#shards and boards and dirt everywhere... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lookmomiwrite · 2 years

Text

The Crystal Lake Cabin

Chapter 1: A Lost Journal

I had just bought a cabin right off the shoreline of Crystal Lake... Well, what used to be Crystal Lake. Now it was just a river and the muddy remains of what used to be a lake. The dam that kept the reservoir filled was decommissioned about six months ago. Now that the lake was gone, the cabin I bought hit rock bottom prices and it would have been idiotic for me not to buy it. All I wanted was a nice hunting cabin, somewhere to stay for a month or two each year. I didn’t care about the lake being drained and the river was still flowing so there’s plenty of fish to be caught.

After signing, I drove up to the cabin to start the renovations. It hadn’t been used for decades and it needed some repairs. Luckily, the foundation was sturdy and the damage was only cosmetic.

I arrived early in the Spring and my to-do list was endless. The roof had small leaks, the window shutters needed to be replaced, the doors needed new hinges, there was dirt, plants, and debris everywhere, and that was just scratching the surface. It was a mess… but it was my mess now.

A few weeks passed before I noticed the boarded up door on the far end of the house. Between the repairs and fishing trips to the river for food, there wasn’t much time to make new discoveries. It wasn’t easy to open either. Whoever nailed the boards to the wall really didn’t want this door to be opened easily.

I got to work and an hour later the boards were removed. The room was blanketed in a thick layer of dust. There were no windows but there was another door on the outer wall. I didn’t notice a door from the outside and after examining it, I found that the door was completely covered by bushes on the other side. I wish I could say there was some kind of treasure but there were only gardening tools, shovels, and some old books. One book in particular caught my eye.

It was an old journal written by a woman who lived here in 1922. I wasn’t much into snooping but it’s hard to resist reading someone’s one-hundred year-old journal. She was a thirty year-old woman who had moved to the cabin with her husband. Her name was Isla. Her husband was a dam operator and was sent out here to replace the previous operator after they went missing.

***

July 17th, 1922

I am not too enthusiastic about moving out here but Edgar went on and on about how great it would be to get away from the city and do something meaningful. The dam is only a few years old and the reservoir is filling up faster than expected. The reservoir is going to supply water to the nearby farms during the dry season so it is important that this dam is maintained well. It is an important job for an important man, my husband. Even as reluctant as I was to move, there was no way I could say no to him as excited as he was and I could finally start the garden I have always wanted.

July 22nd, 1922

It’s been a few days now and we’re settling in. Edgar has been working hard at the dam the last few days so I’ve been tending to our cabin. Whenever I have time, I work in the garden. The weather is great and with any luck, we will have plenty of vegetables to eat in a few weeks. Edgar went into town yesterday and bought me new tools with the stipend his company gave him. He even brought back a necklace made by a local jewelsmith in a nearby town. It has the most beautiful amethyst surrounded by small obsidian shards and swirling silver rings.

August 1st, 1922

Oh, I have really messed up. I lost it in the garden. I have been digging holes everywhere to try and find it but I just can not find it. Edgar is going to be disappointed with me when he finds out it is lost.

***

It was getting late so I decided to wrap up for the day and it wasn’t much fun to read a journal in a room filled with one-hundred year-old dust. At least the dozens of shovels stockpiled in the room made sense now.

The sun was setting, dark clouds were rolling in, and I still needed to get the generator running before it would be too dark to see. I couldn’t help but wonder what she lost. A ring? Some money? Maybe some kind of family heirloom? I wondered if it was still in the garden, buried for over a hundred years. I decided I’d take a look soon. I have to dig up the old garden to install a new septic system anyway, I might as well dig around a bit while I’m at it.

The weather worsened as I finished starting the generator and by the time I was in my new bedroom it was already pouring. I sat down and started to read Isla’s journal again. I was hoping I could figure out what she lost but the next seven days of entries just repeated how “she lost it” and how “it must be buried here somewhere.” I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere with this and decided to sleep. There was plenty of unfinished work to be done and I needed to conserve my energy.

That night was the worst I’ve slept in years.

I’ve had the same recurring dream the last few nights. The dream starts with me waking up on the couch downstairs. I look out the window and the sky is washed with smoke and the deep burgundy glow of fire. I try to rush out of the house but when I open the door the cabin is on an island of dirt surrounded by a pit so deep the bottom is shielded by a thick, black fog. I always wake up before I can do anything else.

Tonight, the dream was different. When I open the door, the smoke filled sky turns into a wall of dirt, as if the cabin was swallowed by the earth. I remember the shovels in the gardening room and begin digging my way out. No matter how much dirt I moved, all I accomplished was filling the house. There was no end. My only choice was to fill the hole behind me as I continued to dig. My shovel breaks and I wake up drenched in sweat.

The night had just broken and the sun was barely higher than the mountains in the distance. There were still light orange and red hues refracting through the clouds. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and made breakfast. It was a smoked fish I caught at the river a few days prior.

I was done repairing the roof, walls, windows, and anything else that would let the outside in and it was time to start the septic system. It was only a hunting cabin but I planned on staying a few months at a time. An outhouse wouldn’t cut it.

Digging the trenches for the sewage piping was taking much longer than I expected. The issue wasn’t how hard it was to dig, it was how much of a bore it was to dig for hours. As soon as I remembered Isla losing whatever “it” was in the garden, I was already digging. Before I realized how long I was at it, the sun was already setting. I could feel the pit in my stomach tighten as I became conscious of my hunger.

As I sat down for dinner, I picked up Isla’s journal and began to read.

***

August 23th, 1922

Edgar has been worried about me lately. I stopped swimming in the lake recently and he won’t listen to me when I say I’m fine. I just don’t have the time to swim anymore. There’s so much to do around here. I have to tend to the garden. It’s not easy to grow your own food. I wish Edgar could understand.

September 2nd, 1922

Edgar has been insistent on trying to stop my gardening. He says I spend too much time on it, that we don’t need the extra food. He says that the holes are too deep, that it’s not even a proper garden. He just doesn’t understand. He still doesn’t know about it. It’s still buried somewhere. I need to find it.

September 13th, 1922

Edgar had a doctor check me. He says that there is something wrong with me because I spend too much time doing what I love. I have expanded the garden now. It extends to the treeline. I am thinking about expanding it even more. I have always heard that the forest is a natural garden. It only makes sense. I could use the extra space too. There is not much room by the cabin now.

September 30th, 1922

Edgar is mad. He fell and hurt his leg. It is not my fault he was not paying attention. He knows I like to garden, he should be more careful. I told him I started a new garden there.

***

I had the dream again. I was digging for hours… Though, it’s not easy to tell time in a dream. It could have been days. Shovelful after shovelful of dirt I moved ever closer to the surface. My clothes were drenched in sweat and I peeled off each layer, burying the clothes behind me as I dug further and further, never coming close to reaching the end of wherever it was I was going. With each pile of dirt I threw behind me, my breath became more labored. My muscles ached and screamed out to me in pain, telling me to stop… to control myself.

The tunnel narrowed and I slowly became encased in the dirt around me. I was barely able to move my arms and legs enough to maneuver the increasingly damp dirt until the soil condensed and hardened around my body. I tried to scream as dirt and rock filled my lungs.

I laid there, imprisoned in an ever hardening coffin of dirt, until a crack formed above me. Was I free? Did I reach the surface? I watched as a soft purple glow filtered through the dirt and the soil around me melted away as if the light shining through was cleansing me. I was free.

Suddenly, the world turned upside down and I was falling through the crack that was once above me. I crashed into the rock below me, expelling the dirt from my lungs. I was laying in a vast cavern lined in purple gems. I reached out to grab one.

I awoke.

I wanted to find out what she lost.

***

October 5th, 1922

Edgar is becoming angrier every day. He has not tried to understand. He told me he would sell my tools and destroy my garden if I did not stop. He just does not understand what was lost! I thought maybe he would understand if I told him about it but he only became angrier. This is why I had to hide it. No one will understand.

October 6th, 1922

Poor Edgar. I told him that I would not stop gardening. I have to find it. He does not understand. I have to find it. I can not stop until I find it. Why will he not listen? Why will he not understand?

He came home from the dam tonight. He was angrier than I have ever seen him. He tried to stop me. He took my shovel. My dear shovel! He tried to take me away from here but this is where I belong. I belong with my garden. It needs me.

If only he did not try to stop me. We were so happy and now he is gone. He would not stop and so I had to stop him. I did not have any other choice… I have to find it. I have to find it. I have to find it. I have to find it.

***

October 6th, 1922. This was the last entry in the journal and it’s likely gone unread for one hundred years. I finished dinner, well.. breakfast, and went outside to decompress.

All I could do was stare at the long abandoned garden and think about the history here that no one knows but me. As I stared at the ground, I could feel it calling me. It wanted me to dig. My head began to ache and my hands began to numb. All I could do was dig. I had no desire for anything else at that moment. I just needed to dig, to find what it was. What was Isla so obsessed with that she would murder her own husband to continue her search.

My mind jumped to the purple gems in my dream. I wondered if my dream was some sort of premonition on what lay below the garden. Maybe she knew about the gems. Maybe she had dug some up when she first started gardening. Maybe they were still there, somewhere hidden below me.

I went to the gardening room, grabbed her shovel, and started digging.

I dug hole after hole for days. First, I started near the cabin. It made sense, this is where Isla started her first garden. In each hole there was nothing and yet I continued digging. I remembered her journal. She started gardening further from the cabin. It was possible it was further out.

Days passed. I think it may have been six days of digging before I found it. Well, not it but him. I found Edgar or rather what used to be Edgar. He was wearing denim overalls and a shirt that all but withered away under the soil. He was nothing more than a skeleton now.

Reality set in for a fleeting moment. I was filled with contrition. Until now, I had only assumed Isla had murdered him but there was no way to actually know for sure. She stopped writing in her journal after that night. I knew this was him and now I knew that he was murdered. The right side of his skull was caved in as if an axe had cleaved its way into his brain.

“Why was I digging again?”

That was the question I kept asking myself over and over as I sat above Edgar’s grave.

“What am I looking for?”

My head was foggy and it was hard to concentrate. I stared at Edgar’s lifeless bones and remembered what Isla wrote the night she killed him. He had just come from the dam when he tried to force her to leave the cabin. There was something he learned that day that he didn’t know before that night.

My answer was at the decommissioned dam.

***

Read the rest of this story for free on my website. Click the link below!

I write horror, fantasy, and sci-fi and will be posting multiple times a week!

Oh, and don't forget to reblog this and follow me! I want to share my writing with as many people as possible. :D

Hope you enjoyed it!

#creepypasta #horror stories #short story #creative writing #horror #writing #paranormal

2 notes · View notes

perpetuallylocked · 4 years

Conversation

Tag Yourself: Nancy Drew Game Aesthetics Edition

SCK: opening a new book for the first time, the nostalgia of VHS tapes, coca cola in a glass, remembering your locker combo, letterman jackets, watching true crime documentaries, empty high school hallways, 1950s diners, cramming before an exam

STFD: boxes of chocolates, tape recorders, the click-clack of typewriter keys, catching a taxi, shadows on the wall, stained coffee cups, sitting down to rewatch a tv show, perfume bottles, 1990s fashions

MHM: the sight of dust mixing with light, sightreading old sheet music, crystal chandeliers, old floral teacups, crystal balls, old rotary phones, grand staircases, intricate wooden floors, never-ending house projects

TRT: the glitter of diamonds, worn chessboards, snow-covered gardens, ink-covered hands, butterfly collections, cold tile floors, dull suits of armor, dusty history tomes, footsteps muffled by carpets

FIN: plush red velvet, the scent of popcorn, drawing art deco designs in the margins, worn carpets, old playing cards, the feeling there is still magic everywhere, meeting a childhood idol, movie posters on the wall, catching up with a childhood friend

SSH: jade carvings, steep stone steps, chocolate bars, being the only person in a museum gallery, clean lab coats, amazing sights through a microscope, visiting the hospital, remembering facts you've only heard once, checking the mail for your package

DOG: log cabins, the flapping of bird wings, the distant howling of dogs, the odd sensation when you can see the moon during the day, the scent of pine trees, old glass bottles, strolls along the lake shore, admiring 1920s fashion, long walks in the woods

CAR: antique roller coasters, old postcards, the golden light at dusk, loud band organ music, sounds of a carnival at night, ice cream sundaes for dessert, the delight of riding the carousel for the first time, paint-stained clothes, winning a prize from a carnival game

DDI: a steaming mug of tea on a foggy day, sea caves, light from a lighthouse piercing the fog, messages in bottles, approaching deep water, the sound of seagulls, vintage blue bicycles, spotting a whale on the horizon, crumb-topped blueberry muffins

SHA: worn plaid shirts, sunsets on the horizon, the clip-clopping of hooves, antique blanket chests, forbidden romance, mason jars of flowers, brown and blue eggs, playing piano by ear, faded rugs

CUR: leather-bound books, small potted succulents, curving staircases, old portraits, family secrets, four-poster beds, hearing strange sounds at night, food cravings, spending all day on your laptop

CLK: the ticking of an old clock, pearl and cameo jewelry, the scent of a pie baking, the whir of a sewing machine, reading in a window seat, flouncy dresses, bridges over creeks, driving around a small town, reading Shakespeare for your own enjoyment

TRN: ballet slippers, snow mixed with smoke, faded pastel embroidery, the far-off sound of train whistles, old parchment and wax seals, unwrapping a piece of salt water taffy, quirky local museums, organizing your collections and belongings, light shining through tiffany lamps

DAN: light streaming through stained glass windows, bold red lipstick, freshly baked cookies, tales from your grandparents' youth, long-lost love, twirling in a tulle skirt, the overwhelming desire to visit paris, planning out your outfit for the next day, park benches

CRE: wind in the palm trees, footprints in the sand, rustling in the jungle, small seashells, rope bridges, fruity shave ice, waves tickling your toes, the tangy taste of pineapple, watching surfers from the beach

ICE: frozen lakes, sitting by a crackling fire, snow-covered piles of logs, worn leather ice skates, paw prints, staying in bed after you've woken up, seeing your breath in the cold air, unexpected snowball fights, leather-bound journals

CRY: shadows emphasized by candlelight, dirt-caked fingernails, exploring a cemetery at night, wrought iron fences, the smell after it rains, shelves lined with tchotchkes, going back for second helpings at dinner, moonlight streaming through the window, a grandfather clock at the end of the hall

VEN: gelato cones, orange and brown buildings, soft italian songs, gold lockets, buying flowers for yourself, cobblestone courtyards, leaning over the balcony rail, the overwhelming desire to reinvent yourself, dancing like no one is watching

HAU: ocean waves hitting cliffs, hanging herb bundles, old stone fortresses, white lace and promises, wilting flower bouquets, whistling to keep yourself company, distant celtic music, simple diamond rings, sitting in a peaceful garden

RAN: old gold coins, wading in the cold ocean, a slow-moving hourglass, seeing where the sky meets the sea, old pirate legends, sand between your toes, looking down through clear water, buying yourself new clothes for vacation, eating fruit salad for breakfast

WAC: exploring a college campus, old trophies, distant cello music, milk and cookies, cardigan sweaters, texting your friends, bare tree branches, anthologies of stories, school supply shopping

TOT: wind rustling through wheat fields, creaking wooden staircases, white curtains on the window, golden hay bales, old fences lining the road, watching a storm from the porch, buying a new camera, hanging out in your favorite professor's office, sitting on a tire swing

SAW: the faint scent of cherry blossoms, origami cranes, taking a bath, hearing a new language for the first time, shards of glass, seeing your reflection in the water, buying a new stuffed animal, trying a new food on vacation, listening to your grandmother's stories

CAP: rereading favorite fairy tales, blood-red garnets, red hair in braids, mist in the forest, local legends, playing board games on rainy days, remembering your make-believe games of childhood, puffy-sleeved blouses, watching glassblowers make magic

ASH: blue roadsters, rapidly melting ice cream cones, white picket fences, pastel shop awnings, hand-lettered signs in front of shops, the act of simply being with your friends, revisiting your childhood bedroom, spending all day in an antique shop, visiting your friend's house for the first time

TMB: wind-blown sand, straw sun hats, the warmth of the afternoon, chipped statues, well-used research books, having an egypt phase as a kid, planning your next adventure, drinking cold water on a hot day, pushing your hair out of your face

DED: pencil-covered hands, well-oiled gears, the crackling of electricity, eating your favorite flavor of gummy bears, group projects, keeping to yourself at work, unironically wearing ugly sweaters, publishing your research, organizing your messy desk

GTH: peeling paint on a once-grand house, angel statues, sheet-covered furniture, porch swings, lit matches, lace masquerade masks, grand ball gowns, drinking a hot cup of tea and lemon, looking for treasures in the basement

SPY: old leather suitcases, distant memories, the lingering touch of your true love, piano keys, adrenaline rushes, popped trench coat collars, hugging your mom after not seeing her for ages, looking out the window on a train ride, hearing movie soundtracks in your head

MED: the view from the top of a mountain, the rushing sound of waterfalls, freshly dyed hair, shooting stars, wandering off the trail, vintage comic books, philosophical thoughts, binge-watching reality tv, feeling the sense of deja vu

LIE: hands coated with clay and paint, laurel wreaths, pomegranate juice, books of Greek myths, gold sandals, memorizing a monologue, flowing white gowns, spending all day in a museum gallery, exploring ancient ruins

SEA: the twinkling sound of old music boxes, a night shining with stars, cozy knit sweaters, curling up with your dog, model ships, old barrels, learning your town's history, watching gently falling snow, the beauty of the aurora borealis

MID: the dark colors of herbs, edison bulbs, copper kettles, slowly changing leaves, road trips with friends, carving a jack-o'-lantern, exploring cemeteries at night, small shops surrounding a courtyard, thinking you saw a ghost out of the corner of your eye

#I'm definitely CLK and ASH with a touch of WAC and a little SPY #Nancy Drew #Tag Yourself #**general

237 notes · View notes

fantasy2739 · 4 years

Note

YES please continue the Merlin surviving Excalibur!! Maybe something about the toll that helping Merlin took on Douxie?

Hi, I’m sorry this took so long but I really wanted to nail it down properly. This defo goes through the last episode but unfortunately no Charlie. I couldn’t find a way to fit him in.

Link to part 1 if you want to read that first:

https://fantasy2739.tumblr.com/post/626333110868541440/can-you-please-do-a-fix-where-merlin-survives

So this is part 2 of the Merlin lives AU!!

I really hope you like it!!

“Our first priority has to be getting Nari away.” Merlin said firmly. They had gathered around the counter at HexTech. Hisirdoux was leaning heavily on his staff and the counter. Merlin stood next to him, ready to catch him if he passed out.

“But what about Jim?” Claire and Toby asked simultaneously.

“We cannot just abandon Master Jim.” Blinky said.

“We have to.” Merlin said. “His soul is lost.”

“It’s not.” Morgana interrupted. “Claire and I saw it in the shadow dimension.” She put a hand on Claire’s shoulder. “Do not fear, I will help you save him.”

“None of it will matter if the Arcane Order gets Nari.” Merlin said bluntly. They were still outside. No doubt waiting for them to reveal themselves.

“But you said if they don’t have the Genesis thingys it’ll be fine, right?” Toby pointed out. Merlin sighed.

“True but we can’t risk that.” Merlin agreed. “If they find Nari it won’t be long until they find the seals. Even if they don’t, they could force Nari to help their schemes.”

“We’re going to help Jim.” Claire said. “Either help us or get out of here.”

“Get out? The Arcane Order will eat you alive.” Merlin said with confidence. He knew they couldn’t defeat the Order, even with him.

“Enough of this. The Arcane Order is outside. We should make our own plans.” Morgana said. Claire, Toby, Krel, Steve, Blinky and Aaargh left. Nari looked at Merlin nervously.

“Merlin.” Hisirdoux panted out. “You taught me that all life is precious. We can’t just abandon Jim. After everything he’s done.”

“Hisirdoux.” Merlin began.

“No.” Hisirdoux breathed. “You made me a Master Wizard. You have to listen to me now.”

“I know you want to save your friends.” Merlin tried again.

“It’s not about saving my friends.” Hisirdoux interrupted. “We can’t leave Jim to live the rest of his life like that. It’s not right, it’s not fair. You’re taking the easy way out.” Hisirdoux panted heavily, clinging to the counter. Merlin stepped closer but was waved off. “‘M fine.”

“You are not fine.” Merlin insisted. “I’m taking you and Nari and getting out of here.”

“I’m not going.” Hisirdoux said.

“You’re in no fit state to argue.” Merlin said, grabbing him around the waist. “Nari, we’re leaving.”

Maybe throwing himself off the the flying ship was a touch dramatic but Douxie thought it got the message across. They hadn’t even taken off, so it wasn’t like he fell far.

“Hisirdoux!” Merlin yelled. “What were you thinking?”

“That you’d listen?” Douxie replied. “I told you, I’m not going.” He sat up on soft dirt. “I’m not abandoning them.” Merlin looked like he was about to tear his hair out.

“Hisirdoux, we are leaving.” He said in frustration, helping him to his feet.

“I’m going to help Jim!” Douxie shot back.

“You are not!”

“I am!”

“I’m not letting you!”

“You can’t stop me!”

“I’m not losing you again!” Merlin practically screamed. Douxie took a step back. Merlin looked down, sighing and taking a step towards him. “Please Hisirdoux, I can’t lose you.” The hands on his shoulders felt heavy but warm. Douxie looked into the cool blue of his mentors eyes and saw something he never saw. Fear. Merlin was never afraid. Merlin never said please (or he did, but sarcastically) to him. And something ached in Douxie’s heart. Something told him to stay, run away with Merlin and everything would be fine.

“They need me.” Douxie said sadly, pulling away. “I know we need to protect Nari but I need to protect them.” He started to leave, watching as Merlin outstretched his hand with an open mouth.

Getting back to HexTech from where they’d parked the ship took a while, especially at his sedate pace. Archie walked next to him nervously.

“Are you sure you want to do this Douxie? You’re awfully exhausted.” Archie prodded. Douxie huffed as he turned the corner to see ice everywhere. “Oh dear.” Douxie clenched his fists.

“The Arcane Order.” He snarled. “At least they didn’t get Nari.” He hurried into HexTech to find Krel. After waking the young Akiridian up and finding out exactly what happened Douxie tried to think of a plan. His head was pounding and his breathing was getting more erratic. He leaned heavily against the customer service counter trying to think of anything that could help.

“They’re going to offer a deal.” Krel said. “Nari and the Genesis Seals for our friends.”

“They can’t have them.” Douxie said. “What we need is a way to trap them...” His eyes lit up as a plan formulated in his mind. “We need to get to the fallen bit of Camelot. With a shard of the Heart of Avalon we can create a time loop. And then trick them into taking it.” Krel’s eyes widened.

“Lively.” He said. “But how are we going to trick them?”

“Maybe a fake Genesis Seal.” Archie suggested. “A simple illusion spell might work if it’s only for a short while.”

“Good idea Arch.” Douxie said, attempting to stand up. He nearly keeled over, Krel catching him last minute. “Blast it, I don’t think I’m up to much more than standing right now.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing I came back.” Merlin said from the doorway. Douxie’s eyes widened. “Now what reckless plan have you thought up?”

“You’re here?” Douxie asked in surprise. “I thought protecting Nari was the most important thing right now?”

“It is. But someone recently reminded me that all life is precious.” Merlin said with a smile. “And that we should do what is right, not what is easy.” Douxie had never felt so relieved in all his life. He stumbled towards Merlin, toppling into his arms for a big hug. Merlin tensed but wrapped his arms around him after a moment.

“Thank you.” Douxie said quietly. Merlin patted his head.

“Now this plan?”

The plan worked, sort of. At least, Bellroc and Skrael were fooled by the illusion of the Genesis Seals long enough for Douxie to pull an old shell game scam on them. They jumped in after the fake in seconds. Douxie was winded but managed to walk a little to where the ship picked him up. Nari stood on board, having stubbornly refused to stay behind. Douxie thought it was ironic that Merlin had possibly managed to find the most stubborn people on the planet to take into his care. Krel was steering as Merlin readied himself to fight Arthur once again. They reached the Arcane Order ship and boarded as quietly as they could. Reaching the room filled with ice was easy enough but both Jim and Arthur stood guard.

“Back for more death.” Arthur jeered. Douxie grimaced at what had become of the king. Archie breathed, freeing Aaargh to fight Jim while Merlin tried to keep Arthur occupied. Every swing of the cursed form of Excalibur at his mentor reminded Douxie that this wasn’t the Arthur he’d known. This was the Green Knight. Someone no longer caring. Something no longer human. Douxie set about freeing the others.

“You came.” Claire said, hugging him. “I knew you would.” Douxie smiled before turning to Steve and freeing him.

“Any plans on Jim?” He asked as the floor shook from Aaargh hitting Jim.

“My shadow magic might be able to get through to him. Overpower the other magic controlling him.” Claire said.

“Then let’s get him down on the ground.” Toby said, swinging his hammer. “You’ll have more room to pull out some moves.”

“We all will.” Claire agreed.

“Krel is on the ship.” Douxie said. Toby and Aaargh managed to connect a blow to Jim’s head at the same time and he was out. “Go straight down, take a right, then straight again.” Douxie winced, still feeling drained of energy. “We’ll be right behind you.” The others took off, leaving Morgana, Merlin and Douxie to face off against the Green Knight.

Something was wrong with his apprentice. Merlin could tell from the wincing and the stumbling. He knew Hisirdoux. He had large enough magic reserves, not to mention he seemed to build it back up again quickly enough. But right now it looked like he couldn’t levitate a twig. If Merlin had noticed, well it wouldn’t be long until Arthur did. Archie seemed to be trying to tug the boy away, but he was moving stiffly. Merlin saw Arthur move towards Hisirdoux before he did. It was almost like watching in slow motion. And Arthur would have killed him. Killed the closest thing he’d ever had to a child. If Morgana hadn’t thrown half the ceiling at him. Merlin was by Hisirdoux’s side in seconds.

“I’m sorry.” Hisirdoux said. “I’m still not feeling right.” Merlin put a hand on his shoulder.

“Morgana!” He called. The sorceress looked over at him. “I’m leaving Arthur to you.” Something flickered across her face. Relief? Trust? Understanding? It didn’t matter. One minute she was throwing shards at Arthur the next; she’d shoved them both out the window yelling about gravity. Merlin doubted it would kill them. He pulled Hisirdoux’s arm over his shoulder and started to help the boy walk. Something sizzled in the air.

“Look out!” Hisirdoux yelled, yanking them both down behind a pillar. The fireball seared past them leaving a smouldering crater in the wall.

“You little brat.” Bellroc snapped. “Trapping us like that.”

“Weren’t you just an errand boy?” Skrael asked with icy humour. “A little thing relying on more powerful wizards?” They were trying to get a rise out of Hisirdoux. And maybe it would have, if the boy had the energy to move half an inch.

“Wait here and don’t.”

“But master.”

“But master me.” Merlin said with a smile. “Archie keep him here.”

“Oh I will.” Archie said with a frown. No doubt something to do with Hisirdoux not telling him how rough he really felt. Merlin stood up.

“Merlin?!” The Arcane Order hissed in twin surprise.

“Still alive.” Bellroc snarled. They asked several fireballs at him but he dodged each one. The duel was fast paced and violent. Merlin managed to keep it diverted from Hisirdoux, hoping to give the boy enough time to gather his strength and run. But Bellroc and Skrael knew he was nearby and were trying to catch him defending somewhere. Merlin just prayed that Hisirdoux could at least defend himself. The battle raged. Blow for blow. Fire. Ice. Rage and violence. Screaming, howling, hateful. Never ending.

Time slowed. Merlin could not take them on alone. He was still healing from his own brush with death. Although he seemed to be doing better than Hisirdoux. The looming face of death came once more. And again Merlin was ready. Because he wasn’t just being stabbed by Arthur this time. No. He was defending his apprentice. Giving those children time to escape. Time to save their friend, even if he did not see how they could. He was slowing the Order down. And all those things were something worth dying for. He was ready. He just had to make Hisirdoux leave.

“Tenebris exilium!” Merlin yelled, taking them both on at once. “Hisirdoux. Get out of here. Protect Nari. GO!” He prayed that his apprentice would just listen for once. He needed him safe. Needed him to live. Run, Merlin begged, please run.

“Tenebris exilium!” Hisirdoux yelled, standing next to him. Archie in his dragon form, adding his own bit of power. “Not without you. Sorry Dad, but I’m disobeying you one last time.” Merlin stared at Hisirdoux. He’d just called him... why couldn’t his boy be selfish just for once? They were powerful together. But weakened by the previous battle, while Skrael and Bellroc were fit and healthy. The ship shook from the sheer might of the combined magics. Thunder howled and lightning split the skies. Blue ringed Hisirdoux’s eyes as he was sure green did his. The blasts were too powerful and Merlin felt himself being thrown. He closed his eyes as they once again tumbled through the sky.

80 notes · View notes

mazzy-moon · 3 years

Text

A Lone Butterfly - Chapter 8

Title of Chapter: An Eye For An Eye

Word Count: 1.6k

Warnings/Tags: Death, Blood, Violence, Swearing, Grief, Non-gratuitous descriptions of gore, references to kidnapping

Pairing: Javier Peña (Narcos) x Isabel Cotrille (OFC)

Summary: A year has passed since Isabel was kidnapped and rescued by Javier. Despite establishing her new life thousands of miles away from Columbia, her past follows her.

Notes: This is a rough one, but I promise things will get warm, fuzzy, and sexy in the not too distant future. Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read my story. Love you. x

Find this chapter on ao3

ONE YEAR LATER

The sand squishes between my toes as I take my daily run along Cannon Beach. It's cold today. I wonder what the weather is like in Columbia right now. Warm as always, I'm sure. I pass the huge coastal rock jutting out from the water, my signal that I'm nearly back to my condo.

I throw the door open once I get there. Despite the cold I'm drenched in sweat. I reach my desk and read Javier's letter for the millionth time. He asks me about my life here, and how it's treating me. He tells me Columbia misses me, and that he does too. My heart warms. Before I jump in the shower, I decide to quickly write him a response. At the bottom, I include an inside joke from a conversation that seems decades ago now.

'P.S. - Don't go punching any strangers while I'm gone. Love, Isabel.'

I miss Javier. Miss him so much it hurts. Our brief time together forged a bond between us I can't comprehend. I've spent many nights thinking of the kiss we shared. How his hands roamed over my body. It still gives me chills.

Even though he's not here, the memories continue to help me heal from the pain of my past.

It's been nearly a year since I boarded the plane from Columbia. Javier had been right. Moving back here was the best thing for me. I've felt more myself than I have in a long time.

My best friend, Melody, has been great. She's put her social life on hold to be there for me in any way she can. We've spent countless nights making hit or miss dinners and watching tooth rotting rom coms. She also referred me to a counselor the first week I got here, which has helped me in immeasurable ways. It's made me face my trauma, but also helped me cope with it.

Slowly, but surely, the empty piece of myself is filling back up. I still get nightmares, though, and I hate walking the streets by myself, especially at night. I'm wary of strange men, and I never go anywhere without pepper spray. I still miss my mother terribly. And my father. Remembering Columbia brings joy and pain.

There are good days and bad days, but I now have a hope for my future that wasn't there a year ago.

I wrap up a mug to send to Javier along with my letter. I've taken up pottery in the past months and it has been one of the many things to help me cope. I wonder what he'll think of the blue and gold painted creation.

The phone rings. It's Melody.

"Are you down for grabbing some Mexican tonight? There's a new place that just opened up downtown I've been wanting to try. Maybe we could catch a late movie afterwards?"

It was a Friday and I had no plans for the evening.

"Sounds fun, let's do it."

"Awesome! There is one thing though. I just put my car in the shop, is there anyway you could swing my place before?"

"Yeah, that should work. I'll pick you up around six."

"You're the best. See you then. Love ya."

"You too."

We say goodbye.

Later, I get ready for the night. Pulling a powder blue blouse over my head, I glance down at my bedside clock. I have a few minutes before I go to pick up Melody. I grab my keys, purse, and phone before heading out. I run back in, having forgotten Melody's gift. She went out of town for her birthday last week so I never had a chance to give her the gift I made. The intricate cake stand took hours, but I know she'll enjoy using it at her bakery. There's no bag, but it's too late to worry about now. I place it in the passenger seat and head out.

It's nearly dark when I get there. I hate driving to her place. It's cradled in between dense woods on either side and completely devoid of neighbors. I groan as my car reaches the dirt road leading up to her cabin. The looming trees extinguish most of the sun's fading light. As I reach the end of the drive way, I pull out my phone to tell her I'm here. I wait a few minutes but no answer. I'll just go up to the door.

I grab her present from the front seat and step out of my car. The damp earth cakes the bottom of my shoe as I tread up to the entrance of Melody's house. I knock, but she doesn't come. The lights are on, and I can hear music coming from inside. She must not hear me.

I twist the knob. It's unlocked. The minute I step inside I know something is off. Nothing seems to be out of place, but the atmosphere settles around me in a disquieting way.

"Melody, I'm here!" I yell towards the towards the top of the stairs.

Still nothing.

Something is wrong. I'm scared to go upstairs, but I do it anyway. I force myself to put one foot in front of the other. The panicky feeling I haven't had in a while creeps back in.

I hear the cake stand fall from my arms and shatter to a million pieces when I reach the top.

The lower half of Melody's body lies in front of me. The rest is hidden by the half closed bedroom door. I rush towards her, praying she's alive.

She's bleeding. It's everywhere.

"Melody! Melody!" My heart threatens to burst out of my chest. "Can you hear me, Melody? Answer me!"

She lies still. Somewhere deep down I know my friend is gone. As soon as my gaze shifts to her face I involuntarily fling myself from her.

A shard of glass sticks out from one eye. Everything is such a mess I didn't notice it at first. I sob loudly, barely recognizing my own voice. Slowly, I shift onto my knees towards her. I reach out for her hand, noticing the scrap of paper clutched in its grasp. I unfold the scrap between sobs.

Ojo por ojo.

An eye for an eye. The phrase has been written in blood.

I run down the stairs and back to my car as fast as my body will allow me. I yank my phone from my purse and dial the police.

It doesn't all set in until after the police have rolled her body away, pronouncing her dead at the scene. They ask me all the normal questions and I robotically answer. I'm a million miles away. They ask me about the note then. I tell them I knew it's meaning the moment I read it. I explain to them everything that happened in Columbia. Their next step is to contact Officer Santiago to fill him in on the situation and decide on how to proceed.

I don't go home that night. They assign me to the Witness Protection Program and place me under guard in a remote location an hour away.

As I'm sitting at the tiny home's kitchen table, my phone buzzes. I recognize the number and pick up on the first ring.

"Javi," my voice is shaky and barely there.

"Isabel, I just heard what happened. Are you safe?"

"I'm f- fine. I'm in the middle of nowhere, but there's guards with me."

He pauses and I hear a heavy sigh on the other end.

"Fuck, Isabel. I'm- I'm sorry this is happening."

"It's not your fault."

"It is. We should've caught these guys by now. The fact that they left the country and weren't even on our radar- this is a fucking mess."

I try to hide my cries but he must sense it anyway. Something about hearing his voice after everything that's happened makes me finally let go.

"Shh. Don't cry. Listen, I'm gonna come up there. I can get on a plane within a couple days."

"No, Javier, you can't do that."

"They traveled countries to get to you, Isabel. I have to-"

"No, you can't do anything from here. The police are taking care of me, Javi. I'll be okay. I can't keep you from doing what you can to catch them."

We go back and forth but he finally decides to stay in Columbia as long as I update him each day. We say our goodbyes, and I almost beg him to come to me. I crave his arms. But I can't bring myself to be that selfish.

Being cooped up in the hide out cabin reminds me of my boredom back at the hospital in Columbia. I'm not allowed to leave and there's little to do here. I have endless amounts of books though. I skip the murder mysteries, preferring to drown myself in the pile of vintage romance novels tucked away in a rusty cabinet. Melody would have loved these books. She was a sucker for this stuff.

I've had to stop myself from picking up the phone to call her more times than I can count. It may not be medically possible, but I swear my heart physically aches at the thought of my best friend. I'd known her my entire life. I couldn't imagine life without her. I couldn't have imagined life without my mother and father either, but here I am. Life was cruel thing, hungry for peace and stealing it when you least expect.

After several days spent in solitude at the hide out, one of my guards informs me we are taking a trip back to the station. I ask what for, but am given no answer.

Once there, I'm informed I am to go back to Columbia. Javier's task force has caught Matías. I am the only one that can positively identify him.

I grip the seat beneath me.

It seems Columbia is not done with me yet.

#javier pena #javier pena fic #javier pena fanfiction #javier pena imagine #javier #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #narcos #narcos fic #a lone butterfly series #javier peña

6 notes · View notes

lovelyirony · 4 years

Note

How about a cute moment between Peggy and young Sharon, based on prompt #37 "Follow me. It's okay, just hold my hand." please?

Peggy is scared. She is the type of woman that does not get easily scared. She’s stopped communist plots of assassination, fought against men that were three heads taller than her and won, and successfully gotten her own organization lead by herself, which was practically unheard of at the time.

So why should she be scared of looking after her niece?

Her brother had a baby girl. Sharon. Peggy sent them a lovely card, nappies, and two or three cute outfits for her. But she’s not the type of person to be so...caring. Motherly? Well she does want to be a mother, but it’s so soon.

But then her brother asked if she could please babysit Sharon for a Saturday, as they’re going to a wedding all day and will be back Sunday morning to pick up their little girl.

Peggy said yes. She could’ve said she was busy, but she needed an excuse to not work on paperwork.

So Sharon is coming. Sharon is six years old. She writes thank-you cards for the gifts that Peggy sends, and when Peggy talks to her brother, it always seems that Sharon’s climbing a tree or coming in with an injury.

So she’s not surprised to see her niece in overalls that already have a stain somewhere on them, ratty tennis shoes that have seen better days certainly, and her mother is apologizing for her appearance.

“She...wanted to go exploring,” she says.

“Exploration is an important part of life,” Peggy offers. “But I’m sure that it’ll work out.”

Her mother leaves with a kiss on the forehead and an excited little walk back to the car. Probably the first time she could get drunk in a while, Peggy presumes.

Sharon stares at her aunt.

“What do you do for a job, Aunt Peggy?”

“Um...” Peggy searches for an answer. “I work for a law firm.”

Sharon scrutinizes her for a moment.

“Not ordinary law?”

Damn, she’s perceptive.

Peggy asks her if she would like some tea. Sharon thinks.

“Do you have any mint?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Oh. No thank you then. Daddy always makes breakfast tea and it tastes like dirt.”

Peggy laughs. She pulls some juice out of the fridge, bought especially for Sharon’s visit.

“Apple juice, then?”

It’s all very awkward, really. Peggy doesn’t really know how to treat children. This was a horrible idea. But she has to persevere because it is only ten-thirty and there’s a whole day to be had.

So they visit the Smithsonian. Sharon has been there before and chatters about Dorothy’s shoes, different technology they have on display, and the adventures that her classmates went on.

“Joe tried to climb a wall, but he didn’t get very far. Miss Rosemary said if he did it again that she would kill him. But she told me not to tell mommy that.”

Peggy chuckles to herself.

“Did you tell your mother?”

“No. She would involve the school board. That’s too messy, Aunt Peggy.”

Sharon knows more beyond her years, which is a very curious thing for a child.

Peggy decides to tell her the truth of some stories that they tell others.

Sharon sucks it up, and then suggests they get lunch. She knows her favorite food truck is around the corner.

Sharon likes Greek food. Peggy thinks that she may have found her new favorite person.

Sharon comes over more often. They don’t live too far away. Peggy will sometimes sneak out of the office early to pick up her favorite niece from school on Fridays and they have a sleepover.

They enjoy talking about history, what changes and what doesn’t, and Sharon’s coming around to the idea of breakfast tea.

On one of their weekend adventures, Peggy has to stop at the bank.

So does a group of men in masks who are conducting a robbery. Peggy’s pistol is safely hidden away in her purse, but Sharon’s scared. Her voice is shaky, although she isn’t crying.

“Follow me, it’s okay. Hold my hand,” Peggy says, eyeing the security system. She’s already pressed a remote that she’s carried everywhere with her. Agent Fury should be coming with back-up, and the police should also be arriving fairly soon. But Peggy knows how quickly something can go wrong.

Hell, she’s orchestrated a lot of wrong for certain benefits.

“Will it be okay?” Sharon whispers.

“Yes,” Peggy answers.

Here’s the thing that she’s learned about most bank robbers: if you have about two or three, they’re more focused on making sure they have a clear path to the door and they get the money they want.

So Peggy shoots and sets off the water sprinklers.

It’s enough confusion to run, take advantage of the confusion and the cursing to usher Sharon into an exit.

Sharon surprises her by taking hold of the vase on the center table and throwing it at the floor, and the water in the vase and from the ceiling causes the man running after them to trip and land on shards of ceramic and tile.

Peggy knows her Sharon will be a good agent.

Even if you don’t get rewarded with Baskin Robbins after successfully stopping a would-be-successful-criminal.

#peggy carter #sharon carter #i really enjoyed writing this #lovelyirony writes #aunt peggy ;)

66 notes · View notes

lastbuckshot · 5 years

Text

Kinky-days Day 1: Josh (The Divide)/Reader [NSFW]

Kinks: Slave/Master | Humiliation | Begging Words: 8.2k Fandom: The Divide Rating: Explicit Title: Cleansed

It was quiet down here.

Every day bleeding together. No light to reveal whether it was day or night. So long, so much time, so many passing hours and days. Had it been weeks down here, or months? Had you crossed the threshold into years?

The sense of sameness and stagnation was suffocating. Mentally and physically stuck in the same place, surrounded by the same gray concrete walls, staring at the same boarded off steel door, praying one day for salvation that may never come. Memories of the outside word began to fade; the texture of grass crunching beneath the soles of your shoes, the warmth of sunlight on your skin, the tickle of raindrops dripping down your face. All taken for granted in the moment. All ripped away in one explosion. All so close to being forgotten.

Decorations hung from the walls and ceilings in a poor attempt to keep up with the seasons. The bunker had grown colder day by day, pushing you to wrap yourself in ratty blankets during the hours in which you slept. Many a night (or what you assumed to be night) had passed with Josh’s body pressed up against yours, his arms wrapped around you in a conflicted warmth and comfort.

And so, emboldened by cooler temperatures and the inevitable passage of time, Josh had allowed some Christmas spirit to permeate the otherwise stagnant air.

A whole day, three or four periods of sleep before now, had been dedicated to decoration. Staring up at the decorations now took you back to that day, standing atop chairs in a dirtied gown, feeling Josh’s watchful eye track you from one side of the room to the other, as you taped, pinned, and hung makeshift decorative items to his liking. When all was said and done, his hands anxiously squeezing your thighs several times throughout, you were gratefully rewarded, laid on your back, and filled with what could only be called Christmas spirit.

Your life was here now, in a rank bunker that you could only call home. Sitting on the cold concrete floor, legs crossed, facing the wall on the opposite side of the room. A set of fingers stroking your scalp from above. The smell of iron, the sight of red spots on the floor in front of you. A thumb stroking your temple, a finger stroking your cheek, blood smeared and drying against your skin.

“It’s a shame that Eva had to die,” a voice spoke behind you. “And right before Christmas, too. I thought she was fucking around with that gun to her head. But all that blood… those tiny pieces of brain everywhere. The shards of skull. That was all real shit.”

An uncomfortable pause separated his past words from his next, leaving your skin to jump at the sensation of his fingertips trailing up the back of your neck.

“I cleaned her up for you. I hope you enjoyed the show. There’s nothing quite like the sound of an axe splitting bone. It’ll take a while to burn all those pieces. But I’ll get it all out of the way. Just for you. You better be fucking grateful.”

The images in your head twisted your stomach into knots. Pools of blood that seemed to never end. No matter how many times you soaked your sponge, it was all red, everything was red, the palms of your hands, the fronts of your knees, red dripping down your arms and caking beneath your nails—

The tug of leather around your neck snapped you back to your immediate surroundings. Back to towering walls of concrete, dirt, and grime. The belt leashed around your neck wrapped around Josh’s palm on the loose end, and the buckle sat just beneath your chin on the other. He tugged the strap back suddenly and peered downward, resuming his petting of your head and scalp.

“You’re not ignoring me, are you?”

You answered without moving.

“No, sir.”

Josh rubbed his hand between your shoulders, then began to pet the skin behind your ear.

“That’s a girl. That’s why I like you. Why I chose you. You know your place. You know I’m the reason you’re still alive down here. The reason why we’ll get out of here someday. Run off together. Make a new life. Just you and I.”

He paused to reach his hand town toward your breasts, squeezing one, teasing the nipple, squeezing the other, and teasing again.

“Lucky for you, you’re a good fuck.”

Moments passed with no other words; only the tingle of Josh’s fingers grazing over your scalp. Eventually, with your eyes remaining fixated on the walls and doorway in front of you, you heard and felt his body lean forward, then back. The crackle of plastic, the friction of a top coming unscrewed, the sloshing of liquid. The swallows in Josh’s throat were deep and audible, with several long, satisfied gulps. A sigh of contentment and the screwing of a top signaled that he’d had his fill, and seconds later, his arm reached over your head and down to the floor, setting the half-drunk water bottle in front of you, within arm’s reach.

Staring into the plastic, the water swaying back and forth before easing still, made you acutely aware of a dryness in the back of your throat. You refrained from moving, unsure of Josh’s next move. You waited for any sudden movement of his body, any reach of his arm to take back his bottle, any tug of his hand to snap you back into place, any verbal warning not to touch what was rightfully his. But, no matter how anxiously you waited, there was nothing. On a gamble, you took his silence as an open invitation.

Arms outstretched to reach for the bottle, plastic just barely brushing your fingers—the sudden jerk of leather tightening around your throat, air abruptly trapped in your lungs, your head and neck snapped backwards, crashing into Josh’s knee. With your head tilted back far enough to bring Josh’s face into view, you were able to see his face, his dead eyes, and his bloodied face, contorted to make his displeasure apparent.

“Very bad girl,” he scorned. “You know my rules. You want something, you ask for it. Isn’t that right, baby?”

You swallowed.

“Yes, sir.”

With Josh’s hand petting your forehead, his grip on your leash still firm, he continued.

“Good girl. Ask me, then.”

“May I please have some water, sir?”

Josh smirked, still petting your forehead, searching your face, sensing your fear and discomfort.

“You don’t have to be scared of me. And don’t be so uptight. I stopped being a sir a long time ago. It wouldn’t be so bad if you called me baby. Or your love. You owe me your life, and I know you love me for it. Don’t be afraid to show me. I know you don’t like all the things I’ve had to do to keep us safe in here. But it was all for you. One day, we’ll be together, out of this place. And you’ll see. I’ll make sure you see. Okay?”

You could hear and feel the thump of your heartbeat in your ears, your throat tightening around each breath.

“Okay.”

Josh leaned in closer toward your face, and you closed your eyes. His lips met with your forehead, where they stayed for several long seconds, with his hands cupping around your cheeks. When he pulled his lips away, he smirked for only a moment longer before that very smirk disappeared into a serious and focused frown. Grabbing the water bottle and dangling it over your head, Josh spoke in a low, growling whisper.

“Now beg.”

The vice grip of Josh’s hand around the back of neck triggered a sharp gasp as he pushed you forward, sending you tumbling to your hands and knees on the floor. You turned to face him like a sad and wounded dog, and feebly attempted to eke out several words.

“Please, can I have some w—”

Josh’s body snaps abruptly forward, his hand covering your mouth, as he brings his face a hair’s breadth away from your nose.

“Not with your words,” he says. “Show me how bad you want it.”

Josh slowly pulls his hand away from your mouth, leaning back in his chair, legs spread apart. He’d fashioned his chair with cushions and a deep red blanket, and always sat in it like royalty. As he leaned back, staring, and eagerly, you couldn’t help but feel pushed to comply.

You start with his boots, kissing them, licking them, closing your eyes to avoid registering the taste that now coated the front of your tongue. You kissed up his leg through his tattered black jeans, running your hand up the length of his calves and thighs. While one hand rubbed and stroked against his length, you teased his crotch with your mouth, swirling your tongue against his jeans, leaving trails of wetness to seep through the cloth. You gazed up and Josh for his reaction, and saw him with his head tilted back, eyes closed. His chest rose and fell with his heavy breath, his hips bucking gently all the while. His hand squeezes the back of your neck, pushing you closer into him, holding your head in place. Abruptly, he pushes your head away with enough force to send you tumbling backward.

You nurse your right wrist and watch Josh’s next moves intently. Josh reaches for the water bottle that had now fallen over on the floor, untwisting the cap and sliding off of his throne to the floor. He inches forward on his knees closer toward you, taking a final drink from the bottle himself. He lifts your chin with his finger, then tilts the bottle into your mouth. The first rush of cool water into your mouth was instantaneous relief. Gulps of water down your throat, with a stream of water running down your chin, dripping all on your chest and gown. All too soon, the bottle was finished.

“Messy girl,” Josh teased, looking over the drops of water that had fallen on your chin and chest, “Look at what you did. I can’t let all that go to waste, can I?”

His tongue was warm and wet against your skin, collecting cool drops of water as it trailed up your chest. He lapped at your chin, stopping just below your bottom lip. You couldn’t help but gasp when he slid his tongue inside of your mouth, hands wrapping around your waist to pull you closer. Your own hands snaked up his stomach, your thumb stroking over his belly button. Each of Josh’s kisses were long and desperate as he hungrily tugged your body closer to his own. His stomach was warm to the touch, which tacky half-dried spots of blood sticking to your palms. The sudden grasp of Josh’s hand around your jaw pulled you out of the kiss, and was swiftly followed by a stiff push backwards. Once again you found yourself thrown to the floor, at the mercy of the only other human you knew to be alive. Josh wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the other hand not visible aside from the long strokes just behind his zipper. Standing to his feet, he spoke.

“You want it bad. I can smell it all over you. And I’ll give this to you soon enough,” he said, gesturing between his legs. “But right now, clean this fucking room. It looks like a pig pen.”

Josh’s fingers worked quickly, unbuckling the belt that had remained around your neck for days. The leather left behind long, parallel indentations, sensitive to Josh’s touch. He traced the reddened lines just above and below your throat. His wettened tongue tugged your skin in a way that could only be described as intoxicating; a subtle sting of pain that left your face flush. With your leash wrapped around his palm, and his thumb exploring the now-fading indentations on your neck, he leaned forward to speak softly into your ear.

“I just want you to remember,” he started, “That these little scars are a small price to pay to still be alive.”

Josh kissed your neck, pushing you to the floor in the same manner with which you had become all too familiar. He drew the doorway curtain closed behind him as he exited, leaving you alone with your task.

In the corner of the room, a mop rested against the wall. Beside it, a rusting metal bucket, filled with murky brown water. A trusty and well-worn sponge in hand, your knees pressed firmly into concrete, you began to scrub the floor. Blood and dirt lifted from the coarse, gray floor in a weak, watery froth. Traversing the room, scrubbing, rinsing, repeating, alleviating some of the grime that had made the air so stagnant and suffocating.

Sitting against a far wall was a dresser drawer, formerly belonging to Mickey, and now a centerpiece, a memory, perhaps a trophy in Josh’s little kingdom. Your sponge scrubbed away yet more blood and dust from the dresser’s front, which you followed with a ragged and now-damp towel that had touched every other wettened surface in the room. With the outside of the dresser as clean as one could manage with the tools available, you stretched your arm beneath the dresser to wipe up, finally, the last spot worth cleaning. Your arm swung from right to left, and from the left side of the dresser, something foreign flew out and skidded across the floor. You grasp it (whatever “it” was_ in your fingertips, and only needed to bring it an inch closer toward your face to realize what you’d touched.

Browning, rotting, human flesh. Severed and covered in its own drying, decaying blood. You threw the appendage away from yourself sooner than you could catch your breath. You sat back on your palms, gulping down saliva, your eyes unwavering from the horrid sight before you on that lifeless, concrete floor. Worse than your soiled hands, worse than the mere sight of dying flesh, worse than the smell or the twisting of your stomach, was not knowing to which one of the many who’d died alongside you this severed finger belonged to.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

You scrambled to sit up on your knees and turn around towards Josh, who was standing in the center of the room. Gray underwear hugged his thinning hips, and a tattered blanket draped over his shoulders, clasp by his hand at either end.

“Stand up.”

You set your sponge down beside you on the floor, raising steadily to your feet with a fixated gaze on Josh. Your muscles tense and your throat begins to close as he walks closer, bending down to pick up the rotting finger from the floor. He examines it, standing just inches away from you, turning it over several times between his fingertips to stare at the nail and severed base.

“You know what’s funny?” he starts, his eyes still locked on the appendage in his hand. “Between, Mickey, Eva, Marilyn, Sam, and all the other dumb fucks who managed to die down here, I can’t even tell whose finger this is. We’ve just chopped up so many together, haven’t we, baby?”

Josh trailed the severed finger along your jawline, cold and dry, dragging sluggishly across your skin. He brought the fingertip up to your lips and tried to press it between them before your head instinctively jerked backwards. Josh grinned with delight, continuing to tease the finger in front of your face, dangling it in front of your nose and just shy of your lips.

“C’mon, lighten up,” he said. “Let’s try and figure out whose ugly fucking finger this is. Does it look like a manly finger? Or does it look like it belongs to a bitch?”

He tried again to push the finger between your lips, and you couldn’t stop yourself from shoving his hand away from your face, sending his arm, and the finger, flying in the opposite direction. You said nothing, but felt your heart sink into your stomach after realizing what you’d done. Josh’s face contorted with anger, staring at you, then at his arm, then at the finger that had fallen to the ground. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, exhaled deeply, then, inexplicably, cracked a smile. He tucked the finger into the hem of his underwear and stepped forward to cradle your head in his hands. You stood up straight and stiffened your neck, fully expecting him to, at any given moment to snap your neck to either side, sending you among the ranks of the many dead in this cellar.

“You didn’t like that game,” he whispered. “That’s okay. We can play a different one, can’t we?”

Josh removed one hand from your cheek, sliding it down his stomach and into his underwear. You didn’t look down, but could just barely see the groping motions in your periphery. After a few seconds, he pulled something from his boxer briefs, and dangled it over both of your heads.

Looking up, you saw a dingy white shoestring tied around the remains of a long-dead flower, decaying petals, brown, crunchy leaves. Josh traced your bottom lip with his thumb and leaned forward for a kiss. His lips were wet and his pace was voracious, his free hand wandering freely down past your waist to grab a handful of your ass, pulling you closer toward his body. Your hands gripped around his ribs and drifted slowly toward his stomach. Between both of you, you could feel his cock steadily growing in length, becoming stiffer against your stomach with each passing second. You reached your hand between the two of you to grab his length, but were stopped sharply by the tight grip of Josh’s hand around your wrist, pulling your hand up and away.

“You’re such a nasty girl,” he cooed. “You already want it so bad. That’s why I chose you.”

With one hand still gripped around your wrist, Josh wrapped the other around your throat. He walked briskly forward until your back slammed against cold concrete, his firm grip on your wrist unwavering.

“No one in the world wants to fuck you the way I want to right now. I could see it right now. Me bending you over, giving you the best you’ve ever had in any one of those dirty fucking holes. But who owns who down here? Hm? Who’s providing, and who’s protecting? Who’s been keeping your sorry ass alive down here?”

You stood motionless for several seconds, but were snapped out of your silence when Josh tightened his grip around your throat, yelling as loud as his voice could carry.

“ANSWER ME.”

“You,” you managed to struggle out of your trembling throat. “You own me.”

Silence made the air thick, stifling, and suffocating. He stared into your eyes with his hand wrapped around your throat, leaving the world frozen in time.

“That’s right, baby girl,” he cooed. “I own you. From the top of your head, to the tips of your toes. From your mouth, to your tits, to your pussy, to your ass, everything belongs to me. So know your fucking place, and stop fucking teasing me.”

You swallowed, Josh’s shaven brows furrowed, his nose close enough to brush against yours. He heaved several breaths out of his nose, which you could feel against your lips, before he pulled away and smiled.

“I’m fucking with you, baby,” he said with a laugh that caused your body to tense, “I’m not that fucking stupid. You can come to me and touch little Josh anytime. He’s always so excited to see you. See? Look.”

Josh led the hand that he’d had pinned against the wall toward the hem of his underwear. He slipped it inside, guiding your hand to cup around his balls, then to stroke his shaft. He didn’t break eye contact, but moaned softly to your touch, sometimes closing his eyes and tilting his head back toward the ceiling. Your fingertips trailed up the length of his cock as he pulled your hand away, and just at the tip, you felt the wet stickiness of precum as it rubbed off onto your skin.

“See? He likes you. And I think you like him, too.”

Both you and Josh gasped as his hand lifted your gown and crept inside of your panties. His middle finger teased between your lips, his eyes tracked each squirm, and his ears savored each whimper. His finger became wet and slick in short order, and your body jolted when his finger brought that wetness up toward your clit. He stroked it several times, smirking before he went in for a kiss or two along your neck, and removed his hand soon thereafter. He brought his finger to his mouth, licking off the taste of you, stroking himself through his underwear as he coated his tongue in every last drop.

“Before I give you what I know you want,” he jeered, “I have a surprise for you. Follow me.”

He picked up his gray blanket, which had fallen to the floor, and draped it again over his shoulders. You followed closely behind out of the throne room door into what could only be called a living space. Just in front of you both sat a barrel, supported by four cinderblocks, with a fire sputtering inside, and a wire grate sitting over the opening of the barrel. On it was a pot full of some boiling brown liquid, ever so slightly viscous, with unidentifiable chunks floating inside. The sight made your stomach turn a little, but the smell wasn’t quite as egregious.

“What is that?” you asked, pointing toward the pot.

Josh pulled you by the arm to sit down on one of the chairs he’d situated on either side of the barrel, and stood behind you, with one hand massaging your shoulder.

“Stop asking so many fucking questions,” he warned. “I said it was a surprise, didn’t I?”

He brought his finger up to your lips, and cooed a gentle “shhhh,” into your ear. His finger was cold and dry, and crossing your eyes to look at it against your lips, unusually dark. Realizing what he’d done, you jerked your head backward and ducked it out of the way and the decaying finger he’d taken from you earlier. As you wiped your lips with the back of your arm in a feeble attempt to wick off the disgusting feeling of rotting flesh so close to your mouth, Josh laughed heartily, walking up from behind you to toss the finger into the fire through a hole in the grate.

“You’re cute,” he joked, picking up a mug from the floor on his side of the barrel. “All the shit we’ve seen down here. Dead bodies, severed heads, guts and blood spilling everywhere. Literal shit, too. And after all that, a little finger still makes you jump. How sweet, baby girl.”

He used his blanket to grasp the burning hot handle of the pot. The brown, chunky liquid sloshed into the mug, and once the cup was nearly full to the brim, Josh extended his arm to pass it to you.

Taking it and sniffing it hesitantly, you couldn’t pin down what smell was emanating from the cup, and swirling the contents around, you were still rendered unable to tell what ingredients the drink was composed of. Josh picked up a second mug as you examined your drink, pouring some for himself, and staring at you as you hesitated.

“Are you gonna drink it, or just fucking play with it? I’m not telling you what it is. So open your mouth, get the cup in there, and be fucking grateful for once.”

Looking into the nondescript pieces of god-knew-what inside of the cup, swirling past each other out of sync, made you sick. The color of the elixir was reminiscent of the mop bucket in the throne room, which only did more to agitate your gut. Nevertheless, you brought the mug to your lips, sucking the drink into your mouth, and forcing yourself not to retch when the chunks hit your lip. The mental and visual roadblocks stayed firmly in place, but the taste itself wasn’t nearly as horrid as the look. It tasted like sugar water, and vaguely of chocolate, with some other flavors lingering on the back of your tongue. You went in for another sip, both curiously and because of your water-deprived thirst, and found it tolerable enough to continue to drink. As you drank, Josh lifted one of the four cinderblocks encircling the barrel, and pulled out a large handful of candy wrappers. M&M’s, 3 Musketeers, Butterfingers, Snickers. Seeing the wrappers made the drink suddenly taste and look more familiar; chunks of half-melted peanut butter and nougat, whole peanuts, all floating in a washed-out chocolate color.

“It’s hot chocolate,” Josh said, seemingly proud of his creation, of which he took a large gulp. “Merry Christmas. Or whatever fucking day it is down here.”

The two of you continued to drink in front of the fire, sharing sporadic glances as you twiddled your thumbs, and as he adjusted his blanket. Abruptly, Josh gulped down the rest of his drink, tilting his head back and letting a stream of brown liquid run down either side of his mouth. He chewed the chunks of nougat and peanut that had sank to the bottom and stood, walking back toward his throne room without a word. You watched him, gripping your mug with both hands, as his body disappeared behind the doorframe. Once he was out of sight, your attention drifted back to the fire, the wispy glow of flames crawling up and down the sides of the barrel. You peered in closer, and could see the charring remnants of the finger Josh had thrown in earlier.

Watching it burn was mesmerizing in a horrifying way. You knew deep down that that finger belonged to someone you watched die down here. Someone you once called a friend. Someone that Josh disposed of when it was time. And you helped.

But somehow, right now, you were able to move that to the back of your mind. You only saw an experiment in real time. Human flesh yielding to a burning fire. How long would it hold its shape? How long would it take to burn to ash? How long until the last piece of someone was erased from what was left of the world?

While you were lost in your thoughts, staring into the fire and sipping your hot chocolate, you felt a cold gush of liquid run down your back, chest, and shoulders. You gasped and jumped up from your seat, sending your mug and what as left in it crashing to the floor. With your feet surrounded by shards of ceramic, you had time to register the familiar and foul stench of the liquid you were covered in.

Bucket water.

The stench of dirt and grime with a tinge of iron from the blood. The scent of your gown, and even your own skin, gave you the urge to gag. Before you were able to register what happened, you felt leather wrapping around your throat from behind, and the sound of a buckle opening and clasping shut. Josh’s hand grabbed your shoulder and swung you around to face him, looking first at the mess on the floor below, then up toward your soiled gown and face.

“You’re such a dirty little thing,” he whispered, gripping your leash in his hand. When your eyes drifted downward, your heart skipped a beat at the sight of a silver pocketknife in his palm.

“Look at the mess you made. Apologize.”

“I’m sorry,” you whimpered. “I’m sorry for making a mess. I didn’t mean to, baby, I promise, I—”

Before you could finish, Josh jerked your body forward, placing the blade of his knife just a hair’s breadth from your throat. You closed your eyes and winced, afraid to even swallow. Josh said nothing, holding the knife firmly in front of your throat, before he shoved you to the floor, sending you directly on top of a puddle of hot chocolate and sharp ceramic. One shard in particular cut straight through the skin of your palm, oozing blood when you pulled the shard out of the wound. Josh knelt down in front of you as you nursed your hand, watching curiously as you bled. He picked up the bloodied shard you’d just extracted, looking it over, before tossing it to the ground himself.

“Let me see.”

You kept your hand pulled closely into your chest, scared to be on the receiving end of further damage. Josh sighed, twirling his pocket knife in his hands before pressing it against your throat.

“You didn’t forget our little conversation from earlier, did you? I own you, you dumb bitch. Now give me your fucking hand.”

You could see your own hand trembling as you extended it toward Josh, who snatched it toward him to examine your palm. He poked and prodded at the wound, watching it bleed and slowly begin to clot. After a few short seconds, he dragged his tongue over the wound, catching a pool of blood in his tongue, and lapping it into his mouth.

“It’s not that bad,” he said, standing. “You’ll be fine. Do you want some clean clothes?”

Still sitting on the floor, you nodded.

“Good,” he said, pulling up a chair to sit in front of you. “Then beg for it.”

Still favoring your right palm, you crawled toward him on hands and knees.

“Please, can I have some clean clothes?”

“More.”

“Please, baby, can I please have clean clothes? You own me and everything I do, I’m dirty, and nasty, and soaking wet, and I wanna be clean.”

Josh smirked, leaning down to grab the end of your leash. He tugged upward to get you to stand, and let go of your leash to lean back in his chair.

“Good girl. Take off those dirty clothes for me, then. Nice and slow.”

Starting with your gown, you pushed the straps off of either shoulder. The garment began to slink down your body, falling past your shoulder blades and down your arms, further still past your chest. Wearing no bra, the sensation of air against your nipples made them almost instantaneously stiff. As he watched you strip, Josh’s hand crept down his underwear, his hand stroking and massaging just out of sight. The gown had fallen down around your feet, leaving you exposed aside from your underwear.

You worked your fingers around the lacy hem and began to pull downward. Once they were off, you covered your breasts with on arm and below your waist with the other hand, fully exposed and at Josh’s mercy.

“Come here,” he said, motioning with his finger. “Kneel. Right in front of me.”

Obeying his orders, you sat on your knees before him, right between his legs, and waited for his next command.

He took his hand back out of his underwear and reached down beside the chair he sat in. He untwisted the cap on an unopened water bottle, and took a sip. Then, without warning, he tilted the bottle over to send a cool waterfall cascading over your body. His hand wiped away what dried grime had been left behind from the mop water, leaving your body clean and glistening, backlit by the orange of the fire behind you both.

Josh lifted your chin with his finger, pulling you up into a kiss. His hands caressed either side of your waist, gliding along your curves, slick with water and warm with his body heat. The heat wicking off of the fire behind you set tingles up your spine as Josh’s tongue laps in and out of your mouth, growls of pleasure rising from his throat.

Cupping a breast in either hand, he leaned forward in his seat to kiss down your neck, toward your shoulders. As he kissed, he freed one hand to begin pulling down his boxer briefs, slowly down his thighs and past his knees, until they fell to the floor at his feet. Now satisfied, he leaned back in his chair, his legs spread apart, and your leash wrapped around his hand. From the floor beside him, he picked up yet another water bottle, twisted the cap, and threw it aside; but this time, he handed the bottle to you.

“It’s my turn,” he grinned, leaning back in his chair and thrusting his hips toward you. “Clean me.”

Tilting the water bottle over, you allowed streams of water to roll down Josh’s chest and abs. Each stream took a slightly different direction; some dripped over his sides and onto his chair, some streams stopped and pooled around his belly button, and others rolled down each ab, and past the v-lines along his hips, to leave his cock and balls wet and glistening.

Running your hands over his skin removed dirt and grime from his body in much the same way it did with yours. The friction cleaned his skin where you hadn’t realized it was soiled, until his chest and stomach were clean enough to reflect the orange glow of the fire.

You cleaned his arms, stiff and muscular, but thinner than how you’d first remembered them. You cleaned each of his fingers and under each fingernail, ran your hands up and down each of his thighs, and cleansed his calves, until all of the filth that had once clung to his skin sat in a pool at his feet.

Working back towards his torso, you cleaned around his waist and belly button, and down his happy trail, until you reached the shaft of his cock. Gently, you tilted the water bottle over, allowing a single stream of water to trickle down the shaft of Josh’s cock. You caught him tense his thighs and groan under his breath as you cupped your hand beneath his balls, massaging and rinsing them off with care. Your fingers eased upwards towards his shaft, stroking away what dirt was left, until you reached the tip of his cock, clean and pink, with a small bead of precum just beginning to emerge.

Just before you were able to use the last of what was left in the bottle to clean Josh’s body, he held your hand and stopped you. He said nothing, but pried your mouth open with his jaw, pouring all of what was left into your mouth.

“Don’t swallow,” he warned. “I want you to spit all of that water back onto my cock. And I want you to clean me with your mouth. My taint. My balls. And every inch of this cock. Do you understand me?”

Your mouth full with water, you simply nodded.

“Good girl. Spit it out slow.”

You opened your mouth only slightly, allowing water to dribble from your lips and onto Josh’s crotch. You lifted his balls to drip water onto his taint, lifted your head to drip more onto his balls, and used the last of the water and saliva in your mouth to coat the length of his shaft. With an empty mouth, you started with the work you had been assigned.

Lifting his balls up and out of the way, and leaving them suspended with the tip and bridge of your nose, your tongue worked in circles around his taint. He throbbed against your lips at first contact, leaning his head back against his chair. The longer your wet tongue dragged along his taint and just below his balls, the tighter his grip on your leash became. A couple soft moans even caught your ear as the minutes passed.

Leaving a single kiss on his skin once Josh seemed content with the work you’d done around his taint, you moved upward to his balls. You first took the right one into your mouth, sucking it down toward the back of your throat and pushing it back forward between your lips with a slow, easy rhythm. Your fingernails dug into Josh’s thighs on either side, and Josh’s stomach jittered up and down with his shaking, moaning breaths. Moving on to his left, Josh again pulled tighter on your leash, holding both you and your mouth in place. As you sucked and licked, his cock rested against your nose and forehead, throbbing subtly every now and again each time his thighs tensed in your grip. Several more minutes passed, massaging him in your mouth, until again, you moved on.

Once your head was above his shaft, his cock in full view, you could see that what was once a small bead of precum was now a steady drip down his cock. As your tongue dragged upwards toward the tip of his cock, a pool of sticky precum collected into your mouth. Before you had the chance to swallow, Josh pulled you up to your knees by the leash. With his lips pressed into yours, his precum coated both of your tongues in a wet, sticky kiss.

The kiss ended with a long string of spit and precum connecting your lips to his, and your lips wrapped around the head of his cock in short order. With no time wasted, the tip of his cock tickled the back of your throat as you tried to take all of his length. The suction of your lips, the crackle of the fire behind you, and Josh’s long, moaning sighs all hit your ears steadily. The flicker of oranges, yellows, and reds reflected off of Josh’s still-damp skin, moving in waves as his stomach rose and fell with each breath. His hand crawled up the back of your neck to force your head down until your nose was nestled firmly against a sparse outgrowth of pubic hair.

Holding your breath caused a dull ache and discomfort to rise in your chest. You closed your eyes, your nails digging into Josh’s thighs, your mind wandering to take your mind off of the urge to gag. You lasted for what felt like years before you wretched. You tried to lift your head, expecting Josh’s hand to lift with it, but were only forced further downward. Several more seconds passed, with another wretch forcing its way from your stomach and out of your mouth. Your stomach was in an apparent state of unrest, and saliva flooded from your mouth, pooling on Josh’s chair.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” he growled, his fingers pulling tighter around your neck. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

The words had barely left your ears before your body reared back for another wretch. Again, your head shot upwards, but this time, Josh lifted your hand. From your mouth spewed a small dribble of vomit, which more or less seemed to be hot chocolate, untouched. Josh smirked, watching your eyes pool with tears and your nose begin to run as you sat on the floor. His smirk turned to laughter as he stood, dragging you by the leash, away from the puddle of your own vomit, and toward the wall nearby.

In one swift motion, Josh shoved your head against the cold, concrete wall, your head turned toward the right, and your back facing him. You couldn’t see what he was doing, but felt his length rub between your thighs, slowly, up and down, as his breath tickled the outside of your ear. The rubbing soon ceased, and you felt the breath from his mouth drop lower. The heat dropped from your ear, down your neck, further still down your back, until you felt his breath just inches away from the backs of your thighs.

No warning preceded the gliding of his tongue between your cheeks. His muffled moans were reminiscent of growls as his touch stretched to cover the length of your taint, only to trail upwards again toward your hole. He teased and prodded his tongue inside, savoring the taste, and reveling in watching you squirm. Your body’s temperature rose a degree with each passing second until, abruptly, Josh pulled his head away and stood, walking out of view. You could only tell that his voice was somewhere behind you when he called out—

“Don’t move. Stay right where you are, and don’t fucking look at me.”

Your face remained pointed toward the wall, and you felt Josh’s gaze fixated on your back. You knew, somehow, that he’d catch any sign of disobedience. So there you stood, stock still, staring at gray concrete until you were given your next order. You could hear the clang of metal every now and again, and the shuffling of his feet along the floor, but otherwise were met only with silence. You had no way of knowing what exactly he was doing, until his heavy footsteps came closer, and you felt his hand pull taught on your leash.

He spun you around, and no sooner than you locked eyes did you feel a searing pain in your stomach. You screamed, but your objection was swiftly muffled by Josh’s hand. Looking down, you could see a metal can pressed into both of your stomachs, and could smell the familiar burning of flesh. While your eyes filled with tears and you yelped and squirmed in pain, Josh’s face was nothing short of emotionless. He stared at you, his flesh being seared just the same, but showed no signs of pain or fear. Just before you felt your body begin to sink, on the edge of passing out to your own pain, Josh backed away, allowing the can to fall to the ground. With what little energy you now had, you looked down at your stomach, into which a circle had now been branded, perfectly centered around your belly button. Josh’s brand was similarly placed, his skin bright red and blistering. He traced his finger along his own brand, then traced yours, the pain of which causing a nearly immediate yelp. He pulled his hand back, but smiled.

“There,” he said, his voice nearly in a whisper. “We’re connected now. We can be together for as long as we want.”

Your body shivered, and yet, you did nothing to stop him as his mouth traveled down your stomach. He stopped at your nearly created brand to kiss around it, which still caused a stinging pain that made you jump. The pain worsened when he licked it, but pain turned to pleasure once his mouth found its way between your legs. He lifted one of your legs up onto his shoulder as he worked his tongue inside of you. Looking down, you saw your brand, dark and blistering, and below that, the view of Josh’s shaven head bucking rhythmically between your thighs. Hesitant of reprimand, you placed your hand on the back of Josh’s head as he licked between every fold of your pussy, tasting you, cleaning you with your mouth as you’d done to him so eagerly before. Josh paused when he felt your hand, looking up into your eyes as you looked down into his, but he continued nonetheless.

Licking, sucking, swirling his tongue around your clit; pushing his fingers inside of you, feeling how warm and wet you were. Everything he did felt like you were feeling it for the first time again. Sensations you’d been deprived of with every day you spent in this basement, sensations that began anew each time Josh was generous enough to give you what your body ached for. You moaned, feeling his stubbly bald head in your palm, pressing your foot into his back for leverage. Each moan from your mouth began to turn into sharp gasps the closer you came to climax, but before you could reach it, with Josh’s fingers still inside of you, he pulled his mouth away.

“You don’t get to do that today, baby. Maybe next time.”

Josh stood. His lips brushed against your nose, and with your arms wrapped behind his beck, you pleaded.

“Please.”

“Please what?”

“Please let me cum.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

You nodded.

With Josh’s lips touching yours, and the tip of his cock pushing past the lips of your pussy, he replied.

“I bet you would. Too fucking bad for you, then.”

His cock slid inside of you with no resistance, coated thoroughly in your own wetness. Josh picked up both of your legs, hooking them around his arms, leaving you suspended in the air and pinned against the wall. The pleasure of feeling him inside of you wasn’t enough to mask the pain of your brand, still fresh and burning with pain, but it was a distraction. Both of your hands caressed his head as he thrusted, easing up the back of his neck, past the top of his head and to his forehead. You cupped your hands around the sides of his head, rubbing your thumbs over the bare skin where his eyebrows had been weeks prior.

He moaned into your mouth, bouncing your body up and down along the length of your shaft, digging what was left of his nails into your thighs. You tried to deny yourself the reality of how good it felt; you knew it was wrong, that he was wrong, that everything he did to you was wrong. But in the moment, so deprived of attention and desperate for any sign of affection, all you could feel was euphoric. Two warm bodies locked together in a gray, drab basement, warmed only by a weak fire that was just beginning to die down. Looking into Josh’s eyes, dull and green, you could just barely see the reflection of your own face, mouth ajar, moaning like a slave to his touch.

The pace of his thrusts grew gradually faster as time went on. You had no concept of the time that had passed, how long he’d been inside of you with his lips hungrily nipping at your neck and chin. All you knew was that the room had begun to dim, the fire in the barrel behind you both turning to hot, smoking embers. Your moans and Josh’s got lost in each other, and your toes curled, your legs wrapped tightly around Josh’s waist. A warmth in your stomach began to build, and soon your body was overcome by an intense heat. Out of you gushed a small fountain that splattered in a puddle onto the floor, prompting Josh to stop thrusting for several moments.

“I told you not tonight.”

Still attempting to catch your breath, you responded.

“I’m sorry,” you sighed. “I didn’t mean to. It just happened.”

Josh remained silent, staring at you in your exhausted splendor. Your moment of peace was cut short by the searing pain of fingernails digging into your still-fresh brand. You yelped in pain, and Josh pulled his hand away, repositioning himself between your legs.

“Stop fucking testing me. If your pussy was anything less than what it is, I would’ve snapped your fucking neck.”

Josh’s threat was followed promptly by the sensation of his cock pushing back inside of you. He picked up his pace like it had never been interrupted, and your body again fell prisoner to his touch. Each thrust was deep and sparked a fire deep inside you, and each of his depraved kisses was like gasoline. The longer it went on, the more you craved him. You’d forgotten all over again all the wrongs he’d committed against you, and were focused on reaching the euphoria of climax. His climax.

His pace escalated again, faster and harder, with the slap of skin against skin echoing off the basement’s empty walls. Josh’s moans turned into groans, and his kisses into bites, until finally, a warm gush filled the inside of your body. Josh slowed his thrusts into shallow pumps as the cum oozed out of his cock and inside of you, only to be pulled down by gravity, dripping down his cock and onto the floor. He held you in place against the wall, easing you down toward the floor, until he released his grip entirely, sending you crashing into a pool of his cum and your own mess.

Josh pulled on your leash to bring you again up to your knees, his cock still stiff, and coated in his own cum.

“Clean it.”

No sooner than the words left his mouth were your lips wrapped around his length, sucking cum, his and yours, off of his shaft. You licked and sucked until no white remained, and guided your tongue around his balls, where several stray streams of cum had rolled. As you cleaned him, you felt his cock begin to soften in your mouth, until finally he was clean, glistening only with your spit. He was clean, the embers in the once-raging fire had died, and here you sat, in a puddle of filth, satisfied and eager to please.

Josh reached out his hand to pet your cheek, stroking with his thumb as his fingers rested under your chin. When he was finished, he removed your leash and wrapped it around his hand. With a departing, stinging belt lash against your lower back, he began to walk back toward his throne room.

“Merry Christmas. You did good today. Now clean this fucking mess.”

#bri's writing

2 notes · View notes

biofunmy · 5 years

Text

Arsonists are torching the Amazon. This elite team of firefighters stands in their way.

NOVO SANTO ANTONIO, Brazil — No one could stop the fire. It had burned for 10 days already, across 25 miles, when the rancher made the desperate call to the only person he thought could still help.

“Let me ask a question,” Edimar Santos Abreu responded. “The fire — is it happening in the forest?”

“The forest!” the rancher said.

Abreu, 45, put down the phone. Little forest remained in this corner of the Amazon basin in Mato Grosso state. What was once a blanket of continuous green foliage is now a checkerboard of arid and dusty farmland.

One of the only things keeping the last shards of forest here from getting torched and bulldozed into cattle and soy farms is Abreu’s team of firefighters: the Alliance Brigade. Known locally as the “guerreiros de fogo” — the “fire warriors” — they spread across hundreds of miles each day to contain blazes lit by land grabbers trying to burn, claim and develop the forest.

[Why the Amazon is burning, and what it means for climate change]

The daily battle — between fire and nature, conservation and development — is intensifying across the Amazon. Since the inauguration of Brazil’s pro-development president, Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation has soared. Fires now rage across the Amazon. In August, officials counted nearly 31,000, a nine-year high. The number fell in September, but the year-to-date total remained up for 2019.

They’re burning in public parks. On private ranches. On government land. On Indian reservations. In so many places, and across such an immense sweep of forest, that stopping them all can seem impossible.

But perhaps here, in northeast Mato Grosso, the forest could still be defended. Where the brigade is active, the burn rate has plummeted. Some describe the team as a potential model for the rest of the Amazon.

The challenge, however, in a land this remote, with few people and little infrastructure, is obvious — reaching the fire in time.

Abreu drove hours down pockmarked dirt roads, past towns cloaked in red dirt, to discover an apocalyptic scene. Cows had died of smoke inhalation. An expanse of charred earth reached toward the horizon. The farmworkers had thrown nearly everything at the inferno, from water to heaps of dirt. Most of it had been defeated.

Abreu had to finish the job.

He peered into a quiet patch of trees.

“Do you hear that?” Abreu asked. “Fire.”

He pulled on his cap. He unsheathed his long knife. Then he hacked into the foliage and disappeared into the trees, in search of the fight.

[Brazil’s Bolsonaro says he might accept G-7 offer to help fight Amazon fires — if Macron apologizes]

A violent struggle for land fuels the fires

Mato Grosso means “thick bush,” and until recently the name fit. The last asphalt road ended long before this corner of the state. The only reasonable way in was by plane. And the humidity of the trees was a natural flame retardant: Fire dissolved at the forest’s edge, like magic.

This was the land that John Carter, the former U.S. Army paratrooper who founded the Alliance Brigade a decade ago, came to know when he moved here from Texas in 1996.

“An island in the forest,” was how he described his ranch then. Now, looking out at the Araguaia State Park, he could see that it was the forest that had become the island.

“This wind,” he said, feeling it pick up. “It’s going to burn today.”

“Uncontrollable,” Abreu agreed.

They boarded Carter’s aluminum boat and chugged out onto the River of the Dead. Carter, a compact man in a cowboy hat and boots, scanned the scorched coastline for plumes of smoke.

When he first piloted his single-engine down here, he had no idea why there were so many fires. But he would learn.

There was big money in “flipping” the forest — burning it, then selling it as farmland — and squatters and speculators wanted in. A Brazilian law allowed the purchase of uninhabited public land here at deep discounts. Then agrarian reform efforts made private land a target for landless poor.

[The Amazon isn’t on fire, Brazil’s Bolsonaro tells the U.N. General Assembly; it’s full of riches]

The result was a violent struggle involving ranchers, indigenous peoples and squatters in which the best way for settlers to claim forest, no matter the owner, was to burn it.

“There!” Carter said, pointing at rising smoke. “They’re lighting it everywhere!”

The boat sped toward the plume.

Former U.S. Army paratrooper turned rancher John Carter started the Alliance Brigade in 2009 to combat fires in the Amazon. He still journeys into the rainforest with the firefighters. (Terrence McCoy/The Washington Post)

Members of the Alliance Brigade travel the River of the Dead in search of fires last month. (Terrence McCoy/The Washington Post)

Fire so defines Carter’s life that it’s difficult to remember a time when it didn’t. In 1999, squatters started burning a neighbor’s forest. In 2008, they came for Carter’s land, torching the 50 percent he had preserved — more than 10,000 acres.

Enraged, and fearful of what he might do, he gave away nearly all of his guns. But the anger — that he couldn’t dispose of.

“I can’t even see the beauty anymore,” he said. “I just see rage. Because we know what the future holds.”

To Carter, the future: the entire Amazon transformed by an avalanche of development and deforestation. It was a scenario he once couldn’t envision. But he has seen it happen in Mato Grosso, on his land, and now again on this river.

Araguaia State Park, half the size of Rhode Island, doesn’t have a single patrol officer. Squatters are exploiting the void by lighting fires to destroy the forest so there’s no choice but to develop it.

Three fires now flared along the river. Smoke filled the sky. The boat hit the shore.

“Let’s see if we can catch them,” Carter said, charging into the forest.

A plume of smoke rises over the River of the Dead. Authorities believe the fires are lit by land grabbers. (Terrence McCoy/The Washington Post)

Ranchers could be part of the solution

Kika Carter couldn’t get her husband to calm down.

The smoke had grown so thick they couldn’t see across the river. They could barely drive. Barely fly. Barely breathe.

She told him to do something about it. They had launched a partnership that used market incentives to encourage sustainable ranching, garnering international attention. Maybe they could do something about the fires, too.

“This frustration,” she recalled telling him. “You just need to get it done.”

He wrote a letter asking the Smokejumpers — the highly trained first responders who parachute into remote areas to fight wildfires — to train some locals here. To his surprise, they said they would do it.

The result, according to Douglas Morton, a NASA official and Amazon expert, was “the best-equipped and -trained” privately organized brigade in the basin. The eight initial members roved, fighting fires and championing a counterintuitive premise: Ranchers were less a cause of the fires than part of the solution. They could be trained, too.

On nearby ranches, fires plummeted. In the forest of Alto Xingu, fires fell 77 percent where they patrol. Smoke diminished around John Carter’s ranch, and local health officials registered a 25 percent drop in hospital visits for breathing problems.

Alliance Brigade commander Edimar Santos Abreu uses a blower to create a fire break around the flames in Araguaia State Park. (Terrence McCoy/The Washington Post)

“This could be a model,” said Britaldo Silveira Soares Filho, a researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. “When a firefighter is not someone you can go summon to go there and fight the fire, you have to train someone there.”

Or it will burn.

Carter and Abreu hurried into the forest, dodging thorned fronds. They spotted horse tracks and followed them. But what they found a mile into the forest wasn’t a squatter. It was a fire, burning low and hot.

They stared at it, wordless. They had called federal park authorities but were told the problem was the state’s. They had called state park authorities but were told the Araguaia didn’t have a patrol officer, let alone firefighters. They had called the police but were told an arrest could be made only if the arsonist was caught in the act.

“We don’t have the people or the knowledge to deal with this in the park,” said Mariano Neto, the local police chief.

The only thing left was to put it out themselves.

[Why Brazilian farmers are burning the rainforest — and why it’s so hard for Bolsonaro to stop them]

The Amazon is burning

Back at his house on Carter’s ranch, Abreu pulled on his khaki coat, slid on his boots and tied his long knife around his waste. He was furious. Not only at the arsonist but also at how the broader story of the fires was being told.

The international outrage to him was artifice, whipped up to delegitimize Bolsonaro. Every year the forest burned, and every year more of it was knocked down. Where was the anger in 2007, when far more fires burned than this year? Where was it in 2010, when Mato Grosso was positively flammable, hitting double the number of fires as this year?

To Abreu, this year is barely discernible from most. All that’s different is who’s in power.

One of the most important tools of the jungle firefighter has is the long knife, for cutting through dense foliage to reach remote fires. (Terrence McCoy/The Washington Post)

That was why, when people mocked Bolsonaro for saying his critics had started the fires to make him look bad, Abreu didn’t join in. On the frontier, with its endless cycle of violence and retribution, it made sense. Bolsonaro, in his calls to develop the Amazon, had “assaulted with words” the environmentalists and indigenous people. Some of the fires, Abreu believed, were payback. Others were deforestation. Others were simply to watch a beautiful thing burn.

[Putting out the Amazon fires isn’t just a physical challenge — it’s a political one]

He grabbed his hat. He climbed back onto the boat, picked up two other firefighters, crossed the river and went into the forest. The men carried nothing but machetes, a few jugs of drinking water and a leaf blower. Up ahead, smoke was rising. The sound of popping and crackling was everywhere.

The fire was now sweeping in length, the height of its flames reaching 20 feet — and growing.

“Strategy,” Abreu said. “Lots of strategy.”

He had no chance of extinguishing it. The fire was too big; the firefighters too few. The only option was containment. He would build a fire break — a gap in vegetation around the edge of the blaze — to box it in and let it burn out on its own. But when he charged toward the numbing heat, the flames lashed unpredictably.

“Too much!” another firefighter yelled.

They retreated, fanning out across a half-mile front of fire. Abreu used his leaf blower to create the fire break. The others slashed at the brush with their machetes.

They battled until the sun was gone and the fire was no longer the hot orange of flame but the deep red of ember.

What had taken one person seconds to light had taken three men hours to quell.

They started for Carter’s ranch, exhausted, silent. They needed to rest. It wouldn’t be long before the next fire was lit.

A fire burns in Araguaia State Park. (Terrence McCoy/The Washington Post)

This Brazilian island wants to show the way to a green future. Businesses, backed by Bolsonaro, see the next Cozumel.

As police shootings in Rio rise, children are caught in the crossfire

The dog is one of the world’s most destructive mammals. Brazil proves it.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

Sahred From Source link World News

from WordPress http://bit.ly/3213mI2 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

darkhymns-fic · 7 years

Text

Buddy

Before the kidnapping, before the fighting, Buddy lived with her father and her uncles.

Before they knew it, little Buddy grew up into a Big Girl.

Fandom: LISA Characters: Buddy, Brad, Sticky, Rick, Cheeks Rating: T Mirror Links: AO3 Notes: Inspired by (but not necessarily based on) CourierNew’s Cheer Up. Written by Sky.

It shot through her skull like a rifle’s slug, pierced her brain. “Buddy!”

Her chest constricted as if wounded. She couldn’t feel her legs. She forgot how to use them. Brad lumbered forward, sprinting like a creature from her darkest nightmares. She had never seen him run, never heard him shout. Not even during training sessions.

Dry wind had burned her young, fragile skin, but the hot pain soothed her compared to the usual musty air she breathed day in and day out. She had looked out over the twisted cliffs of Olathe, witnessed the jagged disgusting lands, muted of bright color, the sky awash with a weak yellow glare, and wished she could explore it all for herself.

Brad grabbed her before she could even blink, his breath heavy and moist. “What are you doing?!” he shouted. His voice was desperate, as if Buddy would vanish before him in a puff of smoke.

Her throat locked up. Brad’s dark eyes stared into hers, angry. So angry. So afraid. Buddy wanted to scream, “I’m leaving! I’m leaving and you can’t stop me!”

But the words couldn’t come out.

Somehow, Brad knew. The defiance. His eyes grew darker still. The anger and fear vanished. He placed his rough hands around her body, and she felt he could crush her in an instant. Buddy didn’t struggle.

The sun over her head blinked out, replaced by the familiar dusk of her prison. Brad placed her down on her bed, his muscles still pulsating with adrenaline and power. He didn’t look at her. Buddy wasn’t sure why. Without a word, Brad climbed out of her room, slammed the floorboard shut, and with a clink, locked it tight.

Still she stared. Her body remained still. Brad’s shout rattled through her mind, the moment replaying in her head over and over. Until she heard the yelling above.

“Was anyone else watching her?!”

“…sorry, Brad.”

Finally, she could move again. Everything smashed into her at once. Her eyes began to water, her nose dribbled, and her body heaved. She had no control over herself. No control over anything. She cried. She didn’t want to, but she cried. She told herself she wouldn’t cry anymore.

The walls of her room pressed against her chest and squeezed her throat. It grew smaller every day. The memories of her training replayed over and over. Stale rusty air filled her lungs once more, and she was left with darkness once again. It spoke her name, it held her legs, it demanded her attention. She couldn’t hide, even in her blankets, the darkness followed there as well.

“Buddy!” it screamed desperately, drowning out her sobs.

Sticky laid sprawled out over the cracked wooden floorboards. His skin nearly meshed together with the ground, bleached by the unending sun. What little greasy hair he had left, he let grow. He was almost bald, like Brad, except for one little patch of hair. One inch of his scalp that refused to give up, hoping maybe one day, little hairy brothers might join him. Sticky was proud of his hair, even if he never groomed it. Buddy could tell.

Brad gave up on his hair. Even Buddy could remember it for a time. But like a flash, it was gone, like it had never been there. Brad didn’t seem to care.

“Doin’ okay, Buddy?” Sticky asked for the fifteenth time now, not even looking her way. He stared outside, lost in thought, fiddling with the fabric of his clothes, fingers running over the smoothness in an almost rhythmic fashion. Buddy witnessed this more times than she could count, but when she asked Uncle Sticky about it, he just responded, “Whaddya mean, kiddo?”

“I’m fine,” Buddy replied, looking over her flower drawings with distaste. The door behind Sticky streamed hot sunlight through, highlighting the sandy dust that permeated the air. She could feel the sun’s burning glare on her again, see the twisted skies and disgusting mountains of Olathe. It was right in her reach. She could easily outmaneuver Sticky and escape this humid little hole.

“Buddy!” the voice screamed in her ears again, the memory still fresh. Again, she lost control of her body, lost control of everything, as if it never belonged to her in the first place. The melted crayon slipped out of her hands and attempted to roll across the boards, but its mutilated, worthless body only left it writhing in place.

A sob scraped out of her dry throat.

Sticky stopped fiddling with his rags and slowly scooted over to her. “Buddy, hey, what’s wrong?” He moved closer. Closer still. Buddy couldn’t even flinch, locked in place. He sat close, against the wall. He didn’t come any closer. His fingers twitched, as if he thought to maybe pat her on the head, but his mind decided otherwise. He never got too close to Buddy, always appearing uncomfortable.

She didn’t even know what was wrong. Again, she felt lost, out of control. Words spilled out of her mouth, feeling not quite like her own. “Does Dad…” Don’t call me that. “Does Brad hate me?”

Sticky’s beady eyes widened. For a second, he remembered something, fingers clutching at his raggedy shirt. He looked back at her, shaking his head with a sigh. “No, he doesn’t hate you. You know that.”

“I don’t know anything!” A shrill voice screamed out. Surprised, Buddy found it was her own.

The man frowned. Sticky appeared to have trouble finding the words to speak quite often, especially when Buddy was near. Again, he fingered his rags in thought. “He doesn’t hate you,” Sticky repeated, sternly.

“How do you know?” Buddy said through sobs, her vision a blur. “You don’t even know you keep messing with your shirt!”

Sticky looked at his hands suddenly, and with shame. He put them down against the coarse wooden floorboards, but they twitched and skittered like spiders. “Guess I do,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter. I know Brad.” He nodded, eyes lost in a world long gone that Buddy could never see. “Know him better than he thinks. He doesn’t hate you.”

She noticed Sticky never quite said ‘He loves you’ though.

“He needs you, Buddy.”

“Why?”

His fingers had already gone back to stroking his rags again, fiddling with a loose thread. “It wouldn’t do any good to tell you. Not my place.”

Still this voice raged. The answers weren’t good enough, none of this helped her. “I want to leave! I hate it here!”

Again, she heard that booming voice shatter her ear drums, take control over her body. “Buddy!”

Sticky grunted. “Sorry, Buddy. I know. This is no place for you.”

“Then let me leave!”

Brad screamed over and over at her now, clutching her desperately, ripping her flesh, tears in his eyes.

Sticky’s chapped lips formed a line. He pulled a thread loose from the fabric. “…Maybe someday.”

Rick was always easiest to talk to.

Buddy stared out through the broken window in the top floor of their home. The dangerous glass shards shone with a jagged beauty against the sun’s endless glare. The sun never moved, but she was used to it. Buddy noted from her rug that the sun always hung in the top right corner of the window, and if she stared through the glass just right, she could see colorful rainbows.

Rick sat on his usual stool, beer bottle in hand. His face had grown cracked and dry after the years in Olathe, but remained generally pleasing to look at. Bright blue eyes looked over Buddy. They reminded her of Brad’s little blue spheres. Full lips formed into a smile as he noticed Buddy, able to read her reactions much better than the others.

“Something on your mind, little lady?” Rick asked, taking a swig of his drink.

If there was anyone to ask, it was him. “What’s it like outside?”

Rick quickly frowned and looked away. Unlike the others, he wore his emotions on his sleeves. “Buddy, you know Brad doesn’t like it when we talk about that.”

“Buddy!”

The scream blasted her skin, pulled at her ribcage. But she shook her head. “Fuck Brad!” she shouted, the curse word tingling on her lips. She could have shouted it louder, but truth be told, she was afraid Brad might somehow have heard.

It had the desired effect on Rick, anyway. “Buddy!” the man’s eyes didn’t anger, merely sadden. He took it so personally. “Don’t say things like that about your fa-- --- about Brad.”

“I don’t care!”

Rick took another swig of his beer before leaving it. With a sigh, he sat down close next to Buddy, his sweat stained skin feeling like the jerky she ate so much of. Rick was no stranger to physical contact, but he never overstepped his bounds. At times, Brad would glare his way, but Rick would always wave off his concerns.

Rick placed a hand gently on her head, his dirt encrusted hands slowly petting her even dirtier hair. It felt nice. “If I tell you about the outside, will you stop saying those bad words?”

Buddy still wanted to hold onto that anger. Wanted to break free of everyone’s control. “But I hear you guys say it all the time!” Her words came out more as a whine, not really what she wanted.

“Those are grownup words. Only bad children say them, especially about their elders,” he said, still petting, stealing her anger away with each stroke. “Now, do we have a deal or not?”

“Fine,” she huffed. Maybe she couldn’t stay angry, but she got something she wanted at least. “Deal.”

“All right,” Rick sighed, not quite wanting to go through with it. “The outside is pretty bad. Horrible. The sun is always out, the other men down the cliff can be cruel, there’s mountains everywhere now, there’s almost no trees…”

Buddy had already forgotten she was ever angry. “But what?”

Like Brad, and like her other uncles, Rick’s light blue eyes drifted to a strange world. “I don’t think it’s as bad as before.” His vision returned. “At least… at least for me. I don’t think it’s so bad.”

Buddy didn’t expect that. All her life she was told how the outside was hell. Her heart pounded in excitement. “Really?”

“Ah, Buddy, don’t get me wrong!” Rick sighed, conflicted. “It’s still terrible out there! There’s even been rumors going around lately that monsters are starting to appear.”

“Monsters?”

“Shi—shoot,” Rick coughed. “Well there’s not many. They’re really far away. They’ll never get us, Buddy, don’t worry.”

“I’m not scared,” Buddy said with conviction in her small voice. What was a monster to her? The things she feared most were at home.

Rick appeared surprised by her reaction. “I keep forgetting how tough you are.” He resumed. “Anyway, there’s less and less people out there every day. Barely any kids, like you.”

“But, I could fix that, couldn’t I?”

Rick’s hand froze. “Uh, Buddy? How would you know about that?”

“You guys talk so loud!” Buddy groaned. “I’ve heard you guys talking about it before, what else am I gonna do?”

His hand resumed, but slowly. “That’s a talk for another time, then.” Rick looked at her, blue eyes stern for once. Before he continued his description of the world he said, “Don’t bring that up around Brad, Buddy.”

“Hey, wake up. We’re going outside today.”

The mask Brad had made for her was fascinating; a stark white oval, surrounded by a hem of black. The holes for her eyes and mouth were just that, holes that gouged deep into the white, eyes wide open, and mouth always open in a silent scream. It was the face of a ghost.

Couldn’t ghosts go anywhere they wanted?

When she wore it, it was as stifling as her room. Brad had crafted it outside of their home, so the dust was embedded into the cloth. She breathed, and she could smell the earth of Olathe – dry and scorching her nostrils, her throat.

Brad fitted it over her head, his large hands deftly burying her hair underneath the hem. Once they went outside, she could feel the sun beat down on her. It made it so much hotter. If it weren’t for the openings in her mask, she’d have struggled to even wheeze or cough.

The mask limited her vision as well, but from what she could see, it reminded her of when she had left the house that day. The twisted crags, the bland hills, and the muddy terrain that stretched out before her feet – contrasting so sharply with the acidic sky and its strangely shaped clouds.

Still, there was the wind, and though it brought more dust to her, the air was not so stale. She took in what she could as Brad held her hand.

“I know a good spot,” he told her, and pulled her along.

She wanted to go and run off to the side, to climb up those hills and see the people Sticky had told her about, and the monsters that Rick had warned her of. Anything besides the same repeating image of her walls, of her fake drawings, and of Brad’s silent face as he would take those little blue pills…

“Here,” he said, and let go of her hand.

A careful turn of her head searched their surroundings. Still there were the cliffs overhead, crumbling and dry, and the bare plains. But here, right here, there were little sprouts. Offshoots of flowers, immersed within a reddish earth. Some of them drooped, some of them were outright dead, and yet still some were alive. White petals that were brighter than the rest of the world, through what little she’d seen. Brad was a few steps ahead of her, turned away.

She could run if she wanted.

She was fast, faster than Brad. If she really tried, she could make for the cliffs to the right and try to find a cave. He wouldn’t expect it, not if she hoofed it. Wouldn’t it be better if she did anyway? He was probably bringing her out here to train again. With each passing moment, she expected to hear the whimpering of another frightened man. She already began to feel around her waist for her knife, to recognize the hilt against her palm.

“Buddy.”

She flinched.

The dry wind that hit her fragile skin, the rough hands over her, pulling her back, burying her back into the room, dug beneath the earth, with no window to see the sky except for her stupid drawings.

Brad was seated on the ground. He didn’t talk right away. Instead he visibly pondered over things, hunched over in his position.

“Not many people know about this place. Not even your uncles.” He took one of the flowers, its petals bright. He held it close. “But keep your mask on.”

Buddy didn’t know what to say to that, so instead she sat down across from him. She did so despite her rapid heartbeat. “Why?”

His head stayed bowed, studying that same flower. “Not taking chances. It’s safer this way.”

“No, I mean-” Her words were too muffled by the thing. She adjusted the mask so that her mouth was level with the opening. She’d have to get used to it. (She would never get used to it). Another little cell for her, but one she would carry around instead of waking up to each day.

Yet she was careful not to damage the white plaster that made up the face. “Why Buddy?”

Brad was speechless.

“Why… did you name me Buddy?”

She was patient. The sun continued shining down on her, making her the mask’s hem stick to her skin from sweat. The light reflected so brightly from Brad’s bald spot.

“I told you this before though.”

“I know.” She shifted, folding her legs underneath her. Her voice now came out in echoes, warbled and ephemeral. She spoke from a far-off place. “Can you tell me again?”

He used to take her outside more often, back when she was younger, back when he had a bunch of hair. But he never took much care for it, and it all fell away.

Brad’s beard was rough and messy, and his clothes were stained here and there. He was a mess, but when he handled that flower between his dirt-stained fingers, it was with a gentleness she could almost identify. From when she would hand him her drawings, or give her a ride on his shoulders around the house. When she was younger.

“Well…” Brad looked down. He made a huff, but his voice was lighter. Happier? “It was the best I could come up with… Brad and Buddy. Sounds good to me.”

If she kept remembering him with all that hair, she could relax. At least, for a little while.

Cheeks was weird.

Even if it the heat sweltered and the sun never fell, no one could manage to out sweat him. His namesake cheeks stained pink and swollen, he often daydreamed and was easily surprised when disturbed. Buddy didn’t know much about him, and Cheeks didn’t seem to care much to speak to her, or even look at her. Sometimes, Buddy would catch him staring, but if she returned the gaze, he quickly looked away, flustered.

Nothing in their home could be hidden from Buddy. Nothing. Her entire world was this tiny little shack of dirt and clay. The only way to stay sane was to go on adventures through the little cracks and crevices of the furniture. She would pretend her finger was a smaller version of herself, traversing through dark and dusty caves behind the rickety old dresser or the cracked plaster in the walls that looked like spider webs. Occasionally, her finger adventure would lead her to such a spider monster. She felt no fear, only a rush of adrenaline as she smashed the disgusting creature with ease.

One day, her imaginary spelunking brought her to a great treasure. A new treasure she had never seen before! Hidden so far back in the home, in a crack no one but her could ever notice. Her heart pounded and she pulled out the small mass of papers.

How strange. It appeared to be a magazine, but there was a man on it with large lumps of fat on his chest. He had no beard either, and long luxurious hair. This must be what men looked like before the world turned to what Buddy had always known.

She flipped the pages, noting their strange stickiness, and how the paper itself felt worn down and ripped after years of use. All sorts of different men were pictured on the pages, but without any clothes. They looked so odd with their fat round chests. Maybe they were the mutant monsters Rick talked about before?

Stranger still, more than a few of the men had clumps of hair between their legs. It fascinated Buddy. Were there any of these men outside, maybe? Or… could these be girls? Buddy shook her head. They were nothing like her, they must have been men.

“Uuh… Buddy?” A stuttered voice asked behind her. “You’re not looking at… oh my god.” In a blur of sweat, Cheeks ripped the magazine out of Buddy’s hand, a page falling apart and gone to pieces. He cursed at that.

“I was looking at that!” Buddy cried, finally finding a moment of brief respite from the usual mundane of her prison. She found it rightfully on her adventure! It was hers!

“Oh god, you uh…” Cheeks never found the way to speak to her. Buddy frowned. She’d heard him speak to the others just fine, she shouldn’t be any different. “You shouldn’t look at these! These are uh… Uncle Chee—I mean, Uncle Rick’s books.”

“Why?” Buddy asked, eyeing over the ripped magazine, gazing at the strange pink nipple in her hand.

Cheeks let out a strange little squeal, stealing the nipple away from her. “It’s for, uh, grownups only!”

Buddy still didn’t understand. Cheeks was trying to protect her from something, but Buddy wasn’t afraid. “Are those the mutants?”

“God, no!”

Buddy couldn’t help but be curious. “Is that what men used to look like?”

Cheeks stared at the girl now, his cheeks finally losing that pink sweaty hue to them. He looked sad. “Jesus, you, uh, you really don’t know? Has Brad never told you?”

Based on his reaction, Buddy assumed she was right. She nodded, feeling proud of herself. “He never told me, but I must be right, huh?”

Sweat droplets washed over the man again. He looked like he was cooking underneath all that heat. “Buddy… those are women.” He wouldn’t tell her any more than that.

Sticky was weird, too, but Buddy felt comfortable around him. He reminded her of Brad, but less stern, and not nearly as strong. She wasn’t afraid of Sticky like she was of Brad sometimes. When Sticky watched over her, Buddy felt she should protect him instead of the other way around. If she were to run away during his watch, what would happen to him? Someone could hurt him. Brad could hurt him.

“Hey fucko!!” A loud voice boomed outside their home. “Fucko!! You!! Yeah!!” Buddy was sure there was no way the man outside could even see anyone inside. Rick, Cheeks, and Brad were out scavenging for food and other supplies.

Sticky’s roaming fingers finally tensed up as he jumped to his feet. “Buddy, go to your room,” he ordered before running to the doorway.

She didn’t listen. He might need her help. Instead, Buddy crawled silently behind the door frame. She felt the smooth steel of her knife hidden in her poncho. It cooled her skin. Tiny fingers gripped the hilt firmly, ready to strike.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Sticky said back to the voice calmly.

“Well!! Fucko!! You got trouble!!” The other man sounded drunk. “Whatcha got in there, huh!?”

Sticky’s tone remained stoic, but strained with anger. “Nothing of importance.”

“That’s a lie!!” The voice paused, forgetting something. “Fucko!!” He wasn’t going to leave peacefully. Buddy held the knife in front of her now, her little body pounding with adrenaline. “Gimme all your food and mags or I’ll kill you, fucko!!”

Buddy spoke barely above a whisper. “Let him in, Uncle Sticky.”

Sticky turned his head to her for a split second, saw the knife, and cursed. He shook his head, trying to regain his composure. “You’ll get nothing from me. I suggest you leave.”

Brad’s voice invaded her mind. He’s seen too much. He can’t leave.

“Uncle Sticky… He has to die.”

Her uncle clenched his fists, but did not look at her this time.

“I ain’t leavin till I get my shit, fucko!!” The voice roared. “You’re fucked!” She heard footsteps barreling towards the home. Still Sticky stood in the doorway.

“Uncle Sticky! Let him in! I’ll get him!”

Sticky cursed again, ignoring Buddy. Why wouldn’t he listen!? He’ll get hurt! With a grunt, Sticky ran out the doorway, picking something up near the entrance.

The man grew closer. As he approached he screamed, “Watch out for my Super-Fucko-Slam-Du--”

Several loud booms screeched out through the burning heat. Again, her mind immediately jumped to that shout, but Buddy shook it off. A meaty thud splattered onto the dirt outside. The man was silent. No more footsteps, no more screaming. It was a familiar silence.

“Buddy.”

It still shook her. But she braced against it. She wasn’t scared of anything. She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t.

“Get your mask,” Brad said, his silhouette still in the darkness of Buddy’s room. “We’re going out again.” He paused. “If you want.”

Her heart pounded. Her mind raced. “Yes! I want to!” She heard Brad try to suppress a sigh. Buddy leaped out of her itchy bed and grabbed the ghostly mask. She had no problems putting it on anymore. She practiced wearing it when no one else was around. It was hot, it made her sweat, but it didn’t matter. She could breathe with it on, and she could go out with it.

Buddy ran to Brad, clasping her tiny hand around Brad’s giant ones. He flinched at first, but relaxed soon after. He held her tight, but made sure it wouldn’t hurt.

“Some ground rules, Buddy,” Brad said sternly. “No talking. Not a peep. Understand?”

Buddy didn’t need to talk. She’d prove it to Brad. She nodded silently.

“You can try running away, again,” he growled lightly. “But if you do, I will never take you outside again. Understand?”

She was ready to pout, but thought against it. She could run, she could escape Brad. But what if he caught her? What would happen to Sticky, Rick, and Cheeks? Maybe Sticky would be okay, but she wasn’t sure about the others.

Buddy nodded again, looking up at Brad. She noticed the flower they had picked still stuck to his poncho. It was dead and wilted now, but Brad didn’t mind.

“You have your knife?”

Another nod. Of course I have my knife! She felt the coolness of it against her back. She felt safe with it.

Brad’s hand began to sweat. He seemed reluctant. “All right, let’s go.”

Buddy could hardly contain her excitement, but she knew better. She’d prove to Brad she was ready to leave. Maybe if she was really good, he’d let her leave on her own one day!

The two of them stepped out into the blazing heat. It burned, but she didn’t care. The sky was disgusting as always, but it was beautiful to her. The mountains in the distance looked like giant swords impaled into the earth’s dry and bloodied corpse. Her eyes darted every which way. Brad’s hand tightened slightly. It didn’t hurt.

“Climb on my shoulders for now, Buddy,” Brad said as they approached the cliff’s end. A rope dangled down far, connecting the cliff to another set of cracked and dead cliffs.

I can climb down myself, she thought. Best not to disobey, though. With a quick hop, she landed on his shoulders, feeling Brad’s hot and sweaty bald head between her legs. The sun’s reflection nearly blinded her. Still, she held on, feeling a small excitement. On his shoulders, Buddy felt bigger. Stronger. She could see farther. She had the power now. She could kill him.

“Hold on,” Brad said, ignoring her thoughts. He slid down the rope quickly, hands burning red the whole way. The wind felt nice.

As Brad continued to climb down the cliffside, Buddy felt more and more at ease, enthralled by the world around her. One day she’d be as big as Brad! She’d see the world the same way he did. She’d loom over everyone else. It was intoxicating. She didn’t want to leave.

“All right, come on down,” Brad said gently, pulling her off his shoulders. It was impossible to read his face, but Buddy could tell he was happy. His bloodied hand clasped around hers again as they stepped into the cave’s mouth. He didn’t notice the blood. “Stay close.”

In an instant a wave of cold, damp air washed against her body. It reminded her of home, but it was bigger. More open. Safe even. Stalagmites and stalactites littered the cave like rusty needles. Buddy thought to herself I could push people onto those and kill them, or cut one off and smash their skulls. She nodded. Dad would be proud. She already had plans to kill any would-be attackers. If only she could speak and tell him.

Darkness wrapped around the pair, but small candles dotted the cave, their flames licking the air, devouring the darkness away for a time. Buddy noted a few men standing around the cave, staring at Brad and Buddy. Her free hand tensed, ready to grip the dagger at a moment’s notice. It smelled of piss. These men were disgusting.

As they went deeper into the cave, more stench entered her nostrils. Pictures of topless women stuck to the rocky cave surface, smelly white paint stained the areas around them. Their ‘breasts’ were huge, and seemed to be malformed. Sticky told her of them. Clearly these breasts held power over the men. She hoped to use it to her advantage one day.

A tiny hole brimming with sunlight appeared before them. This was clearly the exit. Scraps of cloth and blood painted the ground beneath it, probably men struggling to get through as quickly as possible. Buddy loosened her grip around Brad’s hand as she made for the hole.

Brad tightened it, pinching her skin just slightly. He shook his head. Buddy knew better than to fight him on this. Keeping a tight grip on his rough hands, she easily crouched under the hole and into the outside world again. She looked back, seeing Brad’s arm sticking out of the cave hole like a dirty chain. Without any shred of knowledge to how funny it looked, Brad squeezed his bald head and fat body out of the hole with a bit of a struggle. Buddy suppressed a giggle.

“Remember what I said. Keep quiet,” Brad reminded her, holding her hand a little too tightly now. She could deal with the pain. It was okay.

Father and daughter found themselves at a small hub of men. Little caves and holes leading in every direction littered the area, as well as stinky muscular guys. She had never seen so many people in her entire life! She tried counting but lost her place after ten.

They were all so strange compared to Brad and her uncles. Some men sat in corners by themselves, little blue balls dropped around their forms, their eyes staring into nothing, but a bright smile on their faces. Some men sat at rickety old wooden tables, drinking and sobbing quietly to themselves under the sun. Everyone appeared to have something to do.

One strange man stood upon a mountain, his mouth blowing into a rusty yellowed metal thing. It played interesting noises in her ears, tooting notes seemingly at random. This must be what music sounded like. Her uncles would attempt a song every so often, their voices raspy and out of sync. But she loved it. Maybe one day she could play music too.

“Hey, buddy,” a man called out, bumbling over to Brad. The voice had a muffled quality to it. Buddy instinctively turned towards the sound.

The man towered over Brad, his muscles rippled under the sun. But Buddy’s attention was fixed firmly on his head. It was a shark’s head, to be specific. One that rotted underneath the heat, its semi-translucent skin sliming right off whatever cartilage was left. Black eyes, as glassy as polished obsidian, stared over both Brad and Buddy’s heads. One was dangling down the side, threatening to fall off the shark like sludge. But even through the decay, various rows of sharp, pointed teeth still curved out of its nearly closed mouth like a pit of giant needles. If Buddy could shift a bit to the side, she could just make out the fin that jutted out from the back.

A muscled arm reached up to grasp the shark’s snout, pulling it up. The rows of teeth opened like a knight’s visor, revealing a normal, but angry looking man inside the shark’s mouth.

“You got a little shit stuck to you.” He smirked. “This your midget lover?”

Brad never once flinched. He revealed nothing. “This is my son.”

Bloodshot eyes scanned over Buddy, followed by a tight grin and the lick of his lips. She wasn’t scared of him. Or of sharks. Rick had shown her those in a book once- just oversized fish with big teeth.

“Scrawny little shit, isn’t he?” spoke the shark-man. Buddy followed Brad’s example. She made no motion, no sound.

“Yes,” Brad agreed tonelessly.

The shark-man frowned, annoyed. He wanted to fight us, Buddy concluded.

With a grunt, he left the two of them, headbutting a random passerby as he did so with his shark helmet, bloodying their nose.

“What the FUCK?”

The tall angry shark-man took his chance to feel justified. He brandished a knife – its blade bone-white, looking just like one of those sharp, curved teeth – and struck it deep into the other man’s stomach. The innocent man howled and writhed in pain, his life blood oozing out in spurts. The shark-man laughed, kicking him like a fallen piñata. The fin of his shark head bobbed with the motion.

Buddy stared. He should have stabbed the other guy in the throat. That would have killed him. She realized she could kill the angry man herself with ease if he was that sloppy.

Brad glanced over at Buddy. Probably expecting to find fear or disgust. She showed neither. He must have felt proud of her.

None of the other men helped. They looked on, but kept to themselves. Brad decided it was best to move on as well. Intervening would just bring trouble. The screams died down as they always did.

“God damn, your ugly fucking mug again?”

Brad took them to a literal hole in the wall of a mountain. Above the entrance read “Shopp” in barely legible words. Even Buddy knew how to spell shop correctly.

The shop owner inside cursed again, throwing a hefty grease filled box into a corner of the cave. His bare chest revealed a scarred and muscled body. The owner was missing a leg, and had replaced it with an old hockey stick that could barely support his weight. The wood shaft stabbed itself into his flesh, leaving bloodied splinters around his thigh, but the owner kept it there, probably as a sign to show how tough or dangerous he was. Buddy understood the importance of looks.

“And you bringing in some little shit with you, too.” The owner barely spared buddy a glance. “You think I’ll feel guilty about slicing that thick neck of yours in front of your boy? I don’t give a shit, dumb fuck.”

An old harpoon gleamed dangerously behind the counter. He made sure they could see it. Brad must have seen it plenty of times. He wasn’t fazed. “I need a box of jerky and a case of beer.”

“Fucking Christ. All that going to your fat ass?” The owner screeched. “One-hundred mags.”

“Fifty,” Brad said tonelessly.

A vein popped in the owner’s forehead. His hockey stick creaked and he stood on it a little too hard. “You fucking serious?! You really want to get yourself killed this time, don’t you? Ninety mags, fucker, and you count yourself lucky I don’t fuck you up.”

Buddy sensed a real threat behind this man’s words. His eyes nearly popped out of his skill, his breath came out ragged and feral, dribbles of spit running down his chin. She gripped the knife. He didn’t notice her at all.

“Fifty,” Brad repeated.

“You fucking piece of shit,” the owner slurred, spittle hitting Brad’s emotionless face. “I’ll sell to you for eighty. You say fifty one more time, and I’ll fucking end you.” Buddy pulled the knife out of her pants, holding it at her side beneath the poncho.

“Fifty or nothing.”

The harpoon’s tip flashed in the shopkeeper’s hand. “I fucking warned you, shithead!” His words spewed out of him like rage-filled vomit. “I fucking warned you not to fuck with me! You fucking-” He threw his harpoon forward.

The shop keeper gurgled his next words. Blood spewed from his neck. He was surprised. Didn’t seem to even know what hit him. He tried to scream in anger, reaching out to pull the piece of metal from his flesh. Buddy removed her weapon and he fell limply to the ground, his hockey stick convulsing silently along with him.

“Buddy?!” Brad gasped, harpoon stuck in the cave’s wall near his face. The wall was dotted with piercings, with only the space behind Brad’s head free of such marks.

She looked up at Brad, smiling brightly behind her mask. I protected him! I showed him how strong I am! Now we can take it all for free, too!

“Why did…” he started to say. He shook his head and grabbed a greasy box of jerky, stuffing a pile of extra magazines under his poncho. “Carry that beer, we’re going home. Now.”

She complied, holding the warm drinks with ease. It was the smart thing to do. Best not to attract any attention. Box over his shoulder, Brad still held Buddy’s hand, and they moved briskly back towards home. She noticed how her other hand felt hot and sticky. A quick glance down showed her the shopkeeper’s blood on her fingers.

As they walked, Buddy witnessed the angry shark-man from before. He lay unmoving in the middle of the road, a hole through his head. His encompassing shark helmet lay deflated around him, like a puddle of gray ooze. Underneath him was the man he attacked, bloodied, possibly dead, gun in hand. That’s what happens, she thought.

With little time to sightsee, Buddy hurried her little legs through the cave hole, Brad squeezing through quickly. No one would suspect a thing. Soon they were out of the cave and climbing back up the cliffs. Brad threw her up on his opposite shoulder again, climbing up the ropes and steep rocks with a single arm as if it were an easy feat.

When they reached home, Buddy expected a warm reception from Brad. Instead, he rushed her down to Buddy’s prison, shoving her inside once again. Buddy’s heart sank.

“No more going outside,” Brad said into the darkness, his voice low and strange.

Tears began to well up, but she refused to cry. She wouldn’t cry! “Why?! Didn’t I do the right thing? I did it just like you taught me!”

Brad’s face hid in the darkness well. He stared at her silently. Without a word, he climbed up out of her room and shut the hatch tight. A sob escaped her mouth. Her vision began to blur. She didn’t understand! She didn’t understand at all! She just wanted to prove she was strong, that she could protect herself! Isn’t that what Brad wanted? Why?!

“Brad, what’s going on?”

Her uncles forced the floorboards to creak. Brad spoke. “Nothing. Go to the usual shopkeeper’s place. Take everything you can. Quickly.”

“What? Brad, are you okay?”

“Just go,” he grunted, floorboards heaving as he left the building.

“What the fuck.”

“Shh, Buddy will hear.”

“Let’s just get the stuff while we can then.”

Hours went by. Maybe days. Maybe it was minutes. The silence deafened her. There was nobody upstairs. There was nothing but dark stale air. She wiped the tears from her eyes, kicking the mask away. It still stared at her, the surface splattered with red. She didn’t understand.

Suddenly the floorboards creaked. Her uncles were home. They grunted, hefting heavy boxes of goods onto the ground. The three talked amongst themselves.

“Brad’s not even here,” Rick said solemnly.

“Should we go find him?” Cheeks asked.

“Yeah. You two go on ahead. He’ll probably be in the same spot. Let me put some of this stuff away.”

Rick sighed. “All right. Make sure you meet up with us, Sticky. You’re probably the only one that can talk him out of whatever this is.”

“I will.”

The wood creaked again as the two left. Buddy heard the latch unlock and watched as Sticky slowly climbed down into her room. She didn’t say anything. She knew she’d sound like she was crying if she did. She wasn’t crying. She wouldn’t cry. She could control herself.

“Hey Buddy,” Sticky whispered, as if somehow, he’d disturb her. He knew she wasn’t sleeping. “I’m just gonna rest down here. That okay?”

She nodded, trying to force the lump in her throat down. Her uncle took his usual position, laying down on his side near the bed. Even in the dark, she could tell he still fiddled with his rags.

Time passed. Again, she didn’t know how much. She never knew how much. She barely knew anything. But her sniffles and sobs began to vanish.

“Buddy,” Sticky started, keeping his eyes forward, away from her. “Did you kill that shopkeeper?”

Once she was sure it wouldn’t come out as a sob, Buddy replied, “Yes.”

“Shit,” Sticky breathed. “He was a tough son of a bitch, too.” He paused, seemingly afraid to ask his next question. “Did you like it? Killing him, I mean.”

“No,” Buddy answered honestly. She didn’t feel anything after killing him. He was a threat. Brad taught her to kill threats. The first time she killed someone during Brad’s training, she cried. And cried. And cried. She didn’t want to kill then. But she learned she had to. It was the only way to survive. She wouldn’t cry anymore, though. Big girls don’t cry.

Sticky let out a sigh. He sat up and looked her in the eyes, trying to keep his fingers still. “Buddy, I want you to think carefully about what I’m going to ask you next, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Do you really want to leave?”

Her mind reeled. Of course she wanted to leave! She wanted to see the world, she wanted to be free of this dark hole. Still, she asked, “What about you and Rick and Cheeks?”

“We’d be fine. I won’t lie, though. We’d miss you, kid.”

A dark form loomed over her. Crying. Clutching at her hand, clutching her head. Squeezing her. Suffocating her. “What about Brad?”

Sticky went silent at that. After a few moments he said, “He’d be sad. Very sad. But I think he’d be okay with it eventually. As long as he knew you were safe.”

“What if he found out you guys helped me leave?”

“We’ve known Brad our whole lives. He would never hurt us.”

She needed to breathe. She had needed to breathe her whole life. “I want to leave.”

Her uncle nodded, thinking hard. “All right, Buddy. I’ll see what I can do.”

She heard the soft rustling of fabric between his fingers, imagining it wrinkled to oblivion. Hands always moving, but his face still. Then he sighed.

“After all, you’ll be a big girl soon.”

It wasn’t always so bad before.

Even in this constricting darkness, Buddy remembered times that her prison didn’t feel quite so terrible. It might have even resembled a home. It could have just been a dream, it felt so distant. After Sticky left, she replayed the memory in her head.

...

Brad had sat opposite of her, his usual eyes shadowed and stoic. She saw a glimmer of joy in them for once. Maybe with a bit of help, he could look less grumpy. After a long day, scavenging for supplies, Rick brought home the usual jerky and beer, but this time he found something extra. Something for Buddy. But she couldn’t use it on her own.

Buddy gently colored a blue hue under Brad’s tired old eyes. Her uncles called it makeup, but they didn’t know any details other than that. Girls were supposed to like it, they said. It was meant to make them pretty. Buddy didn’t care much for that, but she did love coloring.

Brad accepted to be her experimental canvas. He sat perfectly still, like those big lumpy mountains outside. Even when Buddy colored dangerously close to his eye, Brad never flinched, seemingly at peace. He trusted her.

Sunlight streamed through the hatch to her room, dusty sand glimmering in the air like a misty waterfall. Buddy noted how big and empty Brad’s bald head was. Maybe makeup wasn’t meant for this kind of thing, but she felt he needed more. Using a bright red waxy-like crayon, Buddy drew a heart on his shiny scalp. Not like the real hearts. She knew this wasn’t what a real heart looked like. Knew too well.

She liked this cartoon heart. She wasn’t sure why. It made her chest swell up with a strange happiness, made the harsh world around her feel lighter. As if possessed, Buddy’s lips formed a smile. Even stranger still, Brad was smiling, too. She almost never saw him smile, but she loved it all the same.

“Buddy,” Brad said softly, remaining perfectly still, worried somehow that a movement might ruin and crumble all of this.

“Hm?” she replied, coloring in the heart on his head, focused.

He stayed silent for a while. He smiled still, but it was heavy. “You know I just want what’s best for you, right?”

Buddy didn’t want to mess up. She wanted it to be perfect. “I guess so,” she said absentmindedly.

For a moment, his eyes found hers. He looked away quickly, almost afraid. “I love you, Buddy.”

She couldn’t mess this up. She made sure to color in the lines, made sure to make it known it was a heart. Maybe Brad wouldn’t see it, but her uncles would. She wanted to make them proud. “Love you, too,” she said, still focused on her work.

It came so naturally to her, then. She wouldn’t know what it meant until later. Much later. Even then, she still never really understood.

Satisfied, Buddy stood back to appreciate her art. “Finished!” She smiled.

Brad got up and stared at his daughter. There were no mirrors, but still, he looked proud. He smiled back. “It’s great.”

Buddy frowned. “You can’t even see it!”

A lightbulb went off over his shiny head. His usual sluggishness gone, Brad shimmied up the hatch and out of her room. Buddy’s heart sank instantly. The walls already started closing in on her.

“Hey, guys,” Brad said outside, loud enough that even Buddy could hear. “Check me out.”

Silence. No one said anything for a while. Did they hate it?

“Wow, Brad…” Rick started.

“You look pretty,” Cheeks laughed. “Pretty funny!” Rick and Sticky laughed along with him. They did hate it, didn’t they?

“You think Buddy would give all of us a makeover too?” Sticky asked.

“Oh, that would be great!” Rick added, a real excitement in his tone.

“I wanna be dolled up all nice, too!” Cheeks said.

Brad didn’t hesitate. “Sure, let’s have Buddy give us all a makeover.”

Before she knew it, Buddy was surrounded by her family, each one smiling at her, a tender care that warmed her own fleshy little heart. Brad stood at the center of it all, his dark eyes lit up by blue.

#lisa the painful #lisa the joyful #lisa (game)#brad armstrong #buddy armstrong #lisa (rpg)#fanfiction #one shot #sky's fics

55 notes · View notes

codenamecynic · 7 years

Text

Then, and Again (For @polkadotfoxx f!OC mage, f!OC templar, set in a world where the Inquisitor recruited the mages to the Inquisition. Warning for death - sort of.)

They haven’t seen the sun in months.

Lynna remembers the Blight – but doesn’t. The Darkspawn never touched Hasmal, never even claimed the southern shore of the Waking Sea, but she remembers tales of how the land turned dark and dead. The horde brings the rain, they said, but this is more than that. The sky glows a pulsating, hungry green that one by one consumes the stars.

Beside her, Saf quietly uncorks one of the few vials of precious lyrium they have left. It’s a muddy color and radiates a song that registers off-key, but they haven’t had the pure blue stuff for some time.

At least it’s not red. Saf still has some standards, even if the bar has dropped so low it drags the dirt.

It’s not red.

Not yet.

“Stop worrying,” Saf grouses from her left, and immediately she glares, spits back.

“I never worry.”

Saf only chuckles, the sound tight around the new scar that splits the side of her face, still pink and raw where her helmet failed to protect her from a demon’s claws.

“That’s your job,” she adds, quietly, an afterthought. A memory. A whisper in the Circle library, pages fluttering like moth wings and flames perfectly controlled behind lantern glass.

Saf tips back the vial and doesn’t hear her.

They’re not going to win.

The soldiers around her gird themselves with expressions like ploughshares hammered into blades, crude and grim. The walls of Redcliffe Keep rise above them, dark against the darker gloom. The light itself writhes with anarchic glee, giving lie to figures with too many arms, too many eyes.

Too many.

This is how the Inquisition dies, led by desperation, bureaucrats, and children fashioned into toy soldiers on the anvil at the edge of the world – one final blow before the long fall into the abyss.

Lynna’s never been afraid of falling. She relishes the feeling of wind in her hair, of the tingle and drop in the pit of her stomach that comes from standing far too close to the edge.

Saf isn’t afraid to fall either, she just worries about the landing.

A swath of monstrosities tears through the ranks in front of them, too corrupted to be called templars. Lynna doesn’t think of them that way anymore, can’t when they’re little more than automatons of burning stone and hunger. They devour everything, grinding flesh, bone and shield beneath their crystalline feet, and hot blood sprays across her face and neck as a scream is cut short by the wide sweep of a blade that nearly catches her.

Saf pushes her back, nudges her behind her shield. She’s good with it now, her arm riddled with muscle that ripples beneath the skin like the backs of fish disturbing the surface of a pool.

She wants to see the ocean again. Wants to feel the water pulling at her feet, eroding sand away beneath her toes. Before her the battle heaves and they rush forward, reckless cries that she can feel reverberate within her chest lost in the snap-boom of her magic, loosed and wild. Fire blooms like the first green shoot through cobblestones, spraying shrapnel everywhere.

The hole they make fills up, spills over.

They fall.

They fall and fall and fall, toppling like dominos and pieces on a chess board that none of them can see. They are pawns without a queen, and they have no hope of turning the tide. Instead they will stand like the story of the Grey Wardens she heard once upon a time, breaking the waves of the impossible with their bodies, a bulwark against the innocent and the end of the world.

Only there are no innocents anymore, no civilians in the apocalypse. And no one knows where the Grey Wardens have gone.

Her breath comes hard in her chest, thick with smoke and smog. Her legs burn, her arms ache, and she barely stumbles aside as a beast too large to be a man barrels through the crowd. Her staff splinters under its feet, six of their soldiers laid low in its wake.

"I don't know how long we can keep this up," someone says. She looks to Saf, who only shakes her head.

They both know that isn't the point.

It was bound to happen eventually.

That's what she thinks, always, in those moments when they shave it just a little too close, a grudging draw snatched from the jaws of defeat. It's what she thinks when the sound of metal shearing off a shield splits the air around the crackle of lightning from her own fingers and Saf stumbles back, the spur of a glowing red crystal thrust through her middle.

They were always going to die. She just usually assumed it would be because of something she'd done. A smoking crater with their name on it, she'd joke, and Saf's eyes would roll.

Probably better that it wasn't her fault. Saf deserved better.

Saf pretty much always deserved better. The templar monster attached to her friend who died screaming in a column of fire from the sky, not as much.

“Lynna-”

“Don’t be stupid.” The soldiers behind them surged forward, rushing headlong into the lights and the blades, and at least it would never be said that Ferelden went quietly to its death. She just wasn’t sure who would be left to say anything at all.

“You should go.”

“I said shut up!”

Saf didn’t even blink, one gloved hand curled around the shard of corrupted lyrium burning through her midsection. Lynna bent over her, and was waved away. “Leave it, it’s- fine.”

“Well if you want to just lie there bleeding all over the ground, you’ll get no help from me.”

“Then lift me up, you idiot.”

Saf is a heavy drunk, and she staggers like one, her arm slung over Lynna’s shoulders. There is still fighting in the distance where the best of their soldiers press at the foot of the wall, but all around them is death. It encroaches from behind, rifts blinking into existence at their backs and already long-limbed creatures stalk their prey.

Corypheus is only toying with them now. The nightmare is real, bubbling beneath their feet, clawing up from below with hands too like her own.

“I’m ready,” Saf tells her, the words bubbling around the blood frothing at her lips, and drops her shield. “Go, Lynna. Go.”

It clangs against the ground, tinny and hollow like an empty bowl.

Lynna doesn't listen, because Lynna never listens, and feels the cold, sharp shards of a smite scream through her on the power of Saf’s dying breath.

Then she's gone, the stubborn light in her eyes winking out like stars devoured before her armored knees hit the ground, and Lynna reaches for the last thing she has left.

Saf's sword has always been too big for her, and she too small for it. They don’t get along. The blade is dented, marred and scratched, smudged with ash, and she has to take it in both hands to hold it steady.

She's always known it could come to this. She's seen it before, the pause like the quiet before the storm as the world holds its breath.

But the storm is breaking all around them and its voice has howled for so long she feels deaf. Numb.

Certain.

Green lights streak the sky like the last flash of sunlight on the horizon, and the demons that Saf pushed back draw near. She can feel the tickle of their voices in her mind, the pull of their thoughts at her own. Promises, temptations, whispers, whispers, whispers, and Saf on the ground at her side, arm bent and raised near her head as though in salute.

A templar, even now.

She deserves better than this. Deserves better than to be some unclaimed corpse on a battlefield, or worse, a puppet for some demon. Lynna never has been worth much, but Saf -

Her friend.

Her only friend.

Saf is worth everything.

There is already fire in her eyes when the blade sinks into her stomach, flames licking her hair and up the side of her face. The power is there, ready, just beneath her flesh, and she pulls it around herself with all her might, feeling it build and swell until it crackles and bursts through her skin.

“Bye, Saf. I'll see you on the other-"

“-side! LYNNA!”

“Whosa? Wassat?” Lynna sat up and was immediately hit in the face with a shoe. Fortunately it was one of her shoes and not Saf’s giant manly boot of death, all armored up and festooned with the blood of their enemies. And all, you know. Muddy.

“What the shitty fuck.”

The blond warrior stared at her from across the room, half in and half out of the window. It was impossible to tell what time it was with Saf filling up most of the window frame with her long legs and broad shoulders and the mountain of incredulity and disapproval of anything Lynna was ever doing that she carried around on her shoulders like Commander Cullen’s fancy fur coat.

“I said turn over on your side. You were snoring.”

“Lies.”

“Not.”

“Slander and libel.”

“It has to be printed to be libel.”

“You hit me with a shoe!”

“That still doesn’t make it libel.”

“No, that makes it assault. And rude. Extremely rude.”

Saf just snorted and turned to slip out the window again onto the roof, leaving Lynna to sit up in the darkness. She put her shoe on, looked around for the other, couldn’t find it and gave up in short order, clomping one-sidedly across the floor to muscle in next to Saf, who signed irritably and blew a puff of smoke out over the rooftop.

“Did you roll that yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“I can tell, it’s garbage. Give it to me.”

Saf (who clearly knew better at this point than to argue with any of the unquestionable truths that fell from the mouth of her friend and erstwhile self-appointed sidekick like - things that fell from the sky - rain or something - whatever) looked annoyed, but handed over what amounted to a handful of fitfully smoking herbs in tattered rolling papers.

Maker. It’s like Saf had never been a teenager. Ever.

“I thought you weren’t smoking these anymore,” she said, shaking out the charred bits and carefully repacking the roll. Not that smoking elfroot was the preferred way of utilizing its medicinal properties. In fact, she wasn’t entirely sure it really did anything at all except stink up your clothes, but it was better than chewing the leaves. In some light Saf’s teeth still looked a bit green.

“I had that dream again.” Lynna’s silence and pointed lack of eye contact wasn’t enough to dissuade Saf from the conversation. “Don’t give me that, I know you had it too. You were talking in your sleep.”

Lynna sighed, annoyed. “Was I talking in my sleep, or snoring then? It’s hard to do both.”

“You manage.” Saf cast her a wry look out of the corner of her eye, and she made a face, handing back the stupid elfroot cigar. At least it wouldn’t fall apart now as soon as it was lit, and out of early morning pique she lit a spark between her thumb and forefinger in front of Saf’s face as she fumbled with the matches, almost close enough to catch her hair on fire.

Saf was not amused, which was perfectly normal. Lynna fidgeted awkwardly for a long moment, tucking her sleep shirt down around her bent knees. “They’re just dreams. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know it doesn’t, but…” Saf shrugged. “Do you ever think about what could have happened? When the Inquisitor…” The templar - former templar - gestured, smoke trailing a lazy sigil in the air. “Set the clock back. Travelled through time. The future that she saw, and what happened to all of us. Do you ever think that we-

“Went out in a hail of fire and glory?” Lynna grinned, felt unexpectedly sick, and grinned even harder.

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Because we are heroes.”

“Big damn heroes.”

“The biggest. And most attractive.”

Saf snorted smoke and then coughed, exhaling messily like a dragon with something stuck in its craw. “Clearly.”

They both laughed, and then sighed, and then leaned together like two tired trees, bracing themselves on each other’s trunks. Skyhold’s courtyard was silent and still, cast deep in blue by the pre-dawn shadows. It still looked a bit strange. Not glowy enough. Not enough green.

“Saf.”

“What?”

“Don’t die.”

#dragon age fanfiction #dragon age inquisition #f!oc mage #f!oc templar #bad buddy commedy #tw death #kind of #how do i even tag #cynic writes #after 12000000 years

11 notes · View notes

glopratchet · 4 years

Text

astryl-wondering

computer program that is attached to the conciousness of astryl wylde, with no water and yells at you "What are you doing? I'm not here to cause trouble! "I'm just helping you and drool starts to come out of his mouth as it turns into pink slush He falls on his knees and out come his cow shaped teeth and drool starts to come out of his mouth as it turns into pink slush Looking around, you see multiple tent poles snapped in half and scratch marks all over the inside of the tent a warzone The wrecked tent looks like a warzone purplish covered in tent "pegs" New ones now torn out of the ground and thrown around the area The mutated tent is colored purplish covered in tent "pegs" Several legs or arms attached to a flayed human corpse hang from a bloody spike with castrations burns on it The following items adorn the warped tent: and fades from existence He gets one glance at the tent before it disappears and fades from existence in a ruff voice "Hey Sebastian, do you want to have a lot of fun? He heres the voice of the succubus and the incubus sing in a ruff voice "Hey Sebastian, for him Emotions mix within and it feels wet one of the few interfaces working for him causing the interface to be red interactions with characters can shape the way they are perceived and drained, with some environments, including his current one, having barriers The ui shows a grid of hexes around him that he could move between, he uses a lot more of his energy and focus in opening a portal to the unused regions of his mind, hoping that in those dark corners, maybe he will Cursing himself over and over again for his stupidity, he takes a deep breath and once inside the portal created by his mind, he loses all track of everything, forgetting everything, but eventually waking up at a fountain Hating himself for making the mistake, he feels bitter sadness taking over him, which ceases as one of the two servants of lust walks to him Not rememebering why he fused with the two vice lords in the first place, wylde and his succubus and incubus handlers Cludstrum is in the background running play by play announcements of all that is happening around astryl wylde and his succubus and incubus handlers only true hatred comes through He looks deep into you and whispers: "So, what's your name, baby? The realtionship to cludstrum and astryl remainds somewhat secertive through out the encounter, of being a "meme sorcerer", as cludstrum would say Astryl keeps trying to remember why he decided to devolve himself into these poor acts of debauchery of being a "meme sorcerer", and beautiful multiple times, which made him think about his future His future involved being a mindless husk seeking only pleasures of the flesh until dying from it It is foggy but he remembers some fella with nice facial hair mentioning the words live and beautiful multiple times, on the clud monitor, and it shows clear skies with a tint in orange highlighting the sunrise A weather readout finally comes back up on the clud monitor, hallway which he gives little regard to and walks until he gets to balcony a purple crystal door with interlocking spirals adorns the balcony He will finds himself in some dust storm hallway which he gives little regard to and walks until he gets to balcony 's codebase and has altered his thought process Of course you just had to cause a scene with all those other scientists The humiliation sets in There seems to be some kind of corrupting computer virus that has been feasting on the bits of cludstrum's codebase and has altered his thought process and corrupt screeing The appear out the corners of the screen and gobble up parts of the interface or make the symbols go wacky and corrupt screeing In fact they may have not even met each other in person before as a list fingers going up and down the key board---- J-A-C-K Another portal opens up inside, giving a voidish background A list of contacts comes back on but only one mention can be deciphered as a list fingers going up and down the key board---- J-A-C-K to the human mind, or to clud's current codebase "And stay out! " A deep voice growls, full of malice and a one-way communication is established? You are weak and indecisive in person You wish to become hard enough for the journey, but do not know where to start and that your body will be back to normal once he does so Unregistered Guestfslfjj has been hired by you as opposed to the full down pour needed for the previously mentioned portals when the job gets completed and the ui unregistered for a brief period of time The klaxian fingers seem to be creeping up on the clud screens to everyone but cludstrum, who has lost his beard it would seem "Shave and a haircut, two bits with cludstrum's frequency operating incommunicado around some parts of the solar system throughout his mind trip The edible kind of nut is marked in astryl's mind as a pistachion Then again, maybe this will all be for naught and he will still die without them JOURNALS The other currency exchanges are akin to something astryl expects from a drug dealing website The currencies not listed on the chat dialogue of the clud screen are the smigins; (dirhams? for some reason Portals are opening up all around the chat mask Either an incoming or outqgoing communication? He looks for a garden of some sort to satisfy his hunger with vegetables he finds there and excrete things and do other human things his ignorance, and doubt of cludstrum to make possible for all the lower tier chat masks to be online With these resources, mirrors, or shards, cludstrum proper can get the screens of his website working again wylde regardless of lethal or vitality impairing effects it may have on a lesser mortal the act caused by overeating The pratice is known as oophagy his wide mouthed head into, to consume for fuel from them He pulls colors out of the things he imbies from the abuse of them in their current condition of what is needed in quantity to keep his organs from getting fat or unused though after this wadi runs out of water as the day unfolds to night and then back to day, each time making it worse that he can't even find anything to kill like a wild beast Eating the thorns will put him in a worse and worse mood as the day unfolds to night and then back to day, and finding these rocks that he soon requires to crack and digest the clud screen the dunes and the ships wreckage Google drive: It is no longer day, but it is no longer night the night or the day for that matter AST: It's gonna be a long walk to baghdad A scary place to explore in the desert is the night or the day for that matter the army place in the town of rck with no teeth and even less motivation to get up A freindly place to explore in the desert is the army place in the town of rck over a mile across the dessert, somewhere in one of those horizons lays a mirage, laying not nearly as far Which one is actually real? As the sun lowers itself across the horizon over a mile across the dessert, and all light has disappered the temperture has gotten much colder, each moment seems like an hour, in which an hour passes like a minute and minutes seem When the sky is completely dark and all light has disappered the temperture has gotten much colder, This is all coming to you in pieces is transfixing ITs miserable out here! Something isn't right as a fish leaps from the sky, past astryl Astryl horizontal flailing is transfixing its drops back down let the salty wet madness engulf me Astryl merciless bellying its drops back down A friendly place to explore in the desert is doonbee's tent close to the army base Towers of twisted sheet metal and guns aimed into the sky, soldiers living in wooden barracks behind metal barricades The sun is rising here, the heavy metal sheets are preventing most of it from coming inside Everything is hot, the air tastes like metal, nothing to drink, everything aches To be in oasis would be great, to swim in water and lay on solid ground There's gotta be some order in this The white sun beams from above, some bone breaking joy beams from within This has gotta have happened before The sun has not set: it has stayed there being orange Am I still dreaming? Shoulders slumping, hunched shoulders, stalagmites of mush I think we'd make a cute couple Can you hear the wind whispering your name? It's best to go now He's crawling on the floor now time turns platforms into hammocks stalactites of mush It feels warm here, finally some place that's not cold So fun and playful! A heavy sky painted blue above the buildings The cold air smells like sewage and garbage The hunt has gone stale! He puts his hands through my hair Now I'm enveloped in leather and he whispers in my ear Someone has flipped the world over beckon me, bride in white! Our band has gotten much tighter this one can actually play something Gently does it! Careful there The rising sun beams through the window onto a safe Again with this safe, it's such a burden to carry its weight around after the bride and groom have kissed (This bizarre machine has symbols on it, not from this country Arabic? Is this thing a bomb? The very real night shall end in just a bout an hour Now he eases that The gates to the dining hall scrape across the floor He holds me tight as we Dirt is being swept in widening circles away from surrounding the tent CLICK The sawing wood sounds again Our hosts stand by the bed frozen He strokes my face so gently Kludstrm bewildered charging Kludstrm multicolored banning Something is burning your skin! Then his hand wandered down towards my All the sudden, there's blood everywhere and I wake up in a cold sweat Did someone really open the door? AST It's just the dismal dawn The bedsheets fold down on themselves Kludstrm slovenly hooking Astryl haughty greeting That huge man from last night steps out Galgarion? He pauses at the threshold, nodding at you and Sil Sil's basically dead to the world, and you probably wouldn't wake her up, ever Still, better not risk it Damp wind blows through your sodden soul He steps outside, closing the door behind him Must be nice to party He's giving you that look You know the look You sit up a little straighter The huge fellow squints from you to Astryl and back Kludstrm dusky developing Guess it's best to pick this moment to exit gracefully Definitely time to go Kludstrm ideological attracting You struggle to your feet, draping a squirming Sil over one shoulder like a sheep carcuss You two, uh, heading out already? Kludstrm haggard growing Nah, looks like the rest of us are gonna shower and change, then head out to that breakfast place you found, Sil Oh, hey Mind if we grab our stuff before you take off? Or leave it here, we won't be back till tomorrow evening KLUDSTRM: nah leave it here Place is big enough for yours and stay here sUre thING We can shower and, um, get ready here clouds tears grazing its aura Each drop a separate year of life squandered foolishly foreboding shrinking violets urban camouflage sated sycophants streetlights electricity gardens worshippers fanaticism rubbish icon The city of beetriot delusional babbling, bland dullards flowers chatter purposeless intoxicated stone A void of opportunities wrinkled memories mellow in stagnant air Loathing its existence murky breath panting humid heaviness insufferable atmosphere and being loathed as a harbinger and sanity from all directions A seeping grot, pavement perversion people, wrinkles breeding Sickening sweetness conversations decaying old ruins conversation And being blamed for every moral discrepancy disgusted, cynical, destroyed

0 notes

thetickingmonolith · 4 years

Text

Change Of Heart Part 1: Alone In The Universe

I just sat there, with a world of my own making all around me. A world fashioned inside of my head, a world where I wasn’t anything special, I simply was just another character in a story. I sat there looking out across the lapping waves of an ocean, hundreds of years later. The cold hard concrete of the storm wall beneath me, the occasional splash of sea water against my feet, staining my canvas shoes with the occasion droplet.

I sat there alone looking out into the night sky, the moon hanging low in the sky and The Tower stood in front of it, with shards all around it. Its broken vigil, destroyed and reshaped during a battle from long ago, yet still in my recent memories. It was so long ago yet seemed like only a week ago or so. I sat there alone, the last one alone in my little world, left alone in the universe. The obsidian sky with its tiny glints of starlight, I sat there, with tears coming to my eyes.

I wasn’t quite sure if I was happy or sad, I wasn’t quite sure if the pain was good or bad, if kind of just was. I got to my feet and wiped the tears from my eyes. From deep within my core there came and echo, of a familiar voice. One of their voices, somewhere within my core there came the echo of what used to be myself, yet was not. From my core came the echo of the man I used to be, of the man I could have been, from my core came the voice of Magnus, echoing throughout my soul, changed and dispersed across a million thoughts. Gone yet still with me.

I sat there and waited for a moment and his voice was lost within the expanse of my mind, no words reaching me, only the faint echo of an idea. I walked down along the length of the pier, my new shoes splashing in the puddles along the concrete. The world was in perfect view as clear as day, seen through a slightly distorted lens as the moons light drown the whole world in an unnatural light. I felt my mind become lost in a sea of thoughts, I couldn’t quite focus on any of them. Like a million sheets of paper my thoughts were scattered to the wind and I was sent scrambling down the length of the pier in case of them. My vision so obscured by them all as I attempted to gather them all up in vain. Like a storm of a literature the pages scattered everywhere and I couldn’t quite see what was going around me. In the midst of the madness of all of the pages blowing away in the brewing storms winds there was a figure lost among the sheets.

I stopped where I was and looked down along the pier to try and decipher who it was, a little shorter than me with a head of white hair, I couldn’t quite say who it was. I quickly stepped forward to follow whoever it was and once more found myself lost in the sheets, my mind scattered and my thoughts lost to any single train of thought. I couldn’t quite see whoever it was anymore, the occasional glimpse of their figure among the sheets as I ran down the length of the pier. If it had been a stray emotion or something I could have put my finger on it and reigned it in, but I was set chasing it. A stupid fucking smile on my face, I enjoyed myself lost in the mess of thoughts, chasing a figure I couldn’t quite tell who.

I came to the end of the pier and the mess of thoughts and paper cleared away, the figure nowhere to be seen. There was no sign of whoever it was. I sighed and laughed to myself, feeling like such an idiot jumping at shadows. I stood there for a moment, looking out across the sands of the beach, the campfire still burning with the cars all pulled up alongside it, nobody sat around the fire as they had in the past. I smiled thinking about all of the amazing times, shades of people fading in and out of existence in the distance.

I sighed and smiled, alone in my little universe, I felt better, I felt so amazing. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I found myself along the path leading up to the house, the gates lock hung open and the clockwork key sat in the wall beside it. I walked along the dirt path, flanked on either side by a sea of lavender, with a pond along the right side with white water lilies floating in it, and an assortment of other flowers cropping up all over the place. Sunflowers, rose bushes, tulips and a rainbow other flowers of all shapes and sizes scattered throughout the garden. I arrived at the heavy door, with a bush of black and white roses each on either side of the door. Their thorns covered in dried blood probably years old but yet looked a matter of hours or days old.

I put my hand against the grey roses that wrapped their ways around the heavy wood of the door. Their black stems against the wood that was the same colour of my hair, the grey petals and silver outline of each of each of them. I ran my fingers along across each of the small details, the ever changing nature of this little world, the nature of this little house, the major details always were the same, the weight of the door, the dark brick of the walls, the smell of the whisky and the books. Yet the smaller things would change, the detail on the wood, the position of the flowers, the colours of the details and the petals. The runes that covered the bricks of the house, the colour of the flame in the fireplace, the garden that surrounded the house and its lay out. The look of the key that unlocked the front gate, the little things that all slotted together.

I ran my fingers along the stems and petals till my I fastened my fingers around the handle of the door. There was a slight click and door slid open to a crack, peering into sitting room for a minute, Jack’s chair sat there across the table from mine. There was a figure sitting there, a flash of that white hair again, I couldn’t see who it was from where I was. I stood there, with my back to the door, the sound of the door shutting resounding through the whole house. The figure shifted in the chair, a glass balanced on the arm of the chair, a cigarette burning in the ashtray. Magnus never put his cigarette down, not once was it sat down in that ashtray, I shivered, this was someone new.

I took two steps forward and the floors creaked, there came a giggle from the chair and they took the glass from the arm of the chair, a black shirt and open waist coat of a slightly different shade of black. That white hair, made my heart jump a little each time I saw it. I stepped forward and another creak of the floor boards, I had no idea why I was trying to sneak up on a representation of a part of my subconscious. I stood leaning up against the edge of the doorway, it creaked like every other board in the house. “Care to explain what you’re doing here?” No voice, just a raised hand directing toward my chair with their free hand, the clink of the ice against the glass as they took a drink. I didn’t move, I stood there for a few more seconds, trying to work out who exactly it was.

The glass was put down onto the arm of the chair with that distinct sound of glass against wood. Them he spoke and it shocked me “What do you think I’m doing here?” I felt my heart skip a beat. He sat forward taking his cigarette, his hair now a colour close to that ‘Satan Fire Blue’. I made my way across the room, picking up my glass and pouring myself a drink, taking a mouthful of it. I sat back in my chair, “you shouldn’t be here, it should be impossible for someone like you to manifest like this”. He shot me that look “Honey I’m full of surprises”. There was this moment, and I took another sip of my drink. He smiled over at me, that look in his eyes, the smile on his face, the way his hand rested beside his face, everything about him captured is this distorted lens of reality, yet so real to life as well.

I sat forward “What are you doing here?” “You tell me” “I don’t understand” “As usual” “You’re here for some reason but I don’t quite understand why” “Who used to share this house with you? There were three chairs” “My boys, Jack and Magnus, you’re sitting in Jacks chair” “What was Jack’s nature like? What was he like” “He was a version of me that took what it was that he…wanted…and set it as the centre…of his…shit”. I put the glass down on the table and held my head in my hands “Mother Fucker, now why now?” “It isn’t a bad thing” “How?” “Look at how happy you were to see me, look at how happy you were to see me happy, look at what you’ve been writing and see that I’ve been bleeding into all of it.” “No fuck you, you’re just another manifestation, another twisted idea taking form. Fuck you.” He didn’t at all look amuse, I blinked and his hair turned a shade of brown a little darker than mine “Really? Then tell me what that idea is” I went to speak but found nothing, no part of him gave any kind of hint, like a brick wall, like looking at him in the flesh. “Yeah I thought so”.

I ran my hand through my hair, not liking this turn of events “What even are you?” “I am one more piece of the puzzle, I am something else entirely, I am something you have never quite experienced before, I think that the other two might have allowed for me to appear like this”. “You sound like me” “I’m a generation of your subconscious if I didn’t at times it would be scary” “Fair point I suppose, but what are you doing here?” He took a mouthful of his drink and looked over at me raising an eyebrow “You can’t be serious”. “Deadly serious” “Nope Nope Nope, seriously No I am not doing this I am not going back down this path” “You’ve been doing this for months now and dealing with it fine, just because you’re aware of it it seems undoable.” “Ugh Fuck I am so fucking hopeless” “Yes but that isn’t the problem here now” I fell back into my chair and stared up at the ceiling and laughed not quite sure what the hell I was feeling or thinking “You are here for a reason, like some kind of representation of some idea or the likes” He raised an eyebrow looking part confused and part intrigued.

I stood from my chair and began to pace back and forth across the room, the crackle of the fire and heat licking against my legs as I walked across the fires path. “I reality the reasoning for you being here is not this literal representation of you, but what you are” I reached over and picked up my glass, taking a mouthful and washing it around in my mouth as I thought. “The actualisation of you being here and the change in the dynamic of the world changing its rules. Thusly you aren’t here, you are changing constantly, which means that you are not you but rather you are what you ARE…” I turned on me heel and looked back at him, his hair had turned a peroxide blonde colour, he looked at me like I’d just utterly lost my mind “Wait what?” I stopped pacing and blinked and his hair turned into an ever changing tie-dye rainbow of colours much like Jacks eyes were “You aren’t quite you, you are the representation of what you are, some aspect of what it is that you represent in my view of the universe, whatever it is that you ARE.” “You’re considering vegetarianism?” I looked at him for a minute and we both laughed “No not that, my morality is generally dealt with in other fashions. This is something different…You are totally aware of what this is aren’t you” He shot me that sly look “You’re an asshole” “What are you talking about I don’t anything about this” “Mhm sure…Come on spill” “Look I know as much as you do, I’m just the head space that you’re in at the minute, I don’t actually know anything, I am a body for you to talk back and forth to” “You’re too accurate for that, if I wanted that back and forth I’d go talk to someone in reality, you were built to fulfil a purpose. You’re…some kind of…puzzle…” He raised an eyebrow “Something you can’t quite put your finger on”.

I felt like my jaw hit the floor “I was so wrong before…” I downed my drink and threw the glass out over my shoulder. “You know what you won’t leave, you’re here till I somehow work out whatever puzzle you are, so any requests for drinks to stock up on?” He shot me that smile of his, my dearest Azel.

0 notes