Tumgik
#Just pals being chumps. Chumps being pals
amateurmasksmith · 1 month
Text
You Didn’t Know (Reprise)
(don’t mind me, just got inspired by a shitpost by @onesidedradiostatic (and their Anon) and turned it into angst…)
(also, it looks like @convolutedblasphemy beat me to it - well done btw - but I still wanted to give it a stab!)
Vox (yoinking the proof away): “Gimme that, Alastor, It’s not meant to be seen by you. Let’s move on, everyone, Figure out the best move that should, Improve our chances against the Angels’ threat!”
Alastor teleports behind him and counter-yoinks.
Alastor: “You want me to ignore that? No, not yet.”
Alastor examines the figurine closer, with a morbid fascination.
Lucifer, to Alastor: “It’s not as simple as you think, Not everything’s been spelled in ink.”
Vox lunges at Al angrily, flailing his arms as Alastor easily sidesteps him. Val catches him before he can fall.
Vox: “Leave it, Alastor!”
Valentino: “Careful, Voxy, keep a cool head.”
Vox pushes away from Val, gesturing towards Alastor.
Vox: “No! You never cared, did you?! You left, and it was like you were dead, Al/ /astor! We could’ve just gone our separate ways, but You left me here, with this internal blaze!”
Alastor: “I’m sure you wish it had been so, but there’s a lot that you don’t know!”
Vox: “You left before we could talk it out! Find a way we could still be friendly! But you blew your shot when you dropped off the block, Yeah, I’m so ‘sorry’ for being so petty!”
Alastor pulls Vox into a dance as they sing past each other.
Alastor/Vox: “No more questions to be posed,” / “There’s one question to be posed,” ”I hate you now, case closed” / “Though you are predisposed” “I try to forget that we were forever!” / “Why is this thing worth losing your temper?”
Vox breaks off and walks away, putting distance between them…
Vox: “I made the mistake once, Now I won’t be a chump! Decades of isolation await you,”
Velvette, concerned where this is going: “Vox?”
Vox: “No-one else will think to even date you!”
Alastor: “Wait-”
Vox turns around, realizing what he said.
Vox, who didn’t mean to spill: “Shit.”
Alastor (Aro 404): “What are you saying? Let me get this straight, When you begged me then, Down on your knees…?”
Valentino: “He didn’t know?!”
Velvette: “Whoops! Guess the cat’s out of the bag!
Alastor (through gritted teeth): “Oh, what a reveal!”
Vox: “Wait a sec here, Al, you didn’t know?”
Alastor begins slowly pacing towards Vox.
Alastor: “I thought you were bolder, as our friendship grew older!”
Vox, pained: “No!”
Alastor’s demon form begins to show as he slowly corners Vox.
Alastor: “You have to listen, My life here has just one mission, So it’s lucky I saved you, The anguish it takes to… Do what was required!”
Vox: “To think that I admired you, Al!”
Alastor breaks off, dismissing him with a wave of his hand, and starts walking away.
Alastor: “I don’t need your condescension, It’s not my fault you weren’t direct!”
Vox: “Was our relationship just manipulation? Oh, I was naive to expect you, to care beyond favors you’re repaying!”
Alastor: “Vox, what on earth are you saying? Love is not forever, your programs here are all lies, I’d have thought that seven years would give you enough time! Now I’ll leave you all to handle your foolish little scandal,”
Al gestures to the group, and casually drops the figurine in Lucifer’s hands as he brushes past.
Alastor, to Lucifer: “I’d recommend you stick to sculpting Anatidae.”
Alastor is engulfed by his shadow, and melts into a nearby radio. He emerges at Rosie’s place, ears drooping. The music takes on a softer style.
Alastor: “Rosie, dear, I have a problem.”
Rosie: “For you, Al, I’m all ears! Sit down here!”
Rosie gestures to her couch, on which she sits, and Alastor crumples.
Alastor: “Ugh! Apparently, my old pal Vox, Bought a commission, born from horrid thoughts… I gave him a piece of my mind, he Said ‘we were forever,’ and yet somehow I never…”
Rosie: “Oh. Yes, I see…”
Rosie brings Alastor in for a hug.
Alastor: “Why the fuck / Was I the last to know my old friend had a crush?”
As the music fades out, we see Alastor’s face buried in Rosie’s shoulder, partly obscured… Without a smile.
164 notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Behold, the thing I said I was going to do! (x) Nobody asked me to, but I did it anyway. Huzzah
If you don't want to share your actual first initial, you can use a nickname or fictional character instead.
I really tried hard to make these sound as plausible as possible per the way Wodehouse usually names things, so I put an explanation of all my thought processes under the cut.
Also, many of the color category placements are based on speculation and best guesses. If you think you could make a case for the color you're wearing being in another category, you can go ahead and put it there. Category justifications and list of canon references also under the cut.
*EDIT: Some new information regarding the way Drone nicknames work has been brought to my attention. I'm appending the following instructions to the nickname section: if you can think of a food pun based off the name you chose, do so, the stupider the better
First names: This is pretty simple, there aren't that many posh British first names. They mostly reuse the same 15 or so over and over. I used this list (x) of canon Drones as my reference to work off of for all names.
Surnames: All of these are either real British surnames (found mostly here) or real British town names (found mostly here). From Googling, this appears to be how Wodehouse created most of his characters' surnames. I generally tried to avoid names that have already been used, with the exception of Phipps, because Plum really seemed to like that one.
When it comes to place names, he tends to be more liberal about making up generically British-sounding shit or swapping out the suffixes of real places. For example, there's a real town called Steeple Bumpstead, but Steeple Bumpleigh is completely fictional. So I believe my instruction above to mash two names together still squares with the Wodehouse school of naming things, Your Honor.
Nicknames: Did you know that it's REALLY hard to come up with random combinations of sounds that a) are funny, b) sound like plausible nicknames, and c) aren't too similar to funny sound combinations that Wodehouse has already used? Because I do now
Most of the Drones just have regular nicknames based on a syllable of their first or last name (Corky, Freddie, Algy, etc.). Rules of hockey nicknames seem to apply. This left me with a fairly small pool of non-name-based nicknames to use as examples. Other categories of nickname include "personal characteristics" (Barmy, Ginger), "random syllable followed by y" (Tuppy, Biffy, Oofy), "random syllables shoved together" (Boko), "food joke or pun" (Stilton, Biscuit), and "random thing" (Bingo). I tried to include nicknames from all of these.*
I first assumed "Catsmeat" was just a random compound word, which is where Fishbowl and Mousetrap came from. On further searching I found out that his middle name is Cattermole, putting him more between the "based on real name" and "smushing random syllables" schools of thought. I kept them in partly because I thought they were funny and also because I can easily hear Bertie in my head telling Jeeves all about his old pal Mousetrap's romantic troubles. I imagine there are good stories behind them.
Colors: As stated above, placements are based on memory, conjecture, and cursory searches of the text. Some are pretty easy; Jeeves likes neutral tones. Some seem more context-based or depend on the specific shade. Pajamas seem to follow looser rules for acceptable colors, so I didn't count them.
Clothing items Jeeves has approved: shirts in light blue, mauve, and "dove colored"; brown or blue suit; tie with blue and red domino pattern; brown lounge with faint green twill (The Aunt and the Sluggard); blue suit with thin red stripe (Jeeves and the Chump Cyril)
Clothing items Jeeves has NOT approved: Blue suit with thin red stripe, confusingly; green tie that gives Bertie a bilious air (The Aunt and the Sluggard); "cheerful" pink tie (Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest); purple socks (Jeeves and the Chump Cyril); scarlet cummerbund that Bertie tries to justify by telling Jeeves he saw someone wearing a yellow velvet suit downstairs (Aunt Agatha Makes a Bloomer (Jeeves wasn't swayed)); white mess jacket (Right Ho, Jeeves, but I don't think it was on the basis of color)
Jeeves seems to endorse blue and red on some occasions but not others, according to mysterious Jeeves rules. Conspicuous bright red clothing is obviously verboten (see: cummerbund).
There's little data available on green. He approved it once in the form of an accent color, but vetoed a green tie on another occasion. Might be shade-dependent or only acceptable in small amounts.
Lavender gloves and spats tend to show up when a character is dressed in formal wear. I take this to mean that it's a normal color for such, but possibly not for casual wear.
I couldn't find anything on orange, so I made a guess. I think it's a good guess.
I could only find one instance of Bertie wearing yellow: in "Jeeves in the Springtime" he tells Jeeves to bring his "yellowest shoes" and "the old green Homburg." Jeeves doesn't voice any objection in the text, but there's no way in hell Bertie got away with this.
The only thing I can find on pink (excluding pajamas) is the "cheerful" pink tie mentioned above. I decided to err on the side of conservatism and assume that all pink is a no-go, but it's possible Jeeves would be less hostile toward a lighter shade.
For expediency (ha) and because the clothing power struggles become less frequent as the series progresses, I mostly limited my color search to the short stories.
I cannot just casually make a fun little meme. It has to consume my life and turn into an entire research project.
And there you have it! Like share and subscribe, ring that bell (ha) etc. etc.
*EDIT: Some new information regarding the way Drone nicknames work has been brought to my attention. While I still mostly stand by reasoning behind the nicknames, albeit a little more tentatively, I apologize to Catsmeat, Oofy, Biffy, Pongo, and Bingo for misclassifying the origins of their nicknames. The former is actually a food pun based on a real name, while the latter four describe characteristics.
Yeah, that's right, my memes have footnotes within footnotes
92 notes · View notes
world-of-aus · 1 year
Text
Family Matters - Person of Interest
Pairings: Mobster!Bucky x Reader
Warnings: Minor character death.
Author's Note: Here is part II to the revamp for family matters series. Part one can be found on my other page @worldofausupdates. There are some things that will be changing as I rebuild this story but will try to keep things as similar to the original as possible. I am building story in this part, the next part will have more of the original series coming out in it. Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoy this second part! More coming soon, happy reading Buns!
Tumblr media
He runs the satin cloth over the blood splattered on his knuckles, the material shining the decorative rings as he goes over each digit. His darkened eyes flick up at the tied, slumped body of his latest lead, or what should have been a good lead. Bucky had to give credit where credit was due, Pierce kept his men on a tight leash, a life filled with fear if they were willing to give theirs for his.  
‘Hail Hydra’ had been the last words from the poor chumps lips before it was lights out.  
“Boss,” Steve announces his presence, “a call for you.” 
He looks over his shoulder, his best friend and right hand at the doorway cellphone in hand, “its detective stark, says he has something you might be interested in.” His interest has been peaked, satin cloth joining the pooling blood on the floor as he turns on his heel closing the distance between him and Steve. 
He grabs the burner bringing the device to his ear, “you know I don’t like to have my time wasted stark.” 
“Always a pleasure to waste it, but listen pal any news on y/l/n?” 
The brunettes jaw ticks, “why are you calling me about y/l/n? I did away with him the day he decided my friendship wasn’t enough to keep him from the likes of Pierce, even sent the fool out on his ass when he tried tucking tail and coming back, you don’t come back from playing with the enemy.” 
“Well looks like Pierce took those words literally, taking out a rat the only way he knows how.” 
The brunette straightens up, Steve’s brows furrowing in question as he looks at his bosses' features trying to gauge the direction in which the conversation has taken, “when?”  
“Got the call this morning from an anonymous, site wasn’t pretty by any means though we expect nothing less when it comes to Pierce, even left us a picture of y/l/n daughter."
“A picture of his daughter? What do you mean of his daughter – his daughter died stark.” 
On the other end of the line detective stark sits behind his desk a photo of a girl looking out her bedroom window looking back at him, ‘we know the truth, we know about y/f/n/ y/l/n.’ scrawled messily in the back of it. “Well unless Pierce has the wrong y/f/n y/l/n.” 
Bucky’s jaw clenches, “his daughter died stark, he showed me the certificate the day he signed over their estate to me. A low chuckles chimes in his ear, “well unless your mole’s daughter had a twin who was identical to her in features and name the man lied, and Pierce is going for her next.” 
Bucky swings around, his fist hitting the the wooden structure of the doorway, “and you’re sure it’s her, you better not be playing me stark.” 
“I have nothing to play you for Barnes, just thought you might want to know before you show up to your estate and find your moles ‘dead’ daughter very much alive.” 
“She’s coming home?” 
“That’s her plan, but I’m not sure how far she’ll make it.” What do you mean,” Bucky questions, “why wouldn’t she make it?” Tony sighs, “are you listening at all to me Barnes, Pierce knows about her, he had a picture of her left behind at her parents' crime scene, he has every intention of getting her.” 
“Not if I get to her first.” 
“Barnes,” Stark warns, “this girls' parents just died have some respect.” 
“Thanks for the information, Stark, you were right I’m definitely interested.” 
The line goes dead before he can get an earful of the detective, the burner being dropped back into Steve’s hands. His friend looks at him in question, “Get Wilson on the line, tell him its urgent.” 
Tumblr media
 
“So, she’s alive?” is the first thing out of Sam’s mouth in the dim of his office, “and Stark is certain that it’s her?” 
Steve and Sam watch their boss pace the wooden oak floors of the office, once, twice, before he comes to a stop in the middle of the room, Cerulean blues dark as he looks over at his most trusted. “So he say’s, but that’s where you come in Sam, I need to be sure Stark isn’t pulling a fast one on me, I need to hear her voice for myself, I need confirmation.” 
Sam looks at Steve with a raised brow, while Steve was his right hand and he had a say in any decision laid down on their table, this was one Bucky would not let him have a hand in. Bucky needed to know whether the man who was once part of his most trusted had really gone as far as to lie about his daughters death to get out of what he owed him. He needed to know just how deep this man’s lies went. 
He moves toward the desk producing a strip of paper from his slacks, a number scrawled on it. “What’s this,” Sam questions as he reaches for the paper, “if she’s real, she’ll answer, call it.” 
“Wait you want me to call right now, Bucky I -” 
His hand slams on the table; albeit loud the noise doesn’t startle the men, “get your phone, and call the number Sam, now!” 
Sam’s lips fall in a flat line, jaw clenching as he looks up at his boss, “I don’t pay you to lily gag Sam, the phone, now.”  
He rolls his eyes adjusting himself in his chair as he leans for his office phone, Bucky watches as Sam dials the number in, the tone of a ringing line fills the office. 
It rings once, twice, and before it can pass three a feminine voice is filling the room, all three men straighten out at the voice a disbelief on their features as the look at office phone. 
The voice calls out again, “Hello, is somebody there?” 
Bucky is swinging at the air in front of Sam, ‘say something’ he mouths, Sam seemingly blinks out of the trance the voice placed him in, he was certain the call would go unanswered. 
“Hello,” the voice calls again. 
Sam clears his throat, shaking himself out as he answers, “Apologies for calling so early this morning but is a Mr. Y/l/n in?”  
The line is silent, “No,” comes her voice a second later, “I’m sorry sir, but my parents have been in an accident and they -” 
Sam’s eyes shoot up to Bucky’s as to say ‘really man’, the brunette waves him off urging him to continue. “Oh, I’m so sorry miss, wait did you say parents, are you Mr. Y/l/n’s daughter?” he questioned. 
Bucky holds his breath eyes frozen on the phone on the desk. This is it, he thinks, the confirmation he needs is within her answer. 
“Yes,” music to his ears, “I’m his daughter, may I ask what the reason for the call is?”  
Sam looked at Bucky then, he got what he needed, what more did he want? Bucky signals him to go on. Thinking quick on his feet and spinning together a response that wasn’t a complete lie in regards to your father he manages to get out, “Well, I’m calling from Wilson Lending INC in regards to your fathers account, due to the unfortunate events, my condolences,” he feels the need to add, “and seeing as you are his next of kin would it be possible to get you to stop by our offices? 
They can sense your hesitation on the line as it goes quiet, “M’am,” Sam calls for you. 
“I’ll be in town meeting with a detective tomorrow, as soon as I get free I can get in contact with you to meet you.” 
Bucky’s nodding his head, Sam’s agreement coming a second later, “is this the best number to reach you at,” they hear you question. 
“Yes, it’ll be the best number, we’ll be seeing you tomorrow.” 
You’re ending the call with a farewell, the office going quiet as all three men take in the call they just heard. 
“She’s alive,” Sam breathes as he leans into his office chair, “I can’t believe it, she’s alive.” 
“But there’s a death certificate,” Steve murmurs, “daddy must have had to jump through hoops to fake something like that, but why?” 
Bucky should be thrilled, should be elated that at the news but he’s not, he thought he knew the type of man your father was, thought he could trust with how many years he had known the man through his father, then through the work they did together when George Barnes passed. Turns out he didn’t know the man at all. 
“Buck,” Steve calls for his boss, “what are you going to do, she’s alive, the contract -” 
Bucky twists his head shutting Steve up, “take me to the estate.” 
He’s not leaving it up to discussion as he gathers his coat on the way towards the door, bidding Sam a quiet thanks before he disappears out the doorway. Sam and Steve give each other a look, “don’t let him do anything stupid Steve.” Steve shakes his head, “I mean it man, keep an eye on him, we don’t need him making any rash decisions because of this, the girl is innocent, or at least for now, she just lost both her parents too.” 
Steve sigh is heavy, he knows that despite how he tries to reason it to his best friend, tries to talk him down from what it is he is about to do. That the brunette won’t listen, y/l/n took more than just money from him, he betrayed Bucky’s trust, and with that, well who knows what price his daughter would have to pay for her father’s lies. 
Steve bids his pal a farewell, making his way out of the quiet office meeting his friend and boss by the black sedan, “We need to talk about what you’re going to do Buck.” 
“There’s nothing to talk about, I know what needs to be done, get me to the estates.” 
Steve won’t argue, his friends mind made up, he just hoped you would be prepared for what was about to come. 
143 notes · View notes
Text
"Dirk Strider, Dave's bro."
"Karkat Vantas, your literal god."
"In that case, I've got questions."
"I bet you do. And, well. I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"You know, the usual. Doing things in a hurry to win and giving your universe cancer and stuff. I even got locked out of it after like a big slobbering chump."
"All right, I've got no more questions."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. God's a kid and he's neither omniscient nor omnipotent. That explains damn near everything."
"Okay, douchelord. You clearly got it all figured out except I'm not a kid."
"Aren't you like sixteen?"
"You're nine over the mark."
"What."
"I'm going to stop y'all there before this devolves into another match of intercultural trolling."
"Right, sweeps. Good one."
"Tell me, Dave. When did you become the life of the fucking party?"
"Not in the best mood right now, sorry."
"Did I do something or is it the…? It's totally that isn't it. I'm shutting up now."
"Tell you what, let's rap about it when plot critical shit stops going down. Kay?"
"My schedule's fucked six ways to sunday but I might be able to pencil you in somewhere."
"It's about to get worse, bro. The chess people are looking for you".
"Again?! I made it clear that John's the one in charge!"
"Yeah, I was there. Egbert totally just gave them the slip."
"You mean he's gone?"
"Fucking gone with the wind, maybe we shouldn't've put on the spot the kid that can do a cranked up disappearing act. "You're de facto pal honcho to them now, them's the breaks."
"Fuck. I'll go check if I can get Terezi to do it, or maybe the other human leader. We really don't want me to ruin yet another civilization. "Nice meeting you for real, Strider. We'll have to catch up later."
"… "Sup."
"Sup. I'm told our universe had cancer?"
"Don't put too much stock in his inane theories. Dude would twist a ruler if it'd let him take the blame for everything that goes wrong."
"He looked dead sure. Speaking as a newcomer that's got no business giving his opinion, there can be nuance."
"Nah, even if the cosmic cancer thing were true, then it was what had to happen for us to get this far. Trust the time professionals. "Karkat's just-- Let's just say that if you give him a mirror, he'll immediately lose his fucking marbles."
"Hm. A perfectly reasonable thing to do, I see."
"You know I can't tell if you're being serious or not, right?"
15 notes · View notes
mental-mario · 4 months
Text
Sibling Rivalry, Favoritism, and Multiplayer
Hey all, it's been an upsetting week for me, not gonna lie. I'm gonna skip the spiel and just get into it, so I'll just say that if you can relate then please Like and Follow and be sure to tip your struggling blogger. Also I'm lonely and need friends, so send me a request on Switch and message me on here as well! My mental issues make it difficult for me to sustain friendships, but I'd love a pen pal or 10k of them!
I'll be opening up more about things as I get more comfortable with this whole self-awareness and vulnerability thing, so subscribe and bear with me, but let's just say for now as a quick background that my mother is a narcissist, my dad is the flying monkey, my brother is the golden boy, and he married a conniving narcissist as well, so as to continue the cycle of abuse to his two kids. I am the damaged scapegoat who is trying to navigate away to healthier dynamics for my spouse and kids. I'm currently no-contact with my brother and his family as well as my mother and any relatives whatsoever. I do meet up with my dad occasionally for pancakes, but it is very much about sticking heads in the sand and pretending like we aren't estranged. I was no-contact with him as well until my wife informed him I was in the psych ward a couple months ago. I'm willing to answer questions as we go...
Anyway, he recently sent me $500 since I finally got up the nerve to put my pride and ego aside and outright ask him for help; something that has been instilled as a big source of shame for me to ever do because my mom especially would verbally berate me about how incompetent I am and how I would die alone and unwanted. Anyways, I digress, you may be asking what I would have to complain about? While I am thankful for any help I can get, let's just say $500 is chump change when it comes to my parents. They have money that I have been long since cut off from but that my brother and his family still very much access unabashedly, at the age of 32. I am 38. Also important to note is that he works a lucrative career where he has been able to make similar or better money as me over the past decade. The difference has been that my wife and I have been smart and careful with our money, while they have spent it recklessly. I always tend to leave out background details inadvertently, so I'm trying to recall as much as I can so as to not sound like unjustified soured grapes.
After years of no contact, our wives started communicating again, and it eventually got to where they decided to move to the south where we had relocated, originally in order to get away from them all. I wasn't thrilled about this, but I didn't want to deny my wife a chance at a friendship. My brother was reluctant to move here too, for reasons that I will get into someday as I work up the nerve to do so. My mom said I should take that said reason to the grave, but I'm not going to do that. They lived in an apartment for 6 months while making excellent money, by most people's standards, but they then exited out of the lease and moved into my parents' house, yet again, rent free, until they could buy a house of their own (or at least, that was how it was phrased to me when I decided to go nc with my parents yet again, due to the emotional pain of yet again seeing him and his family completely chosen over me and mine). They had to get out of their lease because they are assholes and got a bit too brazen with their neighbors. Despite being brazen in the past with neighbors who produced guns in their faces, they still find it rather funny to try and cave their downstairs neighbor's ceiling in by purposely jumping around as hard as they could out of spite. So long story short, another awful neighbor who couldn't take a joke decided to make them feel less than safe for their choices.
With the money and assets they have, there should've been no reason why they couldn't just pivot into another short term lease or something, but my parents ate up the chance to get into that abusive dynamic yet again, telling themselves that they couldn't let their son and his family go homeless (I can't say that without laughing because that is hardly the only other choice in this scenario). Regardless, we have come back into this situation because my parents decided to move those who we are once again no longer in contact with into their own house, essentially choosing a side once again. Of course, the explanation evolved from this being a temporary thing to suddenly they can't afford a down payment on anything because they don't have any money saved, meaning they would be living with them indefinitely. My only satisfaction in this was knowing that my mom's vicious lap dog, who she refuses to rehome because she spent $6k from a breeder, would be biting the shit out of all of them. Despite the dog being a barrier to letting my kids stay over my parents or anything of the sort, you can at least cordon a dog off for someone to visit. Sadly, they refuse to kennel my brother's wife.
Anyways, my spouse has some acquaintances in the real estate industry, since we have bought and sold a number of homes over the years. She got a message from one of them, asking her if she was aware how terribly entitled and obnoxious her in-laws are. Despite having to search numerous banks for a loan due to their awful credit rating, they still have the nerve to act like they are rich and powerful somehow. They were apparently searching originally for a house priced in the $300's but could not get a mortgage unless my parents cosigned and put up their retirement assets as collateral. They refused that, but they did cosign a mortgage for $200k. This after having always told me about how they would never cosign a loan for anyone ever. So basically, my parents bought my fully grown ass brother and his family a house, because when push comes to shove they will definitely stop paying the mortgage payment and could care less if they force my parents into doing so. Of course, I am sitting on this knowledge since before I was gifted $500 by my parents, and my parents won't ever tell me they did this. To answer your question, if you are asking it, I do intend to call my dad out on this, and it may be the last time I ever speak to him, depending on how that conversation goes.
My parents for the longest time would act like they did so evenly for both their kids and their grandkids, but I've called them out on that enough over the years so that they don't even make that claim anymore. From money to time spent to emotional support (if you can call it that), his family got 99.9%, and I'm an ingrate to complain about not getting my 0.1%. To clarify, I could care less except for the impact it all has had on my kids, but I do acknowledge that it's a blessing in disguise that my kids are growing up without that toxic influence so prevalent in their lives. Just makes me sad because if they would cosign a $200k mortgage for me like that, I'd be set for life, but bro's family gets rewarded for their recklessness while mine gets punished for trying to do things "the right way."
I want to shift gears now before I become too bitter, but I will just ask you to comment or message me, do you have experience with being the black sheep? If so, how's it going? Conversely, do you have experience being the golden child and self-aware of it? How has that been like for you??
To channel my inner Cranky Kong: kids these days experience multiplayer gaming far different than we did as young bloods. In my day *groans as he shifts in his recliner* multiplayer meant your friend or sibling played a single player game while you waited and rooted for them to screw up so you could have your turn to play! SMB3 made some progress in this by establishing a cooperative level progression, despite continuing the alternating turns system of play, but it was still waiting impatiently for your turn to play. Other games that did have simultaneous co-op could be frustrating if you had a younger sibling who couldn't hold up to your skill level. Nowadays, you got co-op where players don't get in each other's way, and you even got games that are accessible for players who can't coordinate keeping the acceleration button held down in Mario Kart. I may sound like I'm complaining, but I assure you this is quite the opposite. I might have had better interpersonal relationships growing up if it was more about this level of inclusive play and bonding rather than the confusing cooperative yet competitive setup that led to a rather passive aggressive style of friendships and relationships that I experienced.
A quick update before I wrap this up: I will be going away for a couple of weeks without access to internet, so know that I am okay during this time and will post more when I get back. I would like to ask, has anyone reading this ever called the suicide hotline, and what was that experience like for you? I have not yet called, but I do have them in my contacts (it's 988 in the US for anyone who doesn't know).
The holiday season is filled with controlling propaganda for family, friends, and other such obligations disguised as tradition, so if you are like me and can't conform to society's expectations, just know you aren't alone and that this is a safe spot to share and discuss. You don't have to feel shame and guilt for putting your own health and quality of life first. Trauma sucks, but we all have it. Understand that your own personal experience is valid and that you aren't lesser than anyone else. I hope you are able to find peace and comfort this season in your spirituality because that's far stronger than worrying about the company you keep, possessions you have, or living a lifestyle by others' standards. What's the point in living that way if it just adds to your stress? Family sucks, and that is why I have opted out. If you are considering doing the same but haven't yet, I hope you survive this year. If you are considering breaking free, I'm happy to lend a friendly ear and chat!
Tumblr media
7 notes · View notes
parisknyghts · 10 months
Text
The Greats (a novella)
The Greats
"The greatest beings find out they must come together to fight evil or something ". Episode one
Chapter One - Piper 
Piper sat down just a second, having just finished her daily 250 mile jog, she felt she deserved a little bit of the rest as it were.
The first fist flew past her face fast, her reaction time always on the right key eller note she managed to not only stand up but dodge the heavy bladed weapon that was thrown at her back. It dug fourteen feet deep into the mostly innocent maple tree that provided many passersby a bit o shade... For a price.
Ten.
She counted 9 masked, armed and possibly underage assailants surrounding her person, it was ten but by the time she finished counting she had already dislodged the obsidian harpoon from the tree trunk and had returned it to the owner. The stabby way, like it landed into and through his coccyx parts. He screamed like a bitch and went down even more like a bitch or something.
Piper drove the outer edge of her forearm into the first approaching thug, a rather large fellow, she slowed his attempt at a tackle by shattering his upper windpipe.
Pushing him away with a thrust kick she used her pencak silat training to swifty turn and completely rip out the neck nerve of another.
"A ha!" She shouted mockingly.
For a brief second she switched to ledrit style to leap in the air, spin kick another fool before dropping the bone part of her knee onto the big guys back most neck gristle. It went kaputz.
"A ho!" She shouted from her foaming mouth.
American wrasslin was up next, the jog had driven Piper into a frenzy. 
She spun and dodged the next attacker before catching the masked woman by her waist and overhead belly to back suplexing her through a nearby hadron collider.
It exploded and the shrapnel flew all around, injuring two more attackers most important groin bones.
A saito suplex to another heavy one left his upper body meat and confidence and health a shambles.
As Piper yanked one of the assailants ribs from his back to use as a weapon on another goon he fell to his knees and begged off.
"Please! I beg you, it's only a telegram. Don't hurt me and me mates anymore..."
Piper slowly dug the rib bone into the man's left most eye.
She said, "A what?"
The man slowly and with Shakey hands reached deep down into the front of his mossy pants and produced a wet envelope. Fat shiny leeches swarmed the outer layer, they tasted funny.
"F... Fighting telegram ma'am. It's supposed to be all in good fun, a little row to get the juices going." He said like a chump.
They both had a good and hearty laugh as Piper took the telegram.
"Do you think I could remove this rib bone from my -"
"No, no leave it in. It suits you." Piper said as she walked away, the mechanics of opening the envelope proving to be quite befuddling. 
That's when the second chapter happened.
Chapter two - Bridewell 
Hock Bridewell was an Ill man, his cellmate Jug Illman however was pretty even keeled and unabashedly polite.
As Bridewell shaved his back, the sounds of the old man struggling underneath Jug began to get on his nerves. 
Bridewell could shave his own back because he had cool ass long arms, like he could scratch his ankles while standing straight up and shit. It was awesome. 
For a shaving instrument he preferred to use a baleen whale tooth he stole when he was aught 13 years old (adjusting for inflation of course). He stole it from a plug ugly pirates French maid, the cool of her last breath as he leapt upon her back over and over gave a nearby kitten a shiver.
Kittens are baby cats who come out of the cats cloaca after they dig a deep hole on a safe enough beach and shed their last skin.
Bridewell liked kittens but he did not like cats. When cats get too old their fur tastes too much like shit.
"I'll have that cigarette I owe you in a few years Bridewell me pal, I've finally secured myself a spot on the kitchen staff. Tis a working man now I am!" Jug said with a greasy grin. He quivered for a spell before grabbing his yummy belly.
"You alright there...?" Bridewell stared at his cellmate with great and deep concern in his autumn hued eyes. He had never seen the man so much as sneeze or cough or eat or sleep or drink or talk or breathe or blink or have a shadow or -
The sound of a man screaming in the distance was soon followed by the familiar roar of a drunk Minotaur. It sounded sexy.
Wayward but dapperly dressed Minotaurs were known to leave their salty hovels from time to time and enter Pleasureville prison from time to time through a door in the back that no one ever remembered to lock. 
They would get drunk off 10 day old pig wine and become well randy and quite talkative. 
Even rarer though it was still like everyday they would grab a man by his arms and legs and head and groin and pull the opposite direction. Merriment was had by all.
Another cool game the Minotaurs and prisoners liked to play was they would see how fast they could debone. The rules were kinda vague but basically the bones had to be removed one by one, and the wish bone was to be avoided. You didn't have to start with the feet but prisoners sometimes have more bones in their feet than other people. Last count it was like 650 (as reported by famed bone counter and astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Iron Mike Tyson chickens and peer reviewed.
Bridewell retrieved his trusty abacus from deep in the toilet and began to calculate the size of the Minotaur by the scale of it's bellow. 
As Jug violently shook on the cell floor, frothy blood squiring out of his ears in short burst and pooling around the feet of a passing turtle, Bridewell secured Gjölly to his back.
"Stay here Jug my friend. I'll return soon, I have business with this particular Minataor." Bridewell said with a wry upturn of his uppermost lip.
With a pep in his ass and step he sauntered out of the cell.
CHAPTER 3 - Bridewell 
GJÖLLY was the solid stone sledgehammer that belonged to Bridewell. It was a magnificent weapon and tool. Made from the rock that some giant wolf was pooping next to, Bridewell noticed it's strange dexterity and smell. 
The big ugly dog or wolf or whatever was tied to it by a very lazy owner. Bridewell took the stone and the chain and used them to forge his mighty weapon. He has yet to find anything that it cannot smash like a boss, ya heard me shorty? 
"Leslie, you cheap bastard! Time to pay the piper." Bridewell said as he stood on the gray cracked wall, directly above the shocked Minotaur (or Leslie as he was known to his chums and trivia night contemporaries).
Leslie set both duffle bags full of ear bones down and was obviously annoyed at having been startled.
"My word Bridewell, have you no manors. I swear you're going to give me a stroke one of these days. Sneaking about as you do." Leslie droned.
Bridewell hopped down from the wall and circled around Leslie with a smile.
Leslie was becoming perturbed. He said, "... Is everything kosher Hock? You seem a little, tense. You say you're working for Piper now.. the thing between she and I is personal. If she has anything she needs to say to me, she can pick up the phone or drop a telegram like a normal goddamn per-"
The sound of Leslie's collar bone snapping in five places as Bridewell leapt into the air and with great gusto and glee brought Gjölly down onto his person, was kinda cool.
Her erect vagina signaled the need for interest in Lickity Split as she observed the much bloody interaction. 
The mission of recruitment weighed heavier on what was left or right about her soul. 
Chapter 13
Wicked.. a taste of the morrow. Is the word. But then…
Paul was not an unpeculiar fellow. Some would say he had a knack for the abstract by way of "jack o tradeitis", the man knew just a little bit enough about almost everything but not a bit enough to make something of it.
He sat cross legged atop his banyan wood desk puffing away at a tobacco pipe full of lush brown brown and locally sourced cinnamon, pondering the small ownerless Pomeranian skulking past his pale green garden. He wondered what that hund smelled like.
With an awful crash the door to Paul's office splintered and buckled and just a shade later the whole piece of wood split and almost fell to the floor save hanging by a meager hinge.
Paul straightened his back and let out a puff of smoke in dismay as standing before him in the doorway, nearly breathless and disheveled was a man named Jack.
A large bodied, furrowed brow and damp with sweat his muscles had torn through the sections of his brooks brothers suit making the man look most ill fashioned.
He was holding a bent ax, the one a lumberjack might carry but well rusted and twisted at the center in what Paul presumed was some sort of chopping accident.
Paul spake "I say jack, we haven't seen you in at least a season! Since I believe the whole debacle with Mrs. Havershams stray gazelle.."
"Shut your fucking mouth you sick ... Fuck!" Jack worded.
Jack reached into his trousers and produced a thick and tattered paper cover novel of some type. He tossed it into Paul's face and raised his ax high into the air. Really high.
"Explain this!"
Paul took thirty short puffs from his pipe and retrieved the novel from the floor where it had landed after hitting him in the nose. The blood from which slowly dripped down his face.
Jack fumed and his buxom chest muscles heaved as he practiced an ancient art known to few as Patience fu. Taught to him no doubt by the great practitioner Hanzo Gruber of little Berlin in West Kyoto, Paul suspected.
Paul studied the tome with little more than a few grunts and slight eyebrow raises. Maybe a wry upturn of his lips or the turgidity of his left nipple betrayed his conclusions.
After a few terse moments he looked up at jack and said..
"...why did you throw this in my face? It's quite heavy and appears to have both semen and fecal matter on it."
Jack bristled, "that's my fecal matter you son of a bitch. Stop changing the subject. What's the meaning of this? Why did I find it locked up in your shoddy ass basement and why does it have the names and personal info of hundreds..."
He took a step forward crushing a few roaches and snatched the pipe from Paul's hand with great violent force, shattering one of the man's favorite fingers and scratching deep enough to expose white meat.
Paul was deeply offended and finally uncrossed his legs. Sternly he addressed his increasingly unwelcome guest.
Paul said, "I'm not as happy about knowing you as much as I was before, jack."
Jack spit in Paul's mouth just as the final venomous words were being spat from his part time lord and keep.
Jack bellowed, "Lies! This vile wretched ... Accursed thing! When I found it, I .. the madness! The flames.. heaving breast, flames licking my face -"
He began to pace in a semi counter clockwise concentric mobius strip. He muttered to himself at the top of his voice as Paul began to become annoyed at the loss of his pipe.
"Why.. why did it have hundreds.. maybe thousands of people's names, and addresses.. and..."
He stopped after stepping on another sweet roach and turned to Paul.
"....Paul. Yellow paper? And why are most of the people in your... Book. Why are they dead?"
Paul smiled, " and why the business listings and adverts jack? I don't know what -"
Jack swung the bottom most part of his leg high into the air and brought it down on Paul's scrotum bones with a crunch.
Jack whispered, "I visited those homes. Those people and those businesses too as well Paul. You know what I found in your sick wake?! Entire places called blockbuster left abandoned with nothing but rats and mostly used but still usable condoms! What did you do to those people?!"
"My nutsack hurts!" Paul chided.
Jack was becoming unnerved.
Chapter 10
Paul thought a lot. He liked thinking because being smart was what gave him boners. He liked getting boners since he could recall being a wee lad standing on the marmy shore, fish shit and sand between his toes as he watched the treacherous waves. 
"They come and they go boyboy... They come and they go. Like your aunty on a Sunday." The cracked out but still kinda hot in a nerdy kinda way bullet train hobo barked, his voice seemingly the result of him drinking a mixture of glass and coffee. 
It was times such as this that were around 5 am. Also, it was ass can open of whooping time as it so happened that the boy known as Paul "Falcon" Maltese had exactly one so called friend. 
"Grrrrreada ooooopar ficu fuck.." Jack screamed as his heavy blows rained down onto and collapsed the skull parts of the hobo. About the monkey blood stained man's middle torso and inner thigh meat Jack jumped up and also down. 
As the man's bitch ass screams became wheezing pleads of prayer or mercy Paul turned to gaze back out at the wet water. With his eyes. Which were also wet.
"Why hast those words... That that man had said... Why do they stick with me so." Paul purred.
A seagull with two heads swooped down and expertly pooped into the gaping mouth of a sunbathing maiden as she slumber. The Z's coming out of her huge boobs were sharp. Man. Her boobs were like, so huge.
The sound of her smile as she swallowed the umami guano brought Paul to his revelation. 
"I'm super smart and I should be a detective because I'm good at noticing things mon!" He said in a Jamaican accent.
Paul turned 72 cubits catercorner to Jack's left most knee. 
"I say, dear jack. I shall return. I'm going to go become a famous detective!"
Jack gave Paul a blood plasma covered handed high five and 6 before leaping 68 billion parsecs into the air, snatching the sexy seagull out of the sky with his bare dick.
Jack bellowed "I don't give a fuck what you do. Just don't ever be evil or I'll kill your whole body till it's wet and dirty!"
With a splat and perhaps half of a skasplooshka his nutsack snapped back into place and Paul was brought back to the hear and now. 
Then he realized he was past aggravated, ideally seeing a grave misunderstanding about to be birthed Paul raised a single elbow into the air.
"If I am who you think I am, and I deduce that if it weren't so then you would kommer ikke into my personal home and barraged me with these redundant and weak sauce ass queries! Now haste your genital blows. Away with your besotted and furthhence insipidus moral artillery, motherfucker! Disrepute and gelatinous gallons of spunk I spit uton your violent ways, especially when aimed towards my personal pieces! You have within your hot bod a flame of mystery.. and who else. Nay. Nah son. What else... Could possibly scratch your itchy ass gooch? I.. Paul Maltese!! Shall solve this most fatigued riddle for you. If you have money." Paul moaned seductively so loud that his throat parts began to a shimmy and a shake.
Jack looked his old comrade up and west before reaching into his pants roundabouts his crotch side and producing an eye juice and temple sinew laden dog leash for dogs. 
He said, " .... That piece of pussy clot was having his dog make fart solids on your lawn so I made his eyeballs into a pussy."
Paul produced an illegally sourced teak wood smoking pipe from his desk after fumbling around in his broken Fleshlight drawer for ten minutes before turning to jack.
"I will always have your back, too old friend. You are.. a good man." 
Paul poured a fathom of gin and black tar heroin into his pipe before picking up a local rat and squeezing its arse tendon juice into the exotic mixture. He struck a match and it called the cops. 
I know, right?
Chapter 7
Guiltee McKee hard a had life. Reading what was not good for his brain like. Sometimes math made him anal muscles feel itch and bad hurt!
He walk funny and look ugly so titty people with fancy hats and tight cloth cross the street or snicker like candy bars at Guiltee. 
"Him have soft dick for life style currently." He whispered in him crooked cranium.
Happen upon most prestigious government funded money laundry scheme. 
"B... Bunk. Bunk have papers trade for cheap ass."
Sudden Guiltee have wood in top penis. He hard AF.
"Guiltee who is me! Me Guiltee go put security fucker clitoris gristle in mouth and clomp!? When me have money for ass. Ill repute ass great for these me penis!" He sang as he skipped down the road.
Paul turned the volume of his pale gray Sony walkman down, the Ramones will have to wait. And they were famously known to hate waiting.
As he slowly but confidently climbed out of the rustic yet quaint city dumpster Paul readjusted his condom, keeping close watch on the piece of shit ugly bastard known as Guiltee "possibly up to something or a rapist I don't know he looks fucked up" McKee.
"Methinks this will be a fun ride." 
Paul drooled. The way he slurped up his own spit sounded like an angry gay elephant. 
Making sure to stay no less than 40.544 kilometers but no more than 6.988887 barleycorns within his mark Paul kept one wet eye on Guiltee (ugly ass piece of shit), and one dry eye on his surroundings.
Obviously observation serves tons of folk bro. On the middle left a toad's bits and crannies hung lazily on a mossy prostitute's back as she sat reverse cowgirl upon a poor excuse for a log. 
On the nearer left a jackal slunk about with a sway in it's tender gait indicting the iller effects of drug abuse, no doubt scavenging about behind Old Man McScabbies absinthe laden meat pie store. 
Guiltee turned his nasty looking body towards the street where other ugly people probably lived. If their bods were decent enough Paul might throw one of em a handful of his essence. 
Guiltee hunched over and took a bite out of the fallen ice cream stained pavement and began to chew.
Sharpening his crooked bicuspids.. Paul  surmised with his brain. He loaded a few .454 cassulls into his mateba autorevolver and checked his fanny pack to make sure his stash of rusty hypodermic needles were well stocked. They were.
Guiltee leaned heavily against a graffitied wall across from a thriving coxswain thrift depot and began massaging his own prostate while he chewed his gravel, surveying the land. 
Paul stopped by an ancient news-stand and took a long hardy piss on the intricately displayed candy selection so as to not draw suspicion to himself. 
"Hey! You can't urinate your piss on me knickknacks and wares ya bloody twat!" Shouted the owner seductively.
Paul tossed a few pence over the elderly lady's visage and as her greed distracted her Paul quickly scooped all his urine back into his penis and disappear down an alleyway.  
Chapter 80
"The art of deduction is for losers." Thought officer Growler. 
599 wet bodies lay stacked upon one another in a most ghastly and some would say gaudy fashion.
The local donut clowns were perplexed and full of vitriol, once again having been outwitted by the crime dude coined and perhaps dinar'd "bony ass robber guy". 
"Bony ass robber guy is number -135 on the most wanted list. My supervisor or general or whatever is pissed at me and keeps making me cry. I love him. Doesn't he see that? Am... Am I invisible?" Sergeant Growler was a wreck. Three thousand failed marriages. A smidgen of herp on his dick and a wagon he used to ride but fell off of due to his liquid porn addiction. The rookies shook their long heads behind open halls in plain sight and spit in his ear whenever and wherever he roamed.
Growler placed a single tongue on officer Bricksticks shoulder.
"Officer Bricksticks... I'm going to pass out. Tell my momma.. she had some tig ol' biddies.. and... I wish I coulda.. " Growler began to openly weep from the front of his pants and some of his eyes.
"A bit of curds and whey for lunch it is then, plus if I were you I'd get that dick problem checked out." Paul mimed. Catching the attention of Officer Growler from behind the rancid pile of cat bones stacked in the shape of a throne.
Officer Growler threw up in his own mouth and then swallowed it and then repeated the process for forty minutes as he slowly crawled on his shoulders and knees towards the gumshoe.
"E FUCKING gad Maltese. How do you do it? And what are you doing here? Last I heard you and your beastie got nicked for a few skull crushings and international peeping Tom Geneva violations down in middle Aberdeen." Growler spat.
Maltese shuddered and let out a small puff of smoke, "We escaped, Growler."
Growler spat, "You don't say".
"I studied under and inside many great escape artists the world over, plus as you are quite aware I am a master of over 40 deadly and arcane scientific fields. Banned and shunned by even the cruelest of philosophers and theoretical astrophysicist."
"Nope, I didn't know shit about that." Growler screamed.
"Not to mention I managed to procure the souls of several battle tacticians, Warfield assassin's and six buff Aussies."
"Oh fuck.. for real?"
Maltese smirked with his mouth and lips.
"I told you all this before, no doubt your low and pathetic level of intelligence has caused you some form of voluntary brain retard life."
".....ok. Why -"
"Allow me propose a bit of quo pro quid. I suggest that I help you with what is most presently perplexing you and your limp dick partner and in return you... Simply do me a small favor."
Officer Bricksticks approached scratching his chest hair through the rips in his uniform, "Wow, you really are a master detective Maltese. How did you know I was a limp dicked?"
Maltese grew slightly impatient. 
Stuffing his Triassic period amber dabbed maple wood pipe with two ounces of bath salt soaked hashish he took a deep pull, being offered a light by a passing broad with a nice hat and a wet smile.
"By the gait in her walk I can tell she is a fan of what is known colloquially as doggystyle, note the curve of her shadow as the ultraviolet rays bounce off her loose bunghole. Poorly concealed beneath a knock off gorilla skin hoop skirt most likely haggled in the purple light district. As evidenced by the burnt sheepskin condom stain on the nape of her shoulder." Maltese spun around six times and then faced the officers.
"You, Growler are super gayly in a tryst with your immediate supervisor and are in no doubt great pain in your penis knuckle as well as your soul. The knot in your cheap government issued tie is off by exactly tenteen atomic units which is a mistake you only make when you are under great physical and emotional stress. Exhibit A.. you will recall thrice regaling me with a long and boring tale of your school boy days. In which you cried yourself to sleep at night for ten years straight due to worrying that your parents would one day remember to care about you and in doing so would find out that you were only barely passing your classes. Also during which time a banded eyed racoon had taken up residence in your dorm room and would sexually hurt your body at night." Maltese screamed with a frothy mouth.
Growler amazed, "how did you -"
"I took the liberties of invading your mother's home and finding a photo of you from that time previous, your school uniform was off... By exactly tenteen atomic.. units. Stress. And you officer Bricksticks, a few of my larger mates took turns on your long missing sister and during which she revealed to them that for your entire life you've had precisely two tragedies and one phobia. Tragedy moja - when you were born the doctors left you on the floor while out on a well deserved smoke break, neglecting to cut your umbilical cord. Instead differing the task to the lice infested rats, albeit smart ones. One of whom would proceed to begin a several days long psuedosexual affair with your nasty mum. Until of course he broke her heart. Driving her to a most orgasmic and brutal suicide. Tragedy mbili, five years ago you were out walking your blind dog -"
"How did.. is my sister ok? -"
Maltese grinned from ear to ear, "No. She's dead. Now, Silence. Obviously the dander on your shoulder and mouth and fingers betray the swill you feed your mutt. Poor in quality and high in nitric molecules that over a very short amount of time lead to a dog's nuts falling off and wicked cool eye degradation."
"Well I make a most meager wage.."
Paul stomped down on the officer's hip with enough force to impress a disparate bloke.
"I demand you stop interrupting me as I haven't the minutes nor seconds. When you were walking your hunde it sniffed out some bone. Bones that had inexplicably been claimed by a giant marmalade cat. It was rat bone. They fought. You ran. They chased you, forming a bond over your cowardice. They forced you down and ripped your uniform and put the rat bones in your penis hole. They stalk you and every once in a while.. like today. As shown by your ripped uniform.. they repeat the assault. So now.. officer Bricksticks. With the trauma of the rat. The bones. The throne. All of these things have given you a phobia."
Maltese posed like hulk Hogan, gesturing towards the bone throne.
"With this, before you. Your phobia is triggered.. causing your very dick. To be quite currently and possibly forever... as they say… a limp."
The officers looked at each other, thought about kissing and then looked back at Maltese.
"...sorry to have doubted your genius deduction skills Maltese. We're sold. What do you need.... Master?" They groaned.
Maltese took a quick sixteen puffs..
"Gentleman.. if you and your badges will follow me."
Chapter 2
We were all arrows, long time ago..
The air was bitter and salty, scraping against Paul's face like so many shards of night.
"Do you believe the comets ever falter, young Falcon?" Queried the Akkadian mage, striking her volcanic thunder forged sasumata in a mnemonic pattern. 
Against the burning elk which shook alongside the earth, with each blow stoic embers danced like big booty freaks when the beat is bumpin'. Ya heard me?
Paul struggled to maintain his inner mantra, each inhale a harsh reminder that he had yet to transcend. 
"It's not up to us to judge the tenacity of the cosmos.. we cannot fathom the importance of their final destination.." Paul whispered as the sharp stone he balanced upon slowly dug into his fine ass foot palms.
The Mage turned a keen nestle milky eye quickly towards her apprentice. She said in a low growl, "..becoming a master of escape requires the blood and sacrifice of the weak. Word life."
Rising up from her perch, the mage with a swiftness of a coked up peregrine leaped towards Paul, swinging her weapon with such force that the air around it began to sizzle.
Paul spun on his blisters in time to dodge the blow but in doing so lost his balance and fell neck first onto a hissing cobra with an attitude.
It bit the shit out of his neck skin and back bacon meat. Paul didn't like this for some reason and writhed in pain as the mage rubbed her pert nips and cackled.
"Why... Like.... What the fuck for real tho?" Paul whinnied as the venom coursed through his veins like a grand prix.
The Mages teeth twinkled ever so suddenly as she nodded towards the snake. 
"Solstices ago, when the moon was still sat in the sky so close you felt you could reach out and fuck it.. I needed to borrow ten bucks. So I sold my essence to a passing serpent who told me he knew a guy. Yadda yadda, I needed to offer the taste of a fool to pay the vig. So.... Yeah." She mused as the snake winked at her and retrieved its auburn derby hat, it's business here no doubt reaching a most satisfying conclusion.
"Ok well fuck you and that bitch ass snake. I should -" 
Paul was yanked back to now as the nightmarish screams of several lethargic coxswains floated heavy on the flap of so many burning leaves. 
A near to pomegranate bonsai tree made a most curious birth, the expulsion thick with a tepid sweet eller metallic aroma that struck with a most furious yeet.
One coxswain proclaimed, "ohhhh shit. Ok. This isn't good. I don't like this."
Paul gyrated towards his center view of the situation, it was as thus. 
Two billion factory workers ran in hexagonal zag zigs as their flesh began to smell hella good. Similar to an Austin, Texas inspired seasoned mesquite sauce burnt on an onion laden brisket, coleslaw made of sweet earwax like big momma used to beat you for eating. A downtrodden depot behind them smoldering most river Styx like, stank ass brimstone waning near beauty.. their noice skulls displayed signs of hurt.
"Ok.... Ok. This is fucked. This fucked me. What the fuck?" Growler brayed as he emptied his twelfth to second clip into the jowls of the now 52 hay bale tall Guiltee McKee. 
The suave behemoth swallowed the bullets fired into his crooked mouth with a gulp before slowly removing his wet cotton fatigues. The scent of the newly formed cloud droppings took a most throbbing route as heated beads of innocent bystander marrow formed big black estuaries along the ripples of his officer meat filled tooths.
He said "Me stupid, and Iggy.. am so pain in blood pump organ, most ball blue in era. Most ball... Blue.." 
Paul placed his damp palms and fingers and knuckles into his last pocket as he approached a clearly unnerved officer Growler.
"Relax bro. Everything will be fine." Paul snickered as he gently eased growler to the soil.
"But... He ate bullets... Then he ate... He ate my partn... He ate... Oh shit.. my donuts... I left them in the shop... The police carshop I mean." Growler spat as he hissed.
Paul had little time to ascertain the situation, which had spun least heinously out of fubar. 
Chapter 54
Some people taste funny. Ain't nothin this ol' dirtball can throw that can break down a strong will. 
Maltese furiously scrolled through his vintage Asian porn collection located on his computer phone like device as he gathered his thoughts. His palms began to sweat as the terse temperature caused by the burning people running past became a nuisance, he enlarged the gif of a thick veiny vulva and meditated. 
Guiltee McKee was a query of a specimen. He was ugly. He smelled like a dusty wallabys taint, and his shoe game was lacking. Still, upon consumption of various forms of matter he would grow in size and strength, as well as developing a slightly indifferent cowlick. 
"Me are balls blue!!" The hulking brute autotuned as his rampage became exceedingly erratic. 
Reason. Craft. Achieve. Thought Paul as he finished adding his twelve thousand word long scathing review to the comment section of the bukaki video he was currently studying. 
"Bad form" would be a magnetic summary of his intrepid thoughts.
The detective sauntered over to the unattractive criminal, his soft but taut hips swaying side to side and up to down with a hateful riddim.
"I say... Oaf. May I bother you for a few picoseconds of your temporal proclivity." Maltese was in true form.
Guiltee turned to face Maltese with a look that said "bitch, please" and tossed aside the bowl of kneecaps he was munching.
"When you have words for Guiltee... Bu.. bunk hurt. No time for fake ones, mustard on the beat!"
Maltese checked the hours and seconds hands position on his flame retardant limited edition patek, the raw speckles of oort cloud asteroid mined diamond dust that coated the face impressed even the most frugal of bastards.
He said, "I am a man of great skills, intelligence and style. No doubt when you gaze at my person you feel pangs of jealousy and doubts concerning your manhood... Stop me when I'm lying."
Guiltee was taken aback, he clutched his pearls in abackness. 
"..........continue." he said as he choked a little bit on the eyeball juices of an elderly barkeep who happened to be in town for a high school reunion. Awkward.
Paul stepped ever so closer to the hulking brute, whose unattractive but muscular tendons glistened against a smoggy early winter backdrop. With each deep breath the beads of steaming perspiration evaporated into tiny altocumulus clouds that formed a breathless atmosphere of contempt and desire near the monster's buff ass chest. His buxom tongue hung damply from heaving lips, temptation unbound as a furtive damsel peered out of her sniper encampment for only two reasons. To kill the enemy. And to take peeks at the ugly ass hot dude eating people and gravel roundabouts the coxswain depot. 
Anyway. Paul licked the side of his rose petal infused Damascus pipe before inserting a pound of raw crushed Percocet, lighting it on the smoldering frontal lobe of a soon to be deceased boat barnacle collector, Paul took 7 long puffs and then 68 short hits before stepping ever so much closer to the now entranced galoot.
"Check it. I didn't do any research into your background but I can tell you're all fucked up bruh, from the cat jizz stain on your favorite aglet, one with a decent degree of learning can surmise that a cat jizzed on your shoe. It was a multiplier. Your mood already askew after having awakened from yet another lonely evening dry humping your previous landlord's ribcage sinew, procured by nefarious means no doubt." Paul puffed away as Guiltee slowly took a knee, the detective's mastery of deduction and weavery of alphabet math stuff was noice. Having a calming but moist effect on even the most astute of pervs, nuttas and wayward carny.
Maltese had sway.
"Me... Me feel getted. Me want more of brain man. Wicked boner me have." Guiltee whispered into his own armpit.
Paul stepped once again closer to the foolish beast, now within a breahes hair or less than 907 half hectares the detectives pungent crotch just barely grazed Guiltee McKees chin split.
"I and you are not that same Mr. McKee, if I may call you such..." Malteses keen eye spied officer Growler being a bitch. Also crawling towards his cruiser. Paul continued, "I get ass all the time. Because I'm awesome. I'm just keeping it real with you, you're whack. But with my expertise in flavor and clout chasing I can turn your paltry existence into something that benefits me and most likely grants you what you so desperately desire..."
"Hooker love!" Shouted Guiltee.
"Precisely. Now Guiltee, if you will.. so kindly dust yourself off. We can begin."
Maltese turned his back towards the front of officer Growler. 
"Belay that reload officer. I and the monster have come to a most amicable armistice. Isn't that right motherfucker?"
Guiltee nodded in agreement.
"Yup. We are peace now. Apologies for what eat people and destroy factory depot. Me shit. Me surrender." And with that guiltee began regurgitating all the irritating mark ass tricks he ate. 
The hulking behemoth, now only 8 feet tall and a svelte 500 leagues heavy, smiled and turned to face the detective.
"Me am.....-"
Seizing the opportunity, Maltese reach into his utility belt and grabbed a handful of hypodermic needles, which he then proceeded to toss into the criminal's face muscles. Guiltee screamed and wailed as the exotic drugs and poisons entered his body and burned. Causing mental and menstrual hallucinations as well as itchy aortic migraines. 
Maltese spit on a gray pigeon that flew too close before grabbing many more needles and slowly dropping them into Guiltee McKees back pants around the butt area. Expertly, Paul grinded the sharp interlopers into the criminal's anal situation. 
Guiltee bellowed and howled. Slippery warm tears pooled atop his musty upper lip as the buffoon wailed.
He sounded like a straight bitch. For real.
Chapter 22
Take your time sweet child, and then may the wicked come..
Officer Growler awoke with a start, ribs were damaged. Breathing laboured and shallow, wet. Metallic taste tainted the fruit of his lower mandible, his loins were a little achy but other than that he was alright, I guess. 
He strained to see past the stars hindering his vision, both of his eyes and his hefty belly button were swollen shut, a mighty knot swell up as if so many volcano on his top moist head. A single tuft of silky hair sat pon the lump, Fred Flintstone wouldst get a nominal boner from how awesome the lump looked.
"D.... Donuts .. need.... Don..." The officer stereotyped as thick human blood pooled in his throat. His blood.
Maltese was close by, but said fuck that and continued on his personal mission. He put his new Fleshlight away and stare deeply into the now fallen and quite lucid Guiltee McKees eye bits.
"Now... That I have successfully captured your attention, and before the fuzz no doubt place you into a deep dark guarded hole.. I require a bit of information." Maltese snatched a small sparrow from the ground and then spun it in a circle before launching it into the air. It flew... But not how people like sparrows to fly.
"B... Bunk .. me hurt.. drugs so potent... Me help them. Please.. cure our selves .." Guiltee spouted.
Paul pulled his pants back up around his waist fromst his ankles and took a comfortable seat on the pavement beside his bested foe. 
"You poor bastard.. succumbed to the vile violent. The wretched Desire. In the blink of a whores pink eye you fell asleep, and in your slumber you forgot who the fuck you was dealing with. Now tell me where I can find one associate of yours before I set the rabid dogs of justice loosed."
"Who you look at for?! Please.. me snitch... Me snitch so hard for you.. me snitch you long time." Guiltee said in a poor but serviceable eastern Sicilian affect.
Maltese got a boner from how good he was at his detective stuff.
Chapter 6
Average!? I beg to differ, and I aim to please.
Some people called her Hattie. Well, the pieces of shit that managed to survive her existence did anyway. She had many names.
Picture this. Backdrop, harsh drought circa west Lebanon. A poorly trained and fallable vagina physicist named Portsmouth soaped down and gloved up for a suicide mission, he was set to task as presently the finest molecular biologist this side of Istanbul got herself in a family way. 
She exhaled twelve thick clouds of pure krank from her multifaceted canary yellow tsavorite chalice while calculating pi to it's 630th sine integer, thus proving the nonexistent phenomenon known as "big dick energy" as she found great humor in the pain foreceding the baby making its way through her whole fancy cervix. 
Having trained in wombwu-chun since she first got on the rag the fantastic and bombastic maiden let out a deep and gutteral fart noise through her bottom entrance, the density of which caused much discord and confusion amongst the lesser informed hostel patrons. They were all like "ewww..."
It didn't stink that much. Hattie fumed, reminiscing about her mother as she observed the legal maladies taking place exactly 693.5 pascals from her well scouted hiding place where she was hiding.
She watched Maltese with a great fury. The huge palooka with the needles in the front of his face was spilling all the beautiful bean footage. Gesturing wildly and slightly over dramatic with his appendages and licking his lips in a whorish but inviting fashion.
"It would appear a new game is afoot my dear detective Maltese... My lady boner is big. And my mind boner is big too. Because of the challenge... " She cussed the heavens while shaking her fist in tepid apoplexy.
Chapter 11
Call it whatever you want, just don't touch it bro.
Realizing there was no time to haste Paul Maltese sped through town at a flimsy 545 mph, barely dodging most of the pedestrian traffic as he was shivering from the constant fire he felt in his immediate bottom. 
With an obstructive bleat the soggy vibrations rippled through his well defined belly and blatantly muscular intestinal tract, the big one. His guts aflutter, the world's most addictive detective pulled over with fervor, the screech of the well worn tires on his vintage red panda leather interior Subaru sounded something similar to your mom's.
"I.... Gotta take a shit." Said some weirdo who lay sprawled before the entrance, his penis and halve drunk bottle of spirits all askew. 
Paul ignored the bum ass dude as he stormed into the establishment, his sharpened turd well into berth. 
The information he has gleaned from Guiltee McKee had proven to be most furtive, ever closer to resolving his case he placed three thumbs deep into his booty guts to help alleviate the poopy pressure.
Approaching a fine ass freak behind the counter of a local vasectomy museum Paul licked most of his lips and said, "I... have poop coming out. Help me." 
His turgid words jolted her awake, a lazy day guarding the wares of ancient losers and mummified collectables made her a dull dame. 
Readjusting her patent vibranium strap on, the 9 foot tall vixen spit out three bloody teeth before loosening the tungsten wires on her chartreuse bustier, her plump breast meat was well seasoned. Smoked in burnt yak butter maplewood lotions for a lot of days and then soaked in salted peppercorn maxi pad scrapings.. she had it all. 
Paul relieved himself in his mock velvet Rolex trousers and wafted away the eye watering stench with his favorite hand while lighting a bit of makeshift broken crack pipe glass resin in his rustic pipe. With a Dana carvey impression he said, "You're sexy. I don't need to use the facilities anymore.. can I sex you. With my penis?" 
Chapter 88
Gods pray as well, but they too are met with painful silence..
Their sex business was poorly executed. Paul's dick top and center felt as if it were cascading against burly limestone, his partner was no help. Her dry gyrations against his impoverished member a lame brained attempt at nut busting. 
The long haired gimp watching from the latticed balcony lost her erotic fever. What was supposed to be a wild evening of jacking off like a boss had become a retrospective incursion into her flailing psyche.. remembrance of times past when she walked in on her mailman and milkman double teaming the vice principal (who looked most bored).
Paul finished with a grunt and spit on his own reflection as it mocked his performance in the mirror. His sperm exited with a beleaguered sounding gong.
She looked at him funny.
"So.... You said you needed to use the phone or laboratory or something?!" She screamed while choking herself.
"Oh yeah, the case. Thanks.. I almost forgot.". Paul did with his mouth.
She tossed thirteen million crinkled and most damp yen into the puddle accumulated nearest the fridge door. 
"Here. Next time don't be bad at sex, and also you made mess in the sheets. I don't like that anymore." She scatted.
Paul sat up on his tippy toes maintaining perfect balance on the water bed.
"Hmph." Was the sound his heart made.
"When we first met I anticipated your desire to grind uglies with a stranger as evidenced by the angle of your female clitoris dangle, known to harden and vary in texture.. and aroma.. when the female version of the grape ape was aroused. As you know, or maybe you don't now that I've been inside you and listened to you moan foolishly.. the grape flavored or rather hominus purpilious majori the third is our closest genetic relative."
Locusta the freak snatched her cockles deeply, the anger on her visage quite apparent.
"Obviously you're just a no pussy eating loser posing as some great detective and you're guessing your way through a sad career hanging out with lunatics and fool hardy sycophants." She cackled in a rough Irish brogue. 
Maltese bristled, "Funny enough you should say that shorty, tell me. This substance that I felt under our bodies and under my current toes is supposed to be... Water? Yes?" Maltese screamed as he ripped a piece of the bed frame from its position and raised it above his knees. 
With that Locusta snatched up her purse, her extensive but unimpressive CBL minor league card collection then made a quick ricotta cheese, hot prosciutto and garlic bread banh mi before leaping through the farthest window upper ankles first, her dexterity as she crashed onto a passing clerical tourist carrying a bevy of vintage Thracian currency was a sight to behold. 
Maltese watched as she rolled off of the holy man's mushed cranium spunk and performed a perfect 450 backflip over a sentient robot clearly disguised as what public transportation buffs refer to as a "sweet 24 wheeler hauling more hog tit tips than whatever's a lot of them". With a vikings crotch tuft worth of artillery to boot. She landed on her muscular earlobes before disappearing into an abandoned opium den owner's shoddy duplex. It wasn't that shoddy I guess. Sometimes I just get jealous.
Maltese opened his third pack of crushed steroid flavored edible undergarments and emptied them into a oblong collectible cereal killers serial bowl filled six thirds of the way with cheap distressed male emu milk water. 
"No doubt my false poor sexual performance will influence her travel.." he howled into the night. The pale gray wolves lapping at a muddy stream got so hard from how much they thought he was a chick wolf with huge wolf honkers.
Their crooked lupine members throbbed indiscriminately against the swollen winter gust, a big black and sweaty starlit comet grazed the pulsing hot atmosphere. Pumping slowly in and out of the dirty earths tight but deep gravitational pull. 
The canine emergency reaction hairs on the back of their muscular neck muscles harkened back to a nother time. Whenst their were less separation a mongst continents. 
Wooly mammoths roamed hapless plains blistering with pre mesozoic mushroom trees. 
Gallot, the alpha wolf laid his musty but cold nose on the nape of his gay wolf lovers belly.
It was going to be another harsh winter.. but hope was a yonder.
They heard what sounded like a female wolf. And they all got boners. 
Word.
Maltese checked his brand new solid uranium brick cell phone.
Thirteen thousand billion messages from his comrade Jack. No doubt concerning the mystery... Perhaps some physical threats. 
With a great explosion Paul's impotent bowels made short work of not only his trousers but also the Raphael forged equine robot deco that blanketed the perfectly vertical wall nearest the other room.
Chapter 35
Uh ohhh, spegettios sang the bells.
The next door tenants of the harsh foliage covered hostel were at the moment knee deep into a most rousing bout of playing the dozens when the serene boom interrupted their bitter proclivities. 
The entire building's brick and mortar structure quaked with a most venomous rattle against their gullible and tasty bones, the sweet marrow of which became humble and doubtful in integrity as the first, second and fifth elbow delivered to their countenance tripled in veracity and heat with each blow.
About two minutes ago Jack got tired of waiting for answers. His tolerance was the greatest and his patience was without compare - but c'mon bro. 
"C'mon bro!" Jack belched at the top of his lungs with a heated breath onto the face and neck of the elderly tramp making his way westward with nothing but his finger paint sammich and a ruck sack full of like ten million dollars worth of sexy exotic animals in his insulated backpack that was like a rucksack. 
The tramp was aghast and soon a ghost for he was in Jack's way, which is no Bueno. 
No bueno. 
Jack knew Paul Maltese was in one of these buildings, and he kinda wanted to know how long this mystery was going to take.
Take time, or anything from a good man and there was gonna be murders. Most wicked. 
There was a Convo, like this.
Jack: "it's yellow mmmm hey so!"
Then the now hurt person said, "..are we ok? You seem -"
A broken femur.
Jack snapped the thigh bone of one person. He broke it, so good. Let's know a bit about jack.  He's...
Chapter 16
 Wait.  This happened first.
Paul took a breath. His secretary and front desk receptionist was angry, she was used to rudeness but God damn.
A red haired vixen with hips to match sauntered into the detective agency carrying her teacup sized three headed komodo dragon in a mock turtleneck style Maserati handbag. 
"I say, I have a most intricate plot and or scheme that I ... Er.. I mean I need to hire a private slong. I heard the best one works hair after he got discharged from the seamen corps all over someone's face. My poor elderly but disgustingly wealthy husband has not only fallen ill, but he has been missing since the rebirth of slick. He's old like that. He's sick like that. He's probably cold like that. I worry about his bones like that. I would inquire at his nursing home. The owner, her names is Cleopatra Goldstein." She scatted.
Paul listened with his ears as the flustered commotion outside interrupted his daily god cussing session. Various gods in literature got dissed with scornful disdain and meaningful spite while Maltese stood over and before an altar he haphazardly stole from a drunk monk on a vacay that became a staycay.. in the ICU.. cuz o how hard Maltese bopped him about his well polished noggin bones.
Sekky, the secretary (as some lame losers might call her) was a staunch advocate for animal abuse. Even despite this her mad libbed mindset inferred a classically trained wit, betrayed only by her porn star shaped back and Marc Jacob glasses that held no lens's, only fancy frame. 
On her illegally uru mined desk sat fifty gallons of collectable erotica themed, wrestling superstar bobbleheads shoved into a ming era style mason jar. Pickling slowly in unholy juices. Also she had a few pictured frames but they were all factory setting laden, nothing personal. Just the original happy family porn you get when you procure the keepsake.
The red head punched a rabid fruit bat out of the air as it attempted to mate with her upper jaw, swooping down from aloft the long deceased canaries' human hair and used toothpick (haphazardly crafted in a faulty drug induced stupor from a confused blue swallows parasite residue) nest located on the third most bookshelves shelf that only had a few books on it. Cool pornographic books. With pictures of naked bodies in them.
Like ... As far as one of them. It's not like you can't find it on the internets or something but it's like, hot flower petals and shit side by side with mildly thick broads messiness. Plus there were ancient cartographers lame brained attempts at sketching many  short, hairy burly blokes, bangers and mash. Get me bruv. 
There was one that was nothing but wizard beard long pullouts featuring the best bleached taints of post mortem disavowed prophet's.. the eloquent poems accompanying each pimpled picture popped perfectly plike  pthe pletter p.
"Pwhat in the heavenly fuck are you staring at you big toothed botch?!" Sekky spoke with words towards the fire headed future client.
"... Harrumph. A most erroneous abrogation was interred on my person, I was fittin to fuck somebody up but my favorite show was on. I beseech your most famous detective services. Also I have no intentions of betraying his trust or using him for a grander scheme." The redhead said as she adjusted the glasses on her head by at least 23.14645zed7 kelvin.
Back in the back office, a torrent of orange light converged on Paul's pupils. A miniscule migraine migrated through his mental portions. It hurt. In his head.
Smashing through his office door head first and landing most unceremoniously afloat a nervous pot smokers spray tanned back Paul punched his way into that person's neck and recovered what appeared to be an audio recording device, bro.
Sekky was no slouch. She smirked as she had previously scouted the interloper entering the office looking all interlopy. 
"A listening device. I suspected as much ... Good show Mr. Maltese." Sekky grunted.
Maltese turned to sekky face first and laid both his feet on her desk with a jolt. 
"The flies encircling the decaying necromancer outside my chamber door began to vigorously mate in a self destructive manner. Mushing their junks together with wanton abandoned ment." He cajoled, his upper lips twitching and covered in carpet cocaine.
Sekky dug her nails into her own back as she smiled, "Which at this time of decade only occurs in temperatures suited for clandestine audio recording. Especially when said equipment is made by a -"
"-lighthouse keepers olive skinned midwife." They finished together. Hands in wet pockets.
INTERMISSION 
This dude walks out, and he's hot. Then like, this chick walks out.. she's totally hot too. She has breasts. Big ones. And her booty is tight. But sorta bouncy. You know what I mean.
So anyway. The dude, his boner is heated. NASA couldn't build a bigger rocket. He's practically getting his pants Prego cuz he so horny. And he don't wear boxers nor briefs. He Rambo. Dick scratching his zipper. Ykk.
So the chick is smart and funny and stuff. She's all like.. rubbing on whatever's down there in her underwear. And she's like.. "yo.. one time a gorilla was famous in a zoo. 
And butt it was lonely in its but. So the zoo dudes said to a crowd of dudes .."yo, our gorilla is lonely so can one of you keep it company and suck it's ball sinew and shit for 5000 dollars American?"
A bated hush came over the crowd. 
L
Ace space pilot Scout Bombardier raised his sturdy yet girthy fist.
"I shall do this horrible thing. Yet I have conditions and shit. Meet me behind or next to the closest disco teque. We make sexy time deal but only after you hear me say things."
The misconstrued but thick bottomed zoo lords met his stalwart request.
"What is it you seek?' they… said.
Scout emptied his buxom bowels on a familiar owl. 
"Firstly, I demand that there be no kissing of the mouth." He was lying, he was totally gonna kiss that gorilla.
"Secondly, I pray that my wife and ugly children no hear bout me banging ape ass!" He also said.
"And third!?" They beckoned.
"I require two solstices to sell off my assets to pay for the gorilla sex. I need time.. to raise money. For the sex I am mistakenly willing to pay for as opposed to being paid for.. for the sex. I'm going to have with the gorilla. Which will have kissing. I will give you money.".
End intermission 
Chapter One 
Maltese took a long proud and slightly racist breath, "Well done Sekky. Your training is coming along swimmingly. I noticed a few dollars missing from petty cash. Those are my dollars. Don't touch them or I'll fuck you up. Next week we shall begin your blind submerged cave river creature anti toxin rituals." 
"Please stop training me." She pleaded.
"No!" Maltese compromised before turning he's gaze towards the flame haired dame.
"And you... What can you do for me!" He exclaimed.
"My complaint is already explained." Plainly, she feigned. 
"But .. I'm willing to let you torture me for information. I just want answers." Bleated the mysterious client.
Paul extended one of his most famous hands.
"Do you know anyone who wants to make a lot of money selling drugs?" He mourned, his cold perspiration well past pronounced. 
The red head smirked before baring her sharp teeth. 
Chapter 16
Sitting aloft three satin soft yaks relaxed backs while they napped Maltese smiled before he set aflame ten long cigarettes, next he attained a well laid loin of wet pork and set it on the blackened floor before his long backed company. Yeah.
Forty mugs of thick hot barley mead set forth for the sake of thirst and boss ass merriment.
Ok
"Let me say, I am most displeased and aroused to here about your old ass husbands demise." Paul spake.
"I think you mean hear." The red head demurred as she bit off a huge chunk of the wet broiled beast. 
"....do you have money or drugs? Or perhaps I can touch you... I mean I'll take your case but I gots to get mines too." Paul chastised.
The red headed vixen reached deep into her grossly plumped boob fjord and produced a damp but well embroidered business card.
"I have all of that and more... If you can truly help me. You're gonna want to start hear, motherfucker."
Paul took the card deep into his warm hand, squeezing it and feeling every veiny inch of the letters. It read, "Gigi's Old People's Drop Off and Emporium" followed by most of an address, the rest partially burned off with something hot Maltese surmised. Maybe fire or something.
Maltese grinned as the unforgiving sol blazed through the toast brown stained office vinduet. Just outside, perched on the sill was a most curious looking ibex. Most curious looking indeed.
Chapter 26
Boney Scummspiser slowly removed the octagonal edge of his lower boot from the brune haired Constantinoplian oar makers only neck. He meant bizness.
At a famous 680 lbs the poor soul had a not good life. Born with a rarefied airborne disease known to only the darkest quantum theory cultists OL' bones as he was knowns suffered from Ohshityubonsfukdupedisis..
Or perhaps he didn't suffer, but instead prospered most heinous. With an inner skeleton dense enough to handle 856 ohms of gravitational air pressure, padded by 80 stone worth of frothy man meat and muscle.. his epidermis twas not skin. Rather a ghastly mixture of additional and multiplicationized razor sharp bone and cartilage that smelled like ancient fishmongers from eastern Carthage.
These things in addition to his morbid proficiency in Queensbury rules fist of cuffs and Emperorexhumed krav noob saibot breathing exercises exalted Boney a life sullied in the juices of excess crime profitability.
He relished in squeezing the local patriotic whore biz chroniclers, their semi hourly gazette rife with nascent articles concerning the sordid superfreak negotiations taking place twixt the heavy tongued Jerzeter fecal kings ( a gang heavy in firepower but low in your mom's) and thee Proper Yorkshire Purple Ribbon Youth Choir (a fairly recent and evenly taint skin thirsty crew of slothy religious artifact enthusiast who had lost their luster for peace). 
Um.. where was I . Oh.. Boney raised his right shoulder high into the air as his eyebrows twinkled against the autumn hued parking lot morning, leaning close to the oversalted eardrums of the oar fashioner Boney spoke in deep heavy whispers, "I... Need. You.... To 'splain something to me... Lucy..."
He brought all 68 of his cold slime dripping teeth nearer to his trembling victims cranium sound holes.
"You don't mind if I... Call you Lucy.. do you... I like to.. call 'em Lucy cuz ... He shuddered as the middle part of his tonsils came into close contact with the edge of "Lucy's" kneecaps.
"...cuz I... Cuz I'm getting the impression that you.. need to be a part of the show... But thats not where you ... Be... Long... Lucy... You
.. don't... Be... Long..."
The blood red clouds overhead hung low and heavy like well aged nuts, the air crisp and thick with the acrid plumes of torture. An environment abused by the sodium laden torrents spit down onto cracked pavement, a lone elderly badger bared what remained of it's broken teeth as it fought off rivals for a mere piece of a rotted bootleg vhs tape peddlers entrails. Entrails taste good.
Searing Madness rampaged through the very edge of ones nerves, a passerby sitting by his lonesome on a rickety trolley took notice. A low hum behind the guttural hymnals the driver sang made arm hairs stand on end. Some even stood on beginning.
Scraping the mental gray juice and bits from the top of his heels against the slovenly chest of a recently widowed meat dispensary financier, Boney realized from the insanity inducing heat.. from the rapid flashes of sickness and destructive depravity invading his thoughts...
That today must be Monday, which means it was time for a company pep talk. Plus if the one known as Carol was still alive she would most likely bring croissants and white chocolate bear claws, caramel dipping sauce with little bit of  
Chapter 49
Locusta uncorked her sawed off and checked the best by date on her bullet resistant maxi pads, now with wings. 
The exterior of the disjointed compound verged on the verb of "nah, bro/nahbruh". As in "yo, I was creating a Pythagorean riddim based riddle to stump my heavily implied lady lumped mate when I attempted to forego a std flavored condom and her demeanor was nahbruhed more than as per usual." 
Locusta spit on the earth and wished many a pox upon Daniel Webster and the devil's homesteads. Both of them. 
Her fallopian boners hast gotten the better of her yet agained. 
"I see great things in your future lassy, astounding victories and glory untold... Just avoid dudes with huge dongs." Her penpals half atheist chaplain wrote her one pre winter school break.
His mother quarter died from having visions of plucky cherubs holysplaining to her about how there was whyes being and know god... so finding a church where you didn't have to get all first name basis with everybody's body but still be able to meet a decent muscular fella with a healthy romantic nature who earned himself a decent wage was antisimple to locate.
She rest the middle left of her back against a long standing cats eye marble column. It's design intricately mundane within it's artistic simplicity. Opaqueness centered on the linear details within the thinly coloured grain.
"Oh man... My body feels like shit." She bellowed.
"That's.. is what someone's.. mother's achieves." Hummed Boney.  His stark but pert frequency related scale or pitch bordering on E major.
He startled and endeled Locusta's demeanor, she snatched a Prussian era fragment grenade from out of her most stinky body cavity, the pin deloosed by her main gooch muscle. Thirty picovolts away from tossing it into Boneys being... 
"You have a bad habit of sneaking up on me and also you don't pay attention to your female family members emotional states. Your sisters, your cousins and nieces... They want to get a nice poem or a compliment once in awhile. For Yahwez sake men just buy em a flower e'ry thn an na' ya pikish besterd.. twod be gran' te' av a fragrant flor or tew frem summon who aisn't a stranger or strummer." She sang in a vibrato.
"You reek.. of untitled urine and.. entitled mortality." Boney gestured loudly with sounds resonating from his throat and then, subsequently.. oral surfaces.
Repleted, Locusta layed down on a stiff bleak mattress. It's heyday long sequestered, but post modern in it's aboriginal attire inspired aestheticness. 
"Well, unlike you... I can find someone to love me. Even if just for a few fleeting grunts. A laymen could'st form my dreamt rivers, steamed water'd fall our entwined lust. 'enhaps a whored thast, clappin' unique in it's staunch H2O ache. Weren't thee recent a proud Jupiter, fuming failed star a long the wirn serpents dark jism? Hairy globes marked deep blue in thirst?! "
In a fiery gusto the Boney jerked.
"Better scissors than paper you rock headed bitch." He saideth gently.
"A child's fame reference from a child minded fool. Makes sense." She refracted.
"I only deal in dollars buster." He said with a swish and a switch in his hips reminiscent of pre world war two era bombshells. Like Boom. Pow. Boff! Zlonk!
The two heathens embraced comically as the room darkened.
Chapter 79
Twain.
Twain had arrived. And they were not pleased. In life, emotionally or otherwise. Fearful inwist their parse synapseses.
"Poor. Those who knows less, poor! Pour the liquid sentiments postly, port aged in the vigor of elden war. A sediment host, a taste of ale for the one who bleed, waged not for nation.. aside from gain or grain. We halfted our frozen foes.. chosen a gainst vaulted pain of olde, all-time no cap. We beastmode." They snarked as they crookedly entered the hidden parlor.
They were to be feared. They were called..
Twain.
Once splintered a moon half the size of Europa, almost as dense as your moms.
Born twice, once by curse.
One by way of sought after hate the one called Twain was both.
The deepest earth hath heat sicker than the sun, lesses gods quake as if so many tectonic shifts.
Twain.
A twice. More than. Extra dipping sauce. 
Existence made a fool, for how could there be another? Time and space never considered itself to be repeatable, but here we are again.
The same power, knowledge ripped through bloody warfare and dastardly experiment.
A them.
"Why hast we been summoned?! Sayment fromst your frothing jowels nower ye makeshifted molerat.." they spake.
Locusta stepped forward with her feet, her buxom head hung low.
".... I… I fear that I have failed you m'lords."
Twain was losing his buzz.
"Spake… we demand." 
Locusta furrowed her brow and let down her gaze, towards the long equator.
"Spake!! Heart fated til nothingly, words dabbled by falstastion!?" Twain was gonna fuck somebody up if they didn't get answers.
Boney bristled, "cure… cure for madness you eat. Been stolen. Locusta did her vagina wet with detective… he found liquid cure. Him penis good in girth and length but merely serviceable in aesthetic and.. of hard… only kiss vagina a … tepid a mount before rush to finger.. game. Kiss on neck but… no with emotions.."
"Oooooook… we are they. And us find displeasure in sordid details. So… Locusta lost the cure? How? We hidst that marginal ambrosia fairly troth!!" Twain was obviously aroused but they tried to hide it.
"Guiltee… was he who fucked up bro! He allowedst my existence… our existing existence to be known. I told you he was ugly and weak and ugly and stupid and ugly and weak!!" Locusta waxed poetically.
Twain slowly backed away…
"The madness we eat shall be in question.. we are not pleased."
"Uh oh… somebody fucked up." Boney smirked.
Chapter 43
At least give them a nod, those who failed to die for you…
Jack didn't give a fuck bro. He tossed these dudes inerts cross two football leagues of length before even measuring, it's like that.
It was good. His foot through the ass meat of a pretender, one time some bitch ass dude asked Jack for directions. Direct to his ass, went jacks fist finger edge knuckle parts. Through and through the pain made that dude sound like a loser.
Truth be told jack can and would and could figure anything out that he wanted to cuz of how cooler he is than everyone and smarter. 
But for what bitch? Jack will punch. That's how he gets answers. He's punching you, and if you know shit he punches it out of you. Or else. 
Plus he was decked out in wholly mammoth tusk armor, freshly procured from a recently deceased hemp textiles magnates favorite corporate assassin.
Jack stomped on the outer temple joint of a haggard mta employee, hard.
"I... Need answer. Yellow. Maltese... Yellow." Jack screeched. In a cool way.
Dead people with their heads crushed suck at answering stuff.
Chapter aught ten
When Twain was born it was on the same day at the same time during the same season.
The same nurses had the same name and the same stench of breathe and the same shoes. 
The same moon and the same sun banked on the similar set shore on the same beach where two same turtles deposited the same amount of eggs after fucking the same dude turtle who definitely wasn't planning on being a good father or paying child support, especially not twice.
On two planes of existence two twains flourished as twice the amount of anti and anto energies split to form the second but almost identical firmament
Twain.
Boney and Locusta knelt before them in monotonous revelry.
We will stay in the shadows for now… for Maltese is arrive.
Chapter 33
Sometimes… the love lost was just.
Leftenent Growler perused his files whilst on Ill gottenly procured hospice. 
Vacation days and overtime well in the red, his inner arm bone meat twas a slight or sight off kilter plus bruised, he needed a concerted effort to regale his eyes with the blotted ink jargon known as words.
WELL TONED BONES LEFT OUTSIDE ZONED HOMES
Read (or rather read) the headline on the local tree skin murder produced picayune. Previously and kinda famously known as a snuff nickelodeon inspired propaganda rag monikered eller tagged "Teen Newz n' Shitz", it's legend n' embarrassment of riches for the cuff pimpz, rather a cazcade ala tasteful bullshit that paraded the malted incompetence albeit intelligent care of the impotently important but rye law whores. 
Growler readjusted then writejusted the IV drip sharpened needle point located in his northernmost cock gristle, perturbed and almost melancholy he licked the edge of his dirty badge before inciting an ancient prayer to the deity of the fuzz..
"Ohhhhhhhhhh.... Hoolllllllllyyyyyy sweeeeeet. Doooooooooonnn...   Ohhhhhhhhhhnutt, mistress of theeeeeeeeeeee...." He barely matched in pitch from the original runic pork worshipper inspired tablet translatutions.
"Want to hair a joke Growler? What did the copper say to the detective.." 
Maltese was swift. Crawling from the underneath of Growlers hospital mattress fluff with gusto.
"Oh shit!! Not really in the mood for nasty riddles master .. but still well good to see you, ocular in a way o weight.. E'ry curd n den." Growler spat twice. Or maybe three times.
Maltese produced his dusty stained thirty tonnes of compressed painite encrusted quarter bent squat bulldog shaped pipe from the deepest nor hollowest part of his northwest pant hollow.
Allowing a modicum of disparity it were close to ten clicks of staggered witch hazel flavoured crank sprinkled and well mixed with elephant tranq dust, in the hug of one thumb and two middle fingers broken down for fiery inhalation consumption tossed into the smoking apparatus. 
Maltese took tenetyeleven or twelventeen deep pulls before he sat native American cross legged, ballzak Indian styled on the chilled floor.
"So.." Maltese belched 
"We have us a bit of a non starter.. a conundrum circa rubix."
Officer what's his name queefed deeply.. his intestines aloft of sudden non starter fecal improprieties. I know a lot of words. 
"You're suspect has been squeezing the local rag peddlers ya dig. They was Havin the shit slapped outta Dem wit a cool cats best pimp hand, bitch. Check it. The fool ass trick you seek is monikered Boney and I have deduced that he is part of a vast criminal network." Maltese bloviated like a gangsta.
"So you've helped me solve me case it is then?! Jolly right and gay times abound. Surely me cap will give me a promotion and a proper handy ta boot!? Oh gailee gala galoo!" Officer Growler found the second wind to hop out of his hospice bed and do a Russian dance. You know the one, where he's like low but like kicking out his legs like a loser.
"No... No that's not what's happening. I don't give a fuck about you or your ambitions bro. I'm taking this case personally. I got sex from one them earlier and I want more. So you'll have to wait until I'm done to talk to your cap. Or I'll hurt you. In your body. You know I'll do it. Test me. C'mon motherfucker!! Test me!!" Maltese calmly explained to a now nonplussed and openly weeping Growler. He was crying like a straight bitch cuz.
Chapter gg
You want to know the limits to the evil of man? Convince him that forgiveness exists.
Maltese once made a mistake. That's more than once enough, a snail can be too slow. Believe it. A reflex to fast... An ass too fat. However, impossible.
This freak was off kilter, making them ass chaks claps most proper. Like a beast on mode the frontal meat of her left glut made a most pleasant aroma.
Plus her tits were huge. Nips on fleek.
This old folks hostel were not the best. If someone was to have a job where they picked out the best old people dump places, they would be all like, "hi, I'm Mary. That's not my real name but I work here. Some of these older old guys have big dicks. I fuck them. I work here I think. I gets money. This place smells of the shit. It hast rats most bubonic in nature and crest. Like toothpaste!!"
The madness was spreading. Like your mom's cheeks. Man.... I used to hang outside your crib. She kept them curtains open, you just knew by the way she looked at you when you came over to play late hump day hardcore D&D...
The way she came downstairs into the basement accidentally wearing a see through night gown prom cut slutty hellboy themed hat made his boner squeak.
"You came here for our confidential mental records I reckon .. suga. I like slavery." She whispered like a jerk.
Her name was Grimple. Weird. But just. Maltese stalked his own veritable shadow as he paced fro und to about the bleak pastel themed office. 
"Most presently, in accordance with my several restraining orders.. I am disallowed to force you to cater to my inquisitive whims. Mind you though, I am and will always be Maltese. Therehence by the bevy of clout my name carries you are well aware of things that should persuade your compliance." He flowed in a voice similar to old school yet prime Dark Man X. His least sexually attractive but favorite lyrical mc.
"If I want it you got it all you gotta do is set it baybay.. ride or die. Arf arf..! " Quipped Maltese.
Grimple leapt across the room and produced a thick yet curved 90 centimeter long bladed weapon and placed it near enough to Maltese esophagus location to split a follicle sample in thrice.
Always on his boss shit, Maltese sidestepped vertically whilst maintaining perfect perception, his left most hand eight aught degrees catercorner to the opposite roof he blocked the sharp thing before delivering a healthy albeit slightly racist hapkido chop to her partially swollen clitoris vien.
It sounded like Kerplunk! 
Stunned and flabbergasted Grimple staggered expertly backwards before falling over the pile of used air conditioning units layered hastily against the chambermaids favorite bookcase. 
Novels and smut bibliographies laden pon the dusty tasting shelves bore much resemblance to centuries past when racoons were rampant and as tall as a crows gaze.
Like... One of the smut books. It has pictures or rather caveman style motifs of huge crooked phallic beasts. 
The hairs coloured faintly of yeastly wheat crops, leastly lapping at the peppered thigh meat sodden with delicious sweat.
Another one.. of those smut books. Had the suspenseful origins of the 
Grimple rose up from the ground and tulipped in a circle before attempting to kick the shit out of Maltese favorite face, unwavering he paused never while ducking and returning diagonally with a prime Mike Tyson uppercut type knee to her lowest mandible. 
"Enough!" She laughed as the blood like plasma squirting from her achy teeth nerves splashed the adjacent wall in a voltaire inspired political statement.  
"I give.. I thought I could kill you. But I was wrong. Unless!...? Nah... That won't work. I'm sorry... Wait! Maybe if I..... Oh... No. That will probably get me kicked in the fucking mouth again. I guess I give up. I can't think of a way to kill... Wait! I know. I'll try this!!"
Grimple was met with a tricep inspired downthrust among her middle neck before she could complete her attack, the force of which gave a nearby earthquake measuring worker and cigarette lobbyist the sternest sense of arousal. 
"Ow. That hurt. Ok. I give up. What do you want to know? I'll give you anything you want. Anything you need. Just name it. It's yours. Just love me. Fear me. Do as a say and I will be your slave. " She laid out as plainly as she could.
Maltese did a 630 degree tope suicida in mock approval of his success.
"I forgot what I came here for...." He worded.
"....." She didn't said.
"Oh yeah, I need access to your records room or something." 
"....oh. sure. cool." Okayed Grimple, gesturing vigorously towards the next partly lit corridor with the edge of her wet collarbone.
Maltese rubbed her cankles as a sign of mutual respect (not really) and thanks. He rubbed them hard, and aggressively.
With a sweet pep in his step the stalwart gumshoe ran towards the information thing room at full tilt. His tongue wagging dryly.
Paul was not only astonished by what he discovered in the hundred liter bale of documents and papers with covers on the front and back with words on and in them, but he was also astonished.
Chapter 5
Jack pissed in the eye pupil of a daunting gong farmers latest pupil, freshly clocked out and marginally dark in demeanor and having worked up an south Carolina sauce soaked slow smoked BBQ brisket cut perfectly from the sweetest lump of giraffe ass sinew perspiration scent.
Seasoned in the heavily scotch bonnet peppered regolith of whiskey barrel aged makeshift seasonings, the aroma was bullshit and he knew it. It made Jack tremble with unbridled rage, his tumescently muscular abdominals rippled justice desiring pain.
"Yellow! The book yellow!!" He screamed cooly as he pounded down on the mass group of bystanders heated skulls. They screamed, like weak ass banshees.
Sending the edge of his fist deep into the heart juice of an elderly midwife, her reaction was mild but dead. Cuz she died.
"We don't need that attitude Jack. We all know... You're a good man."
Maltese pleaded sarcastically from the bottom of his heart.
Jack bit off forty more pieces of a lame eyed strangers nose and sweet forehead inerts before slowly turning to see the salty detective. In Maltese hands a familiar site. 
"You brought that with you you sick sick shit shit fuck fuck! Jack made obvious his manly feelings with his people parts.
"No... Tis a copy. One of many my dear ally. It is a rendition of information most fowl. And foul. You see..."
Maltese masterly produced his least sturdy solid opium chalice and seductively inserted two fiftieths of dank ass Birchwood moss doused bath salts before taking a huge rip, the flame provided by the maybach inspired torchlight he kept on his person.
"...once a time ago the people of this land used to allow their local lords to print several editions of a book containing not only their names, but addresses and telephone digits. It was madness, no doubt the reason behind so many awesome home invasion dismemberment serials. Like raping brand crunch and strangle puffs. What we have here.. jack.. Goodman.. "
"Is called a phone book." Maltese chimed as he tossed the pile of papers at jacks dick.
"Oh." Jack screamed as he leapt away, bounding 500 leagues into the air no doubt on his way back to his residence to finish his Gilligan's island themed snuff films.
Maltese sat down on a fire hydrant before it went kaputz, the massive stream of hydrogen and oxygen sending him flying into and through a local rat peddlers marketplace window pane.
Chapter 999
From a distance of roundabouts sixty Pokemon arenas she watched.
"It was going to be quite the adventure." She thoughted.
Killing Maltese will have to wait.
.. readjusting her prism linked Navaja sword on her waist... 
Sekky smirked.
It was going to be quite the adventure indeed.
Chapter 04
Again with the grimace. There was once a time when you smiled…
"Oh shit, I hate this. Word to big bird my job is hard. Like my sexy parts." The captain of manager or whatever of the police place was perplexed. His caseload heavy with cases that were hard to solve. 
"Growler officer, I should hurt your feelings!" The admiral blatantly threatened.
Officer Growler hid his penis his worry, nonplussed he shuffled paperwork on his desk in a fashion that was sure to endanger the innocent lives of many people with dark colour to their skin of perhaps in possession of vaginas. Which is sometimes considered a problem.
Maltese drunkily tethered into the station, his form rare.
"Oh… so the words make sense.. Growler need not be emotionally raped this season, nor a different way of life produced. I have solved this query, motherfucker. You see…"
The thirsty leftenant sparked mad ism as he procured a half moistened breath, his dry lips dry like dry stuff.
"As you have previously been made aware my sex liquid marks a scent, trained in the most arcane of scientific and latent technological techniques I was thought the vein of my member mark the victim of my poor sexual confection. Needless to say I was able to find one old man. A wealthy old man."
"Damn, bribe me harder Maltese." The captain spewed.
"In an hour's time I will be at the forefront of a red headed broad, her wealthy mate shall be explained as having been succumbed to the madness. Which based on the pale dirt I found in his person after having dug up his wet body.. uh.. something. The one you seek called boney is rumoured to be taking up residence in the pissy smelling location I followed my one time paramour to. I was not able to arrive in time to see who they were meeting but boney is still there."
Maltese yelled.
"Round up the swat teams and secure the baton hatches! Belay the paddy wagons boyos we've a monster who's rights need violation!" The Major sang to his men as he slowly did a blood pumping striptease til he was wearing nothing but his heavily stained knickers. 
Maltese made short work of manners as he left. Disappearing through a large rat hole while the officers scrambled about.
Chapter 56
Maltese was well pleased. 
Having found the origins of the mysterious novel his best friend Jack would no doubt cease to threaten his life with violence. 
After having discovered the cure for the spreading madness located in the waterbed Paul was quick to hand out mostly placebos to the likes of the missing old man and sell the real thing on the black market for hella quap. 
Pulling out his vintage pyrenean ibex skull pipe and stuffing it with toromiro tree sap flavored LSD, Maltese took 58 long deep pulls before smiling to himself and nodding off to slumber.
A good day indeed.
It was a dark and stormy fucking night. 
Jack sat at his table. A rustic block made from the bones of polar bears foolish enough to fight back whenever he tried to take their recent kills. 
He downed a gallon of petrol before dusting of his bloody hands and grabbing his favorite book. He jerked off on it sometimes. 
"We'll Teach You To Be Special"
It was not a heavy tome, but quite jagged and acrid. It was written in jaguar blood mixed with arsenic and radioactive fentanyl. The spelling was atrocious because the writer was no pussy nor nerd. 
The writer was also unknown at least by name. Legends told by losers who don't have the guts to be sick fucks say that the pen was forged in the flames of a church, saked in the eyeball juices of a billion dragons. NO. Two billion dragons. 
They pull out their dicks and say things like 
"Im a piece of shit. And I heard the writer of this book be the one who bit a demi gods testes Twain."
Jack punched his fireplace back to life before taking a shit on the logs. He tore the cover off and glared at page one.
  - so you want to be special. Well let me tell you a little story. First a little background on me. I'm 9'16 in height and just shy of about 6,289 pounds. I work out as much as I can which is everyday all year for 24 hours. And I enjoy squeezing turtles till they pop. Which is what I was doing at the beginning of this story. There I was beneath the shade of an overfull mass grave eating rocks and squeezing Galapagos tortoises when I heard a a familiar sound. 
  - nearby a bag full of wizard hearts had fallen out of a nearby tree. Of course you know how they not only have value as currently but you could also shove them down the throat of gargoyles and make them shit themselves to death. 
  - now let me pause there. I tend to find affirmations a bit blase. But least we forget, just because something is a stupid piece of shit doesn't mean it can't be useful. Even you. 
Jack turned the page with the sharpened edge of his penises.
  - to be a winner. It requires practice. Dedication and some other things that don't matter. Because this is not about being a winner. It's more than that. I will teach you to be special. 
  - first some more background on me. I ate my first midwife when I was but a pup. She liked to bake pies and sing while she worked in the rain. A pale but buxom fiery redhead whose sweaty breast heaved as she yanked sabertooth tiger  babies from their mothers stomachs by the dozens, tossing them onto a steaming pile. 
  - she displays potential. This is obvious. The potential to be special. So I taught her. I first yanked three fistfulls of hair from her head and anus. She didn't like this and bristled to show her dissatisfaction.
  - Now to be an effective teacher one must apply pressure to the upper brain and hip area with enough force to crush the dreams of Mount Olympus. Without obstacles a person can become stagnant and gay. 
  Jack smirked a little as he heard the thunder raging outside. The motherfucking storm screamed like the destritis of hades as it got closer to his cabin. Jack grabbed a chainsaw made of dentist teeth and the tears of metal made live, tortured and strangled for ages, and used it to turn another page. 
  - a good rule of thumb is to always confide in your equals and loved ones. Seek them out when you find special people and enjoy their criticism as well as advice on how to teach them. When I wrote this manual I had full intentions of showing you how to teach the special. As I know you do or let's be honest you wouldn't have sold the souls of all you slaughtered to make this purchase of twelve easy payments $20,000,000,000,00,561,000,9999.99. 
  - You may be feeling a little overwhelmed by the pressure of being the one to teach the special. Lets take a breather and let me tell you a funny anecdotal. 
  - as I was one day staring out at the raging but yearnful tides of a new moon, I rolled up the ashes of a fellow I once new into a nice spliff and pondered. Where had I gone wrong? I have never failed per say but even during a windfall its good to stop and access, to go over it and discover what if anything could have been done better. More efficient. Did you enjoy the journey is an important question to ask oneself.
  - it was then that I heard the ninny of a passing unicorn. One unlike any I had either taught or molested. It was a magnificent beast with a huge dong and a horn that gleamed in the burning mist. I moved closer as it grazed on the pile of loose mammoth tongues I had tossed aside fifteen years ago. 
  - as I rained blows down upon its granite hard spine it bent in half where its arse touched its stomach, I remember the stench of its dying words, not the words. And that ladies and gentlemen, is what's known as a folly. I should have taken more time to break all the bones of that beautiful creature, rushed for time for no particular reason. And though not a fault, being time efficient can deflect from time enjoyment.
Last night's rain was a sporadic heavy shower mixed with lulls of tepid drizzle. Seagulls overhead pooped against the wind and the poop mixed with the wet weather and fell on people's heads and into their mouths. 
Jack used the timing of the thunderclaps to bite his way through the dead bolt, the flash of lightning was his chance to slip in like a shadow on crack. Good crack. 
The security system was easy to disable, several years ago Jack banged the maid's grandmother to death AND beyond and upon her last breath she say the password. 
It wasn't rosebud. 
A honestly barely registered creak on the teak wood floor caused the family goldfish to stir and exit its tiny castle in a fit ... 
The sound of the blade across the goldfish's throat, a slow and jagged drag - brought back memories of death and savagery. 
Sunsets blanketed by sinew and smoldering human fat running down his face after a pitched battle.
Jack struggled to contain the odor of his boner. 
This job was to pay like 20... Maybe even 23 dollars. Money Jack didn't need but a job is a job.
The family concubine was located in the foyer snacking greedily on rotted oyster shells. She was hot. And her booty was nice.
On the stroke of 3 hours past midnight Jack achieved a spinning back fist to the front of her ears, and then a running punt to her inner bits sent her flying into the fireplace. 
The crackle of her back against burning logs caused the father to stir.
He slowly spat into his wife's open mouth until she awoke and grabbed her least favorite cricket stick thing. 
"A wah da bombaclot a gwan?!" She patois'd. 
Running downstairs she met her fate something similar to a cornerstone stray cat, her smaller intestines and left biceps and right biceps torn from her person ala swift blade strikes.
Jack used to chop up butchers into premium shanks, filet and loin. Tender loin.
"A fuck did you see my next soul or give me something !!" Jack whispered as he made his was up the dusty steps fourteen at a time. 
The patriarch arrived at the top of the stairwell with a bag full of his pets and children and crusty unmentionables. 
He tossed a few of these things as he cackled.
Jack was undeterred, but also in a rush so he ripped all the supporting beams from the walls and used them as a whole whip to strike against most of the old man's sexy back.
Interpol was watching on cctv.. they were supposed to be taking notes.
Instead... They doodled penises and boobs onto notepads. Big ones. 
Chapter 4 - boat
 Capn' blog.. sea date 33.90
This is my fucking boat.
She goes down, so do I. Maybe going 69 on a rusty sea vessel twice saved from the scrap was poor decision making. It's a good thing I'm not in charge of anything but this boat, and these men who signed on to help me with that starboard thing. 
My first Nate Mate I mean my second mate Steve was the blackest dude I had ever seen in my life. His demeanor was solemn, almost a quickened way of sorrow. His boots charcoal and stained with stains. A deep shaded shark leather jacket adorned his 9 foot 8 tall personage, the pale parcel upon his sweaty hips filled to the brim with black licorice he never ate. Plus his skin was dark like those black people I seen one time in Madagascar.
The devil on my left shoulder told me to steer right towards the oncoming storm. 
"Go right through that storm you dandy ass puss!" They whispered into the hole where my leftest most ear used to be.
"Hunh?! A whazzat?" I drooled. I was drunk. I'm drunk.
"Jesus h. Chr... Go towards that storm! Now! You Hellen Keller ass -" the voice was a pause.
I too had a deafening boner. Maybe two. For the sight... The majesty...
It gave the entire ship pause. A crew of 3 billion smarmy cutthroats interbred with many, many krunk dancers who hast lost their way. A few billion dirtbags seeking the waves of forgiveness, that will never come.. like the frail whores I frequent.
Anyway. 
Back to the whores. Man they were good at whore stuff. I revisit soggy mouth filled memories of ports past. 
This one time, I was knee deep in a huge set of -
"There's a goddamn monster on the side of this ship that's not starboard or whatever!" Moaned the senior rowman. His buxom chest heaving.
I procured and supplied copious amounts of LSD and cocaine for my crew so I was ganske used to their nightmare fueled screams and threats of suicide in the middle of the night. 
This time was different. I felt their blood curdle, the cheap alcohol in their system also curdled.  This..
I stepped on ten children on my fervent dash from the bathroom, my pale palms still furry with the windy excrement residue I was busy giving birth to.
Third mate nate journal
Acts iv
Poseidon is a bitch
I howled into the nighttime moon at night. It was dark. Me cap'n was drunk again and oh so sexy. This one time I tried to rape him and he said no so I was all like.. ok. Fine then.
We parted ways and he continued with his wedding. His guest afoul of my behavior I received looks I didn't like all night. 
As I watched the treacherous waves of wet water smash gainst my sea mates scrotum. 
Twas born in a isle sorta shitty in berth. The coconuts tasted like my nuts. The sand was racist. One time, this huge frog used his legs to jump on my back while my father watched and it bit me so I set my father's face on fire while he was asleep and then I got in trouble motherfucker.
So.. I see this FUCKING whale. It's not cool. But I remember it. This one time, me and the cap was down by the local pizzeria by a moisty shore purchasing faux hotdogs with a newly minted whore monger. It was fun.
it was then that a woman named Piper, and a weirdo named Bridewell hopped aboard the vessel.
2 notes · View notes
Note
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA FRIEND BUDDY PAL AMIGO BUD MIGO FREND BRO FRIEND BUDDY AMIGO PAL CHUMP AND ANY OTHER WAY OF SAYING FRIEND JUST TO PISS OOF THAT ANON!!!! IM HERE TO BRING YOU SILLIES TO TRY TO HELP!!!!!!!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Im so sorry this keeps happening to u <:( i feel like these anons are the same ones that also sended me hate the first time :/ ANTWAYS I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I LOVE YOU AND I DONT CARE WHAT ANY ANON SAYS YOURE COOL AND I LOVE BEING YOUR FRIEND SO MUCH *pat pat pat pat pats* *gives you a hot choc milk, puts a blanket over us and hugs you*
@gender-mailman
I would've said friend in my source language but I don't think I should. (If you repeat it then you'll probably say something offensive. 💀)
Thank you for bringing the sillies (ROSS QUARTZ. I SEE Y.) and thank you for the hot chocolate, milk, pats and hugs. (even if its all virtual.)
It's fine too, just really pissed off because everytime this happens I get the overwhelming need to ACTUALLY kill myself (so those texts weren't jokes..), and they probably are since how else would they know anything about you?
I love you too mailman and thank you, you're very cool too and I don't care much either (I'm still gonna think about everything sadly and get angry all over again.) I love being your friend so much as well /p /pos
2 notes · View notes
dreams-of-valeria · 1 year
Text
CHAPTER TWO
| Series: The Glass Cage Epidemic | Pairing: Evan Peters OC x FOC | Warnings: Obscene language | Word count: 2,578 | Rated: Mature | Book mentioned: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke |
Tumblr media
For the next hour or so, I couldn’t get that out of my mind. I struggled to come to grips in the beginning but by the end of my spiral, I had decided that it was just a sick joke. A man of his stature, assumingly, was embarrassed, obviously and wanted to teach me a lesson. He probably thought I’d show up exactly at 7 all eager and curious and get stood up like a chump.
Well, not this chump, pal.
And to be honest, I had forgotten about the entire ordeal come high tea time. 
It was the busiest hour for the bakery, what with all the yoga classes, Pilates, and whatever health savvy the millennials of LA did these days ending. And Ava just happened to be on leave today. But I couldn’t blame her, her IBS was flaring up. 
Although it wasn’t what I pictured when I was 10 years old and wanted to open a bakery of my own, Cleo's was IBS central. Sugar free, gluten free, locally sourced, organic, vegan, yada yada yada. Sure, it was healthy but at what cost? 
Unfortunately, I was a slave to capitalism. Envision doesn’t pay the bills. You catered to the majority’s needs. And the majority of downtown LA just happened to be inane and couldn’t wait 5 extra fucking minutes for his matcha tea.
And to think, only 10,000 years ago we were hunters in unprocessed leopard skins. Times have changed. Kind of.
I really underestimated Ava’s quiet but formidable presence. Did she creep patrons off with her cold and off putting persona sometimes? Sure. But that girl moved the walnut cookies like it was nobody’s business. They tasted vile and bitter no matter how many changes I made to the batter, but something about having nuts in confections especially in the off season really seemed to cream their pants. Ironically, we served nothing with cream. Not real cream, at least.
And she gathered tips upto half the jar too. I didn’t know how she did it. 
The tip jar today, however, was fittingly scraping the bottom. The bottommost dollar wouldn’t be useful anyway because of the remnants of chewing gum some poser thought it would be funny to drop in. 
It was a good day financially, but it was kicking my ass. Drops of sweat pooled down my chest and at the dam of my bra. I hated not being sweat free but there was just so much moving around. The muffins on display weren’t structurally pleasing enough for an Instagram post so could I please check in the back? Usually, I didn’t mind it but I was just nitpicky today. The good news was that I could just sleep it off and not feel this way the next day, hopefully.
It’s not like there was much for me to do after work anyway. I just like the change of place. My therapist once told me it was something about how I wanted to control time, and I agree. Everyday I’m frustrated that after all the leaps we’ve made in technology we’re yet to conquer time. What were the kids at CalTech doing anyway? It was long overdue. 
“I’ve been waiting for 20 minutes.” 
I dragged my eyes away from the bills on the counter and at the man in front.
“I’m sorry sir, we’re a little short staff—“
It was him. The weird man from the café. Did he say he was waiting?
“Why didn’t you show up?” For some reason, all the apprehension I’d felt that noon was gone, and it was promptly replaced by scorn. Who did he think he was?
“Well I’ve been busy, as you can see,” I shrugged and directed my attention back to the receipts. Then something hit me. “Wait, how did you find me?” I asked, pointing at him with a coffee stirrer I used to pierce receipts.
“You’re a regular at the cafe. George told me where you worked,” he shifted his weight, and the line of sweaty yoga wear silhouettes peered over his shoulder. Fucking George.
“I take it you haven’t finished the book?”
“Mm hm.” I didn’t even look up, because I could feel matcha guy’s eyes burning holes into me. He was the only regular I despised. The rest were borderline tolerable. Why would I get into the business of people if I didn’t necessarily like said people, you ask? I romanticised the idea of baking too much to deal with logistics. Do what you love, right? I didn’t know if it even mattered, we were all going to be forgotten anyway. 
Speaking of forgetting, on one hand I felt bad for dismissing him so abruptly, especially now that I knew it was not a setup, but I was restless and wanted as little distractions as possible, because I kept reading the receipt over and over and wasn’t able to process it for the life of me. 
The shadow across the counter disappeared and I sighed in relief. I didn’t even have time to unravel why he was so invested in my book review. Did he mistaken me for a minor celebrity? He didn’t seem the type to be starstruck, though.
For real, why is anyone starstruck? What is it about celebrities that make people think they shit gold and lose their minds over it and want to get their signature? On strange body parts? It’s wild if you really think about it. 
Focus!
Finally processing the words dozen and GF, SF blueberry muffins, I headed for the display, when I bumped into a wall.
It felt like a wall.
Then the wall grabbed me before I could fall flat on my arse. It was him. His face wore less of a scowl and more of disappointment as he steadied me by my arm.
“You take the cash register, I'll fill the orders?” 
He asked, shrugging off the same charcoal suit jacket from noon. 
“Huh?”
“I’m a bit rusty with registers so you take that?” He repeated, pulling one of the Holly green aprons over his crisp white shirt. The movement made his cologne seep into the air around me and, well.
“Sure,” I answered, utilising the stray bowl of words at the bottom of my brain that I kept aside for non-innovative conversations that didn’t necessarily require the maximum capacity of my cognition. Which were almost all of them. But the reason now was because I was flabbergasted.
He took the receipts from my hand after a curious glance at me, and dove right into them. I watched him package the goods with expertise, like he’d been doing it for years. 
Why? What was happening? Who was this man?
Was I being pranked? Was this Ava? Because I wouldn’t use her pizza cookie idea? 
“3 gooseberry muffins, please,” chirped a toned woman in fuchsia yoga pants, who then proceeded to quite obviously check him out. And he wasn’t helping, posing like a model. Seriously, who was this man?
But I was in no position to question help when it was available to me. However inexplicably. So I went along with it.
“Your hair’s a really pretty colour,” he said flatly. It wasn’t. But of course she fell for it. What hold did attractive humans hold over the mediocre that we trusted everything out of their mouths?
He had her giggling like a schoolgirl through her thank yous.
“I’ll tell you what, if you buy half a dozen muffins, I’ll throw in a pack of walnut cookies for free.”
Um what?
“Really?”
“Yeah, but don’t tell my boss though, I can’t afford to get fired right now,” he vagrantly pointed his head in my direction, before cracking a gorgeous smile. We met eyes for a brief second and then it was all gone. Why was he doing this again?
It truly baffled me. What could he possibly hope to gain from this?
The woman promised to keep it a secret as he filled her order, leaving him a large tip. How was he better at my job after 5 minutes? It had only been a few minutes in, but we already had a smooth system going like we’d been doing it forever. The line became decadent and the air of constant mellow conversation settled in.
It was then that we finally caught a breather, and he sidled up to the counter, resting his elbow on the display case.
“I don’t remember mentioning that offer to you,” I said in hopes of starting a conversation. I didn’t care for it, but it seemed like it needed to be addressed. 
“I got her to spend more while simultaneously getting rid of the stuff no one wants.”
“How did you know no one wants them?”
“Because it’s walnut cookies,” he shrugged.
I chuckled. “Fair enough.”
Just when I framed a sentence to ask him what the heck he was doing, he beat me to it.
“I don’t mean this offensively, but do you have anything here that’s not . . .”
“Healthy?”
“Yeah,” there was that grin again, but the floor got it this time. It was like he was going to make me work for it. And he didn’t even seem like he was trying. I already felt like I had to impress him for some reason. Was this daddy issues again? I really thought I’d gotten over the whole shebang a year ago.
I retrieved the muffins I baked for the rare customers who weren’t afraid of sugar or gluten from underneath the oven and offered him one. He gave it a once over, inhaled deeply and then took a bite.
I stood up straight. Why was I looking for his approval? I didn’t even know his name.
“Did you make this?”
I could only nod.
“It’s good.” 
Did I cream my pants or was it just really hot?
“All of these as well?”
“Yep, that’s what it says on the sign outside,” I chuckled, vaguely bringing up my name in hopes that he would tell me his, shifting my feet. I didn’t want to ask him for some reason. I wanted him to tell me.
“I’ve never met a Cleopatra before.”
“I’m a Cleodora, actually.”
“Greek,” he nodded, sounding impressed. Another bite and the muffin was gone. I noticed how he didn’t speak with his mouth full. A cultured, well educated man who didn't say dude even once. Was he the prodigal son the masses speak of? Who would finally free us from the bondage of surfer dudes and palm trees and tiki torches?
“Your parents fans?”
“I think they just wanted a break from all the Kayleys with two y’s and all the other pretentious names. I’m grateful.”
“You should be, it’s a very pretty name,” he breathed and leaned his back to the counter now, arms folded. I didn’t read too much into the compliment. Not after he found standard brunette shade pretty.
“Thank you, what’s yours?” I had to give in. He wouldn’t budge.
“Kaydyn. With two y’s.”
Fuck.
“Oh,” I leaned away from the register and shifted awkwardly. Just couldn’t keep my mouth shut, huh?
“I’m kidding,” he chuckled, finally gracing me with it this time. There was just so much going on that I couldn’t catch much of it. “I’m Atticus,” he said and brought his hand out for me to shake. It nearly engulfed mine. Oh, but it was so warm. I hated it when people had cold hands.
“Greek.” I commented, nodding like I was impressed myself. 
“Nah, my parents were really into To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“I take it you’re a lawyer then?” I asked, idly billing a woman’s request for a chia seed tea. Why did I even make those?
“No, just a boring businessman.”
“How’s that classified?” I asked, walking to the filter. He followed me, keeping a respectful distance.
“What’s that?”
“The woman from lunch. You told her your job was classified.”
“Do you usually eavesdrop on private conversations?” He deftly raised an eyebrow.
I froze, my hand on the filter.
“No.” I sounded so guilty, but to my relief, he smiled again.
“I’m glad you did. The conversation was brain dead so I just stuck to answers that required no follow up hoping she’d get bored and leave. I have you to thank for that.”
I rolled my eyes playfully. “I’ll have you know, I don’t usually listen in, she was just so loud that I couldn’t get through a sentence.”
“So loud, right?” he enunciated, and that made me giggle. 
“An indirect vegan. And I thought LA couldn’t surprise me anymore.” I said, handing the drink to the woman with a smile. She tipped!
“That’s a terrible motto to live by.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s yours? Confuse strangers by demanding their book reviews?”
He was taken aback. Too on the nose?
“I can see how that was odd,” he shifted. “But I was intrigued by your take and wanted to hear more.”
“Why? There’s so many others out there with better takes.”
“But I’ve only come across you.”
I paused and looked at him. Oh?
“The women on Hinge aren’t as . . . sophisticated. No offence,” he added quickly with a hand up to show surrender. 
“And you think this is sophisticated?” I asked, gesturing around my silly little bakery. 
“Yes,” he said, and stepped closer. “And this.” 
He leaned down and I wobbled. I parted my lips slightly, out of reflex, but he moved past me to retrieve the novel I kept underneath the register. If there is a God, please don’t let him have seen that.
“You annotate,” he commented, rifling through the pages. “You have no idea how uncommon that is.”
“You’re just looking on the wrong dating apps.”
He smiled. “Oh, I’m not looking to date at all.”
?????
“Oh,” I breathed like I understood and looked away, mostly to hide my face. He didn’t want to date? Was he looking to make friends on an app famously used to hook up? Well, that was fucking adorable while also decimating to my ego.
I kept a close eye on him after that. He helped me fill a few more orders until it was time to close.
“Ah, the satisfaction of a full day’s job. Nothing beats that.” He sighed whimsically and shrugged his jacket back on.
I chuckled regardless, turning off the ovens and putting my own coat on. “Have you worked retail before?”
Why was he still here? I mean I knew why but how bad did he want this? Was I about to get murdered? Not that I’d mind getting strangled by those hands.
What?
“A lifetime ago,” he replied. Was I getting non-follow up answers now? Sensing the disdain in voice, I wordlessly counted the day’s spoils.
He seemed hesitant, but waited until I was done counting.
“Well?”
I looked at him expectantly like I didn’t know what he was referencing. But again, he wouldn’t budge.
“I’ll be ready with my priced opinion tomorrow at noon.” 
“Tomorrow? Why, what are you doing now?”
I knew I should have been insulted that he assumed I had nothing better to do, but for some reason I didn’t want to disappoint him.
“I have . . . stuff to do.”
He breathed shakily and said nothing for a minute. “Of course.”
“Only because you’d have to watch me read for a couple hours, that’s all.”
“I don’t mind.” He shrugged, a grin playing at his lips.
4 notes · View notes
annettamiljanov · 3 months
Text
Why I Let My Kids Play With Toy Guns
Top Reason to purchase: Large water reservoir allows for extended play, and the pump-action firing system ensures a robust and accurate water stream. All that in an reasonably priced worth tag that is just north of twenty bucks is hard to move up and our purpose why it took the top spot total. The Nerf Zipfire 2 Pack Combat Blaster is the ultimate water Orbi Gun duo that promises infinite water-soaking pleasure for water warriors of all ages. This set consists of two compact and excessive-performance blasters, perfect for dueling with pals or engaging in thrilling water battles. Each blaster features a quick and straightforward-to-use design, ensuring speedy-hearth action and drenching fun in every round. With the Nerf Zipfire 2 Pack Combat Blaster, you'll be able to take your water fights to the following level and turn out to be the undisputed champion of splash warfare. Top Reason to purchase: With two blasters in the set, you may group up with a pal, go head-to-head, or take them both and twin-wield each.
Fourteen of the calls have been home disturbances. Ten others began as robberies. The remaining circumstances vary from patrolling neighborhoods to serving arrest warrants to making site visitors stops. Of the people killed, 50 have been white men. The oldest person killed was Robert Patrick Quinn, 77, who was fatally shot in Pittston, Pennsylvania, as he rode his motorized scooter outside an condo advanced whereas waving a practical-looking pellet gun. Half of the shootings happened at evening. In almost each case, police said the victims failed to comply with an officer’s orders. In 60 circumstances, police said they pointed guns at officers. Among the lifeless are Ernesto Flores, a mentally distraught 52-12 months-outdated man who after a standoff with police in April 2015 stepped out of a pink stucco house in Montclair, California, holding a BB gun. Police opened fire, killing Flores in entrance of his household. One among only five ladies killed by police was 17-12 months-previous Shelly Haendiges, who was shot in Kokomo, Indiana, after police responded to a robbery name and found her pointing a pellet gun at a store clerk.
Most definitely, early hammers had been literal rocks that individuals used. Drills are a number of the oldest tools in the world, far older than many people understand. Hand drills date back 35,000 years in China. Hacksaws are specifically designed for slicing metallic versus a daily handsaw intended for wooden. Thanks to their versatility with blades that can be easily swapped in and out, you possibly can cut any number of arduous substances with a hacksaw, from plastic pipe to ceramic tiles. An impact driver is totally different than a regular energy drill or perhaps a hammer drill insofar as it increases the ability being delivered perpendicular to a screw or a bit. This implies increased torque, like using a protracted wrench to loosen a bolt. A skeleton gun is a fairly easy merchandise however extremely useful to have around for those who ever need to seal some cracks or run a bead of adhesive somewhere. The skeleton gun holds dozens of different kinds of merchandise and presents control in laying it out.
One look at the mercury exhibits this summer season is heating up. And as nearly anyone who has slipped on a slide or sprinkled on a sprinkler (ewww), they know it is time to swimsuit up and arm your self with a water gun. But one should choose their H2O weaponry properly. Going with an ordinary (IE Lame) pea-shooter variety of guns is certain to lead to disappointment. Even worse than the "chump" using a brilliant Soaker 50 on this early 90s "Zap It" industrial. Growing up, I used the Super Soaker CPS 2000 as my weapon of selection. It was actually a blast a minute, but ultimately I grew up. I progressed in age past 13. Suddenly I turned a teenager, and it is not cool to play squirt guns. We're supposed to use this time to change into taken with women-and not simply as squirt targets (though, I suppose this assertion somewhat holds). Yes, squirt guns have been pigeonholed as something solely performed with by individuals below the age of 13. Once i hit the big one three and out of the blue realized I could now not squirt, it was darkish times.
Her family said she suffered from psychological illness. Two of the latest shootings occurred in October in Elkton, Maryland, where police shot and killed Brandon Jones and Chelsea Porter, each 25 and of Dover, Delaware, after they pointed BB guns at police who were attempting to arrest them. Umarex makes air guns below the Beretta, Colt, Smith & Wesson, HK, Ruger and Browning brands. It sells BB guns that are copies of such firearms as the iconic Colt Peacemaker, which was first produced in the 1870s, and the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine, a mainstay of specialized military and police items. The Umarex 40XP BB gun that King allegedly brandished sells for about $50 in shops, together with Walmart. Gunmaker Sig Sauer makes air guns which are advertised as "carbon copies" of their hottest lethal firearms, together with the P226 semiautomatic handgun. A industrial on the Sig Sauer webpage displayed the BB gun and the lethal P226 as reflections of one another in a mirror.
1 note · View note
braveryhearted · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media
UBW Abridged-Based Starters Pt. 1
( accepting )
@lyriccl said: ‘ I figured it out! You’re actually Satan! ‘ ( for Griss! )
Tumblr media
"Just who in the hell is that? I'm way worse. Much, muuuuuch worse. Wouldn't want to cross me in a path of pain and punishment. Even lord Sombron is more ruthless than this....Santa guy. Look, just trust your pal Griss here. I'm always 99 percent right on things. The other slight chance that I am wrong? Well, let's say that you don't want that happening any time soon. This Sateen guy might just get on your ass for it, by the sounds of it".
Pfft. Did this chump think that this masochistic borderline sadistic sage would fear the lord of the devils and dead lands? As if. Griss doesn't fear anything but being unalive. Because that would be a world without pain and he is not about that shit. No way, no how. He turns around, all dramatic like, sauntering around the place like Griss had a few glasses of good wine.
"Next time, come back with something more serious and worth more of my time. Got to get back to fightin' alright? No more of this Santa talk okay? I'm not him. The name's Griss and I am not the prisoner taking type".
1 note · View note
Text
My reactions while reading New Mutants #26 (1985)
Emma Frost absolutely wrecking Empath is a peak moment. "Manuel Alfonso Rodrigo de la Rocha" Emma Frost was so pissed off she used his whole ass name cause he was playing around and fucking shit up. Then he got cocky and got his ass handed to him, as one should.
At least Xavier realizes and admits he fucked and abused his position of power with Gabrielle.
"A telepath can play god, you've no idea how tempting that is. I can change thoughts, twist memories, destroy a personality--erase it utterly--and recreate it any way I choose." - Charles Xavier, New Mutants #26 (1985) (this quote goes hard and should be referenced more if it isn't referenced enough already)
Moira and Rahne's relationship is tugging my heartstrings.
Also all these psi-words, we've got
Mindspeak, Psiprobe (Psi Probe), Psi-Talents, Psiwall (Psi-wall), Psilink (okay like half of these words need a hyphen between them- Psi-Link looks so much more pleasing to my eyes)
Skipping ahead to New Mutants #28
Love how everyone except Xavier (the damn telepath) is getting bad vibes from Jack Wayne, like yeah the racist douche who called Dani "Hiawatha" might be bad, and then Rahne is literally like "Mummy, he smells evil" to Moira about Jack Wayne. And the fact that everyone is like "this guy who the Professor's only known for like a day is totally his pal, friend, buddy, pal, chump."
Magneto's getting his heart broken in the Bermuda Triangle, as one does.
Oh my- lmao Douglas Ramsey saved the day by quoting a Star Trek episode, if that isn't the sweetest (and nerdy-ist) thing ever! He's adorable.
"Y'know, there's this classic Star Trek episode, where the captain's been kidnapped and his crew are trying to rescue him, only their weapons have no effect, even at full power. Thing is, the phasers worked all along, it's just that the villains, who were telepaths, wouldn't let the crew see that." - Doug Ramsey, New Mutants (1983) #28
And like sureeee he could had shortened it down and just said the wall is fake / another illusion but cmon this quote rocks.
The issue ends on such a hopeful note that I truly want to believe in Charles' promises and words but they sound almost cruel now knowing how he failed so hard at just being there for David and then later on further mistreatment.
1 note · View note
Note
HELLO THERE FRIEND PAL FELLOW AMIGO CHUMP BUDDY FRIENDO BUD!! /silly
HAVE I TOLD YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE YPU(/p) AND YOUR TERMS AND ART YET?!?!? yes NO!?! SO HERE IT IS A DOZE OF LOVE FOR TOU TODAY!!!!!!! X3!!! I love your terms so much!!! Even the ones i dont id with i think theyre so cool and the flags are so pretty!!! I got so exited when i saw the stanmarshfictic flag and term!!! AAAAAAAAAAAA i want to make a thing but i forgot the name of the term!! Its like: "you see [thing] and makes you euphoric because it reminds you of someone" I KNOW IT EXIST BUT I JUST DONT REMEMBER!!!! AAAAAAAAAAA
Anyways! Here some things that make me remember you that i find very pretty and cool :3c (the last 3 are caled dazecore with is just so pretty!! :00)
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
@gender-mailman
FKLDSKMGFDM,GSKDHL;GFKHFG;LHK I AM. STRUCK BY AFFECTION. FINISHED SECONDS AFTER JOINING THE BATTLEFIELD! IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE! ONE HIT KO OH NO /silly
also is it Eulovia [Link]???? We made a bunch of terms under it so I know it's definition HEHE
ALSO SORRY FOR LONG RESPONSE, I was busy reading comic and saving pics of my brother (ay...). Images are VERY nice, nice to see myself being associated with dazecore! Also yeah, I think we have several hundreds of hours in Terraria WHOOPS
-[Seekers] -Frenzy
1 note · View note
ihopethisendswell · 3 years
Text
Hop: Look, let's just agree to say "I'm sorry" on the count of three.
Hop: One. Two. Three.
Hop:
Bede:
Hop: See, now I'm just disappointed in the both of us.
5 notes · View notes
creat0r-cat · 2 years
Text
Yugi Mutou x Disney Descendants!Reader - Card Queen
For Yugi, life was getting boring. He had recently earned himself the title of King of Games thanks to his spirit friend Yami, and his friend, Joey, was finally going to be able to pay for his sister's eye surgery. However, everyday just seemed to be the same. Wake up, go to school, see his friends, be challenged to a duel, go home, help Grandpa with the game shop, go to sleep, and repeat. There was nothing new or really fun anymore, even with the spirit around.
For (Y/n), life was getting boring. Her friends had left to go to some goody two-shoes school in another country, her mother wanted her to get a boyfriend, and no one shared or peaked her interest. She was a master of card games but no one would play with her. There was nothing to do anymore other than mess with any random chump who decided to get in her way. (Y/n) was the daughter of the Queen of Hearts and the Headless Horseman so what did that mean other than that no one would really approach her.
For both of them, there needed to be a change of pace.
-(Yugi's POV)-
"Hey Yuug! Did ya hear there's gonna be a new student coming to the school?" I looked up from my dazed state and looked at Joey in confusion. "Really?" Tristan smiled and nodded excitedly, "Yup! Apparently she's really good at card games!" I nodded, looking back down at my desk. Looks like it'll be the same old thing again.
"Alright everyone," called the teacher as he entered into the classroom, "As you all might've heard we have a new student. Please treat her nicely. Come on in and introduce yourself." I looked up in time to see a beautiful girl with (H/C) hair walk in. "Heyo everyone! The name's (Y/n) Heartman. I enjoy card games so if any of you want to play a game, I'll gladly play. Hope we can get along."
I could hardly keep my eyes off of her. She was gorgeous. "Alright, (Y/n) go take a seat in the back next to Joey. Joey raise your hand." I felt something in me tighten. My heart. Why did Joey of all people get to sit next to her? As she walked passed my desk, I was shocked when she looked at me in the eye, and winked. I could feel my face heat up and Tristan smirked at me, giving a look that could only mean one thing: "You lucked out, man."
- Time Skip -
As the bell rang, signaling the end of class, Joey started talking to (Y/n). It actually sounded like he was challenging her to a duel. "You said you'd gladly play so how about you duel my pal Yugi over there? He's the King of Games!" She seemed confused. "Who's Yugi?" I turned away quickly in my seat as Joey point me out.
The sound of a chair moving away from it's matching desk sounded in the classroom and I became stiff as a board when (Y/n) appeared in front of my desk. "Hey there! Do we have time for a quick game before our next class?" Joey shrugged. "Next class is free period since the teach's out sick. So.. yea I think so." The (H/C) female nodded. "Alright then, would you like to duel?"
I nodded nervously and Tea walked over, putting a hand on my shoulder. "You don't have to duel her if you don't want! Joey wasn't being considerate. "I can take over for you if you want." Came the voice of my spirit friend, Yami. "No. It's fine."
"I.. I kinda want to duel her on my own."
With that, she whipped out a duel monster deck and shuffled them. I did the same and simultaneously, we set up the game. Tea looked behind me and smiled, walking over beside Joey. "He's got a good starting hand. He might be able to win this quickly." I frowned, was she trying to be quiet? It wasn't working. "You never know. We've never faced her before so we don't know what her deck's like." Replied Joey and Tea rolled her eyes. "It cant be that powerful. I mean, she looks and acts like a big shot beginner."
"It's rude to talk about someone like that, especially when you know they can hear you." Came the cool voice of (Y/n) as she placed two cards face down. Tea rolled her eyes again and the game continued. "Alright, I'll place two cards face down and summon Celtic Guardian in defense mode! Your turn!"
(Y/n) drew a card and smiled. "Alright then, I'll play Full On Assault to switch your Celtic Guardian into Attack mode then summon my Queen's Knight in Attack mode. I'll attack your monster for 100 life points off of your own! Your turn."
Yugi: 1900 (Y/n): 2000
I was surprised, as were we all. Queen's Knight wasn't a very common card so the fact that she got it out and was attacking it was quite shocking. "Oh well, try this on for size! Next I'll play my Curse of Dragon to attack your Queen's Knight!"
I shouldn't have done that.
"You just activated my Trap Card!" (Y/n) flipped over one of her face down cards and smiled. "Scrap-Iron Scarecrow! Your attack is negated and I'm able to set this card face down again! I draw, and summon King's Knight. Thanks to the special ability of the King and Queen's Knights, I can also summon the Jack's Knight. Now I sacrifice all of them to summon my favorite card! I summon the Card Deck Dragon!"
"The Card Deck Dragon?!" That card was in the rarity levels alongside the Blue Eyes White Dragon and the Red Eyes Black Dragon! (Y/n) smiled. "Yup! This is my baby! Since you have more monsters in your graveyard, my monster gets its defense points raised by 500! Also, I'll attack your monster to lower your life points again, but this time by 500! And for good measure I'll play Cemetery Bomb for an additional 200 damage.
Yugi: 1200 (Y/n): 2000
"Okay.. I'll draw and summon Gaia the Fierce Knight in attack mode. Next I'll put a card face down and play the spell card Swords of Revealing Light!" Her eyes widened and she frowned. "Should've seen that coming. That was a good play, Yugi!" I blushed and hid my face behind my cards. "Th-thanks.." Why was I being so bashful? This was strange. I mean, I was sometimes like this around girls, but this was to a whole new level. "I'll end my turn there."
(Y/n) nodded and drew a card. She seemed to be planning something but couldn't put it in play because she couldn't attack. Finally, she placed a card down. "I'll play Lord of Dragons in Attack mode and end my turn." That was confusing. Why would she leave a card like that out in the open. I fortunately had a trap card that could negate her face down card, but did I really want to risk it? Sure why not?
"I'll draw and attack your Lord of Dragons with my Fierce Knight."
Yugi: 1200 (Y/n): 900
(Y/n) began to smile. "Alright then. Remind me how many turns I have left before I can attack?" I tilted my head in confusion. "Two. Why?" She smirked and drew a card, placing it into her hand and revealing a Spell card. "I play Mystical Space Typhoon and wipe away your Swords of Revealing Light. Thanks to this, I can attack your Knight with my Dragon. For a grand total of 500 life points."
Yugi: 700 (Y/n): 900
"EH? What're you tryna pull? It's only 200 life points!" Said Joey about to get in (Y/n)'s face but I stopped him. "No, Joey. She's right. I just realized it too. One of the special abilities of the Card Deck Dragon gives it a boost in power in a certain circumstance. It's what makes it so powerful"
(Y/n) nodded. "Yup! The ability is called Dealer's Advantage. If the user has more monsters in their graveyard than their opponent, then CDD gets an Attack boost of 500! If the opponent has more monsters in their graveyard, then CDD gets a Defense boost of 500. Those stats add and subtract based on how the game changes."
"No way! That's crazy!" Said Tea. "Where did you get such a powerful card from?" (Y/n) shrugged. "It was a present from my dad. I'm known as the Queen of Cards back home so when I was first getting into the game, my dad found good cards so I could build my deck. Anyway, it's your turn, Yugi."
"R-right." I drew a card and frowned. At the moment, I couldn't take down her dragon, not only that, but her face down card was the biggest problem. I would need to sacrifice my face down card to get this right. "I play Heavy Storm and take away all trap and spell cards in play." (Y/n) smiled. "Nice!" She put the card in her graveyard and looked at me expectantly. "Alright then, I'll place one card face down and summon my Dark Magician in Attack Mode!"
(Y/n)'s eyes widened. "A Dark Magician?! No way! Those cards are wicked awesome!" I blushed hard, hiding once again behind my cards. "I-it's my favorite card." She smiled kindly. "I can see why! Not only is it rare, but it's incredibly powerful! Especially when combined with the Dark Magician Girl!" I nodded excitedly. I wasn't used to people being THIS into the game like I was.
"Alright, I draw, lay down one card face down and end my turn." I blinked in surprise. I was expecting something more. "Alright. I'll draw and place down the Dark Magician Girl in Attack Mode. Finally, I play the Spell card Dark Magic Twin Burst to destroy your life points and your dragon!"
"Not so fast! I reveal my face down card! Attack and Receive! This attacks your life points directly costing you 700 Life Points!" The duel was over.
The two of us stared at each other. Technically speaking, it was a dead tie. Both attacks landed the blows to each other's life points which dropped them both down to solid zeros.
"Wait", said Joey in confusion, "Did.. did Yugi just lose?" Tea was at a loss for words. "No." was all I could say. I didn't look away from (Y/n) and I began to smile. "It was a tie. Both of us won and lost." (Y/n) looked extremely pleased and her (E/C) eyes shone brightly as she blushed happily. Just then, the tense air was broken by the school bell. During the duel, an entire free period had gone by.
Tea sighed. "We'd better get to our next classes." Joey nodded and the two of them left the classroom. As I was about to leave, after cleaning up my cards, a hand stopped me. "Yugi, I want you to have this." (Y/n) stood behind me, holding out a card.
"This card, if you chose to use it, can help you get out your magician faster." I looked at the card and then at (Y/n). "I'm honored that you would give this to me, but why are you doing it?" The girl smiled. "You deserve it. Not only that, but thanks to you, I've finally met my match! You don't realize how happy that makes me. I've never tied with or lost to anyone before."
I was shocked. "R-really?" She nodded. "Yeah. I'm glad to know that I can finally have a good match. Let's duel again sometime!" I nodded happily. "Yes! That would be awesome!" (Y/n) smiled again and began to leave the classroom but I called after her. "By the way, since neither of us lost the duel, but both of us lost, I guess you're the Queen of Games now." She looked at me an then laughed. "Maybe not of all Games. I'm happy with being the Card Queen for now. See ya around Yugi!"
With that, she was gone.
I smiled happily, clutching the card she had given me. Life had just gotten a lot more interesting.
52 notes · View notes
mrs-bartowski · 3 years
Text
My dudes. My guys. My pals.
I’m about 10 seconds away from going feral.
So, I’m the kind of unfortunate chump whose brain requires continuity. Meaning, when I started thirst watching Supergirl during its mid-season-2 hiatus and came across the realization that it had crossovers with all the other arrowverse shows, my brain tasked me with watching them all. I won’t put you through a recount of this arduous feat, but it does leave me with the certain advantage of having immediate and full-contextual access to any parallels between supercorp and canon CW DCEU couples.
Normally, this is a good thing, because it’s just another crumb to obsess over. But I just finished watching Legends 6x02 and...I. AM. FUMING.
I literally don’t even know where to start, but know that if you’ve made it this far you’re in for a long ride because my entire being is in Scream mode right now and I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop typing until it passes.
OKAY. So.
Meet Sara Lance (lol jk y’all thirsty gays know who she is I mean look at this flawless human)
Tumblr media
Next, meet her ******* Ava Sharpe (who is literally the definition of white European beauty standards-based perfection because she’s a clone from the future)
Tumblr media
And finally, meet Gary Green. He’s...well, he’s Gary.
Tumblr media
Sara started out on Arrow and is now the captain of the Legends. Ava was the director of the Time Bureau and Gary was an agent, and now they are also members of the Legends. Sara has been there (and been the show’s effective lead) since season 1. Ava and Gary both came in at the beginning of season 3. 
Gary is (as pictured) an absolute fool, but he is also kind of regarded as the one the Legends Must Protecc. The whole team is considered a family, and, while they are not necessarily labeled as best friends, Gary has been Ava’s longest and most loyal companion, and Sara has a way of adopting him because she’s the best equipped to keep him out of trouble.
So, why is all of this relevant to why I want to go feral? Because it sounds a bit familiar, yes? Member of the team that is somewhat a black sheep, doesn’t get included fully or all the time but often comes in with save-the day type shit (even though with Gary it’s more of a distraction than a save because he’s a mess of a man). Close friend to one of our two main heroes and, subsequently, that hero’s closest companion puts them at the top of their Protecc list. Has little faith in his relationships with the team so he is constantly going out of his way to help in whatever way he can to prove his usefulness. And so on and so forth.
Well, 6x01 marks exactly 3 years since Gary’s first appearance, and what did we find out in that episode? That Gary is an alien. And not just any alien - an alien who was sent (by the woman he was traded to) to get close to Sara because she has been labeled as one of the world’s most dangerous creatures. Not to mention, his species of alien feeds on humans (not him of course, he’s reformed, but nonetheless not a friendly species). And we find out all of this because he and his master abduct her.
Sara finds out in person while Ava and the rest of the Legends solve the mystery on their own. Now, I’ve drawn a lot of comparisons between Lena and Gary to make a point about the time frame and nature of their relationships, but let’s take a look at Sara, shall we? For starters, she’s been “dead” either literally or supposedly about...what, 15 times now? If you think that’s an exaggeration, here’s the link to her fan wiki which says she’s been presumed dead 10 times and actually dead 5. The sg writers tried to sell season 5 as “the fight for Lena’s soul” but Sara LITERALLY LOST HER SOUL when she got resurrected in the Lazarus pit. 90% of Sara’s character development has been based on her certainty that she is too close to death and evil and destruction (getting possessed by a demon, perhaps, had something to do with this?). She was an actual literal assassin and she has left civilization out of anger and pain to go back to that life once before.
She has always believed that she is too dangerous to have real love or relationships or friends. And now she has found and built and led this family through time and space and she’s done so with this goofball by her side that is endearingly attached to the love of her life. So, how does she react when she finds out Gary is an alien? Well, clearly, she goes down a dark path, right? She cries and screams and talks about betrayal because she’s had such a hard time with feeling like she only ever puts the people she loves in danger and now here she is finding out there’s been a human-eating alien in her family for three years that was tasked with observing her and keeping her in check because she is exactly that dangerous?
Yeah...try again. This is how Sara reacts:
undefined
youtube
And then there's another scene that apparently no one even bothered to put on YouTube where you can see the pain in Sara's eyes when she asks him “why me?” You can see how hurt she is that after 3 years she’s just finding out that their friendships is based on lies and that she has trouble keeping her faith in it. But in both of these instances where are the “crocodile tears?” Where are the fearful, shaky confessions from Gary about his fear of losing the only people who have ever really loved or cared about him and desperate justifications about how he just wanted to protect them and keep them in the dark so his master didn’t come after them? Where is the outrage from Sara about how everything Gary has reassured her about over the past three years when she was scared to let the damaged-soul assassin inside of her out was a lie and he doesn’t get to tell her who or what she is again? Where is the determination from Ava to make Gary pay for not only lying for three years but for ABDUCTING THE LOVE OF HER LIFE TO HAND OVER TO A FLESH-EATING ALIEN??????
Nowhere. Those things...they’re nowhere. There’s anger. There’s pain. There’s doubt and heartbreak and fury. There’s betrayal and helplessness and desperation. But there is no scene with Sara standing on a balcony and Gary looking up at her longingly because he wants to talk to her about the secret and he knows it will change everything between them. There is no scene with Sara and Ava lamenting over what this means for Gary and the team and the world because he’s no longer the person they knew. There are no romantically-scored scenes of them looking teary-eyed at the pictures they took together or reassurances that the others’ intentions are good and trustworthy now that the truth is out in the open. There is nothing to imply that the last several years of friendship are now entirely suspect (damaged, frayed, clouded, maybe, but definitely not voided) because Gary kept this secret to protect them. And Gary isn’t made to feel obscenely guilty or shameful because his intentions were good and he only did what he felt he had to. But most of all, the world doesn’t feel like it’s going to end.
And I’m not talking about we’re now scared Gary will take his master’s side or Sara will suddenly decide that she never wants an alien to fool her or hurt her again so she’s going to make sure he doesn’t have the choice. I’m just talking about the way they address each other. There are no sobbing tears or laments over the biggest mistakes of their lives - even though it’s quite possible Gary could see this as his. There are no screaming matches over betrayal and mistrust and years of doubt and confusion. There will be no episode dedicated to going back and seeing what could have happened - what kind of danger they could have avoided from the alien(s) controlling Gary - had he told them the truth sooner because that’s the only way to save him and the world. There will be no episode where he has to single-handedly save them multiple times as some example of redemption. There will be no adamant looks and declarations about how the team knows his intentions were good and they forgive him. There won’t be any of that. Because Sara is not in love with Gary. And Ava is not in love with Gary. And Gary is not in love with either Sara or Ava. They’re just close friends. Family. Loved ones who mean a lot to each other but whose betrayal and seeds of doubt don’t bring on emotions whose force and ferocity could be acceptable for finding out the apocalypse is nigh.
I have many, many more feelings about this but right now I’m going to go write things that will make me feel better and not things that make me want to gather every writer from every CW show in a line and run down the line smacking them all in the face while the Legends writers watch and cheer. But I’m fuming. THIS is what it looks like when a years-long, heavily weighted lie is revealed between close friends/family. So, in conclusion, Supercorp endgame or die.
156 notes · View notes
deniigi · 3 years
Text
So @petrichordiam and I are menaces and giggled over our ideal dinluke flower shop AU for like 4 hrs and then I wrote this.
Title: murderer next door
Summary: Din works as a florist and Luke works as a bookseller and they’re both assassins trying to keep the other off their turf.
-------------
Two times now, Luke had crashed past that flower shop, and two times now, the fucker inside had taken out his mark. Now all Luke had to say about the whole thing was that it was too bad that he was going to have to kill the guy.
Han told him not to turn back. The mark was dead; the mark was gone. They weren’t fast enough this time, but there would be others.
Luke just couldn’t let it go, though. He had rent to pay, and McFloristApron over there was smashing through all his targets and making that nigh impossible—regardless of how many marks there were in the area.
Luke waited until Han had closed up shop for the night and remained there in the dark with his arm slung over the back of the chair in the backroom, surrounded by books. He rolled his shot of whiskey in its tumbler. The sound against the old wood table offered no comfort.
He stood up and left the glass to get his laptop.
He wasn’t losing to some florist, Han, sorry. Only one family could take innocuous cover on this street, and it was them.
 ---
McFlorist’s name wasn’t listed on the florist’s staff page, but then again, none of the people on that page had names. In fact, the website’s whole vibe was all wedding-chic until you clicked on the ‘staff and contacts’ tab. Then, it may as well have been a line of mugshots.
Luke squinted along the row of increasingly involved headgear until he got to someone with a reasonably-sized neck with no tats. The ladies on either side of him appeared to have sapped all the ink out of McFloristApron. He wore a mask over the lower half of his face and gave a stoic thumbs up to the camera.
Under his picture was the number fifteen.
Damn.
Luke was only making eight per pop. Who the hell was this guy eating up all the feeder fish, huh? Them lower division folks had to eat too, you know.
Well.
‘Lower division’ in a sense of the word. Being two times undercover wasn’t super glamorous, Luke had to say. But when your dad fucked it up for the first family, sometimes you had to take what you could get.
Luke pointed at Fifteen on the screen.
“You and me, pal,” he said. “You and me.”
 --
 Step one was to get paid first.
Luke chased down three marks on the other side of town to pay the rent and the medical bills for now. His hand’s new sleeve felt like a dream. It didn’t overheat like the nylon black one did, and the hand was far less shiny now as a bonus. That had certainly reduced the number of people catching something move out of the corner of their eye.
Was it worth fifty grand?
No.
Was it worth the last nine that Luke had left to pay on it?
Yeah. It was definitely worth the nine.
 ------
 Step two was to go make it clear to Fifteen McFlorist that he and his folks needed to back down in the face of the established guard.
Luke put on his biggest sweater and the thickest glasses he could find. He stole Chewie’s messenger bag with all the pins on it. He slung it over his shoulder and rolled the hems of his jeans up just a smidge too much, then scurried over to the florist’s across the way.
Fifteen was off to the side of the register, fucking around with something in the refrigerator. Luke busily and noisily looked through the wall of foliage on the side of the shop nearest the window. He hummed. He hawed. He made anxious nerd-sounds until a voice asked, “Hi, can I help you?”
Luke glanced out of the corner of his eye and found that Fifteen was standing facing his way now. His mask was gray this time. His apron was orange. His boots were too heavy-looking for florist work.
“I’d love that,” Luke gushed breathlessly. “See, my mom just got engaged and I’m on the way to her house.”
Fifteen lifted his chin slightly.
“What’re her favorites?” he asked tonelessly.
Terrible customer service skills, dude.
“Roses,” Luke said.
“Ours are shit today,” Fifteen said. “How about dahlias?”
Luke didn’t know what those were but sure.
“That sounds great,” he said. “You have any in pink?”
 --------
 He watched Fifteen brutalize some pink, orange, and white flowers into a bouquet wrapped with a silver bow and was sure to smile every time the guy looked up.
“That’ll be $37.59.”
Sir, these are dead flowers. There is no need for that price.
“Can I put it on card?” Luke asked. “How long have you worked here, if you don’t mind me asking? I work just across the way is all.”
Fifteen’s dark gaze flicked up. His hair was covered by a gray beanie two shades darker than the mask.
“At the club?” he asked.
“The bookshop,” Luke corrected him with a shy, but widening smile.
Please be gay. Please be gay. Please be gay. Leia wasn’t going to want to cooperate. She thought it was beneath her to establish boundaries like this.
“Blue paint,” Fifteen said. “Yeah, that place. How long have you been there?”
“My brother-in-law’s place, actually,” Luke said. “I started there last year after I finished college.”
Or, you know, maybe even eight years ago when he’d finished college. No one had to know. Baby faces don’t kiss and tell after all.
“Huh. You must like it there,” Fifteen said.
“It’s fine,” Luke hummed. “You like it here?”
“The kid does.”
“Oh, you’re a father?” Luke asked. “How old?”
“He’s three,” Fifteen said. “Godson. His folks were in an accident; didn’t make it.”
“That’s terrible, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Luke said. “He’s lucky to have you.”
Fifteen handed him his card back. Luke’s hand didn’t close in time to catch it and it fell onto to the wooden counter.
“Sorry about that,” Luke said, reaching for it with the other hand. His knuckles bumped into Fifteen’s when he went for the card at the same time. They both paused and went for the card again with the same result. Luke laughed.
“Slippery, am I right?” he asked, flattening his fingers on top of the piece of plastic and snatching it away.
“Very,” Fifteen said. “I hope your mom likes them.”
“Me too,” Luke smiled. “I’ll see you around—What was your name?”
“You can call me Armando,” Fifteen said.
“Armando,” Luke sounded out. “It suits you.”
It was a falsie.
“And yours?”
“James.”
“It suits you.”
It didn’t.
“Bye now,” Luke said. “Thanks for your help.”
He let the door fall closed behind him with the tinkle of the bell.
 --------
 He informed Han that “Armando” had a toddler and received only a warning look and a scolding for all his effort. Han told him not to get jealous. If there was a kid in the balance, then Fifteen, for better or worse, was going to have to see each day after the next until there was no longer a kid in the balance.
Luke offered to call CPS and report “Armando” as an assassin.
“You do that and those folks across the street are gonna call the VA and tell them I’m an assassin,” Han said. “Lay low, Luke. Lay low.”
Never.
“Christ. At least until that thing’s yours then.”
Luke glared at his right hand.
“Gimme a double,” he told Han without looking away from it.
 ------------
 It was never easy to hunt in the daylight, but Luke wasn’t here to do easy things. He needed to get Mark No. 1 alone. The man took the train once a week to a gentleman’s club on his lunch break. Luke needed a change of clothes.
He had a rainbow windbreaker, white boots, and fishnets all ready to go.
He got on the same train as the mark and dropped his phone nearby. It clattered loudly and the case came off. Luke swore and squatted to drop it at the same time that two girls next to him decided to become good Samaritans. They crouched with him and one of them caught the phone first. They handed it back with a smile.
“I like your jacket,” she said.
Luke let his face struggle to find a smile at her kindness to him, a sweet little twink trying to find the pride parade that happened two weeks ago.
“Thanks,” he said. “I like your bracelet.”
He stood up. The girls were pleased with themselves. Luke glanced back to find Mark No. 1 turn his head abruptly away.
Come here, Markie.
Do you like what you see?
  Mark No. 1 didn’t make it out of his hotel room. A pity. Luke took the elevator down and huffed and puffed about a cheap date when he passed the front desk. He stopped abruptly and went back to ask the receptionist what the cross street was. She judged his go-go boots.
He told her she wasn’t his type. Her manager gave him the cross street.
Mark No. 2 had different parameters.
 ----------
 Mark No. 2’s parameters involved chasing him through a maze of boiler rooms and dumpsters. He was chump change towards a hand that Luke hadn’t wanted in the first place, but alas. The anger still roared.
Luke cornered him, still in go-go boots—no need to sacrifice style for speed—and watched those pale eyes look every which way as Mark No. 2 realized that there was no getting out of this.
“You got options, friend,” Luke said. “I can bring you in hot or I can bring you in—”
“—cold.”
His head snapped up and he lurched out of the way just as the crack of a bullet exploded in the alley. A car backfired around the corner in a sympathetic cough. Luke stared at the body then twisted around just in time for a thick glove to latch onto the back of his neck.
“Well, look who it is,” Fifteen drawled.
Luke glared out of the corner of his eye.
“Hands off, Armando,” he warned.
“I like your boots.”
“You’re gonna love ‘em when they’re on your dick,” Luke warned.
“Back off, Nayberry.”
Fucking hell, Han. This is why they should have set up boundaries weeks ago.
“I prefer ‘James,’” Luke said sweetly.
The glock levelled at his face didn’t care.
“You took my mark,” Fifteen said.
“Aw, poor baby,” Luke pouted. “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you took mine.”
Fifteen’s orange apron was gone. He’d swapped it for an old leather jacket—something he could more easily wipe clean. He should’ve gone for patent leather. The brown really wasn’t working with his grey mask-beanie situation.
“Stay in your lane,” Fifteen warned.
“Only if you stay in yours,” Luke beamed.
Fifteen huffed.
“Bookstore,” he scoffed. “Who’d you give the flowers to?”
Luke tsked.
“Myself, jackass,” he said.
“Do you even have a mom?”
“What the fuck business is that of yours? You even got a kid?”
Fifteen’s stare was deadly—the cooling body before them notwithstanding.
“Take one step near him and we won’t be talkin’ so friendly, yeah?”
Mm. Yeah.
“You owe me four grand,” Luke informed Fifteen as the glock went down and Fifteen left him to go take a pulse.
The man’s back stiffened.
“Four?” he asked. “You took this job for four?”
Luke rolled his eyes.
“I got bills, Armando,” he drawled.
“How do you keep that shed open? Have you sold even one book?”
Rude. Luke was a great sales associate. If he actually cared to put his mind to it, he’d be worthy of a promotion to manager.
He pulled the rising legs of his shorts down and adjusted the weapon in his windbreaker. He couldn’t leave the alley the way he’d gone into it. Someone might have seen. He was going to have to take a side street. Hmmm, which one? Choices, choices.
“I’ll give you a Dad’s discount. Gimme two grand, and you can have him,” Luke negotiated as he thought.
“Two.”
Hey, no need for that tone. This was a great deal.
“What’re you gonna do with two?” Fifteen asked, already knelling down to heft the body over his shoulder as proof for payment.
“Buy some more tights,” Luke deadpanned. “Two, final offer.”
Fifteen stood up all the way and gave him a weird look. A long look. His beanie was pulled down low, but Luke got the impression that he was frowning at him.
“Take the four,” he said out of nowhere. “I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
Luke recoiled a step at first, then recoiled another when the reality of the situation hit him full in the chest.
“Forget it,” he snapped.
He spun around and started to leave.
“Wh—hey. HEY. Where are you goin’?”
“I don’t need your fuckin’ pity,” Luke called ahead of him as he set to climbing the chainlink fence separating him from the adjacent dead-end alley.
“You what?”
“You heard me,” Luke said.
He jumped down. His left hand found his right wrist and squeezed as he walked.
 -------
 The phantom pains kept him up all night, and it was definitely that and not the humiliation that made him call in sick. Han told him to answer his therapist’s emails. Luke told him to go do something useful and hung up. He rolled onto his back on his bed and focused on letting his body relax, his jaw unclench, his joints go limp.
There was sunlight finally streaming through his apartment windows again. It had been months.
Spring was almost here. He just had to hold out a little longer.
 --------
 He came in to work the next day and found an envelope on his chair in the backroom. It was thick.
“McFlorist dropped it off,” he said between aggravated sounds at his spreadsheets.
“Is it tax season already?” Luke asked him as he tried to burn a whole in the center of the envelope with his mind.
“Sure fuckin’ is.”
He stepped forward and snatched up the envelope, then deposited it squarely in Han’s lap. He made an unattractive noise of confusion and alarm.
“For the taxes,” Luke called as he went out to grab his lanyard and name tag. “Gotta keep this place open for another six months at least.”
 ------------
 There were new books in. A new shipment to shelve. Two kids’ displays to set up. And Luke was actually good at this stuff, thanks; he started stacking.
He got peace until he nearly got to the end of the second display, and then what he had was a heart attack. Two liquid brown eyes surrounded by an ocean of ringlets stared up at him from between his knees. The child curled a hand in and out in hello.
Luke jerked himself up to locate the thing’s parents immediately, and promptly found himself in deadly eye-contact with Fifteen.
Armando.
“You were gone yesterday,” Fifteen said flatly.
Luke looked between him and the kid. He was pinned between two enemy parties. How to escape, how to escape.
“Are you sick?”
How to escape. How to escape. How to escape.
“Are you hurt?”
H—what?
“I’m fine, stalker,” Luke snapped with more heat than this present cover allowed. He caught himself and pulled it back. “I’m fine,” he repeated. “Thank you for asking. Is this…?”
Fifteen blinked once. The child blinked once as well. It was creepy.
“He’s mine,” Fifteen said. “And apparently the only thing that will get us through the next two hours is a book.”
Dude.
“Kids are kids,” Fifteen said. “You got any books?”
Luke stared at him, then checked the shelves to make sure he hadn’t teleported into another dimension.
You always had to check.
“We’re in a bookstore,” he said.
“He can’t read,” Fifteen said, pointing.
The kid grinned. His teeth were gapped in that toddler sort of way. He was kind of cute.
“You can’t read?” Luke asked him.
“Hi,” Baby said.
Oh no.
Luke loved him.
“How much?” he asked Fifteen.
“Touch him and you’ll be permanently comatose,” Fifteen said.
“Not if I died out of spite,” Luke said.
There was a long pause. Then Fifteen started laughing? Kind of hard?
“Oh my god, that was so unprofessional. I am so sorry,” Luke blurted out.
Fifteen collected himself and shook his head. His little one giggled and reached for Luke’s fingers.
“Boo,” he said.
Luke couldn’t feel the hand, but he could feel all the heart.
“Book?” he asked, crouching down. “Do you want a story?”
“Mmmm.”
“I have the perfect one,” Luke told him. “It’s about a caterpillar. Do you know what a caterpillar is?”
He got a slow, exaggerated head shake back and forth, back and forth. He stood up straight.
“I’m conducting a temporary kidnapping,” he informed Fifteen. “Do I have consent?”
Fifteen looked from him towards the front entrance and mulled over the merits of leaving his kid with his rival assassin. Then he shrugged.
“Consent granted,” he said. “Luke.”
Luke’s heart stopped.
“James,” he said.
“Your name tag says ‘Luke.’”
Well, fuck.
“Luke Nayberry. It suits you.”
Hhhhhhh. This was karma, wasn’t it.
“Thanks,” he gritted out. “And yourself, Armando?”
“Din.”
Woah, look out. Mr. One-Syllable-Cool-Man had entered the building.
“Din, what?” Luke asked as his arm registered tension. Din’s kid had latched onto his fingers and started pulling incessantly with a chubby hand gesturing in the direction of the wall of children’s books.
“Don’t you worry about it,” Din said.
“Fine, go trip then,” Luke said.
He swore that there was a smile under that mask.
 ----------
123 notes · View notes