#its this big duplex that we lived in for maybe a year or two when i was really little like maybe 4 or 5?

[hakesbros]

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#real estate

[crazy-loca-blog]

Hello, hello! This week, we are going on a little:

Home Tour!

Notes: Answer the following with pictures (dialogue from your characters is optional!). Collages are highly encouraged if you want to answer a question with multiple pictures because tumblr mobile only allows 10 total pics. Otherwise, tumblr on a desktop lets you add multiple pictures (non-beta)!

For both:

What does the outside of the home look like? (Front/back yard, garden, pool, etc)

Living room and home office (if any)?

Kitchen and dining room?

Bedrooms? (Master, guest, others)

Other rooms?

Do you own your dream home? If not, what does that dream home look like?

What is your favorite room to spend time in with each other?

Masterlist

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Ethan: Why does this feel like we're doing MTV Cribs?

Casey: What's that?

Ethan: You have to be kidding me... every kid and teenager on the nation watched that show in the late 90's.

Casey: Ethan... you do remember that I'm 10 years younger than you, don't you? Also, I can't imagine you as the type of teenager who would watch MTV.

Ethan: I didn't watch it... my girlfriend did.

*The doorbell rings*

Casey: That explains a lot... Bree is here!

Casey: Hey, Bree! Welcome to our home!

Bree: Hey guys... wow, this home is impressive! Can you tell me more about it?

Ethan: We got this place shortly before getting married. We agreed that we wanted to have a new beginning at a new place, so we moved in here right after the wedding.

Casey: We got this two-story duplex because it had everything we were looking for: plenty of space with a beautiful view, a nice kitchen, and enough rooms for his dad and my brother to stay here with us when they come to visit.

Ethan: It's also close to Edenbrook, which is important for us if there is an emergency and we are needed at the hospital.

Casey: And even though this wasn't something that we were looking for, there are three outside areas that are exclusive to us and that we fell in love with: a terrace that I´ve been in charge of renewing because it was a mess, a secluded patio and the rooftop and its pool, which is Ethan's favorite place.

Ethan: Swimming after a long day of work helps me clear my mind. The fact that the pool also has a view of Boston Common makes this place very impressive, too.

Casey: True... most of the time I go to the pool with him, but I can't swim, it freaks me out, so he's definitely the one who makes the most of it.

Ethan: I've tried to teach you...

Casey: And we always get distracted... you should stick to teaching medicine, Dr. Ramsey *smirks*

Casey: Then we have the living room. It is so big that decorating it was a nightmare... but we love the result. By the way, have you seen the paintings? Both were a gift from Evelyn, our patient in the diagnostics team.

Ethan: We don't use it a lot when it's only the two of us here, but it is the area we use the most when friends and family come to visit.

Bree: I can imagine a lot of people in this place and still having room for plenty more...

Casey: Me too! It's so sad that we weren't allowed to have a housewarming party here.

Ethan: If it's anything like the party you had during your intern year, maybe it's for the best...

Casey: Hey! How do you know about it? You literally *imitating Ethan* "had to decline my inivtation"...

Ethan: Is that you imitating me? I love you, but that was awful... of course I knew it because I could hear every nurse talking about it the next day... how did you manage to have all those people there?

Casey: I have no idea... but it was epic...

Ethan: One of the areas where we paid especial attention while looking for a home was the kitchen. We both enjoy cooking together, so we needed it to be comfortable enough for both of us. The fact that the dining room is right next to it is very practical, too.

Casey: And he was very specific about something...

Ethan: You're going to tease me forever with that...

Bree: I remember Casey telling that Ethan can't make pancakes...

Ethan: This is embarrassing... and pointless... *rolls his eyes*

Casey: This gorgeous man who happens to be my husband, had a dishwasher that he used even before I moved in to his old place... only because he hates doing the dishes...

*Bree and Casey laugh in unison*

Casey: Trust me, the water bill has dropped a lot since I moved in with you...

Ethan: I wouldn't be so sure... we don't use it in the dishwasher, but we take long showers...

Casey: Ethan! *begins to blush*

Ethan: I think I've just won this round, sweetheart *smirks*

Casey: This is the area of the house where we spend most of our time... because... uh... *blushes furiously*

Ethan: It's funny to see you blushing... I'm sure that Bree knows exactly what married couples do in a bedroom... *smirks*

Bree: Of course I do... you sleep... a lot... after those exhausting shifts, that's exactly what I'd do... *smiles*

Casey: We enjoy the view, too... anyway, the bedroom has three areas... there is of course, the area where we... sleep... then there is our bathroom where we take long showers... *winks at Ethan*

Ethan: ...and then there is what I call "Casey's chaos area"... or the closet. And it's only fair to say that yeah, I may hate doing the dishes, but she's the worst when having to fold her clothes... so Bree, don't even try to open her closet's door...

Bree: Okay, I won't *chuckles*

Casey: Lucky me for having a husband who offers as tribute to fold my clothes

Ethan: As lucky as I am for having a wife who volunteers to do the dishes...

*They stare at each other for a long, long time... Bree wonders if they forgot that she is right there with them*

Ethan: One of the things we agreed we wouldn't have when we were looking for a place was a home office, because we didn't want to bring the work home.

Casey: So we decided to make a change and we turned the office into a small living room for us to read, to watch TV... basically, a place to get cozy. And yeah, it became my favorite room in the house.

Ethan: Of course, the original plan of not having a home office failed. So we ended up building a small office, very secluded, that we avoid like the plague. We only use it as a very last resource.

Bree: Guys, I love the amount of books you have... they're almost in every single room of the house!

Ethan: Trust me, we didn't realize how many books we had until we moved to this place.

Casey: We don't watch much TV, but we both are heavy readers. Of course, the medical books are a must.

Ethan: And we finally have two guest rooms. They both look exactly the same, and one of them is for my dad and the other one is for Oliver, Casey's brother.

Casey: We love having them at our place, you know? We all four have this little family and we have a great relationship. So the main reason behind the guest rooms is us wanting them to visit more often.

Bree: Guys, your house is impressive... but I need to know... is this your dream home?

Ethan: It's perfect for this moment of our lives.

Casey: Exactly. We both love this place and we can't see ourselves living anywhere else... but we've been talking about the possibility of expanding our family in the future...

Ethan: It's a secret though, we haven't told anyone but you about it... *they smile at each other*

Bree: Really? That's great news, congratulations, guys! I feel honored!

Ethan: And the problem is that we both grew up in houses, so we don't know if a penthouse and a kid are compatible.

Casey: Exactly... but going back to your question, for me, this is more than I ever dreamed of. None of us grew up surrounded by luxuries, and I personally never had expensive stuff before coming to Boston, so this is definitely something that I'm not used to, and I don't think I ever will. But I think I'm speaking for both of us here, we're more than grateful for all of this.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

A/N: If you can read this post, then it means my Internet came back to life and that you have a lot of patience lol. Thanks a lot @jamespotterthefirst for sending these questions and contributing to my weekly procrastination quote. Loved it!

#newlyweds game with your host bree #newlyweds game #newlyweds ask game #answered asks #ethan ramsey #casey valentine #ethan x casey #casey x ethan

[hargrove-mayfields]

Just A Dream Away

Chapter 6/13 read here on ao3!

for @harringrovebigbang

accompanying art piece by @monochromegee! check it out here!

~~~~

The more Steve thinks about someone being stuck on the other side, the more he has his heart set on doing something about it.

He hadn’t been a hero to anybody last time they were dealing with the Upside Down, too caught up in his own troubles to do anything useful, and it had cost him the love of his life. He was going to guarantee that he stepped up this time. With more time to think, he defines a plan, “I think you’re right, I think we should get ahold of El. That way we can at least figure out who to go to next.”

“Okay, well, that sounds great and all that you have a plan, Steve, but you’re not calling anybody with this burnt up phone, and I’m pretty sure this is too time sensitive to write a letter.” Robin motions to the broken phone where it still hung from the base.

Steve thinks for a moment and snaps his fingers, “The neighbor would let us borrow hers.”

That’s how they end up in the elderly neighbor Dorothy's half of the duplex, Robin entertaining her in the living room with any random story she could think of, and Steve in the hallway a little ways down, talking low so the unsuspecting neighbor can’t hear what he is saying. To get in, they’d just told her that Robin's phone had just been cutting out, but Steve needed to call his sick mother until they could replace it.

Of course that isn’t true, he instead dials the number Joyce left for all of them to get in contact with her if need be, “Mrs Byers?”

On the other end, he hears a lot of noise in the background, at first worried about a repeat of last night, until the sounds made themselves clear as not doomsday static, but business. There’s a television turned up loud, noise from the kitchen like someone was cooking, talking carrying from a distant conversation, before Joyce’s gentle voice cuts through it, “Hi, honey. How have you been?”

He skips the formalities, trying to be fast for the sake of whoever is trapped, and to get it out before the neighbor got bored of Robin and started snooping, “I need to ask you something.”

“Of course, Is everything alright, Steve?” There’s a hint of concern in her voice he has to swallow before he decides what his answer will.

He decides just to rip the bandage off in one go, “Can you put El on the phone?”

Instantly her demeanor switches. They both knew Steve had no reason other than an emergency to want to talk to her daughter, because the other kids would have done it themselves, don’t need Steve as their messenger anymore, “What is this about?”

“We think there is someone in the Upside Down.” He hears her cover the receiver, and call to El in the next room, a hint of urgency to her tone. There was the sound of the phone being passed between two people before El's small voice rang out through the receiver.

“Hello?”

He again skips a proper greeting, full of too much nervous energy to worry about being polite, “Is there any chance at all that someone could still be in the Upside Down?”

It takes her a second to respond, but her answer is firm, “The gate is closed.”

“I know, but do you think we could’ve closed it on somebody?”

“Why?” She sounds unsure of whether or not she should trust him, so he explains to her, “The phone rang and Robin said it sounded like a bunch of static, and like someone was talking but she couldn’t hear them. It blew up like it did before when Will called.”

There’s a long pause and whispers in the background, like she’s being coached by Joyce, and her answers comes slowly, “Without powers I can’t help. But I have an idea.”

Another pause and her mother takes the phone back, “We’ll come back to Hawkins and figure it out, Steve. See what you can do until we get there.”

The line goes dead before he can thank her or ask how long he could expect to wait, so he sighs and hangs the phone back up. When he returns to the living room, Robin stands up from the couch and the neighbor asks politely, “How was she?”

He furrows his eyebrows, has too much on his mind and has to remember the cover story they came up with before he can answer, “She’s alright. Thank you, Dorothy.”

They’re halfway to the front door when she stops them, “Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you two, I have the city’s number if you need it.”

Robin smiles politely, “What for?”

“Well, that streetlight outside. It’s been flickering on and off these past few nights, I thought it would be bothering you two being right outside your window and all. I know it’s been driving me up the wall.” She chuckles, not realizing the significance of what she just said to them.

They exchange a look between themselves, both having gone a little pale.

Robin recovers quicker, so she forces a smile back onto her face, significantly less genuine this time, and steers Steve outside with a guiding hand on his back, assuring the neighbor before shutting the door in her face, “That’s alright, Dorothy. We hadn’t noticed actually.”

~~~~

This end of the neighborhood is so poorly lit, but Billy can’t afford to get cornered like this.

He’d taken off from the area around duplex apartment, leaving behind the big monster and running until he finds more street lights, though in a poor backwoods town like Hawkins, only a select few streets nearby downtown or the rich neighborhoods were taken care of, so it’s not until he’s all the way at the other end of the street, almost by the intersection to the next neighborhood, that he finds another dull and flickering street light.

It’s then, looking up hopefully at the dull, flickering light that he realizes this area is somewhat familiar to him, though it's still much farther out than his usually traveled routes between Cherry Lane and Loch Nora.

When things were normal, Billy was so bitter about leaving his home, so he hadn’t bothered getting familiar with the entire town. If it was out of his way, it wasn’t his problem, Hawkins was only ever supposed to be a temporary home for him anyways.

Even now he still wasn’t acquainted with the area, because over here past the neighborhood where he found Steve and Robin is the dark zone, where the storm clouds are thicker and the fog covers what little light there is in this place, and he normally wouldn’t dare stray over this way.

Right now though, there’s a monster that’s already tasted his blood on his heels, so it doesn’t really matter where he ends up.

He follows a long dirt driveway towards that one streetlight, beacon of hope that it was, when suddenly it hits him. This is the Byers’ house.

If there were literally anywhere else for him to go right now other than that house, he’d go there, guilty memories he’d been mostly forgiven for still sitting heavy in his heart, if not just because now all the people he’d hurt that day were still living without him, making new memories and probably remembering his as that same asshole that barged into the Byers family home that night.

But, he’s not out of the woods just yet to be picky, because there’s a trail of blood from his injured arm leading the monster to this exact spot, and that is a monster that already had the taste of his flesh. He’d have to take whatever he could get.

The second he opens the door, under the twisting vines and ash and mold covering almost everything in the house, it’s obvious that this isn’t the same house he’d burst into two years ago, none of the floral couches and knitted Afghans and Merry Mushroom canisters that made for that warm, homey feel of the place that had made Billy feel queasy when juxtaposed with what he’d thought was happening in that house before Steve apologized for lying, and he for kicking Steve’s ass, and gave him a new explanation that was, as he now knew, still a coverup, but didn’t seem so predatory.

Now there were all leather arm chairs, dirty work boots by the door, and empty beer bottles on the kitchen counters. He could tell from the way this house is decorated alone, at least if he imagined it without all the rot and death, that this house had been bought up by some unhappy old man, and he almost wants to be bitter, that he’s going to die in a place that looks like the embodiment of the unhappy future he was damned to even if he made it out of this hell, until something catches his eye.

On display hooks, positioned perfectly atop the mantelpiece, there is a proudly displayed shotgun.

Billy almost trips over the clutter-covered coffee table running to go get it, a feeling like hope in his chest, but when he pulls it down, his heart sinks a little. He can tell from the weight that it isn’t loaded, it’s just some old bastards trophy.

He worries for a second that it isn’t even a real gun at all, but a snarl from the other side of the door reminds him it doesn’t matter if it shoots, it’ll still bludgeon. A weapon is a weapon.

Still, he quickly turns the place over, clearing off that coffee table, feeling along the underside of the mantel for a hidden box, and digging through the side table drawers, in there finding old pills and candy wrappers, spare change and, in the very last place he looks, a box of shotgun shells.

He grabs it, but he doesn’t have time to be relieved, because on the other side of the door, there’s a snarl accompanied by a scratching sound, and he knows that that thing outside is taunting him. Trapping him in so it could toy with him before finally killing him. But he’s not going to let that happen, not now.

He couldn’t say how much time had passed down here, but he had been hurt and starved and damn near froze to death, and he had still survived. All this time it had been for himself, to prove he could do it and maybe, just maybe someday reach the other side, but now he had a purpose. Now he knew his Steve was right there, just out of his reach. He can’t give up now. He won’t.

He takes the gun into the kitchen, where he’ll have a minute if the monster does lose its temper and break in early, sliding to the floor with it so he’s level with where the monsters face would be once it turned the corner, gritting his teeth and lowering the barrel of the gun, his good hand shaking badly as he tries against his nerves and the bite making him weaker to load the shells in both barrels.

At the same time, just as he expected, the monster decides it’s done playing with its food, hitting into the door until the hinges crack and it swings open at an off angle. Billy curses under his breath and tries to load faster, in his panic accidentally catching sight of the bite wound on his arm, and it’s bad. As in, he can’t believe he’s still conscious right now bad. But he tries not to think about it and just locks the gun back in, cocks it, and aims it straight in front of him.

His hands are shaking so badly he’s not sure he could actually fire the gun or hit the monster even if he did, but surprisingly, he doesn’t have to put that theory to the test, because the monster never comes around the wall. Claws scratch into the damp carpeted floor in the room parallel to the one he’s in and eerie chitters and growls fill the disturbingly quiet air. Billy always wondered if that sound was them communicating, or if they were mocking him. Making his skin crawl so he’d let his guard down, be afraid as they tore him to shreds.

But then it just stops again. The house totally silent except for the monster's horribly ragged breathing, and then it leaves. Retreats right out of the front door, and from the rustling sound that carries from outside, back into the woods.

Billy breathes out a heavy sigh of relief, tilting his head back against the wall, exhausted. Above his head he notices a cross, just a little golden thing dangling right above his head, and he laughs bitterly. Some blessing this is.

Because, while he didn’t get viciously eaten alive, for which he supposes he could be grateful in some ways, here he still was, after so many days he couldn’t count them anymore, he was still trapped and alone with monsters hunting him. Now suddenly throwing Steve and his friend into the mix, and he’s got himself the perfect mix of hopelessness and heartbreak and dread making this all the harder.

With effort, he stands again, this time not making the mistake of leaving his weapon behind.

The adrenaline is slowly wearing off, and his arm really starts to demand his attention. It stings like nothing he’s ever felt before, a horrible sensation that makes his whole arm feel painfully numb. He just hopes the medicine in this house hadn’t succumbed to the elements like most things he scavenged for tend to anymore.

By some miracle, the old man who bought the place up still hadn’t finished unpacking, and right at the bottom of a cardboard box full of old towels is an almost completely preserved first aid kid, fully intact other than a couple of rotten bandages, but those wouldn’t be of much use to him right now anyways.

He tries to remember the rules his dad had taught him the first time he cut too deep, rules which he’d later passed down to Max when she was being nosy after witnessing a fight, following him around while he was trying to get his face to stop bleeding.

Clean it, medicate it, bandage it.

Normally when he was telling it to Max, he’d tack on to the end to go get help if she was bleeding more than a bandaids worth, but that’s not really of much use to him, so he pushes his sleeve up, grateful it had already been rolled up some and hadn’t been torn, and assesses the damage.

He can’t see any bone, which is good enough news, but he can’t see much of anything else from how badly he’s bleeding, which is not so good. He can’t even get a fair judgement of how bad it is with all the gore covering the actual wound, so he walks to the sink to wipe some of the blood away.

The water quality down here varies from day to day, not that he’d ever drink the stuff, he’d a thousand times over raid a monsters den for a single water bottle than put that stuff in his body, but sometimes he’d test it just to check if it was clean enough for him to try and wash away any of the dirt and blood on him.

Sometimes nothing would come from the faucet but disgusting black sludge. Today he was lucky, the water, if you could even call it that, cloudy and speckled, but not unusable. Besides, he would rather get some weird alien infection in his arm than bleed out anyways.

Max’s watch is caked in gore so he quickly runs it under the water too. It’s probably going to fry the stupid thing, and the thought of its familiar ticking being gone does admittedly make Billy a little uneasy, but he’d rather return the watch broken than stained with his blood.

Because that’s really his biggest goal. To keep surviving and make it out of wherever the hell he is so he could give Max back her watch and Steve back that stupid bandana he probably didn’t even notice was missing, and his dad back his jacket. Shove it in the asshole's face and tell him, ‘Here’s your jacket back you old bastard. Mind the blood stain on the collar and the tear in the shoulder. I fucking missed you, dad.’

He's able to get the bleeding to stop with rags, and once the wound is clean, he slathers the bite in as much polysporin as he can find, mostly to mask the heavy smell of blood lingering on his skin that would act like a beacon for the monsters miles away until this hole in his arm heals. He finds clean enough bandages and wraps it until he can barely move his wrist, tugging his sleeve back down over them. He decides not to clean up all the blood, so there was something to distract them from finding him once he leaves.

Healing is supposed to be the hardest part, and Billy had always thought that was bullshit- the hardest part was the betrayal when his dear old dad cracked his bones and left bruises on his skin when there are real monsters out there in the world that don’t give you a hug and an apology when it’s over- but now he knows for sure that isn’t true.

The most important thing is finding Steve again, and figuring out why he couldn’t see or touch him, and could only just barely hear him, but could feel his presence, almost tangibly.

Billy steals another two boxes of bullets, keeping the gun close at his side, and he sets back off for that duplex.

#harringrove big bang 2021 #harringrove #billy x steve #billy hargrove #steve harrington #robin buckley #tw blood #tw gun mention #ej writer #story by ej! #so excited to get this chapter out #because look at that amazing art!!!

[sebsallowapologist]

Pothos

Hi! While I have my nerve I’m going to post this- I haven’t written anything for public eye in a long time. 

I’d been thinking for a long time that Bella & Edward’s love story would be so much better if Bella had the chance to mature a little bit. So I wrote this:

When Edward left Bella in New Moon, what if he didn't come back until he was sure that Bella wasn't going to live happily ever after. It's 7 years later and Bella is floating through life as a 25 year old in Los Angeles when he comes back into her life.

Please please please tell me what you think or if this is worth continuing. 

The elevator ride was quiet, just the muzak playing and the quiet dings as we passed the floors that lead down to the basement. Most other people in the office would go home as soon as their computers told them it was 5:00, seldom staying until 8:00. They had families to get home to, dinners to be had, husbands to kiss and tell them how their day was. I filled up that time by staying a few hours late at work, until I got the message that we were meeting up at Umbrella tonight.

When I’d gotten word that morning that Mike couldn’t make it out tonight it made my blood drain from my face. If we wouldn’t go out then shy Angela would have bailed on me too. Theres power in numbers, and two girls alone at a bar wasn’t something Ang was comfortable with. Or maybe she was as long as I wasn’t the only other girl there.

Now that I had some plans for a Friday night I could stomach leaving work behind, moving from one distraction to the other. I shove my phone into my back pocket and grabbed the little black backpack I carried before shutting off my computer and walking out of the cubical I spent 60 hours a week sitting in.

Most people craved the weekend, spent the 48 hours of freedom trying to undo all the work they did over the weekend, but I was the opposite, my weekends were spent trying to run away from my own thoughts, mostly through drinking until I could feel my brain sloshing in my head and then working over my days off, desperately trying to prove to my company, and myself, that I deserved to be there, and it wasn’t just because my guardian angel put me there.

My guardian angel.

The one who got me into UCLA when I applied late and with horrible grades. My guardian angel who made sure I passed every college course, despite how much I didn’t understand the work. My guardian angel who got me the job at Variety, to make sure I was writing and doing what I thought I loved. I hated him, but I took all of his gifts, even though I haven't earned any of them. I was selfish and was plagued by the thought of the person who should have the life I was living, the one I took for granted. All because he felt guilty and I was too weak of a person to deny the silent gifts.

I make it down to my car and throw my backpack on the passenger seat of my little four door, another gift from my guardian angel. Or was it just a coincidence that someone was selling a barely used safe car just for the price I could afford as soon as I needed it? The truck had finally wheezed its last breath my senior year of high school, it was so symbolic it almost hurt, but it was right. A pick up truck didn’t make sense for Los Angeles, I would have spent my salary on gas alone.

I rest my head on the steering wheel, keeping the car keys gripped in my hand as I take three deep breaths and let out everything that happened at work today. The deadline that was moved up without my knowledge, the bitch who took the last k-cup on our floor which made me go to Starbucks this morning.

I sigh and stick the key in the ignition and crank the car to life and back out of the spot without letting the engine warm up. I pull to the mouth of the garage and flash my badge to the attendant, who let the gate rise and let me out. I wave and give a half smile while he waved me on and turned down the street, heading for my apartment.

Los Angeles had ruined my driving, you just didn’t get around this city in any kind of timely manner if you didn’t treat yellow lights like a suggestion. I made it home in a reasonable amount of time, since almost all of rush hour had already died down.

I lock up the car and walk up to my side of the duplex. The duplex I loved, covered in flowers that were cared for by the old woman who lived next door, the old fixtures that reminded me of what Los Angeles used to be- a golden era of film and mob crime. What made LA interesting, as opposed to what it is now- an influencer filled hellhole. I open up the door and slam it closed, the only way the hinge would catch.

I throw my bag down next to the pile of shoes next to my door and head to my small bathroom to freshen up. I bite my lip and stop at the wall of plants lining the window in my living room. Fuck I should water those. The plants all stemmed from the singular pothos plant my neighbor had given me when I first moved in. She taught me that when it grew, a stem could be cut off from the rest of the plant and placed in water. The little section of plant, given the right circumstances, could develop its own root system and thrive on its own, without the home it had once known.

So I did it once, wracked with anxiety that I would kill one of the few flourishing leaves on the plant. It sat in water for weeks before the small root stuck out of the stem. One root became two, and then three as it grew and reached the bottom of the mason jar, and all of a sudden I had a whole other plant that was thriving, the scar I had given it from taking it away from it’s home had grown, and made it possible to survive on its own. So I did it again, and again, until my apartment was covered in pothos vines. I walked around my apartment and watered each one of them until their soil was damp before continuing with my night.

I wasn’t going to any club, but a brush through my hair and a little mascara on the eyelashes doesn’t hurt. I had to act quickly though, since I was getting texts from Mike about every five minutes asking where I was. I tell him that I’m on my way and throw on a jacket over the thin silk and lace top I wore. I didn’t live far from our favorite bar which made stumbling home a few nights a week extremely convenient.

***

The Melrose Umbrella was the bar for people who thought they were too good for bars. The Hollywood nobodies lined the walls, drinking the drinks they could barely afford while trying to all sleep with each other. I’ve been guilty of it, I’d brought home quite a few conquests home from the Umbrella, when I felt like it. I find Mike and Ang at the back of the bar, sitting in our normal booth.

I wasn’t sure if having a normal booth at a bar in a city as big as Los Angeles was something to be proud or ashamed of, but it was our home. I put my bag down and take off my jacket, smiling lightly at my friends. “Sorry I’m late, I’m getting a drink, anyone need?” I ask and they both raise their hands. I laugh a little and head over to the crowded bar, trying to lock eyes with Paul. Pretty Boy Paul the bartender. He smiles and I hold up three fingers, signaling that I needed a drink for his three favorite regulars. He nods and I relax a little, waiting for our drinks. “Hey.” I hear and I turn around to see a man, average height, average build, nothing special about him talking to me like he deserved my attention. “What’s going on tonight, beautiful?”

“Drinking.” I mumble and nod at Paul when I get my three drinks. “Let me get your next round. I’m an actor and-” He starts and I almost roll my eyes out of my head. An actor. Great. “Oh really? What restaurant?” I ask and collect my drinks and go back to our booth, leaving him in the dust.

“You should really make them think they have a chance, it looks like you just kicked his puppy.” Mike laughs and I roll my eyes, sliding him his beer and Ang her margarita. “But he didn’t.” I mumble and Mike rolls his eyes, “What? Don’t need anyone to keep your bed warm tonight?” He jokes. The few times a year I brought a man back over to my apartment were national holidays to Angela and Mike, who insisted that I just needed a more steady flow of orgasms to fix whatever was broken with me. Every time it fell short. Every time I had sex with someone else it wasn’t one tenth- no one one hunderth of the attract, thrill and wholeness that came from just kissing E- No.

“I got a heated blanket, and no. I’m getting black out tonight.” I smile and place the vodka water at my lips, the lime hitting my lips as I take a big sip. As if that was different from any other night we spent at Umbrellas.

Drink after drink I talked with my friends, until my brain was too slow and too cloudy to think about him, until he wasn’t the underlying stream of consciousness that was always going through my mind. The last call bell rings and I sigh, grabbing my jacket. “Alright, I gotta go, I need to work on a piece tomorrow.” I mumble and Mike chuckles. “You would consider 1:45 in the morning to be calling it an early night.”

“I’m a saint.” I smile and he nods. “Do you need help getting home?” I shake my head. “I’ll make it the two blocks.”

I lift my last drink up to my lips and finish it’s remains, letting an ice cube fall into my mouth. I wave to my friends as I exit the bar and let my shoulders curl forward as I shuffle my way back to my apartment. Another successful night. If you could call it that.

I keep my hood up and finally make it back to my place, shedding my jacket at the door. It was too hot. My stomach rumbles and I groan, I hadn’t eaten at fucking all since lunch. I stumble into the kitchen and find a pot, tossing it onto my gas stove before bringing out the boxed mac and cheese.

With shaking hands I get enough water into the pot and set it to boil, leaning over the stove to watch the bubbles rise, but you know what they say about a watched pot, or whatever. As soon as I deem the noodles “done” I drain them and mix in the milk, haphazardly cut butter, and finally the packet of powdered cheese and mix it together, bringing the whole pot into the living room to enjoy my dinner in style. I set the pot down on my coffee table and groan, the burner. I wasn’t so drunk I was going to burn my house down. Stumbling back to the kitchen I glanced at the stove top, expecting to see a small red flame, but everything was off. I was better than I thought.

I walk back to the couch and start eating the mac and cheese while I scroll on my phone. Seeing stories from everyone’s Friday night, posts of everyone laughing with their friends. And I had done that. Succeeded at being a normal human girl. To an extent.

I’d had that smile on my face, I’d laughed and danced, but I just wish it didn’t feel like a cover. I felt like my whole life I was hiding someone’s secret. Tears prick at my eyes as I land on a couple, laughing together outside of a bar, her hands on his chest. I lock my phone and place it face down on the couch. I couldn’t- be around that anymore.

I abandon my full pot of mac and cheese and stumble off to bed, shedding my shirt, my pants, and my bra at my hamper before falling into the bed, pulling the covers up to my chin.  

***

They say hangovers get worse as you get older, but I haven't experienced that yet. When the sun creeps in through my window my biggest symptom is the light headache that I know would go away with some coffee and an aspirin.

I lay in my bed and let a little whimper out of my lips as I stretch. I freeze when I hear the sound that must have woken me up, three quick raps at my door echoed through the apartment. My brow furrows, no one ever comes by. I lean over and check my phone, anyone I knew would tell me before they came over.

I hear the knocks again and roll out of my bed, I was going to have to go in blind. I grab my jeans from last night and a UCLA sweatshirt off my floor, pulling them on as I walk to the front of the apartment. “I’m coming!” I call as I get the knocks again, impatient. I push my hair off of my face and look through my peep hole.

The distorted image did him a massive disservice.

His bronze hair was covered by a dark hood. His white skin was shaded but still brillant, it made my headache scream just a bit.  His golden eyes looked through the peephole and I gasped when we made eye contact, not that he could see. “Bella?” I hear and every muscle in my body freezes. He had to know that I was standing on the other side of the door. My name sounded angelic coming out of his perfect lips. I’d never loved the word Bella so much.

My hand shakes as it moves to the doorknob.

#twilight #twilightfanfic #twilight fan fiction #edward cullen #bella swan #twilight saga

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Matt McKeever, BRRRR Investing

https://www.jayconner.com/matt-mckeever-brrrr-investing/ Matt McKeever is a CPA & Real Estate Investor. He implements the BRRRR investing strategy in London Ontario. https://www.youtube.com/c/MattMcKeever/ You'll learn how to analyze multifamily properties and how to maximize your return on investment through strategic renovations that will allow you to increase rents, your equity and your cashflow!

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Jay Conner (00:10): Well, hello there and welcome to another episode of real estate investing with Jay Conner. I'm Jay Conner, your host, and also known as the Private Money Authority. If you're brand new here to listening on iTunes or Google play, or you may be watching and listening to the live stream right now on one of our YouTube channels or Facebook and you're new to Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner show. We talk about all things, real estate, how to find deals, how to get them funded, how to sell them fast, how to automate your business. So you're actually running your business and it's not running you. And since we launched the show back in June of 2018, I've had some very, very amazing guests here on the show with me, and today's no different, but before I bring my guest on, I want to let you know about what one big thing that we do here on the show. And that's talking about funding for your deals.

Jay Conner (01:04): Well, the short version of my story is, my wife, Carol Joy and I started investing in single family houses here in Eastern North Carolina, back in 2003. And the first six years that we were doing business, I relied on the local banks and mortgage companies. But in January of 2009, I was cut off from a funding, but no notice like the rest of the world. And so I was introduced to this wonderful world of private money. How to get funding for your deals that has nothing to do with your credit. Nothing to do with your verification of income. Nothing to do with your experience and how you can actually set your own rules to get funding for your real estate deals. So I've been using private money for funding ever since 2009. We've got 49 private lenders right now, funding our deals.

Jay Conner (01:55): And if you would like to learn as well about how you can get funding for your deals, the same way I do without relying on banks, then I've got a free online class for you to check out after the show. You go over after the show to www.JayConner.com/MoneyPodcast. That's JayConner.com/MoneyPodcast. There, I will teach you and reveal the five easy steps as to how you can quickly have zero funding for your deals, and very quickly having the hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars in funding.

Jay Conner (02:37): So with that, I'm just so excited to introduce to you my guest today. My guest is a CPA and a real estate investor. You don't find too many of those combinations inside the same head. So anyway, he implements this thing called the BRRRR investing strategy. And we're going to dive on that and find out what in the world that strategy is. So he primarily focuses on small apartments and commercial deals. Now he has got a very, very popular YouTube channel. That right now has over 60,000 subscribers. And we're going to tell you here in a moment, how to get over that YouTube channel and you can check him out, but on his YouTube channel, he teaches you how to analyze multifamily properties and how to maximize your return on investment through strategic innovations and renovations. That will show, that will allow you to increase your rents, increase your equity and how to increase very quickly your cash flow and these properties. And own this same YouTube channel, you'll find videos where he's teaching this ranging from renovating properties, duplexes, triplexes of all sizes, as well as dealing with student rentals his best practices for buying properties, how to manage your tenants and your portfolio of properties.

Jay Conner (04:02): So he's also going to show you on his YouTube channel, how he structures joint venture deals. How he gets funding for his deals. How he negotiates with banks, refinances properties, and of course, much more. So be sure to subscribe to his channel when we tell you about it here in a moment, and you'll be able to follow him in his pursuit of financial independence and how you can get it also as well. With that, I'm so excited to bring onto the show right now, Mr. Matt McKeever. Hello, Matt! And welcome to the show, my friend.

Matt McKeever (04:35): Thanks, Jay. Appreciate the warm introduction.

Jay Conner (04:38): Absolutely! Glad to hear you. So, you're up in Canada. Well, whereabouts in Canada?

Matt McKeever (04:43): So located London, Ontario, about two hours from Toronto, which is our big city here in Canada.

Jay Conner (04:49): I got you. Now is all of your investing these days taking place in Canada?

Matt McKeever (04:54): Yep. So right now my portfolio is exclusively in Southwestern Ontario. So within right now, actually it's pretty much all clustered in London, Ontario, which is a market with a 500,000 Metro population area. Just to kind of give you guys a rough idea. Median house price is around 350 to 400.

Jay Conner (05:14): So with everything that we're going to be talking about here on the show today, and also on your YouTube channel, do all or most of the strategies apply to doing this type of business the way you do it in the United States?

Matt McKeever (05:29): Yeah, absolutely. So if anything, the United States has maybe more friendly investor regulations in most States. So everything we do here in Canada can absolutely be replicated in the States. And in fact, sometimes it's easier because you guys have nifty little tricks, like the 10 31 exchange, which is completely nonexistent here in Canada.

Jay Conner (05:50): I got you! And that comes into play more often in the world of commercial than it does in single family homes. Right?

Matt McKeever (05:58): Absolutely! So here in Canada, unfortunately we don't have that 10 31 exchange. We can find a handful of other innovative ways to try and, you know, help us speed up the velocity of our money. But really for myself, when I first joined like a lot of investors, my biggest thing was either limited amounts of resources, right? The limited amount of my own money. And like a lot of people I had discovered private money like yourself. So we're constantly focused on how can I stretch the little bit of money I have to control the most amount of real estate as possible. And that's what really led me into that BRRRR investment strategy, where you buy a property, renovate it, you know, fix it up, bring it up to its highest, best most efficient use, then rerent it out at a higher amount, then go back to your lender and refinance and pull out the money. And I started originally doing that on small single family homes and small multi-families. And now I've just graduated to doing the exact same business model, but just with small apartment buildings, rather than like a triplex or a fourplex,

Jay Conner (06:56): I got you. Well, just in case some people aren't able to stay to the end of the show. Let's go ahead and let everybody know right now how they can find your YouTube channel. That's got all the trainings on it and et cetera, where can they go for that?

Matt McKeever (07:09): Yeah. So if you hit me up on YouTube, it's just Matt McKeever. That's M C K E E V E R. And anywhere social media, you'll find me on those platforms. So if you're not on YouTube, I'm everywhere else as well.

Jay Conner (07:24): Well, what I want us to talk about. Well, thank you for sharing that, Matt. What I want us to talk about today here on the show are really three topics. First I want to hear about your personal journey in real estate. Secondly, I want to, I want you to talk about the power of social media and how you use social media to leverage success in your business. And then thirdly, you got an interesting concept that you talk about. You don't talk that much about ROI, Return On Investment or Return On Cash. You talk about this thing talking to call return on time. So those are the three topics let's start with your personal journey, Matt, and your story.

Matt McKeever (08:03): Absolutely. So like a lot of real estate investors you know, my gateway into real estate investing the gateway drug, as I like to say it, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That's what really started my entire journey. And in my fourth year at university, you know, I was going through for business. I was going to get my CPA license and really the reason I wanted to get into business or become an entrepreneur was to, you know, get rich. Like a lot of people. But I didn't really know what get rich meant and had no idea how to actually achieve it. And so I was speaking with one of my roommates at the time we lived in a six bedroom student rental house and I was like, Jake, your dad's rich. He owns like a big company with hundreds of employees. I was like, go ask him how we get rich.

Matt McKeever (08:49): Cause we both know we want to get rich, but we have no idea. And he actually gave us the book, Rich Dad Poor Dad. And ever since reading that book in the back of it and a list of other books to go read, I went and read every book from that as well. And just really got addicted to this idea of real estate investing and being able to build up a, you know, passive cash flowing investment portfolio. I didn't end up jumping into real estate until age 25. So from kind of 2021 discovering real estate to 25 and actually executing that I was just consuming information, trying to save up money. But also I was trying to get outside my comfort zone because all my friends and family thought I was crazy for wanting to get into real estate investing when I was already on, you know, the corporate path to that white collar job with the corner office.

Matt McKeever (09:37): At the age of 25 is when I bought my first rental property. And on my 25th birthday, I ended up making a commitment to myself. So I downloaded an app on my phone that would count down the days to my 35th birthday. And I decided to make a commitment that I would retire by the age of 35 because of real estate investing. And so I was the guy at different parties or networking events, people would say, Hey, Matt, what's new with you? What's up? I'd pull out the phone and be like, Oh 2,465 days until my 35th birthday. When I get to retire. Long story short, kept buying real estate, kept in asking them that. And instead of having to wait 10 years, I actually retired from being a CPA, a chartered accountant at the age of 31 and just went all in to real estate investing at that point.

Matt McKeever (10:22): And then from that I found like a lot of people, once I left the corporate 9-5 behind, my success in real estate actually really started hockey sticking because I had all this extra time and energy now to deploy into my real estate investing business. And in that first year of quitting my day job, I think I acquired 32 additional units that year. And then continued just to, you know, focus on different unique investment opportunities, started teaching other people about real estate investing as well. Because when I quit my day job at 31, I found it's kind of lonely. There's not a lot of other 31 year old retirees out there. And so I didn't really have a peer group to hang out with. So I decided to start writing these really long emails to my friends, you know, like 5,000 word emails, trying to explain to them how they could quit their day job in five years, if they would just invest in real estate like I did.

Matt McKeever (11:15): And I'm sure as you can imagine, your audience can imagine. No one responded to those 5,000 word emails because that's a small novella. Thankfully at the time I happened to be reading a book and the books that speak to your audience in the language they wish to be spoken to. And immediately clicked for me, the reason that I love real estate and the reason so many people are drawn to real estate investing is because it's such a tactical, you know, real investment, right? Like it's a physical thing. Unlike say paper stock or paper assets. So immediately started documenting on my YouTube channel, just how I was going about investing in real estate. So if you go back to like my very first video, you can see, I was still swinging a hammer. Like I was still sweating up in the attics, re-insulating, running duct work, stuff like that.

Matt McKeever (12:01): So really have been exposed to almost every aspect of the real estate investing journey. But at this point now what the day to day looks like is I've got a wholesaling business with five full time employees just wholesaling real estate. I've got a company that just BRRRRs apartment building. So in the last eight months or so we've acquired about 70 units in that entity and have just been BRRRRing those apartments and then also have my education and just networking, which is, you know, my YouTube channel, social media presence and a couple other little education companies. So definitely just, you know, constantly trying to level up and surround myself with like minded individuals when it comes to real estate.

Jay Conner (12:43): Now you just said, that particular entity you've been BRRRRing properties. First of all, how do you spell that? Secondly, what does it mean?

Matt McKeever (12:53): Absolutely. So B R R R R. And so it stands for Buy, Renovate, Rent, Refinance, and Repeat. And so really what that looks like is simply finding, to me the best way to explain it is you're just looking for under utilized assets and you're going to try and bring them up to their highest, best, most efficient use. So oftentimes what that looks like for me these days is we're buying an apartment building here in Ontario that maybe is being rented out for 50% of fair market value. And the landlords owned it for 10, 20 years. There's not a lot of equity and they're no longer motivated to operate it at a hundred percent efficiency or anywhere close to it. They're often approaching retirement age. So we go in there, buy the property. Then we implement strategic renovations, which again, unlike, you know, on HGTV, a lot of my YouTube fans would love to see me blowing out walls, you know, doing open concept this, that, and the other, but most of my renovations are really boring.

Matt McKeever (13:52): It's like, let's clean out all the junk. Let's paint the property. And maybe we'll put a new kitchen and bathroom tops. And so really we're just focused on what creates the highest return on investment from those dollars we're investing into the property. So in my market here in London, Ontario, specifically usually adding dishwasher to a kitchen that can increase not only the rent we can charge every month, but also in general increases the quality of tenant that we're going to be drawing from as well as say, adding laundry. If you can put in suit laundry, oftentimes in my market, I can charge between a $100 and $150 more per month in rent. And yet the cost of actually, you know, installing that laundry, depending upon the layout of the unit might be $2,500. So a very fast payback period in regards to when we can earn back that initial investment. But because we've increased the rent amounts.

Matt McKeever (14:44): Now the actual capitalization rates of the property, you know, is going to revalue the property at a higher amount as well, if we the same cap rate. So again, what I'm really focused on is just taking underutilized assets, bringing them them up to their highest, best, most efficient use. Then re-renting them out for top dollar. And once we've re-rented it out for top dollar, you know, our income statement looks a lot more attractive, which means the lender and the appraiser is going to reappraise the property and refinance the property a much higher value. And ideally with our business model, if you're doing it right, once you're done this BRRRR and with the larger apartment buildings, it's usually taken us about 18 months to do it from start to finish. What you're going to end up doing is being able to extract all the initial capital you invested in. So the idea here is, you know, if I can refinance at a 75% loan to value, I maybe buy the property for, let's say a million dollars, put 500,000 renovations, but then get it to reappraise at 2 million. Well at a 75% loan to value, I actually will get $1.5 million in new financing, right from the property, which means I can pay off the entire acquisition costs. So that's really the base model here is to implement what we call a perfect BRRRR.

Jay Conner (15:58): I love it! I never heard of the BRRRR strategy. I love it! Now, one thing you were just talking about was buying the properties. That's the first letter in the BRRRR strategy. So here in the US there's a popular website called LoopNet. What are, what are some of your favorite strategies these days for locating these under you know, these underperforming assets?

Matt McKeever (16:26): Yeah, so there's a lot of different strategies. One thing that is very different about the U S market and the Canadian market is, in the U S market, you guys have the freedom of information act. Here in Canada, we've got the protection information. It's so like, it's literally the exact opposite. So you guys are all about free information. We're all about keeping it all secluded and hidden and private. So honestly my best way is like personal networking. So I'm happy to share some tips here, but it's something that doesn't seem to resonate with a lot of people my age or my generation, which actually makes for a great opportunity for anyone that's willing to actually just build relationships, build rapport. And so, like, we actually target a certain type of realtor even to network with. Like the realtor I want to network with is he's like, realistically, they're above the age of 55.

Matt McKeever (17:21): They've been in business for at least 15 years. And what we're doing is we're approaching those realtors and being like, Hey, who have you sold the property to? Like a large apartment building to 10 years or longer ago? They're sitting on a ton of equity. I want to go make them an offer and make them a ton of money and make that offer through you and have you make commission off of it. So we're very focused on trying to structure win-win opportunities when possible, and make sure that everyone eats because we find when make sure that everyone else profits from a deal we'd done, they get addicted to that cycle and they want to get us more deals. But again, we're very boots on the ground and often focused on doing things that our competition won't do. So everyone loves the idea of hiring a VA out of the Philippines and hitting them, them hitting the phones for a thousand calls a day.

Matt McKeever (18:10): But what we'll do is I'll literally send one of my employees to stake out an apartment building, and they'll just park in front and literally talk to every person going in that building, being like, who's the owner? Can I get the owner's phone number? And we find that usually, you know, we ask enough, we will get that owner's phone number. And a lot of the apartment buildings I buy are literally through that process of, originally it was myself or a business partner just taking it out. Now we have employees taking out the apartment buildings, but we found that that's the best way to really get deals. Because if an owner has already thought about selling the property, contacted a realtor and listed on the market, they're now focused on just getting top dollar. And if they're solely focused on getting top dollar, that's fine for them, but it's usually not going to work for me and my business model. So we're often focused on not finding sellers, but actually creating sellers by making what we call blind offers. I don't even really know what their motivations are, but I know that they've owned it for so long that they're probably sitting on massive amounts of equity. And so I'm hoping that I can present them with a unique offer that they haven't even really considered. And, you know, then we can get that conversation rolling.

Jay Conner (19:17): So do you have your people stake out properties that looks just on the outside like it could use, you know some rehab and renovations and really be brought up to increase, you know, rents or whatever, or do you approach it differently? By again, looking for someone that probably has owned this property for a long time or which comes first? They've owned it for a long time or it looks like it could use some renovations or both?

Matt McKeever (19:47): Yeah, we're definitely open to either. In general, the way we're usually going to like again, because we don't have like easy databases of information. It can be very cumbersome to really figure out who's owned what property for how long on a grand scale. I can definitely look it up individually, but there's no way for me to like print off, you know, a giant data set. So in general, we're more focused on the building first and then doing our research afterwards. So literally what I'll do, and again, nothing fancy here, but I'll go to my local cities, zoning map, look at the zoning, look for a high density residential. And then I'll go on Google satellite and look just from the satellite view and find apartments, buildings, right? Identify the apartment buildings. Then literally go on Google street view. Sometimes on Google street view, you can see the property manager sign on the building.

Matt McKeever (20:40): So we'll immediately just call the property management firm then. If we can't find that, that's when I'm probably going to send someone to stake out the building. Get in contact with the tenants and find out who manages it and how. But at the same time, we've got a lot of other strategies. So here in Canada, Kijiji is really popular in the States. I think it's more often Craigslist is the, you know, the online classifieds the people are going to use. But I also love going on Kijiji, looking through the for rent ads. And you just look for the landlords that are beaten down and they're just sick of it, right? So like there's no good photos taken. And sometimes I don't know what it's like in the States, but in Canada you can read it like, the landlord will write all in caps, like no debt deeds. And that's like the title of their Ad. And like, this guy doesn't want to be a landlord anymore. This guy wants to sell to me, even if he doesn't know it yet.

Jay Conner (21:31): I love it! When you said a moment ago, something really, really important to your, the success of your business is networking and relationships. Well, that ties right into how you're able to leverage social media. So would you share with my audience here strategies and tips that you're doing these days to leverage social media and to really how you harness the power of it?

Matt McKeever (21:57): Yeah. And so the first thing I think that we need to really discuss is why even care about social media, right? And I find a lot of investors think that it's simply a distraction. And if you use it as a distraction, it absolutely is if you use it as a business tool, it absolutely is. So you're right. Either way, it really just comes down to how you use it. But for me, what's really powerful about social media is having that one to many conversation before the advent of social media and online networking and things of that nature. Realistically, the only one to many conversation we could have as real estate investors is going out to your local real estate investment group. Right. And you could maybe go, and if you were lucky, you could get up on stage and maybe talk for half an hour, give a little presentation or breakdown about what you're doing.

Matt McKeever (22:44): And that group maybe met once a month. So maybe once a year, you could get in their lineup, get up on stage and talk, or you had to become the host of the meet-up group in order to have that one to many conversation on a reoccurring basis. Whereas on my YouTube channel. And again, like my YouTube channel, isn't massive by YouTube standards, but it's important for what I'm focused on. And what I'm focused on is really talking to my core audience, which is Canadian real estate investors, and then just real estate investors in general. And so even with just like 60,000 subs on my YouTube channel, any given day, I'm averaging 4,000 to 5,000 views on my YouTube channel. The average view on my YouTube channel is about seven minutes long. So I view that as myself being able to have, you know, 4,000 to 5,000 conversations that are seven minutes long, every single day.

Matt McKeever (23:33): Well, that's more minutes than there already is available on the day. So right away that one to many conversations, extremely powerful. But even more so as real estate investors, it's not like we necessarily have to go, you don't need millions of followers or millions of views in order to have a very effective business model. You really just need, like for a lot of real estate investors, their business would be changed if they had five good private money partners, right? Or five private money lenders. And you can really build up a relationship with those people through social media. So a lot of people, they decide that they want to lend their money to me before I ever even make an ask. And that's simply because they're able to watch and see my projects. They get to see me interact on interviews or go live on Instagram or Facebook and just have conversations.

Matt McKeever (24:20): And they get to build a personal relationship with you. And something that we all need to remind ourselves as people like doing business with people they like. And so if you're not putting yourself out there on social media, if you're not trying to present, you know, your story, your image, your business model, you're not giving anyone even the chance to fall in love with you and your story and want to invest in you or your business. So for me, there's just so much power when it comes to social media, but I know I've just been kind of talking high level. So specifics. If any of your listeners here are brand new to social media, they're intimidated by the idea. They don't have a lot of time to invest into social media, pick one platform and spend at least 80% of your social media efforts on that one platform.

Matt McKeever (25:03): Now, if you're a small investor and you're looking just to get a couple money partners or finding say two or three money partners with six figures or more to invest would be a game changer. I personally would focus on LinkedIn and I would literally just write one or two blog posts a week about my business model. Understand that's never going to go viral. You'll probably be lucky to get more than a couple of dozen views, but that's all it takes. All you really want to do is really cultivate a strong relationship with a handful of money lenders. Now, for myself, there's value in the education and email list and all that stuff. But for a lot of beginner, real estate investors, you don't need that. You just need to build a handful of relationships and still social media is going to be a faster means to that end. Than going out to your local real estate investing group.

Jay Conner (25:49): That's awesome! And then to wrap up Matt, I want us to hang out a few minutes on your view and your take on return on time versus return on instead of ROI, et cetera. So what's your take on return on time and why is that so important?

Matt McKeever (26:08): Yeah, it's something that I think a lot of investors are looted by at the start. And so in general, I kind of view this evolution of real estate investors and their sophistication based upon the metrics they talk about. So CPA by nature. So kind of a numbers nerd and, you know, a ratio nerd to begin with. But in general, when brand new people come to real estate investing, I find they talk about ROI, you know, return on investment. And they're really impressed by the return on investment real estate can generate. Then once they get a little bit more sophisticated, they really start appreciating and understanding leverage. And we hear them talking about things like cash on cash returns, and really then it's about the velocity of their money. Then as people continue to graduate and evolve as investors, maybe they start looking at larger multifamily properties.

Matt McKeever (26:55): At which point in time, they usually start talking about cap rates or IRR. The internal rate of return. And again, all of these metrics are useful, but at the end of the day, what really draws us to real estate investing in my opinion, is the ability to have a high return on time. And that's what I'm really focused on these days as an investor and I'd encourage anyone else that's in real estate investing to start viewing things through that lens. And so one of the best examples I can give is wholesaling real estate. Here in Canada, it's still a relatively new concept. It's maybe only five years old that people have really been doing it to any serious capacity. And so it's got a little bit of a negative stigma still here in Canada. However, if you look at what you can accomplish with say, wholesaling versus flipping a property, usually the return on time, even if the total profit is lower on that wholesale deal, let's say you can wholesale a deal for $10,000, or you could flip the same property and make $50,000.

Matt McKeever (27:52): Well, the bigger question to me is how long does it take to wholesale assign that piece of paper versus actually flipping it. Well for the average person here in Canada, assigning it, you're probably going to assign it in one to two weeks. So your return on time, let's say it took you even a month. Well, your return on time is $10,000 per month. Whereas if we're going to flip the property, well again, we have to tie up the property. We have to wait for it to close. Then we close on it. Then we have to do our renovations, fix it up. Then we have to put it up for sale. Then we have to sell it. Then we have to wait for it to close. Well, oftentimes even if you're going to make $50,000, that entire process from start to finish, it might be five or six months.

Matt McKeever (28:31): Well, at that point in time, you're looking at very similar return on time, but your perception of risk is higher as well because with the wholesale deal, we make the money before ever even closing on the deal. While we're flipping there's a speculative piece to it because we don't really know what's going to sell for, until it sells. So for myself and a lot of people that I'm trying to help level up as real estate investors these days. I really want them to focus on the highest return on time investments. And this is also really important because a lot of us, when we first get started as investors, a lot of us swing the hammers ourselves. We clean up the units ourselves. We paint the units ourselves. But oftentimes those are the lowest value skills, right? Like you could probably find someone to pay $10, $15, $20 an hour to clean up or paint the unit. Whereas you, as the investor would likely be better served going and finding the next deal or going and talking with your next private money partner. And really building those relationships and send yourself up to do more deals rather than trying to squeeze every deal for every penny. We're better off to go find more deals. So this idea of return on time is just really being cognizant and not getting distracted by one piece of the puzzle, but really looking at the puzzle as a whole, When it comes to our investing and investment strategies.

Jay Conner (29:46): Excellent! Thank you, Matt. Well, folks, go ahead and check out and subscribe to Matt's YouTube channel at YouTube/MattMcKeever and that's M A T T M C K E E V E R. Matt. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really enjoyed having you.

Matt McKeever (30:07): Thanks, Jay. Really appreciate it.

Jay Conner (30:09): Alright! There you have it folks. Another show. I'm Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority. Wishing you all the best. And here's to taking your real estate investing business to the next level. We'll see you on the next show. Bye for now.

#Jay Conner #Private Money Lender #Real Estate Business #Real Estate #Real Estate Investing #Real Estate Investor #Real Estate Profit #The Private Money Authority

[a-servant-writing]

Home is the Heart

My husband and I are what you would call a young couple. We are both in our mid-twenties, relatively new to married life, still full of hopeful dreams, and eager to experience everything this life has to offer. We are like many other people, caught up in our daily lives, living for the dream, barely aware of each other, barely aware of the blessings we already have, but perhaps our biggest flaw is our trusting nature.

We had our first child six months ago and were still adjusting when our apartment building unexpectedly caught fire. We were forced to vacate the only home we’d ever known as a couple, and hadn’t yet managed to start accruing for a home of our own. With no savings to put towards a down payment and a saturated rental market, you can imagine my anguish at the thought of finding a new place to live within the perimeters of both mine and my husband’s places of employment.

Enter Mrs. Jefferies. She is the epitome of the sweet old lady archetype. The top of her head only reaches my shoulder and I’m not what most people consider tall. She has a frail, petite build, and rounded, hunching shoulders, but that doesn’t stop her from walking to the local market once a week to pick up groceries for her household.

The market is where I had first met Mrs. Jefferies. She had such an easy, cheerful way about her, it was impossible not to engage her when she complimented my adorable newborn. After our initial conversation, I found I noticed her more often than not when I was there and started taking a few minutes out of my shopping to stop and chat with her. So, by the time the unfortunate event has taken place, she is an acquaintance I am more than comfortable spilling my miserable guts to about my pitiful predicament.

Needless to say, Mrs. Jefferies is more than understanding. She listens sympathetically, pats my shoulder reassuringly, and—after a moment of contemplative silence—offers for my small family to come and stay with her and her husband until we can save up enough money to afford a place of our own once more.

Of course, I am nervous at first. This is a woman I, for all intent and purpose, know nothing about, but the more I think about it, the more appealing the idea becomes. We have lost most of our belongings in the fire and are living in a hotel down the street from where I work. It would be good to have some semblance of normalcy back in our lives, even if we would be sharing the living quarters with another couple. Mrs. Jefferies says it is just her and her husband, Frank, and assures me that they have the room to spare. We would have our own bedroom and bathroom, plus unlimited access to the kitchen and living areas.

She finishes her thought, saying, “Surely, the baby would sleep better in a quiet house than a noisy hotel.”

              “We wouldn’t want to intrude,” I say after a pause, secretly hoping she won’t back down.

She does not disappoint.

              “No intrusion, dear,” she assures cheerfully. “I am inviting you.”

              “I should talk it over with my husband,” I return politely.

              “Of course, of course,” she says as though that was never in question. She digs in her purse for a small notebook and a pen and scribbles something on it before handing me the paper. “If he is okay with it, this is our address. You just head over when you are ready. We’ll be there.”

              I look down at the paper apprehensively. The address alone has been scrawled on the paper.

“I wouldn’t want to just show up unannounced,” I say, explaining the concerned look on my face. “If you’d give me your phone number, I could call you first.”

              She laughs looking slightly abashed.

“We haven’t had a phone in… oh, it’s been a while. No one to call on us, you see.”

She looks a little sad at the thought and I feel bad for asking.

              “I’m sorry,” I say.

              “Not to worry,” she replies, perking up a bit. “You just talk to that husband of yours and come by once you’ve got yourselves all straightened out.”

I contemplate her words all the way back to the hotel, and am relieved when I tell my husband and he agrees that anything is better than our current arrangement. The very next day, we pull into the driveway at the address Mrs. Jefferies gave me and stare up at the house with mixed feelings.

It’s a large corner lot, badly overgrown with weeds. The house itself is an old two-story colonial. The siding is a dull faded-gray. Facing the road is a large porch with a covered balcony. A wooden bench-swing creaks gently in the breeze, its white paint peeling. The front door is almost dead-center and framed symmetrically with windows. It doesn’t look like it’s been opened in years. Some creeping ivy has wended its way up the columns and much of the upper balcony has been cloaked in a curtain of green. On the right side of the building—where our car is now parked in the crumbling driveway—is a side entrance. A small awning is anchored above the screen door.

Our car is alone in the driveway, giving the place an unwelcoming, abandoned feel. The curtains are all tightly drawn, betraying no sign of movement from within.

I look again at the paper, thinking maybe I have the address wrong, but my husband is already unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the car door. Before I can stop him, he’s headed up the front steps and I am forcing myself out of the car after him.

              “Looks like a split-level duplex,” he is saying as he starts up the front steps. “If they don’t have a tenant maybe we can rent from them.”

              “She didn’t say anything about that,” I answer, checking the sleeping baby in the back seat.

The car is a comfortable enough temperature for the little one to be left there for a minute or two while I make sure we have the right place.

I take another minute to look over my surroundings.

Despite the house’s obvious lack of upkeep, there is something about this place. It’s a quiet tree-lined street. All of the homes are big and old, like this one, and the air is alive with the ting-ting of wind chimes and flapping of cheerfully bright garden flags. The nostalgia of it makes me feel at ease. It makes me feel safe.

I start around the car after my husband when the side door opens and the familiar tiny woman appears.

              “Not that way,” she says softly with a grin, waving us over. “We haven’t used that old front door in forever.”

              Relieved, I head back to the car to collect our meager belongings and the little one before meeting my husband and Mrs. Jefferies at the door. My husband distractedly takes a bag as I hold it out to him, juggling the child carrier and our other luggage on my other arm.

              “That’s too bad,” I hear him saying.

              “What is?” I ask.

              “I was just asking Mrs. Jefferies if they had a tenant,” he replies as though we had discussed this previously.

              “And I told him we would love to have tenants again, but the upstairs apartment is, unfortunately, in a poor state. We don’t even have the power turned on up there.” She leans in a bit closer to me and whispers, “Frankly, I’d be worried if someone were to even set foot up there. They might fall through the floor.”

I nod my head, wide eyes looking reflexively at the ivy-covered balcony.

“Is the rest of the house safe?” I can’t stop myself from asking.

              She laughs as if the question is a bad joke.

              “Of course,” she assures sweetly.

She eyes the luggage still balancing with the child carrier in my right hand.

“Let me help you with your bag. It doesn’t look too heavy.”

She holds out a wrinkled hand. Her skin is so soft and shiny it almost looks synthetic. I find myself hoping my skin is as healthy when I am her age.

“I was right, it’s a fine weight. Very manageable,” she announces as she shifts the bag in her hands. “Well, this way now.”

She turns slowly on the stairs and heads back into the side enclosure. My husband and I follow. Directly ahead of us is a stairwell that leads to the upper level apartment in a classic scissor switch fashion. I can’t help but look up, craning my neck as though that might help me to see around the bend to the upper floor landing directly above us. For a moment, I think I can hear the stairs creaking, as though someone has just tiptoed down a few steps. The thought sends a shiver up my spine.

My husband has already followed our hostess through the door to our left and I quickly follow.

The kitchen is arranged to the right with the stove closest to me. The refrigerator and sink are on the adjacent wall and a small pantry is situated in the wall opposite me, beside the entrance to a hallway. A small, square kitchen table breaks up the space, four little chairs tucked neatly beneath it. To my left, and completely open to the kitchen, is the living area. Two oversized recliners and a sofa fill the space. A small television sits on an antique stand in the corner of the room. Around it, making the space feel infinitely smaller are an assortment of bookshelves and end tables adorned with books, newspapers, magazines, knickknacks and doilies.

Everything smells faintly of old cooking, air freshener, mothballs and musty paper—a smell I associate mostly with libraries—but I guess that is to be expected of such a home.

Seated in one of the recliners is a tall, square-shouldered man in a long overcoat. A bowler hat is pulled down low on his brow. His face is buried in the newspaper he is holding close to it.

              “Frank,” Mrs. Jefferies calls to him, “our guests have arrived.”

              The paper barely moves as the man utters a loud grunt.

I feel uncomfortable again, wondering if it is truly all right for us to be here. Frank certainly doesn’t look pleased to be meeting us. He stands stiffly and ambles down the hall, heavy steps echoing after him.

              “Are you sure it’s all right if we stay?” I ask feeling much less assured.

My husband on the other hand has already settled into the oversized recliner beside the one Frank had been sitting in and taken up a magazine from the rack between them.

Mrs. Jefferies waves her free hand absently.

              “Don’t you mind Frank,” she declares cheerfully. “He is just not used to having people around.”

              “What’s with the overcoat?” my husband pipes rudely from behind the magazine.

Mrs. Jefferies doesn’t seem to mind the question. She just chuckles softly.

              “These days it doesn’t much seem to matter what the temperature is, Frank is always cold. He’d have the thermostat set to ninety year-round if he could, but that would be unbearable for anyone else, not to mention the cost,” she sighs audibly, “so this is his solution.”

The baby begins to stir in the carrier I have all but forgotten I am still holding, and Mrs. Jefferies looks down with warm adoration.

              “Why don’t I show you to your room. We can put down your things and get that precious little bundle settled in.”

She leads the way up the hall to the first door on the left. It’s a moderately sized bedroom with a full-sized bed centered against the right-hand wall, an end table and a chest of drawers arranged on either side of it. There is space enough next to the end table to set up the pack n’ play that has been doubling as the baby’s crib since the fire.

Expressing my gratitude, I put the child carrier down by the bed and begin to unhook the restraints.

              “The bathroom is directly across the hall,” she starts as she places the bag she has been carrying on the floor beside the bed, “as you already know, you will have it to yourselves. We have our own bath in the master.”

She has paused, watching me with my baby, a distant dreamy look crossing her face. After a moment, she shakes her head as if the thought had suddenly become unpleasant.

              “I’ve got to start dinner, but if there is anything else you need, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

She hurries down the hall and I can’t help but feel like something has upset her. That uncomfortable feeling is creeping into my gut again. I can hear her faintly through the wall as she asks my husband if he needs anything, and he grunts a reply not unlike old Frank. For a second I am ashamed of him, but Mrs. Jefferies doesn’t seem bothered as she speaks to him again. Maybe she is just used to it.

I take a minute to breathe in my new home, looking once more around the room, when I hear it. There is a dull thump-thumping coming from the floor above my head.

 ***

 What may well have been a figment of my imagination is quickly overshadowed by the sound of Mrs. Jefferies rummaging through her pots and pans. I decide it would be rude not to offer my assistance and head back to the kitchen, throwing a careful glance at the door at the far end of the hall as I exit the guest room. It is closed. Apparently, Frank doesn’t want to be disturbed.

I drop my wriggling baby into the arms of my husband, all but crushing the magazine in the process. He immediately switches gears and begins entertaining the child.

I approach Mrs. Jefferies just as she is opening a drawer to the right of the stove and pulling out a box of long stick matches. I watch her curiously as she turns on the stove and lights the match.

              “Propane,” she explains catching my eye, “the ignitor went a while back. Too expensive to replace it. Saving up for another one.” She sighs again. “One day at a time.”

              “Anything I can do to help?” I offer.

Her eyes light up.

              “Potatoes need peeling,” she answers, busying herself with a pot of water. “Knives are there. Trash is under the sink.”

I occupy myself with the chore and soon dinner is cooking. Mrs. Jefferies has been making small talk the whole time, occasionally my husband will put in his two-cents. I notice he has put the television on at some point. They only have the local channels, and my husband has settled it on the news. He’s only half watching it as he plays with the baby.

I remain mostly quiet. I can’t believe how much has changed in such a short time. I feel like my whole world has turned upside down. I miss cooking in my own space, not worrying about the little one getting into things and sleeping in my own bed. I find myself wondering how long we will have to live like this.

              “Will you be working tomorrow?” Mrs. Jefferies asks suddenly as she is dolling mashed potatoes out onto four large dishes.

              “Yes,” I reply, still distracted by my thoughts. “I will have to leave around six. I’ll try to be quiet.”

I go on to explain that my husband works overnights, but he only works four days at a time and he has taken some time off after the fire, so he won’t be going back until next week. Mrs. Jefferies takes this information in stride.

              “Well, if you need me to watch the baby, all you have to do is ask. I’d be more than willing.”

I watch her thoughtfully. While the offer is nice, and I appreciate her consideration, just making this meal seems to have taken the wind out of her. She finishes filling the plates and takes two of them towards the hallway.

              “Will you not be joining us?” I call after her.

She pauses, surprised by the question.

              “Oh, I would, but I thought you might like having some space to yourselves. It’s been a while since you got to eat at a dinner table now, hasn’t it? Besides, Frank is particular, he doesn’t like people watching him while he eats.”

Her explanation makes me feel miserable again.

              “I really don’t want to mess up your husband’s routine. We could eat in the bedroom if that would be better for him.”

She waves off the thought in an instant.

              “You’ll do no such thing! You are my guests. Frank will adjust, I promise you. Don’t worry yourself with his needs.”

With that, she continues up the hall and I am left looking across the table at my husband as he hungrily wolfs down his food. I poke at mine for a moment before smashing a bit with my fork and feeding it to the baby with a spoon.

              “You’re unbelievable,” I say at last to the man across the table.

He’s already emptied his plate and is getting up to get more.

              “And you’re uptight,” he replies, unphased as he takes a healthy second portion of meatloaf.

              I look down at my plate and poke at the carrots that have been boiled to mush. At least the baby seems to be enjoying them.

              “You’ve certainly wasted no time making yourself comfortable,” I say dejectedly.

              “Why shouldn’t I?” he replies innocently. “Mrs. Jefferies did say to make ourselves at home.” He shovels a forkful of potatoes into his face before continuing through the mouthful, “It would be rude not to do as she says.”

I poke at my potatoes again and give another scoop to the baby. I don’t think he’ll ever understand how I feel. Men just don’t have the same level of attachment to these things that women do.

After dinner we settle into bed. The baby wakes up once or twice and after a bit of mothering comfort settles back in to sleep, whereas there is no one left to comfort me. My husband snores softly beside me, and I know better than to wake him. He’ll only rile me more if I do. So, I am left lying awake, watching the dark ceiling overhead in silence. There is a street lamp in front of the house, and its soft light wends its way through the curtains to cast shadows over the walls and the bed. I peer into the pack n’ play and watch my little one sleep. That brings me some comfort. I start to feel more relaxed. I can imagine being in my own bed in my own home. My own home in a welcoming cul-de-sac with little flower gardens lining every side walk and neighborhood kids playing tag in the street. I want my child to grow up in a neighborhood like that. I am nearly asleep when something stirs me. At first, I think I’m having a dream. Then I remember where I am.

The faint sound of a woman humming has reached my ears. It’s a soft melody, a lullaby. At first, I think it is Mrs. Jefferies singing. The baby must have woken up and I somehow didn’t hear the crying. My heart leaps as I peer into the pack-n-play expecting it to be empty, but my little one is curled up cozy, sound asleep.

Once more, almost on cue, the distinct thump-thump begins, echoing through the ceiling. My stomach lurches into my chest. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Like my heart beating ever faster. My body feels stiff as wood, heavy as lead. I am unable to move, paralyzed by fear. I worry it is a burglar, someone who would take advantage of an elderly couple in the night. I keep waiting for the sound to travel down the hall, for the door in the kitchen to creak open, but it never does. The sound continues for a little while, just above my head, and then it stops. All is silent once more. At some point, I fall asleep.

 ***

 The next day I contemplate sharing what I heard with my husband all through work. I argue with myself whether or not I truly heard anything at all. It is, after all, an unfamiliar place, and I was so sleepy—somewhere between overtired and dreaming—so who’s to say I didn’t imagine what I thought I heard? Mrs. Jefferies assured us that no one lived upstairs. It was unsafe. There was no electricity. No one in their right mind would go sneaking around up there in the dark.

I feel worn-out and hazy, my lack of sleep making me sluggish and distracted. I get scolded twice by my boss to pay attention to what I am doing. Its not that he is trying to be mean, but he is trying to run a business, and if he lets me slack off, others are sure to follow suit. Still, I know he cares. Later, when he is sure no one else is around, he asks about our situation.

              “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask,” he says when I tell him about staying with the Jefferies. “I’d have trouble sleeping too in a house I wasn’t familiar with, and your health is important. If you need a couple days—”

I cut him off.

              “No, no, everything is fine.”

The truth is I really can’t afford to take the time right now. We can’t save up for a place of our own without the income.

Finally, the day ends and I return to the Jefferies’ home feeling as though I’ve had bricks strapped to my legs for the last nine hours.

I open the side door to the kitchen and see Mrs. Jefferies sitting on the living room floor, playing with the baby, and my husband passed out in the recliner closest to the television.

Mrs. Jefferies smiles up at me.

              “There’s mommy,” she sings to the baby who coos in reply.

I throw a grimace at my husband, hoping he hasn’t been leaving too much of the baby’s care to our old hostess, and Mrs. Jefferies follows my eye.

              “Don’t be cross with him,” she says guessing my thoughts. “He’s been doing his part, I assure you. He was just starting to look tired, so I offered to take over for a bit.” A groan escapes her lips as she climbs to her feet. “It’s been so long since I last got to play with a baby.” She smiles sadly. “Makes me feel young again.”

I pick up the baby and it feels good to hold that warm little body close to my chest again.

              “Do you have children?” I ask.

She looks sad again.

              “I did, once.”

The way she answers makes me feel uncomfortable. I do not wish to pry further.

              “I’m sorry,” is all I can manage.

She puts on a painful smile and lets out a sharp breath.

              “Shall we start dinner then?”

I nod, suggesting that I wake my husband to take over with the baby so I can help her, but she says she’d be happy just having my company while she cooks and begins asking me about my day at work. I must confess, it is nice to be asked and nicer to be listened to. She nods occasionally and asks questions when she doesn’t understand how something works.

At one point she laughs. “They don’t do things like they used to.”

I watch her for a moment, questioning. I don’t think my line of work could have changed all that much since her time. I would guess she is in her seventies.

              “Did you used to work?” I find myself asking.

              She gives her head a shake. “In my time, it was a married woman’s job to keep the home.” She throws me a cheerful grin. “Frank was a fine provider, though, so I can’t say I was ever wanting. He bought me this house, so we could start ourselves a family.” She is looking somber again. “Of course, things don’t always turn out like you hope they will.”

She sniffs deeply, turning back to the counter. For a few minutes the only sound is the soft click-click-click of the knife on the cutting board.

I’m not sure what to say. We sit in awkward silence for a while before she starts again with small talk: the weather, different cooking styles, current events.

When dinner is ready, she again takes two plates up the hall and I wake my husband, who happily takes his place at the table and begins eating. While we eat, he talks about how wonderful Mrs. Jefferies is and suggests we offer to fix up the upstairs apartment so that we could live here long term.

              “She’s like a live-in baby sitter who cooks and takes care of the house,” he says chipperly with a laugh, “can’t do better than that.”

I find his assumptions a bit off-putting.

              “That’s not fair of you,” I tell him. “She’s an old woman. You shouldn’t be so quick to dump your responsibilities on her like that, and you shouldn’t assume they’d want us as permanent tenants. Frank hasn’t exactly seemed thrilled to have us around.”

“Maybe it’s just you,” he responds thoughtlessly, “he spent most of the day sitting in his chair reading the paper in his ludicrously huge overcoat.” He laughs as if it’s all a joke. “He hardly moved at all until the car pulled into the driveway.”

“Thank you for that,” I reply incredulously. As if I don’t feel badly enough at the moment.

I spend the rest of the evening in sullen silence and retire as soon as the baby is tucked in bed. It’s another restless night. Every so often I can hear the soft thump-thumping above me, but I’m too overtired to pay it much attention. I fall sleep only to dream fitfully.

The next morning as I am getting ready for work, I try to rationalize the sounds that torment my evenings. It can’t be someone trying to break in, the sound doesn’t leave the space above my head. Surely if it was a burglar, I would hear something more akin to footsteps, things being rattled around, things being broken. Surely, too, would the sound spread throughout the space, not stay fixed in the corner of the room above mine. Maybe there is some loose piping in the ceiling, rattling when water runs through them. Maybe there is a draft in the rundown upper level that is sending air whooshing over the floor above my bed. Maybe there is family of mice where once there was a family of people—a worrying thought, considering I have a baby. Having racked my brain, I finally write off the sound as the house settling, and set off for the day.

The week goes by more quickly after that. We settle into a routine and I find myself starting to sleep more easily. Despite saying he was going to ask about fixing the apartment, my husband doesn’t bring the topic up with me again, and I assume that means his idea was not received as warmly as he had hoped.

The first evening he is scheduled to return to his job on the night shift, he is ready to leave when I come in the door. I hand off the keys and tell him to have a good night before I notice a plate on the table wrapped neatly in plastic. I look to Mrs. Jefferies for an answer.

              “I couldn’t send him to work hungry,” she explains, as she rocks the baby in her arms. “So, I made dinner a bit earlier. I hope you don’t mind. It should still be plenty warm enough for you.”

Not wishing to cause a fuss, I settle down at the table to eat alone.  The evening hours creep slowly by and I find myself growing anxious for bed and sleep.

At the usual time, I finally dismiss myself from the living room to put the baby to bed and settle myself in. It’s odd to have so much room. I’ve grown used to the closeness of having his body beside mine. I find, despite my fatigue, I am restless. I toss back and forth, dozing on and off, bits of dream visions blending with my waking thoughts. Then, I am wide awake.

The sound overhead is filling my ears. Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

My breath catches in my throat. I lay still and silent. Listening. It has gone on for a long time and I cannot sleep, so—against my better judgement—I climb out of bed, slide my slippers on my feet, and tiptoe out of the bedroom. Down the hallway. Past the living room. I pause at the door in the kitchen, hesitating. Then I turn the doorknob and proceed up the stairs.

 ***

 The worn old stairs creak and groan beneath my steps as I push myself slowly upward. It is a combination of fevered curiosity and sleeplessness that drives me on. It isn’t until I reach the second-floor landing that I start to question the sanity of my actions. I don’t have a flashlight and my ability to see in the dark is poor at best. Even getting up the stairs was something of a challenge with the street lamp on the corner as the only light source to guide me.

My heart pounds in my ears as I reach out for the knob on the upper apartment door. What do I expect to find when the owner has already told me it is uninhabited and unsafe?

I am surprised when it turns easily with the motion of my wrist. Why isn’t it locked? I don’t know if I should feel relieved or more unnerved. I push it open and it swings aside with a gentle squeak. I find myself looking into a dark, eerie copy of the kitchen and living area downstairs. This version, however, is dated and dusty.

The white kitchen countertops are gray with filth. The absence of a dinner table makes it hard to tell where the kitchen ends and the living area begins. A few pieces of old-fashioned furniture sit in a semi-circle, as though invisible guests have drawn them close together to engage in some silent conversation. Thick, tightly drawn curtains frame the peeling wallpaper darkly on the far wall of the living space.  There is a musty smell in the air: a damp, humid air of stagnation.

I push myself forward, reasoning I’ve come too far to turn back now. I reach the hallway and am immediately taken by an elegantly framed picture that hangs on the wall. Gently wiping the murky grime to see the image more clearly, I gaze at the two people in the portrait. My guess is that this is an old wedding photograph.

The woman stands in front of her mate, looking up at him lovingly. Long hair, white in the sepia-toned portrait, cascading over her shoulders. Her face is softly acorn-shaped, her full lips spread wide in the sort of smile one makes just before they burst into a fit of laughs. Her shoulders are gently sloping, her frame petite. The man stands behind her, his tall, broad build contrasting her small curved form. His wide, square shoulders stick out on either side of her, strong arms wrapped around in an embrace. Hand over hand, ring over ring. I am taken by the smile on the man’s face. It is honest and kind. There is a glimmer of excitement and admiration in his dark, gently creased eyes. Deep smile lines frame his thin lips and square jaw.

It occurs to me that the couple in the photo are none other than Mr. and Mrs. Jefferies, many years younger, frozen in the eternal bliss of newly married love. I look a bit closer at the man who would be Frank. I can’t help but be curious, since the most I’ve seen of him is a stiffly formed trench coat and a bowler hat. The Frank in this picture looks warm and friendly. He is not at all the brooding brute who lives downstairs.

The sound of a woman softly humming reaches my ears. It sounds like it’s coming from the room nearest me. I turn from the picture with a start. My heart is pounding again. For a moment, my legs become stone, my tongue a dry mass in my mouth, my lungs lead balloons unwilling to fill with air.

I am looking at the doorway to the room directly above the guest bedroom downstairs. The room from which the sounds have been issuing night after night.

As quickly as the humming had started it has stopped. After a moment of suffocating silence, I am able to force myself forward once more. I approach the open doorway and peer inside. I am surprised by the sight that meets my eyes.

The room appears to have been used as a nursery. In the dim lamplight breaking through the poorly drawn curtains I can make out the dusty crib nestled in the far-left corner. An old rocking chair has been arranged beside it, tucked back in the shadows. On the wall opposite the crib is a bookshelf full of aging stuffed animals. As their lifeless button eyes watch me, illuminated by the faint shaft of light, I find myself becoming more and more uneasy. The stuffed animals are not the only thing in this room silently staring in my direction.

I am taken by the sudden realization that the rocking chair beside the bed is not empty. A figure sits there, bathed in the shadows. Its eyes shine like finely polished glass, staring fixedly at me.

A closer inspection reveals the eerily human figure to be a porcelain doll approximately the size of a young child. She is dressed in a light blue, floral gown that matches her wide, staring eyes. Then I notice an odd anomaly: there is no dust around the base of the rocker. I stand for a minute staring when the doll’s head suddenly moves.

The motion is not smooth, but jerking and unnatural. A clinking sound, like bones rattling, fills the air. Long blonde hair, tangled and matted, catches the dull lamplight as it spills over a rounded shoulder. Then the doll leaps from the chair to the floor, landing on all fours and skittering forward like some kind of mechanical spider, sending a plume of dust into the air with its motion.

Everything is a blur. I have staggered back from the door way, bumping the wall behind me, and knocking the wedding portrait askew. My pulse is rushing in my ears. It is the only sound I can hear as I hurry back through the kitchen area, reaching for the open door, and then something blocks my path. Hands are firm on my shoulders. A voice is talking softly.

              “Calm down. Calm down, dear.”

Finally, I have composed myself enough to realize it is Mrs. Jefferies who has caught me in the door way and is speaking to me.

              “There is someone,” I start through gasping breaths, but I find that I can’t seem to pick a train of thought. “I kept hearing noises above the bed. Something tried to attack me. I’m sorry I know I wasn’t supposed to come up here, but the floor seems stable. There was a noise, and I couldn’t sleep.”

Mrs. Jefferies has her hands raised and she is waving them gently.

              “Calm down,” she says again. “You are all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

              “But there is someone—or something—in that room!” I point back at the room just down the hall in earnest. “It—it—it tried to attack me.”

At this Mrs. Jefferies laughs lightly.

              “I assure you, you are mistaken.”

She heads past me, shining the flashlight in her hand down the hall ahead of her.

I hesitate before cautiously following.

She reaches the doorway and stops there, shining the light into the room, and beckons me forward with a reassuring smile.

              “Come and see. It is all right. All a misunderstanding.”

Nervous, I creep up behind her and peer over her hunched shoulder at the object being illuminated on the floor. The doll is now laying on the floor in front of the rocking chair, its limbs splayed out at odd angles. Its expressionless face rests upon one cheek, straw-like blonde hair strewn wildly about it, half covering its ivory-white features. But those bright blue glass eyes are still upon me, shining unnervingly in the focused pillar of light.

              “It’s just a doll,” Mrs. Jefferies begins softly. “I’m sorry it gave you such a start.” She makes her way across the dusty floor, carefully gathers the doll in her arms and gingerly places it back in the chair, taking a minute to tenderly adjust its limbs and smooth the matted hair back down. “It must have fallen out of the chair. That would have caused quite a clatter. Porcelain can make quite a ruckus when it hits the ground, you know. I’m glad it didn’t break, though.”

I am having a hard time collecting my thoughts. My recollection of what has just happened is hazy, like the waking memory of a dream. I can’t be sure if what I remember is right or wrong. Looking at the doll as Mrs. Jefferies makes her adjustments, it is plain to see that it is a lifeless toy, yet, something about it continues to discomfort me.

Mrs. Jefferies takes a step back from the doll, looking around the room with sorrowful admiration.

              “You asked me if I had children, and I told you that I did once. Perhaps I should have told you the whole story then.”

She turns from the room and walks past me down the hallway, pausing to adjust the picture I had accidently knocked in my frantic retreat.

              “Frank and I were the happiest newly-weds you ever could have seen, but even that happiness paled to compare to the joy we felt when we discovered we were with child,” she says as she gently shifts the frame with those smoothly sculpted fingers of hers. “We started looking for our forever home, and when I saw this one I just fell in love. I thought having the two units would be perfect for when our baby was grown and ready to start a family of their own. Frank liked the house, too. Of course, his reasoning was much more conventional—the added income of a renter would help give our young family an economic boost. We settled in. Made it our own. We didn’t think there was anything that could take away the joy we felt,” she offers me her back as she continues, “but we were mistaken.”

She starts back up the hallway towards the kitchen door and I follow, unable to utter a word, a captive, curious audience.

              “No one was at fault, our little one just was not long for this world. We only had her for a little while, but when she was taken from us, we may as well have died right along with her.”

She presses a hand to the door to balance herself, the pain in her voice telling me she is on the verge of tears. I want to reach out, to comfort her, but I can’t seem to find the strength in my arms.

              “I couldn’t bear to be up here, to see all our dreams in shambles, our life stripped of all the promise it once had. Frank suggested that we sell the house, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t let anyone else lay a finger on my baby’s room. So, we moved to the downstairs apartment, turned off the power up here, and just… left it be, untouched, unchanged. So long as the nursery remained, my happy future had a chance to be realized.”

At long last she turns to face me, but with her back to the light, her expression is etched in shadow. Still, her voice is quivering hopefully.

              “I know I have just been fooling myself, but it still hurts. I can’t believe how much it hurts.”

At this I finally move forward to console her, but she waves her hand slightly, taking a step back.

              “Thank you, dear. You can’t know how much your comfort means to me, and having your family here has had me thinking for some time. Maybe I can move past my broken dreams and help you reach your own happy future.” She pauses, but when I still don’t know what to say she continues, “you must know your husband was asking about this apartment.”

I feel compelled to say, “He spoke out of turn. He had no way of knowing what this place meant to you.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to stay with us then?”

For a second, I am almost alarmed. Her voice seems hollow at these words, but maybe it is just my imagination or her emotional exhaustion.

              “N-no,” I manage quickly. “I mean, sure, it would make things easier if we stayed here, but after everything you’ve told me, I don’t blame you for the decision that you made, and you barely know us. It would be… an unfair request.”

Her voice softens.

              “Once, it would have been an impossible request,” she admits, “but now, things are different. Maybe the time has come to put my past to rest.” I can see the outline of her hopeful smile in the dim light.

 Her choice of words strikes me as odd, but I choose to overlook it. Not sure what else to do, I smile back at her. Still, I cannot deny my growing sense of unease. I make the decision to talk to my husband as soon as possible and tell him about everything that I have experienced.

 ***

 I catch my husband in the morning as we pass each other in the entryway. He hands me the keys. Eyes edged in thick, black circles, he looks me up and down.

              “You look like hell,” he says.

As if he could win a beauty prize in his current state.

              “I had a rough night,” I admit, turning the keys in my hand and refusing to make eye contact with him.

              “You have been having a lot of those lately,” he replies and for the first time I catch a hint of concern in his voice.

I find myself hesitating. Somehow, I doubt he will believe what I have to say. I force a smile.

              “I guess I’m just not handling all this stress well. I think we just really need a home of our own. That is important to me, you know?”

He smiles gently and I believe he reads the underlying message of my words.

              “I completely agree.”

He gives me a quick, but well-meaning embrace and I am off.

I spend every spare moment of my work day searching for available apartments in our area. By the time my shift ends I have three possible contenders. For the first time in weeks I feel mildly excited, but when I return to the Jefferies’ my husband greets me at the side door with news that I never could have anticipated.

              “Your prayers have been answered,” he starts as he takes the keys from my outstretched hand, “the Jefferies have agreed to let us rent the downstairs apartment from them.”

              “What?” I say, trying to ignore the rock settling in my stomach. “Are they sure? I mean, are you sure this is the best arrangement for our family? Why the downstairs apartment?” I’m not even sure what compels me to add this last question. The image of the doll lunging from the rocking chair flashes through my mind. I wouldn’t want the upstairs apartment even if it was the last livable place on the planet. Then I find myself thinking of the elderly Jefferies going up and down those stairs. “Won’t the stairs be hard on them?”

Clearly, I was wrong in assuming he understood me this morning, and now his lack of empathy is more blatant than ever. How can’t he see the utter terror on my face?

              He answers me absently, a little shrug on his shoulders, “Mrs. Jefferies says the upstairs has sentimental value to her, so she’d rather give us the lower level. She didn’t seem worried about the stairs, but she did say it was going to take time for her to get the unit cleaned up so she and Frank could move in. I’m not worried about a couple of weeks. It will still be quicker than finding an apartment, the location is perfect, and the Jefferies are about as accommodating as is humanly possible.”            

I can’t help feeling a little beaten at this point.

The best I can manage is a disheartened, “I see.”

An expression of aggravation and disbelief crosses my husband’s face as he forces a sharp bark of laughter.

              “Well, don’t hurt yourself jumping for joy or anything.” He scoffs. “I thought for sure this news would cheer you up, but you look just as miserable as ever. Try not to screw this up for us, all right?”

He has already started down the stairs, at this rate he will be late for work and it’s obvious he isn’t overly interested in hearing my thoughts on the subject.

I swallow my would-be reply and call after him, “Have a nice night, dear.”

He waves back over his shoulder without turning—my lack of enthusiasm has obviously soured his mood—gets in the car and pulls out of the driveway.

I take a breath and head inside. My dinner sits, neatly wrapped on the table as it had the night before, but the only thing I want to do is hold my baby. As if anticipating my desire, Mrs. Jefferies is heading in my direction with my wiggling offspring.

She keeps me company while I eat, talking about everything she and Frank discussed with my husband, and, slowly, I can feel my reservations easing.

It is only after I finish eating that I notice Frank’s monstrous form in the recliner he seems to favor: the one closest to the tall bookcase along the wall. Again, his face is buried in a tabloid, but at least this time he didn’t charge up the hall at my arrival.

After eating, I seat myself on the sofa with the baby while Mrs. Jefferies occupies the other recliner. The evening news comes on and Mrs. Jefferies and I engage in light conversation as we watch it. Frank is silent all the while, until he puts the paper aside to pull something from the inner pocket of his coat. Before I am even aware of what is happening, Mrs. Jefferies is shrieking at him.

              “Not with the baby in here! Have you lost your mind? You put that away!”

I catch a flash of what I believe to be a pipe as Frank silently tucks the object back inside his coat with the same slow, gloomy motion he had used to retrieved it. Then he stands stiffly, and wordlessly shuffles up the hall.

Mrs. Jefferies watches him go admonishingly before she turns back to face me.

              “So sorry about that, dear, but we can’t have him smoking in front of the baby, now can we?”

              “No,” I say appreciatively, “but… is Frank okay with all of this? I mean, he doesn’t seem…”

I let my words trail off as I study Mrs. Jefferies. She seems to be thinking carefully now.

              “Frank has never been a man of many words,” she says earnestly after a moment, “but believe you me, if there was something he didn’t agree with he wouldn’t sit quietly by and do nothing about it. I promise you, Frank has accepted our arrangement. I’d be lying if I said he didn’t have his apprehensions at first, but I think it’s only fair to say that we all did. Now, he can see what you all mean to me, and at the end of the day all he wants is for me to be happy.” She smiles that distant, sad smile that is becoming commonplace. “He really does live for my happiness, my dear. Bless his soul.”

After this exchange we sit mostly in silence. Together, we watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy before I yawn, politely thank her for her continued hospitality, and take the baby to bed.

For the first night since moving in, there is no noise above my room.

 ***

 By the weekend I have accepted my situation and am resolute to make the best of it. It’s a beautiful day, so while the baby is napping I decide to go outside and do some weeding in the badly overgrown flowerbeds lining the front porch. I find myself fantasizing about cleaning up the entire yard and planting brightly colored flowers in the beds where currently only weeds reside. For a moment, all of my worries are forgotten, and then I hear a voice call to me from behind.

              “Hello, welcome to the neighborhood.”

I turn to see a handsome middle-aged woman standing on the nearby sidewalk, her small dog panting patiently at her side.

              “I’ve seen your car coming and going,” the woman says cheerily, “and I was hoping I’d get a chance to meet whoever finally purchased this old house.”

              “Oh, I’m sorry,” I reply shyly, “I didn’t buy it. My husband and I are just staying with the Jefferies until we can afford to get a place of our own.”

              She looks perplexed, apologizes and asks, “The Jefferies?”

I point back in the direction of the house.

“The elderly couple who lives here.”

              “Oh,” she laughs nervously, looking surprised and a little uncomfortable, “I was under the impression this house had been abandoned for years. At least,” she pauses somewhat dramatically, “since the last owners lost their daughter in some freak accident.”

My curiosity and my nerves are piqued.

              “What accident?” I can’t stop myself from asking.

              “Well, it would have been before my time here, but from what I’ve heard, the couple’s daughter fell down the stairs.”

I immediately recall Mrs. Jefferies’ story about losing her baby at a young age.

              Aghast, I ask, “The baby fell down the stairs?”

              “Baby?” the woman repeats with alarm. “The way I heard it, the girl was a young woman. It hit the community hard. Apparently, she was very well liked. I guess everyone just assumed her parents had moved away when the house fell into disrepair. Sad, really.”

She starts to walk away, but I call after her and she pauses.

              “Is there anybody around here who would know…” I hesitate. Am I asking for trouble? A part of me is screaming: I need to know. “Anyone who knows what actually happened?”

She looks doubtful.

              “From what I’ve heard it happened quite a long time ago, but if anybody knows it would be Mrs. Harrison. She’s lived in the community for forever.”

              “Where can I find her?” I ask eagerly.

              “Old folk’s home,” the woman says matter-of-factly, “the big white one on the corner of Church and Main. I forget what it’s called.”

I nod, committing this information to memory. I am vaguely familiar with the building. I drive by it on my way to work.

She hesitates this time, watching me with a concerned expression, and I have to pull myself from my thoughts to thank her before she finally starts walking away again. She looks back at me a couple of times, and I can tell she is questioning my sanity. These days, I honestly find myself questioning the same thing.

 ***

 On my husband’s next scheduled day off, I tell him before I leave for work that I will be running late. All I can think of all through my shift is the nursing home and Mrs. Harrison. Where most people experience a sensation of time slowing down when they are filled with anticipation, I feel as though time has been sped up. The events of my work day blur around me and, before I can reason, I find myself sitting in my car, parked in front of the tall white building on the corner of Church and Main, my heart pounding in my ears.

The building has a decidedly hospital-esque feel, and I can’t help but feel uncomfortable as I walk through the sliding entrance doors. The air is filled with the sterile smell of medical equipment and the stuffy scent that often accompanies things that are old.

The woman at the visitor’s counter greets me with a smile and asks me who I am here to see.

              “Mrs. Harrison,” I say nervously.

She takes a moment to look over her files.

              “And what is your relation to Mrs. Harrison?”

I think for a minute, doubting the truth will be well received.

              “She is my great aunt,” I say less confidently than intended.

She looks at me for a moment, but doesn’t challenge my answer and goes back to her files. Her eyes scan a page and she purses her lips.

              “Well, your family must not be very close,” she says abruptly, “says here Mrs. Harrison hasn’t had a visitor in over fifteen years.”

Still, she gives me a floor and room number and sends me on my way. I can’t help thinking as I push the button on the elevator: just how old is this woman to have spent the last fifteen years in a nursing home with no one to visit her?

I get my answer when, at last, I see her, sitting in a wheelchair in the common room on her level. At first, she has her back to me. She is looking out a large picture window at the busy street below. She is a heavier woman. Her long, coarse grey hair has been pulled tightly into a bun on the top of her head, a few wiry curls jutting out here and there rebelliously. She is dressed in a purple muumuu adorned by gaudy pink roses. I approach her slowly, not wishing to startle her, but when I am about halfway to her side her head perks up. It’s as if she already knows I’m here to see her—as if she can sense me with some unnatural gift. She turns towards me and I immediately notice she is blind. Still, her milky-white eyes find me, fix upon me, and she smiles. She has great sagging jowls, reminding me of a bulldog, and a mouth-full of surprisingly white, straight teeth. Maybe they are false?

              “Excuse me,” I begin politely, “Mrs. Harrison?” Even though I’ve had the nursing assistant attending the room point me in her direction, I want to make sure I have the right woman.

Her grin widens.

              “Greetings, child,” she says in a rich voice, “I knew I would be getting company today, but I never would have guessed it be from a sweet young lady like yourself.”

I can’t help but feel a little uneasy. I’m not sure how to reply. I’m beginning to wonder if my original assessment was incorrect. Is she really blind?

              “You can… see me?” I ask, unsure if I am being rude. I don’t wish to offend the only woman in town who might be able to answer my questions.

She certainly doesn’t seem offended. She laughs heartily, giving her head the slightest of nods.

              “I suppose not in the traditional sense of the word,” she begins, confirming my observation, “but,” she sucks in a breath like she is trying to taste the air, “when you live as long as I have, you start to realize there are many kinds of sight.” She clears her throat quickly, “but then, you didn’t come here to hear about old Mrs. Harrison’s virtues of the world, then, did you? You’ve come with a specific question. A question about events long past.”

My mouth has gone dry, my head is spinning. Old or not, there is no way she could have known why I have come here, and yet somehow, she does.

              “You know what I came here to ask you about?” I manage despite my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

              “Well, no,” she replies slowly, almost as if she is questioning her prior choice of words, “but best I can figure, I wouldn’t be the type to get a young visitor who was just looking to pay some random old lady a visit now, would I? No, you’ve come with a question. So,” she pauses, “out with it.”

              “Well,” I begin hesitantly, “my husband and I have been staying with the Jefferies,” I give her the address and her smile drops, but she doesn’t interject, so I continue, “They were good enough to take us in after our apartment caught fire, but, after we moved in, something just didn’t feel right. Some…strange things happened, and just recently I was given some information by a neighbor that made me wonder…”

I let my voice trail off, my thought unfinished.

Mrs. Harrison is running her tongue over her teeth behind her thick lips, her white eyes hidden by dark, wrinkled lids. She looks as though she is deep in thought, contemplating what to tell me.

After a moment of tense silence, I feel compelled to add, “I just want to know the truth. Was it Mrs. Jefferies’s daughter who fell down the stairs? Or-or was there another family before the Jefferies?”

“The Jefferies…” she starts slowly, “have lived in that house as long as I can remember. They must be… slowing down these days.” She turns her hand over, flexing her fingers slowly.

In the silence that follows, I wonder if she is waiting for me to tell her how the Jefferies are doing. The thought makes me think. While the Jefferies aren’t exactly as fresh as daisies, they certainly aren’t showing their age as badly as Mrs. Harrison, either. Is that what she is waiting to hear? Will sharing this information with her upset her?

I open my mouth to speak, but she starts talking again.

              “You came for answers,” she says slowly, “but the answers you find will not settle that feeling in your heart, child.” She takes a breath. “Yes, the Jefferies had a daughter, and she did lose her life tragically by falling down the stairs to the upper apartment in their home. She was a young adult, freshly graduated, as I recall.”

              “That’s awful,” I interject honestly.

              “It was awful, more awful than you could possibly know.”

Her voice has lowered a little, and there is an urgency to it now. It makes me more than just a little uncomfortable.

              “I don’t understand,” I admit.

Losing a child at any age is a tragedy. I can understand why Mrs. Jefferies told me she lost her daughter when she was young. To Mrs. Jefferies, twenty was likely no different than two. She was still her baby. But then, I can’t help thinking about the nursery. Surely, it wasn’t a nursery the whole time the daughter was growing up. Just as I realize that things still aren’t adding up, Mrs. Harrison tells me the shocking truth, the whole truth, and I am left speechless by the unsettling notion that is implied.

I thank Mrs. Harrison for her time and take my leave, but it is a chore to make my wobbling legs work the way they should. I’ve never been so uncomfortable, so unsettled. And I’ve never been so eager to get back to my husband and child.

I think about what Mrs. Harrison told me the whole drive back to the Jefferies’ house. The Jefferies’ daughter had been pregnant. The fall killed not only her but her unborn child, and many in the community didn’t think that she had fallen down those stairs on her own. There had been an investigation, but the findings were inconclusive. It was ruled an accident officially, but Mrs. Harrison had made clear what she had thought of that. She had told me some of the young woman’s closest friends had disputed the findings, and that the father of the unborn child had been no less suspicious. He had even gone on record telling the police that the daughter had been planning to move in with him and her parents had been none too pleased with her decision.

The more I think about what Mrs. Harrison has told me, the more suspicious I become of the things Mrs. Jefferies herself has said to me. I remember when she tearfully admitted having lost a daughter. She mentioned when she had moved into the house, and how the thought of having two units had appealed to her for when her baby was grown—for keeping her adult daughter close by and having a part in raising her grandchildren. Still, murder is a pretty big leap for anyone to make, let alone a mother who claims to love their child so dearly as to want them to be with her forever.

I blink up at the house, conflicted. No matter how I look at it, Mrs. Jeffries has not been honest with me, and that alone makes me uncomfortable remaining in her home. I know I could never look at her the same, not with the doubts I have.

I force myself into the side entrance and my eyes instantly fix upon the stairwell. I can imagine a young woman with straw blonde hair tumbling toward me, a look of terror and betrayal etching her features. Above her on the landing, Mrs. Jefferies is smiling wickedly. I shake the vision away. No matter what I have been told, I don’t want to think of Mrs. Jefferies as a murder.

I try to act natural as I enter the kitchen. Mrs. Jefferies greets me warmly from her place by the sink, cleaning dishes.

I return the greeting as chipperly as I can and catch sight of my husband sitting in the recliner next to heavily covered Frank, the baby playing on the floor in front of him.

              “Dinner is on the table for you,” Mrs. Jefferies is saying behind me, “if you are hungry.”

              “Yes, thank you,” I reply too abruptly, “I’ll eat in just a minute.”

I try to get my husband’s attention discreetly, but he is about as observant as a cow, so I finally just tap him on the shoulder and whisper in his ear.

He looks up at me, shrugs and gets up, asking Mrs. Jefferies if she’d keep an eye on the baby for a moment as he follows me down the hall.

I have a fleeting thought to run back to the living area and retrieve my child, but I’m too distracted with the jumble of thoughts running circles around my brain. Surely the baby will be fine for a minute. Mrs. Jefferies has never given me any reason to worry before.

I quickly close the door to the bedroom and meet my husband’s eye.

              “We need to leave,” I say too quickly.

              “What?” he asks, the irritation plain in his tone. “I thought you wanted to make this our long-term home.”

              “I never said that,” I hiss. I’m not really sure why I’m whispering. “That was all your idea. You never actually asked me what I wanted to do.”

              “It was your idea to come stay with the Jefferies to begin with,” he disputes hotly.

              “I know, I know,” I reply sharply, “but that was before…” I hesitate. “Look, you’re probably going to think I’m crazy, and it’s fine if you do, but there have been things—strange things—happening in the house since we moved in.”

He scoffs.

“What, like ghosts?”

“No, no, nothing like that. More like—like people moving around upstairs. They have a nursery set up, up there.” I point at the ceiling overhead. “Mrs. Jefferies lost a daughter who was pregnant. She fell down the stairs. People thought she might have been pushed. I’m just—" I stop myself.

The look on his face is a combination of concern and aggravation, but what he does next, I couldn’t have anticipated.

He sighs and says, “Listen, I’m not as thick as you think I am. Now, whether or not what you think you have been experiencing has been real,” I start to interject, but he holds up a hand and continues, “or these stories you’ve been told are accurate, I can see that you are obviously under a lot of stress, and this living arrangement clearly isn’t working for you the way we had hoped it would. That said, would you mind waiting it out a little longer? I found that list of apartments you made and called a couple, we should be able to get in one by the end of the month.”

In an instant I feel a hundred pounds lighter. I throw my arms around my husband and give him the biggest hug he’s ever received.

              “That’s great news,” I start cheerfully, until I think about what he is asking. I don’t think I can do another week here, let alone until the end of the month. “But as far as waiting it out here goes, I don’t honestly think I can. I’d rather pull a few weeks in a hotel again than stay here another night.”

After a short laugh, he says, “Well, it will be easier to get a hotel room tomorrow, so you’re going to have to work with me and be content to stay here tonight. Still, we should probably let the Jefferies know.”

I agree and we head back into the main living space.

Mrs. Jefferies is sitting on the floor with the baby, playing with some blocks. She looks up at us and smiles brightly. I can’t help feeling just a little bad for what we are about to tell her.

My husband begins with how grateful we are for everything she and Frank have done for us, and goes on to explain how we’ve found an apartment that is available immediately and closer to his work. Mrs. Jefferies listens silently, the smile on her face slowly dropping.

              Then she asks, “When did you start looking for an apartment? I thought we had agreed you’d be staying here?”

My husband is quick on his wit.

              “We weren’t really looking,” he says smoothly, “but my friend has a place he needs to move out of, and he can’t legally break the contract, so we’d be doing him a favor. These things happen all the time.”

              “Do they?”

By now Mrs. Jefferies is wearing an expression I can’t quite place. Her face is like a mask—a taut, emotionless mask. She slowly lifts herself from the floor with the baby in her arms and walks past my husband and I, into the kitchen.

              “Well, your friend is just going to have to find someone else to take his place,” she says flatly before calling to Frank.

Frank stands robotically and proceeds to the kitchen’s side door.

My husband laughs uneasily.

              “Excuse me?” he asks.

By now my stomach has once again become a ball of lead. Mrs. Jefferies is inching back towards the open door in front of Frank, my baby still in her arms.

              “I said he will have to find someone else,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’ve treated you like family, and this is your home now, so I won’t be listening to any such talk of you moving out.”

I feel rooted to the ground beneath my feet. Frozen. Tears sting my eyes as I reach out helplessly.

              “We’ll stay, no more talk of moving, I promise,” I hear myself whimper pitifully. “Please just, give me my baby.”

Mrs. Jefferies looks down at the little one lovingly and throws me a cold, scornful glance.

              “No, I think you need some time to think. Perhaps a few days off from work to reevaluate your place. In the meantime, this little one will be safer with me.” She’s only looking at the baby now, rocking her arms slowly. “I have the space all made up and ready.” She offers me her back, proceeding towards the stairs to the upper apartment. “Best eat that dinner,” she calls back, her voice eerily sweet once more, “before it gets cold.”

She gives one sharp call to Frank, and begins humming. The sound carries easily through the floor as she moves around above us. It’s a soft melody, a lullaby.

 ***

 My life has become a hell on earth. I see my baby only under the supervision of Mrs. Jefferies with Frank stationed at the door like some kind of stone soldier. I spend my nights crying, my days doing whatever Mrs. Jefferies requests, hoping to earn back her favor. Of course, I have taken a leave from my job—there is no way I can work like this and I don’t want to be any further from my family than I am when the baby is brought upstairs for the evening and my husband and I are left alone in the lower level.

My husband has been supportive, despite his own disbelief of the situation we have found ourselves in. He keeps telling me that Mrs. Jefferies would never hurt our baby, and I largely agree with him. In some part of her demented mind, she sees it as her own. Still, it kills me to watch her go each evening, taking my precious one with her. She hums that haunting melody all through the upper level, and the thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump of the rocking chair beside the crib torments me until well past midnight.

After a few days, I feel I am on the verge of snapping as I robotically join Mrs. Jefferies in the kitchen to start dinner. We have continued to cook downstairs because, as Mrs. Jefferies insists, the upstairs stove is well past usable. Not that I would be eager to go upstairs if she were so inclined to make me. I would be even more afraid to come back down with her behind me.

              “I’ve noticed you’ve been looking a bit pale lately, dear,” she says sweetly as she takes a glass from the cabinet and fills it with water from the tap. “Drink this. If we don’t have our health, what do we have?”

She chuckles lightly, placing the glass on the counter in front of me. Then she goes to retrieve a bag of carrots from the refrigerator and a vegetable peeler from a nearby drawer, and places these on the counter in front of me, also. I take up the tool and set to the task of peeling the carrots, leaving the water untouched.

She pays it no further mind and begins peeling potatoes beside me with a large paring knife. She has left the baby in my husband’s care. He is sitting stiffly in one of the recliners, the baby in his arms wriggling to get free, unaware of the danger we are in.

Frank is once again blocking the door with his monstrous form: his collar pulled up high, his hat down low, thick arms crossed over his square, flat chest.

With every minute that passes I fear I am growing closer to losing my mind.

Mrs. Jefferies, however, is as cheerful as ever.

              “When the baby is old enough I want to take her shopping with me,” she announces chipperly. “Of course, you can come too,” she says to me before adding sharply, “if you behave yourself, that is. We wouldn’t want baby growing up without mommy, but if mommy can’t mind her place, she may just have to—” she slams the knife against the cutting board through the potato, sending the two haves spiraling across the counter on their rounded edges, “—let someone who knows better take her place.”

One of the potato halves knocks the glass of water and sends it crashing to the floor making a puddle of broken glass and water at her feet.

              “Oh!” she exclaims, putting down her knife and bending to pick at the pieces of glass.  “Frank! Frank, grab me the dustpan and some towels from the entry closet.”

Frank opens the door and wordlessly stalks out into the entryway.

I can feel my pulse pounding in my neck. This may be the only chance I get. I take advantage of her momentary distraction and I cut around behind her, slamming the door on Frank and throwing the deadbolt in a single swift motion.

I turn from the door as swiftly as I have closed it, catch sight of the paring knife left abandoned by the pile of half-sliced potatoes, and reactively scoop it from the counter.

As soon as she realizes what I’ve done, she is headed towards me, perhaps intent on opening the door behind me, perhaps not.

Taken by a panic and my own instinct for survival, I grab ahold of her frail body and pull her towards me.

              “We are not your family!” I exclaim as I drive the kitchen knife into her gut.

I am honestly surprised by how little resistance I feel. It is only after the seventh thrust that I realize she doesn’t bleed. Her body has gone limp in my hands, deflated. Frantic, I sift through the loose clothing and rubber-like skin and come across a tiny straw doll. Upon closer examination, I realize it is not straw, but hair. Fine, brittle blonde hair, wound and tied in the semblance of a human form. I throw it to the ground as the awareness hits me that this body was little more than a puppet.

There is a distinct thudding on the floor above. Something half-dragging half-skittering towards this end of the house from the direction of the upstairs bedrooms.

Immediately, I move for the box of matches she uses to start the stove, but it is suspiciously absent from its normal spot. I begin tearing through the cabinets and drawers.

My husband has been watching me from the living area, holding our child close to his chest.

              “We should just go,” he says, “while we can.”

With a bit of effort, he manages to pry open the front door. He hovers there, waiting for me.

His logic is sound, and I largely agree, but a part of me knows that if I leave this woman as she is, she will come after us or find another unsuspecting victim who will suffer in our stead. I must not allow that.

              “Go,” I hear myself say with forced determination, “I’m going to burn it down.”

I am already tossing through the antique end tables and bookshelves that had been so neatly arranged along the walls. Anything that will burn, I have thrown into the center of the room. The moldy books, pamphlets, magazines, newspaper, and doilies all go into the pile. I find a tube of glue. Flammable: it reads on the side. That goes in as well, but it will all be for naught if I cannot find those matches.

I am barely aware that my husband has gone, after a brief attempt to convince me to follow. At least I know my dear ones are safe.

As I sweep past the front door in my search, I instinctively engage the rusting lock, buying myself precious minutes should the Jefferies be unable to break through the side entrance.

I am alone with the sound of my heart pounding in my ears. Then I realize my heart isn’t the only thing pounding. Through the locked door in the kitchen I can hear the distinct—thump, thump—of a heavy weight trying to break it down.

“My, we are a naughty girl,” her shrill voice calls to me over the sound. “but I have learned from my past failings, your rebellious behavior will not suffice. You will be perfectly obedient. And you’ll see. You’ll know I’ve been right all along. You can’t survive on your own. You need your mother!”

My search becomes more frantic. A packet of tissues, a box of cards, a bag of old rubber bands, but no matches. At this point, I’ve gone through nearly every drawer in the living room, but I have run out of time. The door breaks open, and Frank comes through first, a living wrecking ball.

I am getting my first real look at his face. It looks like taupe-colored latex, not the least like human flesh. The tightly drawn “skin” has been stitched together at odd angles creating discomforting, puckered spaces. His tight-lipped mouth glistens with a waxy sheen. There is nothing left of the man I recall from the wedding picture, and I am pretty sure he is something of a doll, just like her.

He ambles across the room after me as “she” appears in the entry behind him.

I recognize the porcelain doll I had the run in with upstairs in an instant. Perhaps this doll is being controlled by her in much the same way as her rubber-skinned puppet. The thought occurs to me that it is entirely possible that all that actually remains of Mrs. Jefferies is her twisted soul.

She staggers and stutters, her body jerking as she shifts her head to look at me.

              “Ah, there you are, dear,” she says in that honey-sweet voice as tried and true as the smile painted on those thin, cracking porcelain lips. “My, you have made quite the mess. I think the first thing I will have you do is clean it.” Her painted smile seems to change somehow, but it could be just my imagination. Her large doll eyes glitter wetly, unblinking. “Then we will call back that precious husband of yours.”

My fear is instantly replaced by anger. She would use me to get to the ones that I love!

I look to Frank as he closes in, arms outstretched stiffly, a deep groan escaping his unmoving lips.

              “Frank,” I begin, my voice not quite pleading, “I know you love her, but she is sick.”

              “Don’t you talk to him!”

Behind me I can hear her moving more quickly now. Arms and legs clicking like dinner plates being knocked together as she tries to scramble towards me.

              “Please,” I continue with Frank, doing my best to ignore her, “please help me.” I look up into the deep, empty sockets and visualize the picture, his warm smile and kind eyes. I can only hope I understand him better now. “Please, Frank,” my voice lowers just a little, “this is not living.”

Frank pauses, only for a second. Then he moves one of his large arms towards his coat pocket. She is shrieking behind me. The clicking grows louder as she closes in, but all I can focus on are the large, patchwork fingers ducking into the pocket and reappearing clutching a tiny match box.

In the smoothest motion I have ever seen him make, the matchbox is in my hand and Frank has moved to intercept his wife.

I am strangely calm. The fact that I have Frank’s blessing makes this all the easier. She is fighting with him now. Clawing at his latex-like face with those smooth porcelain hands. Cursing him.

I light the first paper match and throw it on the pile. Then I light the second, and a third. Within minutes a small fire roars at my feet. It spreads quickly, and I am forced to take a few steps back. It is only now that I realize the noise behind me has ceased. I look back at Mrs. Jefferies.

She is hanging off of Frank’s thick shoulder. His arms embrace her stiffly, keeping her aloft. She is still and silent. Those unnervingly glistening eyes stare blankly at the fire. All of the fight seems to have left her now. She is sobbing. It is the kind of sound that comes from the gut, shaking the whole body as tears stream down the cheeks and the nose becomes runny, but the doll doesn’t move. It’s shining eyes do not blink for a doll cannot cry human tears. The mournful sound is but an echo of the soul that lost its way. A soul that refused to let go.

The fire grows around us, creeping along the throw rugs and climbing up the drapes. The ceiling turns black as the smoke thickens. Knickknacks, pictures, memories—begin to burn away. A lifetime of hope, a lifetime of tragedy, finally comes to an end. Her home had become her heart when everything that she had loved had failed her. The weight of her own expectations had held her anchored to this place like chains. Now finally, that weight releases. Rising, like the flames.

The last thing I see through the heavy smoke that fills the room is Frank’s monstrous silhouette being engulfed by the blaze, his bride held tight to his chest. I could swear I see him smiling.

I am not even sure how I get outside. I just suddenly realize I am standing in the cold, no longer sweating by the fire, my lungs filling with smoke. The air is sweet with the scent of freshly fallen rain. It smells clean.

My husband presses a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“We have to go now,” he says, “before anyone shows up.”

He is right. We could never explain everything that we went through here. No one would believe the truth. What we have lost, we can find anew.

I express my agreement with a wordless motion of my head, but as I turn to follow, I find myself watching him, our little one still tightly clutched in his arms, close to his chest.

And I find myself thinking, I would do anything to keep them with me.

Forever.

#Horror story #short story #original work #halloween #suspense #writing #creative writing

[littlereyofsunlight]

The Fire is So Delightful

Hi @geekynerddemon, I’m your @steggyfanevents secret santa! You chose modern AU from the options I gave you, so I wrote you some firefighter Steve Rogers and a self-rescuing Peggy Carter. There’s a cat in a tree, plus a bunch of the usual suspects from the MCU. Chapter 2 coming shortly!

Read on AO3

ch 1/2 Rating: Gen Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers Characters: Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Sif, Dum Dum Dugan Additional Tags: Firefighter AU, Modern Day AU, romcom, meet-cute, the gang’s all here Summary: Peggy rescues a cat from a tree. Steve doesn’t help.

“Will you look after Liho for me?” Natasha’s sudden request startled Peggy out of her contemplation of the drink in front of her. They were at their usual place, a dingy little bar down the block from work where the bartenders all knew them and they could hold a conversation without having to shout over music or dodge the advances of the neighborhood suits, who generally avoided the place owing to its distinctly aggressive lack of atmosphere.

“Sorry?”

Natasha kept her eyes on her own drink, fidgeting with the straw. Natasha, normally a beer drinker, or after especially difficult weeks just straight vodka, had ordered one of the bar’s ridiculous cocktails. It was tequila-based, neon orange, came in a Tiki cup and had what looked to Peggy like an entire mint plant sticking out the top. “I’m going out of town for the holiday and I need a cat-sitter.”

Peggy had worked with Natasha on the analyst team for six years now, but she’d only ever been invited to her home once, a few months ago. “I’d be happy to, I have no plans.” As a rule, she saved the trans-Atlantic flights for better weather. Her parents weren’t big on Christmas, anyways.

Natasha gave a quick little half smile, and Peggy noticed her shoulders drop a good inch. “Thank you.” She took a sip of her drink, holding the ostentatious garnish away from her face as she did so. “My, um, ex-girlfriend is also going to be home for the holiday, so I didn’t want to just do a short trip this year. I’ll get you a key next week.” Then she changed the subject back to work, and they strategized about their supervisor’s latest power play—and speculated how their beloved admin Darcy Lewis might undermine it—until much too late for a work night.

Two weeks later, Peggy set her bag down just inside the threshold of Natasha’s bright, clean two-story duplex. “Are you sure you want me to stay?”

Nat waved her hand. “It’s such a long drive between your neighborhood and mine. If you’d be more comfortable at home, of course, Liho will be fine.”

Peggy looked around the downstairs living area, flooded with early afternoon light. “I’m sure I’ll be perfectly comfortable here. I just know how very private you are.”

Nat gave her a shy smile. “I think we’re past all that, aren’t we?”

“I’m glad you feel that way.” Peggy smiled broadly back.

“Okay, bedroom is upstairs and there are fresh sheets and towels and everything. Help yourself to anything in the fridge or pantry, of course. I got some of those yogurts you always eat, plus this—” Nat thrust a nice bottle of red wine into Peggy’s hands, though Peggy wasn’t sure exactly where she’d been hiding it up until then “—Her food is on the counter, please just the listed amounts, because she is a terrible beggar and will try to weasel more food out of you.“

“Noted,” Peggy said.

“And her litter boxes are in the bathrooms, the litter is flushable.”

“Convenient.”

“Also, she sometimes tries to escape out the front door, so look out for that.”

“So to review, your cat is a cat who acts like a cat,” Peggy teased. “I have this handled, I promise. Liho and I will get some quality time on your couch with everyone’s favorite streaming network while you spend the holiday with your sexy ex. Now get out of here. Maria’s waiting for you, isn’t she?”

“Thank you, Peggy,” Natasha said, as she rolled her eyes but pulled her in for a quick hug nonetheless. “Liho’s hiding upstairs, but she’ll probably come down around dinnertime, so like, six, if she doesn’t get curious about you before then.”

“Is she very interested in people?” Peggy’s grandmother kept cats in her little London flat, and they were always all over the place regardless of who was visiting, though she supposed that could have been more out of necessity. The few times she and her brother Michael had tried to play hide-and-seek while visiting Nana had been very anticlimactic: there were only two good child-sized (or even cat-sized) hiding spots in the whole place.

Nat shook her head. “She and I get along because we’re very similar.”

“So if I lose her, I should just put out a saucer of vodka.”

“It might work,” Nat allowed. “Smart-ass.”

“Aren’t you leaving?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nat looked up the stairs one more time. “Thanks again. Text me if you need anything.”

“We won’t.” Peggy raised her eyebrow. “Text me if you get some this weekend.”

Nat actually blushed at that, to Peggy’s surprise. “You’re sort of wearing on my gratitude, here,” she grumbled fondly. She picked up her bag and took her coat off the hook.

Peggy threw up her hands. “Yes, I’m trying to get you to leave already!”

Laughing over her shoulder, Nat finally opened the door. “See you in a week.”

“Drive safe!” Peggy called after her.

“Oh!” Nat called, stopping beside her car. “My neighbors are all pretty friendly, don’t be surprised if someone pops by.”

Before Peggy could formulate a response (How friendly? Which neighbors? Why aren’t any of them watching your cat?), Nat was in her car and on her way. “Thanks for that advice, I guess,” Peggy said to herself. She closed the door and looked around. At least this Christmas she’d be alone in a new location, she mused. She pulled out her phone and tapped out a quick message to her friend Angie back home, even though Peggy knew she’d be asleep already. She scrolled aimlessly through the apps on her phone, hovering over the ‘dating’ folder she’d shoved Hinge and Bumble and all the rest into after the last in a series of disastrous dates over the summer. Peggy hated to admit it, even to herself, but she was lonely.

True to Natasha’s word, a small, sleek black cat poked her head through the top two spindles of the stairs promptly at six pm and, upon seeing Peggy on the couch but not Natasha, she let out a series of squeaking chirps. Peggy put down the novel she’d borrowed from Nat’s bookshelf—Lauren Beukes’s Broken Monsters, and here Peggy had thought Nat to be more of a nonfiction reader—and got up to see what Liho’s dinner situation was.

Natasha very clearly cared a great deal for the skinny little cat who, according to Nat, had turned up on her doorstep one day and invited herself to stay forever. There was a stainless steel water dish that continuously burbled up a little fountain, and two shallow dishes, one for wet food and one for dry. On the counter above the cat’s dishes, Nat had thoughtfully set out Liho’s food, all fancy brand-name specialty stuff. Liho chirped at her a few more times while Peggy dumped a can of wet into the designated bowl, and she kept making adorable little nomming noises while she chowed down. Peggy stroked her hand down the cat’s back and Liho jumped and shot Peggy an affronted look before she went back to her food.

“No touchy while eating, got it.” Peggy left the cat to her meal and grabbed her phone to see what delivery options were available in Nat’s neighborhood. As she tried to decide between Mexican and an interesting Vietnamese-fusion place, the doorbell rang.

Peggy opened the door to a barefoot, confused-looking man wearing a t-shirt despite the frigid weather. He sketched a brief wave before launching into a query in sign language, but she couldn’t hope to follow. Peggy waved back and gave him a broad “huh” gesture. He nodded and reached up to turn on the hearing aids hidden under his hat.

“Is Nat home?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, she’s not in,” Peggy responded.

“I’m her neighbor, Clint,” he said, pointing his thumb at the other side of the duplex. “I was hoping she’d want to split a takeout order.”

“Oh!” Peggy said, realization dawning. “I’m Peggy, Nat’s friend from work. I’m watching her cat for the week. Did she tell you she was going back for the holiday?”

Clint watched her lips closely and nodded as she spoke. “Right, sorry, I forgot.” He scratched the back of his head under his knit cap and squinted at her. “Do you maybe want to go in on some takeout?”

A grin spread across her face and she opened the door wider. “What do you think of the Vietnamese place?”

Clint gave her both thumbs up. “The báhn bao are freaking amazing.”

When Nat texted later that evening to let Peggy know she’d arrived, Peggy and Clint snapped a quick photo for her with their very impressive spread of food and Liho just barely visible in the background, creeping on the interlopers in her home from the top of the stairs. Nat texted back a laughing with tears emoji and then when you go to bed tonight double check under the covers. she sometimes attacks feet if she’s not expecting them

Noted, Peggy replied. More normal cat behavior.

Nat sent back the eye-roll emoji.

Have you seen Maria yet? Peggy hoped she wasn’t being too nosy. She and Nat had been friendly for years but this new level, with in-home cat-sitting and ex-sex-discussing, was still pretty new for them.

In response, a photo appeared of Nat’s slim fingers around a half-drunk pint glass. she’s meeting me in 30 minutes, got here early for some liquid courage

Peggy sent her a string of crossed fingers and martini glasses, punctuated with a purple heart.

Nat sent back a purple heart and Peggy felt it in her chest, warm and liquid. She didn’t have many good friends, and all of them were back home in the UK. Nat, standoffish, prickly, elusive Nat, was turning out to be her first real friend in the States.

Just then, Liho jumped up into Peggy’s lap and butted her head against the hand holding her phone. Now she was ready for Peggy to pet her.

Clint was good company, and he turned out to unabashedly love Love Island, which Peggy watched to keep up with Angie’s opinions on the subject, so he and Peggy re-started the beginning of the third series together and talked about how Camilla was too good for the rest of the crowd.

While Peggy got ready for bed, she poked her head around the upstairs, looking for Liho as she brushed her teeth and slathered on moisturizer, dipping back into the bathroom to spit and then to dab on a spot treatment.

“Where are you hiding, miss?” She peeked behind the door of Nat’s second bedroom, set up as an office. She spun the desk chair around, but there was no cat curled in a ball in the seat. Peggy went into Nat’s bedroom and threw back the covers, but no luck. She called and called, but Liho didn’t poke her head out, didn’t answer with a chirp. Peggy searched the whole house twice, and then remembered what Nat had said about the front door. Had it been open too long when Clint left? Peggy had said goodnight and gone to put away her leftovers, she hadn’t watched to see if the cat stayed inside. She couldn’t remember seeing her after that.

Feeling out of sorts, Peggy grabbed her phone and Nat’s key, tossed a hoodie on over her sleeping shirt and shoved her feet into her sneakers. She opened the door and stepped onto the stoop, calling softly for Liho as she shut the door firmly behind her, in case the cat was still inside. “If you’re out here, darling, please come back inside.” Peggy shivered as a cold wind blew down the street, throwing the bare branches of the tree in Nat’s yard against each other. A full moon and a cloudless sky, plus the street lamps and the festive lights on many of the houses meant the street was fairly well-lit, even at this hour.

She turned on the flashlight on her phone and swept the light around the walkway, focusing on the spots in shadow. “Liho!” She stepped off the stoop and into the yard. Over the wind, Peggy heard it. An unmistakable chirp. She spun around, trying to see the cat. “Come here, kitty!” Against her better judgement, she made kissy noises and thanked the lord no one else seemed to be out at this hour. Another chirp, and this time Peggy realized where it was coming from. She aimed her light at the tree. Standing in a vee about halfway up the old oak was Liho, shivering in the wind.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Peggy said, “did you get yourself stuck up there?” Liho chirped back at her and stayed put.

Peggy eyed the tree trunk. She’d climbed more difficult ones, to be sure, but not since primary school. She tucked her phone and keys into her pocket and zipped her hoodie up to her chin. “I’m gonna get you down,” she told the cat. “Don’t worry,” she said, mostly to herself.

As Peggy climbed, Liho retreated further up into the branches. “That’s the wrong direction!” Peggy complained. But she could keep going, so she did. The street lamp provided decent illumination, and it was a dry, cold night, so the bark wasn’t slippery against her rubber-soled shoes.

A truck rumbled down the street and stopped at a nearby house and Peggy hoped the occupants wouldn’t notice her, climbing a tree at midnight in her pajamas.

“Uh, ma’am?” A voice called up from below.

“Bugger,” Peggy cursed. No such luck.

She didn’t dare look down, the branches were starting to get thin. Liho watched the man on the street with some interest, though, which might work in Peggy’s favor. “Ma’am I’m with the fire department. Is everything okay up there?”

Peggy had to laugh. “I’m fine, just retrieving a cat. But you seem to be short a hook and ladder, or even a siren. So try again, Mr. Fireman.”

She heard a sigh from down below, but Liho was cautiously creeping towards Peggy along one of the topmost branches. “That’s it, come here.” Peggy reached out her hand and Liho came closer. Peggy braced herself against the trunk of the tree, hugging it with her thighs, and then she grabbed the cat by the scruff of her neck. Liho let out an undignified squawk but didn’t fight her grip, allowing Peggy to drag her close to her chest and hold her there.

“Good job,” the man encouraged.

“No thanks to you,” Peggy muttered. She climbed down. Liho, to her credit, submitted to Peggy’s hold like a kitten in her mama’s jaws. Soon enough, they were both out of the tree.

The supposed firefighter stood several feet away on the sidewalk, watching. “All set?” he asked.

“We’re fine.” She finally got a good look at him then, and well, he did look the part. At least six feet tall, with broad shoulders, fair hair, and a clean-cut All-American sort of look, if the chiseled jawline throwing shadows under the streetlamps were anything to go by. He wasn’t in his gear, of course, just jeans and a short leather jacket. It was still a good look on him.

He looked back up the tree. “You, uh, you’re pretty good at that.” He looked back to her and gave her a small smile.

“It’s not my first tree.” She looked him up and down. “Are you really a firefighter?”

He hooked his thumb back at his truck. “Not on duty. I heard the call on my radio, and I was nearby.” Now Peggy could see the bar of lights on the top of his truck. “I’m guessing you didn’t call this in, though? You definitely had things under control.”

She smiled despite herself. “I did have it under control.”

He nodded. “Well, glad I could be of no help at all.”

“You certainly did get here quickly, so points for that, I suppose.” She shifted the cat against her and took a tentative step closer.

“I live in the neighborhood.” He took a step closer, too. Peggy could see the wry smile on his lush mouth now. “Steve Rogers,” he offered.

“Peggy Carter. I’m just cat-sitting for a friend.” She cut him a look under her lashes, having a bit of fun. “But I’m starting to see why my friend likes this location.” Steve open and shut his mouth a few times, and then his reply was cut off by the wail of a siren. They both turned to look as a fire truck careened down the street. Steve stepped into the center of the road to flag them down. As the siren got louder, Peggy felt Liho tense under her hands, her front claws digging into Peggy’s sweatshirt. She tried to hold her close, but the cat squirmed away and bounded right back up into the tree. “Oh, Bloody Nora!”

He came back to stand beside her, hands on his hips. “Did the cat just run back up the tree?”

Peggy sighed. “The cat just ran back up the tree.”

“Well,” Steve scratched at the back of his head as he looked up to where Liho had perched herself, “I have that ladder now.”

“Captain Rogers!” Someone called from over by the truck. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Steve checked his watch. “Lieutenant Barnes, somehow I made it here a full five minutes before you did.”

“Aw, Steve, it’s a cat in a tree.”

“I told him we should get our hustle on for any call in your neighborhood, Cap,” another firefighter piped up.

“You should hustle for any call anywhere, come on, team” Steve’s voice got more commanding as he spoke with the members of the crew.

“Is that the cat’s owner?” another crew member piped up, gesturing at Peggy as she climbed down from the truck.

“I’m caring for her, yes,” Peggy replied.

The woman looked up at the tree and back at Peggy. “Would she let someone hold her if we got the ladder up there?”

Peggy considered. “She’s not great with new people.”

The firefighter nodded and looked back at Steve. “Cat bag.”

“Cat bag,” Steve agreed. “Ms. Carter here already got her down once, so I don’t think this one’s a jumper.”

The rest of the crew all exchanged looks, disbelief clear on their faces despite the truck’s flashing lights throwing strange shadows over the group. “Uh, what?” The handsome one Steve had called Barnes broke the awkward silence.

“I got her down,” Peggy explained. “Then your siren scared her and she went right back up.”

Another firefighter—also a handsome man, Peggy noticed—looked slowly between Peggy and the tree. “So if you didn’t have any trouble getting up there, then why …?” He squinted back at Peggy.

“She didn’t call this in, it must have been a neighbor.” Steve clapped his hands together. “All right, it’s cold out and I’m sure that cat wants to be warm inside, just like the rest of us. Who’s going up?”

“Not it,” both Barnes and the other one said at the same time.

“Wilson,” Barnes whined, “I got the last one.”

“Allergies, man. You’d have to dose me with Benadryl if you want me within five feet of a cat.” Wilson shrugged. “Sif, can you take this one?’

The female firefighter—yet again a very attractive person, statuesque with dark hair and big, dark eyes, Peggy was starting to wonder if the entire engine company put out a calendar every year—already had a burlap sack, which Peggy assumed was the cat bag, in her hands, along with a length of nylon rope and carabiners. She rolled her eyes at the other two. “Well, it’s not like Cap’s going to send Dum Dum up after her, is it?”

As if on cue, a fourth fire fighter stuck his head out of the truck’s door. “Everything okay out here?”

“Thanks for the help, Dugan!” Steve shouted back.

“Oh! Cap! Didn’t realize you were here!”

Steve waved him off and turned back to Sif. “You don’t want the ladder?”

Sif looked at the tree. “Nah, it’ll go faster and scare the cat less if I climb up. What’s her name?” The last part she addressed to Peggy.

“Liho.”

Sif nodded, put on some thick work gloves she produced from a pocket, clipped the cat bag to her belt and up she went.

“You know,” Peggy said, standing next to Steve as they watched Sif’s ascent, “if you lot hadn’t showed up I’d already be back in the house with the cat I’ve been entrusted to look after.”

She could hear the smile in his voice as he replied. “But then you wouldn’t have met me or my motley crew, and wouldn’t that have been a shame.”

Peggy eyed him speculatively and took a breath. “Jury’s still out. Perhaps you could buy me coffee sometime, Captain, as an apology for keeping me up so late. Give me more time to decide.” She felt brazen, hitting on a man who was there to do his work, but he wasn’t her neighbor, after all. And she was intrigued by this man, his apparent kindness, how he showed up even when his shift was over, not to mention the easy way he had with the people under his command. Captain Steve Rogers was the sort of man she wanted to get to know better. And, not to put too fine a point on it ... he was sexy.

Half his mouth quirked up in a self-conscious smile and he rubbed at the back of his neck. “Coffee, huh?” He looked at her, his ridiculously long eyelashes casting shadows on his face in the strange light. “Could we make it dinner? Tomorrow?” He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet. “With the upcoming holidays, I’m going to be working ten days straight. Better to get it out of the way.”

“Oh.” Peggy’s spirits fell.

“No!” Steve backtracked, eyes wide. “That came out all wrong. That was me trying not to uh, sound too eager? Also, I’m tired, and one of my firefighters is up a tree, and you are a very attractive woman and you just asked me out and my brain might be short-circuiting right now?”

Peggy had to laugh at that. “Okay, okay, stop digging.”

“You have to forgive Cap,” Wilson said from behind them. “We don’t let him out much.”

“This may in fact be the first non-work conversation he’s had with a woman,” Barnes chimed in. “Sorry it was so bad. He’s terrible at flirting.”

Steve took the good-natured teasing in stride. “Watch it, you two,” he warned them, but there was only wry warmth in his tone as he shook his head.

“I agree, it was very lacklustre flirting,” Peggy said. “You’ll need to step up your game for dinner tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve replied, a broad smile on his face.

“Got her!” Sif called from above. “Coming down. Good job securing a date, Cap.”

Peggy had to agree with that, too.

#steggysecretsanta #steggy fic #geekynerddemon #steve rogers #peggy carter #my fic

[purplesurveys]

831

When you were a kid...

Were you happy or sad when you found out your babysitter was coming? I didn’t have a babysitter. My grandparents took care of me and my siblings and cousins when we were growing up; and if they were both busy I was usually the one expected to care for everyone. Which was okay with me, since I was the most ~motherly~ one in our little group anyway.

Did you have a boyfriend in kindergarten? I studied in an all-girls school from kinder to high school. Outside of school, also no boyfriends. The boys at my neighborhood were super rowdy and hated girls, so I didn’t like hanging out with them.

Did you ever play hopscotch at school? For sure. I was a little mischievous - I would steal a bunch of chalk from the classroom so I can doodle a hopscotch court on school grounds for me and my friends to play on. I definitely wasn’t the most goody-two-shoes kid in the beginning, lol.

Did you refuse to eat your vegetables? Yeah, hated them. We have this local brand of instant noodles that have pieces of carrot in it, and I remember grouping all the tiny carrot bits at the edge of my plate. I didn’t learn to feed myself until I was around 8 or 9 though, so prior to that my elders would just include vegetables in all my meals and I’d have no choice.

What did you usually dress up as on Halloween? Some basic costume like a witch or pirate. My mom wasn’t super into Halloween and would just get us costume packs from the toy store. I wanna be the complete opposite for my kids.

What was your favorite television show? As a much younger kid I was into Hi-5. When I got a bit older I liked Pokemon, SpongeBob, The Fairly OddParents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, etc. Then when I got slightly older I started watching the real-life shows too, so like That’s So Raven, Suite Life, Drake and Josh, Zoey 101, Hannah Montana. Did you have D.E.A.R. time in school? (Drop Everything and Read) Yes, a few times each year. When I was still a bookworm it had been one of my favorite segments in school because I got to see other kids reading, which was my favorite hobby then. But by the time I was in high school and stopped reading, I remember always struggling to find a book to bring because I didn’t read anything anymore D: If I remember correctly, I think Athenna lent me most of the books I brought for DEAR time since at the time she was into John Green and YA in general. Did you ever read the 'Magic Treehouse' series? No. I googled it to see the cover, and I know as a kid it wouldn’t have interested me enough to pull it out of its shelf. How about the 'Bailey School Kids' series? Nope. Kids my age were into the Geronimo Stilton and Mr Men/Little Miss series. Do you remember the first movie you ever saw in theaters? Yes, it was a Stuart Little movie when I was maybe 3 or 4. I’m guessing it’s Stuart Little 2, because Google says it came out in 2002 and I was 4 years old then, so it checks out. Who was your best friend in elementary school? Angela was my best friend in some grades, but you know how kids are...once they vibe with someone else, they’ll hang out with them 24/7. Angela was a way more sociable kid so she got close with everyone, while I remained terrible at making friends. If she wasn’t my best friend at the time, I had no one. Did they continue to be your best friend in middle school? We don’t have middle school but I’ll guess that this is like Grade 6 and 7 for us? Anyway, no. ~Middle school~ was worse for me because this was when cliques started to form and material trends became the basis for being visible, e.g. owning a Blackberry, wearing Nike Roshes, getting side bangs lol, etc. I had none of those, so I was left behind both in terms of visibility and having friends. I only had a best friend again by the time I entered Grade 7, in which time I met Gabie and the ball started rolling from there. Did you ever watch 'The Land Before Time' movies? No, I didn’t. Did you ever watch the show 'Arthur'? I don’t think it aired here, so no. I did read Arthur books though; they were one of my favorites. Did the tooth fairy give you a lot of money? I honestly thought the tooth fairy was real. I never told my parents whenever a tooth would come out because I thought it was none of their business. That said, they just genuinely never knew to put money under my pillow because my dumbass never told them hahaha. I’ll never forget how crestfallen I was when I woke up to no money though. How often did you visit your nearest grandparents? I lived with them until I was 10. I only visited my other set of grandparents whenever my dad would come home from abroad, so I didn’t and haven’t ended up being close to them. Did you ever play with 'Little People' toys? Never heard of them but when I looked it up the toys looked familiar, so we probably did. How about Polly Pockets? Yes. Did you collect anything when you were a kid? Pokemon cards and pogs, heh. I also had my fair share of notebooks. Did you get an allowance? No, my parents didn’t teach me how money worked early on. I was a packed lunch kid until high school, and when I did ask for money I – and I’m not kidding – would only get a ₱20 bill, which was only enough to get me a tiny snack. What was your favorite sport to play? What is it now? Track, but then it shifted to table tennis when I joined the table tennis club initially out of peer pressure. What foods did you not like then that you do like now? Chicken curry, definitely. Were you into American Girl dolls? No. What was your first pet and what did you name it? It was a goldfish but I don’t remember whether I named it Goldie or Fishy, lol. Did you ever read the 'Junie B. Jones' books? No. What did you want to be when you were a kid? All the things I wante to be were astronaut, firefighter, veterinarian, and writer. What was your first word? Your first sentence? (If you remember) My parents didn’t keep track of either...I definitely would with my own kids. Have you moved into a new house since you were a kid? Yes, several times. When I was an infant we briefly lived with my dad’s parents in Manila. My mom couldn’t take the poverty and pollution there so we moved to a city in Rizal, where my mom’s parents + some extended family live in a duplex. At one point we switched houses in that duplex, and the unit that we switched to was where I lived for most of my childhood until we moved to our present house by the time I was 10. Were you friends with your neighbors? As a child, yeah. I was mostly friends with the girls though because like I said, the boys were super rowdy and sexist in that they never let us play basketball with them and stuff. Did you enjoy exploring your backyard? We didn’t have a backyard. Did you bake cookies with your grandparents? Sometimes! I would mix the dough and turn them into balls. :) What was your biggest fear when you were a kid? Flying cockroaches, because we had a lot of them in our old duplex unit. I also had an irrational fear of catching TV ads at night because I found them too loud and too vibrant. Who did you look up to most? My dad because I barely saw him as a kid. When he was lower down the ladder at his job he’d be gone six months and only stay with us for one. It wasn’t until I got to high school and he had a much higher position that he was away for only four months and home for one and a half.   Did you ever play the 'Reader Rabbit' computer games? I don’t think I’ve heard of that. Did you have a swing set in your backyard? No but we had a relative who had a playground at their place, and we’d go over there often. I spent a good amount of my childhood going as high as I can on their swings. How about a sandbox? Same relative had a sandbox too! It’s my favorite part of a playground and even during playtime in school I would usually be found alone in the sandbox. How old were you when you learned how to ride a bike? I’m 22 and still don’t know how... Did you ever spy on your neighbors through the window? Sometimes. Our houses were very close to each other and their open window is right across the part of our house that also has an open window, so sometimes we’ll fool around and peek. Were you a teacher's pet in kindergarten? No, but I gave my teachers a reason to remember me because I was the kid that peed their underwear everyday and had to go home in shorts. I’ve always been shy and even as a kid I was unable to ask permission to go to the washroom. Did you ever build a treehouse or a fort in your yard? No, ours was too small to build anything like that. Did you ever find anything interesting in your yard? No, just different types of bugs and caterpillars. Did you ever have 'themed birthdays'? Kinda? My 7th birthday party was mostly a plain, theme-less birthday party, but so much of the decorations and giveaways were Bratz-themed because I was into Bratz at the time. Did your parents let you drink soda? They would have let me but I personally never liked it. Did you ever watch 'The Powerpuff Girls' or 'Dexter's Laboratory'? I watched Powerpuff Girls but not Dexter’s Laboratory. Did you sleep with a blanket or stuffed animal? For the most part I preferred cuddling with a pillow. Did you ever have a night light? For some points in my childhood, yeah. Ultimately, I preferred lights out though. Did you watch 'Winnie the Pooh'? Nope, just read Winnie the Pooh books. Did you ever have an imaginary friend? What was their name? I named them Katrina but I wasn’t imaginative/creative enough, so when seven minutes passed after I created her and she still wasn’t talking back to me, I gave it up haha. What kinds of games did you play with your friends during Recess? Dodgeball was a favorite. We had a big field just right outside our classroom so we’d all go out, pick our teams, and play for the whole 30 minutes. We’d do it for lunch, too. Fortunately our teachers never barred us from playing, because I guess they knew it counts as exercise for us too. Did you dream of being a princess or did you not really care about that? Not really. I wanted to be an astronaut more haha. The only princess-y things I did were to wear my blanket around my neck like a cape, and to wear a tiara on my 7th birthday party. Did you have a special name for your pacifier? What was it? No. Did you watch 'Blues Clues'? Yesssssss. I grew up with Steve and Joe. It was such a fun show to watch. What kind of car did your parents have? I don’t remember the make anymore but we had a black sedan until I was around five. It was mostly broken-down and had no aircon, but it was my dad’s first car so it was his absolute baby and I never had the heart to complain about the car’s flaws to him. He eventually sold it and we had a blue Mitsubishi Lancer after. Did you ever flush anything down the toilet by mistake? I don’t remember ever doing that, thankfully lol. Were you afraid to sleep by yourself? No, I think I was excited to start doing it. Growing up in a cramped duplex, I shared one bedroom with my entire family until I was around 9; so when we moved to our own home, I was the first one to call dibs on a bedroom. What was your favorite subject in elementary school? Language, which is a class where we were just taught basic English grammar. I loved reading as a kid and got fluent in English early on, so I was always a top student in that subject. How often did you go to the park? We don’t have parks. What was your favorite kind of cake as a kid? Chocolate cake from Red Ribbon. Did you ever want to grow up? I never actively ‘wanted’ it because I was already kinda forced to grow up early, what with all the issues happening at home and me having to shield my siblings and cousins from whatever screaming match was happening inside.

#survey #surveys

[cinemamablog]

Ruin Valentine’s Day: Watch a Movie

Five Valentine’s Days ago, the film adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s break-up musical The Last Five Years hit VOD platforms. My then-fiance and I watched it, since we both enjoy musical theatre. (In fact, we formally met onstage, in our high school production of You Can’t Take it With You, though I like to remind him that we were chorus members in Bye Bye Birdie together, back when he wouldn’t give me the time of day.) It was an uneventful viewing experience in our living room; Adam liked it, I thought it was just okay and missed Sherie Rene Scott in the lead role of Cathy. 

Unbeknownst to me, across the city from our downtown duplex, two of our theatre-loving friends (also a couple, though less settled into their now-defunct relationship) also watched The Last Five Years to celebrate Valentine’s Day. (It’s like theatre kids are drawn to potentially drama-inducing situations or something.) I think it’s safe to say it was not an enjoyable evening for either of them.

I love how movies can affect different people based solely on their current relationship status: they can trigger lovers’ quarrels in a fragile relationship and can stick a metaphorical finger in your open emotional wounds, bringing all that bloody baggage up to the surface. What better way to celebrate love on the one day of the year devoted to nothing but? Some feel-bad romances are beyond obvious: Blue Valentine, Marriage Story, and of course, The Last Five Years. (The movie starts with the break-up, people. You aren’t going to have fun.) Instead of dwelling on these well-known bummers, I present to you, five less-obvious movies, ranging from lesser-known indies to arthouse classics, guaranteed to ruin your Valentine’s Day:

1. Celeste & Jesse Forever (2012), Lee Toland Krieger

Celeste and Jesse Forever is a bittersweet movie about trying to move on from your best friend and romantic partner. You would expect a romantic comedy starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg wouldn’t break your heart, but guess what? I literally cry every time I watch this movie. Samberg’s delivery of a particularly cruel line always sticks a very sharp, pointed object in my heart and twists it. If Adam and I ever get divorced (god forbid), I’m pretty sure our lives will follow the exact trajectory of this movie, minus a dramatic element or two.

2. Nymphomaniac: Vol II (2013), Lars von Trier 

If you thought Volume I was graphic, just wait until you get snuggled up together to watch Volume II. Unless you’re super freaky (more power to you), this movie might turn you off from touching for awhile. The tales that Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character tells of her sexual escapades manage to get darker with each encounter, ranging from unhealthy affairs and threesomes to straight-up sadomasochism. For a movie about sex, von Trier manages to repel the audience from the very act itself. I’ve yet to see the infamous abortion scene that only made it into the Director’s Cut, but it’s on my bucket list. Maybe next Valentine’s Day?

3. Take This Waltz (2011), Sarah Polley

Take This Waltz is an exploration of whether the grass is really greener on the other side. The possibilities of a passionate affair intrigue and conflict the protagonist, played by Michelle Williams, despite a comfortable and loving marriage with her big-hearted husband, played by Seth Rogen in a rare, vulnerable dramatic performance. But unfortunately,  “comfortable” can also translate to “boring” if you’re of a certain temperament or long to explore the more spontaneous side of your personality, and it becomes clear that Williams’ character is not comfy, but bored. Will she satisfy her lust for life by leaving her husband? Can a long-term relationship withstand a flight of fancy? Or are some longings better to ignore, as spontaneity can become your new comfortable in the blink of Leonard Cohen montage?

4. Lovesong (2016), So Yong Kim 

Lovesong is the story of two women, former best friends and one-time lovers, played by Riley Keough and Jena Malone, struggling to reconnect at Malone’s wedding to a man. If you adore Jena Malone like I do, you’ll be pleased to know she plays a lead part in this movie, rather than the supporting roles to which she’s usually relegated. (The woman’s got star power, so why does Hollywood so often keep her out of the spotlight?) That’s probably the only thing that will please you about Lovesong though, because the film doesn’t provide its characters with easy answers, dooming them to a life of “what if?” after missing their chance at love years ago.

5. The Night Porter (1974), Liliana Cavani 

Probably tied with Nymphomaniac: Vol II for the title of Darkest Movie on this list, Cavani’s The Night Porter tells us the story of a Holocaust survivor who encounters her former Nazi lover and tormentor years after the war’s end. They fall back into their roles of victim and keeper in a sick and masochistic romance. A film about trauma, Stockholm Syndrome, and the undying legacy of war, The Night Porter’s story of re-connection and dependency gives a fascist twist to the typical storyline of star-crossed lovers.

#lists

[halyconskies-blog]

kodak moments

riding my bike to the gas station on the end of my street, i'm on a mission.  gigantic beautiful trees provide shade the whole way there. what's my mission? buy batteries for my dinky little point and shoot kodak.  my favorite musing is my dog, the outside world, and my pubescent body in my underwear. i see an even smaller girl riding her big wheel... seemingly following me. there’s tinsel coming off her handles. the almost white, pinks and blues twinkling as they flutter in the breeze. the wind kisses my skin and it's sparkling too.

my mother is feeling shiny and sparkly too. she just had one of those surgeries where they shrink your stomach so you can’t choose to be horrendously fat anymore. now she's just a deflated balloon. unfortunately for her, the hanging fat around her back started pulling on a dislocated plate in her spine. for which she's been taking prescription medication (although she doesn’t always receive it from the pharmacy). despite the awful pain, she felt hot for the first time in 20 years. ever since then she has been cheating on my dad...

it’s 2007. people are making phone calls to those television ads for hot hookups in ur area! or at least my mother did. she begins speaking to a man named franky luzar... truly a loser. he is tall, dark, and “handsome”. he sticks a heart shaped sticker on his ass when he goes tanning-- so it’ll leave a mark, of course. long blades of black grass grow from his head with salt at the roots, all kept tightly in a pony's tail. his face is a pleather hand bag, eyes are blue and sharp. his thin body is lavishly draped in tattered dusty jeans, those tan work boots with the steel in the toes, and a white wife beater... a favorite of his. 

i’m not sure what he does, or where he goes when he’s not here... but he’s over a lot. he has an obsession with sick horror movies— always excited to show us the latest and greatest. i watched a man get pulled in half in gruesome because franky said so.

i rush inside the house, to switch out my old batteries. i take a picture of my dog cuddling my stuffed bulbasuar on the couch. my mother’s feet are in the shot. she’s been sleeping there since yesterday afternoon— it’s 5 pm. i hear the door open and hit the wall. a couple shoes are tumbling down the stairs. franky is always happy to add some flare to his entrances. his voice is rusty and low. what do you think he’s got in his hands? if you guessed, a white plastic bag filled with movies, beer, and a small weird maraca of sorts, you'd be correct. my mother is finally awake, or so it would seem. her cigarette ashes itself into her lap.

my living room set is dusty white with bright green flowers embroidered in a line going downwards. i can’t remember why the love seat is in the middle of the living room, but it is. i’m sitting on the ground right next to the tv. my mother and franky are planted on the crooked couch. a man is making cookies out of some people he just killed brightly displayed in liquid-crystals. i glance over into the darkness. the light hits their faces and a small, fraying pillow. i notice the pillow is moving slightly, up and down. my eyes flash to franky. his face is serene and intense... my head jolts back to the tv. i’ll just pretend it’s not happening.

i like to spend as much time at my dad’s as i can. his girlfriend and her daughter are fine enough. heather is her daughter’s name. she likes to throw up in milk jugs in her closet because she eats too much. her mom puts locks on the cabinets so she doesn't go back for round two. heather's a little older than me but she tells people she’s 15. she likes to take me to her boyfriend’s house, his name is damian. a couple hours later we  go to her other boyfriend’s house, his name is eddie. this time her nice boyfriend is mad, because he suspects her to be cheating on him.  she brings of a bottle of parrot bay to say sorry.  he doesn't care, they go into his bedroom to fight about it for a while.  i sit on a cold couch in the living room with his brother.  there's nothing to do but stare.  i quietly go peek in the bedroom to see if they've made up.  i see her jumping on top of him so maybe it's not over?  his brother, vinny, says i can just sleep on the couch if i don't want to walk home by myself.  so i just lay there, in dark silence, my eyes are open all night staring at the hint of pale yellow light out the window, but i am asleep.

its weird i know, but my dad and his girlfriend found a duplex right across the street from my grandmother’s. there wasn’t enough room for all of us there, so my brothers stay across the street a lot. they don’t like it though, our grandma drinks all day and gets mad at them for stealing the remote, the phone, the tv guide, her commemorative elvis dinning plates... i'm standing on the wooden stairs of her house, coming down, peeking through the fake palm trees to see if the coast is clear. she is throwing up into a bowl she keeps planted on the coffee table.  her head flies up to come up for air and there's a piece of residual rice on her lips.  her tongue flicks it back into her mouth. i hold my mouth to keep in my gagging air.  

this morning i was actually at my mother’s. on my way to school, rounding the corner to go out the front door. my eyes flash to frankie’s ass-heart thrusting into my mother’s face on the couch— it’s 7:45 am. i take a picture. i tell my best friend rachael about it at the bus stop. she thinks it’s funny and weird. i can't think at all.  the next couple months i'm going to just stay at my dads, i'll have better luck there.

i do however have to go back once to retrieve some of my things i left behind after a week or so. 

“sammy ran away!” my mother told me. her voice is like an untuned instrument.

“he didn’t come back?”, i ask— because he runs away a lot. he always comes back

though, even if by the means of our neighbors dragging him home, knocking on our door, and hating us.

“he’s been gone for.... two weeks” my mother said.

i don’t have any way to mass produce a flyer with pictures of him so  i begin to individually draw out a picture of him and the words LOST DOG on about 30 pieces of paper. i put a couple of

them in sheet protectors because i’m afraid the rain will ruin them, or my tears. i ride my bike to the ends of all the streets nearby. i nail them to the posts. my tears make it hard to see sometimes, but i get through it.  this is my misson.

it's been so long now that i wonder if he's just gone for good. i start to think about him less and less. i am hoping that he was able to find a new home, or at least a couple friends along the way.

i know it's not true, but the bright side is comforting.

it’s october in 2009. my best friend somier and i are having my mother drive us to go see

a movie. i'm testing the waters with her being around me— i'm still a little bitter, but she’s trying to buy back my love. so i allow the chance.

we’re at a stop light. the red light from the brakes in front of us trace the outline of her crazy curly hair. little pieces of it are blowing in the breeze, the windows are down. the air is very brisk— i like it though. she’s talking about something, but i can’t hear.

“i still can’t believe he did that to me— to sammy!” my mother blurted.

“....what are you talking about? i mean i figured it was him who let him out?” i replied. him being franky...

“oh shit— i forgot!” she let out loud laughter. “i guess i just didn’t want to make you

cry... but you know franky killed sammy, right? he smothered him to death right in front of me.” 

i'm in shock. “......why didn’t you do anything??” i get out.

“oh... well that’s because he tied me up. he covered sammy's mouth and closed his nose” 

i look at somier. her face is blank. i’m sure mine is too...

we’re at burger king. my mother calls the garbage cans "trash receptacles". we think it’s a funny "old person" thing to say. we all laugh pretty hard.

#writers on tumblr #childhood trauma #past life #personal #essay

[goobergamer]

Welcome to the Real World, Chpt. 2/?

Fic Summary:  ‘The real world’ is Marine Corps slang referring to civilian life after discharge. -(x) 

Or, Washington, new and struggling veteran, moves into a duplex where he has a strange and surly neighbor with a penchant for the color red. (Sargington modern war vets AU)

Warnings: No common warnings for this chapter, ask me if you need specific content tagged for!

First chapter on Tumblr here: (x). This chapter crossposted to AO3 here: (x)

The first rain since Wash’s arrival to the house three days prior sees sheets of water falling to the porch steps. It takes him a couple of trips between the kitchen and the rest of the house to realize that what’s falling outside the front window is far heavier than the rain on his other two sides of the complex. Pulling on a jacket and braving the waterfall to reach the bottom of the stairs, he spies a gutter full to capacity with wet leaves, spilling what it can over the rim. Odd that there would already be so many in the summer.

Or perhaps not so odd. Did Stephen say anything about gutter cleaning?

Maybe. Wash’s guess is as good as anyone else’s; physically present he was for their meetings, mentally present? Not so much.

Well, there is someone he can ask now. Sarge has been living there for at least a few months already. He should have had an idea of what maintenance comes with the place.

At Wash’s knock, Sarge’s door swings open a few inches before stopping short, no fewer than three security chains holding it in place. He squints out the gap before recognizing Wash, his expression shifting to one...slightly less suspicious. “Washington.”

“Uh, hi.” Wash feels out of practice in conversations with normal people, let alone a man who’s clearly a fair stretch beyond that. “The, uh, gutter’s overflowing, and I was wondering if they hire someone to do cleanings here?”

“Nope, that’s on us.”

Joy. At least it isn’t a one-person building. “Okay. Do you want to come out now to do it, or we can--”

“No can do,” Sarge interrupts, face impassive. “I don’t do heights.” And he promptly slams the door.

After giving it a long, incredulous stare, Wash walks back to his own side. He has some sense that even if he were to knock again and Sarge actually opened the door, the conversation wouldn’t get much further.

He climbs out an upstairs window onto the porch’s overhang with his makeshift gutter cleaner, a broom. The thought crosses his mind to leave Sarge’s half of the gutter untouched; it would probably still drain from Wash’s pipe, but he would get his point made either way. In the end, however, he brushes the rest of the leaves off the side of the porch. May as well get it while he’s up there instead of being a (well-deserved) asshole; there’s already one frustrating neighbor in the complex, there doesn’t need to be two.

---

Routines are good. Routines are normal. Routines make Wash feel efficient with his time, as opposed to aimless with the amount of it he just can’t fill.

And routines mean that nothing is wrong, that everything can be expected because it is exactly the same as it has been. Wash of course would never lean on that, never let his guard slip, but it’s comforting all the same.

Get up at 6 (though waking up often happens earlier, not by his choice). Out of the shower by 6:30. Coffee on the porch by 7, before the summer heat bears down. Like clockwork. He’s maintained it for two weeks in the duplex now.

Except today, when Wash steps out with his drink, something is wrong. He senses, before he really sees, the moving shape out of the corner of his eye, and jerks his hand back, instinct ready to transform his mug of burning hot coffee into a weapon.

He pauses, thankfully, when the figure is fully in his line of sight; Sarge, sitting on a kitchen chair he must have dragged out, holding his own coffee mug. Apparently unaware of his near brush with second-degree burns, or at least ignoring it, he offers a gruff “morning, Washington,” as a casual greeting.

Wash mentally counts back from 5, straightening up as his heartbeat slows to somewhere within the range of normal. “...Hey, Sarge,” he finally replies, tone clearly conveying his confusion. “...What are you doing out here?”

“A man can’t drink coffee on his own front stoop?” Sarge squints at him, challenging.

Not when you haven’t done it any time before now. “I mean-- I-- Nevermind.” Wash doesn’t need the routine. Sarge doesn’t need to drink his coffee there either, but Wash can already guess who would more easily fold.

With a small “hmph”, Sarge nods, seemingly victorious in whatever nonsense he thought was going on. He takes a sip of his coffee, and after another moment of staring, Wash leans his elbows on the railing and imitates the action.

The two remain there, silently drinking and watching the road, until Sarge’s cup finally drains. He promptly stands up, nodding at Wash when the movement draws his eye, and returns to his apartment.

Wash doesn’t know what to make of it. Sure, not everyone lives on a schedule, but why change it up this particular day? There’s nothing special about it. It’s no cooler or hotter than usual. No more or less sunny.

There’s no special reason he shouldn’t, either, he reminds himself. But the thought had still gnawed at him every time Sarge shifted and Wash had to work not to twitch.

It makes more sense--not much, but more--when the next morning, Sarge is back out there again.

---

A little over a week more, and Wash has made tenuous peace with Sarge’s now daily presence during his morning coffee. They greet each other, and say goodbye when one or the other clears out, but not a whole lot is said in between. It would almost be easy to ignore him there once they’re settled in...if Wash isn’t growing more curious about Sarge, against his better judgement.

He knows, logically, it’s the water in the desert phenomenon; beyond the cashiers who ring him up for his once-weekly grocery trips, he hasn’t had much engagement with people over the past month. While that’s by his preference, it still isn’t what he was previously used to, sleeping in tents or on floors packed with five or six other people he had been training with or fighting beside daily for years. However much of a closed door he is, Sarge is still a little bit of necessary human interaction.

Today is sticky-hot, even so early in the morning, and Sarge emerges after Wash, sporting a red tank top and a worn pair of cargo shorts.

“Washington.”

“Sarge.”

With formalities out of the way, Sarge settles into his chair. Wash intends to turn toward the road, hazy as the dew burns off the asphalt, but before he can something catches his eye. Though there is a rough-hewn scar on Sarge’s nearest shoulder, Wash’s eyes are drawn to a splash of color above it. Tattoos of military origin are typically recognizable in style alone, but this one in particular is startlingly familiar, with its similarity to the Recon Jack skull tattooed on Wash’s chest.

They aren’t a match, though, and Wash’s question is answered when he reads the banner script beneath it: ‘USAF Combat Control’.

“You were special ops,” Wash realizes aloud. He isn’t familiar with many standard military units outside of the Marines, but he has at least a passing knowledge of the high-level special operations forces he could have come across on collaborative assignments. The Air Force’s Combat Control Teams, trained on combat support and communication behind enemy lines, are one of them.

Sarge’s brow furrows at the sudden break in the silence, before he follows Wash’s line of sight to the tattoo. He huffs, as though disgruntled that Wash has somehow noticed something completely out in the open. “You’re damn right I am.”

The skull is surrounded by two curling wings, with a parachute in the backdrop. I don’t do heights. So either he had been lying to get Wash to clean the gutters alone...or there’s something significant there.

Not that it’s exactly his business. He plays it safe, asking, “how many jumps?”

“More than you.”

Likely true. Definitely frustrating in its evasiveness. “I don’t recall mentioning what I did.”

“And I don’t recall making a guess! My answer still stands.” But it doesn’t take long for Sarge to start poking for more info. Perhaps Wash hasn’t been the only one curious. “You don’t get scars that big by paper pushing. Unless they’ve started handing out medals for paper cuts.”

Maybe Wash being straightforward in a gesture of goodwill will encourage it in his cagey neighbor. Besides, it’s not like he feels any inclination to hide the info Sarge is after. It’s his past, for better or for worse. “Marines. Force recon.”

Sarge grunts in reply, but his begrudging recognition seeps through. Wash had trained in spec ops as well, with an emphasis on reconnaissance, gathering intel deep within enemy territory. Though Sarge had probably parachuted more, as he’d said, it would have been for his role’s focus and his age. Wash has his own areas of greater experience he could claim. They’re on fairly equal footing, as far as things go.

“Awful young to be out of the game now, after all that training,” Sarge comments, another probe. Wash turns his attention to his coffee, now growing lukewarm; while he appreciates that he’s gotten Sarge talking, that isn’t first full-length conversation material by a longshot.

“You aren’t that old, yourself,” he finally evades.

Sarge barks a laugh at that, but apparently his own discharge isn’t first conversation material either, because he drains the last of his coffee and waves Wash goodbye for the day.

A/N:  Sarge's shoulder tattoo: (x)

Wash’s shoulder tattoo: (x)

#rvb #red vs blue #wttrw #welcome to the real world

[mommyblessing-fyi]

get vaccinated & go… where ?

12/20/21

I was on the lookout for a destination that’s drivable from Kansas City for a vacation that would tease Daddy Blessing into getting vaccinated.

A college student whose family is also mixed race said privately that she didn’t think Lake of the Ozarks was such a good idea… and per a summer 2021 article it looked as though people at the Ozarks are pretty much anti-vax and anti-mask, too.

Another of my students made a trip to the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta with her teen-aged daughter this fall. I’ve been wanting to explore Albuquerque/Santa Fe, and I’m acquainted with a couple Nigerian-Americans living in Santa Fe. I remember how, once when driving westward, it was as though the backdrop suddenly changed upon entering New Mexico.

Alas, Santa Fe was too far to drive with what time we had. 

When Daddy B got his first shot I decided on St. Louis, about four hours away, and booked an AirBnB duplex for two nights. I also got timed tickets to the top of the Arch for midday Monday to push us out of Kansas City and on our way by 7am that morning.

The long drive-thru line for a “fast” breakfast on the way had me a little anxious, still we arrived on schedule and parked in a metered spot by the footbridge to Gateway Arch Park.

I had gone up in the arch once before, on my way home for Christmas from college. Looking down from the top I saw a pristine lawn of snow. Back on ground I took my afghan hound for a run. With our six feet we marked a giant figure eight - an infinity sign - on that blank canvas. We went round, and round again, to win the attention of onlookers 600 feet above.

I’d forgotten all about climbing aboard the little Arch tram car with jolting rides up & down and views of the structure’s innards along the way…

At the top Blessing and Daddy B pulled phones out of pockets and began framing up views of Missouri to the west and Illinois, just over the Mississippi River, to our east. You feel God-like looking out on the world below where teensy people and cars are moving about.

The exit from the arch complex sent us straight out to the foot of a leg where Blessing posed for photos by the end of the silver rainbow. What a mighty work for the public sphere, thank you Eero Saarinen. It looks contemporary at 55 years plus.

Later that first day it appeared that our AirBnB had only one bedroom ! We opened this door and that... to find B’s room downstairs - with its freshly-made bed, mirror wall, and snaking remote-control mood light. Blessing gave me a hug. 

During our stay we took in the Aquarium, where a stingray circling the petting pool gave B a big splash (these rays have had their barbs removed, btw). We did the free behind-the-scenes tour of Shark Canyon which was simply a view from above narrated by a well informed guide. The Canyon is vast with many species and dramatic tank-side views. Beyond that were aquaria with leafy sea dragons, sea nettles (jellyfish with long, flowing tentacles)… and a ruffly octopus colored orange (at least for the moment) that receives “enrichment” through being given puzzles to solve. 

When I look back through my videos, it’s as though my phone’s a window to an aquarium ~

Our other stops included Laumeier Sculpture Park, the Cathedral, the Art Museum, and lastly the Zoo. Close up views of gorillas had us marveling at how their feet seemed like hands and how their ears and hands looked almost human.

We prepared most meals at our vacation abode and enjoyed a supper out at Lona’s Li’l Eats, “home of the giant rice paper wrap.”

Back in Kansas City I’ve been dreaming of Christmas Eve in Santa Fe: the Farolito Walk, midnight service at the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi…

(Maybe next Christmas !)

(c) Mommy Blessing, 2021

#vaccineacceptance #vaccinationvacay #vaccinationvacation #reasontogetvaccinated #StLouis #STL #Missouri #MississippiRiver #cartrip #vacay #StLouisArch #STLArch #gatewayarch #silverrainbow #infinitysign #figureeight #afghan #afghanhound #blankcanvas #Christmasvacay #SantaFe #NewMexico #FarolitoWalk #SantaFeCathedral #SantaFeBasilica #mommyblessing #mommyblessingfyi #mommyblessing-fyi #immigrantperspective #familymatters

[onsometime]

By Hoai-Tran Bui

The first thing you notice about Blade Runner 2049 is how stark it is. Opening in a desolate, grey field where Ryan Gosling‘s Officer K confronts Dave Bautista‘s Sapper Morton, the world of the Blade Runner sequel steadily unfolds into the cyberpunk mecca that we were first introduced to back in 1982.

It’s clear that director Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins don’t want to ape the neon-drenched griminess of the original, instead delivering an oppressive urban labyrinth that parallels the dense claustrophobia of modern Hong Kong high rises. Only one-third of the way through the film do we see hints of a vibrant neonscape cutting through the smog and rain that covers the futuristic Los Angeles. And with that neon: holograms of dancing women in anime-inspired outfits, cute Hello Kitty-style machines, Chinese characters and Japanese kanji galore.

It amounts to a stunning, dissonant image in one of the most gorgeously shot movies of the year, and not an unfamiliar one: science-fiction movies have long borrowed East Asian imagery as a visual shorthand to portray a more globalized society. It has roots in none other than the original Blade Runner, which drew from the burgeoning Tokyo and Hong Kong metropolises of the time, as well as the rapid globalization in the ’80s. With the massive cultural influence that China, South Korea, and Japan wield today, it’s no huge leap to assume that in the near future, every city would be a cultural melting pot with East Asian influences run amok. But in Blade Runner 2049, it feels less like a nod to those influences so much as it feels like window dressing.

When East Met West: The Rise of Cyberpunk

Los Angeles is known as one of the United States’ most colorful cultural melting pots, housing a Chinatown that had become so synonymous with the gritty underbelly of the city that it inspired the title for one of Hollywood’s most famous film noirs. From that Chinatown spawned the makings of the classic cyberpunk aesthetic — Ridley Scott’s Blade Runnertook that Chinatown-set, gritty neo-noir aesthetic and ran with it.

With 1982’s Blade Runner and William Gibson’s seminal 1984 novel Neuromancer came the birth of cyberpunk, a sci-fi genre heavily influenced by Japan’s technological boom of the 1980s and Tokyo’s rapidly rising metropolis. After visiting Japan, Gibson once said:

Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. The Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns – all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information – said, ‘You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town.’ And it was. It so evidently was.

Cyberpunk blew up in the ’90s, and you could see it in everything from The Matrix, to Total Recall, to anime itself. Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and more all depicted a futuristic, grimy vision of Neo-Tokyo whose visuals can be traced back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer. It’s a cyclical nature of inspiration, see — from Tokyo to America, back to Tokyo again.

“The work that has influenced me the most in my anime profession would be, of course, Blade Runner,” Cowboy Bebopand Samurai Champloo director Shinichiro Watanabe said in an interview about his Blade Runner anime short. There’s been a cross-pollination of ideas and influence between the two countries for years — just look to “god of manga” and Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka’s influences in Disney’s Bambi, and Disney’s subsequent “plagiarizing” of Tezuka’s Kimba the White Lion for their ’90s film The Lion King.

These sci-fi films depict a future where cultural boundaries don’t exist. One of the tenets of sci-fi is its potential to predict innovations or technologies within our reach. At the rate that the world is globalizing — on a political, cultural, and social media level — the vision that Villeneuve has for Los Angeles in 2049 is probably not far off. But amidst all Chinese or Japanese slogans and imagery draped over skyscrapers, where are all the East Asian people?

The ‘Firefly’ Effect

Firefly was an ambitious, witty, and wonderful sci-fi series that was gone too soon. But it’s been long enough since the series was unceremoniously cancelled by Fox that I can say this: Firefly has a race problem. While it was inspired for showrunner Joss Whedon to give his western space opera a Chinese twist, there aren’t many (or any) Chinese characters in the series to back up this piece of world-building.

Chinese culture in Firefly is so ubiquitous that all the characters curse, write, and read in Chinese. Yes, I know the Chinese curses were a clever way for Whedon to bypass prime time TV censors, and yes, I know that in the Fireflymythology, China and the United States are the two remaining superpowers. But for all the Chinese spoken in the show, for all the Chinese-inspired design and fashion in the series, there was barely a Chinese character to be seen. There is approximately one documented minor character of Asian descent in the series, and a few extras who were spotted. It’s odd to have Chinese culture be so dominant, and not have one Chinese character establish a presence.

Blade Runner 2049 runs into these same pitfalls. While the Asian-influenced imagery remains further in the background than it did in the original Blade Runner, where the sequel goes wrong is the utter lack of Asian characters. I spotted maybe two extras of Asian descent — one in the false memory that Carla Juri’s Dr. Ana Stelline was creating, another in a fleeting shot behind Officer K when he’s approached by Replicant prostitutes. And the one character with an Asian-inspired name — Robin Wright’s Lt. Joshi has a traditionally Indian surname — is most assuredly not.

So if East or South Asian culture or language is so powerful, who is it for?

Angelica Jade Bastien at Vulture makes an interesting point about sci-fi’s tendency to depict a post-racial world in which the white characters — often dehumanized and oppressed — exist in a strange space between the Asian-inspired landscapes and the allegories for minority oppression which they are acting out. “Science fiction has long had an uncomfortable relationship with Asian cultures, which are mined to create visual splendor in order to communicate otherness,” Bastien writes. “[R]ace is relegated to inspiration, coloring the towering cityscapes of these worlds, while the white characters toil under the hardships that brown and black people experience acutely in real life.”

Like Bastien notes, sci-fi stories don’t reckon with real-life minority narratives, instead preferring to turn them into allegory. This is an effective technique, no doubt, but assumes that this futuristic world we’re introduced to is a post-racial society in which culture has become so globalized that racial and cultural borders don’t exist — but these societies are still predominantly white.

Living in a Material But Not a Post-Racial World

One of the best depictions I’ve seen of a cross-cultural future was in Disney’s Big Hero 6, an often overlooked superhero-lite movie released in 2014. The protagonist, Hiro, is a half-Japanese, half-American boy genius living in the somewhat clunkily-named San Fransokyo — an amalgam of San Francisco and Tokyo.

But less than a clumsy merger of the San Francisco skyline with Japanese-inspired artifacts, Big Hero 6 creates a rich world in which the two cities comfortably mesh the old with the new, much like the neon-drenched Tokyo that became an inspiration for many a cyberpunk metropolis in the ’80s.

At the time of the movie’s release, The New Yorker‘s Roland Kelts called the elegant-yet-eclectic design of San Fransokyo a “marvel of architectural alchemy”:

“Shibuya skyscrapers with pulsing video screens hug San Francisco’s iconic Transamerica Pyramid. Victorian Mission duplexes line hilly San Fransokyo neighborhoods, aglow from the pink-white light of Japanese cherry blossoms in full bloom below. Trains from the Yamanote and Chuo lines, two of Tokyo’s central and most popular railways, stream by on elevated tracks. The sprawling Yokohama Bay Bridge connects the financial district to San Francisco’s East Bay, which may well be home to Oaksaka and Berkyoto in this Japanamerican universe.”

As much as I point to Blade Runner 2049 as one of the perpetrators of the problem of choosing “costume” over “collaboration” (see: this Vulture roundtable discussion on where the line of cultural appropriation should be drawn), the original Blade Runner managed to avoid this stumbling block. Perhaps it was because its neo-noir style was as much ingrained in the Chinatown of Los Angeles as it was inspired by the Hong Kong skyscrapers, or perhaps it was because Rick Deckard negotiated with as many Asian noodle sellers and seedy pawn shop owners as he interacted with those of other ethnicities. Whatever the case, this is one of the few places where the sequel falls short of the original.

Still, there are other films that sit uncomfortably on the periphery. Ghost in the Shell divorced itself of any cultural context completely by moving the setting from a futuristic Tokyo to the ambiguous New Port City — though that setting still retained its cyberpunk East Asian influences. This means that the 2017 Ghost in the Shell tangled entangles itself with its own  representation and diversity problems — there are a few Asian characters and one of the two recognizable actors featured (Rila Fukushima) is a geisha robot. In Ghost in the Shell, the vague nods to all cultures only make the film feel more hollow and aimless — a shell, you might even say.

A Future to Look Forward To

Blade Runner 2049‘s missteps with race don’t detract from the powerful story it tells about the will to live, and love. Rather, Villeneuve’s film becomes an interesting confluence of issues that have been simmering beneath the surface of sci-fi for a long time now.

It only becomes noticeable when held up to the original film, whose influences become all the more stronger even as Blade Runner 2049 becomes less about any cultural inspiration than it is about an all-encompassing message about humanity. Blade Runner 2049 comes at a time when Tokyo is no longer than awe-inspiring cultural metropolis that spawned so many cyberpunk stories and movies. It comes at a time when the future looks less like the colorful, grimy neon lights of Blade Runner and more like the dense, smog-filled labyrinths. So the story it tells is no longer one that is rooted in our current paranoias and beliefs, but rather a universal story about the abstract concepts that Villeneuve comes to again and again: cycles of brutality, and cycles of empathy.

I wish I could say I had a better conclusion — but then again, who does?

#blade-runner #sci-fi