil off of the bride, and right at that moment the other altar boy said, “Aw, she’s ugly.” And then they looked, and they were right next to the video camera. And I know that’s awful, but wouldn’t you give a million dollars to see that wedding video? It was the best moment of this stupid woman’s life, and she’s walking down the aisle, and the organ’s like… And she gets all the way to the altar to her betrothed, and he unveils her to the world and to the eyes of God. And right at that second, for no reason at all, some Cheeto-fingered, rat-mustached, 13-year-old prick decides to go, “Aw, she’s ugly!” Hopefully the videographer knew some sound editing so he could fix it to be like, “Aw, she’s beautiful. She’s enchanting.”I grew up Catholic. I don’t go to church anymore. But I went on Christmas Eve with my parents, ’cause you know how you lie to your parents. So… we go into the church and I was like, “I got this under control.” And then I got schooled because they introduced a bunch of new shit. No, I was going through Mass and I was batting, like, .400. And then in the middle of Mass, the priest said, “Peace be with you.” And everyone said, “And with your spirit.” And I was the one pre-Y2K asshole going, “And also with you. What? Huh? What? Huh? What? When? When?” For those of you that aren’t Catholic, I don’t mean to exclude you, even though we love to exclude you, but… There’s a part in church where the priest says, “Peace be with you.” And for many, many years, we all said… – “And also with you.” – Very good. But they changed it to “And with your spirit.” Because that’s what needed revamping in the Catholic Church. That was the squeaky wheel that needed the grease. In Rome, they were like, “Let’s see. What problems can we solve? Problem one. No.” I’m actually glad they changed that, though. I never liked “And also with you.” I always found that clunky. “And also with you.” That’s not how you talk. – “Have a nice day.” – “And also you having one.” It’s just a little bit wrong, isn’t it? It’s just a little off. Like, when someone’s like, “How are you?” And you’re like, “Nothing much.” And it sort of makes sense. Never begin a sentence with “And also.” You just immediately sound caught off-guard. It sounds like if at the first church ever, like, they weren’t expecting it. Like, the priest was like, “Hey, this is the first time we’ve ever had church. I just wanna say, ‘Peace be with you.'” And they were like… “What? Oh. Uh, yeah. And also you should have some.” “Hey, that’s good. Let’s keep that for 2,000 years. And then change it to trick John.”My wife and I don’t have any children, we have a dog. We have a little puppy named Petunia. She’s a tiny little French bulldog puppy. I like having a puppy that’s a bulldog, ’cause it’s like having a baby that is also a grandma. Her body is young, her face is as old as time. She definitely saw the Nazis march into Paris. She always gives me this look of like, “Oh, the things I have seen, you cocksucker. You have no idea. The Gestapo threw my printing press into a river. But, go, tell your fucking jokes. Bring me my dish.” She said that. Petunia… Petunia is my best friend in the world. I give her a million kisses a day. She does not like me, and barks at me and bites me all day long. We had to get a dog trainer into the apartment because Petunia is a bad dog. We tell her that every day. We go, “Hey, you’re bad at being a dog.” So, the trainer came into the apartment. Sorry, didn’t even walk into the apartment, walked into the threshold and went, “Oh, okay.” Like she was an exorcist or something. She said, “I see what the problem is.” She said, “Petunia has become the alpha of the house.” And then she pointed at me, she said, “You are no longer the alpha of the house.” And in the back of my head, I was like, “I was never the alpha of the house.” I turned to my wife, I was like, “Let��s pretend. It’ll be fun. Yes… My title of alpha, which I once had, how can I reclaim it? Because that was a thing that existed at one time.” She said, “You need to show dominance over your puppy.” These are things people say to me. I said, “How do I do that?” She said, “Well, let me ask you this. Who eats dinner first, you or Petunia?” I was like, “Petunia eats dinner first. She eats dinner at 5:00 p.m., ’cause she’s a foot long and two years old.” She said, “No, you need to eat dinner first. Because the king eats before anyone else eats.” Oh, yes, and what a mighty king I will be, eating dinner at 4:45 in the afternoon. “Look upon your sovereign, Petunia, and tremble. My lands stretch across this entire one bedroom, and I eat dinner whenever I choose, as long as it works for the schedule of a dog.” She said, “Now, you don’t actually have to eat dinner before Petunia. You just have to convince Petunia that you’ve already eaten.” So… for the past month, I shit you not… before my wife and I give Petunia her dish, we take down empty bowls and spoons, and in front of her, we go, “Mmm, dinner. Mmm, good dinner.” Like we’re space aliens in a play about human beings that they wrote, but they didn’t work that hard on. “Mmm, we’re eating dinner.” Meanwhile, Petunia’s just staring at us with her Paul Giamatti face, like… “You’re not eating dinner, cocksucker. Dish, now.”I have a wife and a dog, and we just bought a house. We have a new house. It was built in the ’20s, but it was flipped in 2014. Which means it’s haunted, but it has a lovely kitchen backsplash. Actually, we didn’t buy a house. A bank bought a house, and I’m allowed to keep my shirts and pants there while I pay it off for 30 years. The woman from the bank came over and she showed me my mortgage broken down month by month for 30 years. And she said, “So, for instance, this is what you’ll pay in July of 2029.” And I burst out laughing. I was like, “2029? That’s not a real year. By 2029, I’ll be drinking moon juice with President Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I’m not gonna be writing you a paper check.” I like having a house, but I loved looking for a house, ’cause I love real estate agents. I mean, they are the true heroes. They really are. Have you ever watched HGTV? Real estate agents have to deal with the dumbest people in the world making the biggest decisions of their lives. Every episode of HGTV is like, “Craig and Stacia are looking for a two-story A-frame that’s near Craig’s job in the downtown, but also satisfies Stacia’s need to be near the beach which is nowhere near Craig’s job. With three children and nine on the way, and a max budget of $7… let’s see what Lori Jo can do on this week’s episode of You Don’t Deserve A Beach House.”I loved our real estate agent. It was so fun to hang out with her. It was like hanging out with my mom. ‘Cause, you know, real estate agents always look like your mom. And they have various Chico’s accoutrements. They always have kind of fun mom energy. And they’re always, “So excited to see you two.” We would have little conferences before we walked into a house. She’d go, “Let’s talk. Let’s talk before we go in.” We’re, like, two feet from the door. “So, there’s no toilets. And I know that was on your list. But I think I can get him to budge. Let’s go.” So, we’d have a real estate agent, and then, like, the house would have a real estate agent who’s just some guy sitting in a big chair. And these two always hated each other. They’d be like, “Hi, Tony.” “Hi, Kim.” It’s like, “Jesus Christ! What, were you two in the Eagles together? What is the animosity about?” Our real estate agent wanted us to have a baby more than anyone else in our lives, more than anyone in our family. She hinted about it constantly. Every room she walked into, she’d be like, “So, this could be an office.” “Or maybe a nursery.” “Yeah. No, like we said, we don’t know if we’re gonna have… ” “No, no. I know, I know, you know. You don’t know if you’re gonna have ’em, but you know. You know, you never know. Sometimes you don’t know what’s gonna happen, and then… you know, something happens.” “Well, yeah, that’s how all of life works.” “Okay, all right. Okay. Uh-huh. Mmm. This is an on-fire garbage can. Could be a nursery.” She showed me a backyard once. She goes, “I don’t even like this backyard for you.” I was like, “Oh, do tell.” She said, “It’s all pavement. I think you should have some grass out there. You know, in case you have a couple… little guys… running around in the grass.” And I got offended on behalf of my imaginary kids. I was like, “Hey, lady. I went outside about as much as Powder from the movie Powder. My children are not gonna be playing out on grass. They will be up in their rooms playing violent video games and catfishing pedophiles. These are my children. And that’s my wife!”I didn’t mean to make it sound like we don’t want children. We don’t, but I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. See, I just don’t think babies like me very much. Sometimes babies will point at me, and I don’t care for that shit at all. Like, I’ll be on an elevator, and a baby will be there in its big, like, stroller activity tray, just, like, working on one Cheerio with Bobby Fischer-like intensity. And it’ll look up at me and go… I like to lean in and go, “Stop snitchin’, motherfucker.” And then walk off. ‘Cause you’re never too young to learn our national no-snitching policy. My friends have babies and I don’t do so well with them. I had a run-in with a two-year-old girl. I know there are better ways to start that story, but… My friend, Jeremy, has this two-year-old girl, and I really like her. She’s a sweet kid. I really like his daughter a lot. But I was over at his family’s house for the Fourth of July, and he had his daughter on his knee. And it was a very lovely day. His whole extended family was there. And he was bouncing his two-year-old up and down, and he pointed at me and he said to his two-year-old, “Do you know who that is? That’s your Uncle John.” And I was like, “Oh, my God. That’s so sweet. I’m her Uncle John.” And then the baby pointed at me and said, “Uncle John has a penis.” I thank you for laughing, because no one did that day! Fell deadly silent, is what they all did. Hey, do you know what you’re supposed to say when a baby points at you and knowingly says, “He has a penis”? No, I’m asking, ’cause I don’t know what to say in that situation. Here’s what I went with that day. I said, “Oh, come on!” I don’t know. I thought that’d be good. But then it just made it worse, ’cause it sounded like the baby and I had an arrangement not to talk about it, and she had violated my trust. Like, the baby had been like, “Do you have a penis?” And I was like, “Yes, I do, but you’re a baby, so discretion is key.” And then the next day she goes, “He has a penis,” and I go, “Oh, come on! Someone can’t keep a secret!” Luckily, Jeremy’s wife saved the day. The baby’s mom saved the day. She came in and she picked up the baby, and she was like, “It’s okay. She’s just going through that phase where she says penis and vagina a lot.” Aren’t we all? And, by the way, it would’ve been a totally different situation if the baby had said vagina. Like, if a grown woman had walked in the room, and the baby had been like, “She has a vagina,” the woman could be like, “Yes, I do, and it’s magnificent.” And we would all be like, “Hooray! You are brave!” No one wants to applaud the penis of a 32-year-old weirdo.It’s fun to be married. I’ve never been supervised before. I’m supervised. She studies what I do. Like an anthropologist. She’ll be like, “Sometimes, he will watch a movie on TV even though he already owns that movie on DVD. Pointing this out to him confuses and upsets him.” I had no supervision when I was a kid. We were free to do what we wanted. But also, with that, no one cared about kids. I grew up before children were special. I did. Very early ’80s, right before children became special. Like, I remember when milk carton kids became a thing. When they were like, “Hey, we should start looking for some of these guys. I don’t think they’re just blowing off steam.” No one cared about my opinion when I was a little kid. No one cared what I thought. Sometimes, people would say, “What do you think you’re doing?” But that just meant “Stop.” They didn’t actually wanna know my thought process. They didn’t want me to be like, “Well, I was gonna put this bottle rocket into this carton of eggs, so that when I lit off the bottle rocket, the eggs would explode everywhere.” “Oh, well, that’s very interesting. And what brought you to this experiment?” “Oh, well, thank you for asking. Well… you know how I’m filled with rage? I’m so horny and angry all the time… and I have no outlet for it. So… eggs.” Your opinion doesn’t matter in elementary school either. It matters in college. College is just your opinion. Just you raising your hand and being like, “I think Emily Dickinson’s a lesbian.” And they’re like, “Partial credit.” And that’s a whole thing. But in elementary school, it doesn’t matter what you think, it just matters what you know. You have to have answers to questions. And if you say, “I don’t know,” you get an X on your test, and you get it wrong and that’s not fair, ’cause your brain has never been smaller. Also, that’s not how life works. I’m in my 30s now. If you came to me now and you were like, “Hey, John, name three things that the Stamp Act of 1775 accomplished.” I’d go, “I don’t know. Get out of my apartment,” you know? But when you’re a little kid, you can’t say, “I don’t know.” You should be able to. That should be an acceptable answer on a test. You should be able to write in, “I don’t know. I know you told me. But I have had a very long day. I am very small. And I have no money. So you can imagine the kind of stress that I am under.” Or if it’s one of those true or false questions, you should be able to add a third option which is, “Who’s to say?” Kids are much more supervised now, but also, they have a lot of rights. Like, that’s the biggest civil rights increase I’ve seen in my lifetime. The rights of children have gone through the roof. I had no rights when I was a little kid. I remember, one time, I walked into a supermarket by myself, and I walked in through the double doors, and the woman behind the register just looked at me and she went, “No!” And I went, “All right.” And I turned around and left. That’s how broken I was.And there weren’t special things for kids the way there are now. Like, we would just go see movies. Any movie. Like Back to the Future. That was a movie everyone could see. Kids could kinda see it. Great movie, right? I rewatched it recently. It’s a very weird movie. Marty McFly is a 17-year-old high school student whose best friend is a disgraced nuclear physicist. And, I shit you not, they never explain how they became friends. They never explain it. Not even in a lazy way, like, “Hey, remember when we met in the science building?” They don’t even do that. And we were all fine with it. We were just like, “What, who’s his best friend? A disgraced nuclear physicist? All right, proceed.” What a strange movie to sell to be a family movie. Two guys had to go in and do that. They had to be like, “Okay… we got an idea… for the next big family-action-comedy. All right, it’s about a guy named Marty, and he’s very lazy. He’s always sleeping late.” “Okay. Is he cool like Ferris Bueller?” “No. But he does have this best friend who’s, you know, a disgraced… nuclear physicist.” “I’m confused here. This best friend, this is another student?” “No, no, no. No, this guy’s either, like, 40 or 80. Even we don’t know how old this guy’s supposed to be. But one day, the boy and the scientist, they go back in time and they build a time machine. Whoa!” “Okay. I think I see where you’re going here. They build a time machine, and they go back in time, and they stop the Kennedy assassination.” “Ah! Oh, wow, that’s a really good idea, I mean, we didn’t even think of that.” “All right, well, what do they do with the time machine?” “Well, now I’m embarrassed to say. Ah, well, all right, all right, all right. We thought… We thought it would be funny, you know, if the boy, if he went back in time and, you know, he tried to fuck his mom.” “I don’t know. We thought that’d be fun for people. But, no, good point. No, he doesn’t get to, he doesn’t get to. ‘Cause this family friend named Biff, he comes in and he tries to rape the mom in front of the son. The dad’s gotta beat the rapist off of her. And also, we’re gonna imply that a white man wrote ‘Johnny B. Goode.’ So, we’re gonna take that away from ’em.” “Well, this is the best movie idea I have ever heard in my life. We’re gonna make three of them. Now, you say they go to the past. How about we call it Back to the Past?” “No, no, no. Back to the Future.” “Right, but they go to the past.” “Yeah.”Kids have it very good now. My friend’s a teacher. She told me that, uh… the parents will take the kids’ side over the teacher now. That’s insane. That never happened. My parents trusted every grown-up… more than they trusted me. I don’t mean coaches and teachers. Any human adult’s word… was better than mine. Any hobo or drifter could have taken me by the ear up to my front door and been like, “Excuse me! Your kid bit my dick.” And my mom would be like, “John Edmund Mulaney, did you bite this nice man’s dick?” And I would be the only one who’s like, “Hey, doesn’t anyone wanna know why… his dick was near my biters… in the first place? Isn’t anyone curious… as to how I had access?” Don’t get me wrong, my parents love us. They just didn’t like us. We weren’t friends. People are now like, “My mom’s my best friend.” I was like, “Oh, is she a super bad mom?” My parents didn’t trust us, and they shouldn’t have trusted us. We were little goblins. We were terrible. I remember, one time, we were going to this resort for a vacation when we were little kids. Three weeks before we went to the resort, my dad sat us down and he said, “All right, we’re going to a resort, and I’ve just been informed that the man who owns the resort only has one arm.” And we were like, “Oh, yes! Yay! Yes!” “Now, I’m telling you three weeks in advance, so that you will not freak out when you see that he only has one arm.” “Oh, we’re gonna freak out so bad!” “Yes, John, you have a question?” “How did he lose his arm?” “That’s exactly what you won’t ask.” And then I did ask. I went into the kitchen one day, and I was like, “So, how’d you lose your arm?” And he was like, “Well, I was born with only one arm.” And I was like, “Nah.”No, my parents loved us. It’s just, like, they were the cops, you know? And we were criminals. So, we didn’t get along. We only got along in that way that, like, cops will sometimes be chummy with criminals. Like, when my dad and I would talk, it was like that scene in the movie Heat, when Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sit down in that diner. We kind of had that rapport of, like, “Hmm, we’re not so different, you and I. You have your law practice, and me, I have all these fucking markers.” “I guess we both have responsibilities when you look at it that way.” My dad would respect it if I could get away with breaking a rule. We had a rule in our house, you were not allowed to watch TV on a school night. So, every school night, I would 100% be watching TV. And I would hear my dad coming, I would immediately turn the TV off and grab any book, magazine, periodical, anything. And I’d open it and pretend to be doing homework. My dad would walk in the room and he would go, “What are you doing? Are you watching TV?” And I’d go, “No, man. I’m not watching TV.” And the TV wouldn’t even be dark yet. It would still have, like, a neon green halo around it. It’d be sizzling like a glass of Pepsi. And I would look my dad in the eyes and go, “No, I’m just reading this Yellow Pages.”My dad loved us. He just didn’t care about our general happiness or self-esteem. I remember, one time, we were really little kids. I have two sisters and a brother, and all four of us were in our family car ride for three hours going to Wisconsin. My dad was driving, going down the highway in our white van with wood around the side. ‘Cause you remember when you wanted your car to be made of wood? You remember that era? Where we were like, “How much wood can we get on this car… without it catching on fire?” But then the big announcement. “We here at Plymouth-Chrysler can put a saucy stripe of wood safely on the outside of your car, for all those times you’ve looked at your minivan and thought, ‘Huh! It needs a belt.'” So, we’re going on the highway. We’ve been on the road for three hours. And in the distance, we see a McDonald’s. We see the golden arches. And we got so excited. We started chanting, “McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s!” And my dad pulled into the drive-thru, and we started cheering. And then, he ordered one black coffee for himself. And kept driving. And, you know, as mad as that made me as a little kid, in retrospect, that is the funniest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. How perfect is that? He had a vanload of little kids, and he got black coffee. The one thing from McDonald’s no child could enjoy. My dad is cold-blooded. He once shushed a kid during Lion King on Broadway. That actually happened. We were at Lion King on Broadway, and there was a five-year-old behind us going, “Look, it’s Pumbaa! Look, it’s Timon!” And my dad turned around and said, “Are you going to talk the entire time?” He’s my hero.The weirdest thing when I was a kid was how much they scared us about smoking weed. They scared us about it constantly. And I’ve been on tour this year… Marijuana is legal in 18 or 19 states in some form or another. It’s insane. Yeah, well… All right, don’t “whoo” if you’re white. It’s always been legal for us. Come on, sir. We don’t go to jail for marijuana, you silly billy. When I was arrested with a one-hitter at a Rusted Root concert, I did not serve hard time. I think I got an award. Eighteen or 19 states. And, by the way, I agree, it’s a very good thing. But it’s also a really weird thing, because this is the first time I’ve ever seen a law change because the government is just like, “Fine.” You know? I’ve never seen it before. Like, gay marriage and healthcare, we have to battle it out in the Supreme Court, and be like, “Gay people are humans.” And they’re like, “We’ll think about it.” But with weed, it was just something we wanted really badly, and we kept asking them for 40 years, like, “Excuse me.” And then suddenly the government became like cool parents, and they’re just like, “Okay, here. Take a little. We’d rather you do it in the house than go somewhere else… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Those stupid parents. And that’s a big deal because they scared us about weed constantly. It would be on our sitcoms. We’d be watching Saved by the Bell, we’d be having a great old time. And then, suddenly, a character we had not seen before would show up with some weed and the episode would stop cold in its tracks. And they’d always hold the joint… The bad guy would hold the joint in a villainous way. They’d always offer the joint in a way that no one ever holds a joint. Like it’s a skull in a Shakespeare play. And now it’s legal, and that is great news. Unless you’re a weed dealer, and then it is terrible news. And I don’t just mean because they’re about to lose out to Amazon.com. I more feel bad for weed dealers ’cause they’re about to find out that we only showed them a certain amount of politeness because they had an illegal product. And we don’t show that same politeness to people who deliver legal products. Like, when the Chinese food delivery guy comes, we don’t let him hang out after he’s delivered the Chinese food. And we don’t look the other way when he says weird shit to the girls we’re hanging out with… to try to preserve the relationship. And we definitely don’t give him some of the Chinese food. He’s never like, “Hey, can I get in on those dumplings?” And we’re like, “Yeah, we’re all friends.”What are you, on your phone? Hey, V-neck. Hey! – What’s your name? – Sam. Sam? Cool! What do you do to afford V-necks, Sam? Typing numbers. Ah… numbers, the letters of math. I’m sorry to bother you. I don’t mean to single you out. I hate when people get pulled out of the audience. Like, are you familiar with the Cirque du Soleil, Sam? They’re a group of French assholes that are slowly taking over America by humiliating audience members one by one. We once went to see Cirque du Soleil at Navy Pier when I was a kid, and my brother came, and he was 12 years old. You remember being 12, when you’re like, “No one look at me or I’ll kill myself.” And these French bastards come into the crowd, being like, “Le volunteer!” And they pulled my brother up on stage, and I was like, “No!” And they brought him up, and they reached into his sweatshirt, and they were like… And they had planted a bra, and they pulled out a bra and they were like… And everyone at Navy Pier was like “Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha!” And my brother was like, “That’s great!” I have had other jobs besides comedy.I was an office temp for a while. I really miss that. I loved being a temp, because I would just go from office to office and be terrible at a different job for a week. And then you just get to retire like Lou Gehrig. You’re like, “Thank you. No one will ever see me again.” And they’re like, “Goodbye!” I worked at an office once on 57th Street in New York City. I was there for a couple weeks. I was in a cubicle next to this other cubicle. This woman named Mischa sat in the other cubicle. I want to get the number right. I think Mischa had… about 900,000 photos of her daughter up in her cubicle. Almost like she was trying to solve a conspiracy about her daughter, A Beautiful Mind-style. I think about Mischa two times a week… because of a phone call she had next to me one day. It was one of my first days, and I was sitting next to her. And her phone rang, and this was her call, and I’m quoting. Her phone rang and she said, “Hello? Hush!” And then she hung up. Think about that two times a week. And I didn’t know her well enough by then to be like, “Hey, what kind of a person are you?” You know? Who could she have been talking to? “Hello? Hush!” This was a place of business. My only thought was that it was the CEO of the company being like, “Mischa, help. I’m doing a crossword puzzle. I need a four-letter word for ‘be quiet’ right now.” – “Hush!” – “You’re promoted.”I temped at a little web company on 25th Street in New York City. It was a small web company owned by this old man who was old, old, old money New York. His name was Henry J. Finch IV. Like old, old, old money. Like, his money was in molasses or something. He owned this web company. I have no idea why he owned this web company. I think he won it in a rich man’s game of dice and small binoculars, or something. Mr. Finch wore linen suits. He had suspenders, he had a bow tie, he had a hat, he had a cane with an ivory handle. I’m giving you more description than you need, ’cause I need you to believe me. This was a real person I knew in the 21st century. Mr. Finch was in his 70s. He had an assistant named Mary. She was in her 50s, she was Korean. I don’t know why he had an assistant. He did not need one. Unless he needed someone to be like, “Remember, Mr. Finch, at five o’clock, you need to keep looking like a hard-boiled egg.” One day, Mr. Finch came into the office. It had been raining. Everything I’m about to say to you was said in front of me on that afternoon. Mr. Finch walked into the office, and he was wearing a raincoat, he was wearing a rain hat, and he had his cane. And he walked in and he said, and I’m quoting, “Ah! One feels like a duck splashing around in all this wet! And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!” And then Mary yelled, “Ooh, ducklings!” To which Mr. Finch replied, “Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack.” And then walked into his office. I think about that every goddamn day. I mean, imagine you’re me. You’re a 22-year-old temp, and you’re so hungover, and you just wanna die every day. And then that happens in front of you, and I don’t know, gives you hope? And I did that a little fast. Let me break that conversation down for you. Mr. Finch walked in, and he began a conversation the way anyone would. “Ah!” “One feels like a duck splashing around in all this wet!” The rain. “And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!” Now, that’s debatable. But rather than debate that point, Mary brought up a new, separate, but interesting point… which was, “Ducklings!” But Mr. Finch, ever the realist about his own age and mortality… said, “Ah, too old to be a duckling!” As if to say, “My duckling days are behind me. Mary, don’t you see? I’m a duck now. And to prove it… Well, I’ll say just about the most famous catchphrase a duck has… ‘Quack, quack.'” And I knew right at that moment, by the way, that it meant nothing to Mr. Finch, what he had said. Crazy people are like that. They have unlimited crazy currency. Like, if I had gone into his office a couple weeks later and been like, “Hey, Finch, you remember that time you were like, ‘Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack’?” He would just be like, “Ah, perhaps I did quack! But such is life for an old knickerbocker like me.” Like, he’d say something else crazy.That’s the wonderful thing about crazy people, you know? Is that they just have unlimited currency. The things they say mean nothing to them, but they mean everything to me. I was once walking into Penn Station in New York. I was walking down 31st Street towards Eighth Avenue. I’m walking down 31st, there’s this woman standing at Eighth and 31st. I have my little roller suitcase. You can all imagine. I’m walking towards her. She’s smoking a cigarette that is not lit anymore. She’s watching me walk, kind of scanning me up and down, as if she had Terminator vision… where she could see little bits of data, like, “Little honky ass,” and could read information. As I walked past her, she said this to me. I walked past her and she said, and I’m quoting, “Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs.” Very dirty, yes? A very upsetting thing to hear, yes? I’m sorry you all had to hear that, but at least you all got to hear it as a group. I was alone out there that afternoon. And she said this totally unprompted. “Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs.” It wasn’t like I had paused in front of her and been like, “What should I do with my life?” So, I walk away from her with this to-do list. And I like structure, I like a to-do list. It did dawn on me that that list of things does get better as it goes along, when you really think about it. ‘Cause it starts in a pretty rough place. It starts with just about the worst task a to-do list can start with. But by the end, you have your own small business. And isn’t that the American dream when all’s said and done? That if you eat enough ass and suck enough dick, one day you can sell drugs. Imagine you did all that to sell drugs and then they legalize drugs, and you were like, “But I…” This has been a real thrill to perform here, by the way. I just wanna say that in all sincerity. Thanks for coming to this. Really, really appreciate it.I wanna tell you one more story before I get out of here, about the night I met a guy named Bill Clinton. Now, I don’t… Some of you know who that is? For those of you that don’t, he was President of the United States from 1993 until 2001, and he is a smooth and fantastic hillbilly who should be declared Emperor of the United States of America. Now, I know you know who Bill Clinton is. But I was doing a show at a college, and I mentioned Bill Clinton, and, like, they kind of didn’t know who he was. Like, sorry, they knew the name, right? But they only knew this 2015 Bill Clinton, who’s a very different Bill Clinton. Have you seen his ass lately? What the hell is he trying to pull? He’s all thin now, and he wears these little tight suits, and he’s got these grandpa reading glasses, like, “Hey, I can’t do nothing to nobody no more.” “Oh, me? I’m just an old, old man. I don’t have the appetites.” You know? And he’s always flying around the world with Bill Gates trying to cure AIDS.That is not the Bill Clinton that we all signed up for 20 years ago. Our Bill Clinton was like a big, fat Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights-looking guy, who played the saxophone on Arsenio, and his work in the STD community was not in curing anything at that time. That was the man we all elected president. That was the Bill Clinton that I met. I got to meet Bill Clinton when he was Governor Clinton in 1992, when he was first running for president.And I got to meet Bill Clinton because my parents had gone to the same college as Bill Clinton. They’re a little younger, but they went to the same college. So, when he was first running for president, he would have all these big, like, alumni fundraisers, and everyone who went was invited to go. Now, this was really cool for a couple reasons. One, I got to meet Bill Clinton. But two, I got to watch my parents watch someone they went to school with become the president. And that is super funny to see, ’cause think about some of the people you went to school with. Now imagine they’re becoming the president. Imagine Sam was becoming the president. It would stir up strong emotions. And my parents had very different opinions on Bill Clinton.My mom loved Bill Clinton, ’cause Bill Clinton was always a really charismatic, handsome guy. I mean, think about how many women he got in the 1990s when he looked like Frank Caliendo doing John Madden. Now… imagine him as a college student. And my mom tells me that there was this sort of chivalrous policy on campus back then, where, late at night, if female students were leaving the library unaccompanied, male students were encouraged to wait out in front and offer to walk them home. That sounds good, right? So, my mom tells me that Bill Clinton would be out in front of the library every single night… just being like, “Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home?” And one night, my mom was leaving the library, and Bill Clinton was like, “Hey, can I walk ya home?” And my mom was like, “Hell, yes.” So… This is absolutely true. My mom, little Ellen Stanton, walked arm-in-arm with Bill Clinton to her dorm. And she was like, “You know, I wanted to invite him up for a beer.” And I was like, “Thanks, I’m nine.” But… her roommate was upstairs, so she lost her chance with Bill Clinton.Now, my dad, on the other hand, hated Bill Clinton, because my parents were dating during this time. And also, my dad’s a much more morally-upright, conservative kind of guy. He always told me that he hated it in college that Bill Clinton could, quote, “Get away with anything.” Can you imagine how he felt later?So, one day, this invitation arrives for a fundraiser where you could meet Bill Clinton. My mom opens it first and she goes, “Oh, we have to go. We have to go see Bill.” And without looking up at her, my dad just says, “Why? It’s not like he’s gonna remember you.” One black coffee. Same motherfucker. So, my mom says, “Fine! I’ll go and I’ll take John.” And I was like, “Hell, yeah.” And I slid in the room in my First Communion suit, ready to go. ‘Cause I loved Bill Clinton. I was ten years old. If you were a kid when Bill Clinton was first released, it was the most exciting thing ever. We’d never seen a cool politician before. And he would go on MTV, and he’d have cool answers to kids’ questions. They’d be like, “Governor, what’s your favorite food?” And he’d be like, “I don’t know, fries?” And we’d be like, “Yay, we eat fries!”I learned to play his campaign song on the piano. It was “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac… from Rumours, an album written by and for people cheating on each other. He let us know who he was right away. So, I went with my mom, as her date… to reconnect with Governor Bill Clinton. We walked into the ballroom. It was a big hotel ballroom. It was the Palmer House Hilton, big Hilton hotel ballroom. Walked into the ballroom, it was packed with people. It’s actually the ballroom from the end of the movie The Fugitive, remember? So, that ballroom. So, my mom and I walk in, it’s packed with people, the… Sorry, the end where Harrison Ford, as Dr. Richard Kimble, bursts in to confront Dr. Charles Nichols, right? Okay. So, that ballroom. So, my mom and I walk in, it’s packed with people. Why does Kimble confront Nichols? Well, I know we all know this, but… No, no. But, but, but… Kimble, he found out that Nichols, along with Devlin MacGregor and Lentz, who has mysteriously died, they had hired Frederick Sykes, the one-armed man, to kill Kimble. Kimble’s wife wasn’t even the target. I know we all know this. But they were gonna kill Kimble because he wasn’t gonna approve certain liver samples to pass RUD-90. So, Kimble finds out about all of this, and, of course, he’s furious. And he bursts into the ballroom and he goes, “You switched the samples!” And Dr. Nichols is like, “Ladies and gentlemen, my friend, Dr. Richard Kimble.” What accent did that guy have, by the way? He goes, “You switched the samples! And you doctored your research! So that you could have Provasic!”Anyway, so it’s that ballroom. So, we walk into that ballroom. It was packed with people. It was packed with people. A real Who’s Not of Chicago celebrities. Walter Jacobson was there. Walter Jacobson was the local Fox anchor. He’d do fun things where he’d go undercover as a homeless person. And he’d be like, “Oh, what time is the soup?” And they’d be like, “Man, you’re Walter Jacobson.” He was there. Everybody. And on the far side of the ballroom, under a spotlight, we saw a little bit of silver hair. And it was him… Bill Clinton. The Comeback Kid. But he was surrounded by reporters, and photographers, and Secret Service. So, what are you gonna do? Well, if you’re my mom, you ball up the back of my sport coat, and you push me forward like a human shield. And then you start jogging while yelling, “This ten-year-old boy has to meet the next president of the United States!” Kind of implying that I might be dying. My feet were not on the ground. She was swinging me like a snowplow. I was just mowing down fat Chicago Democrats. I pushed past all the reporters, I pushed past all the photographers. We pushed past all the Secret Service.We land at Bill Clinton’s feet. Bill Clinton turns, looks at my mom and says, “Hey, Ellen,” ’cause he never forgets a bitch, ever. My mom melts. She goes, “Hi, Bill.” Then it is revealed that she has no plan. So… she pushes me towards Clinton and she goes, “This is my son, John, and he’s also going to be president.” And I was like, “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not gonna be president.” And I know now that I’m definitely never gonna be president. Not unless everyone gets real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. Based on my ten-year-old memory, Bill Clinton is about 13 feet tall. And he leaned down, because, well, I was wearing this button that I bought outside the fundraiser. It was a cartoon button of George H. W. Bush, and it had a quail flying over his head, and it was shitting on his head. And it said, “Bird-brained.” And I thought it was very funny. And Bill Clinton leaned down so that only I could hear and he said, “Hey, man, I like your button.” And I said, “You can do whatever you want forever.” And he took my advice. And… it was the best night of my entire life.And I got home that night… I got home that night, and my dad was still awake, like, reading angry under one lamp, just like… And I went up to him and I went, “Hey! I’m gonna be a Democrat.” “And I’m gonna vote for Bill Clinton.” And without looking up at me, my dad just said, “You have the moral backbone of a chocolate éclair.” You know, how you talk to a child. So, here’s the end of that story. That was 1992.Let’s flash forward five years to 1997. It is now 1997. I am a sophomore in high school, Bill Clinton is in his second term as president. And on the morning that the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaks on the cover of The New York Times. It had been on the Drudge Report, and then it was on the cover of The New York Times. That morning, I wake up to the newspaper hitting me in the face. I am a teenager asleep in bed, and the newspaper hits me in the face and falls open on my stomach. And I open my eyes to see my dad standing there dressed for work, and he says, “The other shoe just dropped.” And then my dad went in to work to find out that his law firm had been hired to defend Bill Clinton.Good night, Chicago. and thats mulaney for ya

#loml: fish #jordan fisher

8 notes · View notes

dolly-decadatia · 3 years

Text

Angry angry witch journal entry: 2/10/21

Today’s reading

3 card spread : the Trinity

ALL INVERTED

Question- what do I need to do to find inner peace?

Underneath: sacrifice

Renunciation, offering, letting go

“It is time for you to examine what you value most and what you least want to give up. ... For so many of you will not choose. You wish to be good at all. You wish to let down none. You do not think about what is best. For what is best sets your blood alight, and makes the song of your soul soar. What is best is that you know your own heart, and know your own code, and adhere as closely as possible to what is noble about you. There will not be time for all, space for all, love for all. ...you must sacrifice something. By doing so make it beautiful. Make it worth it. Make it count. Make this deliberate. Do not play victim. Make your choice and be powerful and compassionate at once. “

I must find something that soothes, gratifies, or excites me and give it up.

This will “refine and polish” my character.

Heart: discipline

Training, consistency, practice

Oof it’s brutal

Basically I am lazy and spoiled as are most modern humans. I need to work hard I don’t way. “ there is a desire within your culture to at all times experience happiness and comfort. It has created generations of people who are physically unwell, mentally lazy, and spiritually apathetic. The discipline that is being required of you will result in a great breakthrough. You know that a major part of your life requires a change...it will be hard. ...the challenge you face will go beyond what is easy and pleasant to do and yet it will bring you all that you wish for and the strength of character you sometimes have doubted you have. ... lay a plan down, to create some structure and to stick to your commitments. You must clear doubts and into the space it’s absence creates, pour action.

I hate this card so much. I’ve been pushing myself way to hard for my entire life to earn money or be physically perfect or to pass. I’ve only just now let go of all of that and this card is telling me I’m lazy and I need to sacrifice? My entire life has been hard work and sacrifice. My knee jerk reaction so far is rage and being offended.

Promise: religion (holy shit)

Canon, rules, commandments

This is fucking stupid and I don’t vibe with it. It’s telling me I’m religious. I’m not. That I suckled religion from my mothers teat. There’s that creepy breeding fetish of the author rearing its head on another card description. First of all, my mother is an eclectic witch and her mother was a wasp of some sort who was a cunt to her about religion. I am very grateful my mom broke the cycle of religious abuse. I am not oppressed in the slightest bit by my mother. She’s awesome. My action is to “study the worlds religions.” Absolutely not, cards. I’m not even slightly interested. I am queer and nonbinary. I’m not going to use my precious free time reading homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic bull shit.

This is the second time these cards have pissed me the fuck off and I do not like them. I gave it a try and it is not a match. You don’t come into my house and tell me I’m lazy and that I’m religious whether I want to admit it at all.

So what do I do? Am I less of a witch if I refuse to oracle card??? My practice should be what I say it is. Do I like working with oracle cards or am I wasting my time with this bull shit because I feel like I “should”? Or because they remind me of Dru? Either way I’m mad as hell right now and I can’t picture continuing to endure these whack ass readings. I could have been doing fun magick during this wasted hour

I made it 6 minutes into the 10

Minute meditation I was supposed to do in year and a day book day 1 exercise. I held Black Widow, my spider plant and mediated picturing myself growing roots that connected me to all the plants and animals in the world. (He wants the reader to include humans in that but let’s not get wild. I don’t like most people.) I don’t know if I consider it a success but I certainly tried .

Spell a day was about protecting yourself from gossip and slander which is not an issue I have.

Ending today’s session feeling cranky and displeased. This is supposed to be my happy place. I resent the reading very much.

#les vampires #oracle cards #atheist witch #secular witchcraft #babywitch #witch journey #nonbinary witch #queer witch

1 note · View note

mor-beck-more-problems · 4 years

Text

Monster House || Morgan, Cassie, & Blanche

Three gals, one creepy old house, and TOO MANY ghosts.

Contains: ghostly body horror

@harlowhaunted @deathsdoorman

Morgan brought her car up to the curb in front of the Bachman house. She had gone up the drive many times before, but under the cover of eternal night, it seemed more foreboding, more dangerous, and Morgan had a flash of fear that the earth might swallow her car if she left it alone, an offering to be devoured. It was probably her fear talking, the night pressing on longer than thirty minutes in front of her happy light could help. Or it could be the four-ish deaths she’d recently uncovered thanks to her sleuthing with Rio and Winston. Agnes’ father had been impaled on farming equipment, her sister strangled in clothesline, and one of her nieces drowned in a pail. Accidents, all of them. The exact cause of death for Agnes’ mother, Hannah, was unknown, because she was found so many days later, when a neighbor was alerted by the buzzing growth of decomposition. And that didn’t count the little disasters that had come before then. Something about the curse, which only knew how to take and torture, seemed to have embedded itself into the walls, and Morgan felt a twist of guilt at agreeing to bring Blanche along. Seeing this through with Cassie was one thing. Unavoidable, even if her refusal to let Morgan pay her back somehow made her neck itch with discomfort. But Blanche? She was a kid. A reckless, overworked kid in way over her head in so many ways. She didn’t need another. But here they were. Marching headlong into a completely literal danger zone.

The Bachman house was the oldest of its kind on the street, steadfast against the press of time that peeled its fingers over the paint and shingles and bowed its fist on the front step. The earth, still in its winter sleep, seemed to have made an uneasy truce with the place, growing in brown prickly brambles around the perimeter, but stopping short of the place itself. The strange clarity of this border made the house seem ensconced in its own picturesque dome of grim. Morgan walked as far as the weeds and sat down, clutching her bag to her chest. She had Cassie’s special brew, a tin of Morton’s, the iron rod she’d been gifted by Deirdre, and a shiny new transmutation circle on a cuff around her wrist. It was more than she’d ever had coming here on her own, but knowing what she knew now, it didn’t seem like enough.

Pulling the car up across the street and leaning across to look out from the passenger side window Cassie sized up the building looming just ahead of her. Reaching behind her to the back-seat Cassie pulled through and slung her bag across her chest and stepped out of the car. One of these things is not like the others. Amongst its newer and less neglected siblings the house stuck out with its dilapidated yard and forlorn looking façade against the fresh coats of paint, well-manicured lawns and front porches of its neighbours. Never judge a book by its cover, but she felt it was safe to say that saying didn’t count under the circumstances. She didn’t even have to step inside to get an uneasy vibe from the place.

She raised her palm up in a small wave as she spotted Morgan where Morgan was sat, bag clenched to her chest. “There’s uh….a lot of character going on here,” she offered in tentative greeting as she approached and stopped just outside the threshold. “You sure about this?” She was sure she already knew the answer, but she had to ask all the same. Okay, two out of three so far were here. The third party was the worry. Blanche was young, but determined, persistent even, but if every other interaction so far was to go on, she was going to do this kind of anyway. She may as well get the full experience with some backup.

Regan was going to kill her. Remmy was going to kill her. Blanche was probably going to want to punch herself in the face after this. But it was fine. She pulled up in her yellow jeep, parking on the side of the road, already spotting where Morgan and Cassie were. She hopped out, grabbing her backpack that had… Well. She hadn’t known what to bring. She had a lot of salt, acid mace, regular mace, the chalk pens, and that book that Cassie told her to get with her. Just in case. She made Granny stay at home because she didn’t want Granny getting into a fistfight with a cranky ‘caught in between’ ghost. She still didn’t know what that meant.

“Hey guys,” Blanche said, approaching the two. She looked at the house and grimaced. “Spooky house,” she said. The sort of house that had this been three months ago, she would have had to be dragged into kicking and screaming. It was like something broke in her - the denial and the living in secret wasn’t something she wanted to do anymore. It was exhausting. But, well, this didn’t seem to be very restful. Still, Morgan was nice, and she liked her, so she couldn’t just leave her alone. She shifted the backpack on her back, looking between the two. “So what’s the plan?”

Morgan fixed her attention on Cassie and Blnache’s shoes. They were nice shoes, black and sensible, and ready for ass-kicking in a pretty on TV sort of way. Morgan wished she’d gotten the memo and put on something besides her busted sneakers, but that wasn’t why she was looking. It was just easier to see three pairs of shoes on a rickety stoop than two good, nice people with hope and salt in their bags, and her. She could turn them away, she thought. Sorry, game over, thanks but no thanks, I’ll just take my blind ass in there alone bye! But she needed this. She needed the universe to stop blowing holes in her like so much swiss cheese. She needed coming to White Crest to amount to something more than hurt and confusion. “Spooky Central!” She said brightly. “Come for the ambiance, stay for the impending doom.” She forced herself up to her feet, iron and salt at the ready. “Um, we stick together, because splitting up is for horror movies, and that’s not us. We don’t know who all might actually be in there, but both Agnes’ parents, her sister, and one niece all died in there back when. I don’t know if Agnes can turn up if she died in Texas, ghost travel isn’t my thing, but it is yours! Hopefully whoever Constance is shows up, and--” She held herself a little straighter. She was fine. This was fine. Plans were supposed to be simple and straightforward, right? “At the end of the day, we just need to get the dirt on why my family’s been cosmically screwed for at least four generations! The older they are, the more likely they’ll know.”

The last of their party arrived hefting a backpack which looked like she was packing for doomsday, but she came prepared, she would give her that. Had Cassie really been that young when she started out? Too young for this. This was probably how everybody that had ever clued her in had felt now she was in their shoes. It was a weirdly jarring feeling. Cassie looked over at Morgan and flashed her a brief look of doubt. Yeah no, this is a bad idea, a thought she quickly shook off. Okay, so she had two people she had to watch out for. No big deal. It was just to talk anyway. No exorcisms needed necessarily. This was doable. “Yeah, no splitting up,” she agreed with a small shake of her head. “That never works out and if there’s anybody in there we’ll know soon enough. We’ll get them talking,” she shrugged. Getting them to do the opposite was usually the problem. Plus, if they split up, she just knew she would turn around at some point and Blanche would manage to find the broken floorboard or portal to a hell dimension. Call it a Sixth sense. “How about we take things room by room,” she offered up, looking back towards the house. “Go from there,” she finished as the dry grass reeds parted to her left as something skittered through.

Impending doom was right. Blanche looked at the house, doubtfully. Maybe she should have brought Granny with her. Granny was always better at calming down ghosts - but those ghosts were usually, like, freshly dead. “I’m all for not splitting up,” Blanche said. “I know, surprising, but like - I do have some sense of self-preservation you know,” She shot them a grin, as goodhearted as she could make it. She was a little anxious, but as Morgan pointed the way to go, she was the one that strode right ahead, grimacing at whatever slithered through the grass. Nope. Nope. Nope. They were supposed to deal with the inside of the house, not whatever animal was in the grass. Gripping onto one of her backpack straps tightly, she tensed the second she pushed the door open. She definitely knew that feeling. She held the door open for the other two, walking a little deeper into the house, looking around the entryway curiously. “Room by room, yeah? This the best place to start for our friends?”

The Bachman house welcomed them with a damp sigh. As they crossed the threshold one by one, the doorframes edged away from their frames, making room for their new guests. The walls, flaking like fine old gentlemen, stood as straight as they had the day they rose. Stairs rose in neat lines, and pine and oak furniture, stubborn against the wear of time, glowered alongside their moth and maggot familiars.

“Hello, old house,” Morgan sang tentatively. In visits past, she had said so as a peace offering toward the presumed beings loitering around. Knowing what she knew now, however, of White Crest, of the many ways her ancestors had perished, it became a plea for mercy. Agnes, from what she had gathered, had liked to be the center of entertainment. Her sister, Martha, had been more of the ‘boss the servants around’ type. And their mother, Hannah, had been ill after a tragic, brutal fall before her eventual death, like Morgan’s own mother had been. Because of course she had. Because some torments were just so good they bore repeating.

“Parlor first,” Morgan said, “Maybe they’ll be partying where the party’s at, right?” She stepped ahead of the others, iron rod raised in front of her. “Either of you see anything?” To Morgan’s ordinary eyes, the place was much as it had always been, except for a door in the corner that she didn’t remember being there before. Morgan went still. “Blanche--? Cassie?” She called.

“Emphasis on some'' Cassie half-joked at Blanche and followed after the two of them. “But good to hear,” Cassie was the last one to step across the threshold and closed the door over behind her just as that familiar pins and needles sensation spread. She could feel it spike as she stepped further inside the front room and trail down her arms and crept up to the tip of her neck. She did her best to shake it off and pressed on. Taking a cursory glance around she caught sight of a few weak fleeting figures that seemed like they were doing their best to keep out of her eyeline. Weird. Cassie looked away from the others for a second and took a few steps towards the door on her right to peek inside following after one of the figures, but thought better of it. “Okay, parlour sounds good,” she started, “let me try and get hold of few of these—" she moved to turn around and found herself facing a wall. The hell did that come from? Shaking off the confusion she looked around for any sign of Blanche or Morgan, but found herself alone in a now empty hallway. “Guys?” She called out again and let out a frustrated sigh and ventured through the first door she could find and stepped inside. A dark-haired figure flitted across the room, but she couldn’t quite make them out in the gloom, “Morgan?”

“Cassie? I don’t think these guys want to-” Blanche started, absentmindedly following after Morgan to the Parlor as a figure darted just out of her eyeline. Must be one skittish ghost. “Guys?” Blanche did not find Morgan, even though she just saw her go through the door. Instead, she found a moth-eaten dusty bed. Blanche stared at it, silently a moment, before turning around. “Cassie?” Nope. There was a window. Blanche stared at it for a long moment. Her entire body was on edge because they were all clearly note alone in the house, but now she was just tense. When the hell did she get to the second floor of the building? Blanche backed away from the the window, turning away as she patted her pockets for her cell phone, intending on calling Cassie straight away. No service. “Are you kidding me?” she hissed, before she heard something move. She looked up, and moved straight through the open doorway and into the Hallway - nope. Not the hallway. “.... Cassie! Morgan!” Blanche yelled at the top of her lungs. It was a big ass house, but someone had to hear her. Maybe, though, she realized after, with a grimace, she should be careful. There were others in the house after all.

They left me, Morgan thought. The plan didn’t mean anything and they left me. Was that the real plan, to disappear? Morgan stayed rooted in place, the rod trembling in her hands. The Bachman House breathed around her, raising dust around the old floorboards. Its cold breath pinched her, cruel and needling. The walls laughed, as the playground children had laughed, and the third dates she tried to tell about magic, her old cohort. And under them was a strange sound, a tisk of disapproval, or of keeping time. Tat, tat, tat, tat… Morgan wobbled on her feet and inched through the new door, clearly she wasn’t going to find anyone in here—and found herself on a stairwell, suffocated in dark. “No—” She dashed back the way she’d come and crashed into a wall. Trapped. “No, no, you do not get to do this. Cassie! Blanche!” She stumbled up blindly, each stair scraping on her ankles like so many teeth. She had to get to them—didn’t she?

The room was empty save for a debris-covered fireplace and some moth-eaten curtains. Cassie breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped inside and caught sight of Morgan’s sneakers in the dim light. Okay, now they just needed to find Blanche. She was crouched in the corner of the room with her back to the door. “Hey, you find something?” She asked taking a step closer, “thought we said we weren’t splitting up where’s—"she cut herself off and felt the pin prickles erupt along her arms again as she got closer and clocked the tattered denim jacket and dishevelled dark hair. No, not Morgan. Definitely not Morgan. A pair of terrified dark eyes flickered up at her. “Hey,” she ventured tentatively like she was approaching a startled animal, “you help me I’ll help you have you seen-”

The girl rose up suddenly, hands clinging to the wall and shrank away from her as though she were contagious, “stay away,” her voice cracking from disuse. “Get away from me!” She shrieked and streaked past her, making contact with her right arm sending the feeling of her skin being plunged into ice water and darted past her at speed through the wall. Taking their advice Cassie got out and called out again, “Blanche? Morgan?” She yelled. “The hell are you?” She asked quietly as she weighed up her options. “Stay where you are! I’ll come to you,” she tried, hoping one of them was close enough to hear that. For a split second she could have swore she heard someone call out and followed blindly in the direction it came from.

“Cassie! Morgan!” Blanche was bellowing Cassie and Morgan’s names over and over again. It was a big house, but it wasn’t that big. They had to find each other eventually. Flashes of people danced around the corners of her eyes, but everytime she turned to look, nothing was there. She did not like that. She didn’t like that one bit. She was hardly used to seeing ghosts when they were normal, she didn’t like them when they were screwing with her. And this whole maze of rooms thing? Not cool. Blanche was going through rooms as fast as humanly possible, none of them ever where she meant to go and none of them being right. It wasn’t until she ended up in a closet that she finally stopped and took a fucking breath.

It was a large closet. Blanche turned on the flashlight on her phone, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Blanche screamed backing up against the wall as she stared at the human skeletons. Her stomach twisted, she for a moment, she was certain she was going to hurl. Except the jacket. The stupid fucking jacket. Blanche latched onto the first thing she saw that would ground her fear, and it was a jacket. Faded and moth eaten and dusty… It was hung around the shoulders of the bones, but that wasn’t what she was concerned with. DIE was on the breast pocket. She knew that fraternity on campus, but this was just a cruel joke. She was rooted to the spot now, staring at this stupid jacket around a dead person’s bones. Eerily, she was calm now - or numb. Her head sort of felt fuzzy, almost like she was in a dream. What a dream, what a nightmare. She went to leave… And then turned back around, unsure what possessed her to carefully take the jacket with her. Two people had died in this house alone and scared, someone had to miss them. And Adam could track down any DIE alumni and figure out who had gone missing. What their names were. Who were they? She wanted to know. Blanche’s stomach churned as she clutched the moth eaten jacket to her, before stumbling back into the hallway eyes burning with tears. Wait. Hallway. The hallway! No more room swapping hell! “Cassie! Morgan!” Blanche yelled again, turning a corner and catching sight of the stairs. She bolted to them immediately. “Hey! Can anyone hear me?!”

Morgan was sure she’d been walking the same stairs for hours now. She had stopped for breath, she had raced on almost all fours in desperation, and it was still just this. Just her and the dark, alone.

Tat, tat, tat, tat….

Morgan tripped on the latest step and slammed onto her knees. “What the hell?” Her voice trembled hoarsely in her throat.

“Come out already, pumpkin.”

It was a soft voice, steady and sure. Morgan couldn’t place the sound, but there was something in the cadence that chilled her with familiarity. What was happening? Why couldn’t she get out? Morgan staggered back up to her feet and began to climb again. Any second now, it had to be. She couldn’t be more than a few steps from the top. She continued, on and on, over and over. Had there been a landing she’d missed? A door just to her right or something. Of course there was. Only you could get lost on a fucking staircase. Morgan stopped, and fished out her flashlight for what--the third time? Or the first? Had she tried it before or dismissed the obvious idea because getting something right would just be too novel an experience?

The light came on. Morgan was staring in front of another door.

Earth and fucking stars, she had been in front of it the whole time. Morgan threw her weight against it and stumbled into a hallway. She looked behind her--there was no door. No enclosed stairs. She was coming up the main staircase that had watched them when they first entered. Someone was calling her name. Or was that in her head? Stupid, lonely-- no. Blanche was there, running towards her.

“What the hell is wrong with you!” Morgan snapped. “What were you--” she couldn’t breathe. She was trembling from the shoulders down. Shit. How did she breathe again? She couldn’t forget how to breathe. It was in there somewhere, right? In. Hold. Out. Slowly, counting the time. One, two, three, three-- wait. Morgan looked up at Blanche from her haggard crouch in the middle of the hall. “You were supposed to be right behind me,” she said. “And what is that you’re holding?”

She could hear them yelling but every time she thought she was getting close it faded and died and she was left with silence. Cassie lost count of how many doors she went through that seemed to lead her on in what felt like an unending loop. “Here! I’m here!” She called back to no answer and sat down to catch her breath on one of the chairs left sprawled in the basement that sent out a thick plume of dust before she registered, she wasn’t alone down there. Several pairs of eyes turned to look at her and instantly rushed her. A chorus of frantic voices fought amongst themselves to be heard over the din and figures pushed and shoved to jostle for position in front of her. “One at a time,” she yelled. “One at a damn time,” to no avail. If her patience had been low before it was non-existent now. Reaching into her bag she opened up the salt container and launched it into the air sending anyone stupid enough to have stuck around to see it in her hands evaporated into the air. On the move again she tried to make contact again, but none of the occupants inside lingered long enough to be of any use or offer any help. They were all just kids, terrified kids too far gone to be of any use. Pressing on she wound her way through the house until she finally pushed against the one door that emptied her out into the hallway. Her eyes took a moment to adjust and clocked the two figures huddled close together and felt a flicker of relief at the sight of both Morgan and Blanche just ahead of her. She attempted to dust herself off on approach and caught her breath. “I’ve been looking everywhere,” she stopped to get a breath, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you guys,” she managed in relief and clocked the tattered fabric in Blanche’s hands. “You find something?”

“Morgan!! Morgan!” Blanche exclaimed in relief, before Morgan’s name caught in her throat as she lashed out at her. Blanche looked at her, eyes wide, shaking her head. “I was right behind you! I was right behind you! I got spit out in the bedroom! I don’t know what happened. And then I started running through the house and nothing was right and -” Blanche was shaking and talking way faster than she meant. She didn’t realize how terrified she had been until she looked down at the jacket and saw her knuckles white with how hard she was gripping the jacket. She took in a shaky breath, jumping as Cassie hurried up to them. She let out a sigh of relief, nodding. “There’s - I don’t know where, but - I mean, two people, two skeletons…” Blanche wasn’t great at explaining, but she shifted the jacket in her hands and showed the D.I.E. logo on it. “This is a frat at my school. I thought… if I talked to my friend, they could… figure out who they were,” Blanche said, suddenly feeling very foolish. This wasn’t why they were here at all. They were here for Morgan. Blanche’s face felt hot, and her eyes burned slightly, and she looked down, clutching the jacket back to her. After a moment, she got it together. “What the hell just happened?”

Morgan was still struggling to breathe. She gave up on maintaining her crouch and stood, pressed against the wall as she forced oxygen through her teeth. “Yeah, while we’re at it, we can pick up trophies from every other dumbass who died lost in a two story house!” She snapped. Stars, this was wrong. This was wrong, wrong, wrong, but Morgan couldn’t figure out in which direction, should she be doing this alone? Was that better? Or was the stupider thing to push Cassie and Blanche away? The thoughts in her head were soured like milk left in the sun, ugly blobs rising to the surface, smelling strange, and wrong. She clenched her fists. “We’re lost,” she said, trying to line up the facts for herself as much as the others. “We might die here. You need to get out. I, meanwhile, am going to--”

Her eyes didn’t even look away. They were on the end of the hall, she could’ve sworn they were on it the whole time, when it stretched impossibly far away from them and the door, or had there been a door? There must have been, her eyes never left it-- The door opened with a cruel thump as it hit the wall on its hinges.

Morgan looked to the others and back to the hall again. “We are so screwed,” she whispered.

“Hey!” Cassie frowned at Morgan, “let’s not start turning on each other. I get it, but this is the last thing anybody needs. Keep it together.” She swiped more of the dust away from her arms as she crossed to stand close by and folded her arms over. Her eyes flickered to Blanche as she mentioned finding remains and softened. Shit. What was seeing something like that going to do to her? For a first rodeo this was like throwing her in the deep end and attaching a concrete cylinder block for good measure. She registered the letter jacket in Blanche’s hands with the letters D.I.E on it, yeah, that’s not an omen at all “Soon as this is over and we’re out of here we’ll find somebody to give that to,” she reassured. She shook it off and sighed “I couldn’t get a straight answer from anybody. It’s all just a bunch of college kids and high schoolers. Something’s got them too scared out of their minds to make any sense.” Something was causing this, messing with their heads, with what they saw. This was beyond your standard poltergeist activity; past any hallucinations they could pull. “We’re not lost and we’re going to die,” Cassie urged at Morgan again, “come on, enough,” she pressed and padded over towards Morgan to pull her along with them when the hallway gave itself The Haunted Mansion Ride treatment and elongated out. She stopped still and watched. “We’re all getting out. Whatever this is, it’s trying to mess with your head, so don’t fold on me and make it easy for them.”

Shame and guilt twisted through Blanche like a poison. She didn’t understand why the feeling was so strong, but it was enough to make her want to get sick. She cringed away from Morgan’s harsh words, clutching the jacket to her chest. What was wrong with her? Her emotions were in overdrive, and she felt like she was going to have a panic attack. Her mouth dry, she forced herself to fucking breathe. Morgan was already freaking out, Cassie and her didn’t need to deal with her useless problems because she made a bad decision. She always made bad decisions. No. Shake it off. Stop it, Blanche told herself, focusing on Cassie. “I can’t get a good look at anyone, they won’t - I mean, I think they kept running away from me. And I kept running away from them trying to find you - I mean. Sorry.” Blanche stuck with Cassie and Morgan, and reached out. “I don’t think we should go that way - hey, I don’t think we should go that way!” Blanche reaching to tug lightly on Cassie’s arm. “We’re being herded! I think we’re being herded. Let’s go back the way we - oh.” Blanche had turned to point back the way they came, but it had changed again. No more stairs. They were being herded. Blanche swallowed hard, and pushed forward anyway. She was afraid and overwhelmed and all she wanted to do was cry. She noticed the whispering then, just as they all plowed through the door. The low whispering that in her head - “Cassie. Cassie can you hear them? Morgan?”

Cassie’s grip pressed something back into Morgan and at last she remembered how to breathe. In. Hold Out. Five. Three. Five. In. Hold. Out. And they were all here, together, in arm’s reach. Morgan wiped her hands on her pants and took hold of each of them. She stared intently at her fingers, the fabric it pinched on their sleeves. “Sorry,” she mumbled. There was still so much gunk in her head, and that voice from before, that voice. Morgan barely had time to notice the stairs vanish before their eyes. No way out. No way around.

Morgan tightened her grip on each of them. “I can hear something,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “What’s, um, what’s yours saying, Blanche?” She could only just work up the nerve to meet the girl’s eyes for a second. There was no comfort in her to give, and only the smallest piece of resolve, She was just afraid, but she wanted to tell her the truth. “Does it sound like anyone to you?” She asked.

Her eyes darted around them, waiting for another way out, but nothing came. This was the only way forward. Keeping her grip on them, Morgan led the way into the room.

There were no windows to be seen, and yet the room was full of the stale non-light of winter days and lingering hurricanes. There was a bed against the wall, a rocking chair, an empty shelf. In the middle of the room a hunched over woman, her skeleton bent in ways that should have broken her skin or sent her to the floor: feet bent the wrong way on the floor, limbs zig zagging in sharp, terrible angles, back swollen and curved like a snake in distress, She was swaying, unnaturally steady in her balance.

“We’re not going to get any answers from them,” Cassie answered. “They’re too far gone,” she answered Blanche honestly. As Blanche tugged on her arm the house sealed the stairs off from them, they had no choice but to follow. The three of them fell into step and moved towards the room ahead as Morgan took the lead. Follow the yellow brick road it was. No way to get separated now at least. The only way was forward as the voices picked up again as they moved. A hushed whispery rustling of words sent a shiver up the nape of her neck. “I hear them,” Cassie answered quietly, her voice far away as she listened and tried to tune into the words but couldn’t make it out. As she concentrated Cassie could almost hear partial words as though she was hearing snapshots of a hushed conversation as it ebbed in and out of audio. The fact that Morgan could hear it wasn’t a welcome sign. “I can’t make much out.” As they entered the room Cassie felt her skin prickle and flare in the seconds before she caught the figure inside. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, at first. She could make out the twisted limbs bent at unnatural angles. It was a woman, or it had been in life, but whatever was left in death had been warped and mangled into something that only just looked human. There was something about them, something important, but she felt her mind blanking the longer she looked. There was something. She could feel it. She was forgetting something, but she couldn’t remember what it was. Just the vague feeling as she rapped her fingers against the side of her leg absently in rhythm. “What do you want?” Cassie asked them, her voice steady as the figure seemed to make a move towards them.

Blanche shook her head. “I can’t - I can’t figure out what they’re saying they’re not -” It was like they were purposefully out of reach. Purposefully trying to mess with her head. Was that really a thing? Being too far gone? Blanche didn’t get a chance to think much of it, only glance between Morgan and Cassie as they entered the room they were herded too, before she froze. She clutched the jacket closer to her, like it was a blanket of comfort, except, it didn’t help. Cassie spoke to the thing in a somehow impossibly steady voice.

“Agnes,” the figure cooed. “Martha. You’ve been disobeying me, haven’t you?”

Blanche was fixated on the thing’s feet. Bent the wrong way as it stumbled towards them it made her a little sick. Who was Martha and who was Agnes? And who was she? Was she human once? Was this Morgan’s family? Blanche went into overdrive for a second - would this be what happened to Morgan if the curse wasn’t broken?

“I think we should leave!” Blanche hissed, tugging at Morgan’s arm. “I think we should -”

“Did I grant you permission to leave?! Wretched child,” the woman looked straight at her. The room seemed to lurch and Blanche was thrown off balance, letting go of Morgan with a squeak. “After showing up without notice? You’re making me angry. How dare you make me angry.”

Her heart sank. She made it angry? “What do you want?” Blanche repeated Cassie’s question, her own voice wavering. The room span and Blanche, after a moment Blanche realized it wasn’t her anxiety and she stepped forward unable to get a good look at the thing now. “What the fuck? What’s happening? What’s happen- urck!” Blanche snapped her eyes shut and sank to her knees, but that was somehow worse.

“I wouldn’t have to punish you if you hadn’t disobeyed me -”

Blanche tried to get a grip, and start reaching behind her to start rifling through her bag. Salt. She needed salt. No - she couldn’t focus. “No! Make it stop. Make it stop!”

Morgan jolted off balance, crashing to her knees. The woman (she was still a woman, wasn’t she?) was beginning to scream. “Don’t talk to me that way! I am your mother!”

“Oh,” Morgan wheezed, forcing her eyes upward. “You have GOT to be fucking kidding me.”

The floor seemed to tilt, but Morgan shut her eyes against the sensation. She had skipped over being ‘done’, like a deep scratch on a record, and now she was skimming past that in a burning haze. “You are fucking kidding me!” She screamed. She swung her iron rod blindly. She staggered to her feet, wheezing and shaking and livid. “Was it you? Did you wake up one morning and decide one punishment wasn’t enough? Because your daughter wasn’t the way you wanted? It was you, wasn’t it, Hannah? Answer me!”

The floor leveled out, the walls went still, and yet there was no silence in the Bachman house. The quiet tapping sound like teeth crept into the air. Tat, tat, tat, tat. Morgan opened her eyes. The ghost of Hannah Bachman hovered inches from her face. Her ghost hair dangled in front of her in ropes, hiding whatever there was to see of her face save for one wide, lashless eye. “It is you,” she said. “My precious girl.”

“No--” Morgan swung but Hannah only vanished. Her voice, reedy and bitter went on, marked only by the tapping in between.

“Another precious girl. You never change. You did this to yourselves.”

“Fuck you,” Morgan whispered, digging into her bag for the tin. She hurled it at the nearest wall and it burst open, white grains of salt hissing and rolling over the floor.

Hannah laughed. “How many times did I tell you not to mix with others. Your family is all that matters. I would have done worse than Constance Cunningham if I could. At least she learned her lesson.”

“You want worse?” Morgan backed to the nearest wall and slammed her cuff on it. The wood snapped, veiny cracks sweeping through as if they had been clawed in one swipe, they jutted outwards, exploding into sawdust and splinters and earth, showing the way out on the other side, if they could just get to it. But the tapping, the tapping was still in her ears, and the house, whole parts that Morgan hadn’t even consciously touched, were trembling along to its rhythm. Morgan looked to Cassie, abashed. “Oh, shit.”

Hannah paid Cassie no mind as she advanced on the other two. “Apage!” Stop she demanded and tried to step forward but the tapping grew louder and louder drowning everything out and she felt the ground come up to meet her. Every thought, every sound with it as the thing in the room rounded on the others. The more she fought against it the more the room around her seemed to twist and warp and forced her back down. The sound increased until it thrummed like a pulse inside her head. She fought again as the others fell to their knees as the room span and contorted, but was pulled back to the floor as Morgan managed to scramble to her feet and confront her.

“Make it stop!”

Something in her stirred and she pulled herself up with effort and stood, barely. She could make it stop. Make it all stop. Had to. Taking a step forward brought a wave of nausea, but she pushed through, trudging through what felt like quicksand, but kept going. No chalk. No circle. No salt. There wasn’t time. Stripping off her watch she gripped it in one hand and started to chant. Slowly and quietly at first, closing her eyes over as she focused on the words and intent and forged on as she felt the familiar tugging sensation spread out from her chest as she poured all her energy into forming the circle above. After a few moments she opened her eyes again in time to see the shape above start to take form and kept her eyes on it as she worked, aware that ahead of her Morgan and Blanche were trapped with it, but she needed time. She needed her distracted. Apologies would have to come later.

Out of the corner of her eye she turned her attention to Hannah then; too rapt in toying with the others to notice the opening forming above her on the ceiling. The gleeful look on its face made her stomach twist. That bought her some time as she gritted her teeth and concentrated as the circle above bloomed out and the dust began to fall downwards and swirl. Gaining mass in thicker dark plumes that branched out like vines as they found their target and clung to Hannah’s form. Spreading slowly upwards from their ankles began to snare her in place, creeping upwards.

She was going to be sick. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Blanche thanked every possible being there was that she didn’t come here alone. She was useless. What good was being able to see and hear this shit without being able to do anything about it? She buried her head in the jacket, trying so stop the wave of nausea, fear, and confusion that hit her like a truck. Still a little sick to her stomach, she looked up just as Morgan’s hand slammed against the far wall - Just as the opening in the above Hannah Backman appeared - it was the first time she had seen a real exorcism.

Danger! Get out! Get out! An unfamiliar voice hissed in her ear and Blanche whipped her head around to look.

“Do you hear - “ Blanche asked.

Get out!

Blanche felt the rumbling underneath her knees and sprang upward. Danger. Get out. They needed to get out right now. She dove for Cassie first, her legs feeling like JELL-O as she yanked hard. She went for Morgan next. “We have to go, we have to go right now! Something else is wrong!”

As if to prove her point, loud cracking through the wooden structure and the ground began to shake. Oh this was bad. “We gotta go,” Blanche pulled a little more, the damn jacket still clutched in her arms as they went barrelling out of the house. One goal, and that meant out. They needed to get out and get out now. She had hopes that whatever Cassie and Morgan did would shake the house back to normal before it collapsed on top of them.

She shot out of the room, trusting the others to follow. They didn’t want to die either. She was shaking too bad to be able to hang onto them. Was she shaking too bad or was the house shaking too bad? PRobably both. The long hallway was there, but replaced with more doors, no doubt for more maze confusion - nobody had time for that. Debris was already falling, smashing furniture and used to be wall fixtures. Blanche saw the stairs and immediately threw herself down them as fast as she could. If they could just get to the ground level…

Danger! Look out!

Something hard hit the back of her just as she got towards the end, and she shrieked in pain as she was knocked off her feet, her left side hitting the ground at the bottom of the staircase hard. The shaking was getting worse, the crashing of the house collapsing after them was deafening. Blanche didn’t realize until she was already back on her feet that pain was searing in through her left shoulder and she couldn’t move it - fuck. Tears bubbled and spilled, but she saw it. “Front door -” Blanche said. “Front door. Front door!” She dove for it before it could disappear. “No! Let us out!”

Morgan didn’t need to be convinced to leave. She held onto Blanche for dear life as they sprinted out, the Bachman house screaming at them from all sides as they went. Beams roared as they buckled overhead, floors shrieked as they snapped. Morgan pushed herself to keep pace, but the house was faster. Her foot plunged through black, dusty air. She cried out, holding onto her friends harder and collapsed, her leg crashing into the ruins. Above, the second floor was bottoming out, and for a moment Morgan wondered if she should just let it. Just let it all break and stop running. What was next after Constance anyway? What use was any--

No.

Morgan staggered up, blood dripping from her leg,and charged the rest of the way out, tears streaming down through the dust on her face. When she could see the world outside, she let herself go splat into the grass, her things splattering around her. She pressed her cuff into the ground and fixed herself on the house and all the hurt it had done with bitter certainty. She opened herself and pushed.

The collapse of the Bachman House was not a natural thing. The ground that had held it for two hundred years became a hungry, jagged mouth. It swallowed the basement and the neglected foundation, it guzzled up the steps and the wood pillars and the beams, the windows, the roof, and the brick chimney, melding it all into dust and ash. The sound was something like fury, something like an unquenchable hunger, demanding more.

Morgan watched, dead-eyed. All that remained was the debris from the upper floors she hadn’t had the strength to reach. And now that she was finished, and sick from draining herself, she realized she hurt...everywhere.

The tendrils snaked their way around Hannah. By the time Cassie had the sense to pay attention it was too late. Kicking and screaming she tried to lash out, but the more she fought the tighter the binds gripped and encircled her until she was shielded from view entirely. Without an ounce of sympathy Cassie kept her gaze set on whatever was left of her and finished the incantation, watching as she lost form altogether, dissipating in front of her and was pulled upwards through the opening in a pillar of smoke rising up towards the opening. She watched in horrified fascination as Hannah was swallowed up and the opening sealed itself up, disappearing in the time it took to blink. There was no time to stop or take a breath. The whole house felt like it was shaking, but her limbs struggled to respond as any energy she had left ebbed away.

“I—what?” Cassie found her voice as she heard the others frantically pulling at her. In the moments that followed Cassie was only vaguely aware of Blanche hustling her out of the way, throwing off her balance as the room came into focus again and she registered the crumbling surroundings and clocked Blanche dragging her alongside Morgan as they scrambled to find a way out. As her head cleared, she took in the situation and dodged the falling debris as they ran for the front door. The whole house was coming down around them with an unnatural fury and she searched around for a way out as the house continued to twist and contort as it crumbled. The woodwork started to give way and she heard Blanche cry out somewhere ahead of her. “Blanche!” she yelled as the house started to fold in on itself as they cleared the stairs and fled. She heard Morgan yelp in pain and fumbled to get to them to no avail. All she could do was try to keep up. Glass smashed and sprayed out behind her and rained down and she shielded her face and neck as she sprinted for the exit. Scrambling to stay close to them Cassie barrelled out not long after them as the house seemed to crumple in on itself and howl with rage. The outside air hit her and collapsed down on the grass. As Morgan dug her cuff into the ground Cassie watched in horror as the ground itself seemed to open its mouth and swallow the remnants of the house whole until all that was left was a crater in the ground. Looking to Blanche and Morgan she finally caught her breath and slumped back on the grass.

Blanche stumbled out of the house, the fresh air a gift to her dusty face as she collapsed into the grass. It was pitch black - of course it was, but Blanche shut her eyes tightly, breathing hard, before she watched in horrified curiosity as the house seemed to melt way into the ground. Blanche dropped back down into the grass, looking at the ever present moon above her, trying to process what the fuck just happened. Morgan was hurt. Cassie was too. The adrenaline and shock was wearing off on her arm and it was really starting to hurt. Tears bubbled over and she sucked in a deep, deep breath. She couldn’t - she wouldn’t - lose it now. Not when she had been stupid and asked to come. What would have happened if she hadn’t been here? Blanche didn’t want to know. “I can’t… move my arm…” Blanche’s voice cracked faintly.

#wr blanche #wr chatzy #wr blanche chatzy #wr cassie #wr cassie chatzy #wr group chatzy #wickeds writing #wickedswriting

10 notes · View notes

atamascolily · 4 years

Text

lily liveblogs “terminator 2: judgement day” for the first time

Nothing says "Christmas season" like watching bloody action movies! Well, there is "Die Hard," but I'm watching Terminator 2: Judgement Day, aka "James Cameron Was Mad He Didn't Put Those Ten Minutes of Subplot He Filmed Into the Theatrical Cut of the First Terminator, So He Made An Entire Movie About It Instead Because He Could”.

Ok, so I have the "Extreme Edition", whatever that means. The menu options for the DVD include "Sensory Control" (for subtitle options) and "Jump Into Timeline". Every now and then a super-creepy T-2 metallic head drops into frame to remind you to press play. I'm loving this.

Cars in L.A. traffic. Children laughing on a playground in the '90s. Cut to the Apocalyptic Nightmare Future with the busted cars and skeletons for drivers. Everything's STILL IN PLACE the way it was when Judgement Day happened. Oooh, yeah, just cut to the wrecked playground with a pile of human skulls, in case we didn't get the memo.

(for the record, I'm pretty sure nuclear winter would actually NOT WORK LIKE THIS, but it looks cool, and James Cameron seems to be really good at this kind of parallels between present and future, so I'm rolling with it.)

Sarah Connor narrates the introductory spiel, and we're treated to basically the same opening as T1, except much higher budget everything. Lots of laser beams and explosions and fireballs, plus scary metal Terminators roaming around that the last movie did NOT have the budget for. (plus the audiences have already seen that in T1, so it's okay to show them in the intro, since I assume an EVEN SCARIER TERMINATOR FINAL FORM is coming).

We're only 3 minutes into the movie and the filmmakers have already spent like a tenth of their total budget on SFX and twice the total costs of the first movie.

It occurs to me as Sarah is narrating, who is she narrating to? Just us, or some other characters? I strongly suspect we'll see some other characters when this film finally cuts to her.

How does Sarah know about a second strike? Didn't we establish in the last movie that there was only one Terminator that went through the portal before the humans got to it?? Are they retconning that now?

Instead of '80s synth and logo during the credits, we get a more symphonic treatment of the main theme, plus THE PLAYGROUND ON FIRE because SYMBOLISM for the destruction of CHILDHOOD INNOCENCE, amirite?? And then we cut to the SCARY METALLIC RED-EYED TERMINATOR SKELETON IN FLAMES because THAT is the defining image of this francise, the one that James Cameron had NIGHTMARES about that he decided to give to EVERYBODY ELSE by making these films.

I just realized how much the Terminator head in that shot looks like a human skull, THAT'S SO INTENTIONAL AAAAAH.

Cut to a truck driving off without its cargo, trash on the ground. Sparks fly, a wind picks up, it's night, we've been here before... This time the budget is higher, so we actually get to SEE the sphere instead of people just kind of appearing... and it carves a hole in one of the trucks. This ALSO didn't happen in T1. Nudity is still mandatory, though. It's still Arnold. You can tell it's an upgraded model Terminator based on his computer system menus. He still beats up tattooed punks to steal their clothes, only instead of stoned punks, these are long-haired motorcycle dudes in some sort of pool bar.

Oh, wow, there are a lot of people in this bar. A woman with a cigarette and a nose ring is checking the Terminator out. This is going to go well. Country music blares on the soundtrack.

He's looking for the dude with the best motorcycle. Tells him to give him his stuff. This is just like the first movie, but different. The dude is unimpressed, though why I'm not sure, because the Terminator is super-intense, and super-buff.

But the motorcycle dude blows smoke in his face--the T2 model scan says "carcinogen vapors", which is a) hilarious, and b) SO DIFFERENT FROM THE "EVERYBODY IS ALWAYS SMOKING EVERYWHERE" vibe of 1984--a sign of the evolving social norms. Then the motorcycle dude grinds his cigar into the Terminator's bare skin... and of course there's no reaction.

One dude goes through a window onto the front window of what may well be his car(?). The original dude goes flying into the kitchen and lands on a stove, which is horrific, but also karmic payback. Another gets stabbed with his own knife. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, CAMERON. Burned guy tries to pull a gun on the Terminator, but surrenders his keys and his clothes without a fight. Terminator goes outside in record time, because the dude he tossed on the car window is still there.

The bartender comes out with a gun, fires a shot into the air, and tells the Terminator to get off the bike. This is going to end poorly for him, especially since "Bad to the Bone" is playing in the background. Terminator takes both the gun and the guy's shades while the dude just watches, incredulously. YOU GOT LUCKY YOU'RE NOT HIS TARGET/MISSION, pal.

(also: this movie is such an obvious social commentary about how being armed really doesn't help you against a real threat, American fantasies to the contrary)

Cut to more blowing trash, more buildings, more trucks, a police car, electricity. The future is calling! (Oh good, this person's either going to be chased by the police OR Take their stuff.)

Dramatic hole in the fence from the future sphere thing. Yeah, this definitely wasn't a thing in the first movie, but it does look cool in this shot! Yep, there goes the policeman!

New dude's first order of business is to look up John Connor's name in the computer in the police car. Apparently, John Connor has a criminal record - trespassing, shoplifting, disturbing the peace, vandalism. He doesn't live with Sarah... he's got a guardian, and the address is in the computer.

Cut to the suburbs. It's wholesome, white-bread America. His foster mother yells at him. John is a teenage motorcycle punk, but in a clean, wholesome way. His friend has very '90s hair, though.

John's friend thinks that his foster mom is a "dick," but frankly, I see no evidence why we should hate her thus far. Her husband comes out to tell John to clean his room, but he and his little friend are already zipping away on their motorcycle, and the little friend is holding a miniature boombox, and it's so '90s, I have to pause so I can laugh for a while. Also, this rebelliousness is what's going to save his life when the Terminator comes for him. I guess the foster parents are framed as nagging assholes so we don't care so much when they die??

(also, what do you want to bet Sarah taught John to ride a motorcycle??)

John Connor is a little dick who thinks he's so clever, and he doesn't have to do anything because these aren't his real parents. His foster dad smokes, and doesn't say anything, probably because he's already made it clear to his wife that room cleaning is not high on his priority list. Fuck him.

Sarah's doing pull-ups in her cell. THOSE ARM MUSCLES, OH MY GOD. She's 29 years old. SUCH A CHANGE from the waitress with the '80s hair from the first film. Everything's so white, it's a state psychiatric ward for women. Men in suits discussing Sarah's case.

THIS IS WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED TO KYLE IF THE TERMINATOR HADN'T BUSTED THE POLICE STATION. *sob*

Is Silbermann - the psychiatrist who examined Kyle in T1 still around? He left the police station right before the Terminator's attack, so I assume he lived... what does he make of Sarah's case? Does he ever follow up? I wonder what's going through his head.

I like how we don't see Sarah's face until she turns to face the doctors. I like how wild and unhinged she looks, how feral. She's changed so much in what, ten years? Thirteen? I think it's 1997, just before Judgement Day, but idk if that's been confirmed yet. Thirteen looks about right for John Connor, so I'm going with that.

Oh, god IT IS DR. SILBERMANN, THAT ASSHOLE!!! How does he explain how both Sarah AND Kyle have schizophrenia, when Sarah was perfectly normal before? And he *know* someone was murdering other Sarah Connors and seemed to be gunning for her, so why...? Was he really that much of an asshole not to suspect that *something* was going on, and Sarah wasn't crazy??

Also, I love "How's the knee?" because she totally hurt him, and I love her. I love how calm she sounds, like she's the one in control not them, because she can hurt them more than they can hurt her.

Sarah stares at the female doctors, and I realize now that Silbermann is doing a tour of the facility LIKE IT'S A ZOO, and... yeah, wow, he really is an asshole. He's the one with delusions, who can't see outside his own sheltered bubble...

I wonder what would happen if Sarah could talk to one of the female doctors? If they could make a connection? Maybe they would believe her. God knows Silbermann isn't going to listen to anyone who doesn't already agree with him.

God, the orderlies are sadist assholes. I fucking hate them. That shot of Sarah lying crumpled on the floor is so beautiful because everything is angelic pristine white and sunny, and so horrifying.

The police dude shows up at John's foster parents' house. We're supposed to think he's good because he's not Arnold, but this person has no facial expressions and he's too calm - compare with Kyle's frantic fumblings. This is not somebody from the human resistance of T1, at least not without some serious retconning. He's too poised and professional, too adept at the 1990s, whereas Kyle Reese had the social skills of a feral racoon and wore pants he stole from a homeless man. Totally different vibe going here.

The knock on the door sequence is so parallel to the original Terminator going to the first Sarah Connor's house in T1... same suburban paradise... and you can get anything when you're a clean-shaven, short-haired white cop, can't you??

Cut to: '90s tech. John and his little friend hacking an ATM. God. Their clothes, their hair, the ATM... everything is peak early '90s, and I can't handle it. We learn that Sarah Connor taught her son how to hack, because of course she does.

John keeps the photo of Sarah in his backpack, awwww. John is so not impressed by his mother, calls her crazy because she took the war to Cyberdyne and WENT BACK AND TRIED TO BLOW UP THE COMPUTER FACTORY AGAIN AFTER KYLE DIED!! (and her son was born)

Q: what did she do with John while she did that? Was he outside waiting for her somewhere? How did the police find him??

It doesn't matter who your parents are, EVERY teenager thinks their parents are "total losers". John has a chip on his shoulder a mile wide. His little punk friend thinks Sarah is so cool, and he doesn't know any of this, so I guess they're not THAT good friends??? Since it's John's motorcycle, John's driving, and John's stolen money, I guess the little unnamed punk friend is only hanging out with John because John is so much cooler than him, and needs someone to exposit to??

That shot of a drugged Sarah slumped over her knees on her bed in the shaft of sunlight, with her hair combed is SO BEAUTIFUL, too bad she's a drugged shadow of her usual self...

OH MY GOD, MICHAEL BIEHN IS IN THIS MOVIE, AND HE COMES TO HER, AND HE'S WEARING HIS TRENCH COAT AND TELLING HER SHE HAS TO WAKE UP OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG MY SHIPPER HEART asfhgfkgkfdgjkfdlgf *incoherent screaming* I need a thousand GIF sets of this scene PRONTO.

Kyle: "Where's our son???"

god, Sarah's EYES when she says they took him from her

Kyle is so earnest, so desperate, so much less bedraggled than he ever was in T1... god, he's even wearing that stupid gown under his trench coat that he got in the police station in T1, that detail wrecks me, oh my god, oh my god, this scene is so beautiful, I just want an entire movie of THIS, oh my god...

Sarah is begging Kyle for help, and he grabs her shoulders and tells her she's strong, stronger than she ever thought she could be, LIKE HE'S ALWAYS DONE, OH MY GOD, beautiful cinnamon roll, too good for this world, I love him.

AHHHHHHHHHHH, and then he says "On your feet, soldier!" which is what she said to HIM right before he DIED, and he forces her UP and they EMBRACE and she's sobbing into his shoulder and he hells her he loves her and he always will, and HKGKSFJALFNDBJNJN

I am a melting pile of shipper goo right now, this shot of them in the sunlight is so fucking beautiful, James Cameron HOW DARE YOU THIS IS EVERYTHING I WANTED IN A MOVIE EXCEPT THAT KYLE IS STILL DEAD, DAMN IT, YOU DIDN'T RETCON THAT.

He says he'll always be with her... and he is, because he's a voice in her head, a memory.... ahhhhhhhh my heart...

And he tells her "The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves," which is what SHE SAID TO HIM, oh my GODDDDDDDD.

And they hug and kiss and I could watch a whole movie about this, and then she slumps back and she's alone in her cell in a shaft of sunlight and I just want to cry. whhhhhyyyyy do you have to hurt me this way, why, why why why why whyyyyyy?

Oh wait, he's at the door to the cell, and it's open, telling her there's not much time... and walking away, and she goes out to follow him as he's walking down the hall and everything's so eerily perfect white and shiny and beautiful and SURREAL, fuck, I am so HERE FOR THIS!

God, this is all beautifully shot as she chases after him - and we get a good view of her amazing forearm muscles without objectifying her. The nightgown she's wearing is NOT standard institutional outfit - it looks more like lingerie than State Mental Hospital Standard Issue - but it's not especially revealing, either.

She opens the doors and she's outside and there's that playground again with all the children playing... SYMBOLISM AGAIN.... Sarah is locked out, away from the children, yelling to save them... and then fire.

And she wakes up in her cell and her hair is a mess again, so this time we know it's real -- and her outfit's changed, too, back to the tank top she was originally wearing, so I guess her outfit was part of the dream, too.

(ngl, I wasn't expecting even THIS MUCH of Michael Biehn in this movie, so I will happily take it, but stilllllllll... I WANT MORE, GODDAMN IT!!!)

(this got long, so I’m breaking it up into parts)

#Movie Reviews #terminator 2 #terminator #MY SHIPPER HEART

7 notes · View notes

travllingbunny · 5 years

Text

The 100 6x03 The Children of Gabriel

The last episode was a character-based one focused on our protagonists and the issues simmering below the surface, which came out during the eclipse-induced psychosis. This one was very much focused on world-building, and was such an overload of new information about two new groups of potential antagonists that I had to watch it twice to pick up all of it. But while there was no time for any longer talks about feelings and character stuff, there were quite a few small and/or subtle character moments that were quite meaningful.

We finally get the introduction of Russell Lightbourne (JR Bourne), the leader of the „peaceful“ society of Sanctum, and a few other characters, including his wife Simone, and we get a look at how their society works; and we also meet, for the first time, the mysterious people who are lurking in the woods and appear to be some sort of a rebel/guerrilla group, and who are referred to as „the children of Gabriel“. The first thing I did after seeing the episode was to make a Twitter poll: „Who is creepier?“ with the third option: „Both are super creepy“. At the moment, Russell’s people are presented as pseudo-good guys, but everything about them all but screams that their society is very sinister. The „children of Gabriel“, on the other hand, are presented as pseudo-antagonists, and while I’m more inclined to see them as potential not-so-bad-guys, I would hesitate to call them good, either: they are very grey. And both groups give off cult vibes. It’s possible that there really are no good guys among the people on this planet – or if there is a someone else that may be a good guy, that it’s a third faction that we haven’t met yet – at least not in the present.

The hijackers from 6x02 indeed belonged to Russell’s people, so for a society that’s supposedly „peaceful“, they sure didn’t make a good first impression. Kaylee – that’s apparently the name of the woman who’s the sole survivor of that group of four – was blaming the Earthkru for killing three of them, while saying „we hurt no one“. Err, you came in masked, attacked their ship, tried to hijack it and took people captive. Of course they defended themselves, what the heck did you expect?! New planet, but yet again we have to deal with hypocritical people who attack the protagonists and then blame them for defending themselves.

There’s no way that Russell and his society aren’t bad guys, right? They are elitist, self-righteous, judgmental, hypocritical, they believe in "special bloodlines" and treating some people as "disposable", they give off creepy cult vibes, Russell straight up makes a comparison between his society and Mount Weather after having heard the story about them – and while I don’t think that Sanctum people are too similar to Mountain Men, as I point out here, this is a big hint that this society is very sinister. They are giving me Capitol vibes (minus the actual Hunger Games, because they’re anti-violence). Including the bad kind of pacifism - the “war is terrible, but oppression, classism and treating people as disposable is OK, so anyone taking up arms to rebel against us is evil”. And I'm pretty sure they have been doing some sort of a mind transfer of the Primes (members of the four founding families from the Eligius 3 mission) into the brains of "hosts" (apparently, being a Nightblood makes you a suitable host) in a ceremony they call „Naming“. This may be technically just speculation at this point, but it’s really, really strongly hinted.

My theory on the „Naming“ ceremony however, is different than the popular opinion in the fandom that the Primes fully take over the bodies of the „hosts“ and that the hosts disappear I don't think it's a full replacement, but more like an upgrade, where the host is changed and the Prime is supposed to be in the driving seat. (Maybe it’s because I’m thinking of the skinchanging in A Song of Ice and Fire and some of the storylines in Dollhouse.) For starters, Delilah was not happy about becoming a Prime, but she didn’t seem to think that she would disappear and her body would be simply overtaken by someone else – and I think she would be way more freaked out if that were the case. Similarly, even in a cult, I can’t see parents being happy for their children to become Primes if it meant that their bodies are overtaken and that they basically disappear. And it would also make it a lot more interesting storyline – especially if the fandom speculation about in Clarke becoming a host for Josephine is correct (and it probably is, in some form – there are quite a few hints towards that, and the setup happened in this episode, when Rose, the blonde little girl who was meant to be a host for a Prime, was kidnapped/rescued by the Children of Gabriel). If the hosts were fully overtaken by the Primes, then this takeover is either never going to happen, or will never be full or will last very short, and Clarke will be saved. But if Clarke and Josephine can co-exist in the same brain for some time, this may open new storytelling possibilities – where Clarke is obviously not going to be obliterated by Josephine, but the two may co-exist in the same brain and body, fight for dominance but also possibly even be allies and work together, so to speak, and maybe help each other? This could indeed be the „acting challenge“ for Eliza Taylor that so many of the cast and crew have talked about.

But what kind of technology exactly are they using to transfer minds? The most likely theory is that it is derived from an early, less developed prototype of the chip/Flame, which Becca already worked on before the apocalypse. There are too many ties between Eligius Corporation, Becca and the Second Dawn. Madi will be in real danger if/when Russell and co. find out about the Flame.

The Children of Gabriel are more mysterious of the two group so far. Unlike the Sanctum people, they may end up being more on the (relatively) good side, and they're rebels fighting against the eternal dominance and prolongation of life of the Primes - but they still planned to kill the hosts as the B-plan if they couldn't kidnap/rescue them. So, killing the Primes is more important than protecting/saving people. Their chanting "death is life" and "death to Primes" also sounds cult-like (even though I think the words themselves are less sinister than they first sound, as they probably refer to stopping the endless cycle of Primes replicating themselves), and they are mostly motivated by trying to impress or get back into the good graces of "the Old Man"... Is the Old Man Gabriel? I don’t know how he would still be alive, but I feel he is – but not through the same means as the other Primes are prolonging their lives, because CoG hate the Primes and what they do. In any case, this group seems just to be a group of guerrilla fighters, who have also infiltrated the Sanctum – but we haven’t seen whatever larger group of people they are part of, or what their settlements look like. Have they been cast out by the „Old Man“?

Some big hints about the history of the planet were dropped: Gabriel is considered a "demon" and hated by Russell and his people, who tell the story of how he thought he could walk on water after being bitten by the snake whose poison works as an antidote to the seaweed poison. (The snake that was named by Josie.) Meanwhile, Russell Lightbourne is worshiped as a savior. But it is Russell who has the last name that's very similar to "Lucifer" (which means lightbearer), even though Gabriel seems to be the one who was cast out of this "paradise", or didn't want to be a part of it. And apparently, Russell has the same first name as Sean Maguire’s character we met in the flashback in 6x02, the astronomer and Josie’s father – and is probably his latest incarnation. But Russell was the one who killed many of the original Primes during his eclipse-induced psychosis, shouting „Sanctum is mine“, while Gabriel, the geneticist, Josie’s boyfriend, was the one who got away and survived. So what is going on? False history?

But while the new characters and societies are intriguing, what is more interesting is how it all affects our protagonists. I don't know how long it will be till they start realizing that how sinister this peaceful society is (they don’t have all the info they need as of now), but right now, they are too focused on the fact that they need someone to teach them how to survive on this planet (with not just eclipse-induced psychosis, but also poison seaweed, swarms of bugs, meat-eating trees and so many other weird and dangerous things), which is why trying to convince them to accept them into their society seems to them, understandably, like the best course of action.

At the same time, the fact that Clarke, Bellamy and the others want to find peace and be the „good guys“ as Monty told them, is another reason why they are likely to try to see Russell’s people in a good light. I feel like Sanctum is going to be a temptation to Clarke in particular (based on this episode and trailer hints) for multiple reasons, and they are already trying to suck her in. It feels like a peaceful, happy place, with things that she has only read about and maybe seen on videos but never in real life – such as dogs. (Having an adorable dog come up to you is truly one of the biggest temptations possible.) She gets to wear beautiful dresses, Russell acts nice to her, and kind of looks like her father. But her emotional state is especially making her vulnerable. She feels so much guilt and wants to do better, wants to ensure this better life for her people, while Russell and Simone (playing a good cop/bad cop) are interrogating her about the supposedly terrible past of her and her people. They are sitting there at a table with a huge banquet made just for three people, somewhere in their Renaissance Fair-like castle, and being judgmental about the things they did to survive or protect their loved ones. And now that they know that she is a Nightblood, she is a target – but how far would Clarke go to try to ensure her people stay in Sanctum? Would she even agree to be a host, both for them and because she’s had self-loathing and suicidal thoughts, so losing herself into someone else’s consciousness may be additionally appealing to her in her current state?

Some themes that have always followed Clarke’s character are: privileged background (reflected in her nickname „Princess“, which I think fans tend to romantcize way too much), tendency to take on too much responsibility, to take charge, but also to isolate herself, desire to save people (which may be either saving everyone – or just saving those she loves), ruthlessness in pursuit of that goal, self-sacrifice. One of the repeated situations throughout the show is: other leaders who have been Clarke’s allies/friends/occasional antagonists would tell her that she is "born to lead" just like they are (which may be just about her personal qualities and tendency to take charge and responsibility in tough situations, but also has some other, less pleasant connotations, when said by people who are royalty/„special bloodlines“ – for being born with Nightblood like Lexa, or as a son of a Queen, as Roan), and try to encourage her to treat people as disposable, as a part of making tough decisions. But no one has been so blatant about it to actually use the word „disposable“, as Russell has. And now he also thinks that Clarke literally has „royal blood“. (The funny thing about it is – she doesn’t, she became Nightblood through science. Emori was very close to becoming one instead. But you know what's even funnier? Everyone who is Nightblood /on Earth or on Sanctum/Alpha- became that through science, or their ancestors did. Of course, valuing people for their bloodline is nonsense, period.)

But Clarke had a few great moments in this episode that made me very happy. First she refused to bow to Russell, and then when she made it clear to Russell that she is going to risk herself first, not anyone else, and that „None of us are (disposable)“. But since those were things I expected, I was particularly happy that Clarke refused to be guilt-tripped about Mount Weather and made it clear that she wasn't going to apologize for saving the people she loves from those trying to murder them. YES. People have made Clarke feel guilty about that way too many times. What she, Bellamy and Monty did was the right thing to do, and most of the adults on Mount Weather were not innocent.

Murphy’s clinical death experience opens up a very interesting and completely new storyline. We’ve had characters talking about what they think happens after death, but (outside of characters whose minds are being preserved in the Flame), this is the first time someone has come close to seeing or thinking they had seen what happens after death. But is this really a normal clinical death experience, or did Murphy have hallucinations while still unconscious, caused by the poison or the antidote? It’s the first time anyone on the show has mentioned the concept of people going to hell due to their sins. I can’t wait to see what character development this causes in Murphy.

There wasn’t much talk about what happened during the eclipse-induced psychosis, which makes sense – people are simply aware that they weren’t really to blame and no one is holding it against anyone (not to mention that they have so much urgent stuff to deal with), but the deeper emotional issues are something that we know about and that I expected to be addressed later in the season. Naturally, they addressed what happened to Murphy the most, since they nearly lost him. Emori was as loving and caring to him as she was violent and murderous during the psychosis, and felt guilty over attacking him, while Bellamy comforted her pointing out that Murphy’s condition was not her fault but his. (These two had some very nice friendship moments in season 5, and it’s nice to see that again.) Bellamy and Murphy had a very warm friendship moment, and Raven showed her relief and happiness about him being alive in her usual snarky manner.

On the other hand, while Bellamy and Clarke didn’t talk about what happened during the psychosis, or what happened during season 5 (yet – we know from the trailer that a big conversation is coming, just not when), they confirmed the trust they have in each other through actions, and small moments of exchanging meaningful looks. Bellamy showed that he still trusts in Clarke’s ability to be again a leader and ambassador of their people– although it was, at the same time, a smart decision and quick thinking. Russell got the impression Clarke was the leader, from the way she was the one asking questions (which happened mostly because she was asking about Murphy’s condition, and later in particular when she was showing concern for Madi – these are the things that spur her into action), and, as Bellamy pointed out, Russell seems to like her, so it was a good idea to use that. Raven was rolling her eyes* (this happened shortly after she angrily remarked „I didn’t know you were giving orders again, Clarke“), and I wonder if she again thinks that Bellamy is „taking Clarke’s orders“ or „a knight by his queen’s side“ or whatever she thought in season 3, which wasn’t really true back then either – but that would especially be funny now, since Bellamy wasn’t relinquishing leadership at all: he has been the one telling everyone what to do and did that right after that scene, after Russell left, and no one has a problem with taking his orders. (Except Octavia, who’s not listening to anyone and still does whatever she wants.) In fact, telling Russell „She is. She can speak for us“ was also kind of giving Clarke a role – so he felt he needed to explain his reasons to her, immediately after Russell left. And unlike Raven, he is not threatened by Clarke being perceived as the leader, and her being his co-leader (one whose role is more of an ambassador who gets to interact with the other leader) is a return to a familiar dynamic that works.

Bellamy taking the responsibility to get Madi from the dropship and saying „I promise“, and Clarke silently accepting that and trusting him with her daughter’s safety, was a really important moment and callback to the most painful moments between them in season 5. It shows they are healing from the terrible misunderstandings – and that Clarke is now thinking about everything differently than she did at the time. Back then, she saw Bellamy’s actions, after he had promised her to keep Madi safe, as a deep, awful betrayal, but now she seems to understand that he saw putting the Flame in Madi as a way to protect Madi and Clarke and everyone else. It’s funny that the fandom was expecting a big and long separation between these two, but instead, they were reunited in the same episode – and the show still managed to use the short separation to show Bellamy walking away and looking back, and Clarke looking at him leaving with a sad, longing look (only interrupted by the adorable dog), and then a reunion with „you kept your promise“ heart-eyes.

*At this point, I feel a bit fed up with the constant bitter and angry remarks Raven is constantly throwing at Clarke. She has reasons to feel angry over Clarke’s betrayal in season 5, but it’s time they talk it out, because this is kind of annoying, especially when it’s the only thing Raven gets to do in the episode. Diyoza was amazing

A lot of people have remarked on the awkwardness of the hug between Bellamy and Echo, and there have been lots of comments about actor chemistry etc. – but thinking that acting choices are random or dictated by how actors feel about a fictional relationship is pretty insulting to the actors, and directors and editors, and also doesn’t make much sense: people who make the show are not incompetent, and all the moments of Bellamy showing more emotion and interest for Clarke compared to how he is with Echo, cannot be accidental, just like it can’t be accidental that there are so many times all three are framed within the same shot, with Echo positioned as the third wheel rather than Clarke. Echo herself may be increasingly noticing this, just as she may have noticed that Bellamy is valuing Clarke’s opinions more than hers or at least tends to agree with and side with her more. Echo suggested fighting, Clarke retorted that they should instead try to be friends and be welcomed in that society, and Bellamy said nothing, but obviously supported Clarke’s position later. (In season 5, when they were still on the ship and Clarke-less, Echo and Bellamy also had a big difference in opinion when Echo was suggesting they killed the 300 prisoners in their cryo-sleep, but Bellamy shut that down quickly, and Echo then agreed with him.) This could make her think that psychosis!Emori was right when she called her a spy „serving her master“, once again, which provoked Echo’s hallucination of her past with the Ice Nation and Queen Nia.

One thing that Echo decided and Bellamy wasn’t too happy about, but did not protest, was inviting Octavia to come with them and Raven to help bring Madi and others from the dropship. He probably realized that it was for the best that they take Octavia as far away from people they wanted to convince that they’re good and peaceful. But Echo may have done it as a combination of hoping Octavia and Bellamy reconcile – because she thinks it would be good for him – and because she values the fact that Octavia is a strong fighter. She respects people who are capable and can be ruthless (which is why she doesn’t blame Clarke, either), and the idea that it’s good to use Octavia’s abilities is similar to what Bellamy initially told her at the end of season 4, that she’ll be useful for them because she’s strong and can help them survive.

But Bellamy is not able to be so chill about things when Octavia is concerned. And she went and confirmed all the worst things he thought about her: that she is not trying to change at all, isn’t admitting any mistakes, and is going to use violence and kill people as her first choice, even when it’s not necessary. The fact that even Diyoza angrily pointed out that it wasn’t necessary shows that this was the case. Leaving Octavia behind may seem very harsh from Bellamy, as is his line that his sister died a long time ago, but I like the fact that he’s sticking to his guns and cutting her out of his life and not allowing her to be a part of the group before she shows a will to change, because an insta-forgiveness/ acceptance would prevent her from even trying – and would harm everyone else, too. At the same time, I don’t think he really wants her to die, contrary to what she said – it was obvious on his face how painful the decision was for him - and I don’t think he really thinks she will (Octavia is capable, has a sword, and has survived a lot of things before). He thinks that she needs to have her own soul-searching on her own – which is probably right.

Not that Octavia will be by herself, since she immediately attacked and got captured by the Children of Gabriel, led by a new character Xavier (Chuku Modu). Ironically, she may end up being the first to learn more about and maybe see the perspective of that group of people (after killing three of them for no good reason) – even though the first interactions are less than pleasant.

Another person who may get in touch with them is Diyoza, who got cast out of Sanctum by Russell, in spite of being 6 months pregnant, after he learned who she was. (I guess they don’t practice keeping people in prison for any longer period of time.) According to him, her reputation as an evil terrorist is so bad that her picture is in their history books next to Hitler and Bin Laden. So how come they didn’t recognize her immediately? Unless he is exaggerating. Diyoza’s backstory is something I really, really want to know more about. Diyoza herself claimed in S5 that she was fighting against a „fascist“ government. Somehow I feel that she wasn’t really the evil one, especially when Russell and her people hate her.

Diyoza was amazing in this episode, again, and is quickly rising even more on my list of favorite characters. She was a no-nonsense and capable military person that she always is, and made snarky remarks to Gaia about the whole Madi being a Commander thing, basically that she should leave Madi alone to just be a child. Madi was herself a bit annoyed with Gaia’s lessons and snarky, but then felt just as insulted as Gaia when Diyoza made her comments, because she does take the Flame and her role seriously.

When Madi mentioned the scary, evil „Dark Commander“ (Sheidheda) that she sees in her dreams, Diyoza seemed like she had an idea who it may be. Someone from Second Dawn? It’s been speculated that it was Cadogan, though the figure seen in the trailer is not played by the same actor. (BTW, I know that Sheidheda means „Dark Commander“ (shade –dark, heda = commander), but I can’t be the only one thinking that the writers or the guy creating the Grounder speech had a sense of humor and intentioanlly made it sound like Sh*ithead?)

Jordan was adorable, and his romance with Delilah was as cute as insta-romances between two cute people who have just met can be, when they have nice chemistry - but he’s starting to learn that he shouldn’t trust people so easily and that his naivete can be very harmful to the group. He can’t go on being treated and acting as a child in a body of a man in his mid-20s.

This was a nice setup for the rest of the season.

Rating: 8/10

71 notes · View notes

zankivich · 6 years

Text

Neighbors: Shawn x Plus-Size Reader Chapter 1

Prompt: It’s 2am and I’m drunk and I need some salt for my fries and I know your awake so OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR

I’m reminded of that story Shawn told about the girl who showed up on his porch in the middle of the winter with nothing but a crop top on saying she was lost. But like...normal. And not creepy. Also I wanted to write Shawn with a plus size woman and this was my first attempt, but I finished the other one first. Let me know if ya like!

Edit: Hi! No longer a one shot. This is now a series! Check masterlist for more chapters.

The only only thing that's keeping you whole at the moment was the bag of grease and destruction in your hands. You had gone to some dumb club and danced with some dumb guy only to find out he was a handsy dickhead and you’d had to pull out the switchblade from your bra to give him the message of back the fuck off. You’d specifically gone out to get laid and if dickhead would’ve just not been an uber creep, you definitely would’ve been down. As it was, the only thing going in your mouth was about to be these bomb ass french fries.

You got into your apartment already reaching inside to try a bite only to shutter with disappointment. There was no salt. What fuck is a french fry without salt? It didn’t occur to you to look for any salt yourself. You were drunk for christ’s sake, and if anything you DESERVED someone to fucking salt your fries for you. You’re a lady dammit!

Seeing as how you lived alone in an apartment building, and there was no one there to solve this issue for you, you turned to the next best thing. Neighbors.

You stumbled out into the hallway armed with your bag of fries barefoot and starving. It was well after two am, most of the hallway dead silent except for the neighbor at the end of the hallway. Music drifted from under the door in a soft, muted sort of way, just enough to tell you that someone was definitely in there. Your lord and savior if they had any fucking salt.

You knocked with reckless abandon wanting to make sure they heard you over the music, and it didn’t even occur to you that it might be annoying to slam your first into someone’s door at two fucking am.The fries! They needed to be saved!

“Hi! I know it’s very late, but I can also hear your music. Good choice by the way, I live for Troye Sivan, he’s a bop. But like I need you to open the door, it’s kind of an emergency!!! Life or death!”

The door opened and your whole body was shocked into silence. Because that was Shawn Mendes on the other side of the door, clearly in his sweatpants, and not at all interested in your french fry problem. Your drunken mind received flashbacks of a letter that every person in the building had gotten about generally perfect super star moving into the building. You weren’t supposed to ask for pictures, to release any information, and you certainly weren’t supposed to knock on the guy’s fucking door at two o’clock in the morning.

“Emergency eh? Life or death?” He asked looking you up and down.

You hiccuped--one that made your whole body kind of boop--and he grinned at you.Thank God for bomb ass dresses that showed off every curve in the book. He was almost hot enough to make you forget the fries. Almost.

“Yes, you see I have these fries. And they need salt. And I can’t eat them without the salt, but my apartment has betrayed me in that it is saltless, and so I would be really appreciative if you would salt my fries.” You mumbled.

“‘Salt your fries’” He repeated a smirk permanently etched into his lips. “Is that a euphemism for something?”

You shook your head which made you a little wobbly and he seemed to reach out at the perfect time grabbing your arm to still you. You thanked him sheepishly before holding up the bag of fries as your evidence

“Not a euphemism. Really just need your salt, bro.”

“Alright, alright. Let me see what I can do.”

He headed back into his apartment leaving the door open which your drunk ass took as a personal invitation and followed him into the kitchen, which was nearly identical to yours. By the time he was done fishing around in his cabinets you had already seated yourself at the island opening your bag and taking another experimental bite. Oh what a disappointment it was.

“Found it.” He said offering you the heavenly morsels.

You moaned snatching it out of his hand and proceeding to generously shake the contained into your bag to evenly coat your meal.

“This has been a glorious ending to a really shitty night. Thank you, so much.” You giggled extremely giddy with your french fries.

Shawn was oddly amused at your behavior taking a seat beside you at his own damn island and watching you eat.

“Not a great night?”

You shook your head shaking your body to the rhythm of your chewing before swallowing.

“Went to some club solo. Just wanted to get laid and get back into my bed. Dude was super handsy, which would’ve been fine if not for his insistent attempts to try and fuck me in the middle of the dance floor with his micro penis. Didn’t take no for an answer. Almost had to cut him cause he started with all that fat bitch nonsense. Men who are into plus size women, hate rejection from plus size women because we’re supposed to be like the ugliest and most undesirable. But like… I’m fine and I’m thick and I still don’t want you sir. And then I got the true love my life, these french fries here, and what happens? My fucking salt disappears.”

“I’m sorry.” He says sounding genuinely sympathetic. “That’s not cool. You’re a very beautiful woman”

“You’re right, not cool. I deserve at least average dick and salt on my fries. And I’m not settling for less.”

He chuckled, cheeks warming into this adorable bright pink. He was leaning his chin on his hand watching you with inquisitive eyes and the first thing your mind went to was what a shitty guest you were being. You pushed the bag in his direction as a peace offering.

“You want?”

He smiled eyeing the bag. “Not really supposed to eat those. Bad for my diet.”

You rolled your eyes. “You look like you’re a quarter of my size. Eat a damn french fry.”

His cheeks did this very interesting thing where they just sort of burst with color. It was as if he was destined to be pink and his body was just fighting the inevitable. It was maybe incredibly adorable. You decided to get farther away from his face less it cause you to spontaneously combust. You crawled out of your seat, still barefoot and tipsy and began to look through his cabinets.

“You got something to drink in here by chance?”

“There’s water in the fridge.” He explained around a mouth full of food.

“How the hell is water going to get you as drunk as I am?”

You quickly located the booze, a bottle of tequila and the shot glasses to boot, before crawling back into his too tall seats.

“Oh I can’t I’ve gotta sing in the studio tomorrow.” He mumbled finally addressing the elephant in the room that was popstar letting drunken woman into his apartment against literally anyone’s better judgement.

“Shawn, you don’t know me, which really shame on you cause I’m awesome. But if you’re not eating french fries and drinking tequila is being you even worth it at that point?” You asked.

He laughed. “Is that your way of convincing me?”

You ignored him in favor of pouring each of you a shot and pushing the glass in his direction.

“Me not taking no for an answer, is my way of convincing you.”

He takes the first shot with hesitation. The second, he barely puts up a fight with. The third, he cheer’s his glass against yours. And the fourth he takes with no hands. It’s a wild awakening, but Shawn may just be a lightweight. Or a normal person with four shots of tequila in him. Tomato, potato.

He leaned his head, which seemed to be too heavy for his neck, on his hand and swung his chair back and forth to the rhythm of the music that was still playing the background. Your eyes were trapped on his thighs, which looked glorious even in sweatpants. Yours were biggers, and you thought about how wonderful he might look between them. Thick thighs save lives and give incredible orgasms. It’s kind of a fact.

At the end of the day you were a big woman. It didn’t bother you in the slightest, the way that it used to when you were younger. It had taken years, but you were comfortable in your skin, and happy as hell with the way you looked. And it never occured to you to beg a man for jack shit. Either he was with it, or he wasn’t. And the men who were, were in for a wonderful fucking ride, if you were to say so yourself. That being said, as attractive as he was, it didn’t occur to you to hit on Shawn. You were just kind of vibing and eating french fries. It seemed harmless. He didn’t strike you as the type to be into thick women, with the whole hollywood size two fad that was in place. There’s a quote somewhere about books and covers and judging and whatever.

“What club did you go to tonight, anyways?” He asked still not holding his head up on his own.

You smiled for no reason at all. “That place nearby with the strobe lights, why?”

“Gotta know where not to go if I don’t wanna be a piece of shit, right?”

“So many double negatives and yet I still appreciate the sentiment.” You grinned.

He chuckled his head lolling from side to side.

“Do you always take the piss out of random men in their apartments?” He sighed hand over his heart. “I’m hurt.”

“Only the ones I like. You’re welcome.”

“It’s an honor, truly.” He murmured taking a moment to hiccup, which was also absolutely fucking adorable. “Can I ask you something?”

You nodded leaning your head on crossed arms because maybe he was on to something and gravity was taking its toll.

“Does that happen to you a lot?”

“What?”

“Guy’s being assholes, saying stuff about how you look?”

You shrugged. “I mean we live in a pretty fucked up culture for sure. You were afraid of a french fry twenty minutes ago because you might look less like you and more like me.”

“No I--”

“Hey, it’s cool. It’s less you and more like our history and our society. People kind of don’t realize they’re saying shitty things. But quite honestly I look good. Like I’m killin’ it over here. And once I figured that out, no one’s been able to stop me since. I’m living my best life.”

His eyes roamed over your body staring at your bare legs and moving over the olive green toned dressed that was hugging you wonderfully. You had a stomach and cellulite and boobs that required a bra and none of these things made you lesser than. In fact you were beautiful because of them, and that had taken far too long to understand.

“ I think that….I think you’re gorgeous.” He shrugged dopely. “You shouldn’t take shit from anyone who can’t see that. The world can be so fucked up sometimes.”

You smiled because in that moment he was nothing but cream and sugar. You wondered what it was like to be so innocent that it just sort of radiated from your pores. He looked untouched by the world, which was something you admired greatly. What a wonderful thing it must have been to exist outside of all the ugliness that surrounded you.

“Thank you. I’m not sweating it though.”

He nodded pushing off of the island and sliding out of his chair. His hair swooped down in his eyes and he pushed it back and it shouldn’t have been so fucking attractive, but here you were lusting over your neighbor at three in the morning with french fry-tequila breath.

“Do you wanna dance?” He asked

You raised an eyebrow. “Dance? Now?... We don’t really know each other like that do we?.”

“That didn’t stop you from taking my salt and forcing tequila down my throat.” He grinned.

“‘Forcing’? That’s a little harsh don’t you think, superstar?”

He licked his lip at the nickname and your brain completely stalled at the visual. Damn him.

“Maybe. I’m Shawn.” He state holding his hand out for you to shake.

“Y/n.”

You slid your hand into his and screeched as he yanked you without an ounce of grace from your chair. You tumbled into his chest and he caught you once again arms seeming to settle around your waist naturally. John Mayer was playing on his stereo system, and there seemed to be multiple speakers throughout the room because the sound pulsed through the floor and in the walls. He started to hum along to the music pulling your body in a sloppy circle as you both danced drunkenly across the hardwood floors. His chest was warm and he smelled of fresh laundry and soap and something that was just entirely him. He nuzzled his face into your hair, the humming turning into a soft singing and your body turned to goo inside his hold. Maybe that had been his plan all along.

Even in his drunken state he didn’t feel you up, though you wouldn’t have minded in the slightest at this point. Instead he leaned back to stare at you and lost his balance almost immediately, so he had to wrap his arms around your neck to save yourself. You laughed and he smiled and you were both just dumb, drunken idiots.

“You’re cute.” He murmured nodding his head as if he had decided it right in that moment, and thus it was fact.

You chuckled. “Thank you. You are cute as well.”

“K.”

His eyes traveled down to your lips and yours traveled to his. If either of you had one brain cell to offer you might have noticed at you’d stopped dancing, or that song had changed. He ran his fingers into your hair and stepped closer in the limited space between you. Before your lips could touch, before you lost every sense of who you were, you were pulling away from his arms, cheeks flaming red.

“I should...I should go home. It’s late.”

His face drooped and it took everything in you not to physically push at his skin until he was smiling. But you were drunk and he was a rock star, and it had all gotten to be a little much.

“Are you sure?” He asked giving you ample opportunity to change your mind.

You smiled slipping his arms from around your waist.

“Yea. Thanks for the salt, neighbor.”

He seemed to remember then that you leaving meant walking the fiver feet to your apartment across the hall, and his smile was suddenly back in full force.

“No problem. Let me walk you home.”

He presented his arm out to you like you were going to a ball and not your apartment door, but you were a sucker for cute boys with brown eyes, so here you were barefoot and drunk in the middle of the hallway with a popstar on your arm. You got all the way to your door and you reached for your pocket to get to your keys only to look down and see that there was no pocket…. Because you were in a tight ass dress designed by some man who hated women. Idiot.

“Something wrong?” Shawn asked as you groaned and slammed your fist against the door.

“My keys. They’re in there.” You explained pointing at the door.

Shawn, the intellectual that he was, shrugged. “Let’s go get them.”

“No, sweetheart. They’re in there. We are out here. I need them to get us in there.”

“Oh.”

Tequila. A hell of a drink.

“I guess you’ll have to stay at my place then huh?” He asked bringing you back from your haze of drunken stupidity yourself. “At least till the morning, when the front desk is open?”

He was wearing a grin that was so smug and dumb and attractive that you didn’t know whether to kiss him or hit him.

You sputtered. “I’m not sleeping in your bed.”

“Sweetheart what kind of guy do you think I am? I have two guest rooms.”

He grabbed your hand interlocking your fingers like you weren’t technically strangers and brought you back to his apartment. True to his word he takes you to a guest room that’s big enough to be the master bedroom in your apartment. So much for similar layouts. He brings you sweatpants that are tight in the thighs and long long long everywhere else and you don’t even bother trying to squeeze a tit into his t-shirt feeling just fine in your bra. But, when he comes to say goodnight you might as well have been one of those skinny girls in the movies with a white button up that was really purposely picked out three times bigger than the lead actor guy had ever worn to continue the narrative that women have to be dainty and smaller than men to be sexy. He looped his fingers through the waistband string and sent you a smile so goofy and dopey that you just wanted to invite him in to stay forever.

“You look good in my sweatpants.” He mumbled not allowing his eyes to meet your cleavage.

“Yea?” You murmured peering down at wear the material bunched awkwardly around you thighs.

He nodded allowing his thumb to skim up an across your belly, which even on your best days was hard to love.

“Absolutely.”

Maybe it was the tequila. Maybe you were still horny from the club. Or maybe it was just the way that he looked at you like you mattered. But, closing the door with him on the other side just didn’t seem logical.

“Do you wanna… I mean you could sleep in here if you wanted.” You murmured, cheeks burning. “Or not?”

“Do you want me to sleep in here?”

He ducked his head to catch your eye, fingers rubbing soothing circles into your hip. It was a seemingly kind gesture and yet it felt incredibly intimiate at the same time. You found that you loved his hands on your body, which felt kind of astonishing and profound because no man had ever touched your body like him.

“Yea I--I...yes.”

He smiled and his whole face was just a little too cute for comfort.

“Cool.”

He leads you to bed and lets you peel back the covers. You face the wall and he crawls in pressing his chest along your back and slipping an arm over your waist. You feel like your sinking--into what you don’t know, but it feels good, feels right, and you’re hopless to stop it.

“Is this okay?” He whispers against your neck.

All you can do is settle yourself firmly into his body and sigh a sigh of contment.

“Yea.”

What a fuckin night.

***

When you woke up it was with your own personal human sleeping back. Shawn had his large leg draped over your much smaller one, his face hidden in your neck as he slept the sleep of the innocent. It was like something out of a fairytale...but you were nothing like a princess, and this was real life where you’d drank a quarter of your weight in alcohol the night before and had to learch away from the cute boy who’d cuddled you all night to barely make it to his bathroom and vomit horridly.

He found you there, on his pristine, beautiful floor looking like death, and you just knew this was the moment where he realized that you don’t let crazy women into your apartment and officially filed for a restraining order. You’d collapsed against the floor and he quickly made his way to his knees beside you. You thought for sure he would yell and tell you get the hell out of his place but instead he was kneeling to the porcilan god himself. What a fucking shit show.

“Holy fuck this sucks.” He muttered flushing the toilet and collapsing beside you. “I’m supposed to go to the studio today.”

“I feel like I may have had a small part in this and for that I’m sorry.” You mumbled.

He managed to peer over at you around the toilet with a look that said, “are you fucking kidding me?” and despite being on your death bed you still found it within you to bust out laughing. Shawn couldn’t help himself and quickly joined in only for both of you to realize that laughing hurt and you were kind of a couple of goddamn messes.

“This might be the wrong time to say this but...I had a really nice time last night.” He murmured.

You peered over to look at him, again around the toliet, and wondered if this man before you was actually real or if you’d died to alcohol posioning.

“I agree…. It’s the wrong time.”

He laughed at you again only to quickly start heaving and lurch forward for the toilet again. So, it wasn’t a fairytale by any stretch of the imagine. And the fries from the night before had probably all found their way into the toilet bowl. And you spent the rest of the morning on your neighbor’s bathroom floor praying for death to take you. But at one point, when your bones ached and your throat felt like sandpaper, his fingers touched yours on the linolium. And he smiled at you with this pathetic, tiny grin. And you decided that maybe living next door to a popstar might not be so bad afterall.

The End.

#Shawn mendes #Shawn mendes imagine #Shawn Mendes fic #Shawn Mendes fanic #Shawn mendes fan fic #Shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes x reader #shawn mendes x y/n #Shawn mendes x you #Shawn mendes x female reader #Shawn Mendes x plus size reader #Shawn #Shawn fic #Shawn fanfic #Shawn fan fiction #Shawn Mendes One shot #Shawn mendes au #Shawn mendes prompt

744 notes · View notes

yoon-kooks · 6 years

Text

Two Tones of a Tabby- pt.I

Pairing: Taehyung x Reader

Genre: Angst, Fluff, Bildungsroman, Idol!Taehyung

Summary: Upon graduating from university, you embark on your first and last summer adventure to explore the wonders of the world with complete independence before becoming confined to a cubicle when autumn begins. But as fate would have it, a chance encounter with a troubled idol in search of his own kind of freedom threatens the solo aspect of your trip.

Word Count: 2.4k

Parts: I II III IV V

A/N: this was supposed to be a lengthy oneshot, but i guess itll be another series instead (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ and im screaming at myself for being extra enough to write bildungsroman as the genre. it’s basically just a fancy term for coming-of-age and the longest word in my vocabulary LMAO.

T is for Taehyung

“travel diary entry #1- it’s 5pm, been stuck at incheon since like 6 in the morning and nothing remotely interesting has happened because this is a fucking airport. if there’s one more flight delay, i think i’m going to combust.”

With a sigh, you drop your pen between the first two pages of your journal to reveal a red cover with tiny tigers running across it. The first spontaneous purchase of your vacation is already proving its worth through the countless flight delays you’ve had to endure thus far. Your mother would’ve told the younger version of yourself not to waste money on a journal at an overpriced airport kiosk unless you were going to write in every single page from beginning to end. Maybe you wouldn’t have made use of such a sentimental object as a child, but as time went on, you’ve grown. Besides, no one’s here to stop you and your rash decisions. You’re on your own.

Or so you think.

All at once, a rush of humans and cameras flood the airport walkway that had been otherwise quiet for the past 11 hours. You notice some young folks get up from their seats with their phone cameras ready to get a better view of whoever it is. A celebrity? You’d get up off your ass to check out what the big deal is, but honestly, you have no idea what all the youngsters are into nowadays. Maybe that’s your own fault for paying more attention to your studies and workload than pop culture and current events. So you decide to stay back and eat your slice of pizza that had gone cold as you were busy writing.

Even from afar, you can see the huge moving cluster of people and bombardment of camera flashes. Is that even legal? Does personal space not exist when you’re a celebrity? Do celebrities ever grow tired of not being able to live freely? Those are the thoughts you have as you munch on your dinner.

Mid-bite, you watch as a black mullet pops up from the crowd with a few sleepy waves. You could swear, for just an instant, he makes eye contact with you, the only person sitting that far away from the chaos. His dark eyes reflect something more—something beyond what the rest of his nonchalant body language shows. With half of your pizza hanging out of your mouth, you give him a polite wave with crumby fingers, although you’re sure he had already looked away by then.

And just like that, the airport finds peace once more. You wonder if you should pull out your journal and write another entry about your fateful encounter with an unknown celebrity who accidentally made eye contact with you for 0.3 seconds.

Beep! “Attention: Now boarding, Flight 1230.” You leap off your seat as soon as you hear that your flight hasn’t been delayed for the thousandth time. Checking twice to make sure you aren’t leaving any of your belongings behind, you lug your carry-on bag with you to the boarding area.

Finally, your solo trip has begun.

Once you’re settled into your seat on the plane, you try to remember what the fuck you were thinking about before boarding. Ah yes, your eye contact with Mr. Celebrity. How could you forget?

You dig through your bag and pull out your tiger journal. For a good minute, you just stare at it, having an internal debate on whether or not to waste a page on another dumb event at the airport. Nah. It’s too late now. Maybe if he was a celebrity you knew, your heart would’ve leapt, and only then would it be worth recording into your journal. But you’d rather leave space for memories that perhaps hold more weight to you.

All that remains engraved in your mind from the occurrence are the boy’s eyes. They were fill with darkness as if they were hiding a secret of some sort, and he had awfully beautiful eyelashes that could be seen from a mile away. So for the sake of it, you draw just his eyelashes, which look mildly creepy on their own beneath your entry on the flight delays.

For the rest of the flight, you try to rid yourself of that one instance and get some rest, but for some reason, it’s more difficult than it should be. As much as you’d like to think of yourself as someone with a carefree personality, little things like this actually bug you quite a bit.

Something about the whole thing is unsettling. You aren’t sure if it’s because of the bombardment of cameras, the lack of personal space, the troubled look in the boy’s eyes, or the fact that that was the most action you’d gotten all day. But nonetheless, something just feels off.

Perhaps the only way you’re able to find peace is by telling yourself that there’s nothing you can do about it. The boy doesn’t know you, you don’t know him, and that’s that. You just want to enjoy your trip and not have to worry about anything—especially not a boy.

So you close your eyes and dream of all the yummy food you’ll eat over the course of your adventures. That's the only travel plan you have so far. Everything else will happen as it comes.

After the long flight, the first thing you do is stretch and breath in some fresh air. The sky is blue and the morning sun is radiating down on your jet-lagged body. As much as you’d love to find a hotel to rid yourself of your bulky luggage and take a nap, you don’t have time for that. You’re eager to explore, and that alone is already more than enough to energize your mind and soul.

You wander around the streets in search of the no.1 thing on your mind: food. Rather than use a GPS or Yelp, you leave it up to your intuition and stomach. And somehow, you’re led into an empty café with fancy coffees and desserts.

To give off the least amount of touristy vibes, you shove your luggage beneath the table for two and begin to browse your food options. You lowkey want to eat everything that’s pictured on the menu, but you have to remind yourself that you still have a long trip ahead of you, so there’ll most definitely be plenty of other opportunities for good food. After careful consideration, you settle on an iced mocha and a slice of strawberry sponge cake. A caffeine and sugar rush can’t hurt.

As you wait for your food, you wonder why the café is so empty. Perhaps it has a bad review on Yelp and you would’ve known that if you’d just checked your phone. Maybe the food quality is shit, or maybe the service is terrible, or maybe they know something that you don’t. Oops.

But it takes less than five minutes for your food to be served with Instagram-quality presentation. The strawberry sponge cake looks moist and delicate with pink flower sprinkles that glisten in the sunlight, and the mocha has a cute kitten drawn on the handcrafted foam. But to be honest, you kind of care more about the taste—which is also surprisingly quite delicious by your standards.

You suppose you shouldn’t worry as long as the food tastes good, so you pull out your journal again and write another entry as you enjoy your breakfast.

“travel diary entry #2: got off the plane, stopped at a cute café with no one in it, which is lowkey shady, but whatever. the food tastes good lol. oh and the mocha has a kitten drawn on it to match the tigers on this journal. is this what they call fate?? LMAO jkjkjkjkjk-”

“I’ll order what that customer is eating—except no coffee, please,” a soft and mellow voice interrupts your train of thought. You had been so absorbed in your food and writing that you didn’t realize another customer had appeared. Maybe the café isn’t so shady after all. Your intuition hasn’t failed you.

As you take a sip of your mocha, you casually glance over at the table across from where you’re seated and nearly spit out your entire drink—not because it tastes bad, but because you recognize the long eyelashes. It’s the eyelash boy from the airport.

Between bites of your cake, you keep sneaking peeks at the boy, who’s actually a lot more handsome now that you can see his features up close. With his loosely styled hair, his expensive yet questionable taste in fashion, and his gorgeous looks, there’s no doubt he holds some sort of fame status.

Apparently you’ve stared for too long because he catches you and deadass rolls his eyes. As if you’re doing something wrong.

“If you’re waiting for an autograph or something, you aren’t getting one,” he finally says to you. An autograph? You don’t even know who the fuck this guy is, and he thinks you want his autograph?

“Excuse me?” You narrow your eyes at the celebrity.

“I know you’re one of the fans from the airport. You waved at me with pizza hanging out of your mouth.” You’re half embarrassed by the fact that he witnessed The Great Pizza Incident, and half offended by the fact that he called you a “fan”. Because you’re certainly no fan of his.

“Last time I checked, I was sitting at this café before you, so there’s no need for you to assume I’m one of your crazed fans who follow you around everywhere.”

“And yet, somehow out of all the places in the world, you happen to travel to the same exact city as me,” he scoffs. “Don’t pretend like this is a coincidence.” His thick-skulled ass doesn’t believe you, and you can’t believe it. What did you do to deserve this?

“If you think I somehow found your schedule and took this vacation for the sole purpose of seeing my favorite celebrity, then you’re either paranoid or way too conceited,” you say. “I don’t even know who you are, or why there were so many fans chasing you around the airport. I’m just here to enjoy my trip, so leave me the fuck out of your problems.” It comes out a little harsher than you’d like, but hopefully it’ll get the point across that you aren’t a fan blinded by love.

Out of shock, the boy just blinks at you. He’s probably not used to being scolded straight to his pretty face. But he deserved it, and to your surprise, he apologizes.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to take out my frustrations on you,” he pulls back and bites his lip, “especially when you chose to stay away from the airport chaos.” At least he’s willing to own up to his mistakes.

“It’s fine… I’m not actually that mad… I just didn’t want to be wrongly accused of being a stalker, you know?” You soften your expression to ease the tension. “Besides, I’m sure it happens to you all the time.”

He nods in silence as he stares down at his strawberry cake. It seems celebrities do get overwhelmed and sick of living with no privacy. Maybe this boy just happens to have reached his tipping point.

“Look, I’m sorry you have to deal with constant bullshit like that. Everyone deserves the freedom and space to do whatever they wish (as long as it’s legal),” you say, finishing off your last bite of cake. “That’s actually the reason I decided to take this solo vacation—to take time away for myself!” You aren’t sure why you share this last bit of information with the boy, especially when you hadn’t told any friend or family about your spontaneous trip, but it just feels right to let him know that he’s not the only one in search of a liberation of some sort.

“I wish I could be a free spirit like you,” he chuckles for the first time, and it’s really fucking cute. “Maybe that’s why I’m taking this trip too—to loosen up a bit and do what I want, rather than conform to what the world expects of me.”

“Well you aren’t off to a great start, to be honest,” you tease him as you receive the bill from your waiter. As soon as you see how much you have to pay, your mouth forms a big O because you realize why the café is so empty. It costs you a lot more than you’d like to spend on some coffee and cake. But despite the overpriced food, you don’t feel terrible about your stay.

Just as you’re about to get up to pay at the register, you’re blocked by the boy who’s suddenly trying to act like a gentleman. “Let me pay for it… as an apology for interrupting your breakfast. And by the way, who eats cake for breakfast?”

“You ordered the same thing as me!” This guy is unbelievable, but also amusing. “And it’s fine. I may not be a celebrity like you, but I can pay for my own food. Thanks anyway, Mr. Celebrity.” You smile at him before making your payment at the counter. Something about his cute frown from the rejection makes you die a little.

“Then let me take you out,” he blurts out, perhaps on the spur of the moment. “I-I mean… unless you have plans later.”

You take a long moment to stare at the boy who had accused you of being a stalker less than an hour ago. Oh how the tables have turned. The spontaneity of travelling with someone you just met certainly will spice up your adventure—for better or worse. Somewhere in you, a fire is lit. So you shake your head, “I don’t have any plans. After all, I’m a free spirit as you like to call me.”

“Then what would you like to be called?”

“Y/N.”

“Right. Y/N. Then… I’m T?”

“T? Is that what your real name starts with?” you chuckle. “And why do you sound so suspicious?”

“Wait, you really don’t know who I am?”

“I really fucking don’t.”

You hear him mumble something about fires and deoxyribonucleic acid, as if you should get the references. But you suppose you’re too much of an uncultured swine to pick up what he’s putting down.

“Good.” For some reason, he looks relieved that you’re unaware of his celebrity self. “Just call me Taehyung then.”

#bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts angst #bts fluff #taehyung fanfic #bts imagines #taehyung x reader #taehyung #v #bts #bangtan #two tones of a tabby

104 notes · View notes

thesoftdumbass · 6 years

Text

Together

McKirk

Tia’s Birthday Challenge

A/N: This ended up differently than I expected when I started out, but I’m still pretty proud of it. It’s got sort of a Princess Diaries 2: The Royal Engagement vibe to it, which I didn’t realize until I was already halfway through writing it haha.

A big Happy Birthday to the amazing, the wonderful, @captainsbabysitter-blog who is hosting this challenge. You’re fantastic and we’re all lucky to have you on our blogs and in our lives 💜💜💜

Word Count: 3.1K

Characters: Jim Kirk, Leonard McCoy, Winona Kirk, Nyota Uhura, mentions of: Spock, John Harrison (Khan), Marla McGivers

Summary: Jim Kirk is a prince, ready to ascend the throne, but before he does so he has to choose a spouse and get married, too bad he’s not interested in any of the people chosen for him. When Jim gets sick and a handsome doctor, Leonard, makes a house call, he thinks his luck may have changed.

masterlist

Winona Kirk looks across the breakfast table at her son James. He refused to meet her eyes or even speak, other than exchange pleasantries with the staff. The blonde woman lets out a long sigh, putting down her cup of coffee. “Will you please talk to me, son?”

Blue eyes flash up with a hardness in them. “What would you like me to say, Mother? I think I’ve expressed my feelings enough on the matter.”

“I don’t know what you want from me, James. It is the law that you have to be married before you can take over the throne.”

“Can’t you change the law? You are the Queen, after all,” James huffs.

“It takes the votes of all of parliament to change, believe me, I tried, but those old men are too set in their ways. They won’t change unless they believe there is a logical reason for it.”

“What about my happiness? What about the fact that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life ruling beside somebody that I barely know? Or how about setting a bad example for our people by settling for less, doing something that I don’t believe in, and lying about my personal feelings? Are those logical reasons enough?” James’ voice getting quieter by the end of his small tirade, emotion thick in his throat at the thought of being stuck with a stranger for the rest of his life.

Winona’s eyes soften and she speaks gently, but loud enough for him to hear. “I know, Jimmy. I’m sorry about that. I know what it feels like to marry a person that you barely know, just to keep your rightful position.”

Jim looks up from where he’s picking at his eggs, confusion on his face as he recalls the few memories he has of his parents together. “I thought you loved Dad?”

“Yes, eventually. At first we didn’t know what we were doing. We got along well enough, and that turned into a friendship, and from there…” Winona trails off as she thinks back on her relationship with George, her eyes glossy.

A deep sigh escapes Jim’s mouth, “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ve been acting like a spoiled child and that isn’t fair to you.”

“It’s alright, son. I haven’t talked about it much, how could you have known?”

The rest of breakfast passed quietly, the subject of conversation staying far from the subject of the argument. The peaceful morning couldn’t last forever though, as today several prospective spouses were arriving. James would have to get to know them, spending hours upon hours with them doing mindless activities, all the while wishing he were far away.

The candidates seemed elegant, nothing too disagreeable about them at first impressions, but Jim wasn’t immediately interested. Maybe the three women and two men were too many to meet at once, maybe they just weren’t that engaging, or maybe Jim was just avoiding making a connection with one of them subconsciously out of pettiness. After all, if he couldn’t find a spouse, he wouldn’t have to get married, right?

Luncheon followed behind an afternoon of walking the gardens outside the palace and taking a tour to view the artwork in the corridors, and after that James was finally given a few moments of peace to read to himself. Sitting in a large chair in a corner of the library, Jim was skimming through an old book that he’s read a half dozen times when he started feeling unwell. Thinking that it may just be exhaustion from a stressful day, Jim made his way to his room and laid down for a nap.

Hours later there is a knocking on his chamber door that goes completely ignored. It takes energy to get out of bed and answer the door, and Jim just does not have any. A few moments later there is a hand on his forehead, Jim barely opening his eyes to find Queen Winona gazing at him with concern.

“When you said you weren’t feeling well I just thought you were trying to get out of this evening’s dinner, but it seems you’re coming down with something.” Jim erupts into a bout of coughs and looks up at his mother pitifully, his throat too sore to speak. “Oh sweetie, it’s okay. I’ll get a doctor to come and see you.”

“Thank you, mom,” is barely croaked out before Winona leaves the room, going to make a call to a physician.

Jim is still asleep a couple hours later when somebody else enters his room, the light clicking on and disturbing his sleep. When a hand checks his forehead he expects it to be his mom again, but the hand is much larger and warmer than Winona’s, making Jim open his eyes in curiosity. Who he finds looking back at him is not his mother as expected, but a man sitting on the edge of his bed.

It’s not somebody that he’s seen before, James can be certain of that. He would have remembered the dark hair, tan skin, and wide shoulders. Not to mention the dimple that shows on the side of his face when one corner of his mouth lifts in a smile.

“Hi,” Jim croaks when he feels he’s observed this man enough to be slightly creepy.

“Hello Prince James, my name is Leonard McCoy. I’m a doctor, I’m here to help you.”

Coughs make their way from Jim’s chest and Leonard opens up his bag, taking out a stethoscope and putting the headset where it belongs. “Can I check that out for you?” A nod is all he gets in return before he’s helping Jim sit up in bed and listening to his lungs.

Doctor McCoy does an examination and asks a lot of questions before finally reaching a conclusion. “It looks like you’ve got the flu, kid. I can give you something to help with the symptoms, but you’ve basically just gotta let the infection run its course.” Leonard gives a dose of medication and makes sure that Jim is comfortable.

“Thank you, doctor,” Jim was able to get out, his voice cooperating with him a little better now.

“You’re welcome. I’m going to update your mom on the situation, I’ll check back in on you after a while.”

When Jim wakes back up a little while later he feels about the same, the medication starting to work. He is able to sit up in bed, the body aches easing off slightly. Jim pushes his back against the headboard of his bed and looks around his room, trying to discern what time, or even day it is. Judging by the darkness outside the window it is late, and Jim has slept since late afternoon but he feels exhaustion in the way he can barely keep his eyes open.

Still studying his surroundings, Jim’s eyes land on the large armchair in the corner of his room that seems to be inhabited. Sitting in the reading chair is Leonard, the handsome doctor from earlier. If he knows that Jim is awake he hasn’t said anything about it, simply reading through what looks like a medical journal under the light of a lamp.

“Hey,” Jim says, getting his attention.

Leonard looks up, slight surprise showing in his eyes when he finds Jim attentive and sitting up in bed. “Hey. How are you feeling, Prince James?”

“I’m alright, and call me Jim. Everybody around here does.”

He got a smile and nod in return before Leonard started to check his temperature, among other things, making sure that he wasn’t getting any worse. Len is writing some numbers down in a notebook when Jim speaks again, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled over the room.

“This probably sounds dumb, but this flu couldn’t have come at a better time.”

He gets a confused smile in return. “I won’t pretend to know what you’re talking about, kid.”

“Long story short; I have to get married before I can be coronated. There are five candidates staying here at the palace. I’m supposed to choose one of them to marry so my mother can retire, only none of them are even remotely interesting to me. Honestly I wouldn’t care about being King, it’s just that Mom is tired of ruling, and my brother Sam refuses to lead.” Jim shakes his head and sighs when he realizes that he’s just unloaded too much onto a man that is practically a stranger. “Sorry about that, sometimes I talk too much.”

“Don’t sweat it, Jim, I can understand how that would be frustrating.” A few moments pass as Leonard sits on the edge of the bed. “So can you only get married to one of these five people,” he asks curiously.

“No, it can be anybody I guess, as long as they don’t have anything brought against them. Warrants for arrest, incredible debt, things like that,” Jim shrugs.

“So, student debt from medical school that’s almost paid off, would that count against someone?”

Is he flirting with me? Jim thinks to himself when Leonard smiles and shows his dimples off. And then, he is flirting with me when a beautiful hazel eye winks at him from just a foot away. Jim’s face warms and his cheeks are pink before he can help it.

Before Jim can think up a clever response to that, his bedroom door is opening and his mother is walking in.

“Mom! Hey, what are you doing in here,” Jim yelps just a little too quickly, his blush getting that much darker.

“Can’t I come check on my son?” She chuckles. “You were asleep last time I was in here, I’m glad to see that you’re looking better. Although you do look a little flushed, does he have a fever?” Her question is aimed at Leonard and he shakes his head, a small amused smile on his face.

“No fever, I just checked his temperature. The medicine is doing its job and helping to reduce his symptoms.”

“That’s perfect! That means you’ll be able to continue with your scheduled events for tomorrow. The Duke, John Harrison was asking over you at dinner, you know.”

An image of the man’s cold eyes and pompous smirk flashed through Jim’s mind and he shivered at the man’s stony attitude. Leonard picked up on this and decided to drop him a line.

“Actually, Your Majesty, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Jim may seem better but he’s not yet, the virus is still in his system. It will take at least four days for him to get better altogether.”

The queen huffed not so subtly and bid goodnight to her son before leaving the room, an unhappy expression apparent on her face.

It was hard for him to hold in his laughs at the look on his mother’s face but he managed, at least until the door closed behind her. Leonard chuckled along, his voice deep and sunny at the same time. His amusement doesn’t last long however, as soon Jim is groaning in pain.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Leonard is already checking him over for what could be wrong, concern evident in his voice.

“Nothing, my head just hurts.” Jim groans, putting a hand on his head and rubbing his temples.

Leonard immediately goes to his bag and grabs some aspirin for the pain, giving it to Jim to take along with a glass of water. “Maybe you should go back to sleep, you’ll need all the energy you can get to fight this off.”

Jim just nods, settling back into bed and covering up with his heavy duvet. Leonard picks up his journals and notebooks, placing them in his medical bag before closing it and making his way to the door. “You leavin’?”

Jim’s voice is low, the sound barely reaching Leonard’s ears. “I’m gonna let you get some sleep and I’ll come back in just a little while. Goodnight, Jim.”

“Goodnight, Len,” Jim mumbles, and then he’s out like a light.

The next few days are not as bad for Jim as one would expect, what with having the flu and all. Of course, having Leonard staying in the next room and coming multiple times a day to check on him and keep him entertained is what actually made being sick tolerable.

Their conversations and banter only got more flirty with each passing comment, making Jim feel amazing and terrible at the same time. He was starting to really like Leonard, learning so much about each other and getting along perfectly, but in the back of his mind was always the lingering thought that he is supposed to get married, and soon, to somebody he hasn’t even spoken a dozen words to personally.

That brings them to today. Winona had convinced all of the visitors to stay until the prince got better, and now that he was, Jim was being forced to sit down at a banquet table with all of the guests, as well as several members of the government. One good thing though is that his mother let him invite some friends, including Leonard.

Sitting in the center of the table, so he can get to know the guests, as his mother had urged, Jim was eating quietly and listening to the chatter around him when he felt someone’s eyes on him. Looking up, Jim’s eyes landed on John Harrison who was attempting to ignore the affections of one of the other guests, Marla McGivers, and was staring straight at him.

Clearing his throat uncomfortably, Jim turns his attention to his friends next to him, Spock and Nyota, who are having a conversation with Leonard. About what, he’s not sure, but he just knows he has to focus his attention somewhere other than the man in front of him that makes him uncomfortable.

Nyota, noticing how quiet Jim is being, decides to ask about it. “How are you feeling, James?”

He shakes his head to clear his thoughts and responds. “I’m fine Ny, why do you ask?”

Nyota sends a pointed glance across the table to the man still unabashedly watching her friend. “You don’t look very well, I just thought that maybe you’re still recovering from your illness.”

“I think she’s right, kid. You’ve probably over-extended yourself so soon after being sick. I can walk you back to your room if you want,” Leonard cuts in, picking up on the tension at the table.

Jim nods and excuses himself, telling a short lie to his mom as an explanation. Jim and Leonard walk out of the dining hall beside each other in companionable silence. When Jim starts to turn a corridor in the direction of his room, Len grabs his hand to keep him walking straight and doesn’t let go once Jim has corrected his path.

Jim is satisfied to say the least that Leonard is still holding his hand, although he is a little confused at where they are going. He did say he would walk Jim back to his room, didn’t he? Jim cocks an eyebrow and looks over at Len, his head tilted slightly in question.

Leonard smiles, his dimples once again making an appearance. God, Jim was starting to really love his dimples. “I figured you wanted to get away from the table, but I didn’t want you to be stuck in your room again. You’ve been confined there for almost a week,” Leonard says in explanation.

“Thank you, Len. Not just for tonight but for taking care of me and keeping me company. It’s really easy to be me around you. I can’t do that with just anyone.” Jim smiles at the man next to him and feels his heart skip a beat when he feels Leonard’s hand tighten around his own.

Not knowing or caring where they were going as he was sneaking glances at Leonard, Jim looks up when he feels wind on his face and finds himself in the gardens. Len and Jim walk through the beautiful flowers and budding trees, just enjoying each other’s company and the improving weather. The two of them stop when they reach the center of the walled garden, sitting down on the ivy-covered sides of a large fountain.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Jim just shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t really know what to say. I feel like I’ve already about myself enough for the time being...”

“Well I’m here for you if you decide you want to talk. Anything you need.” Leonard’s’ voice is filled with warmth and Jim can feel himself gravitating towards him, laying his head on one of Len’s broad shoulders.

“Anything, huh?” Jim looks up at Leonard, his electric blue eyes almost glowing in the coming darkness.

“Of course, Jim. I hope I’ve made that clear.”

“I don’t…” Jim searches his words, sitting up straight. “I am not going to marry any of those people. I am going to challenge the ruling that says I have to be married to become King. I don’t want my life to be ruled by somebody other than me. What I want to know is… will you stay with me when I do?”

Leonard doesn’t answer right away, letting his mind think about what Jim is saying. Does he really want Leonard to stay around? Leonard hadn’t let himself think that something like this could happen, instead choosing to remain a realist, but now that him and Jim could be together without having to rush, it sounds perfect.

In the few seconds it has taken for Leonard to think this, his mind coming back with an emphatic /yes,/ Jim’s head has lowered, thinking that the silence was a rejection. Leonard put a hand under Jim’s chin, lifting his head gently to look into his eyes.

“I did say anything, didn’t I?”

A large smile takes over Jim’s face, and it’s one of the most beautiful things that Leonard has ever seen. A matching grin comes over his own face and before he knows it he’s smiling into an affectionate kiss, letting himself melt into it.

The kiss breaks off sooner than expected and Leonard places his forehead on Jim’s, breathing deeply, when he hears something he wasn’t really expecting. A laugh is bubbling out of Jim’s mouth, bright and so full of warmth. Leonard raises an eyebrow in silent question and Jim stops to take a breath.

“You do realize that now I have to tell everyone to go home, right? Mom is going to be so pissed.”

This time Len joins in, chuckling a little when he thinks of what Winona’s anger will look like. The corners of Leonard’s mouth lift up and his eyes gleam with adoration. He leans in and places another, chaste kiss on Jim’s lips. “We’ll do it together, then.”

Post-A/N: So there it is, I hope y’all liked it! If you wouldn’t mind, maybe leave a like and a comment if you’d like to see more from me! And if you’d like to be added to one of my tag lists, please leave your URL on my list HERE

Permanent tags: @deanxfuckingadorablexwinchester @mad-girl-without-a-box @cd1242 @space-helen

Star Trek tags: @bookcaseninja @musikat18 @kickingitwithkirk @shealwaysreads

#tiasbirthdaychallenge #mckirk #jim kirk #leonard mccoy #jim kirk x leonard mccoy #leonard mccoy x jim kirk #star trek #star trek imagine #star trek aos #star trek reboot #star trek au #royalty au

75 notes · View notes

47pictures · 3 years

Text

“Sedona”

Road trips were always fun, even if I didn’t get to go on a lot of them. I was invited to tag along for a visit to Sedona, Arizona, along with three other people - my younger sister Janice (19), Kenneth (25), and Matt (27). I was 23-years-old and a recent college graduate. For now, there was a little free time while I applied and waited to hear back from several employers.

Kenneth and Matt were doing this for their new ‘horror’ podcast, where they covered a variety of creepy, unexplained stories and phenomena around the world. Typical things you’d expect from an amateur horror podcaster. Several of the listeners recommended they cover the topic of certain ‘hot spots’ or zones that seem to harbor paranormal and downright strange activity. So to suffice, they decided to pay the city of Sedona a visit themselves, since they were adventurous like that.

The area had a reputation for being what’s known as a ‘spiritual vortex,’ a zone where people seem to be at a sense of peace, calming, and thought to bring healing capabilities to whoever stands in it long enough.

So why use it as the topic of a horror podcast? Well, it’s also known to be the sightings of many UFOs and other paranormal events from time to time that can’t quite be explained. Supposedly, there are other ‘zones’ like this in the world. Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. Taos, New Mexico. Aokigahara forest in Japan. The Bermuda Triangle. They all have the same thing in common.

Energy. Lots of peculiar energy compared to the rest of the world. Matt and Kenneth, being the urban explorers that they were, wanted to nosedive right into the heart of Sedona’s vortexes. The main one we planned on hitting first was Bell Rock, a large butte with one helluva peak that gives a panoramic view to die for.

Usually, I’d say fuck no to things like this, but then Janice agreed to tag along. As a matter of fact, she agreed without hesitation, as she was more adventurous than I was, always getting into things, in both a good and bad way. She also got into more trouble than I did. It was just me and her growing up, and you can imagine how much blame I’d get for when something unfortunate would happen to her. She was 100-percent on board, and even wanted to hike some of the trails with the two guys while she insisted I could stay in the van if I wanted.

Nope.

I knew Kenneth and Matt well enough to assume they were good people, truly, but older sibling instincts refused to let her go by herself with two older men. Even if I was overthinking it, that just wasn’t something I could afford to risk.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I knew of van dwellers and people who’d put a lot of effort into making their home on wheels look and feel like an actual home, but damn, Matt and Kenneth weren’t playing around. It was a high-top conversion van with more room than you’d expect from the outside looking in.

They fit a couch, beanbag, tabletop and chair, computer, mini-fridge, sink, mini-oven, and stovetop all in such a compact yet roomy living space. It was also decorated with various stickers and posters, and the floral pattern curtains paired nicely with the brown wooden interior of the walls.

What really set the mood, though, were the strands of LED lights taped around the corners and along the walls, each circuit lit in a combination of colors ranging from red, blue, green, and yellow, making it look like Christmas.

Janice and I were inside the back, sorting through our things and getting settled in.

“I’m glad you decided to come along,” she mentioned.

“What, you thought I was just gonna let you go by yourself?” I remarked.

“You know I’m an adult now, right?”

“Yes, and you’re still naive.”

She rolled her eyes at me.

“Think about it, me leaving you with two grown men?” I added.

“Um, have you seen the two of them?” Janice retorted. “Like, I’m just saying, I think even you could take them by yourself. Hell, even Mama could.”

“That’s because Mama can actually fight.”

“I can fight,” she argued, sounding offended.

“Eh, you talk a good talk.”

She scoffed. “Whatever, you know I can scrap when I need to.”

“Suuure.”

She hit me on the shoulder, as I teasingly smiled.

Then Kenneth came into the back where we were.

“Got everything?” he asked both of us.

“Yeah, think so,” Janice said.

“Sorry there’s not another bed for you to sleep in, Joe,” he said to me.

“Oh that’s okay, Janice will be perfectly fine on the beanbag in the corner,” I dryly humored.

“Ha-ha,” she remarked.

In one hand, Kenneth held two walkie-talkies by their antennas and raised them.

“Brought some two-way radios, just ‘cause,” said. “In case we feel like playing around or testing other points at the summit and other spots.”

“Ooh, sounds fun,” Janice sounded pleased. She then took note of the thing in his other hand. “What’s that?”

“Oh, this?” Kenneth said, raising the device for us to see.

It was a small wooden contraption in the shape of a triangle and what looked like a gemstone tied to the end of a string.

“It’s a pendulum,” he noted.

“What’s it for?” she asked.

He then walked over to the tabletop and placed the pendulum on its legs to stand freely, as the gemstone now began to swivel left and right on a single axis from the string.

“Well,” he started, “They say when you’re near a site that’s full of paranormal or high amounts of energy, the pendulum’s supposed to swing nearer in that direction or whatever.”

“Who’s they?” Janice remarked.

Kenneth looked at her then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said frankly.

Janice laughed amusedly.

“Apparently, that’s what it does,” Kenneth went on.

“What kind of rock is that?” she pointed.

“Oh, that’s amethyst. Supposedly it wards off bad spirits, so, you know, probably a good idea to have it around while we’re camping out there.”

“I thought the vortexes harbor good energy only?”

“They do, but, you never know.”

You never know…

“Oh that’s okay,” Janice said as she clasped her hands on my shoulder. “Joe here will protect us, because our grandmother said he’s special,” she said in a mocking tone and a big smile.

Janice then walked out of the van.

“O… kay,” Kenneth replied.

But I knew exactly what she was referring to.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We made a rest stop at a gas station seemingly in the middle of nowhere. No big-name shop like Shell or Texaco, but a compact blue wooden exterior structure with two gas pumps that look something straight out of the 70s. They did, however, have a good selection of snacks and drinks on par with a 7-Eleven.

Everyone used the restroom and got something of nourishment at the least. I decided to grab a water and head back to the van before everyone else so that I could light and smoke a cigarette (or ‘cancer stick,’ as Janice referred to them as). Soon after, Matt followed, while Janice and Kenneth were still in the station looking for something to buy, or probably laughing and bullshitting. Those two, I swear. They shouldn’t shut up the whole drive.

Matt and I sat along the edge at the back of the van with the door open. From where we parked, the view of a wide range of mountains and desert terrain was ethereal, something I wasn’t used to from North Florida.

“Those two are something, aren’t they?” Matt said as he cracked open his Red Bull.

“Hmm,” I scoffed, taking a hit of my cigarette.

“He is on the older tip, though, so…”

“I don’t care who she sees, if that’s what it is,” I responded. “Kenneth’s all right, I think.”

“No bad vibes from him?”

I shook my head. “Nope,” then took another hit.

“No bad vibes from me?”

I turned to him and glared into his eyes. The intention was to make him uncomfortable. My humor was dry like that. After a few seconds, I backed off.

“No,” I said.

Matt chuckled. “That’s good to know,” he said.

“At least I don’t think so.”

“Would you have tagged along if you thought otherwise?”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Janice tagged along, so I did.”

“And if she didn’t?”

“If she didn’t what?”

“If she didn’t decide to come along, would you have still?”

I took another hit from my cigarette, taking in and exhaling the menthol, thinking of how nicely to put this.

“Honestly, probably not,” I answered. It was really definitely not, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“At least you’re honest,” Matt noted.

I shook my head. “It’s nothing against you or Kenneth or your guys’ podcast. It’s just… I don’t like to play with energies like that.”

Matt furrowed his brow. “Energies?”

I nodded. “The vortex?”

“But it’s supposed to be peaceful. You know, a ‘positive’ energy.”

“Yeah, it may be peaceful for some, hell, even most. But for others… you just never know.”

Matt paused, tapping his foot on the ground, then took a sip of his drink. After a while, he spoke again.

“Have you had bad experiences before?” he asked.

I looked at him. “No,” I answered.

“You believe in… possession? Or being overtaken by another force?”

“I believe in protecting your aura. At all times. Like you would your own life.” Matt nodded with content. “My grandmother, before she passed, told me when I was younger that me and a few other people in the family had ‘the gift.’”

“The gift?” Matt said.

“Like a… not necessarily psychic or anything like that, but that me and the others were just more… sensitive to certain energies. Vibrational frequencies, they say.” I shrugged. “I don’t know how true it all actually is, though. I don’t believe in absolutes. Angels, demons, gods, divine intervention. But that grey area always tests my faith every now and then…”

Then I saw the look in Matt’s eyes. Maybe he was wary or maybe he was regretting me coming along. Wasn’t too sure.

“Does Janice have the gift, too?” he asked.

“My grandmother says no,” I answered. “Then again, she never seemed to take a liking to Janice, for whatever reason. She seemed to cherish me more. I’m not surprised Janice is the way she is.”

“How’s that?”

“Just… free-spirited. Unhinged. Spiritual. Into yoga. Trying to find an inner peace and being one with the universe. Stuff like that. I see it as a way of compensating for our grandmother’s indifference. Basically a ‘fuck you’ to her.”

“Wow. What do you think might happen if you get near the vortex?” he asked.

I slowly shook my head. “I have no idea.“

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We hit the road again. About another 4 hours before we’d make it to Bell Rock. Janice and I played cards for a bit, chit-chatted here and there, and Kenneth, Matt, and I rotated between taking turns driving the van.

Eventually, we made it to the first stop, and found a good spot to camp out not too far from Bell Rock, according to Matt. We decided to take a short hike around the area, take some pictures and vlogs, etc.

Sedona is in a league of its own, I thought to myself. It didn’t seem quite like the typical American city I was used to. It was akin to stepping on Mars. Rock, sand, mountains, complemented with patches of grass and cacti. It felt like I was in another world entirely.

As we walked, I took note of a tall saguaro cactus surrounded by other shorter cacti and flowers. I told Janice it’d be a nice backdrop for a photo shoot. I had the good camera while she just had her phone.

She stood next to the tall plant - taller than her - and she began to strike various silly and some very Instagram-worthy poses.

“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Photographer,” she played around.

“My, my, madame, you’ve gotten fat,” I teased in a heavy French accent.

“Oh please!”

She really wasn’t fat in the slightest, I just liked to mess with her from time to time. She definitely was in better shape than the rest of us. I couldn’t knock her for that.

As I snapped various pictures of her, taking different angles, poses, trying to get better lighting, I got down on one knee, pointing the lens at just the right angle, finding the perfect shot.

“That’s money right there,” I commented.

“Well shit, watcha waitin’ for?” Janice exclaimed, holding her smile.

But before I could snap the photo, a loud ringing noise emerged in both of my ears. It crescendoed, then lowered, then raised in volume again, a pulsating sort of sensation. Regardless, the sound was distracting and unusual. Were my ears ringing? Probably, but they never rang like this.

“Joe?” Janice said impatiently.

I lowered the camera, where she could now see my face was disgruntled.

“You okay?” she asked, concerned.

I stood up. “Do you hear that?” I said.

“Hear what?”

“That sound. That ringing.”

She looked puzzled. “No…”

I turned my head in every which way across the desert, unsure of what I would even be looking for until suddenly, it stopped. The ringing was gone, and it fell silent. Only thing I could hear was the slight breeze of wind.

“Are you fucking with me?” she said.

“What? No, why would I be?” I said, seriously. I messed with her a lot, but not like that. Never pranked her once in her entire life.

She chuckled and walked past me to catch up with the other two, patting me on the shoulder as she did so. “Never mind, ‘gifted one.’”

I stood there for a moment. I didn’t understand what the heck just happened, but decided to brush it off and keep on moving down the trail.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I don’t remember how long I’d been asleep, but I woke up and found myself alone in the van. It was nighttime outside. Worried, I quickly got up and looked outside the window to check and see if maybe they were in the front.

Nobody.

I went out and saw that we were parked atop a sandy hill. They’d set up a small camp of some sort with three pull-out chairs and a large mat laid flat, which I already knew was Janice’s yoga mat. In the distance, I saw the three of them down about 23 yards away walking towards a mountain top. Could that be it? The vortex? I thought I told this chick not to leave without me, especially once they started the hike.

I saw Janice turn back to look, and she noticed me.

“Joe!” she called to me. I shook my head. “Come on! We’re gonna take some videos of the vortex!”

I thought about it. Really thought about it. At this point, I just decided F it. Something told me that she’d be all right. After my many objections to Janice going by herself with the two, finally, my intuition spoke to me. My gut never lies, so I knew I could trust it. Only this one time, though.

"I’m good,” I declined. “Go on without me.”

“You sure, bro?” Kenneth asked.

“I’ll stay behind and watch the van.”

“Ah, no one’s gonna steal it.”

I cocked my brow. “You sure about that? It’s a nice van.”

“Nobody’s gonna steal that junk.”

Matt hit him on the shoulder. “Fuck you,” he said, and Kenneth laughed.

I turned and started walking back towards the van.

“Whatever,” Janice spoke. “But you’re coming to take pictures with me when the sun comes up, ya hear?”

I raised my hand and gave her a firm thumbs up.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I laid on the comfy bed in the van with my noise-canceling headphones over my ears as I listened to music. The inside Christmas lights kept the area illuminated. Through the window, the night sky bathed in stars of various different shapes. I recognized the Sagittarius constellation, just aside from Gemini, but couldn’t make out much more from this view.

Abruptly, my ears began to ring again. The same one from before. It grew louder in pitch the more I listened. So loud to the point where I couldn’t even hear the music anymore. I removed my headphones and scratched and rubbed against my ears, wincing at the sound. The noise wasn’t exactly painful, but grew noticeably more discomforting.

I got up to look around, to see if maybe there was a device inside that might be the source of the noise, but it was hard to tell the direction from which it came. I checked the walkie-talkie to see if that could be it, but pressing it to my ear, I still heard the sound radiating from elsewhere.

I stopped for a moment to listen, and when I did, I realized it wasn’t exactly a ring, but more in resemblance to a hum. Crossing the line between the stroke of a chord of an instrument… or the audible sound of something else entirely that I couldn’t decipher at the moment.

Just as suddenly as the humming initiated, it ceased at once. The van fell silent. Dead silent.

I stepped outside again, finding it unusual that the same volume from within the vehicle matched the desert. Pure silence. It was almost distracting to all five of my senses. My body was confused.

I saw the three of them in the distance still, nearing the vortex, about to reach the edge any minute now to begin their ascent.

I decided to sit in one of the foldout chairs in front of the van and light a 'cancer stick.’ I gazed at the night sky where I could now see the full layout of the celestial bodies above. Breathtaking, needless to say. Out here where there were no city lights, the entire display of stars and constellations were there for us to take in. If anything, this was worth the long trip.

The pendulum sat just beyond where myself and the other chairs stood, in place of where I figured a campfire should’ve been. I was surprised to see that it swiveled just barely left and right.

“Hmm,” I laughed internally, taking another drag from my cigarette.

As I sat and smoked, I noticed that not only was there no noise, but likewise, even so much as a tiny breeze was nonexistent. I had no sensation of the air around me, no feel for any particular temperature, neither hot nor cold, dry or damp. It was as if I were sitting in a vacuum. How was the pendulum moving, now that I think about it? Couldn’t do that without the wind, right?

I took note of the smoke as I exhaled, following its trail. Bizarrely, the smoke didn’t merely dissolve into the air, but shot in a clear pathway upwards in a stream, curving inward in the direction south of me. Yet still, I felt no wind blowing in that direction. No wind whatsoever.

The humming resumed. Thrown off, the hairs on my neck raised at the abrupt return.

I could hear it clearly and audibly as I did in the van like it was right next to me. I looked around again to see if there was any possible direction for the sound to be emitting from again, but it was still very hard to tell. It was so strange.

When I looked down at the pendulum again, I grew wide-eyed.

The crystal stopped swinging entirely, and instead was pulled completely in one direction, suspended in an impossibly still state. I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but I went over and kneeled to get a closer look, and saw that it did seem to be pulled at one clear angle, as though it were attracted to an invisible force - or a magnetic field of sorts.

I turned to face the direction the crystal was, which pointed directly to the van, and was taken aback by the lights inside. They each began to flash in a sequence that made it appear as though they were looping in a complete circle inside - a phi phenomenon. All of the colors - red, blue, yellow, green - alternated and moved down the line of each circuit one by one.

Could they do that? I hadn’t played with the settings or seen Matt show us any other sorts of tricks and sequences it could perform. Either way, how could they just do that by themselves? Did he set it from his phone? Impossible, I thought. They were way too far away for the Bluetooth to even work. Even still, it wouldn’t make sense for him to do so.

I turned to face the three in the distance again, seeing that they were now starting the climb up the rock. It was right then and there that I noticed something very particular about the structure as a whole. It had twin peaks at the summit, identical in shape, almost like cone pyramids, as the base took the form of a rocky pyramid. There also was hardly anything surrounding the vicinity. No grass, cacti, anything. Only barren desert and rock. Around where we parked and set up our camping site only lie a few remnants of any sort of vegetation. Then I knew…

We weren’t at Bell Rock at all. This was the wrong spot.

I looked back down at the pendulum, and to my shock, it was now pointed downwards at full rest. Not even swinging. I turned to face the van and saw that the lights were now completely off. My eyes narrowed. I put out my cigarette, dropping it to the ground and stomping out the bud.

Hopefully at least one of the walkie-talkies Kenneth brought was in the van. I opened the door to the back and entered, shutting it behind me. It was too dark now with the lights off, so I used my phone flashlight to search for it. Bingo, one was sitting on the table, and I grabbed and pressed the push-to-talk button.

“Janice, can you hear me?” I spoke.

I waited a moment for a response. Nothing. I pressed it again.

“Janice, can you hear me?” I said loudly and clearly.

A few moments passed. Then her voice sounded from the other end, readable but very staticky.

“What’s up, chickenbutt?” she said back.

I rolled my eyes. “Hey, I don’t think we’re at the right spot.”

“Whatcha mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think this is Bell Rock.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Just look at the peak. It’s nothing like it. It’s not even shaped like it.”

“But Joe, I feel it. Like, we haven’t even reached the top yet, but I swear, I feel its energy, Joe. It’s real. It’s… it’s alive. It’s beautiful.”

I’m sure there was no doubt about it. I’m glad that whatever energy she was taking in felt good on her end, but whatever energy that began to overtake what now surrounded the campsite didn’t match hers. It felt wrong. I knew something wasn’t right. Something felt off…

“We’ve been climbing and… so f… ar it’s… been… ve… er… y…”

She was breaking up badly, as more static overpowered her transmission. Were they too far? I don’t know, but the reach should’ve been well within good range from where we were from each other.

“Janice?” I transmitted.

No answer.

Screw this. I reached for my phone in my pocket and decided to just call her instead. I waited as it dialed, putting the phone on speaker. Lo and behold, I heard her phone ring from inside the van. She left it behind.

“Fucking idiot,” I muttered.

I hung up the phone and dialed for Matt, when suddenly another transmission came through the radio.

It wasn’t Janice’s voice.

Under a heavy load of static, the hum faintly emerged.

In the corner of my eye, further from me towards the sink, a single red light remained on. It was the only thing illuminated inside the van. Then it shut off, but was quickly replaced by the one next to it, giving the illusion that the light was moving. It did the same thing again, inching closer towards my direction, as though it had a life of its own. As it inched over, the hum grew more and more resonant, feeling closer.

The single red orb trailed down the string of circuits until eventually, it was right across from me from where I stood. The light remained for a moment, burning brightly as I locked eyes on it.

And just like that, the humming ceased again, and the light suddenly died, fading to black.

In the blink of an eye, red lights filled every circuit along the van, a crimson luminescence engulfing the interior around me. Startled, I quickly tried to push the button again to call the others, but a loud error beep kept emitting along with a red light on the radio, letting me know that someone else was currently using the channel. I heard nothing, though.

Then the lights rapidly strobed in quick bursts of terrifyingly disorienting red flashes, as the humming returned louder than before, like the unified chant of hundreds of people around me.

Panicked now, I darted out of there and stood at the edge of the hill, waving my arms to get the three’s attention.

“Janice!” I called.

Curious, I looked at the pendulum again, seeing that it was now swaying side-to-side in a frantic motion, going haywire.

I glanced at the three turning back to face my direction. I doubt we’d be able to hear exactly what the other was saying. From what I could make out, Janice pulled out her binoculars. As she did so, I began motioning with hand signals for them to call it off.

I then jumped at the sound of Janice’s bloodcurdling scream across the distance.

I turned to the van. The red lights continued to emit for a moment, only for all but two of them to remain. From where I stood, they were positioned in a way that looked as though it were two glaring eyes peering directly at me.

Fearful, I slowly stepped back, eyes still fixated on the ones now staring at me. The amplitude of the lights began to grow, and diagonal lines curved inward from the glare, like the deadly eyes of a viper. I knew I didn’t have astigmatism. What I was seeing was unreal.

Janice’s voice transmitted through the radio again, clearer more than ever this time.

“Joe! Just run! If you can hear me, just run!”

I wasn’t paying attention as I kept stepping away, as the incline became too steep from where I stepped off. Before I knew it, I tripped and started to fall backwards, rolling violently down the hill.

Once I’d managed to stop myself, I forced myself up and turned to look behind at the van again. Those eyes… they kept staring into my soul. They were captivating and enticing. But I knew that if I stood there, I probably wouldn’t make it…

I ran towards my sister and the other two, as I saw the three of them were now climbing back down and racing my way also. I ran faster than I ever had before. I don’t know what was back there or what energy was inside the van, but I refused to look again for another second as I kept running towards the three of them.

When I finally reached them, Janice ran to me and tightly hugged me, squeezing the air from my lungs.

“Thank you, God,” she cried. “Oh, thank you.”

“What the hell happened?” Kenneth said.

I shook my head frantically. “I-I don’t know.”

“Did you see something?” Matt asked Janice.

She didn’t answer either one of them. She instead kept hugging me tightly, relieved that I was okay. And to think I was more worried about her.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We decided that it was time to go, and hit the road again very shortly after. Janice and I just wanted to get the hell out of there, and undoubtedly, so did Matt and Kenneth after us causing such a commotion. We contemplated whether we should keep on going with the trip and try to make it to the real Bell Rock, but it was still undecided. At this point, we had enough adventure, and likewise, Matt and Kenneth enough spooks for their podcast for sure.

After some time on the road again, we’d both calmed down, and Janice finally let up the nerve to talk.

“You scared me back there,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. I think you might’ve saved my life. I don’t know how, but I just feel it.”

Janice stirred, nervously rubbed her arm. It was what she always did when she was troubled by something.

“Why’d you scream?” I asked.

She grew fearful again. I didn’t know if she would even tell, her mouth opening, then closing, then opening again, until finally mustering the courage to speak.

“Back at the butte, when we were climbing and you called to me, I looked through the binoculars and saw something in the van behind you.”

Chills waved throughout my body.

“The lights kept alternating and moving in a weird circle in the van,” she continued. “Matt said that they were supposed to do that. They were all supposed to just stay whatever color they were. And then they turned solid red… and then I saw a figure in the van. Like, a silhouette of someone… or something. It was peaking back at you. Back at me, too, I think.”

“Jesus…” I muttered.

“The lights just blinked and then it was fucking gone. Whatever it was, it just disappeared. I know I’m not crazy, Joe. I know what I saw.”

I now realized the answer to Matt’s question earlier when I told him about my grandmother’s premonition about me, and as to whether Janice shared the same power that the others in the family also held. The answer was yes. She had the gift. I could only hear it, but she could see it. Whatever presence was near me in the van the whole time, she was fully conscious that it was there.

“I believe you,” I assured.

#nosleep #reddit #horror #scifi #scifi story #supernatural #mystery #mystery story #thriller #story #short story

0 notes

alluringoneirataxia · 4 years

Text

Morning Thoughts

October 1st 12:26 AM ESTBy: Astoria Cathryn Andromeda

Yo yo it's spooky season.

This concept is something I learned about two days ago. It's from DBT, but it's very mindfulness meditation Buddhism inner peace, so I vibe with it.I have always tried to be like a really well-rounded person like in high school I was smart, a varsity athlete, a social crowd, a music thing, the church thing, an intellectual. But then I realized that I think in very very extreme black and white, and then I found out I'm autistic so it made sense lmao. I pride myself on being able to be in the middle and see both sides, and I still think that is true about me. However, I am an extremely passionate person, and therefore all my opinions often rather be passionate or if you would like to call it dramatic. I'm a Slytherin and I always have been every time I have tested, so honestly, I take it as my fucking aesthetic. If you don't know what I am referring to, although I find that almost nearly impossible, here is more information. :

"Slytherin is one of the four Houses at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, founded by Salazar Slytherin.[1] In establishing the house, Salazar instructed the Sorting Hat to pick students who had a few particular characteristics he most valued. Those characteristics include cunning, resourcefulness, leadership, ambition, pride, fraternity, determination, and self-preservation ""Or perhaps in Slytherin,You'll make your real friends,Those cunning folk use any means,To achieve their ends."—The Sorting Hat[src]I am 100% ambitious, resourceful, determined, and ya I always got a safety net, and yea I'm prideful definitely one of my fatal flaws, that and self-deprecation. I am not racist though, for those who read the books, that's definitely some nazi shit and well I am literally autistic like straight to gas chambers I would have gone. Speaking of, I'm sure you've heard of Asperger's syndrome, and maybe you were wondering does she have Asperger's syndrome? First of all I don't, well ya I do if you go off it's definition made by Hans Aspergers on deciding which autistic people to send to death. Yeah he was a shitty guy, I mean he was a nazi, and he was like basically if you're smart and autistic you can stay because you might help society, and he just like set an iq=level, so definitely not cool, not a thing we should use anymore, very harmful to categorize people on their supposed future contribution to society.Everyone over the past two months, has just decided to jump back into their middle school harry potter phase on tik tok, and honestly I'm vibing. I always had a thing for draco malfoy, but then again I'm an absoulet whore for enemies to lovers trope, and Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender got the redeeption arc that Draco Malfoy deserved. She who shall not be named was just super prejudiced, so he never got one and old creepy I bully children and hold not my wife's dead body got one. Like yes I get it he had a very abusive childhood, but that doesn't mean you get to give trauma to children. If you aren't on tik tok and don't know what i am referring to, it's a lot of fanfics, roleplay, and fan cams of harry potter characters. It's very wattpady and I love it. I think everyone like pretends to be like wattpad is so cringy or fanfictions or whatever or I guess used to, but people my age are like full force embracing it and I love it. Like you do you. You enjoy stuff without societal pressures. So here's my thing of the day, go do thing you love, or think about a thing you love, or read or watch a thing you love, just go enjoy some shit. It's your life my dude. Don't worry I'll leave

eye candy.

oops dropped some

more.

oops

I am so clumsy

Also don't forget to

appreciate my main man who lived.

#draco malfoy #harry potter #hot #edits

0 notes

chellyfishing · 7 years

Text

ok i finished kona so as promised my lil* post on walking simulators i’ve played. (*it’s not lil.)

first things first: a lot of these give off a creepy vibe because it involves you investigating a deserted place piecing together What Happened. i don’t personally consider them scary, as such, but i guess some people might? with minimal spoilers, i can say that unless noted there are no jump scares or battles and you can’t get a game over at any point. none of these except flower and maybe gone home are exactly the cheeriest of games, they’re not total downers and you can take away a lot from each of them, but there’s almost always death involved. also these are all short games, many can easily be completed in a few hours, some you might want to spread out over a couple days.

i’m a little hesitant to put gone home on here bc i haven’t actually played it myself, but i did watch a full LP. i don’t think it’s a spoiler at this point to say that there was a bit of a bait-and-switch with advertising and it’s not a horror game. it is actually a very sweet, heartfelt coming-of-age story about a teenage girl who left behind notes for her visiting sister. while this might be a bit of a spoiler, i saw a review that called it “a lesbian scavenger hunt,” which i think is pm all anybody needs to know to decide to play it.

the vanishing of ethan carter is the first one i played and probably still my favorite. i played through it possibly half a dozen times that first week, and it’s not necessarily that sort of game. at the risk of overselling here, i can’t tell you how much this had an effect on me. you play a detective who’s come to a small seemingly deserted town at the behest of a young boy (ethan). what follows are a series of visions, stories, and light puzzle-solving to get to the bottom of what happened to ethan carter. as the story unfolds things get pretty disturbing and there is some blood (stain variety, not gushing). there’s nothing that would, i think, rate more than a PG-13 though. i could go in-depth but just play it okay.

dear esther is credited with being the first walking simulator. you can hear about its humble beginnings as a mod for some other game i forget by listening to the audio commentary, which you have to do for one of the trophies. dear esther is, the most out of these, not what it appears. it’s almost more of a poem than a story, and there is a lot left abstract and open-ended; death of the author is encouraged. it’s probably got the slowest start, but i like the peacefulness of it. it has a sequence that is the most beautiful and transformative thing which then leads up to the climax, and by then you are definitely in a different game than you started. no puzzle-solving, you don’t pick up or interact with any items, no keys or secret passages to suss out. you just walk and look and listen. definitely melancholy, but then, the whole thing is what you make of it. also apparently there are loads are little background details that can change randomly each time you play it, if you’re into that.

firewatch is another one that seems creepy, but (i’m sorry to spoil, i just want people to be okay when they play!!) i promise you, if you can handle some sadness and bittersweetness, you’ll be fine. this game is a little treasure. i saw someone complain about the graphics and i like??? couldn’t disagree more? i mean first of all what do you expect but second all it’s got more of a painted feel to it than a hundred laboriously-created computer models. there are some views and areas that are just beyond lovely. anyway you play as henry, who’s come to sit alone in a tower in the middle of the wilderness for summer 1989? to watch for fires. henry’s a bit snarky and sad and would probably be played by paul giamatti. the other man character is his boss, delilah. the rapport the two develop is probably the high point of the game tbh. their banter is topnotch. while firewatch seems a little overwhelming in scope but it’s actually not. there’s not much gained by extraneously exploring but you’re welcome to it if you want. it’s mostly just a lot of walking with very easily navigable roads and rappelling and such while around you all this weird shit starts happening. henry and delilah discuss what it all means and what to do about it. all questions are answered by the end, except for the ones any good story leaves open for you to decide.

beyond eyes... i don’t quite want to say that i wished i never paid for or touched this game, because my reasons for my violent rejection of it are very personal. so, here it is neutrally. it seems like a colorful, peaceful game about a blind girl, rae, looking for her lost cat, nani. the catch is that rae is blind, and so you have to sort of “fill out” the world by walking around (laboriously slowly, bring patience). it really is lovely, kind of painterly-feeling with so many vibrant colors, and i was very pleased with it for a long while. and again, i don’t want to spoil it, but the ending caught me so off-guard, threw me for such a loop, and triggered me so unexpectedly that i immediately turned it off and deleted it from my system. suffice it to say the tone is a bit different from the rest of the game. so, i won’t tell anyone not to check it out. it is pretty and simple and it seems like the kind of game people might want to support financially. just... not me. it made me disproportionately angry and upset and ruined my day. if someone has played or does end up doing so, my reaction might seem a little extreme, but it was one of those things that struck hard without any warning and it was just not what i needed at the time.

i tried to wait for what remains of edith finch to go on sale and i failed. while i’m not convinced it has $20 worth of content (it’s possibly even shorter than dear esther but i’d have to check), it’s also gorgeous, so i guess we all make sacrifices. anyway i’m still sort of processing my feelings for this game. most of it is completely genius. it’s about a girl, edith, who’s returning to her family home for the first time in years. she’s the last finch left alive; they have a habit of dying young, most not even making it to adulthood. you find out the story of each finch and each is interactive in a different way, one you’re different animals, another it’s in the format of a comic book, it’s all really neat how it’s done. anyway, obviously this game talks about death a lot but never shows it; in fact, some of the sequences are so abstract you have to interpret them yourselves to decide what even happened. my main continuing reservation is... i don’t know what it’s trying to say. i don’t know what it’s all supposed to mean. i mean maybe it’s some crap about the value of life no matter how short or idk, but for the most part at the end i was kinda like, “ok.” i keep thinking i must be missing something, but i’ve no idea what. it’s kind of just a collection of interesting stories whose only discernible thread is they all happened to the same unfortunate family for some reason. it’s the kind of “open to interpretation” that makes me feel like something is lacking. anyway i still loved it and do recommend.

kona. oh kona. let me start off by saying you can die in this one. they’re not that ubiquitous but there are creatures that can and will kill you, and sometimes they might startle you as well, and of course there’s the cold, which can also kill you. i kept getting pissed off at that fucking inventory because it was JUST BARELY too small and you never knew when you were going to need something. now that i actually do know it’ll probably be waaay less infuriating. there’s also a final boss, but the “fight” is basically you going “jesus christ it’s a lion get in the car.” it’s very intense, but i wouldn’t really call it scary. you don’t even have to do anything offensive at all to win, just run like hell. a couple more words about the gameplay: i mentioned the better coat. you actually can find the components you need for that early on and possibly go straight and get it? like i’m not sure if the game lets you but if it does, it makes exploration SO much easier. you still have to be careful but like. type b careful rather than type a. anyway it’s pretty much a must. um, you probably want to take your car for the sake of convenience, and also you can get a snowmobile later! there are a number of little achievements to earn, some of which make this game a lot more involved than any other on this list. like, it’s a very big area with poor visibility and you’re looking for very very small things WITH A CHEAP-ASS SWEATER CARL. anyway, as for what it’s actually about: you’re a detective again, come to québec in 1970 to find some seriously fucked up shit. this game isn’t really horror, it’s mostly just what the hell is going on this is so fucking bizarre. there narrative has a lot of stuff about colonialism and racism and a lot of Cree culture and lore driving it. it was funded by kickstarter btw. so yeah, a little too game-y, most intense and involved of the bunch, unsettled even me at times, but not meant to invoke terror or keep you up at night, only make you think about the circumstances that created this event.

flower is your friend. i’ve only played a little bit of it but honestly that’s all you need. you can just go back and do that bit as many times as you want cause this is a game that’s all about being a petal on the wind. it’s cute, it’s playful, both the score and visuals are charming and lovely. this is the game you play after running for your life in kona. recommended to have in your library if for no other reason than to know it’s always there when you need something simple and beautiful and andy dwyer is unavailable.

#deep thoughts

1 note · View note

zrtranscripts · 7 years

Text

Season 6, Mission 4: Seaside Rendezvous

Airing dirty laundry

AMELIA SPENS: Look, can we get on?

SAM YAO: You know as well as we do, Amelia, that we have to wait for the flag. Just because we've got the king on our side now - just because he's doing the rounds of undecided territories, building our support - doesn't mean all the rules have gone away.

AMELIA SPENS: Not long to go. Devil Flesh leave Worthington-on-Sea at precisely 15 minutes past the hour.

MAXINE MYERS: Devil Flesh? Is that as sinister as it sounds?

AMELIA SPENS: Oh, no. They're just the combination of Barree and Venment colonies. You must remember. After the war between Radial and Connor? When they poisoned each other's leaders?

MAXINE MYERS: I uh, I lost track of that when Radial formed. I couldn't work out who they were allied with.

AMELIA SPENS: [sighs] Well, if you will ignore world politics, it's your lookout, I suppose. You understand the purpose of Worthington-on-Sea, I hope?

SAM YAO: Uh, well, I know it's neutral. And different groups take turns, and no one's allowed to bring weapons.

AMELIA SPENS: There's a transmitter on the spur here erected by a coalition of the Ministry, the Exmoor Militia, and the Psychoanalysts Enclave.

MAXINE MYERS: The Psychoanalysts Enclave?

AMELIA SPENS: They had a lot of dirt on a lot of important people. They've done very well in this apocalypse. Anyway, no one was able to outright control Worthington, and an uneasy peace ensued, as is the style these days.

SAM YAO: Yeah. Abel has a treaty with Worthington. We can come in here, send or receive messages.

[cannon booms]

AMELIA SPENS: Gosh, they make everything so bloody formal. There's the cannon, and here comes the flag. Come on. We haven't got long. Run.

MAXINE MYERS: It's kind of pretty, this promenade. And I like the vibe of the town. Down-at-heel off-season seaside is my jam. Peeling buildings, shuttered stores. Is this place usually this deserted?

AMELIA SPENS: I expect that'll be the townsfolk staying out of the way of Devil Flesh. They're totally harmless, but they do smell.

SAM YAO: But our messages will be there.

AMELIA SPENS: Oh yes. Sweetpea's very reliable, especially for a woman with pink and purple bunches. She runs the transmitter tower.

MAXINE MYERS: Very reliable with a kind of loud personal style? [laughs] Well, I don't suppose she's Janine in disguise, is she?

AMELIA SPENS: [laughs] I thought of that, but no. I've met her. Definitely not Janine.

SAM YAO: Hmm. I keep doing that. Something happens, and I think, "Oh, it must be Janine." Like when we found those holes dug in the Forest of Fallen Runners. My first thought was -

MAXINE MYERS: Has Janine dug up a weapons cache? [laughs] Yeah, mine, too! Sometimes I wonder if, you know... maybe she's trapped somewhere.

AMELIA SPENS: Or dead.

SAM YAO: Janine's not dead. Definitely not.

AMELIA SPENS: No, she's not. I know because every time I make any headway with the Ministry, someone feeds them lies about me, making me out to be untrustworthy, if you please. So yes, Janine's still alive. When she wants to be found, you'll find her, and not before.

MAXINE MYERS: Kind of like literally anyone in this town. It's too quiet, even for me. Let's pick up the pace.

AMELIA SPENS: This is the place. Lighthouse at the end of the jetty is the listening post. Our delivery will be in one of these gravel bins.

MAXINE MYERS: Don't they come down from the listening post to talk to us?

AMELIA SPENS: No. They're listening. And they wouldn't want to play favorites. But look. That gravel bin has our name on it. I'll just undo the padlock with our pre-agreed number. [chain jingles, lock clicks] Five, get the lid open for me. [lid clangs open] And there we go - our post.

Blah blah... more settlements saying they can't join the Abel alliance because the Minister's promised them her vaccine serum. Blah blah... ah, here, Five. A message from the Ministry for Abel. That'll be from your Laundry friends. Ooh, and there's a parcel in there for me. Oh. No. Leave it.

MAXINE MYERS: Why? What is it?

AMELIA SPENS: It's nothing we want.

MAXINE MYERS: It looks expensively wrapped. It's not like you to leave supplies, Amelia.

AMELIA SPENS: Five, open that letter.

[paper tears and rustles]

MAXINE MYERS: Oh, right. It's in code. I forgot. Ellie taught all this to Zoe and Phil in case she needed to communicate from behind enemy lines. So um, yeah. Yeah, I can work this out. That letter followed by that one makes a D, and I think those three make a P...

AMELIA SPENS: Can't you do this on the run, Doctor?

MAXINE MYERS: Are you really going to leave that package? Because if you're leaving it, I'm taking it. I'm curious.

AMELIA SPENS: You can throw it in the sea for all I care. Just hurry up.

MAXINE MYERS: Okay, that's an X, so yeah. Yeah, this message is definitely from Ellie Maxted. She's taken over as the head of the Laundry now.

[distant explosion]

AMELIA SPENS: I just heard something.

MAXINE MYERS: Ah! Then if that's a B, and that's a B, too... yeah, I think this is about the babies, you guys. The Laundry sent a team to pick up the babies Sigrid was using to make her serum. That was Ellie's main priority – rescue them from Finland.

AMELIA SPENS: Oh, good. I'm glad that's going to be sorted out. Well done, Team Do-Gooders. Sam, have you got long-range cams here? That parcel's giving me a bad feeling.

MAXINE MYERS: What is that parcel, Amelia? Do you have a mystery admirer?

AMELIA SPENS: Not a mystery. I recognize the handwriting. It's Valmont.

MAXINE MYERS: Ooh, your husband, the multi-billionaire. Well, why is he sending you gifts? And how did he know that you were here?

AMELIA SPENS: Two excellent questions.

SAM YAO: Guys, there's a horde of zombies cutting off your safe route out of town. Um, yeah, you might be able to make your way around them and out, but if not -

MAXINE MYERS: They'll drive us into Sigrid's territory, and then we're fair game. Five, you take point. Go!

MAXINE MYERS: Oh God. I haven't seen this many zombies together in months. How the hell did they get here out of nowhere?

AMELIA SPENS: I think that's obvious. I know the man who runs Worthington-on-Sea. Calls himself "Raoul" now, as if he thinks he's running Cuba on the side. Before he took over here, he was called Ralph. He used to be a stringer for me. Amazing what a sudden elevation in status you get running a tinpot settlement.

He cleared his people out of town and lured that horde here. I heard the flashbang go off. Act of zombie isn't covered under the treaty, so he won't be responsible for this to Abel's allies. Don't worry. I'll make it my mission to destroy him, just as soon as we get out of here.

MAXINE MYERS: These zoms are gaining on us.

AMELIA SPENS: Well, you might be able to run faster if you got rid of that stupid box.

MAXINE MYERS: Let me just open it, see if there's anything useful in here. [packaging tears, glass bottles clink] Oh. Perfume? Eau de Maron.

AMELIA SPENS: Well, that's typical. Constantly with the fake romance.

SAM YAO: Eau de Maron? Oh my God, no, I've read about that stuff on Rofflenet. It's a legend!

AMELIA SPENS: Just a second. Show me that bottle? You're right! [?] must be distracted to have forgotten this. This perfume became famous in the siege of John Lewis, early days of the apocalypse. It's got some molecule in it that mimics a human pheromone so well that -

SAM YAO and AMELIA SPENS: - zombies will follow it instead of following humans.

SAM YAO: Five, run south from here. Throw the bottles in a line towards the sea. Lay a trail. Now, run!

[glass shatters, zombies growl]

SAM YAO: It's working! It's definitely working. They're following your perfume, Amelia!

AMELIA SPENS: It's not my perfume!

MAXINE MYERS: I get it. This dude is some kind of creepy ex, right?

AMELIA SPENS: In a way.

MAXINE MYERS: He's stalking you, right?

AMELIA SPENS: Well, he's trying to get me back. I might have left with uh, one or two of his belongings. Nothing very significant. Not in the grand scheme of things. [cannon booms] Oh, good. Here's another emergency for Team Abel to solve. Go on, team. Deal with the emergency.

SAM YAO: Uh, yeah, that was the cannon. You're officially on Sigrid's time in Worthington now. And that horde of zoms isn't following you anymore, but it's still in your path home. You could run around them, but yeah. Sigrid's soldiers are fanning out across Worthington.

AMELIA SPENS: So, stealth mission? Run and hide?

MAXINE MYERS: Uh, no, I think your creepy ex has given us another alternative.

SAM YAO: What's that?

MAXINE MYERS: Well, no one's allowed weapons in Worthington, but under all that perfume, Amelia, Valmont sent us three handguns. We can shoot our way through the zoms! Five, you take this one. Let's do this the old fashioned way. You take point, Five. We're heading for the border. Run!

[zombies growl, gunshots]

AMELIA SPENS: Runner Five, to your left!

[gunshot, zombie splatters]

MAXINE MYERS: These pistols are amazing, Amelia! The laser sights, trajectory, adjusting rounds. They must have some AI targeting correction on them, too. I'm getting headshots every time.

AMELIA SPENS: Yes, well, that's how he operates.

[zombie growls, gunshot, zombie splatters]

SOLDIER: Stop! In the name of the Minister!

SAM YAO: You're nearly at the border, guys, but uh, yeah, you've made quite a bit of noise. Sigrid's soldiers are after you. If they manage to catch you, the treaties say they can take you prisoner! Go!

SOLDIER: Stop!

[gunshots]

SAM YAO: Yeah, don't stop, guys. Keep running.

MAXINE MYERS: We are just so nearly there. Just over this wall, and -

AMELIA SPENS: There. Back in Abel's territory. Good.

MAXINE MYERS: Man, that is so weird. Sigrid's soldiers are just a few hundred yards away, but they can't come into Abel's territory, or it'll spark a full-on war!

SAM YAO: Yeah. Well, Sigrid doesn't want that, does she? She knows now we've got Abel back, we've got access to Janine's armory, and well, if she wipes us out, we wipe her out. Mutually-assured destruction.

AMELIA SPENS: Yes. You know, that's how I used to feel about my marriage. I suppose you've all noticed. He knew what was going to happen here.

MAXINE MYERS: Yeah, that is kind of creepy.

AMELIA SPENS: I'll have to think carefully about my next move. Right. Good to have a project. Did you translate that message yet, Maxine? All the babies safe and well and somewhere nice and warm? No more new serum vials for Auntie Sigrid?

MAXINE MYERS: Actually, it's bad news. The team from the Laundry arrived in Finland two weeks ago, and the facility we sent them to was empty. Staff gone, babies gone. Just empty buildings, Ellie says.

SAM YAO: Oh no!

AMELIA SPENS: Well, that's simple. We'll just have to find them and rescue them.

MAXINE MYERS: It's not going to be easy, Amelia.

AMELIA SPENS: I know that, but I'm feeling very efficacious today, and the sight of dozens of infants being used as a serum factory sparked some useless sympathy in me, and that's that. I will stop at literally nothing until I find them.

SAM YAO: Uh, well, yeah. Well, that sounds good, actually. Want a hand with it? Yeah, I know a lot of people on Rofflenet. I mean, people who want to help me. And if we find them, it'll be one more blow against Sigrid's plans. A blow against her ability to recruit allies, and a blow in favor of lots of little babies.

AMELIA SPENS: Fine. Just don't tell anyone about this. It'd ruin my reputation.

#zombies run #zrs6 #s6m4 #seaside rendezvous #zr transcript #zrs6 spoilers

4 notes · View notes