#0fficially0fftherails

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"Will you think about me?"

"You make it sound like we’ll never see each other."

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Wages of Sin

0fficiallly-0ff-the-rails

The whole country was trapped in a series of darkness. Lost to itself in the out pour of nothing. Will had lived his life in a slum. Trying to make himself a living but there was no living to be made. The lines for the newest job were all the way down the street, folks saying they'd work for bread crumbs. The whole town in an uproar over everything. He could feel the thickness of the situation, the bleak atmosphere that plagued everyone.

He went to bed hungry every night for as long as he could remember. An empty stomach and pains from working long days out in the fields, out some place that would hire. Even though most times that was no place. The hardness had offed his dad a few years back. And then there was nothing more to keep in a straight line for.

He had been arrested twice since his dads death but they let him off. Most of the people around understood what it was to want, to need. And then there were some that hadn't been touched, hadn't even felt a damned thing.

Sometimes he passed by those houses with a sick feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. Wanting to taste some of it, hoping that he'd be able to just spit it all back out. But he might be consumed if he got himself a taste of that. Will was well used to dust and emptiness. He lived a hollowed out life on his own.

He liked to take things. It wasn't so much of a thrill at first. Just because he needed it. Need was had got him picked up by the cops in the first place. But now it was drive. And he wanted to get his hands on all the things he didn't have, couldn't have. He'd die empty and that wasn't the kind of life he wanted.

She had lived in one of those houses. Small. But it looked like a mansion to him. They might've seen the darkness that had taken hold of him for so long. They might've known what it was to taste of ash and dust. But whatever was going on in their house Will didn't care. He cared about his own dusty atmosphere.

They had a car. And that was what had mattered to him. And he had tried to take it. She had caught him. It was funny. Most, in this sort of time, would have hated him for even attempting so much. But not Effy.

Effy was a different type altogether. Will would like to see her in fine things, dark silks and expensive lipstick. Dressed up like those shadowed girls on the big screen. He wanted to see her in something good, a world away from the one they were forced to live in.

He had a room in some boarding house. But it was the sort of place that he wanted to leave behind. He had a small torn up suitcase on the bed. And he was waiting for Effy to come on over. He was leaving, running out. He wanted to make plans for something, to be something.

Anything really. He wanted to taste something better. He wanted what he had hated, what had driven his old man over the brink. He was just a mess of hypocrisy. He wanted Effy to come with him. He wanted her to say yes. He couldn't go without her. She was his dissolve and he needed that. 

He shut the case and sat next to it. The bed creaked, the clasp on the case was broken. Everything including him worn in. He had a hot idea in his hands, eager to pass it over to Effy. Things weren't going to be so run in anymore.

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Form of Death-

0fficiallly-0ff-the-rails

It had been blared over every radio station. Something of an epidemic spreading throughout a few major cities. Will had been tossing around retirement for a while. But he got a call and he had to perform. Still on duty, still required. So he went. Barricades, they wanted barricades, evacuations. And he saw many men get too close. He was supposed to be counted among the lucky few that never caught it. Following the rules that had been posted outside of every door. But after everything he saw, Graham felt like his mind was terribly infected. Like something sinister and deadly had been injected into the raw tissue of his brain.

And then came the time when the government split, as if to say that they were on their own. The barricades stayed up but if torn down they weren't put back up. They were left abandoned. Will didn't feel betrayed. He had been holding his breath until it happened. He still had a few seconds left on that hold.

He got retirement. But in the sort of way he had never wanted it. His mind was a gaping hole of memory, a downward spiral that knew no end. He had seen death face to face on many occasions. But murder was not like sickness. Sickness was all consuming. Murder was man crafted.

He never slept. Holed up in some abandoned inn by the water. No one was sure about the water. But Will liked the way it looked, it was a filter for the death and soot in the air. Here he was able to build up a small foundation of calm. Even if he knew that death was clawing it's way into him, pounding at a rapid speed. It would come for him soon.

And he had been right. Only he had thought that his isolation would play out and the would find that the sickness had bitten into him, ripping chunks from his body.

They were all kids. They were all noise and eagerness. They seemed ready to call the world down onto their heads. He wouldn't have given a shit but the quiet was broken.

This time it sounded like screaming. He had never been one for parties. It might've been some ritualistic right of the young, especially in their time to scream like they were getting murdered.

But he did step out of his room. Perhaps invoked in him a long dead duty of taking charge. He still had his badge some place between the old sheet and the stale food, the half gone bottle of whiskey. No, that had it's own shelf with the books he used to pass the time. Nothing had changed for Graham. He was used to hollowed isolation.

He saw her though, standing there. She looked exhausted. Was she running? Or was it partying that weighted on her. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and surveyed her an extra moment and then he recognized her.

Living in the city had been hectic for Graham. But it was the requirements of being on the force. Live close by, live on call. And his life felt often like a three ring circus, sitting there in his box of a place, wondering if the suffocating feeling of being in a crowded city would end. He didn't want to be banded with so many people. She had lived across from him.

The first thing he always noticed about her was that she was frail. The sort of frail thing that doesn't break but bends. She had an air to her of nonchalance and eagerness to do something that mattered. Sadly though nothing mattered anymore. Not even her.

"You guys thinking of turning it down any time soon?" he asks, authoritative tone. It lacks authority though. Everything does now. People merely live now. Live to die. Everyone has their own form of death that they crave. Wills had forever been silence.

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Hate me, Love me, Miss me

Put “Hate me, Love me, Miss me.” In my askbox and my muse will tell you something about you they hate, something they love, and something they would miss if you left. 0fficiallly-0ff-the-rails

Watching her talk he catches on little things she says. Small words suggesting something that leans towards an inner disappointment within herself, towards herself. She’s eager to place a burden on herself, a dark and heavy burden. As if she’s to blame for the pieces that are missing inside of her head. And there’s something that triggers a response of hate towards the things she must think, the way she can refuse herself something good. The feeling is slight hypocrisy but it throbs and lingers there, a festering mess in the middle of his insides.

Watching her he likes to put up on little things. Things that format themselves into a whole picture in his head. An image so alive in his mind whenever she’s gone but not far. He loves listening to her, the sound of her voice. It’s soft in the harshness that surrounds him, it’s comforting in the empty loneliness of his house. He likes the way it sounds whispered or loud. He likes it when she laughs and it rings through gently, bringing to her voice some light. He loves her when she’s light and dark, it terrified him that he might toss around that word too much when he thinks of her. And maybe she’s too young to understand, and maybe he should walk away instead of asking her to.

He’d miss her presence, the gnawing feeling inside of him when she presses near. He’d miss her chaos and her easiness. Her avoidance and her yielding with words. Completely and entirely, just her. The blue lights she laid under and the way she clung onto him. Small fragments of her that would burn and linger in his mind as if she wasn’t gone at all. He’d miss saving her even when he knew he couldn’t.

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0fficiallly-0ff-the-rails replied to your post:

You hate me until I buy you a fancy new guitar and put it in your crappy car. That’s the rule.

And I'm still waiting so.....

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I let it out of its cage because it needed water, and I thought it would just drink out of the toilet or something, but then it ran off and couldn't get back it in.

"I have no idea what you’re talking about. But I’m hoping it’s not a small child."

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Sic Transit Gloria

0fficiallly-0ff-the-rails

Black upon black, gray on gray, browns mixed with browns. It was all just a series of darkness. It was a useless settling that most would shy away from. But it was what they saw when they got inside they made them keep coming. Will didn’t go to the place. He left Infernus to it’s own devices, running on the sickness of the people who put their money in. Patrons of mass destruction. They cared very little for the face of the man that made the world of Infernus spin.

He had decided for himself shadows were the best hiding cloak. He remained in them long enough to disappear. He was a byword, a broken man. He was faceless and he was hollowed out. He was something that no one wanted to talk about. But he was on everyone’s minds. Will Graham was destruction of his own accord. And he struck the world around him with his own storms.

He had built up a collection of debts that strayed into his favor. Many men falling on their knees to his hired hands, begging him to take away their pains. A hit here, a pay off there. They knew that he would take care of it. They called him a king of the underworld. But living in his own decay Will hardly felt like a king.

The head of the Stonem family had racked up his debt good. And Will was looking for something in return. A vastly large payment to make up for the road that he had paved before the mans feet.

Will always watched the people who owed him. By habit or some form of coming out of the steel shell he trapped himself in. He saw her one day, passing the house. She walked with a dark grace that he was taken to. And when he requested from her father payment it was her he asked for. Terms written out that she would be his. In his loneliness he craved company. He craved nothing. He hated the idea of needing. The terms were laid out and she was to be his.

He sent someone to bring her. And now he waited in anxiousness. It was raining out now. And the rain made a beat on the windows. The house was dim and the whiskey was bitter on his tongue. He waited.

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Nurse me // I also want this. But you can save it for last or something.

Leave a “Nurse Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character healing yours.0fficiallly-0ff-the-rails

But she had started to stir so he went to the bathroom, showered. He had to do so carefully, the cut was still raw on his stomach and every movement was painful. He went back into his room, passing the time with Ezra Pound because it was what was left on his bedside table. He wasn’t sure if he had done that or if she had. She must’ve. That’s why he left it there.

She came into the room after he had read ten pages. In calculation Will would have guessed twenty minutes. He looked up at her, not too into absorbing the words that he had read a lot already.

She was carrying a plate and she looked a little out of herself. Her hair was a mess, her makeup was smudged, although with her that might’ve been hard to tell because she wore so much around her eyes. He liked the way her hair looked, messed up from sleep, her shirt was slipping a bit off of one shoulder. Her skin was pale and he could recall that it was soft and warm. She always smelled like something distantly sweet and stubbornly bold but now sleep had laced through her scent and drowned it out a little.

She sat on the edge of the bed and set the plate down on the bedside table, where Ezra Pound had been left. She looked nervous. “You should eat something.” she said, not looking at him. As if the very words were hard for her to push out. She swallowed harshly, he watched the movement of her throat. He reached for her wrist, fingers touching lightly to the bracelet around her thin wrist.

"Effy." he said her name, a small smile on his face.

She looked at him, questioning. She tried at smiling but her lips failed.

"I can’t eat a sandwich. Doctors orders."

She looked a bit surprised, taken off guard. And she was about to fling curses at herself, he could see the way her mouth started to work up. But she stopped when he grabbed a hold of her wrist, gingerly though. Not forceful. He could never be forceful with her. She carried too much frailty without realizing it.

"But it looks delicious." he said with a laugh, that was slightly painful but he pushed against it only to get her to laugh along with him. She did.