He grins over the lip of his bottle. Their eyes have long since adjusted to the dark, and when she turns her head the shape of her mouth is clearly silhouetted against the dim light that filters in between the boards--as is the ridiculous flop of the stuffed ears, the curve of the hood that begs to be pushed gently back and away from her hair, hair that he frankly can't blame Brutus for shedding tears over. His hands, in the way that they do when he is exercising restraint, ache.
The liquor haze has settled in fully and he feels (despite the sprint that had been required to get here) safer than he has in weeks, with his back to the rough wall and America so close that he can smell the cloying stink of her drink of her choice when she lifts it. Psychopaths and skeletal hands and empty-eyed reflections are all fictional pasts: he is twenty-one again, twenty-two; someone forgot to pay the power bill again so they're a week without it and it's dark but that's not so bad, and they're drunk or worse, and swapping stories that some of them have heard a dozen times.
Tell us the one with the skunk, someone says, and there's a ripple of lazy laughter, and then: no, Alex, tell the one about the Greek girl you picked up in Haiti. Pockets, tell the one about the fry cook at Chap's. Taym, tell the one about--
Quote:
God, put me on the ******** spot. I'll tell you about uhm--this is what your story made me think of.
I was having a party once--I was seventeen, it was before I graduated. Parents out of town. I actually did that a lot. I had a lot of little siblings--six, I don't know if you knew that--so sometimes it was hard to keep things quiet, but mostly if you let them have free rein on the TV and food and the pool and didn't make them go to bed early, you had a sort of agreement. I'll let you break all these rules while mom and dad are gone, if you let me break them too.
My little sister Harley--we all have stupid ******** names, or most of us anyway. They ran out of fuel by the time the twins came. Anyway--my little sister Harley was going through a goodie two-shoes stage, and when she found out I was throwing another party she got real righteous about it, threatening to tell mom and dad. Seen one too many DARE cops, I guess--lectured me about the drinking and the smoking, even if she didn't really know--anyway.
I kinda bullied her into keeping her trap shut, and kinda sweet-talked her, and kinda bribed her. I don't remember how much she wrung out of me but she drove a hell of a hard bargain. Anyway, the agreement is struck, on the condition that I don't let anyone drink.
That goes to hell in a handbasket within ten minutes of the first few people showing up. We used to get older kids bringing in smokes and beer but we also--I don't know. I lived in a... not a rich neighborhood, but we had pools and entertainment rooms, you know? And liquor cabinets full enough that kids could grab a few bottles and no one would notice. So naturally people showed up, and it's barely even dark yet and there's a red Solo cup in every hand, and Harley comes down the stairs and gives me this look from across the living room like: busted, a*****e. She wouldn't have said a*****e, though. She'd have said butthole. Goodie two-shoes.
I pull her aside and I threaten and cajole and I offer her twenty more bucks and she finally folds her arms up and marches back up the stairs which I take as a sign that she's come to. So I tell everyone to let loose, ******** it.
At some point--maybe one AM--this girl from two towns over who's visiting her cousin comes down and informs me that she has decided to give herself a mohawk, and do I wanna help and maybe point her to a bathroom. She was pretty stoned but I was too so I thought this was a great ******** idea, so we decide to make it into a public affair. We lay down some plastic in the middle of the living room floor and we break out my dad's beard trimmer. She's got hair halfway down her back, but she keeps saying she's wanted a mohawk for years, ******** it, let's do this.
We get the most sober person in the room to do the deed. Pictures are taken. Someone documents the whole thing on video. There's a lot of ******** applause, and she is stoked. And there's about two pounds of curly blonde hair in a trash bag in the middle of the living room floor. So we gather it up and we toss it, the party continues. I have no idea if she regretted the mohawk after, but I damn near did.
Two days later mom and dad are home, the party is in my past, and Harley and Ros and Mal and I are sitting around the dining room table shooting the s**t and mom comes in to take out the trash. You see where this is going. The bag breaks, and out tumbles this wadded-up trash bag, and she picks it up in bafflement and just this huge hank of long wavy blonde hair falls out. I freeze. Mal freezes. Ros freezes. Ros is on video touching up the back of this girl's head, OK, in my mother's living room with a drink in her hand. And Harley looks right across the table at me and I am like, you little rat, you are going to tell her the whole ******** story.
Mom looks at us, like: who wants to volunteer? And we're all trying to look confused and ignorant and stupid and all of us are sitting there with our minds racing trying to think up a cover story, and then Harley, really suddenly, bursts into tears. I'm like, oh s**t, here it comes: Taym's been drinking, Mal and Ros were drunk, blah blah.
She starts sobbing and she goes: "I'm sorry. I know I'm in trouble."
And I feel so ******** guilty I'm opening my mouth to stop her and she goes: "I cut the hair off that expensive doll you got me for my birthday because I wanted to play barbershop." She had some--ugly, like--those porcelain dolls, you know? Mom had gotten her a really nice one a couple months back because the name on the box was Harley, or something.
We had to sit there listening to her getting this awful ******** lecture from Mom about how disappointed she was and how she'd promised her she'd take such good care of it, while I got down and cleaned up the mess so Mom wouldn't look too hard. Hook, line, sinker.
I went upstairs later and Harley was standing over her trash can cutting the hair off the doll, which she ******** loved, by the way, ugly-a** thing that it was, and I was like, so why'd you do that. And she said: because you keep getting in trouble, but I haven't gotten in trouble in a long time.
And I started to tell her thank you, and she, all of what, nine or ten years old, she looks at me with the scissors in her hand and she goes: and now you owe me a big ******** favor.
He pinky swears, as requested, and his hands are shaking but he doesn't notice, and he tells her that he'll try not to let any "your highnesses" slip out by mistake. He asks her if she's ever read--well there's a series of books and there's a King in it, and he's a good King, but no one actually knows he's the King and it's pretty obvious they'd all vote him in as a president, if that place had presidents, but the thought is too difficult to follow through the pleasant haze.
He is sure that she'll realize that the ramble is not as drunk as it seems (indeed, the only symptoms of his drunkenness, really, have been that he is more talkative than usual, that his hands shake without stopping, and that he smiles more often but just as secretive), and that it's a transparent ploy to avoid letting go of her just because the ritual of the pinky swear is over, and sure enough he threads his fingers through hers for a second and he hates himself for doing the difficult thing for once in his life and having told her "maybe we shouldn't." But "maybe we shouldn't" has been said and it has trappings whether she realizes it or not--she is so much more casual with his hands than he is; more casual with her hands than he has ever been without the help of some foreign substance clouding his judgment and choking his anxieties--and so he lets her go, reluctantly.
The worst part about America, he thinks dimly, is that there's no point in telling her about the things that make her amazing, because she already knows it. It is also one of the thing that makes her amazing.
Quote:
Your criminal record beats mine by a longshot, you miscreant, and they didn't give me any ******** crowns for mine. And I get pissy because I have never been to prison. Hell, I've only been to jail a handful of times and usually it was just to toss me into the tank for--
--and he hesitates. It is more than he has said to anyone on the Island, even to Peyton who knows more of who he is and was than anyone besides the people holding his records. Jane, he thinks bitterly, must know everything, and is probably a self-righteous judgmental b***h about it. It is as much this as the alcohol and (it will out) the infatuation clouding his judgment that makes him continue, more honest than he's ever been with her. With anyone here. He feels his way around the words like he's testing to see if they'll bite, and seems dimly surprised when they do not. Insecurities are strange and irrational things and some of them, maybe, can be shed by mistake. He takes a drink but the bottle's empty.
Quote:
--well, they don't call it vagrancy any more, not really--the civil liberties people don't like it much and pigs don't like the civil liberties people--but they just dress it up in a few other words. They get you for panhandling or public intoxication or they'll call it loitering like it ******** means anything.
Third time they got me it was a possessions charge but mostly it was because I'd picked the wrong place to sleep, I guess. Anyway they toss me into the tank, there's maybe five, four other guys there, it's pretty quiet, pretty standard. We all sort of look like we belong there, you know--me, I need a ******** haircut, haven't had a real shower in over a week; old bald pot-bellied guy in the corner missing half his teeth; great big ******** black guy covered in tattoos--except there's this one kid in the corner.
This kid is--imagine like the kid on the cover of Mad Magazine, you know, or like any kid you ever saw in a Norman Rockwell painting. Like picture that kid and give him Otto Graves' hair, and a pair of glasses and I s**t you not a short-sleeved shirt with a tie. He looked like he'd just been hired on a fresh internship at a vacuum repair shop, or something. He's got this crop of pimples all over his chin, and he's been scrubbed up so much he's shiny and he's got a ******** pleat in his khakis you could cut bread with, and he's just sort of gazing into the middle distance looking like he's totally lost control of his life.
The old dude had been eyeing him when I got there, and then the black guy, and pretty soon we're all side-eyeing him and we're all wondering what wires got crossed to get this kid in a holding tank on a weekday at three AM but for whatever reason--I guess we were all quiet types; sometimes you'd get a bunch of rowdy guys yelling and other times everyone just kept to himself and I guess this was the second type--no one was asking him. No one was picking on him.
Finally I'm so bored waiting to get booked I figure, what the hell, and I go: hey man. What's got you so ******** distracted. And everyone else perks up, like OK, good, someone's going to antagonize this squirrelly ******** and we'll all have a couple minutes' diversion at his expense while he panics over nothing, the ignorant ********.
He looks at me real earnest-like and he goes: What day is it?
And I have no ******** clue, but the old guy goes: it's either late Tuesday or early Wednesday. And this guy perks right up, and without missing a beat he goes: "Last three Wednesdays I was here they served cinnamon rolls for breakfast."
xxlizbot
Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2014 1:44 am
He laughs a silent laugh and waves the bottle away when she offers it, face twisting up in exaggerated disgust.
"I'd rather be sober," he tells her, aloof, and he distractedly reaches out for the blanket, just as distractedly gathering it around himself while he talks.
"My Dad was the baker in the family--Mom and Dad both liked to cook, but Mom did not have the precision mind you need to bake--but I don't think he ever did nail down a cinnamon roll recipe. Or anything else, really. I think he took more pleasure in trying out new ones than revisiting favorites."
The blanket drapes his shoulders like a cloak, and the island is warm, like it always is, but she's dragged him without his coat or his scarf, in a thin sweater that should have been more than enough but never will be. But it's not cold that makes him shake, and probably she knows this, but it does not occur to him to grow irritated and snippy at being cared for. He is too drunk to connect the shaking hands to the sudden offer of the blanket.
He pauses, and she is in the perfect place for him to reach out an arm, to offer to enfold her in the bony curve of his arm, the blanket pulled over them both as if they were in front of a campfire. He reaches, but he retracts the gesture, smoothing it over with more small talk.
"I can't bake for s**t. I'm shocked I managed the cake, honestly. But I like to--to try and cook. Not always great at that, either. I think my parents liked cooking so much maybe they never thought to pass much of it on. And--I don't know. Not a lot of practice with anything that wasn't super cheap."
He pauses.
"Tuesday," he said after a long a tentative silence (and he has never said her name to America or to anyone else here, but he does not realize this, and so for a few seconds the story is disjointed) "was a picky eater, but not--in the way you want a kid to be a picky eater."
He hesitates again. He is standing on a conversational precipice. It is easier not to touch this particular wound, but he aches to say his daughter's name aloud, to acknowledge that she exists, to prove to someone here that she is not some product of his imagination or, worse, a person to be forgotten. And there is, besides, an uncomfortable clinging memory that people without children do not like it when you talk about your kids, and that it is worse to talk about your children when you are in a situation that makes it obvious that you are unfit to take care of them.
"She was like any other kid is supposed to be, I guess. Chicken nuggets and apple slices and sweet things, and Jell-O--god, I hate Jell-O--and that was about it, and everything else was a ******** battle. And Mom of course, being Mom, she'd try to just give her whatever everyone else was eating, just like she'd always given her other kids--except Harley, Harley went the Tuesday route and won that fight, in the end."
He toys with the edge of the blanket in his fingers and he grins, suddenly, downcast, secretive, hidden, and sincere and honest like no grin he's ever procured in her presence. "One time--she was three and a half, I guess. Anyway, I was--I was in town for a while."
And just like that, the grin is gone, dismantled in rapid stages. In town is a euphemism for capable of remembering that he is an adult with responsibilities. In town suggests all the times that he wasn't, all the absences. But he continues, and the story is not a story, so much as it's an anecdote at the end of a long string of asides.
"We were having dinner--whole bunch of us; Ros came over too--and I'd spent, god, an hour while Mom was hovering around the kitchen trying to cajole Tuesday into eating but she was refusing before she even knew what we were having just based on the smell. It did not smell like chicken nuggets or apple slices or Jell-O and therefore it was not a thing that Tuesday was prepared to eat.
"I really--I really love food. No, shut up. I mean that, I do. I just have... high standards. And my mother's food, Jesus Christ. She could have been at home in any upscale kitchen in the country. Dad's too, but he was more--avant garde, molecular gastronomy. Mom liked to take a classic, something simple, and render it perfectly. And to look at my own daughter--my own ******** daughter!--telling me she wanted chicken nuggets. I hope you can hear my ******** heart breaking, America.
"Funny story. This has nothing to do with anything, bear the ******** with me. One time my mom got a big tin of that disgusting pre-packaged popcorn for Christmas, one of those big ******** things--and she's, to use your word, a peach, so of course she's polite about it, sweet as she can be, even though I know for a fact now that she loathed that couple--she told me later, after I was grown up. But anyway one day Caleb, my little brother--he's maybe five--he asks my mom what the label says, and she tells him it says 'gourmet popcorn.' And he asks what gourmet means, and I guess she was having a bad day because she got real sarcastic and goes: in this case it means cheap. And do you know, I swear to god, Caleb thought 'gourmet' meant cheap until he was twelve. Mom told me this story when she was warning me against being sarcastic with Tuesday, but it turns out getting sarcastic with Tuesday just produces a really, really sarcastic toddler, because Tuesday is smarter than Caleb.
"Anyway, dinner's on the table, Tuesday is provided her plate, and of course she picks at it and then folds her arms across her chest and she looks at me like do something about it, old man.
"So I take a different tactic. I decide to get philosophical instead of trying to just coax her into it. I ask her why she doesn't like it. And she doesn't even hesitate, she rolls her eyes, precocious little s**t that she is, and she gets this tone like I'm the village idiot and goes: I don't like food with ingredients."
He laughs again, the premature crease at the corner of his eyelid deepening, and it ought to make him look older than he is but it has the opposite effect. And when the laugh, brief as it is, has passed, it fades to a grin, and he hides it by reaching out and taking her bottle of Rose, and deigning a swallow that he can't help but follow with a disgusted face.
At some point he'd stop trying to gauge which things and people were potentially dangerous. Instead, the victim of his own bad judgment and a world that seemed eager to prove its endless capacity for cruelty, he'd begun ranking them instead. His criteria were strange and capricious and often arbitrary, but this was perhaps necessary for cataloging a mental list of threats that included "a day away from work" and "someone willing to hold my hand."
Empire
He once kept in the quieter corners of his head a vast and intimately-peopled world, lush with detail, that despite its quiet realism could have rivaled in loving scope one that sustained princesses in disguise and roving pirate crews and men who flew on their ears like enormous kites. It had been a long time since he'd had reason to unspool the mental maps and trace over old pathways.
In the Sahara he'd turned it over, having almost forgotten it existed while its people toiled on and its factions quietly warred and its city limits sprawled in his absence, and he'd written a page here, an outline, a page there, and destroyed them.
He opens the new journal, bends to inhale the smell of the pages and the leather. It needs filling up.
Falter
before
It's been two weeks.
"You look like you need a break," he says to Taym.
It's been two weeks since he'd moved back into his mother's house, and he was sleeping on the couch so he could set up the crib in what had been his room, before. They aren't expecting him back for another three hours.
"I do," he says.
It's been almost a year.
"On me," he says.
It's been almost a year and he never wanted it then like he wants it now.
Compliment
He'd told Edith he was going to ask if he talked too much.
What he'd really been going to say was: have I ever made you proud to have me?
He wants to hear it. He needs it. He's terrified that one day he will.
Glass
He hates mirrors even now because without the reminder of his reflection to destroy it he maintains a polite fiction with himself that he is not what he is: sharp-edged, brittle, transparent, fragile.
Honor
His standards are lofty enough to be elude living up to even by character far better than his. He is helpless under the burden of them and he is a willing slave to them: Stockholm Syndrome to his own ruthless demands on himself. Backsliding exists to be punished, not forgiven, and often the punishments are as elaborate and exacting as the standards that necessitated them in the first place.
He'd long ago made an effort to stop thinking, not in the least because thinking pried up the corners of all the doublethink required to sustain his warped and broken moral code, inviting the temptation to peel them away, as irresistible and exhilarating and painful and unhealthy as picking at a scab. It's harder here, harder now, both to avoid incurring the temptation and to resist it, so he's stripping away the cruft a little at a time against his will.
And with the slimmer, sharper core of it, he's getting a glimpse at something else, something he's not yet consciously aware of but which will, in time, deliver a harder truth even than what it means to be a good man: that being a good man is not a deliverance from suffering. That being a good man, frequently, is to make oneself even more vulnerable to it than before.
That's all a distant, future pain. What he has right now is a need to atone for his sins and his ********, and a growing awareness that maybe it's not impossible to do so.
Work
What he does is important. What he does is kill time. What he does saves lives. What he does is nothing but complicated atonement. What he does is to keep his hands from idling. What he does is to chase activity in the hopes that it will silence the loud clamor of his constant thoughts.
It's one of his only virtues. He's a good worker. He works hard. He's punctual, he's thorough, he's quick to learn, he has punishing, exacting standards. He volunteers even now, with the patch on his shoulder, for menial labor and for extra shifts. Despite his surly disgust with the task he has a definite aptitude for training, for distilling the steps of a process down in a way that makes sense, for outlining not just the what but the why. He comes home exhausted every day, desperately in need of a shower.
He's made himself valuable, but god knows he wants to hear someone say they're proud of him, but it was only incidental to the real goal.
Work is a drug.
Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 1:39 pm
I, Obadiah Ezekiel Thompson, designate this document my last will and testament, in a state of sound mind and without influence or duress or any of that other s**t that has no relevance in a place with no legal system.
I hereby appoint Ferdinand Wilkins, Jr. (Bix) as Executor. If this Executor is unable or unwilling, I appoint Peyton Creedy in his stead.
ARTICLE I Regarding the disbursement of my monetary assets, my fear for jeopardizing the safety of my civilian family has prevented me from leaving what remains in my bank account to my daughter. I have opted instead to have the remaining balance divided equally into anonymous donations to the following non-profit organizations:
Atlanta Mission (Atlanta, GA) Atlanta Harm Reduction Coalition (Atlanta, GA) Literacy Action (Atlanta, GA) Chicago Recovery Alliance (Chicago, IL)
In the event that this is deemed unacceptable by the Organization for any reason, I request that all funds in my bank account be distributed equally between Peyton Creedy and Bix Wilkins.
ARTICLE II
To Peyton Creedy I leave the ownership, care, and keeping of Quint and Jessel, the Siamese Cats, as well as all of my possessions relating to their care, including the runic minipet carrier in which they are currently housed.
To Peyton I also leave my copies of Alice in Wonderland, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the His Dark Materials series, as well as my stockpile of cigarettes, located in my closet. Don’t start smoking, but do look into setting up a business, or possibly a charity. Your first kindness to me has never been forgotten, nor your friendship in the time since.
ARTICLE III
To Maebe Grace Bertrand I leave the messenger bag currently resting at the foot of what was my bed, as well as all of its contents. These contents include one runic laptop containing all files pertaining to my relinquished specialization which were not deemed high priority and previously turned over to Edith Carr. She is to do with this information what she sees fit. If the pressure of seeing to this information in a way that she finds valuable proves overwhelming, she is welcome to turn it over to whomever she chooses among the normal Hunter ranks, with the exception of Konstantin Bashmet, Lawrence Weiman, and William Reid or Harrison Hughes, with my apologies for the undue and unsolicited stress. If she cannot find someone to take this up, she is to turn it over to Edith for reassignment.
I am aware of the tendency of artifacts to bond exclusively to one person, but in the event that this does not occur with distortion shards, it is my preference that my shard should pass into Maebe's possession as well.
((OOC: In addition to mission supplies and the promised laptop, the bag contains all of Taym’s lighters--his nicest Zippo, his backup, and a handful of cheap BICs, including one pink one. The laptop has been wiped of personal files.))
ARTICLE IV
To Camille Ryland I leave the remainder of my personal library (with the exclusion of my personal journals and two further exceptions noted below). I encourage her to set up a recreational library for all Hunters, and thus have included among my books a cashier’s check for a sum sufficient to complete the restoration of a schoolroom and the installation of bookshelves and miscellaneous supplies, as well as a list of recommended purchases. Should Camille Ryland be unwilling or unable to oversee the installation and upkeep of such a library, I request that she find an enthusiastic replacement from anyone among normal Hunter ranks with the exception of Konstantin Bashmet, or in the very unlikely event that they express interest, which I do not foresee, Lawrence Weiman, and William Reid or Harrison Hughes.
ARTICLE V
To Bix Wilkins I leave the personal effects bundled into the manilla envelope left on my bed beneath my weapon tablet. He is free to do with these effects as he wishes, including destroying them in any manner he sees fit if he deems this best.
To Bix Wilkins I also leave my copy of Transmetropolitan, with a note that I thoroughly enjoyed it and was appreciative of his thoughtful and effective efforts to expand my horizons. I leave also an apology, that I did not have more to give you except my gratitude for your kindness and your friendship, which I was privileged to enjoy.
((OOC: The envelope contains a few items of personal correspondence, a few drawings by a child neatly labeled with names next to stick people including Taym’s, and a photo of a smiling toddler carrying an enormous black cat, printed on computer paper and looking worse for the wear, as though it’s been carried for quite some time.))
ARTICLE VI
To Molly Finn I leave the hand-knitted sweater folded at the foot of my bed, with my sincerest, warmest gratitude for the thought and care invested in its creation and my appreciation for the great comfort it brought me.
ARTICLE VII
To America Jones I leave all of my journals and notebooks, to do with as she sees fit, including destroying them if she deems this best. I also leave to America any trinkets and clothing items that were a gift from her, if she wants them. I have collected what I believe to be all of them into a box at the foot of my bed. Any items that she does not want (or the entire box, if she prefers) can be left with the rest of my personal items to be dealt with as outlined below.
To America Jones I also leave my cellphone and any files contained therein that she might want copies of, if the Organization permits her access.
Finally to America Jones I leave the books of poetry written by Trucks Jones, one of which she will find bears a signature from the author on the dedication page.
((The journals and notebooks are mostly full of what look to be word games, as well as some stabs at acrostics and acronyms made with the names of people on Deus, and a few written dictionary definitions of obscure words that Taym must have found particularly engaging. There are some snippets of spare, modernist poetry, two much-revised sonnets in classical style, several scattered outlines and timeline tables for two separate novels, lists of citations and references (primarily in works on homelessness), and a few written chapters of stark, meticulous prose much edited with red ink. There are also a couple of rough drafts of love letters that were, of course, never delivered--some from fairly early in the relationship.
Among the box there is also what's left of his favored cologne.
There is very little remaining on the phone that was not already sent to her--a scattered handful of selfies deemed unfit to send her, a couple of stray photos and notes to himself, a few civilian-internet bookmarks mostly for literary references; searches for homeless and harm reduction charities in various cities, and suspension searches; and a single, somewhat disturbing photo of an intensely serene-faced Taym suspended from hooks in his stomach.))
ARTICLE VIII
The remainder of my personal possessions are to be divided between Peyton Creedy and Bix Wilkins at their discretion, to be kept or disposed of as they see fit. It is my hope that any items that might be well-suited to improving the morale or living conditions of new Hunters should be put towards this purpose, but I trust as always to the discretion of Creedy and Wilkins.
To all beneficiaries listed in this will I extend my gratitude for their kindness, friendship, and encouragement, as well as my apologies that I lacked the strength to spare them this final hurt. I was once told that the ability to remember that we are human makes us better Hunters, and this belief is the nearest thing that I have to a religion. It is the truth, however, that being human is difficult and painful and at times can seem unbearable, as it does to me now. My final wish as I write this is that you greet the joy and privilege of being human and a part of humanity with more readiness and frequency than you greet the pain of it. I hope you all remain, as much as is possible in Deus, healthy, happy, and loved. Know that for the last, at least, you were and are.
iloveyouDIE
beejoux
nio love
lizbot
lucyal
sorry so sudden! i just remembered the sweater at the last minute and it meant a lot to him crying
