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extraneousdominomask · 4 years

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Family.

This was, technically, Elyna’s second ever Día de Muertos.

That first autumn had bled into winter in a blur. Things in the house had been hectic, and tense. Understandably tense. Justifiably tense. Even without the exceptional circumstances, the ghost of a murderer hanging over this lovely home, it was easy for traditions to slide a little. It had taken a lot of careful effort to “adopt” her.

Oops. She was doing it again. The thing her therapist had pointed out where she didn’t classify the things that happened to her as real, because she didn’t see herself as real, but everything she felt was more than real so it only made sense to drop that habit and accept herself.

It had taken a lot of effort to adopt her. Yes.

That was what had happened. About fourteen months ago, this family, this wry and well-liked pillar of the local community, had revealed that they actually had a second daughter. Older and taller and much more purple than the pre-existing daughter. And they included her in everything. Last night, she had shared a wonderful Hallowe’en with them.

And now it was November 1st. From one holiday right into another.

Sly wasn’t a particularly spiritual man, despite - because of? - all the actual, literal undead creatures he had battled in his youth. He loved a good excuse to celebrate, though. As well as the big, basically secular holidays, he was happy to join his wife in her own traditions. The Montoyas and the Foxes were spread across pretty much the entire Spanish-speaking world and beyond, and at this point Carmelita essentially just picked her favourites. Factoring in all the globe-trotting they had both done, separately and together, the household’s annual calendar was… interestingly blended.

So, an archetypal Hallowe’en was always followed by a traditional Día de Muertos. It wasn’t a total shift in tone - it was important to remember the deceased with love and good humour, something this household could produce in industrial quantities - but there was a certain reverence to proceedings that was noticeably absent on the preceding night of pumpkins and candy and horror films.

Carmelita took this fairly seriously. That was why Elyna was dreading it.

Sly had stepped out, taking B with him. An annual raid for clearance candy. A shared activity Elyna preferred them to keep for themselves. This was her best shot. She had no idea how she was going to get through this conversation, even removing the possibility of her father bursting in with a poorly-timed joke.

‘Her father’. She reflected on those words as she stalked towards the living room. Sly Cooper was the source of half her genetics. The necessary ingredient that made her a test-tube baby instead of an unfeasible clone. And despite a… tense first meeting, she hadn’t had much difficulty accepting the fact he was her father. It was exactly that. A fact. His overtures of friendliness, everything he did to make her feel welcome, came with a solid, scientific basis.

His wife, though…

Elyna let herself into the living room. It already looked so different from the makeshift movie theatre it had been last night. This was a small town, with an almost suspiciously low crime rate. There wasn’t that much work even for the Chief of Police, and that leftover energy meant quick and efficient decorating and undecorating and redecorating.

The only survivors were the skeletons, grinning and painted, specific to Día de Muertos but certainly not out of place last night. But the pumpkins and cobwebs and big orange candles were gone. The back wall had been cleared, making space for several beautiful ofrendas.

Elyna’s eye lingered on one corner, distinct from what was otherwise a sea of severe foxes. A photograph was the focal point, per tradition. It depicted two raccoons. One had black hair and sharp, intelligent eyes - still noticeably green in the otherwise faded colour palette. She was giving the camera a quiet smirk. The other was only identifiable as a raccoon by the hint of his striped tail sneaking up through the bottom of the frame. His arm was lovingly around the woman’s shoulders, but his face was totally obscured.

Every year, Carmelita asked if Sly seriously didn’t have a better photo of his father, and every year, Sly would make a fresh joke about the man’s lifelong animosity with cameras. Just another tradition. Another ritual, part of the smooth running of the holiday.

“Your grandparents.”

Carmelita was adjusting a small figurine of an acoustic guitar with pinpoint precision, getting it in exactly the right spot relative to a smiling ancestor. But she had heard Elyna come in, and knew where those hazel eyes were focused.

“Conner Cooper, and his wife Beatrice,” she continued. “B is named after both of her grandmothers, actually. It’s made easier by the fact Sly’s mother preferred to be called Trixie.”

Elyna took another look at the bulk of the ofrendas, remembering her sister’s full name. “But, um, Zoe’s not up here, right?”

Carmelita smiled to herself. “Not yet she isn’t. Or my father. Too stubborn. At this rate, they might both outlast you.”

It was a harmless joke. One Elyna had to stop herself from hearing as a threat.

Carmelita straightened up, turning thoughtful. “We’re overdue for a visit,” she said. “I thought we had introduced you, but apparently not.”

These sorts of forgetful exchanges were becoming rarer. Elyna fiddled with a stand of her black hair - she was growing it out, and still getting used to it, and didn’t need distractions right now. Didn’t need to think about how she never met her father’s wife’s parents. Her step-mother’s parents. Her step-grandparents.

This was her chance. Her best shot. She should just follow her training and seize the moment. Without fear.

“I have a question,” she mumbled. “About this, I mean.”

“Oh?”

“I, uh,” said Elyna, “have no idea whether I should put up a picture of my mom.”

The living room went silent.

Silence was one of the reactions Elyna had been expecting, and it was honestly one of the better ones. But that didn’t make it comfortable. “It’s just,” she attempted, “it’s kinda unclear to me if it’s all your family, or just the ones you…”

“The belief,” said Carmelita, crisply, “is that by setting up an ofrenda you’re inviting that person’s spirit into your home.”

“Right.”

“So you do it for people you want in your home.”

“Right,” said Elyna again, quieter.

A few moments passed. And then Carmelita sighed. Her posture, which had become rigid, uncoiled a little. “There’s no one answer,” she said, more diplomatically. “The spirit of the holiday is remembering the togetherness of family. But we both know that’s how things should be, not how they always are. Not everyone is so lucky.”

“I’m sorry.” Elyna was back to fiddling with her hair. “I know it’s a stupid question.”

“Not at all. I’ve always held there’s no such thing as a stupid question.” She put on an expression of exaggerated tiredness. “Or at least I used to say that, before moving in with your father…”

Elyna chuckled at that, and Carmelita smiled. That was always Sly’s strategy for smoothing a bumpy discussion - knowing when to include a soft joke. Carmelita had gotten better at it herself over the years.

“Has this been worrying you for long?”

“It’s kind of been in my head on and off for the past month. Sorry for only bringing it up now. And sorry for…” Elyna sighed. “I shouldn’t even be asking you about this. I know how much Mo- …how much Neyla hurt you both. Obviously you don’t want a picture of her in your living room.”

“The question,” said Carmelita softly, “is do you?”

Said question hung in the air for a few moments, unanswered. Carmelita intently watched the teenage girl in front of her. She looked so much like Neyla. But standing there, her paws awkwardly clasped, her gaze nervously on the floor, she couldn’t be more different.

“Do you know the origins of this holiday?”

Elyna managed to tear her eyes off the carpet, watching Carmelita carefully.

“It’s pre-Columbian,” she explained. “The practice of honouring the dead is rooted in the ancient cultures of Mexico. It was an important part of life for the people who lived there long before the Europeans came. The modern version we celebrate today is a mixture of those original practices with a Catholic influence. That’s why it’s held on this date, for instance - to sync up with the church calendar. I think it’s important to remember it’s a blend.”

Elyna’s ear flicked. “A ‘blend’? That’s a pretty nice way of putting it. I’m no historian, but Hernán Cortés didn’t just step off his boat and ask everyone to play nice, did he?”

“No,” said Carmelita quietly.

“It’s not a blend. A blend would be if the Europeans and the natives set out to make something nice together. This is some kind of Frankenstein monster made when one group was just minding their own business and someone else came up behind them and-”

It was Elyna’s turn to fall silent.

“Oh,” she said.

Her face scrunched up a little, and Carmelita sighed. “That’s… not what I meant. Or at least not exactly.”

“You only kind of meant to call me a Frankenstein, got it,” muttered Elyna, who was, fantastical circumstances or not, still a teenage girl.

“I didn’t call you anything.” Carmelita’s voice was steady. Not sharp, but steely, leaving no room for argument. She hadn’t thought much about motherhood earlier in her life, but she had always been able to keep a firm grip on an unpleasant discussion, and that was one of the fundamental requirements. “Try not to assume the worst of what I’m saying.”

Elyna stayed quiet.

“But… yes. I suppose it might be an applicable metaphor. You’ve got two sides to you, too. You’re Neyla’s, and you’re Sly’s. You’re the result of some cruel revenge scheme, and you’re a person with your own desires. Who you are now is a product of both.”

“That’s… yeah.” Elyna rubbed her arm sheepishly. “That’s pretty much what’s been eating at me. Neyla was an objectively bad person. And like, I never even met her, so it’s not like I’m attached. Or at least I shouldn’t be attached…”

Not for the first time, Carmelita privately despaired at the uncertainty in the girl’s tone. That therapist had a lot to work through.

“…but the fact is, I wouldn’t exist without her. At all. And that’s… It’s just weird.” She paused. “Yeah.”

“And now all those confusing feelings have a physical problem. Whether or not to put up her picture.”

“Yeah…”

“I’m not being flippant when I say I don’t know what to tell you,” said Carmelita. “Not everyone in my family tree was a saint. No-one can claim that. But as far as I know, we never had a Neyla.”

“As far as you know,” echoed Elyna. “That sounds like the answer, then. Monsters get written out of the family history.”

“They don’t get invited to parties, at least,” she replied. “Which, like I said, is the spirit. It’s keeping your family close, because you never want to forget their warmth.”

Elyna resisted the urge to scoff. Purely for Carmelita’s benefit - it wasn’t directed at her. ‘Remembering warmth’. There wasn’t any warmth to remember when it came to Neyla. To the brisk, clipped instructions Elyna had been left in lieu of a childhood.

She felt the decision click into place.

“Let’s not do it.”

Carmelita, to her credit, kept her reaction diplomatic. “You’ve decided?”

“Yeah. If the point is remembering the good times, well… A photograph of Neyla is just a waste of space.”

In other circumstances, Carmelita would have shown more enthusiasm for an insult that harsh, that confidently delivered. But she knew to tread relatively lightly, so she just offered Elyna a smile. “Well said. I’m glad I could help.”

“Yeah. Thanks a lot.” Elyna nervously returned it. “I was hoping you’d know what to do. And, I knew that you, y’know… I mean, I can ask Dad for advice on a lot of things, and it’s usually pretty good, but-”

“Happy Skeleton Day~!”

The door swung open, revealing a grinning Sly. They hadn’t heard him come through the front door, but he had no qualms about announcing his presence.

“How’s it going?” His eyes, the same hazel as Elyna’s, fell on the ofrendas. “Oh, wow. These look better and better every year, ‘Lita.”

“Oh, I didn’t do much differently…” said Carmelita, but her face betrayed how much she appreciated the comment.

He planted a kiss on her cheek, then planted himself beside her, husbandly.

“Where’s B?”

“Oh, she ran straight to her room,” he said. “Pretty sure she’s stashing her candy in a secure location. Or locations. Who knows how many caches she might have…”

Carmelita sighed. “Is that raccoon behaviour, or fox behaviour…?”

“Oh, both. Absolutely both. It’s a marvel she eats anything at dinner.”

He turned his warm smile more towards Elyna.

“So, what are you two talking about?”

“Just, uh, holiday stuff,” said Elyna. “I had a weird question. Carmelita is a good person to ask.”

“She is! Honestly, I just follow her lead.” He glanced over to her. “Speaking of, there’s still a few things to figure out about the big dinner. Bentley and Penelope are easy to cook for, but I like to give Murray new options where I can. Any thoughts?”

Seizing this chance for a tactful retreat, Elyna began to drift towards the door. “I might, uh, go check on B.”

“Good idea,” said Carmelita. “Again, I’m glad I could answer your question. You can always talk to me, Elyna.” That earned a smile, once much less nervous.

“Thanks, Mom.”

There was a pause.

Sly was pretty sure that blushes weren’t supposed to show up through fur, and yet, the lilac of Elyna’s face seemed to briefly veer into a much more reddish purple. Her hazel eyes were wide and unblinking. “mrrghg,” she said.

“Come again?” said Sly, unruffled.

“I said ‘okay bye’,” said Elyna and she was gone an instant later.

The door clicked shut with surprising gentleness. Sly chuckled. “Well…”

He stopped, finally noticing his wife had a similar facial expression.

“‘Lita? Everything alright?”

She blinked, twice, and suddenly she was back. It was still hard to slow Carmelita Fox down. “Sorry. Just wasn’t expecting that.”

Sly’s smile was wry, but his voice was soft. “I was.”

Carmelita leaned against him, and they stood there for a moment, half-embracing in their living room. Logistical questions about dinner plans and decorations fell away, briefly, as they savoured the feeling in the air. What had just happened, and the unique atmosphere of the day, and, of course, each other.

The silence was broken by a soft murmur.

“She’s a good kid.”

“Really?” said Sly innocently. “She doesn’t get it from me!”

Carmelita scoffed.

“Okay, maybe she does,” he admitted. “I have many wonderful qualities to pass on, as is evident in both our daughters…”

He cupped his wife’s cheek. Lost himself, for a moment, in those deep brown eyes.

“But you’re a better influence than I could ever be.”

Her reply was a kiss.

The moment passed, slowly, but they didn’t hurry to get back to decorating. It was still early, and they had several hours before the annual dinner they held for Murray and Bentley and Penelope - familial relations just as important as the gallery of photographs in front of them. As the girls engaged in hushed discussion of cheap chocolate upstairs.

“Oh,” said Carmelita. “While she and I were talking, I realized that Elyna’s never met my parents. We should fix that.”

“We should,” said Sly. “Sometime in winter, maybe? Whenever suits your folks. Might take us a little while to get over there, but we could throw in a few detours on the way, really make use of the journey…”

She smiled. “And when did I say we’d be going to them? They’d be perfectly happy to come here. You’re just-”

“-taking every chance I see to go on a trip, yes,” he smirked back. “C’mon, ‘Lita, you can hardly be that surprised. Old habits, etcetera…”

“Are you really so eager to escape?”

She said it as a joke, but he didn’t bounce back with another quip. He stood there, in his living room. His daughters upstairs. His parents watching over him from behind the glass of their picture frame. His brothers and sister-in-law, still thriving, quietly, the same way he was, on their way in a few hours. And, above all else, the love of his life in his arms.

His smile was as warm as his voice.

“Nah. We’ve got something pretty good here.”

#SlyFox #Elyna #just some regular-boy prose to close out!

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gavinstrashbag · 5 years

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Pride

Pride month was always Gavin’s favourite. Each year him and his friends - and his ‘Uncle’ Dee, the best god damn drag queen Gavin has met - would arrange to go to their local parade, and just have fun, being themselves.

Dee would dress up, as usual, high heels and, on occasions, a wig (although, she never actually needed to, as her hair was long enough and Gavin would help style it). Tina would wear high waisted trousers and crops tops (much different to her usual loose trousers and band merch). And Gavin would just kinda... be his normal self - ripped jeans, loose t-shirts, brackets, peircings and eyeliner.

Each year, the route for the parade was the same. Start at the Tuesday Market Place, walk through town, pass the police station (which would always change the flag to a pride themed one), and into the park (called ‘The Walks’). The parade would finish in the large expanse of the park, it has shops and booths and a live band. It’s where everyone could meet collectively and sit and relax and just talk to one another. It was nice. Every time Gavin went there was always something new, someone new. He loved it.

This particular year was no exception.

Starting at the Tuesday Market Place, the anouncer came on to the mic to tell everyone the parade would be starting shortly.

Just like every year, the parade started, with much commotion, as people started to make their way down the narrow roads.

Just like each year, there was bystanders on the sides of the road. Some innocently trying to get their shopping done, but paid no mind and made no grief for the paraders - some even joined in and smiled at the lovely scenes in front of them.

Just like each year, however, there where those few bystanders who didn’t support what they saw. This never detered the paraders though, as they where silent - an old man with a cross, a pensioner with his thumb down, or maybe just a catholic mother. Either way, they weren’t actually bothering the people of pride. So Gavin, Tina, Dee and in fact, everyone else, continued walking.

The most narrow street that the parade walked down is one of Gavin’s favourite streets. It had a pizza shop, two record shops, literally the most gothic shop in his area and the police station on it. It was beautiful, old cobble pathed it and he always remembered it because someone made an art piece on it at his college.

The beginning of the walk down this street was fine, he was smiling, laughing with Tina - who’s girlfriend had suddenly appeared. Towards the end of the street, Gavin noticed a few stragglers, a small group of people that didn’t seem to be moving with the parade. Just viewers maybe.

As they got closer, he could see that they didn’t seem to happy about the parade. They shouted cuss words as people walked by, screaming at them as if trying to scare people away. In fact, Gavin could see the clear arch to the right as people started to walk on the opposite side of the narrow street.

Finally close enough to see the group clearly, Gavin could see that there was 4 boys and a young girl. He made eye contact with, who he could only assume was the boy that started to rebellion, and Gavin shook his head at them.

Clearly the wrong move.

The first hit fell to his left cheek. The next was his right side as he fell to the ground. Two, three boys where on him in a second flat. Kicking, punching, even spitting on him as they tried to degrad him with words.

Several punches later and Gavin was finally lifted from the ground by a few sets of strong hands. People from the parade behind him lifted him to his feet and the three boys who’d beaten him backed away.

Gavin looked at them, blood covering his right eyelid, keeping it shut. His lip stung from the sweat and spit and blood that poured over the deep cut. His nose aches like a bitch, he can feel the blood leaking down it, he suspects that it must be broken. He notices the two people from the group that looked at him shocked, scared, guilty on the side of the road. They hadn’t done anything to stop their other friends, they where innocent but never said a word to help. Gavin turned away, and started walking with the parade again, pretending the stinging all over his body and the blood all over his face wasn’t there.

The parade kept walking, as far as he knew, the group that beat him had departed, no one else got the tail end of their fists. That was good.

Finally, they reached the park. Picnic tables, booths and shops, the live band and a police car where gathered in a sort of circle. It brought another smile to Gavin’s face when he saw the gigantic ‘PRIDE’ sign that only gets erected on the occasion of this parade. It looked just like it does every year.

Dee and Tina hasn’t stopped pestering Gavin. Which, to be honest, Gavin didn’t mind the attention, but they don’t understand that he just doesn’t care about those types of people, and that he has the right to move on.

“There’s no point crying over spilled blood, Teeni.” Gavin says.

“Gavin, you know that’s not how the quote goes...”

Gavin’s argument is completely dismissed however when he sits down on the freshly mowed grass. He’s suddenly surrounded by 20 people, give or take. It’s so sudden that he thinks he lost so much blood that he hallucinating, and it’s loud, they’re all speaking to him at once, asking him questions.

They suddenly sit down. All in a circle, looking at him.

It’s the weirdest trip, and Gavin doesn’t actually know if it’s real. Someone asks him if he’s okay, and he says he’s fine. They watch as a medic walks over and sits beside Gavin, carefully ridding his face of the - slowly drying - blood. Adding small closure strips to keep the cuts and deeper wounds together, they even check the shoulder that Gavin landed on when he fell to the floor. Nothing hospital worthy, but the medic confirms that he’ll definitely have a scar across his nose.

Eventually, the medic leaves, along with a few other people from the circle. There’s a couple of people still with him - Dee, Tina and her girlfriend included. They all chat, talk about what just happened, talk about their experiences, prounous & preferences, sexualities and a few of them even exchange phone numbers.

Suddenly, a white bag is placed his front of Gavin’s crosses legs. Confused, and slightly worried at the mysterious white bag, Gavin looks around to see who’d placed it there.

A young man, probably his age, looks at him with, admittedly beautiful, but sad eyes. Gavin recognises him, from earlier. With the group that had beaten him.

Gavin grabs the bag, grunts and asks the man, “what do you want?”

A few people in the circle murmur, also noticing the boy.

“I want to apologise.” He looks at the people in the group and then back to the swollen face, “you er... your cuts, they bled pretty bag. I brought you some food... I didn’t want you to pass out...”

Gavin looked in the white bag, a drink, crisps, some fruit and a sandwich where in there.

Before he could reply, someone in the group shouted, “maybe you should fuck off” at the young man.

He started to leave, head low. Gavin could tell he felt guilty, he took pity in that.

“Wait,” the boy turned again, “you... you can stay. If you want.”

Wordlessly, the man took a few timid steps and sat in the circle. Not next to Gavin, but close. A few people stared at him, some people looked at Gavin as if to say, ‘are you insane?’ But he ignored them.

“So, what’s your name?” Gavin asked, not to loud, in fact he was kind of scared that if he spoke loud enough in that moment the boy would take off in a sprint.

Gavin wouldn’t say the guy looked shy, or like he was easily scared for that matter. He had dark cloths on. Skinny jeans, black long sleeved shirt, Doc Martin boots on and so many piercings. It looked as though him and Gavin had coordinated their clothes.

“My names Niles.” He was quiet, “what’s your name?”

“‘M Gavin, nice to meet you.” Gavin got a small, ‘yeah’ in response.

It was mostly silent for a few minutes after Niles joined, the air a little awkward between them. It was clear that others picked up on it because someone turned and asked Niles, “why are you here, in the parade, sitting with us, when you’re homophobic?”

Niles looked up, wide eyed, eyebrows might as well have been in his hairline. “No! No I’m not homophobic!” He shook his head before continuing, “my group, took everything the wrong way. I suggested that we go to Pride because I wanted to join in. They took it as me inviting them to start a protest.”

Everyone was silent. Gavin especially.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen... I’m not homophobic,” he paused, looking at the ground, hands ripping up individual blades of grass, “I’m bisexual.”

There was a lot of tension in the group. Not because they didn’t except him coming out to them, of course not. But because they’d got it all wrong, and felt bad for judging him. They all understood his good intentions now.

Breaking the tension, Gavin reached over and clapped him on the back, “well Niles, we obviously except you.” He smiled at them as Niles raised his head to look at him, but Gavin’s smile went neutral as he said, “but what I won’t except is that you brought me lunch and forgot my fuckin’ chocolate bar.”

————————

Look at me, two posts in one day? Damn, who is she??

Hope you enjoyed ❤️

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saintmachina · 5 years

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What were some parts of seminary that you liked, versus ones you didn’t? I’m thinking about my future (read: freaking tf out) and I know I want to study theology in some way, I’m just not sure how exactly, ya feel?

Thanks for the question! Your mileage may vary: I went to a Princeton Seminary, which I would categorize as a theologically/politically moderate, academic, traditional Western-style seminary. Seminary culture varies WIDELY from school to school, so keep that in mind when choosing between, say, a Princeton, which may be a more insular academic community focused on research and internships, and a Fuller, which may be a larger community more integrated with the surrounding city concerned with practical training for missionaries, worship leaders, and Christian artists. This is NOT to say that you can’t learn to be an awesome worship leader at PTS (I know them) or an awesome theology professor at Fuller, but make sure you shop around for your particular cultural, career, and academic needs.

Things I Loved

The residential experience. Nearly all students at PTS live in beautiful on-campus housing or in apartments specialized for families with children just a few miles away. Living a few minutes walk from the library, my professors’ offices, and the chapel was amazing, especially since students at PTS tend to be sociable with the others who live on their hall. I would often spend my evenings studying with friends in their dorm rooms, and since everyone on campus at any given time tends to eat their meals in the cafeteria together, I formed a strong clique of ten or so people who unpacked my readings + spiritual crises with me at the lunch table.

Spiritual friendships. I was able to make deeper friends than ever before in my life from a variety of denominational and theological backgrounds. We saw each other through vocational shifts, prayed with each other, administered the Eucharist to each other, celebrated birthdays and ordinations together, and stayed up late into the night when anyone needed us. I would literally drive across the country to bail any of them out of jail at a moment’s notice.

The emotional crucible. Seminary is bootcamp for the soul. You get exposed to so many new ideas and theologies, learn how to preach, sit at people’s bedside while they’re sick, pull together responses for every new act of violence in the news, and most of the time, are thrust into a leadership role at a church that is either going under and begging you to save them or so large and thriving that it nearly swallows you whole. Nothing will grow you up like that. I have an insane amount of poise now dealing with other people’s crises, rage, or grief, and that wasn’t the case when I matriculated. Pastors are all making it up as we go along, but seminary gives at least the appearance of sage wisdom under pressure.

Academic engagement with theology. This one seems obvious, but after spending four years in a secular liberal arts university that was tolerant of my enduring interest in religion but didn’t offer me an outlet for it, seminary was balm in Gilead. I loved being able to dig into what I really cared about directly, be that metaphysics, church history, or the Bible as literature, and I thrived being surrounded by other people who cared about it and did the reading and wanted to explore together.

Freedom to research what I wanted. There are plenty of demanding intro-level courses that throw you to the ground and kick you while you cry into your notecards (New Testament, what’s good) but it was fun being on that ride with the rest of your small cohort, and upper-level classes offered chances to research what you cared about. I got to present research on astrology in the book of Daniel, queer American Muslim communities, IVF treatments and theology in Ghana, overlap in myths about Odin and Jesus, and I did an independent research study linking the emergent church to the spike in Millennials re-discovering the Episcopal and Catholic churches.The library was stuffed to the brim with books I would kill for. What a treat.

The melting pot. PTS DEFINITELY has its ideological and admissions biases but they do work hard to create a diverse student body, and I was close with students from so many different counties, denominations, ethnicities, and political leanings, which was enriching beyond belief. It was one of the big reasons I chose a seminary degree. That said, not all schools skew diverse, and I was very specific about choosing a seminary that was explicitly affirming of women in ministry and the goodness and wholeness of LGBTQ+ folks, so I knew that I would be supported by general school policies. Getting that information up front is important.

Access to university resources. This one is PTS specific, but I went to a independent seminary closely linked to and basically on the same campus as Princeton University (they were the same school back in the 1800s until an amicable split, but we’re still cozy). This meant that I had access to Princeton U libraries, free events, lectures, and religious life, and I was a member of the Episcopal Church at Princeton U for most of my time at seminary. People bribe admissions officials or work themselves to nervous breakdown to get access to the resources I had at my fingertips, and I don’t take that for granted.

The aesthetic. If I’m gong to take tens of thousands dollars of loans out for graduate school you bet you’re ass I’m going to be sitting in American Hogwarts while I do it.

Things I Did Not

The cliquishness. This one is a double-edged sword, because I thrived on having a clique of high-functioning. highly-educated pastors who ate at the same lunch table and gossiped about the same people and showed up to campus parties in a gang, but that’s not always healthy. People tended to fragment off by denomination or where they fall on the liberal-conservative scale, and differences can fester that way. Students of color were often implicitly excluded from certain spaces through this behavior. Humans skew towards tribalism to begin with, but when you put super socially-oriented people with strong beliefs in one space where they have to live on top of each other and are looking for low-effort socializing after a long day in the trauma ward, confessional, or picket line, it gets worse.

Imposter syndrome. Maybe it’s grad school in general that does this, but I spent most of my degree fighting off the feeling that I was dumb, lazy, not serious enough about my “calling” or my research, and probably a heretic. Part of my character growth came from learning not to give a fuck about what people who didn’t share my passions thought of them, and from realizing that I wasn’t on the ordination or PhD track like most of my peers, and that was okay. So I grew from this, but it stung like hell. I cried a lot.

No handholding. The professors at PTS were, by and large, old school, and they were busy as hell. While there was opportunities for office hours, most engagement with professors came in the performative form of “a question, well, more of a comment really” during lectures. Students, (mostly men, I’m not going to lie to you) scrambling for a good letter of rec for a PhD tended to monopolize whatever time professors had. I can think of exceptions (Ellen Charry was exceptional and made time for me in her home when I was struggling to unpack antisemitic theology) but it was a far cry from the literature department in my undergrad, where professors were accessible and knew me personally as mentors and friends.

Caregiver burnout. This is my big one, and is the reason I’m still in recoup mode doing the office job thing instead of working in formal ministry. Everyone at my school was a pastor, hospital chaplain, activist, or social worker. We are the people who care so much, and who are constantly doing emotional labor for those around us with no time off and usually, poor personal boundaries. Working in a field where it is your job to hold everyone’s hurt and be the face of God to them while their life falls apart is….hard. It was not unusual for me to work ten hours at Penn on my feet in campus ministry, helping people sort through whether or not they wanted to report their sexual assault, holding mini-interventions about excessive drinking, and scrambling to re-schedule worship night after my volunteer went to the hospital after a suicide attempt, and then ride the train home while my phone blew up with news of a new mass shooting that I would have to help host a candlelight vigil for. You hold your parishioner’s hand while they die in hospice. You watch social services take your client’s children away. You stand still while someone screams at you for being too political in your sermon, or not political enough. You sit down to do the budget only to realize the beloved pastor who just retired had been embezzling. Typical Tuesday.

A lot of the items on these lists are specific to my temperament and the culture at PTS, but by and large I would say it was an amazing experience well worth my time, effort, and money. I pushed myself academically beyond what I believed I was capable of, made the deepest friends of my life, found a home denomination, learned how to effectively care for others and myself, and was met by God in transformative ways again and again. Someday I may get that ordination or work for a ministry nonprofit again, but I have skills now that no one can take away from me, skills I use every day in some capacity.

Good luck in your discernment process, and I pray you find yourself in exactly the place you need to be!

#people of the page #princeton theological seminary #princeton seminary #seminary #grad school #studyblr #gradblr #theology

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acuppellarp · 5 years

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Welcome (again) to A Cup-pella, Ace! We’re excited to have you and Santana Lopez in the game! Please go through the checklist to make sure you’re ready to go and send in your account within the next 24 hours.

OOC INFO

Name + pronouns: Ace+ She, Her, It Age: 32 Timezone: CST Ships: Santana/all the ladies Anti-Ships: Santana/forced

IC INFO

Full Name: Santana Gloriana Lopez Face Claim: Tessa Thompson Age/Birthday: 26 / December 21st Occupation: First year associate at Jones Day law firm Personality: ambitious, distrusting, loyal, guarded, passionate, competitive, blunt Hometown: Bronx, New York, New York

Bio: Santiago and Maribel Lopez knew they’d wanted children. They’d talked about it before and after marriage. What they also talked about was how they just couldn’t afford to give any child the life he or she deserved. It turned out, though that sometimes fate didn’t actually care what people could afford, go figure.

Santana Gloriana Lopez was born during a ridiculously warm day in the middle of winter. It was a freak occurrence, and Santana’s abuela liked to attribute that to the girl’s… attitude. As a young child Santana was scrappy and protective of her friends and family. Growing up near the Bronx River, a kid had to learn how to protect themselves, and to think on their toes. She was smart and she knew how to make her words strike a blow as damaging as any punch the bigger kids could throw. Santana quickly gained a reputation as someone not to be messed with, and she loved the way that small bit of power made people respect her. Fear apparently meant respect. That lesson was carried throughout Santana’s young life.

Both of Santana’s parents worked none stop just to make ends meet and put her father through Dental school, so she spent most of her childhood with her Abuela. The woman sparked her love of music. They’d spend their saturdays listening to bolero, merengue, salsa, jazz, soul and R&B music. Those days filled her up, and she held on to them when she was forced to Sunday Mass every week. Growing up in a very catholic household, most of the time felt stifling, though she took comfort in parts of it. Santana had a very strange relationship with religion, but she loved her abuela, so she sucked it up, with a lot of complaints.

School was a whole other world. A world Santana ruled with a devious smirk and an iron fist. The halls literally parted when she walked them, like the damn red sea. The classes always came easy to her so it was never a concern. Staying on top became her main focus. The right boys on her arm, right band aid dresses on her hot ass body, and finding the right minions, were the most important things. She didn’t know what it was like to have real friends, just followers. People either hated her, or wanted something from her, and that pissed her off most of the time, not like it wasn’t her own fault. Still, it added to the reasons for her walls. She couldn’t count on her parents, so why should it surprise her she couldn’t count on anyone else, well except her abuela.

Sex was just a tool. One that got her things from guys who luckily for them had something she wanted. Santana was excellent at it, of course, like she was at most things she tried, but it was never anything to write home about. She just didn’t get it. Not until Aisha. The choir nerd, who was decidedly one of the most beautiful things Santana had ever seen, heard Santana absentmindedly singing some old jazz song her abuela loved and made it her mission to get Santana in the choir. Now San wouldn’t admit this to anyone but the annoying persistence was really cute, so eventually she gave in. Santana would have said at the time it was because she liked a challenge and making the lame ass choir cool would definitely be a challenge. It obviously had nothing to do with the crush she was developing on the nerd, who also happened to be a girl.

The friendship became romance quickly and Santana was actually really into the secretiveness of it all for a while. Aisha, on the other hand was not okay with Santana’s double life. It made sense she didn’t want her girlfriend going out with the entire football team. They talked it out, and fought it out, then talked some more. It was decided. They were going to come out. It was fine because Santana was still a badass bitch and no one would step to her. But there was her Abuela. She had to be the first San told, because she was sure it would break her heart to hear it elsewhere.

The day Santana told her Abuela she was a lesbian was the day everything went to shit. Alma Lopez, officially had no granddaughter. That was what she’d said, and Santana’s heart shattered. And when she went to Aisha for comfort, the other girl confessed she chickened out, and that she thought they just needed to cool off for a bit. Everything sucked. If you think Santana was a bit of a bully before, well some might have called her the biggest bitch in the East after that.

She’d just gone back to her life of make believe, boys could never hurt her as bad as she’d been hurt. She’d go home and spend time in her room studying. She left the choir even though she actually loved it in the end. Santana reigned high school that way until she left for Columbia.

College changed her, a teeny bit. She met a couple people who she felt she could semi trust sort of, and that was nice. And while her heart stayed locked away she liked sex with woman, she was gay after all, so she had plenty. She joined the school choir just because it was fun and she enjoyed beating people out for solos. Now though, the most important thing was getting into law school. Santana loved her business law classes and she couldn’t wait to make it rain in the strip club with her corporate lawyer salary.

Now a first year associate at Jones Day law firm, Santana works a lot but makes time for her band, the few actual friends she’s managed to accumulate, and the casual hookup when the mood arises. Life’s alright.

Pets: Santana 100% ain’t got time for that

Relationships: [ Only for OC applicants and Canon/Semi-canon characters not currently part of the Masterlist. Both OCs and Canon/Semi-canons not currently on the Masterlist must fill a wanted connection. Please provide brief headcanons for possible roommates and/or groups. ]

EXTRA INFO

[ This is for the masterlist, but also a fun little way to get to know your character! ]

San Lo Esq./@couselor_snix/description: Luckily for you I left my whoop that ass days behind me. Now I’ll just sue you for wasting my very valuable billing hours.

Five latest tweets:

@couselor_snix: personal not professional twitter so I’ll hurt your feelings if you try and come for me here.

@couselor_snix: client lunch at Via Corota. I love Italian but especially when is on the firm, shot out to the write off lunches

@couselor_snix: Lavender lattes are that boujee shit I never knew I needed in my life. I’ll have another please.

@couselor_snix: @rollingwmyhomies Ariana, replace my spaghetti or roll for your life!

@couselor_snix: Third years are such dicks… I can’t wait to be one

#accepted

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saintsnsinnersbdb · 3 years

Text

Deal with the Devil: The End of the Beginning (Part 6)

Written by @Lassiter_SASBDB.

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srinhn

It was a normal, blue-collar suburban neighborhood, filled with 1950’s ranch homes and split-levels. Mature trees lined streets that were probably filled with kids on bikes and dog-walkers during warm weather months, although now they were barren except for a couple of people shoveling snow off the sidewalks and a few toddlers playing in the white stuff with a stay-at-home parent in their respective yards. Shortly the Catholic K-12 down the street would let out and younger kids would trudge their way home while teens tentatively navigated the slick streets in 200,000+ mile Subaru’s and Nissans that had been purchased not by their parents but by working summer and after-school jobs and saving their money to do it themselves. Yeah, this was that kind of human neighborhood. So why was Devina here?

Short answer is hiding out. After I’d rousted her from that obnoxious ode to regentrification in yuppieville she’d gone deep. So deep I’d thought for a while she’d left Caldwell. But I knew I couldn’t be that lucky, so I’d kept looking. The easiest way to find her was to focus on missing persons. Not the bodies, although there would be plenty of those, but she was smart and careful. She wasn’t going to leave any of those where I might put together a pattern. But I’d been looking for the wrong /kind/ of missing persons.

Devina’s preferred prey was male and not too sober. A horny, drunk man was a sitting duck. She’d take females, too. Had all too often, but her bait for them tended to be emotional support or some such shit. She “bonded” with them when they were at low points. So I’d been looking for singles. People who had gone missing from bars or been depressed and just ghosted. I’d been over hundreds of missing persons reports…yeah, computer hacking isn’t my bag, but when you can go invisible and look over a cop’s shoulder for an afternoon it’s a piece of cake to get the right passwords. Then it’s just a little late night B&E into the police station and an empty office. But I’d looked for months and hadn’t found anything I couldn’t track down. And yes, some of them had been dead, but a few inquiries “up top” had let me know the souls had made it where they were supposed to. Obviously not Devina’s victims, as taking the souls was the whole point for the bitch. So I’d finally backed off that angle, taking a wait-until it-smacks-me-in-the-face approach.

For a while I’d turned my attention to the problems of the Brotherhood and the race. That whole deity-in-training thing was turning out to be a full time job. I kind of liked it. Who knew I had it in me? But while “tending my flock” I’d stumbled across something that sent me in a new direction.

Now,I’m not big into the whole “organized religion” thing, even for the race, but I tried to keep tapped into this one particular Catholic church. Most of the brothers aren’t big on prayers to the Virgin Scribe unless shit is going down hard, but Butch was a regular, so long as he could do it in a Catholic church like his human mother had taught him and this was his one of choice. I wasn’t 100% sure prayers not directed to the VS would get to me through the whole ethereal call-forwarding system the Creator had put in effect, so sometimes I went to hear Butch’s in person. I know, I know, I could have just tapped into his head when he was in the manse or the pit, but it seemed like an invasion of privacy to do it in his personal space. A church was basically public, so it felt more acceptable to go invisible and sit in the pew behind him while I listened in. I didn’t wanna neglect him. And it was a beautiful place. The serenity there was on par with my place in the forest so sometimes during the day, after my morning deity duty, I’d go back to the church and hang around and kinda veg in it while the Brotherhood slept. Or whatever. With all the shellans these days you never knew. Or, given the volume level, sometimes you did, but you didn’t /wanna/ know, feel me? So some days I decided to be missing during the fireworks and this place was calming. Ellen and Maury only relieve the stress of being a deity so much, you know? And if I followed the priests back to the rectory, well, hey, the nun who cooked for them made killer snickerdoodles. I kept trying to snitch the recipe for #Fritz but she did it all from her head and man, I am SO not going to pick a nun’s brain.*shudders at the implications* It was while I was looking over her shoulder as she baked that I overheard the three priests that lived there talking.

They’d lost a family from their parish that week. I mean literally LOST them. Dad, mom, and four kids, ages 4 through 9. Just vanished. The kids all went to the parish school and when none of them showed up four days running and the voicemails to the parents weren’t being returned one of the priests had gone to check on them. All he had found was an empty house. He’d called the police and filed a missing persons report to start a preliminary investigation but essentially both mom and dad had called into work one morning and said they were taking a week off, and since it’s not illegal to take vacation time, the cops had done nothing. But it was odd that the school hadn’t been contacted at all. So I did a little digging of my own and what do you know...a pattern.

Six families from different parishes in Caldwell had disappeared in the last four months. Thirty-seven souls in all. All the families had been Catholic. All the families had young children, one just a few months old. And the mother in all the families had attended a stay-at-home mom support group that met every Thursday night in the gymnasium of St. Phillip Neri’s Church and Catholic School. The same one that was just down the street. And the group was open to people from all parishes in the archdiocese, which explained why the missing families were from all over the city.

It hadn’t been hard from there. I’d stationed myself outside the gym two Thursday nights ago and waited and lo and behold, who should walk out, but Devina, bundled up in a puffy white coat that made her look like the Pillsbury Doughboy and fake giggling with a human female. It was “soooo tough to relax when the kids couldn’t get out much because of the cold” she said and then she said her condo on the beach in Florida was “sooooo relaxing” and such a help. And then she offered her nonexistent condo to the frustrated mom and her family for a stress-free vacay. And bingo, bango, done, I knew how she was luring the families in.

She’d left the woman in the parking lot as others came out, getting into a predictably boring, yet originally expensive, used Volvo, thereby confirming her image as a middle-class mom who could afford a few luxuries and putt-putted to the last house on a street that dead-ended at a dense woods with a “no trespassing” sign on the the fence that separated it from neighborhood. That gave me a good idea what she was doing with the bodies.

I’d done my recon in the past two weeks. While she hadn’t brought any new victims home, she did have a routine she invariably followed. In the mornings she made a public appearance with a pair of toddler-sized gollums she glamoured into looking like rosy-faced children. Playing in the front yard, a walk with a stroller in the park, going to the grocery store… it was always carefully planned to give her maximum exposure to her victim group without allowing them to get too involved in interacting with the “kids”. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon she put the golems in carseats and left the house at 1:58 PM. I’d followed her those days and found Devina had a standing 2:30 appointment with a therapist. Good to know somebody else knew what a neurotic bitch she was. She’d deactivated the gollums and left them in the car in a parking garage while she had her appointment, magicking the rear window tint to opacity so no one noticed them there. Afterwards she indulged her inner compulsive shopper for an hour or two and then headed back home.

And now, on /this/ Thursday I was standing across the street from her modest hideout waiting for her to leave. Like clockwork, at 1:58 the garage door rose and the Volvo backed out of the driveway. I had stayed invisible while I waited for her to leave -- even though I’d taken the precaution of tucking my long black and blonde streaked hair down inside my coat with a black watch cap shoved over my head and added shades and a black scarf to obstruct most of my face, I’d decided discretion was the better part of valor here. While it was obviously a friendly neighborhood, 6’7” of unknown muscle encased in black leather standing on a dead end street would make anyone take notice and I did/not/want to be noticed. And I was glad I had. Devina must have sensed something off. She stopped the car after she’d backed onto the street and looked up and down it. She’d paused as her gaze fell on where I was standing and squinted. I simply stood there watching. If she saw me and we did this the hard way, it was no skin off my nose. I’d just thought it would be simpler if I searched for the souls and released them myself before deciding what to do about her this time. Finally, she’d given up and driven down the street to turn onto the main drag. As the last wisp of frozen exhaust from her car disappeared, I turned my attention to her house.

It was a tidy little brick ranch. No gargoyles or garishly macabre door knockers this time. The front lawn was fenced but otherwise unadorned. The curtains were drawn on the large picture window as well as the jalousies that were probably the bedrooms’ windows to the world. Down lower, hopper windows told me there was a basement. All in all, even if the basement is finished, there’s probably only 1400 square feet absolute max. A huge comedown for her. Devina liked luxury and lots of it. This probably was very nearly Hell for her. *smirking as I fold my arms across my chest.*

Getting inside wasn’t a problem. Although Devina knew how to keep me out she was just arrogant enough to assume this was enough of a change to keep me from finding her and maintaining warding requires power that she doesn’t have an abundance of right now. Thirty-seven souls weren’t going to be enough to keep it powered up and maintain the glamour that kept people from seeing the evil hellbitch she really was. But she could have put in ADT and that was going to take some finesse. I didn’t want her coming back before I was ready for her. As I dematerialized just inside the front door I took a moment and looked around. To the left, just behind where the door would hide it if I’d opened it was a control box with a steady green light. It was either set to trigger when the door opened or had motion sensors connected to it. Either way was no big deal. While it might have caught an unwary human, all I had to do was demat from room to room and stand still while I scoped them out.

As I stood in the doorway looked through the small living room it was apparent that Devina was maintaining her cover well. There was nothing here to indicate she wasn’t what she seemed. A photo of her in a wedding dress with a man in a tux graced the foyer wall surrounded by pictures of the “kids”. On the table beneath it lay a scrapbook, conveniently open to an obituary for National Guard Captain Alan Veckman, KIA in Afghanistan. A wife and two kids were listed as the only survivors. That explained why she hadn’t gollumed up a spouse for her image. She’d just tracked this guy down, photoshopped herself into their wedding picture, and probably taken the wife and kids as her first victims this time around. Instant sympathetic widow.

The house had had some modernization done on the inside. Instead of closed off main rooms the dining room walls had been knocked down to open it up to both living room and kitchen, forming the more-currently-popular “great room''. From here I could see all the public spaces were clean. No macabre art work on the walls, no horrific but trendy sculpture. Just a few framed prints on the walls and the typical kid’s finger paintings on the fridge. I popped into the kids bedroom and the hall bath, doing a quick check, but finding nothing then moved on to the master. It had been remodeled too, probably taking out the third bedroom to enlarge it and add the spa-like ensuite. This space, small by Devina’s norms, still felt more like her. Where the great room had been “Leave It To Beaver” tidy, this place was an overpacked disaster. Her shopping addiction was apparent in the overstuffed closet and bags of clothing laying on the floor. Jewelry strung haphazardly across the dresser and the unmade bed completed the total mess. The bathroom had every known brand of cosmetic, perfume and skin treatment known to man represented, and that was just a waste of money, given she relied on magick to maintain her outwardly pretty face and body. Lots of scented bath crap around the tub, too. Keeping the stench of evil down must require some heavy maintenance. But still nothing that hinted at her new well of souls.

Only one place left to check. The basement. I’d spied the door to it in the kitchen. If any door was going to be wired to alert her, it would be that one, but if it was her gateway to hell, ADT wasn’t going to be her alert system. Dematting to the kitchen, I look at the door and open my senses. There was nothing alive in that basement but there sure was a lot of pain coming from it. I dematerialize to the otherside of the door and flick on the stairwell light. The smell hits me immediately. The odor of death is distinctive. The odor of death by torture even more so. Blood, feces, spilled intestines, vomit….and the residual agony...I had to stop on the steps and take a deep breath to steel myself. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, been on battlefields. But I never get used to this.

Jaw set grimly, I focus on the details of my surroundings to get me down the stairs. The walls are painted yellow concrete blocks, the ceiling exposed floor joists. The floor at the bottom of the stairs is smooth concrete. My eyes follow the slope of the concrete to the center drain, beginning to take in the blood and viscera still laying on the floor. She must have magicked the whole damned place to keep the smell down here. Nausea rises in my throat, but I force it down as my gaze rises to the table over the center drain. It’s a steel autopsy table, the kind sits on a pedestal and raises and lowers for the user's convenience. It has a sink attached to it and channels that run down the sides to let blood and body fluids drain away . But unlike standard autopsy tables this one also has straps attached. Ones for wrists, ankles and forehead as well as thicker ones that run over the chest and thighs. I guess Devina wanted options. Staked to the wall behind it is the mutilated body of a female. Early 30’s, blonde, fair skinned where the corpse wasn’t ripped open or stained with red. Before moving towards it, I flip another switch that lights the corners of the basement. I take in the empty cell in the corner. Makes sense. If she’s taking families she can’t work on them all at once and holding them immobile takes power she doesn’t have. And on the concrete wall that runs behind the staircase I see it. Instead of a well she’s created a wall this time. Faces frozen in agony are embedded along it. Male, female...children…

”Creator,” it’s a scream in my head “she did this to CHILDREN!” I can feel His pain, but the whisper enters my head “She has a part to play. She must live.”

I choke back an agonized cry and move towards the woman staked to the wall. Gently I close her already clouded eyes, murmuring “I’m sorry. I was too late for you and your family. But I’ll set you free.” I know she’s not in there anymore. She’s on that god damned wall. The body is just the alarm system. Devina will know if it’s moved. Well, I’ll get to that.

Moving to the wall, I let my wings become visible. The basement ceiling is too low for me to spread them fully, but I can feel the souls’ pain and terror. Going full angel will help calm them, I hope. The white light I normally suppress to a dim glow that can be at least partially explained by the light catching all my piercings is fully released to become a white light so brilliant it would burn the retina’s of a mortal.

“𒂼𒅈𒄄.” Release, in ancient Summarian, the language taught to humans by the angels. “Ama-ar-gi. Release,” I repeat it again and again as the souls gradually disengage from the wall and come to stand before me. Fathers, mothers...little ones, all confused and fearful. But even as they shimmer into existence, the rheapers come. I knew they would. As I serve the Creator, they serve Death. I help mortal souls find their way in life. They help souls move on and find their way once their mortal bodies can no longer serve them. And, like me, they’ve seen it all, but also like me, this sickens them. After the initial shock of pity passes, compassion settles on their faces as they begin to take the souls. Somehow they know which souls belong together and they take them as families.

After the last has gone, one rheaper remains. She’s small and dark-haired, her 5’3” frame barely reaching chest high on me, but she comes towards me, pounding her finger into my chest and hissing,

“They weren’t supposed to die yet! Take. Care. Of. This. Or we will.”

“I can’t. The Creator says she has to live. For at least a little longer.”

“Good thing we don’t answer to Him, then isn’t it? My boss doesn’t like waste of the life spark and this is incredible waste,” she shoots back at me. As I look at her, not a little shocked, she shrugs “What, you didn’t know? Everything dies. Even at the Creator’s level, there’s balance. Balance for Life is Death. Two sides of the same coin. So,” putting her hands on her hips and squaring off with me,” handle this before we do.”

“The demon has a part to play. I don’t like it, but I’m forbidden to kill her.” My frustration must be showing in my face, because she softens a little bit.

“Then get creative with it. Because the rheaper way won’t be creative. Just final.”

She disappears in front of me, a fine black mist swirling into nothing. ‘Get creative,’ she’d said. Biting my lip, an idea I really don’t like hits me, but one of the Creator’s early lessons pushes back on my initial rejection. ‘Being a deity often consists of doing things you don’t like.’ Yeah, this qualifies. With a sigh, I go to the body staked on the other wall and gently remove it, laying it on the autopsy table. The sudden drop in power when the souls were freed would have been enough to alert Davina there was trouble. At this point moving the female’s body was just respect for the dead. But I wouldn’t face the bitch over it.

As I go back up the stairs, I open the door to the kitchen and cross to take a seat at the table just as I hear the garage door go up. As she bursts through the door from the garage, she shrieks,

“YOU! What have you DONE?!!!!”

“Hello to you, too. Long time no see.” Everything in me wants to slam a lightning bolt through that glamored body just to see it twitch, but that’s not the plan. “You knew I’d still be looking for you. Did you really think hiding out in this hovel would be enough camouflage? You have a very distinct signature.”

“Those souls were MINE! They came to me freely. You had no RIGHT!” The last comes out as an angry wail and ok, I’m done with diplomacy. Rising from my chair I slam my hand thunderously on the table.

“I have EVERY right. You broke the rules. You took innocents…children. Babes in arms. You’re only allowed ones that have the ability to make their own choices.”

She glares at me, then crosses her arms and simpers, “The parents made their choices for them. Children have such power, You know, the more innocent the soul, the greater the energy. I’m short on that, thanks to you, so kids were a quick way to restore it. And the pain of the parents as they watched their brats die...it was sooo delicious. That kind of pain is almost as powerful as the kids' souls. So I’m stronger now than I was the last time we faced off. Whatcha’ going to do about it?”

Motherfucking bitch….Oh, so not getting away with that. Holding a hand out, I release a bolt of electricity that knocks her back against the refrigerator and spears through her body to pin her to it.

“What am I going to do about it?” I repeat. “I can do a lot of /very/ painful things to you Devina that won’t result in your --immediate-- death. You’ll just wish it did. I’m not that naive angel boy you once knew and betrayed. Deity-level upgrades come with deity-level thinking. And you aren’t strong enough to break free even from that,” nodding at the electric bindings holding her to the fridge, “Now are you? So I have a lot of pain in store for you. Maybe I”ll use your own autopsy table. But,” materializing a silver handled angel’s dagger, the blade flashing blue fire, “I think I’ll bring my own tools.”

The thing is, while I really would like to end Devina, torture isn’t my thing. It makes me wanna throw up. But ‘get creative’ the rheaper had said, so creative I was being. Devina doesn’t know what the kind of changes the Creator made with me when he agreed to bring me up to a deity, might have done to my psyche. In her fallen, psychotic brain the Creator is a cold, distant daddy figure capable of enjoying causing His children pain and she’s getting back at Him by embracing the dark side. So I can see the doubt growing in those dark eyes. She’s asking herself if I’m still the same egocentric, soft, gullible angel-boy toy she used and killed centuries ago or am I growing up in Daddy’s image? Have I turned into a being that is detached enough to use pain for my own ends? Thing is, I hope I am becoming more like the Creator. Because He’s nothing like what she thinks He is and nothing like who I used to be either. He’s just….more. But the doubt is good for my plan.

The energy trapping her against the refrigerator is doing its job. Not only is it keeping her immobilized, it’s sapping her strength enough that her true appearance is flickering through. Time to move to the next step. Calmly, I take the tip of my dagger and clean a nail with it before pointing it at her.

“You’re losing your mojo babe. Your face is showing. I don’t think all those creams and cosmetics are helpful for decayed, oozing skin.”

“OH!....Lassiter, please, don’t do this to me. To us. Remember what we were…”

Oh, I remember all right. In my nightmares. But this tact plays. I heave a sigh and look at her sadly, as though remembering something bittersweet.

“We did have some good times didn’t we. You were something special back then. We had something special.” Oh gag me, this is more likely to make me puke than torturing her. But she seizes on it.

“We did, yes, we did. Let me go, Lassiter and we can again. I never stopped loving you, I just got caught up in it all. It’s so dog-eat-dog on the dark side!”

Christ, how do I not kill her when she spews shit like this? But be creative. Creative. Think of it as an acting job. Ok… Sadly, I shake my head.

“Too much water has passed under that bridge for me to cross it again Devina. But…” pausing for effect, “for old times sake, maybe we could come to an agreement. Something that lets me not have to kill you.” Right now. Not have to kill you right now…. She makes a major effort to hold the glamour and pours a combination of pleading sensuality into her eyes that should have won her an Oscar.

“Oh, baby,” I cringe inwardly as she calls me ‘baby’, “I’m so sorry. But,” And there it is, the self-interest speaking…. “What kind of agreement did you have in mind?”

Bingo. Gotcha hooked. “If I let you go, you have to promise not to go after innocents. You have to leave them alone. And that includes their parents. And,people who are kind of lost, too. You can’t use that emo bonding thing with them to lure them in anymore.”

“But, but…,” she makes a pout, “what does that leave me with? I have to have /some/ leeway or I’ll die.”

And this is the part that irks me most. It goes against everything in me. But she’ll fuck it up, probably sooner that later and I won’t have to keep my end.

“Go back to trolling for your prey in bars. If they choose you, really choose you, you can keep them. You’ll have to work harder for it. A quick fuck in the backseat of the car isn’t going to be enough to get their souls. But if you can get them obsessed with you? You can keep them.”

“It will take me forever to restore myself that way!” It comes out as a wail but she’s almost there.

“It will take time,” I agree. “But meanwhile you won’t be stuck in suburbia living in a 1400 sq ft. dump. You can indulge yourself in the highlife again and I won’t hunt you. Think of it. A luxury loft, being able to wear Prada and Coach without blowing your image…think of the time it takes you to build back up as doing penance in the demonic equivalent of Club Fed. Payment for the innocents you took. All the perks, just a few restrictions. It’s the best I can offer you.”

“Fine,” she spits out, and I have to struggle to keep the uniquely male satisfaction of knowing that whenever a female says ‘fine’ it’s absolutely not fine but that she has no other options, off my face. “But you’re going to have to let me out of this restraint.” And then she coos “We’ll seal it with a kiss.”

Oh, hells no to that. “I’d rather we seal it with this.” Holding up my hand I materialize a contract containing everything we’ve talked about. And some very special wording. “You’ll sign it in your blood.” Laying the document on the counter, I release the energy restraints and grab her arm. Using the dagger I slice her arm as she howls in both pain and outrage, but not fast enough to do anything about it.

“Here. Use this. It’s appropriate.” My wings materialize and I bend one forward towards my hand. Managing to pluck a silvery secondary feather, I dip the tip in the blood running down her arm and hand it to her. “The magick in my feathers will make it doubly binding. Break the agreement and I’ll know. Immediately.”

If looks could kill, she’d be frying an angel right now. And with her, at full power, looks could. But she doesn’t have the juice right now and we both know it. She scrawls her name on the document and thrusts it at me, but drops the hand holding my feather. “Here. Take it.”

“Uh,uh uh...not so fast. I’ll take that feather back too.” Can’t let her keep it. No telling what kind of evil she’d use it to conjure up on me. Taking both feather and contract back, I step back from her and add, “You should have read the contract. In addition to specifying how you can attract souls it also specifies only /human/ souls.”

Dropping all pretense of cordiality now, I narrow my eyes at her. “I know you were imprisoned and I know how you were freed and by whom. Stick with taking the human souls agreed upon in the way we agreed upon and we don’t have a problem.” Until she breaks the contract. Then all bets are off. But one thing at a time.

“I’m going to make you pay for this Lassiter!” She yells as she grabs for the contract.

“Oh, please, bitch,” dematerializing contract and feather back to my room at the manse, “stop with the evil super-villain talk. It’s really cliche and Darkseid did it better.”

Walking to the door, I jerk it open, setting off the alarm system she’d neglected to turn off when she came in. As the earsplitting siren split the neighborhood quiet, I added...

“Oh, and if you want to avoid the police, I’d be vacating this place PDQ. I’ll be phoning in a dead body in the basement as soon as I’m out the door. Laters, babe.”

The resounding crash of what had to be the blender off the countertop hitting the door makes me chuckle as I dial 911.

“911? Yeah, I want to report a dead body….”

#DealWithTheDevil #TheEndOfTheBeginning #PartSix #TBC #SaintsNSinners #BDB #SASBDB

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blitzdrake · 7 years

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Nerdy Men of Letters Dean AU....the SEQUEL or should I say....PREQUEL (dun dun duuuuun)

So had another rush of ideas for the fun entirely in my head AU where Henry Winchester survives, was firing them off in PM’s to @mayalaen and @powerfulweak when Maya suggested I post it in a forum that could be forwarded to other fans of Nerdy MoL dean....so.....here we go. (First a shot of one of the inspiring picture that started it all.) [stealth tagging @mashiarasdream to inform them of this WIP and the related link below for the father of this Wip head-cannon to fulfill my daily obligation to give them a fun story idea.]

And for those in the dark...This AU was an elaborate excuse to rerwrite Season 1 with Charlie and Castiel in it WAY sooner, and to put Dean in nerdy glasses as a MoL magic user (Charlie too). The premise was Henry Winchester returns to his time surviving Abaddon and tries to avert the misfortune to befall his son, but fate (and possibly angels) keep interfering ensuring that Jon continues on the path that while it leads to Henry’s grandchildren, also leads to the death of Mary Campbell, and Jon’s short trip off the deep end. Link Here

The last batch of back and forths that result in Dean turning 28ish (or season 1 age I forget) and being initiated as a full Men of Letters with his BFF Charlie (Henry made the MoL America gender inclusive), only to panic worrying about his missing dad and sneaking off from the Bunker after using the MoL lore to forge a pact with a grumpy guardian angel Castiel to provide the muscle he fears he’ll need trying to track down his dad and win over the help of his brother Sam. But I was admiring looking at old images of the guys in their early acting careers and though of a fun twist.

So after Mary dies, and Daddy Winchester runs off, Dean is left with Henry, and of course goes into Dean Winchester latches-onto-and-over-emulates-a-parental-figure(tm), diving into being a good little MoL nerd. Of course he rarely gets to leave the Bunker with how overprotective Grandpa Henry is. And even worse, he can kiss having a normal life or god-help-him relationship since there isn’t another initiate in the Bunker that isn’t terrified of pissing of super-protective Granpda Henry, except Charlie, his BFF, and she’s hardly interested in dating him. (and visa versa). So in a desperate bid to not go stircrazy, Dean convinces Grandpa Henry to take him on a few planned trips to Chicago over a few months, when he’s 18, where Grandpa Henry is visiting the super secret Supernatural Library hidden beneath the real Chicago Library.

Dean, meanwhile decides to sneak into the normal, or as his friend Charlie calls it, “muggle” part of the library to meet...normal people and just get out from the Winchester-names far reaching shadow.

Years of hiding in the MoL dark bunker and cramming his face into ancient books and manuscripts have lead to dean having a bit of a vision problem, not that he even realized until he’s in a strange place he’s never been, with bright lights, (unlike the Bunker) and is having trouble seeing.

Still he’s escaped Grandpa Henry, and sure there’s a little trouble seeing, but he’s out in the real world, with real people, that don’t care about the supernatural, and he needs to just get out of the normal library for just a second and see the open sky. So he rushes in the direction he thinks the public library exit is, managing fine even if everything around him is a little blurry, until he runs into another guy, literally. And his best laid plan come crashing down.

The guy, Jimmy is fairly understanding and a tinsy bit flirty, especially when dean has to get his face fairly close just to see Jimmy clearly. Once they are both standing again the guy seems to forget where he was rushing a second when he gets a good look back at Dean.

That of course prompts Dean into a nerdy talk about actual angels, which OF course he knows all the stuff the MoL have talked about it. Turns out Jimmy knows plenty too having been raised a good little catholic boy. But their conversation is halted when Jimmy’s school mates rush in to drag him off to the Freshman Econ class study group he is late for. Before he can manage to get Dean’s information and figure out which college Dean is in, Dean slips away, having realized the time as well and desperate to get to Grandpa Henry before Henry notices he’s missing. In a parting shot, Jimmy suggests Dean considers glasses.

A month passes and Dean is eager to join Grandpa Henry on his next trip to Chicago, especially now that he can clearly see with his new glasses, which only Charlie knows the real reason why he suddenly became interested in something he hardly needs to get around the Bunker.

As soon as Grandpa Henry wanders away, Dean sneaks back into the library, ridiculously excited even if he knows the likelihood of bumping into Jimmy again is Nil.

This time he can see a lot more clearly, and wanders off in the direction where the people his age seem to be clustered. (Random college student meet and greet at the public library.) Surprisingly...(or maybe not, he and Charlie DID cast a luck charm and a finding lost things spell, and borrow an amulet blessed by worshipers of Aphrodite before leaving the bunker.) And sure enough a few minutes into watching some people have a “quiet” library poetry slam, a voice greets him, whispering flirtingly into his ear. “Hello again Dean.” This time Dean manages to stick around a few hours, meeting some of Jimmy’s friends, and cautiously avoiding any questions about his own classes or college with healthy deflection.

Long story short over a few months, Dean manages to meet Jimmy in the library every-time he can sneak himself along on Grandpa Henry’s trips. And eventually Charlie catches Dean in the Bunker Bathroom giving himself a pep talk. She learns that Dean had his first kiss, (that one with Charlie when they were fourteen doesn’t count!) with Jimmy and after a groping make-out session in the public library almost lead to them getting kicked out, has been planning his next visit to Chicago carefully.

Charlie realizes Dean is convincing himself to work up the nerve to finally lose his V-card next trip to Chicago to meet Jimmy. (Cause god knows no one in the supernatural world is gonna help HENRY “super mage and Savior of the Men of Letters” Winchester’s pride-and-joy grandson get laid. Except Charlie. But her help is more of the wingwoman variety and not the willing participant.)

Charlie gently convinces Dean to promise to tell Jimmy at least a little bit of the truth about himself before going to far. Dean doesn’t realize she’s trying to be sneaky. She is concerned that Dean or Jimmy will get themselves hurt or aren’t being honest enough with each other. Especially since she’s seen the pattern in Dean’s stories that makes her worried about Jimmy’s self acceptance, since Dean’s been building to this for Months, but his stories always end with Jimmy going from being ridiculously flirty, before cooling off and holding the cross on his necklace and pulling back. Charlie fully believes that with dean’s promise, she has pushed the confrontation back a few trips to Chicago, because she believes Dean will hold back from telling Jimmy all, giving Dean more time and trips for Jimmy to get used to his attraction. Dean (clueless to Charlie’s intent) isn’t sure bringing up, “oh and I’m kinda a wizard” will help things so Charlie thinks she’s bought them time. But Charlie underestimates the desire for a teenage Dean to get laid. So he goes and tells Jimmy the truth about himself the very next visit. And of course it doesn’t go...well.

Dean implies it’s no more insane than the rest of the Catholic stuff Jimmy believes in, and how Jimmy alternates between believing his faith, “You believe liking me is gonna get you sent to hell and that your priest can turn wine into a dead guys’ blood Jimmy, how is me casting a spell any different?” and resenting his faith for how it makes him compartmentalize his attraction to Dean. This turns into a fight over Dean vs Jimmy’s problems with being comfortable being Bi, and the issue of Jimmy’s faith and his experimentation. They argue. Dean’s learned over the months that Jimmy has an awkward relationship with his religion. Jimmy believes in it, but he also had some issues with himself that did not click with small town Catholics, so for college he fled his tiny hometown and his HS sweetheart because he was a little bit more BI than he felt his family was ready to accept. But he still has his faith. So Dean’s comment starts a fight that ends with Dean storming off.

[This gif isn’t perfect since obviously they haven’t Met...just pretend its more Dean saying he just met THIS side of Jimmy.]

What Dean doesn’t notice in his angry storming away from Jimmy, is that Grandpa Henry was watching the whole thing, having been suspicious about Dean’s behavior lately, especially with how distracted nervous he was this trip. Dean also doesn’t see Grandpa Henry’s face turn white as a ghost at the sight of Jimmy’s face.

Grandpa Henry cancels all future trips to the Chicago Supernatural Library, and the next time Dean joins his Grandfather its in NYC. Which is fine Because Dean is totally over that guy, and his stupid-pretty-face. So much so that he goes weeks without seeing it, before Charlie introduces him to Facebook and he stalks it to find Jimmy has switched to a college closer to his hometown and has apparently flung himself back into his faith whole heartedly...and his high-school girlfriend, Amelia.

That’s the list time Dean Winchester see’s or thinks about Jimmy, (or at least admits it) until ten years later, when his father has gone missing, and newly Initiated Man of Letters Dean, breaks into the Bunker artifacts and secures a bond with the guardian angel Castiel, and is startled that he recognizes the face of the vessel the angel has chosen.

#men of letters #dean winchester #destiel #jimmy novak #castiel #AU #Time travel fix it #Henry Winchester #Dean with glasses #Nerdchester #MoL Dean Winchester AU #Charlie

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daemonvols · 7 years

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Chapter Three

Ghosts and Grave Robbers

The graveside service lasted the usual hour, but Truman and his siblings lingered for at least another forty minutes, so I guessed that the old girl did not get to rest under the sod until closer to three. I also had to be back in the office by two preparing the final documents, answering the telephone and dealing with vendors or nursing home/hospice administrators who thought they should be entitled to group rates for the indigent dead we buried in our Potter’s Field. I could not get back to wiping down and replacing headstones under after dark. And I would not be in time to stop Old Sharpe.

Rain hadn’t fallen in fact for a few days, so the grass clippings didn’t stick to most of the flat surfaces. It was the scraps and bits of moss that clung to the ornate designs and inscriptions of the wealthy dead that eat up time and nick my fingers. The middle class’s stones are simpler. Names, birth dates and death dates for the most part. Here and there you get a design or a quote, but nothing excessive. Potter’s Field “residents” get brass plaques flush with the grass with no one to really care about them.

Now nineteenth century folks who had money could and did drive this twenty-first century caretaker crazy with detailed carvings of sheep and angels and weeping women in long gowns full of moss- and mold-growing folds, not to mention the extra words to describe the loving mother, faithful father, beloved child and so forth. I realize it’s all to comfort the surviving family, but, after living all of my thirty years in a cemetery and reading the records and hearing the ghosts’ gossip, I have to wonder how much of those endearments are wishful thinking.

Take Old Man Sharpe, and I wish somebody would.

The official records of the time list him as Benjamin Antony Sharpe, born 1831 and died 1881. The newspaper obituary described him as a “leading citizen who loved God and served his fellow man.” He left neither widow nor children, except for the town’s orphans housed in Heaven’s Angels Children’s Home and the women of the three Magdalene houses he oversaw with other leading citizens. Benjamin Sharpe was upright man, as the white marble stone stated in Gothic script over his grave in the southwest corner of Section A’s front skirt.

But there’s more to the man. My grandparents spoke of him as “Der Parekh,” a bad man, but that is all I knew until after they died. I pulled the records from the library’s stacks, made hard copies from their microfiche and, on my own time at home, Googled his name. A notice in the newspaper, dated the day after his death, announced an inquiry into his death, hinting that a man of 50 in “splendid health” might have died under suspicious circumstances. His maids Bridget O’Doole and Mary Kate Bailey were being held for questioning. “Obviously Irish,” the article went on to note. The reporter omitted, or assumed the readers would add with a shudder, the words “and likely Catholic.”

“The good people of Sayresville demand an answer,” the article concluded.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and a few late hours on the Internet, I found the record of the inquest and the maids’ testimony.

As it turned out, it was a good public relations move to publish the obituary before the inquest. The maids, the cook and Sharpe’s valet told stories of Sharpe’s quick temper and his regular nighttime habit of draining two bottles of brandy, and then walloping the tar out of both maids with a specially knotted belt. According to Bridget, on the night of his death, he’d cornered both girls in their narrow bedroom. He’d bent them over a bed with their shifts raised to their waists and had the belt ready to flay them when he “wheezed a bit like he was took by surprise” and fell down dead.

The valet, a “small Canadian” named Richard according to the inquest records, offered to tell more of Sharpe drinking and then being unable to find the privy. The valet further hinted that the upstanding citizen had more than once peed on stray dogs and late-night walkers.

The officials cut the inquest short at that point. The determination they made official was death by natural causes.

But “natural causes” in the corporeal sense does not explain a ghost still wandering the cemetery and harassing other ghosts nearly 130 years after his death. And that is what Old Sharpe does when Varney knocks loose Sharpe’s head stone as the mower did after any funeral. As Varney did the day of Eulalie Plutarch’s funeral.

I know this because the two ghosts I call my gossips caught me heading out to finish the wipe-downs that night.

“He’s out again!” yipped the first one, who was Missy Drucker. She had been a housewife who died at the age of 37 in 1951 of a burst appendix. Her family buried her with a headstone complete with Psalm 23 and a rare color photograph of Missy. She’d been a pretty brunette with vacant blue eyes dressed in pastels. Six years ago, the plastic or whatever cover that held the photograph onto the stone fell off, as did her photograph. The required search for family members turned up no Druckers in upstate New York that acknowledge a Missy Drucker, or a Michelle Drucker nee Baker, let alone give permission and funds to replace the photo or the cover. Regs would not allow me to do so, either. It’s a vain hope that someone someday might come to claim that fading picture, but I keep it with my ledger. I like to be prepared.

“He yelled at me to raise my dress!” the other told me. This was Mischa Bridey, born in 1892 and died in the influenza pandemic of 1919. She must have been a spinster school teacher. It may be that her white shirtwaist cinched too tightly at her waist over a heavy dark skirt that swept along the gravel. Or her blackish hair stayed now for eternity in a tight bun that gave her headache. Or maybe, back in her living days, she really needed to get laid. She never has anything good to say about men and she is, in general, a bespectacled, pinch-faced grump. Then again, until seven years ago in the spring, someone had come every June to lay six yellow roses on her grave. I found the last bouquet dried out from a rainless July and “borrowed” one of the petals for my ledger. You never know about some people. Or ghosts, for that matter.

You have more questions: yes, ghosts exist. I see them most nights, occasionally during the day, and have done so since I was a baby. I’ve felt the cold that surrounds the ones whose bodies died by violence and the softer coolness of those who passed more peacefully. Ghosts, spirits, “hain’ts,” etc. - they’ve gone by all sorts of politically correct and incorrect labels, but the CPF has a fair share of the haunters for Onondaga County.

Yes, I talk with them.

And no, I don’t really know what a ghost is in the physical sense. I also don’t know if ghosts realize they are dead or not. It seems rude to ask. Furthermore, I doubt they’d behave any differently than if they did realize it. I would be willing to bet Old Man Sharpe wouldn’t.

“I know,” I said to Missy and Mischa. “I’m on it.”

“Well, hurry up before he gets over the hill!” Missy snapped.

“Well, I could if two nosy hain’ts would clear the road!” I snapped back.

These two are the first ghosts I’d met who had an overwhelming desire to always be relevant; it is likely they found themselves behind the times while they lived and spent that life and this afterlife trying to catch up. To do this, this pair had observed and learned reactive “moves” to do in unison. This night they gave me the Cat Move: their opaque and vaguely pink hands raised to ear level, then fingers curl for claws and a nasal “Re-e-e-eowwwww!!” from their ghostly gobs.

I walked away before they celebrated their unified dissing and high-fived each other right down to their non-corporeal elbows.

Sharpe’s grave was on the southeast end of Section A. The Board approved more tall poles with more blue-white lights back there rather that install the motion detectors the police recommended to dissuade drug deals and lovers with a fetish for having sex on graves. As security for the living-wise, it was a help. To find a ghost whose color was fading to white and gray, not so much.

By the oak tree, where I’d stood only a few hours ago, floated the white shape of a dead martinet. He had to have been a lump of a man. His spirit wasn’t much taller than my five-foot-four height and he spread out from belly to butt. He had goggling pale eyes and a beak of a nose over flabby lips. His ears under the white fronds of hair reminded me of a harp that sagged at the bottom. He was clothed – they still buried them in something like their best back then – but Sharpe had faded so much, it was hard to detail his garments beyond shirt open at the neck under a waistcoat and over trousers. Tradition held that he be buried barefoot, so I was glad the end of his trousered legs were a blur. No doubt he’d had knobby feet with talon-length toenails. And he had the knotted belt they’d buried with him raised in one lumpy hand over his opaque head. I braced myself for the howl. Sharpe’s voice, whether in death or reminiscent of his living squawk, ranked right up there with fingernails on a chalkboard.

And Benjamin Sharpe was a howler. “Bridget, you strumpet! I know you broke that china cup! I’ll blister your hindquarters for that! Where are you, girl?”

It is wise to approach ghosts, slowly, particularly agitated ghosts. Hands down at the side, head slightly down but off to one side so there can be modest eye contact. It is a literal pain in the neck after a while.

“Care for the residents,” I muttered. “Mr. Sharpe!” I said somewhat louder. “Mr. Sharpe, it’s Grace. Isaac’s granddaughter.”

Sharpe halted and undulated for a moment. The belt came down to his side. “Grace. Yes. Your grandfather is a good man. He took the stones out of my grave before they lowered me into it. Wanted me to be comfortable, he said. So I could rest.”

“That’s right. You look tired, Mr. Sharpe.”

“I am tired. They all want so much from me! Those brats! Those whores! How much more do I have to give? I’m only one man!”

It is also advisable that, if a ghost on the loose wishes to howl against what he perceives as injustice, he be allowed to do so before you herd him back to his grave. It may take a while, but interrupting can leave you standing there with him until dawn. Ghosts will follow you if you walk away. There’s also no telling if the ghost has not finished his or her diatribe at sunrise, that s/he won’t follow you to continue throughout the day. A ghost’s voice registers over the telephone as either white noise or a television on too loud to a bad soap opera – not something to have going on over your shoulder when you’re trying to sound professional and organized on the phone.

I waited for a gap in his complaint and tried again. “You need to rest. Why don’t you come with me and let’s get you back to your rest.”

“It’s that Bridget!” he snarled. “She broke the cup. I know it! She’ll pay with her hide!”

“So she will, but you rest first. You need your strength to – “ I swallowed my disgust – “do the job properly.”

“She’ll bleed for it!”

“If you rest first, of course she will. Now come on.”

You cannot reach out and offer to touch a ghost, so there was no leading him by the arm. I had tried once as a toddler to take the hand of the ghost of the first body buried at the CPF. All you get is a handful of icy cold and an annoyed ghost.

And there’s no pointing. Ghosts like Sharpe like to point, but to be pointed to or at would only start him off again through the cemetery in twice the rage. I stepped onto the gravel path with a slight bow towards his plot.

As I suspected, Varney had taken the corner too quickly again and knocked the stone to an acute angle off its seat and there was a nice three-inch gap to the right side. I stood a respectful half meter from the gap and offered it to Sharpe with a modest, open-handed gesture. “See? It’s all ready for you,” I said. “You tuck yourself in there and rest. Bridget is not going anywhere.”

Which was true. County records showed she died in 1948. St. Agnes’ Cemetery holds her body. Now, if she has a loose headstone and wanders, too, I’ve not heard of it. And it’s not my problem. Her late addle-pated employer, however, routinely is my problem.

Sharpe floated into a horizontal position on the sod that had been well-packed by living feet for one and a quarter centuries. He seeped back like foul water back into the earth with a mournful “Bridget!”

I straightened the headstone. Then I packed it down with moss and some extra dirt and gravel from the path. If the rains held off, Old Sharpe would stay put for another two weeks.

Back to the questions and possibly the Big Question: why do ghosts, souls, spirits, whatever you want to call them, hang around? There are probably two or three answers for every one person you might ask. The sort of “it’s this way, but maybe that way, too” thinking that leaves the listener more confused and not a little bit frightened.

I have only heard one explanation that makes sense – and, as with anything else, it’s open to debate. My Grandpa Dov said that Midrash assigns five levels to each living soul. Three, starting with the lowest, reptilian senses, are attached to the physical earth. Only two of them are on the spiritual level and yearn to reunite with the Creator. Therefore, the odds that a soul will pass on are sixty-forty against.

People in the past knew this and invented headstones. Headstones are meant to hold the sixty-percenters down until the dead realize that’s as far as they are going to go. Their spirits pass on then, with little or no notice given to the living.

Some souls, however, cannot take the granite or marble slab hint and insist on hanging around. I sometimes think they were the last ones to leave a party while they were living. Either way, the stone keeps them where their families buried them. But, like so many of the best laid plans, things do go awry. The CPF has drainage ditches, soil erosion and jokers like Varney and Trumbull. Ergo, we have ghosts walking the grounds most evenings. And I’m the one to walk them back and tuck them in again.

Old Sharpe was tucked away for this night. I wanted to go to bed and to dive back into my book (I’d fallen asleep just as the clothes were coming off and the strong masculine arms were outstretched), but something felt wrong.

Derek and his band of merry bloodsuckers were long gone to wherever they fed tonight. Missy and Mischa hopefully had returned to their plots or were having hissy fits over the crowding in the Potter’s Field. The CPF was not quiet. It never was at any time, but that night there were newer noises I did not recognize and did not like.

I ran up the hill again and stood beside the oak tree. Two small Coleman lanterns sat beside Eulalie Plutarch’s still open grave. The chairs were gone, the fake grass and brass frame for the hydraulics were gone, but the diggers had not filled in the grave the way regulations said they should have done once all the mourners departed the site. I felt cold and looked around for a wandering Eulalie. But the night wind had picked up, promising either rain or a dust blow from the middle school’s dead grass and playing fields. No ghosts that the living eye could see.

I hopped over graves and between plots to go down the broad backside of the hill, careful to stay out of the pole light’s glare. Here and there I slipped and had to apologize to the occupant of a grave for the intrusion. Stepping on the residents’ graves and thereby on them is not good public relations. Even if the grave I apologized to would be empty, it set those still lingering at something like rest.

Varney hadn’t loosened any more headstones that I could see, but some ghosts are only a slight disturbance of the seating away from joining the nightly rounds. Especially for the newly buried. I knew Eulalie Plutarch by sight from the newspaper society pages and her son’s behavior (neither one flattered her). Her ornate pink granite headstone was set, but the grave was still open and I did not want her ghost haranguing me about the “abysmal service” offered here at the CPF.

I stopped in the dark at the edge of Section A before the path that led to B. The Coleman lanterns burned on high, one at one long end of the grave, the second at the other. A head of thick medium brown hair bobbed up and down at the rim of the grave, consistent with someone digging. I heard scraping and the occasional thunk! Of hitting the mahogany, brass-embossed coffin.

“Dammit, Jerry! You told me you left the casket unlocked!” barked a somewhat attractive baritone voice from inside the grave. I moved over to the edge perpendicular to the rest of the Plutarch plots. I stood in the glow of an eighteen inch kerosene lantern and looked down.

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quoththesaven · 7 years

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Mall

I met Cady by the fountain in the mall at eleven in the morning, across from the store with kitchen supplies and the jeweler. She arrived seventeen minutes late, and was carrying a shopping bag from the candy shop in her left hand. She wore a pair of overalls and sneakers, and wore a vibrant geometric patterned shirt under the denim. Her hair was crimped and she had a blue eye shadow on that matched the rectangles on her tee. She was always one to keep with the style and never the time.

We decided to look through the shops and eat the fresh licorice she just purchased before grabbing a meal in the food court and going to catch a matinee horror flick. We checked through a store where she bought a pair of bright green high-waisted shorts, and she bought a necklace that was made of recycled bottle caps off a guy with a table outside of a boutique. I never really bought anything when we went shopping together. She never noticed that, either. Not until today, at least.

“Mar, look at yourself,” I have my hair straight today, a light blue headband and a button-up of the same color, and a plaid skirt, and knee high socks, and my old and beat-up Mary Janes. “You look like a… a typical Catholic schoolgirl.”

“I am a typical Catholic schoolgirl,” I add before being interrupted again.

“No, Mar, you’re missing the point. It’s the summer of 1996: you are sixteen years old now, which practically makes you a woman. And you don’t even have class except for on Tuesdays.” I looked at her, as if asking if she had a point. Being my best friend (well at least of all girls), she knew what I meant, and went on her rant. “My point is, today is Wednesday, and you’re still in uniform.” She did have a point about that one, I suppose.

“After the movie, you’re coming back to my house, and I’m going to give you a makeover.” We passed the shop with all of the fancy and expensive clothes, and prom and homecoming dresses. They have a display outside their store—the only store to have a display—and we always stop and have to pick one. She chose a bright orange puffy-shoulder dress with yellow stripes on the skirt, and I chose a long dark blue ball gown with nothing at all sparkly or not fitting.

I didn’t know why she asked for later, until I saw a girl walk up to her and hug her. I forgot about this being a double-date with Chris. I suddenly dreaded the day even more than I did pre-makeover-mention, and regretted looking like I haven’t yet finished adolescence. He found me outside five minutes prior to our entry. He liked Cady, but didn’t care at all for Jennifer. I really didn’t either. She was like that dress Cady chose. There was a reason it was on sale. But it didn’t really matter about that. She isn’t the type to stick to one thing, or, person, for the matter of “Jenny Jenkins, Junior in tdTmJournalism”, or the type to want to go to school events like prom.

The movie was okay, but I really couldn’t pay all that much attention to it, as much as I may have tried. For much of it, Chris tried the same old classic and lame moves like yawning and putting his arm around me to try to get me to stop watching the movie entirely. Sometim nes he really seems like the stereotypical teenage boy trying to get some at every chance he can. But other times he doesn’t seem like that at all. Like when we were leaving the movie and it was raining, he spun around the light post, singing, and it was just so much fun to play in the puddles. He often says a lot of sweet things, too, but my mother raised no ignorant female.

It was a special day at the pediatric ward this afternoon, as Justice and Isaac were going around to all of the kids and their visitors (more than one, today) and inviting them to cafeteria at three thirty to play games and make friends. Justice came up with the idea herself. I think that’s a great way for these poor children to be happy for even a little while. Cady wanted to go today, and when she brought it up to me after we dropped off her date, Chris invited himself along. Michael did say he wanted to meet the ever elusive Christopher Hale. I just don’t know how well this will go down.

We reach the hospital in Mallory’s tiny, grey, and aged car with little time to spare. Michael was happy to see Cady, but soon realized why he normally isn’t when she hugged him extra tight, squeezing his now un-casted yet still healing arm. He was very professional with Chris, as he had to be, for he was the one pushing the wheelchair as I dragged along the things connected to his IV for his pain medication. Not to mention, he’s the understudy who wants to be the lead so bad he’d hit Chris with a car. Not literally, of course. That was probably way too soon.

Nurse June, whom Isaac calls Juniper, says a few words that I don’t pay attention to and brings out with Daisy a pile of boxes of board games like checkers and chess and Battleship and Monopoly. Justice picked out a game I never heard of before. Isaac read from the box that a group of kids staying here played this game every Monday night. There were cards inside, of all kinds, as well as game pieces of different colors, dice, an old game board, and instructions.

PLAYERS: 2-8

HOW TO PLAY: Set up the board and choose a piece for each player. Roll the die to see who goes first. Go around the board in clockwise order. Choose the appropriate card for the space landed on.

For a truth or lie card, write down the honest answer on a piece of paper, and hide it from the others. Have the other player(s) bet on whether the player has told the group the correct or incorrect answer. If the player stumps the group, the player moves ahead as many spaces as there are other players (not including themselves). If they have not, each player moves ahead or behind one space accordingly, depending respectively on whether they guessed it right or wrong.

For a dare card, complete the dare within fifteen minutes, or whenever the dare permits. If the player does complete the dare, they may move ahead one space. If they do not, they move back one space.

For a category card, list the items the card specifies in counter-clockwise order. Whoever messes up in thirty seconds per each turn, they move back one space.

HOW TO WIN: Reach the end and answer trivia questions about the other player(s). Once the player in question to win has answered three correctly, they win the game.

It sounded easy enough; just truths, dares, and lists. I liked making lists when I was little. I still do. It helps me think clearly. We went around, youngest to oldest, just because it was easier that way. Justice went first, and she moved her piece the appropriate four spaces. It was a dare card. “Confront the last person who was angry with you behind your back.” Justice is the kind of little girl that everybody loves. She kept it for the next person who chose a dare.

Isaac got categories and it was presidents; of course, Justice did not know many, so he helped her out as much as he could. Chris lost. I was next. I chose dare. That meant I got her card, and she got mine. “Tell the group what you think a cool job would be but would never be able to/could/would actually do.” She announced that she had a fascination for boats and the water. She loved to swim and go to the beach. She had not been to the beach in years. She said she wanted to be a pirate. I know that the purpose of this question was not to say pirate, but it was cute, so we went on.

The person who was last angry with me was his father, and he knew that. It was silent for a while. Michael attempted to take his turn, but Cady urged me to call them, “right now”. I didn’t do it, and somehow managed to pull an excuse out of thin air. “I cannot perform this dare currently, but...” the game instructs me to read in the event of my failure to do so, “...but that is simply because said person is at work at this time.” Michael then quickly rolled the die to reveal his space to be a truth card.

“What was the name of my first pet?” Michael wrote his answer, and I wrote mine, knowing it so easily. I was the only person to get it, as expected for it being such an out-there question, and it was then Cady’s turn. She had a list, and it was planets. A shorter one, it ended as fast as it began. The cycle continued, in a fairly boring fashion. No big secrets, no big dares. Isaac did have to ask Nurse June on a date, though, which as expected, was hopeless. Lastly, was Chris, for the win against the crippled boy. It was a truth or lie card.

“Who was the last person you thought about?” I guessed his mother, for some unknown reason. Cady and Isaac guessed his dad, and Justice guessed a sister he doesn’t even have. It was all looking to be stumped, allowing Chris to keep his secret, until, the final guess was made accurately. Michael became the winner of the game, and Chris absolutely would not share the truth with anyone. Michael said he would keep his secret.

As we cleaned up the game, Cady and I returned them, and she whispered, “I think I know what he wrote..” I didn’t say anything to respond, but she acted as if I did. “I think it was a girl he might find, hot, or something..” I pretended like I didn’t care, but I was all-ears. “Perhaps, a blonde with short hair, who he’s been eyeing up all afternoon..” Oh. Of course. How could I be so naive? To think an actual college boy--or any boy, for that matter--with a face like his and a personality to match would pay any real attention to me.

Rejoining the group, I grab my jacket, and the Johnson kids went back to Justice’s room before I knew it. Cady offered to take Chris home, hoping to make a move. I let her go. Wheeling Michael back to the room, I look out the window to find Cady driving off. Michael laughed after the door was closed. He told me he wasn't laughing at me, but at Cady. “She wasn’t the name? And he doesn’t--? And now she’s--” he nodded, and laughed much harder, until it hurt. He finally settled down, and told me the truth card’s answer for the victory: none other than the on-stage Juliet.

#tiamus #mine #ya

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