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alarawriting · 4 years

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Inktober 2020 #1: Fish

To say I wasn’t expecting an attack would be an understatement.

I was in my van, driving my oldest daughter to soccer practice. (Why yes, I am a soccer mom. I’m big enough to admit it.) Natalie was supposed to be putting on her shin guards, but instead she was playing the Nintendo 3DS Arista had brought, on the grounds that technically it was her 3DS. I believe Arista’s was out of battery, although it was the kind of detail I try not to pay too much attention to. Arista, of course, had whined about this for ten minutes straight. “It’s not fair! I brought that 3DS! You said you’d let me play! Mommm, Natalie won’t let me play!” And so on. This was partially, though not fully, drowned out by the sound of Theo singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” loudly, enthusiastically, off-key and with half the words made up, for what may well have been the tenth time in a row.

“Mom! Make Theo be quiet. I can’t concentrate!”

“Just give me back the 3DS! You aren’t even supposed to be playing it!”

“—itsy bitsy spider, gob up the stop again, itsy bitsy spider went on the bo bo bot, so wong go the dwain and it quash the spider out—“

“That isn’t even how it goes, Theo. It goes ‘Itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout—'“

“If you’re just gonna sing to Theo you can give me back the game. Mommm, she isn’t even playing it and she won’t give it back!”

“I’m sing it, Natwee! I’m sing it my way!”

“Yeah, well your way is wrong, cause you’re a baby.”

“ITSY BITSY NATWEE, CAN’T SING THE SPIDER SONG, CAUSE THEO IS SING IT LA DA DOO DOO LA LA—“

“Come on! Let me play!”

With all this going on, I had no hope of getting back enough of my own concentration to change lanes, so I had been stuck behind a car carrier lugging SUVs for the past ten minutes. I hated being behind large trucks; they block my view of the rest of the road. And here I was with nothing in the CD player but Gary’s smooth jazz, when plainly I needed death metal to drown this out. I’d have given my pinky finger to be able to put on the radio, but radio and I did not get along.

As if to underscore this, a sudden burst of static cut through the horn solo. I frowned, wondering if I’d gotten mixed up and this was the radio after all.

“Hey, cool!” Arista said, having apparently found something worthy of distracting her from her quest to recover the 3DS. “My mood ring is red. Mom, what’s it mean when your mood ring goes red?”

I went cold, and glanced at my own left hand on the steering wheel. The stone in my ring, normally opal, had turned obsidian black.

I glanced back up to see the top SUV on the car carrier starting to slide.

“Aspída!” I shouted, having no time to do anything more complex than that. Then I spun the wheel and swerved wildly onto the right shoulder, scraping the jersey wall, as the SUV slid off the carrier’s ramp and came careening down at us.

Distantly I was aware of my kids screaming, but all my attention was on surviving this. The SUV slammed into the shield I had just cast and bounced into traffic, making the car shudder. The small truck that had been behind me struck the SUV, sending it spinning across the road. Meanwhile I’d slammed hard on my brakes, coming to a full stop about twenty feet away from where the SUV ending up crashing into the jersey wall ahead of me. The small truck pulled over, in front of the SUV. The car carrier continued blithely on into the distance.

At least they hadn’t all fallen. That would have been a lot harder to deal with. I could have done it, but I would not have liked to explain it to the kids.

“Mom! Mom! What was that? What happened?” Natalie screamed. Theo was crying hysterically, and Arista was gasping, hyperventilating.

I turned around in my seat. “Arista! Inhaler, now! Natalie, help her grab it!” I wanted to unbuckle, to go take Theo into my arms and calm him, to grab Arista’s inhaler and give it to her, but I didn’t dare. My ring was still black; Arista and Natalie’s rings were still both red.

The guy who’d been driving the small truck was coming toward me, walking along the shoulder, and he looked furious. Of course, from any reasonable human being’s perspective, I’d had nothing to do with the SUV that had fallen off the car carrier and smashed into his car, but with my ring black I didn’t dare assume he was a reasonable human being. I’d read enough about road rage incidents in the paper; I had to assume he had a gun.

I threw the car into reverse and drove backward as quickly as I dared, which was a lot slower than the cars zipping past me on the highway were going, but a lot faster than one dude walking on the shoulder. He began running toward me. “Katev̱odó̱no̱,” I whispered, shoved the gearshift into drive, and pulled out onto the highway, lurching from 0 to 60 in three seconds and slamming myself and my children back against our seats. The car behind me laid on the horn – I’d cut it off. “Sorry,” I said, more to myself than to the driver who obviously couldn’t hear me, but now I was back up to full highway speed, weaving in and out of traffic so that neither the guy I’d just cut off nor the driver of the small truck could catch up with me.

I pulled off the highway at the first exit that came up, watching as my ring dulled to a grayish opalescent color. We weren’t safe, but we weren’t in deadly danger either.

Arista’s breathing was normal again. Theo was still crying. “Mom, where are we going?” Natalie asked. “Don’t I have to get to practice?”

“You’re skipping practice today, Nally.” She used to call herself that. She couldn’t get the middle syllable of her own name, so she was Nally. Nowadays she usually rolls her eyes when I call her that, but this time, she didn’t. I could see her face in my rear view mirror; she was pale and shaken.

“Because we just had an accident?”

“We didn’t have an accident,” Arista said. “We almost had an accident.”

“Right,” I said. “We’re going home, and we’re going to eat ice cream and we’re going to relax.”

“Ice cream?” Theo asked, his sobs becoming weaker and less pronounced.

“Yep! Who wants an ice cream soda, who wants a milkshake and who wants a sundae?”

Kids are sometimes very easy to bribe. Though I suspected that Natalie was letting herself be bribed rather than challenging me. She knew something weird had just happened, but she didn’t want to ask me what, or perhaps didn’t want to acknowledge it.

Another old terror raised its head. What if she was like me? What if all of them were? What if they could use magic?

I shook my head to banish the thought. No one had found us. No one had sent either of them an invitation to school. Natalie was 12, Arista was 10… they were old enough that they could have gotten invitations by now. I’d gotten mine when I was 9, though my parents hadn’t been persuaded to send me to a boarding school until I was 13.

I’d wanted to go. I’d begged for it. I’d wanted to learn magic so, so badly.

I couldn’t even remember how that had felt, now.

***

When we got home, I put the girls in charge of getting the ice cream, the Coke, the sundae fixings, the milk and the blender out, and Theo in charge of washing his hands, going to the bathroom, changing his clothes and washing up. He’d been potty trained for nearly a year, but I’d nearly peed myself during the almost-accident; I could hardly hold it against a little boy that he’d wet his pants. Theo was obviously very embarrassed by it, though, so I didn’t acknowledge that he’d done so, just gave him the opportunity to wash himself up and change to save face.

I went straight downstairs to my fish tanks in the basement.

The filters didn’t hum. The tank lights weren’t on. The room smelled like ozone and smoke. At least one of the surge suppressors that ran my tank filters and lights was blackened. And every single fish in all four of my tanks was floating on top of their water, dead.

The opal on my ring was still dark grey.

In Homeric Greek – the language I cast spells in, though this wasn’t a spell – I said softly, “Brave heroes, I commend your souls to the Elysian Fields. The gods will honor you.” I didn’t actually think the ancient Greeks had believed fish would go to the Elysian Fields, but then, I also didn’t actually believe in the Elysian Fields, or the later Christian version, Heaven. If humans had souls – and they might, I’d seen Jason so many times I found it hard to believe that all of him could literally be gone, forever – then fish could as well, maybe. These fish hadn’t exactly volunteered to die to save my family, but they’d been feeder goldfish, destined for the belly of a pet predator or an agonizing, choking death due to high ammonia levels and lack of oxygen from the overcrowding in the feeder tanks. I’d given them a better, longer life than they could otherwise have hoped for.

Whatever had killed them, I hoped it had been fast. It looked like some kind of electrical short, maybe. A month ago one of those had taken out all the fish in tank four; I’d replaced the filter, and the surge protector, and the GFCI outlet the surge protector was plugged into, but when magic is targeting you, all of the sane and reasonable precautions you can take may end up coming to nothing. The fish had died because I’d bound them to my family and enchanted them to take on our bad luck. Most of the time, that meant fish died one by one over a period of months, as all of the normal bad luck that might occur to a family just failed to happen – my kids never got scraped knees, our cars never broke down, Gary made it through every round of layoffs at his company, none of us ever got sick.

When the fish started dying fairly rapidly last month, starting with the electrical short, the stone in my ring had been purple – not white opal, not the gray it was right now, not the black it had turned on the highway. I’d put more fish into service and it had faded to white. The fish had been doing reasonably well; I’d thought the danger was over.

But today all of them were dead. And I didn’t dare go out and get more; whatever malevolent spell had targeted me and my family would work a lot more effectively outside the shields I had around the house. Petco would ship me fancy fish, but not feeders. Which meant firstly that it would cost a lot more money to put more fish into service, secondly that I wouldn’t be able to leave the house again until tomorrow when the fish arrived (and what would I do about the girls going to school? They couldn’t leave either, and I couldn’t explain to them or to Gary why not.) And thirdly, that the girls, and Gary, would see the change, think I was taking Gary’s advice about getting nicer fish who could actually serve as pets, and they’d be horribly disappointed when the fish died.

Maybe I could have two layers of fish, I thought. Pet fish upstairs and feeders down here. Order neon tetras and a tank for overnight delivery, set them up, go out and buy more feeders as soon as I had the neons in service.

The thought flickered through my mind that I could buy feeder mice instead. Mammals are stronger and have more life force, and more resistance to malevolent magic. Feeder mice were in the same position as feeder goldfish – they were destined to die. I’d just be giving them a good life before it happened.

But my children would get attached to the mice. Would give them names. Would cry when they died.

I closed my eyes. I needed more power to protect the family than I had at the moment. I’d given up so much of it for my anonymity and my family’s safety, back before I’d even met Gary, when the only family I’d had to protect were my parents.

To get it back, to protect them now, I’d have to break some old compacts. But those old compacts weren’t working well enough anyway, obviously, if someone was targeting me.

“Moommm! We’re ready!” Arista yelled down the stairs.

“I’m coming,” I said, and headed up. I’d deal with the magic later. Right now, I’d promised my kids ice cream, to distract them from near-death and any weirdness they’d observed, and as both a magus and a mother, I’d learned to keep my promises.

***

This is a piece from a WIP “Not Even Past”, about a former child mage student who had to save the world with her group of friends, all of whom died except her. She left the world of magic behind and became a soccer mom. But now the world of magic is coming back for her.

#inktober 2020 #not even past #amanda walker #alara's october 2020 prompt fics

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skruffyfairy · 3 years

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the suicide journalist , Chris Morris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwiA8C6oiJo

Susie and a thin man found me in the park. I was walking slowly round the pond, making the bones in my nose tickle by hooting. Susie said my mother had tipped her off, after hearing my voice while throwing stones at the ducks. I had been there a day and a half. "It's because of my job," I explained, "batch testing New Age CD's." "But Hal said he didn't hire you in the end," she said. "That would explain why he hasn't paid me." The thin man with Susie coughed up a small laugh, and spat it onto the ground. "You'd better come to dinner on Saturday," Susie said. "Clive will be there too." She squeezed the man's arm. "Clive is the suicide journalist." He was ghostly pale, with black hair and a sad wit in his eyes. I'd say he looked like John Cusack, if I could remember who the hell John Cusack was. As he gazed moodily at the pond, Susie explained that Clive had announced in his weekly column that he had six months to live. On April the fifteenth, he would be committing suicide, and until then he would write about how it felt to be staring death in the face. Clive took aout a notebook and muttered something about the blackness of a moorhen. "Do you know what month it is now?" she asked. I thought it might be Martober. Susie dabbed a damp eye, and said that the suicide column was the saddest, funniest, most tragic and uplifting thing she'd ever read. "He has just twelve weeks to go." I looked across the pond and started honking again. Susie turned to collect Clive, who was puffing on three cigarettes and smirking at his notes. "Eight or late with a good excuse," she crooned, and popped a sweet in my mouth. I arrived well after dark. A smart woman opened the door. "I couldn't afford a bottle of wine," I said, "so I've drawn one on a piece of cardboard." I had prepared for the party by eating half a jar of instant coffee I'd found in the bins at Sainsbury's. She took my cardboard and said "That's brilliant. Could I use you in a programme?" When I asked her what sort of programme, she said "I could make a whole series about the things people bring to parties." "What do you do?" I said, thinking of the window at Dixon's. "My name' s Hosanna Bell. I work in the warm arts." We stepped past Susie's yachting gear and into the dining room. Seven people sat noisily round a large bowl of oysters, but Susie wasn't a single one of them. I thought I was at the wrong party, until they explained that the whole point was to be late, but with a good excuse. "Why are YOU late?" they asked. I said I'd had no money for a bottle of wine, and the homeless bloke at the tube station who normally subs me a couple of quid because he says I look worse off than his dog was being mugged when I asked him this time and hadn't given me a penny, and then I'd got lost whether Susie's house was directly opposite some trees, or directly opposite no trees at all. Several conversations had started by the time I got to that bit. Susie arrived to great squeals and kisses. She announced that she had spent the last three hours in bestial congress with a junior cabinet minister. Gobs hung open, because everyone had thought he was gay, and several of them also knew that he was her half-brother. She wore a grin as big as a harbour. "Do you think Clive is still coming?" said a sincere man in glasses, and the talk turned at once to his column. Hosanna Bell said she had seen more truth in Clive's writing than the entire works of any writer she could think of. A woman called Emma agreed. "I'm still reeling. I don't know whether to weep, laugh, throw up or hug everybody." "That's just your protein rush," observed a man called Paddy, pointing to the seventeen shells on her plate. Emma touched his leg. Paddy was Clive's editor, and was busy milking the table by mildly deprecating the praise for Clive's column, so people doubled it in protest. He was just declaring that the columns would have to be polished up for the book, when swearing in the hall announced the arrival of Clive. He looked a bit drunk, and seemed small with his coat off. He said he was sorry he was late, but actually he didn't give a fuck. Everyone laughed, except Paddy. Susie said "This brilliant man has asked me if you would all take it easy on the suicide questions tonight," and helped him liberally to bivalves. We nodded, of course, and I asked him if he thought oysters could commit suicide. Susie glared at me. I said I was just wondering if an oyster could make a decision like that, and if so, how it would die, because it couldn't really hang itself. "Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I didn't know, because I get the two feelings mixed up. She called me a plankton, and started telling Clive about the time she had cut her wrists. "Look at my scars," she said. "They are beautiful, but not as beautiful as your columns." For some reason, Clive looked at me as he said "Only the very ugly is truly beautiful. And if the printed word has any meaning, then it must come from the very edge of fuckybumbooboo." There were titters. Paddy muttered something about Clive alienating his fans, but was cut off by Emma. "No, Clive has every right to be drunk. You are in masses of pain, Clive. You are doing it for us." "Yes," agreed Hosanna. Clive asked her what the hell she knew. "In the warm arts, we're strong on people power," she said, "and what you have done in volunteering to take your own life is illuminate with poignant resonance the self destructor in all of us." There was a ripple of applause. Clive, who had been sousing his oysters in vodka and setting them alight before hurling them down his throat, now added a cigarette to the turmoil, and belched the word "bollocks." Paddy banged the table, and started telling Clive that if all he could do was get pissed and shove drugs up his bum for the last twelve columns, he would lose all his priceless empathy. "This is the finest copy I've ever commisioned," he said, "and I'm not having it ruined by some jumped-up little floozy going all diddums." A man called Stitt said that Paddy was threatening the purity of Clive's columns. "If he uses the bottle, then that should come through in his work." "But he'll end up writing about you lot!" said Paddy. Suddenly all the guests were telling Clive about the time they'd nearly topped themselves. Hosanna Bell described how she'd been suicidal for six months after giving birth, until she'd decided to sue her baby for what it had done to her figure. Clive was insulting everyone and writing notes on his cuffs. "Losers! Crap attempt!" he shouted. "I want something that actually works." Someone said hosepipes work. Clive knew a bloke in a garden centre in Maidstone who actually cuts them to length for your particular car. He said the people carrier length hose was the most popular. "Wow," said Hosanna Bell, now also scribbling feverishly. "So then, Mr Superstar," Paddy was saying, "what is the best way to kill yourself?" Clive said that in fact the best way he knew was to buy 200 foot nylon rope, tie one end round your neck, the other round a lamp post, and get into your car and floor the accelerator. He said that's how his great-uncle had done it. He'd made Clive help him. He was just nine years old. And he'd had to ride in the car and stop it crashing when his uncle's head came off. The blood had made the pedals very slippery. Clive blinked, smarting eyes. The table fell silent. "Really?" said Paddy, genuinely shocked. "Of course not, you moron!" brayed Clive, and went on to explain that we were all idiots, he could say anything and we'd lap it up, just because we thought his pain meant something, how we wouldn't give him a second thought if he wasn't going to kill himself, except that actually he wasn't anyway, because the whole thing was a hoax, and he was going to say so in his column next week. Paddy erupted, and decked Clive with the oyster bowl. Then he stood over him, roaring that this was his f***ing idea, Clive had agreed to do it, and he wasn't going to wriggle out of killing himself now, not now there was a book. Clive crawled from the room. The general opinion was that Clive had just treated us to his most savage and moving cry for help yet. We had all understimated his pain. "I feel choked up now," said Emma, "but if I read about next week, I'll be crying for the rest of the year." "Someone bring me a f***ing fag." Clive's voice sounded glutinous. Susie gestured to me, as everyone else was still debating the meaning of his actions. He lay on the floor, two regurgitated oysters a tongue's length from his leaking mouth - one of them still slightly alive. His nose seemed a better place for the cigarette. The caustic fumes revived him, and he stumbled to his feet. "I'm going out," he said "I'm going to break into a car, and drive around drunk until I crash." As he lunged past me into the hall, his foot snagged on a rope among Susie's boat bags, and he fell on the sea grass. We both looked at the large coil of blue nylon. "Are you good at knots?" he said. Susie's car keys were hanging by the front door. "You might as well use the Discovery," I said. "She'll be so thrilled to have a new story." About an hour later, I revealed that Clive hadn't just gone for a walk. He'd gone to divorce his head. And how I'd helped him with the keys and the knots. I needed to go to sleep, and had correctly anticipated that Paddy would punch my lights out.

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tiredandineffable · 5 years

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Left Unaware Pt 3

Find this one on AO3: Left Unaware Pt 3

Read part one here! And part two!

Summary: Things haven’t changed, not really. Except God is tired of waiting and sometimes, when your creation is bad at putting things together itself, you get involved. Reverse fall au with ineffable husbands endgame. Consider this the end of the slow burn that was the whole series.

……………………….

There's a downpour going on outside, raindrops attacking Crowley's window as he looks out at the sullen, damp darkness of central London. A handful of businessmen walk with their black umbrellas. Crowley considers for a moment wasting one of his precious infernal miracles to tie their shoelaces together in the hopes of getting to watch them tumble about in the grey wet muck. One of the businessmen smiles in the direction of the other in a way that betrays more fondness than he was likely going for. The other businessman doesn't seem to notice, and Crowley decides he has better things to do than meddle with Londoners.

Instead he gets up, ignoring the steady beat of the rain on the glass of his expansive apartment and the desperate tone of the ancient ansaphone as yet another of uncountably many messages is left.

"Crowley, I'm very sorry, truly," the machine begins again, as if this whole business hadn't been enough of a punishment. Above and Below were getting creative with their punishments for impertinence these days. "I never meant to worry you. I understand that you still want me to end my research of this topic, but I refuse to allow you to risk walking into this situation blindly. I want to help, Crowley. Please allow me to."

A long beep. A beat of deafening silence. Crowley's phone rings again and then the ansaphone begins again.

"Crowley do you really intend to ignore me the whole night?" This time, the answering machine sounds angry, hurt, impatient. Crowley doesn't respond, staring at the impersonal concrete ceiling. The machine falters for a moment, collecting it's thoughts, but it's next words still sound tentative. "Can we get done what needs to be done for now, and then you can hate me afterwards? After all of this is over, if you wish to never see me again then so be it. But you are…"

The machine thinks. The rain pounds. Crowley looks over at his desk.

"You are a fool if you believe for a moment that I would let you handle this alone."

Another long beep. Crowley's fingers twitch to call back, to respond to the pained voice and make things better. But he won't.

So he doesn’t. He knows avoiding Aziraphale is something he can’t do forever, but to be in his presence is to pull him into whatever mess he’s gotten himself into. Two more feathers have appeared since the fight a few days ago. He was completely assured that he’d made the right decision regarding this until Aziraphale had started calling him mercilessly. And now, for the first time in millennia, he prays for a sign.

He waits then in the silence. For a few moments it’s just Crowley and the hit of rain against the apartment walls. Then the long beep of the answering machine pulls him out of his wishful fantasy.

Who is he kidding. God forsook him ages ago, before the creation of time itself.

He stands, considering for a moment where he actually plans on going before deciding that he really just can’t be home alone with the ansaphone pleading with him like that, so he grabs his coat and another pair of glasses, stepping outside into the cold just as the machine picks up Aziraphale’s voice again.

……………………….

God, in all Her infinite wisdom, knows that Her creation is full of idiots. She doesn’t necessarily work in mysterious ways. They just seem mysterious to the many members of Her creation who wouldn't have picked up on a sign even if they ran right into it.

……………………….

Most of the time, going on a drive is a very calming experience. There’s something about speeding along a highway that reminds you that feelings are a thing, even when you’re completely numb. It’s like taking that first full breath after a good long cry. Except that it can last as long as you need it to, and if it were up to Crowley, it would last hours.

These things are, of course, weather and traffic permitting.

It was just Crowley’s luck that neither the weather nor the traffic were permitting that evening. The traffic is just short of crawling with the rain coming down as it is. Two multi-car, rain-related crashes on the M25 have left Crowley stranded and nearly an hour away from any functionally therapeutic roadways. Part of him itches to miracle away the crashes but that would be a very angelic thing of him to do.

But his intentions were selfish.

He remembers the three mismatched feathers on his wings and groans as he accepts his fate and sits in his bumper-to-bumper disaster.

He’s been in the same spot for what feels like hours and the white noise of the rain and occasional honking is doing absolutely nothing for his patience. It’s too quiet, just him and his thoughts, and his traitorous mind keeps replaying the messages from the ansaphone over and over again.

I want to help, Crowley.

You are a fool if you believe for one moment that I would let you handle this alone.

Why won't the angel understand that he can't? He can't help. Crowley doesn't deserve his help. Crowley doesn't deserve him.

Do you really intend to ignore me the whole night?

Crowley’s ignored lots of things his whole life like his emotions and how Jack and Rose could have both totally fit on that door and how his back still hurts sometimes when he wakes up from nightmares about falling. But this is different, harder to ignore, and really he’s at his wits end with regards to it so he decides instead to completely drown out his feelings with music. He hadn’t put any new CDs in the car since the apocalypse-that-wasn’t, but honestly a bit of anti-establishment anger courtesy of Freddie Mercury sounds great right about now.

He fiddles with the CD player and just waits in the rain until the music hits him at an appropriately loud volume. He intends to successfully shut out his feelings, after all.

When you’re feeling down and your resistance is low, light another cigarette and let yourself go, Freddie begins. Crowley must have paused this at a weird spot last time. Whatever. The song is still good and the melancholic tone is closer to what he needs right now than it is to what he wants. The traffic moves an inch. Crowley takes it gratefully. Some honking from an impatient Londoner informs him that his music is too loud.

This is your life. Don’t play hard to get. It’s a free world.

He takes a breath. He’d lived without Aziraphale for millennia before their agreement. He and Aziraphale had done just fine with the occasional meet up. No reason they couldn’t go back to being casual friends who accidentally bumped into each other every once in a while. Or maybe he could avoid him completely, find somewhere where he could live anonymously but still do a lot of good demon work, like New York. Freddie is right. It's his life and he doesn't need Above or Below. He most certainly doesn't need Aziraphale and his reckless need to help and his unconditional forgiveness that rivals that of God Herself.

All you have to do is fall in love, play the game.

He’d forgotten where this song goes. Maybe being a sappy shit worked for Mercury, but it doesn’t for Crowley. He skips the song.

I don’t want my freedom. There’s no reason for living with a broken heart.

He skips this one too.

Can anybody find me somebody to love?

He slams the eject disk button with an unnecessary amount of force. “Whoever is fucking with my radio is operating on some really demonic shit,” he mutters. The mortals stuck in traffic with him are just glad that they don’t have to listen to Queen at an ungodly decibel anymore.

……………………….

Idiots, She thinks to Herself, especially these two.

#Aziraphale #aziraphale/crowley #aziraphale x crowley #crowley x aziraphale #crowley #reverse fall au #good omens #good omens fanfiction #good omens fanfic #good omens fic #Ineffable Husbands #ineffable husbands fanfiction #ineffable husbands fic #ineffable idiots #my writing

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mushroomminded · 5 years

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Walkman (3)

The police came for Jake the next day.

Two cop cars and an ambulance pulled into the apartment complex’s parking lot and a group of official-looking people made their way to the door, knocking sharply. Aaron was no stranger to seeing cops around, but having them at their door was a new experience. Aaron tucked himself in the kitchen as he listened to Donna scream through the door for them to leave. At some point the front desk buzzed them in.

The next few minutes didn’t seem real.

There were two officers standing over his mother, calmly asking her questions as she screamed in their faces, a woman in a suit was looking around the building, taking pictures and writing notes. She looked long and hard at Aaron as he stood in the kitchen corner. She wrote something down in her book. About 3 people in blue latex gloves kept going back and forth between the propped-open front door and Jake’s room. At some point they came in with a stretcher, at another they left with Jake on it. Aaron noticed he was crying, turning on the wheeled stretcher, face twisted in pain from being moved. He didn’t have the walkman with him. Donna followed them out the door, screaming, but the officers followed close behind.

In the quiet of the apartment, only Aaron and the lady with the camera remained.

“Are you Aaron?” she asked, standing with the kitchen table safely between herself and the boy.

Aaron nodded. She set her things on the table.

“Your brother is going to be okay,” She said, “We’re here to help help him feel better.”

Aaron didn’t respond. His eyes wandered cautiously from the woman’s face to her stack of things on the table.

“Are you safe here, Aaron?” she asked.

Aaron looked up at her in confusion.

“Can you tell me what your mother will do when we are gone?”

Aaron’s heart clenched in his chest.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

In the end, he was put in the back of a cop car. Donna followed all of them into the parking lot, her cries muffled as the door to the car slammed shut. A police officer was in the driver’s seat, and the woman who talked to him was in the passenger’s side, scribbling something on her clipboard.

“Where’s Jake?” Aaron asked quietly, the sound and sights around him starting to blur together. He had pulled the walkman from its place in the drawer before the woman led him outside. Now he fidgeted with it in his hands.

“He’s in the ambulance, sweetie,” the woman said, pointing as the larger car pulled out of its spot and started out of the parking lot. The car he was in followed suit. “We’re just gonna make sure he’s okay.”

Aaron was quiet for the entire ride. At some point the cop noticed the walkman in his hands and encouragingly asked him what was in it. Aaron didn’t respond. In all truth, he didn’t really know the answer.

---

The hospital was very boring. There was a lot of waiting around and doing nothing. Aaron sat in the hallway by himself, kicking his feet off the floor as he was too tall to let them dangle. He gripped the walkman firmly in his hands. Every now and then someone would come by to ask him some questions. Sometimes the woman came back, sometimes it was a cop, sometimes it was one of the hospital workers. All of them crouched in front of him and spoke softly, rising and leaving when they were satisfied. Some asked about Jake, some asked about Donna, some asked about him, some asked about the walkman. Aaron answered the questions as best he could. He never once put the headphones on and listened to he walkman.

After a particularly long stretch of quiet, where no one asked him anything, a nurse came and beckoned for him to follow him into the room. Jake was there. He was leaning back on the bed and a tube was plugged into his hand. Aaron noticed some of the bandages were missing, and the cast on his wrist was changed to a much smaller brace. Aaron smelled fresh shampoo and soap on Jake when he stepped closer, never really realizing how badly he had smelled of sweat and grime at the house before.

His fingers clasped around Jake’s and he gently placed the walkman in Jake’s lap, just like he had last time they were here.

“How you feeling, Aaron?” Jake asked quietly.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Aaron admitted.

“Do you want to listen with me again?”

Aaron nodded.

---

They let Aaron stay the night with Jake. Jake dozed off early on, his body seemingly the most at peace it had been in a long time now that he was properly dosed up on painkillers. Aaron curled up in the bed beside him, his head pressed to Jake’s, pressing the play button again and again to start the CD over, letting the music sing him to sleep.

In the morning, they had visitors. Aaron recognized Dan as he burst into the room, nearly tripping over himself as he ran to Jake. Jake laughed and threw his arms around his friend despite the pain it undoubtedly caused him. He laughed and laughed and he wouldn’t let go, his own skinny arms around Dan’s back and Dan’s big strong arms around his. He laughed until there were tears in his eyes.

“I missed you so much!” Dan cried, releasing Jake gently with a smile

“I missed you too!” Jake said, letting the tears fall, but Dan wiped them from his cheeks. “I missed you so so much.”

“Are you okay, is everything okay?” Dan asked, eyes flitting over his friend, noting the casts and bandages and the collarbone sticking slightly more prominently than usual from the collar of Jake’s gown.

“I’m fine, I’m just... so happy to see you.”

Dan smile so warmly, then he noticed Aaron on the bed beside Jake, he leaned over the bed.

“Thank you for getting this to him,” Dan said, giving Aaron’s shoulder a squeeze and motioning to the disc in the walkman.

“Yeah, of course,” Aaron said quietly.

It was then that another handful of people walked in the room. There were two adults and about 4 girls who all looked strikingly like Dan. Jake smiled and greeted them all by name.

It was weird to Aaron to see Jake so happy. Amidst all the noise, Aaron had quietly slipped from his spot in the bed and wandered back out into the hallway. Jake never smiled like that at home. He never laughed when he saw his family. He always looked so angry and sad around them. He always thought that was just Jake but somehow even in the hospital, barely able to move, Jake was happier than Aaron had ever seen him.

Aaron sat in the same chair he sat in the day before. With no walkman to fidget with, he played with his fingers.

There was another burst of laughter from the room.

Aaron wondered where his mom was.

Aaron curled in on himself, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Suddenly, in this hospital hallway, he felt horribly, terribly alone.

“Hey, Aaron,” a voice broke his thoughts. Aaron’s head whipped up to see Dan standing beside him, head tilted to the side.

“You okay, bud?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just thinking.”

“Can I ask what about?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, if I may, I have something I’d like for you to think about,” Dan said, seating himself cross-legged on the floor beside Aaron’s legs. For some reason, Aaron expected a scolding, as if Dan somehow just knew this mess was his fault.

“Your mom’s gonna be with the police for a while so we were wondering if you and Jake wanted to crash at our place for a bit,” Dan said. Aaron looked at him in surprise, but Dan seemed not to notice his expression. “My big sister moved out and we have a spare room that you guys can have all to yourself.”

“You want me to come?” Aaron asked.

“Of course,” Dan said with a soft smile. “You in?”

Aaron didn’t respond for a moment because surely this couldn’t be real. He nodded sharply. Dan smiled and stood, offering Aaron his hand. Aaron took it. It was big and warm and he followed Dan back into the hospital room where everyone was talking and laughing and Jake welcomed him back to his place in the bed, carefully putting an arm around him. Aaron rested his head on Jake’s shoulder and in that cold, white hospital room, something felt weirdly like home.

#written #mico #jake #the pierlys #bummers

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supersaiyansadie · 6 years

Text

Other Lies Excerpt: The Zoo and the Pregnancy Test

I might set Past/Prologue aside and start re-editing this one

Anyway! Here’s another excerpt from Allison’s story!

Enjoy!

Tag list: @editedandwrittenbyhannah and I nominated @thepotatowearsprada

to my tag list. (if either of you want of, let me know, ok?)

Length: 3000 words (roughly)

The next few weeks were hectic. I was able to pull my head out of my worries long enough to study for finals. Finals week fell two weeks before Maria and I’s birthday, so we started bugging Mom and Dad to do something special. We were turning 21 this year, a very special occasion if you liked alcohol. I wasn’t really a drinker, so it was just another birthday.

The campus sprung into bloom all around us. Flowers adorned every tree and bush that’d stand it. The campus lit up with color. Pink, blue, purple, you name it. The day of my Physics final, Coltin came into the room with a bouquet of freshly picked flowers for me. He hadn’t spoke to me in a week. I figured he was still a little pissed about what I said in lab. Still, we started talking again before the final. He asked me to go out with him after finals were over.

I finished off the semester, I felt, as strong as I’d started it. Sure, there was a bit of a bump in the road that had thrown me, but I got back to normal. Well… not normal. The nightmares were still happening with alarming regularity. Despite all my attempts to stave it off, I was still worrying myself sick. Most days, I ended up puking up my guts. I’d missed my period. I tried telling myself that I had just worried too much. Periods could be missed because of stress, right?

Maria dove into her studies more ferociously than I had. She’d been tripped up by what happened, too, but her classes were so much harder than mine. Intermediate Differential Equations, Intermediate Microeconomics, Linear Algebra, to name a few. I’d made the mistake of looking over her shoulder while she was working on her Differential Equations study guide. It was a math class, I knew, but I don’t think I saw any actual numbers. Just looking at it made my head hurt.

Maria was my best friend (don’t tell Jenna), and had been since we’d burst into this world, but I only just realized how much smarter she was than me. Still, she’d slacked off for a minute there trying to help me. Between that and how hard her classes were, she spent most of her home time during the last few weeks of the semester pouring over study guides and practice problems. Most nights, she fell asleep at the table, mid-problem.

Without Maria in the room with me, I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know how much of it was that we’d shared a room for forever and how much was the fact that I didn’t want to wake up from a nightmare and find myself alone. The last few weeks of the school year, I went to sleep in the living room. One morning, I woke up on the couch and Maria was passed out on the recliner. She’d covered me in a blanket before she crashed.

The week after finals, nearly a month after I woke up on the bathroom floor, I went back to the doctor for another round of tests. The day after, Mom and Dad surprised us with a birthday trip to the Memphis Zoo. Our birthday wasn’t going to be until the week after, but Mom and Dad both had grad students defending their dissertations on that day. The plan was for us to go out to dinner that night, but the trip had to be early.

I loved the zoo, let’s just get that clear. I loved animals of all shapes and sizes. Lions, tigers, snakes, spiders, it really didn’t matter to me. Except roaches. Roaches still bothered me, but every other type of animal was cool. Maria was not quite the animal lover I was. She liked the cute fluffy animals, but the creepy crawlies? Nah, she couldn’t stand them. It may have had something to do with how many times I “forgot” my pet tarantula in her bed when we were twelve. She ended up getting the last laugh. Peter (that was the spider’s name, Peter Parker) had gotten tired of Maria’s screams, I guess, cause one day he ran away. I was inconsolable.

So, the Tuesday after finals were over, the four of us got up early and climbed in the car. For once in my life, Dad let Maria and I control the radio. I think that was the first time the radio had left the oldies channel since the oldies were released. Maria put in her Christina Aguilera CD and sang along the entire trip. Every now and then, I’d join in on one of the hits, but most of the trip consisted of me staring out of the window, trying to quiet my thoughts.

Occasionally, out of the corner of my eye, I’d catch Maria give me a despondent glance. I knew she was worried about me, just like I knew my parents were. They didn’t press the issue, but they were keeping a closer eye on me. I had been hoping that once all my tests came back negative and I was in the clear that everything would settle down. I wanted things to go back to normal. Part of me knew that “normal” was a bit much to ask for, but maybe something next to normal would be sufficient for now.

I had been going to therapy every week, like Mom suggested. I was able to start vocalizing some of the things I’d been feeling, but I didn’t like therapy. I always left my appointments feeling worse than I did when I arrived. I told Mom that, and she nodded.

“It makes sense.” She’d said.

“It does?” I’d asked. “How’s that?”

“Well, if you were dealing with everything, you wouldn’t need therapy.” She had explained. “The only way to get better is to deal with things, which can be unpleasant. Ergo, if you go to therapy and actually work at it, you probably won’t feel great leaving your appointments.”

After an hour on the road, we pulled into the zoo parking lot. The front of the zoo had a beige archway fifty feet high, or so it seemed. Lining the walkway to the gates were larger than life animal facsimiles. I vaguely remembered the last time we came here. Maria and I were barely as big as the lion‘s paw. The realization that I was that small once unnerved me a little.

The zoo was packed. School was out for the year, and all the parents must have been tired of their kids already. I couldn’t get comfortable. Every time somebody walked past me, a chill ran up my spine. I hadn’t been around so many people since… I don’t even know. I kept glancing over my shoulder. Maria must have noticed cause she took my hand. I pulled it away. She frowned, but backed off.

“So, which way should we go?” My dad asked, once we were inside. Before I could answer, my cell phone rang. I held up a finger and hurried out of earshot. I could feel my family’s eyes on me.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hi, is this Allison Evans?” The lady asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Hi, Allison. This is Marietta Jackson from the Ole Miss Health Center.” She said. “I’m calling about the tests we did yesterday.”

“Yeah?” I asked. I looked back at my family. Maria was watching me. She fiddled with her charm bracelet. Mom and Dad were looking over the Zoo map, planning the day’s activities.

“I have your test results here,” She went on. “As for your STD screens, all the tests came back negative.”

The pressure around my heart released a little bit. No STDs. That’s good.

“And for the pregnancy test?” I asked, my heart in my throat.

“As for that one, that came out positive. Congratulations.”

Do you ever get those moments where it feels like the world stops around you? Moments where a second feels like a minute or an hour? That’s how I felt at that moment. Congratulations? I wanted to laugh, cry, scream, and curse all at the same time. That asshole couldn’t control himself and… now what? Pregnant… I was pregnant. What am I going to do? I pressed a hand to my stomach.

“Ms. Evans?” The nurse asked. I snapped my phone shut, and hurried to the bathroom. I hesitated at the door, my heart fluttering wildly. I could feel his hand clamp down on my shoulder again. A woman pushed past me. I clenched my fist and went in. I barricaded myself in a stall.

It was supposed to be over. They were supposed to tell me I was negative for everything. I couldn’t be pregnant. How could this happen? I asked myself. I felt my eyes get hot. I choked the tears down. No. I told myself. I couldn’t break down now. I couldn’t be pregnant. I couldn’t be. Hail Mary, full of grace… Blessed virgin, please let this be a false positive. That happened sometimes, right?

“Allison?” Maria’s voice wafted through the bathroom, echoing slightly. I prayed that my voice wouldn’t crack.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Is everything ok?” She asked.

“Yeah, everything’s fine.” I lied. “I just… really had to go.”

“Was that-” I heard her moving around. After the noises stopped, she started again, softer this time. “Was that the doctor?”

“Uh, no. Telemarketer. They don’t take no for an answer.”

I pulled myself together, as best as I could, and joined my family outside. Mom and Dad had decided the best path to take to hit all the prime spots. Near the entrance area, there was a fountain spewing water into a small in-ground pool. A dozen children, or more, were splashing around in the pool, enjoying the beautiful weather.

How many of them are going to grow up and hurt others? I wondered. How many of them are going to grow up and get hurt? Beaten? Broken by somebody they weren’t aware existed? I looked over at the parents, standing in the shade of the nearby gazebo, taking pictures of their babies. How many of them wanted their kids at the point I’m at? How many want them now?

Maria jostled my shoulder, snapping me back to reality. She followed my gaze. She looked after Mom and Dad. After deciding that they were sufficiently far enough away, she turned back to me.

“It’s going to be fine.” She said. “Don’t worry. You’re probably not pregnant.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She admitted. “I guess I’m just hoping.”

“Girls!” Mom called back. They were nearly a hundred feet down the path, already. “Hurry up, we’ve got a lot to see.”

“Just… try to enjoy the zoo.” Maria said. “Nothing you can do about it now, right?”

I nodded. Maria moved to grab my hand, but stopped herself. We hurried after our parents. Mom and Dad wanted to get the creepy crawlies out of the way first, it seemed. They lead us to the insectarium and the reptile room first. Maria waited outside both sections. Despite my worries, I found myself grinning. I loved spiders and snakes and komodo dragons (though there were no komodo dragons here, I was sad to learn.)

“I still can’t understand how you can find those things cute.” Maria said, as Mom, Dad, and I exited the insectarium.

“I mean people find you cute, so…” I said.

“Hey, you look the same as I do.” She shot back.

“Really?” I asked, suppressing a smile. “Is that how this whole identical twin thing works? I’ve never been good at Bio.”

Maria giggled and stuck her tongue out at me. I rolled my eyes. After the insects, we made a bee line (no pun intended) for the Asia exhibit. I turned a corner and smacked into a woman.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I said. She rubbed her protruding belly. “Oh. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine.” She said, winking at me. “He’ll live.”

“How do you…?”

“I can tell. I don’t know how.” She said. “I just can.”

She flashed a smile, and headed off. She was so blithe about it. Sure, she was going to have a baby, but she was happy about it. I realized with a start that some people wanted babies. The concept seemed so foreign to me. I hugged myself, lost in thought.

“It’s a panda!” Maria squealed, seeing a panda. “Oh, my god, he’s so adorable.”

Future ruler of the world, ladies and gents. Maria, I’d learned in my 21 years of knowing her, was a strong independent young lady who had very few weaknesses. Cute things were number one. Any time she got within five feet of puppies, cats, squirrels, and babies she’d turn into a squealing, gibbering, mess of a girl.

Her eyes lit up as a smile broke across her face. For weeks now, she’d seemed so serious. Between stressing out about finals and worrying over me, her smile had been tainted with her troubles. She never seemed to let herself be happy any more. I’d started worrying about her. I’d never tell her that, though. She’d say I was being over dramatic. Still, seeing her in a moment of pure uncontained joy… It was refreshing.

When we were able to pull Maria away from the panda enclosure, we headed toward Primate Canyon. Everywhere I looked, little kids ran around, excited. Mothers pushed strollers through the walkways, every now and then bringing out the little ones to see an animal. I hugged myself. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Mom and Dad exchange a worried look.

Stop it, girl. I told myself. Stop ruining the day. I didn’t like people worrying about me on a normal day, but we came to the zoo to have fun. I didn’t want to kill the mood.

“So, Dad.” I started. “You know anything about gorillas?”

“A fair few things.” He replied.

“You know why they have such big nostrils right?” I asked. He shook his head, brow creased. “It’s cause they have big fingers.”

All three of them looked at me, bewildered. When it hit them, all the tension broke. Dad took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, groaning. Mom leaned against the wall laughing at my Dad’s expression. Maria rolled her eyes, but couldn’t hide her smile. I started laughing at them all. It was like a valve busted inside me or something. I’d been so stressed for the past month. Now that I was laughing, I couldn’t stop.

I kept giggling sporadically as we went through the monkey zone. When we got to the gorillas, I started laughing hard again. Mom put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. My muscles tensed up, but I didn’t pull away this time. Don’t make them worry. Dad kept giving me amused looks. Maria grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers.

Dad, not to be outdone in the horrible joke department, kept cracking puns all through the zoo.

“Never play poker with these cats, they’re all cheetahs.”

“Oh, my god.”

“…and so he said, with friends like these, who needs anemones?”

“Dad!” Maria groaned. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe. “Stop encouraging him.”

“Why are Owls so lonely? They’re owl by themselves.”

“Mitch.” Mom chided, but she was grinning.

We finished the zoo around five o’clock and clambered into the car. We stopped for dinner at Outback Steakhouse. Maria and I took half the booth, the old people took the other half. I sat sideways in the booth seat, my back pressed against the wall. I folded my leg under me. Dad excused himself to the bathroom not long after we’d gotten there. He returned a few minutes later with a couple of glasses of red wine. He passed one to me and the other to Maria.

“Well, you’re not technically of age, yet.” He said with a wink. “But don’t tell anyone, and I won’t.”

Maria sipped her wine and grimaced. “Oh god, that’s strong.”

Oh, please. I thought. Maria had always been a bit of a party girl. I highly doubted that this was her first time tasting red wine.

I grabbed my glass, but hesitated. I rubbed my belly. Isn’t alcohol bad when you’re pregnant? Mom and Dad were watching me. Maria looked over, and nudged me playfully.

“Come on. It’s not that bad.” She said. “I’m just a drama queen.”

I muttered something about needing air, pushed past Maria, and hurried out of the restaurant. Out on the patio, I leaned my back against the wall and slid to the ground. Why does my life suck? I thought. I pulled my knees to my chest. Maria came out a moment later.

“Hey,” She said. “You still worried about the pregnancy thing?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

“Look, you can have a glass of wine.” She said. “Besides, I doubt you’re pregnant. You got your period, right?”

I shook my head. Maria’s eyes went wide, but she kept her composure.

“Look, you can miss your period for a lot of things. It could be stress.”

“That’s what I told myself.” I said, my voice was barely a whisper.

“So, listen to yourself. You’re probably fine. When’s the doctor supposed to call?”

“He called already.”

“What?” Maria narrowed her eyes. “Is that the call? The one you got at the zoo?”

I nodded.

“And?”

I nodded again. Maria pursed her lips.

“You told me it was a telemarketer.” She said, her voice shaking. She squeezed her knee until her knuckles were white.

“Yeah.”

Maria got up and stormed inside. I felt a tear roll down my face. I wiped it away and forced the rest down. I couldn’t be weak. My family was waiting for me inside. Don’t ruin their day. I told myself. Don’t let them suspect anything. I sat there a few minutes. Finally, I got back on my feet and headed in to the table.

“Sorry about that.” I said. “Just got a little hot.”

Mom and Dad stared at me, all humor gone. Maria was nowhere to be seen. Shit. “Allison, is there something you want to tell us?” Mom asked.

#other lies #my writing #writeblr #allison #maria #I actually really like this chapter #there may be a few things to touch up #but it's in good condition considering

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supergirlimaginesfic-blog · 7 years

Text

The Danvers Sisters (the youngest sibling)

Request: could you write some headcannons on being alex and kara's little sister?

a/n: HECK YEAH I CAN. These are always so fun to do lol, bring it on!! These are more dumb than emotional, I think... I live for the trash and the crack, y’all LOL

Also a little sidenote, headcanon requests (for now, anyway, in my absence) are something I’d be more likely to do since they’re much quicker than coming up with actual prose - those are the ones I really want the most time to focus on. These are just quicker as little flashes of inspiration, and they even help in creating some backstory for the other requests. So that’s just the reason why I’m getting to them before the other prompts, in case anyone was wondering. Have an awesome day y’all :D

- - - - -

it wasn’t always that you were close to your sister, Alex. Life seems to have a different way of handling things than you expect, and you’ve come to learn that things fall into place exactly as they’re meant to; when they’re meant to

you were much younger than Alex, and you figured you had a relationship as ordinary as any other siblings would have. She wouldn’t annoy or pester you, but she would tease you quite often whenever she had the chance - for the most part, you took it in stride, never having seen your sister get close to anything that could be described as malicious

she was always so cool and even at a young age, she just seemed to know what she was about

you, on the other hand, were both parts rambunctious as you were delightful. You spent as much time feeding your untamed imagination as you did swimming the depths of the deep ocean or chartering the vast distances of outer space

Alex never failed to mention how lame you were, but nonetheless joined in whenever the two of you were outside and parkouring on nearly every single thing you could find in your wild savannah adventure

your parents eventually put you into sports to expend your impressive abundance of energy - needless to say you thrived at it, albeit a little too eagerly, if the bruises you got and the fiery competition in your eyes were any indication

you never thought Alex’s loud music was scary or perplexing, you just wouldn’t come to appreciate it until years later on your own; your parents, however, often had to remind her to turn it down several decibels to a humanly acceptable level

when freakin’ Superman himself brought a girl maybe about Alex’s age, maybe a little bit younger to your house and your parents told you she was going to be your new sister, you were ecstatic

now that you saw him, you didn’t really think he was as impressive as you thought he would be, and you said as much. Your mom chastised you and your dad laughed, and Superman winked at you as he took off

Alex, however, was wary about her - she had a better understanding of the implications of having an alien sister; you just thought about how awesome it’d be

your new sister, Kara, shared your room. You were more amenable to the arrangement than Alex would have been (if they’d even asked her, which they didn’t)

you let her pick which bunk she wanted to sleep in, and she merely stared wide-eyed and alarmed at your excitement. Your parents had to remind you that Earth was an entirely new world to her, and it was only then you really considered just how much your new sister needed you

she didn’t talk much, and you were fine with that. You’d get her talking eventually. You spent so many nights speaking seemingly to yourself, but Kara always looked at you with rapt attention, and you always knew she was listening

“What do you mean you don’t have Harry Potter in space? No- wait, you don’t even have to say anything for me to know that look on your face. I have to fix this. I’ll read you every single book, okay?”

much credit should be given to you, because you did, and Kara would start asking you questions about the story or the characters, her mouth still trying to form around new words of an entirely different language

“So magic is just human technology but more advanced?” “Well, not exactly, it’s just... it’s magic.” “Is alien technology considered magic to Earth?” “I mean, I guess it could be.” “Does Hermione love Harry?”

you’d seen less and less of Alex, she was a teenager in high school after all, but sometimes you’d all get together on some nights and watch the stars, all of you intimately aware of Kara’s place in them

rather frequently, you’d hear Kara sniffling from her top bunk, and you’d never fall asleep until you heard her crying cease - you never said anything to her when she did and you never made mention of it in the morning

in your young mind, you thought the best course of action was simply to just distract, and damn were you good at that

you taught Kara how to play soccer, and you think you nearly peed your pants from laughing so hard when you watched her kick an old car tire just a little too hard, and Alex stood watching on the porch like she’d just seen a ghost

you dragged Kara to the park with you constantly, and you’d spend a good majority of your afternoons on the swings - it was a nice feeling to know this was as close you’d experience of the powers of flight that Kara was bestowed with. You suspected it humanized her in some way, and if the content smile she had whenever she swung back was any indication, you think she appreciated the normalcy it gave her

when Kara eventually learned to have much more control of her new powers on Earth, your family spent a day at an amusement park, and you loved the way Kara laughed when she was on the roller coasters

you let Kara go through all your Backstreet Boys and N’Sync CD collections, and you adored her for being the only person you think you ever knew who loved both as undivided and fiercely

Alex absolutely loathed when you two started singing in your bedroom, but you think you’d seen a hint of a smile on her face whenever she stood scolding at your door, but you might have imagined it

she spends less and less time at home and more time being out, and you thus spent even more time around Kara. Alex, in her frequent socializing, simultaneously became more closed off, and you wondered about it - Kara did too

“Does Alex hate me?” “What? No, Alex is just... Alex. She’s always been like that.” “Really?” “Yeah, really, she still loves us though.” “I didn’t have any siblings on Krypton.” “Well, now you have two.”

when Alex was to go off to med school, it wasn’t without proper farewell, and when she spoke to you personally you began to realize just how much you’d miss your oldest sister

“Hey, take care of Kara alright?” “I have, and I will” “Yeah, I know you have. You’re doing a great job... you’ve always been better at it than me.” “We’ll miss you.” “I know.”

Kara went off to college and when it was your turn just a short time after her, you’d shared an apartment, neither of you seeming to not be able to let go of your childhood memories entirely. You got a full-ride scholarship on the basis of playing varsity basketball

throughout the entirety of your experience away from home, she still maintained her normal human persona, and you were set to believe the remainder of your life would continue on that path

Alex, for her part, had gotten into trouble, and after her stint in jail, she’s fixed herself up and found a job as a scientist, you’ve been informed. Admittedly, you were beyond relieved - finally, the sister you always thought was the smartest person you ever knew was putting her brilliance to work

you weren’t jealous when Kara came out to the world and used her powers to save Alex’s flight to Geneva from crashing into the city, but you did ponder how this new development rocked the boat entirely

nobody told you that Alex was a secret government agent working in the extra-terrestrial branch, you figured that out on your own. What was a surprise to you, however, was the fact that it took years to put together that Kara was related to Superman

“Holy shit... how did I not... wow.” “Really, (Y/N)? You’re a Danvers, I can’t believe you.” “Yep, he’s definitely my cousin.” “Clark? Honestly? Did you know I told him he wasn’t as good-looking as I imagined he’d be when I first saw him?” “Oh my god-” “For someone so brainy you’re also a huge idiot.”

you still fight with Kara over the last Ben and Jerry’s pint, but only because you’re far too lazy to have to replenish your stock literally every day

when you came home with a new tattoo, she wouldn’t stop gawking at your arm, and you thought about how adorably fascinated Kara was with human physiology - even with the more you got, Kara would never stop examining them in great length, and you always indulged her

Alex always comes over whenever she can (nearly every night, in fact) and you all have pizza and watch TV

Kara is particularly intrigued by Orphan Black and all the implications of cloning and autonomy

you’ve become more comfortable around Alex now that she’s allowed herself to be softer, and you’ve taken the mantle of being the annoying sister when she brings Maggie to the apartment one night

you live for the scowl on Alex’s face whenever you share embarrassing stories about her, and it’s only made so much better when Kara eagerly joins in and substantiates everything you say

when you take Kara to her first Comic-Con, you never loved yourself more than you did at the very moment you captured Kara’s reaction at seeing all the Supergirl cosplays, and you relished in how dumbstruck but mystified she looked

you still get texts from Kara asking you what certain words mean, or asks for your opinion on which words are better to use in different contexts when she becomes a CatCo journalist

you never would have suspected it, but Kara is as surprisingly intimidating as Alex is whenever you bring someone new home as a date

you always worry about Alex and Kara whenever the security of the city is at stake again (this happens far too often than you care to acknowledge) but the way they come crashing into your apartment and topple onto the couch every single time after a successful battle is enough to remind you that you have two superheroes for sisters

#kara danvers x reader #alex danvers x reader #supergirl #supergirl imagine #kara danvers #alex danvers #kara danvers fic #alex danvers fic #supergirl fic #supergirl fanfic #supergirl imagines #danvers sisters fic #danvers sisters #kara danvers x you #alex danvers x you

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dontshootmespence · 7 years

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That’s Where He’d Be

A/N: An anon request where the reader is dating Spencer at the time of the car crash in season 12. Stephen Walker was a casualty of the crash, and as tribute to him, she (and four friends-much like the Pentatonic cover, found here) sing at his funeral. @coveofmemories @sexualemobitch @jamiemelyn @unstoppableangel8 @criminallyyoursdrreid

----

“No!” Monica screamed, throwing an antique vase across the room and watching as it smashed into a million pieces against the wall. “No! No! No!” As a piece of the vase hit her leg, she spun around, her hands combing through her hair as the tears streamed down her face in waves. Through thick streams, she saw Maya and Eli run into the room to see what was wrong.

Today was the funeral. Upon hearing the news, they’d all nearly collapsed and burst into tears. Then came the numbness as the funeral was being planned, and this morning, as Monica pulled a mourning veil over her eyes, it hit her all over again, causing the crash that brought the kids to her attention. “Mom?” Maya asked, her voice cracking as Monica reached out for her daughter. In a split second, Maya also dissolved into tears and Eli followed closely behind, always told by his father to never be afraid to show emotion.

“It’s not fair, Mom,” Maya cried. She wanted to tell Maya and Eli that everything was going to be okay - and it would be - but right now she wanted to wallow; she wanted to curse the world for taking her husband away. “Why?”

Monica didn’t know how to console her. As a mother, you were assumed to know all the answers, and she just didn’t have them. “I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.”

----

“I know you didn’t know him that well,” Spencer said to you as you flattened out your black dress at the grave of his co-worker. “But thank you for doing this. I think his wife and kids will appreciate it.” The minute he’d asked, you said yes, calling up your old friends and asking them to resurrect your little group for a friend’s funeral.

As you composed yourself, you saw Emily off near a tree, unable to make eye contact with anyone, especially not in the direction of Stephen’s family who were on their way toward his grave. “I’ll be right back,” you said to Spencer and the rest of the team. Since you started seeing Spencer, you’d become very close with Emily and saw how hard it was hitting her. “I’m just gonna go talk to Emily.”

She only looked up when you approached, quickly glancing back down, her eyes filled with guilt. “How are you?” You asked softly. You reached your hand out for hers and she grabbed it limply, still not looking at you.

“It’s my fault,” she said quietly.

“What?” She couldn’t have said what you think she just said.

“It’s my fault, Y/N,” she said. A short intake of air let loose all of the emotions she was holding back. “I told him he owed me one. That’s why he came to help us. And now he’s dead. It’s my fault.”

Emily collapsed into your arms, so you rubbed her back. “Em, it’s not your fault. He could’ve said no, but he didn’t. Because he was a good man. This isn’t your fault. It’s Scratch’s fault. And you’re gonna get him.” For a few moments, she sobbed into your shoulder, holding on tight in an attempt to steady herself. You pulled away and wiped her tears away before giving her a comforting smile and leading her back toward the casket.

When Monica, Maya and Eli walked up toward the grave, they stared into oblivion as the priest started up the service and Stephen was lowered into the ground. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the life and mourn the passing of our dear friend, Stephen,” the priest started. He continued, the words flowing out of his mouth as if he’d said them thousands of times before; he had, but at least it didn’t sound like it. His warm and personable voice reminded everyone of Stephen. “And now Stephen’s teammates wanted to do a little something special for Stephen and his family.” He waved you up, and you returned the favor with your friends. They followed up closely behind you until you were all standing in front of where his tombstone would be placed.

“Please accept our condolences,” you said directly to Monica. “This is for your family.” Quietly, you started to sing.

Well I heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? Well it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth The minor fall and the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you She tied you to her kitchen chair She broke your throne and she cut your hair And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Although you hadn’t sung together in a while, your five voices still fit together perfectly. Monica had been taken off guard, dissolving into a puddle of tears and whispering continuous thank yous in your direction as well as the team’s. Spencer’s lips upturned into the smallest of smiles, both proud of you and grateful for the gift you were giving Stephen’s family. As you continued on, you turned your head up toward the heavens, knowing if heaven did exist, that’s where he’d be.

Baby I've been here before I've seen this room and I've walked this floor (you know) I used to live alone before I knew you And I've seen your flag on the marble arch And love is not a victory march It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know What's really going on below But now you never show that to me, do you? But remember when I moved in you And the holy dove was moving too And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

With a deep breath, you steadied your own voice. Granted you didn’t know Stephen that well, but you were overcome with emotion as his wife and two teenaged children watched their husband and father get lowered into the ground more and more. He was too young to die; his wife had already sacrificed so much for the sake of his job, and the children especially didn’t deserve to have their father taken from them at such a young age. None of it was fair, so you kept singing in an attempt to heal even a bit of their pain.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above All I've ever learned from love Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you And it's not a cry that you hear at night It's not somebody who's seen the light It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

As your collective voice trailed off, you approached Monica, barely able to see each other through her tears and your own. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” you said, giving small hugs to both of the children as well. “I hope you know he’s never far from you.”

“Thank you so much,” Monica said, her smile evident that strained and painful. “I can’t thank you enough for that.” She motioned her head towards where you were standing and singing just moments earlier. “That was Stephen’s favorite song.”

“The team told me, and it was no problem at all. If there’s anything I can ever do for you, please don’t hesitate to let me know,” you said, turning back toward Spencer and the team.

“Y/N?” Maya asked as you turned away. Quickly, you spun back around and looked inquisitively at the young girl. “Do you have a recording of your group singing that?”

You nodded softly remembering the couple hundred CDs you’d had made for the purposes of handing them out to those that needed their spirits uplifted most. “I do,” you replied. “I’ll give it to Spencer to bring over after work one day this week.”

All three of them smiled softly as you walked away and back into Spencer’s arms. “Thank you again,” he said. “That was beautiful and I know Stephen would’ve appreciated it.”

#spencer reid x reader #criminal minds fanfiction #stephen walker #spencer reid #david rossi #emily prentiss #jennifer jareau #penelope garcia #luke alvez #tara lewis #that's where he'd be

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spilled-ink-and-city-lights-blog · 6 years

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Chapter One of my novel (and an extra plug for patreon)

I’ve been working on this beast, Wayward Soul, since my senior year of high school and I’m just now releasing it into the wild, forgoing traditional publishing because down with the man or something like that. I figure I’ll post the first chapter here for anyone so inclined and then a link to my patreon, in which a dollar a month will help with rent/catfood/human food/etc.

I tossed the end of my cigarette from the open window of my truck, watched the resulting fireball skitter away before dying on the asphalt. My girlfriend wasn’t present to give me the usual spiel about my litter being eaten by squirrels or stray kittens who would then develop cancer because of my negligence. It was three in the morning and I had to be back to work in five hours. The regular night shift worker had called off with a mysterious illness that had conveniently struck on the first warm day of spring when everyone was crawling out of their houses and blinking as if they’d never seen such sun before. As for me, I was stuck in the cold damp of The Warehouse.

The Warehouse wasn’t a warehouse of anything specific, more of a hub of all things needing shipped. Every breeze that blew through the Civil War era structure set the building to sounding as if it were alive and displeased about it, with creaks and groans echoing down the oversized corridors. I didn’t believe in the rumors that The Warehouse was a hospital for soldiers in days gone by and I didn’t believe in ghosts, but there’s something about three in the morning that strips the skepticism from a man.The only good part about working graveyard was that everyone in their right mind was already home in bed, and I had the roads to myself. I was already half asleep and the fewer obstacles to crash into when I inevitably dozed, the better.

I slipped into autopilot and my mind wandered to my bed. The radio did nothing to improve the situation; I had heard the same six songs on the local station so many times that they all blurred together into what may as well have been a lullaby. Something moved in the corner of my vision at the side of the road. I hoped that I wasn’t going to get bombarded by Bambi or his woodland friends. As soon as the thought crossed my sleep deprived brain the thing shot into the road in front of me and stopped still. and I slammed on the breaks at the same time as wrenching the steering wheel to the left, into the empty other lane. The truck skidded almost sideways across both lanes before it came to a stop with the thing standing close enough to reach out and touch the bumper. A person? I wondered what the hell a person was doing trying to play Frogger on a backroad at three in the morning. I didn’t think that there were any bars nearby to send too-drunk patrons stumbling home in the early hours. I jumped out into the darkness, the residual adrenaline telling me to beat the Hell out of the asshole that had nearly caused me to wreck. The slam of the door sounded like a gunshot in the darkness. And then I paused.

Now that I was standing so close, I could see that it was actually he, and he was a child that came up just past my waist. He dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around himself, watching me with huge, shockingly green eyes that seemed to reflect the beam of the headlights as an animal’s would. He shrunk away from me as I approached, adding to the illusion that it was some sort of strange animal that sat before me in the road. Good parenting, I thought, losing a six-year-old in the middle of hillbilly backwater country. I looked around for any sign of a parent: flashlights, headlights, panicked screams. A loon wailed from beyond the line of trees, and that was all. “Better get out of the road, kid. You’re gonna get yourself killed,” I called, and his eyes locked on mine, startled and hurt. I could hear the distant roar of a car, far away but fast approaching. “Seriously, move!”The kid started crying and covered his ears. “You’re going to be roadkill here in a second!” I said, and scooped him up under the arms, ignoring his protests.

I opened the passenger side door and tossed him in the general direction of it, jumped in myself, and reversed to swing to the shoulder of the road. He was howling, and he had compressed himself as far away from me as he could manage. I locked the doors, half scared that the kid would make another break for it and head straight back into the road. It crossed my mind how this must look to an outsider: a shaggy, pale, probably wild-eyed man with a tiny child locked in his truck with no indication of a booster seat or anything else that might place the ownership of the child in his hands. Dammit. “What am I going to do with you?” I asked. The kid was making some impossibly high, keening noise directly into my right ear. I tried to turn on the radio, hoping for some potentially soothing music to diffuse the situation, but all I got was a harsh blast of static that caused me to jump and accidentally punch the horn as I tried to turn it back off. The only CD in the six cd changer was slipknot. Soothing. At least the screaming of the music deadened the kid’s screaming a bit.

I flipped open my crappy dinosaur age cellphone and dialed 9-1-1.The dispatcher sounded irritated. I had always thought that they went through training to be able to talk about guts and severed heads while still sounding as close to Bob Ross as humanly possible, but this guy wasn’t having it. He promised to send the cops my way and I hung up to let him get back to whatever dispatchers in rural areas do in the middle of the night when nobody is doing anything stupid to send paramedics or cops to. I turned the heat up. The kid had warn himself out with his carrying on and his eyes had begun to droop. I closed mine as well. If I was going back into work at six in the morning, not even this was going to stop me from getting some sleep first. What else was I going to do, besides stare at trees or watch the kid sleep like some kind of actual creep?

When I woke up again, the seat behind me was empty. I assumed the kid had crawled into the back, but he wasn’t there either. I found myself awake with a solid jolt of adrenaline straight to the bloodstream. He didn’t look old enough to be competent at managing door locks, so where had he gone? Surely enough, upon examination the doors were still locked locked from the inside and the keys still in the ignition. My pulse throbbed behind my eyes. I had always figured that my brain was a tad bit fried from a decade of drug use, but hallucinating small children on abandoned roads was a new one. I decided the best course of action was to take off before the cops finished their snail-paced crawl to my location and pretend that this night had never happened.

https://www.patreon.com/dcayton

#writing #spilled ink #wayward soul #first novel #my own frankenstein monster #it's aliiiiive #patreon #chapter 1

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852recordstores · 5 years

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gold song producer Adi Aberdeen X Grammy Master Randy Merrill master tape production J.Sheon X Liao Wenqiang X Fang Yijia X Night Watcher Qin Xuzhang Mountain Man X Wan Zhixuan X Hai Dafu X He Yusheng Join hands to create a colorful new Ding Dang music color ticket

★ Sing red nearly 50 The drama song "National Love Songs" has a good performance ★ "The palm of your hand" is the first YouTube point to see the billion songs promoted to "K song billion sister" ★ Return to the player's identity to participate in the singing program to return to the original self-viewing self ★ On the eve of the show, the feelings of returning to zero will face the long-distance love and hurt.

Twelve achievements, the results are loud! Dingdang released his first solo album "Runaway from Home" in 2007. After 12 years of debut, he released 8 albums and accumulated more than 50 concerts around the world. He sang nearly 50 TV dramas, movies, stage drama theme songs and episodes. Known as "Idol Drama" and "Queen of the Theme Song", it has the classics of "I love him", "I can't be alone", "Not your fault", "It's hard to be rare", "Can't guess", etc. His masterpiece, the TV drama "Lan Ling Wang" theme song "Hand Palm" has become Ding Dang's first YouTube point to break through the billion songs, so that "K song a sister" Ding Dang promoted "K Ge billion sister" club. The song is also excellent. In 2018, he took the lead in performing a new adaptation of the musical "The Wrong Car" actress "Ami". The tour was held in Taichung, Taipei, Kaohsiung, Xiamen, Wuhan, Beijing, Shanghai, Toronto, Vancouver and other cities. The challenge of the three-in-one strength of song, dance and drama makes Ding Dang's acting career a new milestone!

Constantly innovating, constantly advancing, and constantly returning to zero, is the way in which Ding Dang has been examining himself in recent years. She has set her own 2019 year as "Ding Dang Yuan Nian" and reviewed the past performance art road until this year. It’s like drawing a circle, you can go back to the original point, think back to the original intention, and return to the original one.” Just as she went to the singing program “The Voice of Dreams”, she felt very big in her heart and once stood on the concert of thousands of people selling tickets. On the stage, she has to stand up with the amateurs to become a contestant, and she needs to put a lot of burdens and world vision. This process has become her important life lesson: "The most feared people are getting along with themselves. Re-recognizing that you really need to experience all kinds of storms and baptisms, but often because of various senses of insecurity on the road of life, bring yourself a lot of unnecessary inferiority. And fear." She deeply felt that the bondage of the outside and the so-called care, it does not matter, do not have to deliberately please who to lose yourself.

In love, Ding Dang also bravely faced the return of zero and wounds in the past. She once had a long-distance relationship, always thinking that as long as it is well cared for and maintained, it can make happiness come true. Unexpectedly, on the eve of a performance, the unfettered breakup broke, and the feelings of the five flavors made Ding Dang unable to resist the crash when he was performing! She recalled that she could only tell herself at the time: "I know that the night before the show was the last time we met, so I put all the tastes I have tasted in love into every love song." Long distance love is hard. But Ding Dang is very open and chooses to fall in love, she will go all out. "I don't regret it, at least I work hard, and finally I don't have to be so careful to guard." Walked through the stage and under the stage, after emotion She is grateful for these memorable processes and insights, and believes that she has become a woman with confidence and brilliance after her experience. Now Ding Dang, I know how to cherish my heart, not to live for others, just for myself!

★ Bravely pursue the true self, "Love is not to be fatal" to examine the shortcomings of love and life. ★ The golden song producer Adi Aberdeen develops a colorful and jingle music color ticket ★ "Gold" light 熠熠 Grammy master Randy Merrill master tape production ★ 10+1 first special record "Minimum Great" Sanshang Meibang Life Insurance Publicity Image Advertisement ★ "Desperate Sanniang" Ding Dang's love "death" can "not kill"

Courageously pursued my true Ding Dang, on April 2, 2019, released her 9th solo album "Die Lovin", made by the golden song producer Adi Tsai, combined with J.Sheon, Liao Wenqiang, Fang Wei Jia, the night watchman Qin Xuzhang, Shandiren, Wan Zhixuan, Hai Dafu, He Yusheng and other outstanding music creation and production teams, changed the past sadness and weakness of the bitter love song image single color, and developed a more colorful new Dingdang music color ticket. The genre is diverse, including: R&B, POP, lyric rock, metropolitan folk, electronic funk, etc., so that the love songs show more different styles. The post-master team of the album is also a "golden" glory. The guest has been awarded the six-time nomination of Grammy and three award-winning gold master Randy Merrill. The artists who have worked together are: Ariana Grende / Lady Gaga/ Adele/ Justin Bieber Wait, let Ding Dang's voice on the album be penetrating but not sharp, and the producer Adi Zi praised it. It is the best masterpiece of the master tape post-processing in his recent album.

"Love to No Life" is a Ding Dang "the most courageous face to love, the album closest to you", with her true emotional story and love concept as the main axis, from analyzing herself, facing herself, reconciling herself, and healing herself In the music, accept his own imperfections. In the past, Ding Dang often gave people a strong positive image of a "female man". She said frankly: "People who look very strong on the surface often have a weak side in their hearts. Sometimes they just fear to puncture the status quo or dare not face it. The cruel reality is stubborn." The new album "Love to No Life" cuts in with "the regrets and beauty of love life". Love is not perfect, honesty faces ten flaws and ten beauty, everyone has different regrets in love. For example, humble, addictive, blind, long distance, inertia, etc. Some beautiful things are actually to shine through the reflection of regrets, bravely face the defects of love, in order to discover the beauty of the shortcomings, to find the original one, The one who still believes in love.

The concept of the album full of bursting tension, "Love is not to be killed", is the personality portrayal of "Ding Ming San Niang" Ding Dang, born with a kind of "the more you are light, the more you want to prove yourself". Can work for the fall, still do not want to continue to sing on the stage; in order to overcome the demons of the play, set up tens of thousands of words of autobiographical novels for the stage play characters; you can try hard to challenge yourself, extreme sports; Can lose weight, run on the treadmill and cry and don't want to support it; for the sense of justice, for the harassed girl to stand up and defend; more for love, encounter scum male bad heart still love not to die . Every kind of "Don't Die" of Ding Dang is because the loved ones, things, and things are all in the heart. "Because of life, love, and love, you can pay for it, you can love it." .

★ The first wave bursts and breaks the main character <Don't be fatal> Characterizes "Don't care for the body" Dark love life ★ Ding Dang X J. Sheon sings new sparks and boldly challenges R&B style ★ "Love and hate symbiosis" lyrics concept dying elopement of the end of the day ★ New MV Director Ares Wu American black movie style full of violent aesthetics

Do you want to go for a person? Do you want to, do you really want to die? The first wave of bursting and breaking the main hit "Don't be fate", R&B style, by the new generation of omnipotent singer J. Sheon, together with the new creator Wan Zhixuan, for the Ding equivalent body to create a male and female chorus, telling the secret love of life: a pair Love does not care about the body, sometimes it is forced to the cliff, the only way to see the beautiful vision, in order to provoke absolute determination. The lyrics come from the concept of "love and hate symbiosis", the attachment to a person who has a strong love, love can be broken, not even life, but the deeper the love, the deeper the hate, the encounter of two lives The bond with the relationship, metaphor of love and hate is a community, you can love to die, you can hate to be terrible, only for each other's life or birth or death, there is no alternative.

Have you ever worked hard for others in your life? Do you know if you should, but still do not want to love it? "Don't be fateed" MV is directed by the new director of the MV of Zhang Huimei, "There is a beautiful black movie style. Ding Dang and hair stylist J. Sheon plays a hot couple, but the real identity of the show is J. Sheon. The serial murderer killed a number of women in the darkroom operating room hidden in his hair salon. Dingdang fell in love and fell into the hunting trap to become a lamb to be slaughtered. Even she apparently noticed that she would be stunned and stunned. In this play, I drank a poison drink, and finally woke up to resist the poisonous needle with him but lost the other hand. Ding Dang was so sad that he was crying. MV Riding is a big play, with a face that is closely related to the intimate interaction of J. Sheon's chest and romantic dance. There is a female man who has been dragged and bound to break away from the drama. When she is touched by the murderer J. Sheon, she is afraid of fear but heartbroken. After the drama, even the crying drama is also crying and crying and tearing the heart, so that the "Don't Die" MV full of dark and beautiful violent aesthetic love drama seems more worth seeing.

★ Pants/windbreaker/suit style, neutrality, wind and swaying feeling ★ Black apple/surreal high-rise fashion photographer Zhou Mo palm mirror play avant-garde modern style ★ Mottled and decadent eye makeup / hysterical chaos challenge Life crazy woman dressing up ★ Mobile black paint / temperature ink new designer Yang Shiqing to create a beautiful collection of packaging

echoes the "not to be fat " attitude, the new album style is neutral and handsome, biased suit suit tops, pants, windbreaker Get rid of Ding Dang in the past to give people a feeling of love and soft beauty, showing the feeling of degeneration of strong women. The main visual invites the new fashion photographer Zhou Mo's mirror to play the avant-garde modern style. The ingenious use of black apples represents the fatality of dangerous love, but still eats without fear. Set up a surreal super-high-rise building, let Ding Dang climb the high ladder to the building, showing that even in the high-risk area, it is still dangerous and unrelenting. In the process, Ding Dang also wears workers' gloves and simply puts tall buildings. Tear off the dismantled domineering sense of arrogance. Even in the end, the hair was messed up, with the mottled and sinister makeup, the mad woman who performed the performance, conveyed hysteria and bravely faced defects and imperfections.

The album design packaging is designed by the cutting-edge designer Yang Shiqing. The album cover is made up of a large type of typography. The concept standard words are arranged in a stepped stack, and like a staircase, they echo the idea of climbing the building. In order to present a sense of desperation, the transparent CD case in the album packaging is hand-painted with black paint, so that each album is a unique out-of-print collection, with a black paint flow with jingle photos, showing a dying edge A deep and hopeless experience. In the concept poster, using the temperature-sensitive ink technology, through the touch of the hand, the face of the close-up face will appear, and the interactive temperature will show another kind of jingle appearance. I hope that the fans will use love (temperature) to feel the dying of Ding Dang.

01. 我們不像我們 (LINE TV《hitory3圈套》插曲) 02. 有什麼不敢面對 03. 不要命feat.J.Sheon 04. 都是月老惹的禍(OT：Birthday Suit) 05. 海的顏色（華視《最佳利益》插曲） 06. 成癮(LINE TV《hitory3圈套》插曲) 07. 誤區（華視《最佳利益》片尾曲） 08. 太陽雨 09. 愛情最高指導原則 10. 愛上你的我 11. 最小的偉大Smallest Great-三商美邦人壽公益形象廣告曲

Release Date: 2 Apr 2019

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ficdirectory · 7 years

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Disuphere (An AU Fosters family fic) Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30

For the record - fancy or not - pizza’s still pizza in Jesus’s book.

He eats one slice, because it’s there, and then goes back to drawing Cookie Land. It’s easier there. No one stops him. No one tells him to slow down. He can’t get sick ‘cause all the food is invisible anyway.

In the actual world, no one bothers him. Moms can tell when he’s trying to cope. And the rest of the fam is used to Jesus acting strange.

But the smells are too alike. And the crowd in the restaurant’s getting louder not less. Jesus thinks about ditching and going to the bathroom just for some quiet, but it’s a bathroom and it’s not super private like at home. He might get stuck in there and then Brandon - or worse Jude - will have to come in for him.

That won’t work.

He’s restless. Even the Cookie Land picture isn’t helping. A loud clatter sounds from the kitchen area, and Jesus is on his feet.

“I gotta walk around,” he says, keeping Moms back. If they touch him right now it will be epically bad.

“Can I walk around?” Frankie asks.

Moms look at him. The message is clear on their faces: Is she safe with you?

Jesus extends a hand. “Yeah. Come on. We’ll stay where you can see us, right?” he asks, for Frankie’s benefit (and Moms’peace of mind.)

“Right!” Frankie answers.

Outside, it’s quieter. They hold hands and look at the sky. Frankie’s voice breaks the silence first:

“Do you not like us?”

“What?” he’s more than a little shocked. But then, she’s always been honest. He thinks about getting down in front of her. Making eye contact. But he thinks better of it. Maybe she can ask because they’re not super connected - just their hands.

He coughs a little. Jesus blames the pizza.

“In therapy. And not. You yell, like about my Doc McStuffins…” Frankie pouts.

“That really bothered you, huh?” Jesus asks.

“Hurt my feelings…and made me jump.” Frankie admits. Her voice is thick. But she’s trying not to cry. For him, Jesus realizes. “That didn’t make me feel good…”

Bending down, Jesus scoops up Frankie, holds her just like he used to - her back to his front - one hand on her top to keep her back. This way, she’s still looking out. That’s better for both of them, but this way maybe she can feel that he does want her around.

“Did you know when you were a baby, I carried you around just like this?” he asks, giving her a chance to calm down before they talk some more. She’s whimpering. Sniffling. But she loves to hear stories about herself.

“Nah-uh…” Frankie denies, not ready to forgive him yet. “How come there’s no pictures then?”

“‘Cause I don’t like pictures,” he comments, swaying back and forth with her in his arms.

“Don’t like pictures. Don’t like me…” Frankie says sadly.

“Now, that’s not true at all. You’re my best buddy.” Jesus takes a deep breath, uttering the words he’s been careful never to say, because they always felt wrong. Always meant something wrong. But Frankie needs to hear this. Needs to know it:

“I love you very much.”

“If that’s real then why? Why were you mean and loud about Doc McStuffins?”

Jesus shifts her in his arms, so they can see each other. “Because even though it’s just a costume, it made me scared. What scares you the most?”

“That bad movie E.T. Jude watched it. I’m scared E.T will come and get me…” Frankie shudders.

“Do you yell when you’re scared?” Jesus asks, curious.

“Sometimes…” Frankie puts her finger in her mouth. Jesus takes her hand. She forgot Night-Night inside.

“That’s okay. Sometimes, I do, too. I just need to remember to stop and breathe when I feel scared. That way, I won’t yell.”

“Doctors help you, you know?” Frankie says gently. “I wanna do that. It’s how come I was Doc McStuffins.”

“You wanna be a doctor so you can help people?” Jesus guesses.

Frankie nods, and very slowly, almost lovingly, pokes him in the face. “Help you.”

“I want you to do whatever you want to do. Whatever makes you happy. And maybe by the time you’re big, and a doctor, I’ll like them.”

“‘Cause you like me?” Frankie asks seriously.

“I do like you. Okay? I promise. And I’m very sorry I hurt your feelings and made you jump. I--”

Jesus’s words are cut off as Frankie nearly chokes him in a tight hug. She smells like coconut and crayons and nothing at all he’s afraid of. He pats her back and sways with her.

“I’ll be a doctor in regular clothes, okay?” she promises, his face between her hands. “Like Dr. H? So you won’t be afraid anymore.”

“Even if you’re a regular doctor,” he says, boosting her higher. “I’ll still come see you. We’ll still be buddies.”

She lays her head down on his shoulder and he just stands with her. It’s evening and the sun’s getting lower in the sky. It’s a bright orange that he loves.

Jesus scans the people around them. Spots a lady his moms’ age approaching them. He can tell by looking at her that she recognizes his face. She doesn’t know him. Jesus puts up a hand while she is still a ways back. He warns her away with a look.

It works.

Frankie’s crashed out on his shoulder by the time Moms, Mariana, Jude, Brandon and Callie come out. Mom smiles and makes little squeaking noises. She puts Frankie’s blanket around her. Jesus carries her to Mama’s car and gets in, too.

Mom hands off his headphones and blanket for the ride home. Mama reaches over to turn on the Brandon CD but he stops her, clearing his throat.

“Can we talk, instead?” he asks.

“Of course,” she says quietly. “You guys were outside a while. Everything okay?”

“Yeah. We just talked.” he answers, not wanting to betray Frankie’s confidence.

“That’s good,” Mama answers, looking at him in the rearview mirror. It’s still light out. The sky looks on fire.

“I didn’t know you got overwhelmed,” Jesus offers, remembering what Mama shared in therapy.

“I think everyone does,” Mama muses.

“That Day, I was in back, too…” Jesus begins. Sometimes, it’s just like that. There’s a moment and he just has to share. “Not at first, ‘cause I got in the passenger side...but, you know...later.”

Mama listens. Looks at him again in the rearview mirror.

“It’s hard being sick. I think about it more.”

“I bet,” she says, compassion in her eyes. In her voice.

“Do you?” he asks. “Think about it?”

“All the time,” she nods. “Every day your brothers and sisters come home from school. That’s when I knew.”

School let out at 3:03. More than four hours after Jesus got in That Car. It’s the first time he’s heard this.

“Did you think I ran away?” Jesus asks. He always needs to check. In case her answer changes.

“No. I knew you wouldn’t have gone anywhere without Mariana,” Mama offers a sad smile.

Jesus is quiet, watching the scenery pass. “You know me so much better than Him,” Jesus mutters.

“I would hope so,” Mama says seriously.

Silence again. Jesus is thinking. Wondering something. Needs to ask in a way that’s okay for her. That doesn’t make her bummed out. But then, Jesus doesn’t think there’s a good way to ask something like this, and maybe he just needs to go for it:

“Do you remember when I got here?” Jesus swallows.

“First time or second?” Mama asks.

“Second,” he manages.

“I remember both,” she confirms softly.

“Do you remember what it was like when I came back?” he asks. “Did you still like me? Was I the same?” Jesus’s talk with Frankie has made him wonder things. Did Moms pick him up? Hold him? Tell him they still liked him? Loved him, even?

“You were quiet. Tentative. You asked a lot of questions. You loved Frankie--”

“Did you love me?” he asks. It’s quiet, but insistent.

“Yes, honey. We loved you so much. We were so glad you were home. And, no, you weren’t the same, but neither were we. We changed with you. We had to get to know each other again, but once we did, and you were more comfortable here, that really helped. We liked you. And we loved you.”

“I can’t remember it,” Jesus admits. “It’s messed up that I remember so much of Then, but I don’t remember coming home. I know you guys say I came back in the middle of October, but I seriously don’t have any memories between, like, October 12th and New Year’s 2012. And I don’t remember before fourth grade either…”

“Sometimes, your mind hides memories, because they’re hard,” Mama says.

“But coming home wasn’t hard. It was good,” Jesus insists. Because he’s sure that’s how it should have felt. Instead of memories, he has vague impressions of feelings. Mostly numbness and fear.

“It was both. And it was probably a trauma of a different kind - a shock - to come back home. You had lived so differently. And our family was very different, too. That Day, you had Brandon and Mariana. When you came back, we also had Callie and Jude and Frankie. That was hard for you to get used to.”

“Oh,” Jesus says. He’s so relieved she doesn’t blame him for not being happy. “But you said I liked Frankie,” he points out.

“You and Frankie have always gotten along,” Mama smiles.

“Yeah, she is pretty awesome,” Jesus smiles. But it fades. “I really have to work on managing my triggers. My reactions to my triggers. They’re really getting to her.”

“If Mom or I can help, just let us know. You know we’re big supporters of working on ourselves.”

Jesus nods. They’ve pulled into the drive. Parked. Carefully, he reaches over and unbuckles Frankie’s carseat. Lifts her into his arms, and carries Night-Night in his other hand.

“Okay?” Mama asks.

“Yeah, I got her,” Jesus nods. Mom’s car is here. The front door is open. He goes inside, and kicks off his shoes. Carries Frankie upstairs and taps on Mariana’s door. Jesus still isn’t that comfortable around bedrooms that aren’t his. And he just can’t make himself cool around beds.

Mariana pulls open the door.

“Special delivery,” Jesus says softly.

Mariana melts. “Awwww…” she murmurs. “You guys are so precious.” Seeing Frankie like this pretty much erases her anger at Moms about her chronic stomach issues and at him about her bracelets. He’s glad for any reprieve.

“Stop it and take her, please,” Jesus laughs quietly.

Finally, Jesus gets to his room. He arranges the blankets the way he likes. Changes into comfy sweats in the bathroom and is totally ready to fall asleep when a knock sounds.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Did you take your antibiotic tonight, love?” It’s Mom, and no he didn’t. Bummer.

He stands and goes to the hall to meet her. He eats the chocolate pudding and the granola bar he’s been saving. He drinks a whole eight ounces of water. Swallows the pill.

“Thanks. I totally spaced.”

“I’m a Mom. It’s what I do, sweetie.”

Jesus stands still. He really wants to hug her, but they are surrounded by bedrooms. Jogging down the stairs, she follows, confused.

“Did you forget something else?” Mom asks, perplexed.

“Yeah, I did.” In the living room now, he turns and wraps her in his arms. He rests his chin on her head. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

She smiles. Looks surprised, but happy: “You,” she says calmly, “are worth it.”

Jesus walks away, and upstairs, waving behind him.

In his room again, with the light off, but the one in the hall on, Jesus falls asleep listening to the sounds of home: the dishwasher running. The TV on not playing the news but the Cooking Channel. (He feels totally loved and wholly understood when they play the Cooking Channel.)

Jesus falls asleep feeling okay, for the first time in days. Maybe it was listening to Frankie. Maybe it was being heard by Mama. Or maybe it was what Mama said:

Maybe it was both.

#fic: disuphere #fosters fic

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smol-selkie · 7 years

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This is probably the most personal thing I ever posted on here and I feel like I’ll go to hell for it: When you’re raised in a Jewish family and have different beliefs than them but you were constantly told that Hebrew isn’t a religion and if you don’t obey every little whim the Bible tells you, you’re a demon and you only have two choices so if you break one sin you break them all and you’re constantly told that you’re rebellious or sinful for being a teenager and liking metal music even though that’s the worse thing you’ve done...So then you truly start believing that you’re the bad seed of the family and no matter how much you read Scripture you will never be redeemed and your parents will go to heaven while you won’t because you betrayed their family bloodline by having doubts of Him and everything you enjoy is sinful so you slowly start believing that He’s cruel enough to send anyone into the pit if they sin once in their life regardless of virtues. – my-life-is-a-downed-system

[Reposting as a combined post so I can relate and share my experiences as well.]

Alright, [possibly long-ass] story time under the cut.

I come from a pretty weird family; my mother and brother are staunch Christians and my father claims that he's Atheist (though he does subscribe to/practices some familial Buddhist/ancestral folk religion). Me, I'm definitely the 'black sheep' in my immediate family, though I lean towards my father.

It all started sometime around third grade when my mom was trying to convert me to Christianity. She brought me to this one play that terrified the shit out of me, IIRC, it was two families got into fatal car crashes, one went to Heaven and the other went to Hell (and damn, I give the producers credit for doing one hell of a job making shit terrifying, especially on children at an impressionable age).

From there, she regularly took me and my brother to church, with me out of fear because I didn't want to go to [someone's interpretation of] 'Hell'. I tried to take in and believe what was being taught at Sunday School, studying/memorizing Scripture and such. This went on until about junior high.

Then junior high swings around, and some pretty awful harassment starts happening (to make it worse, said bully was once a good friend); it got to the point where my parents were threatening to sue the school district because the administration did fuck-all to mitigate the situation. At that point, I would go to church, crying a lot and praying and pleading to God to help with my problems.

No help ever came. I spent two years in complete misery, literally dreading each day of school.

This is where my doubt began; where was God when I was suffering? I was a goody-two-shoes, straight-A student all the way through grade school and junior high. Fuck, I even thought words like 'crap' were awful swear words, and that the littlest sin would send me to scary, scary Hell forever.

Was it the summer of 8th or 9th grade that this happened? I can hardly remember. But my mom took my little brother and I to the Church's summer camp. I also recall this was when I was really getting into sketching, and listening to metal/hard rock (mostly Black Sabbath and Disturbed). This comes into play in a bit. I had my two CD's (We Sold Our Soul to Rock and Roll and Ten Thousand Fists, for anyone who was curious was I was into at the time) to listen to on my CD player on the way to and from camp (CD players weren't allowed during camp, so I kept it in the shared dorm room).

One night, after some 'rousing' sermon about 'seperating oneself from earthly (therefore, evil) things', the counselor and the girl group I was assigned to decided to take all their 'evil earthly' things and destroy them, defacing, trampling, stomping, and breaking all of it. I was both horrified and terrified. I ended up cowering in the far corner of my bunk, clutching my sketchbook and music with dear life, lest the hysterical, wound-up girls and/or counselor got their hands on them to destroy them.

Thankfully, nobody noticed me hiding.

I did a complete turnaround in 9th grade as far as my personality went. Out went the goody-two-shoes façade, in with as 'hardcore, tough-ass goth and metalhead' as I could get away with, which was (is!) pretty damn laughable when I look back on it. Still a straight-A student, but I started hanging around with a pack of guys who were pretty bad influences, and started getting into 'dark' things.

This went fine and dandy for the first three years of high school. I actually started getting a rep as the vicious bitch who wouldn't hesitate to literally claw someone if she was in a foul mood. Pffft, lmao.

Things started going to shit in Senior Year. On top of five college applications (three of which required extensive portfolios), like four(?) full-on AP classes (two in Art/Design, so tons of work there), and extracurricular activities, I'd pretty much bitten off more than I could chew. For some unknown reason, a whole bunch of people (outside the group of guys I hung out with) started in on bullying me, which, long story short, I got three days of out-of-school suspension (which, tbh, the punishment was racist bullshit; I knew someone who got the same punishment for fist-fighting, and I did nothing of the sort). So, there was all this major stress going on (and I suspect my anxiety and depression was developing then), and by this time, my faith in God had dwindled to basically nothing.

So, I gave religion one last shot, and I realized after all the shit had gone down, it was not God, but me who pulled through, mostly out of spite. From then on, I considered myself Agnostic Theist (which seems weird, I know), where the gist of it was 'Maybe there's a 'God' or higher power/being out there, but until someone provides concrete, irrefutable proof of [its] existence, then I highly doubt it'.

To top it all off in cementing my becoming an ex-Christian was the incident with my mother one summer between college years (though I forget which). She insisted that my dad and I attend my brother's Baptism at the same summer camp in which I was traumatized at, which both my dad and I agreed that it would be better without the two of us because of our non-belief. She got extremely verbally violent with the both of us, nearly taking it to a physical fight. My dad ended up begrudgingly taking the four of us to the ceremony only because he had the car, though he and I spent lunch together awkwardly, as a couple of areligious people in a sea of religious people.

I guess what drove me away from [organized] religion was the overall sheeple mindset (if you don't believe what we believe in, and do as we do, and fit in, you'll go to 'Hell'), and the constant guilting that comes from its adherents. I don't want to spend my entire life feeling guilt-tripped and eternally paranoid; I'd rather be a filthy hedonist that lives life up and dies on my feet feeling satisfied.

TL;DR – These days, I just claim that I'm an Agnostic (leaning towards Atheist) as a short answer. I have a totally different set of beliefs now, but that's better left as another story for another time.

#Reply post #Personal #Banana tells a story

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curiouskarenscapers2017 · 7 years

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Volume Three – October 2004

The 1st of October, no ways!!!! It’s nearly my birthday!!! All gifts can be sent to Sesame Street School, No 2-1 Chung Yang Rd, Changhua. Thanx!

Anyway, miss everybody and will think of you as I party it up in Taiwan…..hey, I never had a birthday in the East before!!! Coooollll!!! I think I’ll buy a few fire crackers and set them off on the roof!! Payday is only the 10th….Go figure! I’ll have to party after then.

So my birthday came and went silently. Got little gifts from two Chinese teachers and then had a bottle of wine with the girls after work at our place, and everybody was so tired that we all crashed by 11pm. Plenty of time to party this weekend!

On Sunday they had their National Day celebrations and once again the crackers tore through the night air on Saturday. A massive procession was heard coming up the road on the side of the complex. The next minute at an intersection I saw the dancers in uniform pass with flags flying, the next two dragons of two people long. The next minute a huge float (which is just a truck exquisitely covered in a pattern of lights) the lights were actually quite blinding until I saw the second truck, I needed my shades!!! Beautiful. Followed by boxes of those flying crackers! Hectic but stunning and you could hear the music and crackers for miles to come! Wish I was closer to take pictures.

After a while we went to the girl’s place (Neps and Kim’s) I’ve never been there and it is quite impressive. Gardens, small pools and little wooden decks between the plants. They stay on the 10th floor….surprise! Stunning setting. Very upmarket. So naturally we braaied on the stoep!! Someone did stick their heads out to see what all the smoke was that came from apartment 10J but we smiled and cheersed them with our plastic cup wine glasses and had an excellent braai! The braais here are quite interesting and extremely cheap. I think people don’t have place to keep a braai so they literally have disposable braais. So when you go to the supermarket you buy your meat, bread and ‘n braai….every time. They cost less than R20 for a tin foil looking braai. It works!!! That’s what counts. We walked back at about 12pm and got home in about 10min.

I decided today was the day to bath Draco. Come here kitty, I won’t hurt you….really!! It was great fun though, he went all rigid but I’m sure after the clawing and crying he actually enjoyed it! I spent the rest of Sunday sleeping and felt a cold slowly get hold of me! Monday was payday! So we got up and went. Tuesday we hit Carrefour, to buy the monthly groceries and a few things. What a pleasure to shop on a Tuesday, the aisles are yours!!!!!!! Carrefour is yours!!!!!! Stunning! We got hold of our taxi driver and dubbed him Eddie!! He was very impressed with his new name and kept pretending to talk on a cellphone saying “Eddie, Long chia tsue” meaning Eddie pick us up at Long Chia Tsue…our building’s name. Ok then!! We’ll call him again to take us to Taichung on Saturday for our party….did I mention we’re having a party on Saturday evening?? Really?? Strange……. Anyway, we’re having my birthday party on Saturday at about 7pm……can’t wait!

And then it happened! The earth shook and my ears rang! My first earthquake! This is a phenomenon we are TOTALLY not prepared for if you’re from SA. Maybe once or twice in your entire life you feel a slight shudder in Jo’burg and then you don’t really know whether you did or not!

Myself and Abby were on the 2nd floor in kindergarten marking our kid’s books on Friday, chatting away when I suddenly felt a weird sensation and it felt like somebody jumping up and down next to you at first, or when you stop on a bridge and the trucks go by, a slight up and down movement. We looked at each other and Abby said “Did you feel that?” as I agreed the shaking got slightly worse and it actually pulsed. We were sitting there bobbing up and down for over a minute. I remember looking down the hall at one of the Chinese teachers talking to someone and when she noticed it she put her arms out and told the children to stay put. I remember wondering what I would do now if the roof started flaking and things started falling on the floor all around us…like in the movies you know. The weirdest part of this is that until you feel it you never really experience the fear that goes with it when you see it on TV or in the movies…you know!!! Suddenly that realization sets in that the earth and its movements don’t have a conscious. You are the proverbial ant making your way to your destination while the earthmover/bulldozer clears a field. No ones fault or no one doing anything on purpose. You are at the total mercy of what ever happens next. Totally out of control. The shaking continued a bit and then slowly subsided between bouts of starting up again.

We then heard on the news it was a 7 on the Richter Scale, 109km of the east coast of Taiwan, next to the county of Ilan. They felt it as a 5 and we got it as a 2, Taipei experienced it as a 4. I watched the news and it looked worse there with things literally falling to the ground off the shelves in shops etc.

After that, as we saw people, we asked, where were you when the earthquake happened? Poor Melissa, my roommate, was in our flat on the 10th floor. Quite the swaying she got! But we survived and will live to tell the tale…….this time! They said we should expect another within 4 weeks…great!!! Something to look forward to! There hasn’t been one for a long time and people were expecting it. Apparently it releases the tension in the plates if it moves every few months, it hasn’t happened for over 5 months, so it was due. Stunning!!

Anyway, at least we were going to a party soon. So Saturday came and dragged by after our meeting about Halloween and Xmas activities. Halloween is big here, we will be dressing up and getting the kids to do the same, they have to chant songs and do decorations. Quite the vibe here! So the evening came and we all got dressed up! In our party gear that is….not Halloween outfits. We were all in our flat chatting with a friend of Kim’s that arrived from the Tainan province. Her name was Alicia and she has been there for 5 months now. The only foreign teacher with one other Chinese teacher in her school. Very rural!! Jane, my Chinese friend and Celine who is one of the ladies from the school were also there to drop off my birthday presents. Jane gave me a stunning Chinese material purse. Light blue and silver with dragons on and Celine got me a stunning emerald green top with, you guessed it, dragons on. Too beautiful!!!

I had my new black and white slightly glittery top on with the usual black pants and high platformish shoes. I was the party girl after all you know!!!! Anyway, we got hold of Eddie and he brought another driver and off we went. Eddie even had the party music going in the car. Myself, Melissa and Ryno were in our car and Kim, Neps and Alicia was in the other. We got to Taichung and it looked like Vegas, so many lights and flashing billboards. We passed a massive department store called SOGO, apparently, Ryno told us, it has 12 floors….so we will obviously go checking that one out for sure!!!!! So we arrived at FM bar, a quaint little hidden in a side street kinda bar with lots of foreign people at the tables.

Very nicely set out and the waiter’s English is remarkable! We had drinks and I tried their Long Island Ice Tea (as usual actually). Quite potent, they are not shy on the tot servings here! Anyway, the menu looked exceptionally good and there was even “Boerevoers” on the menu….no ways!!! We were going to suggest a spelling change but thought it added to the Taiwanese look and feel of it! Melissa and I had a lasagna to die for, we’ll have to come back to try some of the other dishes! They looked very good, nobody complained and the food was well priced. Our lasagna was NT$270 which is R54 for a good portion! So the people added to our party and we were 12 people! We called different taxis and via scooter a Taxi and someone’s car we all went to Pig Pen…the London pub club. We got there at about 11pm and started partying immediately! There were so many foreign people there compared to the previous time I was there….oh wait yes my first night in Taiwan!!! Nothings changed, except for some groups of people that were obviously there as a company or on business etc. And we spotted a group of Nigerians as well….wonder what contract they are here on……..yeaah right!!! Anyway, the one was very interested in Neps and Melissa and we had to step in a few times and rescue them from deep conversations…….shame! The night carried into the morning and we had a blast. The local stage act…same as the night I was there before…were strutting their stuff on the stage. They also have a pole on the stage and every guy in the club at one stage or another according to how many drinks they had, climbs it!!!!! Amazing! Great fun to watch!

So at about 4am we left and waited for our taxi until about 5am. We slept all the way home although Eddie prided himself in getting us there in 10min! Same price though…..hmmmmm! Got to bed at about 5:30 and slept until about 10, woke up and cleaned our flat. We phoned Jane at about 4:30 and she took us to Rose records, which is a CD shop. Had a ball in there!! New CD’s are priced at about NT$ 350 = R70. So obviously I got a few. They sound stunning on my HI FI!!! We got pizza’s at Napoli’s on the way. And all met up again in our living room and had a quieter chat this time…the girls still had babalaas from the night before and started partying again during the day…easier than to deal with the headache!! Everybody went to bed early….we are definitely getting older!!! My neck was sooooo sore from the head banging!!!! This time I only did it for a few seconds…..!!! I’m getting old!!! Stiff neck for about two days already.

Kim is a dancer and said she’ll start a Salsa class next week. Obviously I agreed to join so Wednesday at 11am in the Kindergarten exercise room we gathered. Myself, Stacy, Monica and Winnie were here first students. Great to do something different and I’ve always wanted to take dancing classes. Going to get bored in the mornings I don’t have Kindergarten. Monday’s and Thursday’s I’m going to start swimming at the splash pool place. They have calmed down on the hours a bit. But the problem with that is that my money goes with it!!! So I need a happy medium where I can, do my own thing but also have enough money to make it worth my while here. We’ll see what happens.

Lukang is next on our list for this weekend. It is an ancient city and has over 150 temples. And then we were off. We phoned Eddie and got transported to Lukang. NT$300 later we decided to go back by bus…besides we haven’t done that before.

We were dropped off at the cultural art museum and found we didn’t want to go in, you had to pay anyway…….So we started walking around and exploring Lukang. I was a tad disappointed. I was expecting the open rice paddies and a few houses and shops and lots of temples, instead we got another suburb of Taichung with normal buildings and shops and in between hidden beneath the usual scurry of a town lay the hidden world of Lukang. We discovered tourist friendly signs all over the city, directing us to temples and walkways.

An interesting looking plaque said Nine Turns alley and we went down that road…..suddenly it was like being in an ancient little village, you are not aware of the noise of the cars down the road or the shining glass window shops down the main street. A small winding cobble stone road took us through a section that used to be a residential area, with a “wall of jars”. The wall was literally put together out of old, seems to be wine jars, made out of a terracotta. Only the top of the wall was left in tact as the rest was probably pillaged a bit by tourists or passing traffic those days.

The walkway was cool and peaceful with high walls keeping you on the path. The width was about that of a small car. Every say about 10 paces you had a small doorway indenting the wall. The doors were either made of old wood, painted a pale flaking blue or a bleached green. Here and there modern art made its presence felt in a metal door with the usual decorations etched on it but mostly it was wooden and small and hidden.

We came across a small temple in a dead end and explored it.

We made our way through the maze of turns and alleys and came upon an old original hand water pump, and it was in working order! Stunning. We explored, got lost and eventually ended back on the main road. Our search was actually to find the Holy Grail ….it seemed, we were looking for the Arts and Craft market and ended up coming full circle to the place we were dropped off. We asked the guard at the gate to the museum where the arts and crafts centre was and he quite casually informed us that it no longer exists. This is about 4 hours after we started on our quest! Anyway, all worth it in the exploring sense for sure! We also came across a lantern maker’s shop where they paint the lanterns to your request and the famous shoe shop. I obviously had to visit that as they made the shoes while you wait. Really?? You might ask flabbergasted, yes. They have the base of the shoes in sizes and you just add the material you want to. So here goes, all the shoes are solid wood of different wood colours and styles. So you pick the sole, then you pick the materials they keep in drawers, all stunning Chinese designs and colours. You then take these two pieces of shoe and give them to the man at the table where he then subsequently puts the two together. You try one on for size and then he adjusts it accordingly or then carries on with the next shoe. They are only slip-ons so it works well for them and the tourist, just waiting patiently for your own design shoe. I got a dark wood with a silver and dark blue dragon design material together…beautiful! And they had my size…kinda!

On our exploration we stepped into a small painting shop. I wanted to get some things for my mother, to get her doing some Chinese painting…..have you tried that yet????? We walked around and they had brushes everywhere and stunning Chinese writing hangings. The two gentlemen came over and introduced themselves as the owner and a 2nd gentlemen who looked older. He could speak English and it turned into a photo session within minutes. I looked around for some gift sets, although it wasn’t the kind of shop that would keep gift sets etc. More of an artists shop, with canvas and paper and ink and brushes. I saw a small brush box and asked him how much, and he wiped it off carefully and smiled at me and said it’s a gift! I was dumbfounded! I couldn’t believe people were still like this in the world. We thanked them profusely and left the store with me grinning from ear to ear!!!

We entered a huge red and gold coloured store and it turned out to be a famous shop in Taiwan that serves traditional pastries. Called “Nayoshupie”. A circular flat bread looking pastry, but made out of flaky pastry. The size of a saucer. The centre section of it was a sweet taste while the rest of the bread falls apart as you eat it….my favourite pastry here. The most amazing sweet taste. Difficult to explain, not quite a jam taste, but just slightly sweetened dough for 90% of the circle. This is a very traditional pastry and Lukang is famous for getting it at this shop! People come from all over the world, when traveling Taiwan, to buy this at that shop. We finally entered a walkway, with a huge Lukang sign arch across it.

This was like a flea market with many food stalls on both sides of the cobble road. Jade, stone, paintings, food smells, cheap gadgets, expensive red gargoyle looking tigers laughing at you as you pass an ancient antique shop. This is like in the movies. We walked into an antique looking shop, the musty smell and old paintings confirmed that, stunning boxes, with woodcarvings and inlaid mother of pearl designs, adorned the small crevices. Black jet figurines of ancient god and deities peered at you from between other small boxes and trinkets. Silver chalices and weird designs complemented the dark wood of the walls. Scrolls lay loosely in a large terracotta jar tied with a velvet ribbon. We opened them reverently and saw the old paintings of country sides and peacocks in green fields. Mountains with a temple nestled in it. How much? Only about NT$15 000 / R3 000 and those were the cheaper ones. We left quietly!

What a town! The festive feeling and the streets lined with shops of all sizes and crafts and things! We entered into a small square with vendors on either side surrounding the entrance to a huge temple. By this time it was getting dark and the half moon glowed above the dark ornate temple roof. People were buying fake Chinese money to burn in the temple as an offering and incense to pray with. Exciting and beautiful!

We made our way to the bus station and figured out how the system works. We could either go to an electronic board and guess the symbol for Changhua press the button and get a ticket or ask the bus conductor behind the bars at the station and be sure we’re going home! So we did the later and got our tickets waited 5 minutes and got on our first bus ride in Taiwan. We waved goodbye to Lukang with a promise to return soon. Cool!! Their buses are definitely not our low budget set ups, even for local transport between towns or suburbs. With soft leather seats and even a TV in the bus, although it wasn’t on. The bus ride was only about 20min back to Changhua. The bus stopped a few meters away and we walked wearily home. What a day!

The following week went passed so quickly and the weekend dawned on us again. This time with a bit of a twist, it’s Halloween!! The school has been gearing up for Halloween for about two weeks before. We got the kids in our different classes to memorise a song for a competition and they had to make decorations, like either cats, witches, pumpkins or spiders. The kids love it! So the school slowly changed into a ghoulish environment and we got into the Halloween mood. We as South Africans are not used to Halloween and all the things and excitement that goes with it. The costumes, the candy, the trick or treating, the Halloween songs….cool!!!! The kindergarten kids dressed up on the Friday evening…what a sight…what money the parents spent to make their kid look the best!!!

We had a hoard of Spidermen…definitely the thing these days, we had fairies, dracula’s, spiderwebbed people, scary movie masked people, traditional wear etc. etc. Then we were bundled into the kombi’s and went trick or treating with the kindergarten at about 7:30 with designated restaurants and places. The list included three stores, King Stone restaurant, Mac Donalds and Le’ Enfants (baby clothing). The kids arrived and the managers dished out candies into their little handbags and pumpkin bags…too cute!!

The teachers were dressed as well in our full witches regalia and Abby went as a pig!! The restaurant clients were offering the teachers, wine instead of candy!!!! We finished off at about 9pm, the kids were tired and half asleep in the back seat of the kombi. As I turned around to check on them from the front seat, I had the most Anne Geddes Halloween picture presented to me. A small pumpkin lying on Spiderman’s shoulder with a lion holding on to his candy! Too cute for words!!! Well, Halloween was definitely a highlight for me this year.

On the Saturday we were to go to Taichung for training again and supper on the school at the Taichung Steak House! That should be a good experience! We were all craving steak! The training went by and I bought a book at there bookstore, the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. We got discount ok! And we arrived at the steak house…..or rather it didn’t look like a steak house, it looked more like a fast food outlet all though it was huge with different counters in the centre for the different foods you wanted. All the South Africans and Canadians went straight to the steak/meat counter. You had to take a wooden tray, the type they put under your iron steak plate at the Spur, and place it in front of the grill. You could then leave and go get other food if you wanted to. I immediately felt some apprehension as to the quality of the steak, when do they ask me how would you like it????? What steak do you want? Sirloin, fillet or even beef or lamb??? Then we got the steak…….anyway, next on the food list was stir fry, good selection and they had two chef’s doing your bowl of stir fry you accumulated from the rows of metal dishes. Very effective and efficient. There was Sushi, seafood etc etc etc. Eat as much as you want for about R70. Then we found the oysters, and we ate our R70 worth!! They were huge! Probably double the size of the larges at home or in Cape Western Fisheries!!!! The evening was good and we went home, watched movies and went to bed. The following week we managed to book a massage….finally!!!! So Sunday 11/7 is our day for being pampered! The dates are all being written the American way, you get used to it, eventually!!!! 7 Nov. for the people back home! Will tell you all about that!!

So , miss you all!

Taiwan Times vol 3 Volume Three – October 2004 The 1st of October, no ways!!!! It’s nearly my birthday!!! All gifts can be sent to Sesame Street School, No 2-1 Chung Yang Rd, Changhua.

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survivingwriter-blog · 7 years

Text

February 7, 2017

I’ll preface this by saying that when I proposed to my ex, it wasn’t the first time I was engaged. The first time was long distance, with a ring I had bought myself, and he was in and out of my life repeatedly for the three years we were together. My ex had been teasing me with the idea of proposing to me with a beautiful ring that was supposed to have been his grandmother’s. He told me that his grandmother wanted him to have it when he found the love of his life, and he had told her he found just that. He was insistent, and she hesitated. She finally gave in, knowing how badly I wanted the ring. I wanted to be an Anderson.

That story gets me laughing every time I think about it. He fed into every fantasy I had involving marriage and children. He would tell me he dreamt of his niece, running up to him and saying “we’re having a baby.” He would look at her and look at me, smiling. He’d always ask me “Mrs. Anderson, do you have something to tell me?”I’d look down at my belly, and look back up at him with tears in my eyes. I’d give him a kiss, and he’d be over the moon, kissing my belly and speaking to our unborn child.

We always assumed we’d have a daughter. That was our hope, as we had her name picked out. Her name was to be Sawyer Kathleen Storm Anderson. It was a mouthful, but it was powerful to us. We had picked out Sawyer as a nod to her big brother. Jack’s full name was Jackson Sawyer Anderson. It was our way of making sure his name lived on, and he was always with us. Kathleen was my ex’s mother’s name. In my mind, she had given me my happily ever after. I wanted to thank her for it, considering I was told she was ill. Finally, we arrive at her second middle name. I wanted her name to be unique. I have always been bored with names that are generic. Having a second middle name was already making her stand apart from the rest. Storm was personal for me, as it was a nod to my grandmother who had passed away two years ago. Her nickname was Stormy, and she was a firecracker personality. She was a storm, if you will. It shows with my mother and my sisters as well. We knew Sawyer would be just that: a storm. It was perfect. All we needed was her.

He was insistent that we try to get pregnant before our wedding. We had settled on a date, and it was “too far away” for him to wait for a baby. I refused to let my child grow up with parents that weren’t married. He always had an argument for it though. All the things I want to avoid with my own family were debatable. He had a story and example for everything. Our family was the exception to everything. I already had Jack, and that was reason for us to be an exception. I loved my child, but I refused to let our family grow without us being a unit.

Our relationship wasn’t exactly built on a concrete foundation. I was already paranoid, as we had nearly fallen apart in the weeks leading up to my proposal. We were in a secret relationship. My parents had held an intervention with me because my friend had reached out to them. I was willing to give up my best friends. I had nearly lost my job, after being threatened with legal action for crimes at work that I had not committed. It was already established with the general manager at my location that any action I took that day was going to be disregarded. They acted as though I was capable of taking revenge. I was less likely to take action because I was in a management role.

They could steamroll over me.

They did steamroll over me.

Everything fueled the fire for the conversation that happened 6 weeks later. It didn’t take long for our engagement to crumble. He had told me that he was going to see a concert with his brother and his roommate. He was spending the day with his sister before the concert. By 3 PM, I had received a message online to call his roommate. She had arranged her work schedule so she could go to this concert. It was one of her favorite groups performing. Instead, I felt myself getting sick as she confirmed all my anxious thoughts.

He didn’t have a sister. He only had two brothers. He didn’t have a niece. There was no crazy ex girlfriend who was hellbent on revenge. At least, not the girl I was told about. This is where I’m about to upset a lot of people: I was told there was no Jack. There was no child that I had been so desperate to love and protect in the afterlife. I felt the bile churning in my stomach, as I asked her whose ashes I had. I could hear her choking on the thought. She was as sick as I was. She knew what antics he had done to an extent, but she wasn’t aware that the man who took her in when she needed help was capable of this. Ten years of friendship doesn’t mean you’re aware of who your friend is. She told me she found his wedding ring, sitting in the cabinet. It was in the ring box. That was when I felt as though I was worthless. I truly wondered what my purpose was anymore.

I called his phone and left a lengthy voicemail, choking on sobs and profanities. I wasn’t going to hear from him for a couple days. When I did, he was quick to have an excuse. I received pictures of the concert tickets. I received texts, begging me to come home. He begged me to give him his daughter and son. He begged me to be an Anderson, asserting that I would always be an Anderson. I wasn’t going to be given a choice. I told him I wanted all of my things back. It was over five hundred dollars of things I had given him, including the wedding band.

When I went to his place, he gave me everything I requested. There were tears in his eyes as he removed his ring from his hand. He placed it in the box and threw it in my car. I felt no remorse for what I was doing. I didn’t need to. Everything was there, including the letter I proposed to him with, a sketchbook with drawings and letters, a sweatshirt that was once laced with my scent, drenched in his instead, a CD I had burned for us to listen to while I proposed to him, a photograph of us in a frame, and a calendar page that had a love note from me. He kept telling me I didn’t have to do this, and I insisted I did. I got mean. I was willing to rip a knife through his entirety as he had done to me.

It only got better from there.

The same car he had used to visit me at school pulled up, with an overweight girl driving. I recognized her. She was the woman that he had been seeing prior to me. He begged me to stay inside, but I smirked. I introduced myself, and she blinked. She asked me if I’ve been sleeping with her fiance. I told her she was sleeping with mine. She said he proposed last night with a black ring with three diamonds in it, symbolizing all that she was, all that she is, and all that she will be. It was the wedding ring I bought him and proposed to him with two weeks prior. I gagged on the thought of her greasy sausage fingers fitting into the ring I had tailored to his hand. He didn’t hesitate to say that she was lying. Part of me felt she was, as he had the ring on his hand just moments before.

The conversation got more heated, but it was towards him. She asked me if I liked the scars she left on his back. I asked her about the fresh ones and grinned. I told her those were my doing, and she flashed a glare at him. She was told that he had fallen in the bushes at his grandmother’s. I choked from laughing so hard. She was more gullible than me. She asked me if the sex was as bad with me as it was with her. I paused. I could’ve destroyed him, but I wasn’t going to lie to her. I told her it was phenomenal. She looked genuinely surprised. We laughed at how much he’d cry while we were intimate. While we unveiled the lies we were told, his roommate made sure we knew everything. She pulled out the pictures that he had sent me and asked about the little girl that he called his niece. She responded with what we already knew. It was her niece. We asked about his disappearance over the weekend, and she said they went to the concert together in Ohio.

“How does it feel to be the biggest asshole on the planet right now?”

He chuckled under his breath.

“It feels pretty good. I’m not gonna lie.”

I asked him about Jack, and handed him a stack of letters that I had written. It was fifty or so pages. I felt my throat squeezing shut as I leaned over and spit venom in his face. I asked him how he’d feel when I threw away Jack’s ashes. I asked whose they were. I asked how he could lie about it. His eyes welled up with tears. He looked like I had hit him with a freight train. That was pain you couldn’t fake. How did I not know Jack was fake? That moment. The moment when he looked like the wind had been knocked out of him because he could feel his world about to shatter. He couldn’t fake that moment easily, at least I thought. The color drained from his cheeks. He begged me to give him back. He begged me to give him the only thing that will keep him sane.

I stood up and told him I was keeping him. He was safe in my home, surrounded by innocence. He was cushioned by stuffed animals on my bookshelf. I knew he was where he should be. I could hear the sharp exhale of relief. Some of the color started to return to his face. It was a wave of relief crashing over him. That moment is what I held onto when I thought about Jack. That was the moment that I needed. Maybe I am a sociopath for how I approached him with Jack. I was willing to inflict pain with minimal guilt. That guilt didn’t stop me from continuing until I could feel sadness and rage radiating from my ex. If there was ever a moment I felt he could be physically abusive, it was then. I was the mother of his child, and he would’ve done anything to stop the unnecessary hate that was spewing from my lips towards our child.

Why are these moments what I remember?

Why is his pain important to my story?

These are the moments that are engrained in my mind. These are the moments that I think about when I feel tears welling in my eyes as I lie down at night. These are the moments that make me feel naive. I feel vulnerable. I feel numb. I feel sick. These are the moments where I wish things ended. I didn’t end things here. I’ve heard Hell has multiple levels, or circles. If I had to guess, I’d say the first time was the third circle. This time, I was in the seventh circle. Yes, I found the thirteenth circle, and yes, it is as bad as you think.

#diary #survivor #surviving writer #abuse #emotional abuse #marriage #kids #children #grief #moving on

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