#songs of Lakeshore
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Lungolago
Having fun with ink and imagining scenery from an old original storyworld, code-named Songs of Lakeshore
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richard siken - meanwhile
#toast with honey and the butter you get nearby. tasting of here#half a mint chocolate protein bar on the bedside table. morning was nasty but the afternoon is looking up#it’s 2am and chicken nuggets for the rats. it’s 9pm and mcflurries on the way home#summer. so it melts too fast for me and that song. late nights in the middle of june#smoke in the air and the lakeshore. bittersweet#still looking for mint oreos. still looking#love you. love you. love you.
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EAGLESCOUT!STEVE/PERV EDDIE WIP EXCERPT FROM CH. 1
Capture the flag is all fun and games until it’s time to clean up the equipment and Steve is wandering through the woods trying not to infect himself with poison ivy like the better half of his troop did an hour ago. Now being treated by their resident Scoutmaster/Chief of Police–Jim Hopper–with calamine lotion and an eye roll.
He’s out on his own.
Strategically voyaging through the underbrush in search of the blue team’s flag. It’s the last one on his list and he’s dying to get back to basecamp to snag a refreshing post-win lemonade with the rest of the troop. Already salivating from the promise of tangy sweetness.
The sun is about to set. Sky blushing pink while the owls hoot from the branches of pine trees. Calling out to each other in harmonious song as the day comes to a close.
Steve’s back is sticky and warm from directing the game. His cheeks are flushed, exposed thighs bitten up by mosquitoes despite multiple reapplications of Deet, and his glasses keep slipping down the bridge of his nose from the slick sweat coating his brow bone.
To be honest, despite the itchy heat and craving for something ice cold down his throat, Steve looks forward to rare moments like this one.
In which he can breathe easily in the reverie of temporary independence.
No one to perform for.
No one to stop him from humming a tune under his breath and stopping every so often to investigate a patch of blooming elderberries.
No one to chastise him for plopping an unwashed piece of fruit under his tongue and taking his time to savor the sweetness.
No one to point fingers and accuse him of gluttony.
Out here in the quiet, Steve can pretend all that exists are the mourning doves, rabbits running from foxes, and the subtle breeze kissing the lakeshore.
He’s content. He’s at peace.
He’s—
He’s choking on his spit at the sight of the terrible scene in front of him—two men dancing with Satan beside a picnic table.
Two men entangled in an inconceivable fashion.
Two men running their hands over each other’s skin; half naked.
Two men–
Together.
Together in the way that only a man and his wife are supposed to be once they’ve married in the church, sworn vows, and moved into the modest house at the end of the cul-de-sac beneath the weeping willows.
Steve racks his brain. Unfolds the information–the proof from the good book–that every belief he holds relies on.
The verse, he thinks–thoughts spiraling out of control, ingrained savior complex kicking in, What about the verse? Don’t they know it? Didn’t their parents warn them? It’s—Hebrews 13:4; ‘Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.’
They’ve yet to notice him. As if he’s camouflaged amongst the pine trees. Khaki blending in seamlessly like he’s just another part of the natural landscape.
In a sense, he is.
The first of the two men sinks to his knees like he’s praying for mercy as Steve has done all his life in the back of the chapel. He gazes up at the other man like he is God. Like he alone holds the divine power to cleanse sin, turn water to wine, and carve Eve from Adam’s rib.
Except, Eve doesn’t exist in this version of the story.
Eve is nowhere to be found and Steve feels like he’s entered a parallel universe where none of the former rules apply. Where this strange subset of humanity has scorched the Earth, burned the devoted ones at the stake, and anarchy now reigns.
The second stands above him in the widened prideful stance of a known pariah who foolishly believes he can outrun impending rapture and escape eternal damnation if he is clever and quick enough on his feet.
Steve can’t see his face, because similarly to the vile act he’s committing, the man is concealed by a vexing darkness. Curly tendrils of wild hair obscure his identity.
It’s odd. Unlike anyone else Steve’s ever known. Overgrown and hanging well past his shoulders. It doesn’t make sense.
Only girls are allowed to wear their hair like that. Boys like this—boys like him get sent away for such infractions. Excommunicated for their betrayal to patriarchal norms.
Men are supposed to look like men.
This man does not.
This man seems to toe and test every line and boundary like nothing can touch him.
Steve tries to get his feet to move so he can turn and run and disappear into the forest like the rest of God’s innocent creatures–the field mice, the deer, the fish in the pond–find somewhere hidden to seek asylum and preserve his fragile righteousness.
But latent curiosity slithers around him like a serpent with a fatal bite.
No cure.
No remedy.
Steve has no choice. All logical thought abandons him and perhaps for the first time in his life, he allows himself to simply watch and feel.
The man who doesn’t look all that much like a man leans a ring-covered hand back onto the rickety table like it's his personal throne and feeds his–his—genitals to the parted lips of the first.
Steve brings a hand to his own gawking mouth, ducks behind a tree to better shield himself, and tries to stall his racing heart.
“Lemme fuck your throat, baby. Open wide—wider. C’mon now play nice for me. If you’re not gagging on my cock then you can take it deeper,” the man rasps out as he thrusts his hips forwards and ensnares his black tipped nails into the hair of the kneeling man like vicious talons, “Good boy–there we go. Someone’s learned their lesson since last time, haven’t they? Stay open for me, sweetheart—keep that tongue nice and relaxed.”
thanks so much for reading !! please let me know what you think, feedback is always motivating and helpful 🥰
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#to everyone who has encouraged me to write this au ily and i’m so excited#steddie#steddie brainrot#steve harrington#eddie munson#steddie fic#steddie fanfiction#steddie fic recs#steddie ao3#ao3 steddie#steddie ao3 fic#steddie au#fruity four#stranger things#steve x eddie#steve harrington/eddie munson#perv!eddie munson#perv!eddie#eddie munson/steve harrington#steddie fanfic
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Not that you're taking drabble requests, buuuut...
James Arthur's song "Naked" seems very Everlark, and I'll bet you could come up with something awesome for it. If not, I feel like it's great inspo.
Just sayin'! I'll see myself out now. ;)
Katniss held her breath as she crested the hill that lead to her father's lake.
She knew he'd be there, waiting for her just like his note said.
What she didn't know was that he'd already be in the water waiting for her.
She looked down at the trail of clothes that led to the lakeshore.
The first, a plain white T-shirt. The thin kind Peeta favored for working at the bakery during long hot summer days. The kind she had taken to stealing and sleeping in because they were so comfortable.
Then, a pair of boots, tossed off haphazardly a few feet from each other. The double-knotted laces were pulled uncharacteristically undone.
One gray sock lying over a rock. The sight shouldn't have affected her, but an image was forming in her mind.
A thick pale chest dusted in faint blond hairs....a broad back decked with freckles moving over strong muscles.
A pair of tan trousers crumpled and left to lie precisely where they had fallen stirred up images of solid calves and thickly built thighs covered in dark, curly blond hairs.
The odd shiver rolled down her spine, half anticipation, half trepidation. They'd spent the night wrapped in each other's arms and had shared much of their bodies but not everything.
There had been obstacles.
It had taken him years to wrest control of the bakery from his mother after his father had died. He wanted to be his own man, with his own livelihood to offer when he inevitably asked her to marry him. Katniss had refused for years to sign any official papers at the Justice Building, despite knowing he was the only one she could ever see herself sharing her life with. Even after they toasted in a private ceremony she refused to fully consummate the relationship until she was sure the Hunger Games had been abolished for good.
Tonight was different.
It had been a year since the current government had signed a decree outlawing anything like the Games from ever taking place on Panem soil again.
It had been four years since she and Peeta had toasted.
And this morning they had signed the papers at the Justice Building that made everything official.
It was time. Past time, really for this.
And with that thought, she began to disrobe.
She prodded gently at the last item of clothing with her bare toe. Her plain white cotton underwear lay atop his navy blue boxers.
The sight made her smile just a little.
She looked out into the water where she could just make out his shape. He was floating on his back lazily, hands braced behind his head. His torso was shining wet with small puddles collecting along his sternum and navel.
The things she wanted to do at the sight surprised even her.
Especially when her eyes dipped lower to trace the rest of his naked body that he proudly left on display for her to see.
She licked her lips absent-mindedly as she took one step forward and warm summer lake water lapped at her ankles.
She saw the moment he noticed her. Saw the way his eyes caught on her bare skin and dragged down with agonizing intensity across every inch of her.
She stood there for a minute, just letting him look at her, as she looked her fill at him in return.
It was a promise. She was done pretending she didn't need him, all of him, with her, beside her, inside her giving her everything she always swore she could do without.
She could do without so much. But not him. She needed him and what's more, she wanted him. She wanted the promise of everything they could build together, with their hearts and their naked bodies finally surrendering to each other after so long of only giving each other half of what they really wanted.
The wait was over.
It was time for her and Peeta now.
She slipped into the water and swam out to meet him, bare-skin, naked soul, and full heart.
#thg#everlark#fanfiction#lemonluvwrites#implied smut#just a little drabble#anticipation#peeta mellark#katniss everdeen
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In A Week
a/n: i was about to say i’m going literal with this one but that is, thankfully, not true. (y’all do know this song is about a pair of corpses rotting in a field, right? but it is very romantic which is peak Hozier)
word count: 0.9k
warnings: vague reference to past sexual activities. gender-neutral reader!
Our hungers appeased, our heartbeats becoming slow.
The gentle chirping of birds and the sound of their fluttering wings through the trees are what wake you from your slumber. A pleasant change from the noises that you often heard first thing in the morning; the sounds of traffic and shouts from the city that never sleeps.
Your eyelids flutter open and in the bleary haze of your eyes adjusting, you can only make out the green and brown of the world around you.
The unfamiliar scenery wakes you more, a jolt to your system. However, it only takes a few seconds for your mind to catch up, reminding you about the night before.
Mat and you dragging the air mattress out from the cabin closet. Carrying it down to the clearing by the lakeshore, along with every blanket you could find. The sound of the crackling fire, it’s heat warming you in the night.
The feeling of Mat’s body above yours, his lips on your skin, the stars your only witness.
Last night… it was perfect.
Your body twists, rustling the soft blankets that were piled on top of you, gently stretching as the sky grew brighter. After chasing the lingering fatigue from your body, you turn to look up at Mat, still sleeping peacefully.
He looked beautiful. He always did. But when he was sleeping, it was a different kind of beauty. The beauty of existing. The troublesome wrinkle between his brow that appeared when he was stressed didn’t materialize. His eyes never drifted off into his worries about performance or standings. He never ran a hand though his dark hair with anxiety, tousling the strands.
Here, he just lived.
Every off-season, you never wanted him to go back to New York. Perhaps it was selfish. But it wasn’t just for your benefit. It was for his too. He would be away from the never-ending pressure, the failures, the struggles through injury, through doubt. He would never have to go through trades, or scoring droughts, or any of it.
Here, in Vancouver, in his lake house, it could be just you and him. It could be perfect.
It was a silly fantasy though. One you often relinquished. Because that wasn’t who Mat was. Even if he did agree to never go back, it would be a lie. He loved the game too much to abandon it. And you loved him too much to ever ask him to.
So, you took these moments where it felt like the world couldn’t touch either of you, and held them close to your heart.
You might have to share him with his teammates, his coaches, and hundreds of fans. But you didn’t have to give them all of him. There were some parts that were solely yours.
Your hand moves without really thinking, brushing some of the strands of hair away from his forehead, a small huff of laughter falling from you as his nose crinkles, the motion waking him.
He stretches with a gentle groan before rubbing his eyes, blearily opening them. You can see he has a similar reaction to his unfamiliar surroundings, not remembering the events of last night for a moment before his gaze catches yours. The smile that appears on his lips warms you from the inside and you welcome the feeling of his arm coming to wrap around you, pulling you closer.
“Mornin’,” he mumbles, his lips coming to press a small kiss onto your forehead.
“Good morning,” you whisper back, eyes remaining on his before you lean in to properly kiss him. His lips are soft against yours and it doesn’t take much for you to deepen this kiss, sighing into him as your body rolls on top of him. His hands help guide you before lifting to cup your jaw.
The two of you continue like that for a little while, lazily swapping kisses, only occasionally breaking apart. Finally, you pull away, your eyelids fluttering open to look down at him, that gentle smile playing on your lips. An expression which is mirrored on his.
The cold morning air could be blamed for the shiver that was sent down your spine. But that would be a lie. It was the way Mat’s thumbs caressed your cheek, his movements never failing to draw a reaction from you. You press on last kiss on his lips before collapsing back to his side, nestling closer as your eyes turn to the sky.
You feel his hand come to grab yours underneath the blankets and you gladly intertwine your fingers, a sigh falling from your chest.
The two of you lay there in silence; listening to the birds and the gentle lapping of the water against the shore, watching as the sky turned from its grey to orange to pastel yellow and blue, the wispy clouds disappearing in the heat of the sun. It isn’t long until Mat’s voice sounds, breaking through the early morning silence.
“I love you.”
You sneak a glance up towards him and find him already looking down at you, his words clearly reflected in his eyes. The smile that tugs at your mouth is instinctive, one he was able to bring forth so easily. You relax back against his side, your grip around his hand tightening.
“I love you too.”
There is nothing else you could say. There is nothing else you want to say.
That was the truth in its entirety – as sure and constant as the rising sun.
#nicole writes#hozier blurb weekend#mat barzal blurb#mat barzal fluff#new york islanders blurb#nhl blurb#hockey blurb
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Oh, Rama Havenna Stage Script (EN)
This is the full Stage Script from the game menu for Oh, Rama Havenna (occasional typos and all, though I tried not to add any that weren't already there, but no promises).
Another verse, much like the first, I've gotten through Oh, Rama Havenna with a few weeks to spare. You can read Mary Jane here [x]. Some notes - the formatting is a bit different on this one. I've gone without the constant quotation marks, and tumblr let me do different things with line breaks.
There are some things in this script that are not in the game version - in-game, parts of the script are elided in favor of summary.
The Stage Scripts don't include any character ad-libs from the in-game performance, though. Of course, you can access it from the game menu, if you've got it, but this version is searchable! The play is a touch under 700 lines long, and is thus behind the cut. I have a version saved elsewhere if you'd like an easier way to save it, feel free to ask.
Oh, Rama Havenna
By Neji Kokuto
(1) Singing Havenna
◆Havenna Lakeshore
Father: …
A boat docks.
Father: A boat.
Father: You in the boat, stop in the name of the Lord.
Chicchi: …
Father: This is Havenna. A town of decadence and pleasure.
Father: Step ashore, and you will never be able to return to the other side.
Father: Do you desire gold? Or fame? Succeed, and the town will be yours for the taking. Fail, and you will become a mugwort seller in a back alley.
Father: Young woman, clean and pure. Will you still enter Havenna?
Chicchi: Yes.
Chicchi: I have no intention of returning to the other shore, Father.
Father: I see.
Father: Then dance until you collapse.
Father: Oh, Rama Havenna.
◆Singing Pub
★Song
“Oh, Rama Havenna, Oh Beloved Havenna”
Man A: Oh, Rama Havenna! Indulgence is sweet and nothing to be ashamed of!
Man B: Oh, Rama Havenna! Just give into your desires!
Rukiora enters with a flourish.
Rukiora: Oh, Rama Havenna! As warm as a baby’s first bath. Oh, Rama Havenna! As gentle as a rocking cradle.
Man A: Love the setting sun. A trash bin can take the place of a hotel!
Man B: Aimless pleasure. A place for the lazy!
Rukiora: Melt down to your bones and forget it all in Havenna. Let the lovely food and drink sing to your core in Havenna.
Rukiora: Oh, Rama Havenna! Oh, Rama Havenna!
Customer A: Rukiora, Havenna’s singing princess.
Customer B: I want to be ripped apart by those beautiful arms of hers!
Customer A: Hey, cut that out. Just imagining that will get you kicked out of here. She is well known for being a fine woman.
Customer B: That’s even better!
Chicchi quietly appears
Chicchi: …
Rukiora: Oh, Rama Havenna! …That’s all for my singing. Thank you very much. Have a good night.
Applause
Customer A: Oh rama! Oh rama! Secanda!
Customer B: Give us more! Secanda, secanda!
Rukiora: Haha, how many times are they going to make me sing… Ah.
Chicchi: …
Rukiora: I’ll sing one more song. Only because a friend is here today.
◆Town Streets
Rukiora: Chicchi! You came.
Chicchi: Rukiora. You sang beautifully today, too. Your guests were so delighted.
Rukiora: Thank you for the praise… However, haah, I’m unhappy.
Chicchi: Unhappy?
Rukiora: With the song itself! Those lyrics are just atrocious!
Rukiora: 'Oh, Rama Havenna, we are a bunch of sloths', 'Oh, Rama Havenna, even so, our life is great!
Rukiora: Ugh, I hate it. The guests at the club are just excusing how pathetic they are with these lyrics.
Rukiora: They're filling the singing club with their muggy stench.
Rukiora: If my nose weren’t so stuffy, I’d have thrown up from such a horrid stench. I’m so glad it is!
Rukiora: Though I want it fixed because it’s difficult to sing.
Rukiora: …But what I detest even more is the fact I’m making money by interacting with them.
Rukiora: My living is dependent on them!
Rukiora: Aagh, I just hate it.
Chicchi: I think anyone’s amazing who works hard at what they do. I love your singing, Rukiora.
Rukiora: Chicchi! My friend I love so much! You’re my one and only solace here in Havenna.
Chicchi: Heh heh…
The two of them hug.
A little distance away, a dirtied man address a charming woman.
Dirty Man: … I can’t sleep. Can you sell me some mugwort?
Suspicious Woman: Yes, I just got some good mugwort in.
Rukiora: …Look, Chicchi. A mugwort seller. The most indecent and immodest women in all of Havenna.
Rukiora: The smell of mugwort will get all over you if you get near them. What a revolting smell.
Chicchi: Right. Let’s walk far away from it…
The two of them walk away from the mugwort seller.
Girl: Waait!
Rukiora: What now?!
Fugio: Ah, I’m in trouble…!
Rukiora: Someone’s being chased by that crowd of women…! They’re coming this way.
Chicchi: That’s…
Woman: Wait! Waiiit!
Fugio: I’m going to get caught at this rate…!
Chicchi: This way. Come hide in the shadows.
Fugio: Huh? You’re…!
Rukiora: Chicchi?!
Girl: Hey, let me shake your hand! Hug me! Come talk to us!
Sound of footsteps run past.
Rukiora: …Looks like they’re gone.
Fugio: Thanks, you saved me!
Rukiora: …Are you Fugio, perhaps?
Fugio: Oh, you know my name.
Rukiora: You’re the princeps of the Agua Club… The most famous celebrity around! There isn’t a woman in Havenna who doesn’t know you! Right, Chicchi?
Chicchi: R-Right…
Fugio: Haha, thanks. You two really saved me. Come see my show if you’re free. I’ll prepare some VIP seats for you.
Rukiora: Really? For both of us?
Fugio: Of course! All right, bye then, Chickachina
Chicchi: …!
Rukiora: ‘Chickachina’?
Fugio: Oh, that’s just a way of saying goodbye that’s making the rounds at the club! It could be old news by tomorrow.
Rukiora: I see. Chickachina!
Fugio leaves.
Rukiora: Oh, he’s so cool. Fugio, the finest treasure of Havenna. I never imagined running into him here.
Rukiora: They say not even thieves can get their hands on tickets to his shows. Could this be a reward for trying to live a clean life?
Rukiora: Well, looks like our next meeting will be at the Agua Club! Bye-bye, Chicchi!
Chicchi: Bye-bye, Rukiora.
Chicchi: …
A man comes closer as Rukiora leaves.
Jire: …Chicchi. I see you went to meet Rukiora.
Chicchi: Jire… That’s because she’s my one and only female friend in Havenna.
Jire: …Is that all right? She’s famous for being so clean that she won’t even eat a rat.
Chicchi: Even I won’t eat a rat. Except for the kebabs on Tigris Street.
Jire: The kebabs there are fantastic, huh?! They say there’s a secret in the spices.
Jire: Er, no, I didn’t come here to talk about that.
Jire: …It’s almost time for your shift at Pontartia. Domina said to come to your room an hour before.
Chicchi: I was just a bit late from running into a guest. I always make sure to do my work.
Jire: I’ve heard as much from Domina… More times than I’d like.
Jire: All right, let’s go. Time for ‘Chicchi’ to become ‘Chickachina’.
(2) Bright Havenna
◆Back Alley
Sounds of murmurs
Girls advertising their store and men looking around.
Mugwort Vendor A: Hey mister, need some mugwort?
Mugwort Vender B: Our’s is much better than that shop… Hm? Oh my, it’s the priest.
Father: …
Mugwort Vendor A: He sure is faithful, proselytizing in a town like this. But we’re sick of those sermons!
Mugwort Vender B: Our customers are going to run away, fearing God’s wrath. Go on, get out of here!
Father: This place is once again gloomy with the smell of mugwort…
◆Pontartia - Chicchi’s Room
Jire: Chickachina, your next guest is here.
Fugio: Hey, nice to see you again!
Chicchi: Please don’t call me by my work name outside the shop.
Fugio: Sorry, Chickachina… Er, Chicchi. I was just so happy since I never thought I’d see you around town.
Fugio: Shouldn’t you be the one who should be more careful?
Chicchi: What do you mean?
Fugio: You could have just ignored me like you do your other customers.
Fugio: You’re hiding it, right? The fact that you’re a mugwort seller.
Chicchi: This conversation is absurd. As absurd as someone like you coming to a shop like this to buy mugwort.
Fugio: It’s really tiring to be the princeps. The eyes of the public are on me, so I can’t ruin my image.
Fugio: You understand, right Chicchi?
Chicchi: I’m going to light some mugwort. Set the money down. You can call me by my alias here.
Fugio: Haha, sorry. You keep a lot of secrets, Chickachina. Ah, what a nice smell.
Chicchi: Hey, take off your coat.
Fugio: Right.
Chicchi: You like having my arm around you, don’t you?
Fugio: Yeah… So hurry, wrap it around my neck already…
Chicchi: All right, then… Hmph!”
Chicchi wraps her arm around Fugio’s neck from behind, choking him.
Fugio: Rrgh…!
Fugio falls unconscious without any resistance.
Sound of a thud on the bed.
Fade out.
Fugio: …I think I’m sick.
Chicchi: Yeah. Did you sleep well?
Fugio: Really, I wonder what kind of person first thought up of a business like this?
Chicchi: I’m sure anyone would think up a business to make men who can’t go to sleep fall unconscious. Someone from this town, at least.
Fugio: Havenna’s full of guys who can’t sleep, after all… Can I stay by your side a while longer?
Chicchi: Yes, I’m your Chickachina until morning.
Fugio: Seriously, I hate the sun for that.
Fugio: Someday, I want to take you away from Havenna. I wonder how I can have you all to myself.
Chicchi: There’s nothing outside of Havenna, Fugio.
Fugio: Haha, you speak as though you’ve seen it for yourself. Outside Havenna is overflowing with dreams and hopes bigger than here.
Fugio: Someday, I’ll get out of Havenna… with you.
◆Pontartia
Chicchi: I smell like mugwort all over…
Chicchi: I’ll be taking a shower. I don’t know when Rukiora’s stuffy nose will get better.
Jire: I’m sure it’ll be fine if she’s seeing the same doctor. That guy’s a quack, after all.
Chicchi: With any luck, he’ll hit his head and get some sense knocked into him.
Chicchi: If her nose gets better, she might notice even the faintest scent of mugwort.
Chicchi: If that happens, it’s not just my job that’s in trouble.
Jire: Pontartia’s earnings would plummet instantly. All your customers are the good ones, after all.
Jire: Even that Fugio’s all over you. My ear gets itchy every time I hear his pickup lines.
Chicchi: He’s popular in Havenna. There’s no way he’d actually fall for a mugwort seller.
A man and woman in gaudy clothing approach them as they talk.
They are Facchio and Domina, the owner of the shop and his lover.
Facchio: Chickachina!
Jire: Its Facchio. Pontartia’s owner and the millionaire of Havenna. If he’s here, that means…
Domina: The smell of mugwort is so strong here. I’m sure you’re not wasting any of it, are you?
Jire: Domina… The madam of Pontartia and Facchio’s lover…
Chicchi: Good evening.
Facchio: Did that prince boy come by again?
Chicchi: Not ‘prince boy’. The princeps Facchio.
Facchio: Prince, princeps, whatever. The fact that such a popular boy is mad about you is what’s important.
Domina: So, how much did we earn from him? Ah, here it is.
Chicchi: Ah.
Domina: A bit low for the star of the Agua club. He could be more generous with the tip.
Domina: Subtracting the rent for the room, equipment expenses, other miscellaneous fees… Here’s your share.
Chicchi: …This is it?
Domina: What’s that I hear?
Domina: Who was the one who plucked you off a dirty street corner stinking of matrik into a fine mugwort seller?
Chicchi: You, Madam Domina.
Domina: I thought so.
Domina: The one who taught you how much pressure to apply to block one’s airway, how to charm the beastly men of havenna and send them into heaven was me, right?
Domina: I can be real scary if you mouth off to me.
Facchio: Come now, my little butterfly. The reason you’re upset is proof that Chickachina sees herself as worth more. Let’s give her a little bonus later.
Domina: Facchio, I’m going to get jealous if you keep treating Chickachina so well. Enough to kill her!
Facchio: You’re flapping wings are the most beautiful, my butterfly.
Domina: Hee-hee
Jire: Um, can we leave now?
Domina: Oh, Jire, you’re still here. Get out already.
Facchio: Later, Chickachina.
The two of them leave Facchio and Domina.
Jire: That Domina. She took all that after you worked so hard, Chicchi. I’m going to complain about it later.
Chicchi: There’s no helping it. Those two were the ones who took me in.
Jire: Domina’s jealous of you, Chicchi, because you’re so young and beautiful.
Chicchi: Domina’s beautiful, too. Even though she’s not young.
Jire: Chicchi. What’s so worth gaining here in Havenna that you would go this far?
Chicchi: Jire, Havenna is the town of desire and pleasure. I am a woman of Havenna, too.
Jire: I don’t understand, Chicchi. I can’t imagine this kind of work being fulfilling for you.
◆The Edge of Town
Facchio and Domina enter a church confessional. The priest listens to them from the other side.
Facchio: Father! Oh, Father! I have sinned!
Domina: Please hear Facchio’s confession! And please here mine as well!
Father: Go on.
Facchio: Pontartia has been prosperous here in Havenna.
Facchio: Eventually, we will cross the river and expand Pontartia to a hundred locations.
Facchio: Please, God! Forgive my arrogance and ambition, and protect me from those jealous of my genius!
Domina: And I will follow this man, whose pockets overflow with profit.
Domina: Please allow me to support him in a way his wife is unable to.
Domina: …And please punish that arrogant little Chickachina.
Facchio: Father, what is it that we must do?
Father: God is always watching over us, each day and each night.
Father: He loves us in all our greed, arrogance, jealousy, and envy. Be thankful for the love from our magnanimous God.
Father: You must dance.
Facchio & Domina: Aah!
★Dance
“Intense confessions at the confessional”
(3) Swaying Havenna
◆Agua Club
Fugio’s performance is a cheerful, empty song.
Fugio: The future is a hope without a dream. Let me see your dazzling smile tomorrow! I am your princeps!
Fugio: Shining tears become shooting stars! We can create a love that’s true, if we’re together! I alone am your princeps!
Audience: Ahhh!
Audience: Fugio!
Rukiora: Amazing! I never imagined we could watch the princeps of the Agua Club from such good seats! Let’s dance later! I have to thank God for this!
Chicchi: I’m happy for you, Rukiora.
Fugio: Thank you, thank you! Here’s a flower to remember this night by.
Customer A: Fugio threw a flower!
Customer B: It’s mine!
Customer A: No, it’s mine…
Rukiora: Huh? No way!
Customer: Aww, no fair!
Customer: Fugio, one for me, too!
Fugio: Thank you all! I love you like the stars do!
Rukiora: Look, Chicchi! I got the flower from Fugio…!
Chicchi: Well, you’re the cutest one here, Rukiora. I’m happy for you.
Rukiora: Yeah… I’m so happy…!
◆Yorubeya
Chicchi talks to Miguel, an employee at the club
Miguel: Rukki, Chicchi. Welcome to the Yorubeya. Hm? You look happy, Rukki.
Rukiora: Listen to this, Miguel! Fugio tossed a flower to me at the Agua Club!
Rukiora: Look at this flower! It’s so pretty…!
Miguel: A man giving a flower to a woman is a meaningful thing. And that man is Fugio, the most popular man in Havenna.
Rukiora: You’re right, Miguel. What do I do? What if Fugio becomes my lover?
Rukiora: If I’m with him, I might even be able to leave Havenna and live somewhere far away from here…
Chicchi: Leave Havenna?
Miguel: If you do that, I won’t be able to see you or Chicchi anymore. I’d be a bit lonely.
Rukiora: Miguel! I’ll write to you.
Miguel: Really? I can see you taking your sweet time in responding.
Chicchi: Rukiora, if you were to become Fugio’s lover, would you really leave Havenna?
Rukiora: Chicchi, the world outside this town is full of things that aren’t just pleasure and desire.
Rukiora: Things unimaginable to people like us who have grown up in Havenna!
Chicchi: What do you think is outside Havenna, Rukiora?
Rukiora: I don’t know. Probably…everything.
Miguel: You think? It might just be dandelions and neshiromi fields, you know?
Rukiora: That would be so boring!
Miguel: Havenna’s a place with everything. You can get all the riches and privileges you want here. If you have the power, that is.
Miguel: To me, Havenna’s the most amazing town! There’s no one to criticize you if you spend all your days having fun.
Rukiora: You really are the embodiment of Havenna, Miguel.
Miguel: There are girls as cute as you too, Rukki.
Rukiora: You playboy.
Miguel: Ahaha, it’s true.
Rukiora: I want to get out of here as soon as possible. If only Fugio really WOULD take me away…
Chicchi: But we’ll be apart if you leave Havenna.
Rukiora: You just need to come with me! Me, you, and Fugio, all three of us will leave.
Miguel: No fair. You’re only taking Chicchi.
Rukiora: It’s different with Chicchi, Miguel. We’re special friends.
Chicchi: …
Chicchi: …So you want to leave Havenna, Rukiora? You have no desire to stay here?
Chicchi: Even if I’m with you…?
Rukiora: Wait, Chicchi. It’s not like I want to leave Havenna right NOW.
Rukiora: Though if I could leave, I would.
Miguel: Are you okay being with anyone, so long as they’ll take you away from Havenna?
Rukiora: Well, of course I’d prefer Fugio. He’s a pure-hearted princeps. This flower must be a sign of things to come.
Rukiora: I’m sure something will happen before this flower’s fragrance fades. Oh, what a nice smell. If my nose weren’t so stuffy, I bet it’d smell even lovelier.
Chicchi: Rukiora, you’ve got pollen on your nose.
Rukiora: Oh, no! I need to touch up my makeup!
Rukiora leaves her seat.
Sound of her hurrying away.
Miguel: Rukiora is quite taken with Fugio.
Chicchi: It’s because he threw her that flower. What is he trying to do, anyway?
Miguel: You think he could’ve been trying to throw it to you? I mean…
Miguel: I’m sure you were the cutest one in the audience.
Chicchi: …That’s why people call you a playboy, Miguel. I don’t eat up sweet talk like that.
Miguel: You’re my guest today. Shouldn’t I be serving you?
Miguel: …I can’t sleep. I crave the scent of mugwort.
Chicchi: Don’t talk about that here. Rukiora will be back soon.
Miguel: It’s tough, isn’t it? Having to keep lying.
Chicchi: I’m not lying. I just haven’t told her the truth.
Miguel: And you want her to believe a false truth? Why are you so adamant on hiding it?
Chicchi: When I first started taking customers and Pontartia, Domina always scolded me for failing to knock them out right away.
Chicchi: … ‘We don’t need someone like you here, you freeloader’.
Chicchi: I cried as I walked around Havenna, and when I arrived at Pig’s Rear Street, I heard someone singing.
Chicchi: “‘Oh, Rama Havenna’… I love Havenna so dearly. You can be a good-for-nothing, and that’s all right. Laugh and dance, and you can forget it all…
Chicchi: I was crying.
Chicchi: I cried and cried, and couldn’t stop. When the show ended, I still couldn’t move from where I was…
Chicchi: Rukiora spoke to me.
Chicchi: I think she thought of me as a pure-hearted girl who was moved by her singing. When in truth, I’m far from pure.
Chicchi: But I was happy.
Chicchi: Rukiora’s the only person who can’t know who I really am. No matter what happens.
Miguel: Even if it hurts her in the end?
Chicchi: Is there anything that would her her more than the truth that her friends sells mugwort?
Miguel: Don’t glare at me like that. It’s fine. No one knows anything about who you really are. No one in Havenna. Not even me.
Chicchi: Miguel. You’re different. You’re special.
Miguel: Hey, now. Look who’s dishing out the sweet talk now.
Chicchi: Then, will you be honest and tell Rukiora that you care for her?
Chicchi: You’re a liar, too. You mix in flippant, nonchalant flirting with your true feelings, then shrug off your sleepless nights with mugwort.
Miguel: …I give up. You win. You sure are mean today. Are you annoyed that Rukiora’s so obsessed with Fugio?
Chicchi: Rukiora seemed happy to get a flower from him. That’s why I’m happy, too.
Miguel: You’re not telling the truth again.
Rukiora comes back.
Rukiora: Sorry. Where were we?
Chicchi: We were thinking about how you could stay in Havenna, even if you and Fugio become lovers.
Miguel: I think Fugio going totally broke at a casino would be most effective.
Rukiora: Idiot. Fugio leads a proper life, so he wouldn’t go somewhere like a casino.
Chicchi: …
(4) Noisy Havenna
◆Town Streets
Miguel: Then, can I get those? The Bakuu cookies. Yeah, thanks.
Rukiora: …Those cookies are cute.
Miguel: Rukki! If you had cookies, I would have gone straight to buy them from you.
Rukiora: I have no such thing.
Rukiora: Are they for your customers? I think they’re a little too cute to give out at the club.
Miguel: They’re for me, I just like them.
Rukiora: Oh, you’re so adorable.
Miguel: Right? I AM adorable!
Rukiora: Oh, never mind that. Look, the flower Fugio gave me. It’s still alive. Isn’t it amazing?
Miguel: That’s love for ya.
Rukiora: It is.
Rukiora: I’m going to have my nose checked now. I want to be able to enjoy the fragrance while I still can.
Miguel: I see. I hope your nose gets cleared up soon.
Rukiora: Yes. Goodbye now.
Sound of her walking away.
Miguel: …I think tonight’s going to be another sleepless night.
◆Pontartia - Chicchi’s Room
Fugio: Chickachina, how I’ve missed you. We couldn’t stay and talk for long last time.
Fugio: First, thank you for coming to my show. My heart was dancing just from seeing you there at the Agua Club.
Chicchi: Rukiora was there, too.
Fugio: Oh, right. So, that flower. Did it surprise you?
Chicchi: Rukiora caught it.
Fugio: My aim was abysmal. I really wanted you to catch it. I’m sorry!
Chicchi: I see. She was really happy. She’s a big fan of yours.
Chicchi: But I don’t want you to play with her feelings. She’s a dear friend to me.
Fugio: I see. I didn’t mean to do so, but I admit it was wrong of me. I’m sorry.
Fugio: I’ll throw it next time so that you catch it. No, maybe it’s better if I give it to you directly.
Chicchi: Rukiora is enamored with you. You’re all she talks about.
Fugio: What about you? Talk about me, too.
Fugio: About how you want to run away from Havenna with me.
Chicchi: What a ridiculous conversation.
Fugio: You always avoid the topic whenever it leads to what’s outside Havenna.
Fugio: …Could it be that you have the strongest desire of all to see what’s out there?
Fugio: Don’t you want to escape this harsh reality?
Fugio: Why? Why are you working as a mugwort seller? Debt? Is there something you need?
Fugio: I can give you what it is you desire. Whatever you want, even a moment to make you forget reality.
Fugio: So, just quit being a mugwort seller and…
Chicchi: …Stop already!
Chicchi: If you’re just going to pity me so much, then just stop buying me!
Chicchi: What do you even know about me? …Jire! This customer is on his way out.
Fugio: Chickachina, calm down, I was out of line.
Jire: Chickachina, what’s wrong?
Fugio: It’s nothing. This is between the two of us.
Jire: And I’m stepping in between the two of you as well.
Fugio: Aren’t you just Domina’s lackey?
Jire: What did you say? I’m Chicchi’s ally!
Fugio: What can you do, with no status, prestige, or money?
Jire: You’re one to talk! Buying mugwort all the time when you HAVE status, prestige, and money.
Fugio: What was that?
Jire: What’s your problem?!
Chicchi: Stop!
Chicchi: …It’s fine. I’ll just do my job. I’m a mugwort seller, after all.
Jire: But, Chickachina…
Chicchi: I’m sorry, Jire. Leave the room. I don’t want to be seen working.
Fugio: And this is time that I purchased. Am I mistaken?
Jire: …Understood.
Fugio: Oh, wait.
A clinking sound.
Fugio throws a tip.
Jire: 100 panie…!
Fugio: It’s a tip. Go get yourself some kebab with that.
◆Pontartia
Jire: Who’s he kidding with the kebab crap.
Jire: I don’t need this!
Jire throws the 100 panie.
Sound of him throwing the coin
Jire: …Chicchi! Aah, Chickachina! ! I… I…!
Jire: The smell of mugwort is seeping into her body…!
Jire: …
Jire: …100 panie.
Jire picks up the coin.
Jire: He has the power to give 100 panie as tip…
Jire: What I have is…
Jire: …Chicchi.
◆The Edge of Town
Father: …Lost little lamb.
Jire: …
Domina: Oh, Jire. I didn’t think I’d run into you here. Have you been up to no good?
Jire: Please don’t lump me in with you. I don’t have any sins to confess.
Jire: I have something to talk to you about in regards to Chicchi. I’ll ask bluntly. What do you think about her?
Domina: She’s a pupa who doesn’t know her place. She may grow to be a carbunculus-patterned butterfly.
Jire: You’re scared of her, aren’t you?
Jire: Would you like to make a deal?
Domina: A deal?
Jire: Yes.
(5) Aromatic Havenna
◆Singing Pub
Rukiora: Chicchi, Miguel! You came!
Chicchi: You were lovely today as well.
Miguel: You sang like an angel.
Rukiora: Hee-hee, thank you.
Rukiora: Here, look, Fugio’s flower! Two petals fell, but it’s still in bloom!
Miguel: Perhaps it’s the magic of love.
Chicchi: It’s not a fake flower, is it?
Rukiora: A fake flower wouldn’t have a scent like this!
Rukiora: Here, have a sniff. Hnnn, hahh, hnnn, hahh… Huh?
Chicchi: What is it, Rukiora?
Rukiora: I smell something displeasing.
Chicchi: Huh? From Fugio’s flower?
Rukiora: No. Mugwort.
Chicchi: …That’s just your imagination isn’t it? Remember, your nose is stuffed.
Rukiora: I changed doctors. Thanks to that, it’s getting better day by day.
Chicchi: …!
Rukiora: I DO smell it. That filthy stench… That dreadful stench.
Miguel: Maybe it’s this.
Rukiora: What… The cookies?
Miguel: There are all sorts of flavors. These are mugwort.
Rukiora: What terrible taste you have, Miguel!
Miguel: I didn’t think your nose would get better… Sorry!
Rukiora: I’ll forgive you since you were honest.
Rukiora: Ah, it’s time to give the flower some water. Excuse me for a moment.
Sound of her leaving.
Chicchi: Thanks, Miguel.
Miguel: Never thought she’d change doctors
Miguel: What are you going to do, Chicchi? If her nose gets completely better, she might notice the smell of mugwort on you.
Chicchi: I’ll change perfumes.
Miguel: …Chicchi. I don’t think you can fool her forever. What about being honest with her?
Chicchi: …
Miguel: Or maybe… I’LL be the one who takes Rukiora and runs away from Havenna?
Chicchi: You’re joking, right?
Miguel: Yeah, just trying to distract us for a bit.
Chicchi: Stop. I’m not in the mood for this right now.
Miguel: Then, want a Bakuu cookie?
Chicchi: I ate those as a kid. There aren’t any that are mugwort-flavored.
Chicchi: You like those, Miguel?
Miguel: I hate them. They’re dry and have no taste. But they remind me of the past.
Chicchi: Are you eating them to not forget about the past?
Miguel: That’s about right. You don’t have anything like that for yourself?
Chicchi: Memories just make me feel empty.
Miguel: That’s so like you.
◆Pontartia
Chicchi: …
Jire: What’s wrong? You don’t look great.
Chicchi: Rukiora’s stuffed nose is starting to get better.
Jire: Huh? But that hospital’s supposed to be full of quacks…
Chicchi: She found another doctor.
Chicchi: If she finds out the truth…
Jire: It’ll be okay, Chicchi. God will protect you.
Chicchi: God’s been asleep for a long time.
◆ Pig’s Rear Street - Second District
Rukiora: The flower smells so nice! I’m so glad I changed doctors.
Domina: You’re in the way.
Rukiora: Aaah?!
Sound of the two bumping into each other.
In a hard collision, the flower falls onto the street.
The woman who bumped into her steps on the flower.
Rukiora: What are you doing! Huh?!
Domina: Well if it isn’t the moonlight princess of the singing pub.
Rukiora: I feel sick… Of all people, I had to bump into you…!
Rukiora: Ah, the flower. My flower…
Domina: Flower?
Domina: You mean this filthy trash under my shoe no different from a rat’s carcass?
Rukiora: Move!!!
Rukiora: How could you… The flower I got from Fugio!
Domina: Oh, too bad I’m not sorry.
Rukiora: Don’t you ‘not sorry’ me! What are you going to do about this?
Domina: It’s not something to be so down about. Flowers wilt eventually. Humans are the same.
Rukiora: Quiet! You vermicurmi! You rotten matrik woman!
Domina: How rude. I am still in my prime.
Domina: That’s why your father is still so obsessed with me!
Rukiora: You dreadful mugwort woman…! Shut your filthy pig mouth!
Domina: And how is that woman doing, tossed aside by her husband?
Rukiora: Don’t make fun of my mother…! She’s… passed.
Domina: I see. Facchio made no mention of that at all.
Rukiora: I’ve erased any memory of that man reeking of mugwort!
Rukiora: Ah, I’m going to vomit! I’ll leave you all in this filthy putrid town… With Fugio, my beloved.
Domina: Fugio? From the Agua Club?
Rukiora: Yes! The princeps Fugio! One who would never reek of mugwort like you!
Domina: So what if you found out that Fugio spends his time buying mugwort?
Rukiora: Huh…?
Rukiora: …What a joke! Fugio is Havenna’s treasure. He’s my idol!
Domina: I don’t know if he’s an idol or an idiot, but I’m only telling you the truth.
Domina: He’s a man stained by Havenna, collapsing every night in the arms of a mugwort seller.
Domina: What an innocent young, Havenna-like woman you are, fooled by such ostentatious displays as his.
Domina: Your fate is to have everything taken away by mugwort sellers in the end.
Rukiora: Lies… Lies!
Domina: If you think it’s a lie, come by Pontartia sometime. Behind Ant Hill Alley.
Domina: It’s possible… that he might come today.
Domina: He’s mad about a woman named Chickachina.
Rukiora: …Chickachina?
Domina: You want me to tell you more? She…
Miguel: Stop!
Rukiora: Miguel…!
Domina: What do you want?
Miguel: Get away from her. If not…
Domina: If not, then what? …Hmph! Out of my way!
Sound of her leaving.
Miguel: Rukiora, are you all right?
Miguel: That woman is a mugwort seller full of lies. Don’t take what she says seriously.
Rukiora: Miguel.
Miguel: Yeah?
Rukiora: Then why did you interrupt her?
Miguel: Because she says the most ridiculous things.
Rukiora: …You lie so much that the truth is clear.
Miguel: Rukiora? Ah! Wait, Rukiora!
(6) Fussy Havenna
◆Pontartia - Facchio’s Room
Chicchi: Excuse me
Facchio: Ah, come in, Chickachina
Chicchi: You wanted to talk?
Facchio: It’s as though you are my adorable daughter. I can ask about how you’re doing, can’t I?
Chicchi: I’m having a lot of fun. All my customers are good people.
Facchio: I’m glad to hear it. I want to ask you, my adorable little girl.
Facchio: Chickachina, what do you think about Domina?
Chicchi: Domina? If you’re playing the role of my father, that would make Domina my kind stepmother.
Facchio: Chickachina. I swear I will never tell Domina.
Chicchi: She’s an aged vermicurmi.
Facchio: Ahaha! Oh the things you say behind people’s backs are always so amusing!
Facchio: Domina’s a clever woman. She’s planning on a higher status in Havenna, using me as a stepping stone.
Chicchi: Is that so?
Facchio: Of course she is! Chickachina. Aren’t you interested in status as well? What would you think of becoming the madam of Pontartia?
Chicchi: But the madam is Domina.
Facchio: You’re popular among the men. You’re affectionate, and you knock them out quick. And above all, you’re clever.
Facchio: There’s no one better suited to represent Pontartia.
Facchio: Will you build this business with me?
Chicchi: Facchio. I don’t intend on going from daughter to stepmother.
Facchio: Of course, I’ll prioritize whatever it is you wish. It’s just that there’s no mistake that a brighter world awaits you.
Facchio: Just think about it. A woman of mine will wear a ring of carbunculus.
Chicchi: …I understand. I’ll think about it.
◆Outside Pontartia
Rukiora: Pontartia… there’s no mistake. This is it.
Rukiora: I can smell the mugwort even out here. Is it possible Fugio actually comes to a place like this?
Rukiora: There’s no way such an upright and clean man could…
Rukiora: …
Rukiora: No, this isn’t right!
Rukiora: I should be ashamed for getting led on by that woman and doubting him!
Rukiora: I’ll go home… Huh?!
Rukiora: Is that…?!
◆Pontartia
Chicchi: Facchio wants me to be…
Jire: …Chicchi. It’s time for work, Fugio’s coming.
Chicchi: R-Right…
◆Pontartia - Chicchi’s Room.
Fugio: Chickachina, I’ve missed you!
Chicchi: Good evening, Fugio. You can’t sleep again?
Fugio: I feel like my face is heavy with a mask I put on myself.
Chicchi: All right, I’ll light some mugwort then…
Rukiora: Hey!
Chicchi: …!
Rukiora: To think the princeps would come to a mugwort shop…!
Fugio: You’re…
Chicchi: A-Ah…
Rukiora: Chicchi…!!!
Chicchi: Aah, ah…
Rukiora: …What is the meaning of this?
Chicchi: I… I…
Fugio: Let’s calm down for a moment.
Rukiora: You be quiet! You falsa of a man!
Fugio: Wha…
Rukiora: Chicchi. We’re friends, right? Friends don’t hide things from each other, right?
Rukiora: Tell me the truth. If so then I, I… will forgive you.
Chicchi: Rukiora…
Chicchi: Tell me!!!
Chicchi: I… I…
Chicchi: I’m actually a mugwort seller. A mugwort-selling woman, the likes of which you hate so much…
Chicchi: I’m sorry for hiding it from you… You’re the one person I didn’t want to find out.
Chicchi: Because I care about you. Because we’re friends…
Rukiora: Chicchi…
Rukiora: You’re terrible! To trick me like this!
Chicchi: R-Rukiora…
Rukiora: What do you mean ‘friends’?! You were ridiculing me, drenching yourself in mugwort with Fugio!
Chicchi: No, Rukiora! I…
Rukiora: You were jeering at me, exhilarated over a single flower!
Rukiora: Don’t ever come near me with that disgusting stench ever again!
Sound of her running off
Rukiora leaves the shop.
Chicchi: Rukiora!
Chicchi: Ah, my dear friend…
Chicchi: Because I’m… a mugwort seller.
Fugio: Chickachina… Poor thing.
Fugio: Come here!
Fugio takes Chicchi’s hand.
Chicchi: Fugio?! Were are we going?
Fugio: Towards hope.
Sound of them running off.
Jire watches in the shadows as the two of them exit Pontartia
Jire: …
◆The Edge of Town
Rukiora arrives at the church.
Rukiora: …Please let me confess!
Father: Proceed.
Rukiora: God… Please forgive me! Please forgive me for being unable to forgive such a dirty lie, unable to forgive my precious friend!
Rukiora: I wanted to… I wanted to forgive her, but my head and my heart are all a mess, and I can’t do anything about it at all!
Rukiora: Not only that, I want her to be punished, even though we’re friends! Even though we WERE friends!
Rukiora: Or, am I the one in the wrong?
Rukiora: Am I the terrible one? Is my heart the one that is dirty? Aagh!
Rukiora: Is everything disappearing around me because I’m the one who’s no good? If only I had done better, If only I had more value, things wouldn’t have turned out like this?
Rukiora: Then Father wouldn’t have been taken away, and Mother wouldn’t have gone mad?
Rukiora: Please forgive me, forgive me, please forgive me. Please take out my heart, and wash away all its sins.
Rukiora: Please forgive me, forgive me, please forgive me, forgive me…
Miguel: Mind letting me confess too?
Rukiora: Miguel…! What is all that luggage?
Miguel: I’m leaving Havenna. I finally saved enough money.
Miguel: In fact, I’ve been able to leave for a while now. I just kept letting things drag on.
Miguel: But I made up my mind after watching you run off.
Rukiora: Whatever do you mean?
Miguel: My family is made up of poor neshiromi farmers. We are not from Havenna.
Miguel: With so much debt, the farm was in danger, so I was sent to Havenna to earn money.
Miguel: But now that I have enough saved, I’m going back home.
Rukiora: What are you here to confess about, then?
Miguel: For lying to myself.
Miguel: Rukiora, I’m in love with you.
Rukiora: What?
Miguel: Escape from Havenna with me.
(7) Drowning Havenna
◆Pontartia
Facchio: Chickachina! Where’s my pupa?
Domina: She went off somewhere with a man.
Facchio: Domina! Why didn’t you stop them?
Domina: I saw my younger self in her and thought she might get in my way, so I just thought to rip off her wings before she became a beautiful butterfly. You don’t need two women, Facchio.
Facchio: What a terrifying woman you are!
Domina: Who’s the terrifying one here?! You ebrietas of a man. I’m the one who raised Pontartia to who she is, you leech.
Domina moves behind Facchio
Facchio: What are you doing! Stop!
Domina: My skills have not yet dulled. Hmph.
Facchio: Rrghk!
Sound of him dropping to the ground.
Domina: …Chickachina, Facchio. Now everyone in my way is gone.
Domina: I’ll confess to God later.
◆Havenna Lakeshore
Fugio: Alright, we’re here.
Chicchi: This is the lake.
Fugio: Right. We’re going to cross it on a ferry and reach the other side.
Chicchi: Stop, Fugio. I don’t want this.
Fugio: Then what DO you want?! Your lie has been found out by your dear friend.
Fugio: Is it money? Status? Fame?
Chicchi: I don’t want any of that.
Fugio: Then tell me, Chickachina. I want to help you.
Jire: Chicchi!
Jire runs forward. He has a knife in his hand.
Chicchi: Jire! What are you holding…
Fugio: A knife…
Jire: Celebrities have so much confidence. To think you’d take Chicchi away from Havenna.
Fugio: Urk…
Jire: Chicchi. Come back here. This man is nothing more than a thief.
Chicchi: …No, Jire. This man is the princeps of the Agua Club. Rumors will spread quickly.
Jire: Then…
Jire: All I can do is pretend I didn’t see anything.
Jire: Chicchi, you decide.
Jire: Whether you’ll cross the lake with that man and leave Havenna, or punish him and come back to Pontartia.
Chicchi: Jire…
Chicchi: I won’t cross the lake, nor will I punish him.
Fugio: Chickachina…
Jire: That’s not a choice you can make! You need to leave. I don’t want to see you dirtied by rumors.
Jire: When you first came to Havenna, you were pure as the purest white. A vase for a single flower, descended down to us in the snow.
Jire: To watch you poisoned by this town, stained by the scent of mugwort is… painful.
Fugio: Even he agrees. Leave Havenna with me.
Fugio: If you do, you can become pure again. You won’t have to lie anymore.
Chicchi: …
Chicchi: …Leave Havenna so I can become pure again? How can you decide that all on your own?
Chicchi: I came to Havenna of my own free will. When I leave Havenna, it will be of my own free will as well.
Jire: Chicchi…
Chicchi: It was you who provoked Domina into telling everything to Rukiora, wasn’t it Jire?
Jire: I…
Chicchi: How arrogant of you to get Fugio involved in this.
Jire: Chicchi, I just wanted you to…
Chicchi: You should confess to God. Before I can no longer stand you. Goodbye.
Chicchi leaves.
Sound of her leaving.
Jire: Chicchi!
Fugio: You…
Jire: Uurgh…
Jire: I… just cared about her so much…
Fugio: I understand
Jire: …Thank you.
Jire: Hey, sorry for dragging you into this. Will you join me in the confession booth?
◆Pontartia
Sound of murmurs
A crowd forms around the shop.
Domina and Facchio are arguing.
Facchio: You finally showed your true colors, you sneak!
Domina: What about you? Isn’t it about time you realized you’re about to be fired?
Chicchi: Facchio and Domina?
Man: They’re arguing over who gets ownership.
Woman: It seems like the fight led into an investigation, and it turns out this shop is illegal.
Chicchi: I see. That’s terrible.
◆Pig’s Rear Street - Second District
Chicchi staggers.
Chicchi: …
Chicchi: Ugh…
Chicchi: Urgh… Aagh…
Chicchi: Aaaaaagh…
Rukiora’s voice can be heard.
???: Oh, Rama Havenna! As warm as a baby’s first bath.
Chicchi: …?!
Rukiora’s voice continues.
???: Oh, Rama Havenna! As gentle as a rocking cradle.
Chicchi: Rukiora.
Chicchi: Rukiora!
◆Singing Pub
Chicchi runs into the pub.
Chicchi: Rukiora!!!
Rukiora: Chicchi…!
Chicchi: Rukiora. I…
Rukiora: I was asked to leave Havenna with someone.
Chicchi: Huh?
Rukiora: By Miguel. He wasn’t raised in Havenna.
Rukiora: He said he’ll be returning to his family of neshiromi farmers… He wants me to come with him.
Chicchi: Miguel…?
Chicchi: Ah, right. I see. Miguel was finally able to be honest with himself.
Chicchi: …I’m sorry.
Chicchi: Miguel told me as well. That I needed to tell you the truth. But I couldn’t.
Chicchi: I just didn’t want you to hate me.
Chicchi: I thought that instead of hurting you, it would be better for me to stay silent.
Rukiora: I see.
Chicchi: I wanted us to become true friends.
Rukiora: …I see.
Rukiora: Even if it meant lying?
Chicchi: …Yes
Rukiora: Your problem has always been that you’re too lovable.
Chicchi: Huh?
Rukiora: Hey, Chicchi. Are you able to forgive me?
Chicchi: Huh? What do you mean?
Rukiora: I lied to you, too. I was unable to tell you the truth.
Chicchi: That’s not true! You’ve done nothing wrong.
Rukiora: Then, forgive me. That’s far simpler than having God forgive me. It’s a pain to go all the way to the church.
Chicchi: But…
Rukiora: Chicchi!
Chicchi: …I forgive you. I forgive you, Rukiora.
Rukiora: Then I forgive you, too.
Chicchi: Rukiora…!
Rukiora: When Miguel asked me to go with him, the first thing that came to mind was you.
Rukiora: When you listened to my song, so full of tears. You were so beautiful.
Rukiora: Whether you’re a mugwort seller or a kebab seller, I don’t care. You’re you. My dear friend.
★Song
"Faded Color"
Chicchi: Rukiora…
Chicchi: …Pontartia’s gone.
Rukiora: You can just sing here with me. Dancing would be good, too.
Chicchi: But what about Miguel? Aren’t you going to leave Havenna with him?
Rukiora: There is a desire in his heart that Havenna cannot fulfill.
Rukiora: I do like Miguel, but he and I desire different things.
Rukiora: I want to be with you.
Chicchi: Rukiora…
Rukiora: …Chicchi, can I ask you one more thing?
Chicchi: What is it?
Rukiora: I want to know the truth.
Rukiora: Coming here to Havenna, going so far as to become a mugwort seller… What was it that you desired?
Chicchi: …
Chicchi: I’ve been asked this question by everyone. But I’ll tell the truth only to you, Rukiora.
Chicchi: I wanted to live the life of a mugwort seller.
Monologue: After that, Chicchi and Rukiora lived their lives. Singing and dancing, laughing and crying in Havenna, the town of desire and pleasure.
(8) Havenna
◆Back Alley
A few days later, Chicchi stands in a back alley.
A man appears. It is the priest.
Chicchi: …Oh, Rama Havenna. As warm as a baby’s first bath. Oh, Rama Havenna, As gentle as a rocking cradle.
Father: …
Chicchi: It’s you…
Father: I cannot sleep.
Father: I cannot sleep, night after night. What should I do?
Chicchi: I see…
Chicchi: Shall I burn some mugwort for you?
Father: Oh, Rama Havenna.
The End
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Today I danced around to my next to be released song at the Chicago lakeshore.
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Please make a story from lovefool feel free to make any oc’s or smth =]
Lovefool is so Tiffany coded!!
𝑨/𝑵 : 𝒂𝒍𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕…𝑰 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝑰 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝑰 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒙 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝑻𝒊𝒇𝒇𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒘𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕… 𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒃𝒚 𝒎𝒆! 𝑰 𝒕𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝒊𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒂 𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝑪𝒖𝒍𝒕 𝑶𝒇 𝑪𝒉𝒖𝒄𝒌𝒚!! 𝑰 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒂𝒌 𝒊𝒕 𝒂 𝒃𝒊𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒇𝒊𝒕 (𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕) 𝑻𝒊𝒇𝒇𝒂𝒏𝒚'𝒔 𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓. 𝑴𝒚 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒈 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒆 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝑰 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒔𝒑𝒐𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒇𝒖𝒏𝒌𝒚 𝒓𝒖𝒏-𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒐𝒓 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈. 𝑰 𝒂𝒎 𝒕𝒓𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒎𝒚 𝑬𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒅. (𝑳𝒀 𝑴𝑺. 𝑩𝑨𝑵𝑲𝑺𝑻𝑶𝑵)
"...Did you ever wonder how those cops caught you that night in Chicago?"
"We never kill anyone together anymore..", Tiffany whined as Charles took off his bloody shirt. "Where the hell do you think you're going!?", she moaned once again, although this time with frustration. "I'm going out!", Charles snapped, slipping his arms into a clean shirt. Without even sparing her a glance, Charles left the apartment room with a loud slam. Having none of it, Tiffany heatedly made her way to a bright red rotary dial phone, picking it up and dialing a number. "I'd like to speak to detective Minoris (couldn't make out the name) please.", Tiffany immediately sneered. With a long pause, Tiffany takes a deep breath before spilling out a sentence she knows she could have just ruined her life with. "I have some information...on the Lakeshore Strangler."
_____________________________________________________________
She quickly hung up the phone, slamming it on the table with rigor. Her jaw tensed up and her eyes darted to the gory scene that had happened not so long ago. With a scoff, she yanked a compact mirror from her leather jacket pocket, taking a moment to examine herself. She could hardly believe it was herself on the reflection. She started to look at herself from all angles frantically. Her make-up was ruined, mascara was running down her face, her lipstick was smudged, and the dried blood on her face was starting to become bothersome. Looking around, she notices a door slightly opened. Curiously, she poked her head in and loudly exhaled when she realized she had found the restroom. After she locks the door, she slowly started to strip off her clothes, tossing them carelessly behind her. Running the bath, she dipped her foot in and soon enough, she is lying comfortably. Oh, if she just had a cigarette between her fingers..then she would feel truly like a princess. As time passed by, she noticed that Charles had a radio in his bathroom and she hesitantly turns it on. The radio automatically connected to a station dedicated to love songs. Tiffany's eyes widened and she felt her heart skip a beat. Was her Chucky interested...in love? Could there be a possibility, a chance, that he could love her too? With a smile, she sunk lower in the tub. The thoughts rushing through her head were halted when she heard a familiar tune coming from the radio. She increased the volume of the radio and began to hum along...
(Love me, Love me)
Say that you love me
(Fool me, Fool me)
Go on and fool me
(Love me, Love me)
Pretend that you love me
(Leave me, Leave me)
Just say that you need me..♥️
i am never writing character x character again.
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Imaginary Book Recs Cover Thoughts: Round One
Two Passengers on the Last Train by A.G. Benedict: Obscure English literary fiction from the 1920s. I read it as a Gutenberg ebook, but the original cover was one of those clothbound classics with silhouette images. Any modern-day reprints are by very small publishing houses that provide minimal, low-budget covers using old illustrations (something like this version of Manalive.)
Song of the Seafolk by Marjorie A. Penrose: American children's fantasy from 1954, with illustrated cover typical of the era. Has had rerelease covers in subsequent decades (including one very nice painted cover from the '90s).
Bright Folly by Glorya M. Hayers: 1930s comedy mystery. Most representative cover is the mass-market paperback that looks like the more cartoony covers of Wimsey novels (like the editions that contain this version of Gaudy Night), though with a bit more of a sunny Wodehouse twist.
On Eternity's Doorstep by Willa Aldecott: Classic autobiographical novel about WWI nursing. Several rereleases over the years, all involving variations of historical photographs or historical-nursing-items on a colored background. (The Hiding Place keeps coming to mind as a cover comp, except with more sepia-toned photos and gentle browns and neutrals as background colors.)
The Queens of Wintermoon by Jessica Wagner: 1980s (or '90s, I can't remember) adult fantasy with an illustrated cover. A 2010s attempt to repackage it as a YA series split the book into four covers that each featured the heraldic symbol of the House of each of the four sisters (Raven, Eagle, Falcon, and Firebird) on a different jewel-toned background (probably blue, green, orange or red, and violet or black).
Caroline by Maria Layton: 1820s classic novel. Anything that's been done for an Austen book is applicable here.
The Lands of Dorothon series by Barbara Lamley: Off-brand versions of Narnia.
The Autumn Queen’s Promise by Rose Rennow: 1990s children's historical fantasy. Illustrated cover that combines the fantastical autumn colors of An Enchantment of Ravens with the more straightforward historical imagery of a book like The Sign of the Beaver or The Witch of Blackbird Pond.)
Island in the Stars by Carolyn Taylor Harris: 1970s children's science fantasy, with the period-accurate slightly wonky cartoony style.
The Camille series by Annette Nowell: Anne of Green Gables covers but with more exotic settings as the background. Both Camille in the Alps and Camille in the Andes involve her climbing mountains in intrepid Edwardian girl-reporter wear.
The Lakeshore Plan by Louise Zajac: Something between Swallows and Amazons and The Penderwicks. Could go full-on painted summer scenery, but simple drawings and/or silhouettes are also valid options.
Ever Miss Eliza by Charlotte Koning: 1940s slice-of-life light fiction. Honestly, I just picture the cover of D.E. Stevenson's Charlotte Fairlie, except the illustration is a woman in front of a rural schoolbuilding.
The Ocean’s Revenge by Edward G. Whitmore: 1940s pulp fiction in all its glory. Cover features a striking painting of a futuristic submarine in the grasp of a huge squid-creature.
The Book of All Days by Harriet Street: Painting of a little girl peering at an old-fashioned book.
The Guardian of the Nest by Aurelia T. Noah: 1960s children's fantasy. Probably a cloth-bound cover with the images (fairy tale carved right into the cover the way they are in some old books.
The Thief’s Debut by M.J. Ponders: Very recent indie-published fairy tale retelling that is unfortunately saddled with the genre-typical "girl in a sparkly prom dress" cover that probably involves her wearing a mask and standing in front of a vaguely Venetian-looking building. In a better world, it would get a digital-painted cover more along the lines of The Electrical Menagerie, (though the subject matter would be something between The Princess Bride and The Lies of Locke Lamora).
The Interdimensional Book Carrier by Martin Kaspar: Modern-day bestseller. Cover comps coming to mind are The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
#imaginary book recs#this is already long#and it's harder to gather up links for round two#so i'll stop here for now#but part 2 will be coming
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Has the set list had any updates since the start of the tour?
hey anon! i actually did a little setlist analysis on my blog the other day, so i'll summarize that here!!
the short answer: yes, but not a lot.
the long answer:
every setlist has been 27 songs long so far.
no night has had an encore (a trend i think will continue, because the setlists are long and almost every city has a concert curfew of 11pm local time.)
there are 24 songs on that setlist that have been played every night, including 2 covers (don't stop believing and crazy train.)
the first of those three songs we don't have accounted for the song that patrick plays solo on piano. (night 1 was lakeshore drive cover. night 2 was what a time to be alive. night 3 was i'm like a lawyer.) this song is usually just the first verse and the chorus, and then we go into don't stop believing.
the second is the magic 8 ball song. different question/prompt every night, then we get the full song.
the third some we can't entirely account for yet is the 12th song in the setlist, where 2 nights in a row we got "take over, the breaks over" and then on the 3rd night we got "hum hallelujah" in its place, so. who knows if that'll rotate consistently or what!
with them- potentially, but incredibly likely- teasing this new cover/update of "we didn't start the fire" as of this morning, it's maybe likely that will replace one of the covers on the setlist? but, don't hold me to that, as it's just a best guess.
we've got so many shows left that so much could change! if you'd like my conjecture, i can go into that in another post.
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so i've been doing a little setlist analysis now that we've had 3 fob shows and here's what we've got, fellas:
every setlist has been 27 songs long so far.
no night has had an encore (a trend i think will continue, because the setlists are long and almost every city has a concert curfew of 11pm local time.)
there are 24 songs on that setlist that have been played every night, including 2 covers (don't stop believing and crazy train.)
the first of those three songs we don't have accounted for the song that patrick plays solo on piano. (night 1 was lakeshore drive cover. night 2 was wattba. night 3 was i'm like a lawyer.) this song is usually just the first verse and the chorus, and then we go into don't stop believing.
the second is the magic 8 ball song. different question/prompt every night, then we get the full song.
the THIRD is just like. 2 nights in a row we got "take over, the breaks over" and then on the 3rd night we got "hum hallelujah" in its place, so. who knows if that'll rotate consistently or what, yet.
anyway! i could be proven completely wrong next show and they could toss my ragged body around like a beach chair in a hurricane, but here's what we've got so far!!
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Part 4 Friends in High Places | Umbrella!Ben Hargreeves x Reader
Last part of Friends in High Places! Find all chapters here.
I had so much fun writing this! Keep in mind that Klaus had already developed his powers to make ghosts appear before people. Also, I was listening to snow jam - Rin音 while writing this so feel free to listen to it as well since this definitely did set the mood for the last few paragraphs - think of this as the song for the end credits because ahhhh <3
“Hey Y/N,” Klaus whispered as one of the staff walked by eyeing both of you. “Meet me at the entrance of the Activities Room at 2:00 a.m.” He said to you as he waved the hand with Hello tattooed on it to the staff who passed by while giving him a not-so convincing smile. The staff still eyeing both of you.
“Yeah but why the Activities Room, and why so late?” You began to ask all of these pertinent questions.
“Y/N, your obsession with Ben is showing,” Klaus said while poking your cheeks which happen to show a light blush.
“Cut it out, Klaus,” you said flicking his hands. “Listen Y/N, unlike you who actually go to bed when the lights go off, I myself tend to walk these hallways at around 12:00 or even 1:00 a.m., and I can tell you that the guards are still awake around that time.”
~
The rest of the day was filled with anxiety and excitement as you stared at the wall clock of your room. The hands seem to be mocking you as it painfully moves ever so slowly.
It was already 1:55 a.m. when you tried to ready yourself. Klaus was right, you go to bed when they tell you to so you don’t really know what the hallways of Lakeshore Rehabilitation look like when no one was around. You figured it’d be less than a 5-minute walk as you took a deep breath and pushed your bedroom doors open. You looked back at your roommate who was pretty much deep in slumber.
~
“Did you tell her 2:00 a.m.? Maybe one of the guards caught her on her way here?” Ben frantically cling on to Klaus’ arms who was trying to play with the ends of his robe.
“Relax, Ben, and yes, I told her 2:00 a.m.,” Klaus said. “Now would you stop pacing around and stay still, you’re making me dizzy.”
“I’m just nervous, okay?” Ben said. “What if she’s scared of me? I waited months for this and what if she just thinks we’re both crazy? What if your powers suddenly stopped working? And you swore you’re not high right now?”
“For the millionth time, no,” Klaus responded. A few seconds passed before Klaus turned to see you. He waved at you with a soft smile, followed by a look of curiosity by how you were walking towards them.
“Psst. Klaus!” you called out to Klaus who was lazily sitting by the doors. You walked slowly, turning your head side to side frantically just to make sure no one else was around or that you weren’t followed. You walked humped over, ducking your head whenever you would passed by doors, as if that would make a difference. When you finally reached Klaus, you gave him a big smile and let out a relief.
“Where’s Ben?” You asked. Ben was behind you when you asked the question and he eyed Klaus carefully.
“Okay, Y/N. Before I show Ben to you, I have to tell you something first,” Klaus began. Ben took a deep breath along with Klaus. “Ben is…”
“Yeah?”
“Ben is dead,” Klaus finally said. You weren’t sure if he was joking, if he was high, or if all of this is some kind of joke. Maybe there is no Ben, you thought.
“What do you mean?”
“Ben has been dead for years and well, I can conjure him,” Klaus paused after every statement to watch your reaction. Ben was watching your reaction as well.
“Ben is dead,” you slowly repeated Klaus’ words. “And you can conjure him.”
“Yes,” Klaus and Ben both said at the same time. Of course, only you can hear Klaus.
“Show me,” you said after a few seconds. You weren’t sure what to believe anymore or if this is all a dream, so you said the first thing that come to mind. Proof. You asked for proof.
Klaus did not say anything anymore. He took a step back and clenched his fist. Ben was still behind you and Klaus had given him a nod, which you thought was intended for you so you nodded back. That’s when you saw Klaus’ fists start to glow as if he was holding a ball of blue light in both his hands. He was concentrating really hard and you can feel the hair on your neck stand. You went to touch the back of your neck when you suddenly felt a presence behind you. You turn to see a man dressed in all black. He gave an awkward smile to which you returned.
“Hey,” Ben said.
“Hello,” you said. “Ben?” you confirmed, just to be sure you’re not imagining things. You look back at Klaus who was smiling at both of you. His hands crossed over his chest before he started to blow kisses to both of you.
“Y/N meet Ben,” Klaus began his introductions. He moved to Ben’s side as he pushed Ben closer to you. “Now, you two kids have fun!” Klaus said walking away. “But not too much fun because I’m always going to be nearbyyyy” he said in an almost sing-song voice.
You looked back at Ben smiling. You feel your heart skipped a beat - a few times already actually. His smile is so soft and genuine and kind and calming. You feel your ragged breathing and Ben could tell.
“Are you okay?” Ben asked concerned.
“Yes!” You almost shouted at him in an attempt to disguise your nervousness. You covered your mouth as soon as you realized that the volume of your voice could have woken up the guards. Ben gave a light chuckle. "Hi Ben, nice to meet you," you mentally gave yourself a pat on the back for being able to formulate one good sentence.
“So, you’re a ghost?”
“Yes, by every definition of it”
“You died”
“Yes, people have to die in order to become a ghost, that’s how it works”
You couldn’t help but smile at his sarcasm. He does it so well and Klaus was right. Ben is a tiny cloud on a perfect sunny day but he definitely wears it so well that it makes it easier to like him.
“How did it happen?” You asked. He paused for a long while.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to say,” you brushed it off and decided to change the topic to a more light one.
“Thank you for earlier. You know, at the cafeteria,” you said as Ben smiled trying to remember the incidents. He remembered grabbing you by the arm and how nice it felt. It’s as if you could read his mind as you find your hands moving on their own, reaching out to touch him. You wondered what it felt like. Ben moved in closer, thinking the same thing.
“Hey you guys!” Klaus called out to both of you. “I just saw one of the guards and he’s walking over here.” Klaus was running quietly as possible (which was not that quiet) towards where you guys are. Both you and Ben gave a look and without thinking about it, he grabbed your hands as he run towards Klaus before all three of you turned a corner. You gripped Ben’s hand firmly trying to outrun the guard and you saw Ben’s soft smile turned into a full on grin. Ben called out to Klaus to hurry up and in the process told Klaus he had short legs. You laughed as you all turned another corner.
~
You woke up this morning from a bad dream and you end the day holding hands with a ghost, conjured by a friend at rehab, trying to outrun a guard because you all stayed way past your bedtime. It truly pays to have friends in high places.
tagging @sanzusmile@choichaeyiul @wifeofcamillamacaulay @cff3kat @mayempress @hiraeth-maximoff @keiladragon @ohmyitsfaith @sparrowb3nscloset @ben-er-ino @harleyquinn3289 @chariottie @missstealyourheart @thatrose19 @aceofspades190
#the umbrella academy#ben hargreeves x reader#justin h min#ben hargreeves x you#tua season 3#umbrella academy#ben hargreeves#the sparrow academy#sparrow ben smut#sparrow ben x reader#friends in high places
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Headcanon Scenario: The Song
Author's Note: OK, I had this song stuck in my head today and then I wondered how would the Bad Bach react to you singing. So... I indulged myself. The first part is the general scene and then you can pick your favourite clone or read them all, up to you.
It's this version of Chasing Cars but not the Snow Patrol version, even though I love them too (but I avoided the car bit because it would make little sense in the context of Star Wars):
youtube
You’d convinced the Bad Batch to do something new today. To take a day off. Echo had protested the most, he felt there was work to do but when he saw the joy in Omega’s eyes at the idea of exploring the sandy lakeshores you’d described, even he couldn’t say know.
You’d given Tech the co-ordinates and headed off to your favourite resting spot. Together with blankets and food and wine, you all sat together drinking and laughing. Talking about their missions and your life as a senator. Of times before the Empire. Wrecker chased Omega across the sand with no intention of catching up to her raucous little giggles.
As the sun began to fall int the sky, you sat yourself in the sand, allowing your feet to sink into the sand beneath your feet. Allowing them to be covered in the warmth the sun had provided.
“We’ll do it all, everything, on our own” you began to sing softly, placing your head softly against the rock you found yourself resting against, “we don’t need, anything or anyone.” The faint chatter around you began to slowly fade away as you sang. Omega and Wrecker stopped playing and simply watched you for a moment.
“If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world,” you sighed as you finished that line. A soft smile gracing your lips as the others simply stared at you. In that moment, the song felt very poignant to the people around you. You all had needed this day and it had truly been beautiful, relaxing and friendly to the point of perfection. As your voice faded off, and the silence around you, save for the gentle whisp of the water next to you all, Omega came to sit beside you.
“Don’t stop singing,” she said, taking your hand in her little one. You smiled and noticed the others paying attention to it too.
“I don’t quite know, how to say, how I feel, those three words,” you looked at them as you said it, “are said too much, they’re not enough.” You smiled again at the tranquillity of it all. Internally laughing at the surprise your friends now had upon their faces.
You continued on, through as much as you could remember, singing softly. Softly but with a hidden passion in each word. On and on you sang through the words you remember. “All that I am, all that I ever was, is here in your perfect eyes, they’re all I can see.” You turned to Omega, giving her hand a gentle squeeze, as you continued to sing, “if I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?”
As your voice drifted off finally, you all sat together in silence as you noticed the sun beginning to set over your perfect day. You sighed contentedly, resting your head against the rock behind you. Feeling the last of the suns rays on your skin. Cooler and gentler than they had been in recent hours. The sun's smooth edge of its gaze on, supporting your head and thoughts in that moment.
Suddenly overcome by the emotion of it all, you released Omega’s hand and sighed. “I’m gonna go for a walk,” you suddenly said, standing and walking off into the distance as they all simply watched you go.
Crosshair
He had listened to you sing in raptured silence. Trying to act cool and calm as he usually was. You had a habit of unravelling him, this was one of those moments. His mouth hung ajar for a brief as you sang the song gently. In peace. Eventually, after you paused, he smirked slightly, removing the toothpick from his mouth.
You had noticed his stare before you had moved off further down the lakeside. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from following after you. It was almost instinctual. To remain as close to you as he could in that moment.
“I didn’t know you could sing,” he said, softer than he had hoped, “it was beautiful.” He came up behind you, resting his forehead into your shoulder as he wrapped his arms around your waist. You were flush against him and as he leaned into you, you pushed yourself into him. Completely enveloped in one another.
“No critique for me tonight then, Crosshair?” You joked as you both simply enjoyed the contact.
“How could I critique that? It’s not like I am an expert in singing.” You giggled as he pulled you both from side to side slightly. Suddenly, his head reached up slightly to kiss gently at your next. This level of softness was unexpected but certainly not unwelcome. You enjoyed your usual banter but today? Well, today had been different. For everyone. A slice of peace in an otherwise chaotic galaxy.
“Three little words,” he said against your neck. He hadn’t said them to you ever. You’d mumbled them to him once, when you thought he was long asleep. He wasn’t, he had been enjoying the moment, eyes hooded in comfort. You mistook it for sleep, and he let you. “Three little words that I should’ve said to you, when you said them to me.”
You froze at that. Turning so very suddenly in his arms. Your body almost shook at the fear of being caught. Your mind racing. He hadn’t said it back and he knew you’d said it to him. When he noticed the fear in your eyes, he caught you retreating chin between his fingers. Willing your eyes to meet his. After a moment, you relented and tried to give him your hardest stare. But when all you could see was an unfamiliar softness with his usual smirk, he brushed his cheek to yours, his lips dangerously close to your ear.
“I love you.” It was so quiet, so gentle that you convinced yourself it had all been in your head. Until he kissed you. He kissed you so passionately that your daze became a frenzied meeting of lip and tongue as you stood a fair distance from his brothers. Though you were sure they could see it. Your arms coiled around his neck pulling him even closer to you.
It took all the restraint he had to pull away from you in that moment. He wanted you to know that the softness was real. The affection was real. Not all of it was pure passion and lust. So, he simply looked into your eyes as neutrally as he could muster in that moment.
“Who knew the fearsome Crosshair could be so soft?” You teased with a delighted giggle. You held his hand as you stepped away from him slowly, never turning away. He simply relented allowing you to pull his hand upwards and out as you moved away.
“Tell anyone and I’ll deny it.” He warned as he watched you walk away back towards his brothers. He shook his head softly, trying to hide the blush that coated his cheeks.
Tech
Tech had listened intently to you sing. He had never heard such a soft melody fall from your lips before and he could not explain the warm feeling that seemed to be spreading through him as you sang. As you walked away, he simply watched you go with a small frown on his lips.
He could not tell if he should follow or leave you be. When he noticed none of his brothers went to move, he decided he would take his chance. Softly padding his way across the sand after you, he approached you carefully.
“May I join you,” he asked on his cautious approach. You’d propped yourself up on a rock further down the beach. He saw you simply leaning contemplatively, staring out into the sunset. When you nodded, he placed himself beside you. Your hand was placed flat on the rock, holding you in place. The tips of his fingers grazed softly over the top of yours. “I was unaware that you could sing.”
“In all fairness, Tech,” you said with a small laugh, “when would I have had time to sing? I think you’d call me delusional if I started to sing in the middle of a blaster fight.” He considered your words for a moment, realising that you were, in fact, correct.
“That is correct,” Tech said, a small frown forming on his lips, “I would suppose there has been very little opportunity before now.” For a moment, with his fingers still touching gently at the tips of yours, you sat together in a pensive silence. He had a question he wished to ask, but he could not seem to find the right words. “I would assume that you did not write the song?”
With a mirthful laugh, you replied, “no. But it was oftentimes sung on my home world. It felt appropriate somehow.” He nodded at your response, adjusting his goggles nervously.
“Am I correct to say that it is a love song?” He asked, cautiously turning his head towards you and though you felt his gaze on you, you continued to look out into the sunset.
“Yes, it is.”
“Does it make you think of somebody special?” He asked, feeling his stomach drop slightly. That you might admit that it was for one of his brothers or for someone back home. But when you looked at him, that fear quickly dissipated. He had been correct that it was not about them.
“It was for you, Tech.” You admitted, a soft blush forming on your cheeks. “I know that I am nothing special. That I am a nobody ex-senator who tends to get in the way but –“ He had to stop you there.
“You have never been in the way. You are essential to our operations. You are essential to the repairs and have been incredibly important to all of us. To me.” He admitted carefully and although, this was not perhaps the most romantic sentiment, it still made you smile. It was Tech romantic. You rather liked it. “I do not know what would happen if we… if I lost you.” He added after a moment of silence.
“You would go on as you always do, I am sure.” He knew you were wrong. He just didn’t know how to say it. Instead, he simply reached his gloved hand to brush against your crimson cheek.
“I do not think that I could.” Tech implored and the contact of his hand on your cheek made you finally turn to look at him with soft eyes, “I do not know what would happen. I am sure I could go on, but I do know that I would not want to.”
You couldn’t help but reach up and kiss his cheek softly. His lips parted the moment your soft lips touched his skin. His whole body felt alive in a way he had never felt before. Pushing yourself off the rock, you held out hand to him. He realised you were silently asking him to take it.
And he did. With one hand in his and the other now wrapped around his arm, you silently made your way back to the others.
Hunter
Hunter watched as you walked down the beach with an intent gaze, until he noticed you suddenly veer off into the wooded area. At deep frown suddenly matched his scorched stare. He couldn’t help but follow.
As he approached the wooded area, he bent down to focus on your tracks. You scent. Your footsteps. Your direction. He began to follow you through the woods, touching the same trees you had. You were taunting him to follow you and he knew it.
“Are you going to make me track you through the whole forest?” He called out, knowing he was close to you. You’d hidden yourself behind one of the trees deeper in the forest. Truthfully, you were perhaps a little embarrassed and simply wanted the two of you to be further away from the others.
“And how far would you track me, Hunter?” You called out mockingly. He felt his footsteps approach you. Louder and louder as he neared you. A twig beside you snapped and you jumped slightly. You could feel his presence beside you.
“I would track you the length of the galaxy if that is what it took to keep you close.” He whispered from the mirrored side of the narrow tree. His sultry voice was deliberate and slow.
“The galaxy is a big place.” You reminded him as he rounded the tree, placing his hands at either side of your head. The familiar smirk graced his lips as he looked into your mockingly guiltless eyes.
“I’d find you,” he reminded you, the soft sound was part warning, part promise. He reached down and nipped softly at your neck. “I’d find you anywhere you went,” he affirmed. When you offered no reply, he looked intently into your eyes. “You sang beautifully,” he began again in earnest, “though I could feel how nervous you were.”
“I was nervous of your gaze. Your opinion,” you admitted quietly looking down. His hand reached for your hair in that moment, gently moving it out your face.
“You have no need to fear my gaze, sweet one.” He chided, resting his hand on your cheek. “I would happily listen to you sing anytime.” Your eyes snapped back up to his in shock and he smirked slightly, knowing he had you trapped in his intimacy. He reached in and pressed his lips to yours lightly, testing the waters. When he felt your lips react, he pushed his body forward into yours. You groaned softly against his lips, almost begging him to deepen the kiss.
When he suddenly pulled away, leaving you panting and needy, he whispered, “I gaze at you, as you put it, because I cannot help myself.” A soft admission of the feelings he had for you. He couldn’t quite say he loved you, though he did. But he couldn’t bring his guard down that far, so fast. He wanted to wait. To say it when you didn’t expect it.
For a moment, you simply remained in each other’s presence, enjoying the moment of secluded peace. Then he took your hand and said, “come on. We shouldn’t miss the sunset.” He pulled you quietly and calmly through the woods and back to the beach. You expected him to drop your hand as your neared his brothers, but he simply held your hand tighter, keeping you close as you sat to watch the sunset.
Echo
Echo had admired your calmness and happiness as you sang. You somehow always made him less grumpy, less concerned with the impending doom that surrounded them. Some days when he was with you, he forgot things altogether and that scared him greatly. He had followed you almost immediately as you walked down the beach, away from everybody.
You knew he was directly behind you, and you knew you couldn’t see the small smile on your lips. When you suddenly stopped, so did he. He looked at you, shocked by the sudden change in your movement. He realised you were waiting for him to speak but he couldn’t seem to find any words that would work.
“I…uh…ah, I liked the song.” That was about all he could muster, and you smiled at that, thanking him sweetly. He loved the sweetness that always lace your voice. He took a step towards and offered, “if there is someone you have lost, somewhere in this galaxy, someone you want or miss, then please tell me. We will find them.”
Always with the sense of duty, you thought. You mimicked his action and stepped towards him. He resisted stepping back. Secretly, he wanted you closer to him. “There is someone,” you began, eyes drifting towards the water sheepishly. He felt his heart shatter but when you raised your eyes, feigning confidence, he hoped that he had been too quick in letting it break. “But they don’t need to be found, Echo. The only person I want in this whole galaxy is you.” You placed a hand cautiously on his chest, over his now racing heart. Your fingers played at the fabric that covered his chest and you simply watched your own movements, and he watched you intently.
“Me?” He repeated, a panicked gruffness in his tone. “Why would you waste your chance of love on me?” Your eyes suddenly tore up to his, almost in anger.
“It’s not a waste, Echo.” You moved your ever roaming hand to his cheek, “I think loving you is the perfect use of my love. I think it is the place it is most deserved.” He looked shocked, even whiter than usual.
“Then I will try to be worthy of it,” he affirmed, grasping the hand on your cheek in his own. He raised the palm of your hand to his lips and kissed softly at the tender point. Your lips parted as he grazed his lips onto your palm.
His eyes had not left your face and he took pride in himself as you became slightly undone at his touch. You stayed together for a while, gently familiarising yourselves with each other’s bodies. Innocent and soft. Nothing being pushed too far. Then, as the moon lay high in the sky, you agreed it was time to return to the others.
Wrecker
Wrecker had been in awe of your singing. His mouth agape as he watched you. He didn’t know you could sing at all. Let alone like that. For a while, he simply watched you from a distance, letting it all sink in. When he looked at Omega, dumbstruck, she tapped her head in your direction, instruction clear in her eyes. Wrecker coughed slightly but nodded and stood up to join you.
“How come you didn’t tell us ya could sing like tha’?” Wrecker asked as he walked towards you. He towered over you, but you never feared him. He was a teddy bear, and you knew it. With a small smile, you reminded him what you do for a living, “not a lot of time for singing between the running and shooting and the, you know, boom.” You mimicked and explosion with your hands and his raucous laughter resonated in your chest, making you giggle.
He lifted you up into a bear hug, spinning you around suddenly, only making you giggle further. When he put you down, his hands settled on your hips, “whatever guy you pick isn’t gonna be good enough for you.” It was a very sudden and very unexpected and his fingers were desperately clinging to you.
“Well, that’s a very unkind thing to say about yourself.” You chided gently, placing your hand on his large bicep. He blinked a couple of times, mouth agape. Processing. Making sure he’d understood you correctly.
“Wait,” he said, dragging the word out, giving him a few extra seconds to think, “you’re interested in me?” With a giggle, you simply said of course. He couldn’t help but lift you in the air spinning you around again. Around and around you went, safely in his arms.
As he set you down, you took your chance and reached up on your toes, pressing your lips firmly to his. He was ecstatic in that moment and reacted immediately. With a gentle sort of force that you could only expect from a man like Wrecker. He groaned delectably into your mouth as you deepened the kiss.
When you pulled away, he stared at you with a dazed smile. “Will ya sing somethin’ else for me later?” He asked gently, brushing his large knuckles across your cheek carefully. You took his large hand in both of yours and promised, “I’ll sing whatever you want, Wrecker.”
Bonus: Omega (Platonic - Obviously)
Omega had promptly followed behind you as you’d left the others. She watched from a distance for a moment as you skimmed a stone across the calm water. One. Two. Three. Four skims before it sunk into the water. You sighed, searching for a new a stone as you saw her. You gave her a warm smile as you noticed her.
“Hi,” she said, giving you a little wave. You skimmed the next stone in your grasp, and she couldn’t help but murmur a, “woah, how’d you do that?” You smiled and beckoned her closer. Handing her a smooth stone, you demonstrated the flick of your wrist towards the water. Standing behind her, you watched as she tried the first stone. Once, twice and under it went.
“Not bad,” you praised gently, still lost in your own thoughts. You had noticed how quiet she was being. She was waiting for you to come to her with information. Realising you needed to air it, you looked over at her searching for stones.
“Do you know much about the Jedi, Omega,” you asked, furling around the smooth stone in your hand, grazing your fingers over it aimlessly before pressing its weight into your palm. She looked at you with a curious gaze, “only what Master Shaak Ti told me, which wasn’t much. Nala Se never really let us near each other.” You offered a gentle scoff at the idea, of being hidden from the Jedi Master, particularly when you considered how things turned out. You mumbled ‘figures’ under your breath.
“They were once incredibly loyal and patient peacekeepers turned soldiers in the spite of the Sith.” You told her, before skimming the rock across the still water. Once. Twice. Three times before it sunk. Not your best effort. “I was only young, naïve Senator when I first met a Jedi. A Jedi Master by the name of Plo Koon.” Omega mimicked your previous action, skimming the stone successfully across the water as you spoke. “Well,” you continued, resting your weight against the boulder near you, digging it into your side, looking out over the water, “the first day we met, he saved my life. I was plummeting to a very early grave when bravely dove to save me. Literally swept me off my feet.” You chuckled at the memory.
How swept off your feet you truly had been. You owed him your life instantly. The way he held you so soundly, whispering that you would be okay as you shook in his arms. He had placed you down with great care, checking to make sure you were okay. You’d been truly graceless in that moment and his patience and kindness had centred you instantly.
“We only every shared one dance. Nothing more came of it. Unlike some of the other Jedi who succumbed to their feelings, thinking we didn’t know, he was excellent with patience and restraint.” You chuckled once more. “It was maddening. I often wish he had less restraint when we were alone. But he never broke that old fashioned oath. Knowing he couldn’t truly give me what I deserved.” Omega was looking at you with a feverishly happy smile as you told her your romantic tale. You couldn’t help but smile along with her. “One dance and my soul became connected to his and his alone. I fear it will only ever be his.”
With a sigh, you told her what she had already guessed, “that song was the song we danced to. It was a strange choice for the formal gathering we were at. Very slow and very sombre. But it suited us quite well. It’s never truly left my mind. Whenever there is quiet, I can hear it. Whenever I am happy, I can hear it. It’s almost as if he is somehow reminding me that we cared deeply for one another, though we could never truly show it. In that moment, when he held me in his arms, we knew we deeply cared for one another. In that moment, I was truly his and he knew it.”
“So, it’s a happy memory?” She queried, as she simply looked at you confused. There were tears in your eyes as you nodded at her, so she continued on, “but it also makes you feel sad?” And you simply nod again, allowing a tear or two to fall. “Love seems…” she pauses, searching for the right word, “confusing,” she finished with emphasis and all you could do is giggle with mirth.
“Perhaps.” You offered up cryptically, a small smirk on your lips. You walked over to her and placed your hands on her shoulders, “perhaps one day you will know what it is to love another like that. Not like you love your brothers. But a different and special kind of romantic bond. It only ever makes sense once you have felt it.” A poignant silence fell between the two of you.
After a moment, you whipped one of your arms around her shoulders and began to lead her back towards the others, who had begun raucous conversation once more.
“What if I fall in love with someone and they hurt me?” She asked, looking up at you with a childlike innocence. With a chuckle, you retort, “well, you have a long line of brothers who happily set them straight,” leaning in so your lips were just above her ear, “after I’ve taught them a thing or two of course.” She simply giggled as you reached everyone and you all sat together, your arm still around Omega, and watched the sun set over the lake. She leant into with a contented sigh. She would always be safe. She would always be happy
#wrecker bb x reader#hunter bb x reader#tech bad batch x reader#omega & reader#echo bb x reader#wrecker bb#the bad batch#hunter bb#echo bb#tech bb#Youtube
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✨️Using only song titles from one band/artist, cleverly answer the questions and tag people✨️
Going through all the lovely posts you've tagged me in! Thank you as always, Beedle @sleepystede!
Artist: Greyson Chance
Gender: yours
How you feel: Down & Out
If you could go anywhere, where? lakeshore
Fav mode of transportation: Boots
If my life were a TV show: Bad to Myself
Relationship status: Nobody
Your fear: My Dying Spirit
#this sounds depressing but these are the titles that make the most sense#tag game#tagging game#personal#get to know me
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30, 17, and 25 for Maverick; 10, 7, and 2 for Nancy!
WOOOO YESS
Starting off with the worst man you've ever met Maverick here:
30. Do they smell like anything notable?
For him, I'd figure he'd smell a bit like the cigarettes/cigars he's typically seen smoking; musty with a hint of cedar. Although, I imagine him using some kind of cologne semi-regularly, perhaps one that smells of leather? Nothing that smells much like wood, he doesn't like the association most wooden-based scents have with his early life.
17. How did they spend their summers/free time as a child?
I imagine that during vacations within the long, arduous summer months, his parents never thought too much about ensuring he socialized with other kids his age, and so they'd drag him along with them to the lakeside vacation home where his father liked to spend those months away hunting for sport while his mother tried to make the most of her time away from the bustling city and her husband being occupied with matters that didn't concern her for the most part. Maverick would usually just entertain himself along the lakeshore, poking around with a stick at the various flora and fauna—usually skewering whatever he found of the latter when his mother wasn't watching.
Something Maverick also did frequently was bring a mason jar out with him to the lake, scanning around for bugs or any other creepy crawly he could pick up and encase to examine. Sometimes he'd let them go afterwards, other times he'd attempt some pseudo dissection of whatever insect he caught in his little glass prison. In some instances, he'd put two live animals in at the same time to see what would happen. Most of the time, one would end up killing and eating the other, yet it fascinated him all the same. When he wasn't terrorizing whatever small critters he stumbled upon, he'd reside to reading on his own, feeding into his ever-growing love for literature that would continue to follow into adulthood.
25. How good/bad is their hearing? What about their eyesight?
His hearing is generally okay, though probably has deteriorated a bit with age. Same deal with eyesight, and I imagine he employs the use of reading glasses from time to time.
AND NOW Nancy, everyone's fav sad girl muppet moth xoxo
10. If they wear jewelry, what kind? Do they prefer silver or gold? Do they have a favorite gem?
Nancy isn't the type to accessorize a bunch, though I'd like to think she'll sometimes wear jewelry whenever she's gifted with any. For instance, during college, Felicity gave her a gold necklace for her birthday that had a lil ruby pendant—Nancy's birthstone. In turn, Nancy ended up wearing it almost everyday up until around the time she and Felicity started to gradually drift apart and Nancy's initial insecurities surrounding her own future and success in comparison to her friend's shifted towards envy.
7. Favorite Animal? Why?
Had the sudden thought of Nancy really, really liking opossums for whatever reason and I just think that's very characteristic of her to love what would be considered an unorthodox animal to find cute by most. Like when she was really little, she’d look around her father’s old shed, and once came across this full grown opossum that she then proceeded to take and bring inside, much to Elena’s eventual horror.
Little Nancy when her mother comes home and, completely astonished, asks her why on God’s EARTH she thought to bring in a possibly rabies-infested animal as the latter stumbles upon her running a bath for it:
2. What sort of music would they like? Have you thought about what genres or bands do they lean towards? Do they have a favorite song?
In canon, Nancy would have a preference for softer, orchestral music—a record she can put on while she's on her own, either writing or even during a lowkey read if she's feeling particularly antsy. I can see her really liking music by Leo Reisman and his orchestra, particularly stuff ranging from the late 1920s to the early 40s. In terms of singers, she'd probably be a fan of Elizabeth Welch, especially for her song "The Girl I Knew" (1935).
If this were the 21st century, Nancy would 1000% be a Mitski and even Crane Wives fan for Reasons.
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Tiffany Valentine has two things in her mind: love and murder. The origins of the brains behind the infamous Lakeshore Strangler and the string of broken hearts she left along her way to Chicago, interwoven with the development of the tempestuous relationship between her and a certain Charles Lee Ray.
CHAPTER 12
[ CHAPTER 1 // CHAPTER 2 // CHAPTER 3 // CHAPTER 4 // CHAPTER 5 // CHAPTER 6 // CHAPTER 7 // CHAPTER 8 // CHAPTER 9 // CHAPTER 10 // CHAPTER 11 // CHAPTER 12 // CHAPTER 13 // CHAPTER 14 // CHAPTER 15 // CHAPTER 16 ]
CHICAGO, 1986
We had been lying under the shade of that tree for a few hours now. A while had passed since the shade had moved enough to leave us unguarded again. The warmth felt good on my skin, and even though the sun was shining pretty strongly, it was nice to stay there, on the soft grass, with the gentle breeze from the waterfront. It felt like it had been ages since we actually stopped and enjoyed the outdoors for a while.
“Thank God it’s spring again,” Chucky sighed. “And it really feels like Saturday, to boot.”
“But you don’t have a job,” I reminded him with a little giggle.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
It had been a few months since we had moved to Chicago, and I didn’t miss Hackensack one bit. I half-opened my eyes to take a peek at the world around us. Birds were singing their pretty songs from the treetops. Seagulls flew above us like little white crosses against the pure periwinkle blue of the sky. The rustling of the fresh new leaves in the trees and the chattering of the scattered crowd relishing the sunny weekend weather at the park was as calming as the faint sound of the waves of the Michigan lake. People walked their dogs, children flew their kites, friends had picnics, other couples just like us were similarly sprawled on the bright green grass, basking in the sunlight. I closed my eyes again, focusing on the low quiet thumping of his heart, and pushed my sunglasses back up the bridge of my nose.
“You know, I was a real outdoors sorta kid, back in the day. Didn’t have many friends in the first place, so I tended to spend a lot of time on my own,” I said, going back to the few times I sunbathed by the park, smoking and wasting the hours before it was time for dinner. “Playing in abandoned houses, collecting spiders, exploring the neighborhood…”
“Huh. I wouldn’t have thought of you as a tomboy.”
“I wasn’t a tomboy,” I frowned. “I just liked being out of the house.”
He stroked the side of my arm. We were both feeling kinda drowsy.
“What about you?” I asked him, pushing his sunglasses up and off his eyes. He blinked and scrunched his nose, briefly blinded by the light. “I can imagine you being a total boy scout type.”
He laughed, covering his eyes with his hand.
“I dunno, Tiff… We had a yard, back at my parents’ house. I guess I played in it,” he shrugged. “But the second home had some really nice grounds. Lots of trees, a whole forest surrounding it… Great for playing in, as a kid.”
“The second home?”
“Yeah—”
“You were in more than one home?”
“I was at two homes,” he said. “One back near Hackensack, the other in South Jersey. Had a pretty shitty time at the first. And, I mean, I was kind of a sheltered kid before, not the best at making friends. Not like I wanted any.”
I rested my cheek against his chest, playing with one of the buttons of his Hawaiian shirt. It wasn’t a confirmation, but I had had the suspicion he was an only child for a while now. Him having been a spoiled little thing made a lot of sense.
“I was convinced I’d be adopted in a month, at most,” he continued. “You know, I was a model kid. I knew all the right things to say. But time passed, and I kept getting annoyed with the other boys… And after picking a few too many fights I should have known I was too small to win—”
“You killed them?”
“Close enough,” he said with a little smirk. “I started a fire in their rooms, and it spread, and soon the whole orphanage went up in flames.”
“So you set an orphanage on fire?” I chuckled, honestly quite impressed. “Were those your first kills?”
“Huh?”
I crossed my arms over his ribs, and rested my chin over my hands. “I totally get it. One day you just have enough, you snap, and… You know. Things happen.”
Chucky sighed. We didn’t really talk about our life before meeting the other. Not that I was gonna complain. It was nice to see he trusted me enough to share something personal.
“After that, I was transferred to Burlington County Home. That was a more liberal type, the sort that’d get you a slap on the wrist if you were caught smoking pot in the hallway.”
I laughed. It would figure that it was there where he got introduced to some good music. Maybe it was along the same time I got introduced to Heath’s house parties, to his cool friends, and to what being cool was all about, too. I liked the idea –our parallel stories. There was a feeling of destiny to it.
“There I made an effort to start fresh, win people over… It was like turning a new leaf, you know? With all the records of my behavior having been burned up, and with most of my old tutors in intensive care. And besides,” he smiled wider. “My story of having survived a fire gave me quite a bit of a reputation among the other kids.”
“Bet you didn’t quite say how the fire started, though.”
“Well, you always got to doctor your stories,” he said, raising his eyebrows over the rim of his sunglasses. “Omit some details, add a few new ones.”
I sighed and nodded, too. I knew exactly what he was talking about. Perhaps he had told himself, after that fire, what I had told myself after killing Heath: that it had been great fun, but that a functional member of society can’t go around killing all willy-nilly. After all, everyone loses their temper once in a while. I used to wonder if there were actually a lot more people who had killed someone in their lives –not just cops and surgeons, but your average joes and janes, people you came across in line while buying groceries, in the crowd at the movie theater, or spending a lovely afternoon in the park. One little accidental death doesn’t make a killer. No –you need to commit to it. You need to really love it, care about it, know what you’re doing. Otherwise, you’re just an amateur waiting to get caught.
“If you had stayed at that Hackensack home,” I said quietly. “Then we might have met a little earlier.”
He raised his sunglasses and squinted down at me. “You think so?”
“… No, not really,” I muttered, thinking it over. “I was probably already on my way to New York by then. Besides, the chances of us two meeting back then… I don’t think they were very good.”
All around us were little wildflowers, welcoming the season. I sat up and picked tiny daisies and buttercups, gathering them in mini-bouquets and spinning them, getting green stains on the tips of my fingers. Once I had a nice bunch, I leaned back on the grass, against him, and weaved them all along his black hair.
“At what age did you run away?” I asked him.
He looked up at me in surprise. Chucky hadnʼt mentioned it, but I could pretty safely assume so.
“… I was fourteen.”
Another perfect coincidence. I smiled. “Yes, you and I might have gotten along just fine.”
Not often did I think about that other kid at school, the only one who had asked me to be his girlfriend, Darry Cade. The pussy. Another missed chance to make a friend. If he had been Chucky, I knew he’d have agreed to run away with me. There was not a time in his life in which he would have turned down such an offer. Chucky was many things, but he wasn’t a pussy.
“What were you up to back then?”
“Oh, you know…” I shrugged, gazing down at my hands, wondering what childhood he had painted in his mind for me already, and how far it’d be from the reality. “We were just a normal family. Mom, dad, me, Bri… I went to school, I looked after my little sister, I helped my mom around with housework… It was a good life. Normal. I just… It was a bit stifling, you know? And you know how mothers can be kinda bossy—”
“Not my mom,” he said with clear pride in his voice. “She was the coolest. She let me stay up late, reading all night, even on a schoolday.”
“Lucky you,” I chuckled. “Mine was… She wasn’t so cool. And my dad, he was always somewhere else, only home for dinner…”
A stowaway ant had crawled its way out of a daisy, and onto Chucky’s brow. It went down the thin path of an old pale scar. I recognized it as the traces of scratches I had given him some time ago. They were almost invisible, except under a certain angle and a certain light.
“But it was a good life, all things considered. I can’t really complain.”
I could –but I didn’t want to. Besides, what was the use? Just to have him pity me? For him to bitch about how much I bitched?
He felt the ant on his face and raised his hand to try and kill it. I clicked my tongue. Carefully, I picked it with my nails, like I would pluck an eyebrow hair with tweezers. Slowly, I crushed the little bug until it stopped squirming.
“You know, Tiff,” he said with a smirk. “It’s that type of fine upbringing that makes us such outstanding citizens.”
We both burst out laughing.
Not very far from us, I heard the coos and babbles of a cute baby in a bucket hat. The parents laughed along and encouraged them, holding their little chubby hands, and helped them give a couple stumbling steps on the grass. I watched the family keenly. Sometimes I made an effort to remember my first memory; whatever it was, I had to guess it was probably something similar to that scene of the parents with their baby. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t quite picture it, though. I had a bunch of scattered images of me being dressed up by my mother, me being bounced on my father’s knee, me with my toothless mouth open wide, either in a laugh or in a scream, but then I realized these were all photos we had around my parents’ house. Real details were fuzzy. Both of my parents had looked the same across the years, so I had no way to know which event came first, whether a blurry, off-key Christmas pageant was during kindergarten or during elementary already, or whether a frosting-covered cake, made to look like a big hoop skirt for one of my dolls, was lit up for my fifth or for my seventh birthday. I do remember throwing a tantrum when I lost my favorite star-shaped barrette during the performance. I remember wondering if my doll’s cheek would melt with the fire of the candles.
“My mom thought I’d end up being a doctor,” Chucky commented quietly, lost in thought. “I mightʼve gotten into medical school, like my dad.”
“Mm… We should probably think about getting jobs by now,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Shouldn’t we?”
He stroked my hair. “… Well, we might not need to.”
I looked back up at him. “You say we just keep on looting?”
“I mean,” he shrugged. “We can probably manage just fine that way.”
“Come on, most people don’t carry that much in their wallets,” I said with a frown. “Besides, you never take care of groceries and stuff, it’s easy for you to say so—”
“Alright, alright…” he huffed, taking off his sunglasses and pressing his eyelids. “I’ll see if I can get hired for something.”
I went back to resting my head on his chest, and considered what my options were. “You know, I used to want to be an actress.”
“Really?”
“Yeah… But I wasn’t any good at it. I had to give it up.”
“Shame.”
“I guess I’m not that good at anything besides killing,” I said, letting out a resigned chuckle.
There was a pause. Chucky then propped himself up on his elbows. “Hey –don’t say that. You’re a damn great cook, and you had that job at the hair salon for years… I don’t think you’d be able to hold down a job for so long if you didn’t do something right.”
I smiled at him. Genuine, creative compliments weren’t his strong point, and he was particularly stingy with them. Still, he had made an effort, and truthfully, I was more than a little bit moved. “Guess so.”
“Only thing…”
“What?”
“You do drive like a goddamn maniac.”
I laughed out loud. “Why, thank you, darling.”
“Am I wrong?”
I pounded my fist on his shoulder, laughing louder. He wrapped his arms around me, his chest shaking as he repressed a giggle, trying to get me to stop hitting him. It took a while before I calmed down, still smiling, and plopped down over him. He took off my glasses and set them over his own, making me laugh longer, louder, with those little snorts that he always found so funny. Just straight ahead of me, I noticed one of the other couples sitting up on the grass and shooting me a glare. Probably thinking I was too loud. I flipped them off. What a goddamn need some people had, to get all up in other people’s business.
“Do you ever think about being, like…? Normal?” I asked.
“You say this isn’t normal?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean… Like, a more traditional way of life.”
Chucky frowned and thought about it for a moment. “You mean white picket fence, two and a half kids, disposal in the sink, that sort of stuff?"
“Yeah. That sort of stuff.”
“No. I never think about it,” he scoffed. “Listen, Tiff, can you really imagine me working a nine to five? Carrying a stupid briefcase around, like a goddamn yuppie?”
“No…”
“So? We have a good life. We have all we need. All we could ever want.”
I gave it some thought. He was right, in a way. We had each other, and a nice place all for ourselves, and our fun little hobby. Really, what more could we ask for?
Well, for starters, I would have liked a real house. Not that our apartment wasn’t perfect, because it was. But I had always dreamed of a proper house, with a good kitchen, a dining room, a nice big bathroom with a tub, somewhere with a yard where I could grow flowers, and that would have a porch on which to sit on summer evenings… And a wedding, that would be really nice too. I gazed at Chucky’s face, breathing softly, his eyes closed behind the two pairs of sunglasses. It would make a funny sight, him dressed up in a proper tux, waiting for me at the end of the aisle. Before we left for Chicago, I had the luck to be invited to Connie’s wedding, back in Hackensack. It had been such a beautiful occasion –even though the groom was a cheating bastard. And, as silly as it could seem, I still dreamed of a white wedding, a proper one, big and impressive and with a lot of guests, and a big poofy silk-and-lace dress, in a grand church, and full of flowers and music and light, just like Connie’s. The sort that would make the local news. That would be a true dream come true, I sighed, coming down back to reality.
Only thing that would be missing from it, then, would be…
“Have you ever thought about having kids?” I asked him.
Chucky scoffed again. “Fuck no—”
“Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t considered it at least once.”
“What would I want kids for? Just to have them demand attention all day, and cry out all night?” He shot me a look from under the sunglasses. “I already got you for that.”
“Kids keep you company once you’re old,” I pointed out, thinking about something Connie had told me, part of the reason she had married her boyfriend. “It’s actually a pretty smart long-term decision to have children, when you think about it. Like an investment.”
“Well, let’s just agree to disagree.”
I pouted and poked his cheek. “Aw, are you that bad with kids?”
“Nah, I’m good with kids. It’s just that I hate them,” he replied. God forbid he admit he was bad at anything. “You know, those little fuckers can get pretty wily once they start walking.”
“What, did a baby try to bite a finger off you once, or something?”
“I grew up in an orphanage, Tiff. I know what kids can be like.”
I rolled my eyes, and looked down at the grass, pulling little green blades. Everything pointed to me not being able to change his mind. Not that I was suggesting anything, of course. We were just saying stuff to pass the time. He did notice some kinda shift in my mood, though. With a little sigh, he sat up, picked a buttercup from his hair, and tickled my neck with it, getting me to smile again.
“Listen, babe, we’re just not cut out for... For the supposed normal life,” Chucky said, in his best attempt at being reassuring. “We’re not like others. We are who we are. And we are… We’re special . And besides,” He put the buttercup up over my ear. My dark roots were showing again already. “I wouldn’t be a good father anyway. You know that.”
“I don’t know about a father… But I think you’d be a good husband.”
He snorted, and leaned back to lay on the grass, staring up at the sky. “Very funny, Tiff.”
I rested my chin on his chest. “You know that, if you popped the question, I’d say yes in a heartbeat. Right?”
He forced an unconvincing laugh. “Sure.”
“I’m serious!” I insisted. I turned his jaw so he would be looking straight at me. He rolled his eyes. “Hey. I love you, Chucky. You know that.”
He looked me in the eye, and finally gave me a genuine smile. “Yeah, I know.”
“So, what’s so funny about it?”
“It’s just… Come on, Tiff, this is crazy talk! Marriage? Really ? Do you honest to God think I would be a good husband?” Chucky huffed. “We’d just end up trying to kill each other. And you’d ditch me the second I got too old for the chase.”
“Don’t be stupid, Chucky,” I said, sitting back up. Did he really have that idea of me? “I wouldn’t leave you for the world, even if you got all ugly and wrinkly and fucked up in the face.”
“You say that now—”
“After all, you’d do the same if I got all fucked up,” I said with a shrug. “Right?”
He glanced at me, and let a few too many seconds pass by. “… Yeah, sure.”
I gave him a shove. He let out a real, bright laugh.
“You asshole, not even I am that shallow!” I cried, trying not to laugh too, as he shoved me back. “If I were, I wouldn’t have stayed with you for this long—”
He laughed again. I tried to slap his arm but he grabbed my hand, so I slapped his shoulder with my other hand, and we play-fought, him pushing me on my back and trying to tickle me, me giggling uncontrollably and trying to kick him off me, while at the same time swatting his hands as best I could, trying to gain the upper hand and tickle him back. I finally managed to grab his shoulders and shove him back and climb on top to straddle him –though there was a good chance he just let me overpower him this once –and distracted him from the little roughhousing with a kiss, declaring myself the winner of this round.
Chucky never said it out loud, but I knew how he really felt about all these things. Maybe I was being kinda stupid for thinking about our future like that. I just couldn’t take my mind off it. The more time that it passed with us together, the more I was convinced that, as much as he didn’t seem to care about that sort of life, this thing that we had was definitely gonna last. And if we were going to stay together, then what was so wrong about trying to plan for it? 'Live for today' , or however his personal philosophy went, didn’t need to come into conflict with just thinking things ahead of time.
I was spending a lot longer than I would have liked to admit, wondering these things to myself. Sometimes I did wonder if we’d ever truly get too old for the chase, having to, for whatever reason, stop going on our hunting dates. That might have been what scared Chucky, the idea of not being able to do what he loved anymore. Maybe he thought that a little more traditional life would clash with that –but why should it? Why wouldn’t we be able to be who we were, and still enjoy all the middle-class perks and comforts? After all, not all serial killers had to be rednecks and bums. We were smart, we could find some way to make it work. All I really needed was for him to see how good this could be, for the both of us.
After all, I knew he couldn't deny how much better it was to be comfortable in a little place of our own.
Unboxing all our stuff took us a lot more time than we spent packing. Since we didn’t have anywhere to put our clothes at first, we just left them in the suitcases. The priority was to take out the more fragile things: while Chucky put away the knives and our mugs and the little dishware we had brought with us, I spent some time unwrapping my doll collection and my trinkets that would adorn the mantle. At the bottom of the box, lying awkwardly on a pile of Chucky’s books, I found Peeping Tommy, and beamed at the sight of him. Of course I knew he would have brought him along with us to Chicago, but still, seeing the tiny clown in the flesh was a relief. What wasn’t so nice was to notice the poor little guy hadn’t gotten through the trip unscathed: there was a long thin crack going from the upper side of his face down to his nose. It was barely noticeable, I told myself, running my finger through it, but it was still something I knew I should take care of. I decided to leave it in the box for the time being, and once we had settled down better and I could start buying back all my doll-fixing supplies, my glue and my paints, I would get Tommy looking as good as new.
And settling down in the apartment didn’t seem to be difficult, at first, until we realized just how many things we were actually needing. Some basic stuff was all covered, like heating and toiletries, but we basically ate all our meals either standing up by the counter in the kitchen, or on the sofa we got for the living room. Flea markets and garage sales were where we found most of our furniture, and we brought them up to the apartment after tying it up to the roof of the car and some effort to bring it up the stairs. First thing we got was a sleeper sofa, to at least have somewhere to lay down that wasn’t a couple of pillows on the floor, until we could get ourselves a decent bed. Eventually we found a beautiful old wrought iron bed frame, a good-enough mattress, and a dresser, and two little side tables. A couple weeks later we took a trip to the local Goodwill, and I got a few picture frames where to put some magazine cutouts to adorn the walls, so they weren’t so bare, while Chucky examined some knickknacks and wandered around the t-shirt section. We both had our own collections: I had my dolls, of course, and collector’s magazines, but also a few china figurines, old cake toppers, porcelain pillboxes, pretty candles, and interestingly-shaped bottles; while he collected animal bones, small statues of skeletons and devils, retro masks, and other weird little knickknacks –anything that called his attention, really. The more the merrier. I didn’t manage to find a new sewing machine at a decent price, however, which was what I missed the most of my old things at Hackensack that I couldn’t bring with me to Chicago.
The bedroom, more than the kitchen or even the living room, was the place that was the most lived-in. Chucky piled his books by the side of his bed for the first month or so, before he got tired of having such a hard time organizing them, and decided he would make shelves. It was his first time doing any carpentry work, apart from that forgotten Ikea table, and with his lack of patience and our lack of tools I knew before he even started that he’d end up with a swollen finger or two, at the very least. He refused my help, shocker, and since after a while he got particularly worked up, I decided to leave him to it and watch TV, keeping the volume low enough so I could snicker at his swearing and little tantrums. Still, it worked out well enough, the shelves weren’t too crooked, and I could display the rest of my collection, and he could place his books so he could organize them more easily. Similarly, I soon got sick of having to dive through the suitcases to find the clothes I couldn’t stuff in the dresser drawers. He managed to get us a clothing rack from which we hung our coats and my dresses, and a few days later I found an empty dollhouse at the Goodwill that I fixed up and refashioned into a shoe sorting thing. I even got us a tall, pretty bamboo palm from a hardware store, to bring a little life into the living room.
Slowly, piece by piece, the apartment became a proper home. A month or so later we could already say we were nicely settled.
I made an in-depth analysis of my options around the city before I took the car for a checkup. Luck would have it that the guy at the garage trusted me with a place to get the license plate changed, so I wouldn’t be caught with a stolen vehicle. Darnell’s was the name of the place, managed by this large man, Darnell himself, who was really interested in it. He offered me some pretty good money for it, even after I told him it wasn’t for sale. Truth be told, his last bid was a really tempting one, but I reminded myself that the Pontiac wasn’t just another joyride. This one had sentimental value. Besides, what was I gonna do with the money? Get me a shitty Chevette? No way.
We spent most days cruising around and getting acquainted with the city. We did the touristy stuff for a few days, and then we just became familiar with the neighborhood, so then we could branch out and go further. We got a feel of which streets were the most patrolled, and which ones were the best for when we wanted to go on our special hunting dates and pass by undetected. The change of scenery was really exciting at first. The new routine didn’t last very long, though: at first, it was as if we were the only two people in the entire world. But as time went on, Chucky started going out on his own during the day, only showing up late at night for us to head out together. He slept at home, but he would sometimes not even be there when I woke up, and so I had to have breakfast on my own –not even back in Hackensack he ever left me to have lonely mornings. Maybe I would have been able to understand it better if it wasn’t so inconsistent. Some days he’d be there to wake me up with a kiss; some days he would be gone and wouldn’t even show up until the next evening. I didn’t have a job to keep me distracted yet. I only had him, there in Chicago, and when he wasn’t there, it really felt like I had nothing at all.
And I hate having to wait. I hate empty moments. I hate silences. My hands start trembling if too much time passes and I don’t have anything to do. I need something to devote myself to.
So I did my best to keep myself busy. When he wasn’t around I took out the Pontiac, filled it up, and scoured the city for cool new places to visit, for when he finally showed his face again. It became my new occupation to find restaurants we could go to, and nice cinemas, and a few clubs that didn’t sell drinks that cost an arm and a leg. I also applied for jobs, but nothing came up; besides, I didn’t really want to do anything that was too far from our new home.
One Tuesday afternoon I was alone again, so I drove to a record store I had my eye on. After all, I had a car now, so it stands to reason that I was needing my own tape collection. I picked some of the loose change I had scattered under the car seat, fixed my lipstick in the rearview mirror, and got into the place. I think the music that was blasting in there was some B-52s, but I’m not completely sure. There was a guy by the cash register reading a newspaper, with the front page announcing the latest murder of an insurance salesman by Irving Park, not too far from where the store was. I looked away from it with a little smile. Going through the box of tapes on sale, I found Purple Rain ; I picked it up and turned the case and went over the tracklist, and out of a sudden I remembered it had been a Prince song, the first one on that list, that which had been blaring out the loudspeakers at that Hackensack nightclub years ago. It surprised myself to even remember that. I wondered if Chucky remembered it, too.
“Hey,” I said to the nearest person, thinking she was an employee. “You got any Joan Jett?”
“I don’t work here,” she said, and turned around towards the cash register. “Hey, Jack! Look alive, you got a customer.”
The guy looked up from his newspaper. As soon as he saw me, his mouth gaped open, and then it struck me.
“Tiffany?”
“ Jack ?”
God knows how I recognized him. He had badly chopped his hair into a homemade mullet, replacing the scruffy look he had as a teen. There were scars of recent shaves on his jaw, little dots that weren’t fully healed yet. All in all, though, he did look healthier: no longer sunken eyes and cheeks, no more the look of someone who slept on park benches. I wondered how different I must have looked to him, from that scrawny sixteen-year-old he had first met.
“Wow, it’s really you!” he smiled. “Damn, it’s been a while.”
“Ten years?”
“Give or take, yeah, I guess…”
I stared at him, wondering what the odds were for us to ever meet again –and in Chicago, of all places. For a moment I had a sudden worry that he might have somehow followed me from New York… But that made no sense, of course. And besides, if he knew anything about me, it was that it wasn’t wise to piss me off.
“What’re you doing here? Promoting your band?”
“Man, I wish. I’m hitchhiking my way to San Francisco,” he declared, as if that was a particularly cool thing to do. “Money’s been tight lately, so a friend got me this job, for the time being.”
“Huh.”
“What about you?” Jack asked, leaning forward. “You wanted to be an actress, right? I really thought you’d make it, back in New York.”
I scoffed and looked away, cursing at myself for even smiling in his direction. Still, I wondered if he meant it. He knew I had wanted to be someone. If he ever believed I had what it takes to be a star, he didn’t really say it until now.
“You know, the old twists and turns of life… You never know what fate’s got in store.”
The initial shock of reuniting with him finally washed away. We were never a thing. He never agreed to call me a girlfriend. If anything, more than regret, I had resentment.
“How’s your hand?” I asked, gesturing towards it. “Did the finger ever grow back?”
“Not yet, but I’m still holding out hope.”
I gave him an open-mouth grin. Jack just kept smiling, perfectly calm, as if we were discussing the weather. I wondered what he told people who asked about his wound. It was a given that he’d never tell anyone a not-girlfriend chopped it off at the back of a movie theater. Maybe he’d say he lost it in a knife fight, that surely sounded convincing enough. Back when I was in the dating pool, I had met a couple guys who liked to point out their domestic accidents and cat scratches, and say stuff like they had been assaulted at knifepoint and somehow miraculously managed to fight the attacker off with barely a scrape. And I’d smile, too, because I knew that that was what they wanted me to respond with.
“You’re, uh… You’re looking good,” he said with a nod, his eyes still fixed on me. Then he glanced down the neckline of my minidress, like they always did. My own smile faltered. “Real good.”
Should have seen it coming. He wouldn’t be half as nice to me if he didn’t have something else in mind.
I glared at him. Better to make it clear right then and there. “I have a boyfriend.”
Jack’s smile became less natural, stiffer, more of a grimace. Disappointment could have that sort of instant effect, I thought, biting my tongue. “Oh –really?”
“Yeah, really,” I said with a chuckle, quirking my eyebrows. “Two years, actually. Going nice and steady.”
“Wow. Lucky dude.”
He might pretend he had forgotten about trying to get his hand under my skirt. I hadn’t forgotten how Jack had stood me up in the dead of winter. Briefly I considered inviting him over, so Chucky and I could have some fun with him –but I decided to be forgiving, and let bygones be bygones. After all, I could be merciful. I could be nice.
“Sure is.”
“Is he here with you, in Chicago?”
I sucked on my teeth. The guy just didn’t give up.
“Was his idea to come, actually.”
“You happy with him?”
What’s it to you? , I almost snapped. Instead, I just closed my hand into a fist, took a deep breath, and smiled. “Happier than ever.”
“Good,” Jack said, finally getting the message. “Good to know.”
I nodded. We kept silent for a moment.
“… You came for tapes?”
At least that gave us some room to talk like normal people.
Jack jabbered on and on about the Chicago music scene, complained about 'all these goddamn posers and sellouts ', and listed bands I had never heard of. I pretended to be really invested in all of this, even managing to ask a few questions for his sake. I'm not sure why I did it. I guess that a part of me still had some affection for him, somehow, after all this time. And Jack was genuinely happy to see me again, despite me leaving him with an uneven number of fingers. I think that was weirder than me taking some pity on him and allowing him to ramble on about his hobbies.
“Hey, by the way,” he finally said as he focused back on me. “When did you arrive in Chicago?”
“Hm, about three months ago? I think?”
Jack nodded. He took out a piece of paper and scribbled a number and an address. “Listen, if you ever need anything, like, I don’t know, some tools, some contacts in the city… I got a few guys who can help out.”
“Guys?”
“Yeah, folks I know ‘round here.”
I frowned. There was a feeling that there was something left unsaid. Like he expected me to do something in exchange. He handed me the paper. I looked at it. It really was just phone numbers and addresses, and a small list of names. His was included at the top.
“Last week I had an issue with the heater at the place I’m staying over. Paulie there,” he pointed at the paper. “He came over and fixed it for me. I paid him in lunch and beer. He’ll probably take the same from you, if you ever need to give him a call.”
I folded the paper and tucked it into my bag before he changed his mind. “Why’re you being nice to me?”
“You mean, because of this?” he asked as he raised his hand. “Well… Boyfriend or no boyfriend, I remember how hard things were, back then,” Jack said, scratching the back of his head. “I guess one can use all the help one can get.”
That did get me to give him an honest smile. I had no way of knowing whether or not Jack was being honest, obviously –but it was just an offer. And who knew, maybe I would end up needing some help, God forbid. I wasn’t gonna say no to a possible lifesaver because of some old stupid fight from back when I was a teenager... As tempted and justified as I was to keep the grudge.
“After all, you never know what fate’s got in store,” he shrugged. “Right?”
“Right.”
Jack smiled at me again. I smiled back. It was so ugly, to feel those teenage crush heartstrings being pulled once more, after so long. It was difficult to even remember that I still hated him. We talked a little more, we said our goodbyes, and after a while I left the store with a pretty good haul of Lita Ford and The Pretenders.
So, really, it turned out a good deal of the ‘help’ Jack had offered me were the numbers of a few of his friends: weed dealers, aspiring musicians and desperate handymen. But he knew the local scene much better than I did, even with less time in Chicago than Chucky and I had, so I kept it. In the end, I liked the idea of having at least one friend in this new city, at least until I could properly feel at home.
Summer was soon on its last legs, and then it was fall again, and the cold came back with a vengeance. We were both really thankful the fireplace at the apartment was fully functional. Only problem was, neither one had gotten jobs yet. Money had gotten tight, and we were really living from kill to kill, taking all we could from the bodies we slaughtered. Most of all, whoever we chose during our dates was always a gamble. Since we were working together, there was no chance any of our victims managed to overpower both of us and escape, that was for sure. But people who dressed up to the nines did not always have much cash on them: our golden tickets, rich people who flaunted it and carried fat wallets, were pretty rare. That was without even mentioning how they tended to stroll around richer areas of the city, with heavier surveillance and cops in every corner. We were bold, but we weren’t stupid.
In the end, til either one of us got a new job to at least take care of groceries, we’d make do with our loot and a bunch of savings we kept under the mattress. That did mean less movie nights and less eating out, but it was sort of a given this would happen; and besides, both of us had gone through hard enough times to not make too much of a fuss about it.
We had missed the date for spring cleaning by a couple months, so one afternoon I decided we would get things done and finally make the apartment look neat and organized for once. It definitely wasn’t an empty two-room anymore: the clutter we had been gathering had turned pretty worrying. It wasn’t that we didn’t have room for it all, because we certainly did. The issue was putting everything in its proper place.
“You’re gonna do the bathroom, right, hun?” I asked him after I had changed into the oversized Betty Boop t-shirt I didn’t mind getting dirty, putting on the rubber gloves and heading to the kitchen.
“Yeah, yeah,” he nodded, still staring at the TV.
“Hey –did you listen to me, Chucky?”
“Yeah, I said I heard you already,” he said, and finally turned around. “I am gonna do the bathroom… And it’s damn near impossible not to listen to you, you’re always screeching.”
I was about to snap back at him –but told myself that if we started arguing, then nothing would get done.
The kitchen was bigger than the one at my Hackensack apartment, but small enough that, thankfully, cleaning it didn’t take too much effort. All I needed to do was water down some bleach, soak up a rag, and give everything a wipe. The biggest issues were the fridge and the oven –but the fridge only needed to be cleaned once a year, and I rarely used the oven anyways, so that could wait a little longer.
“When d’you think you’re gonna be able to take care of the bathroom, sweetface?” I asked him once I was done, coming back into the living room, pulling the rubber gloves off my hands and checking I hadn’t messed up my nails. “I’d hope your very busy schedule can be cleared out before New Year.”
“You’re a riot and a half, Tiff.”
The TV was still on, but he was no longer paying attention to it. Instead, he had sprawled all over the couch, chewing on the end of a pencil, staring at something in the pages of his sketchbook. He was working on the last blank ones: all the previous pages were all creased and worn. On the coffee table was an old box of black pencils, also worn down and almost empty, a pencil sharpener full of shavings, and the very small end of an eraser that was a few more uses away from disappearing completely.
“Huh. I didn’t know you were such a dedicated artist.”
I wondered with a giddy smile if he was drawing me, and tried to catch a glimpse of the page he was working on, but he quickly closed the sketchbook before I could manage to make out anything.
“Hey –no peeking!”
“Why? Are you drawing nudes, or something?”
“Yeah, I’m drawing you inside out,” he joked, before going back to it. “No, it’s just… It’s just doodles. None are that finished yet.”
“I wanna see them, when they’re done.”
He glanced up at me, and gave me a smaller, non-compromising smile.
“Alright, I’m gonna tackle the mess that’s the bedroom,” I declared, stretching my arms and preparing myself for the challenge. “Would you go down and get a roast from Sawyer’s, so we can have dinner later?”
“… Huh?”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and put my hands on my hips. Chucky did that far too often recently, pretending he didn’t hear me to get away from doing basic helpful things around the place. “I said, go down and get a roast from Sawyer’s.”
He drew in a sharp breath. “Sorry, no can do.”
“Oh, really? What stops you?”
“Well, I’m… I’m busy,” he insisted, turning his sight down to the sketchbook.
“With what?” Being too into a drawing was no damn excuse. “’Cause it’s certainly not cleaning the bathroom nor tidying up the bedroom.”
“That mess is all yours,” he said. “My clothes are on the rack.”
“You wear my sweaters—!”
“Yeah, exactly – your sweaters.”
I huffed. Granted, he was, admittedly, a little more organized than I was. He did hang up his coat when he came home, and he did put his ties on the rack and folded his t-shirts –that is, if he even remembered I had them washed. Me, I guess I could happen to be a little more scatterbrained… But still, with everything I did around the house, the least Chucky could do was lend a hand. It wasn’t just about the clothes, of course: he was the one who’d complain first about dust bunnies gathering in the corners of the room, all the while he didn’t even know where the broom was kept. He never wiped his feet before coming into the apartment, even though we had a perfectly good doormat. He always left the used wet towels on the floor of the bathroom. And that was all without even mentioning how he never even cooked or helped around the kitchen. Only time he ventured in there was to raid the fridge anyways.
I slammed the handful of wrinkled bills and coins on the only empty space on the coffee table. “It’s all there. And make sure they don’t rip you off,” I told him. “Count it. And remember to bring my change.”
“I’m not fucking going!”
“Yes, you fucking are,” I said, shooting him a glare. “Or you’ll fucking starve.”
“I’m not even hungry.”
Right on cue, his stomach rumbled, very loudly. I smiled. He groaned with a drawn-out eye roll.
“ Fine . Fucking Christ,” he muttered, shutting the sketchbook, tossing it to the side, and getting on his feet. He stopped on his tracks when he reached the kitchen –he just had to have the last word. “You really get off on bossing around, huh?”
“Look who’s talking!”
He yanked his coat off the door hook, threw it over his shoulders, and stormed out.
I cursed him out, grumbling under my breath. Recently he had been particularly thin-skinned, flying into a rage at the slightest provocation –whether it was a real one or imagined. He had always been quick to anger, especially if he hadn’t killed anyone in a while, but this was turning ridiculous. I was about to count the days since our last date when I reminded myself that, actually, it was none of my business. If he wanted to get into a hissy fit because I asked him to do one simple thing then that was his problem. Chucky could deal with it himself; he was supposed to be a grown man, for God’s sake.
All I could do was hope that he would be back with the roast before it was time for dinner.
Going back to the bedroom, I tried to get back to tidying up. I’d be used enough to my own chaos I wouldn’t have any hard time finding my stuff. Living with someone else meant another pair of hands eager to mess with my delicate order, which didn’t help matters. I was done with folding and stuffing sweaters in the drawers, and my shoes were already in their proper rooms in the dollhouse, and my jackets were hanging along with his. Next up, I sorted accessories, looking for my belts in the drawers, cursing at myself for not setting them aside in the clothing rack, hanging from a hanger like with his ties, where I could find them more easily. Humming to myself to manage my frustration, I almost didn’t hear the front door creaking open.
I stopped rummaging for a moment, and listened. There was the familiar weight of his shoes, along with the crinkling of a plastic bag. Of course it was him. Who else could it be? I needed to keep focused on tidying up, because if I got too distracted, I’d find something else to do, and then I would never finish clearing out the mess. I kept searching, throwing balled socks and tangled stockings to the sides, huffing and sticking my hand as deep as I could to feel around for anything that felt like leather. The steps came closer behind me, and there was the creaking of the floorboards by the bedroom doorway.
“I’ve come to get you—!”
I turned around halfway through a sigh –but I got a quick look at Chucky just before he was almost already against me –he was wearing this black apron, and was holding a cleaver in his right hand. At the sight of it I opened my eyes wide and gasped, and before I could say anything he was already circling me with his arm –and I squealed and laughed, trying to get away.
“I dare you—!” I cried, trying hard to keep a scowl on my face, and failing spectacularly.
“Yes, my dear, your time has come!”
Chucky picked me up for a moment, and I kept laughing, too tickled by his fingers clutching my sides to even pretend to be scared. I wriggled a bit and even without elbowing him or anything he had to put me down again –and I felt the cold metal of the cleaver’s square edge touching my arm –and he tried to pick me up once more. He realized it was no use, but he was just happy with trying to hold me to stay still –which, with only one arm, was harder than he had expected.
“I’m gonna cut you up!” Chucky exclaimed, in a funny British accent. “Cut you up and cook you for dinner!”
“H-how?” I managed to blurt out in a wheeze, between laughs. “You, who c-can’t fry a steak to save his life?”
I got free, and in a split second wondered where he had gotten that cleaver from (he had most likely bought it partly with the change from the butcher’s, I realized later), and whether I had any chances to grab it off his hand, when I stupidly tried to turn to him just as I stepped away and tripped over the bed. Holding his arms up to the sides as if he was a monster preying on me, the cleaver in his hand almost touching the blades of the ceiling fan, Chucky lurched forward, very slowly. I giggled, covering my mouth with my hand.
“You’ll see –I’ll eat you up…”
With the biggest grin, he bit the large square blade of the cleaver, holding it between his teeth, and charged against me –tickling me while I laughed and squirmed and squealed. I gave him little punches to his chest, in my attempt at fighting back, while keeping away from the knife he had pointed at me coming from his face. At some point I was laughing way too much, a full body laugh, with my back on the unmade bed, my eyes tightly shut and my knees buckling, and I couldn’t even see where I was grabbing. I was confident, even half aware of it as I was, that I had managed to lay my hands against Chucky’s shoulders, pushing them back. From there it wasn’t very difficult to go up to his neck, where I could curl my fingers and sink my thumb, pressing with my nail, pulling him down along with me. I felt the poking tip of the cleaver against my arm, but I didn’t care. Soon enough he had stopped tickling me, and I could open my eyes again.
Kneeling on the floor, still with the knife between his teeth, Chucky cocked his head as well as he could, what with my hands wrapped around his neck, to get his hair off his face. I let him go, breathing heavily, and propped myself up with my elbows. He grabbed the handle of the cleaver and took it out of his mouth. There was a damp half-circle on the blade where his chompers had been holding it. I giggled.
“God, you’re such a kid.”
“But you love it,” he said, still with that smug smirk of his, now in his normal voice.
“Yeah… I guess I do,” I sighed, smiling, looping a finger under the straps of the apron that went around his neck, and looked down at the cleaver under his hand. “You’re gonna be the disposal expert, now?”
“The knife’s for me,” he replied. “But the apron’s for you.”
“Shame. It looks good on you.”
“I know,” he snickered. “Still... I wouldn’t fill it out as nicely as you would.”
I chuckled, and he leaned closer, and I gave him a kiss. His hand cupped my jaw as he kissed me back.
“You better share your toys,” I told him once I pulled away, gasping for air.
Chucky pressed his forehead against mine. “You’ll get your turn.”
We kept kissing, opening our mouths a little wider, moving closer. He brushed the cleaver against my thigh, softly. His other hand wasn’t as delicate: he was already grabbing me, now going down to my waist, finding the hem of my t-shirt and getting right under it. I helped him out, taking it off and pulling it over my head and throwing it to the side of the bed. He smiled when he got a peek at my pretty white lace bra –but I didn’t give him much time to enjoy the view. I reached behind his nape to pull him back to me, and kissed him as if my life depended on it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the cleaver coming closer, felt it tracing its way up my thigh, over my torso, before settling on my chest, just around my collarbone. It was barely touching me so far –but once Chucky got it where he wanted, I felt the edge of it, the blade pressed against my skin, not wanting to cut yet. Like a silent threat. My pulse began to quicken. I leaned back for a second, breaking up the kiss.
“How sharp is it?” I asked him in a whisper, looking into his eyes.
“You tell me.”
I grinned, and leaned forward once more, not for a kiss but to see if he’d keep his hand still, holding the cleaver, the tip of it already itching to get deeper into me. See if he’d chicken out. All the while I kept staring him down, daring him to push it even further.
His eyes flitted from the knife to my own eyes. For the briefest moment I saw the same stunned thrill I had seen back when we first met. But the knife was closer now. And we weren’t strangers anymore.
Chucky pressed further, just a little bit, turning the cleaver so only the thin edge of it would touch me; and then dragged it along, drawing a short red line below my collarbone and just over my heart. I winced and whined quietly, tensing my arms, curling my toes. There was a pang of pain, and the sting of broken skin. It wasn’t deep at all –but it wasn’t exactly a papercut either –and I let out a small sigh when I felt the first drop of blood trickling down my chest. He lowered the cleaver, leaned closer and kissed the wound. I shut my eyes and grit my teeth. His lips were warm, but what really made me shudder was the wet tip of his tongue, running across the cut. It brought to mind religious pictures I’d seen as a kid –inappropriate pictures, even for Sunday school –of saints kissing Jesus’ wounds. I laughed to myself, wondering if they had used tongue too.
He moved away and looked up at me, with a bit of red on his mouth. And he smiled –maybe he thought he was tickling me, by the way I was giggling.
“You do look good enough to eat.”
I stroked his cheek and pulled his lower lip down softly with the nail of my thumb. There was a thin thread of blood on his teeth, pooling around his pink gums. And he kept gazing up at me, with those big hungry eyes... I barely noticed myself doing so –but I spread my thighs to the sides, a bit wider than before. He looked down. He understood immediately.
Bringing the cleaver down, Chucky pushed my right knee even further, focusing on the inside of my thigh. Then I understood. We shared a brief look before he traced the way from my knee to the seam of my panty with the tip of the knife, sending a shiver up my spine.
“Stay still,” he ordered.
“Or what?”
Chucky brought the sharp tip of the cleaver against the growing little damp spot. I gasped.
“Or we’re gonna have a little accident.”
I closed my hands into fists. He pressed the blade harder against the panty. I did feel a rush of dread, even as sure as I was that it was all an empty gesture. He watched my face, clearly loving my uneasiness, before twisting his wrist and turning the cleaver in his hand, and I felt it, thin and hard, circling my folds –I barely managed to avoid jerking my hips –a whimper escaped my lips before I could even try to stop it.
“You scared?” he asked, and he sounded delighted by the thought.
I was. Like watching a horror movie, or riding a roller coaster, where you're nice and strapped for the ride and know you're safe, knowing it doesnʼt change the fact that your body feels danger. That the only thing it can do is to become excited.
I scoffed as well as I could. “As if you would really do it...”
As if to question my trust, Chucky suddenly pulled the tip up, gathering the fabric with its point, and kept it just in my center, right in the middle of my pussy, leaning the long edge of the blade ever so slightly against the wet panty crotch that barely gave me any security. I tensed up. He pushed it, as if he was completely ready to just slice me in half. I moaned between teeth. Only then he slowly traced the way back again through my thigh towards my knee. I gave a sigh of relief. He was now choosing where to make that new cut, I realized, while the blade went back and forth. And I was thinking about whether to lean forward or not –to watch as he worked, or if to sit back and enjoy it –when I suddenly felt the cold hard edge of the blade sinking in –deeper than before –and I shut my eyes and cried out –moving my thigh in one sharp spasm, out of sheer reflex –tensing up and helping the cut become deeper. He gripped my knee to keep it still. The stinging of the cut was strong and sudden, but quick. A bit of relief, a sense of release. Another hot drop of blood. As soon as he was done, he hurried to kiss it. The contrast was heavenly. I opened my eyes and gasped, reaching down for his head, running my fingers through his hair.
“Baby—”
He sucked on the wound for a little longer, before planting a couple wet kisses along the inside of my thigh, nibbling and biting around the cut, letting it bleed out for a moment and kissing it again. I sighed. The cleaver clanked against the floor.
Chucky had gotten me where he wanted. Without so much as a warning, he pulled my panty to the side to give my pussy a quick kiss. I wailed. I felt his self-satisfied smile just before he kissed me again, this time a longer one, pressing with his tongue, just like he had done with the wound. I whined, higher. He kept warming me up, running his thumb over the fresh cut on the inside of my thigh, smearing the blood, squeezing enough to make the sting as sharp as the pleasure. I shut my eyes and bit my lips, keeping myself as quiet as I could, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of becoming so loud so soon. When he stopped and tilted his head back –and I leaned forward to see what he was up to now –his mouth and his fingers were all sticky and red. My pulse quickened. His hands raced to pull down my panties. My heart was pounding in my ears. We exchanged another little look, and a smile.
He closed his eyes –opened wide –and ate me out, one arm circling my right thigh and holding it in place, one hand pushing down my left thigh and jamming his finger in the wound. I cried and whined and called him –rocking my hips against his face –clawing the sheets of –tugging at his hair, sinking my nails in his scalp. And he made this little low moan with the back of his throat, dragging his tongue, pushing my hips to get where he needed to, fighting against my squirming –and I just whimpered, shaking my head. There were flashes of pleasure, making me gasp and curse him out, just as there were sudden pangs of sharp pain that had me sighing and begging. God, it hurt. It really hurt, his firm butcher-like hand grabbing the slippery thigh and pinning it in place... But it did an amazing job at keeping me desperate for some kinda relief.
Another drop trickled down my chest, down my belly, drawing a red line down towards his head between my legs. We had never done this before, I managed to think. One thing was biting, slapping, binding… Another was full-on cutting. But how different was it, really? Just because it drew a little blood? Was it so weird that I liked it?
His tongue began to work faster. My hips rutted along him to match his pace. I shut my eyes tight and brought a hand to my chest, feeling my frantic heart right under the first cut he had made. I ran my finger over it. The touch of skin against the open wound obviously hurt, but just enough so that it was bearable, just enough so that it didn’t really take anything away from the bliss of his mouth working me… If anything, along with the burning cut on my thigh, it made it feel even better.
Out of nowhere he pulled back to take a breath, and I was left trying to catch my own, legs already weak, while he stretched his neck and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I grabbed the strap of his apron and dragged him to me for a deep kiss. We could rest when we were dead. One of his hands went up to my waist, pulling me closer; the other, that which had been pressing my wound, went up and cupped my tit. His mouth rushed down to my neck, my shoulder, and finally on the cut he had made below the collarbone, kissing it again and again, keeping the blood flowing. Two fingers slipped under the cup of the now red-stained bra, playing with the nipple, squeezing and pinching. It was hard to even try to keep quiet, and definitely impossible to remain still. A hand slithered behind my back, and he fiddled with it for a little bit till he managed to unhook my bra. Once he pulled it off me, he stopped to gaze at my tits with a smile, feeling them for a moment before he licked his lips –and got to kissing, sucking and nipping for dear life, lovingly, hungrily. I could only grab onto him and straddle him, feeling how much he wanted it. How much I wanted it. But it was clearly not enough.
With his mouth occupied, and one hand pulling me to him, his other hand went down and fumbled around with his apron –for a moment I thought it was gonna go under the waistband of his pants –before finally, thankfully, running over my pussy again.
He pushed a finger in. I wailed, losing any self control I had left, and just gripped onto him, running my hands under his shirt and sinking my nails on his back. His breath was shaky, I could feel the ache in him, but he managed to keep his hand pretty steady, dipping in and out, up and down, in slow strokes. And somehow, despite my thrashing, I managed to shut my eyes and move along, automatically, on the edge of the bed, without even thinking about it, following his rhythm, as if we were one. Soon he decided my howling still wasn’t enough. He curled his finger, going quicker, and rubbed his thumb in little circles, and closed his teeth around the nub of my right nipple –and that ended every thought that was somehow still fluttering around in my mind.
He fucked me like that until I almost came. I'd given him plenty of hushed, blubbered, pathetic pleading, in between the convulsing and the contracting, but it hadn't been what he wanted from me. There was a little dribble of spit on his chin when he backed away from my chest, panting, groaning slightly when I dragged my nails harder, trying to keep him close. Just to make sure we were on the same page, I slinked one hand further down, under his waistband, under his underwear, feeling him up. My lips grazed his ear when I whispered to him about how hard he was already, and how badly I wanted it. It answered immediately by twitching in my hand. I think he chuckled and said something about me being so needy, but I could barely hear him anymore. As if I was the only needy one, anyway. He kissed my jaw a little more, all leisurely, then moved back down planting a couple light hickeys around the still sore wound on my chest. I tried to complain about him leaving me hanging like that. I brought my hand down to finish the job myself, but he stopped it. I was starting to worry that he would actually really just decide that I had had enough, just to be an asshole.
And then, he burrowed his face in the curve of my neck, and added one more finger, and his hand –his hand buried itself in me like a blade –and I could barely breathe anymore.
Not that I would ever admit it, but he had a better track record getting me off than myself. I knew perfectly well how that sort of thing would make him even more of an arrogant bastard than he already was… But, if he didn’t know it already, then he didn’t need to know.
He got me to the edge, just to the edge. He brought me to a sob. Maybe that was what he had been chasing, more than begging, more than screaming. No full release yet, but we were getting closer. Then he decided once more that it was time for a pause, and pulled away, moving back, and I still moved along with him, not wanting to stop yet. He knew what I really wanted.
“You asshole–”
“Ask nicely, or you'll get jackshit.”
“Just fuck me...”
“I mean it.”
I rolled my eyes. As if he would really leave me hanging there, when I knew he wanted it as badly as I did.
“Come on… Don’t make me wait…” I begged once more in a pained little whine, desperately reaching out for his shoulders, now putting on the show he wanted and making the pleading as straightforward as I could, knowing full well how much he liked that, how that had been his aim all along. “Please … ”
He smiled wider, clearly glad about his work, and took a little moment to breathe. Or maybe he did want to make me wait for it a little longer –who’s to say. Despite how thoroughly he had wrecked me, I managed to pull myself together, and sit back up on the edge of the bed. And, just to make sure he didn’t doubt it for a single second longer, I stroked his cheek and leaned forward, chest heaving, eyelashes fluttering, inches away from a kiss. I stared him down, down his blue glassy eyes, on his knees, in the space between my legs. Gazing up at me like that .
“ Please .”
That seemed to do the trick. Chucky fumbled in the back pocket of his pants, looking for a condom. When he finally managed to find one, he tried to open it, but his dirty fingers slipped off the plastic wrapper.
“Just give it to me—”
“I can do it.”
He couldn’t. He tried a couple more times before losing his patience and ripping it open with his teeth. I snickered, already reaching down to unbuckle his pants, while he hurried to take the apron off over his head. He climbed on the bed and I glanced down and smiled, getting a quick look of his dick, already dripping with precum, before he slipped the condom on. I pulled him down to me and kissed him slowly, running my hands over his shoulders, now making him wait a little more, like he had done with me. He still had the coppery, sweet-and-sour taste of my blood on his tongue. But he was getting impatient. He pushed me on my back, and kissed the wound on my chest one more time before going to my mouth, making me taste my own blood in his spit. And I kept thinking about the red trail rolling down my chest…
And that reminded me: “Wait, wait, wait—”
“What?” he asked, stopping for a moment to look down. “Did it break?”
“No…” I propped myself up, still panting a little bit, and ran a hand through my hair to push it off my face. “… Did you remember to put the meat in the fridge?”
For a second there he was pretty confused. Then, he laughed. “Yes, I did… Don’t worry about it.”
We kissed again, one more sloppy kiss, and he quickly turned back to my neck, which definitely helped me get my mind out of the fridge and back into the bedroom. As if he had just read my mind, he sunk his teeth down just a bit, just how I liked it. I held him tighter –gave him a long moan. It was as if I melted down on the sheets. And he wouldn’t be able to keep it together much longer either. He took a moment to get into position, pulling my hips closer. Just then –gazing up at him – my legs wrapped around his waist –then he slid into me.
I grabbed his hair in my fist –gripping hard, white-knuckled –yanked his head away from me –and I cried out, loudly, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. He grinned, eyes closed, letting me pull him tighter and harder backwards, like curbing a dog with a leash. Slowly, after that initial shudder had passed, my arm relaxed; I released him, he breathed and pressed his head against my shoulder –and began rocking his hips –slow and steady –clenching his jaw –swallowing –his Adam’s apple bobbing, his neck tensing, my hands running across his skin and feeling what lay underneath. Muscles, bones, sinews, veins. He pulled me up and pressed himself against me –skin against skin –my wound stinging at the touch of him –his warm breath on my chest, panting louder, pushing harder.
“Look at me,” he demanded, when he pushed my hips higher and angled himself better, getting me to shut my eyes and cry out. “You're mine.”
He had learnt some stuff from me by now. He was better at telling me what he wanted, what he needed. Less of a straight-up fuck, more of an actual scene. I loved that. It was all I ever wanted for us.
“C’mon,” he said, stroking my neck, pushing my chin up with his thumb. “Say you’re mine, honeybun.”
I gazed up at him, just like he had done, and smiled. “You forgot to say please.”
Out of a sudden, he frowned and stopped. I frowned, too, and was about to ask him what was wrong –if he had left the fridge open, if he had forgotten about the change, if he had somehow come already –but then the hand’s grip tightened around my neck –suddenly I couldn’t breathe –and he choke-slammed me. In my surprise I opened my eyes wide, weakly turning my head, trying to cough.
“Still in the mood to joke around, Tiff?”
After that initial shock I managed to breathe in and chuckle a little. I had to admit I was impressed. He wasn’t too good at being harsh. He stumbled, he hurried, he didn’t play the role well enough. Last time he tried, he got too excited and it got out of hand, and I ended up furious at him, and gave him the silent treatment for about three whole days. Our last real big fight. If he was gonna be cruel, it just came easier to go all out.
“So selfish …” I said mockingly, with a little pout. Not the wisest thing, maybe, but I knew he did like it when I gave a little fight. “I think I like you better on your knees.”
“I bet you do.”
He grabbed me harder.
“You're mine,” he insisted. “C'mon. Say it. Say you’re mine.”
I grinned wider, drawing a quick breath through grit teeth. “You’re mine .”
Not what he wanted –but did I lie? His fingers closed around my neck. The warm palm of his hand pushed down my throat. It was so sudden –I tried to laugh –but it was hard to even breathe. I brought my knees closer to my chest. His hand squeezed tighter than before. I could feel my heart beating in my head. Not wanting to be less, I put my hand on top of his hand, clutching his. He let out a little strained groan, at how deep I was sinking my nails on his wrist –but he didn’t let go yet.
“Now –it’s your turn to say it, sweetface,” I managed to barely mumble, all choked up, with a quirk of my eyebrows. “Like –you mean it—”
“Say it,” he insisted, his voice becoming lower, trying very hard to seem serious –menacing, even. I decided to reign in my smile and play along for a bit. “ I’m yours .”
My eyes were starting to water. I was getting dizzy already. I’d been pressing my knees against his hips, squeezing my thighs together tight, and they were trembling a bit because of the strain, soon about to give up and go limp. It was clear that I hadn't gone limp yet, though, by how he seemed to be enjoying himself. Part of me wanted to wait a little longer, see for myself how far I could go, how far he would let me choke this time. But then again, he was already in me, and I wanted that goddamn release he kept putting off.
My lips finally parted. His eyes opened a bit wider. A pause, to build anticipation. He was pressing hard enough that my voice came out rather husky. “… I’m yours .”
His expression shifted, and he smirked, satisfied. And then –he looped an arm under my right knee –pulling it up –thrusting harder –making me yelp.
“You're damn right,” he smiled wickedly, and I laughed with a wheeze. Now that was something I loved to hear from him.
I think I had been plenty patient, all things considered. Not anymore. I pushed him closer to me with my free leg, holding him tighter. He grunted. I shut my eyes. He held me closer, found the spot that got me squirming, moved faster. I arched my back in a gasp. His breathing became more shallow. I opened my mouth and gave in with a bunch of throaty moans and whines. I was so close. I didn't hold back anymore. And he didn’t stop. One hand went to grab my left thigh, digging his thumb in the wound, making it hurt so much I could just not separate it from the rush of pleasure I was riding. With his other hand, the one that had been wrapped around my neck, he grabbed my jaw and got me to open my eyes, to look up at him, as we were reaching the end. I tried very hard not to blink, even when my eyes were blurry and burning. As if there was anything else I would rather be looking at... And he kept repeating my name through gritted teeth, calling me as he started to lose focus and turn his sight up, but I could only whine higher and higher and half-mumble profanities, his name choked out in the bottom of my throat.
In the end I finally, finally came first, with a shudder and a hoarse cry and a little warm tear running down from the corner of my eye. He came soon after.
“ Fuck —”
I lost, but it didn’t feel like that at all. The heavenly daze I found myself in stopped me from getting too mad about it. My hand trembled up to touch the bruises on my neck, then down to my chest, to press down my heart and try to soothe myself. When I looked back at my palm, it was slightly tainted red. I was still bleeding, barely so –most of it was on his chest, a smudged stain that mirrored mine. His arms finally gave out and he fell over me gently, as if in slow motion, and rested his warm cheek on my flushed chest, still breathing heavily. We were tangled together, embracing the other with unsteady arms and loose legs. It was a nice type of tired that we shared, like a nice burst of heat and swelling, like after a good cry.
“Don't go,” I asked quietly, in a whisper, wrapping my arms around him, holding him close. “Don't leave.”
“I'm not going anywhere,” I heard him saying against my ear. “Where would I go?”
The rush of pleasure slowly gave way to the sting of the cut. It was warm and cozy there, though, by his side, in my skin, in his, despite the tired muscles, stained and sweaty. I thought about whether to go ahead, stumble off the bed and clean the wounds with some alcohol and cottonballs I kept in a tin box in the bathroom. But I didn’t want to move. Not a year ago, we would have taken a little break and then carried on, kept the blood pumping, before we could even let the bedsheets grow cold. Now we just breathed, heavily but quietly, wrapped in the other, eyes half closed.
I winced when he moved a bit so he could fit more comfortably next to me. He rolled over, and sighed, and circled my shoulders with one arm. Absentmindedly, I leaned my head against him, laying a couple little kisses on his red chest.
“Jesus, Tiff –you're still bleeding.”
His hand went over my inner thigh, and I moved it so he could get a better look. Meanwhile, dizzy and still struck by the soft exhausted soreness of my muscles after the release of all that tension, I sucked on a finger to get the blood from under my nails.
“How're you feeling? Lightheaded?”
I smiled, for some reason, and nodded. I felt drunk, or high, or both.
“Yeah, you've lost a bunch of blood.”
Well, it had to be that or the choking. But I couldn’t even worry. Chucky groaned as he got up and stumbled out of the bedroom. I heard his feet going over the carpet through the living room and to the bathroom. He soon came back with the cottonballs and a box of Band-Aids, and dragged himself back to the bed.
“Shit. I forgot the rubbing alcohol.”
He sucked on his thumb and wiped some of the blood off the wound, before going over it with the dry cotton. It was as if he was playing nurse. His hands were still dirty, and as he traced the wound his finger trembled just a little from the recent strain. A sweet, funny sorta weakness.
I reached out for him. “Darling... I love you.”
Chucky looked back up at me, and smiled. He didn't say I love you back, and I didn't need him to. I knew it. And if he loved me half as much as I loved him, then I had more than enough. You're mine , he had told me. Even as I teased him, he had to know it was true.
I really wished that could be enough.
After that he just laid next to me, and we spent who knows how long in silence, each one lost in thought. Lately, more often than not I caught him staring at the wall, focused on something I couldn’t see, with that intense look on his face. Sometimes it was as if he wasn’t even there.
Heʼd get annoyed when I asked him about it, so I just stopped, eventually. Chucky always made up for it when he got in a good mood, when we were out on our dates, when we managed to really have some fun together. But as much fun as I had with him, I still felt lonely the rest of the time.
I ended up calling the numbers Jack had given me, and spent more time in the store where he worked, and somehow I ended up becoming friends with him again. Well, sort of. Like before, back in New York, the key word was quiet . I went out with him during his lunch breaks, along with his coworkers (he always said there were no more available spots at the store), and they all talked about the latests bands and the top records, and about some drama between singers and their wives and their lovers, and I just ate my fries and listened to them, and laughed at their jokes, and told myself I had friends. Jack had a side job selling weed, so he was my dealer, kinda, and we would all go to the back of the record store and smoke together a little sample of his, and this is what I did so I didn’t go crazy on my own. It was good enough, mostly. Every once in a while, Jack would shoot me a funny look, or smile at me like we shared a secret, or make a comment that got the other two girls he worked with raising their eyebrows. I had the feeling he was fucking at least one of them. I knew that, whichever it was, she wasn’t the one he wished he was fucking.
Once, one of the girls, Hallie, asked me where I saw myself in five years. I didn’t know what to answer. She insisted that I had to answer something , and Jack made a joke about me being off living it up in Hollywood by then. I shut him up telling him I hadn’t been to an audition in the last six years. The other girl, whats-her-name, said that it didn’t mean I couldn’t end up working as a janitor at the Universal Studio lot, if I worked hard enough. They laughed. I distinctly remember putting my hand inside my bag and stroking the metal handle of my nail file, breathing in deep, imagining the feeling of the pressure of the blade in the flesh, and smiling at them with a little fake laugh. Meanwhile I just kept thinking of ways to kill her that would look like accidents, to calm me down. I needed someone to spend the lonely hours with, anyone, but they weren’t really my friends.
When it was time to get back home, I made an effort to drag it out. Just in case Chucky got there first, so he'd find the apartment empty, just so he could feel how I felt. I always took the long way round and passed by the residential neighborhoods, the suburbs that looked much like where I had picked my Pontiac, and looked at the big houses, the cared-for lawns, the toys left by the children out in the driveway. There were a bunch of them with those ‘ for sale ’ signs out, but I knew I didn’t have nearly enough money or credit to afford even a mortgage. I didn’t care. I could spend hours driving through those places. If it was a weekday and it was obvious nobody was home, I would park in the middle of the street, and have a smoke, and imagine myself living there. I would have dinner cooking, and I’d spend the rest of my afternoon talking to my friends, my real friends, or playing with my kids. I had two kids in these fantasies, a boy for him and a girl for me. Chucky was in the picture, of course. When he got home the kids would dogpile him to welcome him back, and he’d laugh, and pull me close for a kiss, and then they’d tell him what they had done in school. They would be smart, real smart, I just knew it. And I would look at them proudly, and kiss the top of their heads, and Chucky would close the door, and we’d spend a nice evening all together at home.
On weekends, if the weather was nice, we could even go on the hunt, all four of us, together. I wasn’t completely sure of how this would work (especially at the beginning, when the kids were still noisy little babies), but weʼd come up with something. Eventually, it figured they could choose whether to come along with us, when they were old enough. I had my first kill at fourteen, after all: I had a feeling Chucky’s had been younger. I didn’t think it would really be too difficult for them. As long as we didn’t get caught...
Chucky rarely got home before I did. He usually arrived by the time I was either watching TV as a last resort, or when I was trying to organize the chaos that our living room always turned into, or sometimes both at the same time. Sometimes, he got home when I was making dinner, which at least meant that he would have dinner with me. Most often he didn’t even eat anything, unless I was eating, too. It had started to worry me. It hadn’t been like this back in Hackensack, or at least not that I was aware of.
“Still no job?” he asked me after hanging up his coat.
“Nope,” I said, watching him from the corner of my eye, as he loosened his tie. “What about you?”
“Iʼll find something... Eventually.”
He picked an apple and gave it a bite. I shot him a glare, but said nothing. Among Chucky’s many annoying little quirks, one of the weirdest was grabbing an apple, having four or five bites, and then leaving it in the fridge, as if he was saving it for later. We had three half-eaten apples, all brown and rotting, currently waiting to get thrown away with the rest of the garbage.
“You’re making dinner already.”
“You don’t say.”
“Isn’t it early?” he asked, sitting on the counter.
“It’s six o’clock.” He had arrived early, for once. I knew I should be happy about it, but I really wasn’t.
“And you’re hungry?”
“Yes, I’m hungry.”
Chucky snorted a laugh. “You’re always hungry. You know, you keep that up, youʼre gonna get huge.”
“Get your ass off the counter.”
He had another bite. I elbowed him, and he gave me a kick.
“When was the last time you ate?” I asked him. He hadn’t been home the day before, not even for breakfast. I had woken up alone, without a note or anything, and just had to trust that he’d eventually show up. When he did, he gave me no explanation. I might have still been a little bit angry at him about that.
“I dunno... Yesterday? I guess?” he shrugged. “We had dinner while watching the nine o'clock news. You made ribs and mashed potatoes. I spilled sauce on the couch and you threw a whole damn fit. Don’t you remember?”
“That was before yesterday. You didn’t have anything after that?” I insisted. “Not even coffee?”
Chucky shrugged again. Another crisp bite, and then he got off the counter, sauntered towards the fridge, and left the apple in there. Four apples to throw in the garbage. It was like a goddamn Sesame Street skit. I turned around to throw the onion skins into the trash can, and stumbled on him standing in my way, and huffed.
“Are you gonna help, or are you just gonna take up space?”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Watch that mouth, Tiff.”
Great. When he was being all testy, and I complained, then I was just being too sensitive. But when I snapped at him, then I was being insane. I had no way to fucking win.
“So,” he said, leaning against the fridge behind me. That kitchen was too damn small to have a conversation in. It reminded me a lot of the kitchen back at home, from when I was a kid. At least I helped around with cooking. “You’re making new friends already, huh?”
I had told him about Jack and about the record store. It didn’t sound like he was happy for me.
“Well, I didn’t think you had any friends in the first place,” I replied. “Do you visit them, too? When I’m not around?”
He didn’t reply.
“Where do you go?”
“Whatʼs it to you?”
There it was. That irritated tone when I asked something completely reasonable.
“Oh, for crying out loud, Chucky,” I said, gesturing with the knife. “I think Iʼm entitled to know.”
He shot me a side glance. “... I go meet up with some folks at North Damen and Grand Avenue. Theyʼre into the voodoo stuff I told you about.”
Chucky had never told me much about it, really, but I got what he meant. Still, I scoffed. “So youʼre spending all that time in a book club?”
“Yeah, Tiff, Iʼm in a fucking book club,” he said. “What dʼyou think?”
“I think itʼs a shitty excuse.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he said, raising his voice, so I knew that it was on. “Are you on the rag or something?”
“No –it’s the same time, every month, and it has been so for years. And you might know that, if you ever listened to me. If you ever paid any attention at all.”
I peeled the onion and was about to start chopping, when I remembered that I had forgotten to take out the pasta sauce jar from the fridge. I groaned and turned around and he stepped aside to let me get it. All the while he just stared at me, as if expecting an explanation.
“So it’s not that. What is it, then? Huh?”
“Take a wild guess,” I said as I continued chopping the onion.
He laughed and shook his head. “You donʼt even know. You’re just throwing a fit for the sake of it.”
“Youʼre barely home anymore,” I said, raising my voice as well, forcing myself not to sniffle. “You show up whenever you want, meanwhile Iʼm here wondering if youʼll be back for dinner.”
“Thatʼs what you're getting all worked up about?” he said as he kept chuckling. “Iʼd say you're old enough to be able to be on your own, Tiff. Iʼm not about to be your damn babysitter.”
“You asshole, you're the one to throw a tantrum and make a scene when I get home a little late!”
On and on with his crazy logic. But the truth was that, when I got angry when he was late and didnʼt tell me beforehand, I was just worrying something might have happened to him. When Chucky got angry I was late, it was him getting all pissed off because dinner wasn’t ready (even when he supposedly wasn’t hungry in the first place), or because some chore he could very well do himself hadn’t been done... I worried about him, and all he worried about was that I did everything he was just too ‘busy’ to do himself.
“I cook and clean after the two of us, I get rid of the bodies, I’m the goddamn getaway driver… What do you do, besides flicking the wrist from time to time to spill some guts?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, don’t you ever get tired of whining?” he said. “If you hate me so much, then why do you even stay?”
That really was the million-dollar question. “Why do you think?”
He frowned, and turned away for a moment. I didn’t know if he really didn’t have a clue, or if he was just considering different options. Still –he didn’t answer. I crossed my arms and waited. Time passed, and just silence from him. No answer was worse than a wrong one.
“… I guess you just don’t know. Big surprise,” I said, squeezing the ground meat in my fists, making a huge effort to keep my voice from trembling. “You piece of shit.”
“ Should I know?”
“I really should just split. Since you clearly don’t appreciate anything I do for you!”
I was on the edge of going off, but if I was going off, his reaction was just as insane. It was kinda hilarious, to see him swing wildly between wanting to keep his cool, pretending to be unfazed, and losing it and scream bloody murder at me.
“I’d like to see you try,” he finally grumbled, finally deciding to pretend to be the bigger person.
“Just watch me.”
“Come on, you’re not gonna leave,” he scoffed. “You wouldn’t last a fucking day without me!”
“Well, you’re not exactly a fucking delight to have around, quite honestly!”
“Iʼm the only one you got.”
That gave me pause. I looked up at him. He smiled, knowing just what he’d done. I hated that he was right. At least, to my knowledge, I was the only one he got, too.
“I can get someone else,” I shrugged, pretending to be focused on the meatloaf. “Easily.”
“Yeah, right,” he scoffed. “With your magnetic personality, sure. Admit it, Tiff, you’re lucky you’ve found me.”
“Lucky’s not the word I’d use.”
“I’m the best thing that happened to you, babe, and you’re bending over backwards to deny it.” He laughed again. “You can’t even argue with it!”
“Keep that up, and I’ll show you exactly how I’d argue with that,” I said, finally turning towards him. “With my goddamn luggage in the trunk of the Pontiac, ready to...! To...!”
He raised his eyebrows again, waiting for me to finish my sentence. I just couldn’t. He grinned.
“God – fuck you !” I screamed while he kept cackling, and I turned back to the bowl. “See who’s fucking laughing, when you come home and see me good and gone!”
“Really? What would you even do, then?” he yelled, all of a sudden taking me very seriously. “Go back to that sad old life of yours?”
“Well, it’d be better than having to stand your damn tantrums!”
“C’mon, you’d still be screwing random fucks if I hadn’t showed up.”
“And you’d still be killing on your own if I hadn’t showed up! No,” I cried, turning around once more to face him, pointing at him with greasy fingers. “You’d be either dead, or in jail. ‘Cause that’s what would have happened, because your goddamn lucky streak would have ended someday.”
“You’re really blowing up your own smarts, Tiff. Stick to cooking and driving.”
I finished shaping the meatloaf, threw it on a broiler pan, and shoved it into the oven.
“You would’ve died without me by now,” I repeated to myself as I washed the chopping board. “If it weren’t for me–”
“Aw, get fucking real for once!” he yelled, slamming his hand on the counter. “You think I’m an idiot!? That I can’t look after myself!?”
“You obviously can’t!”
“You don’t do shit ‘round here!” he cried, so loudly I thought he might as well shatter the window. “What you actually do is scream about how important you think you are! It’s all in your damn head! You think you do everything because you’re a selfish fucking brat!”
“So I’ll just leave, then!” I cried. “Since I’m so unimportant! ‘Cause clearly you don’t want me here!”
“You’re not fucking leaving!”
“ Try and fucking stop me! ”
I stared at him, gripping the edge of the counter. He stared back at me with wild eyes, all tense, as if the only thing in his mind was how much he wanted to throw a punch at me or to choke me to death. But I had the chopping knife at hand. I guess that’s why he didn’t do it. We just stayed like that for a few seconds, measuring each other, expecting the other to make the first move.
And, when I didn’t do anything, and he just couldn’t keep it in any longer –he took a deep breath –gave out a short scream –and punched the wall. I jumped. When he pulled his fist back, there was a hole in the white paint, and cracks all around it. Chucky shut his eyes, clenched his jaw, and winced just a tiny bit. It had to hurt like hell. I sighed, and clicked my tongue, and almost went out to the bathroom to bring something to clean the wounds on his knuckles. But I hadn’t fully come down from the high of my rage yet.
“Oh, real smart, hun,” I said. “You happy now? Do you feel better? I guess you're gonna have to call someone to fix that –unless you're counting on me to clean up your mess again–!”
“ Shut up! ”
For once, I did. He knew I was right, anyway. Chucky stretched his fingers, as if that would help with the pain, with a shaky frustrated huff. After a moment, though, when he looked back at me, it looked like however much it hurt, it wouldn't hurt half as much as whatever he imagined he was doing to me. And me –I just stared at his hand. I thought of when he pummeled that guy to death in the roadside motel when I asked him to. I thought of when he was about to punch me by the side of the highway, and didn’t. How, as angry as he got, he somehow managed to hold on to some small degree of control. It angered me even more. That meant that anything hurtful he said, he really meant it.
And he still had a little more poison to throw my way.
“No wonder nobody gives a shit about you,” he said.
We kept quiet. I could hear his heavy breathing, and my own, and then the noises of the city, the police sirens, the rumbling of cars, the chatter of the TV of the neighbors. By this point they probably knew this was a rather common thing to happen next door. After a while I just turned around, opened the faucet, and washed my knife, and waited for him to say anything else, preferably an apology.
“Go die in a ditch, Tiff,” Chucky finally said. “I'm fucking sick of this shit.”
I tensed up, ready to shove him off me in case he got too close. He didn’t. Instead, the door creaked open, and then it slammed shut, and when I turned around his coat wasn't hanging by the hook on the wall, and I was alone in the kitchen again.
The meatloaf was done: half burnt, but certainly done. I served it in one dish, since everything pointed out to me having to dine alone. I almost threw the rest of it to the garbage, see how he liked it. Just as I opened the trash can, though, I thought it over. I had seen this going down before. In the end I put the rest in another dish, and saved it in the fridge. The TV gave me some company while I had dinner, still sniffling with the strong stench of chopped onions. I stayed up all through the late night news until I fell asleep on the couch. And then, the next morning, unsurprisingly, Chucky wasn’t there.
I worried, because that’s what I do. I just can’t help it. As much as I tried to stay angry and change the script for once, all I could do was try to find other things to keep my mind off it, off the image of Chucky getting too drunk or angry or cocky, and picking a fight he couldn’t win, and getting his ass handed to him and not knowing when to stop, and hurling himself into some serious shit, and digging himself deeper and deeper, until not even a phone call could get me to pick him up, no overpriced ambulance could help him, no amount of praying could save him, and he would end up a limp dark rag thrown over the curb, choking in a pool of his own blood, dying silently under the feet of passersby...
I set the TV at top volume, shifting between MTV and the morning cartoons, and brought everything I needed into the living room. It was time to get busy. First I fixed Peeping Tommy’s face crack, filling it with some putty, and repainting it very, very carefully, to match colors as perfectly as possible. When he was done I set him up on Chucky’s nightstand, so he could see how nicely he had cleaned up, when he came back. Then, I decided I could do with a smoke, and took a little from our stash, and that did help a bit more to calm me down and focus. After that I hand-sewed some stuff from my to-fix pile, prickling my fingers with droopy clumsy hands: there was a black leather coat Chucky had picked up that he never wore, because he was too comfortable in his old trenchcoat, so I wore it instead, but it needed a new lining, so I improvised one out of an old ugly purple satin shirt I had; and afterwards I added a lacy hem to a couple camisoles, and reattached a few buttons in Chucky’s favorite shirt, and tried to rub baking soda and lemon juice on an iron burn that had ruined one of his white tank tops and that no matter how many wash cycles it went through I couldn’t fully get off. And then, because I was now relaxed but bored out of my mind, I went out and bought a Bedazzler and a bag of studs and rhinestones and went back home and added a bunch on a jacket and on a dress while trying to copy stuff I’d seen in fashion magazines. And then I got hungry, and went back out again and bought groceries, spending the rest of the money we had left for the month, and then I went back home again and just when I thought I was gonna go insane I remembered it was time for Search For Tomorrow , so I made myself a sandwich and ate it on the couch while watching the soap opera with my newly bedazzled purple dress on. The episode ended, and I brushed the crumbs off the couch and onto the rug, and I was dumb enough to glance at the time again, and notice the growing darkness in the apartment, and remember that Chucky still wasn’t home. So I changed into my nightgown and got straight into bed, so as to avoid thinking about it, but I wasn’t as tired as I had thought, and took a long while to fall asleep.
When I finally did, I was suddenly woken up by a creaking of the door.
“Tiff...”
“Hm...?”
I turned around to see Chucky in the dark, lurching around the bed, dragging his feet. I blinked. I expected to feel ecstatic, or furious, at seeing him again; but instead I just took a deep breath, wishing he could have come home when I was awake.
“You asleep?”
“Not now, I’m not...”
Chucky plopped down on the mattress, making the rusty springs squeak. I cursed him in silence. As if it wasn’t enough noise already, he untied his shoes and dropped them to the floor with a loud wooden thump! I groaned. It had taken me so long to finally fall asleep, and of course he had to come and bother me. Just in case he had forgotten I was there, I gave him a little kick, to signal to him to keep it down. He ignored me, took off his pants and tossed them anywhere and made more noise with the racket of the belt buckle hitting my dollhouse shoe rack. Once he had made himself comfortable, Chucky slumped heavily beside me, pulling the bedsheets to him, and stretched an arm over my waist.
“Hey—”
“Shh.”
I elbowed him. “Don’t you shush me—”
“Alright, alright,” he slurred with a drowsy sigh, his voice trailing off. “I’m not shushing you… Just stop bitching.”
I kept quiet. It was senseless. And he was half asleep already, breathing quietly, nuzzling my neck, holding me tighter. I laid a hand over his, feeling the little cuts on his knuckles. He was freezing cold. I had to assume he hadn’t eaten.
“You’re incurable,” I muttered under my breath. He didn’t seem to hear me. I wasn’t surprised.
Next morning we woke up at more or less the same time, and had breakfast together. I knew he had to be hungry, even if he didn’t notice, so I made pancakes with the groceries I had bought the previous day. And Chucky was so happy about it, smiling and pulling me to his lap and kissing my cheek, that I couldn’t be bothered to stay mad, no matter how hard I tried. He decided to stay home, and we just spent a lazy day together. At some point he dozed off while we watched TV and fell asleep again, his head resting on my lap, and while I stroked his hair, I kept wondering... What would I do if I left him? What would he do if I did it? That life before each other seemed so far away to me now, and not just because of the three states that lay between Chicago and New Jersey. I know I have a hard time being on my own, so obviously I’d end up trying to find someone who could keep me company, who loved me and that I could love. But after getting a taste of this kinda life, I couldn’t really just get anyone. Nobody would feel as right.
I brushed some hair off Chucky’s face, turning the volume of the TV down a bit. He looked so peaceful when he was asleep. He never snored, nor mumbled, nor tossed nor turned; hell, he barely seemed to breathe.
And he... What would he even do? He had these supposed friends who had an interest in voodoo, apparently. I wondered how many people there were in that group, if they ever spent time together as actual friends. If he had ever told any of them about me. The sheer idea of there being someone in that group that he could have a liking to, someone Chucky might like better than me, that he’d rather spend time with, was enough to get my blood boiling. But he wouldn’t. It couldn’t be.
We had each other. That was how it was meant to be. These were all empty threats. Our own little ways of checking the other was still there.
That was the biggest fight we had in quite some time. It did its job, getting all that anger we had building up out of our systems. From then on it was just a few little bickering sessions every once in a while. We still didn’t have much money, and we still didn’t get any jobs, but Chucky at the very least tried to be home a little more often, to keep me company. The cold helped, too: I had an excuse to snuggle next to him, and wrap him in blankets and coats and cuddle him when we were in the bed, or laying on the couch, or smoking on the street while searching for our next victim. We broke our own record on monthly kills, so that kept us both in a pretty sustained good mood. He still went to his so-called study sessions, though he stopped staying out late afterwards so often. Chicago winters were a lot harsher than he had thought, he had told me, as an excuse for getting home earlier. And, on my part, I made an effort not to get angry when he did get home while I was sleeping, or trying to sleep. I tried to get happy, instead. Grateful. I got really clingy, back then. But Chucky never complained about that.
I think that he actually liked it when I was so attached to him. Mostly because, back then, he seemed to be as attached to me as I was to him.
“Weird, gotta say,” Chucky told me as he raised his eyebrows. “Not like you to let this type of opportunity pass you by. Too busy to get your man a little gift?”
“Well, maybe I don't know if you've earned a gift this year,” I replied with a shrug. “You haven't been very nice.”
He smiled at this. “I could always be worse.”
“That was never in question.”
He laughed, wrapping an arm around my waist, pulling me closer to him, and I laughed along. Christmas Eve, and the city was numbingly cold. We had gone out on a mission: I had seen an ad in a magazine about custom engraved necklaces, which I thought was a wonderful gift. Chucky’s not the type to wear such things, though, so I’d been looking around for a good place where I could get an engraved hunting knife, but that seemed to be harder than I had originally thought. We hadn’t had any luck finding anything else good at our usual secondhand store, so we decided to venture into the bigger shops in Michigan Avenue, partly because we knew that there were bargains abound and because the crowd was our best bet at getting some warmth. Of course, by the time we managed to make our way through traffic, all of the good stuff had flown off the shelves, and people were actually getting into fights over the goods throughout the aisles. In the end, Chucky and I decided it was not worth it, and headed back outside.
“If I have to listen to Santa Claus is Coming to Town one more time, I swear...” he grumbled between grit teeth, sinking his chin under the collar of his overcoat when we passed by the sliding doors of another big store, blasting the heat and the radio at full power.
“Isn’t it lovely, though?” I said with a little skip. The dead trees were covered in twinkling lights, and the shop windows were decked in beautiful themed displays. It would take more than a few unruly crowds to bring me down. “Families gathering for a home-cooked dinner, children going to bed dreaming about their presents... And it’s nice to see people taking so much pleasure in spending time together.”
“You see many happy people?” he asked. “All I see is people pissed they didn’t get the steal they’ve been standing in line for hours for.”
“You Grinch,” I laughed. But he did have a point. The happy people were indoors, having a good time with their loved ones. The streets belonged to the desperate.
“Spare change, please?”
A beggar surprised him at a street corner, getting right in front of us. Chucky whipped his head at her, stopping right on his tracks, dragging me to stop with him. It was a pale old woman, all bundled up, hair covered in a black veil and a black coat, with a rosary hanging from her neck and holding a bright red bucket labeled Help The Children in her bony white fists. A holy panhandler. I remembered we weren’t far from Saint James, where I had seen a beautiful white wedding taking place a couple weeks ago, on the steps of the church. The nun was shivering in the chilly wind, and with her black and white getup, she looked like a penguin escaped from the zoo.
Chucky scoffed. “Do I look like Mother Teresa?”
“Oh, hush, Chucky. After all, like my mother always said: you reap what you sow,” I smiled at the little old woman. She was lucky she had found me in a merry mood. “You never know when you might end up being the one needing a little help.”
“Bless you, miss...”
I kept smiling, but looked down at my hands for a second. It was a silly thing, I know, but it kept making me wonder –why did nobody call me Mrs when I went out with Chucky by my side? It was clear we were together. We couldn’t be standing closer together if we tried. Maybe it was because I wasn't wearing a ring. Nuns are conservative like that.
“Tiff...” he butted in, standing a little apart, as he shot me one of his annoyed looks. “Are you serious right now?”
“Hm, I just can't seem to find my wallet...” I said, ignoring him, moving away from the corner and into a little nearby alleyway where the wind wouldn’t be so strong. The nun came along with me, and then Chucky followed us, too. “Please hold this for me, will you?”
I handed the nun my sunglasses while I kept searching. Then I handed her a packet of condoms, and then a postcard I had meant to send Molly but hadn’t gotten around to do yet, and my makeup compact which, without any more hands, the nun had to hold in her mouth. And I pulled out my nail file and slashed the nun’s throat, a superficial wound, but deep enough so that she couldn’t scream. Chucky cackled in happy surprise, and when she dropped my sunglasses he caught them midair. He put them in his coat pocket just as the nun turned around to him, grabbing at him as if asking for help.
Before she even noticed what was going on, Chucky grabbed the beads of her rosary in one fist, twisted it tighter, and pulled hard. The nun squeaked and squirmed, but in between the throat wound and the tight pressure on her windpipe, she didn’t make another sound. I watched as he shoved her old bones onto the narrow sidewalk, pinned her down with one knee, and kept pulling until her eyes were white and bulging, and her tongue stretched out her thin cracked lips as if trying to escape.
“Where's your God now, sister?”
I snapped out of it with a laugh. I assumed we were safe in that little dark alley, anyways, so I allowed myself to enjoy it for a while longer. Once Chucky decided she had croaked, I crouched down and picked up my stuff and the unexpectedly generous amount of coins and bills some blessed souls had given to the needy.
“Thank the Lord for charity,” I said, pocketing the change.
“Got it all?” he asked, dropping the body and getting back up on his feet.
“Yeah,” I slipped it inside my coat's inner pocket, and was about to hurry down the alley along with him, when I had another look at the nun. “Oh... Chucky?”
“What?”
I grinned, looking back up at him. “She’s still alive, sweetface.”
He frowned and crouched, and checked on her. She was paralyzed and speechless, but her eyes were still moving, and she still wheezed with her last few breaths. I clicked my tongue, shaking my head.
“Sloppy job,” I said, taking out my nail file.
“You think you can do better?”
“Oh, I know ...”
I kneeled too, knees on the cold hard pavement. I held her jaw and pulled it up, and continued slicing deeper, following the line to the back of her neck. The little shriveled old lady had a lot more juice in her than I had assumed. My festive white-and-red painted nails got a few specks of blood, which I quickly sucked off, looking back up to him to give him a go-ahead nod. Chucky smiled, took out his knife –and stabbed in the right spot on her back to get one last spasm out of the nun. We shared her for a little while. We got so into it –she kept moving her eyes like a broken doll, she just didn’t seem to die –that we only got out when I was startled by a voice too nearby, that didn’t sound much like him at all.
“Oh, my God –oh, God !”
That was our sign. I jumped back onto my feet, almost slipping on the puddle. Chucky got up and grabbed my arm and squeezed tight and we ran like hell. I turned around to look over my shoulder just as we were about to turn the corner and I saw, behind us, a small crowd gathering around the dead nun –and a man running and following us –and I gripped Chucky’s hand –and ran faster.
The sudden sound of sirens made me jump. I looked around me as I tried to remember where I had parked the car. Chucky yanked my arm. I just followed him. We went through a few clear streets and alleys while avoiding the crowded avenue –I had to trust he knew where the Pontiac was –until I finally realized that he wanted to get into an almost-empty store –about to close –and I stopped him and looked around once more and realized where we were –just half a block away from where I had parked –so we kept running, and we looked back, and couldn’t see the man but we couldn’t be sure yet, and just before we crossed the street and turned the corner I saw him, along with a couple other people, huffing and panting in the distance, and I digged into my bag for the car keys and as soon as I saw it I pushed it into the lock and opened the door.
We jumped inside the car, I slammed the door behind me, and without warning he pulled me to him and kissed me, and for a moment I tried to look behind me and through the window, but he grabbed my face and kept kissing me furiously, and I got what he was doing and wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back.
A moment passed. I heard footsteps rushing past us. Another moment passed. Chucky stopped and turned his head away. I kept kissing his jaw, under his ear, still breathless, still with a racing pulse.
“Are they gone?” I asked in a hush.
He nodded, and sighed. Still clinging to his shoulders, I looked over my shoulder towards where he was looking. I thought I could see the shape of a couple officers questioning some passersby, but I couldn’t be sure if they were cops at all from the distance. It could just be my still-jittery mind all shook up. I found my reflection in the mirror, and saw he had managed to really smudge my lipstick in the hurry.
“God,” he muttered. “That was way too fucking close.”
“Do you think they saw us?”
We stared at each other for a moment. He passed a hand through my hair, which was probably a mess. I giggled, and he chuckled with me, and we laughed together, tired but relieved and happy with the rush of the race and the thrill of the kill. I started the car. He kissed me once more, and then we headed back home.
On our way there, we started arguing on what we should have for our Christmas dinner. At first I was all excited as I told him the list of things I had in mind: I had gone over my Betty Crocker cookbook in the last week and I was looking forward to preparing baked ham, some mashed potatoes, and baked apples, too. And then I remembered there was next to nothing in the fridge. I had forgotten to buy enough groceries to last the month, and of course Chucky took that chance to complain about how I always left everything to the last minute.
After parking the Pontiac I finally accepted I had to make a quick trip to the store. I kept going back and forth about whether I should not waste any more time and get there straight away before it closed, or go back home first and change into something that wasn’t all dotted with blood. All the while Chucky declared he would stay in the apartment, refusing to come along with me, and I insisted that at the very least he help me carry the bags. He bitched and moaned for a while and, in the end, I said fine , as long as he set the table and washed the dishes after dinner.
I’m not sure how I didn’t even feel it coming. I was too distracted looking for the keys in my purse while I walked up the steps, I guess. It was just when I raised my eyes to the entrance of our building that I saw her: with the little black shoes, the old black wool coat with faux-pearl buttons, the bright red beehive hair.
My mother turned around to face me. I could feel the blood draining from my head.
“Ah, finally... At least this means you’re not ignoring the buzzer,” she said, gripping her little black handbag a bit tighter. “I’ve been waiting for ages, out here in the cold.”
For a moment I thought I was imagining it. It was impossible, after all, for my mother to be there, after so long, standing right in front of me. Really, it made no sense. Maybe I was dreaming it. Maybe it was all some weird nightmare, a result of eating too much before bed, like she always told me not to do.
“You clearly haven’t had any problems with money,” she said as she looked at me up and down. “By the way you’re looking, you’ve managed to feed yourself well.”
I said nothing to this. I just reached for my neck, wondering if it had gotten too thick, if my cheeks were too full. It had been about a decade since she last saw me. Had I changed much since then? My mother, on the other hand, looked just like she did when I last saw her. I thought of the framed wedding photo by the front door of her house. She had looked so much like me, back then. She, of all people, probably knew how ugliness could slowly settle in.
“… So? Aren’t you gonna invite me in?”
Chucky’s hand rested on my back, bringing me back to the present. I tried to say something, but whatever words I managed to string into a sentence died in my throat. Instead, I just nodded, and opened the door.
The three of us went into the elevator in silence. My mother’s attention had shifted from me to Chucky, and even behind his sunglasses I knew that he was similarly studying her. Just then I feared there was any blood on us –if she was so quiet because she was wondering why on Earth we were coming home at that hour with red splattered on the side of our faces. I took out my compact and checked, pretending to fix my makeup.
“I don’t suppose you’re thinking of introducing me to… Whoever this man is.” she said out of a sudden, making a small gesture towards Chucky, which annoyed me but at least reassured me that she hadn’t noticed anything particularly troubling.
I cleared my throat. “Mom, this is my boyfriend, Charles.”
He took off his glasses and gave her a half-hearted half-smile. In return, she also gave him a long hard look up and down, stopping to glare at his hair.
“You are a man, I suppose…”
The elevator stopped with a sudden jolt. Chucky took in a sharp breath, and I saw the flash of anger in his wide-open eyes, and for a moment I just knew he was about to whip it out and curse my mother to hell and back—
“So, how was the trip?” I said quickly.
“By all accounts, not really worth it,” she said once we stepped into the hallway, glancing around at the cracked paint of the building walls. “When you said you had moved into Chicago and were going steady, I was expecting something better than this.”
She was never one to mince words, especially with the lack of fucks to give that comes with age. Chucky shot me an annoyed glance from behind her back, and made a gesture pretending to hang himself, tongue lolling out and all. I grinned, quickly pressing my lips together to disguise it when she looked back at me.
“Are we going to stay in this dirty hallway for the night?” she demanded.
I unlocked the door to our apartment. My mother walked in first, and examined the kitchen carefully. There was the pile of dirty dishes on the sink, empty bottles on the counter, some old newspapers. Apart from that, the kitchen was pretty spotless: I had cleaned the counters a few days ago, wiped the little window, even mopped the floor. Still, my mother made a grimace before moving on to the living room, which was another story altogether.
“It’s not that bad,” I said, locking the door.
“It’s not exactly the very image of cleanliness, either,” she said. The lived-in, warm smell of our place was at odds with the soapy scent of the cheap perfume my mother always wore. “Then again, I assume you wouldn’t even keep your place this tidy anyways unless there was a man in the picture.”
“If I knew you were coming, I’d have cleaned up a little.”
“You shouldn’t need an excuse to take good care of your home. The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.”
As soon as she began saying it I could already mouth the words myself. She had told me something along those lines quite a few times. Of course, whatever me and my boyfriend did in private was our business and only ours –but when your mother drops by, you’re expected to be up to the test. I was about to follow her into the cluttered living room, maybe try to hurry and hide some of the mess under the sofa before she could notice it, when Chucky grabbed my arm.
“Hey –quick word…”
My mother turned around and glanced at us. We both gave her a little smile. She sighed, and focused her attention back to the pigsty where her daughter lived. Chucky dragged me back beside the fridge, closed the door, and then banged his head as low as he could against it. I turned on the sink faucet, letting it run for a few seconds over the greasy dishes, before soaking my hands in the ice-cold water to wash away the traces of blood.
“How –the fuck –does she know where we live!?”
“I sent her a postcard,” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I didn’t think… Jesus, I didn’t think she’d come this far!”
“What’d you send her a postcard for!?”
“I just wanted her to know how I was doing!”
He leaned his back against the door, covering his face with his red-stained hands, muffling a yell, and took a deep breath.
“Well, there goes a perfectly good night,” he muttered. “How can we get rid of her as soon as possible?”
I scoffed, shaking my head. “Oh, she’s stubborn. She’s not gonna leave till she decides she’s had enough.”
Chucky unbuttoned his coat and showed me the situation he was dealing with. His white shirt was drenched in mostly dry blood, less bright red and more cherry-colored –but still plenty suspicious.
“Listen, I’m looking like fucking Carrie here, Tiff. I’m not exactly meet-the-parents presentable at the moment,” he said. “Hell, you want her to ask us how we met while I look like this?”
I knew that was the sort of question she’d make, whether we wanted to tell or not. I thought about it, tapping my heel against the floor tiles, sinking my nail on my lips.
“You get to the bedroom,” I finally said. “I’ll chat with her, distract her a bit, see how I can get her to leave.”
Chucky nodded in agreement, tightening his jaw. I handed him a wet dishrag for him to wipe his neck and hands with before turning the faucet back off.
“I didn’t want this,” I told him in a whisper, just to make that clear. “I didn’t invite her over. I didn’t want her here.”
He sighed, throwing the dirty rag back on the counter. “I know, babe.”
“I would have liked to patch things up with her... Maybe help her change back into when she was just my mom,” I admitted. “But not like this. Not this suddenly.”
He rolled his eyes. “Something I’ve learned throughout the years, Tiff, is that people don’t really change. They just stop lying to themselves.”
It made some sense. At some point my mother must have decided she could stop trying to pretend to like me.
“She’s still my mother, though,” I said. “I guess I still owe her… Something.”
She had come all this way to Chicago just to meet me. That had to count for something . As much as I wished she would just take a quick look around, say a couple biting lines, and walk away, I also wished she would stay a little longer and see for herself just how well I was doing, and how much happier I was now. She didn’t seem to believe me. I had to ask myself what would ever convince her of it.
But then, I remembered what my mother had told me. ‘ Love isn’t something we’re owed, it’s something we earn ’. Had she earned the love she expected of me? Did I really owe her anything?
“You know... You can love someone and still kill them,” Chucky suddenly said, matter-of-factly. “It’s not as hard as it sounds. At all.”
“Really?” I said, picking the dry clumps of blood off from under my nails. If my mother hadn’t noticed the stains we had, it was likely she wouldn’t notice such a small thing. Still, one can never be too sure. “Who did you kill?”
“Long story for another day.”
Not wanting to face her just yet, I glanced through the half-open door to the living room, where my mother was now inspecting the view from our window. After a moment, I looked back to Chucky. He raised his eyebrows.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“For God’s sake, Chucky, don’t be stupid,” I huffed, leaving the kitchen.
Back in her line of sight, my mother hurried towards me. I braced myself for what was coming next.
“This place stinks,” she declared. “Don’t you ever open the windows? It smells sickly in here. You’ll get sick.”
“I won’t, mom—”
“And so cold, too! Don’t you turn on the heater?” she asked. “And in winter, of all times… You’ll catch your deathly cold.”
“I won’t —”
“You sure? With the way you’re dressed?” she exclaimed, grabbing the lapels of my faux-fur coat and shaking them in her fat little fists. “Looking like a cheap minx, for God’s sake…”
My cheeks were burning, but I tried not to let it show. What mattered most was that my mother was distracted enough with this to not even notice Chucky slipping behind us, out the living room, and in through the bedroom door.
“Have you been using a curling iron?” she said, furrowing her thinly plucked eyebrows, reaching for a hair strand on my forehead. “Doesn’t look like curlers—”
“ Yes , mom, I’ve been using a curling iron…”
“You’ve been bleaching it so often, your hair’s becoming thin. You should change to a better shampoo, at the very least, or the heat’s going to keep damaging it.”
Great, so my mother had come all the way from Hackensack to tell me what to do with my hair. Even as I turned my face away from her she kept pulling at my curls, brushing them to the side and adjusting a few stray hairs over my ears.
“Just… What are you doing here?”
“Brittany earned that scholarship she had been studying so hard for, did you know? Probably not, seeing as you didn’t even try to keep in touch with us,” she muttered, and finally left my hair alone. “Well, now that I am a widow, and that your sister is away at college, I have quite a bit of free time in my hands...”
I shot her a look out the corner of my eye as I took off my coat. I pictured her, sitting on the sofa and smoking her herbal cigarettes in the living room of that old little house, exactly the same as it always was, except that now she was completely alone. Meals were single-serving, there were no shirts to iron, or toys to put away, or beds to make, except her own. The weekly bridge games were not enough of a distraction. I looked down at my boots. It embarrassed me, to recognize that loneliness that I had felt so often in my own mother. Was I to blame for it? I had been the one to run away, after all…
“Anyways, you said in your postcard that you were doing well. Of course, whatever ‘well’ is for you is a mystery. So, taking advantage of the fact that I’m free now, I had to come and see for myself.”
“You had to come check up on me?” I said, crossing my arms. “I’d thought you had given up on me.”
“I have given up on you, for a long time now. And still, despite my better judgment, I have looked out for you, cared for you, worried about you…” She gave one more glance around. “The least you could do is offer me some tea.”
I went back into the kitchen and filled the kettle with water. I turned on the stove and put it on top, automatically thinking about whether I had anything to accompany her tea. On a little dish, covered by another one of our dishrags, there were some gingerbread cookies left (a true Christmas miracle), but I knew she would just complain about the excessive frosting. I scoured for a bit till I found a jar in a cupboard, with two lonely chocolate chip cookies that Chucky had either forgotten about or had been saving for another time. The first one was the most likely.
“Water’s heating up,” I told my mother, coming into the living room with my offering of the prettiest china dish we had, holding the two chocolate chip cookies. Despite everything, she was too well-mannered in the very specific way of never talking with her mouth full. I would take full advantage of that. “Thought you might like something to have with your tea.”
“Chocolate chip,” she said, unimpressed, picking one and inspecting it. “A child's choice. But I guess it’s better than nothing.”
She took a small bite. Even there in the living room, with her noisy chewing, I could hear the hissing of the gas stove, and the water that just wouldn’t boil quick enough.
“Not too bad,” she finally said, before she frowned. “Wait a minute… Is this my almond cookie recipe?”
“What?”
“This has almond extract,” she hissed, shaking the cookie around, spreading crumbs everywhere. “And lard instead of butter. You took my almond cookie recipe and added chocolate chips to it.”
She sounded absolutely appalled. A thought flashed in my mind: I could have dipped the cookie in some rat poison we kept under the sink, see how she liked it then.
“So what if I did?”
My mother set the cookie down, giving a long sigh. “Turn on the heater, or light the fireplace, at the very least. It’s so cold here, almost colder than it is outside.”
For once, Chucky had remembered to buy kindle for it. I lit the fireplace and waited, kneeling in front of the growing fire, avoiding my mother’s gaze, while she stood beside me. Once there was a nice warmth coming from the hearth, I considered going ahead and changing into something else as well, but didn’t want to have to pass by her side again yet, feel her questioning eyes on my back. Anything I changed into would be the target of a bunch of new criticisms anyways.
“Is that better?” I asked her.
“It’s better than freezing.”
Age had really done her no favors. I reached for the fire poker and removed a few ashes, causing a little spurt of sparks. It felt nice by the fire, warmed up and cozy. My mind wandered back to some very early memory, of some other winter, when my father had bought a brand-new heater and we were sitting around it, having hot chocolate, trying to keep warm. I had a memory of my mother’s soft breathing, her hands cupping the mug, my head resting on her lap. Most details were fuzzy, but I could perfectly remember the electric buzz of the heater, my mother’s heartbeat, the quiet funny gurgles of her belly as she swallowed gulps of hot chocolate. I had a sudden wish to rest my head on her lap, like I had done back then. In my mind, one of her hands moved away from the mug and reached to stroke my hair, so very gently; but I wasn’t sure if that was real or something I added later to the memory.
The tip of the fire poker had turned bright red. I gripped the handle tighter in my fist. It was heavy, pure iron. If I left it close to the fire for a little while longer, it would get white-hot. The tip of it was probably sharp enough –and if it wasn’t good enough for a nice quick stab, then I could beat her to death with it. Would the screaming be loud? I knew she could yell pretty loudly if she wanted to. Would the neighbors notice? Would they even care?
“What do you work in?”
“Secretary,” I quickly lied. “For a real estate company. Only part time, though. I mostly stay at home.”
“And this Charles, what does he do?”
“He works in waste disposal.”
“Figures.”
I left the poker in its place, stood up, and pretended to fix the garland on the mantle. There were the holiday decorations I had set, my biggest Christmas purchase, that had seemed so cheery when I first arranged them. Their little plastic smiles now seemed mocking.
“Where’s that boyfriend of yours?”
“He’s changing into something more comfortable,” I replied, adjusting the tiny Santa hats on the heads of my dolls. “He wants to look presentable, to properly meet you.”
“I don’t like him.”
“I know, mom.”
“I’m not joking. There’s something strange about him. He seems…”
I glanced at her over my shoulder, admittedly curious to what word she would find the best to describe him with, and wondered whether Chucky was listening on us from the other side of the door.
“… Unpredictable.”
“We’ve been together for almost three years now.”
“I don’t mean that,” my mother insisted. “I mean, he’s… Sinister .”
“Well, I like him that way.”
“No, you don’t,” she said tiredly. “You think you do, but you don’t. Don’t fool yourself, take a good hard look at him. You must know the type by now. No commitment. No loyalty. That’s what I mean by ‘unpredictable’. He can’t be trusted, especially not by those he has wormed his way into staying by his side.” She took another bite of the cookie, and chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed before continuing. “He’ll end up letting you down, Tiffany, mark my words.”
“Where was that great intuition when dad ended up cheating on you?”
Silence. For a moment I was sure she would walk up to me and slap me. She didn’t. She just grit her teeth, left the half-eaten cookie on the dish, took out one of her cigarettes from her black handbag, and kept still, carefully picking which words would hurt me as much as I hurt her.
“He doesn’t really love you,” she finally declared, almost spitting the words.
“As if you knew so much about love,” I grumbled, reaching for the pack of Marlboros on the coffee table.
“I do,” she said, and she lit her cigarette. “You know I do, Tiffany.”
“Charles does love me,” I tried to keep my voice even. The pack was empty. “He shows it to me. He’s… I don’t think I’ve ever been truly loved, before him.”
“He really has reeled you in, then,” she sighed, and dropped the ashes of her own cigarette on my carpet. “If you believe that bunch of crock. How long do you honestly think this can last?”
I didn’t reply. It would last for as long as I lived –or at least for as long as he kept loving me –but I wasn’t gonna tell her that. I already knew what her response would be.
My mother scoffed. “You think that because you have a couple things in common, because the sex is still decent, because he gives you a little gift from time to time, that he loves you. But none of that is real. I made that mistake. Don’t repeat what I did.”
“Well, what’s your advice, then?” Since she was so full of wisdom…
There was another drawn-out silence before she spoke again. “I knew that, once I married your father, I would never be able to go back to my family. That was a choice I made, which I have lived with for the rest of my life.”
I wringed my hands. To be quite honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of that family anymore.
“I’m giving you a chance I was never afforded, Tiffany. You make a choice, you pay the price. Wait, and think, before you regret it.”
“Do you ever regret it?” I asked. “Leaving your family?”
“Regrets don’t mean anything,” she said, looking down. “I had a new family. At least I wasn’t alone.”
“I’m not alone.”
“Right,” my mother said, shooting a glance towards the closed door to our bedroom.
“He does actually like me as I am, mom,” I insisted. “He doesn’t want to change me into something else.”
“Does he, now?” she laughed bitterly. “I find that hard to believe. You were never easy… Of course, I guess part of the blame lies on me. I made you the way you are, warts and all,” she said, sitting on the armchair by the fireplace, creaking under her weight. “I made a goddamn monster.”
Her words made me realize how many childhood memories I had, all of them muddled and fading, of her doing things for me. My mother bathing me, my mother feeding me, my mother giving me a spoonful of cough syrup in bed. And then, memories of me rejecting her care. Me bathing myself, me cooking for myself, me downing aspirins in the bathroom. ‘ Stop exaggerating ’, I remembered she used to tell me. ‘ Don’t be so dramatic. ’ I was about to repeat her own words to her. Then I thought, I was kind of a monster. At least to her. Compared to who she wanted me to be, I guess I was a monster.
Maybe I did owe her.
“I don’t know where I must’ve gone wrong… Since your sister turned out to be such a well-behaved lady…” She looked up at me, and let out a deep sigh. “What happened to that sweet little girl you used to be, Tiffany? When did she turn into…? Into this?”
I had no answer for her. My mother stared up at me until I felt uncomfortable, but I stared back for as long as I could, determined not to let her see it. She was looking for some doubt, some sign of weakness she could sink her teeth in and exploit. It had been years since we last talked to each other, but I knew her stares and glares very well, and I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I wouldn’t be intimidated by her any longer.
“Did you ever find out who the other woman was?” I asked her. My mother was quick to point out my faults. Better to remind her of her own.
“No. But I can imagine it was some vulgar streetwalker,” she said, lowering her voice, fiddling with her ring. “Or more than one, surely. These women are fickle, of course. You can’t really put a price on love… Though I don’t think that love was what your father was looking for in them, in any case.”
It wasn’t the same, of course, but I still wondered what she would say if I told her about my string of one-night stands, after my last breakup. She would be disgusted, that was for sure. She would probably not be there in my apartment if she knew. To her, I would be a vulgar streetwalker too. I gripped my wrist and sank my nails in my skin. The little taste of pride I had about having become what she despised most was quickly overpowered by the sudden disgust I had at myself.
“Maybe he did,” I shrugged. “Maybe he did love that woman... Whoever she was.”
“Oh, please. You didn’t know him like I did,” my mother said. “You didn’t know him at all. Even you, with your whining and your tantrums, did more around the house than he did. When he was promoted, boy, I really believed he would have more time for the family… At least he could have stayed faithful for Brittany’s sake.”
“If he was such a pig, then why did you marry him?”
“You must know how relationships start like dreams come true,” she said, arching her thin eyebrows. “Before they turn into full-on nightmares.”
She must have known how that thought kept gnawing at me. Always, in the back of my head, popping up when I least expected it. Like a parasite, or a rash. How true love never seemed to last.
“I’m just trying to look out for you, Tiffany. Men were born to lie,” she declared. “And women to believe them.”
He loves me –he loves me –he loves me , I repeated to myself. She was just trying to get under my skin. Chucky wasn’t like the others. He had to love me. There had been so many chances for him to just kill me. He wasn’t afraid to shed blood. If he didn’t love me at least a little bit, why the hell would he even keep me around?
“So, you think you got it all figured out now? You think you’re happy?”
I wasn’t so sure now. What was the difference between thinking you’re happy and being happy? Was one real and the other a lie? I felt happy with Chucky around, even despite the few rough patches, the occasional arguing and the fights. It felt real, more real than anything else I had ever felt. Though… Certainly, back with Heath, with Cesar, with Arlene, I just loved them. I just felt it, and it was enough to convince me it was the real deal. Could it be that I was just fooling myself again, just like I had done so many times before?
Regardless of the answer, I forced myself to smile, raise my chin, and take a deep breath.
“Yes. I’m happier than ever.”
My mother drummed her nails on the armrest. Her expression sparked another memory, the way that her presence in general simply did that, plucked from years I had a very weak grasp of. I was back at her house, and I had thrown a fit or something, and after her typical yelling she had decided to go for another tactic. ‘ Fine –you can cook for yourself, then. Cook for yourself, clean for yourself, do your own laundry, pay your own bills… I’d like to see you managing without me. I’d like to see you try. ’
“Well, Tiffany… As the saying goes: if you love something, you have to set it free. And you have been free for a while now.”
I didn’t want to be free. I wanted to be loved.
“We don’t have to keep seeing each other. We can forget the other exists,” I said. It was the easiest thing to do, and the one that, most likely, would hurt the least. “Hell, it’s what I’ve been doing ever since I left home.”
“Don’t be stupid, Tiffany, you couldn’t forget about me even if you tried,” she said. “I’m who gave you life. I’m your own flesh and blood.”
“Say what you want, mom, but I’m not gonna go back to Hackensack with you.”
Because that was what this was all about. She just didn’t want to be alone in that crummy house.
Suddenly she stood up, startling me. She stood almost as tall as I did in my heels, in front of me, with that disappointed look. One of her hands moved away from the handbag, and approached mine, giving it a small but tight squeeze. I held my breath. I didn’t pull away. Her hand moved farther, now close to my cheek. I did wince there, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of submitting. I didn’t move any further than that. The back of her fingers stroked just beside my jaw, careful not to let her hard acrylic nails touch my skin. I grit my teeth. My mother’s hand was much softer than I remembered.
And then, the only thought I had, all I really wanted, was for my mother to hold me close.
“I have come all this way, I’ve done all of this, because I care about you, despite everything. Despite how impossible you are, and how much you say you want to keep away. I know you,” she said quietly, almost shamefully. Worst of all, I knew she was telling the truth. “And you know that, don’t you?”
I stared back into her dark brown eyes, the eyes that were almost exactly like mine. My lip trembled –and I grit my teeth, forcing myself to stay stone-faced. But still I couldn’t shake the image of my mother, all alone, a drink in one hand and a smoke in the other, spending the afternoon in the living room of her empty house. Waiting for something out of sheer faith. It was her when I came home late, and it was me when I was too tired to cry after my latest breakup, and it was her when I got up early in the morning with period cramps and she had already done all the chores, and it was me when I felt absolutely nothing and could do nothing but stay still and let the time pass me by—
Chucky came out of the bedroom. He was now wearing one of those floppy t-shirts he had picked at the Goodwill: this particular one read ‘ Get Really Stoned: Drink Wet Cement ’. I let out a relieved breath, and snickered at the sight of it. He winked at me. My mother just glared at him.
“Oh, nice –cookies,” he said chipperly, taking the other one from the pretty little dish and munching on it as noisily and rudely as he could.
I kept pursing my lips, trying to hold back a grin. My eyes were still burning. At least he found a way to ease the situation, in the best way he knew. Thankfully, before my mother could start her grilling, asking for all the gritty details and the obligatory questions about our relationship, about his education, his family and his reputation, the kettle whistled to call me away back to the kitchen.
“Give me a minute,” I told her, able to loosen my shoulders at last. “I’ll bring you your tea.”
“I’ll help you,” Chucky said quickly, following me back into the kitchen.
I had a wave of fear that she would sneak into our bedroom while we were both away in the kitchen, out of sight, with him having closed the door again so we could talk and not be heard. I didn’t know exactly what my mother could find that could give away our little hobby. Really, there was probably nothing in there that she would ever approve of in the first place, I realized, thinking of our clothes lying everywhere, the newspaper clippings, the unmade bed, the weird books he read…
“Christ, Tiff. Your mom fucking sucks,” Chucky told me in a hush. “Why didn’t you ever tell me she’s such a bitch?”
So he was listening in on us. “I know she’s got her issues—”
“Yeah, no shit.”
I pressed my knuckles against my chin, digging my nails into my palms. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember a time in which she had stroked my cheek like that.
“… She’ll want to stay for dinner.”
Chucky glared at me.
“I don’t think I can bear even five whole minutes more with her,” I admitted.
He clapped in relief. “Thank God, you said it. So!” There was a sudden energy to him, as if he had gotten all wound up and ready to go. “How should we get rid of her?”
I took a deep breath. I glanced at the cabinet below the sink. “Rat poison in her tea. Right? That sounds merciful.”
“You say she deserves it?”
“Well, I don’t know if I can be merciless with her,” I said as I poured the hot water into the teacup, thinking back to the poker by the fireplace. “She’s still my mother.”
“Tiff, come on,” he said, raising his tone. “She treats you like shit!”
“Keep it down,” I hushed him. “And it’s not that bad. It’s just –it’s just how she is. She’s probably really tired from the trip—”
“She hasn’t seen you in years, and she talks to you like this!?”
Chucky was right. What was I even doing, trying to find excuses for her?
The bag of red tea quickly dyed the water a deep rich color. “Yeah, poison won’t cut it. Something stronger. Something final.”
“I can distract her with some story,” he suggested. “So you can come from behind and slash her throat.”
“No… No, I don’t want to touch her.”
He frowned, glancing at the kitchen drawer where we kept the emergency Glock. “A bullet would make too much noise, even with a pillow to muffle it. Would you really risk it?”
“No, I mean… I don’t think I can... That I can touch her. I can’t look at her while I kill her.”
“Hm… What about suffocating her with a plastic bag, then? That’d be clean.”
“Could you do this for me, Chucky? Please?” I asked him, wringing my hands. “I… I can’t do it.”
“What?”
“I want her dead, I do, it’s just… I… I don’t know what it is, I just can’t…”
“Tiff,” he said, with a look of disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about? You’ve done this a million times. You’ve done this less than an hour ago!”
“It’s different,” I said quickly. “I’ve thought about this so many times, but… I’m afraid I’ll… I won’t be able to…”
“You won’t be able to go through with it?”
I nodded. He was almost let down for a moment, but then he picked himself right up, and gave me one of his smirks.
“Well, that’s what you got me for, babe. If you end up getting cold feet, I’ll finish it for you, no problem.”
“No… No, Chucky, please,” I stammered, more and more embarrassed of my own reaction to all this shit. “Just… You do it. I know you’ll do it right.”
“But, Tiff—”
“Please, please… I can’t.”
“It’ll be fun…! We can do it together,” he promised, his voice softening. “We’ll have a blast.”
“I can’t—” I said, my voice cracking.
“Yes, you can!” he insisted, and he held my hand and squeezed it tight. “I know you can—”
“Chucky, please …”
“… Alright, alright.”
He turned around, and picked his second-favorite knife from the drawer.
“But I’m not going for poison in her tea.”
“Do it however you want.”
He was about to leave for the living room. At the last moment he gave me one more look.
“Are you watching, at least?”
I gave it a thought, still wringing my hands.
“I’ll stay here in the kitchen. Just call me if you need anything.”
Chucky looked down at his knife, turning it in his hand. “You know, it’s a damn pity. I think we could really enjoy this… Are you really sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
I don’t think he understood why I couldn’t go through with it. Hell, not even I understood.
Chucky hid the knife in his pants’ back pocket, picked up the teacup and left for the living room. I closed the door behind him but kept close by, listening carefully to anything and everything that went on.
The TV was switched on. There was no keyhole in the kitchen door –I only had sounds to tell me what was happening. The noise of some game show covered the clinking of the teacup on the coffee table, the barely-thankful harrumph of my mother, the steps of Chucky’s shoes circling the rug. All of which I could imagine perfectly well, with or without evidence.
I closed my eyes to listen better. I even held my breath. Chucky had taken a knife with him, but I had already told him a hundred times that I didn’t want any bloodstains in the living room, since it was so hard to get them off the furniture and off the hardwood floors. Maybe he’d go for smashing something on her head, maybe suffocating her with a bag, like he had suggested. Maybe strangle her with his own hands. I hoped it hurt. I hoped it was not quick and painless. I hoped the last thought in her mind was that this was what I wanted.
A stomp of a heel –I jumped. I kept holding my breath. I remained as still as I could. A loud gasping, a groaning, almost a squeal, loud enough to be heard even with the brash laughter of the game show. A familiar chuckle. At last I opened my eyes. My fingers were cold and still gripping the doorknob, my heart was racing in my throat. I was squatting so low behind the door I was almost on my knees. There was silence beyond the TV. But it wasn’t done yet, there was a tension in the air, and I could perfectly imagine her face becoming as white as my hand, life draining out of her, leaving only the clownish makeup colors. I lost track of time, wondering what expression she’d have. Whatever it was it’d be ghastly anyways. My mind soon went to more important questions. Was Chucky killing her slowly? Was he enjoying it?
“Hey, Tiff,” he called. “It’s done.”
Slowly, I cracked open the door, and stepped into the living room, staring down at my boots. My mother was back in the creaky armchair, with her arms hanging limp to the sides. I looked up, bracing myself to see her –and, thankfully, the horrible sight of her shocked face was pretty softened by the jolly glow of the Christmas lights Chucky had strangled her with.
“I knew you didn’t want any blood on your nice couch.”
He sat beside her, on the armrest, waiting for me to say something. It took me a moment before I could walk over to her and look at her properly. There were the lines of the strangling on her neck, deep marks, as if she had been a tied-up roast. Her face was slightly purplish-blue, not white. The mouth was still gaping, her eyes wide open. I stared into her eyes for a few seconds, almost waiting for them to move and stare back at me. It hadn’t been an easy passing. Yes, Chucky must have really enjoyed it.
“Want me to close them for you?”
I scoffed, and did it myself. She still wore the same makeup she put on when I was a kid, the same I wore when I stole her blue eye shadow. The blush was applied almost violently. Her eyelashes were as sticky and stiff as always. She had changed so little, really, even in death.
“… So that’s what you’re gonna look like in twenty years.”
He snickered when I gave him an angry shove, knocking him off the couch’s armrest.
“Alright,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s get started.”
We pushed the couch and the armchair out of the way and carpeted the floor with the bags so as to not stain the floor nor the carpet. It took a while, but it was nothing compared to the task ahead of us. I had a feeling Chucky was having a good time anyway. As the disposal expert I had the hard work, obviously, starting with the legs. Like that night at the hotel, when we had first met, it was a chopping job, made easier by having a proper cleaver instead of a carving knife. Regardless of the tool, holding my mother’s fat ankle, staring down at the black pumps she was wearing, I found myself doubting. Why, I didn’t know. She was dead already. It was just a piece of meat for me to cut up.
“You want me to do that for you, too?” he asked.
“Can it, Chucky.”
“Alright, sheesh…”
I pushed my hair off my face, telling myself to pull it together. Raising the cleaver over my head, feeling its weight and tensing my arm, I brought it down in one quick hard swoop –the cleaver went right down the flesh –and stopped suddenly at the bone, and it made a small dent as it got stuck in it. I grit my teeth and yanked the cleaver out the ankle, and raised it over, swinging it down, three more times before I finally managed to separate the foot from the leg. Once that was done with, I tossed it to the side.
“Nice job,” he said. “Try to aim for the joint next time, maybe that way you won’t dull the cleaver’s blade that much.”
I huffed and wiped the splattered blood off my cheek. This was taking too long. What we needed was a saw. The old woman had stronger bones than I had thought. I went through with the other ankle, while Chucky got experimental and tried to saw the elbows off with one of our steak knives, and when it didn’t work so well, he tried with the carving knife –which at least got it done quicker, and gave him an easier time snapping bones. I knew the biggest challenge would be the head, so I left it for last. Eventually, though, I had to do it: so, as Chucky bagged the chopped parts, I hacked my mother’s head, sinking the blade into her neck, bringing my tired arm up again, sweat falling down my back, the cleaver coming back and forth like a faulty guillotine. My arm was aching badly. I was exhausted from the effort of the previous joints. And this part, with my mother’s face, eyes closed as if taking one of her migraine naps, felt like it was going on forever. And the head just wouldn’t come off. I knew that if I didn’t get it done Chucky would insist to do it –I knew he was itching to use the cleaver –but I had to do this myself –if only I could finish it –and take my mother’s damn head off her neck…
“ Goddammit, you bitch—! ”
I screamed at her dead body. By the sixth time the cleaver had gone through her flesh, I still hadn’t gotten to fully behead her yet. What would it take for it to do so? How many hacks? How much longer did I have to keep chopping for it to come apart? I kept yelling, shouting and swearing, too furious to even notice Chucky standing behind me. And when it finally, finally rolled away from the neck, adding one last victorious spurt of blood to the pool around my knees, I was all sore and my throat was dry. I blinked. A few tears burned my eyes. I blinked again, sniffing and groaning, and I breathed, closing my eyes and turning my face up to the ceiling. There was a silence, still thick with the echoes of my yelling. It took me a minute before I could open my eyes again and brace myself for what came next.
“... You okay, Tiff?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Ready to go?”
We put the remaining limbs in the bags, put on our coats, and went to dispose of the body. Carrying one garbage bag each, it was still pretty damn heavy for just two people, no matter how the weight was distributed. It was Christmas Eve, and apart from a few drunks staggering around, the streets were almost empty: people were celebrating the holiday in their homes, which meant we could sneak off to the lakeshore without being seen or calling any attention to ourselves. Chucky joked that if someone stopped us and questioned us, we could say that we were Santa’s helpers, bringing toys in these bags for needy children. I laughed a bit to humor him, but I wasn’t feeling like joking around much anymore.
One bag at a time, he made a little slash in them so they wouldn’t float, and we shoved them over the edge and into the dark water. They sank almost instantly, first blowing up like balloons, the air being pushed up, and then letting out a few quiet bubbles before finally sinking like stones. And then it was done. My mother was officially dead and gone, now on her way to line the bottom of Lake Michigan.
“You cold?” Chucky asked me, lighting a cigarette and taking a drag before passing it to me.
I shook my head before accepting it.
“Let’s get home.”
We walked in silence for a few blocks. It started snowing again. The apartment wasn’t very far, but now that we had the weight of the body bags off our backs, we were in no hurry. And besides, I wasn’t feeling like cooking a Christmas dinner anymore. I wondered whether we had any chance of finding a restaurant that could be open and had a free table for us at that hour. The odds weren’t good.
“Wait, hun,” I said with a groan, three blocks from home. “My feet are killing me…”
It wasn’t the feet as much as the knees. I’d been on the floor next to the body for too long, putting all my weight in my knees and arms, sawing and chopping away. I had stopped just as we passed by a little playground. I took off my heels and wandered off over the frosty grass towards the swings.
“Tiff, come on, I’m freezing my ass off—!”
“It’ll just be a minute,” I insisted. “Stop being such a baby.”
I sat on one of the swings and let out a deep sigh. It really was cold, but my knees were very much relieved once I allowed them to relax. Chucky waited on the sidewalk, shifting his weight from leg to leg, smoking and sighing in annoyance, before finally huffing and sitting on the swing beside me. We kept quiet. After a moment, he handed me the cigarette back.
“We can do this at the apartment, you know,” he grumbled.
“Back there we’ll have to get to cleaning all that blood,” I replied, blowing the smoke up over our heads, watching it dissolve in the wind.
“Bah, I’m not gonna hold it against you. It can wait till tomorrow,” he said, and rubbed his hands together to keep warm. “It’s Christmas, after all.”
“How considerate of you.”
My voice came out a bit harsher than what I had intended. Hoping he hadn’t noticed, I clicked my nails, holding the end of the cigarette that was almost fully done through. Chucky turned to look at me. I flicked the cigarette stub on the dead grass, slipped my heel back on, and stepped on it. A couple little sparks sputtered away before it went dark.
“Guess tonight’s menu’s gonna be leftovers,” he finally said, rocking back and forth on the swing, the chains creaking and squeaking above him. “That is, if there’s anything left in the fridge.”
I was about to snap back at him, and say something about him never bothering to get groceries, and instead eating whatever and whenever he wanted, all take and no give –before I got a knot in my throat. This, he noticed. I looked down, swallowing, wishing I had something to wash off the taste of salt and nicotine from my mouth. ‘Ladies don’t spit’ . Another of her little nuggets of wisdom. Chucky’s hand rested on my shoulder, turning my swing so I could face him. I turned away. I tried to laugh, as a last desperate attempt to mask the incoming blubbering.
“Hey, hey –why’re you crying?”
A bit too forcefully, I sniffed and wiped my eyes. My makeup was definitely a complete mess by then. “I… I don’t know—”
“Well, are those happy tears or sad tears?”
“I don’t know !”
“C’mon, don’t worry about it… What’s done is done,” he said, his voice sounding like it did when he was building up to a punchline. “She’s in a better place now, and all that shit.”
“I wonder,” I said, with a bitter little giggle that came out quite alright.
He chuckled along, and rubbed my shoulder. “See? You’re okay. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worried,” I insisted. “I’m not.” And right on cue, when I was just getting too confident, my voice cracked.
He knit his brows together. “Well you don’t seem on cloud nine, either.”
I could feel it –something similar to pity in his voice. No, not pity: something more like confusion, disappointment, frustration. Like dealing with a kid that refused to do her chores. An ungrateful kid. A difficult brat. I huffed and shut my eyes and swinged on the set. Some movement might get some blood running through my body, I thought. The chains of the swing were burning cold against my hands. The chains creaked rhythmically, back and forth, and with my eyes closed I was taken back to a winter in which I stayed out after sundown, at the Hackensack playground, sucking in the cold because my mother had forbidden me to do so, arguing that I’d get a fever. I did get a fever. I got so sick I couldn’t go to school; I could barely leave my bed to go to the bathroom. All the while my mother nursed me back to health, telling me to open up so she could give me spoonfuls of cough syrup, grumbling about me being incurable.
Too many memories, too quickly. It was as if I was drunk with them, sick with them.
“What was that thing you said, about what you believed in? The afterlife?” Chucky asked me, suddenly swinging beside me. “You said it doesn’t matter. It’s just death—”
“It does not matter!” I shouted. “Jesus –this isn’t about her, you asshole!”
Another silence, barely interrupted by the creaking of the chains, then slowly becoming silent again. I was never good at holding back tears, but right then I was making a real effort, and prayed to myself I could manage to keep it in at least long enough so we could get back to the apartment, wash my face, have dinner or whatever and then go to sleep. There was a vague awareness that I had made some sort of plans for Christmas Eve, but right then all I wanted was to crawl under the sheets and have a good long cry.
“… Did she get to you that bad?”
That was the last straw. I jumped off the swing, stood up and crossed my arms, walking away. All I needed was to stop the sniffling, and then I’d be alright. For a moment I looked down at the snow that was gathering at my feet, but when a tear slipped from the corner of my eye I immediately pulled my head back and stared up at the black cloudy sky. Not a single star in sight, only the sparkling white snowflakes being blown by the chilly wind. The cold was really setting in now, but I was unsure whether I wanted to go back inside or not by now. Back home it was nice and cozy, but there in the playground it was dark enough that, if I really started bawling, at least we could pretend I wasn’t.
Enough snow had piled up so that I could hear his steps coming from behind me. I wiped the lower lid of my eyes. I told myself I had it under control. I was alright. If he insisted on going back to the apartment, I’d say yes, and that would be the end of it.
Instead, Chucky hugged me. I held my breath for a moment, pretty surprised. It’s not that he never hugged me, of course, just that it was not really his preferred way to show any sort of sympathy. When he did hug me, it was usually in the thrilled aftermath of a nice kill, or when we were half asleep in bed, and he clinged to me, as if to make sure I was there. But not like this. Not that I didn’t welcome it –it just felt kinda awkward. After a couple seconds, though, I was far too warm and comfortable to want to break it off. I closed my eyes and hugged him back, resting my head on his shoulder, taking a deep breath. And I finally let myself cry.
“Tiff… You know youʼve got nothing to be ashamed of,” he said after a while, his voice muffled against my fluffy coat. “Right?”
“Yeah.”
Chucky moved away just a little. He kept one arm around me, keeping me close. He cupped my cheek with his still-warm hand, and wiped a tear off with his thumb. I sniffed once more.
“… Thank you,” I said quietly.
Was I thanking him for killing her for me? For staying by my side and comforting me? I don’t think I was even sure. A puzzled frown crossed Chucky’s face for a second, but then smiled.
“Anytime.”
It had been smart of me to keep our previous kill’s loot in my coat’s inner pocket. Just around the corner we had a Chinese restaurant that was still open. We bought a whole bunch of takeout to bring home with us, rushing back to the apartment with the boxes kept warm under our coats. There was also an old bottle of mid-quality whisky I kept in the cupboard for emergencies, and this seemed like enough of an emergency to me. Not exactly the most picture-perfect Christmas dinner, but it certainly beat going to bed on an empty stomach. We spread the banquet on the coffee table, then sat on the sofa, my legs stretched over his lap, and we covered ourselves with the biggest coziest blanket we had. There wasn’t much on TV, apart from Perry Como’s holiday special and reruns of How The Grinch Stole Christmas , but we caught It’s A Wonderful Life, which Chucky had never watched in full. So we watched it, and I cried a little more, and we drank and ate as much as we could before getting sick, until we fell asleep.
I don’t think I really ever told him just how thankful I was. Years of dreaming about my mother dropping dead, but I never actually made a plan, or thought about actually going through with it. Chucky didn’t need a plan. When the opportunity showed up, he simply took it. A hundred percent hassle free. It wasn’t his mom, anyways. To him it was just another kill. But I knew he knew how much it meant to me. And he had understood how much I needed him to be patient with me, that night.
Those really were the best times we had. If we argued, we forgot about it immediately. If we fought, we made up right away. If the other seemed to be feeling kinda low, we cheered each other up. So often back then I found myself grabbing on to him, in his arms, wishing and praying that the moment could last forever. I didn’t want morning to come, him to leave, or me having to be alone again. But time passed us by anyway, regardless of what I wanted, as if mocking me. All I could do was enjoy it as much as I could.
It had taken him a couple months to catch up with me, but my boyfriend had finally turned twenty-eight. And I promised myself that this birthday would be a really good one.
Anyone who knows me knows I love parties. I love having opportunities to dress up and celebrate and pick gifts for people I’m close to. Chucky, well –he wasn’t much like that at all. Not that he hated them, on the contrary: he knew how much it meant to me, so for the last three years we had been together he had made sure I had a truly great birthday and Valentine’s Day; anniversaries were always a blast; and, of course, he was a huge fan of Halloween, almost as much as I was. Other lesser holidays, like Easter, Thanksgiving or Christmas, were just excuses for us to do a little something special. But his own birthday, he never gave it much thought. I liked planning places to visit, dates to have. To him, for whatever reason, something as important as his own birthday seemed like more of an afterthought.
Not this year, though, I had told myself, once I picked up the Pontiac from Darnell’s after one last thorough checkup.
“For God’s sake, Tiff,” he called out from the bedroom, over the background buzz of the TV’s newscast. “You still getting ready?”
“I’m almost done, geez… What’s the hurry?” I yelled back. After just finishing with the eyeliner, I still had a little more work to do on the eyes. “Perfect’s not easy, you know.”
After applying mascara generously, I moved back away from the mirror to see the bigger picture and take in the results of my effort. The eyelashes were nice and thick, just how I liked them. The eyeliner looked even enough for me. Finally I smiled, satisfied.
Just then I noticed the shadow behind me in my reflection. There he was, leaning against the doorframe, watching me through the mirror. I had been so focused I hadn’t even heard him coming close. I smirked, putting my little tools away, and just to bother him a bit more, I pretended to fix some invisible flaw with the tip of my nail for a minute or so. Chucky let out a loud annoyed groan. I giggled. As if he didn’t love watching me getting ready.
“Alright, I’m done now.”
I had pulled out all the stops for the special ocassion. We had gone to the movies to watch a double feature, and then we had dinner at home. There was still the warm spiced lingering smell of the tomato sauce we had with the Swedish meatballs, wafting through the rooms of the apartment, and there was even a little bit of the waxy burnt wick of the birthday candles I had insisted Chucky blew. And that was not the end of it. I still had a surprise left for him, and despite his usual impatience, he seemed plenty satisfied with everything else we had done that day, so he wasn’t particularly restless. What’s more important, he was grateful. Between laughs at the cinema, he had circled my shoulders and brought me closer, not to do anything, just to keep me against him, like a grounding wire. During dinner, he would constantly look up from his dinner and give me small glances, as if to keep telling me, that way, what he repeated before and after I set the plate in front of him: that it was delicious, and that I was an angel. And there, with both of us in the little bathroom, before we would head out again, he gazed at me through the mirror, with a proud little smile of disbelief on his face, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. As I was the most beautiful creature in the world.
“Hey,” I said, smiling back. “You’re looking sharp.”
“Huh?”
I huffed, and turned around to face him instead of his reflection. “I said , you’re looking sharp.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” he said, grinning to himself. “I just wanted to hear you say it again.”
I rolled my eyes at him. He snorted a laugh. I grabbed his necktie, tightened the knot, and pulled him to me for a kiss. It had been my original birthday gift –a real new purchase, coming all the way from the ritzy displays at the Carson Pirie Scott department store downtown, instead of the bottom of a bargain bin at Goodwill. At first I was really worried he might not like it, or that it might be too garish (the saleswoman had been very insistent, and it was very likely she had done most of the convincing when it came to choosing it, after my initial interest), but Chucky’s delighted reaction when he unwrapped it was as genuine as they come. It was a yellow tie, with a pattern of bright red diamonds all over it. Even if it might not had been the type of clothes he usually wore, it had reminded me of him as soon as I laid eyes on it. It reminded me of him, and of the sort of colorful stained glass you’d find on the window behind the altar, at the end wall of a church. Pretty fitting for the occasion, I’d say.
“So?” I smiled, fluffing up my curls and doing a little twirl. “What do you think?”
After a while of trying to choose what I’d feel most comfortable dancing in, I decided to go for the red pleather pants, a black bustier and a see-through top, in case it got chilly. Chucky wrapped his arms around my waist, and looked at me up and down, frowning as if he was concentrating really hard. I stifled a laugh as I waited for the verdict.
“… So no skirt, huh?” he asked, and patted my thigh. “I thought you’d wanna show off those stockings I got you for Valentine’s.”
“When we get back,” I said, tapping his lips with the tip of my finger. “No skirt, no pants, no nothing. How’s that sound?”
Chucky smiled. “Sounds good to me.”
He followed it with a kiss: a little kiss, the sort of kiss that felt more like a goodbye than like a thank-you. I blinked, still smiling, though a bit confused. Only then I noticed how, despite how happy he seemed, that his calmness and patience was beginning to appear like it was hiding something else. Chucky didn’t kiss me like that, so lifelessly, unless there was something he was turning over in his mind.
“Oh, wait –I gotta find the map,” I said, leaving the bathroom and heading back to the bedroom. “Can’t rely on my memory for this one.”
He chuckled a bit. With my own thoughts shifting between the drawers full of junk and the crammed glovebox of the car, I tried to juggle some possibilities for why Chucky wasn’t bouncing all over the walls, why he wasn’t pulling me to him constantly now, why he wasn’t humming or whistling to himself, why he wasn’t ecstatic, like he had been in other happy occasions, and with less. Was he too full with dinner, or maybe not full enough? Did the cake give him heartburn? We both could handle much harder stuff, and walk it off without breaking a sweat. Had the morning sex been somehow disappointing? He didn’t seem to find it disappointing, then. Had he smoked a joint while I was getting ready? That might have been it... But I didn’t smell it, and besides, he always had the bare decency to offer me a toke when he took something from the stash.
When I came back to the living room he was standing in front of the window, staring out at the skyline, silhouetted against the flaming orange sunset. I hugged him from behind, and leaned my chin on his shoulder. He said nothing, not even a glance back at me, not even a smile. It was as if I wasn't even there. Something was off.
“You okay, darling?” I asked him. “We can stay home if you want, find something else to do.”
Chucky blinked himself back into the present. “Nah –now I gotta know what you got planned.”
I didn’t ask him any further. If there was something bothering him, I had to trust he would tell me; after all, it was not like he ever had any difficulties complaining when he wanted to. Better to keep my spirits up and hope some of it would rub off on him, and that we could still have a good time.
“Uh, Tiff…” he began saying once we were on the road. “When are you gonna tell me where we’re going?”
I smiled, getting off the highway. “It’s a surprise.”
“You’re starting to freak me out.”
I laughed. That didn’t seem to soothe him very much.
It was a half-hour drive. The area was full of tall grass and trees, perfect to leave the car without it being spotted by potential thieves. The stark white headlights made the surrounding forest seem haunting and mysterious, with only a small section of the woods being visible in the dark. Meanwhile, Chucky kept an eye on the map, telling me where to turn to reach the red X I had marked, all the while trying to guess what the X stood for.
“A drive-in theater?”
“No.”
“Hm… Night hunting?”
“Nope.”
“Some kinda weird ritual sacrifice in the woods?”
I chuckled. “No, not tonight, no…”
We finally got off the paved road and onto the dirt, onto a rocky path over dead grass and broken branches, getting a few flashes of brightly lit treetops and bushes… Until I braked, the car stopped swaying, and we were right in front of the place.
Chucky leaned over the glovebox, almost pressing his nose against the windshield. “What is it, an old schoolhouse?”
“Cold, cold…”
“A church?”
“Getting warmer…”
He glanced at me, clearly confused. I smiled wider. We got out the car, and as we got closer to the ivy-covered white church, the night sound of chirps and croaks was replaced by thumping music.
“Midnight mass?” he asked. “At this time of the year?”
“It’s a different kind of party.”
“… An orgy?”
I laughed. “No, not that kind of party either…”
Once we had gotten close enough, we saw movement: dark silhouettes of people stumbling around the tall grass, downing cans, laughing, sneaking in through the windows. The music was loud enough now to recognize it as such. And, as it dawned on him what this was about, a big bright smile crossed Chucky’s face.
“… But close enough.”
He grabbed my face and covered it with kisses. I laughed, trying to push him away.
“Stop, you’re gonna mess my makeup—!”
He grinned, held me tighter, and smooched my eyes, smudging my carefully applied blue eyeshadow before kissing my mouth once more. That was more like him, I thought with a giggle, watching him hurry out the car, barely stopping to check I was still behind him.
The front door of the church was chained and locked to hell and back. Fortunately, a few windows had been smashed so thoroughly it was easy to climb in through them.
It was a cavernous place, full of broken glass and rough rubble and ripped mattresses and car tires. At least, that was what I could manage to see. There was almost no light inside, only a few small desk lamps near the DJ and near the improvised table where a guy was handing beer bottles and serving something in plastic cups. More than what you could or could not see, the focus was on the music. The hum of a generator feeding the music system, the buzzing and booming of the loudspeakers, it all sounded like a rumbling you could feel deep in your bones, coming up from the soles of your feet all the way to the back of your skull. And the music echoed all over the barely visible, supposedly tall ceilings of the church, so when it reached you it was like a memory of a song, more than something you were hearing in the moment –but still undeniably present.
Chucky and I started off with whatever we were handed when we asked for a drink. The expensive stuff. We downed a plastic cup each, tasting Kool-Aid mixed with whisky along with something sharply chemical. It was like a gulp of gasoline to the throat, and like a kick to the gut. We dared each other to have another, and then we shared a beer that didn’t taste much like beer anymore. Soon we had succeeded in becoming absolutely wasted.
We clung to the other, all dizzy, the world turning in circles around us as the little light there moved unsteady along with us. I thought back to when it had been my own birthday, at Navy Pier. I had felt so free then, flailing around, squealing and being pushed around by gravity and pressure and loving every single minute of it. It was the same heart-pounding excitement, but there was something else, too.
“ Acid on the floor, so she walks on the ceiling— ”
Something about the place, or about the stuff I took, made me feel lost. I grabbed him, trying to pull him to me for a kiss, wanting some reassurance. I was lucky to notice that the person I had grabbed wasn’t quite my Chucky before our lips touched, so I shoved him aside, and staggered across the broken ground, over the cracks and the holes. I was getting sick, and not exactly in a fun way.
“ And the body electric flashes on the bathroom wall— ”
I pressed my back against a wall and stared up, trying to get my head to stop spinning for a second. The roof had been destroyed over the years. Some beams were still holding up, and I sorta could see the shape of a steeple somehow intact, but there was nothing to guarantee that it couldn’t come crashing down at any minute. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. At some point the place had been a functional church, I thought. People must have come here for Sunday mass, to baptize their kids, even maybe had a few weddings, right there, in the middle of nowhere.
I walked out of the church through a busted wall, watching that I didn’t trip with my heels. The tall wild grass tickled my ankles. The sky was rather cloudy now. The music was loud enough you could hear it even outside, but there were the quiet sounds of nature, too: the crickets’ songs and the wind in the trees. I finished the cigarette, pressing my nape against the concrete. Would the empty houses at the edge of our suburbs, back at Hackensack, at what used to be my home, end up like this? Reused for secret parties? It sounded like much more fun than to just keep them as junkie hang-out spots. At least here there was music that wasn’t slurred singing, and drinks that weren’t a half-empty bottle of cheap vodka.
“Tiff? Are you here?”
I gave a little whistle to signal to him where I was. Chucky stumbled towards me, over the debris and the garbage and the tall grass.
“The party’s in there,” I told him. “What’re you doing out here?”
“I was gonna ask you the same thing.”
He took the butt of the cigarette I still had between my fingers, picked it as delicately as he could, and smoked what was left. Keeping it in, he held my face in his hand, and I opened my mouth, and he leaned forward and blew the smoke in between my lips. I knew there were people just a few feet away, back at the party; but somehow, it really felt like we were alone out there, sharing secondhand smoke like a secret.
“You got bored already?” I asked him with a smile, keeping my voice low, for some reason. As if I cared about being disrespectful on holy grounds. “I thought you’d like it—”
“I do like it.”
“But you wish we were back at home?”
He looked back at me. I rested my arm on his shoulder as I tried to find his answer in his face, to no avail. I just knew that there was something up with him, some kinda frustration, something that was gnawing at him and he couldn’t put into words. A shitty feeling to have to put up with during your own birthday.
“Sorry, Chucky,” I said, stroking his cheek. “I thought this would cheer you up.”
“Tiff...”
“Yeah?”
“We’re alright.”
I kept gazing at his face in the shadows. There was nothing I could read there or draw a conclusion from. He sounded honest, at least, but I wasn’t so sure.
I kissed him, as the reassurance I wished I got, pressing my nose against his, feeling a few drops of sweat sticking from his forehead to mine. But he wanted something more than reassurance. He wrapped his arms around me, and kept me still and quiet against the wall, finally kissing me back as if trying to push something off his mind. I knew how I could help with that. I reached down to palm him over his pants, and he groaned a little in response, pushing himself against my hand, asking me to go on. As I unbuckled his belt, he pressed a knee against the wall and between my legs, and I kept kissing him and pulling him close, running my free hand over his back, hooking my leg around his, snaking my body around his, trusting he could keep holding me enough to just let go and hang on to him. He had me, I trusted. While I kept fondling him, I started to rock my hips lazily against his thigh, and he got to sucking and nipping at my neck when he realized what I was doing. He was going slow. He wanted it to last. I wanted to hurry up, get to the good stuff, and then maybe have another drink and then go home. He kissed me, and now I was the one with the mind elsewhere.
“Hey. You here?”
“Yes... Yes, yes...”
I opened my eyes when I heard footsteps on the grass. Some drunk had ventured out the party too, and was leaning his arm against a wall and pissing on some dandelions. I watched him for a while, until Chucky noticed I was losing momentum and began touching me over the panties. I grunted. The noise called his attention, and the guy turned around, still a black shadow in the distance. He watched us, and I watched him, watching us, up until Chucky decided I needed to join in and dipped a finger, and I cried out and shut my eyes.
I dragged myself back into the party, dancing by myself, with the electronic beat echoing in my head. I felt glass against my palm, so I pulled my hand to my mouth and had a sip. My cheeks were still flushed, and there was still a nice warmth on my skin, in the middle of the crowd. White and red flashed before my eyes. I was riding high above the crowd dressed in black. My head moved back and forth, my hair feathering my shoulders while my jacket dangled from my elbows. Even if I hadn’t been moved by the dancing crowd I would’ve been swaying to the music, as if rocked in a cradle, as if riding a seesaw. Something dripped off the side of my mouth. I licked it off and swallowed the sharp bitter something mixed with creamy lipstick. Something like glass shattered under my heel, and I gripped my bottle a little tighter. Whatever it had been was too small to be a bottle. I walked off at some point and stumbled upon two drunk shirtless guys either wrestling or making out, while a small crowd gathered around watched them with barely any interest. The light flashed on them for a second, like lightning. I blinked. The two guys seemed to be about sixteen, at most. Did Jack tell me to come to some child’s birthday party?
I bought another drink. I knew that some of the guys standing in the sidelines, chatting with their friends against the graffitied walls, would probably sell me something good, if I had the money for it. I was almost sure I didn’t have the money for it. That might’ve been a better gift, I thought. Once, Chucky had told me he liked yellow best when he was high. I liked red the most: if caught in the right moment, a flash of red was like an electric shock.
“Sweetface?” I called out, as if he could hear me over the music.
I heard his laughs ringing close by. There was a small room beside the choir that somehow still had its four walls intact. Inside, sitting on what was left of a door, I saw him. He’d found a guy who had brought a canister of nitrous oxide, and they were having the time of their lives, passing a mask back and forth and cackling their heads off. At the sight of me the other guy smiled and tried to stand up, but Chucky grabbed his shoulder to prop himself up and shoved him back down on the broken wooden board.
“Glad to see you finally having fun,” I giggled for no reason.
He brought a blunt he was nursing in his hand back to his lips, and giggled, too. “Have I ever told you, Tiff, that you got the most adorable laugh?”
I picked the blunt from his mouth, took a drag, and sighed. “God, you really are off the shits.”
He followed me out of the little room. I glanced over my shoulder at the canister guy, who was back to their giggle gas. He was older than the wrestling duo, but still skewed young –no older than twenty, at least at first glance. Medical student, I assumed.
Soon I lost Chucky again.
I don’t know how I ended up talking to a skinny short girl who had lost the friends she had come with too. She kept talking on and on, leaning close to me so I could listen better, about how hard it was to meet fun guys nowadays, how all men wanted was a quick fuck and ditch before sunrise. I found myself agreeing with almost everything she said. Her breath was warm and sweet, and her face was sticky with sweat, with a black curl that seemed glued to her forehead. I plucked it out, like an old scab. She giggled like a child. Deep black eyeliner ran down the corners of her eyes. I thought at first it had to be sweat, too, but it might as well have been tears. I asked her if she was alone there, but she didn’t hear me.
She ended up wandering off. I danced a little more, scouring the chaos that was the dance floor, and bought another beer. To my surprise, I found another familiar face. Jack was standing behind the broken pulpit where the DJ was, beside a cracked wall and standing over a pile of debris. It was easy to recognize him under the bright moonlight that seeped through a hole in the roof. Out of the city the moon was a really beautiful sight, all big and white and clear. I stared up at it for what felt like hours. It seemed magical. I wondered if what I took had been stronger than usual.
“There you are,” he mumbled when he noticed me. “I was wondering if you’d show up.”
I stretched my arms to the sides and gave a little curtsy, as if being presented by a pageant announcer. Jack walked up to me until he got real close, too close, towering over me with the confidence of someone who didn’t quite know me at all. I dug my hand inside my jacket pocket and gripped the handle of my nail file, just in case, for comfort.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said to him, looking down at a wet stain on his shirt.
“I’m glad you came.”
“Bet you are,” I smiled playfully. “Don’t get too used to it. I wouldn’t if it weren’t for my boyfriend’s birthday.”
His face dropped once more. I was starting to find it really fun, seeing how he got his hopes up and then smashing them to pieces with just a little word.
“Well, I’m glad I could be of use.”
“Oh, you really were,” I nodded, and took a sip.
Even in the little light I could notice Jack was still staring at me. I swallowed, and stared back. I knew he only wanted me now because I wasn’t available. And he really wanted me now. As entertaining as it was, toying with him, my grudge kept festering, giving me ideas. I brought a finger to my mouth and nibbled on my nail. He tilted his head, following the movement of my hand. I just had to consider teasing him a little further. I wanted him to feel that frustration I had, when back then all I had wanted was for him to tell me how much he loved me, and instead all he gave me was a nervous chuckle and a misplaced hand.
“Who’s the freak with the funny tie?”
Jack pointed at someone in the crowd, striding over to us. Once the light flashed on him I recognized Chucky. He had spotted us talking, and by the look of it, he had noticed something about Jack that he didn’t quite like.
“He’s my boyfriend,” I sighed as I had a drag. I saw what was coming from a mile away.
“ That ?”
I laughed between my teeth. “Come on, Jack, as if you were a certified goddamn hunk.”
“I don’t mean that, I just—” he scoffed, shifting his sight between him and me. “… Dammit, I just thought you’d be with someone more up to your level, Tiffany.”
“Up to my level, huh?” I raised my eyebrows. “You mean someone like you?”
He scoffed again. As soon as he got to us Chucky gave Jack’s shoulder a shove.
“Hey –what the fuck d’you think you’re doing?”
Jack turned to him, and without skipping a beat he flashed a big bright smile. “Hey, birthday boy—!”
“I asked you a question.”
I closed my eyes and gestured towards him. “This is Jack. He’s the one who tipped me about the party.”
“Oh,” Chucky frowned. “So you two know each other?”
“Well, yeah ,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “Hun, do you think weed just grows on trees?”
He barely seemed to listen to me. He was far too busy glaring at Jack, who just now seemed to be getting a bit uncomfortable.
“So, uh… How’re you enjoying the festivities?” Jack asked him.
“You know,” Chucky muttered, tilting his head dangerously to the side, just barely having the balance not to fall. “… Enjoying it. So far.”
Jack gave a little chuckle and nodded. “That’s good, man!” he said, and took a gulp from his beer. “That’s good. Say, where did you get the bitching tie?”
Chucky smiled, still askew. His eyes were already wild. “It was a gift.”
Jack shot me a confused smile. I knew what was gonna happen.
Indeed, Chucky smashed Jack’s head with his bottle. It burst in a rain of glittering wet glass. Jack dropped his own –and Chucky grinned a little wider, between barely repressed rage and sheer joy –and shoved the broken bottle shards into his guts. Jack gasped and groaned and stumbled backwards, too shocked to do anything, to even hurt. Chucky pulled out the broken bottle and threw it to the side –it was good for starting off, but not very fun for keeping it up –and he took out his knife from his coat pocket. I quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed, out of habit, but I wanted to see what he’d do next. Chucky didn’t want to waste any time either. He stabbed him, and twisted the knife with one quick turn of the wrist. Jack groaned, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. Finally, it hurt. Blood began to flow, bright red even in the dark. I couldn’t stifle a giggle. Chucky pulled out the knife and, just as Jack bent forwards and brought a hand to his wound, he grabbed his knife with both hands and continued stabbing him over and over on the back, until Jack collapsed, and then Chucky somehow managed, in his tipsy state, to kneel over him and keep on stabbing him. He kept stabbing him even after he had gone very much still.
“You really didn’t need to do that,” I said. I think he didn’t quite hear me either.
After a while Chucky finally decided he had stabbed him enough, wiped the knife on his jacket, and stood up with some effort. I patted his shoulder.
“Are you proud of yourself, now?”
Just then we realized that the music had stopped, and a few of the other people at the party were staring at us. Chucky spat on the floor and wiped his mouth.
“ The fuck you all looking at!? ” he yelled, raising the bloody knife.
“He’s just feeling a little sick,” I told the crowd. “It’s perfectly okay.”
And, to prove just how okay he was, Chucky puked on Jack’s bloody corpse.
Nobody did anything. What would they even do? Call the cops? At least Chucky wasn’t that stupid, thankfully. Still, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t pissed off.
“We’re not gonna be allowed back to these parties, you know,” I huffed, once we were back in the car, on our way back home. “Not if you keep pulling this shit.”
It had felt like ages in there, but the sky was still dark. Each time I managed to glance at the clock, as soon as I looked away I forgot what I had just read. Fully giving up on my carefully applied makeup, I rubbed my eyelids and yawned. The exhaustion was catching up with me. In about a couple hours or so, the hangover would be head-splitting.
“We’re getting old, Tiff.”
“What?”
“I said, we’re getting old.”
I just laughed. “Speak for yourself.”
“No, I’m being serious… Did you see all the people back there? Kids, teens… God, we’re so washed up.”
I turned to him for a second. He was being serious.
“It’s just a birthday, sweetface ,” I told him softly. “Don’t worry.”
“Y’know, I’d rather die than end up turning old and crusty,” he kept saying, shutting his eyes, pushing his head back. “Not being able to move, needing help to fucking piss ...”
“You don’t mean that.”
There was a tension in the air, something beyond him slaughtering Jack among a crowd of hopped-up people, beyond the clumsy breaking of our law of ‘ leave no witnesses ’. A part of me wanted to chew him out for flying off the handle so carelessly. Another part of me was silently glad he had killed Jack. Regardless, my mind was too scattered to even focus on any one subject to start talking. The alternative, to stay quiet all the way to the apartment, slow as I was going to avoid any accidents, wasn’t too appealing either.
“So this is it,” he muttered to himself. “It's not gonna get any better than this.”
I turned on the stereo, since for once Chucky didn’t seem interested in arguing about whose turn it was to choose the music. It was already halfway through, so I left the previous Sabbath tape in there. The echoing electric guitars made the headlight-illuminated road ahead of us seem even more haunting. I liked that; I just hoped it didn’t mess with Chucky’s head too much. There was no way of knowing all he had taken, and with how sullen he was, there was a chance he was a few seconds away from stumbling into a bad trip.
“ The lover of life’s not a sinner… The ending is just a beginning— ”
Chucky stared at his hands. I glanced at them too, out the corner of my eye, under the white glow of the dome light. They were rather pale, and I got a quick look of the soft blue of his veins, branching out from his wrists to his tense fingers, like tiny lightning bolts.
“I don’t think I ever had an X-ray done…” he said suddenly, slurring his words. “But there are bones and shit under my skin. Blood and meat and stuff.”
“There sure is.”
His voice turned lower. “We will be dead one day.”
“You came up with that revelation all on your own?”
“Doesn’t that disturb you?"
“Why would it? It’s the most normal thing there is,” I shrugged. “Are you thinking about your last will and testament already?"
“Don’t joke about that.”
I frowned. Weird . First time he ever said something like that. “What’s wrong, hun? You took too many downers?”
“No, I don’t think so… I just –I’ve been thinking…”
He kept quiet for a moment, long enough that I assumed he might have lost his train of thought. I focused back, as well as I could, on the road, the music, the smooth humming of the car engine and the whistling of the wind. The Prince tape was still unopened inside the glovebox. I thought about putting that one on, at least to lift up his mood a bit.
“You ever… Feel disconnected from your body, Tiff?”
A chill ran down my spine. I was expecting my mind to wander to any of my drugged experiences, anything from Hackensack pot to New York blow to the couple scattered experiences I’ve had with acid –but it went straight to Heath kissing me, on his dirty mattress, breathing on my neck –and I was floating away, somewhere above where my body was. I hadn’t thought about that in years.
“Yeah... I guess.”
“It’s… Sometimes it’s like… My body doesn’t tell me when to do… Human things,” Chucky muttered. I wondered just how high he had gotten, for it to keep him talking like that. “I know that sounds nuts. But, I mean… You know, I can forget to eat. To sleep. And that’s… Not normal . Right?”
“We’re not normal,” I reminded him, in a voice that tried to be comforting. “We’re not like the others… We’re special.”
Chucky breathed with some effort. It reminded me of when I was about to start crying. But he never cried. The sheer idea of him getting upset enough to cry, like an actual cry, tears and sniffles and all, was somehow terrifying. Unnatural. I couldn’t even try to imagine it.
“You know… When I was a kid, my mother told me I was special,” he said. “She always told me, ‘you’re the most special kid in the world’. I believed it, because of course I did, everyone wants to believe that. All mothers tell their kids that. But…”
I shot him a glance. He wasn’t staring at his hands any longer, and he didn’t cry. Now he was completely still, with empty eyes, leaning his head against the side window. I reached out to him and stroked his cheek.
“Darling…”
He didn’t move, didn’t hear me, gave no response. He seemed to be completely gone, locked up in his own head. He must be just tired, I told myself. Even still… Chucky didn’t act like that when he was tired. Hell, he was never this glum.
Could it really be just the drugs that hit him bad? I chewed on my lip, looking back into the night road.
Whatever it was, I hoped it was just a one-time thing.
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