Have a kissy little snippet of KAY RAINIER... and if you want to hear me read it aloud, head over to YouTube, where I've uploaded the Romance Studies stream from earlier this month!
Atlas grabs her hand before she can leave.
“Kay,” he says, “when I’m gone, do you miss me?”
“No.” She doesn’t need a moment, and she doesn’t change her expression. Atlas’s hand is still over hers on the door. He considers her answer, taking a step back to lean against the sink again. Behind him, the mirror reflects messy hair and a patch of Kay’s lack of interest. He puts his hand to his jaw, looking at the ground. “Is that all?” Kay asks, more softly.
Atlas looks directly into her eyes.
“I don’t believe you,” he says. He steps forward, pressing Kay against the wall, and for a moment it is just his weight and her hard gaze against him.
Then she kisses him, the force of it knocking him into the sink; he curves into her and runs his hands up her arms. She’s breathing hard into his mouth; he yanks off her coat and drops it on the ground. She slips one hand around his neck as he undoes her ascot, and for a moment they push and pull against each other’s mouths—her tongue hot over his lips, other hand balanced against his chest, legs bracketing him against the counter. Kay strips off Atlas’s T-shirt, running her fingers up fishnet mesh over bare skin, and Atlas unbuttons her waistcoat to slip a hand beneath the hem of her now-untucked shirt. Kay makes a sound Atlas can’t understand, leaning over him, and when he yanks her shirt open all the way she only barely manages to balance her hands against the sink. Atlas kisses down her jaw and towards her neck, and Kay leans flush against him, face-to-face with her reflection in the mirror. She quiets slightly, and he bites her; she yanks at his hair. Atlas shoves Kay to the ground, and she has just gone for the zipper on his pants when there’s a knock at the front door.
Kay bolts to her feet.
Constantine’s slow footsteps pass the bathroom in the hallway.
Atlas licks his lips; his face feels hot.
Whoever is at the door is talking to Constantine. There’s some commotion as people file in, holding up their skirts to cross the threshold and taking off their coats in the entryway.“Oh my God,” Kay whispers, looking directly at Atlas. He snickers. Then Kay kisses him again, hands on either side of his face, pushing him back against the sink so hard that it hurts, and before he has his hands down to her ass she’s picking up her clothing off of the ground and shaking it out.
For today's post I’m going to share a piece that I wrote several years ago, but which I am still very fond of. The prompt was to tell a fairytale backwards and me being me, of course I chose Beauty and the Beast! If only because I think my favorite fairytale would actually be quite difficult. I really enjoyed writing this, I'd love to do this challenge again in the future.
*
Once upon a time there was a prince who was not a prince. His father was the king, this was true, but his mother was not the queen. From his very earliest memories the air near him was always clouded with anger and disagreements. The air was stormy and so the prince became mild and sweet, doing his best to become a good and proper son. But nothing he did was ever enough and eventually the queen had her way and he was sent to live in a small manor in the countryside with just enough servants to keep his life comfortable.
The manor was nice. It had a dining room with a table that always had fresh flowers in a vase, and a big bedroom with a four-poster bed all of his own and a wide balcony, a grand entryway with a chandelier above and soft rugs below. There was a library full of books, and a toyroom full of toys and wide gardens full of every kind of flower but especially roses, red as a robin’s breast. There was even a tiny room in the attic that he used as a prison in his frequent games of make-believe. The whole place, grounds and all, was nestled inside a grand forest so while there were not many people, there were lots of birds and animals to watch.
And so the prince lived, running rather wild in his beautiful cage, coddled and well-cared for and given medicines for every ill but loneliness.
Then one day, when the prince was no longer a child but a youth of sixteen, he heard the long, low calls of a hunting horn and retreated to his balcony to watch. He had seen hunts before, when his own hunters went out into the woods. They were exciting and wild and utterly unfamiliar to him, for all that he could see some of the chase.
But this was not one of his hunters, that he knew. They were older men, who hunted on foot with only a small gang of multipurpose dogs.
This was a boy, a youth like himself, but foreign to these parts. He rode a shining black horse amid a sea of red and white speckled hounds and he hunted no deer nor boar but a great beast the likes of which the prince had never seen.
The prince could not look away, not from the first call of the horn to the last ragged roar of the beast, right outside his own front gates. Everything about the hunter, from his horse to his hounds to his shining golden hair to his skill with the bow was beautiful and perfect and the prince drank in the sight of him like water fearing only a little that this boy might be, as the stories he read warned, some old fairy or forest god.
The prince leaned forward, gripping the balcony railing with knuckles nearly as white as snow, loathe to miss any detail of the scene in front of him. And that was how he was when the young hunter looked up, and smiled. The prince felt it then, that all of the breath left him at once and his bones turned to water, and there was nothing he wanted but that smile, again and again every day, every hour if he could have it.
His voice hardly sounded like his own when he called down to his servants to please open the gate.
*
His name was Charles, and he came from a village far to the west that was renowned for turning out monster hunters. He was seventeen and always travelling far and wide in search of beasts to kill.
After that they spent their days together and the prince never felt lonely except that, once each day, just after dinner, Charles would make it his intention to leave the next day. And each evening the prince, who’s heart froze at the thought, begged him to stay one more day, just one more. And each evening Charles would sigh, and smile, and agree.
Some months after this began, when the first tinges of orange was showing in the forest, Charles did not give his usual response. Things had been different between them recently, the prince knew, ever since his birthday had passed and brought him up to seventeen – the same lofty age as Charles. And he knew something would happen, soon, though he didn’t know what.
So on that evening, in the very beginnings of fall, their comfortable routine altered.
“I really must leave tomorrow,” Charles said, after setting aside his empty plate. “This time of year is when beasts appear, drawn out of the forest to prey on human stock and stores.”
The prince, as usual, panicked at the thought. “Surely there’s still time!” he said. “You can stay one more day, can’t you?”
As usual Charles laughed and his laughter was as beautiful as the rest of him, deep and full and merry. “You just want to be mine forever don’t you?” he asked.
And the prince, who by this point felt as if he needed Charles’ company as much as food and water and air did not even blink at the odd turn of phrase but said, simply, instantly, “yes.”
And Charles smiled and him and said, simply, instantly, “I’ll see you tomorrow then, my lord.”
And the prince could breathe again, safe for one more day.
The following day was different too.
Charles met him in the rose garden, and said, “I know a way you can be mine forever, if that’s really what you want.”
And the prince, young and lonely and more afraid of losing Charles than any torture or torment said, again, “yes.”
Charles kissed him then, next to the fading bodies of the roses, and it was everything that the prince had ever wanted all at once.
But that was only one moment, and in the next the prince stumbled, dizzy and afraid, and when he put out a hand to catch himself he saw that it was not what he was used to at all but more like the paw of some great beast. His legs seemed to bend the wrong way, or maybe only in the wrong place and he fell hard upon the paving stones of the garden path.
The prince looked up at Charles, questioning and seeing, for the first time, that the hunter had his bow. Why hadn’t the prince noticed it before? How had he missed the sneer under the smile, or the predatory glint in Charles’ eyes?
“Why?” the prince asked him, words underscored by the soft taps of nails on stone as he righted himself. “Why?”
“There always need to be beasts in the world,” Charles said, “else what is there for beast hunters to do?” He strung an arrow on his bow and held it steady at the prince’s heart. “Now hold still and you’ll get what you wanted. I always keep a trophy from my hunts. We’ll be together forever, in a way.”
“No!” the prince said. His body moved on its own, fueled by some deeper instinct. He tackled Charles, knocking the hunter to the ground. The bow slithered across the path to end up resting at the base of the rose trellis.
The prince stared down at Charles, the hunter, his hunter, and understood what had been said to him clearly for the first time in what felt like years. He was not the first person so changed. Had the beast killed outside his gates been the same? Human once?
“You will not leave here,” the prince said. Always before he had been sweet and docile. Always before he had asked, begged, obeyed, but rarely had he ordered. He ordered now, in a voice not much different than his old one, other than the growls that ran under it. “You cannot leave.” The growl grew louder and louder, clawing its way up his throat and out from between reluctant fangs. He had always been kind, hadn’t he? He hadn’t known this anger was in him, though he did not think it was all from the beast. But it was here, now, and it let him do what needed to be done.
The prince stood up and his hands, they were still hands after all, however stubby and claw tipped, held the hunter in a grip he could not fight.
Up they went, up and up and up, to the tiny extra room in the attic that would, for the first time, hold a prisoner of flesh and blood.
But though Charles was contained, he was not yet beaten. He talked as the climbed and words that had once tasted of honey now dripped from his lips like poison. Spells of every nasty sort, spells that drew blood and caused pain, spells that ruined the castle and the grounds, and turned the servants stiff and still, statues and objects and curiosities, spells that made time still and pool, thick as molasses. Still the prince climbed, ignoring it all, until he shoved the hunter into the tiny room that would be his.
That door he locked. The front gates were shut and barred, and the wide double doors that had once led into the marvelous entryway closed.
The prince saw himself only once – all of Charles’ spells had left the mirrors intact. But it was hard to look at himself now and he smashed the mirrors himself. After that there were only glimpses that he saw when he forgot not to look – fur as black as night, claws and fangs that gleamed like polished ivory, pointed ears and a shaggy brush tail like a wolf’s, a short muzzle like that of a cat. His eyes were still his own, and that was the worst part of all.
Charles did not cast any more spells or perhaps he could not, somehow. The prince did not particularly care. They needed nothing, not food, not water. Time did not seem to flow for them the way it did outside the gate. There was day and night, he thought, but the seemed unimportant and trivial.
For a long time he did little but roam the desolate and ruined hallways of his once cozy manor, trying not to think but always, always hearing Charles’ last mocking words to him echoing and echoing in his mind.
*
The gate clanged.
That was a noise the prince would always recognize, though he did not hear it anymore, and it was louder for the fact that it should not be there. There was rain outside, rain and thunder, and still the gate shutting was the loudest thing he heard.
The door opened and then shut, slammed by a gust of wind.
“Hello?” a voice called.
The prince crept, as only a beast could creep, and peered down the stairs into the entryway. A figure stood there, bundled up in hood and cape, dripping water all over the tattered remains of the rugs. The figure had a lantern which he shone into all the corners and up the stairs, where foreign flames made the beasts eyes gleam.
“Heavens!” the figure said, but did not back away. “You startled me.” There was a hesitation in that voice, a tenseness under the cloak, as if the intruder were ready to run. But the prince didn’t move.
“It’s not a nice place to stay,” he said, voice rusty from disuse.
“Still better than out in the rain,” the traveler said. “Any of these rooms have a fireplace?”
The prince pointed and the traveler went.
The prince went too, trailing after, peering into a room which had once been his and now felt forbidden.
The traveler had kindled a small fire in the hearth, using bits of ruined furniture for fuel. The cloak had been removed and hung up to dry, revealing a small, unassuming young man.
“Who are you?” the prince asked, lurking by the door but not daring to enter.
“Just a merchant,” the man said. “I sell seeds, for fruits and vegetables and flowers. I was going to a fair in a nearby city when this storm blew in.” He put a small pot over the fire, making a meal out of travel rations. “Do you want to sit by the fire?”
The prince moved in, carefully, staying on the outskirts of the circle of light. “Do you have any roses?” I always liked roses.”
“Got roses of all types,” the merchant said. “Some you’ve never seen before. You…er…want to buy some? I can trade for a night’s rest.”
“I can pay,” the prince said. “Gold. I will buy half your stock if you will do me a favor, too.”
The merchant blinked slowly, and turned his attention to his food, now bubbling merrily over the flames. “What favor?”
“There’s a man upstairs,” the prince says. “He should be taken to a town and charged with witchcraft and murder. Probably. Witchcraft, certainly.”
“Ah,” the merchant said.
“He’s dangerous,” the prince said carefully. “I’ve kept him here but he should be punished for his actions.”
“Well,” said the merchant, “town’s not so far away. I think I can manage that. You will pay gold for the flowers?”
“Gold,” the prince said with a nod.
The next day the merchant left, and so did Charles, bound and gagged. The prince was left with nothing but two dozen cloth packets of tiny seeds.
He didn’t know why he wanted them. He knew very little about plants. Even so he took the rose seeds down to the empty patches of dirt and grass that had once been a garden. There, next to the rusted trellis and the broken pieces of a hunter’s bow, he dug a small hole and gently, carefully, poured some seeds into it.
*
Nothing had grown by the time the merchant came again, though the prince could not really say how long he had been gone.
“Thought you’d like to know that the guard has him, your prisoner. Doubt he’ll cause any more trouble.”
The prince nodded. It was a relief, to know that. “The roses didn’t grow,” he said, sadly.
The merchant scratched his head, running fingers through hair that was neither brown nor blond but some muddle in between. “Flowers aren’t complicated, but they need more than people expect. I’ll help you.”
He stayed two days that time, teaching the prince how to dig the holes – shallower than the ones he had tried before, and how much to water them every day.
Buckets were awkward in his paws, their handles being designed for smaller, more nimble limbs. He had to carry them in his teeth and no matter how carefully he moved half the water ended up on him instead of in the ground. But this time the roses grew.
Sharp claws could easily trim excess branches and till the soil. Even weeding wasn’t too bad though he had to dig rather than pull.
When the first rose bloomed, it was as if he had grown the sun, so warm did he feel.
After that he tried other plants, not in any order but wherever he had room. But all the brightness of the gardens only highlighted how dingy the manor was.
The prince started with the windows, lugging buckets of water not only outside but all through the halls and rooms of his home. Cleaning rags were much too small, so he used an old sheet and carefully cleaned each window. He had never before realized how many there were, hundreds of them, in clear glass and colored glass, bubbled and frosted glass, and combinations. But he cleaned them, each and every one.
And when the sun could shine in the windows, he could really see the grime.
He found one broom, hidden away in a corner of the kitchen. The handle snapped when he tried to push it, due to age or his own strength he didn’t know. But why would he need brooms and dusters when he had a tail and soft fur?
Certainly it was a bit undignified, rolling around on his own floors, but afterwards he would jump in the ornamental lake to clean out his fur and spend his time drying in the sun.
He took out the rugs and curtains and tapestries too, first shaking them out onto the grass and then, when that didn’t work, he tried this and that until he found the proper way to beat them.
By that point the rugs and tapestries were dingy and moth-eaten. He went to the library and found a book on weaving, crammed into a long forgotten corner. So long as he was very careful he could work the loom, and he only sometimes snagged the fabric with his claws.
Time passed by like this, either a very long time or a very short time, the prince could not tell. He painstakingly fixed his home, one mistake at a time. Now and again the merchant came, but by and large the prince had so many things to do each day that he hardly noticed his solitude. It was there, still, the loneliness. But he no longer felt as if he lived for the notice of others.
A little work each day kept the manor clean, the gardens blooming, and all around was evidence of things he had to offer.
And there were others there, now and again, when storms blew travelers to his door. Mostly he stayed hidden from them, letting them stay in what they assumed was a temporarily deserted summer retreat. Most of them knocked then opened the door when they received no response.
But there was one who kept knocking.
Partially curious and partially annoyed, the prince opened the door himself. Another stranger, another young man, nearly as handsome as Charles had been, looked up at him in startled awe. It was not very often that a beast answered the door.
He recovered himself quickly. “Please let me in,” he begged. “I can pay you. For a hot meal I can give you a magic rose that will never die.”
The prince laughed, and startled even himself. It had been a long time. “I can grow my own roses now,” he said. He raised his beastly paws. “I’m afraid I can’t cook you a meal, but I’ve food and a kitchen you can use. “Come in.”
“For a warm bed,” the stranger said, coming through the door, “I can give you a magic ring that will let you summon any luxury.”
“I once had every luxury,” the prince said, “or near enough. I like things the way they are. I’ve plenty of beds for you to have one.”
“I have…other things to sell,” the stranger said.
“Really!” the prince said, laughing again. “Come in out of the storm. It won’t cost you anything.” That said, he left the stranger to his own devices and retreated to his own room for the night.
*
In the morning the prince saw the stranger in the garden, admiring the roses.
“I’m very proud of the roses,” he said from the balcony. “Would you like to take one with you?”
The stranger turned and looked up at him, and he wasn’t a young man at all but a gaunt old woman, much wrinkled but standing tall as any soldier.
“And who cursed you?” she muttered to herself. His hearing, however, was good enough to pick out the words clearly. “Not power-hungry, not greedy, not spoiled or lustful, and whoever heard of a kind beast! Something you want, certainly, beasts always do. Well? Come here so I can take a look at you!”
Confused, the prince made his way to the garden where the woman still waited. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m a witch, can’t you tell?” She looked him up and down. “Some curses need breaking and some need nurturing. This one needs breaking, unless you want to be a beast forever.”
“No, I guess I don’t,” the prince said. “Though I’ve gotten used to it.”
The witch snorted. “Don’t overdo it. Humility and self-degradation only get you so far. For your kindness I will leave you this magic mirror which reveals people’s true natures. You can look into it, or not.”
Then the witch was gone, and a small hand mirror was laying on the path.
The prince picked up the mirror and carried it back to his room.
*
It was only a month or so later that the merchant came to visit again and the prince told him all about the witch and her strange mirror, which he had left face down on his bedroom floor.
“I guess I’m afraid that I’ll be the same person I always was, as a human,” the prince said. “I don’t know.”
“Well,” the merchant said, “there’s only one way to find out isn’t there?”
They sat in silence for a while.
“You know,” the merchant said, “this’ll be the last time I can come for a while. Taking a trip, searching for new plants and new markets. There’s a big ship, big enough for one more person, if he was human-sized. I’m leaving from the harbor to the south in about two weeks, if you want to join me.” He stood. “Manors are nice and all, but there’s a lot more to the world than just this. More to see, more to do, more to learn.”
“You know,” the prince said, just as the merchant reached the front gate, “I don’t even know your name.”
The merchant smiled. “And I don’t know yours. Mine’s Hugh.”
“Hugh,” the prince repeated to himself. “Sometimes I forget I have a name. It’s Matthew.”
“Good name,” Hugh said, “for a beast. But a better name for a man, I should think.”
Matthew stayed where he was for several hours after Hugh had left, thinking over everything that had happened, and everything he wanted. Then he got up, and headed for the bedroom.
Honestly, though, I'd love to start an online network or collective of queer indie authors!
I don't know what it'd look like; I just think it makes sense to join forces to help each other get more exposure and more $$ for our writing like we all deserve. The processes of self-promoting and marketing etc. are honestly so frustrating and alienating (esp if your writing is ""niche"") & I feel like we really could apply some queer communality to that process!
Maybe I'll start a Discord server for anyone interested in developing this ?? I dunno how Discord works, but if anyone lets me know they're interested in this, I'll figure it out!
hello !! my name is hugo, and this is my writeblr. a little about me: i’m 19, trans guy, and i graduated from an arts highschool last year. i mostly was writing creative nonfic and poetry, but i’m ready to jump back into fiction, so i’m here! i follow back from @holdmejustbecavse
current projects:
yellow. - fiction, lgbt, surreal, young adult
this story is still super super under construction, but the general idea is a highschool senior who starts discovering something strange happening in his hometown, at the same time as an investigation for a missing little boy is going on.
in the ocean, scavengers pick me apart... - nonfic, short essays, trauma/mental illness
this is a collection i’ve been actively working on for almost 2 years now, which was my final thesis for my creative writing classes in highschool. it’s a collection of three sections, with three pieces each, beginning each section with a letter. all pieces deal with my gender, mental illness, and childhood abuse, with the connecting theme being the ocean.
other:
i’d love to find similar writers to read their work! you can tag me in anything or use the tag #lookhugo for me to see it! and if anyone knows any writing groups, especially specific to lgbt writers or those with mental illness etc, i’d love to be a part of one.
He looks at his hands under his failing lamp, and he knows they've changed overnight. He can't see it, but he knows there's blood there, invisible, creeping into his skin and staining his flesh, his bones. A blink, and it's back, that vision of him kneeling to something greater than God, voice hoarse with screams, heart beating with the conviction that he's doing this for the greater good. For Them. But who are They? He's dreamt of them for nights and nights, but he's never seemed to remember their faces. They have to be important, somehow. He knows it, the same way he knows he'll be the death of Them.
TITLE : nerve / untitled metatexual comfort work
GENRE : modernist ya
STATUS : fifty words every other week for random unrelated scenes
POV : epistolary (blog posts, texts) / third person limited
TAGS : inevitability, grief, religion, friendship, 2000's aesthetic, many many melodramatic deaths, characters of colour, wlw disasters, lovecraftian abominations, southeast asian folklore, plagiarising classic lit, plagiarising stephen king, plagiarising homestuck
SYNOPSIS :
Four dreamers find friends from a story long gone. That story ended in tragedy, so isn't it inevitable that this one will fail too? But something has changed this time around—they remember. A flawed, blurry memory, but a memory still. And so they restart their tragedy, their memories their only weapon against their imminent endings. They tell themselves they'll win this time. They almost believe it.
CHARACTERS:
tg - 16 / muslim / malaysian / lesbian
cocky, Extra, thinks she's cool as all hell
is actually a nerd that quotes shakespeare to her crush
breaks her arm punching out a god
minhyung - 16 / christian / south korean / aro
cold, detached, apathetic
please get this boy some serotonin
has not heard the tragedy of darth plagueis the wise
changlian - 15 / taoist / chinese / bisexual
loud, callous, extroverted
super cute but also kind of a jerk
staunch believer in the supernatural. swears she saw a pontianak once.
CLICK HERE for it though, because my ability to make picture links is apparently sub-par.
Guys, I seriously can’t believe this -- after a long, long sequence of revisions, Wicked Waters is finally complete and posted in full on Wattpad. And, even more exciting -- its sequel, Ruthless Rivers, has started posting. I feel like I’ve been grinding towards this forever.
My name is Lovis (or Pinja) and this is my writblr! I really like writing but sometimes have a hard time getting to it, so I decided to make this blog to keep my writing alive and stay motivated. And also to get things done, haha!
I’m not sure how to introduce myself, but I like writing sci-fi settings and mystery stuff. Also like relationship focus and emotions. I’m writing a lot of lgbtq+ characters. I’m currently writing two novels and one short fan fic.
The first novel is a sci-fi novel set in the future, wip name “Between the space and the stars”, about Xenidra (non binary) waking up discovering that everyone is just gone from the planet and that the sky has turned constantly grey. They start to look for someone else only to find strange hostile shadowy humanoid creatures that starts to attack them. This encounter makes them discover they have the power to create a light that both draw the creatures close but also has the power to defeat them.
I started writing this novel seven years ago but only wrote about 30 pages and then I’ve just scribbled down ideas, but really want to keep writing it since it’s all stored in my head!
My second novel is a 2017 nanowrimo and the theme is mystery/relationship driven, set in present time. It’s almost finished, and is about Chris (non binary) who is a newly examined archivist getting their first job at a private archive and records facility. They start to get to know the other employees and start to invest in their daily struggles at work, trying to help everyone as best as they can. At the same time, they find a strange document arriving at the archives, written with invisble ink with a hidden message. Chris and their co-worker Lilith starts to unravel the mystery around the document and finds out it’s secrets are way bigger than they imagined.
The fanfic I’m writing is about Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, and is basically about Jotaro fucking around with starfish (not literally fucking tho) and environmental issues.
Hopefully I’ll have a nice time with this blog and I’ll try to engage in different writblr stuff and look for inspiration etc! ^^
Ok this is like my first actual post about writing on this fucking blog lmao. But I started writing this thing about 2 lesbians, Lucy and Rubik, learning how to love and care for other ppl again after this weird time-altering apocalypse happened and they end up raising an abandoned baby (who’s secretly a reincarnated god) together.
There’s magic and other beings from different dimensions that ppl wrongly think are demons/angels—and way more lore that I can’t even begin to fit in a shitty Tumblr post—but yeah here have some snippets:
(top two are from Rubik’s perspective and bottom two are from Lucy’s)
