The sky glows blue. It feels as though she’s looking through it, rather than at it. Sitting amongst its airiness, are cotton-y clouds just about ready to float out of frame, lit by a golden yellow sun. The whole painting looks as if it’s aflame, dipped in a scalding summer heat. Absolutely stunning.
She’s been too old for adolescent retorts for a couple years now, but it’s so satisfying when the opportunity arises that she hardly ever denies herself. It’s helpful, too, that she never says them aloud. It’s near impossible to imagine what gnarled contortion she’d have received on the Lord’s face, but it’s a dazzling daydream nonetheless.
They set sail about an hour later, Captain hollering a brief fire up their arse. Something about trade routes and timing and bloody layabouts. He’s a jolly guy, really. Mac saw him chuckle once.
It was totally an accident, though. Captain is still bitter about it, if Mac is reading his glares right. No one should be able to sneak up on a pirate captain, but she’d managed, albeit unintentionally. She can be very quiet. Is. Is very quiet. She’d bet all the coin in her pocket she could sneak up on anyone.
He’d been leaning against the rail, half-listening to Pepperidge tell some nigh-impossible anecdote about a tavern lady mistaking him for the King of England.
His chuckle was a concession to the Quartermaster’s wit that he persistently denied. Catching him in the act was a wound to his pride.
Mac thought Pepperidge’s pompous English accent was ridiculous enough to snort at, and that had given away her position. A shame, really. She wanted to know how the story ended.
Instead she got a face full of colorfully-put commands, setting her back to work.
“Oy, Mac! Be the crow, would ye?”
Mac ducks under Scottie’s companioning arm and playfully knocks him in the gut. He groans.
“Ooph. Christ, I should set Peppie on you fer all this harassment.”
Like he’d do anything.
She snatches the spyglass out of the hand not nursing his wound, rolling her eyes as he continues to argue.
“Don’t you– no! Peppie loves me more than he loves you, blasted Devil!”
Mac turns back to put two fingers up beside her head, wiggling them when he squawks.
“Listen ‘ere! I told all you she’s the workings of Hell. None fucking believed me. Unbelievable!”
Peter smacks Scottie over the head as he passes.
His grumbling grows fainter and fainter as she climbs, wind swallowing the sound in her ears. All those poets talking about the roaring gusts over the sea don’t know shit. Wind doesn’t roar, rip, or scream. Maybe those words sound nice on paper, make sense when you read them, but the wind does nothing but eat. It eats at your skin, gnaws at your hair, your clothes, tastes the ocean and sky, and devours anything it’s hungering for.
The wind doesn’t nibble at cheeses or delicately sip wines. It’s why they get along so great. It’s why she doesn’t mind teetering in the crow’s nest for a peep at the horizon. They’ve got some common ground, here. Metaphorically.
---
The sun is nearly at its peak when she spots the speck they planned to see. Fingers to lips, she lets out a shrill whistle, tossing the spyglass into her pocket and swinging over the lip of the nest.
Yelling erupts from below and a grin creeps across her face.
Horror stories are whispered in the beds of children about this. Don’t ever go near the docks at night, they say. Don’t ever wander too close to the ocean. The pirates, with their rotting teeth and dead eyes, will steal you away under their skeletal hands. Their filthy hair, clotted with blood and ichor, moves like snakes in the chattering wind. They’ll press their claws into your skull and pull out every fear to paint on their faces and around their eyes. Grinning like serpents they’ll cut open your throat, laughing at each of your last gasping breaths.
Stories of monsters that thieve gold for the pleasure of menace and chaos.
She doesn’t feel anything dark and oozy at the sight of a naval ship. Nothing malignant and evil. Her heart does trill at the thought of making some Englishmen shiver, but she’s only human.
Don’t kneel to a pirate, they say. They feed on your fear. Like daemons, they’re drawn to the irresolute like dogs to corpses. Stand tall and fight, drive your sword through their heart; anywhere else and they’ll live in the hair on your neck. Be brave, honorable, and spare the world their savagery.
Mac hits the deck.
She doesn’t know what it feels like, to see your fate strung up with a skull. There’s no manner of convincing that could get her to imagine the mind of an English sailor. But she likes to picture them in this very moment.
They’re too close to turn away, run, hide. And they’re too far to brew any sort of resilience. Tremors in their lips, sheaths locked, and a healthy surge of national pride. The English are too secure in their morality, righteous under God; they know with the respect they command, truth they defend, that they’ll end victorious against the scrummy rats clogging the seas.
She imagines there’s some fear there, hiding behind their sickly façade. She’s seen it in person. It’s lovely, sure. But fear before the introduction? That’s the respect all women deserve.
At the cue of the maestro, the first cannon fires.
Mac shoulders through the chorus of elbows and vitriol, slipping around exploding powder, gunshots, spit.
“Fire!”
She ducks down her head and pushes further.
A body knocks into her side.
“Mac! Walk it over!”
What do you think she’s trying to do, fuckwit?
The ship is close enough that she can see their faces– their droopy, spectre-like faces. It’s amusing they liken the pirates to supernatural forces when they’re the ones that look like they’re living from beyond the veil.
Mac runs from mid-deck and propels herself with a leap off the rail.
-
Her knee scrapes against the wood as she lands.
A rush of blue coats barrels forward, muskets ready. Shouting, words indistinguishable from war cries.
Growl low in her throat, she bowls into the man in front of her. Ducking under his arms, knocking the gun from his grip, and ignoring the louder, screaming threats for the feel of warm cotton and metal buttons.
He crashes to the deck, Mac with him.
She rolls to a crouch, pulling out her blade.
A gunshot; splinters explode by her foot.
She sinks her dagger into the closest thigh, pulling down roughly before spinning away, elbowing the back of his knee as she stands.
They must realize guns are ineffective, here, because a sword comes hurtling into her periphery. Sneaky.
She dodges, getting in close. One might even say her head got intimately close to the man’s nose. He rocks backward, mouth shaped like curses.
Face smeared red, he lifts his blade again.
Mac sticks firmly into the boards, knees braced. Something trickles down her temple. A chuckle knocks at her teeth.
Before either move, an arm captures the man’s throat from behind, dragging him off balance. A knife is pressed to his cheek. The man lets out an ungentlemanly squeak.
“Mary n’ Joseph, leave some of ‘em for the rest of us, yeah?”
The officer squirms in Scotties grip. Scottie adjusts, silver sinking deeper. The officer stills.
Mac, hand wound tight on her dagger, looks around, almost perplexed at the sudden calmness. She turns back to shrug.
Scottie scowls over the guy’s shoulder.
“Oy. Just ‘cuz you’re a wily thing, it don’t mean you’re better’n any of us.”
Of course not. Preposterous.
She gestures to the two men on the ground already being tied.
“Conceited little–”
“Scottie! Bring him here!”
“Aye aye!” He hollers. After narrowing his eyes at her one last time, he jerks the guy in Pepperidge’s direction.
The sky glows blue. It feels as though she’s looking through it, rather than at it. Sitting amongst its airiness, are cotton-y clouds just about ready to float out of frame, lit by a golden yellow sun. The whole painting looks as if it’s aflame, dipped in a scalding summer heat. Absolutely stunning.
She’s been too old for adolescent retorts for a couple years now, but it’s so satisfying when the opportunity arises that she hardly ever denies herself. It’s helpful, too, that she never says them aloud. It’s near impossible to imagine what gnarled contortion she’d have received on the Lord’s face, but it’s a dazzling daydream nonetheless.
The yellow lamplight reflects like stars in the brick walk. Her feet slip across the damp rock, soft scuffing the only sound amidst the commonly populous town center. The air is salt-sharp and smoky, smell of an empty summer night. If she were anyone else, she’d feel the compulsion to jump up and click her heels.
What a great day it’s been. She’s not often over ground this hard, so she likes to make the most out of it. Today just happened to involve an English Lord, a pompous English lord who’s just plucky enough to mingle among pirate affairs.
Reparations. Who the hell is he fooling? Neither side is willing to forgive the other, least of all the English, and never will be. Furthermore, she can’t fathom what his benefit would be. The filthy pirates, corrupted by ruthlessness and bloodied seas, could never return to the country. It’s been made clear that this land is not their home. Everything they touch would burn under their hands.
The English, selfish and grand, would force them to their knees on every issue.
And that would not go well.
What possibly could he want accomplished? Any political effect is to his own detriment. A power grab is futile among the lawless. All that could be hoped for is another war, and his own exile into the fray.
And that leaves personal, a territory so wholly unknown to Mac that all she can do is pry open that chest for a small glimpse, hoping for a glint of anything valuable.
She heaves the rowboat down the beach. Water flicks silently over the sand and recedes with a gentle hiss.
She swings her legs over the railing, boots making a familiar thunk as they hit wood.
“Mac! It’s about damn time ya’ got back. We been waiting.”
She gives Scottie a look.
“Well. Not really, but Roger was about off his head thinkin’ you were dead rottin’ and his fretting was sendin’ me back to my Ma’s kitchen.”
Mac nods. That makes more sense.
She loops an arm through his and trots over the deck, scuffing her heels with Scottie skipping alongside her.
“I tried tellin’ him, ‘Mac’d remove the fingers before they touch her,’ but that boy has about as much sense as a beggar’s pocket.”
Mac smirks at him, swinging them into a jerky spin. His yelp is swallowed by laughter.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Scottie says, stumbling out of her grip.
Without letting him get too far, she leaps up, wrapping her arm around his neck, knocking away his hat.
“As much as I’m enjoying this,” he continues, breathless as he struggles, “I’d speak ta’ our li’l Rogie before his head pops off.”
Rolling her eyes, she pushes him away before stomping off. She gets to the stairs and continues her heavy steps down, chuckling quietly at Scottie’s exaggerated gasping behind her.
Annoyed grumbling erupts from the hammocks, several lovely voices telling her to fuck off.
An angry, though expected, hand grabs her bicep, and begins pulling her roughly through the din of happy travelers.
“I thought I told you not tonight.”
And I thought I told you you can’t order me about. Roger glares at her over his shoulder.
“Oh, fuck off. You know this is serious. You don’t know what he’ll do.”
Well, fuck you if you think I wouldn’t do something about it.
Roger comes to a stop at this point, slumping into his hammock, and looks up at her with tired eyes.
“I know you want to help, but this is beyond us. No one’s death is gonna’ change his mind on anything.”
He says it as a fact. A declaration of a simple truth. She doesn’t know whether to pity him or refute him, but she has neither the experience nor the knowledge to conclude.
The sky glows blue. It feels as though she’s looking through it, rather than at it. Sitting amongst its airiness, are cotton-y clouds just about ready to float out of frame, lit by a golden yellow sun. The whole painting looks as if it’s aflame, dipped in a scalding summer heat. Absolutely stunning.
Mac supposes she should be hiding. Even better, leaving. The Lord undoubtedly has armed guards at his disposal, at his very ready disposal if one were to get specific. And yet–
The ship crashes through the waves like a brawler through a crowd. It carries its weight and its teetering height so deftly. She can feel the sway and give under her feet. She can almost hear the creaking wood, flapping of the sails, pulling taut under the mighty wind. The men on the deck are too small to have expressions or mouths but she can tell what they’re shouting, where they’re directing. Falling into that rhythm is easier than succumbing to a riptide.
Carpeted footfalls sound from behind her. Too slow and quiet to be a concern.
She sighs, lingering just a second more on the wall-mounted portal, and turns to meet startled eyes. Wide and blue against pallid white.
Do you know the sky changes? She wants to ask, thinking of the painting. Have you stood under it long enough to watch it dinge and rage?
“Who are you?”
She suppresses her grin. His first action should’ve been to call for protection. Perhaps her frame is not an obvious threat. Or perhaps it is. She holds his gaze to point at the folded note on the table between them.
He picks up the paper, posture already adjusting into something haughty and formal. Such ugly pretense.
While he reads, Mac’s attention shifts back to the painting.
The sea spray soaks their boots. It’s a prickly grime she knows too well. These sailors will kick up their feet onto a cot, sifting through salt-stained dreams until they hit land, feet heavy on the soft dirt, with their hands that no longer burn on rough rope, but on satins and silk.
“What do you mean by this?”
Have you done anything good that’s not owed to your born power?
She smiles thoughtfully. How strange a creature a Lord like that would be.
“Is this a threat?”
No, my Lord, just information.
Mac feels a lick of pity at his confusion. It’s not quite enough to give him aid, but enough to move her hand from her hilt.
“Was it your Captain?”
She tilts her head.
“Did he kill him?”
His voice is fighting stability with something strong. Curious, she scans over his face, his frame, his hands. It’s all the picture of calm. It’s wonderous, how emotionless these men become in the face of– fear? Uneasiness? Loss?
“Answer me!” The Lord explodes. “Seven Hells– are you here to torture me?”
Mac returns her hand to her dagger, allowing the outburst to fall aimless. She tries not to lower her chin, further hiding her neck. Any sympathy she garners here would have to be compensated for later. And she’s had such a long day.
She shouldn’t have bothered.
The man closes his eyes. He shakes his head and sets down the note. After a moment of gathering composure, completely absorbed in the floor by her feet, the Lord lifts his head.
“My apologies. Now, is– is there anything else?”
She draws her blade, allowing a moment of delight for the fear lit in his eyes. Its potency would make a great perfume, mingled with oak and salt and fire–
With an artful slash, she cuts through the canvas, breaking the ship into curling halves. Beauty captured is beauty destroyed, beauty staled, beauty frozen behind an embossed mask. If you wish to see the power of the current and its spry friends, brave the horrors it promises, reap the rewards.
Take your pretense to where I can’t get to it, my Lord.
Through the back roads and dense sprawl of trees, flying over hills, swinging around turns, and falling breathlessly down again. It’s easy to pretend she’s alone, speeding freely through nothing. She’s got the sky turned off, headlights on. All the world is invisible except the small stretch in front of her.
She doesn’t have to think, doesn’t have to plan, doesn’t have to remember anything. The only thing in her mind is the music reverberating in her car and through both ears. These roads know where she’d headed. They turn with her wheel.
It’s also why she loves the summer. It’s so blissfully empty, open ended, brain-dead. Sure, she’s working at a shithole seafood restaurant– The questions asked there are not a puzzle. And sure, in two months she’ll be shipped off to Massachusetts, fending for herself.
She’s not thinking about that now.
Deep down, she knows her friends aren’t real ones. When you’re locked in a room with the same AP students year after year, you develop a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. Each person’s trapping everyone else against their will. Succeed or they will. Succeed or you won’t. Gradually, you befriend them, even though you are working against them, too.
Leah considers them friends until they’re out of sight. She doesn’t want to believe they feel the same about her, and right now she’s driving. She doesn’t have to believe anything.
With the music, everything’s silent. Her thoughts are drowned out. Her concerns, fears, anxious mental ramblings are lost to ten feet of yellow-lit pavement and deafening electronic thrums. Time moves at a more sedate pace when the music moves so fast.
Her road ends as she slows to a stop, a reluctance in her grip as she slowly turns the car off, flicking the headlights into darkness. Before leaving her seat, she pops the trunk.
Next mission, kid. Get it done.
As she’s pulling boxes out of the back, mentally readjusting to reality, she hears gravely footsteps behind her. Mind speeding through all the worst possibilities, she spins around, hand on the trunk door.
“Figured I’d help you this time,” Sophie says, stepping in to lean on the back bumper.
Leah takes a deep breath, gestures at the boxes on the ground, and turns back to the car. Then, remembering, “Uh, thanks.”
Sophie nods, wiping her jeans.
“You can, uh, grab those ones. I’ll get these two.”
-
Leaning from behind her cargo, Leah asks, “So what’d you think of the Lang exam?”
“What?”
“The AP Lang exam. How d’you think you did?”
Leah adjusts the corner digging into her gut, “Fine. It was pretty straight forward, I guess. Uh. Did you take it?”
There’s a weird pause.
“Uh, yeah, I was in your class.”
Really? No, that’s rude.
“Oh, sorry, yeah. Of course.”
Leah sets down the boxes on the porch to open the door. It’s unlocked.
“That passage about leaf peeping couldn’t’ve been more dense.”
Leah chuckles, “Yeah, it definitely wasn’t chosen, or written, with entertainment in mind.”
Sophie squeezes past her into the house.
“Definitely. It reminded me of that episode of The West Wing, you know? Where Bartlett was doing that address thing?”
Leah shuts the door behind them, having slid her boxes in with her foot.
“Yeah! Really, who even ‘leaf peeps,’ if that’s what you call it?”
Sophie snorts, “Leaf peeps. It’s so dumb.”
Leah’s laughter is cut short by a very June-shaped intrusion.
“Wow, such good chemistry. You should make out.”
A flush of red blurs Leah’s entire face, tickling the collar of her button-up.
“What?” Is all Sophie manages to get out, a comforting noise in her furious embarrassment.
June postures haughtily, chin lifted just high enough to know what she thinks of herself.
“I’m just moving this relationship along. Who needs to get anything done when you have young love?”
She uncrosses her arms to accent her last words with (unnecessary) magic fingers.
“Oh back off, June,” Kaitlyn interjects from down the hall, “You said this was supposed to be fun.”
She turns around, sitting into her hip.
“Yeah, before I knew the police were gonna get involved.”
Leah brings her thumbnail to her teeth, already itching to fade into the wallpaper. One day, she’ll invent a way to do so.
“Didn’t it occur to you that that’s why the rest of us were so nervous about this? We’re not afraid of spray-paint, for God’s sake.”
June rolls her eyes at Kaitlyn.
Before she can respond, Sophie says, “Let’s just get started, please?”
God bless her.
-
“You covered the cameras, right?”
Leah looks up from the fridge she’s almost completely covered.
“Yeah.”
Kaitlyn nods, but doesn’t walk away.
“How?”
“For such a rich guy, he has a lousy security system. I stopped by here yesterday and... basically...”
Kaitlyn waves her hand.
“Yeah, I don’t need the specifics. I don’t understand shit about computers.”
Leah forces a quick smile.
“Okay.”
Neither does she. All she did was some behind-the-scenes vandalism, but if Kaitlyn wants to think she ‘hacked the system,’ she’s not going to correct her.
“Wanna smash some shit with the rest of us? We’re kind of over all the painting stuff.”
Leah shakes her head immediately.
“I’m fine here.”
“Suit yourself,” Kaitlyn shrugs, “June’s going ham with the crowbar.”
Many stories take place in the northeast. So many. The world doesn’t need another story in the bustling epicenter of performative liberalism.
And yet, while I’d like to spin you a yarn about the turbulent Midwest or the muggy South, I don’t know how. I don’t know what they’re like. I don’t know what it’s like to live in a city like New York City or Boston. I’ll never know the experience of growing up in a suburb. So for the sake of both of us, I’ll tell the truth. The truth that happens to be rural Maine.
Small town Maine is like a pocket universe, though a far far less interesting version than the regular one. These small hometowns are empty plots of land until you stand in their center. And that’s all they are: hometowns. No one moves here. No one wants to live in a nowhere place. The buildings look like props and the wooded hills and cloudy skies seem like backdrops. Everything you do here doesn’t really count.
And that’s only because you follow the rules. Driving in feels like falling asleep and awakening to a dream where your decisions feel miles away. It’s only once you leave that you feel a surge of autonomy and declare to yourself that you’ll act differently next time. You’ll put your foot down. You can’t, though, when the ground isn’t really there.
It’s a hard thing, to stand out in a place you’ve always been ignored. I suppose the easiest solution is to create a crack in the pavement and act annoyed like the rest. Leave a problem, let it consume everyone else, so your action is more famous than you are anonymous.
By this point your probably thinking, wow, this narrator is unbelievably dramatic, and I’ll one-hundred-percent agree with you. It’s characteristic of these boring places to want something more serious and compelling. Sitting in the living room, nothing happening besides birdsong outside, my ever present dramatics are the only thing keeping my brain from fading to a dull gray.
I have a couple friends. Thank you, thank you, but applause isn’t necessary. I’m planning a little graduation party, a celebration for surviving the mess that is high school, and I’m inviting all of them.
I’m hoping they get along. I’m truly crossing my fingers. We’re teenage girls, after all. Always conniving, always reactionary. Acting out of fear or a desperate need to be reckless. They’re the only two ways a girl can cope with all the high school- young adult- small town nonsense rules.
Thus, I’m hoping my friends can put aside some social disparity, step in front of the four years of pure hell, and have a good time.
If you learn anything from my story, have it be that smoking kills. I know somewhere along its happy trails the nicotine smog clogs your throat and chars your irreparable black lungs, but I hate to tell you that that is not the part of smoking that caused me so many problems.
“Meg, I’ve told you before–”
I singe another circle into the side of the barstool and let the stub drop from my fingers.
“No smoking allowed in the bar. I got it, Marley.”
She fixes me with one of her looks. Legend says one look from Marley has made crime bosses avert their eyes and vampires seek guidance from the Lord. Chills threaten to peak at the top of my spine, but I clench my hidden hand into a fist and fix Marley with one of my own glares.
“Don’t get smart with me, young lady. That attitude is going to get you in a lot of trouble one day.”
That’s the other thing. Marley is always right. I assumed, when I was new to the whole system, that she had some warlock or pixie mixed in her blood. Alas, I was wrong. Marley just knows everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen at some point in time. Nothing has gotten by her, is getting by her, or will get by her, ever.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go smoke out back if you’re that desperate.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I don’t get up from my seat. It’s polite to excuse yourself before leaving a table. Do the same rules apply if you’re sitting at a bar?
Marley moves on to the guy next to me. He’s been ordering straight whiskey all night, and he smells distinctly of the pier. Both scents nearly burn my nose with their potency, but they don’t quite mask the signature stench of rot. Definitely a vampire. Vampires aren’t common here, in Marley’s. They always end up causing tension and catalysing trouble.
It seems this one is no different. Only seconds after I peg him as one, the lull of voices dims. Heels of boots shuffle against the floor and scratches of unsheathed nails on wood are muffled behind backs or under tables. Quieter, but quiet in a way one gathers power before a strike. My wrists crack as I roll them in preparation. Practice is practice.
“We want no fighting today.”
Damn.
I cannot see them. I’ve made it a habit to sit as far from the entrance as circumstances allow, but I feel this will be revised in the future.
Marley speaks, “Then what have you come for?”
There’s frantic shuffling and exchanging of confused looks. All of the movement makes it easy to pick out the guilty. The vampire next to me is slow and still as he releases his glass. He is staring at the ice intently, as if asking for it to melt quicker so he could look away.
I place both of my hands on the table. “Who are they?” My voice is below a whisper.
“I don’t know,” the man says. His gaze never wavers from the empty glass of whiskey.
Pressing the tips of my fingers into the bartop, I lean in. “You reek.” I make sure to be very audible. “I do not like liars.”
This is not true. I just don’t like vampires. However, declaring that to the whole room would be pointless.
“We’ve come for the liar, it seems.”
A man in in a dark pinstriped suit walks over to where we’re sitting, moving swiftly without disturbing the air around him. He dons a wide brimmed hat and black leather gloves, and the unmistakable scent of–
Huh.
I show my front teeth to the vampire as I stand. “What have you done to get in trouble with your own kind, liar?”
The accused hunches further over. He utters no words.
“Come on, Benny,” the suited man says, chidingly, “let’s get going. We don’t want to disturb this fine lady’s afternoon do we?”
He swallows. No one else in the bar dares to make a sound.
“Kal, could you help me with this, please?” His voice is projected to the small group of vampires by the door, but his sharp eyes stay on Benny.
This makes Benny jolt as if sparked by a witchfire. He immediately stands, knocking down his stool. “Th-That won’t be necessary.”
Pleased, the suited man grins. His smile is less about baring his teeth and more about falsifying charm. “Alright, then. We’ll be off.”
With a persuasive touch to Benny’s back, the vampire strides back toward the door.
I take a small step after them before turning back to the bar. Marley meets my eyes, heaving a weighted sigh. Shivers take advantage of the tension and seize the back of my neck.
“You’ve got that right,” Marley says, and she starts washing the bartop. Her rag doesn’t go near the empty whiskey glass at the end of the bar.
I did not know it then, but that was my first time face-to-face with the “King of the City,” Mr. Rafka.
You’re probably wondering why I brought up smoking in the beginning, only for it to be extinguished nearly right away. I could tell you it’s a metaphor for Benny, but that would be a lie, and, as you know, “I do not like liars.” This is me establishing an honesty pact. I will not lie to you, as long as you do not lie to me. That said, all of my other lies are still fair play.
Theo is on the floor. He has his pajama clad limbs thrown out, all askew, looking something like a very soft and very confused starfish.
“What are you doing?” Lee says, drowsy words filtering over the brim of his mug. Normally, Lee wakes up to a settled apartment, quiet with only muffled flutters of electronic music coming from Theo’s room. He is usually alone as he does his rounds around the kitchen and living room; just him and his plants. This doesn’t happen: Theo laying silently in the middle of the floor, just staring at the ceiling.
Just as Lee was about to check if he was speaking to a corpse, he gets a mumbled “What? Ugh, no. S’ it morning?”
“Uh, yeah, and why are you just...” He says, using his empty hand to gesture at the starfish on the kitchen floor.
Theo groans. Flailing dramatically, he stands up and fixes Lee with an unfocused stare. “Because, Leonard, if I lived by the so called ‘24-hour day,’ I would be simply giving in to conceptual laws of ridiculousness. I am a free man. I live by my declared ‘no-hour day’ because hours do not exist, nor do any measurements of ‘time.’” He punctuates the last word with a look of utmost disgust.
Ah. This makes much more sense.
“Go to bed, Thee.”
“You aren’t the boss of me.”
“Don’t make me call Dora.”
Theo groans, louder this time, and shuffles out of the kitchen. Lee sighs and turns back towards the window. Winter is coming to a close, finally. The sun is more willing to shine higher above the horizon, bursting from behind the still-bare branches of birch and oak. Snow has sunk into the ground, hastening to give the murky floor its chance to return to its former splendor. Soon everything will be green. Everything will be new.
After tipping his mug back only to find it empty for the third time, Lee executively decides to push it beside the long line of bowls and plates and Theo’s cup with ‘DO NOT DRINK’ inscribed on it in sharpie. There’s a whole story behind that cup. It’s pretty funny, but also kind of unfair that Theo still manages to be photogenic in the middle of a colorful spit-take.
Lee starts, due to his back pocket trilling loudly in the small space.
Dora (5:47am)- hey cap did thee make it back alright?
He pauses, frowning down the hallway at the Theo’s closed door.
You (5:48am)- Yeah he’s asleep in his room.
You (5:48am)- I don’t remember hearing him leave or come back. Did something happen?
Dora (5:49am)- idk he wouldnt say i just lent him some vodka
You (5:49am)- I have to go to work, but I can check on him when I get back.
Dora (5:49am)- he’s a big boy leopold
Dora (5:50am)- but ill tell him to stop in ur flower shop when he gets up
Lee sighs again, shoving his phone away and ignoring the unsettled spinning of his gut. He can’t really say why it’s unnerving him so much. It’s not like Theo values temperance even in the slightest of ways. In fact, he is quite heavy handed when pouring himself a glass. What was it about this time? Maybe it was the shaking fingers at his sides, or how his lips looked dry and bitten, or the way his eyes weren’t seeing– just looking. Maybe Lee is making this all up in his head; projecting his own overactive nerves on him. It is certainly possible that Theo is perfectly fine. Ok, not perfectly fine. More like decently fine, functionally adequate, or, as Cassie would put it, ‘all nice and dandy with a side of ugh.’
You get those rare good days, but the rest of the time you are crossing your fingers for ‘not horrible.’ No one can ever tell. On a good day you say you are ‘fine’ because you are. When a bad day comes around, you say you’re fine because you want to be. Then you’re pressing a barrel of a gun to your temple saying you’re fine because no one can know you aren’t.
This philosophy carries for everyone in their brokenly joined group. Everyone is always fine. This is why Lee is worried. Like Dora, Theo attributes ‘fine’ to his lively conversation and sarcasm. The better mood he’s in, the snarkier he gets, but this also increases as he gets worse.
A piercing bark interrupts his train of thought.
“Shush. Theo’s sleeping.”
Lisa barks again. She must know he’s running late. Oh, right.
“One sec. One sec. I need to find your leash.”
Two hastily tied shoes and one frantic bike ride later, Lee skids in front of the flower shop, hopping on one foot before he could really come to a stop. Adrenaline makes it harder than it should be to slip the lock through the assorted spokes and click it in place. Standing up, he pulls his phone from his pocket. Under the bright sun, he can barely make out the time on the screen. Thankfully, it says he’s got one minute before he’d be late.
The lock is finicky and only opens if you press on the door knob and twist the key at the same time. You see, Lee likes to think he’s pretty coordinated as compared to the average joe, but this lock says otherwise. It takes him three tries today; pretty low compared to his usual. To this, he smiles smugly as he grabs Lisa out of her basket and tucks her under his arm.
“See that, Lisa? Incredible.”
Lisa just huffs a small sigh. Lee mocks being painfully offended.
“You know, Charles would be proud of me. He would lick my face and everything.” He wouldn’t, but Lisa doesn’t need to know that.
To that, she doesn’t even respond.
“In-cred-ible I say.”
----
Theo waited for fifteen seconds, or however long his patience lasts, in the silence Lee left behind before emphatically kicking his door open from his position on the floor.
“Charles.”
At his name, the gray and white pitbull lifts his head from where it’s resting on Theo’s pillow.
Theo continues, “Did you know that there is a planet out there that rains glass sideways?”
Charles seems to sigh at this and then lowers his chin back onto the soft fabric.
He read it somewhere online. There was this huge list of bizarre planets and moons with bizarre qualities and characteristics. Something about this one stuck. How weird would it be if you woke up one morning to a forecast of “heavy glass-fall coming in from the east– don’t forget your body shields, folks!” What if it started raining without warning. All of a sudden you’d be running for cover, flinching and pinching shards out of tiny wounds, yelling through torrents of angry thunder, apologizing for something loud. Your bony forearms wouldn’t be enough to protect you; it kept coming, spitting, hurtling, choking. You weren’t prepared–
“I could make it rain glass sideways, Charles.” Theo rolls to stand, burning his knees on the rough carpet in his haste. “I’d practically be a god on that planet.”
He would. He would be the one with the power to start storms. He would be the one with control over weather and grey clouds and everything else. He would be the one with control.
He’s in the kitchen holding a drinking glass. Theo remembers thinking how easily it would break.
“I can make it rain glass sideways.”
The glass arcs over the rickety table, and then crashes into the living room wall.
He screams, “I AM IN CONTROL.”
Then, the silence almost hurts. Just like that, what he’s done hurls him through stinging eyes, a heavy chest, and a encompassing buzz that seems to separate him from everything else. He can hear himself breathe but it could be someone else. It could be the ghost of his anger. It could be the other Theo Impransus hovering behind his ears, just out of sight, whispering words that clash gratingly inside his head; loud, loud, loud.
The shards are scattered freely over the hardwood. Pieces had skidded as far as the edge of the kitchen, where someone is standing. It might be himself, but he’s not quite sure.
He backs away from the mess. He doesn’t want to see it anymore.
in which cassie is The Aesthetic, and lee learns a few things about peace
—-
We are all born believing. It doesn’t matter in what, really. It’s just that we can. We are able to bare our hearts, too young to have steel blood, to the evils we don’t understand. We are able to dream things out of dark energy and impassioned stars, to compensate for our not-yet learned minds. We are able to do so much more in those years, and it’s when we age that we lose our companionability with the universe.
Lee isn’t having the best of days. As much as he would like to blame it on vengeful spirits, or karma for that matter, he has to admit it’s probably just the lack of caffeine in his system. He would have had some coffee before Russ picked him up, but the alarm clock beside his bed had miraculously stopped working overnight, he’d slept in, and was instead woken by three harsh knocks on his door. When he tried to grab some quickly on his way out, he had found the coffee maker unplugged. Ok, so maybe that was caused by some angry gods or something, but he has no idea where they’re going with this one.
*whispers* 1-25 for Lee do it Gracie just fucking do it J u s t do it I will pay $$$$$ u $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ I'm srs rn so srs
anything for u my peach
1: their voice
his voice is deep but still sounds very boyish. he has a very very small (u gotta listen so super closely to hear it) french accent from his mom, and almost always sounds like he has a sore throat, super cute
Lee Pugnator is a gentle soul with a heart so trusting that no gaping wound inflicted upon it could diminish its strength. He is sun filtering through glass after a spring rain; its light dappled and shining over wilted petals too strong to fall from their stem. He loves deeply and lends his hands to anyone and anything, from dense soil and steadfast plants, to fickle humans and persistent friends. Lee is the bike he pedals to work everyday, and flowery crowns he makes for his puppy, Lisa, to wear. He is broken and remade, fixed with gold.
