shae

shae mckinley // foxcroft-rpg "what i want back is what i was."

[neilmonroe-blog]

buried in water / s.m.

[shaemckinley-blog]

neilmonroe:

It didn’t take much to ignite Neil’s curiosity: growing up in a household with little child-friendly stimulation had led, unsurprisingly, to a fruitful imagination and an abundance of curiosity – or maybe it was just nosiness. Still, whatever his Freudian excuse, Neil kept an eye on Shae as she wove between the reeds, whistling beneath her breath. The tune she blew was high and melancholy; bittersweet. Most things were bittersweet for him, those days. Any laughter he released now felt like laughing with a stitch: painful mirth. Half a dozen different TV shows, his guitar, the chipped mug ringed with coffee in his sink, his lighter – it all reminded Neil of him. And if it wasn’t traces of Adam which tainted everything, then it was traces of Hazel. Hell, even the swamps in which he sat now were theirs, in life and death: the tree he and Hazel had carved their initials onto was only five feet behind him. They’d expected it to outlive them, even revelled in the romance of it – but he hadn’t anticipated it to outlive her so easily.

He thought that Shae hadn’t noticed him – but then she was staring directly into his eyes, and it was as though time had skipped a beat; he hadn’t remembered looking round. The cool intensity of her gaze made his throat dry. She drew nearer, squelching in her rain boots, a visual cacophony.  Sniffing, he scratched the side of his neck and brought his knees to his chest, turning his eyes out across the swamps and poising himself in nonchalance.

He didn’t look at her right away as she spoke to him, just chuckled and rolled the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Pity you should say that,” he said, “since I always look like this.” And didn’t his lungs know it. 

Neil only turned to meet her eye after she offered her company. Squinting up at her, he paused for a moment – unafraid of a little social discomfort, made immune to uncomfortable interactions by his street days – to genuinely consider the offer, aware all the while that if Shae wanted to sit, she’d sit, regardless of whether he passed. He didn’t want to pass, though: whether it was the odd charm of the wicker basket in her hand or just because he was tired of sitting alone, he didn’t know.

“Sure,” he said, patting the grass to his right. He looked at her basket and smiled to himself. “Biology homework?” he asked with sincerity, even though the concept was ludicrous; they both knew what she was collecting for. He’d been thinking about it a lot lately, in fact.

He’d wandered through her head before, this pretty little boy with the melancholic eyes. His sadness was a sickness, creeping like thick, acrid smoke through cracks in walls and cracks under doors and cracks around the edges of her dreams. No amount of caffeine nor preparation nor careful, tedious, anxious sealing of her consciousness ever seemed to slow the relentless assault. She knew those wide eyes and the purple-black bags beneath them better than she knew her own. Little flecks formed constellations that shifted and shivered around those full-moon pupils: Boötes, Casseopia, Capricorn. Icarus, he whispered, mouth never moving. Icarus, Icarus, Icarus.

It was strange to face him in real life. The swamp pressed in around them like a breathing creature, beating heart buried in shallow water. Did it draw strength from Adam? From Hazel before him? Shae knew the stories, the whispers. Neil Monroe murdered the two souls he’d loved dearest. Shae, perhaps more than all others, knew exactly how ridiculous such an accusation was. She knew how it felt to scrabble for purchase when born of and into nothing. She knew how important people became to those who had nothing else to love and be loved by. Ashes begot ashes, dust to dust. 

She smiled. Not soft, not gentle-- what use would he have of that from a stranger?-- and certainly not patronizing. She wouldn’t for a moment pretend to understand his demons. She claimed a patch of grass at his side, far enough away to let him breathe, and offered both a cigarette and a light. She didn’t smoke much and perhaps they were a little stale, but she carried them out of habit all the same. They were the same brand her mother favoured. “Something like that.” 

“What’s on your mind, Monroe?”

[arthurfoxcroft-blog]

@shaemckinley

He kept his head bowed as he walked down the grungy sidewalks, hoping to god for the first time in his life that no one would recognize him. His brother was to be buried in a matter of hours, and if Arthur was going to endure a day in memoriam of Adam, he wasn’t about to do it with a level head. His heart would only be half-present anyway, having seen the boy more as a distant cousin with whom to be reunited for awkward family gatherings where everyone pretended to love each other. His mind, though, craved the same kind of release — it was the only way he’d be able to make it through without a visible eye roll or audible scoff.

He’d never have called himself a stoner — there were too many connotations associated with the word, too many stereotypes of lowlives just like his brother, but what smoke he inhaled in the confines of his office or bedroom concerned no one but Arthur himself. It was only ever to give himself a mental break, he so often assured himself. When he’d gone home to find Elias gone, it had been an all too easy solution to numb the pain, if only temporarily. The same had gone for when he’d heard the news about Adam, but hardly for the same reason. No, he didn’t mourn a loss — not in the way a brother should have. Instead, he was haunted by another feeling altogether — how inescapable that hell hole of a town was, how all it brought anyone was a spiral downwards, some quicker than others.

The witch’s shop, as he’d heard in passing whispers, was where he’d find what he was looking for. He couldn’t recall having ever ventured into that neighbourhood, never mind behind the doors of whatever bullshit voodoo tourist trap the woman seemed to be operating. Then again, so long as he got what he came for, he didn’t particularly care what kind of wool she pulled over the eyes of a couple of small-town idiots. Arthur’s eyes settled on her, stood behind the register at the counter. From his pocket he pulled his wallet, and from his wallet he pulled a crisp hundred dollar bill. Head still bowed, his eyes dared glance up — first, quickly darting around the room to ensure no one worthwhile would catch a glimpse of him, then to meet hers. “I’ve heard you’re the person to talk to about certain particular herbal remedies,” he breathed, sliding the bill towards her. “For your discretion, of course.”

[shaemckinley-blog]

Shae hadn’t been in Foxcroft nearly long enough to recognize hallowed Arthur, second-born but hardly second-best, by sight alone. Even if her arrival-- a date even she herself had half-forgotten-- had overlapped with the days he’d still called the town home, he surely would not have set foot in the tiny hurricane of Calypso that Shae had painstakingly constructed around herself. 

Calypso had become her home. It had been years since she’d spoken to her mother. Once upon a time they’d drifted from place to place with no ties save for the ones to each other-- they’d slept in their car for more days than Shae would admit, as if the threat of child services carried well into her twenties. She’d spent more months homeschooled than in class. Her mother had been the bulk of her world. Now, without her, Shae poured that same devotion and attention into the little store and the whirlwind of goods under the roof that leaked sometimes when it rained. She grew weed-- good weed-- and it wasn’t a well-kept secret, but she sold it (or gave it away) to friends and those who needed it. Dealing once in a blue moon didn’t a dealer make, or so she told herself. 

In here, in Shae’s domain, Arthur wasn’t an upstanding citizen of Foxcroft, nor a pillar of the small community, nor a fledgling bird flown the coop for brighter skies. All Shae saw when Arthur picked his way across her threshold was a white boy who dressed like a rich man, clearly out of place. 

A fresh hundred dollar bill and a bad attitude. If he found another red flag to wave, he might light the place on fire. The last thing she was about to do was let this stranger pose a fresh threat to her sanity. “That’s a joke, right? Murphy put you up to this?” 

[tsunamiwavesurfing]

short girls always wanna fight yall like mini batteries overflowing with energy cause yall bodies too small to contain it if only yall had used it to grow instead

[levifletcher-blog]

His fingers traced the outer rim of the glass before he slowly reached for the base and brought it up to his lips to take a drink. He hardly ever drank, at least not enough to ever really get himself drunk, but for some reason, he found himself drawn to wanting just a little bit of that today. Maybe it was because he had just got done interviewing Amelia, maybe it was because he was just so tired of constantly being shit on by this stupid town. Even though this was all in his head, he immediately regretting saying what he did. Sure there were things he didn’t like about Foxcroft and he wouldn’t think twice about leaving it. But at the end of the day he did still have family there, even friends, and he couldn’t completely let go of that either.

It didn’t take long for Levi to wash down the entire glass. The expression in his eyes must’ve been enough to tell Logan that he more than ready for another drink. Levi wasn’t exactly sure how he even ended up in this bar, but now that he was here, he wasn’t sure if he was ever going to leave it. Feeling broken and defeated, Levi was stuck in this weird feeling. That’s just how his life was at the moment, this constant feeling of being stuck in between. He glanced over to his bag on the floor, papers of his field notes sticking out just enough to remind him that he should’ve been working on a piece, but not enough to entirely make him feel bad for taking another drink.

As Logan placed the drink down in front of him, it didn’t take long before it had settled in his hands. Levi just happened to take a moment to look over his shoulder when he noticed her staring at him. Almost like second nature, Levi nodded towards the other seat as he waited for her to join him. “And look what the cat dragged in.” He smirked as he watched her take the seat next to him.

@shaemckinley

[shaemckinley-blog]

Levi Fletcher was cute. It had taken months for Shae to pinpoint exactly why she’d let herself become half attached to perhaps the biggest threat to her livelihood in Foxcroft, Marcus Murphy aside. Levi was like a dog with a bone when he got the first whiff of a good story, nosing around every bit of local scuttlebutt with the due diligence a Pulitzer Prize-worthy topic deserved. Calypso had been open for years but had yet to fall into Levi’s crosshairs. Instead of avoiding the boy who came back home, Shae found herself enjoying his company, perhaps because he was exactly the sort of man her mother would have loved to see her ‘settle down’ with. Levi had merits of his own, of course, but it was out of a deep-rooted if latent love for her estranged mother that Shae drifted back to Levi time after time. Hanging out with Levi made her feel close to the woman she hadn’t spoken to in years. 

Shae had always wondered why he’d never set it on her in earnest about Calypso and the persistent rumour that she was a bona fide black-cat-owning-broomstick-riding-wart-sporting witch, but asking him outright was as good as painting a target on her back. Still, she gave Levi’s shoulder a familiar little squeeze with her lean fingers before climbing up (almost literally; she took a moment to curse her meagre height on a near-daily basis) on to the bar stool next to Levi. She waved a hand to Logan, ordered a gin and tonic, and fixed Levi with a winsome smile the likes of which he’d seen many a times before. 

“I’ll tell you who stopped by my shop today if you tell me the latest hot gossip.” 

[shaemckinley-blog]

ameliafoxcroft:

Now that was a person who belonged here. Strange, how location could give and take power away from certain individuals. Amelia had always found herself at her best in office buildings, tall glass monoliths situated in cities. That was where her poise and professionalism were praised, where she didn’t need to smile and hem and haw for every townsperson who thought they knew her simply based on her family history. She was no one but who she decided to become in a city. But here, surrounded by dripping ivy, waxy candles, herbal perfumes and tarot cards, she had no authority to hold on to. At first, this scared her. Then it emboldened her. 

The owner’s light brown eyes seemed as if to embers. Amelia wouldn’t doubt if they had the capacity to glow in the dark. Stranger things had happened at Foxcroft, and stranger things would keep happening until this town collapsed and rotted in on itself. If this woman was more than she appeared, well, it wouldn’t not make sense. In fact, if Amelia played her cards right, that would help. 

“Bless you.” was enough of a statement for Amelia to grasp the context of character from the stranger in front of her. Merely five-foot (though those eyes, they helped her carry a sense of height rivaling Amelia’s), dripping in natural fibers, bangles, box braids – and then the witty jibe. Amelia had expected kitschy fanfare, and gotten a wisecracker. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or scared. She chose relieved, because the more dimensionality this woman had to her personality, perhaps the more there was to her and her shop than ceramic pins and ‘spell books’. “Thanks,” Amelia returned, cautiously bemused herself. 

“Ha-ha,” she said, with an emphasis on the irony. The woman certainly liked pulling chains. Which Amelia could slightly appreciate. “Glad you think so.” She realized she had been holding the small mallet in her hand for longer than she’d need to, and placed it gently on the counter. “I’m guessing this –” she pointed at the gong. “is more for show than getting your attention. Or my sneezes are louder than I thought.” 

And there was the personality that surprised Shae, who had heard nothing but green whispers from the town about the creature standing before her exactly like the tall monoliths Amelia called home. Shae knew a little too much about wearing the skin of a black sheep in this little town and shouldn’t have felt as she did, proven wrong in broad daylight-- yet there they stood. The hair at the nape of Shae’s neck rose as she watched Lady Foxcroft live and breathe in Shae’s own air.

It took courage, Shae supposed, to waltz into the heavy, hazy air of Calypso and stand so at ease in the dancing shadows. There was something enchanting in the colour of those fair cheeks that had nothing to do with the magic shop in which they faced off, witnessed by spellbooks and crystal balls. Shae found the corners of her lips curling up in something a little more friendly than the wry, sarcastic smile she’d worn a moment before. 

“It’s the floors,” Shae admitted, and there was the ghost of a laugh lingering around the edges of her warm-honey voice. Not at Amelia-- Shae had a hard time imagining anyone laughing at Amelia-- but instead a bit at herself, a bit at the situation they’d found themselves in. That mallet belonged in Amelia’s hand about as well as a legal text would’ve belonged in Shae’s. The abrupt collide of different worlds never failed to amuse her. She took a half step forwards and leaned her bony elbows on the worn countertop, slim fingers lacing together under her chin and eyes back on Amelia’s. If she was a little warmer, a little more welcoming, it certainly wasn’t imagined. “What can I do for you?”

[ameliafoxcroft-blog]

location: calypso @shaemckinley

Amelia had a minute range of taste. Some would say she preferred the Scandinavian aesthetic: minimalist, clean lines, neutral shades, expensive looking. She steamed and ironed her collared shirts before she wore them, and always buttoned them up to the last button. Her perfume of choice was Chanel, and she took showers every day – sometimes twice, if she felt the outside world had gleaned a sheen of dirt and swamp on her. 

She would not say Calypso appealed to her innate sense of being. In truth, if she saw the front window on the street back east she would have mistaken it for either an piecemeal art exhibition or a dollar palm-reading scam. There was an abundance of everything. Like being in a vintage store smelling of old fabric, sweat, and patchouli. She couldn’t parse out the store’s furniture from its wares when she first entered. Dressed in an elongating gray suit, Amelia looked a sight for sore eyes among the sprouts of medicinal crystals, antique perfume bottles and dried flowers. It almost looked as if someone had carted a mannequin into a witch’s store as a prank. 

What would her family think, if they saw her in Calypso. Her first (depressing) thought was nothing – they wouldn’t think of her at all. But she pressed beyond that, and imagined her parents with feathers ruffled, Avery and Adam in disbelief, Arthur weirdly proud of his uptight little sister for finally branching out.  

As she cautiously stepped through Calypso’s menagerie of oddities, she came upon an arrangement of perfume bottles. The talk of the town had been in favor of their scents. Amelia took a delicate sniff of one and wrinkled her nose, attempting (and failing) to stop a sneeze. It was possible she was allergic to something in the brew. Maybe not just the brew. Maybe the entire shop. 

At the back of the store, on top of the checkout counter, was a small metal gong with a mallet below it. Amelia bit the inside of her cheek at the kitsch of it all. “Better get it over with,” she muttered unamusedly to herself, grabbing the tiny mallet and rapping it against the gong. Hopefully the owner would hear the first sound and she would be spared the embarrassment of having to ring it again. 

[shaemckinley-blog]

It’s like a fortuneteller’s caravan threw up in here, Willa Potter had once stage-whispered to her eager-eyed entourage. Shae had laughed then and laughed still to remember it, mostly because it was true. Calypso was a labour of love, a veritable mishmash of gently used wares, novelties still in their shrink-wrap, antiques on their last toes (because legs might have been a touch too generous for their state of disrepair). Herbs and flowers hung from the rafters, drying themselves out as they rained a bittersweet floral note over the air below. The window was too crowded to let in much light, and whatever crept through was stained ruby and indigo and violet from the gauzy curtains draped from one side to the other, carefully arranged to draw the eye where Shae wanted it most. Curls of thick, fragrant smoke from her incense du jour shimmered and played in the beams, winding up towards the ceiling. Today was a sharp, peppery green floral mess that reminded Shae of campfires in the middle of cornfields ripe for harvest. 

As the smoke cooled it drifted down again, kissing the hot mess of shit crammed into every corner and conceivable surface of the shop. Figurines of jade, copper, gold, brass; little bars of iron stamped with strange symbols piled around a worn little book explaining the intent and purpose of each; an entire table of crystals and semi-precious stones; a handful of rock-salt lamps, in Shae’s opinion the stupidest of fads that nevertheless sold too well to be ignored; a dizzying variety of tarot cards dumped, deliberately disorganized, into a row of baskets hung from the staircase to her apartment; an eclectic collection of talismans and ornaments and wards and empty promises that Shae crafted herself. The entire back wall featured floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, packed so tight with tomes that they were often hard to wiggle free, with thinner books laying horizontally into whatever space the thicker ones left atop them. Shae might have watched Beauty and the Beast a few too many times as a child, but no one and nothing could convince her that installing a sliding ladder was a bad idea. A bright blue pot the colour of oxidized copper dangled from the centre of the ceiling in a tongue-in-cheek imitation of a chandelier, spilling ivy out from all sides, lush vines heavy with rich green leaves reaching down in a futile but ceaseless quest to reach the floor. Near the ancient and finicky register was a rotating stand of ridiculous kitschy ceramic pins (little crescent moons and black cats and crystal balls, not to mention the oh-so-subtle silver banners emblazoned with “WITCH”). The little rack of perfumes she slaved over sat beside it, never far from her meddling fingers. Nothing in the shop bore a price tag; Shae tended to ad hoc costs, preferring to force her customers to actually speak with her if they intended to buy and giving her ample opportunity to mark up and discount down on a whim, often resulting in a price two thirds off for the grandmother barely making ends meet or two times higher than the norm for the bitch that cut her in line at the grocer’s two weeks before. Shae had a sense of humour about it all (just take a look at collection of glittery skulls or the faux leather notebooks stamped with ‘people to cast spells on’) but the place was chock full of strangeness and oddities, filling a void in Foxcroft that most hadn’t known existed until it arrived in the middle of their downtown. 

She knew well the sound of the door creaking open, not to mention the breeze that ruffled the ivy and sent shadows skittering around the room like grey spiders. She saw Amelia-- reigning dowager Queen of the town which bore her name-- long before the woman was forced to ring the fucking gong, but laid in wait like a particularly enthusiastic predator nevertheless. (There was something so satisfying about watching the Prada Princess, Miss White Bread and Organic Grass-Fed Butter herself send the low, tinny tone of the gong thrumming through her shop.) Shae appeared from behind the beaded curtain separating ‘the back’ from ‘the front’ to fix Amelia with the strange honey-brown eyes that above all else sold Shae as a witch in living, breathing form to the lesser denizens of the town. It had nothing to do with the colour of her skin, Shae was sure (”sure”), and everything to do with the colour of her eyes.

Still, she sold the image well, wrapped in earth-toned gauzy fabrics with an assortment of bangles clattering together around her wrists. Shae cut a strange figure no matter where she went, but it was Amelia who stood wretchedly out of place inside Shae’s shop. It took every ounce of effort and then some for Shae to stop herself from grinning, cat meet canary. “Bless you.”

The slip was deliberate: Shae might still be new to town by Foxcroft standards, but even she knew full well what was whispered about the striking figure before her and the ancestors that had spat her out beside the swamp, another in a long line of pretty white things reigning high above those far below. Foxcroft was Amelia’s hallowed ground, but Calypso was Shae’s turf. Shae’s favourite kind of misbehaving was exactly the sort that so annoyed Marcus Murphy-- the sort that seemed well-intentioned if polite on the surface. “You look right at home in here, don’t you?”

[neilmonroe-blog]

buried in water / s.m.

@shaemckinley​

It was sick, his morbid fascination with the swamp that had killed his friends. When he bathed, the tepid water all speckled with ash, it only took one blink of his eyes for the bath’s contents to turn thick and green and gummy; another blink would return it to normal, but he’d still be left feeling unclean. He’d see the swamp water oozing under the slit beneath his door at night, would find algae floating in his coffee cup in the morning, would feel himself drowning suddenly at any time of day. He’d kneel beside the swamp marsh most days like a zealot praying before their God, all strength in his body gone, arms shaking, chest tight. He’d edge ever so nearer to the bank, crawling closer on his hands and knees until another move forward would send him into the bog itself. Sometimes he’d be standing upright, shoes and socks kicked off to one side, hovering at the marsh’s edge like a phantom. One step, two steps, daring himself closer. Wading in to his ankles, begging himself to go further. Did they walk in, or did they fall? Were they pushed? Did he push them?

He’d drive himself half to death with the agony, staring at the swamp until its greenish waters became black and the sun became moon. He hadn’t been there so long that day, though: dusk was just on its cusp, the blood-red sky silhouetting the nightingales as they swooped down across the still waters and back up into the scrub. He’d left his house half-drunk – it didn’t take much to get him that way, admittedly; a couple of beers would do the trick – but the swamp had scared him mostly sober. Only a faint dullness of his senses remained, a warm lethargy keeping him company as he sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and chewed on a toothpick. (Neil always kept a couple rattling about in his cigarette cases, for when he’d smoked the last one and needed the comfort of something to roll across his tongue.) The air was still, almost humid, and he was alone – or so he’d thought. Across the swamp, a figure was weaving through the reeds, bending down at intervals as if looking for something. He squinted to identify her, then turned his head away, irrationally disgruntled at having to share his spot. But a flicker of curiosity lingered, as he mused on the witchy woman’s presence, and though he didn’t dare let it show, he made sure to keep her visible in his periphery.

[shaemckinley-blog]

The most important part of a lie, or so her mother had always told her, was to root it in truth. No matter how fleeting or feeble, something honest needs must form a backbone around which something decidedly less so could be built. Some lessons were not easily forgotten, not that Shae had ever been particularly keen on brushing her mother’s advice aside. Moments and memories of her sat glimmering gold and rose-tinted in the back of Shae’s mind, up on too high a shelf to draw down on a whim but shadowing nearly everything she did. 

Crawling through the grotty Foxcroft swamp was no exception. It was on her mother’s long-ago-uttered advice that Shae was picking around the edge of the water with her big yellow rubber boots and a little wicker basket at her side. There were water lilies to her right, along the make-shift green-slimed shore (eloquence, purity of heart); there were thistles growing thick to her left, just starting to bloom (pain, protection, pride). The effects of the pressed-flower talismans she threw together and the language of flowers they were borne of might have been over-stated and over-promised, but the “hand-picked, hand-made” label was entirely genuine. They were a pain in the ass, but they sold faster than she could make them. If it meant a few hours sweating her balls off and batting off blood-suckers, it was a small price to pay. 

Until and after the deaths-- Hazel first, Adam next, as if the swamp sought only those ripest for the picking as tribute to its dark dank depths-- Shae rarely crossed another’s path in her wanderings. It was a peaceful place, almost. Foxcroft was small but the folk who called it home had packed in more densely than Shae preferred, especially since she’d set up shop in the dead centre of the (albeit still quiet) downtown, and claimed the once-storage-space sitting atop it as her home. The swamp was a breath of fresh air and a chance to clear her mind. Standing a few arm’s lengths from the next closest human seemed to help clear her dreams, too, if only for a night. 

Her reasons for marching through the boneyard were decidedly more selfish than Neil Monroe’s, the poor boy who had loved and lost two young and able bodies to the weeds and reeds. It was for this reason, plus a touch of concern, that bid Shae to forgive him immediately for infringing on her holy alone time. (Concern, though she knew the madness at the root of it: the swamp wasn’t a living thing, didn’t need to consume to continue to exist; it wasn’t calling to Neil and it hadn’t called to Hazel nor Adam before him. Still, some part of Shae worried that if she lifted her eyes from Neil’s thin body he might fold into the water between them, spat out only when there was no life left within him. A body, a corpse, bloated and bogged, the toothpick which which the swamp cleaned its teeth of its meal, chewing up and swallowing everything that had made its victims who they were. You have such a vivid imagination, Shae, her mother had always said; it was a curse more than a blessing, especially when death’s bare-boned hand brushed ever closer, ever closer.) 

He’d seen her, not that she’d been making much of an effort to hide: wellingtons weren’t exactly conducive to stealth and now that his eyes were on her in such an accusing manner she realized she’d been singing under her breath. Here was Neil, alone as ever, and likely seeking closeness or closure; here was Shae, stomping merrily through what little peace he’d deigned to take for himself. Still and as always, her fat mouth won out over her common sense. “You look like you need a smoke, kiddo.” Murderer, or so half the town accused, but Shae knew how it felt to be firmly on the outside of an angry pack that ought to have known better. He tugged at her heartstrings, little Neil Monroe, and she found herself abruptly unable to let him alone. “And maybe some company.” 

[shaemckinley-blog]

willapotter:

It’d been a long day. She was still wearing the same coffee-stained clothes she’d been wearing since that morning when Jonah Graves decided to be so kind and spill all over her. No fucking way was she going back into the suburbs when she’d already made it out here. It wasn’t far. Willa just knew that if she went home, she wouldn’t come back out. Stepping out the door that morning was hard enough. She couldn’t do it again.

Two cups of coffee, a confrontation with Jonah, and a few shitty girly drinks at Absinthe Minded  – some broody bartender had insisted she try one, and then another, and then another – and here she was. A strange mix of emotions had surfaced. Anyone who knew Willa knew that she kept her real feelings hidden behind a mix of alcohol, a bad attitude and impulses. 

She was angry because she didn’t get an invite to Adam’s funeral. Sad for the same reasons. Angry that Foxcroft P.D. couldn’t find Adam’s killer. Terrified because whoever it was, was still out there. She was scared because she still didn’t understand what had happened that night, and it didn’t seem like Neil did either. What the fuck was she supposed to do? 

Stumbling down the street, taking her and Adam’s shortcut to the suburbs, Willa saw a figure ahead. Even with how far she was, Willa could tell it was Shae. No one had braids like that in Foxcroft except for her. 

Willa was tipsy, but it seemed Shae had a few more drinks that night than she had – or she couldn’t hold her liquor as well. ‘I should– kick that thing. Right in the fucking tires.’ Willa’s eyes darted to the cop car sat outside Shae’s shop. Willa knew messing with Foxcroft P.D. wasn’t a good idea – especially with a killer on the loose an the police desperate to find someone, anyone to bring in for Adam’s or Hazel’s death.

“Oh fuck no,” she murmured under her breath. “Shae! Hey Shae! Shae!”

Willa’s half-frantic voice was enough to cut through Shae’s buzzed fog, if only just. The town witch had been busy entertaining a rather vivid daydream of lighting Marcus’ car on fire-- of tucking herself back into her shop, hustling up the creaky staircase at the back, opening the trap door to her airy loft apartment, and peeking out the window at the chaos that would surely ensue. She knew better, of course; it would take a hell of a lot more than three strong cocktails to push Shae beyond the point of return, but what was the harm in imagining?

Still, the pretty little thing seemed genuinely alarmed. Shae wondered for a scant moment what kind of reputation she’d actually managed to scrape together for herself within Foxcroft if breaking the windows of a cop car seemed like something she was willing and capable of doing. 

What did she know of Willa, anyhow? Outside of what she saw in her dreams and the handful of times the reigning Dame of Good Breeding Gone Wrong had stumbled into her shop. Willa Pothead, or so the rumours accused, not that Shae would call a kettle black. God knew Shae had slipped Willa a little something on more than one occasion. They weren’t friends, exactly-- Willa had her pale weirdo and the dead guy, and had always seemed to need little else outside of them. Shae had settled into the familiar space in-between, the place where people and things that were only used every once in a while fell until called upon again. Shae didn’t know Willa very well at all, but she preferred it that way. It was comfortable to be in a state of unknowing. 

“It’s only Detective Murphy,” Shae called back, hair glinting blacker than the night that hovered soft like velvet above them, but not half so bright as her honey eyes. “Trying to scare me into behaving.” The cop was an annoyance, certainly, but all but harmless all the same. If he meant no threat to Shae, what could he do to the white girl who’d called their town home all her life? It was a dark joke, though, that followed: Shae lifted both hands into the air between them in a pantomime of don’t shoot, gold bangles rattling a metallic protest to the movement. “Don’t you worry, mama duck, I’m keeping my hands to myself.” 

[unpetalled]

I fall asleep whispering “I am safer alone I am safer alone I am safer alone I am safer alone" […] Forgive me, memory is a rope around the neck.

Clementine von Radics, from James (via unpetalled)

[shaemckinley-blog]

march 28, 2017   closed to: @willapotter

It was the damned cop car again.

She had the plate memorized, not that the white-and-black shell was hard to miss. Shae wanted to crush it under her heel like the cockroach that drove around in it. Red, blue, red, blue, red-- how long had he been haunting her dreams? Wide dark eyes, white around the rims-- the creak of sagging wood, the sound of laboured breathing, and the damned cop car. 

Absinthe Minded made a half-decent Alabama Slammer, not that the Lockwood boy would stop judging her for ordering off the menu. (Boy, because that’s what most of them were-- a few choice beating hearts aside, none of the creatures in Foxcroft had lived long enough for Shae to take them as seriously as they may have deserved.) If she were being honest, she’d admit that perhaps the only reason she’d hauled her tiny ass up on to the bar in front of Logan was in hopes she’d run into Levi again-- but no such luck. The little silver acorn she carried in her wallet was good for nothing, but so was most of the shit she dragged around in her colossal purse. (So was most of the shit she packed into the shelves of her shop, too, but by the time witching hour ticked near, she was too buzzed to care.) 

The only thing real enough to burst her bubble was Marcus’. Fucking. Cop. Car. 

“I should-- kick that thing. Right in the fucking tires.” 

[antitoxic]

[loveafffair]

Zoë Kravitz for Marie Claire (Fresh Faces Cover Film) May 2015.

[midgeblitz]

[bangurz]

[chavvesty]

“i don’t care,” i say, caringly, as i care deeply

[nizars]

nomine appellant | » messing around with the unknown. [listen]

It was meaningless, a riddle perhaps, but nonetheless, Adam felt the hairs of his neck crawl. They all glanced at the trees that surrounded them; they were fenced by one thousand different shades of green fastened to a million wind-blown claws.