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writingesgaypism · 6 years

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Leave the Light On, Pt. 1

Part 1: this is it!

Part 2: here

It was decided that Jackie and Finley were both far too functional. So naturally I took it upon myself to try and break them both. Alas, they are Very Powerful and I am Not. So now I have 4.5k words and growing and I still haven’t managed anything more than shaking them a bit. Unbelievable.

It isn’t often either of them have the opportunity to go out. Finley, with their work, and Jackie, with their reluctance to do anything that might distract them from their goal.

They watch Jackie out of the corner of their eye as they drive their beat-up old car to a bar you might say they frequented if ‘frequent’ were a word either of them could use to describe their free time. A person of Finley’s height couldn’t fit comfortably in Jackie’s car, and even the tiny frown that tugs at their mouth at the thought of Jackie’s ex isn’t enough to distract them fully from the way their knees jut up around their chest.

Jackie always looks a little terse when they drive. They’ve never seen them drive another car, but they strongly suspect that it has more to do with either the vehicle or the streets than driving itself that pulls tight the lines around their mouth.

Other than that, they don’t look so bad. Tired, as always, but not quite as bad as it used to be. Their hair is fluffy and dark, and getting a little long - long enough that they’ll probably get it cut soon. Long enough that sometimes it falls in their face, but not long enough that pushing it back does much. Jackie will bat at it in annoyance every so often when they’re trying to concentrate only to have it fall right back in place a moment later. They know it won’t make any difference, but Finley wants to reach over and push it back themself sometimes. It’s more the desire to touch their hair, which always looks so soft, and the objectively more dangerous desire to be close enough to do so that drives this impulse rather than the belief that their efforts would be more successful.

It’s selfish. And foolish. Jackie isn’t over their ex.

Their villainous ex.

Jackie pulls into a lucky curbside parking spot nearby their destination with a little triumphant noise and casts a sly glance Finley’s way. “Do I look appropriately relaxed, Finn?”

At some point, their little sideways glance had turned into more obvious observation. Of course Jackie picked up on it. They offer a bland smile.

“As relaxed as you ever are, Jackie.”

They laugh, though it’s more of a forceful exhale accompanied by a smile. “You’re one to talk.”

Jackie leans back against the headrest with a sigh for just a moment before pulling the keys out of the ignition. Finley takes this as a sign to undo their seatbelt and step out of the car. Unfolding to their full height is always a bit of a process after a ride in Jackie’s car, but they’re ready to go by the time Jackie circles around and joins them on the sidewalk.

“Getting old?” they ask innocently.

“You know,” they say, “one of these days I’m going to dock your pay for this.”

Jackie laughs, closer to a real one this time, and bumps lightly into their side as they walk towards the bar. “I’m caught between protesting you would never, since I’m clearly your favorite reporter, and pointing out that my pay is low enough that I’m not certain you can legally deduct any more.”

Finley holds open the door. “Keep pushing your luck and we’ll test both those theories, JJ.”

The interior of the bar is dimly lit, but not oppressive. As far as cheap bars go, this one is relatively reliable. The owners don’t tolerate too much roughhousing, the whiskey is okay most days, and it never gets so crowded that Jackie wants to leave early.

“I’m calling your bluff,” Jackie insists. “At the very least, you’d miss me.”

“I thought we were talking about pay, not job loss.”

They hum as they take a seat in a sheltered booth. “If I die because I can only afford either my apartment or my groceries, then you won’t need to fire me to get rid of me.”

Finley slides in across from them, eyeing them. They’re joking, of course, but it’s times like these when they want to offer… something. Money, or the couch at their place. They don’t. They know Jackie wouldn’t accept it.

Jackie props their chin on one fist and smiles at them lazily.

They find themself smiling back reflexively, and, huffing a little laugh, they offer to get the first round.

Another note on Jackie: in all the time Finley’s known them, they’ve never truly gotten drunk. Not even when it’s Finley’s turn to be the designated driver. They don’t think it’s because they don’t trust Finley enough to be drunk around them, and it can’t be that they’re worried about being drunk in front of their boss. Certainly they’ve done other things that an employee should feel nervous doing around their boss with no sign of remorse.

From where they lean against the bar, waiting for the glasses of whiskey and water they’d ordered to start, they can’t see Jackie. They’re sitting on the side of the booth facing away from the bar, but Finley could make a fairly accurate guess as to their posture.

It’s not that Jackie’s predictable, exactly, but they like control. You won’t catch them letting a stranger at a bar read anything in their body language that they don’t want noticed. That same preference for control is likely why they don’t like getting drunk, and it’s also probably why their determination to investigate their ex-husband’s villainy hasn’t diminished in four years.

“Water for the responsible driver,” they announce when they return, setting down a coaster and a glass in front of them.

Jackie traces a thumb through the condensation already gathering on the glass. “Thanks.”

They narrow their eyes at the person sitting across from them. “That’s quite the drop in liveliness.”

With a sardonic little smile, Jackie flips open their dinosaur of a phone on the table. “Four years on the dot, Finn. I remember the date I signed the papers.”

“I see.” They sip from their own glass to cover their need to gather their thoughts.

Raf, from what Jackie’s said about him, seems like he might’ve been a good man if not for what he’d done. They don’t talk about him all that often and Finley avoids bringing it up. It’s not their place, and even if it were they don’t trust themself to have an unbiased opinion. Because Jackie is clever and sharp and steadfast, and sometimes it’s hard to tell how much of their dislike of Raf is just because of the damage he’s done to Jackie and how much is due to their own continually growing affection for them.

Jackie speaks before they have a chance to think of what to say. “I miss him. He always knew how to cheer me up.”

And now he’s doing the opposite, but Finley doesn’t say that.

“You mean hanging around a bar with your boss isn’t enough to lift your spirits?”

They laugh. “You’re doing a pretty good job, Finn. I don’t mean to imply you’re not. Sometimes I just…”

“It’s all right, Jackie.”

Jackie glances out of the booth, then stares hard at their water. “If I wanted to talk about it would you be okay listening?”

No, not really. Because there are things they want to say about Raf and about themself that they shouldn’t, can’t, or won’t. Because they know Jackie doesn’t want advice or warnings. Because it hurts to listen to a person they care about talk about their inability to move past someone that hurt them. Because even though they know it will hurt they’ll say yes anyway, because it’s always going to be more important that they help out a friend than it is to coddle their own unruly emotions.

“Of course,” they say gently.

Jackie crunches an ice cube between their teeth and continues to chew on it for a few seconds before they seem ready to go on.

“I know you don’t really approve,” they say. “Can’t say that I blame you, exactly.”

“It isn’t for me to say,” Finley responds carefully. “I want you to do what’s best for you. If this is it…”

“God, Finn, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too far in to want to stop now. Maybe I’m just too stubborn to see that I’m wrong about him. But I’ve got this gut feeling that there’s something I’m missing and I feel like I can’t stop until I know what it is.”

Except that it’s more than just finding out what’s missing that drives them to do this. But this is the part they always talk around even though they both know what Jackie’s not saying.

“I’d like to think I’m not a fool,” Jackie says, one hand propping up their head and the other tapping idly on the table. “Bullheaded, maybe, but not a fool.”

“You’re dedicated,” they say. “And maybe a little bullheaded.”

Another laugh. “You always know just what to say, Mx. Burke.”

“It’s our job to know what to say.” They hesitate. “What else do you miss?”

Jackie looks up, brown eyes so dark it’s hard to differentiate the irises from the pupils made even darker in the bar’s lighting. They’re pretty eyes; eyes you can get lost in without meaning to. They make eye contact and tilt their head curiously, but after another moment their gaze darts away again and Finley lets out a breath they didn’t quite realize they were holding. Sharp. Jackie has always been so sharp.

��Trying to get me all sentimental?”

“Trying to be an active listener. Unless you’ve changed your mind?” They don’t know who they’re looking for an out for.

“No, just… Old habits die hard. I don’t talk to a lot of people these days.” They’re toying with a ring, though it’s unclear when they brought it out. “I’ve never really talked to a lot of people, but even for me… I can’t talk about it with my parents.”

“Why not?”

Jackie makes eye contact again, painfully serious with their eyebrows drawn low even as one shoulder lifts in a facsimile of nonchalance. “You’re the only one I’ve told about Harbinger.”

Finley sits back in their seat and downs the last of their whiskey. They know how Jackie feels about their parents, their mom especially. It’s… hard to believe that they’d tell their boss over their own mother, no matter how good of friends they are with said boss. It either means that Jackie trusts them more than their mom, or that Finley is a lesser risk than their mom. And even if it’s the latter, it still says something about their trust in them.

“And I can’t even give my mom an edited version,” they continue, “because she’ll know something’s wrong. So I’ve been avoiding my family for four years, and that hurts. And it hurts them, too. But this… I don’t want to talk about this. You asked what I miss about Raf?”

“If you want to talk about it.”

“Stop me if I ramble,” Jackie says with a smirk, and then proceeds to do the exact opposite. They keep spinning that ring, watching it intently, head bowed so Finley can’t get a good look at their expression. Eventually they trap the ring between their palm and the tabletop with a clatter and look up. “I miss the way he always reflexively smiled at me whenever he looked at me. Like every time he saw me it was a pleasant surprise. I miss eating with his family and watching him run interference whenever it looked like his mom was about to lay into his sister for whatever quote-unquote deviant thing she was interested in at the time. I miss… God, Finn, I just miss him. This is the first time I’ve ever really been alone.”

“You aren’t alone.” They reach out to cover the hand on the table with their own, squeezing briefly before pulling back. They don’t linger. If anything, they move too quickly, if the minute tilt to Jackie’s head speaks to anything. “I promise you that, Jackie. You’re not alone.”

Jackie only shakes their head. “I mean - I lived with my parents, then I had my roommate in college, and then I married Raf after graduation. I’ve never had to wake up to an empty home before. I appreciate the sentiment, Finn, but I just - I’ve never really felt like I didn’t have a partner to back me up. And you’re my friend, and my boss, but I could never ask you to focus on me the way others used to.” They snort. “And I certainly won’t ask you to move into my shithole apartment.”

You could, Finley thinks. I would let you. I’d offer, myself.

“I see,” they say instead. “You know, I like you, JJ, but I wouldn’t particularly want to move into your shithole apartment either.”

This, at least, it true.

Jackie tips their head back against the booth, smiling in a vague sort of way. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing, or that I don’t appreciate it.” Head tilted back as it is, they have to look at Finley down their nose. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate you, in general.”

They smile back, equally vague, and stand. “I’ll get the next round.”

Jackie raises an eyebrow. “You got the last one.”

“I’m already standing,” Finley says with a shrug. “You can get the next one.”

They wave them off with a flick of their wrist and an eye-roll, and Finley makes their way back to the bartender.

There are times when the urge to say something they shouldn’t gets so strong they have to take a step back. Take a few big, physical steps back, get more drinks, and remind themself that Jackie doesn’t need their boss to tell them how to deal with their divorce. Nor do they need their boss’s futile crush.

When they return to the booth, the ring is gone again and Jackie looks up at their approach.

“Hey, Finley,” they say, accepting their second glass of water with a quick if lackluster smile, “after this round, could I invite myself over to your place? I need to just - I need -”

“My only objection to that is having to get back in your clown car, but that would’ve happened regardless. Are you…?”

“I will be. Thanks. And I’ll pay you back for this round, since we’re not staying for another.”

They’d argue, but Jackie’s going to want to feel like they didn’t make Finley do everything tonight, so they just nod. Nod and watch. Jackie is distant as they drink the water, never really looking at anything, eyes focused on something faraway. This is enough to tell them what Jackie was trying to say they needed. What they need is a private place to pull themself back together because something about today being the anniversary of their divorce is enough to shake someone who’s normally unshakeable. Or maybe there’s more to it than that, but if there is it isn’t Finley’s business unless Jackie sees fit to share.

They’re done and tapping their finger against their glass when Finley finishes their whiskey, though they wait for Finley to tilt their chin towards the door before standing.

“Thank you,” they say again, quietly, when they slip behind the wheel.

Finley almost doesn’t hear them, so occupied are they in contorting their long limbs into the car’s tiny interior. By the time they manage to get in, Jackie’s wrists are draped over the steering wheel as they look on with an odd, soft smile.

They blink and take a quiet breath. “Of course.”

#mcu #model citizens unmasked #fanfic #my shit #jackie #i am......... mildly concerned this might actually take four parts #it depends on how honest jackie decides to be with finley #anyway #please enjoy my attempts at dismantling my own character and making finn watch :)

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spookypastatoo · 7 years

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Cry Baby Lane

In 1999, I was twenty-two and I had just graduated from Emerson University in downtown Boston, majoring in screenwriting, specifically in cartoons and children's programming. My debt was pretty bad, so when Nickelodeon Studios offered me an internship at the studio in California, I accepted immediately. I jumped at the chance to get away from my dead end job as a Benjamin Franklin tour guide.

Many of you ask to see Cry Baby Lane but if you want to see the original Cry Baby Lane, you never will, even if Nickelodeon somehow consents to releasing it to you. You won't be seeing what was shown on TV, and you sure as fuck won't be seeing the original that Lauer made.

I don't even think Nickelodeon HAS the original cut of the movie anymore, and if they do it's in only back-up copies; if the back-up copies exist they must be locked away in some vault along with all the deleted episodes of Ren & Stimpy and the never-before-mentioned episodes of Spongebob Squarepants. I'm pretty sure the director, Peter Lauer, has the original copy and it's probably on his mantel next to his snuff films, that creepy ass fuck.

Anyway, I was hired in 1999 and immediately was put on a creative production team for the movie Cry Baby Lane. It would be almost a year before the movie was due to be broadcast; all in all, it was a pretty low-effort kind of thing. There were only four people on the creative team and I was the only steady one; Lauer would replace them on a whim. He said it was to keep it fresh. I thought it was because he was hiding something... and I was right.

We had a little over a year to make a made-for-TV movie - not just to write it and cast it but to film it and get it edited. Lauer didn't work fast at all; after the first three weeks we only had the ideas for the first 15 minutes of an 85-minute movie. Lauer, even at this point, was a weirdo. He was tall and lanky, and he carried himself awkwardly - he stuttered when he talked and sometimes, when you were hunched over a piece of paper during those endless "brainstorming sessions", you'd look up and you'd catch him staring at you, smiling.

He'd look away when you caught his eye, and I guess that was the creepiest part; he always looked like he had something to hide. The brainstorm sessions, at first, were alright. We got the premise of it down pat: two brothers unleash a demon and they get into mischief trying to get everything back to normal. Not exactly daytime Emmy stuff, but you know, it was an alright start. I thought the movie should be goofy and spooky, kind of like a Courage the Cowardly Dog sort of deal. However, from the very beginning, Lauer made it clear that he wanted the film to be as scary as possible. He didn't want it to be cheap thrills, with a good wholesome ending. He wanted to push it farther than Are You Afraid of the Dark ever dreamed of... and I guess he did.

It was about three weeks into production when I first noticed something: Lauer had the absolute power of persuasion over everyone else in the creative production team. No one fought him and by the third week, he was already suggesting some morbid things. I remember he said he wanted the little brother to die halfway through the movie, getting hit with a dump truck. I immediately shot it down. I was the only one who said anything, and it stayed that way until I left the studio entirely and never came back.

At first, cannibalism and other fucked up shit was kept to jokes and tasteless comments, but as time went on it became more and more overt. I'd give him an idea-idea (which most of the time he would end up using) like "How about the movie starts with a morbid undertaker who reads them stories," to which he'd reply, "Yeah... and then he can cut them up into little pieces and force-feed them to his dog!" He made those jokes a few times in the early stages. Then he got serious.

He's stand up like he was Jesus or something, clear his throat loudly, and proclaim his idea. I'd be the only one to shoot it down. Every fucking time. One day near the end of our brainstorming sessions, Lauer cleared his voice and stood up. We all fell silent, and looked at him, like we normally would. He stood up and said, "Gentlemen and females, I have an idea." I remember what he did - he paused, and looked right at me as he said, "The story will revolve around the legend of a pair of Siamese twins. Have you ever heard of the Donner Party?" Everyone nodded, except for me. I didn't like where the conversation was going. "They ate themselves when it got cold. They ate each other." Everyone nodded again. I closed my eyes. "What would Siamese twins do if they had nothing to eat? Would one wait until the other twin dies, then consume her own sister's flesh? Would they claw out each other's eyes until one of them died, then dine upon them like a vulture tearing at the skin of a dead deer? I do not know. It is interesting indeed."

I didn't know what the fuck I was hearing. I opened my eyes and looked around the room; no one was fucking moving. Everyone's eyes were on Lauer except for mine, and when I looked at him, he was still staring at me. "Children like violence, they revel in it. Children like to be scared. So we'll scare them, won't we, Jonny?" He leaned over the table, getting pretty damn close to my face. His breath smelled like decaying shit. I stared back at him. "I think you're fucked up, to be honest." He smiled, then backed away. "Oh, I'm fucked up alright, but you have to be fucked up to survive in this cutthroat world!" His grin expanded. "Literally. Right now, I'm going to show you some pictures that will spark some of your imaginations." He got up and locked the door from the inside.

I stood up and said, "What the fuck are you doing?" "Let's not make any... errors in judgement, Jonathan. Sit down." "No--" "Sit." For some reason, I did; Lauer pulled out one of those shitty overhead projectors. He turned on the switch and he speak-shouted, in an unusually high and frantic voice, "This is the fucking MUSE we NEED to CONTINUE with THIS PRO-FUCKING-DUCTION! THIS IS WHAT EVERY CHILD SHOULD SEE." His eyes bulged in his head. He put the image down on the glass surface of the overhead. It was silent.

The image was in black and white, but it was grainy. I could vaguely make out a boy lying on a brick floor, his arms cut off and his bloody little nubs black dots. The only thing that was clear was his face. He was bleeding from the mouth. Lauer almost threw the paper off the overhead, slamming down another one. It was a zoomed-in shot of the boy's face. It was in color. The blood trickled from his open mouth onto the brick floor, his eyes shut, grimy blood underneath his eyebrows and eyelashes. Then, his eyes opened, and I screamed. No one else in the fucking room did, and it died in infancy, the shrillness ringing in the air. The pupils were completely black. The rest of the eye was normal.

The longer I stared, the more the eyes opened, widening and widening until it looked like the skin above his eyebrows and eye sockets was going to rip in half. Then they started to bleed. Blood started as a trickle, and I swear to god I could hear it. More, now it was like a full blown stream. More. More, until the brick on the floor was a lake of blood. I could hear it, like I was hiking and I came across a stream, and now I could smell the kid. I could fucking smell his rot. I leaned underneath the table and vomited. When I rose back up, the images were gone. Everyone else in the room was expressionless. Lauer turned on the lights. "You may go," he said, unlocking the door. I walked through those fucking doors, and I never came back.

This happened near the end of the brainstorming process and by the time I left the casting was done and the script was almost fully written. They were desperately behind schedule; I think Lauer planned it that way, so there wouldn't be time for proper editing. I never watched the real thing when it aired, but I heard from a friend who was working at the editing department that they had to cut a good 15-20 minutes of "disturbing" footage from the film before it was fit to be released, and it was only fit to be released. They didn't have enough time to check the footage frame by frame.

I guess he got his wish, unless they cut every single scene that had the pictures in them. Every child watching Cry Baby Lane has an unconscious memory of those pictures, and I weep for them, I really do; they fucked me up, and as I write this to you, it will be the last thing I'll ever write before I slit my throat and blood spatters all over this fucking computer screen.

There's something I should tell you first, though.

Early on, Lauer posed an idea of the two brothers capturing a squirrel, putting said squirrel in a jar and slowly drowning it before filling the jar with sand and dropping it into the bottom of a pond. Soon after this was suggested, Sandy from Spongebob Squarepants appeared in "Tea at the Treedome". Lauer also suggested, in one scene of the movie, for a man with a "squid-like nose" to take off his pants in front of the two boys and rape them off-camera, but heavily implied. Squidward soon appeared as a major character in Spongebob Squarepants. It was suggested that the two be stepbrothers, forced to live in the same house after the first one's mom was found dead in a shallow grave, her body heavily cannibalized by her own husband, a local weather man. A show with vaguely this premise, Drake and Josh, started in 2004, and the stepfather is indeed a weather man. Lauer also suggested the younger brother have a dog house in which he keeps various animal fetuses encased in acid that he regularly uses to poison his mother to have sex with his abusive stepfather. As Told by Ginger debuted soon after. A man who captures the souls of children in a vacuum cleaner and sends them to Hades? Danny Phantom. A robot who goes insane on the two brothers, kills one of them and wears his skin, pretending to be the dead brother at high school? My Life as a Teenage Robot.

The list goes on and on. Nickelodeon knows, and they're continuing the legacy of Lauer, sometimes subtly, and sometimes overtly. And there's nothing you or I can do about it. That creepy ass fuck.

#creepypasta #creepy pasta #spookypasta

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