Discover Top Posts Tagged with #don't flinch

The only sign of her fear was how tightly she held herself together, as if daring herself not to flinch.

Kate Stevens, from Bride of Brutal Hearts

#rigid #characterization #description #repressed #fear #don't flinch #quotes #lit #words #excerpts #quote #literature #kate stevens #bride of brutal hearts

08 SCARED BY A SOUND

TW: Drugging mention.

Kara let Addi come out of the basement. She held her hand, tugging her drugged-up little body to the first floor. Addi is a little more aware of what is going on. She assumes Kara cut back on the drugs since she started cooperating. It's nice, obeying.

Kara smiles as her little pet yawns, she's so cute. They reach the first floor, Addi is startled by the sight of it. She thought it would be bare, unfurnished, and cold, like the basement. But it's far from that. It's warm. Brown, navy blue, and white are the signature colors.

The windows are tinted, probably for her sake but Addi doesn't really care. As long as she can enjoy the rest of the house, she'll be happy. Kara sets her on the comfy blue couch, holding her hand.

"You may go anywhere in the house but my bedroom." Kara points down a hall. "You have to have my permission to go in there. And you may never go outside or answer the door, do you understand?"

Addi is in a completely different place. Her mind wanders. Half from the drugs, half from the new sights.

"Addison!" Kara snaps.

Addi fliches, scooting back on the couch. Is Kara going to hurt her because she wasn't paying attention?

Kara cocks her head, a little angered because Addi flinched away from her. Kara just wants her little angel to love her, not be afraid of her. "Addi, come here."

Addi can't help but flinch again. Her voice has a tone, like the one she uses when she's going to turn on the shock collar. She whimpers.

"Dove, why are you scared of me?"

"I-I'm not s-scared."

"Your voice is shaking."

"I-I..."

"I'm going to have to call in a specialist if you are afraid of me."

I'm not."

Kara reaches out for Addi, the pet tries to back away. Kara grabs her hair. "We are going to call a behavioral specialist so that we can fix this little setback, okay?"

Whimpering, Addi nods.

"But for now, you're going back to your room. We can try coming up here another time."

#possessive whumper #aaaaah #don't flinch #happy pride

"You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch.

Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy.

You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like.

If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.

Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, and watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference.

Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire—overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary."

— Julien Smith, The Flinch

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Today’s doodle and personal pondering-prompt.

Love, eugeniaclara

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#personal #julien flinch #don't flinch #typography #doodle #ink #drawing #markers #copic #posca

don’t flinch

@fatherofmachine

She hasn’t gotten flowers in a long time.

Harold had only given her flowers infrequently -- not because he wasn’t thoughtful because, God, Harold Martin had been the most thoughtful man Grace had ever met, and she misses that thoughtfulness every day, still, but because he’d been more prone to gifts that would last. More than half the time he’d arrived with flowers, in fact, it had actually been because Grace needed them as a reference for a painting. The flowers she got today weren’t like that, though. The man who had delivered them had said he was ‘just paid to deliver them’ and Grace had figured, well, there was a card tucked in the wide-petaled pink flowers, carefully folded and clearly made of good quality cardstock. That should tell her who it’s from.

Grace does not get to open that piece of paper. Moments after the delivery driver leaves, when she’s still holding the flowers, she hears an almost imperceptible whine and then a beep. If Grace were really just a painter, just a girl who’d once spent a semester in Italy and never gotten to go back, then she wouldn’t have known what that meant. She wouldn’t have lived even another second. But Grace does know what that sound is, and she freezes immediately because it came from between her hands. When she looks down into the vase, she recognizes what she sees.

Some parts of it are different: he’d used a pager back then, and tucked everything into a tupperware instead of the ziplock bag this one is it, but recognizing it doesn’t really help Grace. It’s motion sensitive. Sure to kill her if she even tries to set it down.

Years ago, she’d talked an associate of hers (Jakob Lund was the name he’d been going by then, though it certainly hadn’t been his real name; she’d been going by Amelia Cordova) out of using a bomb much like this one to create a diversion in the offices above the gallery they were casing. Jakob had never been the easiest to get along with, and they hadn’t parted on exceedingly good terms, but Grace is still surprised to be a target.

Maybe the note explains what this is all about, but she won’t get to read it. She hears the bomb engage, she freezes, and then she waits. She waits and she waits and she waits. It would be so easy to just give the vase a shake or drop it, and then it would be over, but she can’t. She has neighbors who might get hurt, and she doesn’t want to die, and as unlikely as it is that anyone will come looking for her before her arms give out, she can’t help but hope. It’s a weakness of hers. There’s no reason for anyone to come looking, no reason anyone would think to come check on her even if she held out like this for days. It’s odd that when Harold died she thought it was so strange that there was no one to come to his funeral or tell about his death aside from his workplace, and now she finds herself in more or less the same place. Her mother will probably come into town to deal with it. They’ll probably bury her casket mostly empty, too.

Grace is facing away from the door, but there’s a mirror there on the wall in front of her, above the little table she usually dumps her keys on. She’s a foot away from it; she’d been so close to setting the flowers down when the bomb had activated. She’d been so close to living. In the mirror she can see a sliver of the outside world through the thin windows on the side of her door. Cars pass by, flashing in the sunlight too quick to identify, the way schools of fish will turn suddenly, reflect brilliant light, and then turn again. She wishes she were outside, waiting for death with the sun on her face. She wonders if Harold was inside or outside. She closes her eyes when her arms start to tremble from the strain and thinks of how Harold would want her to hold on.

#fatherofmachine #don't flinch #v: underneath my outside face