Warnings: nightmares, vomiting, lots of talk of murder and vague mentions to cannibalism, strong language and imagery, I also changed this from second person to first person y/n (chapter one is in second person),
Snap-snap-snap
The sound grabs my attention, but I can’t focus on anything. It’s too dark. My eyes must’ve missed their chance to gradually adjust to complete darkness, allowing small shapes and figures to come into view. I can’t see shit. It’s a darkness I remember well but wish I didn’t. One that’s hungry and mean. It smells familiar. Like the scent of an unfortunate childhood.
Where am I?
Snap-snap-snap
It echos, bouncing off of walls that might as well be nonexistent. I squint my eyes, as if that will somehow make up for the lack of light in…wherever I am. Where’s the sound coming from? I turn my body. More darkness but this time there’s a door, only put into view by the light that’s shining from behind the frame, allowing the tiniest bit of soft yellow light to illuminate the darkness.
Snap-snap-snap
It’s louder now. More rapid and urgent. The light behind the door is interrupted by shadows. Four of them in what I realize are feet. Who do they belong to?
“She’s just a child,” a woman says. Her voice is soft and familiar.
“A child that needs to learn, Vanessa,” another familiar voice says. It’s one I should know. One I do know but I’ve locked in the farthest recesses of my mind. And Vanessa. I definitely knew a Vanessa.”
“Randall,” Vanessa warns. “Don’t hurt her.” She sounds nervous now and I find myself scooting on my ass desperate to get as far away from the door as possible.
Snap-snap-snap
This time the sounds are accompanied with something new. Shaking. I’m shaking. I can feel it.
“I’m not going to hurt her, dumb ass,” Randall says, his tone highly annoyed, like he’s talking to someone small and stupid and pathetic. “I’m going to teach her. A few minutes with me is all she’ll need.”
The door opens and I see Vanessa’s shadow on the wall as she leaves. Then Randall comes into view only I can’t see him. He’s just a massive shadow. A void in front of the yellow light of the hallway. He stands there menacingly, and I realize I’m still scooting away. I scoot, and scoot, and scoot but my back never presses against a corner or a wall or…anything. I'm trying so hard to get away, but I can’t. It’s like I’m moving backward on a treadmill with no end in sight. Then, the shadow lunges for me, his hands like claws fully extended and ready to-
“Y/N!”
Snap-snap-snap
I gasp and my eyes shoot open. I’m taking in gulps of air like I hadn’t even been breathing. I clutch my chest and sit up straight. It’s still dark but I can tell I’m in a car. Which is odd considering I’ve not been in a car in years.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” the man sitting in the drivers seat says. I know it’s Lee but my mind is fleeting so rapidly I can’t even look at him. I need to get out.
I jump, my heart pounding so quickly I feel like I’m about to vomit. I reach for the door handle of the moving car and pull.
“Whoa whoa whoa! Y/n, stop! Relax!” Lee's pulling me by my elbow which only makes me panic more.
“Let me out. Let me out. I gotta get out. Can’t breathe,” I say, gulping down air like it’s water.
“Okay, shit, I’ll pull over!”
He pulls over and I spill out of the car the before it’s fully stopped. I empty my stomach onto the ground as Lee puts the car into park. The car we stole. From the man he killed. And ate. Things start falling back into place and the events from earlier flood my brain. Lee slams his door, and I can hear his footsteps crunching against the gravel as he walks over to me. There’s still blood on his shirt. Immediately I gag, but nothing happens other than both sides of my ribcage painfully pressing together.
“Fuck,” Lee breathes out as if he’s exhausted. I look up at him and he’s running a hand through his hair. There’s blood caked under his fingernails. I gag again. “You good?”
“Your shirt,” I say though a shaky breath.
“What about it?”
“Can you get rid of it?”
“That’s the weirdest way I’ve been asked to get naked, but okay.”
“I don’t want to see you naked! Your shirt has blood on it from the man you killed!”
“ShhhHHH!!!” Lee shushes me. He’s starting to bring his filthy palm up to my face and I shake my head, baking away from him. “You can’t just scream that shit out loud, y/n, fuck.” Still, he takes off his shirt and laces it through a belt loop at his side. It won’ fix the disgusting state of his fingernails, but it will at least keep my gagging at bay. “And just so we’re clear, I killed him to save you. You’re welcome.”
Lee plops down onto the curb next to me. “You done puking? I wanna make sure I’m out of the splash zone.”
“I think I’m done,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I sit next to him and realize we’re on a highway. A dead one. It’s dark but not too dark, I can see my surroundings, which is nothing but highway for miles in between dense forest on both sides. Cicadas and crickets chirp in unison filling the night with their song. That’s enough to tell me we’re still in North Carolina.
“What was all that?” Lee asks.
“All what?”
“Well you whimpering in your sleep for starters.”
“I wasn’t whimpering!” I answer too quickly and way too defensively.
“Okay whatever the fuck it was, what was it?”
“I had a nightmare I think.”
Lee fishes a single cigarette from his pocket and lights it. “Damn,” he says after taking a long drag from it. He blows the smoke in the opposite direction of me. “Wanna talk about it?”
I open my mouth, then close it. I get nauseous even thinking of the pitch black room, the hauntingly familiar smell and voices. And the shadows. “Where are we?”
“About an hour away from Asheville,” Lee says, not seeming to mind my sudden change of subject. “Smoke?” He asks, holding his cigarette out to me between his thumb and index finger.
“Your hands are filthy.”
Lee takes his cigarette back and laughs. “You always this uptight?”
“Only after I see a man eat another human.”
“Ah you’re still stuck on that?”
“Of course I’m stuck on that! It’s not exactly normal, you know.”
“And yet you still got into a car with me. A stolen one at that.” Lee arches an eyebrow at me and smirks.
“Well, you saved me so.”
“So what?”
“I don’t know,” I say and stand back up. He’s getting on my nerves and I don’t know why.
“You and I,” Lee says straining his words as he stands up with me, “we’re not that different.”
“Oh yes we are.”
“Not really. Watch. You’ll see.”
“What do you mean ‘you’ll see’?”
Lee walks back to the car. He opens the door and stands on the the inside, resting his elbow on the hood of the car. “You hungry?”
I haven’t moved from my spot on the side of the road. I must have quite the expression on my face because he smirks at me again. And even though he’s filthy and a murderer I’m doing everything I can not to admit that he’s extremely attractive. I can’t get close to anyone. Definitely not someone like him. “What do you mean ‘you’ll see’?” I demand, I cross my arms and stand my ground.
Lee rolls his eyes, “I just mean you’ll see. Now come on, I want waffles and maybe a steak.”
Food sounds revolting to me right now. I don’t move.
“Jesus, y/n, what? You have somewhere else to go?”
I hate how he uses my name like he knows me so well. I hate that him saying my name at all does something to me it shouldn’t. He’s a murderer.
“Look,” Lee says pointing ahead of us into nothingness. “You can head that way into bum fuck nowhere or you can go back that way and go visit our little friend-well what’s left of him-back in that dumpster in Charlotte. And lemme tell ya, where there’s one of that guy, there’s hundreds. Walking around lurking in the shadows and you don’t even know they’re there or what they are until it’s too late. Or you can come with me. What’s it gonna be, y/n.”
He’s looking at me expectantly, knowing he’s already won. I sigh and make my way back to the car. I step over the mess I made and plop into the dirty passenger seat. We drive in silence for at least thirty minutes before Lee speaks up again. “Look, y/n, I’m not forcing you to come with me. If you’ve got somewhere to be or someplace you want me to drop you off just tell me, I’ll take you there.”
I look over at him, but he’s focused on the road, his dirty hands gripping the steering wheel. “Where are you going anyway?” I ask.
Lee shrugs, “I was gonna stop in Asheville first.”
“Why?”
Now he looks over at me. “I love it there.” He smiles and it’s a genuine one and I have to look away because it damn near melts my heart. “But if you want me to take you some place else first, I will.”
I sigh, looking at the blurry trees zipping by. I hope in my next life I’m a tree. “I don’t have anyone. Or anywhere to go.”
“No family?”
“No. Well none that give a shit about me.”
“No friends?”
“No.”
We’re both silent again, but it’s not the bad kind. It’s the kind that I’m comfortable with. And I can tell that he is too. Silence is golden.
“I knew it,” Lee finally says.
“Knew what?” I ask, taking my gaze away from the blur of trees to look at him again.
Lee turns and smiles at me, but this time I don’t look away. “That you’re a loner like me.”
We stare at each other for what feels like too long. Then, Lee shakes his head breaking out stare as he eases on the breaks and pulls into a Waffle House parking lot.
“Hope you like Waffle House,” Lee says as he clicks off his seatbelt. He walks around the car and opens my door for me, the action itself jarring. No one’s ever opened a door for me. I shove that thought to the back of my head, in a sad attempt to not let it do anything to me. He’d do that for anyone.
We scooted into a booth, Lee sitting across from me. “My sister and I used to come here all the time.”
I only nod as I look at the menu, choosing not to ask any follow up questions to his statement so that I don’t have to talk about my family in return.
“You got any siblings?”
I fight back a sigh. “Nope. Only child.”
“Really? Your childhood must’ve been lonely. My sister and I-”
The waitress, an old woman with frizzy blonde hair, shocking red lipstick and a name tag that read Deborah in handwritten cursive comes up to our table. She smacks her gum loud and I can see the lime green wad as she flicks it around with her tongue. As much as I am grateful she interrupted Lee’s family talk, I have to look away to keep myself from gagging. “What are you getting?”
“I’ll have the four waffles and a T-bone, medium rare, and a coffee. Black,” Lee says, practically salivating. Then looks over to me.
“Oh. Uh. I’ll just have a coffee I think.”
Deborah blows a massive bubble with her gum and looks at me like there’s got to be more to my order.
“I’ll give her one of my waffles,” Lee winks and hands Deborah our menus.
Deborah rolls her eyes and pockets her pen and note pad. Seconds later she brings back two steaming mugs of coffee. Lee drinks is straight apparently while I dump five sugars into mine and four of the tiny cups of creamer. In what seems like not long enough to cook an entire steak and four waffles, Deborah’s back in five minutes with Lee’s food and an extra plate for me. “Enjoy,” she says in a tone that sounds more like she hopes we choke on it. My stomach turns at the sight of the plate. Lee’s steak is sitting in a pool of brownish-red liquid. The bottom waffle in the stack of four is soggy with the blood and liquid that seeped out of the steak as it cooked. I look into my coffee to escape the sight.
“So-”
“Please tell me you’re going to wash your hands.”
Lee smirks. “Right. Of course. Be right back. That top waffle is for you if you want it.”
I wait until he’s in the bathroom to get up and grab a few of the pamphlets and maps in the stands at the front of the restaurant. For some reason knowing exactly where I am and where we could be going is grounding for me. I feel calmer, more in control. There are broachers for nearby landmarks and attractions. Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Dollywood, a zoo that’s a about an hour from this restaurant, a Georgia aquarium and various museums, several maps of the Smokey Mountains, and like Lee mentioned, Asheville, North Carolina. I grab them all. When I get back to the table, Lee is already seated and digging into his steak. He's already slid the top waffle onto my plate.
“Doing some research?” Lee asks with a mouthful of steak.
“Just like to know what’s around,” I admit.
He stops chewing and smiles, the meat a ball inside of his cheek. “Don’t trust me?”
I slide into my seat and poke at my waffle. “I’m not sure it’s safe to trust anyone.”
“But me specifically. Right now, you don’t trust me.”
I shrug. “Should I?”
“Are you afraid I’m gonna eat ya?”
I look around before ducking my head “I don’t think we should talk about this in public."
"It's 2:30 in the morning, y/n, no one's here but us and Deborah. Think about it, if I wanted to do something to you, anything, I could have by now. But you're sitting here in this fine establishment with me and you're not the one in a plastic bag in some random dumpster."
"You want me to trust you?"
Lee flashes me that stupid fucking smirk I'm starting to like a lot as he shoves a piece of steak in his mouth. "I'd like it if you did, yeah."
I poke at my waffle before grabbing the pitcher like container of butter pecan syrup and pour it on my plate. I look up and Lee isn't eating anymore. He's still got his knife and his fork in each hand but he's looking at me. Waiting. "Then explain it to me."
"Which part?"
"All of it."
Lee pushes his half-eaten plate to the side. He grabs all the condiments from our table as well as the salt and pepper shakers and pushes them into the center.
"I am so glad you asked. Allow me to demonstrate."
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Phineas and Ferb, Les Schtroumpfs | The Smurfs
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Professor Mystery/Peter the Panda (Phineas and Ferb), Peter the Panda/Brainy Smurf, Professor Mystery/Brainy, Peter Orso/Miggs Ortega, Peter Orso/Quain Petit, Miggs Ortega/Quain Petit, Professor Mystery/Peter the Panda/Brainy, Miggs Ortega/Peter the Panda/Quain Petit
Characters: Brainy, quain petit, Miggs Ortega, Professor Mystery
Additional Tags: Suicide, attempted suicide, Fire, Arson, Crime, Trauma, severe physical trauma, Gore, Blood, Building Fire, napalm - Freeform, Polyamory, Triad - Freeform, triad dating, Uni AU, University AU, Cam Boy AU, Near Death Experience, implied death experience, implied character death for the drama of it all but he doesnt actually die, niche hell
Series: Part 2 of Niche Hell
8. Bed sharing or roommates AU? I’ve written both, but I think I have to say bed sharing. Or, even better, sitting on the floor but falling asleep together with someone’s head on someone else’s shoulder, or knees touching, or some other kind of quiet contact.
10. Mutual pining or enemies to friends to lovers? I’m weak for mutual pining, anon. Weak. I like enemies to friends to lovers (and that’s sort of what’s happening in “Lights”) but my take on it is usually much more low-key than people use that term -- my enemies to friends to lovers usually includes mutual pining, actually, haha. I like mutual pining when each person progresses at a different pace, and so there might be some hesitance or lack of trust alongside the pining.
14. Post a line of dialogue from one of your WIPs without context.“You should really washthose,” Yagi says. [from the upcoming chapter of “Lights Entirely Extinguished”]
hi! i saw on lights entirely extinguished (which i LOVE btw, fantastic update and fantastic writing as a whole!!) that you're a) an academic b) who's been reading kierkegaard. i'm a chipper little philosophy undergrad who read parts of fear & trembling last year, so i thought that was the dandiest coincidence i've run into so far in 2018! is guilty/not guilty very different from f&t? might have to be next on my reading list ^u^
Hi! I’m super belatedly replying to asks, so this is probably not very helpful to you anymore, but all the same: I have never actually read “Fear and Trembling,” actually, which makes me a poor Kierkegaard scholar, I know. But I love “Guilty/Not Guilty?” a whole lot. It’s basically a diary, written by this young man who’s trying to figure out the choices he’s made, his feelings towards a woman, and life in general. So I can’t give you a good answer besides to say, add it to your list! Good luck with your philosophy studies.
