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#THEY ALL MAKE THE NOISES TOO LIKE THE BUS MAKES BUS NOISES. IT HONKS AND SHIT. THE PHONEBOOTH RINGS
krystal-prisms · 7 months
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Honestly, urban and suburban horror is so under utilized
Getting lost in a parking lot full of endless rows and columns of cars. You can't find yours, you don't know how long you've been walking. You keep seeing cars that you think are yours, but they don't open when you try your keys. You press the horn button on your fob, but can't tell which direction the faint honking is coming from. The stalls are all full.
A grocery store late at night. No other shoppers are there. It's dark outside and yours is the only car in the parking lot. The aisles are filled with brands you don't recognize, but seem oddly familiar, all knock offs of each other. It's too cold. Your cart has a squeaky wheel. The cashier is the only other person in the store. They don't make eye contact. You don't remember what you came in for.
You're taking the garbage out late at night. Your elevator doesn't work so you have to take the stairs. The dumpster smells, and there is fluid on the ground beside it. You don't want to think about what it could be. You hear noises down the alley. You toss the bag into the dumpster, and run to the door. You fumble your keys and take longer to get in. You slam the door and lock it. The lightbulb flickers in the lobby.
Rows and rows and rows and rows of identical houses. You don't know how you got into this neighborhood, you can't afford any of the houses here. They all look the same, white square houses, white picket fences, perfectly even and manicured lawns. A good neighborhood. A nice place to raise your kids. There are no kids. The weather is nice, the sun is shining, they should be outside. You drive your used car, looking for a turn off to the exit, but there isn't any. Just endless white square houses, white picket fences, perfectly even and manicured lawns. You're sure you passed this area before, but there are no house numbers and they all look the same. The sun is shining and there is not a cloud in the sky. Or another living creature in sight.
You're on the bus. Surrounded by people, you stare at your phone and ignore them. More people get on. Your stop is coming soon. More people get on. You sit at the back of the bus to avoid conversation. More people get on. Someone bumps into you, and you apologize to them, but you're not sure why. They don't acknowledge you. More people get on. Everyone is staring at their phones, ignoring each other. Your stop is next. You try to stand up to get to the exit, but there are people in the way. You can't get to the button to let the driver know you need to get off. You try to get to the door, but there are so many people in the way you can't move. The bus slows to a stop, and you try to push your way to the exit, but the bus is too packed. The doors open, but you can't leave, and nobody hears you when you ask them to move. More people get on.
You walk downtown. You pass a billboard advertising a product you've never heard of. You keep walking, passing flyers, billboards, screens, all selling things. Things to make you prettier. Smarter. More successful. A whole new person. A new person to fit into society with all the other people, but only if you spend money. For just a few dollars, you can have a better life with our product. You need our product. You would be so happy if only you had our product. Look at all these people in our advertisement, aren't they happy? Don't you want to be like them? You could be if only you just had our product. You can't afford any of them.
You're in a crowd of people, walking the sidewalk. You have your earbuds in. You feel someone watching you. You casually glance around, to try to catch someone staring. You can't pick out individual faces among the hundreds of other people. You continue on your way, thinking you imagined it. You imagine you hear footsteps, and walk faster. The feeling doesn't go away.
Your air conditioner is broken. You told your landlord, he said he'll fix it. It's been days. The air is hot and muggy. Leaving the windows open doesn't help the heavy feeling. The air from outside is just as warm, and carries the scents from the city. There should be sounds coming from outside, but the city is silent.
You're walking at night. You can't see even a single star.
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painted-bees · 5 months
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part i
  Hitting a cafe during rush hour wasn’t Raf’s definition of a fun idea, and he was well practised in the art of saying ‘no’. Yet, for some reason or another, that skill failed to find him when the wide-eyed little Portasound busker insisted on treating him to a coffee.   
  The streets outside Granville Station were abuzz with traffic of all kinds. The wide sidewalks were, at least, accommodating to the amount of pedestrians that relied on them during the city’s busiest times of day. The same could not be said for the roads as cars rolled slowly forward, bumper to bumper. Still, the ambience was manageable despite all the bustle. Only the hissing, honking noises of transit bus breaks would coax the occasional wince out of him in their random, unpredictable intervals.
  The little Portasound busker, ‘Magritte’, kept up beside him in lock step. She hadn’t stopped talking since they began their walk together and, in honesty, he preferred it that way. She was a disheveled little thing, more than a head shorter than he was. Her manner of dress was as sloppy as the thick bundle of curly, dark red hair that flopped loosely atop her head. Her grey sweater was several sizes too large, covering her to the knees. With sleeves that hung far past her hands if she didn’t scrunch them in her palms. Black leggings were tucked into knock-off ugg boots whose soles had eroded so severely on the outer edge, Raf was concerned she’d roll an ankle if he made her walk too briskly. She smiled so vehemently as she spoke, that her lips rarely closed around consonants, making it difficult to understand her at times.
  “–so when my dad was like, ‘you can stay here and work, or you can move out and do your music stuff’, I moved out. That was like…oh–almost three years! I was eighteen. I just turned twenty-one today!” She accompanied that last sentence with a joyful little skip that caused Raf to turn his head and watch her.
  “Well, happy birthday.” He exhaled a small laugh. “Vancouver’s an expensive place to live, but house hunting here probably already gave you the full story on that.”
  “Rent’s insane,” Magritte echoed his small chuckle. “But the weather’s way more agreeable in the winter, which is what I’m after. And the music scene! I heard there were tons of musicians in Van, and look–I’ve already met two in the first few hours of being here!”
  “Oh, you’ll meet more.” The way he said it made it sound more cautioning than he intended and he diffused it with a snort. “Guess the music stuff must have paid off after all, if you can afford a place in the city.”
 There was silence between them and Magritte chewed the nail of her forefinger for a moment. “It actually hasn’t, I’m not a professional musician by any means. I’m just really good at finding a lot of short term work and stuff. Sometimes it’s music related, but not often enough to call it a living.” 
  “Mmh.” Raf glanced down at her. The bounce in her step had vanished and he watched her chew on her lip beneath a knitted brow. With a shrug he said, “You sounded good in the station, all things considered. You stopped, you listened, you came in at appropriate moments, you improvised really well. The pieces I played weren’t really…great for busking…and demanded a lot more than what your little keyboard could reasonably provide, but even your rests were composed and natural. You didn’t drop off abruptly any time the melody brought you past the range of your keys, you played into it.” He smirked. “I’m not gonna lie and say we did a great justice to Paganini today or anything, but I was very surprised by what you were able to pull off. I dunno, seemed like the chops of a professional to me.”
  That brought the bounce back into her step, though she continued to chew on her lower lip. Raf was content to see her spirits buoyed at least somewhat by his sentiments. He hadn’t embedded a single white lie into his assessment.
 They arrived at the cafe of his choosing; a popular spot, very near to the station, named Caffe Artigiano. The outside seating was full up with patrons, but Raf hoped the inside would be a quieter space to sit anyways. Opening the door, he followed Magritte in. It was busier than he would have liked, but he couldn’t have expected differently, considering the hour. Still, one thing he appreciated about the place was that it did not play music. Only the sound of numerous quiet conversations filled the air. Raf gravitated towards a freshly vacated table in a far corner, and Magritte followed him to it. Her gaze hung on the coffee menu that loomed above the counter. 
He waited for Magritte to pick her seat before gently offloading his violin case onto the seat across from her. “I’ll go order. Was it a latte you said you wanted?”
  “Actually…” She let out an indecisive little sigh. “A mocha, I think. I want…choco. Oh, but–!” She dropped her duffel bag onto the ground before unzipping a side pouch and pulling out the twenty dollar bill that had found its way into her upturned ball cap at the station. She held it out to him. “With this! Please?” 
  He hesitated before taking the bill from her. “Yes, ma’am.” There was no point in telling her that the twenty had been his before it became hers. The thought was what mattered.
  The line at the counter wasn’t long, despite the busy patronage, and Raf soon returned to their table and evicted his violin case out of the seat across from Magritte. Finding an unused chair from a nearby table, he pulled it up next to him and sat his carrying case on it.
  He reached over the table to hand Magritte the change, and she stared at it blankly for a moment before saying, “–Oh!” with a bit of a start. She turned her palm up to receive it.
Magritte stuffed the money back into the pocket of her duffel bag. “So, Question.” She sat back up and looked to Raf. “You say you’re not a professional, but you sound like...you know…Properly trained, or whatever.”
  “Mmh.” It was a predictable topic, but not one he wanted to stay on. “Or whatever.” He laughed. “Yeah. Parents pushed it onto me a little too hard. I’ve got the training, but playing it is a chore and I kinda hate it.”
  Magritte’s eyes grew wide and rueful and she shrank against the backrest of her chair. “Wait, really?” She covered her face with the sleeves of her sweater and threw her head back with a guilty little groan. “I’m sorry, I made you play so many songs!”
  Raf patted the air in front of him in a placating gesture, “No, no. You didn’t make me do anything, relax.” He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I did that to myself. I meant it, though, when I said it was fun. It was the first time in a long while where I actually enjoyed myself once things got going.”
  Magritte drew in a deep breath, recollecting herself before tentatively asking, “Enough that you’d wanna do it again sometime?”
  A beleaguered laugh escaped him, “No.”   He had given her much of his time and energy already, and being asked for more put a bitter taste in his mouth. The arrival of his iced americano and her hot mocha couldn’t have been better timed. As soon as it was placed in front of him, he brought the drink to his lips and took a long sip. 
  Magritte sheepishly turned her gaze down to admire the little white hearts in the foam of her coffee before she started to drink it. She placed the cup back down but kept both hands curled around it. “Did you enjoy it when you were younger?”
  “Music?” Raf shrugged. “I don’t remember. It doesn’t really matter.” His gaze turned down towards her duffel bag as he grasped for a better topic. “Is your main instrument the piano?”
 “Yeah! It’s what I had access to, growing up.”
  “Who taught you?”
  “Oh, I, uh…mostly just the internet and stuff. My parents didn’t wanna waste money on it, and my highschool didn’t have like…a music class or anything. Just choir. None of my friends played music.”
  “...You learned online?”
  “Well, like…on Myspace and LiveJournal. Lots of people share what they know there, and I made some really good online friends who tried to teach me things. We’d share music with each other and do weekly challenges and stuff. It was fun.”
  “So, self-taught, more or less.”
  “Mostly. Oh, except–!” Magritte ducked down to unzip the main pocket of her duffel bag and dove her hands into it. She rummaged around until she produced a small mp3 player and earbuds attached by a chord. “There was a year when I was living in Montreal, my girlfriend was a jazz pianist. And then we met other, um…friends who taught me more in that one year than I think I ever learned in my entire life. It was her and a whole lotta horns. They all let me use their instruments and taught me proper technique and stuff. I think they liked watching me stubbornly struggle with it. In the end, I was only able to record one song before I had to, um, move on. But I’m still kinda proud of it. I dunno if you wanna–it’s instrumental and kinda eclectic, but I loved making it.”
  In response, Raf extended his hand, and Magritte spent a second scrolling through her library of mp3s before stuffing the little music device and earbuds into his open palm. 
  She performed an excited little wiggle in her seat as Raf wordlessly placed an earbud into his ear. “Just hit play, and it should be the right song.”
  Raf wasn’t sure what he had expected to hear. He was, at least, perfectly comfortable with listening and offering his honest input. He didn’t believe in ‘bad’ music. There was skilled and unskilled music, there was music that fit his tastes and music that really didn’t. But none of it was bad. All music created deserved to be created and allowed to exist–if only for the satisfaction of the musician who produced it. He was prepared to tell her that the best music she could make is the music she enjoyed making, even if it didn’t resonate with his personal tastes.   He pressed ‘play’.
 What hit his ear was an uptempo half-time funk sound carried on a unison horn line; crystal clear, well mixed, high quality audio. Right from the jump, the sound had a quirky, catching character. He fitted the other earbud into his ear as a sustained note leapt into an energetic, off-beat ska groove. His brow furrowed deeply as he tried to discern the instrumentation. The drum fill might have been digital, but the winds sounded far too dynamic to be synthetic. And there were…three of them; the two horns he couldn’t quite specify, and then a baritone sax. The horns took centre stage, confident and playful, supported by a jaunty walking bassline and synthetic, bubbly organ accompaniment. Despite its G minor key signature, the character of the piece was lively and a little goofy, smart but playful; it was simply–fun. A smile lit across his face as the melody modulated G minor into G Phrygian for the bridge section. The effect was a jesting ooh gonna getcha vibe.
  He listened to the end of the song before he began to comment on it. “Very cool. Your jazz friends weren’t sleeping on their music theory classes. I assume the organ is you?”
  Magritte shifted nervously in her seat as her thumb smoothed over the handle of her coffee cup in small, repeated strokes. “I borrowed instruments for this one and recorded it in…um, my girlfriend’s parents' house. They had a music room where I was allowed to record things.”
  “You borrowed–right. But the horns..?”
  “Yeah.”
  Raf levelled a measuring stare at her.
  “I recorded each instrument separately,” she began explaining, “It’s uh, piano, trumpet, trombone, and–oh! The baritone sax was played by Sadie, one of my, um…jazz friends.” She let out a weak laugh. “And then, like…a bass, I also played. And a synthetic drum fill ‘cus…none of us knew how to actually play drums.”
  “You played each instrument? Learned them and recorded this song within the span…of a year?”
  “No, just the trumpet and trombone! I already knew piano and bass.”   Confusion must have been apparent on Raf’s face, and she tried to address it by saying, “It’s all digitally processed, so it sounds a little more–”
  “No, I–I know that.” Raf massaged an eyebrow with one hand. “You’re the songwriter too, I assume?” His tone was a little more sharp than he’d have liked it to be. It betrayed his incredulity.
  Magritte picked up her cup and eyed him nervously over the rim as she sipped from it.
  “No, I don’t know how.” She sounded embarrassed. “I can’t read or write music. I just sketched a bunch of it out digitally first, and then–”
  “Fresh compositions? By ear?”
  “Yeah. And then I recreated it with the correct instrumentation.” She chewed on the nail of her thumb. “It works, I think.”
  “That’s still songwriting. It counts.” Raf sniffed and leaned back in his seat. “I gotta be honest, and don’t take this the wrong way but…it’s a little hard to believe.”
  Magritte’s nervousness dissolved into a flattered grin. “Yeah?”
  Raf’s brow twitched downward as he tried to read past her demeanour. He had expected a more sheepish response, if not a more defensive one. His doubt wasn’t intended as a compliment, but if she were being wholly honest with him, perhaps it made sense that she’d take it as one.
  He drained the last of his americano. “So, you’re not pursuing this professionally, because..?”
  “Oh, I am!” Magritte shrugged and turned her eyes to the upper right corner of the room. “It’s just been kinda…difficult.”
  “Yeah? Why’s that?” It was a stupid question he already knew the answer to. Music was more easy to find nowadays than ever before, but discoverability still relied on knowing how to promote the work and get the right ears onto it. And, across the entire spectrum of skill, this is what everyone tended to blame for the inability to live off their–
  “Money.”
  “M–!” The response was so sudden and matter-of-fact in tone, Raf couldn’t stop a bark of surprised laughter from escaping him. He’d have laughed the same way if someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.
  Magritte slapped her palms down on the table and leaned forward with wide eyes to state her defence. “Instruments are expensive, lessons are expensive, computers are expensive, software and sound libraries are expensive! Everything’s so expensive!” She slumped back in her seat, turning her palms over in an exasperated gesture. “If I could afford to go to school and actually like–learn music, and if I could afford to rent instruments and recording equipment and stuff, I could make more songs! I could upload like…whole albums! I’ve got all these doodles with my shitty midi libraries and they might sound actually good if I could just record them properly! But it’s been like…four years since I left home, and the only properly produced track I have to show for it is that one.” She flopped her hand towards the mp3 player on the table. “So, I just make my little digital doodles, and I come up with tunes that suit the sounds I have access to. I like it. I’m happy I get to make any music at all, but it’s a bit niche, you know? And I have all these other ideas in my head that need like…better, less…synthetic sounds. There are libraries that sound pretty convincing, but all the best ones are…expensive. And vocals are hard to record with the stuff I’ve got.”
  Raf held up his hands in effort to placate her. “No, I know, you’re right–money. I just–” It wasn’t a struggle he had ever faced, and he couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a heel over the fact that he hadn’t even considered it as an obstacle to the extent that she was describing it.
  “On the other hand,” Magritte’s voice took on a capitulating tone, “With the right skill, I should be able to produce bangers with whatever I’ve got, yeah? And,” she took up her coffee cup in one hand, staring into its contents, “if I was better at saving money, I’d be able to afford those really good sample libraries just fine, probably. I just like my sweet foamy lattes too much.” She sighed a little laugh at herself.
  Raf let out a low groan of disagreement, but didn’t elaborate on it. “I kinda…want to listen to those ‘digital doodles’ you mentioned.” If nothing else, it’d give him an idea of how much input her jazz friends had over the composition of the song he heard. If the obvious compositional prowess flexed in that fun-loving jazzy ska piece were completely absent in her little sketches, he wouldn’t chalk it up to being just a fluke. 
  Drawing in a deep breath and holding it, Margritte reached for the mp3 player and scrolled through its contents before handing it to Raf. “You can just skip through these as you like. It’s all a little–” She wrinkled her nose and let out a grunt in place of any real adjective.
  With an affirming little snort of his own, Raf took the little music player and put the earbuds into his ears once more. He pressed play, and immediately understood what she meant. The synthetic instrumentation was wholly lacking in dynamics, and the musical ideas present in the melodies begged for more colourful phrasing. As he skipped from one song to the next, he grew more frustrated. The compositional writing was good. Consistent with the first song he had heard, Magritte seemed to really love playing with eccentric progressions and modulations that were unconventional for the mood or emotion that the song was attempting to capture. And ever present in each little composition was this boundless sense of joy. But god, the instrumentation (or rather, the lack thereof) really, really held it all back.
  As he listened, his lips pressed into a thin line. Finally, with a low groan that betrayed his thoughts, he took out the earbuds and handed the music player back. “Yeah, that sucks.” The end of that statement stuck in his throat as he sputtered to clarify, “Not the music–”
  “Yes, the music.” Magritte’s giggle was one of genuine affirmation as she tucked the mp3 player away into her duffle bag.
  “No,” Raf argued, “your toolset. There’s a lot of skill here, but the cheap synthy sounds aren’t doing it any favours. You went absolutely ham on those horns in the first song, and I don’t hear any of that in these sketches because it’s just not possible. There’s a lot of energy that is just…missing. Even watching you play at the station, yeah your keyboard suffers the same limitations, but at least in person I noticed you’ll even make use of like…the percussion of your fingers hitting the keys, which, you know…is dynamic.”
  As he spoke, Magritte retained a smile and provided small nods before asking, “You like it, then?”
  Raf leaned back, folded his arms and chewed on the question for a second before replying, “Yeah. I do. A lot.” 
  A lot.
  There was a corner of his mind that begged him to get back home to his apartment and try out the melodies with an instrument that could do it proper justice.  Jesus Christ, this actually makes me want to play the violin.
  The realisation made his lip curl with a feeling in his gut that he couldn’t quite identify. “You know…”
  Magritte, taking the last remaining sips of her latte, turned her eyes up at him with a little “Hm?”
  There was a pause while Raf wrestled with himself. “I, uh…work at a recording studio not too far from here. Just down on uh…Powell Street.”   He felt his jaw clench. There was no good reason for him to tell strangers about where he worked. There was no possible good outcome in doing so. Mentioning it felt too much like an open invitation for her to pop in at any time, for no good reason at all except to make things uncomfortable.   “It’s called Hi-Note, and it’s got like…a pretty standard assortment of instruments to rent out and such. It closes early.” He wasn’t looking at her. Brow furrowed, he stared at the ice melting in his otherwise empty glass. “Swing by tomorrow night, after eight, and maybe we can jam for like..half an hour or something before I head home.”
  He didn’t glance up to see her expression, but her voice was slow to rise to his ears. “..Wait, really?”
  No. “Yeah.” What the fuck? “Really.”   Unable to unfurrow his brow, he managed to at least turn his gaze towards her. Her eyes were so large on that petite face of hers, and her lips parted slightly, muscles tense with the anticipation of some kind of catch or condition. Or, perhaps she had picked up on his apprehension and was waiting for him to revoke the offer. For some reason, the idea of doing so suddenly felt…unconscionable to him.
  In a small voice, she said, “I’d really like that.” The restraint of her response was belied by the way she wiggled in her chair. Beneath the table, her leg wagged restlessly like an excited dog’s tail. “Eight o’clock?”
 “Mmhm.” Raf felt some of the tension in his browline relax as a slight smile passed his lips. “Let's see if we can revisit some of those tunes you have. Just–for fun. No recording, nothing serious.”
  It seemed that Magritte could never keep a smile off her face for long, and once again, that broad, delighted grin of hers painted her features. “Yeah, yeah! I’d like that a lot!”
  “Alright then.” Raf knocked his knuckles twice on the table like a gavel, before standing up.
  As he reached to retrieve his violin case off the chair next to him, Magritte pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Hi-Note, eight o’clock.”
  Raf favoured her with a lopsided smirk. “Don’t forget.”
  “I won’t. I’ll see you there!”
  He provided her with an affirmative little wave, but by the time she had realised he was taking his leave, Raf was already halfway to the door.
  He heard her call out to him, “Thank you for the–um–everything!” 
  Looking back to her, Raf returned the sentiment with an appreciative nod before pushing through the cafe doors; exiting onto the busy sidewalk outside.
  He wanted to get home before sundown…
  To play his violin.
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serene-sun · 9 months
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𝕾𝖆𝖋𝖊 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍 𝖒𝖊, 𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𓅓
Pairing: rain x gn reader fluff/comfort
Warning: panic attack, separation anxiety, fear, overthinking, fear of something bad happening, hyperventilation, crying, if I need to add something let me know!
Summary: being far away from home is never anyone’s desire, especially with so many people to care about
A/n: so I’m writing this falling asleep so I apologize for any grammar mistakes. This is pure comfort that I need rn bc this is my exact situation rn and my anxiety is through the roofs. Nevertheless, just being on a big ass tour bus freaks me out rn. All of this is based on what I’m feeling rn. TYSM for any comments, likes, and reblogs! <3 (Plz excuse the amount of times I say “rn”)
The bus rocks gently as you roll over to your other side, now facing the cold window. You felt the metallic side of the glass swoosh cold air onto your skin, the itchy blanket being pushed down to your feet in a temporary fit, the soft blanket you brought from home wrapped you into a warm embrace.
You brushed the hair out of your face, stretching an arm to move the curtain to reveal the moving road. The interstate signs passing by like shreds of light, the passing cars with different people in them. The landscape changed from high mountain tops and trafficked roads to small hills and starry skies.
As cars passed by, the red lights shined through the bus windows and cast dancing shadows across the many accessories across the rooms.
The windows ripple as rain softly runs down the sides of the bus. A tingling noise scattered about the walls, getting louder than slowing only to repeat that process.
Besides the sound of wheels on the road, you could hear faint honking and sirens as the city roads faded in and out between modern and rural.
You wondered if everyone at the ministry was doing ok, what if there was a fight between aether and the older ghouls? What if the higher members were plotting against papa? What if there was a fire? What if?
You’ve caught yourself on your own tongue as you realize you are too far away to do anything about it if you wanted. Just knowing that you were thousands and thousands of miles away from home made your stomach flip.
What if we were to get into trouble? What if someone saw what we advertised and wanted to hurt us? What if they were attacked? What if someone had a medical emergency? What if-?
Your heart beats, it pounds and it begs your brain to stop running so fast. You’re forced to put a hand over your mouth, realizing that you had forgotten to breath. You exhale, a shaky breath as your body desires more air. Your chest burns, and your skin starts to sweat.
It seemed like you were alone now, everyone was asleep so if something happened nobody would be able to help.
You saw how all of their privacy curtains were closed, it was so late even Swiss and rain were far off dreaming about the next show.
We are billions of miles away from home.
You feel the darkness creep into your top bunk, the air turning on you and swallowing you whole. The rain starts to pour onto the bus harder, streaks of water now blurring every car.
Where could I go? There is no where to go! I can’t escape, I can’t escape, I’m all alone!
You feel a thud, and realize that there’s a webbed hand on the side of your bunk. It dips into the mattress, although it’s dark, you can make-out a slender form that slithers its way up into your bunk.
Of course it’s rain, why would it not? Maybe the rain outside woke him up, or did he ever go to sleep?
“What’s going on up here?” Rains voice is just barely audible, so soft the rain over powers it, “I could hear you all the way down there.”
You pretend to be asleep, hoping the water ghoul will just go back to his own bed. You shuffle a little as he brings the blanket under his own legs.
“Sorry.” You squeak out, you knew you can’t ever lie to him. Number one because he would know, number two because he had such a kind sense to him that why would you need to?
“Hey, it’s alright.” He nudges his head over yours, laying behind you and wrapping a hand around your abdomen. “Woah, sunshine what’s the matter?” Rain feels your heart beat, that’s currently acting like you’re in a marathon.
Your lack of air won’t allow you to speak, all you can do is count the cars that speed by.
One, two, three, four, five, six…
“Honey….” Rains concerned now, he tries to turn you to face him, but you’re forced to stay still.
Your mind taunts you, every second that passes by, the further you get from safety.
“Look at me.” The ghoul demands, now scared of what’s overcome you.
He watches your chest rise and fall rapidly, you’re shaking so hard the others might wake up.
Rain forcefully turns you over, hearing a whimper escape your lips.
Your eyes let go of the built up tears, they begin to run down your face just like the rain drops one look away.
The bus shakes and bobs with the road, rains grip on the sides of your arms release. He grabs your hand and places it over his own heart.
“Hey, hey, hey look at me little drop.��� He hold your hand there with his own, making you feel his heart beat, “I’m right here, I’m not leaving.”
You quiver, your eyes finally meet his.
“It’s ok…it’s all ok.” He brings his other arm around your back and brings you into a tight hug.
“I want to go home. I need to make sure they are alright. Are we alright?” Your breath fogs up the window and rain wipes away the tears on the apple of your cheek.
“We are fine. We are safe. We are together.” The water ghoul states firmly, as if it wasn’t anything anyone could ever change or question.
“You are safe with me, right here.”
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taivansupremacy · 2 years
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16 from promo list 3 with robin? (preferably robin pov if u do that) :)
12 Years
Summary: You and Robin had been friends since kindergarten and always dreamed of escaping Hawkins together. As senior year comes to an end, Robin decides that putting distance between would be best for the both of you.
Prompt: We’ve been friends since childhood, and I’ve accepted that we’re just not meant to be. I’ve moved on and encouraged you to follow your dreams. I didn’t know that your dream was me.
Word count: 4,161
A/N: this was so hard to write omg i kept scrapping things and rewriting. i like how it turned out though, so I hope you do too! as always, feedback, likes, and reblogs are always appreciated!
CW: Swearing, implied homophobia, pining
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August 1975 
You and Robin scrambled off the bus on your first day of second grade and skipped back to your neighboring houses hand in hand. You had been best friends since you moved to Hawkins two years prior. The girl with sandy blonde hair showed up on your doorstep with a handful of Hotwheels cars and a smile, inviting you to go play in her backyard treehouse. From there, you were attached at the hip. You played at each other’s houses after school, had sleepovers just about every weekend, played at recess together, and ate lunch side by side in the school cafeteria. Robin Buckley was your best and only friend and you were her’s. Neither of you were very good at making friends outside of each other and this school year was no different. No one wanted to play with you at recess or sit with you at lunch. The other kids weren’t mean to you and Robin, per se, they just ignored you and declined your invitations to play. 
“Race ya?” Robin challenged with a competitive glint in her eye when you stopped in front of her house. 
“But you always win, Robin!” You groaned. 
“I’ll ease up this time, I swear!” She held out her pinky finger and you hooked your own around it, satisfied with her promise. 
“Ready, set, go!” You shouted, bolting out in front of Robin and making a beeline for the treehouse in the Buckley’s backyard; your special place. You quickly climbed the ladder and threw the door open, taking a seat on the wooden floor when you reached the top. 
“I win!” You announced proudly when Robin finally made it up the ladder. 
“For once,” the blonde quipped with a playful smile as she took a seat beside you and reached for one of her toy cars, passing you your favorite Barbie doll in the process. 
You started to carefully brush the doll's hair with a plastic comb as Robin rolled her car on the wood floor, making engine noises and occasional honking sounds as she played. 
“Hey, Rob?” You interrupted her playing with a gentle tap on her shoulder. 
“Yeah?” She turned to you, letting her toy car fall to the floor. 
“What do you think second grade will be like?” 
“Just like every other year,” She shrugged, “We’ll eat lunch and play at recess together every day and learn math and reading,” She scrunched her face up at the last part, already dreading the academics that lie ahead. 
“But we aren’t in the same class this year. You’ll still be my friend, right? Even if you meet new friends in your class?” 
She nodded, “I promise I’ll be your best friend forever,” She sealed her promise by holding her pinky finger out and linking it with yours, “no matter what.”
March 1986
Robin watched you from across the hall as you laughed with one of your friends at your locker. In the crowded hallway, it was too loud to hear your laughter, but she could hear it in her head, having made you laugh enough over the past 12  years that it was ingrained in her brain. She missed the sound of it, just as much as she missed being the one to draw it out of you. You two hadn’t spoken in weeks. It was her own fault, but it still hurt all the same. Over your years of friendship, Robin developed feelings for you that only got stronger year after year. At first, her feelings were easy to push down and ignore in order to convince herself that nothing’s changed. But over the years, her feelings grew until somewhere along the way, they blossomed into a love and adoration that she couldn’t ignore anymore. 
With the last few months of senior year coming up quickly, Robin decided that it would be best for both you and her if she kept her distance. Maybe then, you wouldn’t plan on attending Hawkins Community College instead of a big fancy university outside of Indiana like you always dreamed of so you could stay here with her. Just because she couldn’t afford to get out of Hawkins didn’t mean that she should hold you here. She also thought that putting some distance between you may also allow her crush on you to fizzle out so she could focus on girls that she actually had a chance with. Unfortunately, she still found herself staring at you when she saw you in the hallways or in classes that she shared with you and Steve teased her relentlessly for it.
“Robin, you need to either go over there or stop gawking at y/n.” Steve said as he leaned against the locker beside Robin’s, “You should just tell her, you know? This whole thing is so stupid.” 
Robin slammed her locker shut and frowned as she turned to glance at you just as you linked your arm with your friend’s and walked in the direction of your next class. 
“It’s not stupid, Steve. She needs to get out of Hawkins. I can’t be the one holding her here,” She sighed as the pair walked away from her locker, “And as for the crush that you insist I just come clean about, there is no good outcome. Either she rejects me and thinks I’m a creep, or she likes me back and ends up staying in Hawkins so we can be together… I’m doing it for her.” 
“Don’t give me that bullshit. You and I both know that not talking to you is hurting her more than it’s helping her.”
“Oh yeah, she looked real distraught just now,” Robin rolled her eyes as she and Steve found their seats in their next class. 
He leaned over to her as soon as they got settled, “That’s not fair Robin. You see her for 30 seconds a day, max. And you don’t even talk to her! You have no idea how she really feels.”
He was right, Robin had no idea how you felt and the thought of that broke her heart. It had only been a few weeks, but she wasn’t sure that she even knew you anymore. You always said that a person could change a lot in a matter of weeks and she wondered if that was true of you. 
**** 
When Steve dropped her off at her house after school, she lingered in the car for a minute as she eyed your house next door. Your car wasn’t in the driveway yet; she had beaten you home. She thanked Steve and waved at him as he backed out of her driveway before turning toward her backyard and running to the treehouse. 
She sat on the wooden floor that was once littered with plastic cars, crayons, coloring books, and dolls. As the years passed, the cluttered floors became cluttered walls as you and Robin tacked photos of the two of you and posters of your favorite artists and movies to the wooden walls of the treehouse. The keep out sign from your childhood remained on the window for 12 years as a reminder of the origins of your friendship. The warm feeling that looking at the haphazardly drawn sign used to give her was replaced with so much sadness that she almost considered taking it down, but she couldn’t bring herself to actually do it. 
The treehouse remained your special place throughout middle and high school and even though you weren’t speaking, Robin still considered it your place and went there when she was missing you. She often practiced her trumpet up there or did her homework as soft music played from her cassette player, things that you used to do together, but found they were much more lonely without you there to whisper the answers to a math problem, slip your own cassettes into the player to show her new music, or be her audience as she practiced a new song for band.
Today, she decided that she would do her English homework and pulled out her copy of The Great Gatsby as she put her favorite mixtape, the one you made her, in the player and started to read. Suddenly, she heard a thud that made her jump as the treehouse door was pushed open. Your head popped through the door in the floor and your eyes went wide as you noticed Robin sitting there. 
“I-I’m sorry,” You stuttered, “It seems that we both had the same idea… I’ll just-” She motioned back down the ladder and started climbing down. 
Robin should have let you go, she knew that, but that was the first thing that you had said to her in weeks and she craved more. 
“No!” She shouted, startling you once again, “This is our special place, which means that it belongs to you too, right?” You nodded in response, “Okay, then you have a right to be here too. We can share the space.” 
You looked at her with furrowed brows, almost as if you thought that Robin’s offer was a trap, “Are you sure you don’t mind? I was just going to do my homework, but I can just go do it in my room or at the library…”
“I don’t mind, really.”
You nodded as you pulled yourself up onto the wooden surface. You took a seat beside Robin in the spot you’ve been sitting in for as long as you can remember and pulled out your calculus textbook and a pencil, setting the book on the floor and starting on your assigned problems. 
The two of you sat in tense silence for about 20 minutes before you broke it, “I’m sorry. I know we’re supposed to be doing our homework in here like you haven’t been avoiding me for weeks, but I just can’t.” Your voice broke a bit and so did Robin’s heart, “I guess I’m just confused about why.  Why do you want to just ignore 12 years of friendship? Did I do something?” 
Robin closed her book on her index finger, using it to mark her page. She racked her brain for something, anything to say that would be at least adequate enough to convey her reasoning and make you understand without fully pouring her heart out. 
“If I did something, Rob, you have to tell me so I can fix it.” You reached out and rested your hand on her knee, a gesture that you did over and over again when Robin still wanted to talk to you and be close to you. The blonde jerked away from your touch as soon as your hand landed on her skin. She forgot how warm your hands were and how freely you showed your affection through touch. 
Tears prickled in your eyes as Robin pulled away from your hand, “Oh, I see,” You got up and started packing your things, “I guess this was a mistake, then.” 
“No, y/n, wait,” Robin reached out for you as you bent down to pull the door open to exit. 
“Why should I?” You spat, throwing your hands in the air, “You’ve been avoiding me for weeks with no explanation and when I finally ask you for one, you’re silent and you jump away from me like I’m some stranger and not your best friend of 12 years… Do you know how much that hurts, Robin?” 
“I’m sorry, y/n/n,” She stood up and walked to you, “I just think that it’s best that we go our separate ways.” 
“Best for who, Robin? Because I know it’s not best for me.” You scoffed, “You don’t even know the hell I’ve been through since you started avoiding me. So don’t give me that shit.”  A moment of silence passed as Robin thought about your words, “What about our pact? Best friends forever no matter what,” You whispered, “We pinky swore.” 
You knew how childish you sounded, but you meant it when you made that pact all those years ago, and you thought Robin did too. Now you weren’t so sure. 
“That was 11 years ago,” Robin mumbled as she stared down at her feet. 
“It was a promise.” 
“A promise that we made in second grade is not as important as your future, y/n!” Robin snapped and immediately regretted her tone when she looked up to find hurt written on your features. 
“What do you mean, my future?” 
“You can’t go to Hawkins Community College, y/n. Not when you’ve gotten accepted to universities outside of this shithole town and dreamed of getting out of here since middle school.” She examined your face, imploring you to understand, “I know that we dreamed of getting out together and you only want to go to the community college because that’s where I have to go, but I can’t let you do that.” 
“You don’t get to make that decision for me, Rob,”  You said softly, stepping toward her and taking her hands in yours, “You matter to me more than some stupid university or even getting out of Hawkins. We’ll get out together in a few years. I think the past few weeks have shown that I can’t live without you, anyway,” 
Robin was frustrated. She needed you to just understand and continue as you were for the past few weeks. In all honesty, she thinks she would rather you find out about her crush and think she was a creep rather than have you stay here in Hawkins for her. 
“I have to confess, I haven’t been quite honest with you either,” You said, looking down at your hands that were laced with Robin’s. You twisted one of her rings around her finger as you stared. 
Robin was taken aback. What could you possibly have to tell her? 
“Remember when I told you that I didn’t think I was going to have a date to prom because there was no one that I liked?” 
“Yeah,” Robin replied with furrowed brows. 
“Well, that was a lie. There is someone that I like, but I’m not entirely sure that they’d like me back.”
Robin wondered why you were acting like this was such a big deal. She didn’t exactly think that you having a crush was big news. You’ve had plenty of crushes before, even some that you’ve initially lied to her about until you were ready to tell her. She listened intently anyway, as she deemed anything that you had to say important. 
“See, I want to go to prom with you, but not as friends like we had planned to before…you know.” 
“What? You like me?” Robin asked bewildered. She was rendered speechless, which wasn’t a common occurrence for the blonde. 
You mistook her question for a judgemental one and recoiled a bit, refusing to look up at her. You knew she was a lesbian. She had told you when you were sophomores, so you knew that it wasn’t the concept of liking girls that she disapproved of, just your crush on her. Even so, you couldn’t bring yourself to lie to her, so you pressed on. 
“Yeah, I have for about a year now, actually.” You let out a nervous laugh, “After not talking to you for a few weeks, I guess I just wanted to tell you because I realized that I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I lost you without telling you how I really felt about you…”
You were just about to gather your things and go, assuming that your confession had gone south, when Robin surprised you. 
“I like you too,” She whispered, finally feeling the weight lift off her shoulders at the confession, “That’s part of the reason why I was avoiding you.” 
Your head snapped up and your eyes settled on Robin, who wore a shy smile. 
“You dingus,” You giggled, pulling her into a tight hug. 
You buried your head in the crook of her neck and inhaled her scent, her strawberry shampoo mixed with her musky perfume. It was your favorite smell in the world and hugging her was your favorite feeling. Robin was always your lifeline, your rock, especially through middle and high school when the struggles of pre-teenagehood and teenagehood started to set in. She was there for every fight with your parents, every breakup, and every bully that made you cry and being without her for weeks made you feel like a part of you was missing. Hugging her felt like she was putting you back together. She tried to pull away, butt you held on, basking in the feeling for another minute before letting her go. 
“What?” Robin laughed, her arms still wrapped around your waist, even after you pulled away from the hug. 
“You stopped talking to me for weeks because you like me? Sometimes, you’re a mystery to me, Buckley.” 
“And because I didn’t want to be the reason that you stayed in Hawkins!” She defended, “You’re definitely not going to consider leaving Hawkins after graduation now, are you?” 
You shook your head, “Nope, not until you do. You need to stop stressing about that and just be here with me. I’m happy with my decision.” You reassured her. 
“But you got accepted to that university in California that you’ve been excited about since middle school and I don’t want to be the reason that you lose that chance o-or the reason that you’re stuck in Hawkins for the rest of your life! You don’t deserve that. You deserve to get out of here and find a safe space for people like us, maybe even find someone that knows what its like to be able to freely kiss a girl and-” Robin’s rambling was cut off by your lips on her’s. 
Robin was addicted to your kiss the moment your lips collided with yours. Your lips tasted like your favorite chapstick, the one that she was always borrowing from you, but she decided that it tasted better on your lips than it did from the tube. Your arms were wound around her neck and pulled her closer to you as your lips moved in sync. She chased your lips when you pulled away and a pretty blush rose to her cheeks, hiding her freckles. 
“I don’t mind waiting a few years if it means I get to be with you. California is my dream, but so are you, Robin Buckley.” You pressed a gentle kiss to the tip of her nose, “You’re my most important dream.” 
July 1988
“Is that everything?” Steve asked as he picked up a box labeled “kitchen.” 
You and Robin had gone to Hawkins Community college together for your freshman and sophomore years. You lived at home the first year and saved up enough to be able to split rent on a dingy little apartment near campus for your second year. Finally, after two years of dating, two years of college, and one year of living together, you and Robin could afford to move to New York and transfer to a small college there. While it wasn’t exactly California, it wasn’t Hawkins and it was a safe for you and Robin, and thats what mattered most. As excited as you were to finally be free of the shithole that is Hawkins, Indiana, you dreaded saying your goodbyes. 
“I think so,” Robin said as she scanned the apartment for anything that you may have forgotten. 
You emerged from your bedroom with a smile and a mischievous glint in your eye, “Robin, my love, why was your Like a Virgin cassette in the bathroom drawer?” You giggled, wiggling the cassette tape in your hand as your walked toward your girlfriend.
Steve stifled a laugh as he walked out the door with the moving box.
“I like to listen to it in the shower when you aren’t home…” She blushed as you wound your arms around her middle. 
“You almost left it here,” You pointed out, “I’m sure the next renters would have loved to get a copy of a Madonna cassette for free with the apartment.”
“You are insufferable!” She joked, lightly pushing you away, “Come on, lets get out there before Steve gets impatient.” 
“Alright, Madonna. Let’s go.” 
Robin turned around and gave you a playful glare as you walked out the door. 
As you reached the moving truck outside, Steve was loading the last box into the back of the truck.
“Well… if that was the last box, then I guess you guys are gonna get out of here soon, huh?” He asked as he hopped down from the bed of the truck. 
You nodded, “Yeah. We have to drop by our parents’ houses then we’ll be on the road.” 
“I’m gonna miss you guys,” He smiled sadly at the two of you, standing in front of him hand in hand, “But I’m happy for you, I really am.” 
You and Robin responded with a bone crushing hug that Steve immediately returned with just as much fervor. 
“Don’t forget to call when you get to your new apartment and at least once a week,” Steve said as he pulled away from the hug and wiped stray tears from his cheeks. 
“Wouldn’t dream of it, you dingus,” Robin let out a watery laugh. 
“I guess this is uh… goodbye, then.” 
“Goodbye for now,” You reassured him with a steady hand on his shoulder before hopping in the driver’s seat of the moving truck. 
After giving Steve one more hug, she followed suit and tearily slid into the passenger’s seat. You planted a hand on her thigh and rubbed her thumb over her knee as you made your way to your old street. 
After another teary goodbye to each of your parents, Robin stopped you with a hand on your shoulder as you started back toward the moving truck. 
“Let’s see the treehouse, you know, just one more time.” She said as hot tears slid down her cheeks. 
You nodded as you wiped her tears with your thumb and took her hand, heading toward the Buckley’s backyard. As soon as you cleared the ladder, you walked around, inspecting the relics from your childhood and teenagehood. Polaroid pictures of you and Robin, posters, and childhood drawings and coloring pages were still tacked securely to the wall, but faded over time. A box of toy cars and barbie accessories rested on one of the shelves, tucked away. An old cassette player sat on the floor where you and Robin used to sit and and empty box that once housed your cassettes laid next to it. 
“I think this is the only place in Hawkins that I’m going to miss,” Robin said as she picked up your favorite Barbie doll from elementary school, “We made so many memories in here…” 
“We had our first playdate in here,” You chuckled as you thumbed through a photo album that contained pictures of you and Robin from elementary thoroughhigh school. 
“And our first kiss,” Robin whispered in your ear as she came up behind you wrapped her arms around you, looking at the photos over your shoulder. 
You set the photo album down and turned around in her arms to look at her. Your arms wrap around her neck as you stare up at her lovingly, “What are we going to do without our special place?” 
Robin smiled at you warmly, “We’ll be okay without it,” She assured you. “We’ll find a new special place in New York and we can always come back to this one when we visit our parents.” 
You nodded and pressed a light kiss on her cheek before pulling away from her grasp to pick up the photo album again. You eyed the treehouse window, where the keep out sign was still hung and smiled to yourself. This place was the physical embodiment of your relationship with Robin. It had relics from every stage of your friendship and your relationship up to this point. Logically, you knew that you and Robin had a special history without all of the things that the treehouse held, but not being able to come back and see it whenever you wanted broke your heart. 
“Come on, love,” Robin ghosted a hand over your back, “Let’s get on the road before it gets too dark.” 
You nodded and descended the ladder with one final glance at your special treehouse. Once you were back in the moving truck, you placed the photo album in Robin’s lap for her to hold as you drove. You realized that the dream that you and Robin came up with in that old treehouse was finally coming true years later, and although you couldn’t strap the treehouse to the top of your moving truck and bring it to your new home, having Robin by your side would be more than enough because the treehouse wasn’t your special place, she was and she would continue to be for years and years to come. 
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mychemicalimagines · 1 year
Text
Ray of Sunshine-Dwayne Hoover-Chapter 7
Summary: Seventeen-year-olds Dwayne Hoover and Tyler Walker (or Ty as she’s affectionately known in the Hoover house) have been best friends since they were born. His mom and her mom are best friends too, so they had every chance to be together. They only have each other and are madly in love. However, the other person doesn’t know about their friend’s feelings. Will a chaos filled trip to California for his little sister’s beauty pageant allow these feelings to surface and let the childhood friends become more or will the the inseparable duo keep them bottled inside, not wanting to risk that cherished friendship that’s always been a little more?
Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI! Language, Talk of Underage Sex, Mentions of Attempted Suicide - not by Dwayne or OC, Fat Shaming of a Seven Year Old, Absent Parent, Death of Character - Not Dwayne or OC, ALL Warnings for the movie apply to this series!
Words: 3,904
A/N: Here’s another chapter! There is one more chapter after this and I hope you enjoy. This is the chapter everyone is waiting for! At least I want to know what you think of this part!! Comments are golden for me!
To Be Tagged in the last chapter: Comment, Message Me, Submit an Ask or Tag Yourself In My Bio!
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Third Person POV
It’s only been about an hour since Olive’s innocent question and the bus has been in complete silence ever since. She had gone back to her music so everyone has been staring out the windows, or in Tyler and Dwayne’s instance, trying not to fall asleep. Now, sitting with both feet on the floor, Dwayne has his head against the window while hers is on his shoulder. 
Suddenly, Richard yells out as he slams on the horn. 
“Hey! Son of a bitch!”
Dwayne and Tyler look toward the front as Frank speaks up. 
“What happened?”
“He cut me off!” He snaps, throwing his hand toward the windshield.
After a second, the horn continues to honk, even though he isn’t touching it. He smacks the wheel slightly, but it continues to make noise. He wiggles the horn and even tries to pull the horn button up but it just makes it louder. 
“Just leave it.” Sheryl says, looking over at him. 
“It’s stuck or something.” He says before groaning, wanting the loud noise to stop. 
Dwayne sits up straighter and leans toward his girlfriend to look past his uncle's head toward his stepfather, confused as to what’s going on. His mother leans over and tries to reach under the steering wheel.
“Maybe if you pull it…”
“Nah, just leave it. We’ll fix it when we get there.” Richard says, smacking the wheel again.
“Okay, fine.” She says, crossing her arms. 
Tyler raises an eyebrow and looks up at Dwayne who shakes his head slightly, wrapping an arm around her. Richard takes an exit and continues to drive when a loud siren is heard. He looks into his rearview mirror and groans loudly.
“Oh, Jesus! I’m being pulled over!” He says to his family as the police officer waves to the side. “Here we go. Everyone, pretend everything is normal. Like-like everything’s normal here.”
Richard parks the bus and glances at his family. Dwayne immediately unwraps his arm from around Tyler and takes her hand, knowing she’s gonna be nervous. When the officer approaches the bus, he knocks on the window, the horn continuing to go off every few seconds. He knocks on the window, forcing Richard to roll it down.
“How’re you folks doin’?” 
“Fine.” He says nervously as the horn honks slightly. “Sorry!”
“Having trouble with your horn?”
“Huh?” He asks, as the horn blares in his ear. “Oh, yeah, a little.”
“Would you step out of your vehicle?” The Officer asks, stepping back slightly.
Richard glances at his wife before opening the door, stepping onto the gravel below. The family can’t hear what they are saying but the officer has Richard put his hands on the window beside Tyler and Dwayne’s heads. She looks over at him and hears something about ‘Not Illegal’ before the Officer opens up the trunk. 
Sheryl’s heart sinks for a moment but the Officer bends over and picks something off the ground that had fallen out. 
“Sir, would you come back here?” They all hear.
Tyler turns her head slightly toward Dwayne to be able to hear what the officer is saying but they’re both whispering. The sheet Grandpa is wrapped in is in clear view of the officer but he’s distracted, paying attention to what had fallen out. 
“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna bust you.” The officer continues before looking up at the family. “Cute family.”
He waves causing Sheryl to smile slightly as she waves back at him, confused as to what’s going on.
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After a few more moments, the officer goes back to his motorcycle and allows Richard to close the trunk after throwing whatever the officer found inside. He gets back into the bus and puts his head down, sighing to himself in relief.
“What happened?” Sheryl asks, watching her husband.
“I’ll tell you when I regain consciousness.” He says, watching the officer drive away. “Frank. Dwayne. Ty. Get out and push.”
Doing as he said, the trio gets out and walks to the back of the bus. Richard starts the vehicle before getting out himself, along with his wife. The five of them start pushing the bus, ready to get back on the road. After a few minutes, after making sure that Olive was listening to her music, Richard begins to tell them what happened. 
Turns out, the bag that Frank had given Grandpa the day at the gas station before had porno magazines. The officer found them and thought they were Richard’s. However, in the pile of female magazines was one male porno magazine, belonging to Frank, forcing the officer to think it also belonged to him. 
The officer let him get off with a warning to get his horn fixed and let him go. It’s been about an hour since and they are getting closer to the pageant. The horn honks in occasional spurts but everyone has chosen to ignore it, knowing there was nothing they could do until they got back home to Albuquerque. 
Tyler is smiling at Dwayne and Olive as she gives him an eye test that she had taken from the hospital earlier that afternoon. She’s pointing at each letter E, allowing him to point his finger up, down or sideways to correspond with the rotation of the E.
“Redondo Beach, 46!” Sheryl says, looking at the sign on the side of the road. 
“It’s 2:15. Might be a few minutes late.” Richard says, glancing at his watch as he drives. 
“Richard, they said 3:00 sharp. They were very explicit. We can’t cross these people. Trust me.” She says, glancing at him. 
“20/20 vision!” Olive tells her brother before calling out to her mother. “Mom! Dwayne has 20/20 vision!”
“I bet he does.” She says, continuing to look for signs. 
He smiles softly before glancing down at his girlfriend who playfully claps with her own large smile. He blushes slightly before looking out the window. 
“Okay, now I’m going to test if you’re colorblind.” Olive says, pulling out another pamphlet. “What’s the letter in the circle?”
Tyler looks at her to see a large red circle with a green A inside. Dwayne looks at her before shrugging slightly. Tyler can see it perfectly but her boyfriend cannot. 
“No, inside the circle.” Olive points toward the paper in her hands. “Right there.”
Frank turns around, looking at his nephew, slightly confused. 
“It’s an A.” Tyler says, taking the paper from Olive, trying to point it out to her boyfriend. 
“It’s bright green.” Frank says, watching him for a moment. 
Dwayne shakes his head again and takes the paper from his girlfriend, trying to look at it closer. 
“Can’t you see it?” She whispers, watching him. 
He shakes his head slightly, confused on what is supposed to be on this paper. 
“Oh, man.” Frank whispers and sighs to himself.
Dwayne hands the pamphlet back to his girlfriend before pulling out his notepad. He scribbles one word down before showing it to his uncle, confused.
‘What?’
“Dwayne, I think you might be colorblind.” He answers, looking down slightly. 
He watches him for a moment before shaking the notepad, asking him the question once again. Frank licks his lips and glances toward Tyler, who is just as confused as he is before answering his nephew, sadness lacing his voice. 
“You can’t fly jets if you’re colorblind.” 
Tyler gasps softly, covering her mouth, shocked by the news that was just laid upon them. All the research, all the training, all the planning that Dwayne had done since he was a child…has all gone down the tubes. Dwayne stares at his uncle for a moment as realization hits him. He drops his notepad onto the seat, thinking for a moment before turning toward the window.
He punches the side of the bus almost as hard as he can, causing his girlfriend to gasp in fright, not knowing he was going to do that. She scoots back to the other side of the seat, running her hands through her hair as her boyfriend continues to punch the side of the bus. 
“Okay, we have a little…” Frank starts to say toward Richard and Sheryl. “We have an emergency back here!”
Dwayne turns in his seat even more, putting his back toward his girlfriend and grabs onto the seats before kicking the spot he’s been punching. Tyler squeals slightly, moving as close as she can to the window, causing Frank to get worried for both kids, despite knowing he would never hurt the young girl beside him.  
“I think we need to pull over!!”
Sheryl turns completely around, confused as to what’s happening. 
“What’s the emergency?!” Richard calls back but Frank continues to yell.
“Pull over!!”
“We’re gonna be…” He starts. “Dwayne just calm down!”
“Dwayne, it’s okay!” Sheryl tries, noticing her son is freaking out, now shaking the seat her brother and daughter are in. 
“We’re gonna be late as it is!”
“Richard! Just pull over!” Sheryl snaps, watching her son.
“But!” Richard tries again but Tyler yells toward the front. 
“Pull the fuck over! We have an emergency!”
“Okay!” He yells over everyone.
Dwayne starts smacking the top of the seat, freaking out even more.
“Can you get him to pull over?!” Frank yells, worried for his nephew.
Everyone, excluding Dwayne, are yelling over one another, waiting for the vehicle to be pulled over. The young boy is now smacking the roof of the car before turning toward his girlfriend, ready to jump out of the moving vehicle. 
“Pull over!” Tyler screams, pushing on her boyfriend’s chest, trying to keep him in the seat. 
Frank grabs onto his arm, helping the teenage girl hold him back.
“Just wait one minute.” He says, trying to help her. “Stay seated.”
“This better be good!” Richard yells back before pulling into the breakdown lane beside the highway. 
Before they are barely even stopped, the teenage boy jumps over his girlfriend and opens the sliding door. Running down the hill on the side of the road, grabbing at his hair angrily, Dwayne screams as loud as he can. 
“FUCKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!” He skids to a stop, still screaming. “Fuck!”
Everyone gets out of the bus, watching as he falls to his knees thirty feet away. He buries his hands and face into the grass, shrieking like a heartbroken animal.
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Tyler bites her lip, trying not to cry as she watches her boyfriend sobbing into the grass.
“What happened?” Sheryl asks her brother.
“He’s colorblind. He can’t fly.” He admits, watching his nephew. 
“Oh, Jesus. Oh no.” She whispers, running her hands through her hair. 
Richard glances at his watch and starts pacing, slightly agitated. He knows this was the boy's dream but they’re been on a time restraint. Not being able to hold back after hearing him sob as he falls to his butt, Tyler starts sliding down the hill, trying to keep her balance. When she gets to the flatter area of the grass, she starts running toward him.
Sliding across the dirt in front of her boyfriend, she immediately wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him into her. Knowing it’s her, Dwayne wraps his arms around her waist and starts sobbing into her shoulder. Manerving to her knees, she holds him close, putting her face into his neck.
“It’s okay.” She whispers. “We’ll figure something out.”
He sobs even harder, holding her tightly against him. 
“Dwayne…” They hear Sheryl say behind them but neither of them look up. “Honey, I’m sorry.”
He continues to ignore her as he sniffs into his girlfriend’s shoulders. All he wants right now is to hold her and cry, knowing his dreams, besides his future with her, is completely trashed. 
“Dwayne, come on. We gotta go.” Sheryl tries again but Dwayne shakes his head. 
“I’m not going.” He mumbles loud enough for her to hear.
“Dwayne…”
“I’m not! I don’t care. I’m not getting on that bus again.” He says, sitting back slightly, looking at his girlfriend’s puffy eyes. 
“Dwayne, for better or worse, we’re your family…” His mother says but his head snaps toward her.
“You’re not my family.” He says, standing up, leaving Tyler kneeling on the ground behind him. “I don’t want to be your family! I hate you fucking people! I hate you!” He screams, pointing at the group still beside the bus before pointing at them individually. “Divorce! Bankrupt! Suicide! You’re fucking losers! You’re losers!”
He deliberately left out his girlfriend and his sister, knowing they’re the only two people in this group who love and care about him. His mother steps toward him but he shakes his head and holds his hands out, stopping her. 
“No. Please. Just leave me here, mom.” He softens his voice, shaking his head with each word. “Please, please, please…”
He turns away from her and sits in front of his girlfriend who is still kneeling down into the grass, biting her lip. He gently pulls her into his arms, holding her close to his chest, needing her comfort. She falls to her butt and wraps her arms around his waist, sitting between his legs. 
“Just leave us here…” He mumbles into his girlfriend’s hair. 
Sheryl sighs softly and watches them for a second before turning back toward the road. As she walks away, Dwayne sighs softly, his voice cracking again.
“Shit.” He whispers, holding Tyler as close as he can.
“We’ll figure something out.” She whispers, rubbing his back. “If you stay, I stay.”
 Making it back to the road, Sheryl runs her fingers through her hair. 
“I don’t know what to do….”
“It’s getting late. Can somebody stay here with them?” Richard asks, glancing at his brother-in-law.
“I’ll stay.” Frank says, watching the couple in the grass.
“Oh, that is not happening.” Sheryl shakes her head, turning back toward them.
It’s silent for a second before Richard shakes his head, glancing at his watch.
“Well, uh, I’m just worried about the time and Tyler isn’t helping fast enough.” He mumbles, anxiously. 
“You don’t expect his girlfriend to make him pop up after something like that, Richard!” His wife snaps slightly, biting her lip.
“Girlfriend?” He raises an eyebrow before shaking his head. “Forget it. Olive, you wanna try talking to him?”
“No, Richard. There’s nothing to say. We just have to wait.” Sheryl looks at her husband, not knowing her daughter is already climbing down the hill. 
Trying not to fall in her cowboy boots, Olive walks down to her brother and his girlfriend. Squatting down next to them, she hesitates for a moment but wraps her arm around his shoulder before leaning her head against him. No one says anything except a small scoff comes from Dwayne. After a minute or two, he kisses Tyler’s head before letting her go.
“Okay…Let’s go.”
Olive stands up first with Dwayne following. He then puts his hands out to help his girlfriend up. Together, the three of them walk back toward the highway. When they make it to the hill, Olive starts slowing down, having a little trouble. Dwayne and Tyler both take one of her hands in their own before picking her up and carrying her to the road. 
When Olive rushes to her mother, now safe from the hill, Dwayne looks down at grass, taking his girlfriend’s hand into his. 
“I apologize for the things I said. I was upset. I didn’t really mean them.” He says in a monotone voice, disappointed in himself. 
His mother sniffles before smiling. “Let’s just go.”
After getting the bus back onto the highway, Dwayne lays down in the back seat, his head on Tyler’s lap.
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She starts playing with his hair, looking down at him. He licks his lips and sighs, looking into her eyes. No one says anything, especially not these two. All he can think about is how his future is ruined. 
He had everything planned out, even before he asked her out last night.
Ask Tyler out…Check.
Move in with Tyler…
Join the AirForce…
Become a Test Pilot…
Marry Tyler…
Have a few kids…
Retire…
But two of those things are now ruined and it might fuck up the rest of his plans. He’s just praying that Tyler isn’t disappointed in him. Tyler is thinking the complete opposite. She’s thinking of different ways for him to fly. Yes, he wants to be a fighter jet pilot but maybe with his colorblind-ness, he can fly something else. 
No matter what he does in their future, she’ll always…always be proud of him. Kissing her hand, she gently taps Dwayne’s forehead causing a small blush to appear on his cheeks. She smiles softly at him and he reaches, taking her hand into his, lacing their fingers on his stomach.
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As they get closer to the hotel, everyone but Dwayne and Tyler are freaking out about where the hotel was and the time restraint. Richard is weaving through traffic, trying to make sure not to hit anything as they look for signs. 
“2:58!” Frank says, looking at his watch.
“Alright, everyone, look for the exit, okay?” Richard says, looking around the interstate. 
“Okay! Here! Here’s the turn off! Turn in here!” Sheryl chants, pointing to the right. 
Dwayne sits up next to Tyler, knowing they’re going to be parking soon. 
“Okay, can anyone see the Redondo Suites?” Richard asks.
“There!” Olive practically shouts. “There’s the hotel!”
“There it is! There it is, Olive!” He says, smiling back at her. 
“Little Miss Sunshine!” She starts chanting excitedly.
“We’re gonna make it! We’re gonna make it!”
She stops chanting and smiles widely, looking out the window. As they drive around a bend, the hotel is in the distance, but they don’t see how to get there. Richard voices the question to his wife, confused. Olive and Sheryl begin to yell over him about passing the building but there was no way over there. 
It was a one way street. 
“Richard, there’s parking lots on the right!” Frank yells over there, hoping he can hear him.
He in fact does and turns right when the trees open up. They are going to fast at this point and drive straight through a boom gate, breaking it into pieces. 
“I can’t slow down! I’m in third gear.” Richard explains to his wife who is freaking out. “Frank? Time?”
“Uh, 2:59!”
In the distance, they can see the hotel and smiles appear on Olive and Richard’s faces. 
“It’s a straight shot from here, honey! We’re gonna make it!”
Suddenly, they get to a dead-end, forcing Richard to turn the wheel strictly to the right, making a U turn. Sheryl and Olive start screaming about how they need to turn around and how they made the wrong turn somewhere. From the force of the U turn, Tyler slides hard into Dwayne, not knowing the turn was happening. 
He flies into the side of the bus but he grabs onto her, making sure she doesn’t hit her head. Richard, yelling about how he isn’t turning around, continues to make his turn before driving forward through a chain and going over into the sidewalk, making sure not to sit pedestrians. He drives, trying to concentrate when he sees the hotel sign.
“How do we get in there?!”
“There! Right there!” Sheryl points as they drive by.
He immediately drives to the left, making another fast U turn, forcing Dwayne to fall into his girlfriend. 
“Hold on! One more!”  
He immediately makes another left, driving into the parking lot of the hotel, screeching to a halt. Frank jumps out of his seat and throws up the door, which it slams into the end of the track and derails. The entire door falls off the side of the bus and onto the asphalt. He pays it no mind as he instantly starts sprinting across the parking lot.
He only stops for the automatic doors and follows the signs to the 2nd floor. Richard, Olive and Sheryl take off after him, leaving Dwayne and Tyler in the bus. Frank runs down a hallway and finally makes it to a big carpeted hotel lobby. He looks around breathlessly, bypassing all the little girls wearing poofy dresses and caked in makeup. 
He speeds up his walk when he sees a woman beside the registration table.
“Hi, we’re here to register!”
“I’m sorry, we’re closed.” She smirks at him as she puts a couple folders into a box. 
“Uh, no. We have the entrant right here.” He says, gesturing to Sheryl and Olive who are panting from their run, smiles on their faces. “We just want to check in.”
“Registration ended at three.” The woman says, looking at him.
“It’s three now.” Sheryl says, looking at her watch.
“No.” She says, smirking as she points to the clock, which reads 3:04.
“Oh, have a heart. We’re four minutes late. We just drove all the way from Albuquerque.” She says, practically begging. 
“Then you should have been here by three.” The Official says, walking around, gathering supplies. 
“Wait, wait, wait. There must be some way we can work this out. Please.” Richard says, walking around the table as he arrives.
“Everyone else was here before three. I’d be giving an unfair advantage…”
“We’re not asking for an advantage! We just want her to compete!”
“Don’t yell at me, sir.” She glares at him slightly. “I didn’t make you late. We’ve settled on the schedule of the show and we’ve turned off our computers. Our lineup is finalized and I have a hair check to do. I’m sorry you’re late but I can’t help you.”
Richard gently grabs her hand and kneels down on the floor. 
“Please.” He begs softly. “You don’t know what we’ve been through…”
“Uh, Ms. Jenkins?” A male voice says. “I can put ‘em into the system.”
“Oh, Kirby, you don’t have to.” She says, pulling her hand from Richard’s. 
“No, it’s okay. It’s five minutes.” He shrugs. 
“Well, it’s your time.” Ms. Jenkins says before grabbing her box. “Excuse me.”
“Thank you, Kirby.” Frank says, sighing in relief. “Thank you very much.”
“Really, you don’t know what this means.” Sheryl smiles at him. 
“Please.” He shakes his head as he boots up the system. “It’s five minutes. I ain’t working for these people next year. These people are crazy. So, what’s your name?”
“Olive.” She smiles.
“That’s a nice name.” He says, typing it into the system. 
Sheryl looks up, glancing around for her son to see him and Tyler walking in, holding hands, looking slightly disheveled from the car ride. Before she can speak to him, Olive pulls on her hand.
“Mom! Mom, look! It’s Miss California!” 
She looks to where her daughter is pointing to see a pretty woman sitting at a table, signing photos for kids. 
“Look! It’s really her!”
“Do you want to say hello?”
Olive nods fast and starts walking over with her mom, who leaves the rest of the checking in to her husband. Tyler glances around at all the kids, nervously. 
“Dwayne…” She whispers, causing him to look down at her. 
All the kids are practically miniature barbies with expensive clothes and hair. All of them are several inches shorter than Olive, who is in mini shorts and cowboy boots. 
“I don’t like this…” She continues her thoughts.
He shakes his head, silently agreeing with her. 
“Come on.” Frank says, patting his shoulder as he approaches them.
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kiyothequotequeen · 6 days
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The Runner Up (My Inner Demons)
This is originally from my Wattpad but since that's basically dead I'm uploading the story and future chapters here. Hopefully this fandom's not as dead as I think it is 🫠
f/f = favorite flavor
The noise of busy chatter could be heard all throughout the city with cars honking and the peoples chatter. I was walking quickly with a f/f bagel in one hand and my phone in the other pressed against my ear as I argued with my dad. "Dad I'm just saying! I think you should definitely let me help you campaign more! Ugh, I'm not gonna make you look like a fool." I took a bite out of my bagel as I listened to him continue to try and keep me out of his campaign. "Yeah. uh huh. Sure dad." I sighed as I stopped at the cross walk and squeezed my phone between my ear and shoulder as I pressed the pedestrian push-button before grabbing my phone again and rolling my eyes at my dad as I walked once the light said I could go. "Alright dad I've gotta go. I'm almost home and need to make sure Ava's up for her interview. Alright, kisses, bu-bye!" Once I hang up the phone I take one last bite of my bagel before putting my phone in my purse. I look over and see my apartment building and walk in quickly passing by the greeting desk with a "good morning," before heading towards the elevator. I press the up button and wait silently for it to open and when it does I watch as a mother and her daughter walk out as I smile at them. I sit in the elevator after clicking my floor number and rummaging through my purse, searching for my apartment keys. Once I find them, the doors open and I walk out and head for the end of the hallway to the apartment opposite of mine. I pull out my keys and instead of pulling out my key, I pull the spare of my friend Ava's and push it through the lock before turning it and heading into her apartment.
"Ava! Are you up yet?" I call out as I place my purse on the stand near her front door as I walk further into her apartment. Feeling something against my legs I look down quickly and see it's just Johnny. "Hi Johnny. Have you eaten yet?" I ask as I caress his back a few times and look over at his empty food bowls. "Ava!" Once I call out the second time her bedroom door opens and she walks out still in her pajamas and on the phone. 'Is this girl serious right now?' Is all I could think. She has an interview in less than half an hour and she's not even ready. Right as I get ready to speak up, she puts up a finger telling me to hold on as she continues to talk. I place my hand on my hip as I scoff and roll my eyes before walking to her couch and sitting down with my arms crossed. I wait until I hear her say, "I'm hanging up now, byeee," before I look at her over the couch and speak. "You're a real piece of work, Ava." She rolls her eyes at me and groans.
"It's too early to deal with life," She groans out and slumps as I get up from the couch and grab Johnny's bowl. "Yeah well you should at least deal with your cat." I wave the food bowl in front of her as she stares at it before her eyes light up like she has a great idea. "Give me a second!" She runs over to the fridge before grabbing a pizza box and bringing over a slice of pizza and placing it in Johnny's bowl. I stare at her in disbelief before throwing my hands up and leaning against the couch. "You never seize to amaze me." She smiles as if it was a compliment and I sigh before looking at a clock on her wall. "Oh yeah, you have an interview soon, genius." 
"Huh?" She looks at her phone with wide eyes before throwing it on the couch and running to her room while yelling profanities. I sigh as I sit on the couch again and grab my phone from my skirt pocket and start scrolling through the news and seeing my dads rival all over while he's only there every once in a while. 
Ava rushes out of her room, finally dressed, and begins talking asking where her things are. "My phone?" I hold up her phone and she quickly takes it. 
"Wallet?" "By my purse at the door." 
"Um I think that's it! Okay bye Johnny be good and just try the pizza, it's good for you! And bye Y/n, thank you!" Before I could say anything more she rushes for the door and opens it but I don't hear her close it. I turn my head towards the door and heard she was talking to someone. I listened a bit closely and realized she was talking to Jake. I didn't like him too much. I had no reason to hate him I just thought he was a little weird. "She thinks it's creepy when you come to her door and no one else's to collect rent, dingus," I mumbled under my breathe as I heard them talking about it. A few minutes later I hear the door shut before not even two minutes later it opens again. And Ava rushes back inside. "You forget something?" "Trash!" She called out before grabbing the garbage and running back out and slamming the door behind her.
"Shit! She forgot her keys!" It's not too late to catch her so I rush to the door, grabbing her keys along with my purse and run out the door making sure to lock it behind me. 
Once I get downstairs I run out the door and head to the back alleyway where the garbage is. I pause once I realize Ava is talking to someone. Or more so multiple people and it doesn't sound much like talking as it does arguing. I reach into my purse and grab the pepper spray I always have on me. I hold my purse to my side tightly as I slowly and as quietly as possible sneak around the corner to immediately be confused by what I see. I see 5 men in weird, mythical looking clothing and they all have different colored horns and one of them, the biggest, holding Ava with a sword in her hand as some other guy yells, "Peaceful evasive maneuvers!" until he puts the sword back in its sheath and places her on a tree. I can't help but stifle a laugh at the sight. I walk a bit closer, behind a guy with white hair as I sweep my leg into the back of his knees causing him to fall and yelp, grabbing the attention of everyone there. I point the pepper spray down at him as he looks up at me with a confused look. "What is that?" I look over at a orange haired guy who was pointing and looked frightened by what I was holding. 'Have they seriously never seen pepper spray?' I'm a little caught off guard by him that I don't realize the man once under me is now behind me until he wraps his arm around my waist tightly and holds a curved knife right against my throat. I see two of the guys freak out a bit while the one with dark blue horns and some other guy with white horns yell at the one behind me. I sigh in disbelief that I'm actually about to do this.
Is he that dangerous? I mean he does have a knife to my throat and these guys do have real weapons, so I guess so. I quickly cover my eyes and hold my breath as I raise the hand with the pepper spray to face his face and spray causing him to drop me as he starts yelling and rubbing his eyes. I quickly get back up and cough a few times and rub my eyes before I look down at him and then back over at the others. "Get her down, now." They look frightened, threatened, and angered but they whisper among themselves before the one with white horns points his hand at the tree Ava's on before it suddenly bursts into flames. She falls and I look at the tree with my jaw dropped.
"Did... You just..." Ava mutters out before turning around towards the man while the dark blue horned one yelled at him. "Prince Asch! Do not use your magic on such trivial matters!"
'Magic?' These guys can't be human. No human I've ever met can do something like that. I continue to stare in awe as this 'Prince Asch' guy started talking. "The next words that come out of your mouth better be-" he was suddenly cut off by Ava grabbing one of his horns and pulling. Suddenly all the guys there gasped and I couldn't help but feel like she had just done something risky. "How indecent!" "In public?!" I look at each one as they yell in fright and the biggest guy covers the orange haired ones eyes. "Hey!" The white horned one suddenly stands up straight, Ava releasing her grip on his horns, and she mutters out, "They're real... heh..." He angrily spits out, "How dare you!" As his response. "I knew I should've slept in today..." She begins to chuckle before suddenly falling over and passing out. "Oh my god!" I cover my mouth before rushing over to Ava and getting on my knees beside her. "You... Killed it."
"No... N-No I didn't!" The prince Asch guy sputters out at the accusation while I sign. "You idiots, she's not dead. Just unconscious." I stare up at them as the dark horned one begins to think. "This is your guys fault, y'know, so..." I bite my nail thinking if I really want these guys coming into our apartment building, much less into one of our apartments. I sigh knowing I won't be able to carry her by myself. "So you're carrying her to her apartment." One of them questions what the hell is an apartment but I don't answer. "We should establish a base of operations when we get there." The dark blue horned guy says to Prince Asch. I groan as I begin to lift Ava up and struggle. "Hello? I said you'd be carrying her so... Wanna come help maybe??" I glare at them, but especially the biggest guy, indicating for him to come lift her. He does just that and comes over and lifts her and places her over his shoulder like a bag of firewood. I stare for a second in shock before collecting myself. I grab my purse from by the tree and wave for them to follow behind me as I begin leading them to Ava's apartment.
'God I hope this doesn't last long...'
-----------
Hi! I hope you enjoyed this first chapter of 'The Runner Up' and it would be great to hear some feedback of what you think! Later on as I write more chapters I'll begin to link them all on here of like a master list if I can. :)
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alicehealer2 · 2 years
Text
Microtransaction Hell
Prologue: My death is way too cliche
Damn. Ran out of data.
Whose idea was it to make single player games online only? Luckily, I managed to do all my dailies. Now I’m stuck in an empty bus with nothing but my thoughts.
Terrifying.
When I was in school, I was always told I had my head in the clouds. Unfortunately, metaphors were never my strong suit back then, so I just smiled and nodded. That strategy stopped working when I was 14. Surprised it took them that long to figure out I had no idea what they were talking about. It took a teacher that didn’t have English as a first language to recognize that look in my eye.
I’m half tempted to just buy more data now, so I don’t have to remember such embarrassing memories.
I absorb myself back in my phone looking for apps I haven’t touched in probably years and find an old idle game. The genre gets bashed on a lot for being a literal waiting game but what they tend to miss the point of the games. Beat boss A to unlock mechanic 8 to use a soft reset that carries buffs over in order to beat boss B repeat until there’s more mechanics than hours in the day.
A logo for “Lord of Hell Studios” pops up, which I don’t need internet to know this is probably the companies only game.
[Achievement Unlocked!] [Dedication: Stick to a single incarnation for 20 years] [New Ascension unlocked! Hard Reset]
Oof, I really need to uninstall apps I don’t use. Oh well, it benefits me this time.
I basically ignore the 10 different pop ups telling me I got a lot of resources that won’t matter next reset, so I press the new Hard Reset button.
A loud honking noise pulls me away from my phone, why is this bus empty? Where’s the driver? What was that-
“In this week’s headlines, the ‘Ghost Crash’ of 2027, a bus and a truck have crashed in the L9 Intersection. Neither vehicles seemed to have a driver and the cameras were reportedly damaged. The bus had only one unidentified passenger. Police suspect foul play and the company owning the vehicles has yet to be revealed. More at seven.”
Chapter One: One-Hundred and One Percent
Darkness.
The void.
An endless abyss.
And a single floating loading bar of pure white.
Despite the lack of computer screen the bar still seems pixelated, as if any extra detail to clue me into this cosmic joke would be wasted.
0.5% complete.
It’s felt like hours, I still don’t know what’s going on. I can’t be dead because I’m thinking, but I can’t feel myself moving. I’ve tried, but when the only anchor to this being a physical space is a white loading bar that stays perfectly centered to your vision, it’s kind of hard to tell if I am moving at all.
I can’t feel anything.
Except fear.
It’s been…
Well time has passed.
Specifically, the loading bar has too.
99.5% complete.
It doesn’t feel like it’s moving.
And it only updates every .5%.
100% Complete.
Is that it?
I feel like I should feel something. Anger, Betrayal, Disgust.
But I’ve used a computer before.
100% is never 100%.
I something sucking me downwards. Or at least I think it’s downwards. Floating in a dark abyss tends to mess with your sense of direction.
But I’m gonna bet on that way being down.
And down means out, and away from this loading screen.
So, I will let myself fall.
And fall.
And fall.
I might not have thought this through.
I wake up in a field.
Not a grassy field or a football field or a field of wheat. No, I fell in a pumpkin patch. I feel sticky. And I do mean fell. Whatever that falling feeling obviously had something to do with whatever punchbowl I drank from to end up here. I feel bad for ruining the crops, so I better go apologize. My clothes are covered in dirt and pumpkin goo so I’m gonna have my best puppy dog eyes to use their shower. Not that I like using a stranger’s shower but they’re a farmer, so they’re probably ripped as hell.
Man, I’ve been walking for a while. This is a damn big pumpkin patch. There’s gotta be at least a thousand of these. I don’t know much about crops but aren’t you supposed to rotate them or something? How do you rotate a plant? How did I get here? Could I survive on pumpkin alone or will I need to Barbeque Ursa this? Why hasn’t he done a survival guide on the infinite pumpkin patch? Mysteries upon mysteries.
It’s nearing sundown and I finally manage to see a small wooden cottage on the horizon. How they house enough people to harvest everything is beyond me. Maybe this is just an outpost and people get lost often.
*30 minutes later*
-and that’s why I’ve always hated the ugly duckling. What a dumb bird.
Anyway, I’ve arrived at the cottage and there’s not a soul in site. So, I knock on the door. Then I yell out for anyone awake. Knock on every window and maybe accidentally impersonated the police, FBI and girl scouts. Luckily, I decided no one was home. Those girl scouts are terrifying when they see competition. So, I test the front door.
Then I test it again.
A bit harder this time.
“Oh no, this building is so old and run down that the door fell apart as soon as a random rock hit it.”
No answer.
I start looking around the house to try and figure out where I am. There’s an old bed, a fireplace, and a desk with a journal on it. Obviously since I respect their priv-
Dear journal. My status stopped showing up today. I was sad to see it but knew it must be fate calling me. My time on this world is almost up. I wished for nothing more than my humble pumpkin patch to bring me something, but alas it did not. The path of the pumpkin is a path of ruin and my life is the country it lay waste to.
“Humble?” I murmur mostly to myself.
“And what the hell’s a status?”
Name: Quinn Burgundy
Age: 29
Job: Homeless
Income: 1 MP per day
Current MP: 0/20
I’m not unemployed? I have a job stupid pumpkin dream! This is a dream, right? Unless…
Oh no!
No this can’t be happening!
I LOST MY JOB!
No, I worked so hard to get it!
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jenna-of-eluria · 10 days
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Just watched Aftersun and listen…if All of Us Strangers was kind of subtly told, Aftersun is a whisper of a film. I kept hearing it was devastating, heartbreaking… a poignant film about love and loss. I was expecting overt heartbreak.
But it’s not overt. And also I’m not sure I have interpreted it correctly according to the world at large? Because I’ve only just watched it so I may be wrong but that’s okay. I know what it means to me.
I can’t help but see myself in Calum. For lots of reasons - hello queer parent I see you. And I see myself in Sophie too. Who hasn’t analyzed the important authority figures in their childhood as they reach maturity?
(Spoilery things under the cut)
Mostly though, I came to the conclusion that Calum is depressed and passively suicidal. A dad who is trying his best to make good memories with his daughter but someone who just can’t quite see the point of going on after she leaves to go back to her mom.
My first clue was the way he stepped in front of the bus - the lack of care for the desperate honk from the bus driver, the casual stroll as he crossed in front of it. Recognizable.
Then the waves. When I was a teenager and also struggling with my own place in the world, I had my first really intrusive thought. My first time at the beach. I was alone and it was like 10 pm and all I wanted to do was walk into the waves and keep going. It doesn’t take much for that thought to enter my mind. In many ways I’m still in Galveston, mad summer coastal town lights ablaze behind me, warm ocean breeze blowing my long hair away from my face and taking the noise with it too. Whispering quietly to me that all the pain and uncertainty and shame could end so easily if I just walked forward and let the waves hold me.
I don’t know how anyone else interpreted the rave/dance scene but part of it for me was maybe Sophie recognizing the same darkness in herself - hating her father for passing it down and understanding his pain too. And realizing that even though he killed himself he did love her. He loved her so much.
I struggle in so many of the same ways as Calum. So far I am able to keep the worst of the darkness at bay…but I know that I might lose that battle at any time.
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universeinapen · 9 months
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The Old Man
The world wraps its hands around those with kind hearts and generosity. When an old man takes advantage of Em's offer to find his cat, she ends up in the same world he was in. Take revenge or find the best outcome, the choice is up for Em to decide.
Length: 5399 words
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All one could hear was the honking of car horns as they raced down the street, the caws from the birds that echoed between the tall buildings, the stomping of footsteps and distant chatter, and, of course, the screaming of the stray cats living in the alleyway. 
This collection of noise was either a nightmare of overstimulation or it was the simple background noise to life to most people. To Em, the surrounding noise made her heart pound with life. She felt the most alive while feeling the electric energy of the air when the sun was high and the skies were clear. The boutique in which she worked to keep organized each and every day was a mile walk away from her apartment. In her city, it was faster to walk than to try the bus. 
It didn’t matter how many times she made this trip per week, she never got tired of knowing that everyone around her each had their own stories and goals where they were heading to. She always stopped by to watch street performers and her bag always had cat food that she gave to the stray cats in the alley. Em never wanted one of the furry friends in her life to go hungry. 
Friday was when Em would go to the market and pick up groceries for the week. Nothing fancy, she never had time to cook up something gourmet anyways. The bag she carried over her shoulder tugged down on her but she wasn’t one to let the small challenges get in her way. 
As she continued down her normal path, she noticed someone who wasn’t rushing from one place to the next like most of the others in the city. It wasn’t a street performer and this person was wearing too nice of shoes to be homeless. Instead, it was an older man with hair white like cotton candy. 
He was muttering something that sounded like “Here, Luna. Here, kitty. Where have you gone off to?” The old man had his back turned mostly towards her with only a sliver of his face visible. A black cardigan was draped over a light gray shirt that resembled a lost grandpa. His hair flowed wild and tall around his head as if static electricity ran through him. 
“Hello, do you need help?” She approached him, noticing the look of distress on his face. He spun around to face her, making his previous distress turn into a look of relief. A small smile appeared on his face. 
“Yes, actually. I am wondering if you saw this cat around nearby. I lost my dear Luna and I am running out of energy to keep looking. I’ve asked some others if they’ve seen my cat and if they could help me, but I’ve found no luck. Here,” he pulls out a crumpled-up photo from the pocket of his cardigan. “Have you seen this cat?
Em leaned in closer to the photo of a tiny gray and black cat. Its ears stood up almost as tall as its head and it was so skinny she wondered if it was getting enough food. Em glanced back up at the man who was still trying to feign a smile. 
This cat was one of the strays she would feel in the ally. It had appeared relatively recently, within the last week or so. The cat had a patch of black fur on the tip of the cat’s right ear that always caught Em’s eye. When she would go into the alley, this cat would be the first to greet her, meowing loudly from behind one of the discarded and molded cardboard boxes. 
She glanced between the photo and the man and had to suppress shaking her head in fondness. Pet owners always look like their pets. 
Em glanced at the sky, noticing that she still had a fair amount of time to give him directions to the alley and get back to her apartment before the sunset. “I might have seen that cat this morning in the alley over there,” she pointed. “I’ll take you.” 
She gives him directions to the alleyway and motions that’s the place she has seen the cat. As she does this, she reaches into her bag and grabs her phone. Going into the camera on her phone, she hits record. If anything were to happen to her, there would at least be proof of who did it. 
In the alley, there was a pile of sleeping cats next to one of the discarded boxes in the alley. On the other side, a cat was roaming around and occasionally pawing at the bricks of the building. In the morning, the cats were rambunctious and excited about the food Em would bring. Now, however, the cats were cast in a sleepy spell as they tried to stretch out in the remaining light for the day.
The man enters the alley and looks around. He crouches near the other cats, one of them leaping up and moving out of the way. His head turns from side to side before he gets up and faces Em again. “She’s not here. Thank you for the advice, however.”
“She might come around in the morning. That’s when I usually see her.”
A ray of the low sun’s light caught Em in the eye, making the world light up in painful sparkles. Red flashed against the back of her eyelids. Her eyes fought to open against the light, looking at the old man that stood before her. 
His face shone with youth in the blinding light. The wrinkles of his face smoothed and his skin snapped back with elasticity. His eyes brightened with a more vibrant color, the gray-blue turning bold. His pupils narrowed the slightest bit, making his stare piercing. The old man’s hair seemed to multiply on his head and the gray faded into black. The ends of his hair were the darkest and pieces of hair on the top of his head stood up in tufts. There was a smile on his face with sharp teeth that sparkled with the last of the day’s light. Yet, with his smile, there was a darker emotion behind his eyes. Panic, pain, Em couldn’t tell what it was. 
Just as the light moved to shine down on both of them, the clouds moved and forced the light away. The illusion on the man fell away, him aging 40 years in the span of a second. His hair receded, the skin on his face sagged, and his teeth were no longer bright shining white and instead yellowed and decayed.
“Hmm. Alright. I’ll come around to look when I get the chance. Let me give you my number just in case you see her.” He grabbed out a pen and wrote on the back of the crumpled photo, then pushed it into her hands.
Em shook herself out of what she just saw, knowing that the light often played tricks on her eyes. “I don’t want to take your photo. What if someone else recognizes it?”
“I have plenty more back home. Have a good day, miss.” The man turned around and began to walk out of the alley. 
She still felt immense guilt about taking the photo and rushed after him, tossing her phone back into her bag without a second thought. Em was surprised at how fast this old man could move. Once she was no longer concealed by the buildings of the alley, she looked over in the direction she saw the old man leave only to see that he was no longer in sight. He had disappeared in the few seconds it took Em to get out of the alley. 
She was stuck with the photo with the number written on the back. Even though she wished the end of the conversation could have turned out differently, there wasn’t much she could do now. Just in case, she would keep the photo safe. 
The emotional fatigue trudged on Em’s shoulders as she arrived home. If it wasn’t for the fact that she had perishables in her bag, she might’ve ignored her chores and gone right to bed. She fished around for the items that needed to be put right away, yet got distracted by her phone laying at the bottom of her bag with the screen still on. A video showed, ready to be played. 
The recording must have stopped after the phone was jostled in her bag. However, as Em peered at the video thumbnail, she noticed that the video capture had issues. Pixels of bright colors dotted the screen like the file was corrupted. Em thought about just deleting the video, but something told her she should watch it back. 
She sat down at her dining room table, the one covered with the few things she bought at the store. While leaning over the table and holding her phone, she pressed play. 
Most of it was a recording of the ground and the sound of her and the man walking. It was full of the sound of cars and the conversations of the other people who had walked by. There was a flash of the ally as Em had turned and the sleeping cats were visible as a blur. Random colors popped up in random places, but it was nothing too distracting.
The whole video seemed normal until the shoes of the old man came into the frame. More colorful pixels popped up, starting at the corner and trickling closer to the center of the frame as more of the man came into view. 
Now, here was what wasn’t mentioned earlier. When the bright ray of sunlight got into Em’s eyes, she brought the hand that was holding the phone up to shield her vision. 
Em almost dropped her phone when the recording captured what she thought was an illusion of the light. Just like how it was in person, she saw how as the bright light shone down on the old man, the features of his face softened to make him look at least 30 years younger than he had before. 
It was just a glimpse she was able to get before the screen was covered in bright colored pixels. A high pitched noise crackled out what audio had been there and rang in Em’s ears. When the camera caught the ground again, the corruption faded away until the inside of a grocery bag was seen, screen turned to black, and the recording stopped. 
A meow called out from behind Em loud enough to be heard from a whole other room. She turned around and on her couch, a cat stretched out, its paws pushing deep into the cushion as its back arched into a deep downward dog.
It was gray with a patch of black fur on the tip of its ear. The cat from the alley! The one neither the man nor Em could find just an hour before.
Em rose from the chair, “What are you doing here?” She reached out to pet the cat and it nestled up against her hand. It was a good thing she was given the photo after all, she could message the man and let him know that she found the cat. After going back to grab the photo from the rest of her stuff, she typed out a quick text. 
Hello, this is the girl from earlier today that you gave the photo of your cat to. Great news, I found Luna. She must have followed me home. I will bring her to the alley tomorrow afternoon. If that doesn’t work, let me know. 
~~
The cat did not appreciate being carried around in a bag. Its meows echoed against the buildings and drew harsh looks from the other people walking on the street.
“You’re the one who ended up in my apartment instead of staying in the alley. I’m not going to adopt another person’s cat,” Em whispered to the cat under the revving engines that surrounded her. 
As Em got to the alley, she glanced at her surroundings. The cats that were always active in the morning were hopping from one trash can to another. No other person was around.
The cat meowed loudly and began to fight its surroundings. Even with Em trying to soothe the cat and keep it from running off, the cat managed to claw at Em’s arms which caused her to retract her arm out of the cat’s way. It leaped out of the bag just as the bright morning sunlight shone into Em’s eyes. 
The cat lit up in sparkles and its form began to stretch out. Its arms lengthened to human arms and the cat’s paws turned into shoe-covered feet. In a matter of seconds, what was once a tiny cat with an interesting pattern turned into an old man, the same old man looking for a cat. 
Once the facts registered in Em’s head, she backed away with a shout. This was not something that was supposed to be possible. Cats don’t turn into humans. Humans don’t turn into cats. Her eyes went from the ground to the man and back again what would have seemed like 20 times. 
“I see that you have found Luna, and kept my photo as well,” he came up to Em and grabbed the photo from her hand. She was in too much shock to fully react to how close he had gotten. 
“You have been the first person to ever help me find my cat. I have been looking for her for such a long time.”
Em shook her head. “But you are the cat, I just saw you transform from the cat into you. How does that even happen? Who’s Luna?” She rambled on with a million more questions, each one making her question reality further. 
The smile that was on the man’s face faltered and Em couldn’t stop seeing the resemblance between him and his cat, err, cat form. 
“Luna was the fiance I lost a long time ago. She was a beautiful woman who I loved deeply. Luna couldn’t have understood what happened to me, I had to let her go.”
“This is unreal. Cats can’t turn into humans.” Em didn’t know whether she should feel scared or angry. Emotions flooded through her as her world spun in circles. 
“Give me a moment to explain. 40 years ago,” the old man/cat started. “I was irresponsible and careless. It didn’t matter what happened to other people, as long as I got what I wanted. However, one of the men I manipulated was a lot smarter than me and had abilities I still don’t fully understand. He had placed a curse on me to randomly turn me from human to cat. The first few months were the worst. I wouldn’t allow myself around anyone else in fear that I would suddenly turn into a cat. So much of my time was spent in fear-filled isolation until I finally learned to control the curse, for the most part. I can decide when I turn, but I always must turn at least once per day otherwise I lose control again.”
“That’s… a lot,” Em said, trying to digest his words.
“It is, and it is a very challenging curse to live with. Ever since that day, I haven’t been able to live a completely normal life. The man I hurt told me that the only way to remove the curse was to have someone take it from me. I have been looking for someone to help me for so long. Will you take the curse from me? You’ve already shown me so much kindness and help.”
“I’ve just met you and I still can hardly believe that this is real. There’s no way that I can take on a curse. I still have my job, there are bills to be paid, I’m supposed to go see my family in a few weeks.” 
“And you can still do all of those things. I want you to help me get rid of the curse for good. I’ve found information about the man who gave me the curse, we can go find him and make him remove it from you. I would do it myself, but I’ve gotten too old. The transformations have taken so much out of me. I need your help.” 
The world continued to spin for Em. Everything felt so ridiculous and she couldn’t believe that he would want her to face the same struggles he had. He was the reason for his own curse, but as she looked at the man, she felt that he had changed over the years. Maybe being a cat for so long forced him to become a better person. Maybe it would be a good thing to remove the curse for good so no one would have to have the same fate. 
“I still can’t give up my time.”
“Two weeks. That’s all we need. It will give you a few days to learn how to control your transformations. I can help you with that. Then, we go over to where he is. I figured out that he’s just a few towns over, the train can take us there. Take the time off of work. Say it’s a family emergency. I need you to help me. I need to remove this curse.” 
She glanced at the world around her as if to remind her of where she was. As she did that, she spotted the cats still roaming around in the area. They almost seemed to be watching her. She had enough vacation time that she could take a two week vacation. She wouldn’t be able to take any more time off for the next few months though. 
“Okay, I’ll do it. Two weeks, tops. Then I have to go back to my normal life.”
“Of course. Now, all you have to say is ‘I will take the curse from you.’”
As Em repeated his words, the sun’s light hit both of them, causing sparkles to fill the sky. Em’s world got so much bigger as she shrunk down into cat form. Her fur was a deep brown, the same color as her hair. 
The old man looked about the same. He still had his wild hair and wrinkly face. However, he seemed a little more tired as if he just lost a few lives. He looked down at the now small Em, “Thank you.”
The old man seemed so tall now to Em. His height towered over her. She glanced up at the sky and saw a bird flying overhead. Her immediate urge was to hunt it. The claws hidden underneath the fur of her paws poked out. Her new ears twitched with each new sound, so much louder than it was before. She stretched just like how she saw the man the night before. The feeling of her much smaller body was so strange with the addition of fur and a tail. Everything felt weird and wrong, at least it was only for two weeks. 
When Em looked back to the level of the old man, he started to walk away. This wasn’t what she expected him to do and was not what she agreed to. She dashed off towards him, trying to get him to stop. Her screams came out as screechy yowls that turned heads as she slipped between and around the legs of strangers, tumbling over her four feet instead of the two she was used to. She followed him as he left the alley and crossed the street. The car-filled street seemed so much more dangerous now that she was smaller. 
Maybe he will be back. Maybe he is getting stuff for us to start traveling. He needs to come back, I don’t know how to turn back into a human. How long am I going to be stuck like this? 
She lost sight of the man and seeing the huge world around her made her fur stand up, turning her into a puffball. With careful actions, she went back to the alley.
He’s not going to come back.
The voice startled her, her head whipped around to find the friendly orange cat that always tried to climb up her legs when she would give food to in the mornings.
As she tried to talk like how she would as a human, a loud meow came out instead. What do you mean, “he’s not going to come back?”
We noticed that when he appeared in the alley he acted weird. Right away, we knew that Luna was not his name and carefully observed him as he would disappear at random points of the day. The third night he was with us, we saw him transform back into a cat before coming to the sleeping pile. He threatened to take us all away the next time he transformed into a human if we tried to stop him from sharing our food or talking to you. We are sorry that this happened. 
Another cat that was on one of the moldy boxes jumped down and made Em poof up again. This was the black and white cat that favored canned tuna over anything else. 
We will help you learn how to survive in the city. It’s not easy being a stray. The food isn’t as good as the stuff you give us. But we have made things work. 
Em spent the entirety of the first night trapped as a cat. It got cold and her stomach growled as she found a spot in the sleeping pile. She would always be grateful that the cats remembered who she was and welcomed her in. There was an advantage to feeding the cats every morning for so long. 
You’re not going to turn into him, right? One of the cats asked her the following morning. Em had been sitting near the street, willing herself to turn into human form so she could hunt the man down. She wanted to warn her job about her future attendance. Her rent was going to be due in a week. Most of all, she didn’t want the man to win. 
He manipulated her just like he did the others. She knew exactly what to have expected, but she still fell for it. Her ears twitched as she was pulled out of her thoughts. If you mean manipulate anyone else into getting this curse, then no. I won’t turn into him.
Her meows came out harshly, but she meant what she said. She was better than that, better than him. 
Come then, let’s get some food.
This cycle repeated for the next few days. The cats of the alley showed Em where they got their limited food from and how to hunt the city mice. At first, Em was deeply disturbed by the idea of eating rodents and trash. However, her stomach growled louder with each day and she showed no signs of turning back into a human soon.
Did you know that the bakery down the street just tosses the rest of the sausage they made after two hours?
There’s a lady in the apartment a few stories up with a kid who loves to throw his vegetables over the balcony. The shop owner across the street never says a thing.
Come with me, I’ll show you how to leap across the roofs of buildings. 
The other cats, each with their own given names which Em picked up quickly, told her information about the city. Even though Em had lived here for a very long time, she still learned new things from the perspective of a cat and from the other cats. 
She even learned to stop meowing when talking to the other cats, instead communicating the soundless ways the others had been with her.
I don’t think I can do this. Em stood on the roof of the bakery. Tessa, the orange cat, circled around her with her tail flicking around. 
You have to trust your new instincts. It’s no different than leaping from box to box. We can leap 6 feet. I’ve heard of cats jumping from floors to the top of the fridge. The other building is just a few feet away.
If Em was in her human form, she could leap across the gap with no problem. The distance would be nothing and she moved similarly when jumping across cracks in the sidewalk. Now, going from a little over 5 feet tall to a foot tall, every gap is a world away. 
Her ears twitched once again and she sensed her surroundings. It has gotten a lot easier to tune into her cat senses, making it easier to sense sudden movements and catch birds from the air. She couldn’t deny that pouncing at prey was pretty fun. 
Getting into a pouncing position, her front legs lowered and her eyes trained on the next building over. Em wasn’t going to psych herself out again, she was going to do it. She leaped into the air and across the gap that previously felt a mile long. Tessa shortly followed her, cheering as she went. 
A few mornings later she woke up to an empty pile. Her cat form looked around to find the other alley cats surrounding some sort of object. She stretched a deep stretch before heading over to the other cats. 
In the middle of the group sat a very shiny object. It was the fanciest pet collar she had ever seen. The collar itself was a deep blue velvet and was jewel encrusted. She recognized diamonds, tanzanite, and black opal placed into silver prongs.
Em got closer to the collar and placed a paw on it. With the touch, she felt herself expand and grow until she was fully human once again. Her first transformation stretched her muscles beyond their limits and Em was left in a lot of pain. 
The collar moved with her transformation, staying in her hands with her fingers tightly curled around it. This action revealed a small note that was previously tucked underneath the collar.
A compensation for your troubles
She just knew that the old man had left this collar here. Of course, he couldn’t have helped her find the person who set the curse or given her a stash of food that wasn’t mice and other rodents. He gave her a random collar that taunted her as she looked at it. 
Em no longer could hear what the cats were saying. They stared at her as she held the collar. Was this supposed to be an appreciation gift? Was this supposed to help her on her journey to supposedly stop the person who gave the old man the curse, which he never gave her any information to help? She wanted to throw the collar, to find the old man and make him wish he never stepped foot into the city. 
Row, a white cat gone gray in the city debris, rubbed his head against her leg. She took a deep breath, knowing the cats could always sense how she was feeling. The collar was heavy and the jewels encrusted into it could make her rich, giving her enough money to search the world for those who wronged her. She could go state by state, country by country until she found out who these people really were and what she could do to them. 
“I know, I won’t turn into the old man. I won’t do the same things he has done. He won’t turn me bitter and full of despair.” 
Panic gripped her chest, her job. She surely wasn’t going to have a job when she got back to the boutique. Her phone was nowhere in sight. It fell out somewhere when she first turned into a cat, completely forgotten about as she no longer had thumbs. 
But she could now see her family. She could sleep in her own bed at the apartment. There was so much she could do again now that she has started to figure out how to control her transitions. 
Em returned to her apartment that night. A lot of the food in the fridge had to be thrown out and she was glad she had enough money to cover rent. The collar sat sitting on her table, glaring down at her. At least the nice lady next store allowed her to use the phone to call her work. Em explained that a family emergency came up and that she had to leave immediately. She never got a chance to use her vacation time after the sudden transition. 
Em was fired that night for being a no-show so many times. 
As Em sat on her couch eating dinner of salmon and fruit- the latter of which she missed dearly while as a cat, she was paranoid of the next time her human limbs would turn to those of a cat. How long would she be stuck as a cat again? 
Transitioning between cat and human became easier over time. Em slowly learned how to control her transitions and how to keep them away from other people. She understood the struggles the old man talked about with how isolating it can be when she couldn’t control her transitions. At least she had a group of cat friends to keep her company when stuck in cat form. 
Without a job, Em was close to losing her apartment. She was starting to pack things up and sell what she wouldn’t be able to quickly move in the few hours of human form she would sometimes have. Sure, she could have used the collar to keep her rent, but that felt selfish of her. 
Use the collar for something good. Something that old man would never even think of. Tessa would often tell her as Em was trying to find her way back to her feet, sometimes literally. 
The old man spent his years bitter and in isolation. His energy went to finding someone else to take the curse. Em never should have let the man use her, but now that it has happened, she vowed to be better.
She started up a cat shelter in one of the For Lease shops along her street. The money from the collar allowed her to pay for the lease, all the equipment, and to gain the knowledge needed of starting a shelter. She brought all the strays from the alley and gave them a nice cat room with lots of toys and delicious food.
I’ve never been in a place like this before. Row said after she turned into a cat for the night. How did you manage to do all this?
Em could only focus on the sweet smell of the cat treats she left open on the counter. She wanted to hop up and take one but told herself that it was for the others. 
The collar gave me the money for everything. You all told me to not be like the man, and I took that to heart. I’m doing something better.
Em cried each night after she helped a family sign the paperwork to adopt a cat. It was good that the cats were going to someplace much better than the streets, but it hurt to see each of them go.
As more stray cats appeared in the city, Em would go and bring them to her shelter. Each cat loved the space and it always helped that Em was able to communicate with them.
For the nights that she got stuck in cat form, she had created a room of her own in the back of the shelter decked out with the things she couldn’t have had in her apartment. With both a bed fit for a human and one for a cat, it never mattered whether she was in human form or cat form. 
Maybe the old man would come around again and she would force him to help her remove the curse. However, Em seemed to be making the cat life work much better than the old man ever could have. One thing was for certain, she was never lonely. In fact, the curse only expanded her friend circle, giving her more insight into the world around her.
Check the story out here https://hubpages.com/literature/the-old-man-a-short-story to help support my writing!
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mejomonster · 1 year
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Reminder to self, I loved all of chapter 129 to 130:
Then his smile became dimmer and dimmer, and he was silent for a while. Lu Jia said, “I’ve heard someone say that those people who take drugs have the physiological structure of their brains changed by the drugs—that sounds pretty horrifying. Think about it. If experience, character, upbringing, and so on are all the body’s removable software, then the brain must be the hardware. If your brain changes, the equivalent of changing from an Ultrabook to a Xiao Bawang1, it’s like another soul has been reincarnated in your body. Even though you have the same memories, you’re not the same person as before.”
 
Fei Du didn’t interrupt, listening very patiently.
 
“But actually I sometimes think that trauma is something similar.” Lu Jia’s tone changed. He unbuckled his seatbelt and stretched in the confined space. “Trauma can also change a person beyond recognition. Sometimes you look at other people, then look in the mirror, and you feel hollow inside. You think, how did I become like this? I don’t even recognize myself.
 
“Ordinary people pursue things, nothing but houses, cars, careers, love, position, dreams. They’re busy every day, each one of them holding a bellyful of worries and happiness. Their worries are genuine feelings, and their happiness is sincere. They don’t know what ‘inconstancy’ is. They think that today is the same as yesterday is the same as tomorrow. They won’t think, ‘I’m only an ant sitting on a dead leaf floating in the river that can overturn any time.’”
 
Fei Du didn’t pass comment. With his chin propped on his hand, he made a noise and waited for him to continue speaking.
 
“But you’re different. You can’t spend your days like that. You’re like a hen that’s had its feathers scared off by a firework and can’t lay eggs anymore.—You look at other people and think that all the things they’re pursuing are illusions. You can’t treat them as real. They can vanish just like that. You have nightmares every day. Your head is full of vain hopes. You’re irritable, worried, anxious for absolutely no reason… When someone gives you a second look, you think maybe he has bad intentions. When someone stops you in the street to ask for directions, you think he may be plotting something. Sometimes you’ll even see someone feeling around in his bag too long and suspect he’s got a hidden weapon on him.”
 
Lu Jia’s voice grew quieter and quieter.
 
Noisy, raucous voices came in through the crack in the window, their babble mixing with the man’s voice, making him seem increasingly out of place, increasingly lonely.
 
“Trust in society and your environment is a cornerstone of a sense of security,” Fei Du said. “Without that, you can only drift in a state of constant psychological stress. In fact, it’s very painful. Even if the trauma passes…”
 
“It doesn’t pass. These things never pass. Even though they’ve caught the killer, it’s still the same. ‘If you gaze into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.’ I don’t know whether you’ve had that feeling.” Lu Jia shook his head. “Sometimes I feel like I have a mental disorder and living is pointless.”
 
Fei Du silently reached over and patted his thick, broad shoulder.
 
Lu Jia waved a hand. “I love talking to you, even though you sit there the whole time and only say a few words.”
 
“According to social etiquette, I should say something to console you. For example, something like, ‘Everything passes. Time will one day make you lose your memories and intellect, so of course it will also heal your wounds.’” At this point, Fei Du heard a car horn honk twice, briefly. He didn’t look out the window, simply picked up his jacket and put it over himself. “But that’s all nonsense. Even if you wanted hear it, I wouldn’t be inclined to say it.”
 
Lu Jia laughed in spite of himself. “President Fei, I think you’re simply discriminating based on attractiveness? With me you aren’t inclined to say a single extra word, only the great truth, but if there were a pretty young woman sitting here, then wouldn’t you carefully adhere to societal norms?”
 
“Then it’s good fortune to be plainer looking. It’s not easy to hear the great truth from me,” Fei Du said with a great show of earnestness. Then he suddenly turned to Lu Jia. “Lao Lu, I’m not inclined to say it to you, but I talked to a pretty little girl recently and have some words ready-to-hand. Will you listen?”
 
Having suffered discrimination, Lu Jia helplessly took on a posture of being all ears.
 
“Each person can be molded by external things. Environment, luck, the people they like, the people they hate…even a person like Lu Guosheng, who makes you want to peel off his skin and rip out his tendons. Murderers use trauma to mold a part of your flesh and blood. That’s a fact, whether you’re willing or not.”
 
Lu Jia stared at him.
 
“If it were me, do you know what I’d do? I’d cut off that piece of flesh, let out that bowl of blood, then take an axe to the deformed bones underneath and smash them. I’m not the person gazing into the abyss. I am the abyss.” Fei Du gave him a slightly bloody smile. But before the smile could fully develop, the mood was ruined by another horn blast. Fei Du shook his head helplessly and turned to open the car door and get out. “What’s the rush?—Drive this car away for me. My parking situation’s tight over there. If you like it, then drive it around to your heart’s content. Happy New Year.”
 x
This wasn’t Luo Wenzhou’s first time living in the duty room for several days in a row. Before it hadn’t been a big deal. Apart from finding someone to feed the cat, there’d been nothing else to worry about. None of those times had been like this one. He felt like he’d been sleeping in the duty room for half a lifetime. The first time he’d honked, he’d seen Fei Du respond by starting to put on his jacket, so he’d known he’d heard. But Luo Wenzhou had watched him take a full minute to put on that jacket and dawdle, talking to Lu Jia, and he’d finally been unable to resist basely honking again.
 
Not seeing each other for a day was like being apart for three years—according to this reckoning, when Fei Du had dawdled for a minute, it was as though he’d dawdled for 18.25 hours; who could endure that?!
 
As soon as the door closed, Luo Wenzhou was itching with impatience to assault the driver, but considering that the environment was too noisy and there was an indiscreet fat guy behind them watching them go, he resisted the impulse and, very unsatisfied, grumbled, “Were you two plotting to overthrow the authority of the Milky Way? What was that meeting about that you had to spend so long talking?”
 
Fei Du sighed, steadily turning the steering wheel, maintaining an even speed as he got onto the main road. Then he freed up some time to pull out Luo Wenzhou’s groping hand, which was feeling around under his clothes. “I’m going to crash into the guardrail by the road.”
 
While it wasn’t visible on Fei Du’s face, he was in fact rather at a loss, because the last words Luo Wenzhou had said to him had been, “Fei Du, you prick,” truly not at all sweet. These last few days it had been big things followed by little things, and there’d been no time for anyone to pay attention to how anyone else was doing. Now that there was temporarily a free moment, he felt like he was coming back requesting a reconciliation after a couple of days of cold war.
 
Fei Du had reached his present age having played with his life and played with fire, but he’d never played a “reconciliation after cold war” game with anyone. The earlier “I am the abyss” aura had long ago blown away along with the exhaust. He racked his brains for a moment. “You…”
 
He hadn’t gotten out anything to follow the “you” when he saw Luo Wenzhou slowly withdraw his scrounging hand, bring it close to his nose and sniff it, then lick his fingers.
 
Fei Du: “…”
 
“Drive faster,” Luo Wenzhou said meaningfully. “I’m starving.”
 
This wasn’t the right context for either apologies or explanations. Fei Du tactfully closed his mouth and stepped on the gas pedal, skirting the speed limit.
 
But maybe his driving was too steady or something; having finished his harassment maneuver, the sleep god Luo Wenzhou turned his head and fell asleep. In a journey only ten minutes long, he efficiently took a nap. When Fei Du shook him awake, Luo Wenzhou blearily stretched in a manner stolen from Luo Yiguo, incidentally grabbing Fei Du’s arm and sweeping him into his embrace, vaguely saying, “I’m so sleepy.”
 
“Wake up,” Fei Du said. “We’re home.”
 
“I don’t want to move.” Luo Wenzhou lay on him, playing dead for a while. Then, struck by some brainwave, he whined, “Honey, why don’t you carry me up on your back?”
 
Fei Du: “…”
 
Luo Wenzhou saw him freeze and say nothing for quite some time. Thinking that the worldly President Fei had been stunned by his shamelessness, he shook with laughter.
 
Then Fei Du suddenly buttoned up his jacket, got out of the car, and went to the other side. Under Luo Wenzhou’s dumbstruck gaze, he opened the car door, turned, and half knelt down. “Come on.”
X
Luo Wenzhou scrambled to fish them out. “Darling, if there’s anything to say, let’s say it, you don’t need to be such a hero… Put me down… Hey, don’t rush! No ‘hold tight’ warning and you’re already moving! Slow down, slow down!”
 
There were only a few steps from the parking space to the door, and Luo Wenzhou lived on the first floor. It was only a little way. However weak Fei Du was, he still wasn’t so weak he couldn’t carry him, but Luo Wenzhou was an expert at frightening himself. He was scared witless the whole way, feeling his legs were hanging in midair, and he was lying on an antique vase; the vase was normally kept under glass, and he still thought that wasn’t safe enough, and now he was pressing down on it, shaking, not even daring to breathe deeply, afraid that if he took a big breath he’d scrape off a piece of that precious vase’s glaze.
 
He could feel Fei Du’s somewhat rapid breathing as he exhaled a trace of warmth. The ends of his hair were hidden inside his scarf, only one lock hanging out, softly falling on his collar. Fei Du’s hard bones were pressing into his chest, stabbing, making him feel rather tender.
 
With that bit of tenderness, Luo Wenzhou couldn’t resist behaving badly. He drew close and gently rubbed his nose against Fei Du’s hair, drawing in a deep breath at his collar. Then he quietly said into Fei Du’s ear, “I’ve thought of an expression.”
 
“Oh?” Fei Du said.
 
X
Hooking like this, he touched Fei Du’s chin. He couldn’t resist stroking that somewhat sharp-cut chin. “Say, last time when we ate at Tao Ran’s, you wouldn’t even take a little coffeemaker up the stairs. How come you’re so nice today?—Have you done something to let me down these last few days? Huh?”
 
Fei Du thought about it. “One thing.”
 
Luo Wenzhou froze.
 
Fei Du took a slight break, then raised a foot onto the step. “I’ve adored you without permission. Sorry.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
He was silent a moment, then suddenly reached out to catch the banister, forcing Fei Du to halt his steps. Then without a word he struggled free and grabbed Fei Du’s scarf.
 
Fei Du went up the last two steps pushed and pulled by him.
 
Luo Wenzhou carelessly got out his keys and unlocked the door without even looking, relying on instinct. Then he pushed Fei Du into the entrance hall and pinned him against the door.
 x
irritably. “You didn’t say a word all the way here, and you agreed to everything I said. My mind is a mess. I keep thinking you’re holding back some big plot again.”
 
Fei Du stared, his smile receding.
 
“I was just thinking, if you came out again with some bullshit like, ‘We’re not suited for each other, let’s break up,’ I’d kill you. You wouldn’t be able to get out of bed next year.” Luo Wenzhou stuck his hand into Fei Du’s hair and viciously rumpled it. “Why? Is it…because of what happened that day at the ecological park?”
 
Fei Du paused. “I thought you were going to think…”
 
“Think that you really weren’t any good?” Luo Wenzhou sighed. He leaned across the wreck on the floor and pulled Fei Du by the collar, lips flitting over the tip of his nose. “You really were kind of scary that day. You know what I thought?”
 
“What?” Fei Du said.
 
“It’s lucky that I’m here to keep an eye on you… Ah, as a man using his beauty to save the world, the Nobel Committee really ought to issue me a Peace Prize.”
 
Fei Du: “…”
 
“I’m just teasing.” Luo Wenzhou let him go and bent down to pick up the clothes rack lying wearily on the ground. “If I weren’t here, at your age, you’d still know what to do, isn’t that right?”
 
Fei Du was looking at him without blinking, as if he wanted to use his gaze to make an imprint of his outline and hide it in the deepest, darkest part of his heart, not letting anyone see.
 
“What are you looking at?” Even with his invincible face, Luo Wenzhou still felt somewhat awkward being watched by him like this—and he’d thought that he’d removed the word “awkward” from his lexicon. “You won’t help clean up, all you can do is stand there watching. You have no sense of the situation. Who else but me would want you?”
X
For a time, the demented suspects, the victims shouting themselves hoarse, the complex old case, the unknown enemy agent…at once all of them calmly left his world on their own.
 
His mind was as peaceful as soup simmering over a low flame, slowly sending up steam, once in a long while sending up a bubble. Each bubble was a full production, nothing hasty, only popping when it was overflowing, the aroma assaulting the senses.
 
It was the aroma of home, which made a person feel a sense of perfect satisfaction when he smelled it, desiring nothing, as if his whole life could settle into place like this.
 
Luo Wenzhou crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head up, lightly closing his eyes.
 
This time, he felt that the opportunity was finally ripe. The hastily-spoken words came up to his lips in the fullness of time, and he called to Fei Du, “Hey, Feishir3.”
 
“…” Fei Du said, “What is it, grandpa?”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked at the ceiling. Then he looked at the floor. He bent down and picked up the generously-proportioned Luo Yiguo. Squeezing the cat’s paws, he asked, “When are you planning to make things official with me?”
 
Fei Du paused. Then, without saying a word, he looked down and searched around among the iron wire he’d cut off earlier, cut off a piece of the appropriate length, and very nimbly used the needle-nosed pliers to twist it into a spiral ring with three circles. He blew off the filings, brought it to his lips and kissed it, then turned and knelt down.
 
Luo Wenzhou and Luo Yiguo were both startled, backing up at the same time. Luo Yiguo bumped into Luo Wenzhou’s shoulder, and Luo Wenzhou bumped into the wall.
 
Fei Du said, “The size is definitely just right. Will you put it on?”
 
That day, Luo Wenzhou personally demonstrated to him that the appellation “grandpa” was mere provocation; in fact, President Fei didn’t get out of bed until next year.
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downbadforbowser · 2 years
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Things that scared my tiny child brain
A while ago, a bunch of youtubers made lists of scenes they found particularly upsetting as kid, so I figured I’d make my own list (in no particular order). 
1) Al Lusions death in Powerpuff Girls
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(apologies for the quality)  This scene used to utterly wig me out as a kid, because on top of tripping into an iron maiden, it’s implied that after fucking dying in front of a whole ass audience, the guy’s body is left in this theater for years and years. In fact, The Powerpuff Girls fight his zombie ghost form. I always felt a bit bad for the guy.  Rating: 7 Terrified rats out of 10 2) Rugrats: .... Just Rugrats. I used to love Rugrats, but the Klasky Csupo art style never sat well with me. So you can imagine how it felt to see:   - A lot of unnerving mouth perspective shots - That fucking terrifying baby - I’M NOT STU
But what really fucked me up? that dead body in the trash chute that Tommy gets stuck in. Why did this wig me out as a kid, on top of it being a dead body? I had a million questions. How did he get there? did he get stuck in the trash and die? did someone kill him and dump him there? 
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Put this in your freaking remake, Paramount Plus. Rating: 7 Terrified rats out of 10 3) Ren and Stimpy  So Ren and Stimpy has...a reputation. But to be honest, a lot of the show never bothered me as a kid. The expressions were funny, I thought it was hilarious how they bounced on their asses during “happy happy joy joy”.  But there’s one scene that really kills the whole vibe. The scene where Ren’s teeth rot out of his skull. But oh no, on top of pulling all his fucking teeth out (great), we get to see him pull out the dangly nerve endings too (awesome). I wish I could hit the history eraser button after witnessing it. I’m not linking the clip here, I deal with enough “teeth falling out of your skull” dreams as is, you’re welcome. Rating: 9 Terrified rats out of 10 4) Brave Little Toaster and David the Gnome 
Both David the Gnome and Brave Little Toaster have scenes that gave me an existential crisis. Brave Little Toaster is riddled with scenes that can give a kid an existential crisis. And for that, I commend it. I have no ill will towards this movie, it’s a good movie. Some people say you should watch things that make you uncomfortable (within reason of course), and I’d definitely put this in a kid friendly category of that reasoning. This movie made me think of existence in ways my tiny brain never thought of before. Hell, I’ve barely talked about the Worthless song. Not only does it go hard, but they tell you so much about these characters in a few short lines, before they’re brutally smashed. It had such an impact on people as kids, all the comments under these clips for BLT are full of speculation and theorizing. I think it’s really cool.  Rating: 8 existential crisis rats out of 10 As for David, his death scene with his wife just wrecked me. The midi synth music kind of kills the mood, but if you edited this with a full orchestra, it could be soul destroying. I always loved how he turns into a tree though. It’s a bittersweet scene. Rating: 6 existential crisis rats out of 10 5) Courage the cowardly dog “Return the Slab” is what everyone loves to point to as Courage’s all time freaky moment, but for me I was more spooked out by Freaky Fred and the Mermaid that lures men to their toothy deaths. There was also an enemy that was a giant foot (no, this show did not air on Nickelodeon, why do you ask?). Anyways the show was great, and it was one of my first intros to horror.  Rating: 5 Terrified rats out of 10 6) Magic School Bus: Poor Arnold People have said enough of this scene, I’ll just link this clip 
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Rating: 5 Terrified rats out of 10 7) ET: Sorry, are we supposed to find this misshapen fetus corpse cute? On top of him looking like a complete nightmare, the honking noises he makes when he yells sound like someone who is seriously congested and ill. Add this to the way his neck extends. Tl;dr- 
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Rating: 6 Terrified rats out of 10 8) Twister Honestly the movie didn’t scare me too much as a kid, surprisingly. But the eerie way the twisters growl and screech definitely unnerved me. I’m going to hand it to the opening scene though. It does a good setup to the tornado approaching, and I was on the edge of my seat over that poor dog. Thankfully the dog is smarter than the dad. Seriously there’s no reason to hold the door.  Rating: 5 Terrified rats out of 10 9) Are you afraid of the dark: The Tale of the Shiny Red Bicycle  Not to spoil the whole episode - But this one was a little too real for me, which is why it wigged me out. This kid loses his childhood friend to a drowning accident when the bridge under him collapses. It deals with a surprising amount of mature themes like survivors guilt and trauma. Upon revisiting this, I’m really surprised how this was handled. The main character is haunted by his friend’s ghost, and the adults in his life don’t take him seriously until his visions of his friend as a ghost start to ramp up and affect him. I like how it ended, but it was a pretty heavy watch as a kid. Rating: 9 Terrified rats out of 10
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phantom-narrator · 2 years
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{ Streets; }
We sat in silence as the train paved its way through the underground. He seemed to pay me no mind, rushing out the doors the second we arrived and heading straight towards the exit. He moved through the station like his feet memorized every tile. I keep up the pace, fascinated by how the pattern on his bag seems to twist and turn.
I pause under the awning in front of the exit. A crackling noise hammers down on the roof, like a thousand pinpricks melding into a static buzz. The street is littered with puddles, raindrops dancing across the ground. I am enraptured by the rhythmic motion of the cascading water highlighted under the streetlamps. This station is my anchor in this new world, and I am content to simply stay there, watching the rainfall.
The city cares not of my desire for stillness, however, and drags me through the whirlwind of its motion. Honking horns and the rumbling of a passing bus; shrieks of laughter and hurried passersby – the unfamiliar noise is defeaning to ears accustomed to silence. But the boy is already moving ahead, and I run to catch up to him.
A few people shelter themselves under umbrellas, while others walk with a rushed gait. I wonder for a moment whether I need an umbrella too, for I cannot feel the rain on my skin. A woman takes off her heels and runs past, joking with her friend about being barefooted. Another voice is concerned about which route would be the fastest, directing their companions toward the crosswalk. To my left, a couple huddle together, attempting to share one umbrella. I try to hover within close proximity to the anomaly I was tailing, keeping an eye on him within the crowds.
The buildings are painted in a dazzling array of lights and billboards, making the city itself feel like a living, breathing creature. We pause in front of an intersection, and I overhear a pair discussing a movie they had just watched. I lose track of time as I watch the city. It could have been a minute or thirty since I left the station, yet the black sky above me could tell me no difference.
We move to cross yet another road, and I spot a street vendor selling food to pedestrians to my right. The smell wafting from the tiny stall is so strikingly familiar, so intimately recognizable, that it shocked me out of my mindless chase. It was calling on memories it cannot find, begging me to remember another place and time.
I do not recognize its origin, but something else in me does, and tells me that it smells like home, like warmth and happiness and all that is good in this world. And all my senses focus on that stall, on the way it looks and smells and the sound of the owner’s voice, my mind desperately grasping at this inkling of a memory.
So focused, in fact, that I forget where I was. A beam of light catches the corner of my eye, and I realize that my companion has already crossed the street, disappearing into the crowd of passersby. The light barrels towards me. It is growing larger and larger, but a calm, instinctual familiarity plants my feet into the ground. The screeching asphalt was deafening and yet, I need not move. And suddenly the car is close, too close, its light blinding -
-and it passes right through, as if I was not there in the first place.
I was alone on the crosswalk.
---
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btw has anyone ever played this game. its a cornerstone of who i am as a person and i just played it again yesterday and found it interesting.
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the normal battles are just you fighting against other dinos (and its like. kinda brutal. they slam each other around) but the like… hidden mini bosses in each level…
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???????? who came up with this????
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peterbarnes · 3 years
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And With the Wind, Came You
Summary: After Yelena’s brainwashing is reversed in Black Widow, she stumbles onto your fire escape, where you unexpectedly find comfort in each other. (Inspired by a request from: @hb8301 )
Word Count: 1.8k
A/N: Since Yelena’s brainwashing tech was designed after Bucky’s I figured she would likely have some memory issues too once she got out of it.
Masterlist
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Your apartment sat completely still as the city’s wind pushed violently against the bricks. The once clear living room window was now littered with raindrops, and as you peered out of it, you saw the old and red fire escape was soaked, rain dripping from stair to stair.
You made a habit of going out there every night since you moved to the city. You would close your eyes and listen to the sound of your neighborhood, taking in the wailing of the sirens racing by, the brutal honking from bad drivers, and the excited shrieks from the girls partying at the bar downstairs.
All of the noise used to clog your ears, forcing you to clamp your hands around them for your own sanity. But over the days, weeks, and now months, it seemed to declutter, to fade into a harmless background noise. That’s why you started to venture out onto your fire escape, to put a picture to the noise. You would come up with full scenarios, storylines of these people's lives and all that led up to the exact moment you saw them. They all lived in your head- the lawyer with crippling anxiety who had an affair, the teenage girl crushing on the boy she sees at the bus stop everyday, the stoner who's on their way to Yale in a few months. Even though none of these people knew you, it was almost as if you had forged your own community. And suddenly, the loneliness, the constant feeling of being so small in such a large city, didn’t feel so suffocating. The city wasn’t drowning you, it was almost as if, as its winds carried the sounds to your fire escape, it was reaching out a hand.
You especially thought so after tonight, when the wind brought something else to your fire escape.
You sat by the window, looking outside at the rain every now and then. The TV was what had most of your attention, the voice of the news anchor, a middle aged woman in a blue pencil dress, booming throughout your apartment.
“A woman was found murdered on Oak Street today. Police cite the cause of death as a stab to the gut, following which the weapon was then dragged all the way across her side up to her heart, making the wound lethal. There are currently no suspects-“
A large bang sounded out of nowhere, interrupting the anchor and causing your heart to jolt. Your pulse climbed as you struggled to grab the remote, quickly muting the news and looking out the window next to you, where the sound came from. The rain covered the window, making it nearly impossible to see out of, but as you got closer to it, enough for your breath to imprint on the glass, you saw what looked like a yellow blur. The hell?
As the seconds passed, it got larger, and seemingly closer to where you sat. Your curiosity got the best of you, and instead of running to your room and locking the door, you stayed put, wondering just what could be outside. Please don’t let this be another alien invasion, I do not have the emotional capacity for that right now.
But as the figure inched its way toward you, climbing up the ladder to the fire escape, the rain and the fog no longer completely shielding its figure, you saw that it wasn’t an alien- it was a girl.
Though the closed window blocked the noise, you could see she was panting, clearly out of breath as she climbed. She fiddled with the sleeves of the black armored suit she was wearing, and her cheeks were wet, though you couldn’t tell if it was from tears or the rain. Once she made it up to your level, she stumbled onto the platform, falling flat on her back. She didn’t look injured just… exhausted, distraught. She covered her face with her hands, and as her shoulders shook it was as if you could almost hear the sobs that must have been leaving her body.
Do all burglars cry before robbing someone?
Your eyebrows furrowed, your brain whirling as you thought of what to do next. The safer option- your usual choice- was to run away and call for help. Or…
You unlatched your window and pushed it all the way up, the rain now making its way into your apartment and soaking your seat. The girl was too lost in her breakdown to notice you as you climbed onto the platform, kneeling next to her.
“Um, are you okay?” You asked hesitantly, placing your hand on her shoulder.
The girl jumped up, her right hand instinctively forming a fist and pulling it back behind her head, ready to strike.
“Woah, woah, woah,” you exclaimed, holding your hands up in front of you. “I’m not going to hurt you, I- uh- thought you were a criminal at first. But then you started crying so… I just wanted to see if you were alright.”
The words slipped from your tongue awkwardly, not quite knowing how to approach the strange girl in front of you. She didn’t say anything, but her fist dropped onto her lap, her fingers unclenching. Her eyes scanned you, up and down, as if you were something to be analyzed, assessed. Eventually, the tension left her shoulders and her eyes slipped from yours, turning to look down at the platform she was laying on.
“I am a criminal.”
Whereas you struggled to talk to her, her words came out naturally, her Russian accent shining through and turning four- kind of concerning- words into the most beautiful sound you had ever heard. Definitely more beautiful than anything you had ever heard from this city, even with all those nights out on the fire escape. But even though it was beautiful, the sound was sad, defeated. This girl only looked like she was in her twenties, and yet her voice sounded as if she had lived a million lifetimes.
“What do you mean you’re a criminal?”
You saw her eyes move from the ground to towards your window, where she looked in at the TV. The anchor was still talking about the murder downtown, yellow caution tape behind her as she reported from the scene. The girl must not be that good of a criminal because criminals need to be able to hide, to commit a crime and get away with it flawlessly, but her eyes were laced with an intense guilt you could barely stomach, her bottom lip wobbling as a picture of the murdered woman flashed on the screen.
“Did you do that?” You whispered, pointing towards the TV as your hand shook. You could feel your heart nearly beat out of your chest at the thought of being with a murderer, alone, on a fire escape with nothing to protect you.
“Not willingly,” she said, the words clearly paining her as tears leaked out of her eyes.
“Like the Winter Soldier?”
Her head snapped up at the name, her eyes boring into your own.
“You know about the Winter Soldier program? That’s classified Russian information-“
“Um, no,” you said awkwardly. Where has this girl been for the last five years? “The whole world knows about it. Bucky Barnes, World War Two veteran, war hero, was kidnapped by Hydra and brainwashed, turned into an assassin. Everyone thought he bombed the UN like a month ago. The Avengers, like, broke up because of it.”
“The Avengers?”
You nodded.
“Do you really not know these things?” You asked softly.
She shook her head, and you could see the gears turning in her head, trying to decode the world she was thrown into.
“Were you brainwashed?” You asked cautiously, dragging out the words.
She didn’t respond at first. Instead, her nails dug into her palms deep enough to draw blood as if it would wake her up and she would suddenly have a different answer, a different reality.
“Yes… I think so.”
You nodded as you took in what she was saying. You knew she was probably terrified out of her mind and had nowhere to go, but you also knew anyone associated with Hydra or those Russian terrorist groups were dangerous, and could probably bring a lot of bad into your life- trouble you didn’t need.
You sighed as you internally fought with yourself, rubbing your eyes in frustration as you tried to think.
“Come on,” you let out eventually, gently wrapping your hand around her forearm.
“What?”
“Let’s get you inside, you’re soaked.”
She let you pull her up from the fire escape, putting most of her weight on you, as you led her through the window, over the seat, onto your couch in the middle of the room. You laid her down on it and saw as she curled into the blue velvet, like a cat. A slight chuckle left your lips at the sight, and at the sound, a slight smile left hers.
“Thank you,” she whispered as you walked around your apartment, dimming the lights and grabbing a blanket.
“Of course.”
You turned off the TV and sat down next to her, wrapping the blanket around her so she wouldn’t freeze, but before you could fully settle in, she turned, laying her head on your lap. You were stiff at first, never having been in a position like that before. But when you looked at her, completely calm and collected for the first time since you saw her, you felt your muscles relax and your body smoothly move back into the pillows of the couch.
“Yelena,” the girl said, her eyes closed.
“Hmm?”
“Yelena. That’s my name. Those assholes might have messed with my brain, but at least I can still remember that.”
You slowly undid the braids holding her hair up, letting the blonde wisps fall onto your lap by her head, and running your fingers through them. It was nearly as soft as the pillows you both laid on, and you heard her hum at the feeling.
“I’ll remember it, too.”
The corners of her lips quirked upwards as she cuddled further into your lap.
“You always this affectionate with strangers?” You teased.
She snorted.
“No. But not everyone would have checked if I was okay if they saw me right outside their apartment.” She paused. “I feel safe with you…and I don’t feel safe with anyone.”
“You are,” you told her, your fingers moving from her hair to her arm, where you traced gentle patterns over her black bodysuit.
As she slipped into a much-needed sleep, you stayed awake, looking after her, running your hands over her arms comfortingly. Soft snores escaped her and you could help but press a kiss to her hair, cuddling back into her as she rested.
“You’re safe, Yelena, I promise.”
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rpd-rookie · 2 years
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So could you write like a small scene of Leon’s feelings in which Leon has a daughter ( 16 year old ) and she is kidnapped by someone to take revenge ? Just like what he thinks at that moment when she is gone ? Please ?
A Father's Fear
(Leon S. Kennedy - One Shot)
Author's note: There it is, dear @eshal456. Hope you'll like it. Tagged: Angst ? I don't know, maybe. It's just an old Leon worried about his daughter. 'Taken-Liam Neeson' mode activated? You'll see
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Stuck in traffic at the angle of Rhode Island Avenue and 7th street, the cars around him honking furiously, Leon exhaled and mumbled another complain as he tried once again to keep his calm in the middle of this unsufferable hubbub. But it was not the surrounding noise that was pissing him off the most, it was the voice of his ex-partner scolding him through the speakers of his sedan as loudly as the motorist screaming curses in the vehicle next to his. “What do you mean you missed our daughter’s recital?!” “You missed it too!” “She was aware I wouldn’t be there. Besides, it’s the first one I miss in ten years. You, however …” She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t need to. Leon could finish it himself. You, however, you missed most recitals, almost every birthday parties and definitely all parents-teachers conferences. Congratulations, Leon. You may be America’s finest agent but … “Yes, I know you’re the wonder mother and I’m the deadbeat dad. But the thing is, I sent her a text telling her I couldn't make it because was still stuck at the office and that I’d pick her up after the recital. But when I arrived, she was gone. She took the damn bus! Without telling me! If it hadn’t been for her best friend, I’d still be waiting in front of the music school.” “I think that’s exactly what she wanted.” Leon sighed loudly and ran a hand through his hair to brush it away before he eventually rubbed his face with a weary expression. He was exhausted, exhausted by his job as an agent, exhausted by his job as a parent and by the way he couldn’t do the latter as good as the first. He could understand a terrorist’s motives with one simple look but he couldn’t read his daughter, his own flesh and blood. Of course she wanted him to wait. She wanted him to understand how it felt to be waiting and to see all your hopes turn into disappointment. “She hates me, doesn’t she?” “No. she doesn’t. She’s too loyal for that. Takes after her father.” The comparison made Leon chuckle a bit. Blind loyalty and devotion were traits that had been running in the Kennedy family for generations, same as being a lousy father. His father had been one, the same way his grandfather had been one and it looked like Leon couldn’t do better than either of them despite his perpetual efforts. “I’m really trying to be a good father, you know. But with my job …” “I know. Why do you think we separated?” “ Don’t you mean why you left me?” Leon could remember perfectly the day he got home with a relieved smile on his face after another long and back-breaking mission abroad. He could remember how happy he was to finally get reunited with his family, how he couldn’t wait to see them both – his two loves - waiting for him in the living room and how much he wanted to hug them and keep them forever in his arms. He could also remember how his dreams shattered when he found the apartment empty and a letter from his partner on the kitchen counter informing him she had packed both her and their daughter’s stuff to go back to live with her mother and that a lawyer would soon call him about the custody of their daughter. “That was 12 years ago, Leon” “Still feels like yesterday.” “To you, perhaps. But to our daughter, it’s like you’ve missed twelve years of her life.” As Leon looked in the rearview mirror of his car, he couldn’t help but thing his ex might me right. He had been living at full speed for almost three decades since that nightmarish hell in Raccoon City, working relentlessly for the American Government, travelling around the world to save it again and again. He had not seen the years passing in the US.STRATCOM or as a DSO agent. And when he spotted his daughter’s old car seat clipped on the back seat of the sedan car he had bought when she was a kid and had kept despite its uselessness, he understood he hadn’t seen his time as a father flying as well. “How big I’ve fucked up.”
Leon knew perfectly he would not get away with what he had done (or hadn’t done) with some Korean take-out food – despite how delicious it smelt even inside the brown bag. He knew it would take more than a bibimpap and bungeoppangs to make his daughter forgive him but that was a start. As he passed the revolving doors of his fancy residence, the agent was surprised not to be greeted by Janak, the friendly doorman from Mumbai, and his usual ‘Evening, Mister Kennedy’ that always rolled on his tongue as he would grin at him. He always managed to make Leon smile – even just faintly - however hard his day. But Janak wasn’t there and the reception was weirdly empty. Perhaps he was sick. Leon made his way to the elevator which opened very quickly as soon as he pressed the button even though it normally would make him wait long seconds before reaching ground floor– Leon was always the last resident to come home. When the door slid open, the blue-eyed man winced at the smell that escaped the elevator. It reeked of some kind of strong and very heady cleaning product that immediately dazed Leon a little, which was not really surprising judging by the large puddle at his feet. The liquid had obviously been poured onto the floor but not sponged. The cleaning lady was on strike or what? He considered this a possibility when he saw the mop and the bucket filled with water abandoned in the middle of the corridor leading to his penthouse apartment. After all, the poor woman was paid peanuts juts like all the employees working in the residence, that’s what Janak had told Leon.
But all sorts of rationality disappeared as soon as Leon noticed the door to his appartement slightly ajar. His heart stopped for a second just like his breath. Leon had taught his daughter to lock every door behind her at a very young age, to a point she had involuntarily made it a compulsive habit. The door to his apartment being open was not just weird, it was scary, just like the scenario that started playing in the father's head. “Don’t be paranoid. She was pissed, she probably slammed the door and didn’t look behind her to check if it was closed.” He whispered to himself as he pushed the door. But then he saw a large set of keys onto the marble floor that wasn’t his or his daughter’s but that held a key-chain with the residence symbol on it. Leon had seen those keys before, once or twice, when he had come back completely wasted and hammered and couldn’t possibly find his. He had seen them in Janak’s possession when he had accompanied him to his door and opened it for him using the spare keys he kept at the reception. “Just in case, Mister Kennedy.”
Leon’s blood froze in his veins as he started put two and two together. The bag of take way food escaped his hands and fell onto the floor as he started calling his daughter’s name. His voice echoed in the big luxurious living room which was as empty as he had left it this morning. “Sweetheart, I know you’re upset but if you’re here just answer me please. Daddy’s worried.” He was. He truly was. The fear he was feeling right now was like no other, definitely incomparable to any other scary feeling he had experienced during all his years as an agent. It was paralyzing and suffocating. It was killing him, softly, slowly. This was not an agent's fear. This was a father's fear for his daughter. He called her name again but his voice was met with silence and Leon instinctively took his gun from his holster. He was torn apart between running around the house like a lunatic while screaming his child’s name or walking silently and open every door of his apartment ready to shoot. He honestly never thought he would choose option A. But he did. He did when he suddenly remembered the stench of heady chemicals he had smelt in the elevator and how it had dazed him. “No, god, please no.” He started to run and open all the doors in his way, shouting, screaming with a strangled voice the name of his daughter, hoping to find her safe and sound, hidden under her bed or something just like when she was child trying to scare him off for fun. “Where are you, sweetheart?! Please come out!” But she was nowhere to be found.
Leon’s chest was pounding hard. He could feel his heart racing and beating in his flushed ears as he was spinning and begging with tears in his distraught blue eyes. “Please, no. Anything but not that.” He grabbed his phone and dialed his daughter's number, hoping she would pick up and tell him she was fine but she didn’t. No one answered. No one could. The phone was lying under the grey leather sofa, ringing and vibrating furiously. Leon quickly picked it up and put it in his pocket before he eventually left the apartment and started sprinting in the corridor, heading right towards the stairs. He couldn’t deny what had happened, not anymore. She had been taken. Someone had taken his baby away from him. His own blood. His love. His life. He ran down the stairs as fast as he could only to stop for a small second when he spotted a bottle of ether by the revolving door. How could he have missed that?! He cursed and got out on the street where he scanned his surroundings, looking for a clue, something, anything that could tell him where his daughter had been taken. But the avenue was too noisy and crowded and his screams were deadened by the incessant hubbub of the passers-by who couldn’t care less about a father’s distress. Desperate, Leon thought he was about to fall on his knees because of how powerless he was feeling. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to think straight, how to focus. Fuck, he didn’t even know how to breathe. All he could do was being afraid, being afraid and repeating. “Where are you? Where are you?”
The vibration of his daughter’s phone in his pocket suddenly eased Leon’s panic a little and got him out of his isolating agitation, giving a faint ray of hope he never thought he would feel again, especially right now. It was an unknown number. But what if it was her, calling to tell him she’s alright and just at a friend’s house, to tell him she had just dropped her phone and that he was just being a paranoid over-protective father. He said his daughter’s name as soon as he picked the phone. “Where are you, baby? Are you alright?” She didn’t answer right away but she sobbed and the terrorised noise sent shivers down Leon’s spine. “Dad.” Her terrified mumbling voice made him cry and the tears he had kept for so long in his eyes finally rolled down his cheeks. “Yes, baby that’s me. Are you okay? Tell me where you are” “Leon, glad to hear you... comrade” Another voice that sounded way too familiar suddenly transformed the fear in Leon into a rage he never thought he as capable of. But if that voice meant what it thought it meant, that he had his daughter, then… “Krauser” The son of the bitch was a dead man.
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reuinx · 3 years
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Red Lights (Yelena Belova x Reader)
Summary: You've been having a tough time lately. It's Yelena's goal to brighten up your day. The day takes the form of an afternoon spent in Yelena's car teasing, laughing, and singing. It looked like the day couldn't possibly get any better until tragedy struck.
Prompt by Anon ask: “Kissing your lover’s forehead as they’re dying in your arms but reader is dying please and thank you “​
Word Count: 2,047
Paring: Yelena Belova x Reader
Warnings: Brief mention of blood (Gore kept extremely minimal), tragic accident resulting in death.
Translations:  Malishka (Baby),  Dorogoy (Love)
Masterlist
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Have you ever had those days when nothing goes right? You miss the bus, you say the wrong thing, you lose your temper, and you spend the rest of the day wondering what you could have done differently? It was one of those days. Using this logic, you are faced with a dilemma - you don't want to stay at home, but you don't want to stay alone either. You tentatively texted Yelena to see if she was free; she was. Summer heat caressed your exposed arms, leaving you with sun-kissed skin. 
Despite the heat of the summer, you kicked pebbles across the ground like a child. The sound of her approaching car preceded your sight. The noise of her exhaust was followed by the blaring of Babooshka by the brilliant Kate Bush on her radio. Typical Yelena. She was driving her obnoxious yellow Ford Mustang; it was convertible. She made sure she knew that. It was her pride and joy, and she loved nothing more than it; well, she did love something more than that car, you.
Parking along the footpath, she had the roof down, and her blonde hair was flowing. While one hand was on the steering wheel, the other was hanging outside her window. In a pure white shirt, she exposed the muscles tense in her arm. Her sunglasses slowly slipped down the bridge of her nose as she peered over at you. She was undressing you with her eyes. She was chewing gum; she moved her lips slowly to match her motion.
“Still moody are we, Malishka?” Yelena called out from her car. The smile on her face was always devilish. Even though today didn't go as planned, you felt like it would be heaven on earth with Yelena.
“No”, You replied flatly as Yelena pushed her sunglasses back up to hide her eyes; she turned to face straight ahead of her as you made your way towards the car.
“I’m going to keep doing it until you admit you’re moody.”
“Keep doing wha-“ Before you could finish, She shoved her hand down on the horn as the already noisy auto began honking. Those who passed by started looking at the car with wonder. Redness flushed your face as you raced to the car.
“Yelena! Stop!”
“Mhm?”
“I’m not-“ You swiftly shook your head as the horn continued its outcry. She was stubborn, but so were you. She always won; there was no fighting with Yelena.
“I’m moody!” The moment you admitted it, she took her hand off the horn, resting her head back against the headrest as she stared up at you with a toothy grin.
“God, I hate you. You know that right?”
“Nah, you love me actually.” She was right about that. Yelena leaned across to open the door for you as you made your way to the passenger side. After entering, you shut the door behind you and automatically turned down the radio.
“Trying to go deaf are you?”
“Mhm?”
“I said are you trying to go deaf?”
“What?”
“I said- Oh forget it! Stop teasing me. I’m just looking after you!”
“What are you, my mother?”
“Feels like it sometimes, El.”
��Ha,” Yelena grumbled. Your laughter today was finally made possible because of Yelena's reaction. You were comforted by her. Talking to your person always made your worries go away. Yelena tutted and pulled your seatbelt into the latch plate as she leaned over your body, grasping your belt to make sure it was secure. Yelena put the car into gear as it began to move, the engine rumbling to life as she drove at the appropriate speed. She would never dream of speeding with you in the car.
“Do you want to talk about today?”
“No no, it was just one of those days.”
“Good, I don’t have to kill anyone...”
“No killing anyone.”
“Unless…”
“No”, You shushed her as you glanced at her with the corner of your eye; Yelena was smiling. She looked genuinely happy, which was a relief to you. She radiated happiness onto you; it was impossible to escape.
“It’s a beach day today.” The comment came from Yelena.
“Are you going to throw me in?”
“Actually… I’m still debating it.”
“What’s the pros and cons?”
“Con is that you’re pissed.”
“What’s the pro?”
“It will make you laugh.” You hadn't encountered anyone with the same kind of personality as her. Selflessness characterized her. Her heart was pure gold. Although she was tough, when her walls were broken, she became the softest person you'd ever met. It was easy to love her. She reached over for your hand; she took it in her hand before placing your hand on the clutch. To change gears, she held her hand yours, moving your hand in the desired direction. She was reluctant to let go but eventually cleared her throat to ask. Freeing your hand.
“Will you change the CD, Dorogoy?”
With ease, you opened the glovebox and located the CD binder. The 2000s saw a lot of popularity with these. Not now. Yelena's argument "It can fit so many CD's in it!" She wasn't wrong. It did. There was tons of CD's from all different genres in it. She bought CDs of the songs you played on your phone, not just the ones she liked. Even though she hid it from you, you started to notice when her binder began to fill up. You flicked through the CD’s until one caught your attention. As you saw a blank CD with writing on it, you paused. "For You" is spelled in Yelena's impeccable handwriting. While her eyes rested on the road, you turned to look at her, returning your focus to the CD. Yelena was smiling softly at you while you were busy changing CDs.
“You made this for me?”
“I did. I wanted to make you a playlist and well, there’s no Bluetooth so I did the best I can.”
“You’re too sweet. But… You do know downloading music and burning it on a CD is pretty illegal.”
“If your worrying over me downloading music, you should see what else I do” Yelena released a chuckle as the music played from the radio. You leaned over as you adjusted the volume up as the song The Chain by Fleetwood Mac came through.
“I know you like them wood people”, Yelena murmured under her breath. Suddenly, you felt the excitement in your stomach rise. What else was on this CD? We get so caught up in the big things when we fall in love with someone. The little things are always the most important. You weren't just going to sing; you were going to perform as well. As you sang at the top of your lungs, you began to sway in your chair.
“And if you don't love me now -“ Your hand clenched as if it was holding an invisible microphone as you held it to Yelena’s lips. She smiled, licking her lips as she finished the lyric.
“You will never love me again.” She sang without hesitation, and while her voice is usually harsh, it was smooth and soft this time. When you heard her singing, you burst into laughter and clapped your hands in glee. The music picked up, and your hands moved with the lyrics. You didn't miss a word. Yelena was beginning to tap with the beat of the song on the steering wheel, laughing at how passionate you had gotten.
“I could listen to you forever.”
“Unlucky for you, you have forever with me”, You chirped out as Yelena frowned, turning her head quickly to glance at you.
“Why would that make me unlucky?”
“I’m a pain in the ass.”
“True but you’re my pain in the ass” She sounded more and more sincere with every word she said. Your singing continued unabated. As soon as the next red light came on, Yelena slowed her car down to a stop. It was now possible to see the beach. You were too busy performing for nobody to notice that Yelena was watching you. When she saw you happy, her eyes glowed with childhood excitement. All she wanted was for you to be satisfied. Because you were focused on the big things like the beach, you missed the little things like how Yelena looked at you. Anyone would kill for the kind of look she gave you. Yelena’s expression suddenly changed when you looked at her, her face filled with horror. She wasn’t making a face at you but something behind you.
“What’s wrong?” Suddenly, everything went black. You lost all sense of time and purpose of self. Feeling an overwhelming sense of emptiness, you thought it overtake you. You felt alone. Yelena? Where was Yelena? Was Yelena okay? Had you fallen asleep? There was a noticeable pressure in your chest, almost as if it was being squeezed. You felt your lips tingle, and your lungs fill with air.
"Hey!" A distorted voice echoed inside your head, and you couldn't understand what was being said or even who it was?
"Wake up! Please wake up!" It was beginning to become more legible until a voice broke through the silence.
"Malishika!" Yelena, it was Yelena.
The world was blurry as your eyes snapped open. As you blinked rapidly, flashing lights obscured your view of the figure above you.
"Stay with me, stay with me please." You now knew what the pressure on your chest was; Yelena had been pressing hard and fast on the center of your chest. It was her rescue breaths that tingled your lips. The haze in your vision was clearing as you could see Yelena. It was evident from her face that she had been crying. Spikes of blood could be seen on her face as sweat ran down her forehead. It wasn't her blood. It was yours. 
In your disorientation, you did not know where you were. You were lying on the road when you suddenly remembered being in the car. Your eyes focused on Yelena's car as you tilted your head to look past her. Now you know what Yelena saw behind you. As you were sitting on the passenger side, a car ploughed straight into you through the red light. Yelena must have rescued you from the wreck. With growing dizziness and fatigue, your eyes began to flicker shut. The feeling of Yelena grasping your cheeks caused your eyes to dart open.
"Don't you dare close your eyes on me. I've lost everyone, I can't lose you too. I just can't. Please. Please don't go anywhere.. Just stay. Please just stay. I need you, god I need you. Please." She was begging you, pleading with you. The moment you tried to move, your body refused to react; you were powerless. With one hand on your stomach, she firmly grasped it. It was now clear that her previously pristine white t-shirt was heavily stained red. You felt queasy thinking that was yours.
"Hey, I'm okay. I'm okay baby. It's okay." You managed to whisper out as your voice was weak.
"It's not okay, it's really not okay. I don't know what to do! I can't stop the bleeding" Yelena's voice was firm, her jaw extending with the words she spoke as she tried to contain herself. She sobbed, her eyes flicking upward.
"It's okay, El. You can stop. Just stop."
"Don't fucking say that, don't ever fucking say that. You aren't going anywhere, you aren't. This is not a goodbye! Don't give me that bullshit. The paramedics will be here soon, they will! " She snapped.
"Baby, it's okay. It's going to be okay. Yelena? Do you hear me? "I love you. I love you so much. You know that, right?"
"I love you. God, I love you. Don't forget that, you hear me?" Yelena dipped her head down as she slowly pressed her lips against your forehead. She placed her free hand into your locks of hair as she slowly began to run her fingers through the strands of your hair.
"Baby?" She called out one last time. Your eyes locked onto her green eyes, admiring them one last time. The world around you faded to grey; the last thing you heard was Yelena's scream.
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