#rip bela he would have loved bauhaus | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

madswritingvoid · 2 years

Text

Start of Something New | Eddie Munson x fem!reader

A/N: Hi guys! I’m back! Got a bunch of things to go through but like everyone, Eddie Munson has taken over my life. So please enjoy the beginning of what will be a fix-it series with our darling Munson. This is set in 1989 and will hopefully be a fun ride for all.

Pairing: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

Words: 5k

Warnings: none except like one swear, but this fic is 18+ because you KNOW we’ll be getting that Munson loving soon enough!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You take a deep breath as you stare out into the mall from the other side of your store’s doors.

It’s your first day as a manager of Hot Topic, the latest addition to Starcourt Mall’s already long list of retailers. But this is different. You fought tooth and nail to get this job. Finally you found a place that not only admired your less-than-popular tastes in music and fashion, but celebrated you for it - you walked out of that interview with a store to manage and a killer employee discount.

Walking into the dimly lit store this morning you took your time to admire the band shirts, the pride and joy of your store, where you find The Cure, one of your favourites, amongst other bands like Metallica and Suicidal Tendencies. The same people who sneered at you for your Doc Martens and safety-pinned pants will now have to deal with the fact that you’re here to flip their Gap-coloured world upside down. Now other “freaks” and “devil worshippers” could shop in peace regardless of whether they wanted new chains for their shirt, pants or face, and walk out sporting the latest design from their favourite band.

You adjust your lanyard covered in pins collected from the million of concerts you’ve attended, a sudden wave of nerves crashes over you. Would people who needed this store feel safe to come in? Was this the right outfit to wear? What if people came in to harass you and you couldn’t fight back because you could lose your job? You make a last-minute decision to dash to the registers in the middle of the store and grab the mix tape you brought to hype yourself up and put it in the store’s sound system. Letting the familiar synth of Depeche Mode wash over you, you square your shoulders and walk back to the front. Time to open whether you’re ready or not.

The day goes pretty much how you think it will. If you had a nickle for every time a older Christian person called you a devil worshipper, you could’ve bought at least two more coffees. Teenagers come in to oogle at you and laugh at your clothes and the outfits set up on mannequins throughout the store, families bringing in their black sheep child to wander and wonder how they could possibly be in the right place, and the occasional fellow freak who is excited you’re here. Fellow freaks like the one who has been doing laps around the outside of your store for the past twenty minutes.

You have an ongoing bet with yourself if he’ll actually come in. Mullet, denim-on-denim outfit with a Dio patch on the back of his vest, and what looks to be a shirt with some sort of devil on it from what you can make out. He’s cute, that much you can tell, especially that adorable blush that crept up his neck when he caught you staring back at him. You’ve noticed certain songs from your mix tape either excite him or cause him to furrow his brow, almost like he wants to tell you that Metallica’s “Fade To Black” could NOT be followed up by Bauhaus’ “Bela Ligosi’s Dead”. You wonder what song will make him break and come in because unfortunately a hottie is not grounds for you to abandon your store.

Apparently the final straw for your mystery man was “Master of Puppets” fading into The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry”. You’re crouched down fixing a stack of shirts when the sound of footsteps approaching land you face-to-face with scuffed Reeboks. Following the shoes up past the ripped back jeans and apparent “Hellfire Club” shirt, you’re met with the warmest brown eyes you’ve ever seen. “Are you the one I’m supposed to talk to about what’s going on in here?” Raising an eye brow you rise to meet him, “what’s going on here is my killer mixtape, so if you’ve come to pledge your undying love for me and my superior taste, then yes I’m the right person to speak to.” Snorting at your reply, he holds his hand out with a smile that makes those brown eyes crinkle and cause a pleasant warmth to spread through your body.

“Munson. Eddie Munson. You’ll have to excuse me having a little musical crisis outside, I just wasn’t expecting such an interesting mix playing in Starcourt Mall.” You shake his hand as you introduce yourself, still not believing you’re actually talking to him and maintaining your composure. Talking to people you found attractive was never your strong suit, but he’s in your store, so you cling to the familiarity around you to stay strong. Dropping his hand you quickly compose yourself, eager to see how long this can keep going, “Well Eddie Munson, I think you’ll find that just like this store I’m here to make Starcourt and Hawkins itself a lot more… interesting”.

With the ice broken and no customers to help, Eddie decides to stick around where you swap favourite bands, movies, and everything in between. You admit you remember him from high school, but your parents moved away after freshman year, leaving you a mystery to those in what would have been your graduating year. Especially since you’re back looking different, embracing the weird things you like and dressing in a way that definitely would have made a full four years at Hawkins High feel like 400. “Of course the only cool person ditched this town before we could hang out!” He slaps his hand on your cash counter, faking offence.

“You have to make it up to me by letting me make you a mixtape. Something you can have at the store or those nights alone, dreaming of the next time you’ll see me under these dim lights.” You pretend to think his offer over but inside your buzzing. Even if Eddie doesn’t think there’s some kind of electricity between you, you know you want to see him again and him wanting to make you a mixtape might just make your heart burst. Knowing you can’t talk with Eddie forever, as much as you might want to, you offer him what you can.

“You’re in luck Munson, I run this place, so come see me again soon and I’ll listen to your tape while trying to make up for lost time.” He slaps the counter again in excitement and points at your face, “I’ll see you tomorrow then sweet cheeks, I have the feeling we’re going to get along just fine!”

Fuck I hope so, you think, already imagining what having Eddie Munson in your life will bring.

#stranger things #stranger thing s4 #Eddie Munson #eddie munson x reader #Eddie Munson x you #Eddie Munson fic #stranger things fanfiction #joseph quinn

103 notes · View notes

southboundhq · 4 years

Photo

MEET NADJA,

FULL NAME › Nadja Nuan Feng AGE › twenty nine GENDER › Cis female (She/Her/Hers) FROM › Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada RESIDENCE › Stagecoach Apartments (Outskirts) OCCUPATION › Bartender at the Coyote’s Howl Bar, Projectionist at the Moonlite Drive-In Theater NOW PLAYING › Lexicon Devil by the Germs

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger warnings: death, murder, gore, sex mention, assault, implied racism, violence, drug mention

▓ ▌now playing : good thing – fine young cannibals

it’s a whirlwind romance, so the journal of nadja’s father would tell of it when her mother finally lets her read it. megan robbie spends her year abroad at tianjin university, hoping to make a new start for her life after the death of her parents. she has no siblings to lean on for support and the once strong childhood and college friendships that had promised permanence and fortitude had failed–crumbling under the weight of complicated grief. megan finds the exchange program that will take her as far away from victoria, bc as possible. northern china connects her somewhat distantly to her mother’s mother, a woman she barely sees in her own features and hardly remembers from her own childhood. megan finds herself falling in love with the coastal metropolis.

guoqiang feng plays guitar and spends his sunny college days reading in the quad. he has long hair and wears oversized sunglasses that megan thinks only he could pull off. they take their first trip during break with some friends down to sanya on hainan island and between the romance of the salty beach air and the hum of anchor beer have the new couple swimming in the saccharine haze of young love. they don’t wait until graduation to get married.

the wedding is a tasteful, small event where everyone remarks on the glow of megan’s soft face, as it shines like the moon–even brighter than the soft cream of her delicate lace dress that floats away from her body in an a-line cut just below the knee. when guoqiang sees her the whole world melts away. in her dark hair, she wears a modern filigree comb and lets her hair cascade over her shoulders in gentle waves. they have never been completely traditional.

no one seems to notice the small changes in megan’s body beneath her bridal garb. it is not long before the wedding that baby nuan grows in her belly–just now the size of a peach pit–kicking with the thunderous force of athena banging around in her father’s head. she is guoqiang’s daughter through and through. when she is born, it is a difficult birth and megan thinks that surely all this pain is worth it. she doesn’t see her baby for hours as she hemorrhages blood and the fundal massage the nurses perform to train her uterus to do what it was engineered to after birth is excruciating. there is nothing she wants more than to be a mother, she thinks, and when she holds nuan in her arms for the first time, she knows she cannot return to work and there is nothing left for her back home in british columbia.

they name the small girl for guoqiang’s feisty mother and megan gives her the english counterpart of nadja and the middle name of her own later mother. in megan’s arms, nuan can never seem to find peace and is quieted only long enough to eat before howling for her father. megan feng cannot understand what she has done wrong, but is comforted by the soft tutting of her husband as he quiets their precocious baby girl, insisting that she is just a fussy child and only seemed preferred him because he was so often at work.

college had worked out well for guoqiang and soon he was working for future tv in tianjin. the train rides home extended his time away as did the occasional afterwork dinner or meeting leaving megan and nadja to themselves for the most part during the week. if distance made the heart grow fonder, time made the heart grow sweeter. megan was full of yearning and though she cherished her time with the fussy, mischievous toddler it soon became not enough. she yearned for stimulating conversation and found herself nose deep in any literature she could get her hands on–eager to discuss the stories with guoqiang as he entered the house late at night with slumped shoulders.

▓ ▌now playing : bela lugosi’s dead – bauhaus

the time comes where guoqiang feng is bestowed with the good fortune of moving up in the company. despite being dead tired everyday, he considers himself lucky even as the dust continues to build on his baby blue fender stratocaster. once relegated to the work week, guoqiang’s long hours continue on long business trips throughout the country. the time apart does not shatter their foundation, but it does take its toll on the young couple. unwilling to let megan and nuan come second to anything, guoqiang makes some important changes.

on most nights, guoqiang starts skipping the afterwork cocktails–coming back home from with a little more energy than before. he starts to plan a family vacation to sanya to revitalize the marriage and get some much needed rest and relaxation. megan takes the news to heart and enthusiastically begins planning their itinerary. there is a new glimmer to the feng household and even nadja seems to be less fussy–toddling around with a smiling face. she takes steps on her own and starts to speak; her first word is ‘cat.’ the fengs get a cat. nadja can hardly remember life in tianjin, but nearly every moment of her childhood includes that cat she cannot name. the gossamer wings of nostalgia obscure so many things.

the fengs are as shocked as the rest of the world when news hits of sarin gas in nagano. it’s a stark juxtaposition when held up against guoqiang’s busy work days in tianjin or megan and nadja playful days in the coastal city of tianjin. the fengs have never been to japan aside from guoqiang’s rare trips to tokyo for business. when guoqiang doesn’t return to his hotel room in tokyo on time from the train to make his night call with his family a year later, it’s the furthest thing in the world from megan’s mind. she’s certain–despite nuan mounting tantrums–that he simply stayed out too late with colleagues following an impromptu dinner. when he never makes it home, megan wonders if she should count herself lucky or unlucky that nadja does not have the words to ask the deeper questions–not yet.

as spring approaches, ushering in the reminders of trips to sanya, megan feng holds nuan firmly in her arms in a dark room. they are all that is left. everything reminds megan of him. guoqiang’s ghost is inescapable and he is present in everything she does. guoqiang’s mother nuan comes to mourn her son, but stays to help a mother and child heal. it’s too much for one woman to carry alone, but despite their grief the two mothers make a go of it together.

▓ ▌now playing : burn – the cure

every grain of sand in bohai bay carries a piece of guoqiang in it. megan cannot breathe in her husband’s shadow and, despite the love she has for her home, she knows it is time to make a new life. the goodbyes are painful, but after she is accepted to study at the university of british columbia she knows that fate has chosen a new path for her. she is blessed to leave with her daughter in tow. the cat with a forgotten name stays with nuan’s nainai in her modest house by the sea. it will be a long time before little nuan looks upon her face again.

nuan starts kindergarten in vancouver, british columbia and struggles behind her classmates. back home she was touted as gifted, if not just a little too busy, but here she feels behind. by elementary school she is taking the bus and walking home to the apartment herself while megan finishes her degree. so many kids struggle with the name nuan, even though it is the simplest thing on her own tongue. she doesn’t get to choose between nuan and nadja; it is a choice made for her by her mother and the rest of the people she comes across. it isn’t perfect, but nadja will look back later upon this time with palpable longing; it’s the only time she remembers feeling happy with her mother because, as she’ll learn in an encroaching reading assignment–nothing gold can stay.

where nadja struggles, megan thrives. majoring in literature, she puts her love of reading to good use. it doesn’t even matter that she has to start seemingly from scratch when all of her credits don’t transfer over. three years into her bachelor’s and she meets professor preston clarke and is immediately enamored by his lecture style. he is, for all intents and purposes, the quintessential cool guy professor. they meet during his office hours and discuss poetry over coffee. the romance doesn’t cross the line until graduate school, when she becomes his teaching assistant. to protect his reputation she drops out of the program and applies for a teaching program instead. megan and nadja move into his tasteful craftsman in english bay. every time preston calls her ‘naddy’ instead of nuan or nadja she bristles; she knows this man has no business playing her father.

▓ ▌now playing : lexicon devil – the germs

as nadja grows so do her problems in school. the letters seem to dance off the page like fall leaves and she is unable to sit still to focus like the other kids. the more nadja struggles, the more megan and preston push her. it only deepens the divide between them. the only balm for her anger is the occasional stretches of the year when nainai visits. it is the only time nadja freely speaks chinese in the household where her mother coddles her monolingual partner. when nainai is there, nadja does not break her toys or rip apart preston’s coffee table books–she runs into the arms of her grandmother and finds the comfort of her father. with grandma feng in the house, the tensions seem to lessen.

there’s an anger in her that is burning, stirring–embers glow now and soon they will be flames. she is talented at finding trouble. she hates her stepfather because he acts like he understands her mother and pretends he understands her. he is holden caulfield. he is jack kerouac. he is a thousand and one tired perspectives. he understands nothing. resentment mounts like bile in her throat and it coats every acrid word she speaks to her mother for choosing a man like him–for choosing that same man every time over everyone and everything else.

it’s the music that nadja channels this anger into. she spends her afternoons skateboarding of messing around on her dad’s old stratocaster. she paints her lips black and clings to anything that turns to corners of her mother’s lips downard in disapproval. nadja tells herself it’s her mother’s choice, this rebellion. it’s the choice she made when she plucked her small daughter from her father’s home and forced her into the hostile canadian soil. in that soil, megan feng becomes meg clarke. she blossoms and grows, building a home in old grief to runaway from new loss. nadja refuses the surname and stands her ground; she will not forfeit her father’s name.

▓ ▌now playing : oh bondage ! up yours ! – xray spex

freshman year brings a new sense of freedom to nadja life. skipping class to smoke cigarettes and crush beer cans under the bridge beats the annoyed sighs of teachers who think ‘nadja feng just doesn’t apply herself.’ when she runs out of cash for smokes or weed at the end of the school day, nadja skates over to the university to bum a few dollars off her stepdad. she’s done it half a dozen times this month alone and there’s nothing to suggest this day will go any differently. as she approaches his office, she zips up the black hoodie she’s altered with dental floss to cover the band shirt beneath as a small act of appeasement.

instead of finding him alone, drinking scotch and contemplating the loneliness his mediocre life affords him, nadja finds him with his hand on the thigh of another bright-eyed literature major–his position as a professor adding an attraction to him that would otherwise go overlooked. she turns sharply on the heel of her black doc martens, storming out to the parking lot to the tenured professor’s coveted parking spot. the silver sedan glistens in the spring sunshine. it’s so close to the anniversary of her father’s death, which has come and gone unmarked yet again in preston clarke’s household. april showers bring may flowers, but in the parking lot it is raining safety glass as she smashes out the windows of the sedan with the trucks of her skateboard. the clarkes have always seemed to be more interested in the status of parenthood rather than the labor love takes. it feels good to break something he loves.

when preston finds out he insists that nainai’s summer visit be cancelled and megan feels pressured to oblige; she has always only wanted harmony between preston and nadja and it seems farther away than ever. the punishment does not serve to temper her into a well-honed tool. nadja anger is a wolf lapping its own blood off the blade of a knife; the meal satiates her, but it is she who is hemorrhaging. she runs away several times before it sticks–never speaking to her mom and stepdad again when she finally manages to get out.

couch surfing with friends and surviving somewhere between traincar and tall boys of steel reserve, she joins a series of moderately popular local punk bands–unable to commit to anything for too long. it builds up her reputation in vancouver’s punk community, however, and soon she has the family she’s always wanted–a large group of friends. nadja casts off her old identity. she is finding her footing in brand new velvet burgundy docs–a kickdown from some drunk girl at a show. they’re a little too big, but with a couple pairs of wool socks, she can hardly tell the difference.

▓ ▌now playing : i love livin’ in the city – fear

by twenty-one, things have picked up for nadja. the girl has split her time between working at smoke shops and alternative cafes long enough to have obtained her ged and now she works the front door at a popular punk bar. at an average heigh tof 5′6″ the fast-talking, loud mouthed runaway has other ways to cut even the tallest men to half her size. her temper gets her into trouble, but her charisma and work ethic keep her employed.

without her parents’ finances, it becomes more and more difficult for nadja to see her grandmother and their visits are relegated predominantly to weekly skype conversations. nainai works with her granddaughter to keep up her mandarin and the girl dreams of returning home and spending the weekdays working in tianjin only to return to the calm beach town where her grandmother still lives in the house she was born in. it seems like a pipe dream, but it is one both women hold onto. it is the only dream either one has left. grandma feng no longer has any reason to speak to her once beloved daughter in law either, but there is no spite. she knows that nadja’s mother cannot bear to have the thorns of guoqiang’s death in her paws for a lifetime. grief is complicated, but better understood by those who’ve lived long enough to see enough of it.

after a few years, nadja becomes lead bartender, but the money just isn’t rolling in. the bar threatens to close and nadja begins taking night classes and setting money away in the hopes that a business degree will legitimize her enough for a business loan so she can buy the place herself. it cements her in bc, but with enough money she could at least afford to bring her grandmother out to see her on occasion. it’s not a homecoming, sure, but perhaps it is a homemaking.

▓ ▌now playing : ever fallen in love – the buzzcocks

like her mother and father before her, nadja falls in love with a boy playing guitar–spitting his own blood on the crowd of the bar like gasoline. kurt is tall and lanky with a padlock securing a chain around his throat. his long, dark hair frames his freckled face so delicately for someone with such an obtrusive frame. it’s not long before the spiteful bartender and the guitarist who lives in his van and calls himself ‘freegan’ to justify dumpster diving cheese pizzas are inseparable. he moves in quickly to her place, more or less because he doesn’t have a stable place to leave his shit when he’s on tour.

it suits her just fine when he’s away playing shows or laying down tracks on a seven inch. the bands slays and kurt and nadja have fun together. they get drunk on forties in train yards and cemeteries. they drive out to the beach and fuck in his van before tagging up the concrete retaining walls of a beachfront housing development. it seems like they might spend the rest of their lives smoking weed and cigarettes on the porch, scarfing down breakfast burritos at three am, and marathoning eighties horror movies like each time is the first time. nadja doesn’t know if she believes in love, but she thinks that maybe this is close enough. her skype calls to grandma feng become spotty in these first few months. it is the thing she will live to regret the most.

nadja becomes lax under the spell of love. coursework does not go unfinished, but she lets kurt hangout sometimes in the bar when she’s closing. eventually, her boss concedes to hire him on as a dishwasher and–though he complains about wanting a better position–he shows up to work most days more or less on time with a fresh cigarette behind his ear and an easy grin. he closes up some nights with nadja or the other bartender–a menacing looking american girl named natasha that bites her nails when she thinks no one is looking and always smells like damp patchouli and sweat.

on a moonless night in december, not long after their one year anniversary, nadja arrives to the community college to see that class is cancelled. excited to return early to the bar and surprise kurt with some burgers and garlic fries, she is crushed to find him in the arms of natasha. the pair are showered in burgers and nadja catches one of them with an empty bottle she isn’t sure she truly means to make contact with. the sound of shattered glass has always been a lullaby to an angry girl.

she’s not even all the way back to her apartment before she gets the call. nadja feng is fucking firedand kurt has given her the blame for the money he’s been skimming from the place on the sly. they’re debating on whether or not to press charges. nadja sells all of kurt’s second-rate band equipment to a pawn shop along with the things that don’t mean enough to carry on her back. she buys a plane ticket to tianjin by way of los angeles that day. with christmas lurking around the corner, it’s the best bang for her buck. nadja leaves her house keys on the empty floor. fuck leases and fuck kurt stevens.

▓ ▌now playing : spellbound – siouxsie and the banshees

the corrosive memories of kurt and natasha’s tryst are far from nadja’s mind as she finishes the skype call with her grandmother giving her the good news. understandably, grandma feng is concerned about the impulsive decision, but she knows her granddaughter well enough. even a girl as rash as a summer forest fire sometimes makes the right choice. they have dreamed of reuniting for so long, it is hard to take the news with anything but a tearful smile. nadja hears it in her voice–it colors every word. for the first time in nadja��s young life she thinks: i’m coming home.

the drive is a long one, but nadja is worried about the possibility of being forced to stay in bc due to assault charges. she can drive down the west coast and breathe in the salty air. she can eat clam strips and throw bread to seagulls in some seaside diner while she watches the tumultuous waves of the oregon coast thrash violently against the rocky shore. maybe it’ll be therapeutic, she thinks, to be one small person along a great, dark sea. a few days more. a few days and she’ll be back in tianjin and maybe she and nainai can get a new cat together. maybe the waves that beat the sands of dongjiang bay beach are softer and kinder than those in the pacific northwest.

it’s a lonely ride down and after three days of reflection and solitude, nadja feels like crawling out of her own skin. it’s too much peace for a girl born of chaos. perhaps it’s self-destruction or maybe it’s idle boredom, but when she sees the young crust punk couple hitchiking on the side of the road, she thinks fuck it, at least it’s something new and pulls over for them. they’re on the way to yuma city and she agrees to drop them off on her way to lax. they seem fine enough. she doesn’t even mind the little blue heeler they have with them, even though she’s a dyed in the wool cat person. the track marks don’t go unnoticed, but it’s nothing new to a veteran of the punk scene and nadja feng can handle anything.

▓ ▌now playing : dead end justice – the runaways

after a day on the road, the trio and their small dog throw down a few bucks to sleep in one of the cabins at a kampground of america. it’s not so bad, but the puppy whines all night and pees on the floor once in the early hours of the morning. nadja lies awake on the top bunk and she can hear the pair talking below her. wes speaking in his dopey voice, hardly whispering and maya shushing him in harsh whispers. nadja eeps her movements to the minimum and her eyes closed after she hears them pause for several moments when she readjusts. she’s certain she can smell maya’s breath for a moment as she hears the bed creak and feels a steely finger in her ribs. keeping her breaths steady, she plays opossum.

it becomes clear to her, once the bed creaks and maya starts talking again that they mean to rip her off. maya even asks wes is he’s ever wondered what it would feel like to kill somebody. nadja’s seen the way he looks at her; he’d die for her. he’d kill for her. boy, have they fucked with the wrong girl, nadja thinks darkly. covers pulled up to her chin. there’s a butterfly knife in her pocket and the shape of it has left an impression on the skin of her thigh. slowly she reaches for it and works to silently unfold it, clutching it to her chest beneath the covers when she’s through. they’re gonna pay. she’s never thought herself a killer, but she’s been a fighter since she was in her mother’s belly. let them try it, she thinks. and they do.

lying in wait, knowing it was coming doesn’t prepare her for what it will truly be like. there’s a fist in her face before she can speak, with the harsh instructions to get up. sucker punched and it’s not even four am yet. helluvah night. the punch stuns her, but she means to be ready. as wes pulls the covers from her bed, she spring on maya like a cat–butterfly knife, formerly a novelty, an aesthetic–arching blood across the cabin walls. maya has to be first, because she’s meanest. the shock will stun wes long enough for her to turn on him even though he’s bigger. somewhere in the darkness, their small dog yelps and paws at the door.

maya is easily overtaken. nadja has the element of surprise and a few inches on her. she wonders what it says about her that she can dispatch a shitty person so easily. it’s not like highlander; she doesn’t gain mystical powers when she sticks maya in the neck with that cheap butterfly knife. all she gets is blood. wes, on the other hand, he’s harder once he realizes his life is on the line. easily, he has half a foot and thirty pounds on her and he gives almost as good as he gets. nadja swallows a molar and take a hit so hard her ears ring, but she doesn’t stop. her whole life has been filled with a rage that she has let out in metered doses. tonight she lets it all out; tonight she knows she can never go back to vancouver, but she can still go home. she doesn’t stop until the dog barks at her loudly to go outside and she wonders if he didn’t trust them either.

they’d named him something stupid, like chaos or dogmeat. he wasn’t a fucking fallout canine companion even if they fancied themselves raiders. heroin and the open road, punk rock and a boxcar–she knows how romantic it all can seem. they probably thought they were mad max or negan. in the end they were just assholes. nadja feng is a cat person, but she can’t just leave this poor dog in the cabin with all that blood. he’s barely more than a puppy. nadja doesn’t know what the fuck to do with a dog, but … he is kind of cute. his blue-grey fur reminds her of an old man’s beard–a little old grandpa–and so the name, while never meant to be permanent, sticks. and so does grandpa, it seems, as he never leaves her side. they’ll have to head east, farther from the scene of the crime and buy a plane ticket from somewhere like phoenix. she chides herself as she wonders how much it costs to ship a dog to tianjin and decides fuck it, it doesn’t really matter. their friendship was baptized in blood, she and the dog belong together.

▓ ▌now playing : there is a light that never goes out – the smiths

the open road at night in the desert has an eerie quality to it and nadja is running from ghosts. phantoms who catch her easiest when she is sleeping, grandpa curled under her arm, in the back seat of her beat up muscle car. she’s never seen a place quiet like this and maybe it’d even be beautiful if she wasn’t alone–lady macbeth on the run. at least the dog’s good company, he doesn’t seem to care what she’s done and long as she feeds him. there’s something kind of nice about the newness of unconditional love.

she doesn’t call her grandmother to tell her about the change in flight plans, not yet anyway. once nainai’s voice sound on the other end, she knows she’ll burst into tears. she doesn’t deserve a grandmother like that, but she knows that an old woman can’t care for herself forever. she can at least give her that. if she can’t give her fat grandchildren and a fancy house on the beach, she can at least be there for her–if only she could find the highway.

driving and coffee, it seems like that’s all she’s known as she focuses on getting to phoenix as fast as possible. inhumanely fast, impossibly fast. it can be an alibi or an escape. there’s no way anyone’s going to believe she was the victim when they see wes’ body. too angry for too long–she’s really fucked it up this time. she doesn’t even google news reports, not wanting to know what might be waiting for her when she finally makes it to the airport and fuck, she can still not find the main highway, but there’s hope in the form of some no horse shithole named boot hill. ahead of schedule from driving like a bat out of hell, maybe she can rest for one night. maybe her demons can’t find her in this place. it’s almost a mirage–the oasis in the desert of cartoon, she thinks. who would ever think to find her in a place like this? the don’t even have a starbucks here, let alone a prison.

before she knows it, it’s been four months. nainai was understanding when she said she’d run into some bad luck and was staying in this small town. she’s just laying low of course, and she promises her grandmother everyday that she’ll be out to phoenix to catch her flight before she knows it. maybe nainai even believes it, because she says ‘my friends in la tell me there was a murder along the freeway there, be careful, sweet girl’ and nadja cringes, because she is not a sweet girl. she’s a killer and a prisoner and only one of those truths is she fully aware of in boot hill.

❝ the only thing i remember from my childhood is when you are scared, make yourself tall. i’m the tallest girl alive. i’m the tallest knife. no throat can hold me. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Chloe Bennet AUTHOR › Lucia

#chloe bennet #rp #rpg #bio rp #semi appless rp #{ all. }#{ local. }#{ f. }#{ over twenty. }#{ lucia. }#death tw #murder tw #violence tw #racism implied tw #assault tw

3 notes · View notes

southboundhqarchive · 5 years

Photo

MEET KIMBERLY,

FULL NAME › Kimberly Qianyi Feng AGE › twenty eight GENDER › Cis female (She/Her/Hers) FROM › Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada RESIDENCE › Stagecoach Apartments (Outskirts) OCCUPATION › Bartender at the Coyote’s Howl Bar, Projectionist at the Moonlite Drive-In Theater NOW PLAYING › Can You Fake It? by Bread and Water

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger warnings: death, murder, gore, sex mention, assault, implied racism, violence, drug mention

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : GOOD THING – FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS

it’s a whirlwind romance, so the journal of kimberly’s father would tell of it when her mother finally lets her read it. megan robbie spends her year abroad at tianjin university, hoping to make a new start for her life after the death of her parents. she has no siblings to lean on for support and the once strong childhood and college friendships that had promised permanence and fortitude had failed–crumbling under the weight of complicated grief. megan finds the exchange program that will take her as far away from victoria, bc as possible. northern china connects her somewhat distantly to her mother’s mother, a woman she barely sees in her own features and hardly remembers from her own childhood. megan finds herself falling in love with the coastal metropolis.

no one seems to notice the small changes in megan’s body beneath her bridal garb. it is not long before the wedding that baby qianyi grows in her belly–just now the size of a peach pit–kicking with the thunderous force of athena banging around in her father’s head. she is guoqiang’s daughter through and through. when she is born, it is a difficult birth and megan thinks that surely all this pain is worth it. she doesn’t see her baby for hours as she hemorrhages blood and the fundal massage the nurses perform to train her uterus to do what it was engineered to after birth is excruciating. there is nothing she wants more than to be a mother, she thinks, and when she holds qianyi in her arms for the first time, she knows she cannot return to work and there is nothing left for her back home in british columbia.

they name the small girl for guoqiang’s feisty mother and megan gives her the english counterpart of kimberly and the middle name of her own later mother. in megan’s arms, qianyi can never seem to find peace and is quieted only long enough to eat before howling for her father. megan feng cannot understand what she has done wrong, but is comforted by the soft tutting of her husband as he quiets their precocious baby girl, insisting that she is just a fussy child and only seemed preferred him because he was so often at work.

college had worked out well for guoqiang and soon he was working for future tv in tianjin. the train rides home extended his time away as did the occasional afterwork dinner or meeting leaving megan and kimberly to themselves for the most part during the week. if distance made the heart grow fonder, time made the heart grow sweeter. megan was full of yearning and though she cherished her time with the fussy, mischievous toddler it soon became not enough. she yearned for stimulating conversation and found herself nose deep in any literature she could get her hands on–eager to discuss the stories with guoqiang as he entered the house late at night with slumped shoulders.

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : BELA LUGOSI’S DEAD – BAUHAUS

the time comes where guoqiang feng is bestowed with the good fortune of moving up in the company. despite being dead tired everyday, he considers himself lucky even as the dust continues to build on his baby blue fender stratocaster. once relegated to the work week, guoqiang’s long hours continue on long business trips throughout the country. the time apart does not shatter their foundation, but it does take its toll on the young couple. unwilling to let megan and qianyi come second to anything, guoqiang makes some important changes.

on most nights, guoqiang starts skipping the afterwork cocktails–coming back home from with a little more energy than before. he starts to plan a family vacation to sanya to revitalize the marriage and get some much needed rest and relaxation. megan takes the news to heart and enthusiastically begins planning their itinerary. there is a new glimmer to the feng household and even kimberly seems to be less fussy–toddling around with a smiling face. she takes steps on her own and starts to speak; her first word is ‘cat.’ the fengs get a cat. kimberly can hardly remember life in tianjin, but nearly every moment of her childhood includes that cat she cannot name. the gossamer wings of nostalgia obscure so many things.

the fengs are as shocked as the rest of the world when news hits of sarin gas in nagano. it’s a stark juxtaposition when held up against guoqiang’s busy work days in tianjin or megan and kimberly playful days in the coastal city of tianjin. the fengs have never been to japan aside from guoqiang’s rare trips to tokyo for business. when guoqiang doesn’t return to his hotel room in tokyo on time from the train to make his night call with his family a year later, it’s the furthest thing in the world from megan’s mind. she’s certain–despite qianyi mounting tantrums–that he simply stayed out too late with colleagues following an impromptu dinner. when he never makes it home, megan wonders if she should count herself lucky or unlucky that kimberly does not have the words to ask the deeper questions–not yet.

as spring approaches, ushering in the reminders of trips to sanya, megan feng holds qianyi firmly in her arms in a dark room. they are all that is left. everything reminds megan of him. guoqiang’s ghost is inescapable and he is present in everything she does. guoqiang’s mother qianyi comes to mourn her son, but stays to help a mother and child heal. it’s too much for one woman to carry alone, but despite their grief the two mothers make a go of it together.

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : BURN – THE CURE

every grain of sand in bohai bay carries a piece of guoqiang in it. megan cannot breathe in her husband’s shadow and, despite the love she has for her home, she knows it is time to make a new life. the goodbyes are painful, but after she is accepted to study at the university of british columbia she knows that fate has chosen a new path for her. she is blessed to leave with her daughter in tow. the cat with a forgotten name stays with qianyi’s nainai in her modest house by the sea. it will be a long time before little qianyi looks upon her face again.

qianyi starts kindergarten in vancouver, british columbia and struggles behind her classmates. back home she was touted as gifted, if not just a little too busy, but here she feels behind. by elementary school she is taking the bus and walking home to the apartment herself while megan finishes her degree. so many kids struggle with the name qianyi, even though it is the simplest thing on her own tongue. she doesn’t get to choose between qianyi and kimberly; it is a choice made for her by her mother and the rest of the people she comes across. it isn’t perfect, but kimberly will look back later upon this time with palpable longing; it’s the only time she remembers feeling happy with her mother because, as she’ll learn in an encroaching reading assignment–nothing gold can stay.

where kimberly struggles, megan thrives. majoring in literature, she puts her love of reading to good use. it doesn’t even matter that she has to start seemingly from scratch when all of her credits don’t transfer over. three years into her bachelor’s and she meets professor preston clarke and is immediately enamored by his lecture style. he is, for all intents and purposes, the quintessential cool guy professor. they meet during his office hours and discuss poetry over coffee. the romance doesn’t cross the line until graduate school, when she becomes his teaching assistant. to protect his reputation she drops out of the program and applies for a teaching program instead. megan and kimberly move into his tasteful craftsman in english bay. everytime preston calls her ‘kimmie’ instead of qianyi she bristles; she knows this man has no business playing her father.

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : LEXICON DEVIL – THE GERMS

as kimberly grows so do her problems in school. the letters seem to dance off the page like fall leaves and she is unable to sit still to focus like the other kids. the more kimberly struggles, the more megan and preston push her. it only deepens the divide between them. the only balm for her anger is the occasional stretches of the year when nainai visits. it is the only time kimberly freely speaks chinese in the household where her mother coddles her monolingual partner. when nainai is there, kimberly does not break her toys or rip apart preston’s coffee table books–she runs into the arms of her grandmother and finds the comfort of her father. with grandma feng in the house, the tensions seem to lessen.

it’s the music that kimberly channels this anger into. she spends her afternoons skateboarding of messing around on her dad’s old stratocaster. she paints her lips black and clings to anything that turns to corners of her mother’s lips downard in disapproval. kimberly tells herself it’s her mother’s choice, this rebellion. it’s the choice she made when she plucked her small daughter from her father’s home and forced her into the hostile canadian soil. in that soil, megan feng becomes meg clarke. she blossoms and grows, building a home in old grief to runaway from new loss. kimberly refuses the surname and stands her ground; she will not forfeit her father’s name.

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : OH BONDAGE ! UP YOURS ! – XRAY SPEX

freshman year brings a new sense of freedom to kimberly life. skipping class to smoke cigarettes and crush beer cans under the bridge beats the annoyed sighs of teachers who think ‘kimberly feng just doesn’t apply herself.’ when she runs out of cash for smokes or weed at the end of the school day, kimberly skates over to the university to bum a few dollars off her stepdad. she’s done it half a dozen times this month alone and there’s nothing to suggest this day will go any differently. as she approaches his office, she zips up the black hoodie she’s altered with dental floss to cover the band shirt beneath as a small act of appeasement.

instead of finding him alone, drinking scotch and contemplating the loneliness his mediocre life affords him, kimberly finds him with his hand on the thigh of another bright-eyed literature major–his position as a professor adding an attraction to him that would otherwise go overlooked. she turns sharply on the heel of her black doc martens, storming out to the parking lot to the tenured professor’s coveted parking spot. the silver sedan glistens in the spring sunshine. it’s so close to the anniversary of her father’s death, which has come and gone unmarked yet again in preston clarke’s household. april showers bring may flowers, but in the parking lot it is raining safety glass as she smashes out the windows of the sedan with the trucks of her skateboard. the clarkes have always seemed to be more interested in the status of parenthood rather than the labor love takes. it feels good to break something he loves.

when preston finds out he insists that nainai’s summer visit be cancelled and megan feels pressured to oblige; she has always only wanted harmony between preston and kimberly and it seems farther away than ever. the punishment does not serve to temper her into a well-honed tool. kimberly anger is a wolf lapping its own blood off the blade of a knife; the meal satiates her, but it is she who is hemorrhaging. she runs away several times before it sticks–never speaking to her mom and stepdad again when she finally manages to get out.

couch surfing with friends and surviving somewhere between traincar and tall boys of steel reserve, she joins a series of moderately popular local punk bands–unable to commit to anything for too long. it builds up her reputation in vancouver’s punk community, however, and soon she has the family she’s always wanted–a large group of friends. kimberly casts off her old identity. she is finding her footing in brand new velvet burgundy docs–a kickdown from some drunk girl at a show. they’re a little too big, but with a couple pairs of wool socks, she can hardly tell the difference.

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : I LOVE LIVIN’ IN THE CITY – FEAR

by twenty-one, things have picked up for kimberly. the girl has split her time between working at smoke shops and alternative cafes long enough to have obtained her ged and now she works the front door at a popular punk bar. at an average heigh tof 5′6″ the fast-talking, loud mouthed runaway has other ways to cut even the tallest men to half her size. her temper gets her into trouble, but her charisma and work ethic keep her employed.

without her parents’ finances, it becomes more and more difficult for kimberly to see her grandmother and their visits are relegated predominantly to weekly skype conversations. nainai works with her granddaughter to keep up her mandarin and the girl dreams of returning home and spending the weekdays working in tianjin only to return to the calm beach town where her grandmother still lives in the house she was born in. it seems like a pipe dream, but it is one both women hold onto. it is the only dream either one has left. grandma feng no longer has any reason to speak to her once beloved daughter in law either, but there is no spite. she knows that kimberly’s mother cannot bear to have the thorns of guoqiang’s death in her paws for a lifetime. grief is complicated, but better understood by those who’ve lived long enough to see enough of it.

after a few years, kimberly becomes lead bartender, but the money just isn’t rolling in. the bar threatens to close and kimberly begins taking night classes and setting money away in the hopes that a business degree will legitimize her enough for a business loan so she can buy the place herself. it cements her in bc, but with enough money she could at least afford to bring her grandmother out to see her on occasion. it’s not a homecoming, sure, but perhaps it is a homemaking.

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : EVER FALLEN IN LOVE – THE BUZZCOCKS

like her mother and father before her, kimberly falls in love with a boy playing guitar–spitting his own blood on the crowd of the bar like gasoline. kurt is tall and lanky with a padlock securing a chain around his throat. his long, dark hair frames his freckled face so delicately for someone with such an obtrusive frame. it’s not long before the spiteful bartender and the guitarist who lives in his van and calls himself ‘freegan’ to justify dumpster diving cheese pizzas are inseparable. he moves in quickly to her place, more or less because he doesn’t have a stable place to leave his shit when he’s on tour.

it suits her just fine when he’s away playing shows or laying down tracks on a seven inch. the bands slays and kurt and kimberly have fun together. they get drunk on forties in train yards and cemeteries. they drive out to the beach and fuck in his van before tagging up the concrete retaining walls of a beachfront housing development. it seems like they might spend the rest of their lives smoking weed and cigarettes on the porch, scarfing down breakfast burritos at three am, and marathoning eighties horror movies like each time is the first time. kimberly doesn’t know if she believes in love, but she thinks that maybe this is close enough. her skype calls to grandma feng become spotty in these first few months. it is the thing she will live to regret the most.

kimberly becomes lax under the spell of love. coursework does not go unfinished, but she lets kurt hangout sometimes in the bar when she’s closing. eventually, her boss concedes to hire him on as a dishwasher and–though he complains about wanting a better position–he shows up to work most days more or less on time with a fresh cigarette behind his ear and an easy grin. he closes up some nights with kimberly or the other bartender–a menacing looking american girl named natasha that bites her nails when she thinks no one is looking and always smells like damp patchouli and sweat.

on a moonless night in december, not long after their one year anniversary, kimberly arrives to the community college to see that class is cancelled. excited to return early to the bar and surprise kurt with some burgers and garlic fries, she is crushed to find him in the arms of natasha. the pair are showered in burgers and kimberly catches one of them with an empty bottle she isn’t sure she truly means to make contact with. the sound of shattered glass has always been a lullaby to an angry girl.

she’s not even all the way back to her apartment before she gets the call. kimberly feng is fucking firedand kurt has given her the blame for the money he’s been skimming from the place on the sly. they’re debating on whether or not to press charges. kimberly sells all of kurt’s second-rate band equipment to a pawn shop along with the things that don’t mean enough to carry on her back. she buys a plane ticket to tianjin by way of los angeles that day. with christmas lurking around the corner, it’s the best bang for her buck. kimberly leaves her house keys on the empty floor. fuck leases and fuck kurt stevens.

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : SPELLBOUND – SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES

the corrosive memories of kurt and natasha’s tryst are far from kimberly’s mind as she finishes the skype call with her grandmother giving her the good news. understandably, grandma feng is concerned about the impulsive decision, but she knows her granddaughter well enough. even a girl as rash as a summer forest fire sometimes makes the right choice. they have dreamed of reuniting for so long, it is hard to take the news with anything but a tearful smile. kimberly hears it in her voice–it colors every word. for the first time in kimberly’s young life she thinks: i’m coming home.

the drive is a long one, but kimberly is worried about the possibility of being forced to stay in bc due to assault charges. she can drive down the west coast and breathe in the salty air. she can eat clam strips and throw bread to seagulls in some seaside diner while she watches the tumultuous waves of the oregon coast thrash violently against the rocky shore. maybe it’ll be therapeutic, she thinks, to be one small person along a great, dark sea. a few days more. a few days and she’ll be back in tianjin and maybe she and nainai can get a new cat together. maybe the waves that beat the sands of dongjiang bay beach are softer and kinder than those in the pacific northwest.

it’s a lonely ride down and after three days of reflection and solitude, kimberly feels like crawling out of her own skin. it’s too much peace for a girl born of chaos. perhaps it’s self-destruction or maybe it’s idle boredom, but when she sees the young crust punk couple hitchiking on the side of the road, she thinksfuck it, at least it’s something new and pulls over for them. they’re on the way to yuma city and she agrees to drop them off on her way to lax. they seem fine enough. she doesn’t even mind the little blue heeler they have with them, even though she’s a dyed in the wool cat person. the track marks don’t go unnoticed, but it’s nothing new to a veteran of the punk scene and kimberly feng can handle anything.

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : DEAD END JUSTICE – THE RUNAWAYS

after a day on the road, the trio and their small dog throw down a few bucks to sleep in one of the cabins at a kampground of america. it’s not so bad, but the puppy whines all night and pees on the floor once in the early hours of the morning. kim lies awake on the top bunk and she can hear the pair talking below her. wes speaking in his dopey voice, hardly whispering and maya shushing him in harsh whispers. kimberly keeps her movements to the minimum and her eyes closed after she hears them pause for several moments when she readjusts. she’s certain she can smell maya’s breath for a moment as she hears the bed creak and feels a steely finger in her ribs. keeping her breaths steady, she plays opossum.

it becomes clear to her, once the bed creaks and maya starts talking again that they mean to rip her off. maya even asks wes is he’s ever wondered what it would feel like to kill somebody. kim’s seen the way he looks at her; he’d die for her. he’d kill for her. boy, have they fucked with the wrong girl, kim thinks darkly. covers pulled up to her chin. there’s a butterfly knife in her pocket and the shape of it has left an impression on the skin of her thigh. slowly she reaches for it and works to silently unfold it, clutching it to her chest beneath the covers when she’s through. they’re gonna pay. she’s never thought herself a killer, but she’s been a fighter since she was in her mother’s belly. let them try it, she thinks. and they do.

maya is easily overtaken. kim has the element of surprise and a few inches on her. she wonders what it says about her that she can dispatch a shitty person so easily. it’s not like highlander; she doesn’t gain mystical powers when she sticks maya in the neck with that cheap butterfly knife. all she gets is blood. wes, on the other hand, he’s harder once he realizes his life is on the line. easily, he has half a foot and thirty pounds on her and he gives almost as good as he gets. kim swallows a molar and take a hit so hard her ears ring, but she doesn’t stop. her whole life has been filled with a rage that she has let out in metered doses. tonight she lets it all out; tonight she knows she can never go back to vancouver, but she can still go home. she doesn’t stop until the dog barks at her loudly to go outside and she wonders if he didn’t trust them either.

they’d named him something stupid, like chaos or dogmeat. he wasn’t a fucking fallout canine companion even if they fancied themselves raiders. heroin and the open road, punk rock and a boxcar–she knows how romantic it all can seem. they probably thought they were mad max or negan. in the end they were just assholes. kimberly feng is a cat person, but she can’t just leave this poor dog in the cabin with all that blood. he’s barely more than a puppy. kim doesn’t know what the fuck to do with a dog, but … he is kind of cute. his blue-grey fur reminds her of an old man’s beard–a little old grandpa–and so the name, while never meant to be permanent, sticks. and so does grandpa, it seems, as he never leaves her side. they’ll have to head east, farther from the scene of the crime and buy a plane ticket from somewhere like phoenix. she chides herself as she wonders how much it costs to ship a dog to tianjin and decides fuck it, it doesn’t really matter. their friendship was baptized in blood, she and the dog belong together.

▓ ▌NOW PLAYING : THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT – THE SMITHS

the open road at night in the desert has an eerie quality to it and kim is running from ghosts. phantoms who catch her easiest when she is sleeping, grandpa curled under her arm, in the back seat of her beat up muscle car. she’s never seen a place quiet like this and maybe it’d even be beautiful if she wasn’t alone–lady macbeth on the run. at least the dog’s good company, he doesn’t seem to care what she’s done and long as she feeds him. there’s something kind of nice about the newness of unconditional love.

she doesn’t call her grandmother to tell her about the change in flight plans, not yet anyway. once nainai’svoice sound on the other end, she knows she’ll burst into tears. she doesn’t deserve a grandmother like that, but she knows that an old woman can’t care for herself forever. she can at least give her that. if she can’t give her fat grandchildren and a fancy house on the beach, she can at least be there for her–if only she could find the highway.

before she knows it, it’s been four months. nainai was understanding when she said she’d run into some bad luck and was staying in this small town. she’s just laying low of course, and she promises her grandmother everyday that she’ll be out to phoenix to catch her flight before she knows it. maybenainai even believes it, because she says ‘my friends in la tell me there was a murder along the freeway there, be careful, sweet girl’ and kimberly cringes, because she is not a sweet girl. she’s a killer and a prisoner and only one of those truth, is she fully aware of in boot hill.

❝ the only thing i remember from my childhood is when you are scared, make yourself tall. i’m the tallest girl alive. i’m the tallest knife. no throat can hold me. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Chloe Bennet AUTHOR › Lucia

#chloe bennet #rp #rpg #small town rp #oc rp #{ all. }#{ f. }#{ local. }#{ lucia. }#{ over twenty. }#death tw #murder tw #gore tw #assault tw

2 notes · View notes