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yourfangirlfriend · 3 years

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It’s Nothing Serious - Chapter Six

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Five and a Half

A/N: idk if this is good but I’ve been putting off writing it and perfect is the enemy of done so here you go, I had fun

It’s not not serious.

At least, this seems to be the mutual conclusion you have both silently reached after that weirdly intimate night you never talked about, either.

And yes, you’re aware of how childish that is.

For two people voluntarily living in one of the more dangerous cities on the continent, it turns out you’re both pretty cowardly. But why put yourselves through the agony of all that when you could both instead play a game of emotional chicken to test where the boundaries are?

You go first the morning the two of you wake up in your bed. You both woke up in a tangle of limbs and slid out of bed after the second snooze alarm went off. He had just pulled on his jeans when he reached for the shirt you had folded the night before.

“Wait,” you said. You walked to the closet and pulled a crisp black shirt off its hanger, continuing to brush your teeth and you walked up and deposited it in his hand. “I washed this after you let me wear it home.”

That night we made pasta and I spilled sauce on my shirt and you took it off and fucked me in your kitchen until the chicken burnt-

He looks up at you, his eyebrows raised.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he shakes his head before pulling it over his shoulders. “Thank you.”

You give him a look before dipping into the bathroom to spit.

After a quick cup of coffee, you’re both striding towards your door when you stop short. He turns and looks at you, waiting for you to take another step and flick the deadbolt. Instead, you ask

“Are you going to be okay? Today, I mean. With...”

His face falls a little, like he was expecting to get out of this without you mentioning it. It makes your heart hurt.

“I’m fine,” he says, curtly. He drops his head to look at his shoes. You swallow.

“So...drinks tonight? Still?” You reach out and bop his hand with yours.

“Not if you don’t open the door.”

You roll your eyes, walking forward and flicking the bolt. You pull the door open and he catches it, holding it back for you as you take the first step out.

“...yeah. I’ll be back around 6,” he says as you finish locking the door. You drop the keys in your purse, straightening up as the two of you walk towards and out the doors.

“Bar or your place?”

“Mine.”

“You sure? It’s my turn to buy,” you say.

“No, it’s not,” he says as he opens the passenger door for you, gesturing that you climb in. You do and watch as he walks around the front to his side. “Besides, mines quieter.”

You nod, staring forward as he starts the car and pulls into the street. Like every morning, his hand falls to your knee and you feel content with his answer.

You can’t help yourself, though, when he pulls up in front of the school and parks, waiting for you to climb out. Usually, it’s a pretty quick, platonic affair- a quick “thanks, Javi” before you open the door and swing your legs out. This morning, though,

“You know,” he says when you reach for the handle. “You...you don’t have to take care of me.”

You drop your hand before turning back to face him. And maybe it’s the coffee you drank took quickly, or maybe it’s the way last night is still lingering in your head, but

“I like taking care of you.”

You reach out and pull his face to yours, letting the kiss linger before pulling away.

“See you tonight,” you said, flashing him a quick smile. If you’re not mistaken, you see the corner of his mouth twitch up before he remembers himself, and gives you a cool masculine nod. You climb out and watch as he drives away before you hear behind you:

“¿Es tu novio?”

You turn around and see three little girls from your class huddled together and giggling that they just caught the teacher doing something naughty. Despite yourself, you smile through your teacher's voice.

“Entrad, niñas. La clase está a punto de empezar.”

He makes the next move when he shows up outside the school, waiting against his car when you walk out that afternoon and he flags you down.

“Hey,” he says when you approach his car.

“Hey,” you say. “What’s up?”

“Was told to go home early,” he says. “Figured...” he waves his hand up, gesturing to you. “You got plans?”

“Was just going to swing by the liquor store. For tonight.”

“It’s not your turn to buy,” he says, moving out of the way so you can open the door. You send him a look.

“It’s the 90s. Let a girl buy you a drink, Javi.”

He smiles, and over his shoulder, you see one of the girls from this morning- Cara - sending you a shit-eating grin.

Despite yourself, you give her a little wave as Javi drives the two of you out of the parking lot.

--------------

It becomes a game after that. He picks you up from school. You ask him to stay the night again, and he does. The next morning, he kisses you goodbye in front of Steve, whose eyebrows you see pop up from the corner of your eye. That night, you stay over at his and leave the spare toothbrush you brought next to his in the bathroom. The next day, he comes to your house with take-out and a tape and the two of you fall asleep on the couch, drunk and full. Soon, you don’t remember a night where you aren’t sleeping in the same bed or whose turn it is to initiate a sleepover. You just meet at your smoking spot and then, inevitably, one of you will lead the other to their door for the night, and inevitably, the other one will stay.

The small reminders of each other begin to pile up in your respective apartments. A mystery toothbrush appears in your bathroom. Then there’s a jacket and two of his shirts hanging in your closet. A drawer in his bathroom slowly begins to fill with evidence of your presence- hair ties, bobby pins, the odd bit of makeup. During one of your drunk nights, when you are once again lamenting the lack of decoration, you draw a stick-figure portrait of the apartment - you, Javi, Steve, and the creepy silent man who you only ever see leave his place to buy fish - and tape it to his fridge. He tells you you hang around kids too much, but every time you come back, it’s still up.

Then the bigger things happen. You go to dinner with him and Steve. You bring him on a double date with Alessa and Frankie. He kisses you goodbye in front of the school every morning, and you reach out and hold his hand whenever the two of you walk outside- which you do now, by the way. You walk to the grocery store, you walk to the liquor store, you walk to the corner store to buy pre and post-coital smokes, and every time his hand finds yours. You’re still having sex, you still fuck, but now, sometimes, to what would once be your disgust, it’s slower. Softer. There’s eye contact and prolonged kisses and caressing and very little hair pulling.

And god. Now there’s cuddling.

You no longer sit across the sofa to hanger a drink. No, now your legs are in his lap or his arm is around your shoulder or some other horribly intimate design the two of you just naturally find yourself falling into whenever you’re in proximity. Now, after sex, he’s pulling you to him or you’re pulling him to you or you just both mutually descend towards each other. And when you’re all wrapped around each other, the worst thing of all happens. He talks.

It’s not like you hadn’t talked before. You were friends, after all. He already knew about your kids you taught, your parents, and some random, funny stories about your life. In turn, he had told you some stories about his mom, about the ranch, and about the people in his life. But now it’s different. Now, whenever you two are alone in the dark, bodies pressed against each other under the sheet with such softness it’s grotesque, the walls come down. He tells you about his mom's death, and how he didn’t cry for months. He tells you how afraid he is of himself, and how he worries she would hate the person he is. He tells you he doesn’t think he’s a good person, because of the women he’s hurt ( -“The DAY of?” “I’m not proud of it”-) and the people he failed (“-supposed to get her out, keep her safe, and I couldn’t-“) and how, though he won’t go into detail about it, he’s worried how numb he’s become to things, and that he’s only going to get number (“-you see so many people die, there’s got to be a point you just stop feeling that, like self-preservation, and that’s fucking scary-“). You listen. You think you may be the first person who has listened in a while. When he tries to apologize, that he shouldn’t have said that or that he’s a mopey sad sack or you don’t want to hear this, you kiss his hands.

“Javi,” you tell him. “I like listening to you. Anything you have to say.”

Looking back, you think the look he gives you the first time you said that was when you really knew. But now, you’re still playing dumb. You both are.

What’d he call it? Self-preservation?

To pay him back, you tell him about you. You try to match his scars, telling him about growing up in a loud, weird house you’d only learn at the age of fifteen was a commune. You tell him about all the times you caught your parents tripping out naked on drugs and having to drag them to bed, or how you had to watch your sister for days on end as a kid whenever they decided to go out on ‘spirit walks’, and how you eventually enrolled yourself in school after your mothers homeschooling attempts fell to the wayside. That one time when you were six and accidentally took a tab of acid your mother and father’s sometime lover, Sunshine, left on top of your peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You try and tell him the good things, too- how you speak five languages (“what?” “English, Spanish, German, Russian, and some Chinese.” “...what?” “My parents were communists!”), how you used to be really good at gymnastics (“is that why you can’t do a handstand?” “I can do a handstand-“ ), and the things in yourself that you’re afraid of- your denial, your anxiety, your bad habit of never calling your sister back and how that actually reveals you’re a sociopath. And in turn, he listens. He squeezes your hand. He asks you questions when you know he wants to and lets it be silent when you can’t bring yourself to answer.

About three months into this, you find yourself lying on your side one night, staring at his beautiful, stupid, snoring face as he drools against your pillow, and for the first time, you finally, finally, finally let yourself admit it.

It is serious.

---

“Well no shit.”

You scowl at Lisa over your glass.

“What? Like we all didn’t already know? For months?”

“Leave her alone,” Alessa elbows her. “I think it’s sweet.”

“You think everything’s sweet.” Lisa rolls her eyes. “You tell him yet?”

You bite the inside of your lip and look down at your drink. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Timing?”

“You spend all your time together.”

You shake your head, taking a swig.

“Coward.”

“What!”

“I said you’re a coward,” Lisa says as Maritza deposits the tray of shots between the two of you.

“Who’s a coward?” she asks sweetly.

“Eloise.”

“Yeah, I am,” you reach forward and take two of the shot glasses, snatching the one in front of Lisa before downing it.

“Hey!” She yelps.

You flip her off and down the second.

She huffs. “Bitch.”

You shake your head and march towards the bar to order another tray.

----------

To be fair, he knew it would be like this.

He had to. It’s you. It’s both of you. Two weirdly cagey people who don’t like having their guard down and never, ever want to be the one person who sticks themselves out for ridicule. The little dares over the past few months have been one thing, like you’re placing pebbles on a scale, seeing how long it takes until it collapses under the weight. Nightly sleepovers? Pebble. Toothbrushes? Pebbles. Sharing childhood trauma after a round of particularly kinky sex where you had your hands tied to the headboard and it inadvertently reminded you of the time you got your hands stuck in some old handcuffs your sister and you had found and you had to spend three hours with your hands looped around a bed frame because Tanya was seven and when she found your mom they were high on peyote and it turns out it takes five drugged-out hippies to find a tiny pair of keys to free a small girl in the woods after it’s already gotten dark and then he told you about the time his uncle had drunk too much shiner and tried to shoot an apple off his cousins head with a BB gun but missed and now the cousin has one eye kind of like Lorenzo and then you both chain-smoked cigarettes and wondered what a glass eye feels like - alright. Maybe five pebbles.

But...actually saying it?

Stones. Big, ugly stones. The kind that fall on cars.

No wonder you got shit-faced.

“Javvvvvvvi,” you sang through his door. You pounded out the melody that only made sense in your head. “Heyyyyy,”

You hear footsteps approaching from the other side and you stand up straight, ready to drunkenly seduce him with your pose when the door swings open and-

“Can I help you?” She asks, annoyed.

You take the woman in front of you in. She’s tall, with long honey blonde hair that falls across her shoulders. Her waist is bared under the halter top she wears, and you’re only a little jealous of the toned plane of her stomach and the long legs that stretch out from her short shorts.

“I...” you start.

“What are you doing? Get away from the door!” Javi appears from behind her, reaching out to take her arm and pull her back. His eyes fall on you, though, and he drops his hand.

“El- hey- I thought you were-?”

“I was...what uh,” you raise your hand to the woman. “What the fuck?”

“Who the fuck are you?” The woman hisses back. Javi reaches up and takes her arm, pulling her back gently.

“I told you not to answer the door-“

“No, I think I’ll leave-“ you toss your hands up. “Enjoy your night.”

“She’s not- it’s not like that-”

“OH PLEASE, I wasn’t born yester-“

The door behind you opens, and the two or you swivel you hear to see Steve enter holding two bags of food. He looks between you and Javier, then to the door.

“Hey,” he says finally.

You give him a pathetic wave. He waves back before turning to Javi.

“Is she-“

“Yeah,” Javier says. He points to his apartment “Could you actually-?”

“Yeah,” Steve nods a bit too quickly, moving behind him and disappearing into the apartment, closing the door behind him.

Javier turns back to you.

“She needs a place to stay before we move her. I was going to tell you when you got back.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” you draw out. You grimace, before looking back to him. “...Sorry.”

“You really think I’d do that?”

You open your mouth to answer before he cuts in again.

“Are you drunk?”

“I-“ you start before huffing. Fucking cop. “Yes! Of course I’m drunk! It’s tequila night! I even, kindly, I might add,” you reach in your bag and pull out the bottle you picked up on the way home. “Got some for you, too!”

“Who did you think she was?”

“Javi-“ you groan, squeezing your eyes shut. This wasn’t supposed to be your night. Tonight was supposed to be about getting drunk with your friends, then getting drunk with Javi, then having drunk sex on your couch loud enough the upstairs fish guy would have to bury his head in what you only assumed was a pile of rotting fish carcasses in his trash to drown out your moans.

Now it’s this.

You shake your head and nod to your door, beckoning him to follow. It’s tense, and he watches over your shoulder as your hands shake trying to pull the right key. Once you manage to unlock the door, you hurry inside and deposit your things on the table, before turning back and facing him.

You open your mouth to say something-

-and then shut it again. You sigh.

“You thought I was sleeping with her.”

You snap your head back up to see him, cross-armed in front of you. You shake your head.

“This isn’t fair, I’m drunk. You’re not.”

He walks over to the bag you threw on the couch and unscrews the bottle you brought home. He takes a swig, holding eye contact as he gulps a third of the small bottle down, all while you watch flabbergasted.

“Say it,” he says, screwing the cap back on.

“You’re going to be sick-“

“Eloise.”

“Well, it’s not like we’ve talked about it!” You snap. “We never- said! What we’re doing!” You drop your hands to your side and turn, walking to the kitchen and leaning forward onto the counter. Javi follows you up, eying you.

“You thought I was, though?”

“Yes! No? I don’t know!” You bring a hand to your face. “I don’t know. Maybe. I just got scared. I guess...I’ve been scared? Lisa thinks so, the bitch-“

“Scared of what? Me sleeping with someone else?”

“No! Not- necessarily-“

“You really think- Jesus, it’s like we never-“

“Hey, don’t!” You spin to face him. “Don’t turn this around on me. You never brought this up. We haven’t talked about this. We talked about everything else and are doing everything else like dinner dates and sweet sex and fucking movie nights but we haven’t...said anything! Saying things matters!”

He stares at you.

“I didn’t think it did! I thought I was fine with just...letting...ugh!” You bring the heels of your palms to your eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that last shot.”

“Eloise, what are you-“

“I’m not a coward!” You point at him. “I’m not! I’m just- it’s just-“

“No one said you were!”

“Lisa did!”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t...Ugh! They really make strong drinks at that bar! Because I haven’t said-“

“Jesus Christ, WHAT.”

Ooh, you wish you could just fall apart and have him see what’s running through your mind right now. You feel the anger in your stomach bubble. He’s really annoyed with you for thinking the worst of him, and maybe he has a right, but you two haven’t talked about it. You had just assumed- assumed he felt the same way, assumed the little intimacies have built up in such a way that you had something real and concrete, and especially that you both weren’t fucking other people. But the second she opened the door it felt like your worst fear had come true: you were the idiot who had let their guard down first and got hurt, because they were too stupid to realize what this was, and you couldn’t even be mad. Because you hadn’t talked about it. Because he never technically said he was with you.

But now he’s looking like he’s feeling the exact same way, only he’s the idiot. He’s the idiot for confiding in you and crying on your tits and telling you all those fears and worries and believing you when you kissed his hands and told him you thought he was a good man. He’s worried that you’ve always seen him this way- as the guy who would cut and run and betray you, and maybe if you think that, then it’s true. Maybe he was kidding himself into thinking someone like you could believe in his goodness, after all he’s done.

Fuck, you may be drunk but it does make you insightful.

It may be too late though. Because he’s dropped his hands from his hips, tired of waiting for an explanation. He’s making towards the door, murmuring something about having to work and it all just seems like it’s slipping out of your fingers like you can see he’s building up the wall again and this time you’re not going to be able to tear it down-

“Javi,” you say, your voice strained. He stops and turns to you, and you know you only have a few seconds to do it. You try and form the words, but your tongue isn’t working and maybe Lisa was right, maybe you are a coward, but you have to try.

“I like taking care of you.” You say, pathetically, dropping your hands to your sides.

A beat passes. He brings his hands to his hips, waiting for a further explanation. You sigh and walk down to stand in front of him. “I like having you take care of me...and...I haven’t wanted to tell you, because I don’t want to scare you but maybe that’s just me ‘projecting’ or whatever Alessa said. She’s really annoying now that she’s doing that psychology class-“

“El.” He says, not without softness. You feel his fingers come under your chin, gesturing for you to look up at him.

This wasn’t the plan. This was supposed to be a hookup. Then a friendship. You don’t want to lose that.

But now he’s staring down at you like that, and your drunk brain is turning over itself as you think maybe that train has already left. Maybe it left a long fucking time ago, and the two of you have just been hanging onto the back, waiting for the other person to let go first.

But you don’t want to let go. You never really did. You were just waiting for him to give you a sign so you could make it look like you were jumping off together instead of you pathetically holding on as he disappears behind you.

But from the way his thumb traces your jaw and his other hand reaches forward to take your hand in his, you think maybe he’s been utilizing the same strategy, and he’s been just as scared as you.

Well, now you can either let go or try to pull yourself up.

So.

Are you a coward or not?

He wets his lips before his eyes drop. He looks defeated. And at that moment you decide – fuck it.

Between the gymnastics and dragging your high parents to bed and all this fucking holding you’ve been doing inside of you, you’ve got strong enough arms.

So.

Fuck it.

“El, I don’t-“

“I love you,” you say without thinking. “And yes I’m tequila drunk, but I don’t think that takes away from-“

You’re stopped as he leans forward and presses his lips to yours, cutting you off. You wrap your arms around the back of his neck, pulling him in closer and deepening the kiss. You feel him pulling at your top and you shimmy it off and over your head, tossing it to the side before dipping your hands down and unbuckling his belt as he unbuttons his shirt before you. You drop your hand down the front of his pants, jerking him softly as he moans into your mouth. You feel him guiding you to the couch, and when the back of your knees hit the arm you drop down and begin to pull his pants down for him as he rids himself of his shirt. You’re about to take him in your mouth when he pushes you down, your back hitting the cheap leather as he crawls over you, pulling your skirt up to your hips. He pauses.

“You always skip the underwear in girls' night?”

“Only when I’m coming back to you.”

That gets him, because a second later he’s between your legs, thrusting inside of you. You let out a cry and drop your head back, exposing your neck to him as he continues to pump into, his hands reaching behind and you and grabbing a fistful of your hair.

“Say it again,” he says.

“I don’t wear underwear-“

“No,” he growls, dropping his hand down between your legs to play with you. You let out another little cry.

“I love you,” you say. “I-I’ve loved you for a long time- ahhh!” The next thrust hits a little too well. “Ah, fuck, Javi- right there-“

“Keep going-“

“YOU keep going- fuck, has your dick gotten bigger?”

“El-“ he lets out a moan. Taking advantage of the moment, you slip out from under him and switch positions, pressing him back onto the couch and climbing atop of him. His hands settle on your hips as you ride him, pulling sounds from him that echo around your living room. When you cum he’s not long after, and the two of you collapse onto each other, breathing heavily as you come down with his hand holding the back of your neck.

“Hey,” he says finally. You lift your head and sit up, looking down at him. His eyes are glassy, and the look on his face makes you giggle.

“Are you drunk?”

“Yes,” he says. “But a wise woman once said that doesn’t take away from what I have to say.”

“She sounds smart, you should fuck her,” you say, moving to stand. He catches your wrist, pulling you back down onto his lap with a bounce.

“Give a girl a few minutes before round two-“

He cuts you off with a kiss. It’s slow and soft and you melt into it. The way you always melt into him.

When he pulls away, you chase after his grinning lips. He brings a hand to the side of your face, tracing his fingers down the side of your cheek.

“I love you, too.” He says. “I don’t know what that’s worth…but I do.”

You lean in, wrapping your arms around the back of his neck.

"Baby," you say "It's worth everything."

In the morning, you’ll have to contend with the knowing look Steve gives the two of you before asking “Good night?”, a joke that earns him a look from Javi and a deep blush and muttered apology from you. You’ll have to put up with the squeals from Maritza, Lisa, and Alessa when you tell them in the staff room during lunch. You’ll even get a look from your upstairs neighbor when you pass him and his fresh fish that next afternoon. Most of all, you’ll have to consider what the fuck this means for you and Javi and this scary, exhilarating little life you’re leading.

But.

Right now, you’re naked and smoking a cigarette on the couch with the man you love who loves you back, and you’re both laughing, and that's more than enough.

taglist: @fuckoffbard

#javier peña #javier peña x reader #javier Peña x oc #narcos #it's nothing serious #fic

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slversoul · 3 years

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* lauren tsai, cis female + she/her | you know ramona pei, right? they’re twenty-three, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, eight years? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to can i believe you by fleet foxes like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool while your lungs are screaming for air, the muffle of a tv from behind a closed door at 3am, ripping your dress as you crawl into your friends window thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is march 6, so they’re a pisces, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( corny :D )

also sorry this got so long :(( really meant to shorten it but uh oh well. let’s get into it shall we...

TW: blood mentions, violence, arson, emotional manipulation, cheating, absentee parenting, parental fighting

ABOUT.

in her hand, ramona held an antique vase, white with blue detailing. passed down from generation to generation, it had been in her family for decades. not wanting to drop it, she held it as tightly as possible. held so tight that it shattered anyway, breaking into hundreds of pieces that cut her hand as they fell.

a trip to china to celebrate graduating college despite having two children in between, patti met a man and had a short-lived but passionate affair, only to return home to find out she was pregnant.

in the middle of a storm, ramona was born into a home longer than it was tall. patti gave her her father’s last name, some shallow attempt to connect her to a man and culture she didn’t know.

ramona’s early years float through her mind like a montage of memories. rolling in the dirt and eating worms. climbing up the trees that shadowed the driveway to their house, jumping from branch to branch. cutting her doll’s hair before cutting her own to match. the first meeting of patti’s new boyfriend. his hairy belly hanging out of his white wife beater as he fell asleep on the couch with the tv on.

patti loved her children. she loved trent, shirley, and ramona with her whole heart, but she was tired. working all day and all night, it was hard to keep tabs on them at all times. the three of them woke up early every morning, singing as they packed lunches, and they kept up with their chore wheel, and they ran barefoot for hours in the woods behind their house.

she first learned to swim in a grimmy lake a couple miles from her house. she’d sit on the bike with trent as he took them there. she jumped right in and paddled her arms until she learned to stay afloat. she’d go under and swim deeper and deeper until her siblings were screaming her name. she’d come up and laugh, knowing that her siblings cared for her.

her first friend was debbie. they were inseparable. holding hands on the playground. playing hopscotch after school. swimming in the lake by her house. as the days went on, debbie made new friends. less and less she was at ramona’s house, eating peanut butter sandwiches trent had made. a thursday afternoon, ramona stole a hershey’s bar from the gas station — deb’s favorite candy. after her mom tucked her in, she snuck out and ran to her friend’s, still in her pjs. she threw rocks at the window, and one was thrown a bit too hard, shattering the window. debbie’s screams woke the whole neighborhood. the cops were called. while she was escorted home, ramona was crying the whole time, confused as to what she did wrong. all she wanted to do was win her friend back.

she felt like she didn’t belong. she’d cut up pictures of her favorite actresses and paste pictures of her own face over theirs, hanging those portraits all over the walls of the house. if she lived like the characters on the tv, she would have to be real. that was real life. there were times when everything felt perfect. the feeling of relief that comes from placing the last piece in a puzzle. snapshot memories like sitting at the table with her siblings, swinging her feet because her legs were too small to hit the ground. her first kiss underneath the slide. running with her friend, crayons in hand as they doodled along the walls. she was inclined to freeze these memories, trying to prolong them and make them last forever.

so when trent left for college, ramona, 13 at the time, hugged him so tight and wouldn’t let go. her mother and sister had to pry her off of him, and she scratched him so hard she drew blood in the process. or when her first boyfriend broke up with her and two weeks later he had a new girlfriend. she took her nail polish and wrote ‘cunt’ on his locker, earning herself a week-long suspension. shirley only congratulated her. her mother was at work. her step-father was passed out on the couch.

she acclimated to high school easily with shirley there to guide her. but she quickly made her own friends. tamra’s parents were hardly home. her house served as homebase. ramona’s parents didn’t realize when she left. they were too busy screaming at each other over the static of the tv. she’d slip out and run to tamra’s, climbing into the window left open. they’d put makeup on like their favorite movie character and get in their nicest dresses, before meeting their girlfriends and boyfriends in the parking lot of the abandoned walmart, making a competition out of who could get the drunkest. they would head home and four or five of them would pile into tamra’s bed and sleep there until late afternoon.

ramona’s first serious relationship was russell. she swore they were in love until she caught him making out with someone else at a bonfire. she pushed him over and ran into the woods. two weeks later, they were back together. he was her dream guy. not even nicholas sparks could write a lead so romantic. he kept pushing her and pushing her because he knew she wouldn’t let go. until one night she got so mad that she smashed in the windows of his car and sliced up the leather interior. fits of rage were rare for her, but when they came around, they were all consuming. she was lucky he didn’t press charges.

life was a whirlwind of change the summer before sophomore year. shirley was packing up for college. patti was getting a divorce and moving them to irving, her hometown. ramona locked herself in her room. she wouldn’t come out for anything. the next day, when she still wouldn’t leave, shirley broke into her room, only to find it empty with the window wide open. a town-wide manhunt ensued, only to find her hiding up in a tree in the woods.

even though she was back home, she wasn’t really there. she wouldn’t speak. didn’t speak until the day shirley moved away to go to college.

despite her reservations, she liked irving. she had never seen the ocean before. ramona stepped up to the shore and looked out at the horizon. peace washed over her as the waves lapped at her ankles. there was a sense of security in feeling so small. she took to swimming in the ocean rather than the lake, searching for sea creatures big and small to befriend.

the tv was always on at their house. her mom couldn’t stand the quiet and neither could she. the house was empty with three less booming voices. ramona clung to her friends, using them as an escape for everything she didn’t want to think about.

surrounded by all of these people, she still felt alone, isolated, like they only loved a certain version of her. when her and patti left to meet trent to visit shirley at school, she cried the whole trip, thinking her friends would talk about her while she was gone, and that they would be closer when she wasn’t there.

but she seemed to always be there, forcing her way into every plan and every activity rather than be left out. it was suffocating, but she was usually kind, so people put up with her.

there were always the times she wasn’t kind. when she’d make passive aggressive comments about what a bitch someone was because they didn’t want her using their favorite eyeshadow. or when someone said they wanted space and she went on a tirade about how horribly they treated her because she didn’t want them to leave her -- a reactionary measure that always seemed to make everything worse. but then she would act out her favorite television episodes for her friends and they would laugh and clap along, forgetting her desperate attempts to fight change.

she couldn’t follow in her siblings footsteps. siblings she hardly hears from anymore, but desperately tries to reach out to. she stayed home and got a job as a swim instructor and a lifeguard in the summer. she sells handmade jewelry on the side. she’s floating and untethered, waiting to see where the tide carries her, only wanting to make fun memories from now until the end of time.

PERSONALITY.

um she’s a bit horrible? her heart is always in the right place and her intensions are good. she romanticizes literally everything. she wants to be loved so badly that she will look past any and all flaws <3. she often acts out because she is scared of losing her friends, and so she’ll be rude and passive aggressive. she wants them to feel like they need her more than she needs them. it’s all a weird power move in a way to keep her friends close. consumed by fomo. sometimes she can be outright mean and aggressive, but she really has to be pushed to her limit. doesn’t ever see what she’s doing as wrong. her older siblings were more of parents to her than her actual parents, and since they were all within 5 years of each other in age, her siblings never disciplined her because they were all immature. she is playful and untamed and just likes to do things because she can’t sit still. can always be found hanging out with friends and doing arts in crafts, or climbing rocks or swimming in the ocean.

HEADCANONS.

she can’t get rid of things. her windowsill is lined with empty makeup bottles and empty deodorants and flowers in old wine bottles. she wears clothes until they literally fall apart. she has a million posters and pictures covering every space of her walls and ceiling. her room is a collection of her life with piles of clothes on her desk chair and bras and sweaters hanging from door handles.

for three months, she wore a bathing suit every day. some days it was under regular clothes and others it was the only thing she wore. she liked it and thought it was fashionable. it was how she was most comfortable.

she can’t drive! only rides her bike!

only wears dresses now <3

cannot sleep without the tv on! likes to hear voices lull her to sleep and inspire her dreams.

speaking of dreams, she has a whole notebook filled with the time she decided to analyze dreams for fun. has a notebook per passion she wants to explore. is always trying new things or researching new things to try to find her forever interest, not coming to terms that she wants to run wild forever and live like a witch in the woods, completely unburdened by anything.

she has a scar on her knee and the palm of her hand. she was hiking up a waterfall with friends one time, and got dared to climb up some slippery rocks. needless to say, she fell and cut herself badly.

she likes laughing and running and swimming. she likes posters and nail polish and cozy comforters. she dislikes being confined indoors and people who go out of their way to be mean and rainy days. she dislikes the color orange and words she can’t pronounce and learning from a textbook. she likes bikes and she doesn’t like cars. she likes anyone with kind eyes.

#irvingintro

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adarkroomandawallflower · 4 years

Text

That Damned Picture (Marko x Gender Neutral Reader)

**photo obtained from Google Images; all rights and credit go to the owner**

A/N: I’m jumping onto the Lost Boys train (and showing my love for Alex Winter)! A short story about long lost lovers with a modern twist. Feedback is greatly appreciated!

The photograph was worn, smudged, and tattered, but between his calloused fingertips, it felt like home. It was small, small enough to fit in his wallet, but he kept it in a small picture frame that hung high in the ceiling of the cave: right next to where his head was situated when he slept. Whenever he left the cave, he took the picture with him. Removing it delicately from the frame, he would stare at his former lover and let a small smile grace his lips before gently placing the photo inside the inner breast pocket of his custom jacket. He wanted-- needed --to have his dearly beloved with him wherever he went; he couldn’t bear the thought of losing the one person who planted a vivacious garden in his chest, again.

He sighed softly as he brushed his thumb gently against the portrait. Eighty years of searching, following dead ends, and running around like a chicken without his head, but he had yet to find any sign of you. If he could go back in time, he would have ran away with you much sooner, before your parents got involved and separated you both. Before he was turned into a vampire in the early 1900’s, Marko had been a lowly street urchin, an orphan forced to find his way out on the streets. He lived off the coins he scoured from pick-pocketing, just enough to keep him fed and decently clothed, until he met you. You were the child of an upper class couple whose gluttonous, insatiable desire for capital was thicker than blood. If they had to choose, they would always pick riches over family (as you would later, unfortunately, come to see) and it was precisely their greed that drove a wall between the three of you. You had no desire to inherit the riches of your family. In fact, you were reckless with it, eagerly spending the money on ridiculous expenses and of course, giving some to the homeless young man with soft, blonde curls and gentle baby blues you came across one fateful day, at the local market.

You had immediately taken a liking to the devious jester, laughing as you watched him trick a baker out of an entire loaf of bread. When he noticed you watching, he flashed you a devilish smile, one that made your cheeks burn and your heart beat erratically behind your rib cage. Needless to say, when he walked over to you and offered to share his stolen, baked prize, you eagerly obliged and even shared your own butter you had purchased earlier, with him. That was the beginning of a passionate love affair between the two of you, one that would ultimately be ripped apart from both of your cold, undead hands.

You and Marko had kept your relationship a secret, for fear of your parents finding out and meddling into your business. They would have had a cow, at best or completely disowned you, at worst. That was a risk neither of you were willing to take, so you both hid the relationship: only meeting up outside of town, where no one could see the two of you and gossip. It worked for several years, but of course, the goodness could only last so long, before the inevitable bad had to kick in. Just mere days before you and Marko planned to run away together (with some money and jewels you stole from your parents), your parents found out about your plans and they would be damned before they let you make a mockery of your family by running away with a peasant.

Marko hadn’t a clue what happened to you, but he just knew your parents were involved. They had skipped town suddenly, not long after you stood him up at the train station you planned to meet up at. He could only assume that your parents discovered your plans, forbade you from running off with him, and packed up the whole family to run away from the eventual town gossip that would destroy your family’s “good” reputation. He yearned for nothing more than to at least uncover the truth about what happened to you, but he hoped that maybe you had faced a similar fate to his own and were still alive.

Somewhere.

“Marko, are you going to keep staring at that damned picture or are you going to come check out the new, hot cashier at the video store with us?” David hollered from the other side of the cave.

Marko defensively held the photograph to his chest, just above his heart, “I told you already; I don’t care about seeing some dumb cashier,” he huffed.

“Aww come on, man!” Paul goaded, “You’ve been moping around this cave for days; it’ll do you and your eyes some good to see this hottie,” he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“I’m really not in the mood,” Marko sighed.

“Leave him alone,” Dwayne warned. He didn’t know that Marko had been so distraught recently because the anniversary of yours and his runaway plans was coming up, but he wasn’t naive. He knew Marko was upset about something and he knew he needed some space.

Paul held up his hands in mock surrender, “Alright, brother, but you’re really missing out!”

“Next time,” Marko promised, nodding silently at Dwayne in a “thank you” gesture. Dwayne nodded once in acknowledgement before he and Paul started to head towards the entrance of the cave, behind David. Marko gently pulled the snapshot of you from his chest to stare at once more. His eyes lingered against your own, trying to read your expression. Were you trying to tell him something?

As if on cue, his stomach growled and his mouth watered softly at the thought of having Chinese food. He hadn’t had some in ages, but suddenly, munching on meat dribbled in sodium-latent sauce and swimming in noodles, before mindlessly winding down the aisles of the video store seemed like a much more pleasant way to spend his evening than sitting around sulking in the cave.

“Hey, wait up!” he yelled, his feet suddenly racing him towards the entrance and out of the cave as he gently placed the image of you into his inner breast pocket. The others were just barely getting onto their motorcycles when he breathlessly reached them, “I changed my mind, I want to come,” David and Paul grinned widely, while Dwayne simply smirked, “but only if we get Chinese food.”

“Deal, now get on your bike!” Marko couldn’t stop the wide smile that made its way onto his face as he trotted over to his motorcycle and hopped on. The comforting, albeit sudden and cacophonous sound of David starting up and revving his motorcycle flowed through Marko’s ears; the sound of the other bikes soon followed. After a few ‘whoop!’s of excitement and playful revving, they were off, heading towards their beloved boardwalk.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Happily munching away on his fortune cookie, Marko made his way down aisles filled to the brim with videos. He skimmed through all the titles, wondering what it would be like to live in some of his favorite movies. He would have loved to get a chance to face off Jason or be Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor. He couldn’t help but wonder what movies you would like or if you would even like movies. If he had to guess, he would say that you would have loved to go see movies in the theaters, especially with him, and that your favorite movie would be a science fiction film, maybe Back to the Future?

Marko was unfortunately reminded that you weren’t here and that he didn’t know what your favorite movie is, or if you even liked movies, when Paul rudely interrupted his night-dreaming by taking a loud, obnoxious bite from his fortune cookie.

“Hey! Get your own, loser!” He playfully shoved Paul, who was sporting a mischievous grin.

“But sharing is caring!”

“Who said I cared about you?”

“Well I NEVER!” Paul shouted as he playfully shoved Marko.

“HEY! You almost made me drop my cookie, asshole!” he shoved Paul in retaliation.

“Bring it on, Romeo!” he shouted exuberantly, landing another, harder but still playful, shove into Marko.

“Oh it’s so on, Nick Bottom!”

“You little shit!” A playful wrestling match ensued (after Marko finished the few bites left of his cookie), between the comedies and dramas of the video store. Having narrowly avoided being shoved into the D-H comedies, Marko pushes Paul straight into the A-F dramas, nearly knocking the entire stand over as several of the cassettes flew off the shelves.

“Hey! What the Hell is going on here?” An angry voice screeched, having witnessed the two duking it out in the store, “This isn’t the WWE, this is a video store! Take that shit outside, now,” Startled by the sound, the two immediately stood up, surprise oozing in their irises as they looked to find the source of the voice.

Marko’s mouth fell open, a gasp fluttering out meekly from his lips when his brain translated the information his retinas sent to it into a somewhat coherent thought. Despite his brain relentlessly turning the cogs at full speed inside his skull, his motor movements lacked and his mouth refused to form words as the shock coursed through his body.

It was impossible, it couldn’t be true; Paul must have knocked him out and now he was hallucinating nonsense. There was no way…

“Y…Y/N?” He practically whispered, your name travelling past his lips like an unsure wave flickering across the water in the sea.

Surprised that a new customer knew your name, you turned to face the blonde, curly-haired and colorful punk, eyeing him up suspiciously. It took you a moment, but once your eyes looked past the enlarged mullet and flamboyant jacket, your mind connected the dots and one of your hands instinctively went up to clutch the small, silver locket hanging from your neck. Inside was a picture of the young peasant who had wormed his way straight into your heart, nearly a century ago.

“Marko?!?”

#the lost boys #marko #marko x reader #my work

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beyondtheciouds · 3 years

Text

“She had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

March 17th 1942

The first time James had found his way through the Silent City, he was stunned at how many dark and dank corners had created the world of the dead. Each stone held a bone; rotting and ominous. These days, the watchnights were nonexistent here; only brass torches lined the walls. Secrets carved into the slate; reopened for the Silent Brothers to deem repeatable.

Everything around him felt wrong; as if he were disturbing the dead by being here. Jem warned him the dead did not take kindly to those who did not believe but he had to know for sure if she was gone. His heart lead the way; his mind divulging into pastimes far away; thorn brushes and tender glances. It did not take long to find the way; familiar stones icy on his fingertips.

Grace sat like a statue with her face buried in her hands. Her body was stiff and at first glace she had blended in with the stone walls; pale grays and eggshells. But then, she moved. Upon hearing footsteps she turned, her eyes gray and steady like a slab of cold granite. She watched him curiously under the veil of her hood. Her hair was covered with the steel gray robes of the Iron Sisters, her face as pale as the death she faked. She did not hesitate to call out to James. “Any news of Kit or my children?”

Her eyes, thoughtful gray skies held the dawn of his and attentively long stares preyed on his guilty love for her, he knew. Looking at her made him feel like that naïve thirteen year old boy again. The boy who still loved her unconditionally. He scratched absently at his bare wrist, feeling the subsequent throb of time passing him by. They were a disgrace. He should have never come here.

And this was why she was doing this. Because he loved her.

James shook his head, dark hair still long and untamed. He took another breath and stepped out of the darkness. Being around her was worse than watching her from the dark crevices of the underground. "No."

Grace sighed; a shameful sound reverberating from the back of her throat. "Are you sure?"

James breathed in deep the scent of the catacombs; mildew, dirt, water and must. Rotting bone and the irreplaceable scent of her lilac soap. “Sorry,” he said and the word felt raw, like an open wound. A slice of betrayal that he had made real. After all these years, Kit still had no idea about their years long affair. If James had anything to say about it, his cousin never would. “I haven’t seen him since Sunday.”

“I’m surprised that you agreed to meet.” Grace said, the words hollow and worlds away. He knew she was thinking of Kit; he was too and the thoughts stung like bee stings. "I just wanted to say goodbye to you. Once Jem comes for me, we'll go straight away to the Citadel."

James sat down beside her on the stone steps; his face softened to butter. “You didn’t have to do it this way, you know. I could have helped him understand.”

Grace shook her head; despair painted on her face like a portrait. "Christopher would never understand James. He loved me too much."

#cassandra clare #the shadowhunter chronicles #the last hours #james herondale #grace blackthorn #charles dickens

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bailey41 · 4 years

Text

📷: obviously from Le peuple et son Roi (2018)

Now posted on AO3

I haven’t really decided on when to post this on AO3 cuz the commitment would be significant, and involve many chapters, but this was a response to a half-jokey prompt from @nightshade2412 for an 18th-Century fanfic on Marianne x Hélöise. But I will at some point.

To be honest, the thing that bothered me the most about the two final Parisian codas in Portrait of a Lady on Fire was my own impending sense of dread for the times that the two principal characters will soon find themselves in.

Those scenes suggest a scant few years before the collapse of the ancien régime. What would of course follow was the upending of the social order and the age of terrible euphemisms: the Committee of Public Safety, the National Convention, the Directorate, the Consulate…

A period full of hypocritical oaths on equality and the rights of the (female) citizen, this time and place would probably not be the best time to resume a love affair between equals, but it is the world that Marianne and Hélöise were put in.

The good news is that Marianne could not see past the moment she was narrating in the film, and in this fic they meet a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a whole bunch of other times. The bad news is that it happens sometime between Year One of Equality (1792), The Terror, and The White Terror (1793-1795). At some point during these very bloody events, the hard-won attempts at enfranchisement by women in the early days of the Revolution are betrayed by both radicals and moderates in government.

The perception of time figures prominently in this telling. The First French Republic rejected the Gregorian calendar in favor of a radical, secular calendar to signify man’s triumph over the feudal past—and the start of a collective, egalitarian memory.

————

Vivre libre ou courir

...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?”

—Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Notes:

August 1, 1794.

It is five years after the French Revolution and nearly two years into the new Republic. The king and queen are dead. Robespierre is dead. The Terror is over but the “women’s clubs” that it outlawed remain shuttered. The price of bread is beginning to stabilize.

Marianne has found accommodation in this new order and is still gainfully employed as a painter, largely by being politically flexible with the leaders of competing factions in the National Convention.

Work is work. She still takes on a small number of pupils and works out of an atelier on rue du Chaume (now the rue des Archives), in what was the aristocratic Marais. The neighborhood is going through what we would now call a bit of transition.

Prologue: The Kalends of August

Year II of the French Republic, the 14th day of Thermidor, Quartidi.

————

Marianne couldn’t recall if it was a Thursday or a Friday in the old calendar. She’d kept a perpetual one in the studio but had stopped moving it forward in the weeks following the execution of Citizen Louis Capet.

That seemed a long time ago now.

Her attachment to the old method of marking the days was less about any kind of sentimentality. She was sentimental for sure, and at once still committed to whatever methods of measuring time, distances or weights were to govern this new world.

For the most part, this novel way of telling time celebrated both nature and reason, and she’d convinced herself that that was logic enough for her. But Marianne had become lousy at keeping time in general, and the ten (or was it eleven) months of this new system she’d endured so far—with its rhyming, excessively florid names and ten-day weeks—had tried her patience.

She was back to using their former names, and it was a hot day in August by any reckoning. She wasn’t about to venture outside to ask her friend the book-binder for one of his smuggled calendars from England or America. There will be time enough for that.

The pressing concern now was to find a way to keep all the sweet butter that Hélöise brought with her from spoiling. Even in the coolest place in the house, the oil in the pot had begun to separate, and it wasn’t even eight in the morning. Its faint odor conflated with the smells of the suppurating cheese in another cupboard and the vapors from the many paints and solvents in the atelier.

Indeed, the whole floor and even the attic above was in thrall to an alien miasma. Not that it mattered to Hélöise. She was sound asleep in their bed, unperturbed by Marianne puttering about, and remarkably unaffected by either the noise or by the rising heat.

Until she wasn’t.

“What is with all the noise?”

“I’m trying to summon something, like breakfast.”

“Does it usually involve all this slamming and moving about?”

“Well, yes.”

“Adagio. E domattina, please?”

“A Dio piacendo.” God willing.

“What does Robespierre call Him, the Supreme Being?”

“Did call Him. Did. My sweet.”

“Oh. How could i forget.”

It seemed rather strange then that the violence and dislocations of the last few months would find the two of them in a state of domestic quiet—more or less.

They had even settled on a kind of routine. Which was all the more extraordinary when you consider that they had both witnessed—but at some remove—the beheading of four of the most powerful men in the country, the mayor of Paris, and what remained of their camp-followers on the Place Louis XV not five days before.

The city was again on a knife’s edge, and the menfolk and quite a few market women were again engaged in their favorite pastime of settling political and personal scores, in a sanguinary manner, and often.

Hélöise had arrived the night before in her trousers and a striped purple coat. Not that there were many sans-culottes around anymore. Marianne advised her footman to remove the cockade from Heloise’s apron, all the better to blend in with the roving bands that radiated out of the Place des Vosges from the east, and the Hôtel de Ville to the west, that had been hunting Jacobin supporters for days now.

She bellows a yawn that Marianne can hear clear across the room.

“A noviciate at the convent, Marie-Fabienne, once told me a story.”

“Oh?”

“She liked me a lot. Quite a lot.”

“Am I going to like this story?”

“Come here and you’ll soon find out.”

————

[To be continued] (x)

#fanfic #portrait de la jeune fille en feu #portrait of a lady on fire #marianne x heloise #noemie merlant #adele haenel #celine sciamma

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theodorechaussard · 4 years

Text

Character Development Post

GENERAL:

Name: Théodore Chaussard

Nickname: Théo

Birthday: May 25th

Age: 33

Gender: Male

Place of Birth: Paris, France

Current Residence: Just outside London, United Kingdom

Nationality: French

FAMILY:

Grandparents: Arthur and Victoire Chaussard, Hugo and Ella Legrand

Aunts/Uncles: Louis Legrand (Uncle)

Parents: Jean Chaussard (father) and Emma Chaussard (mother)

Siblings: None

Relationship With Family: His uncle refuses to talk to him on account of his work, so his sole other living relative is his father, who’s serving a life sentence for murder.

Happiest Memory: His father brought over his old friend, Nicholas St. Clair, to the estate one day. Théo, then twelve years old, met the man for the first time, not knowing he would one day become not only a boss, but a loved and respected mentor. Théo’s happiest memory is Nicholas St. Clair promoting Théo to Commandant, shaking his hand and whispering in his ear, “You’ve made your father proud, Théodore.”

Childhood Trauma: Watching the police slam his father down on the tile kitchen floor, wrenching his arms behind his back to cuff him, and dragging him from the estate, his mother sobbing as it all happened.

Adult Trauma: Too many to list? Launceton, in general. The attack on the hotel, and pretty much all of his time spent in London.

MOB:

Occupation: Independent Business man, Entrepreneur

Affiliation(s): The St. Clair Organizations

Loyalty Level: High

Mob History: Started young, rose his way through the ranks working the streets of Launceton as a dealer, under the careful guidance and instruction of the St. Clair family. He obtained the rank of Commandant, was transferred to Porto Vehlo, and then to London as the Commandant of Westminster.

Notoriety: Somewhat high I suppose?

Deviance(s)?: None.

Possible Ulterior Affiliation(s): None.

Rivals or Enemies?: Johnathan Parsons. The man will die.

Strengths: Excellent shot, smooth tongue and a phenomenal cook.

Weaknesses: His conscience, his heart

Weapon of Choice: Walther PPK/S, chambered in .380 auto/9mm kurz

Money or Murder: Money. Or Murder for money?

PHYSICAL:

Height: 6ft 5in (196 cm)

Weight: 210 lbs (95 kg)

Build: Athletic/fit.

Hair Color: Dirty Blonde

Usual Hair Style: Well kept, combed

Eye Color: Blue.

Glasses? Contacts?: None

Style of Dress/Typical Outfit(s): Business casual - suit and tie, on a warm day slacks and a button up.

Typical Style of Shoes: Dress shoes. Even with jeans.

Jewelry? Tattoos? Piercings?: Fleur-De-Lis on his right shoulder

Scars: Many. Three bullet scars in his upper back, a knife wound in his right side.

Unique Mannerisms/Physical Habits: Théo’s foot bounces when he sits, which is mostly noticeable because he often rests his right ankle on his opposite knee.

Athleticism: Théo does his best to keep in shape, making trips to the boxing ring several times a week, actively swimming, and lifting weights in the basement of his home.

Health Problems/Illnesses: Currently? Sever Retrograde Amnesia from the injuries he sustained during the fight.

INTELLECT:

Level of Education: A Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, at the encouragement and expense of Nicholas St. Clair. (Debt repaid in full).

Languages Spoken: Fluent in French and English. Basic swear words in both italian and russian.

Level of Self-Esteem: Overall pretty good.

Gifts/Talents: Shooting. Been shooting from a young age, and he’s and expert shot with both hands.

Mathematical?: Financially, yes. Construction wise? He can get by if needed.

Makes Decisions Based Mostly On Emotions, or On Logic?: Mostly logic, unless it comes to the idea of love. His mother, when passing, made it her last wish that he’d find love.

Life Philosophy: Take before you’re taken from. Carpe Diem.

Religious Stance: Slowly becoming a more devout Catholic.

Cautious or Daring?: Daring, unless exigent circumstances.

Most Sensitive About/Vulnerable To: His father. He keeps telling himself that his father taking the fall was noble, that it was the right thing to do for a commandant. Anyone suggesting otherwise is treading on thin ice.

Optimist or Pessimist?: Pessimist, mostly. Tries his best to be optimistic.

Extrovert or Introvert?: Introverted, but the ability to appear extroverted for work (like most introverts).

RELATIONSHIPS:

Current Relationship Status: Engaged.

Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual.

Past Relationships: Flings here and there, a long term fling with Jessica.

Primary Reason For Being Broken Up With: He normally does the breaking up, though Jessica ended it for her sanity after the escapade at the PV Hotel.

Primary Reasons For Breaking Up With People: Commitment Issues

Ever Cheated?: Absolutely not.

Been Cheated On: Not that he knows of, besides Jessica being married for the last year of their fling...

Level of Sexual Experience: Somewhat-experienced

Story of Loss of Virginity: He met Jessica at school, and, well....

A Social Person?: When necessary. He drinks too much if he isn’t.

Most Comfortable Around: Probably Maya. He knows she won’t judge him. Too much.

Oldest Friend: Aurélie Parra (neé St. Clair)

SECRETS:

Life Goals: To follow in his father’s footsteps. If he becomes half the Commandant his father was, he’ll be doing well for himself.

Dreams: Somehow having both a family, and being a successful commandant.

Greatest Fears: Failing his father. He wants his father to know he made it, even if his father couldn’t have been there to help.

Most Ashamed Of: The whole affair with Jessica becoming public, and how it affected his friendship with Aur.

Secret Hobbies: He’s actually sketched here and there. Never seriously, but enjoys attempting to draw portraits.

Emotional State: Confused.

DETAILS/QUIRKS:

Night Owl or Early Bird?: Night Owl for sure. Screw mornings.

Light or Heavy Sleeper?: Light. He’s too concerned about being ready if someone were to break in.

Favorite Animal: Wolves.

Favorite Food: Super Burritos man. It’s dangerous.

Least Favorite Food: Not a fan of Indian Food.

Favorite Book: Frankenstein by Mary Shelly

Least Favorite Book: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Favorite Movie: Gladiator

Least Favorite Movie: He’s never been a fan of the Mission Impossible movies. American’s attempt at being suave like Bond.

Favorite Song: Underground by David Bowie.

Favorite Sport: He enjoys football. The real football, not that American trash.

Coffee or Tea?: Coffee.

Crunchy or Smooth Peanut Butter?: Smooth. He’s not a psycho

Type of Car He Drives: Aston Martin DBS.

Lefty or Righty?: Right-handed.

Favorite Color: Navy

Cusser?: When it’s called for. Not normally.

Smoker? Drinker? Drug User?: He enjoys a good scotch just a tad too much.

Biggest Regret: Aurélie. That whole thing.

Pets: None.

#character development

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the-demelza-robins · 6 years

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on the rarity of sunshowers (jily)

notes: no matter how hard I try, I always come back to hogwarts!jily...

words: 3.7k

James is jumpier then usual. Lily notices at breakfast; notices how he almost stabs his toast when he tries to butter it, how he catches his snitch twenty-six times in nine minutes, how he says, “Alright, Evans?” on no less than three separate occasions (not that she minds). He fidgets enough that Sirius threatens to expel him to the first years’ seats on the far side of the table, something that causes him to attempt to hold his breath in a bid for stillness until he’s turning blue, and Lily has to resuscitate him with her wand (not that she minds). He runs his fingers through his hair so that it looks even more messy than usual. He asks Lily to Hogsmeade, and when she declines, he says, “Just joking”, and her heart aches. She wants to accept his offer, but she can’t be sure it’s a genuine one. And she must be sure.

The fact is that she has fancied James Potter far too long — a year now, starting in year six all the way up to this rainy day in December — for anything to happen. It’s a cruel twist of fate, the way that their doomed love story worked out. Lily despises it for a number of reasons, the first and foremost being that perhaps the best comeback of her life, when she’d swore she preferred the giant squid to James Potter, was no longer true - in fact, it was a blatant lie, the most opposite of the truth she could get. She would take James Potter over most things, now, including her sister.

Though perhaps that wasn’t saying much, seeing as her sister hadn’t invited her to her wedding. Apparently it had been a simple affair, a quiet wedding on the countryside. Lily could imagine it: Vernon’s new car parked close enough that the guests could still admire it but far enough away that it could melt into the hills, a cake, short vows, a proper bride. Music, but not too much, and a big, white tent with turrets that would blend in with the overcast clouds above.

Yes, Lily could picture it. But that was all she could do, because she hadn’t been invited and, as were the natural progressions of such things, had not attended. What made the situation worse was that, because of Lily’s absence, none of Petunia’s family had been there on her wedding day. Still, Lily reasoned, it was Petunia’s choice.

Petunia blamed Lily for a lot of things, the most important of which being the death of their parents. When the news of their deaths had first broke, Lily had told her sister they’d died in a car accident, and in a way they had, since their car had been blown up by Death Eaters. It had turned into a rather large scandal when Petunia was informed of the truth by way of Snape, who set about destroying Lily’s life once he realized she’d never talk to him again. Petunia had been hurt, but instead of channeling the hurt into anger and the anger into action, like Lily would’ve done, Petunia had spat and stomped and called names that Snape must’ve also taught her, names like mud-

Well. No use thinking about any of that now. Lily turns her attention back to Marlene’s nervous assessment of the weather, the way that her best friend twists with the promise ring she’d received from her Durmstrang boyfriend as she looks up at the enchanted ceiling. “No clouds, just rain, a sunshower…”

Lily wonders why this matters; seeing as they don’t have Herbology or Care of Magical Creatures (it’s a Saturday), there’s no reason for them to go outside. Lily, for one, has been planning on curling up by the fire in the Gryffindor common room and reading The Shining, a muggle book that had been her father’s last gift to her. She finds it quite intense, but on a day like today, with the rain pattering against the window, she thinks it’d be nice to escape to another world, a world where the supernatural only existed in the Overlook Hotel… She let her thoughts drift again, back to her father, who would tell her and Tuney stories before bed until she insisted she’d outgrown them. There had been one, she remembered, that involved dragons, and a little boy who was fighting them, cheered on by people in the clouds. What she’d give to hear one of his stories again…

“Lily! Are you even listening to a word I’m saying?”

The world comes back into focus again as Dorcas snaps her fingers in front of Lily’s face repeatedly.

“Of course,” she responds hotly, flinching away from her friend’s fingers. It’s a lie, of course, but she’s been lying a lot lately and now do so without thinking and without giving anything away.

“Then will you please answer my question?”

Across the table, James and Sirius are now debating heatedly. Lupin and Peter are looking on with expressions of mild amusement. Lily wonders what they’re talking about.

“Hello?” Dorcas says. “My question: will you bring the sign for the game, or will I?”

“What game?” Lily asks, and she knows she’s made a mistake as soon as the words have left her mouth. James and Sirius stop their conversation and stare, open-mouthed, at her, something that she hasn’t seen them do in quite a while.

“What game?” James echoes disbelievingly, his snitch buzzing around his head like those birds in the cartoons Lily used to watch when she was younger.

In fact, the snitch is going so fast that watching it is making Lily dizzy, so she closes her eyes for a few seconds and says, “Will you please control your snitch? I’m getting nauseous.”

“Give it to me, mate,” she hears Sirius say, and the sounds of James’s muffled protests bring a smile to her face. They’ve forgotten her slip-up, or at least she thinks they have. For now she’s remembered what she missed, and she can’t believe she’d been that stupid. She opens her eyes and turns to Dorcas. “I’ll bring the sign.”

Her friend nodded, something like relief crossing her face. “Thanks, Lily.”

Marlene, however, doesn’t look as pleased. All nerves from before - Lily realizes why her friend had been nervous, it was because she was Gryffindor’s keeper - have vanished as she questions her friend. “Why were you zoning out?”

Because James is sitting across from her, and sometimes his knee accidentally touches hers. Because Petunia is still not talking to her, and though Lily is strong enough to handle it, her sister had gotten married for Merlin’s sake and she hadn’t been invited. Because her parents are dead and The Shining is scary and sometimes she just wants to hear her father tell her a story before bed like he used to…

“Just tired,” Lily responds, flashing her friend a quick smile before standing up. “I think I forgot something upstairs. I’ll be back.”

“Quidditch starts in twenty minutes!” Dorcas hollers after her receding form.

“Oh, Merlin, we’d better get going…” James says, and then Lily’s out of earshot and alone with her thoughts. She takes her familiar path up to Gryffindor tower, thankful that everyone else is either at breakfast or on the pitch. She needs time to reset, time to stop the ever-growing lump in her throat before her eyes get watery. It’s happening more and more lately, that terrible feeling that surfaces when Lily thinks about everything, really thinks about it - Petunia, the wedding, Voldemort, her feelings for James - that terrible feeling that summons tears to her eyes almost immediately. At this point, she’s running on fumes, trying to keep up with everything in her personal life, plus schoolwork, plus being Head Girl.

By the time she convinces herself that everything is fine, she’s reached the Fat Lady. With the muttered mention of treacle tarts, the portrait swings open to admit her, and Lily climbs into the common room. Like the rest of the castle, it’s empty save for a few cats curled up on the comfier armchairs, but Lily pays them no mind as she crosses the space and walks up the stairs to the girls’ dormitories. She finds the sign that Dorcas had in mind quickly — it was furled on her friend’s bed, its letters flashing red and gold at a speed that was guaranteed to give Lily a migraine — and lets herself stop in front of the mirror on her way out. Her eyes aren’t damp, which is good, and her face isn’t flushed. She shows no outward sign of distress, which she supposes is a point in her favor. It’s taken her a long time to control her feelings (which is a mushy word for those urges she gets to cry all night or yell mindless insults) — fifth year and below were a time when no one was safe from Lily Evans’ temper — but the war has hardened her, made her less accessible than she ever was.

She hears the cheer of the Quidditch crowd and knows she’s late. Grabbing the sign, she sprints from the dormitories to the common room, from the common room to the portrait hole, from the portrait hole to the entrance hall, and from the entrance hall to the pitch. It’s almost impossible to spot her friends in the sea of red-and-gold clad Gryffindors in the stands, so she resigns herself to sitting alone in the first seat she can find. The sign pulses underneath her cold fingers, and as the paper gets populated with tiny raindrops, she remembers that it’s raining.

“Lily!” She looks over at the sound of her voice to find Dorcas waving at her three rows up. “Come sit with us!”

Lily obliges, and once she’s sat down, she hands the sign to Dorcas, who thrusts it in the air immediately. “You’re seriously out of it today — YES, MARLENE! GO LIONS! —, did you know that?”

“Maybe,” Lily mumbles, her eyes searching the pitch for a certain Chaser. When she can’t find him, she turns back to her friend, conscious of Remus and Peter listening in.

“Can I ask why?” “No.”

Dorcas looks like she’s about to respond, but before she can, the sky rumbles and truly opens up in a way that suggests that the morning’s sunshower was just a prelude to the storm that is about to occur. The Quidditch players seem like nothing more than streaks through the sheets of rain that tumble down, and Lily finds herself soaked to the bone.

“Did you pack an umbrella?” Dorcas asks, looking similarly wet.

Lily shakes her head.

“I did,” a new voice says, and Lily’s surprised to see that Mary Macdonald has been sitting on the other side of Dorcas the whole time. Though Mary is a Gryffindor in their year, Lily has never had a meaningful conversation with her — in fact, Lily thinks she’s talked more with Hufflepuffs — for she’s a very quiet girl whose nose can most often be found in a book. Besides, Lily had never felt the need to amass more friends; Dorcas and Marlene had always been more than enough, compensating not only for Lily’s lack of friends earlier in life but also for Petunia’s absence, once the sisters’ relationship had reached that point. Lily sometimes felt a little guilty that she didn’t know Mary or Alice Fortescue, the fifth occupant of their dormitory, as well, but comforted herself in the fact that the latter had never been very eager to make friends with her, seeing as her best friend had always been Frank Longbottom.

Now, though, Lily is extremely grateful for Mary Macdonald, especially as she produces a very large umbrella and opens it, shielding the three of them from the rain.

“Thank you,” Dorcas says, and Lily echoes her. She can barely hear Amos Diggory’s commentary over the sound of rain hitting the ground, and she has no idea what the score is. Still, she tries to focus on the game, but as soon as she does so, the players all drift downward and touch the ground.

“What’s going on?”

“Gryffindor’s called a time out, I think,” Mary says so quietly that the sound of the rain almost carries her voice away.

It’s a split-second decision, but one that Lily makes with very little difficulty. She’s tired, tired of everything in her life, but one thing she’s especially tired of is hiding. Hiding her watery eyes and flushed face; hiding her anger with Snape, left over from when he first called her that word; tired of hiding how she much she hurts and aches; tired of hiding how she feels when James Potter’s knee touches hers underneath the crowded breakfast table. She’s tired of it all, and she knows how to alleviate some of the exhaustion.

She stands up, and the rain batters her. The time-out has not yet ended, and now that she’s higher up, she can see the scoreboard: it’s 0-60, Slytherin.

“Where are you going?” Dorcas asks, a look of concern on her face. “You’ll freeze.”

“Down,” Lily replies, her heart pounding loudly in her chest. “I’ll be back soon.” With that, she races to the pitch, the rain pelting her back as she reaches the muddy field. She can see him now, the way he’s talking to his team, the look on his face suggesting the relentless optimism he’s trying to instill in his teammates.

When she’s ten feet away, he sees her. His mouth stops forming words, and he stares. “Lily?”

“James,” she says, and the whole team is watching her now, maybe even the whole pitch, but it doesn’t feel that way. She notices his misty glasses (it’s a wonder he even saw her coming) and keeps walking towards him. The team breaks their huddle to let her through, their eyes on her wearily, no doubt wondering why she’s so, so close to their captain…

James breathes in deeply — she’s close enough to hear it — and says, “Lily, what are you —”

She lifts her hand and takes off his glasses, and he blinks.

“Impervius”, she whispers (she’s always had a knack for wandless magic, something she’s very proud of), and his lenses clear up immediately.

“It repels water,” she says by way of explanation. She hands the glasses back to him, and he puts them on.

“Right. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Oi! Are we gonna play Quidditch or not?” yells the Seeker for the team (Lily doesn’t remember his name, only that he’s a fourth year and apparently doesn’t care that he’s stopped her from saying something impulsive, like I love you or I’m sorry).

“Please win,” she says instead, and walks off the pitch, feeling James’s eyes on her.

***

The final score is 200-70, Gryffindor, and Lily finds that she’s not quite as annoyed at the Seeker as she was during the time-out. Dorcas peppers her with questions almost as soon as the match is over — “Lily, what did you do to James?” being the most notable one — but Lily ignores her, because that moment felt private, even with countless eyes on them.

Marlene rushes right at them, only pausing at the last second to laugh at how terrified they both look at the sight of her. She’s muddy and grinning, and sweeps them into a hug immediately, covering them in mud and letting the heavy rain immediately clear it from their skin. Dorcas starts to complain about the clothing stains she’ll get from the mud, but Lily can tell that she doesn’t really care.

“Party in the common room!” Marlene almost screams, and Dorcas mutters something about how she’ll be deaf by the time she’s thirty, but Marlene doesn’t care and Lily doesn’t either, for she feels happy for the first time in quite awhile. When the hug finally ends, Lily looks at Marlene again, abandoning all subtlety.

“Has James left the changing rooms yet?”

Marlene smirks. “He was packing up his things when I left.”

“I’ll be back,” Lily replies, leaving Dorcas looking positively scandalized.

***

The walk to the changing rooms takes about a minute and a quarter, but to Lily it feels much longer. She shoulders through the crowd of happy Gryffindors and defeated Slytherins, trying to control her loudly beating heart. She knows that James is still in the changing rooms, knows because she can feel it and also because no overzealous Gryffindors are lifting him triumphantly on their shoulders.

She reaches the door to the structure and knocks twice. It’s opened, almost immediately, by James, his bag swung over his shoulder, broomstick in hand.

As soon as he processes who it is, his smile turns into a frown. “Lils? What are you doing here?”

Lily looks around the room, making sure that they’re alone. When she sees that they are, she closes the door, takes a shuddering breath, and turns to him. “Good job today.”

“Thanks,” he says, dropping his bag and broomstick and sitting on the bench in the middle of the room. “Is something wrong?”

She twists her fingers together. “James, I’ve been wanting to say this for awhile now, and —”

He cuts her off, standing up again bench and moving towards her. He puts his hands on her shoulders and looks right at her, and Oh Merlin, those eyes — “Lily, are you okay?”

“I’m not, but that’s not the point. Ever since sixth year, I’ve —”

“You’re not okay? What’s going on? You have been seeming off lately, I was going to ask —”

“James, would you please just listen to me!”

“Right, er, sorry.” He takes his hands off her shoulders and leans back a little, and Lily misses his closeness.

“Ever since the sixth year — and I know this’ll be hard for you to believe, but, well, here it is — ever since the sixth year I’ve had feelings for you, and at first I thought that they would pass, but it’s been a year, James, and I —”

He closes his eyes. “Lily —”

“James, would you please let me finish, I promise I’ll bugger off after —”

He opens his eyes, adjusts his glasses. “Lily, you don’t understand.” His hands find her waist, and Lily realizes that she’s misinterpreted his response. “Since fifth year,” he whispers, and she feels something opening inside of her, like the sun peaking through the clouds, “since fifth year, Lily, I’ve liked you a lot more than I should admit.”

She looks up at him. They’re so close, in more ways than one; Lily can feel them standing on the edge of something amazing, can feel James’s hands on her back, can feel the way he’s leaning in ever so slightly. “I’m glad we’ve got that settled, then,” she whispers.

He smiles, and then he kisses her. It’s nothing like Lily would have expected, no awkward moment when they’re trying to figure out how to hold each other, where to put their hands — in fact, to Lily’s overloaded and dazzled mind, it’s like they just fit, like they’re picking up from where they left off in a past life. She doesn’t think about this too much, though, because James is pulling her closer and she’s wrapping her arms around his neck and messing with his hair and feeling his smile against her lips, and she’s thinking that maybe they should get more comfortable, because she doesn’t intend on going to that party for a while, not when she and James have just stumbled upon something new and wonderful, not when James is backing her slowly against the wall —

“Oops!”

She jumps away from him and looks towards the door, which has been thrust open by Dorcas and Marlene. By the sound of it, Marlene spoke, now, her eyes find Lily’s, flashing invisible thumbs-up signs.

“Hullo, ladies,” James says evenly, and Lily can’t even imagine what they must look like right now. She finds she doesn’t care, though, because James is here and he’s hers, at least for now.

“Lily, we just wanted to tell you that, erm, we found your necklace in the stands,” Marlene says, holding up a star necklace that Lily’s always been particularly fond of.

“I guess it fell off,” Lily replies lamely, walking further out of James’s vicinity to take it from her friends.

“Well, that’s it…” Dorcas says, clearing her throat.

“Carry on!” Marlene adds loudly, and Lily scowls as they tumble out of the room, slamming the door shut on their way out.

“They’re ridiculous,” she says, pretty sure she’s blushing.

James walks over to her, the corner of his mouth — a mouth that had just been on her mouth, sweet Merlin — quirked up slightly. “We all are, to be honest.”

“Should we go to the party?” As soon as the words leave her mouth, Lily realizes what a stupid thing to say it is.

“Sure,” James says, and his half-smile turns into a grin. “Only if you’ll come as my date, though.”

“You don’t bring dates to common room parties, Potter,” Lily scoffs, trying to contain her own smile.

“Well, Evans, considering I’m captain of the team that just thrashed Slytherin, I think I can do what I want.”

“If you say so.” The smile breaks through, but it’s not like she feels bad about it. He shoulders his broomstick and bag, looks around the room one more time, and takes Lily’s hand.

“Shall we?”

***

Lily is happier than usual. James notices it on the walk back to the castle; notices how she smiles up at the sky, how she squeezes his hand while he talks about the match, how she invites him to go to Hogsmeade with her (“A real date, James, where we go someplace that’s not in the common room”), how she blushes when they walk through the portrait hole, hand in hand, to the sound of wolf-whistling and shouted congratulations — James notices all these things, and hopes that she stays happy. He promises himself that he’ll keep her happy for as long as she’ll have him — this month, maybe, or this year, or (if he’s lucky), the rest of her life.

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cathypoetflower · 5 years

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Stomach Wrench

(Words from a Hungry Wedding party intruder)

Blade – rake – torch, insecticide. Whip lash, help me Mumma, I sense the ceiling caving in. Blade – rake – torch – insecticide. Whip lash, shall I depart? I'm at a loose end? All straws are loose. There is no last straw. There is no first straw. Which way? I dig deep, in fact I reach in, hand first into my mouth. I then with all determination, penetrate the entrance to my throat. You see, my destination is my stomach.

Blade – rake – torch – insecticide. Whip lash, with all determination. I tried very hard, I tried very hard. I could not do it. The world champion for dry reaching. What a trophy to be proud of. What an award to celebrate. A thick, lumpy, bland bile, mud slime projected from my lower, solo bulge. I tried, I tried, I tried. I was very ill, very ill. Only for a day. Yet consequences caught up soon.

I love coffee. I couldn‟t drink it. I cut and scratched the black hole to my throat when desperately trying to get my hand in, in, into my stomach. The stinging snatched my coffee away, spilling on the floor. I want to rip my guts out. That's what I wanted to do, rip my guts out. Everything I could get my hands on down in there, reach in and yank it all out! Why? Not yet. Why? Not yet. Rattling refuse was down there, down below in my lower solo bulge. Cans, bottles, bones n'butts in sweet syrup bile, a gluttonous revolting rapid hurling through. Once I recognised as my stomach, I now know as the dump.

On this particular occasion – cold cow, a fine rare roast, sliced and arranged to the portrait perfection of a parrot. Fish – exquisitely baked, simply saturated in butter, salt and garlic, showered in fresh parsley sprinkles. Sheep – the softest lamb I've ever consumed, swimming in the most delectable juices I could not identify, tempting me to temporarily depart myself from the party and find a shot glass full of Cognac to drink, just-by-itself. Truly a sensational swig. Cake – it was a palace and for the first time in my life, I wanted this palace to fall on me. It had the fluffiest interior. Angels could fly through it, soft and cushioned on their flight. They'd go mud bathing in chocolate mousse on the mezzanine and ski, cross country on the edible marzipan gazebo.

Just Married stringed together making a hell of a racket as the fallen lovers rattled down the driveway. No one could hear, nor I, yet calm, quiet night jetty sounds could be heard if you were very up-close, ear touching my stomach. The knocking, rocking of the sleeping boats with occasional bell chimes. The ordered separation of rubbish for gradual improvement of our earth, had no say here. Recycling? A joint, conglomerating collection of it all, coming out to fertilise your sea or enrich your sewer from my guts.

I failed to reach and wrench it out, the entire contents of my stomach. Further efforts to wrench the dump would cause detrimental consequences, carrying me to casualty. I didn't want to go there. Spew out the whole mass? Force myself to throw up? No. That is just a residual effect. I want the whole house and contents out of me! Stomach pump?

I am on my way and will depart this marital affair with gumption, not to clean your bathtub.

Poetry Express Newsletter #57

http://btckstorage.blob.core.windows.net/site29/Member%20Groups/Survivors%20Poetry/57.pdf

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rhetoricandlogic · 6 years

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The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery By Catherynne M. Valente

Issue #200, Special Double-Issue

, May 26, 2016

AUDIO PODCAST

EBOOK

(Finalist, Eugie Foster Memorial Award, 2017)

When my father, a glassblower of some modest fame, lay gasping on his deathbed, he offered, between bloody wheezings, a choice of inheritance to his three children: a chest of Greek pearls, a hectare of French land, or an iron punty. Impute no virtue to my performance in this little scene! I, being the youngest, chose last, which is to say I did not choose at all. The elder of us, my brother Prospero, seized the chest straightaway, having love in his heart for nothing but jewels and gold, the earth’s least interesting movements of the bowel which so excite, in turn, the innards of man. Pomposo, next of my blood, took up the deed of land, for he always fancied himself a lord, even in our childhood games, wherein he sold me in marriage to the fish in the lake, the grove of poplar trees, the sturdy stone wall, our father’s kiln and pools of molten glass, even the sun and the moon and the constellation of Taurus. The iron punty was left to me, my father’s only daughter, who could least wield it to any profit, being a girl and therefore no fit beast for commerce. All things settled to two-thirds satisfaction, our father bolted upright in his bed, cried out: Go I hence to God! then promptly fell back, perished, and proceeded directly to Hell.

The old man had hardly begun his long cuddle with the wormy ground before Prospero be-shipped himself with a galleon and sailed for the Dutch East Indies in search of a blacker, more fragrant pearl to spice his breakfast and his greed whilst Pomposo wifed himself a butter-haired miller’s daughter, planting his seed in both France and her with a quickness. And thus was I left, Perpetua alone and loudly complaining, in the quiet dark of my father’s glassworks, with no one willing to buy from my delicate and feminine hand, no matter how fine the goblet on the end of that long iron punty.

The solution seemed to me obvious. Henceforward, quite simply, I should never be a girl again. This marvelous transformation would require neither a witch’s spell nor an alchemist’s potion. From birth I possessed certain talents that would come to circumscribe my destiny, though I cursed them mightily until their use came clear: a deep and commanding voice, a masterful height, and a virile hirsuteness, owing to a certain unmentionable rootstock of our ancient family. Served as a refreshingly exotic accompaniment to these, some few of us are also born with one eye as good as any wrought by God, and one withered, hardened to little more than a misshapen pearl notched within a smooth and featureless socket, an affliction which, even if all else could be made fair between us, my brothers did not inherit, so curse them forever, say I. No surprise that no one wanted to marry the glassblower’s giant hairy one-eyed daughter!

Yet now my defects would bring to me, not a husband, but the world entire. I had only to cut my hair with my father’s shears, bind my breasts with my mother’s bridal veil, clothe myself in my brothers’ coats and hose, blow a glass bubble into a false eye, and think nothing more of Perpetua forever. My womandectomy caused me neither trouble nor grief—I whole-heartedly recommend it to everyone! But, since such a heroic act of theatre could hardly be accomplished in the place of my birth, I also traded two windows for a cart and an elderly but good-humored plough-horse, packed up tools and bread and slabs of unworked glass, and departed that time and place forever. London, after all, does not care one whit who you were. Or who you are. Or who you will become. Frankly, she barely cares for herself, and certainly cannot be bothered with your tawdry backstage changes of costume and comedies of mistaken identity.

That was long ago. So long that to say the numbers aloud would be an act of pure nihilism. Oh, but I am old, good sir, old as ale and twice as bitter, though I do not look it and never shall, so far as I can tell. I was old when you were weaned, squalling and farting, and I shall be old when your grandchildren annoy you with their hideous fashions and worse manners. Kings and queens and armadas and plagues have come and gone in my sight, ridiculous wars flowered and pruned, my brothers died, the scales balanced at last, for having not the malformed and singular eye, neither did they have the longevity that is our better inheritance, fashions swung from opulence to piousness and back to the ornate flamboyance that is their favored resting state once more.

And thus come I, Master Cornelius Peek, Glassmaker to the Rich and Redolent, only slightly dented, to the age which was the mate to my soul as glove to glove or slipper to slipper. Such an age exists for every man, but only a lucky few chance to be born alongside theirs. For myself, no more perfect era can ever grace the hourglass than the one that began in the Year of Our Lord 1660, in the festering scrotum of London, at the commencement of the long and groaning orgy of Charles II’s pretty, witty reign.

If you would know me, know my house. She is a slim, graceful affair built in a fashion somewhat later than the latest, much of brick and marble and, naturally, glass, three stories high, with the top two being the quarters I share with my servants, the maid-of-all-work Mrs. Matterfact and my valet, Mr. Suchandsuch (German, I believe, but I do respect the privacy of all persons), and my wigs, my wardrobe, and my lady wife, when I am in possession of such a creature, an occurrence more common and without complaint than you might assume, (of which much more, much later). I designed the edifice myself, with an eye to every detail, from the silver door-knocker carved in the image of a single, kindly eye whose eyelid must be whacked vigorously against the iris to gain ingress, to the several concealed chambers and passageways for my sole and secret use, all of which open at the pulling of a sconce or the adjusting of an oil painting, that sort of thing, to the smallest of rose motifs stenciled upon the wallpaper.

The land whereupon my lady house sits, however, represents a happy accident of real estate investment, as I purchased it a small eternity before the Earl of Bedford seized upon the desire to make of Covent Garden a stylish district for stylish people, and the Earl was forced to make significant accommodations and gratifications on my account. I am always delighted by accommodations and gratifications, particularly when they are forced, and most especially when they are on my account.

The lower floor, which opens most attractively onto the newly-christened and newly-worthwhile Drury Lane, serves as my showroom, and in through my tasteful door flow all the nobly whelped and ignobly wealthed and blind (both from birth and from happenstance, I do not discriminate) and wounded and syphilitic of England, along with not a few who made the journey from France, Italy, Denmark, even the Rus, to receive my peculiar attentions. With the most exquisite consideration, I appointed the walls of my little salon with ultramarine watered silk and discreet, gold-framed portraits of my most distinguished customers. In the northwest corner, you will find what I humbly allege to be the single most comfortable chair in all of Christendom, reclined at an, at first glance, radical angle, that nevertheless offers an extraordinary serenity of ease, stuffed with Arabian horsehair and Spanish barley, sheathed in supple leather the color of a rose just as the last sunlight vanishes behind the mountains. In the northeast corner, you will find, should you but recognize it, my father’s pitted and pitiful iron punty, braced above the hearth with all the honor the gentry grant to their tawdry ancestral swords. The ceiling boasts a fine fresco depicting that drunken uncle of Greek Literature, the Cyclops, trudging through a field of poppies and wheat with a ram under each arm, and the floor bears up beneath a deep blanket of choice carpets woven by divinely inspired and contented Safavids, so thick no cheeky draught even imagines it might invade my realm, and all four walls, from baseboard to the height of a man, are outfitted with a series of splendid drawers, in alternating gold and silver designs, presenting to the hands of my supplicants faceted knobs of sapphire, emerald, onyx, amethyst, and jasper. These drawers contain my treasures, my masterpieces, the objects of power with which I line my pockets and sauce my goose. Open one, any one, every one, and all will be revealed on plush velvet cushions, for there rest hundreds upon hundreds of the most beautiful eyes ever to open or close upon this fallen earth.

No fingers as discerning as mine could ever be content with the glazier’s endless workaday drudge through plate windows and wine bottles, vases and spectacles and spyglasses, hoping against hope for the occasional excitement of a goblet or a string of beads that might, if you did not look too closely, resemble, in the dark, real pearls. No, no, a thousand, million times no! Not for me that life of scarred knuckles whipped by white-molten strands of stray glass, of unbearable heat and even more unbearable contempt oozing from those very ones who needed me to keep the rain out of their parlors and their spirits off the table linen.

I will tell you how I made this daring escape from a life of silicate squalor, and trust you, as I suppose I already have done, to keep my secrets—for what is the worth of a secret if you never spill it? My deliverance came courtesy of a pot of pepper, a disfigured milkmaid, and the Dogaressa of Venice.

It would seem that my brothers were not quite so malevolently egomaniacal as they seemed on that distant, never-to-be-forgotten day when our father drooled his last. One of them was not, at least. Having vanished neatly into London and established myself, albeit in an appallingly meager situation consisting of little more than a single kiln stashed in the best beloved piss-corner of the Arsegate, marvering paltry, poignant cups against the stone steps of a whorehouse, sleeping between two rather unpleasantly amorous cows in a cheesemaker’s barn, I was neither happy nor quite wretched, for at least I had made a start. At least I was in the arms of the reeking city. At least I had escaped the trap laid by pearls and hectares and absconding brothers.

And then, as these things happen, one day, not different in any quality or deed from any other day, I received a parcel from an exhausted-looking young man dressed in the Florentine style. I remember him as well as my supper Thursday last—the supper was pigeon pie and fried eels with claret; the lad, a terrifically handsome black-haired trifle who went by the rather lofty name of Plutarch—and after wiping the road from his eyes and washing it from his throat with ale that hardly deserved the name, he presented me with a most curious item: a fat silver pot, inlaid with a lapis lazuli ship at full sail.

Inside found I a treasure beyond the sweat-drenched dreams of upwardly mobile men, which is to say, a handful of peppercorns and beans of vanil, those exotic, black and fragrant jewels for which the gluttonous world crosses itself three times in thanks. Plutarch explained, at some length, that my brother Prospero now dwelt permanently in the East Indies where he had massed a fabulous fortune, and wished to assure himself that his sister, the sweet, homely maid he abandoned, could make herself a good marriage after all. I begged the poor boy not to use any of those treacherous words again in my or anyone’s hearing: not marriage, not maid, and most of all not sister. Please and thank you for the pepper, on your way, tell no one my name nor how you found me and how did you find me by God and the Devil himself—no, don’t tell me, I shall locate this lost relative and deliver the goods to her with haste, though I could perhaps be persuaded to pass the night reading a bit of Plutarch before rustling up the wastrel in question, but, hold fast, my darling, I must insist you submit to my peculiar tastes and maintain both our clothing and cover of darkness throughout; I find it sharpens the pleasure of the thing, this is my, shall we say, firm requirement, and no argument shall move me.

Thus did I find myself a reasonably rich and well-read man. And that might have made a pleasant and satisfying enough end of it, if not for the milkmaid.

For, as these things happen, one day not long after, not different in any hour or act than any other day, a second parcel appeared upon my, now much finer, though not nearly so fine as my present, doorstep. Her name was Perdita, she was in possession of a complexion as pure as that of a white calf on the day of its birth, hair as red as a fresh wound, an almost offensively pregnant belly, and to crown off her beauty, it must be mentioned, both her eyes had been gouged from her pretty skull by means of, I was shortly to learn, a pair of puritanical ravens.

It would seem that my other brother, Pomposo—you remember him, yes? Paying attention, are we?—was still in the habit of marrying unsuspecting girls off to trees and fish and stones, provided that the trees were his encircling arms, the fish his ardent tongue, and the stones those terribly personal, perceptive, and pendulous seed-vaults of his ardor, and poor, luckless Perdita had taken quite the turn round the park. Perhaps we are not so divided by our shared blood as all that, Pomposo! Hats off, my good man, and everything else, too. Well, the delectably lovely and lamentable maid in question found herself afflicted both by Little Lord Pomposo and by that peculiar misfortune which bonds all men as one and makes them brothers: she had a bad father.

Perdita told me of her predicament over my generous table. She spoke with more haste than precision, tearing out morsels of Mrs. Matterfact’s incomparable baked capon in almond sauce with her grubby fingers and fumbling it into that plump face whilst she rummaged amongst her French pockets for English words to close in her tale like a green and garnishing parsley. As far as I could gather, her cowherding father had, in his youth, contracted the disease of religion, a most severe and acute strain. He took the local clergyman’s daughter to wife, promptly locked her in his granary to keep her safe from both sin and any amusement at all, and removed a child from her every year or so until she perished from, presumably, the piercing shame of having tripped and fallen into one of the more tiresome fairy tales.

Perdita’s father occupied the time he might have spent not slowly murdering his wife upon his one and only hobby: the keeping of birds of prey. Now, one cannot fault the man for that! But he loved no falcons nor hawks nor eagles, only a matched pair of black-hearted ravens he called by the names of Praisegod and Feargod (there really can be no accounting for, or excusing of, the tastes of Papists) which he had trained from the egg to hunt down the smallest traces of wickedness upon his estate and among his children. For this unlikely genius had taught his birds, painstakingly, to detect the delicate and complex scents of sexual congress, and the corvids twain became so adept that they were known to arrive at many a village window only moments after the culmination of the act.

Now you have taken up all the pieces of this none-too-sophisticated puzzle and can no doubt assume the rest. My brother conquered Perdita’s virtue with ease, for no such dour and draconian devoutness can raise much else but libertines, a fact which may yet save us from the vicious fate of a world redeemed, and put my niece (for indeed it proved to be a niece) in her with little enough care for anything but the trees and the fish and the stones of his own bucolic life. No sooner than he had rolled off of her but Praisegod and Feargod arrived, screeching to wake the glorious dead, the scent of coupling maddening their black brains, and devoured Perdita’s eyeballs in a hideous orgy of gore and terribly poor parenting. Pomposo, ever steadfast and humbly responsible for his own affairs, sent his distress directly to me and, I imagine, poured a brimming glass of wine with which to toast himself.

“My dear lady,” said I, gently prying a joint of Mrs. Matterfact’s brandied mutton from her fist, hoping to preserve at least something for myself, “I cannot imagine what you or my good brother mean me to do with a child. I am a bachelor, I wish devoutly to remain so, and my bachelorhood is only redoubled by my regrettable feelings toward children, which mirror the drunkard’s for a mug of clear water: well enough and wholesome for most, he supposes, but what can one do with one? But I am not pitiless. That, I am not, my dear. You may, of course, remain here until the child... occurs, and we shall endeavor to locate some suitable position in town for one of your talents.”

Ah, but I had played my hand and missed the trick! “You misunderstand, monsieur,” protested the comely Perdita. “Mister Pompy didn’t send me to you for your hospitalité. He said in London he had a brother who could make me eyes twice as pretty as they ever were and would only charge me the favor of not squeezing out my babe on his parlor floor.”

Even a thousand miles distant, my skinflint family could put the screws to me, turn them tight, and have themselves a nice giggle at my groans. But at least the old boy guessed my game of trousers and did not give me up, even to his paramour.

“They was green,” the milkmaid whispered, and the ruination of her eye sockets bled in place of weeping. “Like clover.”

Oh, very well! I am not a monster. In any event, I wasn’t then. At least the commission was an interesting enough challenge to my lately listless and undernourished intellect. So it came to pass that over the weeks remaining until the parturition of Perdita, I fashioned, out of crystal and ebony and chips of fine jade, twin organs of sight not the equal of mortal orbs but by far their superior, in clarity, in beauty, even in soulfulness. If you ask me how I accomplished it, I shall show you the door, for I am still a tradesman, however exalted, and tradesmen tell no tales. I sewed the spheres myself with thread of gold into her fair face, an operation which sounds elegant and difficult in the telling, but in the doing required rather more gin, profanity, and blows to the chin than any window did. When I had finished, she appeared, not healed, but more than healed—sublimated, rarefied, elevated above the ranks of human women with their filmy, vitreous eyes that could merely see.

I have heard good report that, under another name, and with her daughter quite grown and well-wed, Perdita now sits upon the throne of the Netherlands, her peerless eyes having captivated the heart of a certain prince before anyone could tie a rock round her feet and drop her into a canal. Well done, say all us graspers down here, reaching up toward Heaven’s sewers with a thousand million hands, well done.

Now, we arrive at the hairpin turn in the road of both my fortunes and my life, the skew of the thing, where the carriage of our tale may so easily overturn and send us flying into mud and thorns unknown. Brace your constitution and your credulity, for I am of a mind to whip the horses and take the bend at speed!

It is simply not possible to excel so surpassingly as I have done and remain anonymous. God in his perversity grants anonymity to the gifted and the industrious in equal and heartless measure, but never to the splendid. Word of the girl with the unearthly, alien, celestial eyes spread like a plague of delight in every direction, floating down the river, sweeping through the Continent, stowing away on ships at sea, until it arrived, much adorned with my Lady Rumor’s laurels, at the palazzo of the Doge in darling, dripping Venice.

Now, the Doge at that time had caused himself, God knows why or by dint of what wager, to be married to a woman by the name of Samaritiana. Do not allow yourselves to be duped by that name, you trusting fools! Samaritiana would not even stop along the side of the road to Hell to wrinkle her nose at the carcass of Our Lord Jesus Christ, though it save her immortal soul, unless He told her she was beautiful first. Oh, ’tis easy enough to hate a vain woman with warts and liver spots, to scorn her milk baths and philtres and exsanguinated Hungarian virgins, to mock her desperation to preserve a youth and beauty that was never much more enticing than the local sheep in the first place, but one had to look elsewhere for reasons to hate Samaritiana, for she truly was the singular beauty of her age. Black of hair, eye, and ambition was she, pale as a maiden drowned, buxom as Ceres (though she had yet no issue), intoxicating as the breath of Bacchus. Fortunately, my lady thoughtfully provided a bounty of other pantries in which to find that meat of hatred fit for the fires of any heart.

She was, quite simply, the worst person.

I do not mean by this to call the Dogaressa a murderess, nor an apostate, nor a despot, nor an embezzler, nor even a whore, for whores, at least, are kindly and useful, murderers must have some measure of cleverness if they mean to get away with it, apostates make for tremendous company at parties, despots have a positively devastating charisma, and, I am assured by the highest authority, which is to say, Lord Aphorism and his Merry Band of Proverbials, that there is some honor amongst thieves. No, Samaritiana was merely humorless, witless, provincial, petty, small of mind, parched of imagination, stingy of wallet and affection, morally conservative, and incapable, to the last drop of her ruby blood, of admitting that she did not know everything in all the starry spheres and wheeling orbits of existence, and this whilst believing herself to possess all of these that are virtues and eschew all that are sins. Can you envisage a more wretched and unloveable beast?

I married her, naturally.

The Dogaressa came to me in a black resin mask and emerald hooded cloak when the plague had only lately checked into its waterfront rooms, sent for a litter, and commenced seeing the sights of Venice with its traveling hat and trusted map.

Oh, no, no, you misapprehend my phraseology. Not that plague. Not that grave and gorgeous darkling shadow that falls over Europe once a century and reminds us that what dwells within our bodies is not a soul but a stinking ruin of fluid and marrow and bile. The other plague, the one that sneaks on nimbly putrefying feet from bedroom to bedroom, from dockside to dinner party, from brothel to marital bower, leaving chancres like kisses too long remembered. Yes, we would have to wait years yet before Baron von Bubœ mounted his much-anticipated revival on the stage, but never you fear, Dame Syphilis was dancing down the dawn, and in those days, her viols never stopped nor slowed.

That mysterious, morbid, nigh-monstrous and tangerine-scented creature called Samaritiana darkened my door one evening in April, bid me draw close all my curtains, light only a modest lantern upon a pretty lacquered table inlaid with mother of pearl which I still possess to this day, and stand some distance away while she removed her onyx mask to reveal a face of such surpassing radiance, such unparalleled winsomeness, that even the absence of the left eye, and the mass of scars and weals that had long since replaced it, could do no more than render her enchanting rather than perfect.

It would seem that the Dogaressa danced with the Dame some years past. Her husband, the Doge, brought her to the ball, she claimed, having learned the steps from his underaged Neapolitan mistress, though, as I became much acquainted with the lady in later years, I rather suspect she found her own way, arrived first, wore through three pairs of shoes, departed last, and ate all the cakes on the sideboard. But, as is far too often the case in this life ironical, that mean and miserly soul found itself in receipt of, not only the beauty of a better woman, but the good fortune of a better man. She contracted a high fever owing to her insistence upon hosting the Christmas feast out of doors that year, so that the gathered noblility could see how lovely she looked with a high winter’s blush on her cheeks, and this fever seemed to have driven, by some idiot insensate alchemy, the Dame from the halls of Samaritiana forever, leaving only her eye ravaged and boiled away by the waltz.

All was well in the world, then, save that she could not show herself in public without derision and her husband still rotted on his throne with a golden nose hung on his mouldering face like a door knocker, but she had not come for his sake, nor would she ever dream of fancying that it was possible to ask a boon of that oft-rumored wizard hiding in the sty of London for any single soul on earth other than herself.

“I have heard that you can make a new eye,” said she, in dulcet tones she did not deserve the ability to produce.

I could.

“Better than the old, brighter, of any color or shape?”

I could.

She licked her lily lips. “And install it so well none would suspect the exchange?”

Perhaps not quite, not entirely so well, but it never behooves one to admit weakness to a one-eyed queen.

“You have already done me this service,” said she to me, loftily, never asking once, only demanding, presuming, crushing all resistance, not to mention dignity, custom, the basest element of courtesy, beneath her silver-tooled heel. She waved her hand as though the motion of her fingers could destroy all protestation. The light of my lantern caught on a ring of peridot and tourmaline entwined into the shape of a rather maudlin-looking crocodile gnawing upon its own tail, for she claimed some murky Egyptian blood in the dregs of her familial cup, as though such little droplets could mark her as exceptional, when every dockside lady secretly fancies herself a Cleopatra of the Thames.

“Produce the results upon the morrow! I will pay you nothing, of course. A Dogaressa does not stoop to exchange currency for goods. But when two eyes look out from beneath my brow once more, I will present you with a gift, for no particular reason other than that I wish to bestow it.”

“And if I do not like your gift, Clarissima?”

Puzzlement contorted her exquisitely Cyclopean visage, causing a most unwelcome familial pang within my breast. “I do not take your meaning, Master Peek. How could such a thing possibly occur?”

There is, it seems, a glittering point beyond which egotism achieves such purity that it becomes innocence, and that was the country in which Samaritiana lived. In truth, had she revealed her gift to me then, or even promised payment in the usual manner, I might have refused her, just to experience the novel emotion of rejecting royalty—for I am interested in nothing so much as novelty, not love nor death nor glass nor gold. Something new! Something new! My kingdom for something new! But she caught me, the perfumed spider, wholly without knowing what she’d done. I did indeed take up her commission, and though you may conclude in advance that this recounting of the job will proceed according to the pattern of the last, I shall be disappointed if you do, for I have already told you most vividly that herein lies the skew of my tale.

For the sake of the beautiful Dogaressa, I took up my father’s battered old pipe and punty. I cannot now say why; for a certainty I owned better instruments by far, and had not touched the things in eons except to brush them daintily with a daily sneer. Perhaps a paroxysm of sentimentality seized me; perhaps I despised her too much even then to waste my finer appliances on her pox-punched face, in any event, I cannot even say positively that the result blossomed forth from the tools and not some other cause, and I fear to question it now. I sank into the rhythm of my father and grandfather and his before him: the dollop of liquid glass, the greatbreath of my own lungs expelled through the long, black pipe, the sweet pressure and rolling of the globule against the smooth marver stone, the uncommon light known only to workers of glass, that strange slick of marmalade-light afire within crystal that would soon ride a woman’s skull all the way through the days of her life and down into her tomb.

The work was done; I fashioned two, an exquisitely matched pair, in case the other organ required replacement in the unseen feverish future. Samaritiana, in, so far as I may know or tell, the sole creative decision of her existence, chose not one color for the iris but all of them, dozens of infinitesimal shards chipped from every jewel in my inventory: sapphire, jade, emerald, jasper, onyx, amethyst, ruby, topaz. The effect was a carnival wheel of deep, unsettling fascination, and when I sewed it into her flesh with my golden thread she did not wail or struggle but only sighed, as though lost in the act of love, and, though her faults were called Legion, they were as yet unknown to me, thus, as my needle entered her, so too did my fatal softening begin.

The Dogaressa departed with her stitching still fresh, leaving in her wake but three souvenirs of our intimate surgery: one gift she intended, one she did not, and her damnable scent, which neither Mrs. Matterfact nor Mr. Suchandsuch, no matter how they scrubbed and strove, could remove from the premises. I daresay, even this very night, should you venture to my old house on the High Street and press your nose to its sturdy bones, still yet you would snatch a whiff of tangerine and strangling ivy from the foundation stones.

The gift she intended to leave was a lock of her raven hair, the skinflint bitch. The other, I did not perceive until some weeks later, when I adjourned to my smoking room with a bottle of brandy, a packet of snuff, and a rare contemplative mood which I intended to spend upon a rich, unfiltered melancholy as sweet as any Madeira—for it is a fact globally acknowledged that idle melancholy, like good wine, is the exclusive purview of the wealthy. To aid in my melancholy, I fingered in one hand the mate to the Dogaressa’s harlequin eye, rubbing my thumb over that strange, motley iris, marveling at the milky sheen of the sclera, admiring, unrepentant Narcissus that I am, my own skill and artistry. I removed my own, ordinary, unguessable, nearly flawless glass eye and held up the other to my empty socket like a spyglass, and a most thoroughly stupendous metamorphosis transpired: I could seethrough the jeweled lens of that artificial eye! Truly see, without cloud or glare or halo—ah, but what I saw was not the walls of my own smoking room, so tastefully lined with matching books chosen to neither excite nor bore any guest to extremes, but the long peach-cream and gold hall of the palazzo of the Doge in far-distant Venice! The chequered black and white marble floors flowed forth in my vision like a houndstooth river; the full and unforgiving moon streamed glaucous through tall slim windows; painted ceilings soared overhead, inlaid with pearl and carnelian and ever-so-slightly greyed with the smoke of a hundred thousand candles burnt over peerless years in that grand corridor. Women and men swept slowly up and down the squares like boats upon some fairy canal, swathed in gowns of viridescent green cross-hatched with silver and rose, armored in bodices of whalebone and opal, be-sailed in lacy gauze spun by Clotho herself upon the wheel of destiny, cloaked and hooded in vermillion damask, in aquamarine, in citron and puce, their clothing each so splendid I could scarce tell the maids from the swains—and thus looked I upon a personal paradise heretofore undreamt of.

But there were worms in paradise, for each and every beauty in the Doge’s palace was rotting in their finery like the fruit of sun-spoiled melons within their shells. Their flesh putrefied and dripped from their bones and what remained turned hideous, sickening colors, choleric, livid, cyanic, hoary, a moldering patina of death whose effusions stained those bodices black. Some stumbled noseless, others having replaced that appendage with nostrils of gold and silver and crystal and porcelain, and others, all hope lost, sunk their visages into masks, though they could not hide their chancred hands, the bleeding sores of their bosoms, the undead tatters of their throats.

Yet still they laughed, and spoke animatedly, one to the other, and blushed in virtuous fashion beneath their putridity. Such is the dance of the Dame, who enters through the essential act of life, yet leaves you thinking, breathing, walking whilst the depredations of the grave transact upon your still-sensate flesh, making of this world a single noisy tomb.

My breath would not obey me; my heart ricocheted amongst my ribs like a cannon misfired. Was it truly Italy I saw bounded in the tiny planet of a glass eye? Had I stumbled into a drunken sleep or gone mad so swiftly no asylum could hope to catch me? I shot to my feet, mashing the eye deeper into my socket until stars spattered my sight—closer, look closer! Could I hear as well? Smell? Taste the tallowed air of that far-off moonlit court?

I could not. I could not hear their footsteps nor inhale their perfume nor feel the fuzzed reek of the mildewed canals on my tongue nor move of my own volition. I apprehended a new truth, that even the impossible possesses laws of its own, and those unbendable. I could only observe. Observe—while my vision lurched forward, advancing quickly, rocking gently as with a woman’s sinuous gait. Graceful, slender arms extended as though from my own body, opening with infinite elegance to embrace a man whose head was that of a Titan cast down brutally into the pit of Tartarus, so wracked with growths and intuberances and pulsating polyps that the plates of his skull had cracked beneath the intolerable weight and shifted into a new pate so monstrous it could no longer bear the Doge’s crown, which hung pitifully instead from a ribbon slung round his grotesque neck. Those matchless arms which were not my own enfolded this hapless creature and, encircling the middle finger of the hand belonging to the right arm, I saw with my altered vision the twisted peridot and tourmaline crocodile ring of the Dogaressa Samaritiana.

I cast the glass eye away from me, sickened, thrilled, inflamed, ensorcelled, the fire in my midnight hearth as nothing beside the conflagration of curiosity, horror, and the beginnings of power that crackled within my brain-pan. In that first moment, standing among my books and my brandy drenched in the sweat of a new universe, an instinct, a whisper of Truth Profound, permeated my spirit like smoke exhaled, and, I confess to you now, all these many years hence, still I enshrine it as an article of faith, for it was with breath that God animated the dumb mud of Adam, breath that woke Pandora from stone, breath that demarcates the living and the dead, breath with which we speak and cry out and divide ourselves from the idiot kingdom of animals, and breath, by all the blasted saints and angels, with which the glassblower shapes his glass! The living breath of Cornelius Peek yet permeates every insignificant atom of his works; each object broken from his punty, be it window or goblet or cask or eye, hides the sacred exhalations of his spirit co-mingled with the crystal, and it is this, it is this, I tell you, that connects the jeweled eye of the Dogaressa with the jeweled eye in my hand! I dwell in the glass, it cannot dispense with me any further than it can dispense with translucency or mass, and therefore it carries the shard of Cornelius whithersoever it wanders.

Let us dispense with a few obnoxious but inevitable inquiries into the practicality of the matter, so that we may move along past the skew. How could this mystic connection have escaped my notice till now? It is only sensical: Perdita vanished away to the Netherlands with both marvelous eyes, and no window nor goblet nor cask is, in its inborn nature, that organ of sight which opens onto the infinite pit of the human soul. Would any eye manufactured in the same fashion result in such remote visions? They would indeed, my credulous friend. Does every glassblower possess the ability to produce such objects, should he but retain one eye whilst selling the other at a fair price? Ah, here I must admit my deficiency as a philosopher, for which I apologize most obsequiously. It cannot be breath alone, for I made subtle overtures toward the gentleman of the glassmen’s guild and I can say with a solemn certainty that none but Master Peek can perform this alchemy of sclera and pupil. Why should it be so? Perhaps I am a wizard, perhaps a saint, perhaps a demiurge, perhaps the Messiah returned at last, perhaps it owes only to that peculiar rootstock of my family which grants me my height, my baritone, the hairiness of my body. Grandfather Polyphemus’s last gift, lobbed down the ancestral highway, bashing horses as it comes. I am a man of art, not science. I ask why Mrs. Matterfact has not yet laid out my supper oftener than I ask after the workings of the uncluttered cosmos.

Thus did I enter the business of optometry.

When you have placed a mad rainbow jewel in the skull of a Dogaressa as though she were nothing but a golden ring, a jewel which drove the rotting men of Venice insane with the desire to tie her to a bridge-post and stare transported into the motley swirling colors of the eye of God, lately fallen to earth, they began to say, somewhere in Sicily, advertisement serves little purpose. I opened my door and received the flood. It is positively trivial to lose an eye in this wicked world, did you know? I accepted them warmly, with a bow and a kerchief fluttered to the mouth in acute compassion, a permanently sympathetic expression penciled onto my lips in primrose paint—for that moth-eaten scab Cromwell was finally in the grave, where everything is just as colorless and abstemious and black as he always wished it to be, so full of piss and vitriol that it poisoned him to the gills, and Our Chuck, the Merry Monarch, was dancing on his bones.

Fashion, ever my God and my mother, took pity upon her poor supplicant and caused a great miracle to take place for my sake—the world donned a dandy wig whilst I doffed my own, sporting my secret womanly hair as long and curled as any lord, soaking my face in the most masculine of pale powders, rouges, lacquers, and creams, encasing my figure, such as it ever was, in lime and coral brocade trimmed in frosty silver, concealing my gait with an ivory cane and foxfurred slippers, and rejoicing in the knowledge that, of all the men in London, I suddenly possessed the lowest voice of them all. So hidden, so revealed, I took all the one-eyed world into my parlor: the cancerous, the war-wounded, the horse-kicked, the husband-beaten, the inquisitor-inquisited, the lightning-struck, the unfortunately-born, the pox-blighted, and yes, the Dame’s erstwhile lovers, for she had made her way to our shores and had begun her ancient gambols in sight of St. Paul’s. And for each of these unfortunate angels of the ocular, I fashioned a second eye in secret, unknown entirely to my custom, twin to the one that repaired their befouled faces, with which I adjourned night by night to a series of successive smoking rooms, growing grander and finer with each year, holding those orbs to the light and looking unseen upon every city in Christendom, along with several in the Orient and one in the New World, though it could hardly be called a city, if I am to be honest. And Venice, always Venice, the first eye and only, her eye, gazing out on the water, the moonlight, the dead.

In this fashion, I came to know that the Doge had died, succumbed to the unbearable weight of his own head, long before Samaritiana appeared on my night-bestrewn doorstep, the saffron gown she wore in the moonlight, and every other in her trunk, torn violently, soaked with bodily fluids, rent by the overgrown nails of the frenzied rotting horde who had chased her from the palazzo through every desperate alleyway and canal of the city, across Switzerland and France, in their anguished longing to touch the Eye of God, still sewn into the ex-Dogaressa’s skull, to touch it but once and be healed forever.

But of course I aided the friendless and abandoned Good Samaritiana as she wept beside her monstrous road. Oh, Clarissima, how dreadful, how unspeakable, how worthy of Mr. Pepys’ vigilant pen! I shall have to make introductions when you are quite well again. I sent at once for a fine dressmaker of my acquaintance to construct a suitable costume for the lady and save her from the immodesty of those ragged silken remnants of her former life with which, even then, she attempted to cover her body with little enough success that, before the dressmaker could so much as cross the river, I learned something quite unexpected concerning the biography of Samaritiana, former queen of Venice.

She was quite male. Undeniably, conspicuously, astonishingly, fascinatingly so.

I called up to Mrs. Matterfact for cold oxtongue, a saucer of pineapple, and oysters stewed in Armagnac, down to Mr. Suchandsuch for carafes of hot claret mulled via the latest methods, and listened to the wondrous chimera in my parlor tell of how that famous Egyptian blood was not in the least of the Nile but of the Tiber, on whose Ostian banks a penniless but beautiful boy had been born in secret to one of the Pope’s mistresses and left to perish among the reed-gatherers and the amber-collectors and the diggers of molluscs.

But perish the lad did not, for even a grass-picker is thoroughly loused with the nits of compassion, and the women passed the babe one to the other and back again, like a cup of wine that drank, instead, from them. Now, it is well known to anyone with a single sopping slice of sense that the Pope’s enemies are rather like weevils, ever industrious, ever multiplying, ever rapacious, starving for the chaff of scandal with which to choke the Holy Father and watch him writhe. They roved over the city, overturning the very foundational stones of ancient Rome in search of the Infallible Bastards, in order, not to kill them like Herod, but to bring them before the Cardinals and etch their little faces upon the stained glass windows as evidence of sin. My little minx, having already long, lustrous hair and androgyne features more like to a seraph than a by-blow son, found it at first advantageous to effect the manners and dress of a girl, and then, when the danger had passed, more than that, agreeable, even preferable to her former existence. Having become a maid to save her life, she remained one in order to enjoy it. Owing to the meager diet of the Tiber’s tiniest fish, little Samaritiana never grew so tall nor so stout as other boys, she remained curiously hairless, and though she escaped the castrato’s fate, her voice never dipped beneath the pleasing alto with which she now spoke, nor did her organ of masculinity ever aspire to outdo the average Grecian statue, and so, when the Doge visited Ostia after the death of his first wife, he saw nothing unusual walking by the river except for the most beautiful woman in the Occident, balancing a basket of rushes on her hip with a few nuggets of amber rolling within the weave.

“But surely, Clarissima,” mused I, savoring the tart song of pineapple upon my tongue, “a bridegroom, however ardent, cannot be so easily duped as a vengeful Cardinal! Your deception cannot have survived the wedding bower!”

“It did not survive the engagement, my dear Master Peek,” Samaritiana replied without a wisp of blush upon her remarkable cheek. “Oh, mistake me not, I do so love to lie—I see no more purpose in pretending to be virtuous in your presence than I saw in pretending to be fertile in his. But there could be no delight in a deception so deep and vast. It would impair true marriage between us. I revealed myself at Pentecost, allowing him in the intensity of his ardor to unfasten my stays and loose my ribbons until I stood clad only in honesty before His Serenity and awaited what I presumed to be my doom and my death. But only kisses fell upon me in that moment, for the Doge had long suppressed his inborn nature, and suffered already to get upon his departed wife the heirs he owed to the canals, and though my masquerade, you will agree, outshines the impeccable, he would later say, on the night of which you so confidently speak, that some sinew of his heart must always have known, since first he beheld me with my basket of amber and sorrow.”

I did not exchange trust for trust that night among the oysters and the oxtongue. I have a viciously refined sense of theatre, after all. I made her wait, feigning religion, indigestion, the vicissitudes of work, gout, even virginity, until our wedding night, whereupon I allowed Samaritiana, in the intensity of her ardor, to unfasten my stays and loose my ribbons until at last all that stood between us was the tattered ruin of my mother’s ancient bridal veil, and then, not even that.

“Goodness, you don’t expect me to be surprised, do you?” laughed the ex-Dogaressa, the monster, the braying centaur, the miserly lamia who would not give me the satisfaction of scandalizing her! That eve, and only that eve, under the stars painted upon my ceiling, I applied all my cruellest and most unfair arts to compel my wife to admit, as a wedding present, that she had not known, she had never known, never even suspected, loved me as a man just as I loved her as a woman, and was besides a brutal little liar who deserved a lifetime of the most delectable punishment. We exchanged whispered, apocryphal, long-atrophied names beneath the coverlet: Perpetua. Proteo.

Samartiana treated me deplorably, broke my heart and my bank, laughed when she ought to have wept, drove Mrs. Matterfact to utter disintegration, kept lovers, schemed with minor nobles. We were just ferociously happy. Are you surprised? I, too, am humorless, witless, provincial, petty, small of mind, parched of imagination, stingy of wallet and affection, a liar and a cad. He was like me. I was like her. I had, after all, seen as she saw, from the very angle of her waking vision, which in some circles might be the definition of divine love. I have had wives before and will have again, far cleverer and braver and wilder than my Clarissima, but none I treasured half so well, nor came so near to telling the secret of my smoking room, of the chests full of eyes hidden beneath the floorboards. Samaritiana had her lovers; I had my eyes, the voyeur’s stealthy, soft and pregnant hours, a criminal sensorium I could not quit nor wished to.Yet still I would not share, I held it back from her, out of her reach, beyond her ken.

The plague took her in the spring. The Baron, not the Dame. The plague of long masks and onions and bodies stacked like fresh-laid bricks. I buried her in glass, in my incandescent fury at the kiln, for where else can a man lose his whole being but in a wife or in work? These are the twin barrels in which we drown ourselves forever.

It soon came to pass that wonderful eyes of Cornelius Peek were in such demand that the possession of one could catapult the owner into society, if only he could keep his head about him once he landed, and this was reason enough that, men being men and ambition being forever the most demanding of bedfellows, it became much the fashion in those years to sacrifice one eye to the teeth-grinding god of social mobility and replace it with something far more useful than depth perception. Natural colors fell by the wayside—they wanted an angel’s eye, now, a demon’s, a dryad’s, a goblin’s, more alien, more inhuman, less windows to the soul than windows to debauched and lawless Edens, and I, your servant, sir, a window-maker once more. I cannot say I approved of this self-deformation, but I certainly profited by the sudden proliferation of English Cyclopses, most especially by their dispersal through the halls of power, carrying the breath of Peek with them into every shadowy corner of the privileged and the perverse.

I strung their eyes on silver thread and lay in a torpor like unto the opium addict upon the lilac damask of my smoking room couch, draping them round and round my body like a strand of numberless pearls, lifting each crystal gem in turn to gaze upon Paris, Edinburgh, Madrid, Muscovy, Constantinople, Zurich—and Venice, always Venice, returning again and again, though I knew I would not find what I sought along those rippling canals traveled by the living dead. It became my obsession, this invasion of perspective, this theft of privacy, the luxurious passivity of the thing, watching without participating as the lives of others fluttered by like so many scarlet leaves, compelled to witness, but not to interfere, even if I wished to, even if I had liked the young Earl well enough when I installed his pigment-less diamond eye and longed to parry the assassin’s blade when I saw it flash in the Austrian sunset. I saw, with tremulous breath, as God saw, forced unwilling to allow the race of man to damn or redeem itself in a noxious fume of free will, forbidden by laws unwritten not to lift one hand, even if the baker’s boy had laughed when I offered him a big red eye or a cat-slit pupil or a shark’s unbroken onyx hue, any sort, free of charge, even the costliest, the most debonair, in honor of my late wife Samaritiana who in another lifetime paid me in hair, not because she would wish me to be generous but because she would mock me to the rafters and howl hazard down to Hell, begging the Devil to take me now rather than let one more pauper rob her purse, even if I saw, now, through his eye, saw the maidservant burning, burning in the bakery on Pudding Lane, burning and screaming in the midnight wind, and then the terrible, impossible leap of the flames to the adjoining houses, an orange tongue lasciviously working in the dark, not to lift one hand as what I saw in the glass eye and what I saw in the flesh became one, fusing and melding at last, reality and unreality, the sight I owned and the sight I stole, the conflagration devouring the city, the gardens, and my house around me, my lovely watered ultramarine silk, my supremely comfortable chair stuffed with Arabian horsehair, my darling gold and silver drawers, as I lay still and let it come for me and thee and all.

I did not die, for heaven’s sake. Perish the thought! Death is terrifically gauche, don’t you know, I should never be caught wearing it in public. I simply did not get up. Irony being the Lord of All Things, the smoking room survived the blaze and I inside it; though the rafters smoked and blackened and the walls swelled with heat like the head of a Doge, the secret chambers honeycombing the place contained the inferno, they did not stove in nor fall, save for one shelf of books, the bloody Romans, of all things, which, in toppling, quite snapped both my shinbones beneath a ponderous copy of Plutarch. Mrs. Matterfact and Mr. Suchandsuch fought valiantly and gave up only the better part of the roof, though we lost my lovely showroom, a tragedy from which I shall never fully recover, I assure you. And for a long while, I remained where the fire found me, on the long damask couch in my smoking room, wrapped in lengths of eyes like Odysseus lashed to the mast and listening to all the sirens’ mating bleats, still lifting each in turn and fixing it to my empty socket, one after the other after the other, and thus I stayed for years, years beyond years, beyond Matterfact and Suchandsuch and their replacements, beyond the intolerable plebians outside who wanted only humble, honest brown and blue eyes again, their own mortal eyes, having seen too much of wildness. And what, pray tell, did I do with my impossible sight, with my impossible span of time?

Why, I became the greatest spy the world has ever known. Would you have done otherwise?

Oh, I have sold crowns to kings and kings to executioners, positions to the enemy and ships to the storm, murderers to the avenging and perversities to the puritanical, I have caused ingenious devices to be built in England before the paint in Krakow finished drying, rescued aristocrats from the mob and mobs from the aristocracy by turns, bought and traded and brokered half of Europe to the other half and back again, dashed more sailors against the rocks than my promethean progenitor could have done in the throes of his most orgiastic fever-dream. I have smote the ground and summoned up wars from the deeps and I have called down the heavens to end them, all without moving one whisper from my house on Drury Lane, even as the laborers rebuilt it around me, even as the rains came, even as the lane around it became a writhing slum, a whore’s racetrack, a nursery rhyme.

Look around you and look well: this is the world I made. Isn’t it charming? Isn’t it terrible and exquisite and debased and tastefully appointed according to the very latest of styles? I have seen to every detail, every flourish—think nothing of it, it has been my great honor.

But the time has come to rouse myself, for my eyes have begun to grow dark, and of late I spy muchly upon the damp and wormy earth, for who would not beg to be buried with their precious Peek eye, bauble of a bygone—and better—age? No one, not even the baker’s boy. The workshop of Master Cornelius Peek will open doors once more, for I have centuries sprawled at my feet like Christmas tinsel, and I would not advance upon them blind. I have heard the strange mournful bovine lowing of what I am assured are called the proletariatoutside my window, the clack and clatter of progress to whose rhythm all men must waltz. There is much work to be done if I do not wish to have the next century decorated by some other, coarser, less splendid hand. I shall curl my hair and don the lime and coral coat, crack the ivory cane against the stones once more, and if the fashions have sped beyond me, so be it, I care nothing, I will stand for the best of us, for in the end, the world will always belong to dandies, who alone see the filigree upon the glass that is God’s signature upon his work.

After all, it is positively trivial to lose an eye in this midden of modernity, this precarious, perilous world, don’t you agree?

#Catherynne M. Valente #The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek #Or #The Luminescense of Debauchery #short story #actually long story

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