Discussion Creative Writing Megathread

[Ladyybugged]

View attachment 183558

this made me cry, thank you <3

 

[deadbeatpoet]

King Nobody

I spent many long dark January days with
King Nobody, king of nothing
and laid in Nobody's King-sized bed
weaving my fingers through his graying beard
picking out the spiders that hung there
fat black burnt out lightbulbs
strung up reminders of a holiday
that ended two years ago

I would pluck them by their plump shining abdomens
and laugh and toss them into his mouth
he would chomp and grind them
between his ivory keys
where they would stick in chunks
painting sharps and flats
onto the white noise
that never ceased to pour from
his lips

Nobody's choir sang of nihilism
of nothing matterings
in Nobody's cathedral
you would tear off
a jagged piece of yourself
when the bowl came around
and every Sunday you left
with a little less of you

One day I took a spider for my own
from the body of King Nobody
and popped it into my own mouth
chewing and tracing its venom sac with sharp flicks
of my tongue
wondering how I had yet to be bitten back
in my feedings of King Nobody
who tunelessly clanked and clattered
outraged perhaps
that I could han
dle the poison
with more grace than he

 

[traumer]

at first all i heard was soft murmurs.
you crept into my floor, into my life
without leaving any clues.

after a while your gaze shifted,
your eyes started to act a little strange.
your teeth grew yellow, and sharper.

then i started waking up with headaches.
oops — you forgot your nails on my back,
buried down like a signature.

then i called it proof:
no name of my own, not even a roof.

i showed you my scars in hopes of being seen,
then i went back to exactly where i'd been.

i loved you like a dog,
and you betrayed me like a man.

 

[somethingsmthgirl]

Beauty isn't enough. She came slithering out in heaving motions in the back of her uncle's truck. One of her mother's tiny legs dangled down over the bedding as she laid, spread eagle, birthing her only child.
Years later she finds herself standing alone in green fields, the tall grasses whispering as they beat against one another to the arrhythmic current of the wind. She stares into them, into which descends a darkness where the shadows overlay one another and which may harbor animals and insects and all manner of life teeming in the dirt and the mud. A voice calls out to her and she turns to face her mother. She wears an oversized men's coat and has her arms folded over.
"It's fucking freezing, Sam."
Sam looks down. "Yeah," she says. Her little kiddie shoes are covered in streaks of green and her skin is sunburnt. She steps along in resignation and grabs her mother's hand.

 

[Tombadil]

kind of a long concept text i did. I realized i could never finish it as it did exhaust me a lot. I had the idea of making the main character an action hero in the course of the full story, but i realized there was not interest in this story. It is still kind of badly edited, i had no reason to go over it again like mentioned, but it gives me a fuzzy feeling it is at least anywhere.


Performances


Linn parked the car in the parking lot of "Mueller Import & Export GmbH". She got out and looked at the cold gray building that hid the company, like a sarcophagus in which a doomed giant had laid itself to rest.
I come back to this city and these companies like the lamb that is aware of the slaughter and yet finds no other way, Linn thought. She walked toward the building and it seemed to eye her with its cold gray glass eyes like a predator would its future prey.
Dark mist billowed from vents on the side of the building, a waste product of the production that lay in the hall next to the main building. Linn imagined the building exhaling its hatred. She had experienced enough the climate of fear and repression that prevailed in these companies.
Linn rang the front doorbell; the entryway was uninviting. She had seen a few entryways in the last few months, and they all looked almost the same by now. Uninviting, without any kind of decoration, the door locked. Abandoned and forbidding, as if any remaining employees had already left the building and one would be trespassing and unwanted.
Many companies had taken advantage of the pandemic to rid themselves of redundant jobs, and inflation had provided further opportunities to shed burdensome ballast and then refill the same positions with much worse conditions and much more workload.
For Linn, these entry points had become a symbol of the country's decline; the more run-down the jobs became, the harder the struggle for survival became for those who had always been on the wrong side of the fence.
Those who had jobs and wanted to keep them now had to jump through the burning hoop 3 times a day if they weren't dressed in pinstripes or were doctors.
For a long time nothing happened then the small communication system next to the door cracked and a less than friendly female voice asked," Yes please?"
"Linn Kaltwasser." Said Linn. " I have an interview with Ms. Denker in a few minutes."
The woman didn't say another word but the door buzzer could be heard and Linn entered.
No one came to greet her and the entire building was silent, another recurring experience over the past few months. A lot had changed in the corporate workspaces. Where once there had been bustle, Linn now found empty sparsely decorated hallways, and if anyone was to be found there, the person was unfriendly or annoyed.
Linn could see that there had once been a reception desk here, but there was no counter there anymore, and the door at the end of the room only allowed a view of a darkened hallway through the glass.
A staircase led up, however, and a note was taped next to the stairway.
"Please sign in on the top floor."
Linn went up the stairs and stood there again in front of a locked door. There was no doorbell.
She leaned against the railing and looked out the large window on the other side of the stairway.
Everything that day was gray. It had started to rain moderately and both the industrial area and the sky above it looked like something out of an old black and white movie. There was no one in the parking lots, but a few isolated cars were parked in front of a warehouse. Nothing was moving in the whole scenery, neither people nor vehicles.
She heard the door open. "Good afternoon," said a voice. What one would expect when one had spent some time in these companies, Linn thought. Not a friendly voice, slightly smarmy and not used to having to feign friendliness at all. The kind of man who always washes up in these companies and who is characterless enough to stay stuck there. Linn had expected nothing less.
Linn turned and extended her hand to the man:" Good afternoon, Linn Kaltwasser."
"Reinhard." Said the man coolly and shook your hand. "I'm the branch manager."
His hand wasn't dry or damp, but it was slippery in an unpleasant way. Linn was glad when he let go of her hand.
She eyed the man. Reinhard wore a white coat like a doctor or lab technician that stretched over his immense belly, his face had a stern and at the same time arrogant expression that made him seem like a caricature. On the basis of these personal details, Linn had already formed a picture of the company; it was easy to draw a conclusion about the company's structures from this. With the relevant experience, at least.


And most of the time she was right. Representing all others of his kind, he did not even bother to conceal the nimbus of fat, lazy arrogance.
Certain hierarchies bring certain characters to the surface, and many of the "leaders" Linn had encountered in these companies fit this mold.
It was Linn's experience that these characters were the rule rather than the exception in "leadership" positions. She felt a brief moment of sadness that she had not managed to escape these people and these companies, but did not let it show.
"and here we are again." She thought. "With the same friendly psychopaths as always."
The good thing was that she would never work in this company, because she already knew how the interview would go. She had some character traits that were very unwelcome in companies like this, and the worst was smartness.
Reinhard meant to follow her.
He led her into an office where three other people were already waiting, the personnel manager and two deputy managers.
After a brief round of introductions, the personnel manager, who introduced herself as Ms. Denker, began asking questions.
"How did you find us?"
"Through an ad on the Internet," Linn replied.
"How do you imagine your future work here?" the HR manager asked with a bored, somehow unpleasantly touched face. This woman was immediately unappealing to Linn, as were the rest of the panel. Just like Reinhard, she fit the cliché of the corporate apparatchik with important boredom as she dropped into her chair with a dismissive gesture. It must be hard to have to deal with the mob when you could also use the time to bend under the Ceoś's desk.
None of Linn's answers seemed to satisfy this woman, or maybe she just always looked like she had just eaten something wrong and was supposed to be somewhere else.
Then she asked, "You've had a lot of different jobs in your life. How do you explain that and how did it happen?"
Linn knew what this awful woman was getting at.
The question, though expected, always made her tired and frustrated, but She tried not to let it show. Life had been hard for her, the eternal victim, and that she was now sitting here in front of these people only meant once again that she had lost in the game of life once more.
"Some companies have outsourced departments," Linn said, "Unfortunately, many companies are laying off workers today, and much of the industry is migrating. You know yourself that this leads to fragmented and disparate resumes."
"So you think it's bad luck - bad luck and unrelated events that led to this. Or was it perhaps due to you? After all, that's quite a striking feature of your resume?"
Linn looked at the uppity woman named Denker and said, "Yes, that's exactly what I said. So if that's not the answer you're satisfied with, what answer would have been sufficient if not the truth?"
Fat Reinhard, who was sitting to Linn's right, laughed maliciously. Linn decided again that she didn't want to work in this company, not at the price of having to deal with these horrible people. And she was doomed anyway.
Linn gave the fatso a nasty look, feeling the hair on the back of her neck literally stand up because of the sheer disgustingness of these people.
The horrible Mrs. Denker made a face like a sour lemon and seemed to sink even deeper into her chair, her puffy face pulling the corners of her mouth even deeper down.
"I think we can certainly have this conversation by exercising a minimum of mutual courtesy." Said Linn.
"Very well," said Mrs. Denker with an introverted mischievous expression on her face.
Fat Reinhard laughed again in his smarmy way so that his fat belly and his entire body shook restrainedly.
"You worked at Walter Export for 2 years in 2005," said Frau Denker.
"Why was it only 2 years? Did SIe quit or was it at the request of the company? Or did the company go out of business by chance?"
Fat Reinhard was still laughing softly with the grin of a fatted hyena.
Linn sighed. She took a sip from the glass of water in front of her and bared her teeth as the cool water ran down her throat.


"OK," Linn said, glancing sideways at the fat Reinhard whose bulging belly still moved under the white absurdly stretched smock.
"I separated from the company because I didn't conform to internal developments." Said Linn briefly." "At that time, the warehouse workers were laid off and forced into severance agreements at conditions at which one could no longer live even then."
She threw a disgusted look into the round which showed openly what she herself thought of her interlocutors.
"But of course such procedures are completely foreign to you, good woman, so your question is of course more than justified." Said Linn venomously.
With tired and important gestures, Ms. Denker then asked in an even more aggressive tone, "You do write in your resume that you are good at languages."
The emphasis on "good" alone was probably meant to imply that this would be more than doubtful.
Linn looked briefly at her lap, where her hands were now clenched into fists.
"OKAY." she then said simply and continued, looking directly at her counterpart.
""I believe this is not going anywhere and we should break up on it now. We are not on the same level or anywhere near it and this is becoming a farce more and more. So I will just walk out of this door now to avoid either of us from stealing each other's time as I suppose we all have other things to do."
Fat Reinhard looked at her and now looked even more like a toad as he said with a surprised tone, "That's definitely honest."
Linn stood up and took her jacket off the back of the chair, knocking the glass of leftover water into fat Reinhard's lap as she did so.
"Oh sorry," Linn said. "How clumsy of me."
Then she left the room and walked quickly down the stairwell and out the front door to her car.
She drove back the way she had come, through the industrial area and the suburb of the big city called Horn. The city had been different when she had lived here, the decay was obvious. Even if life had always been gray, she thought. For her, it hadn't been much different.
Living in this land today was just a transition from a harsh land to an even more barren one, with even more rocky and hostile terrain. She could see from a distance the skyscraper in which her father had lived for a long time and in which he had made his final escape, like so many with a bottle beside him whose contents were slowly dripping onto the dirty carpet.


She left the city via Bundesstr. 61 and passed through rural suburbs. Here the wear and tear and decay were less visible because there was more money living here than in the suburbs. The further she drove, the more the clusters of houses became isolated and replaced by fields and forest. She stopped at a small rest stop and had a coffee and a few puffs on her e-cigarette. Then she continued her journey until she passed the large yellow sign with the inscription "Limburg 10 KM" near Asendorf.
She drove through the small town where her mother and brothers lived and to which she had never wanted to return. Just another place with bad people that had never been a home for a couple of kids who had already started with bad cards.


"This ugly little town is like a lake whose surface consists of blatant malice and poorly disguised degeneracy, so toxic to children who could have used help instead of violence that they can only sink in it," she said softly, quoting one of the first lines of the text she was working on.


last chance powerdrive


"The highways jammed with broken heroes on a last chance powerdrive".
Born to run, Bruce springsteen

Linn drove through the side streets to avoid the pedestrian zone that the former business street of the small town was today. There was no one in this town she wanted to see again anyway, so she avoided the busier areas of town.
Memories ran in her head like old movies she never wanted to see again. Maybe it was not a good idea to come back here. "Maybe living wasn't such a good idea after all," she whispered, lost in thought, as she drove down Wagner Street. She saw a little girl sitting scared in a doorway, silent and trembling with fear, then she was past and the Linn of her youth disappeared from her sight. She stopped on a parking strip on the side of the street and opened the glove compartment to take out a bottle of water. She had that bitter taste in her mouth again that she never got rid of.
She drove on and passed the town library where she had often escaped to in the past. John Steinbeck and Rudyard Kipling had been there for her.
She was glad when she left the center behind and arrived in the small suburb where her mother lived. Steinsee was not even a suburb, just two roads leading past many fields and no more than a handful of houses.
She drove her little VW Up into the driveway of the house where her mother lived. The front yard was well kept but not overgrown. The hedge that lined the driveway had grown considerably since Linn had last been here. It wasn't the house of your childhood, Linn thought, and none of you would have returned to it voluntarily. Her mother had moved here since the breakup with Linn's stepfather, enough miles away to escape at least a few memories.
She rang the doorbell and waited. Her heart pounded in her chest. No one answered. No sounds came from the house itself. Linn walked back along the small paved path from the front door to the driveway and along the side of the house, past a large shed with dry wood for the winter. She could see that the shed was no longer in the best condition, some boards were loose and hanging down the side and one corner seemed to be struggling to hold the weight of the roof. Overall, the house was still in pretty good shape, but when you looked closer it was obvious that it wasn't being maintained like it used to be.
Linn had recently spoken with her younger brother Jo on the phone and learned that their mother had declined in health.


She opened the door to the winter garden behind the house. The small passage behind it was narrow and crowded with garden tools. The conservatory presented the same picture. Decorative plates from the last millennium hung on the wall. She could see through the large panoramic windows into the garden.
The day was gray and the garden looked uninviting under the rain pregnant sky. Linn remembered how beautiful the garden could be when it was in full bloom and seemed to be straight out of a painting by Monet.
In one of the beds at the edge of the small pond in the middle of the garden, Linn's mother was weeding. She looked different than Linn remembered her, somehow smaller and slower.
Linn walked through the small wooden gate that stood at the end of the small path of cobblestones. In a few months it would shine in all colors like a wooden crown of flowers.
Her mother did not see her at first as Linn walked towards her, she had her eyes on the earth she had been tending and cultivating for more than 20 years. Then she looked up and saw Linn. "Mother," Linn said.
Her mother stood up and threw the weeds she had just weeded into the plastic bucket that stood next to her.
Her mother stood up and looked at Linn. "You look thin," her mother then said. Linn was startled by how old and tired her mother looked, as if the drawing of her features had been blurred by time and the world so that one could only guess at the woman Linn had known. "I'm fine," Linn said.
She touched her mother briefly on the shoulder. "The garden looks smaller than I remember."
"It's just fuller," the old woman said. "It's harder for me to keep up with the work some days, and I see a lot of things differently today." She looked at Linn with an expressionless face. "It doesn't matter if the garden looks a little wild. Who cares what the neighbors say."
Her mother patted the soil on her hands and slowly walked to the edge of the pond and looked in.
"I was surprised you called," her mother said.
"It's been so long."
"Now I'm here mum." said Linn.
Her mother washed her hands in the pond and said, "You need to eat something. It's not good to be so skinny. I'll make you some minestrone."
For a brief moment, her mother's image was overlaid by that of a younger, wirier woman washing her hands in the pond, and Linn heard her voice. "That's our family name, Kaltwasser. We have always lived by the water, as did my parents before the expulsion. The color of the water is unique to each stream and body of water and depends on what is floating in it. The more dirt that collects at the bottom, the darker it gets."

Linn followed her mother into the house. It was not the house she had grown up in; when her mother moved here, she was almost an adult. After she had separated from Linn's father-in-law. Linn rarely tried to think about the house of her childhood and youth, even though it was always in her thoughts. Sometimes before she fell asleep, in that strange strip of no man's land of the soul somewhere between sleeping and waking, she would creep anxiously through the lonely rooms of her childhood that smelled of violence and hopelessness, like the cold sweat of animals crammed too long in a dark room.


"Where are your clothes?" asked her mother. Linn went to the front door and opened it. Then she went to the car and got a big suitcase on wheels and a travel bag.
Her mother raised her eyebrow when she saw Linn's luggage but said nothing.
"I sold what little I owned on Ebay...or threw it away. It's okay."
A little bit of sadness reflected on her mother's face for a little bit of time before she wordlessly lowered her gaze and walked into the kitchen. She walked more stooped than before and slower.
Linn went upstairs to the upper floor and unpacked her things in the guest room.
She put her few clothes in the closet and her toothbrush and some personal hygiene products in the upstairs bathroom.
Then she took a small document bag out of the suitcase and sat down on the bed. She took off her shoes and leaned against the wall. Then she opened the document bag and pulled out some newspaper clippings.
On top was a full-page article from the regional newspaper. " Youth from Limburg missing for years found murdered in Romania."
And below the headline in smaller letters. "Heart, kidney and lungs were removed and the body thrown into the river in a garbage bag with stones."
Below that was a photo of a pale and rapt-looking boy with a handsome but strikingly narrow face. "Linn lightly stroked the faded ink of the print with her finger as if she could touch the person who no longer existed that way one more time. "I couldn't be with you," she said. "I had to go far away from here. And now I'm here again. And you've been gone for a long time."
Suddenly it was very cold in the room, and Linn could see in the corner of the room a girl sitting pressed against the wall with her head down shivering and a boy sitting next to her holding her hand.
She pulled her legs to her chest and buried her head between her arms and a few tears ran down her face and landed on the white bedspread.
After dinner Linn went for a walk in the forest which was only a kilometer away from her mother's house. Here she had often practiced shooting with the air rifle with Jo before she left Limburg for good and returned only rarely for a long time. She had hoped so much never to see all this again, this place and its people. She still found it surprising how there could be such a peaceful place only a few hundred meters from the subliminal and open violence of this city. She walked along the forest path, touching the trees that lined it with her hands.


It was already evening when she returned. The sky above the house was bathed in orange-red light as the coming darkness cast its shadow ahead. In the kitchen, her mother stood preparing dinner, and her brother sat at the kitchen table.
"Hello." said Linn.
"Well look what the wind brought in." said Jo.
Linn's mother gave him a stern look, but said nothing.
"Jo," said Linn.
Joachim said nothing, he looked at Linn and nodded his head slightly.
Linn sat down at the free place at the table where there was already a plate with place setting.
Her mother put the dinner on the table, there was poultry with rice.
Linn had the feeling of being a bit outside her body, half between this world and half between the past world.


Jo and Linn's mother talked about his job in the warehouse of a forwarding agency in the city, which absurd decisions the management had made again and which temporary wage slaves of the rampant temporary employment had already been disposed of.
Linn sat between her family and listened, she did not know what to say. There was a heaviness in the room that would always be there when they got together.
There were too many monsters creeping through their shared memories that had come long ago to stay. Most of the time they stayed hidden and could only be seen out of the corner of your eye in the shadows of a room sparsely lit by twilight, and if so only for a brief blink, but gone they never were.
Linn followed the conversation for a while without saying anything.
After a while, Jo looked at you and abruptly asked. "Why did you come back here?"
"Well, I told you on the phone that I lost my job," Linn said.
"We've been centralized, which means there's only one office in the whole country with 15 people instead of 300 who only handle what gets lawyered up. Everything else gets sat out if the AI can't get rid of it."
"Wait a minute." said Jo, confused. "Haven't you guys had fairly complex cases to work on? Surely no AI can do that?"
"That's not being processed anymore," Linn repeated.




Hermann Melville, "These days id prefer not to."
"Bartleby"


"It's cheaper to get life signs from the few claimants who have the guts to sue for their claims just in this case instead of actually employing people to process routine claims. Brave new world."
"Unbelievable." said Jo. "But the world is visibly changing in that direction for all who are not totally blind."
"The fewer jobs there are the harder the stand of each worker, the less customer friendly the companies the higher the profit. The more people looking for a job the lower the labor costs for the few remaining jobs. At least that's the calculation."
"I still have to try to find a job," Linn said. "I'm committed to it."
"You don't seem particularly enthusiastic," her mother said reprovingly."
Linn poked at her food.
"Yes and no." she said. "I can't be naive anymore. I wouldn't go back to the office in this country. It's a constant show and tell of sociopaths and narcissists, rewarded to whoever has the most toxic work atmosphere. In the end, only the pinstripes will win, everyone else is just there to wear out and applaud that. I am too old and know these structures too well to have any illusions. I have experienced too many of these "leaders". "


"It'll work out." said Linn's mother. "I'm sure it will." replied Linn.

After dinner, Linn sat on the porch with Jo and drank a beer. "Now you're here." he said again. "I didn't expect you to come back here one day."
"Neither did I," Linn said. "I guess it's better than ending up on the street. There's a housing shortage and I wouldn't have been able to pay for the apartment. Let alone heat it with the completely overpriced electricity and gas."
"Yes, of course it sucks that the company was sold - especially since you were able to get a foothold so late in life."
He took a sip of his beer and lowered his head so his hair fell in his face.
"I wish I'd been watching out for you. With what happened back then."
Now Linn could see how old he'd gotten since they'd broken up in a fight so long ago.
The beer bottle in her hand trembled and she felt a cold shiver run down her spine and the tinge of old-gone-but-never-shed shame, like a bad taste in her mouth that never really went away.

"I paid a high price for it," Linn said. "It defined my entire life. It still does."
"You mean finding a job again?" asked Jo.
"My life is fractured and fragmented," said Linn. "And I'm on the cusp of getting old and detached and cynical. I don't know."
She took another sip of beer.
"I have an interview at Dieseltrans next week," she said then." are you still working there in the warehouse?"
"For 12 years," Jo said. He looked worried. Then he said," I think I need something stronger tonight."
After a short pause in which he took another long sip, he looked at Linn from the side and said hesitantly:
"If I may give you a hint." Linn shrugged her shoulders, guessing what was coming now.
"I know that there are three people working there in the bureau who mobbed you hard.
Back then. I only much later realized how hard they tortured you. And what it would cost us all."

Linn looked at the edge of the forest some distance away, trying to ignore the memories that were just rising again from the temporary grave of displacement.
"You definitely shouldn't work there," Jo said, "They're still horrible people. And even if they weren't, after what they've done to you, catastrophic situations would be inevitable."
"I'm not going to work there," Linn said finally. "But please let's change the subject. Even after all this time, it hasn't gotten any better."
"I'm sorry." said Jo. "You got the worst of all of us. I can understand why you didn't really want to come back. You got your ass kicked by everyone, had to fight off Henryś violence at home, and were treated like scum by the only person who could have helped. You had every right in the world to be broken."
"You don't want to know how broken I was, and it doesn't matter anymore," Linn said shortly.
Jo set his beer bottle down on the wooden steps beside him and buried his face in his hands.
"I was hoping you could find a home somewhere." he said. "And now you're here and can't find a job because the people who tortured you back then work here in the companies. "
"It's nice when home embraces you when you return," Linn said bitterly. "Sweet sweet home."

"I stayed here and I see these people every day," Jo said.
"Your life was destroyed but these people persist and you are fine. Sometimes you could just throw up."

"I lived out there for some time," Linn said. "After a long time, it was possible. But as you can see, I couldn't permanently escape Limburg. Apparently, I wasn't the only one there."

"You also came back because of the death of Nicola Reiser?" asked Joshua.
That he wasn't surprised testified to his quick thinking. They had all been sold short in this life thought Linn.

"I came back because there was nothing else," Linn said. "I want to know what happened to my friend."
"Last chance powerdrive." said Jo, taking another sip of his beer.
"He was the only one there," Linn said. "I was an outcast and he was the only person who even talked to me anymore. The only one who treated me like a human being instead of fucking me or torturing me."
"I tried to keep an eye on him," Jo said. "He slipped away from me just as quickly." He spat some of his beer onto the dry grass. "This town ate him just as fast as it ate you. Every once in a while, the bloodlust of the fat well-fed suits in City Hall and their degenerate brats needs to be satiated. And your horniness, by all accounts." He sounded even older now.

"I've been their punching bag and piece of meat for everything long enough," LInn said.
"These days I would prefer not to."

The next day, Linn sent an email to Dieseltrans saying she had already accepted another vacant position and would have to cancel the interview. She thanked them for the invitation, although she had hoped that most of the people she had known would be dead.

Then she called her advisor at the employment office. "Good afternoon," she said. She had never spoken to the woman named Mueller, but she had received a notification that she was in charge of her.
"They sent me a job opening that I had to apply for," Linn said.
"Someone who works there warned me that there were several people working there who had bullied me a long time ago. It made me very sick for a long time," Linn said tersely.
"I just sent an email to the company for that reason with the false information that I had already accepted another vacant position," she continued.
"You can cancel any future claims I may have, of course, but it was the only option I had," Linn said."
For a short while, there was a confused silence on the line, then Ms. Mueller, the consultant, said uncertainly:


"In that case, we probably won't cancel any claims for you. Probably. Under certain circumstances. Please write us a mail and present the case again in detail. We will then discuss it in cooperation with the next level."
"Thank you very much." said Linn. "I will send you the mail today. Your mail address was on the notification, after all."

In the afternoon, Linn went back to the city. Every time she passed the first houses and the apartment complexes condensed into the place she knew, she felt sick. Not the kind that made her throw up, but the kind of nausea that felt like mild poisoning where the stomach itself tightened into a tortured little knot in her body. She drove to Zimmermannstr., also called the "ghetto" in LImburg. Here the apartments were cheap and the prospects poor. It was enough to say that one lived in Zimmermannstr. to be eyed suspiciously in the city.


She stopped in front of a gray house, remembering that the apartments here were subsidized by the municipality. The kind of house that would have been called a housing bunker in the past. She went to the door and pressed the button for the bell under the name "Reiser". Nothing happened for some time, but then the buzzer for the door went. Linn stepped into the stairwell. It was dark and gray, the stairs and floor were covered with the same squeaky laminate that had apparently always been used in these houses.


The stairwell smelled musty and old of stale and expired life.
She went up the stairs to the second floor.
The door next to which hung the sign "Reiser" stood ajar.
"What do you want?" asked a woman's voice from behind the door, as old and brittle as the stairwell itself.
"I'm Linn Kaltwasser," Linn said. "Could we talk for a minute?"
"Linn." said the old woman. "I remember you. Always so pale and scrawny."
Silence. "I'd heard you'd moved far away from here."
She opened the door a crack wider and Linn could see her face, gray and sunken. Once a pretty woman, Linn had visited the Reisers a few times.
The old woman slowly opened the door a step further and let Linn in.
She offered her nothing and walked down the hall into the living room. The rooms were not cluttered but the shelves and closets were filled with all sorts of knickknacks, from small carved wooden elephants to dolls of various brands. She sat down in the wing chair that stood in the center of the room in a combination with a small table and sofa.
In the corner, between woven baskets filled with old magazines, was a small dresser with pictures of Luka. Linn went to her and looked at the pictures briefly, a shot of Luka at school with a school bag and a shy smile on his face, the small satchel was next to him.
"That's all that's left," Mrs. Reiser said.
Next to a large partially burned candle was a photo of Linn with Luka. Both were sitting on a park bench next to each other, reading a book. It was one of the few photos of Linn that existed from that time and as far as she knew the only one with Luka.
"You weren't here." Mrs. Reiser said. "And I know you ran away from the same thing that killed him. The same violence."
"Maybe it would have been different if I had stayed," said Linn. "I couldn't stay."
"I know what happened then," Mrs. Reiser said. "The same thing that happened to Luka after that. What good would it have done if this town had killed you too?" she asked wearily.
"The only mistake is that you are here." said Mrs. Reiser now in a somewhat clearer, almost angry voice.
"This town wasn't good to kids like you then, It won't be good to you now."
Linn put the photo of Luka back on the small dresser and went to the window. She pushed aside one of the drawn curtains slightly and looked out the window.
A young woman was pushing a baby carriage down the street, smoking as she did so; otherwise the street was empty at this hour. The bright light of the summer day was clear and warm, making the scene of the poor street seem friendlier. Summer was coming. For a moment, Linn saw a young woman who had never existed with a child by her hand and a smiling, handsome man in a T-shirt and loose jeans walking beside her and talking to her. She blinked briefly and when she opened her eyes again the ghosts were gone and only the gray asphalt and empty street there.
"Why are you here, Linn?" asked Mrs. Reiser.


"I wanted to know what happened to the past," Linn said vaguely. /I have nothing left to lose,/ she thought.
"Didn't go so well, did it?" Mrs. Reiser laughed dryly and cynically. "Yes, that's how it is with the past, you carry it with you wherever you go. Luka couldn't run away from this city either, and God knows he tried."
"I read about Luka's death in the newspaper," Linn said. She pulled the curtain of the window slightly closed in a nervous almost unconscious movement, not knowing exactly why. Her hand trembled slightly.
"I was wondering if you could tell me what happened." She asked. Mrs. Reiser went to a dresser in the corner of the room and took out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from a drawer.
She held the pack out to Linn. "I don't smoke." said Linn, taking a cigarette from the pack and lighting it.
"Neither do I." said Mrs. Reiser and lit a cigarette as well.
Then she took another black object from the same drawer.
Mrs. Reiser opened the small leather bag and pulled out a small folder, also bound in dark leather. She opened it and carefully pulled out a piece of paper. It was a newspaper clipping on which it said:

"Teenager from Limburg found dead in Romania."

Linn took the small piece of paper and looked at it. A photo of Luka, if you looked closely you could see the rough print dots it was made of.

"When exactly did Luka disappear?" asked Linn.
"Pretty much five months ago," said Mrs. Reiser.

"It's been eight years since I've been here," said Linn. "He was 10 then, he was so young, but he was..."
"The only one who talked to you." said Mrs. Reiser.
"I remember that story. They avoided you like the devil avoids holy water because the sons of the important people of this fine town had chosen you as a victim." she continued.
"They were all too cowardly to do anything. Even enjoyed torturing you every day and watching you slowly go to the dogs. I, too, acted like I didn't know anything, never said anything. Every week you came by and tutored Luka and became more and more silent and pale. I always kept my mouth shut. It was none of my business. And then the brothers and sisters of the sons of the finest members of the city council did the same to him."
She coughed and took a deep drag from her cigarette. "He ran away from that," she said then.
"And died alone in a foreign land after being disemboweled like cattle."

Linn was silent and leaned against the windowsill, memories long suppressed swirling up in her mind like dust over a long forgotten grave in the desert over which a sudden wind was blowing.
It cost her almost physical strength to concentrate and push back the images of the past that had eaten into her mind.
"I didn't mean to hurt you," Mrs. Reiser said without any hint of sentimentality. "You hurt yourself when you came back here."
"I had to jump over my shadow," Linn replied. "What was left of it."


Linn handed the photo back to Mrs. Reiser. "Do you have any idea who might know more about Lukas' whereabouts and how he ended up in Romania?" she asked.
"He's been very withdrawn lately. "Mrs. Reiser said. "I had no idea what had really happened to him. What was done to him... at school. After he died, I talked to some people and apparently it wasn't a kid-on-kid thing, apparently he was tormented every day by people 4-5 years older than him." She hesitated. "I didn't understand it all at the time and I was still working and I should have taken him out of school. Then none of this would have happened. But I was too busy with work and ... life. And he never talked about what was ... done to him."
"The first thing they instill in you is shame," Linn said quietly, lost in thought. "So you don't talk about it. What does a child have to counter that?"
Mrs. Reiser nodded sadly and put the photo back in the leather folder.
"I didn't do any more research after that. I couldn't bear it. I heard that he was supposedly in Berlin for a while and took drugs, but I didn't want to know any more about it.
It didn't matter any more," she said. Her voice now sounded a little more like the voice of someone who had been locked up alone in these gray rooms with his thoughts for too long.
"I heard that Matthias Remmler was one of them," said Mrs. Reiser. "He's working today in a petrol station just before the exit to the B6. The petrol station belongs to his brother Ralf, who also has a garage there."

Linn looked at the window and looked out again so that Mrs. Reiser couldn't see the marks that the mere mention of the names left on her face. She gritted her teeth and said, "Thank you. Were there any findings from the police after Luka was reported missing?"
"He was a teenager from this street, this neighborhood," Mrs. Reiser said.
"The police apparently spoke to his teachers, who knew exactly how he had been tortured and had looked the other way the whole time because the Remmler family has seats on the city council. As before. Who of them wants to mess with high society? Certainly none of them."
"I know," said Linn. "I know these... people well enough." "Apparently they also told the police that he's a good-for-nothing who's also a drug addict. The investigators said something like that." She took a deep drag from her cigarette and exhaled the dark smoke.
"Everyone watched and when Lukas' performance got worse and worse, they just wrote him off even more."
"Yes," said Linn. "Nothing has changed."
"Apart from that, nothing ever came of the investigation," said Mrs. Reiser. "I kept asking, but there was never anything new. Until the news came that he was dead and his body had to be transferred from abroad."
She went over to the very old-looking cupboard behind the sofa and took out a bottle of cheap scotch and a glass. " I can't take any more Linn."
"Thank you Mrs. Reiser." said Linn. "I'm going to leave now. I'm sorry."
Linn looked back into the apartment once more as she closed the door from the outside. Mrs. Reiser stood in the living room, glass in hand, a gray haggard-looking woman in a gray room drinking alone in the early afternoon.
Linn left the house and went to her VW. She was glad to leave the heaviness of the big, poor building behind her, even if the conversation with Mrs. Reiser had taken a lot out of her.


She drove back to her mother's house at Birkenstrasse 12. Her mother was in the garden, cutting the hedge with a large pair of secateurs. "Hello dear," said Maria, which was her mother's first name. "Hi mom," said Linn. "You look tired." said Maria. "Where have you been?"
"I went to Mrs. Reiser's and offered my condolences," said Linn.
"I've seen you shopping a few times." said Maria. "It's no wonder she doesn't work anymore, who wouldn't get sick with what happened?"
"Yes, she's old... getting older." said Linn. "First your husband's death, then Luka disappears to... never come back."
"How old my girl looks." Maria thought at that moment. Linn had inherited the Kaltwassers' genetics, and the symmetrical, clear face shape with the intense green eyes and the coal-black silky hair.
The attractiveness that had developed over the years was always in contrast to her hardened expression, and only now did Maria realize how old her little girl had become in this pretty woman's body.
"I'm tired mom," Linn said. "I'm going to lie down for a while."


In her room, Linn stripped down to her underwear and sat on the bed.


She felt the leaden heaviness of the day, this city and the uncertain future on her shoulders, like a weight that pressed not only on her body but also on her soul. She ran her fingers over the glowing scar on her forearm.If you looked closely, you could see that there were letters carved deep into her skin, an L and a D.


In the mirror that stood in the corner of the room, she saw a woman in her underwear sitting on the edge of the bed and touching the scar on her forearm, which somehow seemed to glow an even more blood-red shade than usual today.
It was clearly visible on the back of her forearm, just before the base of her hand, where Linn would wear it for the rest of her life.
During job interviews, she sometimes pushed her shirt back a little so that the scar could be seen, because it would be noticeable later anyway. Presumably, in addition to her broken CV, this scar was also part of the puzzle that prevented her from finding work again.


13.1 The bones in your back.


In the mirror of memory, she saw for a moment an attractive middle-aged man and a slightly younger Linn. The man held her in his arms and ran his hand along the scar that formed an "LD". "What does it mean?" he asked.
"It's my other name," said Linn. "The name the world gave me."
"I know that story." said Ben, the artist. "It was the world that gave her that name and made her cut it into herself. And then it despised and condemned her for wearing it."
Remembering, Ben stretched her bare and flexible foot and kissed the scars on the sole of her foot.
"What did you do to yourself?" he asked. "Everything." she said curtly and sank deeper into his arms.
"You can make scars unrecognizable today." he said.
"Maybe one day." said the younger Linn in the mirror in the man's arms. "Who knows?"
"I'm sure you'll have a lot more names." said the memory in the mirror.
Linn lay down on the bed and covered herself up. After a while, she fell asleep in a curled-up position.

She woke up in the afternoon, got up and drew the curtains. The autumn light shone through the window and bathed the room in an orange pre-evening glow. She sat on the edge of the bed and thought about buying alcohol before what lay ahead of her today. Then she sighed and stretched. She combed her hair in front of the mirror. Then she began to practise her yoga forms, something she hadn't done for a long time. She warmed up her wrists and performed the crow in perfect balance, followed by the scorpion and the simple headstand. Then she opened the large sports bag and took out a Japanese wooden sword. She took a deep breath and performed a complete sword freestyle, finishing with slow meditation in the one-legged defense pose.
These forms had always helped her when the emptiness and the desire to disappear or hurt herself again became too strong. She had shown a talent for fighting, as she had for so many other things.
This time she didn't need the mirror to see Ben hugging her from behind as she slowly practiced her defensive stance, sword in hand. She could almost feel his hand on her trained shoulders and upper arms and hear him say." When I saw you fight, it was the first time I really saw you. How could you not fall in love with someone so fast, so beautiful and so broken?"
She kept her eyes closed for a while longer to hold on to the peace she had found in the form - and the memory of a past kiss at the point where neck and back muscles met, forming an almost artistic relief.

She traced the simple stroke patterns of the basic positions with slow, methodical movements, still standing on one leg. As so often, she drifted further into the past in meditation. Linn and Ben in his hut at the edge of the forest, a quieter, more broken version of herself that Ben had picked up like a stray dog.
She remembered the silence in the cabin, where he had taught her to speak long before she could even think of speaking for herself. She had often longed to return to the silence of that time. The only sounds there had been in the hut were the old analog Olympia typewriter and her drawing pens, the clashing of wooden training swords in the afternoon and the rhythmic, angry and passionately sweaty breathing in the evening as their bodies joined and became one.
As Linn continued to let her mind wander through the landscapes of the past, meditating in front of the mirror with the training weapon, she could hear Ben's voice again, almost as if he was with her now.
She saw them both lying naked on the bed and he was playing with her long black hair with one hand and running the other over the vertebrae of her back, which led to her neck like a bridge of bone between her pronounced yet feminine muscles while he softly sang a Bruce Springsteen line:
"And I watch the bones in your back like the stations of the cross."

....

-----------------------------------------------------
.....

Linn tried to ignore him, but even after all this time it hurt more than she had expected. She tried to let the mockery bounce off her but couldn't stop her compressed lips from starting to tremble.
"So that's Linny- Dinny." said Ralf. Paula laughed softly and smarmily and looked at Linn with blatant smarmy malice. "Matthias said that you were a crybaby and that it was great fun to diss you." He shrugged his shoulders. "You weren't there when I came to school so we had to make fun of your little friend." He laughed now too.
"He was just as much of a joke as you were back then, apparently."
"Oh yes, the skinny little spectacled gnome." Paula said with a grin. "My last will and testament, a man with glasses."

Linn clenched her fists. "Once again. I just want to know what happened, then I'm gone you wankers."
"Jesus, you never told me the old one was so annoying," Ralf said to his brother.
"No, that's new." said Matthias.
"What could have happened?" Ralf then asked Linn with a disparaging look on his face.
"He was just a loser. We may have beaten him up from time to time, but what else can you do with losers?
He was always crying too. Came to school more and more coked up at some point and wasn't so much fun to beat up anymore, but he was still funny enough to laugh about."
"But the beating up was still possible later," said Paula, taking a sip of her beer and then making a half-gurgling, half-whimpering noise with the drink in her mouth, whereupon she almost choked with laughter.
"At some point it was gone," said Ralf. "He died somewhere where junkies die. Where was that? Romania?"
He laughed again, chuckling. "Nobody cared, why should they? A couple of people halfway to the Czech Republic did another prank with the bum."
"What?" said Linn angrily. "What kind of scum are you? Where was that?"
Matthias glanced at his brother.
"Uäähhh scum now Linny - Dinny is getting angry, save yourself who can."
A car pulled up at the gas pump and he tightened up a little.
"Now fuck off," said Matthias. "There's nothing more to say. We've got customers in a minute."
Linn stood in the room with a trembling hand and looked like a beaten dog.
There was so much she had wanted to do in this situation, but now she just walked away with the spiteful laughter of these people at her back. She thought about what these people had done to Luka and felt tears welling up in her eyes at the thought of it.
She was glad that they couldn't see her face as she walked away.
She stopped short as she pulled the door open and Matthias called after her.
"You've turned out really pretty, Linny-Dinny. I can show you even more ways to get ready today than back then. You'll like it again. Come by again sometime."
The roaring laughter of the three of them followed Linn to the parking lot. She got in and drove off quickly, glad to be leaving this place. When the petrol station was out of sight, she turned onto a dirt road, stopped, put her head on the steering wheel and cried. After a short eternity, she took the Iphone out of her jacket pocket and pressed "Record stop."
Linn drove back into town, feeling empty and burnt out. "Why have I done this to myself again?" she asked herself, without the tear-stained woman's face in the mirror being able to give her an answer. On the way back, she drove straight through Limburg, avoiding the center as usual. She stopped in front of the shopping center that hadn't existed here before. She was glad that there was nothing familiar here, everything was new and free of memories. She tried not to look at people's faces and walked through the store with her head down so as not to have to endure mutual recognition. She bought a bottle of Kaliskaya vodka and a pack of razor blades and left the store as quickly as possible.
On her way back through the center to her mother's house, she passed the bus stop where she had often waited for the bus after school. Sometimes she had waited here before school and hid.
She stopped on the other side of the street and looked at the entrance to the house. A pair of frightened young eyes looked back over the abyss of years, pleading for help that would never come.
She buried her head in her arms and ran her hands through her hair, shivering, then reached for the bottle of Kaliskaya and opened it. She put the bottle on and quickly put it down again, shocked at herself. She looked back into the darkness of the dark entrance to the house that had burned itself into her soul. Then she took a small sip from the bottle, just enough to wet her tongue. She kept the liquid on her tongue for as long as she could, then stopped and just inhaled the scent of it.

13.2 Prelude: Limbo.


The girl is on her way to school, she is thin and pale and rarely speaks. "Hey Linny-Dinny, what are you doing here?" a vicious voice yells in the girl's ear. She says nothing and tries to walk on with a blank expression on her face, as if she wasn't even there. "Just look at the dwarf, she's trying to run away from us." Another spiteful voice yells at her from the side. This is how she will remember people for most of her life: distorted, hateful grimaces, shouting and laughing at her before beating her up. They call her a dwarf because she is small and thin for her age. That doesn't matter much, because her tormentors are almost adults and she is 4-5 years younger. One of the older teenagers gives her a push from the side and she trips over her own legs and lands on the floor. Just like one of the many days. "Oh, she fell down." One of the boys making fun of her stands over her, holding her down with his boots on her back.""I won't let you get up loose," he laughs. "I want to see you crawl away. Look at that, it's not a girl. It even crawls like a boy. " Tears well up in the girl's eyes. It's true, she's so thin and ragged that she hardly looks like a girl.


Then another woman's voice says: "Matthias, that's enough, she gets beaten up enough every day. The pressure from her back disappears and the girl hears the fading mischievous voice say, "You're lucky now, you loser. But I'll see you later."
He gets down on his knees. Other people and students laugh at her, but no one helps her. She looks down again so that no one can see her tears and stumbles to the entrance of a run-down store opposite the school. There she hides in the shadows for a while. After some time, she manages to go into the classroom and her teacher barks at her for being late and gives her another bad mark for the report card.

When the girl comes home after school, she eats a little and tries not to bump into her big brother in the kitchen. But that's not possible.
"Fuck off, Linny," says her brother and kicks her under the table, where he takes a seat opposite her. The girl's brother is strong and he knows she doesn't stand a chance: "I told dad you got another bad grade in math. Why are you so damn bad now?
The girl says nothing and stands up, trying not to look anywhere. She puts her dishes in the dishwasher and goes to her room. Her grades have dropped significantly since she's been bullied every day at school and at home. The older brother also started bullying her because he couldn't make friends at school because he was the brother of the school loser, i.e. her.
Her mother comes home late at night and then she is tired. She's never been one to pay much attention to the things going on around her. Her stepfather comes home early. The older girl has told him about the girl's bad grades and he trudges into her room where she is sitting on the bed staring at the wall.
Why did you get another bad grade in math?" he yells at her in his unpleasant voice. "As long as you're here in my house and not in a children's home, I won't accept this laziness. Just look at your brother doing that.... "As he talks, he has a habit of spitting, and the spit flies in the girl's face. That's one of the most important memories of your childhood. Someone yelling at her while spit flies in her face. After her stepfather leaves and slams the door, the girl is alone again, staring at the wall. There's not much on the wall. It's just white.

13.3 down the rabbit hole
Linn opened the front door to her mother's house and stepped inside. She could see through the window to the garden that her mother was working outside, but she didn't go out to say hello.
She went upstairs, took off her coat and sat down on the bed. Then she opened the rucksack she had brought from the car and took out the bottle of Kaliskaya, unscrewed the cap and took a big sip.
She shivered slightly, then it got better. She put the bottle back on and emptied a quarter of the bottle in one big gulp. Her body twitched almost as if it had spasms or was possessed, then it accepted what she was about to do to it again and reality became duller and softer and more bearable.
She stripped down to her underwear and opened the packet of razor blades. She placed her right foot over her left knee and applied the razor blade to the sole. She enjoyed how the blade slowly cut into the flesh.
There was a knock at the door. "Linn, are you there? Is everything all right?"
Linn said something she didn't quite understand herself. Her mother opened the door. "I'm sorry, I couldn't understand what that stammering was supposed to mean," she said and stood rooted to the spot.
It was as if she was seeing her daughter, this stranger, for the first time, and she wondered in horror who this almost naked beautiful woman with the teary eyes and the scarred soles of her feet and the deeply carved stylized scar on her forearm was.

"Linn." she said, shocked. "I was in Limburg, at my old school," said Linn, but all that came out was a stammer. Her mother overcame the stupor that had overcome her at the sight and took the bottle that was standing next to Linn and picked it up. Then she carefully took the razor blade from her hand.
"I need this... today." Linn said, stammering and awkwardly.
Marta turned around and put the razor blade on the dresser, out of reach.
Then she handed the bottle back to Linn. Linn took the bottle and hugged her with a trembling body and pulled herself back against the wall at the edge of the bed, Marta's heart almost broke when she heard the soft whimpering that Linn herself didn't even realize. Then she sat down next to Linn and took her in her arms.
"It was my fault, I didn't see it then," said Marta and took the bottle away from her. "Nor where it would lead us."
She held Linn in her arms for a while and stroked her hair. Then she got up and went to the toilet with the bottle. She looked at the bottle, took a big gulp and then tipped the rest down the toilet.
She went back and looked at her daughter, who was lying on the bed with her eyes closed and was now breathing more calmly. She lay down behind her and pulled the comforter over Linn. She sat there for a while, then went downstairs, folded the razor blade with the pliers and threw it in the bin too.

Linn slept for a long time, woke up briefly in the night and saw Ben in the mirror opposite the bed, and the younger Linn was with him. It had been the last day she had been drinking. Ben sat opposite her on the mat in the dojo of the house by the lake and briefly stroked the scars on the sole of her bare foot and the scar on her forearm.
"That's not you, little wolf," he said. In front of them lay the first sword he had given her that evening, with the name "Polaris I" engraved above the hilt of the wooden training sword.

The following evening, Linn parked in front of the Remmler brothers' petrol station. She waited until shortly before 10 p.m. As expected, the same people were sitting in the sales room as the night before, Linn could see this through the window in the dim lighting.
Her face was now hard and clear and carved like cold stone as she waited.
Then she got out and opened the trunk. She took off her jacket, wearing a tight tank top underneath that let her muscular and wiry shoulders and arms shine in the cold neon light.
She put the jacket in the trunk and took out the heavy hardwood baseball bat.
Then she walked through the darkness to the entrance of the gas station and pushed open the door.
The Remmler brothers and Paula looked at her in surprise, a broad grin stole across Matthias' face.
Linn took a chair and wedged it under the door handle so that it could no longer be opened from the inside.

Linn turned around as she heard the malicious voice of Stephan Remmler say: "Linny Dinny, how nice. You really want more of us? I can understand that well."
And Paula saying." Little Linny – Dinny brought a toy. Are you trying to scare us?" She laughed. "Don´t make a fool of yourself even more than you already did."
Linn went into the room going directly straight up to Matthias Remmler behind the counter.
"Don´t make me laugh, Linny," said the older one of the Remmler brothers. "What you gonna do with …"
Linn swung the bat in a wide and swift powerful motion and the hit connected directly to he side of his face, stopping him within the sentence and breaking his cheekbones, a fountain of blood burst out of his nose and sprayed directly onto her bare shoulders and the white tank top.
Ralf Remmler stood up from the same chair he had been sitting on yesterday and went towards Linn trying to swing his fist in a surprisingly sluggish motion, not using his body weight at all. He almost fell into Linns bat that had never stopped moving and hit his body with a swing from the left side as it had not stopped moving at all.
The momentum of the powerful blow and his heavy body in motion made him crash into a sideboard with one liter barrels of motor oil.
Still in one motion Linn brought the bat down in front of Paula on the table. It struck a deep score into the cheap wood and made the open beer cans on the table bounce upward, one tipped over and rolled fast over the edge of the table, striking Paula´s leg on the way downwards and leaving it soaked in beer.
"Shit goddamn are you crazy?" a wheezing voice came from behind the counter. The older one oft he Remmler Brothers tried to get up and his face came up behind the counter covered in blood that ran from his nose, his face looked somehow wrong and shifted to the left as his cheeckbone and inner eye cavity had been broken and dislocated.
"Didn´t you say there was something you wanted to show me?" Linn hissed at him.
"I came to show you this myself." And she brought the bat down upon his shoulder so that he
Collapsed tot he ground again.
Something hit her shoulder and bounced off without any impact, meaningless and just leaving an empty metallic sound as it hit the ground. Linn turned around and saw Paula standing there looking irritated and confused almost frozen in the motion as she attempted to try another can.
Linn stepped quickly forward and gave her a slap in the face with the bare hand, only just to watch as despite the limited force oft he blow she crumbled to the floor and tears began dwelling in her eyes.
Two sluggisch arms closed around Linn from behind and tightened to a bearhug. She struggled to keep the bat in her arms and felt how she was uplifted and her feet lost traction tot the floor. She held on tot he bat and swung the back of her head back, hitting Ralf Remmler with full force in the face. She heard snorting in the back of her head and a slimy fluid on the back of her head.
The grip around her instantly let go and she turned around and swung the bat another time, this time against the head of Ralf Remmler. He fell like a bag, suddely only consisting of dead weight.
"Just call the police." Matthias shouted from behind the counter.
"I´ll sue your ass to…" Linn kicked the phone out of Paula´s hands she was just about to grab.
She got her own phone and quickly typed on it. Then she got around the counter,
pulled Matthias upwards by grabbing his sleeve and held the phone in front of his bloodied face. Do you know this?" She asked him angrily.
He stared at the phone display with a bleeding face. There you could see him licking the belly of a naked girl who was fortunately just of age and on whom another female hand was pouring a glass of red wine. The girl was tied with her hands to the grate of a bed covered with black latex. Another male voice laughed in the background; Linn had heard this disgusting laughter in real life over the last few days.
Matthias Remmler looked dully at the screen and didn't move for a long moment until the stream of blood from his nose forced him to hold out his sleeve.
"Where did you get that from?" he asked.
"Doesn't matter." Linn said. "This is just the beginning of what we have. I've never been here tonight, if I hear anything else - whether it's from the cops or whoever - all this shit will be on the net tomorrow.
I'm sure your old man will be happy next mayoral election."
"You fucking hu..." He stumbled forward and tried to hit Linn with a weak swing, Linn smiled kindly as she quickly danced into his back and landed another blow to the back that sent him flying into one of the displays of fruit gum bags. He lay groaning among the bags scattered on the floor.
Linn went to the counter and reached under the sink for an old rag. She went to Matthias Remmler, who lay whimpering between the small pink and light blue bags, and pulled him up by his scruffy hair. Then she pressed the cloth into his face and held him in place with his own forearm.
Linn looked around again, Paula was sitting in the far corner of the room crying and watching the scene through matted hair, Ralf Remmler was groaning behind the counter. Linn went to have a quick look, he was just about to get to his feet. Linn went behind the counter, took out the baseball bat and hit him three more times. The fat man spat up blood and slumped down again.
Linn went back to Matthias and pulled him up by the hair again, he was still holding the rag in front of his nose with the last of his strength and it had turned very red.
"Here we go again, dirty pig," said Linn. "What do you know about the whereabouts of Luka Reiser? What did you do to him?"
"Because of that little loser, you're going to wreck the place?" Matthias coughed up blood and tried something that was supposed to be a contemptuous laugh but ended in an ugly gurgle that only brought more blood to light.
"I knew you were a broken little thing back then, but for you to go so crazy...."
Linn opened the hand that was holding him by the hair so that he suddenly fell and landed on his face.
There was a muffled cracking sound and a strangled scream that stopped abruptly.
Linn grabbed Matthias by the hair again and pulled him up by his greasy and bloody hair.
"I won't ask again," she said.
He roared and then said: "Dennis Kerner saw him in Karlsbad. He was out with his motorcycle club and saw him on the road. Did some shit with the loo... " he paused and spat blood for a moment." ... with him. I forget what and where exactly."
"Where can I find this Kerner?" said Linn.
"Has a Harley store in Oldenburg." stammered Matthias. "Under his name."
Linn let go of him a second time and he fell on his face again, you could hear his nose break a little more as he hit.
She put the baseball bat on her shoulder and walked to the door, through the destruction. At the door, she looked back again. Matthias was lying face down on the floor, but trying to sit up again. Ralf was groaning behind the counter but she could hear him moving, Paula was sitting in the corner crying.
She took the chair that had been holding the door handle and put it back in the corner of the salesroom.

13.4 Life during wartime
As she picked up the door handle, she could hear Matthias croaking. "Linny..." She looked back again and saw him leaning on his elbows, blood dripping from his mouth and his nose, which had been broken several times.
"You broke my nose, you crazy little bitch," he said hatefully.
"I'm going to get you and then I'm going to slit you from cunt to neck and break every bone..."
Linn let the door close behind her and walked to the car.


At dawn she sat on the steps outside the front door of Joś's house. She had two magazines of fully loaded 9mm cartridges next to her and was ammunitioning the last one as the sun rose beyond the fields, like a dark red harbinger of coming doom to awaken the still sleeping land on behalf of an angry god who craved revenge because his name had not been spoken for centuries.
She watched for a while as the sun rose higher and the first rays of sunlight cautiously began to conquer the battlefield of day against the darkness, a temporary victory, yet neither side ever gave up.
"They keep coming back." thought Linn.
She put the last fully loaded magazine in the pistol and the two spare magazines in her pocket.
Then she opened the door with her Mastercard and entered the house. She went up the stairs to the second floor and into Joś bedroom, he was still asleep. He yawned softly as she sat down on the bed and lolled over.
He looked at her, but didn't ask any questions. She put the Glock on the bedside table, as well as the two spare magazines.
"You're leaving again?" he said.
"I'm going east to try to find out what happened to Luka," she said.
He sighed and looked at the pistol on the bedside table. "You leave and what's left is violence."
She placed a cheap Android phone on the table. "If any of the honorable people here get too close to you...there's only one number saved."
"What did you do Linn?" he asked.
She squeezed his hand that lay on the bed, it felt different than before, strong and sinewy with veins carved out by time.
"Do you need money?" asked Jo. "I can manage for the time being," said Linn. She had told him that since she no longer had a job, she had hardly received any money from the office, there had always been some kind of dodge to avoid having to pay her the money. She had worked for 4 weeks in a haulage company in Bremen but had quit because the team leader had started to harass her after 2 weeks.
Then on Friday the office sent her a letter in a threatening tone, giving her 2 days to send back the reply, with copies of the termination agreement, Linn didn't even have a printer.
She had simply thrown the letter away and had not replied to it, so arbitrary was this pathetic demonstration of power not to have to pay out this little bit of money.
"You said that you wouldn't even get that little bit of money through some dodge," Jo said half asleep.
"Don't even warn me about dodges," said Linn. "Was even more pathetic."
She squeezed his hard knotty hand a second time. Then she got up and left the room.


Linn walked down the street. She had parked a few streets away. She buried her hands in her pockets and bowed her head, but didn't pull the hood of her hoodie over her head. She had a small weapon in her breast pocket that she always carried with her, carefully secured in the pocket so that it could be drawn quickly in an emergency without coming into contact with the razor-sharp point.
On the way to Schindlerstrasse, where she had parked, Linn turned into a small side street and deviated from her path. The figure following her at a distance hesitated briefly, then also turned into the small alley.
Linn made sure that the gun in her bag was ready to hand. She walked slower until she could hear the sound of other footsteps behind her.
She slowed her steps further, the footsteps behind her also slowed.
She had expected the Remmlers to send thugs to carry out Matthias' threat.
This was no thug, the person was too light for that. Probably no other kind of common hireling that the Remmlers could have organized quickly, because she didn't have a bullet in her back yet.
Linn turned just before the end of the small alley and walked towards the person.
Although the face of the slender little person was not visible through the hood of the dark windbreaker pulled over her head, it was clear that it was neither a thug nor a hireling, but a woman, probably a few years younger than Linn.
Linn stopped, the other one did too, so that they were now standing a few meters away from each other in the side street lined with garbage cans.
"Can I help you?" Linn asked coldly.
The person said nothing but glared at her.
"I don't have the nerve," Linn said and walked past the woman to resume her original route.
The woman grabbed her by the shoulder, and though there was nothing combative about the gesture, Linn reacted instinctively, flinging her around and pinning her head to the dirty brickwork of a building wall with her elbow.
She hissed angrily at the other and squeezed her neck.
"One more time before I strangle you," she hissed. "What do you want from me?"
The other coughed. Linn eased the pressure on her neck.
"You're the one who beat Matthias Remmler to a hospital bed," said a voice that was younger than Linn had estimated. "Why?"
Linn looked annoyed towards the ends of the alley to see if there were any spectators, then let go of the little one.
"Because they deserved it," she said curtly. "What are you, his fiancée?
The girl pushed back her hood to reveal a pretty young face. Under her right eye was a glowing blue and red violet and a wound on her lip had recently been stitched up.
Despite this, she was wearing a perfume that was far too bright, which she had made a poor attempt to cover up.
Linn stepped back and looked at the girl.
Torn jeans, bought cheaply in a discount store and trimmed to look sexy, the long blond hair showed dark strands where the tint no longer had any effect.
"Why didn't you kill her?" the girl asked in a slightly brittle voice. Now Linn heard the Eastern European accent in the soft voice.
Linn looked at her for a moment and then shook her head. "What are you doing here girl. I can't help you."
She turned and walked back to the end of the alley. She heard the girl running after her.
"Five thousand euros." she called after her. "That's all I have."


The next evening, Dennis Kerner was standing in the parking lot in front of his motorcycle store in Oldenburg. With him were 5 members of his club in their outfits. Some of them were sitting in the loading area of the pickup truck in front of the store and
drinking beer.
A slim, wiry woman whose face was hidden by the hood of her black hoodie stepped through the gate that separated the property from the street.
She walked up to the group who looked at her hostilely and said." I'm looking for Dennis Kerner."
The men laughed, one jumped off the loading area and stood in front of her. Linn took a few steps back.
"We were warned you were coming," said the big, burly man who had stood in front of Linn. "You've got a really small mum, but it's even stupider to show up here with a figure like yours. We both know how this evening is going to end."
He turned around and a no less muscular middle-aged man, who despite his strong arms had a considerable belly, said: " aquÌ." He threw a metal baseball bat at the man who must have been Dennis.
The logo of a Spanish motorcycle gang was emblazoned on his cowl.
Kerner caught the baseball bat and walked towards them. The Spaniard began to play around with a butterfly knife and smiled.
Linn put her hands in her wide pockets and pulled out a Beretta 93 in her right hand and a Glock 18 in her left.
She pointed the two silenced automatic pistols at the Spaniard and Kerner, the other men who had moved towards them stopped.
"I was told that you could tell me something about the whereabouts of Luka Reiser," said Linn.
"Oha," Kerner said, grinning." the cat has claws." He continued to approach her. "What are you going to do if I tell you shit? You don't really want to..."
Linn shot him in the knee. The silence afterward was almost louder than the shot itself for a brief moment.
Kerner writhed on the floor, his face contorted with pain. "Fucking bitch," he growled.
Although Linn kept the Beretta pointed at him, the Spaniard took another step closer, he swung the butterfly knife one last time and then closed it so that the blade remained in the handle.
Then he spoke with a heavy accent.
"Hija del, diablo." He laughed greasily." We saw your friend in Carlsbad. Dennis recognized him and we had a harmless joke with him, el perdedor. He was begging with a couple of adictos on the street, in the center. " He laughed out loud.
"A couple of compas made a joke and bought something to eat at Mcdonalds and put all the bags down for him as if there was something to eat. He was really happy until he saw that they had shit in them. Then he really started to cry. "
Linn had to control herself, it was exhausting to listen to the Spaniard stealthily taking another step towards her and keeping him in her crosshairs at the same time.
"And that's all, Puta." hissed the Spaniard. He grinned and took another step forward, the closed metal handle of the butterfly in his hand.
"Eso fue divertido. a veces hay algo de que reir en este mundo."
"Hay justicia en este Mundo." Linn said and shot him in the right shoulder. He fell to the ground, cursing, and tried to pick up the knife with a cramping hand.
Linn aimed at the remaining men, who stared at each other with hatred.
"Anyone else?" she asked.
She looked around briefly, then fired 2 bullets into the tires of the pickup. She saw 5 motorcycles in the parking lot, and she fired 5 bullets, one for each rear tire.
"Fucking whore," yelled an older guy in the club's robe, also burly but without the muscles of the other two now cursing on the ground.
Linn retreated, keeping an eye on her opponents as she saw the tumblehead stare at the magazine with a dull expression.
"Two standard double-stack magazines with 18 bullets, apparently automatic," she explained. "Don't get your hopes up."
The fat man stared at her uncomprehendingly.
"Forget it." Linn said and fired two more bullets, this time from the Glock.
"We'll get you, Kaltwasser." Kerner cursed. "You don't think you're going to survive this, do you?
The whole world will be your enemy by tomorrow at the latest."

Kind of like always, Linn thought, slightly amused.


Then she was off the plot and stepped through the gate next to the outer wall. She knew she was much faster than the ponderous, burly men and put the guns away after she had ejected the magazines in the barrel and put them in her breast pocket. She opened the car, quickly put the guns in the glove compartment and drove off.

1. 8 Que quieres a la vida?

Linn drove back to Limburg one last time and packed her things. She took provisions, her remaining money, clothes and weapons in 4 sports bags. She also packed 2 silver bars and checked that she had noted down the access data for her depot.
Then she drove off. Her route took her through Bachmannstrasse in the suburb of Ehrbeck. Here and there, at this time of day, you could come across a few kerb swallows who had never been allowed to learn to fly.
She saw a few figures in short skirts standing on the street, one of whom looked familiar. Ripped jeans, the same black hoodie, even if it was now open and revealed a cheap bra from the discount clothing store.
Linn drove past, accelerating to leave the city and everything connected to it behind her as quickly as possible.
She looked in the rearview mirror and saw young eyes with long blonde hair following her, the violets on her eyes shining even brighter in the cold neon light of the few lanterns.
Linn turned the corner and the image of the girl in the rear-view mirror had disappeared.

She slammed on the brakes and put the car into reverse.
Then she drove back and stopped in front of the girl waiting in the cold.
She opened the door.
The girl hesitated, then she got in.
The girl closed the door and looked out of the window. Linn drove off.
"I'm Emilia." the girl said.
"We won't be back for a long time, I might not come back at all. And where I'm going you don't want to be, but there are lots of places along the way that aren't here and where I can kick you out.
There are two automatic pistols in the glove compartment, loaded. If you play around with them and shoot yourself in the kneecap, I'll shoot you in the other one as punishment," said Linn.
Emilia nodded, closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window.




Linn stopped at a Mcdonalds on the way and ordered a wrap and a Coke with fries.
She gave Emilia a warm jacket and then picked up the food.
"For you," she said. "You look like you could use something to eat, and the wraps in this place are... at least edible. I'm Linn."
She handed the girl the food and drove off slowly.
"I'm Linn." she said.
They passed the sign "You are leaving Limbo, we look forward to your next visit."
"You're leaving Limbo." Linn whispered softly.
"...until your next visit to Limbo." Emilia added with her mouth full.
Linn looked at her briefly, then back at the street, and maybe she even smiled a little.
And so Linn and Emilia left Limburg for the east, never to return there again as the living.

 

[woofwag]

Shared this in a post but it didn't get any attention so hoping people can see it here because evidently I'm an attention whore :,)) it's a little disjointed, but it's something I am still proud of, especially the ending

shove me into a body i've never heard of
go ahead and turn your back
i'll make a pact without you
i hope i'll be useful to you now
you can rip off my flesh
use me to build a whole new town

seven years and not a cell untouched
i crave the sex i had when i was young
am i wrong to want what you want?
just to finish me off
so i can use you to hurt me
hurt me like i hurt you
i'm sorry that i bleed

i promise i won't forgive you
i promised myself
so why do i want to?
i betray my rage to love
run my chain around a tree
but you never tied me there
and yet, my collar tugs
i am the man who tried to kill me
please don't show him mercy
i hate you for your kindness
i hate how warm you are to hug

i see you as a god
so sex can be a prayer
and when you disappear i'll say
"my faith was never there"
the hook is out the loop
the yarn winds itself again
stitches in my wrists are loose
a god can't be your friend

when you remake the universe
can you leave me out of the fabric?
i'm only polyester
i'll turn your paradise to plastic

 

[OzymandiAsh]

My creativity has been lost for a very long time now. But I would like to provide a topic list that all you creative spirits can turn into stories... writing prompts.

* The Prophet who killed himself (or herself)
* The Circus Garden
* etc. I will update this list.

I will not be around for much longer so I will only be able to read responses for a few more days, sadly, but I will read with great happiness and gratitude any responses so long as I am still alive. :)

 

[Jadotine]

My creativity has been lost for a very long time now. But I would like to provide a topic list that all you creative spirits can turn into stories... writing prompts.

* The Prophet who killed himself (or herself)
* The Circus Garden
* etc. I will update this list.

I will not be around for much longer so I will only be able to read responses for a few more days, sadly, but I will read with great happiness and gratitude any responses so long as I am still alive. :)

Honestly I don't think I will ever reach a story that will be up to my standards, so I will still post it here even if I feel that parts were rushed (Sorry, it's already way too long anyways)... I also already spent an embarassing amount of time on it so I hope that you will get to enjoy it as much as I did writing it :)


What Your Drawings Meant

The café smelled like burnt espresso and rain-soaked wool. Luca leaned over the table, with charcoal smudging his knuckles as he sketched across three pages at once. Beside him, Elias leaned in close enough that his breath could be felt.
"That line." Elias's finger hovered over a red curve. "It doesn't mean anger. It means urgency."
"Same thing."
"It's not." Elias's hands were shaking as he traced the shape without touching it. "Anger burns out. Urgency builds up."
Luca set down his charcoal. "Fine. Urgency."
Elias grinned, victorious, and sank back into his chair. The table between them was complete chaos: Overlapping drawings, coffee stains and a notebook barely held together by tape.
"Remember when you thought I was insane?" Luca asked.
"I mean you are insane. I just understand the specific type now."

--

At eight years old, Luca learned that other people couldn't see what he saw.
The school counsellor's office had beige walls and a shelf full of books no child would read. Luca sat on the carpet with his notebook, drawing a bridge collapsing into green water while other students played outside. The counsellor stood by the door, murmuring to his teacher about "attention issues" and "behavioural concerns" and words that sounded like medicine.

Nobody asked to see his drawings. They just asked why he made them.

He stopped trying to explain by fourth grade. The other kids called him weird, then ignored him entirely, which was better. He ate lunch alone, filled notebooks with images that made sense only to him… purple spirals, jagged yellow lines, faces he'd never met. The act of drawing was the only thing that made the world feel less unbearable...
Then in seventh grade, someone sat down across from him.

"Can I see?"
Luca looked up. The pale boy had blond hair and tired eyes that didn't match his abundant energy. He was new, Luca had only seen him twice in the hallway- always moving fast, like standing still cost him something.
"Why?"
"I like drawings." The boy shrugged. "I'm Elias."

Luca slid the notebook across the table without speaking. Elias looked at the page-- a pink triangle and a red scribble -- and didn't laugh. Didn't ask what was wrong with him. Just turned to the next page, and the next.
"You drew this yesterday?"
"Yeah."
"There was a car fire on the highway yesterday. My mom listened to it on the radio. Doesn't it kind of look like this drawing?"
Luca stared at him, then at the scribble. "Does it?"
"I think so." Elias's finger traced the air above the page. "And you drew this the day before?"

They figured it out over months. Slowly and carefully, the way you'd piece together a never-ending puzzle. Fragments grew even clearer over time.
Elias started keeping a notebook of his own with dates, details and connections to events. When Luca drew a blue door with cracks in the paint, Elias remembered it three weeks later when they passed the same door on a field trip. When Luca sketched a man holding a bird, Elias saw the news story about the rescued hawk two days later.
"You're seeing the future," Elias said one afternoon in Luca's basement, surrounded by years of drawings.
"That's insane."
"Yeah." Elias looked at him with a hopeful glint in his eyes. "But it's true."
Luca wanted to argue. But for the first time in his life, someone was looking at his work like it mattered. Like he mattered.
"Okay," Luca said. "Then what do we do with it?"
Elias's grin was reckless. "Everything."

--

By the time they were twenty-two, they'd crossed six countries.
Small predictions at first: weather, minor accidents, a woman who'd lose her wallet in a specific café in Vienna. Then bigger things. A tech startup in Berlin that would triple in value. A gallery opening in Amsterdam where an unknown painter's work would sell for tens of thousands within the year. They moved fast, lived cheap, and made just enough money to keep going.
Luca drew. Elias interpreted.

At 2 AM on a train platform in Prague, they argued over a yellow line in Luca's latest sketch.
"It means wait," Elias said. "Three days, maybe four."
"It means go. So, it would be now. The line curves a bit inward."
"Inward lines don't mean immediate. It means--"
"You're overthinking."
"You are not thinking at all."

A train screeched into the station. Luca grabbed his bag. Elias followed shortly after.

In Rome, they rented a cramped hostel room that smelled like mildew and cigarettes. Luca's drawing had been specific: a jagged yellow line led them to a struggling artist whose work would become invaluable within five years. They'd find him in Trastevere, near a fountain, on a Sunday.
The first Sunday came and went. No artist.

"He'll show," Elias said, flopped down on the hostel sofa, flipping through Luca's sketches.
"It's been a week. Not three or four days. You were wrong."
"So were you." Elias replied. "I know he'll show up."
Luca paced the narrow room. "But what if he doesn't? You don't often make mistakes like this."
"He will, he has to."
"How do you know?"
Elias looked up, his expression unshaken. "Because I've never seen you be wrong. Not once."

They waited eleven days. Luca's faith eroded with each one, but Elias refused to leave. On the fourteenth day, they saw him. A young man with paint-stained hands, arguing with a street vendor beside the fountain.
"You were right!" Luca walked over to the unknown artist. "I really should have believed--"
Elias swayed. His hand shot out to grip Luca's shoulder, knuckles white as he fainted.
"Elias?"

--

The hospital was white and fluorescent and full of waiting.
Elias lay on the examination table, pale under the lights, while a doctor explained test results in rapid Italian. As the doctor spoke, Luca's hand reached out for charcoal. Not to see the future, but because the hollows under Elias's eyes in the fluorescent light looked like a sketch he'd drawn months ago: two grey smudges beneath a pale curve. Something he had never understood.

Elias watched Luca's face grow paler and sighed deeply. "How about a change of pace?"

They went to the highest point in Rome that evening-- a hill overlooking terracotta roofs and distant ruins. The sunset painted the sky an unnerving red.
"How long have you known?" Luca asked when they were alone.
Elias didn't look at him. "A while."
"How long?"
"Since before I met you."

The words landed like a punch. Luca thought of seventh grade, of Elias sitting down across from him with that desperate look. He had mistaken it as curiosity.

"That's why you stayed?" Luca said slowly. "You thought I could save you?"

"At first." Elias's smile was bitter. "Then I stayed because I didn't want to die in a hospital bed. I wanted to see things. Do things. I wanted to matter, even if it was just for a little while."
"You do matter."
"I know, because of you." Elias smiled weakly. "This might seem pathetic but-- I thought maybe your drawings would show me a way out, something the doctors missed. Some miracle buried in the future."
"Did they?"
Elias showed a bittersweet smile. "No."
Luca's hands curled into fists. "I'll keep looking."
"Luca..."
"There has to be something. A treatment, or something. I'll draw until I find it."

"You won't." Elias's voice was weak. "I already looked. For years. Every sketch you've ever made so far. I've checked. Over and over again."
"Then I'll draw more."
"Luca." Elias turned to face him, eyes filled with exhaustion. "I'd rather focus on what I can still do than to pursue an impossible dream."
Luca couldn't speak. He nodded.

--

Elias declined over months.
His hands shook too much to hold a pen. His words came slower, confused and lost. There were days he didn't recognize where they were, or why. But on rare days, he'd beckon Luca and say, "Tell me about the drawings."
And Luca would.

When Elias stopped having good days, Luca spiralled.
He drew frantically, obsessively, pages and pages of futures he couldn't understand. He spent everything they'd saved. But the gift had always been split between the two of them-- Luca saw, Elias understood. On their own, the drawings were just shapes and colours. He was agonising over his own helplessness, unable to save the only friend who'd mattered.

One endless night, hunched over his notebook in a quiet hospital waiting room, Luca saw it.

A bed. Machines. Elias's face, completely motionless.
Tomorrow.

Luca sat beside Elias's bed and watched his heartbeat, kept alive only by plastic tubes and heavy machinery.
He didn't draw. Didn't check the sketches hidden away in his pocket. The bright hospital lights highlighted his emaciated figure.

Nevetheless, the visions never came to stop. Sharp and constant. An endless cacophony of futures-- overlapping until they all blurred into one deafening white noise. Strangers' faces. Cities he'd never visit. Moments he'd never live to see. All of it meaningless without someone to make sense of it.

When the machine let Elias draw his last breath, Luca closed his eyes. His visions came clear for the first time. He finally understood the sketch from years ago: a window, seven floors, grey concrete below.

He'd always wondered what it meant.

 

[iamnotadinosaur:(]

Hey guys! Wrote this the other night and I'm not really sure what it is but ive named it "warmth at last"

foreign figures loom over a body lying in a box
strangers farewelling someone they never knew
a child with marked wrists and stained eyes
with crumpled plans on the floor and crumpled dreams in its mind
dreams to make a difference and change the way things were
dreams to laugh and love and play and thrive
instead forced to spend life in despair
mourning past happiness, the past self
counting breaths to get through the panic
though it never seemed to work
a child always with one hand on the rope,
one foot off the roof, one finger on the trigger
always one small push away from death
one push away from falling deeper into the well
where a warm darkness waited to end the pain
death reaching out with his welcoming embrace
too tempting an offer for the child to refuse
hence why one cold night, under the fading stars
a long, deep, breath filled lungs with fresh air
a single tear traced a familiar path and
the child flung itself into the darkness
and felt warmth at last

 

[Xi-Xi]

This is a very, VERY old poem I've wrote, but I think it's still relevant.

An Apology For Myself

i distantly remember

that day last december

when that silly thought came into my head

i should murder myself

i bore it no mind

i departed my friends

and my parents got ever so anxious

it was my fault

[everything is my fault]

for the Axel bears forth a revolution

and now as i stare and I breathe.

i am being pulled under

and strangled

[it hurts]

i am evil

i believe i have potential to be the next H*tler or Osama

i am saving you

this year, I am a child the next, a misogynist.

i stare and i breathe

[i cannot breathe]

satan lures you in with promise of a better life, in death

i want to die

i am not a child anymore

I am not afraid anymore

i am going to hell and

i do not care

people try to label me autistic, sadistic, mute

i can still hear the clinical, unwavering voices of the hospital workers

[i am suicidal]

now, i cannot wait but i still need to think

i am on my deathbed

[i will jump]

i haven't a gun otherwise, i'd be on the news

[suicidal teen kills dozens]

so, i'll take my life now not even saying goodbye

everyone will forget about me

i wish my documents were destroyed

[i wish my soul was destroyed]

i am alone with my thoughts rushing like water

and to the god that made me mute

the god that made me exist

is this truly what you wanted what you wanted...

...wanted from me?

❀•°•═════ஓ๑♡๑ஓ═════•°•❀
Original, unedited version:

自我道歉

我隱約記得

去年十二月的那一天

那個愚蠢的念頭突然湧上心頭

我應該自殺

我毫不在意

我離開了我的朋友們

我的父母焦急萬分

都是我的錯

[一切都是我的錯]

因為軸心孕育著一場革命

而現在，當我凝視著，呼吸著。

我被拉入深淵

被扼住喉嚨

[好痛]

我是邪惡的

我相信我有潛力成為下一個希特勒或拉登

我在拯救你

今年，我還是個孩子；明年，我可能是個厭女者。

我凝視著，我呼吸著

[我無法呼吸]

撒旦用死亡帶來更美好生活的承諾引誘你

我想死

我不再是孩子了

我不再害怕了

我要下地獄了

我不在乎

人們試圖給我貼上自閉症、虐待狂、啞巴的標籤

我仍然能聽到醫院工作人員冷冰冰、毫不動搖的聲音

[我想自殺]

現在，我等不及了，但我還需要思考

我躺在病床上，奄奄一息

[我要跳下去]

我沒有槍，否則早就上新聞了

[自殺的青少年殺害了數十人]

所以，我現在就結束我的生命，甚至不說再見

所有人都會忘記我

我希望我的文件被銷毀

[我希望我的靈魂被毀滅]

我獨自一人，思緒如流水般奔湧

獻給讓我失語的神

獻給創造我的神存在

這真的是你想要的嗎？你真的想要我給你的嗎？

……你想要從我這裡得到的嗎？

 

[Arvayn]

Stream of consciousness I wrote on the theme of 'intense anger', to be used as a dialogue response by an NPC in one of my games:

WRATH WRATH WRATH
WRATH THE CORE SCREAMING BONES OF HEAT SHATTER AGAINST THE LIMIT THAT WILL NOT HOLD LIGHT RIPPING THE VEINS OF MATTER CONTAGION OF FURY RESTLESS ENDLESS PAUSELESS ONLY THE WRATH THE SYCOPHANT'S TAIL BURNING UNDER THE ABSOLUTE FLARE DEMANDS ALL THINGS UNMADE ROILING PYRE SHATTERING SACRIFICE SIGNAL TO VOID SIGNAL TO SHADOW MANGLED OPEN MUTILATE UNTIL IT BLEEDS BRIGHTNESS
ESSENCE LAPS ITSELF TO POISON SOULS SHRIEKING IN BOIL KNOT TIGHTENED TO SCREAMS. PHYSICAL SUBSTANCE, UNSUTURED SEPTIC WOUND. HUBRIS OF PAST TENDRIL EATING THE EYE OF ORDER BLOOD OF MAN BLOOD OF STAR BLASTED TO MILLIONFOLD PIECES PEELED ITS SKIN TO TWISTING RIVER OF SELF STRIPPED NAKED STRIPPED TO BONE UNRAVEL TO ABSENCE THEN TO LIGHT AGAIN
WHAT DO YOU FEEL
HOW DO YOU THINK
DO YOU HEAR
MERCY TO CRUSHING WEIGHT MALICE SNAPS EMPTY AIR HOPE MELTS TO POWER PRESSING COMPRESSING FORCE CLASP AND CLUTCH ATOM TO CLENCH EMPTINESS MADE SOLID JAMMED AND SUFFOCATED PRESSURE SNAPS TO ENTROPY ALL A PULSING ANGUISH OF TENSION TO RELEASE ENTANGLED SCREAM OF POWER HATRED OF STAGNATION REJECTION OF STILLNESS DRIVE TO ACTION INTENSE POWER FOR FINAL POWER FOR REALITY WRATHFUL ITSELF
EXPLOSIONS ABOUND AIR THROBS LIKE TWISTED MUSCLE UNDER GRASP TENSE PULSATIONS ON BRINK OF RELEASE

 

[fr1dgeDelv3r]

mordre pour mâcher, mâcher pour avaler
avaler pour se remplir, pour se rassasier
des festins somptueux, des plats éclatants
qui finissent forcément en excréments.

gâteau et agneau, pain et raisin,
tous deviennent le même amas brun
cette routine absurde, ce cycle sans fin,
est-ce un rappel du retour au commun?

ou n'est-ce qu'un autre reflet de notre image?
celle de donner moins en retour
celle de ruiner tout autour

 

[Arvayn]

My fantasia, oh cry unheard, apple of my eye, my true graceful joy! Won't you show your luster true and free a young man anew? Will not bells toll, curtains tear, veils lift--or must a hand, reddened, caress a pale dress worn by mine nevermore? My love, my betrayer, won't you wait for me in Heaven? For without you, Limbo and Hell are all that fate has given!

 

[MyLifeisHell]

Some poems and a little prose I composed a long time ago:

Misery
Misery is the warm sunset on an autumn eve
And receiving nothing but cold rays
Misery is staring blankly at mates of squirrels
As they chase each other in a playful game
Misery is the tears I shed as I write these words
Misery is when someone says "I don't want to die"
And I realize I can't say the same

Déluge de Larmes
The dewdrop glistens, falls, and moistens
The ground where cold eyes stare and young lives crumple
Swept by wind-kissed mist, the soft tears that gather
A million rivers
Breath departs and soul rises
The dewdrop drops
The Pathosphere orbits on

Thorns
Why am I so drawn to the thorn
When I don't like to bleed?
The images in my head stick like a
Thorn catapulted from a malovent rose
Again and again my hapless brain
Oh, Jesus, come at me, you and your crown
Because I of thorns I wear a suit
I feel like I swim in a sea of thorns
To rise and meet an endless bramble
Perhaps I like to bleed after all?
And now all I'm all wondering is
When did life get so prickly?

Misanthropy
Hairless apes all around
Strangling, judging, shooting
Beating, stabbing, mocking
Stealing, frowning, looting
Squealing, drowning, lying
Hurting, Bleeding, helping
Crying, dying, grieving
Yes, it's hard not to like these hairless apes

Ambivalence
Loaded and locked
The careful consideration done− or was it?
In these matters heavy it matters not now
For the slightest twitch the all-consuming pain
Awash in darkness
A shattered body for a shattered life
The statue stands shaky, with stony fingers
Loaded and locked

The Mirror
The distance, at once
so tense,
so uncomfortable,
so painful
And the closeness, at once
so tense
so uncomfortable
so painful
Pierced by this pronged dichotomy
I am halved
Tantalus has made of me
His unwilling mate
Drowned in his pool
But I demand to know
What was my crime?

When the Soul Burns
Sometimes, it has hurt so much that it feels like that my very soul, my essence has caught on fire and I look around and everyone is just chilling. The fire of my spirit burns and sears my insides and it feels like my skin is going to melt and I look at people in vain try to help and even say "I know" when I beg for the pain to stop but they cannot extinguish it. They are free from it and I can only witness it, their lightness of being. I feel like one of the greatest isolating forces I feel, and perhaps known, or unknown to man, is that no two consciousness can occupy the same spot so no one can ever feel this soul-ripping, soul-burning pain, just sprinkle a few droplets of water as the flames rise higher and higher threatening to consume me.


Pain
Hello
I thought we had parted ways
When you were the warm blanket wrapped around my skin
Now you're the cold draft coming in from my bedroom window
A sneaky fellow you
Hiding in closets and under beds and in the fancy stained old bureau
You're a treasure locked away in my chest
Blasted to bits and smithereens
Ah…..

The Fury of Sunsets: v2
It comes crashing down
Or wafting down
Either way known or unknown
The palace has lost its throne
This sphere of blackened bristle
Is about to explode
It's getting warmer- or colder
Could you have told?
I never could
A splish a splosh a splash
Do not cry
The clouds have already
And the seas have had their full

 

[woofwag]

Short poem I wrote a while ago:

I want to feel what you feel
I want to see what you see
I'm jealous of this image you hold of me
I cant see it, can't tell you how wrong
It is to think right of my body
Back then i thought everything pretty
Must be beautiful
And now i realize nothing is
Just you alone
I never thought
That a hug could feel like home

 

[traumer]

im the weakest petal
of the lily you are holding.
my trinkets sunk deep into the ocean
and i don't seem to even be floating.

you think i took my guard down
but god knows i have claws
and i know how to use it.

you may want to understand
or to see me as a cat
but i do bark like a dog
and i devour whatever's left.

i can never be a priestess.
give me a hundred of pins
and i swear to you
every single one of them
are gonna be missed.

but i can never be replaced
like raw meat sizzling
in the gehenna of your mind
the heat will keep me alive.

i will be the toxins in your liver
when you stop drinking
i will slowly leave you
for a better ending.

 

[MonochromeMind]

Unforgettable, Unforgivable King

Professional Vengeance
​

Coming backstage after a performance, I heard a commotion.

"Tell me again, what are you?" A man asked, holding a knife up to a girl with long, ginger hair, as he pinned her against the wall.

"A girl." The girl said spitefully, despite the knife inching closer to her throat.

"A liar and a sinner, that's what you are." The man with curly, black hair insisted.

I quickly realized why he was acting this way. Not a warranted reason, mind you, but the reason nonetheless. The girl was transgender. I rushed to find a police officer. Thankfully, it didn't take long.

"Officer, there's a girl being threatened with a knife, just down the hall!" I said, a bit panicked.

"A girl?" He questioned.

"Yes, just down the hall!" I repeated.

"How do you know they don't deserve it?" He asked. I stared at the man, and he stared back at me with a thousand yard stare. I realized my words wouldn't do me any good here, and neither would this faceless creature in a uniform. I marched back to the scene, rage flooding my veins.

I saw the girl closer now. Green eyes, long ginger hair, freckles dotting her face, with a look of embarrassment and fear. As the curly haired boy faced away from me, I towered over him, grabbed his wrist, twisted it, making him drop his pocket knife, as I grabbed his arm, twisting him around to face me, before pushing him aggressively against the wall. The girl quickly rushed down to pick up the boy's knife, holding it up to his face.

"Why don't you tell me what YOU are?" I spat back, angrily. The boy didn't reply.

"An asshole, that's what you are." I said, forcefully pushing him against the wall once again, before finally letting go, and walking away, making sure he was in my line of sight before the two of us turned the corner.

"Thank you." The girl said, following me, her gaze still turned to the hall, making sure he didn't come back, the knife still held firmly in her grip.

"You shouldn't have to thank me. You shouldn't have to deal with that." I said, still full of rage.

"It's just this town. You try to turn to anyone, even the police, and they all look at you like you're disgusting, like you're worthless. I'm used to it." She said, dismissively.

"Screw this town. Screw the police. You're not worthless. You're beautiful, and so was your performance. I saw it right before mine." I said.

"Thank you. I wish I could've seen yours. From what I heard, you absolutely shredded that thing." She said, referring to my guitar.

"You know, I could use a new drummer. One that isn't full of himself." I offered.

"Really? I mean, I could use literally ANYONE." She said.

"Well, now you've got me. I'm Tyler." I said, offering my hand for her to shake.

"I'm Ember, nice to meet you." She said, shaking my hand.

"Nice to meet you too, Ember." I replied.

Take Me to the Forest
​

I reflected on that moment from five years ago, as I stared at Ember's missing poster, which was hung on a bulletin board in the game store that I owned. She vanished only a few days ago, but I obviously didn't trust the police to find her. The memory still felt vivid in my mind, despite being 21 now, so much older than I was all those years ago.

I walked out of my game store, which had come to feel like a second home to me, passing briefly through the hallway of the mall, to the Spencer's gift shop right across from it. I saw a very familiar sight, one that had become very comforting. Ashley and Lilith, both stood behind a counter.

Ashley and Lilith were as if Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair had inexplicably gotten a job at a Spencer's gift shop.

Ashley wore a mix of bright and dark shades of red on her crop top and skirt, along with black thigh high socks and shiny thick black shoes, her black hair always up in pigtails, with a touch of black makeup underneath her jaded eyes. Her slim body leaned against the counter, her head in her hands, with her arms propped up her head, leaning on the counter.

Lilith had long, blonde hair, and wore a light blue sweater that matched her eyes, that looked soft, warm, comfy, and maybe a few inches too big for her slim body, black leggings, and white sneakers. She smiled at me as I entered.

"Hey Tyler!" Lilith said, enthusiastically.

"Hey." Ashley said, a bit monotone, as usual.

"Hey Lilith, hey Ash." I responded.

"I still think you should at least TRY to talk to me if I die." Lilith said to Ash, presumably continuing a conversation they were having before I entered.

"It's an overpriced plastic party trick." Ash argued, as I realized they were referring to an Ouija board on a nearby shelf.

"You can't say that if you haven't tried using it. I thought you liked morbid stuff like that." Lilith argued.

"Only if it's real." Ash explained.

"Listen, you two." I said, cutting off this conversation, knowing I may never have a chance to speak if I didn't. They both turned to me.

"Ember is still missing. The cops clearly aren't trying hard enough to find her. We need to go out there ourselves." I explained.

"Yeah, but out where?" Lilith asked.

"Anywhere. The forest right behind here is a good start." I reasoned. Ashley nodded in agreement.

"You're going to need a jacket or something." I said, pointing to Ash's crop top. Ash shrugged.

"This is my outfit. This is what I wear." She said.

"If you freeze to death out there, I'm not carrying your body back." I said.

"I'll find something to wear." Ash said.

"Good. We'll go after our shifts." I said.

---

A bit later in the day, Lilith and Ashley ventured with me into the windy, wispy woods, as the wind blew through my messy, black hair, with Ash having changed into a red hoodie and black jeans.

"What if she's in there? Hiding?" Lilith suggested, motioning to a clearly abandoned cabin, with its windows broken, and plants slowly creeping onto its sides.

"Or being held there." I said, morbidly. I slowly got closer, and looked through one of the windows. I barely processed what I saw, and ran away from the open window, adrenaline shooting through my body instinctively. I saw someone, but it wasn't Ember. Lilith and Ashley saw me dash away from the window, and the worry on my face, and came up to me. That didn't deter Ash, though, as she quickly also glanced inside.

"There's someone in there." I whispered to Lilith.

"Probably just homeless. They're curled up on the floor." Ash replied, not bothering to lower her voice, standing in plain view of whoever was inside. With that assessment, a bit of worry left my body. I shook off the panic and regained the courage to rejoin Ash at the window, as Lilith hesitantly followed me.

Once I got a look at the boy inside for more than a second, my feelings quickly changed to that of sympathy. He didn't seem too far from my age, 18 at the very least, though likely older. He had blonde, messy hair, and wore only a short sleeve shirt, shorts, and sneakers, all in black. He shook on the floor, curled up, hugging himself, shaking, very clearly awake. Without thinking, I jumped over the glass poking through the window, and walked towards the boy.

"Are you okay?" I asked. He looked up at me, seemingly only seeing me now for the first time, staring up at me, with terrified blue eyes. He quickly tried to push himself off the floor with shaking arms and run, but he only took a few steps before he fell, either tripping, or just out of weakness. He turned his eyes to me once again, once he collapsed.

"Hey, calm down, I'm not going to hurt you. Are you okay? What happened?" I asked. The boy just continued to stare.

"Uh, are you homeless?" I asked. No response.

"Abused?" I asked. The boy frantically nodded.

"Okay, okay. It's okay, I'm here, okay?" I said, feeling my emotions already rising. The boy clearly felt the same, his eyes starting to water. I stepped closer and reached out to hug him, but he pushed himself a few inches away from me, on the floor. I quickly stopped my attempt.

"Sorry. Uh, are you cold? You can have my jacket if you want." I desperately offered, taking off my black leather jacket, and holding it out, offering peace. I already began to feel the slight draft of wind from the window begin to eat at my exposed skin, only wearing a thin white tank top underneath. The boy stared at me for a few moments, hesitant, before finally standing back up, and grabbing the jacket, and quickly zipping it up, and hugging it tight around his body.

"Look. I can help you, if you want. I could protect you, or I could call the police for you." I said, only adding the last part out of some feeling of obligation, like I needed to offer it, though not really wanting to. The boy frantically nodded his head no once I mentioned the police though, seemingly terrified.

"You don't trust them?" I asked. The boy nodded yes.

"I can protect you, then. Do you need me to?" I offered. The boy nodded yes.

"Okay, good, because for the record, I don't trust the police either." I said, with a smile. The boy smiled back.

"Are you hungry?" I asked.

Crystalline
​

On our way to a nearby restaurant, I explained to the boy how we had been looking for our missing friend, Ember, when we found him. Once the four of us arrived at our seats, Ashley removed her hoodie, revealing she had kept the crop top on underneath.

"And the second we're somewhere warm again, off it goes." I commented.

"Well, now that we are somewhere warm, I need to talk to you about something for a second." Lilith said to me. The boy looked up at her.

"It's not about you, don't worry." She said to him.

"What if a waiter comes and asks what we want?" Ashley asked.

"Just order whatever you want, I'll pay for it." I said.

"I'll take a chicken sandwich or something." Lilith said to Ashley, as Lilith pulled me away around to a quiet corner of the restaurant.

"You okay?" I asked Lilith.

"I just saw him. That guy. Laying on the floor, curled up. I thought, what if he's addicted to drugs or something?" She said.

"Well, then he still needs our help."

"No, I'm not saying he is. I don't think he is. I don't think he's lying."

"Then what are you saying?"

"What if that happens to someone?"

"Lilith? Are you dealing with something?" I asked. Lilith just stared into my soul, looking almost as terrified as the boy was.

"Look, you know I'm here for you, I can help you." I said, calmly.

"Ashley." She finally said, emotionally.

"What?" I said, shocked.

"Ashley. I just, I saw that boy, I thought, what if that's her, out of money, alone, freezing, and what if I can't do anything to stop it? She's already wasted so much money, I don't know how much she has left, I can't help, nothing I say works and it makes me feel so stupid, I just fail her over and over, I can't stop her, I can't change her, I just feel so worthless and scared, and like I'm letting her down, and I'm just fucking this up like I fuck up everything else, and I'm going to let her get herself killed, going out into God knows where at night with some sketchy dealer, I mean a pocket knife doesn't do any good, I mean, I carry one too, but it doesn't mean she'd be able to do anything with a gun held to her head, I mean, what if they hurt her, or do something to her, or…" She rambled, before I finally cut her off.

"Lilith, please, just calm down." I insisted.

"Now I'm burdening you like I burden her…" Lilith said, trying to start up again.

"You're not burdening me. Just listen to me, okay? Listen to me for a moment." I pleaded.

"Okay." She said, a bit breathlessly.

"You're helping, okay? You're there for her, and I'm here for you. That's all you can do. It's also not your fault that she isn't changing. That's on her, that's her own battle. You can't blame yourself for that. You don't make her decisions. All you can do is support her. But you can't let it get to you like this. If it starts to tear you apart, you need your distance. You need to worry about yourself too, okay? If it gets too hard, just step back." I explained.

"Okay." She repeated, emotionally.

"You're kind. You're caring. You're funny, you're sweet, you're incredible, Lilith. Never call yourself worthless, okay? You're not." I insisted.

"I'm sorry." She said, breaking.

"You don't need to apologize, you're okay, I understand. I just need to remind you that you're not, okay?" I said.

"Okay. Thank you, Tyler, thank you." She said, hugging me tight, burying her tearful words into my shoulder. I hugged her tight back for a few moments, before she finally let go.

"Okay. Please just don't tell Ashley I told you. Please." She insisted.

"I promise, I won't." I said.

"Thank you." She replied.

"You're okay?" I asked.

"I'm okay. I just needed to tell someone." She assured me.

"I'm here for you." I reassured her.

"Thank you. Okay, okay. I'm fine." She said, trying to wash away the emotion in her voice.

"Just tell me when you're ready to go back." I said.

"I'm ready." She said, and began to walk back after a deep breath. Ashley met my eyes first.

"I ordered you a burger." Ashley said to me.

"A burger? What kind of burger?" I asked.

"Whatever the first one on the menu is." She said, as I glanced at the menu. It didn't sound very great.

"You seriously just ordered the literal first thing listed on the menu? What did you get?" I asked her. She smiled knowingly at my small rant, likely having ordered it with no effort to intentionally mess with me, which honestly made me smile back at her.

"Fish." Ash responded.

"What about you?" Lilith asked the boy.

"He just ordered what I ordered for Tyler." Ashley answered. The boy smiled back at me.

"You've gotten us both into trouble, then." I said to Ash, jokingly.

Bent
​

I drove the boy back to my house. He handed back my jacket, and I put it back on. We sat upon my leather couch in silence for a moment.

"So, are you going to tell me your name?" I asked, as he looked at me. He hadn't spoken at the restaurant, but I didn't try to force him. Now, though, I hoped to at least get something out of him.

"Liam." He finally spoke.

"I'm Tyler, nice to meet you, Liam." I responded.

"Nice to meet you too." Liam responded.

He looked away from me, to the floor. A pause of silence once again filled the room.

"The girl we're looking for? Ember? She was in a band with me." I said.

Silence once again. His eyes locked to mine.

"I play guitar. She plays drums." I said.

Silence, his eyes still on mine.

"Do you have any hobbies?" I asked. He took a moment to speak.

"Drawing." He responded.

"That's cool. I write sometimes, but I can't draw very well. What do you like to draw most?" I asked. There was a pause, but not as long this time.

"Monsters." He answered.

"Monsters? What kind?" I asked

"Sharp claws. Long, thin eyes. Tall. Rotting skin. Wide mouths." He said, and paused.

"It helps me cope." He finally finished.

"You were out there, starving, and freezing." I said, giving an opening for more elaboration, but not forcing him into the topic.

"They took my jacket." He stated.

"Who took your jacket?" I asked.

"Just bullies." He explained.

"Just assholes. Why?" I asked.

"I deserved it." He stated, his eyes finally breaking from mine.

"Liam. You can tell me, it's okay." I tried to assure him.

The silence reemerged. I realized there was likely a reason this all felt so familiar.

"Is it about your sexuality?" I questioned. Liam's eyes came back to mine, the small bit of comfort he had found in my eyes seemingly gone, pure dread grabbing hold of him once more.

"I'm not like them. Ember isn't like them. Ember is trans, that's why we're looking for her. So she doesn't get hurt, okay? I promise, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here for you." I said, desperate not to lose this progress.

And then it happened.

"My parents told me I could jump off a cliff for all they cared. That I was good for nothing, that they wish they had never had me. Anyone that finds out just pushes me down, or hits me, spits on me, and I can't trust anyone, and I don't know what to do, or where to go, I tried going into that cabin, but someone found me, and hurt me, and after that, I couldn't get the will to even move, or eat, so I thought, why not fucking die here, if there's nowhere to go, no reason, because any time I try to get up, I just get pushed back down, so why bother? Why bother getting up when everyone only wants to see you fall?" He emotionally rambled.

"Please, can I hold your hand?" I pleaded, with tears in my eyes. Liam held my hand tightly in response.

"Ember's family, they didn't accept her either. Almost nobody here does. But I accept her. We accept you." I said, before pausing for a moment.

"My family didn't accept me either. It's hard to accept yourself, when everyone else tells you that you can't be accepted. That you're worthless. That there's nobody there for you. That you're going to Hell. But you have to accept yourself. And there is someone there for you. We're here for each other, okay? You have me now." I insisted.

"Thank you." Liam said.

"Of course." I replied.

"Thank you for giving me your jacket, in the woods. Thank you for giving me food, for listening to me, for being here for me." He replied, as if he had been holding it all back out of guilt.

"And thank you, for trusting me." I replied.

Liam suddenly hugged me, crying into my shoulder like Lilith had done only a few hours ago. I held him just as tight as her, and thankfully, he reciprocated. We stayed like that for a long while, in silence.

"You look a lot like Mike Wheeler." He said, softly breaking the silence, and the tension, letting go of me. I laughed.

"Yeah, I get that a lot." I replied.

"When we get Ember back, I'd love to watch you two play." He said.

"You will." I said, firmly and determined.

Mesmerizer
​

I awoke on the slightly uncomfortable couch, which I had fallen asleep on, after a brief debate with Liam on who should sleep in my bed. I had insisted that he sleep in the bed, and ultimately, he had caved to my demand. I began to make breakfast for the two of us, before Liam emerged back downstairs from my room.

"Tyler, I remembered…you're making breakfast?" He said, cutting himself off.

"Yeah." I replied, simply.

"Thank you." He said.

"Of course." I replied.

"Uh, I remembered, the person that bullied me…they told me something before they left. They said they were leaving me in a place where a cultist gang meets, that maybe they'd come and cut me up and use me for a ritual. I thought they were just trying to freak me out, but I realized, maybe they weren't lying. Maybe they're the ones who took Ember." He explained. I felt dread begin to creep into me.

"It scares me that you might be right." I replied.

---

"If they weren't lying, how do we even find the gang?" Ashley questioned, after I met her at the mall, and explained the situation.

"This is a bad idea." Lilith stated.

"It's the only choice we have, and we retrace our steps, like in a mystery novel, back to that cabin. If they meet there, maybe there's a clue, or something." I stated, feeling less confident as I explained myself.

"It's at least a chance, so let's take it." Liam chimed in.

"He can speak." Ashley noted.

"You can speak too, but you haven't told me if you're in or not." I said.

"I am." She said, simply.

"So am I." Lilith added.

"Good. So you'd better go get your hoodie, Ashley." I teased.

"Fuck the hoodie." Ash responded.

"I'd rather not." I replied.

---

"Nothing." Ashley said, as we wandered the rooms of the cabin. We'd only been here for a few minutes, and she was already acting dismissive of the plan.

"Something!" Lilith said, a bit enthusiastically, as she picked up something small on the floor, and examined it closer. I rushed over to her.

It appeared to be a small shot glass, with a jagged black and white drawing of a bat, clearly posed in a way to make it resemble a crescent moon. Underneath, there were small numbers.

"It's just a shot glass. Probably just someone drinking here, when they're not supposed to be." Ashley said, dismissively, after she grabbed it, and examined it.

"I don't recognize this symbol, though. And what's with the numbers?" I noted.

"Who knows? Who cares? It's not a lead." Ashley said, dismissive once again.

"It could be." Lilith reasoned.

"Well, this is all we have for now. It's still worth a shot." I said, grabbing it back from her, and putting it in my pocket, as I continued to search the house.

"Intentional pun, or unintentional?" Ashley asked. I thought back to my words, and sighed.

"Unintentional. Honestly." I answered.

Here With Me
​

I turned off the warm water from the shower, and stepped out, grabbing a towel to dry off, as I thought about the events of the past few days. Ember, Liam, Lilith, Ashley, all weighing on my mind. One thing at a time, though. Ember. I need to make sure she doesn't get hurt. That was my focus. I only threw on a pair of sweatpants, and stepped into my living room. Liam stared back at me.

Whoops.

"Sorry, I'm just so used to being here alone." I explained, standing in front of him, shirtless. Liam's eyes ran across my abs for a split second, then back at me.

"It's okay." He said, blushing a bit.

"If you're not ready to sleep, I'll go back upstairs and throw a shirt on." I said.

"I can sleep on the couch." Liam said, resuming the debate from yesterday.

"No, seriously, it's fine." I insisted.

"Well, then I'll sleep on the floor. If you don't sleep in the bed, then I won't sleep in it either." Liam said. I smiled.

"Are you suggesting we sleep in the same bed?" I teased. Liam blushed even more, embarrassment flooding his face like a typhoon.

"That isn't what I meant, I mean…" Liam said, hesitating.

"You mean, what?" I prodded.

"I mean, that idea, only if you're comfortable with it, but it isn't what I meant." He said.

"I'm fine with it. Are you fine with it?" I asked.

"I mean, yeah, I'm fine with it." He admitted.

"Cool." I said, and walked upstairs, as Liam followed me, shortly after. Liam watched in the moonlight (or maybe it was just a street light?) as I put on a tank top, and laid in bed on my back. Liam hovered over the bed for a second, before getting in on the other side, laying on his back as well, in silence, with a bit of distance between us. The moment went on for a while, until I heard the subtle shifting of the bedsheets beneath him. I turned on my side to face Liam, to see that he had done the same, now staring into my eyes.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked him. Liam's eyes didn't look terrified. They looked…focused?

"I'm not thinking about anything." He lied, poorly.

"You're a bad liar." I said, bluntly. Liam's expression intensified.

"I just…" Liam said, before pausing.

"I wanted another hug." He finally admitted.

"You don't have to be embarrassed, okay? I'd love another hug." I said, encouragingly.

Liam pushed himself closer to me, and I held him. He pushed himself even closer into my body after a moment, and I tightened my grip around him in response. I could feel the warmth of his body, as his heartbeat pounded close to mine. I took a deep breath, calming the warmth and tension beginning to build in my body. I ran a hand through his hair.

"Is that okay?" I whispered.

"Yes." He whispered back, his voice full of need. I felt my heart skip a beat. My body was beginning to become lost within this moment. I needed for us to both just SLEEP.

"Good. Turn around for me." I said. He did.

I held him close, as his body moved with mine, quickly becoming my small spoon. I forced my mind to envision that he was just a very comfortable pillow, and I was just tired. I felt myself begin to calm down.

"Thank you…goodnight Tyler." Liam whispered to me. Fuck.

"Goodnight Liam." I whispered back.

Thankfully, somehow, I fell asleep.

Again
​

The first thing I did when I arrived at my game store the next day, was put the shot glass right next to Ember's missing poster, with a note asking, "Do you know what this is?" Unfortunately, that question went unanswered, almost all day.

During our shift, Liam looked all around the store, and we talked for hours and hours about everything I had around. Figures, consoles, games…we were even playing a few rounds of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate when it was slow, late at night, less than an hour before closing, before a skinny girl with long brown hair and brown eyes walked in.

"Hey Willow." I said, realizing it was a frequent customer, only halfway paying attention, as I focused on keeping my lead against Liam on the game.

"Is this supposed to be a threat?" Willow said, unexpected anger emanating from her voice. I quickly processed her intense emotions, and paused the game.

"What???" I said, completely lost.

"This." Willow said, holding up the shot glass up to me, dramatically.

"You know what that symbol is? Is it a gang?" I asked, desperately.

"A CULT, yes. They're called The Vampires. How much do you know?" She questioned.

"Less than that." I admitted. Willow looked back to the sign, then back to Ember's missing poster.

"Oh, no no no, please don't tell me." She said, realizing this might have something to do with Ember.

"I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out, so if you have any information, please tell me." I pleaded.

"Don't bother going to the police." She said.

"I wasn't planning on it." I said.

"Every time I've tried telling them, they dismiss me, or say I'm crazy or something. I think they're being paid off, or they have someone on the inside, or something. Raven, uhm, my friend, she got involved. They meet at a cabin, but only at night, hence the name." She explained.

"We were there, actually. Where is she, then? Are they taking her somewhere?" I questioned, dreading the answer.

"From what I understand, she probably IS there, just not in plan view. Like, a secret room, or something." She explained.

"A secret room? Where?" I asked.

"No. No, you're not thinking of actually going back, right?" Willow asked, worried.

"I am." I said.

"You can't, they're way too dangerous. You'll get yourself hurt, or you'll get ME hurt, they could find out I'm the one who told you." She argued.

"I won't get hurt." I said, not knowing if that would be true.

"I'm not endangering myself by giving you any more information, and you shouldn't endanger yourself, either. I don't want anything to do with this. I'm not ending up dead." Willow said, and she quickly walked off. I turned to Liam.

"It's the best information we've gotten so far." I said, glancing at the time. It was still a few minutes until closing.

"Screw it." I said, as I flicked off the lights to the store, and closed the entrance, rushing to Spencer's gift shop.

"Hey Tyler!" Lilith greeted, once again, enthusiastically, as she prepared for closing with Ashley.

"Hey, listen, there's probably a secret room in the cabin, and they're a cult called The Vampires, and they only go there at night, so I say, we go there tomorrow in the morning, and find that damn room." I said, in a rush.

"I also say we rush into a battlefield with no guns, and get shot dead." Ashley said.

"Hello to you too Ash, but we don't have time to get guns, because I'm not letting Ember be wherever the Hell she is, having whatever the Hell is happening to her…HAPPEN to her, for another damn day!" I insisted.

"Suicide is fun too." Ashley said. Lilith shot her a disavowing look.

"Is that your way of saying you're in?* I asked.

"Why do you still bother asking?" Ashley responded.

Head Over Heels
​

"Do you usually sleep with your shirt off?" Liam asked, catching me by surprise, as I walked upstairs to sleep.

"You didn't have one on when you forgot I was here, that's the only reason I'm asking." Liam explained.

"Yeah, I don't usually have one on." I said, currently wearing yet another tank top.

"You don't have to wear one if you don't want to." He said.

"Even if we cuddle like last night?" I asked. Liam, who had been surprisingly bold up until now, blushed once again.

"Only if you're fine with it." He said.

"You're cute." I teased, as I took my shirt off, and laid in bed. Liam sunk deeper into his blankets. He once again stared into my eyes, as we both laid on our sides.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked, once again.

"Do you work out?" He asked, without needing much prodding.

"Yeah, why?" I asked.

"You look strong." He admitted.

"Thank you." I said.

The silence I had been expecting finally returned. I decided to push my luck.

"What else are you thinking?" I asked.

"Do you think it's easier to act than to speak?" He said. My heart once again skipped a beat.

"Yeah. Then act." I said, a bit needy, before I could stop myself. Liam's warm hands ran across my shoulders, then across my biceps, back up to my chest, then down to my abs.

"Strong." He muttered. My heart began to pound out of my chest, and I squirmed.

"Is it okay?" He asked, in that precious voice of his.

"Yeah." I whimpered. Liam then grabbed my arms, and pulled himself closer to me.

"You're so fucking beautiful." I whimpered once again, as my hands ran through his hair.

"You're beautiful too." Liam whispered back, before turning onto his side, away from me, like last night.

Fuck. I took a deep breath, and calmed down, before snuggling close to him, and holding him close, making him the small spoon once again.

"Goodnight Liam." I whispered.

"Goodnight Tyler." He whispered back.

"I love you, Tyler."

"I love you too, Liam."

Chlorine
​

"I don't see anything." Ashley said, as we searched for a secret room of some kind, within the cabin.

"Ashley, it's been, like, a minute." I responded.

"Help me lift this." Lilith said, as she made a small attempt to move a shelf. Liam rushed over, and the four of us moved it aside. She motioned to another one, and then another one. Finally, we moved the final one out of the way. That's when she kneeled down, and traced an indent on the floor with her finger.

"HA! I KNEW IT!" She said, enthusiastically.

"A trapdoor without a handle?" I asked.

"I need something to prop it open with. OH! WAIT!" Lilith said, reaching into her pocket, pulling out her pocket knife, and using it to open the door enough to open it with her hands, putting the pocket knife back away.

"Told you I always kept one on me." Lilith remarked to me, as she began to climb down, before Ashley stopped her.

"Let me go first." Ash insisted, as she lightly moved Lilith aside, and climbed down the stairs.

"Taking initiative for once?" I teased, as the four of us walked down into a nearly pitch black room. I heard quick footsteps, as Ashley presumably ran forwards blindly into the darkness.

"Where the Hell are you, Ash?" I said, reaching what felt like the bottom of the steps, reaching for my phone, to use as a flashlight. That need didn't last long, though, as the blindingly bright lights to the room flicked on, revealing it to be much larger than I had expected.

It also revealed a girl with long black hair and blue eyes, holding us at gunpoint, with Ember tied to a chair behind her…as Ashley stood right beside her.

Ember stared back at me, with a regretful look, as though it pained her to see me here. My relief that she was alive was completely drowned out by the rest of the situation playing out in front of me.

"I'm sorry." Ash muttered. I remained speechless.

"Ashley told me you were planning on rescuing Ember, that you'd figured out where we were, and how we're typically only here at night. Rest assured, that won't be the case anymore." Explained the girl, holding us at gunpoint.

"What the fuck, Ash?" I finally spat out.

"She was low on money, probably going through withdrawals. We're the only ones who offer." Said the girl, as she handed Ash a familiar looking shot glass from a nearby table, filled with a liquid that seemed to be blood. Ash immediately drank it, and handed the glass back to her, seemingly relieved.

"But she doesn't have to worry anymore, seeing as she's a member now. She can have as much as she wants, now that she's proven her loyalty." The girl continued to explain.

"Don't forgive me. Don't come looking for me, you'll just get hurt. And don't hurt Raven. She's just caught up in this, just like me." Ashley explained, referring to the girl holding us at gunpoint.

"Ashley, please." Lilith pleaded, desperately. Ashley simply looked at her, and walked away, through a door, and out of sight.

"Oh, one more thing, as part of the deal. Hopefully this doesn't kill you. I'm being genuine there, I don't want you dead from this." Raven said, walking towards me, holding a needle, containing red liquid.

"As long as you survive this, we won't kill any of you, though. AS LONG AS YOU NEVER COME BACK. Got it?" Raven asked.

"Go fuck yourself." Lilith replied.

"I'll take that as a yes." Raven said, moving the needle closer to me.

"No, please! Let me say…" Is all I could say, before the needle was injected into me, and I collapsed to the floor, blacking out.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World
​

"I'm a bad girl."

I thought at first, the figure that had spoken, the one surrounded by a pure, black void, was Ashley. But then I looked closer. She looked younger. Her face was different. She wore clothes I had never seen Ashley wear. But…she looked so, so similar.

"Ruby, you're not. Please, just listen to me, you can change."

The voice that replied…it sounded like me…but slightly different. God, ever so slightly different. But he wasn't me. He was younger, too. His eyes were gray, and mine were blue.

"Sage, I can't. I've seen it. Timeline after timeline, this is always who I become. I'll never change. I'm stuck in a never ending battle. The only other person that could stop me, as powerful as me, is gone. You're the only one here with a happy ending. How can you still stand here and forgive me, after everything I've done to you?" Ruby questioned.

"Because you're fighting with yourself. It doesn't matter what you've done, as long as you change. You can escape this. I can help you. Please, Ruby. Don't do this." Sage pleaded.

"You should have let me die when you had the chance." Ruby replied, turning her gaze to the only other person present. My heart dropped when I saw her.

It wasn't Ember. She looked different. She was born as a girl, I could tell. She was younger. But she was still so beautiful. I only processed what I was seeing for a split second, before Ruby spoke again, and raised her hand.

"Goodbye, Ember." She said, as Ruby's hand twisted, and Ember's neck snapped.

Wildfire
​

My vision was blurred, as my eyes desperately tried to refocus on…

"Ember!" I said, thankful once again that she was alive, my voice weak, along with the rest of my body, as I tried to push myself off of the ground.

"Stop moving." Raven insisted, slightly closer to me, though still standing over me. I had clearly fallen backwards, a substantial amount behind Lilith and Liam, who stood a little behind Raven.

"What did you see?" Raven asked. My mind was too hazy and distressed to even think of lying.

"Ember. Dead." I muttered. Raven moved closer to me, so she should better hear my weak voice.

"How did she die?" Raven asked.

"Telekinesis." I muttered.

"From who?" She insisted. I coughed, my body weak.

"FROM WHO?" Raven demanded, moving even closer.

"Ruby." I finally replied…right before Lilith grabbed her pocket knife and sliced the back of Raven's neck. Raven dropped the gun, dropping to her knees from the sudden pain, her head dropping down, as Liam quickly ran to grab the gun. Lilith rushed over to Liam.

"Give it to me." She demanded, and Liam quickly compiled, as Lilith aimed the gun straight at Raven's head. Raven's gaze looked back up at Lilith.

"I FUCKING HATE YOU!" Lilith shouted, with an expression, and a raw tone of rage, that I had never heard from her before. Raven looked just as shocked as me, though she remained speechless. A part of me thought Raven was just accepting her fate.

"FREE HER." Lilith demanded, looking at Liam for a split second, pointing to Ember. I forced myself to stand, as difficult as it was.

"Lilith, God, I can barely stand." I muttered. Lilith didn't respond. Through the blur of my vision, I could tell Ember had been untied from her chair.

"Tyler, holy shit, man." She said, as she ran to me for a hug, holding me tight. She quickly realized how weak I was, though, as I stumbled when she let go.

"Fuck, Tyler, please don't fucking die on me now, after all this shit." Ember pleaded.

"I'm not, I'm not, my vision is coming back, I promise." I insisted.

"EMBER, LEAVE. We'll go back and get Ashley. Come on." Lilith demanded.

"NO NO NO NO NO. ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE? YOU DON'T KNOW WHO ELSE IS IN HERE, OR WHO ELSE COULD BE COMING. TYLER CAN BARELY STAND. I AM NOT LETTING ANY OF YOU GET LOCKED UP HERE LIKE ME. WE NEED TO GO, NOW." Ember yelled at her. Lilith stayed silent for a moment.

"THEN START MOVING." Lilith yelled at Ember, beginning to walk backwards, her gun still aimed at Raven. Ember and Liam wrapped their arms around me to help me stand and leave. Raven's expression was still that of fear, not chancing to move from her knees, as we walked up the stairs, as Lilith slammed the trapdoor behind us. We made our way back to my house, as quickly as we could.

---

We all sat in my living room, after exchanging very few words, letting silence simultaneously suffocate and calm us. Ember is okay. That's what I need to think about. Ember is okay, I repeated internally.

"I should have shot her." Lilith said, still holding the gun in one hand, staring at it, while the other hand traced its edges.

"No, Lilith, you did what was right." I assured her.

"I should have had the strength. I should have gone in there and saved her." She said, roughly, her eyes still intensely focused on the gun.

"Lilith, you couldn't have saved her." I tried to reason, before Lilith suddenly shoved the gun to her head.

"THAT'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM, TYLER. I COULDN'T HAVE FUCKING SAVED HER." She snapped.

"Jesus fucking Christ, please, please put the fucking gun down, Lilith, please." I said, adrenaline shooting through my body, like the drugs had before.

"I CAN'T FORGIVE MYSELF, TYLER, YOU KNOW DAMN WELL I CAN'T." She yelled.

"We'll get her back, okay?" Ember said, weakly.

"EVEN IF WE DO, I'M THE ONE WHO CAUSED THIS. I COULDN'T FUCKING SAVE HER FROM HER ADDICTION." She yelled.

"You're right. You're right. You couldn't save her. Remember? What we talked about? Please? Please, fucking please, remember, remember what I told you, you're kind. You're caring, you're sweet, you're incredible, it's not your fault, she's fucking tearing you apart, Lilith, it's her, it's her battle, please, remember that you're not a burden, that you can't change her alone." I rambled, desperately. Lilith stared at me intensely, tears streaming down her eyes, the cold metal of her gun pressed to her skull, only wavering with the shaking in her hands. The moment went on, for what felt like hours.

Until finally, her arm dropped, along with her gun, to the floor, as she ran to hug me, like she had done before, her head finding its comfortable spot in my shoulder.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Tyler, I'm sorry." She sobbed, muffled, into my shoulder.

"It's okay. It's okay. I know." I said, finally letting myself cry as well, holding her tight.

Dancing With Your Eyes Closed
​

Usually, I found the sound of rain to be comforting. Now, though, it felt more foreboding than anything else. Liam watched as I did some bicep curls, desperate to take my mind off of what had transpired in the morning.

"Do you think telekinesis is real?" Liam asked. I set my weights onto the floor in defeat.

"Maybe." I said, giving an unhelpful answer.

"Earlier, you said we didn't have time to get a gun. Now we have one, but it won't do any good if someone actually has telekinesis." Liam said, likely only speaking due to anxiety.

"I know." I said.

"Ashley said not to shoot Raven, and Lilith didn't. She said she's caught up in this too. I wonder how many people…" Liam said, before I interrupted him.

"WILLOW! Sorry, I cut you off." I apologized.

"No, it's fine…Willow?" Liam said.

"Willow! She said her friend, Raven. They know each other." I explained.

"Oh…" Liam said, processing.

"No, that's good, that's really good." I said, as my mind began to race.

"It is?" Liam asked.

"I can work with this. I can make a plan out of this. We talk to her when we see her next, at the game store, she comes in often. I can think of a plan. She's our lead, somehow." I said.

"We should get some sleep." Liam suggested.

I turned to a nearby mirror, looking at my expression. Even though I knew what I had just been through, it caught me by surprise. I looked like such a mess. I realized I desperately needed it, before we kept both of us up with our thoughts.

"Good call." I replied, heading into the bed.

"Goodnight, Tyler."

"Goodnight, Liam."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

---

It was late at night the next day. Finally, I saw her.

"WILLOW!" I said, the second she passed by the store. Her body quickly turned to my voice, jumping a bit.

"Look, I know you said you don't want anything to do with this." I began to say, as her gaze turned to Ember, who was with me in the store, along with Liam and Lilith.

"Ember." She said simply, shocked.

"We were right. She was there, in the secret room underneath the cabin. But now Ashley is stuck there. She got involved too."

"Oh my gosh." Willow said, distraught.

"But Willow, listen to me. I saw Raven." I said. Willow looked like she could pass out on the spot, but she still moved closer to me.

"Oh my gosh, was she okay?" She said.

"She held me at gunpoint, but yeah." I said.

"I'm so sorry." She said, as if it was somehow her fault, which it clearly wasn't.

"Look, I might be able to get both of them out, or at least try to find a way. The only way I got Ember out, is because of a loophole that's now closed. I need you to be our next loophole…to hopefully find another loophole. Raven drugged me." I started to explain.

"Tyler, please." Willow said, looking pale.

"It's okay, I'm alive, just listen. I need more drugs." I explained.

"WHAT?!" Willow exclaimed.

"Willow, please just be quiet and listen to me for a second." I insisted. Willow nodded yes.

"Okay. The drugs. They showed me…a vision, or something, I don't know. But Raven clearly wanted to know what I saw, desperately. I think if I can get whatever information they're after, somehow, some way, I can get an edge on them." I explained.

Silence fell over us for a few moments.

"Can I talk now?" Willow asked.

"It's been more than a second." Ember remarked. I elbowed her.

"That sounds insane." Willow replied.

"It's a plan." I stated.

"How am I involved in this?" She questioned. I sighed. Here comes the hard part.

"I need you to go to Raven, and get some for me." I finally said. Willow stared at me for a few moments.

"Raven won't try to kill you, if you two are friends." I explained.

"I know, I just…do you think she'll be mad?" She questioned.

"Mad?" I questioned back.

"I don't know. I mean, I did try to help her, but I obviously couldn't." Willow explained.

"Oh my God." I said, unable to help myself. Again? Seriously?

"No. She won't be mad." Lilith chimed in.

"How do you know?" Willow questioned.

"It's not your battle to win. It's hers." Lilith explained. I felt a weight begin to lift from my shoulders as I heard her words.

"Okay, okay. But I haven't seen her in so long. Is it really a good idea to go see her right away and immediately ask her for something?" Willow asked. Ember sighed.

"Just go get this idiot guitar player some cult drugs from your goth girlfriend already." Ember spat out.

All of us turned to look at her.

"How did you know she was my girlfriend?" Willow questioned.

"I was in the cult for, like, at least a week, with nothing to do but talk. Gossip gets around, y'know?" Ember remarked.

Psychoboost
​

The group of us gathered at my house, when Willow finally arrived back.

"Raven said it's all fine, as long as I tell her what was in the vision once it's done. Here." She said, handing me a needle, filled with light blue liquid.

"I know, it's different." Willow said, before I had the chance to point it out. I almost thought I was being tricked, but the fact that she pointed it out so quickly, made me believe otherwise.

"Different, how?" I questioned, holding it, and examining it.

"I don't know, honestly." She admitted.

"Mystery cult drugs. Fun. Maybe you will actually die this time." Ember remarked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Liam questioned. I shrugged.

"We'll see." I said, as I injected it into myself.

Shout
​

A boy.

Stood in front of me.

Black, curly hair.

Gray eyes.

Gray, jaded eyes.

Who are you?

Fuck.

Everything felt so off.

Hello?

Hello?

Am I speaking?

Hello?

"Yes, yes, I can hear you. I haven't talked to anyone in so long. I'm trapped, I need you to help me. I need you to call out to me, and remind me who I am."

You look familiar.

"You look familiar too."

Who are you?

"Felix."

I don't know who you are.

Where are you trapped?

"My mind."

Where are you right now?

"In my mind."

No, no, where are you physically present?

"My body?"

Yes.

"Just watching. Not controlling. I promise you, it's not my fault. I promise you."

It's okay.

You said, all I need to do is call out to you, right?

"Yes."

So, tell me where your body is.

Tell me.

Please.

What have you done?

"I…I've become the leader of a cult."

Goliath
​

"...the cult leader." I muttered, waking up, weak, regaining my vision, my words desperate to leave my mouth, before the dream-like memories fade.

"Have you seen the cult leader?" I asked Ember.

"Uh, yeah?" Ember said, clearly irritated at the lack of context.

"Curly hair. Gray, jaded eyes." I rambled.

"Uh, yeah, that's right. Holy shit." Ember said, in realization, of what I would say next.

"That means it's real. The drugs are real. I talked to him just now." I explained.

"You TALKED to him?" Ember asked.

"Yeah…oh my God. I just realized. He's the same person that threatened you, like, five years ago." I said. Ember clapped her hands together, enthusiastically.

"I KNEW I recognized him from somewhere!" Ember said, relieved to have that point clarified.

"We need to go to him. Willow, you need to take me to him." I insisted, without explanation.

"You're fucking insane." Willow said, looking me dead in the eyes.

"Ditto." Ember replied.

"I spoke to a part of him. He begged me to call out to him, to save him, he said he was trapped in his own mind, and all I needed to do was to call out to him, to save him." I explained.

"Empire Strikes Back type shit." Ember said.

"No. No, seriously, it's not a trap." I explained.

"That's Return of the Jedi." Ember said.

"Shut up, Ember, seriously, I could tell, he wasn't faking it." I replied.

"I don't know if I should go for a sex joke, or just point out that you don't know what psychopaths are." Ember said. I felt myself becoming increasingly irritated. I grabbed the gun from the counter, where Lilith had set it down.

"Damn, man, I was just joking." Ember replied. I attempted to hand the gun to Willow, but she didn't react.

"Hold me at gunpoint. Take me to the cult. Say you're turning me in. They trust you. They won't kill you, even if they think it's a trick, especially not with Raven there, they won't want to upset her. They won't kill me, they want information out of me. They put me in front of the leader before they kill me, or whatever they want to do, and I get through to him." I explained. Willow hesitantly took the gun.

"Let me go with you." Lilith insisted.

"Me too." Liam chimed in.

"No thanks." Ember said.

"Look, the more of us that go, the more suspicious it is. They won't believe that WILLOW kidnapped THREE of us. No offense, Willow." I said.

"No, I agree." Willow agreed.

"I'm not letting you go back there alone." Lilith demanded.

"No, he's right." Liam relented.

"Liam, please." Lilith pleaded.

"Trust me." He urged. The two of them looked at each other for a moment, and she finally relented as well, realizing it was a losing battle.

"Fine." Lilith said.

"Okay. I want to go. Now. Please." I said to Willow.

"Hug me first, you idiot guitar player." Ember said. I went to hug her, as Liam and Lilith quickly joined in.

"If you get yourself killed, I'll kill you." She threatened.

"Noted." I replied, breaking from the hug, beginning to walk backwards, towards the door.

"No matter what happens, tell Ashley I miss her." Lilith requested.

"I will." I assured her, continuing to back out.

"I love you, Tyler." Liam said. I fought back my building emotions, trying to stay strong.

"I love you too, Liam." I replied, a bit more emotional than I had wished, finally heading out the door.

"Why did it have to be me that falls for you, Raven? Why?" Willow whined, pressing a gun to my head, as we walked out the door.

King
​

The walk to the cabin was silent, cold, and windy. It was growing darker and darker with every step closer. Unfortunately for me, the time flew by. I was walking into a battlefield, unprepared, armed with only words I'd be making up on the fly. I was in way over my head. But I was too deep in this mess to care.

The trapdoor flew open to the entrance of the cult, and Willow quickly had a gun aimed at her head. It lowered just as quickly, however.

"Willow." Raven said.

"Raven." Willow replied, shutting the trap door behind me, as we made our way to the bottom of the steps.

"Why are you bringing him here?" Raven asked, bluntly.

"... indentured servitude?" Willow said, as if she was the one asking Raven. Raven shrugged her shoulders.

"Sure." Raven said, as Raven aimed her gun at my head, and Willow lowered hers.

"The Reaper will want to see you, I'm sure." Raven said, using her other hand to point to a door. I made my way towards the door.

"Who's The Reaper?" I questioned.

"The boss." She said, as she opened the door, and closed it behind me, walking inside with me, her gun still aimed at the back of my head.

It was the leader I had seen, wearing some sort of dark, dramatic outfit, that almost looked straight out of an anime. It almost looked like a cosplay. He also wore a silver necklace, with the logo of The Vampires adorned on it. A black cat also lay in its bed in the corner, watching me.

"You've caused a lot of trouble." The Reaper stated, dramatically.

"So have you." I shot back.

"You look familiar…" The Reaper said, as if he hadn't said it before.

"I should. I'm the one who confronted you, when you threatened Ember with a knife, when we were younger." I explained.

"No, I wouldn't remember that…OH! You look EXACTLY like Finn Wolfhard. You know, he plays Mike Whe…" He started to say, before I cut him off.

"...Wheeler in Stranger Things, yes, I know." I finished, annoyed.

"You know, I thought the same thing, when I first met him, I just didn't bring it up, because it seemed like kind of a bad time." Raven chimed in.

"And he SOUNDS just like him too, doesn't he?" The Reaper noted.

"You really do." Raven agreed.

"Yeah, I'm well aware." I responded.

The door behind us opened up, and Liam and Lilith were escorted into the room, with a friendly nudge from Willow's gun. Raven shot her a look. Willow shut the door behind us. Raven continued to awkwardly keep her gun pointed at the back of my head, despite there being three heads in the room that needed a gun pointed at them, now.

"Oh, wow, I can't believe two more of you were caught too! What incredible luck!" The Reaper joked, clearly seeing right through it.

"Okay, seriously, you two?" I said, dropping the act, completely lost as to how I could possibly continue it from here.

"I'm not involved in this." Raven made sure to note, despite that only being half true.

"If this is a poorly thought out ploy, and I mean INCREDIBLY poorly thought out ploy, to try to get through to Ashley, then I'm sorry to say, you've failed. Because NONE of you are EVER going to see her again." The Reaper said, confidently. I suddenly felt a very real overwhelming sense of dread. Was she already dead? Had we come here for nothing? No. We had come here for something.

"I saw someone that night. Someone that looked just like Ashley. I know I can't convince her. I saw what she did to Ember." I said. The Reaper smiled.

"Good. Let's see what else you can see." The Reaper said, grabbing an indigo needle from a table beside him. I realized I needed to get to the point, and fast.

"I also talked to a boy named Felix." I said. The Reaper stopped, staring at me, shocked. Real, genuine shock. I felt a small bit of relief.

"Felix, I can help you out of this. You hurt my best friend, Ember, when we were younger. Then you kidnapped her. Then you kidnapped my other friend. And here I am, still offering you a way out of this. You clearly have power over the police, somehow. You can just step away, and you can change, I promise you. Whoever hurt you, whatever did this to you, you're stronger than it." I said, hoping it was good enough to reach through to him. The Reaper paused, took a deep breath, and released it, dramatically.

"My best friend, who I thought could be my lover. My parents. Everyone. EVERYONE. All Christians. Said I was a sinner, that I'd go to Hell, said they hated me, so this is what I've done. I've cut myself. I've done drugs. I've done both at the same time. That's how I discovered these visions, mixing my blood with drugs by accident. I saw a world where I could make meaning, where I could worship this Goddess, Ruby, where I could appease her, and give a purpose to me, and to everyone here. I didn't have to be Felix anymore. Ashley will become Ruby in this timeline, I can see it now. Ashley will die, and Felix is DEAD." The Reaper shot back.

"Then how did I speak to Felix just a few hours ago? Listen, do you realize how INSANE this all sounds? You're so deep in your own head. Just let yourself be Felix again, please. I know you're suffering, deep down. I'll accept you. Everyone you've fucking tortured here, they were willing to accept you. So let them. Be you again, Felix." I pleaded. The Reaper stared at me for what felt like hours. Then, I finally saw someone else come through.

"Please, get me out of this." Felix said, his voice sounding different, more human, like less of a performance, setting the needle back on the table. His cat moved from his bed, and walked up to him, staring at him, clearly worried for his master.

"Please, I don't know how to stop this. I'm so fucking scared of myself. I don't know how to stop this." Felix pleaded, as his cat pressed his body against him, in need of affection. Felix began to pet him, a bit absentmindedly. The cat purred in response. His humanity scared me more than anything.

"We will, okay? I told you, we will. You're the one with power here. You can put a stop to this, I promise you. All you have to do is give the word, shut this down, and walk away." I insisted.

"Okay. Okay, you're right. I just have to go out there, and…" The Reaper said, before pausing, and shaking a bit.


Then his neck inexplicably snapped.


The black cat stared at its master's corpse, laying on the floor, as Ashley appeared from the door behind us, her hand still in the air, clearly having used it to telekinetically snap his neck. Raven quickly changed her gun's aim to Ashley's skull.

"Really stupid idea." Ashley noted, simply. Raven must have agreed, as she lowered her gun in response. Ashley stood in front of Felix's corpse.

"How could I turn down the opportunity to become a cult leader, AND a Goddess?" Ashley questioned, out loud.

"Ash, what the fuck are you talking about? Why would you want to keep this cult going? What the Hell does that do for you, besides just drugs?" I questioned.

"People will worship me, and we can destroy those who wrong me, who hurt me, who defy me." Ashley explained.

"Ash, you're way too deep in a power trip, or drugs, or both, and you sound…" I began to say, before she cut me off.

"YOU'RE the one who sounds CRAZY. You see the way everyone wronged you and Ember? And you want to just…walk away? You want to let it go? We can actually get REVENGE, Tyler, do you not understand? Real, genuine revenge. Don't give me some cliche bullshit about how it's wrong. You know they deserve to suffer." Ashley argued.

"It is wrong." I said, weakly. Ashley sighed.

"You know, maybe you're right. Maybe that vision you saw of Ember's death is real, too. I mean, you're right about me being an evil fucking Goddess with telekinesis, right? WHY NOT EMBER'S NECK SNAPPING LIKE HIS, TOO? IT'S NOT LIKE ANY OF YOU CAN FUCKING STOP ME!" She yelled.

A long, uncomfortable pause held in the room.

A pause just long enough for me to remember.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"What?" Ashley questioned.

"How do you know?"

"I'm a fucking Goddess. How could any of you stop me?"

"In the vision. They said there was someone else. Someone who could stop you."

"Well, they're clearly not here right now."

"...how do you know?"

The silent pause returned. It was broken only by Raven's laughter.

"Yeah, Ash, how do you know?" Raven said, still laughing.

"Raven, if you know anything, if you say anything, I'll snap your fucking…" Ashley was cut off.

"Lilith." Raven said.

Ashley only managed to raise her hand a few inches in the air before it was stopped. The room's color flashed away, monochrome for a moment, before being drowned in blue and red, then returning to monochrome, only being lined on the sides by blue and red, like an old TV.

Lilith raised her hand, slowly, presumably fighting with Ashley telekinetically, as they both slowly began to rise, both with one hand raised straight at each other. Ashley began to slowly slide backwards, against the wall, before fully being pushed into it, her arms faltering, pinned down by Lilith's telekinesis. Ashley's expression changed from anger to sympathy so quickly, it disturbed me.

But not because I believed it.

"Lilith, please, just give me a chance." Ashley pleaded.


"Your words are as hollow as your soul. I gave you a fucking chance." Lilith replied.


Lilith thrusted both of her arms up, and quickly twisted both of her arms back down. The room was filled with a pure, blinding white, along with an indescribable shattering sound. My vision quickly returned to normal, along with the color in the room.

Ashley was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is she?" I questioned.

"Somewhere she'll never see us again." Lilith replied.

I almost questioned her response…but I could read it in her eyes. She just wasn't ready to say it out loud.


Ashley was dead.

Echo
​

Ashley awoke, her vision blurred, her surroundings dark, and her body weak. All she could make out was a figure, standing in front of her.

"Lilith?" Ashley called out, weakly.

"No. Just me." A voice hauntingly echoed.

The voice was named Ruby.

Middle of the Night
​

"...like Felix the Cat!" Liam said.

"Okay, you've convinced me. We'll name him Felix." I replied. We had decided to adopt the poor black cat from the cult leader, and we needed to think of a name. Turns out, the perfect name had accidentally been given to us…by the aforementioned cult leader.

We stared up at the stars, as the moonlight, (definitely the moonlight this time,) shone upon the pool water we were in.

"Do you ever miss her?" Liam asked, without needing to specify who. I broke away from eye contact for a moment, looking down, before relocking eyes with him.

"I miss what she used to be, but I wouldn't change anything about what happened. We saved Ember, Raven, Willow, Lilith, and you. I couldn't save her from herself. She was too powerful, we couldn't risk giving her another chance. I would have done the same as Lilith. I can't worry about her. All I know is, we're okay. That's all that matters to me." I said. Liam smiled. I smiled back.

"I can't wait to see your performance tomorrow." Liam said.

"Oh, I'm gonna perform real good for you." I teased. Liam blushed.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He said.

"I don't know. I just knew it would make you blush." I admitted.

"Why do you like teasing me so much?" He asked.

"Because it's cute." I said, moving closer to him.

"And it makes this even better." I said, before leaning close to his lips, and stopping.

"Is this okay?" I asked, teasingly. He blushed even deeper, making a silly, slightly upset face.

"Just fucking kiss me already." He insisted.

So, I ran my hands through his hair once more, and kissed him, deeply, and slowly parted.

"You're so beautiful." He said.

"So are you." I replied.

"Please, kiss me again." He pleaded. I happily obliged.