These are not my hands.

cigarette cw

[bailheap]

How much you get for a run like this? Fixed wage. Twenty-five shillings for forty. Tonnage? Aye. Doesn't change with what you carry? Doesn't at all. Long hours for not much, is it not? Down the Clyde and back for the same pay every time. That's the job. Lumber's an odd weight, though. Takes on water. Hard to say what it started as - let alone once it's dried. Suppose I buy what you can't account for for 25 shillings, and the extra space there, I put what I needs carryin to that same yard? That's two pay packets for a day's work. No. No? What I've signed my name to is worth more to me than what you've got. Now you've done it. Done what? Put me in a position. If I don't carve that on your face and do you in the drink masel, some next cunt will.

indie bleaky pinders oc selective and absent gmt timezone

rules tba it's dj

Pinterest + Spotify

Name: Michael Flett (Mick "Meck" Flett) Era: Interwar DOB: 1880s/1890s? Birthplace: Materialised. Grew up in Cadder coalfields Sex: Male Gender: Male Marital: Separated Children: Bastards paid for Personality: Crass, mean, slippery Religion: Lapsed Protestant Face: Joe G.ilgun Appearance: Extremes. Tired. Tattooed. Sharp suits or a stained wifebeater. Socioeconomic: Wealthy working class criminal

Place of Business: The Gorbals, Glasgow (Industrial slums intersecting several gangland territories between Irish Catholic, Jewish and Protestants)

Alliegiances: He's the head of the Fri Mongers (known for concealing their blades in Caps, lapels and fishwrappers(newspapers)). The gang is formed by trade unionised draft dodgers

Occupation: Former in-the-pocket pit driver for the Billy Boys (protestant unionists), worked for a while as one of their collectors once settled in the city. Now, out of the blue, established a business and a crew of his own in scrap and haulage, soon-to-be exports.

Background: Survived a mine fire in 1913 along with his non bio brother, Callum. Both had been working down the mine since boys. Despite guaranteed exemption from WW1 due to their industrial occupations, the near-death experience affected the men deeply. They made a pact to enlist together and make something of themselves. After a betrayal, Callum goes. Michael stays.

[bailheap]

“You might want to keep your voice down.” eden

The pub throbs, empty but for two tables. Low booming prattle. Match-day statistics. Kits and figures. Precision holds for one of leeches cowards and cutthroats, but a feebleness flicks its silky black tail before slipping away again through the fissures.

Fatherhood not yet mastered: circling the subject of their own share-held beatings, taken and given, sleepless nights, sudden tenderness, bleak bloodless accounts of what shape their rights have taken, as though describing someone else's life.

Old certainties about true love and the current business in France walked back, shrugs, conditional opinions, recent conquests. Conviction is an imposition.

To anyone who has lived through the winters Eden has, there is a weather in her that cannot be muddled through. Michael resents her, unable to frame her in his own idiolect of what women are so cleanly. He pushes open his fist like a bulb growing roots across the table's surface and leans back. "Och, drink with us, sister."

[fieldrot]

“your name?” callum speaks over him in a near whisper. “your name?” 

then an explosion of sound: the banker’s table scraping against the half-rotted floorboards and colliding with the wall in a crash. callum’s hand wrapping around michael’s jaw, willing the words back into his mouth. their chests are almost close enough to touch, callum’s heaving, michael’s still. 

“was me won the war, mickey. me! and all the other sorry bastards who were there in france, in belgium, in the fuckin’ desert, in flesh and blood! while you stayed back, cowerin' cunt, playin’ pretend. playin’ the fuckin’ sargaent of this — this —” 

he loses the words, and in his frustration, shoves michael roughly back. it surprises him that no one outside rushes to see what threat has befallen their dear leader. 

“can’t talk about what i did without mentioning what you did first. and you certainly can’t talk about who won the war. understand that, before i lay you out so you can’t get up again.”

[bailheap]

He holds for help. No help comes. Callum fills a room at the best of times. Fast, thin and embarassing Michael makes way for himself - close and slowly.

"You- were a skeleton, Cal. You didn't breathe right, couldn't stand straight, couldn't keep yer drink down, that Christmas you spat pieces out onto the fucking carpet." Michael's breathing comes quicker than he'd like. He forces it steady. "So I called the doctor. I was-" His gaze puckers, but slides away whenever it may meet Callum's eye. "scared, all right?" The edges of both their sockets are a hollow grey, but the rest of him - them - are ruddy, blood vessels daggered up to the surface like raw static. "Scared it would be me that let it happen. Me that sat there that watched."

It angers Michael that no help comes. Makes him afraid. Makes him think. Makes him jerk his forehead forward, aiming for Callum's nose, but only manages to bruise his own jawbone on their grip.

"Know this: you fought for nowt. Not me, pal. Not your poor ma. Just say it: ye wanted 'ride fast train and sing songs-"

[bailheap]

queue is on

[bailheap]

QUEUE PAUSED. I AM WITH IN LAWS AND CANT TWEAK

[id1eyouth]

"Forgive yourself." / @bailheap

"For whit?" Cathy mutters.

She sits stiffly on the edge of the bed, fighting with the buttons of her boots. Her feet are swollen something awful, pressed raw inside cheap leather gone stiff with rain. She gives the laces a sharp tug, then curses softly when they refuse to loosen.

"There's too much tae choose from," she says at last, quieter now. "Too many things done. Too many things let happen." Her hands go still against the boot. "I wouldnae even know where tae begin."

[bailheap]

He'd thought he'd found her lying down again. The shape of her fresh shift and stockings, keeping no warmth with no chair to drape them, just hems lain toward the hearth to dry across a cold, damp mat.

He sits strewn astride the silk and cotton like two pals on a picnic while the real Cathy unfolds; careful not to disturb either arrangement. A sore striptease, her boot has money tucked there for his collection. "It's aw other bastards that dae that tae ye." A bucket is wedged between his knees, used for keeping Will's toys tidied. Sometimes it's his ashtray. "If it wis jis you an a jungle, you'd be roarin."

[bailheap]

queue is on

[dontwanttobeasexyvampire]

[id1eyouth]

"That right? Well, ah cannae blame ye for that, can ah?" he says, voice rough, like he's dry, in need of a drink. "Easy tae get distracted when ye see somethin' pretty." Smoke curls lazily from between his fingers while he gives Michael a look. "Here, ah'm lookin' fur work. You know of anythin' goin'?"

[bailheap]

For a sticky-fingered junky? Rocks back, oar of his chair wood-clog knocking the blown out bricks. It's a table outside with a ledger of names and alibis. He ropes his neck to the side to see the next man. And the next. Too many bodies for too few yards. Who's building ships after the world's ended? Least what boyo's geared up with's put the sparkle on. "Cood be sumfin tomorrow." That would be the third tomorrow this week.

[choicescreen]

@bailheap, cont.

he's silent for a long time.

probably a masseria goon. or a goon of masseria's goons, being that he isn't italian. folks up there are intense about their enclaves. richard never bothers figuring out who works for who out of new york. gets too complicated. doesn't concern him.

just his characteristic grunt first, towards the choosey bampot. he hears the pistol lower more than sees, on his left side. the hammer clicks back into place, but it isn't put away.

then, "not unless… you give me a reason to." he would smile if it didn't hurt. instead, the attempt to diffuse the tension only added to it.

[bailheap]

His nerves chime. Has to rest the cigarette into the crease of his ear to dress up a headrush at watching the gun go. "Is that how that works?" Startling logic.

Sights and sounds of the harbour suck and swell around the ankles. Gulls cry, men start unloading, rolling oil drums of single malt onto the procession ford carts. "So - what gave the man the reason to gnaw your bones down like a rabid dog?" He can cop a boundary. Push the line down, compress his knuckles with the rope til Richard proves him right: that the world was exactly as hostile as he'd decided it to be.

"I know. I bet you was the nasty cunt over the top. Jehu, enacting his righteous purge over the House of Ahab. Leaving yoOou with fuckall and nothin." And you won't shoot me? "And with what I've done to cunts for less?"

[fieldrot]

@bailheap said: "something is following you. whether you can see it of not is a different matter."

“aye. something’s been following me. another man’s name is a heavy thing to carry, mick. you should know — you’ve done it all this time, too.”

in callum’s stare lingers the intensity that his flat affect conceals. thus far he’s kept his distance, his back pressed against the door to michael’s office. now, though, he steps slowly forward until he’s poised at the center of the room. in his left hand he holds a manila envelope: wrinkled, grimy, even more so than the documents therein.

“be glad to shrug you off me shoulders after today. ‘course —” he holds the envelope up from his side, “i’ll insist, you first.”

[bailheap]

"O ma brother hurts does he?" His cheeks cave in around the rollie and smoke twitches through each nostril like whiskers on a sneering cat. His leg is cocked at an angle, knee to rib, foot braced against the edge of a salvaged banker's table (many layered axe marks, stalks of wheat clawing angrily up through the soil, have tried to split the wood.) "My name won you that war." Two fingers in an OK around the cigarette points at him like a piece of chalk.

"Yours I stuffed in a biscuit tin for weighing down dockets. Mind, though, how I kept yours clean. And see what've you done wi mine? Callum Darrow-" He jacks to his feet, a blade shy of proper tactics. You don't frighten war people. They're phantoms. "-you should be stamped on a charge sheet for a missing man. False attestation. Fraudulence. Thief o the king's wages-"

[joyousdefunct]

@bailheap / cont.

not that she could be certain, but … “yes.”

it seemed unwise to answer. more so to remain silent.

her ring finger pops up from where both hands collect tightly around the handle of her supplies basket. it’s a small diamond with two sapphires set on either side. one size too big, but she hadn’t held it against eddy. he was clueless about these sorts of things.

annis eyes the stain.

“it’ll take me an hour, no more.”

[bailheap]

This stain is also shallow. Married: many lovers die before the wedding night. No soul could he damn for luck. Deeper in the house a baby is crying. The man leaves. Michael stands hunched forward with straight, pressed-together legs like a question mark. His shoulder and neck sway one side as the opposite foot extends, creaks the board closest her side.

Does he know about makeup? Or any of her back panels well-laid but for the quiet omission of a fellow craftspeople? Her ear is a shell. "When that lad opened the door to you, did he seem relieved or frightened?"

[bailheap]

CHARACTER ASSOCIATIONS.

animal: a rat.

color: tarnished silver.

month: march.

song: molehills by arab strap.

number: one.

day or night: day.

plant: quaking grass.

season: spring.

smell: coal smoke, tobacco smoke, musty tenements, oranges.

element: fire.

drink: peat whiskey.

tagged by: @vitalphenomena. tagging: hello

[bailheap]

“Not to alarm you, but someone’s watching you.” hyoob

"-And I don't know what shits?" There is too much in motion here for an outsider to make sense of. Outsider though you are, know this: I am a man who knows the state of play.

Come here sit in a kingdom and wear

opera hat?

"What the fuck are you, then?"

[bailheap]

@id1eyouth

“Were you just starin’ at me?” / from will, glaswegian to glaswegian

With unbridled generosity and complete concurrence, Michael rumbles up phlegm, the smoke chuttering from his nose as he nods gravely. "Aye a did ye caught ma eye."

[bailheap]

“Wait — are you the person I’m supposed to meet?” -- from Annis

The door opens. The man greeting her's hands brisk quickly behind his back. His shirt must be loose. "MECK?" Agape, unsteady, he presses himself against the wallpaprer to let her entry into narrow hallway.

-

"Meck," The man leads them to Michael, who lifts his head from the problem on the floor, a rustier red patch spread across the terracotta tiles, to Annis.

His eyes flit between the man and Annis (Annis for the pleasure of looking) like two flat pebbles, then back at the stain. "Is that a real ring?" He asks it.

[bailheap]

richard: "you might want to. keep your voice down." hiiiiii dj

Land of the free, home of the whichever choosey bampot's aiming Harrow's pistol at Flett.

"Or you shoot me in the face?"

What else has mortalised our man here Harrow? He gets on his left, his wrong side, to check. Prefers it. It's his right side that sits wrong: uncanny somehow: the tin side tells no lies about a soldier. But the heart sits slightly to the left, and that's no proof of a man, either.

He curls in at the edges. A tuft of tobacco he's pinched into his rollie drops onto the deck. He thinks however breifly- it's Callum.

"Shut you up, did it?" Shot to the face? He's asking it quietly, to the living and the dead.

[rpclefairy]

first meeting sentence starters.

send one to have our muses meet for the first time.

“Sorry, were you just talking to me?”

“I think you dropped this.”

“You look lost. Need some help?”

“I don’t usually talk to strangers, but…”

“You’re sitting in my spot.”

“Whoa! Careful!”

“We’ve never met, right? You seem familiar.”

“Is that seat taken?”

“Sorry, I think I just spilled something on you.”

“You’re blocking the doorway.”

“Were you just staring at me?”

“Excuse me, do you know the time?”

“Wait — are you the person I’m supposed to meet?”

“I’ve been sent to find you.”

“Please don’t be alarmed, but I think we have the same bag.”

“Do you work here?”

“I’m fairly certain that’s mine.”

“You’ve got something on your face.”

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

“Do you know the way to ___?”

“You’re hurt. Do you need help?”

“That’s a fine ___ (cloak/hat/book/etc.). Where did you get it?”

“This might sound strange, but can I hide behind you for a moment?”

“You look like you could use a friend.”

“I think your dog just stole my lunch.”

“Hey, you dropped your coin purse.”

“I think we’re stuck in here together.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to overhear, but…”

“Are you the new neighbor?”

“First time in town?”

“I’m not sure if this belongs to you, but…”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’ve been hearing a lot about you.”

“Do you mind if I join you?”

“I think you’re in the wrong place.”

“You seem… out of place.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you following me?”

“That was a close call.”

“Not to alarm you, but someone’s watching you.”

“Mind if I walk with you?”

“You look like you’re in trouble.”

“Was that your doing back there?”

“You don’t look like you’re from around here.”

“That was impressive. How’d you manage it?”

“I’m guessing you’re not here by accident.”

“Do I want to know what just happened?”

“You might want to keep your voice down.”

“Is it always this strange around here?”

“I have a feeling we’re about to become acquainted whether we like it or not.”

“Looks like we’re in this together now.”