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msfilmdiary · 3 years

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Marie Antionette (2006)

Starring Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Asia Argento, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Rose Byrne, Molly Shannon, Shirly Henderson, Marianne Faithfull, Jamie Dornan, Steve Coogan, Danny Huston, Sebastian Armesto, Al Weaver, and Mary Nightly

Screenplay by Sofia Coppola and Antonia Fraser

Directed by Sofia Coppola

Cinematography by Lance Accord

I do not own any of the pictures posted.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Marie Antionette is a historical drama period film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Based on the life of the so-called “Queen of Debt” Marie Antionette in the years leading up to the French Revolution, the film follows her life before and during her life in crumbling France.

Fourteen-year-old (I know, fourteen) Marie Antionette is the beautiful, but culturally naive Archduchess of Austria, the youngest of Maria-Theresa’s daughters. As she is the only one left of her sisters that is not married, she is sent by her mother to marry the Dauphin of France, the future Louis XVI of France, to create an alliance between the two countries.

Marie travels to France and relinquishes all her connections to her home country, including her pet pug. She meets Louis XVI, and they are married at once. They are encouraged to produce an heir to the throne, but the next day, it is reported that “nothing happened” on the wedding night.

As the film passes, Marie concludes life at the court of Versailles stiffening. Her husband’s courtiers disdain her as a foreigner, blaming her for not producing an heir, although the fault lands within her husband, as the marriage remains unconsummated for an inordinate amount of time.

The French court continues to gossip about Marie, as she constantly ignores ritualistic formality among them. Marie also refuses to meet or even speak to Jeanne Becu, Comtesse du Barry, the King’s mistress.

As the years pass, Marie Theresa continues to write her daughter, giving advice on how to seduce Louis XVI. Marie’s attempts to consummate with her husband remained unfulfilled, and the marriage remains childless, while France remains heirless.

Marie spends most of her time buying extravagant clothes, gambling, and partying. After a masquerade ball attended by both Marie and Louis, they return to find that the King was dying of smallpox. He dies, and Louis, 19 is crowned King of France, while Marie, 18, is crowned Queen.

Marie’s brother, Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire comes to visit and counsels her against her lavish spending and partying, which she ignores. He also meets with Louis at the Royal Zoo and explains to him how the “mechanics” of sexual intercourse work in terms of “key making,” as locksmithing keys are his favorite hobby.

After the King and Marie have sex for the first time, ultimately consummating their marriage. Nine months later, Marie gives birth to a daughter, Princess Marie Therese Charlotte of France. As the child matures, Marie begins to spend much of her time at the Petit Trianon, a small chateau in the park of Versailles. She later begins an affair with Axel Fersen, who she met at the masquerade ball.

France’s financial crisis worsens, and the food storages and riots increase, and by this point, her public image has completely deteriorated. Due to her lavish spending and lifestyle, she has earned herself the name “Madame Deficit.”

As she matures, she focuses less on her lavish lifestyle and more on her family, making financial adjustments as needed. A year after her mother’s death, she gave birth to a son, Louis-Joseph, the Dauphin of France. She also gives birth to another son, Louis Charles, and another daughter, Princess Sophie, who dies a month after her first birthday.

As the French Revolution erupts and many storm Versailles, the royal family resolves to stay in France, which ultimately leads to their inevitable downfall in history. Rioting Parisians force the family to leave Versailles for Paris, and the film ends with the royal family’s transfer to Tuileries. The last image is a shot of Marie’s bedroom in Versailles in pieces and destroyed by angry rioters.

There’s something just so beautiful about Sofia Coppola’s films. I think Coppola does a fantastic job of humanizing historical figures in the film, whether they deserve it or not. Although, I will say, Marie Antionette plays more like a music video than I believe a historical film, and I understand the historical criticisms of the film, due to its absence of political context.

I think the film is the world in Marie Antionette’s perspective, as she is very naive politically, socially, and culturally. Intermixing the Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” while showcasing a montage of cakes, champagne, and shoes, describe what Marie Antoinette saw royalty as, nothing less than a shopping spree, rather than leading the people of France out of ruin.

There’s something to be said about the little dialogue in Coppola’s films. I’ve noticed this in certain films aside from Marie Antoinette, like in The Virgin Suicides or The Beguiled. I think she does this completely on purpose. In these films, the setting tells a story more than the dialogue does. The beauty and lavishness, but also the mystery behind all of it, is more important than the characters' interaction with each other. In Marie Antionette in particular, we see many interactions between characters, but they are non-confrontational rather than belligerent, with actions such as slide-glances or whispers. Coppola does not allow dialogue to interfere with the setting, or event storyline for that matter, which I think as a director, must be very difficult to do.

There’s also something to be said about the subtle changes in coloring in Coppola’s films. I noticed this in The Virgin Suicides as well. After a dramatic event in her films, the coloring deteriorates into a blue-green tint. In Marie Antoinette, this is noticeable when she and the King fall out of favor with the people of France.

The film in itself masks the problems proceeding to the French Revolution. The clothes, the parties, the affairs, all mask the real issues retaining to the backbone of the French Revolution. In the modern-day soundtrack, even one could argue the so-called “humanistic” view of Marie Antionette would be considered hiding behind the truth.

Marie Antoinette is fun, lively, but I would argue, not historically accurate. Even Coppola herself stated that she was interested in showing “the real human behind the myths.” Which, in perspective, does exactly that. It showcases Marie Antoinette’s spirit, and her naivety which leads to her inevitable downfall, and the inevitable downfall of France’s royal empire.

So, is Coppola’s version of history correct? Should we sympathize with a young Marie Antionette? Or was the world done with powerful monarchs?

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chelleaslin · 5 years

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Marichat May 2019 Day 29- Werecat

Marinette would have never believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own two eyes. There were reports of wild animal attack through out Paris for the last few years. When it first started there were talk of a rapid dog, these rumours were debunked when the police revealed that the hairs found on the mutalated bodies were feline.

New rumour sprung up after that. They’re was talk of one of the big cats from the zoo getting lose, that the keepers didn’t want to get in trouble and tried to bury it. Of course these weren’t true but after the death toll hit 6 deaths, the zoo had to be investigated. Of course all of the animals were accounted for and the gossip died a little after that.

The deaths slowed down for a few weeks, there was one death a week and the nothing. It stayed like that for about two months. All the gossip, rumours and speculation around the deaths disappeared.

Marinette was walking home from school, she had another hard day of not being able to women up and get Adrien Agreste’s attention.

They were giving the option to choose partners at school for a project. Alya and Nino instantly chooses one another, both of them giving Marinette sujestive glances at an oblivious Adrien. She tried her hardest, she called out to him and everything! But Chloe Bourgeois butted her fat head into the conversation and snatched him from right out under her nose.

Marinette growled in the back of her throat as she recalled the event, her frustrations getting the best of her.

Her blood ran cold when she heard a much threatening growled echo down the alleyway from her right. She froze up, she stood at the mouth of the ally but refused to enter it, she couldn’t even convince herself to turn her head and take a peak at whatever made that horrifying sound.

Her mind suddenly flashed back to a few months ago, all the reports of a feral beast, maiming and killing Parisians.

Another sound erupted from the alleyway, it was so inhuman and guttering that Marinettes mind went back even further to late night on Wikipedia pages reading about Beast of Gévaudan, Dispite the fact that she knew the reports said a feline caused the murders, she couldn’t help that her mind automatically went to supernatural creatures, eg. Werewolves.

“H-help.”

“Oh, god.” She gasped, someone was there. Someone was in that alleyway with whatever was in their. They could be hurt or worse, they could be dying. “Hello?” She called back, tears welling up in her eyes as she started to shake, she was terrified.

“M-Marinette?” The weak voice called. Marinettes body went into shook, the person knew her? It took her a beat longer to realise that ment she knew the person. Someone she knew was in danger! That was all it took to the adrenaline to kick in and she was running down the isle.

“Hello, who’s there?” She called out, “where are you?”

She heard another growl that died down into her cough, as the seconds went by the cough sounded more human.

“Mari..” Marinette heard her name called from behind a dumpster. She carefully walked towards it, hyper aware of her surroundings, knowing that the creature could be here somewhere still. She took a step forward and heard an odd sound, she looked down to see a pool of dark red blood beneath her foot. She ripped her foot back in disgust, quickly side stepping the puddle and finally looking around the dumpster.

Her blue eyes widen when she spotted a very familiar head of blonde hair, even if it was covered it blood.

“Adrien!” She gasped, she quickly ran to his aid, dropping to her knees next to his quivering form. “Oh, god, oh, god. Are you okay?” She started to panic for they’re was so much blood. She eyes whipped around wildly, knowing full well that the attacker couldn’t be far.

“I need.. help.” He whispered out.

“What happened? Where’s the wound?” She frantically searched his body. She carefully uncurled himas she checked his face, limps and abdoman but she couldnt seem to find the source of the blood. “Where are you hurt?”

“N-not my blo..blood.” He panted out. Marinettes blue eyes widen as she shuffled back away from him. What did he mean it wasn’t his blood whose blood was it? No one else was here.

Adrien’s jerked forward, his buckled over onto his hands and knees as he started to groan in pain. Marinette furrowed her brows concerned for the boy she held dear in her heart. Even if it wasn’t his blood, he was in pain.

Suddenly he threw his head up as the sound from earlier tore through his throat. Marinette was up on her feet in seconds as she watched in horror as his body started to change. His blinker and in a second his eyes were no longer his eyes, they resembled something like a cats. He hissed and growled as his body started to contort as his bones visibly moved under his flesh, snapping into new positions that shouldn’t have been humanly possible. His skin developed like picks on black hairs that soon spread into patches all over his body, his clothes shredded and tore as his body grew in size.

After a few more seconds suddenly Adrien was no longer here and in his place, a giant cat, it resembled something like a panther but much larger and feraler looking.

She stood up, slowly backing away, the creature turned its head and looked at her. She turned around ready to run when a whine broke out from its throat. It sounded so scared and vunrable that she almost felt sorry for the creature. She turned around to look back down at it in return it looked back up at her, eyes so different yet so familiar.

“Adrien?” Marinette called, hoping that the sweet and gentle boy was still in this beast. The creature never replied, it just walked towards her silently. Marinette tensed up and took a few steps back that caused Adrien to whine again. She froze and stayed in place, wondering was he wanted. Her mind briefly flicked back to all the murders and her heart rate picked up again.

Adrien leaned his large head towards her hand and opened his jaw. This is it Marinette thought, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited.

No bite came. No steering pain or streams of blood.

Instead she felt a large sandpaper-like wetness up her arm. She snapped her eyes open and looked down to see the were cat liking her. She screwed her face up in disgust, finding herself giggling at little at the sensation.

At the sounds of her small laughs, Adrien seemed to perk up. He suddenly rubbed his head agaisnt her abdoman, purring loudly as he did so. Marinette stiffen for a section but quickly settled. If he was going to hurt her, he would have done so now. She looked down at the him as he soaked up attention and affection, he was just like a normal house cat. She hesitatly ran her hand down his head, just to test her theory.

He preened at the sensation and butted his head into her hand like a kitten would. She laughed again, in amazement and disbelief.

“Adrien?” She called as she got on her knees and looked up at him. “Can you transform back? I think we need to talk.” He stared hard at her for a few seconds without reacting. Marinette worries that he could t understand her in this for, but he eventually laid down and the weird transformation that happened earlier started again, only this time backwards until a very naked boy was left in the big beasts place.

#miraculous tales #miraculous ladybug and chatnoir #ladybug #marinette dupin cheng #chatnoir #adrien agreste #Marichat #MarichatMay #MarichatMay2019

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arcticdementor · 5 years

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There’s an old saying, that Paris would be lovely without the Parisians. I don’t actually agree with that. They can be a bit arrogant, sure, but on the whole I find Parisian men quite civil and Parisian women classy and sexy. So I hope they stay.

There is one place though where that saying absolutely fits. Hong Kong. HK is a very cool city. It is a first world city built on a landscape of high tropical mountains, and you can see how the force of modern industry has made humans conquer the environment, fitting skyscrapers into the mountain bedrock and open-air escalators to reach them with ease.

…

So what’s going on in Hong Kong? A massive riot sponsored and organized by the United States Government, that’s what’s happening. What we call a “color revolution”. Funds by USG’s National Endowment for Democracy have been revealed, US diplomatic staff have been found organizing the rioters, and the whole mass of Western journalists (i.e. half the Cathedral) have been pushing the most egregious propaganda for weeks. There’s nothing special, nothing unique about this. Color revolutions aren’t new. This isn’t the first one, and won’t be the last one. The day Germany grows a pair and starts to push back against US meddling in European politics, rest assured that Berlin will burn for weeks under a massive Antifa riot lionized by the US press.

That said, the US isn’t that powerful. Not that generous; the money USG is sending around isn’t enough to motivate every single rioter to get out of home. USG isn’t stupid and it only pulls the trigger in places where the powder is already plentiful and ready to burn. It needs a fifth column of people willing to burn it all, a place where people hate the status quo so much they’d rather sell their country to USG. Hong Kong is indeed such a place.

…

How did that happen? To put it briefly, Hong Kongers think they are a superior people to the rest of China, and to the bottom of their hearts hate being ruled by Beijing. This isn’t about Communism or muh Freedom or muh Human Rights. This is a basic, deep problem of self-perceived social status. As I’ve said again and again, 90% of human concerns are about social status. Hong Kongers think China is low-status and hate every association with it. On the flip side, Hong Kongers think that Japan is high status. Also England. Well, the Anglosphere as a whole. So they revel in associating with it. Hong Kongers will spend 2,000 dollars to get on a plane on a Friday evening to fly 5 hours to Japan and spend the weekend there eating lame high-carb food and buying cosmetics that don’t really work just to be able to go back and say they’ve been to Japan again. That’s on Hong Kong where work hours are long and leisure time very precious. But that’s just part of the culture.

Why do HK people think China is so low status? Well because for a long time, and for a critical time period in Hong Kong history, the time period where Hong Kong’s population stabilised and its culture took form, China was indeed a poor shithole of peasants who shat in the street and were ruled by a bunch of retarded communists. Societies are just an aggregation of people, and people are dumb and stubborn. Memories taken as a child get fixed as culture, and are almost impossible to update after adulthood. Hong Kong collectively grew up being somewhat understandably disgusted by China’s backwardness. That all that is 40 years in the past and Chinese living standards in most cities are by now higher than in Hong Kong just doesn’t register to them. They just won’t admit it, the same way old men never admit their experiences just aren’t relevant anymore. Things never change if that change results in lower status to oneself. That’s how human brains operate. Scale that to a whole society and it can be brutal.

…

Hong Kong exists because the Hong Kong economy exists, and that exists because as China went communist, Hong Kong was the only sizeable place with a decent commercially-minded government and a land border with China. Hong Kong was the middleman for making business in China, and as China opened up and developed, the economic rationale for Hong Kong slowly eroded. Again, starting salaries for college grads in Hong Kong are already lower than in the richest cities in China. Hong Kongers aren’t superior anymore, by any metric. The city is decaying, little by little, and there’s nothing unnatural about that. Urban economies rise and fall, that’s just a normal result of economic cycles. Happens all the time in every country.

In normal circumstances when a city’s economy starts to falter, young people just pack up and leave for growing cities. But HKers won’t do that. They may leave the country, move to the Anglosphere if they have a chance (not to Japan, that’s only suitable for LARPing in the weekends, the language is too hard), but the vast majority of HKers would hang themselves in the nearest lamp post before considering the logical option of just packing up and moving to Dongguan. Why? Because China is low status, and they are high status. Why? Because it has always been like that, Mommy and Granny told them so. So they will stay, and complain endlessly about why HK isn’t as rich as they believe they’re entitled to be. A life is not worth living if you can’t live in a 50sqm apartment and hire a Filipina to clean it because you’re too busy commuting to your corporate lawyer secretary job.

…

It’s quite the sight to see to what insane lengths Hong Kongers go to slander China and make it public that they just won’t be associated with it. This in a city where the majority of population moved from China barely 50 years ago! See this Hong Kong “scholar” arguing that China is a cannibalistic culture, where eating human meat was just part of the usual savagery of life. Nothing to do with Hong Kong themselves, of course; the light of British enlightenment and bastardized Christianity (you really gotta check out local Christians for yourself, it’s hilarious) has purified them of all that yellow savagery.

But the Hong Kong riots have a deeper lesson than just how evil people can become when they want to, how a basic sense of honesty and decency go down the drain when a movement is allowed to be captured by its left-wing of sociopathic status maximizers. The deeper lesson here is about the Patchwork, this old libertarian concept about competitive governance inherited by neoreaction. The idea that bad government is the result of a lack of competition, that countries today are overall too large, and an ideal world would have city-state sized countries experimenting with different types of government and culture, and having them compete to develop the most effective ways of managing human affairs.

…

A patchwork city who is underperforming economically compared to some neighbouring city isn’t just going to copy whatever government structures or cultural practices of a richer neighbour. Most likely it will just come up with some lame rationalization about how their backwardness is actually just a sign of their superior status, and before changing a iota of its own habits, will rather go to war with the richer city for having the audacity of not accepting the poor city’s cultural superiority. That’s just what humans do. That’s exactly what all the Greek polis did until they were invaded and thrown to the dustbin of history by Macedon and Rome.

…

Do the nations of the earth have a right to preserve their own culture? Many antiglobalists would instinctually answer “yes”. But the proper answer to that question is that there’s no such thing as “rights”. Some cultures are good, some cultures are bad; some nations make sense, some nations just don’t have the means to subsist, and so won’t, and should be allowed to dissolve, instead of insisting on keeping everything alive artificially, making the world a ethnic group zoo where every single distinct culture which existed at the end of World War 2 must be preserved as part of the American project to freeze everything at the moment where its power was at its peak.

What is a “nation” anyway? What is a “people”? The usual attributes are easy to spot: common language and folklore, self-perceived status as a unit distinct to its neighbors. But all those attributes didn’t come out of thin air. They evolved over time, and they evolved because they worked in their particular historical environment. If perceiving yourself as a distinct nation implied your annihilation after a few weeks, like, say, in the case of a Mongol subtribe under the rule of the Khans, or a small fief close to the Kingdom of France, well odds are you aren’t going to perceive yourself as a distinct nation, because the moment you do you get invaded and destroyed. If national status gets you money, women, and lionized in the international press as a Champion of Liberty, well odds are that the among the most impressionable people on earth, i.e. young men and women, who the West has the retarded habit of assembling daily in these places we call Universities, are going to feel like a nation very very fast.

…

Is China going to destroy Hong Kong the way France destroyed all its regional cultures? Not outright, that’s not how the Communist Party of China does things. The CPC are real believers in materialism. They really think that Uyghurs for example go into Islamism because their poor, and the day they’re lifted out of poverty (through education, of course. The blind belief in Education is the one thing that the West learned from Confucians and then re-exported as one of the main tenets of Progressivism) they’ll just become deracinated hedonists like everyone else. The propaganda line about Hong Kong right now is that a lack of economic opportunity for young Hong Kongese, in addition to outright mobilization by the United States of the worst thugs and lowlifes in the city, is behind the riots. Which is completely missing the point. No amount of money is going to change the deeply engrained feeling of status superiority of the HKese towards China. It would only make it worse. The same way that more money would make Muslims even more arrogant and violent towards outsiders. The comparison with Muslims really is apt. Two million Hong Kong citizens demonstrated against the extradition bill. It doesn’t mean that two million people participated in the violent riots, the beatings of police and dissenting citizens, the physical wrecking of roads, the blockage of the airport. But they won’t condemn it either. “These kids are just too hot headed but their heart is in the right place”. The sort of thing that your average Muslim says about Al Qaeda.

…

It’s funny that Progressivism holds racism as the supreme evil, and yet spares no effort in supporting provincialism and ethnic chauvinism, which are basically the same primal xenophobic instinct, but applied in a narrower and much more irrational way. Races after all do differ in behavior in much larger ways than neighboring ethnic groups. But that’s how Bioleninism works: you’re allowed, even encouraged to hate your family, especially your smarter and more productive relations. What you’re not allowed is to hate complete strangers, especially the nastiest and most hostile ones.

#spandrell #hong kong #read the whole thing

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equinoxparanormal · 5 years

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In the 15th and 16th centuries, the average person in France ate somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 pounds of bread per day. The rich also enjoyed meat and another two liters of wine each day. But for the poor, bread constituted the majority of their diet. So when wheat was scarce, the French risked starvation.

In Paris, this risk was most acute during a siege.

Paris has endured numerous sieges throughout its long history. The Vikings besieged the city in 845. In 1429, it was Charles VII and Joan of Arc, and in 1870, the Prussians. During these times of austerity, Parisians resorted to eating everything from military horses to street rats and zoo animals. And during one particularly problematic siege, they even ate bread made from human bones.

Click here to read the full article by Atlas Obscura.

#Paris #history #Madame de Montpensier’s bread

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richincolor · 5 years

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Title: The Gilded Wolves Author: Roshani Chokshi Genres: Fantasy, Historical Pages: 388 Publisher: Wednesday Books Review Copy: Purchased Availability: Available for purchase now

Summary: Paris, 1889: The world is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. In this city, no one keeps tabs on secrets better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier, Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. But when the all-powerful society, the Order of Babel, seeks him out for help, Séverin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance.

To find the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Séverin will need help from a band of experts: An engineer with a debt to pay. A historian who can't yet go home. A dancer with a sinister past. And a brother in all but blood, who might care too much.

Together, they'll have to use their wits and knowledge to hunt the artifact through the dark and glittering heart of Paris. What they find might change the world, but only if they can stay alive.

Review: I knew I was in for an exciting ride when The Gilded Wolves opened with a Virgil quote: “If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.” Roshani Chokshi has delivered an exciting treasuring-hunting mystery populated with a diverse cast (PoC, queer, neuroatypical) and set it against the backdrop of a fantastical, late nineteenth-century Paris. There are magical artifacts, linguistic and mathematical puzzles, secret societies, elaborate heists, and lots of high-stakes flirting.

The Gilded Wolves is a fast-paced heist book with multiple POVs, and Chokshi does a great job of distinguishing between the characters’ voices. Laila and Zofia were my favorite POV characters, and I am excited that it looks like Laila’s quest will be a key part of book two. (Or so I hope!) As for non-POV characters, I was rather fond of Hypnos and his changing relationship to Séverin and the rest of the cast. The characters’ relationships are messy and compelling, and I thoroughly enjoyed the romantic tension between various characters, even if it didn’t always go the way I’d hoped.

The puzzles and heists (and disasters and traps) throughout the book were a lot of fun for me as a reader, even when I was able to guess at a solution or that something was about to go wrong. This is a book where you want to pay close attention to details and world building items so that when the twist or reversal comes, you’ve got the pieces to put it together right afterward. It’s an engaging story, and one I suspect you’ll enjoy just as much on a second read.

One of the things I appreciated most about The Gilded Wolves is that it is impossible to pretend that colonialism and white supremacy haven’t shaped this world. Too often in historical fantasy those factors get swept under the rug in favor of the glitz and the spectacle of what is seen as a more “romantic” time. Instead, Chokshi puts these issues front and center in the creation of the characters (characters from colonized nations, an autistic Jewish girl who experienced violence and harassment for being autistic and Jewish, etc.) or in the plot (the Order of Babel taking artifacts from other nations/crushing other Forging traditions, white-passing privilege for disguises, etc.) or through world building details (the Exposition Universelle having “human zoos” for white Parisians to gawk at, the exploitation of religious traditions/practices for entertainment, etc.). There is a lot of violence and ugliness propping up the wealth and the glamor of Paris, and Séverin and his allies are intimately aware of it.

Recommendation: Buy it now. The Gilded Wolves is a fast-paced, magical heist story filled with a memorable, diverse crew. The world and the characters are intriguing, and Chokshi has built a solid foundation for a trilogy.

Extras

Finding New Definitions Of Strength With Roshani Chokshi In THE GILDED WOLVES

Author Interview #3: Roshani Chokshi on The Gilded Wolves

Fictitious Podcast Interview with Author Roshani Chokshi

#the gilded wolves #roshani chokshi #WeNeedDiverseBooks #fantasy #lgbtqiap #young adult books #historical

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kclenhartnovels · 6 years

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The Perks of Being Dead

[Part two, after Fledgling Assignments. More to come after this.]

Fletcher watched the angel for seven more days before he made another move.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. He watched Merrick for one full day as he followed Abby through her routine. She went to her graduate classes, went to her part-time job at a shipping company, made dinner, called her friends and begged for advice. Should she should move on, or try to get back together with her boyfriend? (“Honey, move on. He was a nasty fuck and he put his hands on you,” Merrick said next to her ear, as if she could hear him.) One day was enough to know what kind of target this angel was. Foul-mouthed and concerned, shadowing her with a commentary for just about everything, moving with the ease of one used to multi-tasking. He would extend a wing to catch an item wobbling on a high shelf, all while leaning over to whisper into her ear, telling jokes to make her smile, even if she didn't know the reason why.

Fletcher procrastinated making his move.

Day two was spent knocking around Alexandria and getting used to moving through the earth as something not quite of it. It was amazing to be able to stand in the middle of the sidewalk and watch the humans move around him. They had no idea he was there, but they automatically avoided anything more than a brush by. Even those texting, eyes firmly fixed on their screens, would abruptly swerve without thought. If he extended his leathery wings, people would trip over the edge of the sidewalk, stepping into the gutter to pass by. Locked doors and windows were bypassed with a puff of smoke and a thought, and soon he didn't even need to think about it. He explored people's houses, listened to conversations, and stole food just to get the taste of it again. He never remembered seeing such a variety of fruit available. He spent six hours in a grocery store.

Day three, four, five, and six, he went everywhere he could think he had wanted to see as a child. New York City, the statue of liberty. He could remember his grandfather talking about Ellis Island. Their last name had gotten misspelled. His grandfather never forgave the clerks. San Francisco, and the Golden Gate Bridge. He sat on one of the rails and watched an angel pull a man back from the edge, whispering, begging in his ear to wait another day. The angel looked much more like what Fletcher expected—golden hair and baby-faced, fluffy white wings aching for a set of claws to bloody them. A target. Fletcher left him alone. Instead, he went to Paris. The Eiffel Tower was much less impressive than it had been in photographs. He ate in a Parisian cafe, practicing making himself appear both visible and human. The waiter asked if he was an actor. Fletcher finally changed his clothes after that.

On day seven, he went home. Not back to hell, of course, but to Chicago.

The streets still felt like home, even with the changes nearly one hundred years brought about. Storefronts that had been their speakeasies were now towering hotels and advertisement-covered liquor stores. He couldn't believe the variety of liquors on display, bold as a new day. On the street where he had watched the taxi riots, cars hummed back and forth freely. A group of men marched with signs, protesting the taxi unions not allowing Uber into the area.

Some things never changed.

He walked through the zoo, then along the lake. His feet took him into a neighborhood of old brownstones, and he breathed in the scent of the city. He was twenty years old again, following after a cop who, despite being on their payroll, was threatening to expose where their latest shipment of moonshine was entering the city. Fletcher cornered him in an alley, shoving him against the wall and breathing threats into his ear. His memory was fuzzy as to how everything happened, but within half an hour he had his hands under the cop's shirt, and the man's lips were around his ear. He could remember feeling the pressure of the wrap around his chest, the fear and the exhilaration. He couldn't remember the cop's name, but he remembered the taste of his mouth, the warmth of his hands, the promise that the moonshine would make it freely into the city, if Fletcher would go home with him.

He remembered when that man broke his promise. He couldn't remember the cop's name, but he remembered the smell of gunpowder and fear, the cool of the pistol's grip against his palm, and the splatter of blood as he fulfilled his duty to his crew. He remembered shaking his boss's hand afterwards.

Fletcher walked the city even as the sun sank low against the concrete and glass. The city had changed, but he found home there when the moon rose and litter scattered the alleyways. Footsteps slapped the concrete, panting breaths loud enough to make him turn. A kid no older than eighteen ran towards him, holding a bag and a handgun against his chest, panic obvious in the whites of his eyes. He was followed closely by two men not many years his elders, swearing and panting, one of them sporting a bleeding lip. The kid made a sharp turn into an alley, caught his foot on the edge of a broken dumpster, and went sprawling onto the ground, the bag tumbling alongside of him, though the gun was still held firmly in his hand.

“Where do you think you're going, you little shit?” one of the older men challenged, stopping at the mouth of the alley. “You think you can steal from us and get away with it?”

The kid rolled onto his back, scrambling backwards. He said nothing, but raised the gun in two shaking hands.

“You think you've got the balls to pull that trigger? Go ahead.” The thug leaned down, picking up rusted pipe near the edge of the dumpster and swinging it one-handed. “We'll see how many pieces of you we leave to crawl home.”

Fletcher crouched beside the kid, and closed his hands around the gun. “Hold the grip like this,” he whispered, his eyes on the larger boys. “And keep both of your eyes open. Sight along the barrel, squeeze the trigger, and by the time you feel the kick, you should hear them fall.”

The sound of two gunshots echoed between the glass and concrete. Fletcher stood, leaving the kid to grab his bag once more, stumble to his feet, and run out of the alley before anyone came to investigate the noise. The demon took a pack of cigarettes from one of the downed boys before blood began to soak into it, and felt a familiar warmth in his chest. His wings twitched, and he took a long drag on the cigarette after lighting it with a flicker of flame from his palm.

“Well shit, fledgling. I was starting to wonder if you'd earned your wings for nothing,” Razi greeted, appearing next to him to steal his cigarette. “You like being the little demon on the shoulder?”

Fletcher startled, but did his best to hide it, pulling out another cigarette instead. “I was just going for a walk.”

“Uh huh. You've been walking for a week now, kiddo. Find your footing yet? The boss is looking for an update on you. Should I tell him we let you out too soon?”

“No,” he insisted, blowing out smoke through his nose. “But I'm not one of the hellhounds. I'm not going to rip into this angel all teeth and claws. I need a weapon. I need a gun.”

Razi laughed so hard he choked. “You'll be a hellhound if Adem tells you to be one,” he warned, but he was grinning. “But fair enough. Fledgling wants a gun to take down his angel? Make sure you don't get any bloodstains on the new coat.” He tugged at Fletcher's jacket. “I dig the new look. Much less Al Capone, much more Wall Street wolverine. You might get there yet.” He looked him up and down again. “I'll meet you back at the guardian's hovel tomorrow morning, with your gun. But you'd better come back with feathers after that. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.” Red and blue lights reflected on the glass store fronts. Razi disappeared, leaving Fletcher standing alone beside the two bodies. His ears still rang from the sound of gunfire, and he leaned against the alley's brick wall, watching the uniformed officers come running over with guns drawn, speaking into radios and quick to rope off the area. Only when the starlight began to fade, and the first gray wisps of dawn threaded the horizon did Fletcher move. He left behind Chicago to the chilly morning, returning at last to the shadow of the oak in Abby's front yard.

“I have to ask,” Fletcher greeted when he heard Razi's step, “do demons sleep? I've been going non-stop for a week now, and I'm not tired.”

“One of the perks of being dead,” he laughed. “You don't need sleep, don't need food or drink, but if you want them, you can have them. Makes filling your diary a bit easier, huh? Makes you wonder why people are so resistant to death. If only they knew what was waiting afterwards, maybe they'd be jumping in front of a lot more buses. Though, I'm sure not every soul in hell would agree.”

“I'm not sure I would have agreed a week ago,” Fletcher countered. “I met plenty of souls that had been down there a lot longer than me waiting to get their wings.”

“Well, some nuts are harder to crack. It's not like we can give every village idiot free reign to run the earth. Too many rules to follow.”

“You haven't exactly told me any rules I need to follow.”

“Cosmic rules,” Razi corrected. “Only thing you need to follow are orders.” He pulled a revolver from an inner coat pocket, and offered it Fletcher. “You know, one day you're gonna have to learn to use your hands to get bloody. This might not take an angel down all the way, but it should slow him enough to get your claws in.”

Fletcher took the gun with a smile, running his fingers over the grip as if caressing an old lover. It was a beautiful little piece, clean and cool, the grip decorated with marks that looked like the slashes of claws. “Do any other demons use things like this?” he asked, but Razi had already left, leaving him to the oak tree and his new lover.

The front door to the house opened, and Abby came bustling out like a whirlwind, coat half-on and keys held in her teeth. She juggled her phone and her purse, cursing around her keys and trying to get her left shoe over her heel as she walked. Merrick shadowed her, holding out his hands as if offering to carry something.

“You know, if you got up when I told you, at your first alarm, you wouldn't have this problem. Can't you stop for a moment and—”

The sharp report of the revolver broke the morning air. Merrick felt the bullet whiz past his feathers, and he stopped in his tracks. Abby climbed into her car with her arms still full of her belongings, oblivious to the fight happening just beyond her senses.

The angel turned to face Fletcher. “I didn't think you'd be back.”

Fletcher led with the revolver as he stepped forward. “I wasn't very sporting last time, now was I? My boss wants to meet you. I thought you should get a proper introduction.”

Merrick looked to the car that was starting to back down the driveway, then back to Fletcher. “What kind of a demon carries a gun?”

“The kind that didn't have to miss when he shot the first time,” he snapped, stopping just out of Merrick's reach, gun still pointed at the angel's chest. “We're taking a little trip together.”

“Shoot me, then. I'm not going anywhere with you, much less to your boss. You're one of Adem's crew, aren't you? I'm not about to have my wings above his mantle.”

Fletcher's arm remained steady, but his finger feathered the trigger. How dare the angel just stand there, refusing to run, refusing to fight, refusing to cooperate? How dare he just stand there, just...daring him to shoot. The nose of the revolver wobbled, then dipped down towards the grass at last. “If I kill you, your wings end up in the same place, angel.”

“If you kill me,” Merrick agreed, focusing his eyes over Fletcher's left shoulder.

The shift was enough to get the demon's attention, and it was nothing other than reflex that saved his life. He threw himself to the side as a curved blade whistled the air, digging into the dirt where he had been standing a moment prior. A female angel yanked the blade free, her white wings covered in small black dots arranged in neat rows. She came after Fletcher again as the demon scrambled backwards. He fired, the bullet ripping through one of her spotted wings, sending a few bloody feathers flying. He snatched the feathers from the ground, then disappeared in a cloud of black smoke as the blade whistled for his head once more.

“Thank you, Eztli,” Merrick breathed, putting a hand to his chest to make sure his heart was still beating. “Are you okay?”

She extended her bleeding wing curiously, poking her fingers through the singed hole. “What kind of a cowardly demon carries a gun?” she laughed. “Adem must be getting pretty desperate.”

“I don't know about that,” Merrick said, looking to the pale threads of smoke left behind. “I have a feeling I haven't seen the last of him.”

“Well, you see him again, and you call me. I won't miss next time,” she promised, wiping the blood from her fingers. “You know I'm always looking to add another spot to the record.” With one last smile and the flutter of feathers, she disappeared.

Across the street, Razi lit a cigarette from behind the hood of a towering black SUV. Adem had ordered the kid to get a handful of feathers, and lo and behold the demon delivered. But Razi saw a much more ambitious opportunity as he watched Merrick look up and down the street, then take wing to chase after his charge on her way to work. A rare, profitable opportunity. Wait until Adem heard this one.

[See more about the universe, moodboards, stories, and more with the Abomination Masterpost] [ Previous | Next ]

#writing #abomination series #fletcher #merrick #demons #angels #short story #my child #i am starting to love him to bits

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uptightcitizensbrigade · 7 years

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ANNIE DOES DALLAS!

(download pdf of article + pix here)

As St Vincent, she is the art-rock provocateur who has been declared the spiritual heir to David Bowie, fronted Nirvana, modeled for Marc Jacobs – and dated one of the most famous women on the planet. Andy Morris meets the singer in her Texan hometown. Photography by Kate Martin. Styling by Laury Smith

It’s shortly after 9am on a temperate Sunday in Lake Highlands, Texas. Clark is wearing a white Parisian minidress with a pair of tangerine Barbarella-esque boots that defy both the laws of physics and the sanctimony of the state. Clark’s brother-in-law Andrew looks up from his coffee, her niece Stella discards her fidget spinner and Clark’s mother, Sharon, snaps the first of approximately 1,000 photos she will take during the day.

At 34, Clark is one of the boldest individuals in music. Under the moniker ‘St Vincent’, inspired by both a Nick Cave song and Dylan Thomas’s last-known address, she specialises in tracks with a human feel and a machine sound. She exists in the creative intersection between Brian Eno, Joan Didion and PJ Harvey – by turns personal, political, fearsome and funky. David Sedaris sung by David Bowie, if you will.

In the past decade she has made five studio albums, including Love This Giant with Talking Heads’ frontman David Byrne. She sang Lithium with Nirvana for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Prince watched her perform in New York and David Lynch booked her for his own festival. Clark’s last LP won a Grammy, beating both Arcade Fire and Jack White. She has spent the past year recording a radio show for Apple Music, directing a horror film set in suburbia and designing a unisex guitar – at some point she’ll also probably release a new album, which she has already described as “the deepest, boldest work I’ve ever done”.

Alongside her musical career, Clark has become the darling of the fashion set – and not just because of her relationship with British supermodel Cara Delevingne. Clark has appeared in a Marc Jacobs campaign, DJed for Max Mara and become a front row favourite, appearing at Burberry (alongside Kate Moss, Sienna Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch) as well as Chanel (alongside Karl Lagerfeld’s then seven-year-old godson, Hudson Kroenig, who happened to be dressed as an airline pilot).

But before her globetrotting began, Clark’s childhood was spent in this Dallas district. One of her earliest memories is of calling on her great aunt, a Texan socialite. Three generations would come together for a ‘sit and visit’ but even at the age of five Clark was easily distracted. “I remember sneaking off to the bathroom where she had Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and then staring at that for a really long time.” She shows me the St Christopher pendant her great aunt passed on: “I haven’t taken it off since I started touring, bar the occasional photo shoot. I’m not sure she was particularly religious: I think her faith was ‘sherry’.”

Clark’s musical education began in Dallas. “It was really kismet,” she says. “There was a giant box of CDs outside our house one day. Someone with great music taste had been moving and it had fallen out of their car.” Clark learnt to play guitar with Tommy Hiett from Zoo Music and created a bedroom studio at home with help from her uncle, jazz guitarist Tuck Andress. She played her first shows in Texas – for a secular audience in a bar in Deep Ellum and a devout one in the First Unitarian Church. It was to Dallas that she reluctantly returned after dropping out of Berklee College of Music in Boston, aged 22. At this point her sister, Amy, suggested Clark might be better off getting a job at Starbucks.

We hit the road in a 50-foot ‘Entertainer’ coach, whose retro styling and racks of fringed clothing make it feel as if we are in danger of an Almost Famous style singalong. Clark clearly delights in showing us her hometown – it takes some creative chutzpah to pose like Anita Ekberg outside a venue selling a ‘Loaded Up & Truckin’ Burger’. Having spent ten years on various tour buses, Clark is agreeably no-nonsense. “Make sure you ask her what it’s like being a woman in music,” says her mother Sharon, mischievously. Her daughter offers an eye roll for the ages. “Yes, I really love justifying every decision I have ever made through gender.”

As we cruise along Interstate 75, Clark flips through magazines, alighting on Cara Delevingne’s Chanel ad campaign: “It’s the goof! She’s so pretty. That’s definitely what I’d wear to skateboard.” Delevingne has visited Clark in Texas: “I’ve never seen someone eat so many tacos!” We discuss the British model’s status – a lone irreverent figure on the catwalk. “For someone so beautiful and so lauded by the fashion industry, she’s the least vain person ever.” I ask if the pair are dating again. “Erm… I would just say we’re really close and important to each other. She’s the sweetest, kindest person. That charm and being genuine is a rare combination.”

We arrive at the last location: a cocktail bar called Lounge Here. The owner, Julie Doyle, managed and sang with The Polyphonic Spree, the befrocked choir Clark joined in 2005. “Annie was shy but eager,” Doyle explains. “She grew quite a bit as a performer and guitarist in her time with us. She was a star before she even knew it, I believe.” Clark recalls that particular tour with unabashed glee: “I remember feeling so cool – we’re playing all these stages around Europe. Sonic Youth is playing after us! People were big and friendly and fun and manic. It was a dream come true.” Clark’s travels have given her a newfound affection for her countrymen. “There is an openness to Texans: there’s a saying, ‘Don’t get too big for your britches’. There’s a premium put on humility, which is nice and very rare in the world.” Yet many misconceptions about Dallas endure. “Either people have seen the TV show or they think of cowboys,” she explains. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve said, ‘I’m from Texas’, and people say, ‘Oh, did you ride a horse to school?’”

The following day is what Texan traditionalists might describe as “hotter than a two-dollar pistol”. Clark picks me up in her own black BMW saloon. She’s wearing a black Tupac T-shirt and shorts decorated with skeletons. The look is a little ‘Wednesday Addams at Summer Camp’ – until she changes with delight into the vintage Pearl Jam T-shirt I’ve brought along as a gift (she lost hers after a close encounter with West Texan wildlife, immortalised in her track Rattlesnake). She reverses the car, turns off her Steely Dan album, tells a true crime story that chills me to the bone, picks up an iced coffee and we drive to White Rock Lake.

Clark has brought me to her teenage hangout. It’s a chance to see a different side to Dallas, under Cormac McCarthy’s ‘unsheltering’ Texan skies. We park between Boy Scout Hill and ‘Big Thicket’, before walking over Mockingbird Bridge. At one point a cyclist overtakes us, his stereo blasting the preposterous sax solo from Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street. As he puffily pootles away, Clark doesn’t bat an eyelid. She thinks that Texas still has an ability to bring out strangeness. “Throw in a touch of fire and brimstone, a splash of cowboy spirit… and you have a Texas weirdo.”

The temperature rises and we take a seat in the shade. An elderly couple fishing nearby politely enquire, “We’re not going to distract y’all are we?” I ask Clark about life on the radar of international designers. “I feel like fashion has given me two kisses on the cheek. It’s not a full bear hug,” she says. Clark agrees Dallas is a city obsessed with style: “If you’ve ever watched Frederick Wiseman’s documentary film The Store: it’s all footage of women in the 1980s at the downtown Neiman Marcus buying clothes. Back in that day, fur was the biggest status symbol in Dallas – because for 364 days it’s completely irrelevant. It’s hot in Dallas. All. The. Time.”

Clark’s own memories of her time in Dallas centre on attempting to extricate herself from her surroundings by sheer force of will. “I remember driving around this lake alone, listening to music, waiting for something to happen,” she says. “I wanted to find the cool people, who were doing things and living wild lives. And I naively thought if I just drove around with the windows down, listening to music that I loved, that people would see and go, ‘Oh, I also love this. We can meet each other.’” She prides individuality above everything else: “I think it was Brian Eno who said cool is the by-product of being uniquely yourself.”

Performing live remains a cathartic experience. “At times, it has been an exorcism,” she says. “There have been moments on stage when I can feel everybody’s sorrow, joy, fears, hopes. It’s almost like looking into a vortex…” She stops herself, keen not to sound pretentious. “I’m a person who is frankly allergic to spirituality – I don’t want to ever say ‘Namaste’ to a white girl.”

What’s clear is that Clark’s in a good place: spiritually, metaphorically and, for the next few days at least, literally. She has also shown what’s possible with a life on the road. How you can grow up in Texas, educate yourself in Boston, experience Europe, work out of LA, New York and Seattle – before returning to your family and the places you’ll never forget. Hell, along the way, you may even fall in love with a British supermodel who loves Mexican food. Travel gives you a new perspective on home. It teaches you to love the state you’re in.

#Annie Clark #St Vincent #fear the future

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enchantedbyhiddles · 7 years

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Can we talk for a moment about how goddamn awful and problematic Lara Croft is? Here we have this super rich and privileged British aristocrat and she travels around the world stealing artifacts of huge cultural significance, while doing so she kills many endangered species (tigers, white tigers, lions, gorillas) that she wouldn’t have to kill if she wouldn’t intrude on their habitat. I maybe could discount killing the other treasure hunters, because they seem to be awful human beings, but what about all those guards and policemen that do nothing but their job? She is a mass murderer and thief. I really don’t want to think about all those normal guards that didn’t go back to their families, because some entitled maniac shot them. Those underpaid guys who took on the job of a night guard, probably hate the job where they have to walk around every two hours and look at old paintings. Not the most sophisticated job, but it pays and it is one they could get with being reliable and not having any other qualifications. Twenty years and the most dangerous thing that ever happened to them was the one time a fire alarm rang, because a kid had a smoke on the toilets. Only six more weeks until retirement and they got killed, because Lara Croft needed a key that was hidden in an old vase. A 2000 year-old vase from ancient Greece she simply shot. And she doesn’t even do anything with the artifacts. She has a hidden room in her home, where she shows them off. She can’t even claim she does it for science like Indiana Jones did.

The absolutely most disgusting episode about that is the add-on for part 3 where she actually goes to the Parisian zoo and kills all the animals and some guards. What the hell?

#i'm joking #at least mainly #reasons why you should never overthink video games #i love them #but they don't make any sense #or if they do it is horrible

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postcard-from-the-past · 4 days

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Wrestlers in the Parisian Human Zoo

French vintage postcard

#vintage #tarjeta #briefkaart #postcard #photography #postal #carte postale #human #sepia #ephemera #historic #french #ansichtskarte #postkarte #the parisian human zoo #wrestlers #postkaart #parisian #photo

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tatselk · 7 years

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PSOH Passage Hen: Chapter 1 “Decheance”

Started PSOH Passage Hen right after the end of Shin PSOH/ PSOH Tokyo. Here’s what I think about it so far…

SETTING 1. Sofu D runs a pet shop in an elegant shopping passage in District 2 of late 19th Century Paris. Unlike in the original PSOH and Shin PSOH, the backroom of the pet shop is no longer a maze of corridors with Chinese-style décor, but what appears to be the Parisian tunnels/ sewers.

2. Sofu D’s equivalent of Leon Orcot/ Vesca Howell is a young, affable and cultivated French nobleman, Baron Victor de Li/Le[something something] (not sure as to how his surname should be translated). Victor hangs around Sofu D as he is totally enamoured with the animals at the pet shop and keeps buying more and more pets. Also, Victor is totally into grabbing Sofu D’s hands and piling him with sweets. :D

SUMMARY 1. Victor first visits the pet shop and sees Sofu D. Victor wishes to buy a special pet for the girl accompanying him. Sofu D offers the girl a Lhasa Apso breeding pair for free, on the condition that she will return their descendants to the shop. The girl readily accepts. (NOTE: the girl drops out of the story after this as she rejected Victor and was too busy with the Lhasa Apsos). Then Sofu D turns to Victor and asks him what sort of pet he wishes to have. Victor asks for a dodo bird. Sofu D asks for more time to procure it.

2. When Victor returns another day, Sofu D offers him a choice between a pair of passenger pigeons and a dodo bird; Victor picks the former. It is here that Sofu D shows Victor the human forms of the various animals. Victor was confused at first but eventually rolls with it. After this, Victor basically turned his home into a zoo and kept hanging around/ helping out at the pet shop, in lieu of attending the Parisian salons and theatre like he used to.

3. On one of Victor’s visits at the pet shop, Sofu D receives a customer, Eugénie de Montijo, who is the wife of Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. She wishes to obtain a Kirin, in order to place a young boy (not sure how to translate his name), who is a descendent of one of Napoleon I’s illegitimate sons, in power. Eugénie knew that Napoleon I obtained power because he had a Kirin. Sofu D asks Eugénie to bring the boy with her, in order to see whether the Kirin would accept him.

4. When Eugénie and the boy turned up, Sofu D seems to have tried to deter them from their mission by first showing them skeletons in the Parisian catacombs and explaining that a king must be able to understand, know and rise above the deaths of millions. Subsequently, Sofu D shows them what seem to be the ghosts of Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette, who apparently attack them.

5. The scene then cuts to Sofu D, Victor, Eugénie and the boy, who are at the top of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile and are regaining consciousness. Sofu D informs them that, unfortunately, the Kirin deems the boy unworthy. Dejected, Eugénie wonders if the Bonapartes’ age of glory is truly over. Sofu D notes that, even without the Bonapartes returning to power, their lasting influence can be felt everywhere from Haussmann’s renovation of Paris to the excellent water and sewerage systems beneath the Parisian streets. Eugénie tearfully accepts this point and leaves with the boy.

THOUGHTS

1. Sofu D and Victor are so cute and comfortable with each other! It reminds me of the dynamics between Count D and Leon in the original PSOH, but fluffier and less antagonistic. Probably helps that Victor is so chill, loves the animals at the pet shop and is not working in law enforcement. Haha.

2. Despite the revenge-against-humans mission which the Count Ds have had since generations ago, the Sofu D here is all nice and not-revenge-y. And totally accepting of Victor hanging around him. Now I am worried if Victor eventually does something really awful that made Sofu D go into a “hate all humans” mode. 0_0

3. The Count Ds never fail to have a sweet tooth. In fact, Sofu D confessed to Victor that he chose his shop location largely because there are good desserts available nearby. Haha.

4. It is pretty clear by now that the Count Ds definitely have A Type: human (definitely), taller by about half a head (yes), athletic figure (yup), easily excitable (no question), blonde-haired (presumed).

5. After Vesca’s, Leon’s and Taizu’s scepticism/ inability to accept the mythical creatures of the pet shop, it is pretty funny to see how Victor just rolls with any and all weirdness which happens with Sofu D’s animals. Lol.

6. We discover that an Eastern European princess granted the Count Ds with the title of “Count”. Wonder if we will know how/ why this title was granted…

7. The art quality in PSOH Passage Hen is probably the worst of the 3 PSOH series. I dunno why, everything is just less detailed and more slipshod. It is pretty weird, considering how I thought the art become tidier and more elaborate in Shin PSOH. -_-‘’

#psoh #petshop of horrors #pet shop of horrors #count d #sofu d #victor #paris #petshop of horrors passage hen #psoh passage hen #pet shop of horrors passage hen #matsuri akino

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lexiseigneur · 5 years

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Chapter seven: Beings out of place

Ao3

Lexi snickered as she loaded the devices into the back of the truck. Each of them was the size of a carry-on luggage. A horrified Quinlan caught staring at her chest, was the most hilarious scene she had witnessed since before the Fall. It was an image that had popped up in her mind often for last three days.

In turn, the Dhampir placed his own cargo in the vehicle. A sack of weapons and a cooler of blood. They also brought tools to crack open the skulls they planned on acquiring as well as Lexi’s personal bag. Her smile did not fade quickly enough and he took notice.

“Care to share what you find so amusing?”

“No.” She replied shamelessly and got into the passenger seat.

Quinlan’s brow furrowed slightly and stayed that way for the first hour of their silent journey. They would need to drive the entire day and then spend the night somewhere halfway between the bunker and Chicago.

They needed nine brains to finish the devices. Near the Windy City, they would search until they could find enough Strigoi to relieve of their pates. All the while hiding Quinlan from them because the Master probably still thought him dead. Lexi might have found the prospect of hunting the hunters rather amusing if it would not have been so damn terrifying.

Full of confidence in his marksmanship, Quinlan had assured her that they would be able to keep a safe distance. He planned on shooting through their cervical bones to decapitate them internally. Lexi trusted him but it did not stop her from dreading the next morning.

The companions took roads that appeared as unused as possible. They also avoided any and all human presence. Throughout the day, they only stopped twice. When the sun bled on the horizon, their truck parked in a small wood by a narrow river. The temperatures were still low but Lexi insisted on bathing in the running waters.

“You will get sick. This is rather unreasonable.” Said Quinlan after she had told him of her intentions.

“I don't want to stink and attract Strigoi tomorrow. If they can smell me it will be harder to avoid detection.”

“I assure you, you do not stink.”

The white of his cheeks deepened and Lexi stared in fascination. Was he blushing?

“I don't care what you think. I'm going and if you don't want an eyeful I suggest you turn away.”

He crossed his arms, and stood, stubbornly facing her. Oh no, you don't play chicken with ME. Lexi was many things but prude was not one of them. While studying in a Parisian university, she had earned beer money posing nude for art students. Her jacket fell on the hood of the truck. Quinlan stared on. Then her sweater joined it but she still wore a tank top. The Dhampir grinned, quite confident that she would stop there. Lexi offered him her most devilish smile and lifted the hem of her shirt above her head, obscuring him from view. When she could see again, Quinlan faced the other way.

“Ha!” She screamed triumphantly then guffawed as she took her backpack with her to the river bank.

“Why must you be so childish?” Asked the Dhampir still looking away. He placed his fists on his hips and shook his head.

“Why must you be so childish?” Retorted Lexi with a decent imitation of his accent.

For good measure, she added a raspy growl. The woman was unsure whether the Dhampir would have averted his gaze the first week they had met. Her ablutions did not last longer than strictly necessary. She splashed water on her entire body and dunked her hair under the surface once. Then she shivered madly while soaping every inch of her skin and shampooing her head. A gasp escaped her lips when she plunged into the waters. Immediately, her legs and arms went numb. Like a cat having fallen in a bathtub, she scrambled out. She dried herself with a small towel. Her fresh clothes were cold but at least they stopped the bite of the wind. When she walked to him, Quinlan was crouching by a burgeoning fire.

“How do I smell now?” She asked and sat in the warmth.

“Like a frog.”

His upper lip retracted in disgust. Lexi laughed once more, reassured that amphibians were probably not appetizing to Strigoi. She ate a cold dinner before the sun disappeared completely. Then Quinlan killed the fire so it would not attract attention.

The only part of the truck long enough to allow a person to lie down was a combination of the trunk and folded back seats. Unfortunately, only a small surface was not occupied by their cargo. To her annoyance, the Dhampir started by insisting that he spend the night outside the vehicle.

“I will NEVER fall asleep then!” Said Lexi and she worried she would be exhausted during such a dangerous mission.

This seemed to change his mind and he complied. She lied against him, covered by his heavy wool coat. The thudding of his heart lulled her to sleep right away.

Lexi jolted awake. The light was the dirty grey preceding dawn. Outside the truck, dried leaves ruffled and branches cracked. Something big was moving. She tensed like a spring.

“It is just a bear. You can go back to sleep.” He whispered in her ear.

The woman relaxed but the bolt of adrenaline left her shaky. Noises grew nearer and Quinlan did not appear to care. A bear was probably just an exotic snack for him. Her curiosity for anything alive made her unable to resist looking. Holding the sturdy fabric over her shoulders, she sat up. Her breath got stuck in her chest. This was not the black bear she expected to find. She knew her mouth hung open stupidly but she remained frozen, observing the animal. Then still looking outside, she reached for Quinlan’s hands and pulled. He did not move.

“Please…take a look and tell me I’m not hallucinating.”

Her companion relented and when his face reached the window, his mouth also opened in bewilderment. The cream-colored animal was easily twice the size of his local cousins. It sniffed the air around the camp and turned away promptly.

“It must have escaped from a zoo.” She whispered as the polar bear trotted away.

It was thin but not yet starving. Never in her life had she seen such a deadly animal up close. The words fascinating, dangerous and beautiful all came to her mind. Smiling, she turned to Quinlan and stopped breathing again. His face in the diffuse glow showed child-like wonder. She observed his proud nose and sharp cheekbones. He was just as fascinating and dangerous as the bear. Just as beautiful.

The woman suddenly felt very conscious of how inappropriate it was for her to straddle his thighs. She thought about his staring down her shirt and his purr when her fingers had touched his neck. Exactly how much of him was human?

The small heart thudded violently. She pressed her forearms against her chest to muffle its music. Her face and ears were on fire. Quinlan’s clear eyes veered in her direction. Lexi froze in embarrassment. Excruciatingly slowly, he turned and looked straight at her heart. Quinlan blinked, then stared into her eyes. As she was about to look away, his gaze traveled to her lips. Lexi knew that look. She had seen it many times on other men and it usually ended the same way. With them leaning closer for a kiss.

Her heartbeat got louder. She avoided his eyes until he lied back down and his face disappeared in the obscurity. The woman imitated him. It was insane to think that this could be on his mind. Then a nagging voice in the back her mind asked a very pertinent question: What would you have done if had he leaned forward?

She stopped herself. It was unacceptable to entertain such thoughts while huddled against him. Suddenly, she questioned the unspoken terms of their arrangement. Was it really acceptable for her chest to press against his ribs? Or for her leg to rest on his? Overly aware of her own body, she kept adjusting her position to something that might feel more appropriate. After ten minutes of this, his arms closed around her and he squeezed.

“Quit this incessant fidgeting!”

The tone was exasperated but she could detect a hint of amusement. When she looked up, there was a smile on his grey lips.

Lexi had a shallow rest after the encounter with the bear. She had indeed stopped shifting position every few seconds but her mind had remained restless. This sleeping arrangement had become too awkward and she promised herself that once they were back at the compound, it would cease.

Maybe she could adopt some of the late Dr. Goodweather’s habits and self-medicate with a shot of liquor. It always knocked her right out. No. It had. When she was happy and safe, ignorant of the existence of Strigoi. She considered listening to the recordings of a heartbeat to trick herself to sleep. Anything to drown out this unnerving feeling that she was in constant mortal danger. Once they were back, she would try all of this.

They had to drive another two hours to the outskirts of Chicago. Her thoughts were on the doctor whose notes were the reason they carried on this mission.

“What happened to the doctor? To Goodweather?” She asked, breaking the silence which was their usual atmosphere while driving.

“He passed away shortly after the nuclear weapon detonated in New York.”

“You told me you and your friends failed that day and I kinda get that they are dead but you didn’t tell me exactly how.”

Lexi could tell this was not a subject he would enjoy discussing.

“The Master was in the coffin and we had reached the shore when the explosion occurred. The blast swept us away and the coffin broke open, releasing the Master. I came out of it uninjured but mister Fet, professor Setrakian and miss Velders were not as fortunate. They died instantly.”

“The doctor was not with you, he was with the boy, right? Why did he die?”

“His son had fled in the city and Dr. Goodweather chased after him. He searched the streets for several hours.”

Lexi already knew what he was about to say but remained quiet.

“I found him as he made his way back to his base of operations. By that time, it was too late for him. Over the next three days, he became ill and eventually passed.”

And Ephraim would have known exactly what was happening to him. The curse of the physician. Lexi grimaced. Through his notes, she had developed a certain familiarity with the man and hearing that he had died of radiation poisoning was horrible.

“Despite his sickness, he insisted on recovering the bodies of our associates and burying them. The coffin was gone when we found them. Then he put his notes in order and onto a unique hard drive.”

“Do you think his son is still alive?”

“I hope he is not.”

That brat had killed millions and ultimately murdered his own father because of a damn tantrum.

“Yeah… I get why.”

Silence fell on the vehicle again. Lexi stared at the landscapes and the overcast. That little fucker better be dead.

“Then you stayed alone for a year? No other associates?”

“Correct.”

“And then you found me. You got lucky with that. You’d probably be Strigoi chow by now.”

Quinlan smirked and gave her a look.

“Your lack of humility is superb.”

“Look who’s talking.”

Lexi returned his smile.

Most houses at the edges of the Windy City had been abandoned. People had been forced to pile up in the downtown area as it made them easier to control. The Dhampir scrolled down his window and inhaled deeply as they drove through a disaffected residential area. Everywhere, they were met with broken windows, dead lawns and abandoned cars. Like a bloodhound, he tracked the smell of Strigoi nesting. A single one might have been hard to detect but as they aggregated, their stench magnified. Quinlan parked and closed his eyes tightly. After thirty seconds he shook his head.

“There are at least twenty here. It would be excessive to lure that many outside.”

By “excessive”, Lexi was acutely aware that he meant “dangerous” for her. Fed, rested and armed, twenty Strigoi was not much of a challenge for the Dhampir. They drove away, and repeated this scene five more times, sometimes circling back to stay away from the city limits.

It would soon be midday and they would need shelter. Even if he could endure those few hours of sunlight, they remained painful for Quinlan. At the sixth nest, Quinlan drove away only to return by another route and keep a safe distance.

“There are ten inside.”

Lexi’s fists closed tightly on her knees and she nodded. It was showtime. She put on her ski mask, goggles and dog collar.

“I will be at that window. I suggest you do not wait for the first Strigoi to exit. Just take the truck and leave.”

The plan was simple enough. Quinlan would shoot them from the opposite house. Her only contribution would be to ring the doorbell and smash bags of blood on the street. The smell would drive them out as surely as the commotion. It would also distract them. Then she would drive away and come back when the gunshots stopped. Just a glorified ding-dong-ditch, really.

“Please, be prudent.” He said and disappeared in a blur.

“You too.” She replied, quite positive that he could still hear her.

Lexi placed two bags of blood in her deep pockets, adjusted the driver’s seat and breathed. She parked on the sidewalk opposite the nest and checked her weapons. Gun, loaded, all good. Machete, present and honed obsessively by Quinlan. She left the key on the ignition and the door open. Lexi ran. There were barely any coherent thoughts in her mind, just a continuous scream.

HAAAAAAAAAA. I really hope I still smell like frog. HAAAAAAAAAA.

The button was right there, by the door. She pressed it frantically. Nothing happened. Somehow, it had been disconnected or that house simply did not have power. Lexi pounded the door, kicking and yelling. Then she turned away and tossed the first bag. It exploded and its contents spread on the asphalt. The second bag bounced and rolled. Fuck. She punted it and it ruptured, splattering blood on her boots.

Never looking back, she got into the truck and drove away. In the distance, gunshots made her exhale in deep relief. Her entire body shook from the adrenaline. The shooting stopped after merely seconds. It had sounded like a dozen rounds or so. She drove back and was welcomed by carnage. Ten Strigoi laid dead on the road, the sidewalk, and the lawns. Some were naked and others sported disgusting tattered clothes. She counted them again and exited the truck, already drawing her machete to prepare for the head cutting. The tip tap of rapid footsteps sounded behind her and she turned to them with a grin.

“You did…”

It was not Quinlan. The stinger grazed her collared neck. Her move had been purely automatic. A reflex acquired from the countless times the Dhampir had projected his own stinger at her. The fighting stance came just as naturally. That Strigoi had been a woman only slightly taller than Lexi. Its once blue shirt was torn, revealing deflated breasts and dirty skin. That thing had run down the street from another part of the neighborhood.

It followed the fucking blood from my shoes. Hissing, the Strigoi prepared for another assault. Lexi was ready. When the stinger came, she swerved and sliced it clean off. The appendage dropped to the ground with a wet smack. The creature screeched and dry-heaved. The blade swung toward its neck. An instant before the machete decapitated the creature, it spat at Lexi. Everything turned white. The goggles were covered with thick blood and wriggling worms. Lexi stopped breathing and grabbed the top of the balaclava. Strong fists closed on her fingers and forced them down. The hood came off and so did her jacket. Quinlan moved with frightening precision. Picking at the few straggling worms one by one.

Time was suspended. A thin, hair-like filament had latched on her naked forearm. So this is how it ends? Her hand reached for it. It had already buried half its revolting body into hers. Quinlan’s fingers caught it and pulled it free. Lexi was suddenly freezing cold. The only color left in her world was that drop of blood where the worm had dug.

“They are all gone.” Said the Dhampir but she did not listen.

Lexi picked up her weapons and ran to the truck. There she tossed the gun and machete in the trunk and extracted her other change of clothes. She stripped completely naked and examined her entire body for other bite marks. Nothing. The old clothes she abandoned on the road, then dressed quickly. She expected to feel something crawling inside her flesh at any moment. You were about to die.

Quinlan was already halfway through collecting the heads. You were about to become one of them. Eyes wide, she fumbled for that dark room in the back of her mind but she could not focus. Every time she almost gained that serene state, she imagined something moving under her skin and the dark room sprang away. Her chest tightened impossibly. She could not breathe. White dots spread across her field of vision. Lexi slapped her plexus, desperate for the constriction to loosen. She dropped to her knees. Quinlan crouched beside her but she could not afford to pay attention. There was nothing to slash or shoot, what could he possibly do?

“Lexi.”

His voice was eerily calm. The white fingers closed on each side of her face, forcing her to look into the ice blue eyes.

“Breathe.”

Lexi whimpered.

“Listen to me… You will be fine. I cannot see them under your skin. Everything will be fine. You are safe.”

The Dhampir lifted her body and cradled her. His embrace was crushing. When he pressed his forehead against hers and whispered continuously, her lungs unclenched. Lexi took a long deep breath. Then she buried her face against his adorned throat and cried. The Dhampir carried her to the vehicle. He sat at the wheel, still hugging her. With one arm, Quinlan started the truck and drove away. Only then did she notice that he had never stopped whispering: "You will be fine. All is well. Everything will be fine..."

When they parked, Lexi recognized the landscape. This had been their camp the night before. Where they had witnessed the ghostly apparition of a being out of place. Her tears had dried up and the trembling subsided. She peeled herself off of Quinlan and got out.

Lexi was ashamed. She had lost control of her emotions and body right in the middle of a Strigoi infested suburb. She was a goddamn liability. Disgusted with herself, she sprinted to the river and splashed her face until numb.

Then she sat and worked on calming herself. Breathing would never be taken for granted again. Lexi closed her eyes and reached for the black room. It was there, accessible, easy to open and close. This would also never be taken for granted. Urg. She needed to apologize. He had to baby her for Christ's sake. She slapped her cheeks which were anesthetized by the cold. Lexi stood, turned around and bumped against Quinlan. The woman slipped on the wet grass but he caught her arms before she could fall into the river. Not again! She righted herself and spoke.

“I'm sorry. I really...I panicked. I'm sorry you had to...”

“You achieved everything that was required of you.”

She shook her head.

“No...I broke down.”

She cringed at the words.

“You defended yourself admirably. Few people would have been able to dodge such a sudden attack.”

Lexi was still incredulous.

“You have the right to...let go...once the danger has passed.” He added.

Of all people, she did not expect the Dhampir to use euphemisms.

“Thank you but the danger had not passed. We were in the middle of Strigoi territory.”

“Since I was right there with you, you were no longer under any threat.”

Lexi's mouth gaped. She had no reply to this because she believed him. It was the reason she had decided to join the fight against the Master. It was also the reason she could sleep at night when pressed against him. Quinlan was the most dangerous creature around and he meant her no harm. No, more than that. For the mission, he meant to protect her.

“Thank you, Quinlan. I mean it. Thank you.”

The Dhampir accepted her gratefulness with a slow nod. For a crazy moment, she was tempted to hug him. What is wrong with you?

“Let's crack those skulls open. If some are unusable, we can drive to another city and get more.”

With the benefit of gloves and a UV lamp plugged into the car, they extracted the precious brains. They were unlike anything Lexi had seen before. Black veins of decay cursed through them and their center was composed of a swirling orb of worms.

After two hours, all nine of them were placed inside the devices. The controls indicated a closed circuit, meaning that all the grey organs were functional. After some calibration, they would be able to test them.

“Let's head back. It's over.” She said.

They drove until the dreaded darkness and stopped in a forlorn farmhouse. Lexi closed herself alone in one of the bedrooms and attempted to sleep. She did not go to him that night. Despite his words, she was still ashamed. When dawn came, she sighed in relief.

#Mr. Quinlan #quinlan #the strain #the strain fx #the strain fanfic #the strain fanfiction #quintus sertorius

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