where: Ollie's kitchen table; Fletcher's radio station
when: approximately God knows o'clock at night/in the morning? in late July
who: CLOSED for @radi0freq
This was almost definitely a mistake.
Ollie stared down his phone, the number all typed, then into the bottom of his scotch. Granddad's brand, always... but he'd started to find it harder to get down, lately. Had it always smelled that much like lighter fluid? He drank, anyway, and dialed, re-reading the points scrawled across a couple of his marking sticky notes.
The line clicked open, like a door he'd been leaning against and, now, was stumbling through. "Hi, ah. Long-time listener, first-time caller..." That's what people said, right? Could've sworn he heard that, someplace. A movie, or one of the books Marlow stacked up on his bedside table... Ollie's hand swiveled around his glass, clunked it back down to the tabletop. "I was - hoping to talk to you, to ask you some questions, about your ads. The one that just played. Specifically. The -" he hummed a few notes of the jingle's bouncy little tune. "Beast-proofing. Is now a, a good time?" He palmed the hand he'd been talking with down his tired face. Idiot. It was an ungodly hour, and in all his sleepless listening - which was a lot, an unhealthy amount - there was simply no bad time, ever, to bring up the local craziness of Misery with the local crazy who ran the station.
where: Low Tide
when: approximately 9 AM on a day in late July
who: CLOSED for @ollieaylen
Marlow had come home, ostensibly, to help after her father fell mysteriously ill. Wasn't that her job, always? No matter where she settled or how she filed her taxes, her occupation remained "Eldest Daughter." And when her mother cried her, weeping? What else was she to do? No, it didn't matter that all but one of her other siblings were still living in Misery. Her mother, her family needed help and Marlow would be the one to provide it.
But with a father in stable, though critical, condition in the hospital and a mother down to part-time hours on summer break...there wasn't much to do, really. That morning, however, had seen both Carson's and Greer's families all over early. It was a sweet gesture, nothing distracted their mother like her grandchildren, but it was earlier enough that everyone needed to get fed and, spotting an opportunity to be useful, Marlow offered to place and pick-up an order at Low Tide.
It wasn't quite ready when she arrived and so she leaned back against the counter, eyes trailing the familiar scene. The morning rush had more or less died off and in the summer lull there were only a couple of older fellows, bickering in one of the back corners, and-
"Ollie?"
She spoke before really meaning too, but she had just been so surprised to see him. To see him looking...different. Same lanky height to him, just more hunch to his shoulders. Same baby-soft curls, just more outgrown and verging on disheveled. A round of scruff shadowing his jaw when he had always been clean-shaven (It tickles, she could remember shrieking at him, when it got a little long and he teasingly kissed her face all over).
"Hi." She stepped away from the counter and toward him but then stalled out, left herself stranded in the middle of the walkway, some ghost of a smile frozen on her face.
The last time they had spoken, almost two years ago now, had been a disaster.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to ambush you at breakfast just- I didn't expect to see you, I guess." And why wouldn't she? Shouldn't she have expected to see him? This was his town more than it was hers, now. No matter how many life-size cardboard standups the library put up, declaring her a hometown hero.
Coffee could fix a lot, in Ollie's world. Not everything, not by a long shot. But it hardly ever hurt. And so it was his second cup that he spilled right across the counter when her voice bolted through him, like lightning out of Misery's grey-blue morning.
Marlow Albright, back in town. Looking straight his way. Saying his name. For the first time in - felt like ages, like a decade of bullshit that, by the looks of it, she'd managed to side-step beautifully. But that'd been the idea, right? Well before he had any idea just how much bullshit those years might bring.
Every ounce of it was scratching up his shoulders, now, hunching him over his coffee and a mostly full plate in their old diner, looking like he felt (absolute crap, recently electrocuted). Just a dozen feet away, at most, from the booth they liked best: windowside, perfect for people-watching together. Or listening to the rain tap-dancing across the glass, as they worked through marking, or one of her drafts. They'd spent so many mornings here, honestly. But nostalgia was a bitch that barked around every corner on an island this size, so. Where else was he going to go? Home? The home they'd been making, together?
Maybe off the end of the pier, but. Knowing his luck, the Beast of Misery could probably fucking swim.
He'd clicked his tongue, mouth gone dry. And a whine scraping around the inside of his skull. With a wince and a hard tilt of his head, he jerked into motion, fumbling over the diner bar for a towel to mop that coffee up. "Yeah, I mean. Same. To you, I - figured you were gone. For good." After everything. And ideally. But. Ollie left the stained towel half-folded, half-flopped over his breakfast, which he would not be staying to attempt to finish. And swiveled on his stool, hands jammed in his pockets. "I'm, I'm sorry. About your dad." Angela - Mrs. Albright - had booked some time out of the front office, and, well. On an island this size. Not asking, avoiding asking someone anything ever again, even, didn't mean you wouldn't hear just about everything. So - he shouldn't have been so fucking shocked. Of course Marlow was back.
There's nothing like the cold. The chill after the heat disperses, after the fire is extinguished. Beckett picks himself up off the ground, trembling, ash in his mouth and smoke in his lungs and death still stuck to his back teeth like caramel.
Across the floor, is the bāis Oliver. Oliver, who's going to start changing back any minute. Nothing seems to satisfy the thing in him, whatever's in charge once the sun goes down, like blood. Like a kill. Like sinking his teeth into Beckett.
He ignores the inappropriate little thrill he feels at the thought of being desired, even through appetite, even through sharp teeth, as he shuffles over to where he keeps the spare clothes. (Being a beast's favourite meal is no blessing. Now if only he could get himself to believe that.)
The ash is gone by the time Oliver, the thing underneath the other thing, resurfaces. There's a blanket on him, and Beckett crouches by his side, concern running along the tight line of his jaw, as Oliver comes to.
Okay? Oh-kay. It always took a minute for his brain to wrap itself around words again, after he got his brain back. Was he okay. Beckett was there, Beckett had come, like he always did, somehow. And Beckett was okay. Somehow.
Feverish forehead pressed to the cool concrete, Ollie felt his throat tighten, tune. Like his voice was a fiddle somebody forgot in the back of their closet, or down in a cellar like this one, until an occasion rolled around. Time to remember how to play the damn thing, and hope the strings didn't snap. "Yeah." Easy answer. He gave it all the time, or used to, when his not being okay had been new enough that anybody around school, or Misery, really, wondered and asked. But, then, welling up sharp and acrid: the answer Beckett, only Beckett, had to be used to by now. Ollie gagged, and barked an elbow as he braced himself for a hard heave. The Beast of Misery had a hell of an appetite, which meant Ollie always had a hell of a morning after. Whatever the Beast hadn't broken down itself came up darkly red, thick. Meaty. More brisket than prime rib, lean, with some gristle at the end. Somebody's skinny little dog, maybe. Fuck.
The retching done at last, Ollie spat, pinkly. Then pushed up, hands pawing for that blanket, holding it closer as he sunk away from whatever'd been dinner, into the nearest wall. "Sorry." He sounded it, a raw croak. Must look it, too: a sweat-soaked, sallow-faced apology, still trembling. "Wish I'd... called you for nothing. Sucks to be right." And wow, was it terrifying. Or comforting? And comforting? Undecided, but leaning towards terror, Ollie pulled the blanket tighter. "I just. Felt it. All fucking day, I..." Like the Beast was digging holes right through his otherwise unremarkable Sunday. Totally unremarkable, besides - the Tide. Marlow. That. "Sorry," he sighed, head back. "I'll... make breakfast? If you want. In a. Minute..."
37 - he/him - local - art teacher @ st brendan/local cryptid
pinterest || story || hooks || existing connections ||
[gray // they // 35 // pst]
tale told under the cut; trigger warnings for parental abandonment, alcoholism, and parental death (suspected suicide/overdose).
Back when, Ollieās family had a bit of a reputation for being a somewhat tragic mess. While his maternal grandparents were generally well-regarded folks - the school custodian and librarian, in their day - their ability to be satisfied with the simple life drove their only daughter up the wall and, eventually, out of town, after years of escalating rebellion. Deirdre returned pregnant, with the father in tow; he was a stranger, a city boy with romantic notions of a seaside hamlet that were deeply disappointed. The two (almost three) moved back into the Aylen family house, andā¦ spiraled, from there. They were both artists, in the most dysfunctional sense of the term, and neither were prepared to be parents. Ollie wound up largely in the care of his grandparents as mom and dad fought, drank, and desperately delivered painting after painting to gallery after gallery. They were a loud, impractical pair of people, the kind of couple that a small working town loves to shake their heads at. Nobody was shocked when the city boy ran off and never returned, or when their local failed artist kept failing under her own alcoholic steam. Her son, quiet, practical, grew up generally pitied. More so, after his grandparents passed - so sad, so sudden, a car accident in the fog. (Not that fog. Just a regular fog. Regular tragedy.) Then his mother, before he finished high school. She wasnāt mourned so much as her folks; bitter, resentful, a mean, lonely drunk with only a temper and wasted talent to her name, all she left behind was some half-finished hotel art and a heap of empty bottles. Just another regular tragedy. And Ollie in the wake of it, alone in the old family house. Where he could make something, even just - something small. And steady. A life of his own. And so he did.Ā
Before the Beast burst out of the dark, most would say Ollie had more or less succeeded. As the shadow of his familyās falling-apart fell further into history, he became a familiar and generally fond fixture around St. Brendan and Misery more broadly. Art had always been his escape, something deeply different than what it was for his parents; it was his art teacher whoād given him the tools to turn it into that, to make it his. He paid that forward, taking over the job when that mentor retired. Teaching wasnāt some kind of consolation prize - he wanted to share the wonder and the process, to give what heād been given! That mattered. And how much it mattered, to Ollie, showed. It was a good place, his art room. By the time he really met Marlow Albright (THE NOVELIST), a fellow teaching student at the closest college, heād cracked out of his shell and, well. Become somebody that someone like her could be charmed by. Why he broke her heart just as she was taking off, thatās another mystery Misery canāt crack. Some might wonder if he just couldnāt cope with the absolutely monumental success she was quickly becoming - a writer, a doer, making something of her work and herself in a way Aylens just. Donāt. Thatād be unfair, and so, so far from the truth, but. Itās not like heās explained himself to anyone. Not even Marlow. And then, just as he was starting to slip into a regular stool at the barā¦ it happened. This not at all normal fucking dog attack thatās. Done. This.Ā
Though only Beckett Byrd (THE PHOENIX) has any idea why, and most assume itās the toll of breaking up with Marlow on the eve of her star skyrocketing away from Misery, itās impossible not to notice that Ollie hasnāt been himself for the past two years. Heās obviously exhausted, unfocused, withdrawn, and, lately, since those bells rang - off. Just. Unlike even that caved-in, scruffy-bearded sketch of himself that heās been. Downright prickly. Prone to snap and snarl. He hasnāt ever been an angry person. Has he? Maybe it was just lying in wait, actually. Perhaps the leash is simply frayingā¦
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