he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
oozey mess
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Misplaced Lens Cap
roma★
One Nice Bug Per Day
Sade Olutola
shark vs the universe
occasionally subtle
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PR's Tumblrdome
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Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
d e v o n
@theartofmadeline
Andulka
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Monterey Bay Aquarium
hello vonnie
Today's Document
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@thebuginyourwalls
Hi! Just call me Cricket, I'm an adult and I use it/its.
I've been lurking around the gt & monster fucker fanbases for a bit and finally decided "fuck it" & made a sideblog so I can actually participate.
Links to writing & stuff below the cut ✌️
🧚♂️🍂One Small Wrong [on-going]
An unlucky human named Cadell unknowingly earns the ire of a pixie, and immediately makes the situation worse by accidentally kidnapping her when she tries to get revenge.
[Inspired by @not-a-space-alien 's world building for their series Watch Your Step.]
Chapters:
Chpt.1
Chpt.2
🕴Project Esoterica
Snippets from a horror project I'm developing. The main thing is not gt-centric but does contain a lot of those elements, so I thought I'd share the occasional drabble here.
The Homunculus kills its Creator
Hmm but what if a minigiant picked you up if you were cold and zipped you up under their sweater, leaving you a window at the top to peek out of as you warm back up all wrapped up and cuddled close 👀
Very good, with a lot of patience he can fly again...
ecstasy
My uni professor brought in a bunch of 3D-printed tiny guys so I took some home to put in my terrarium
Desperate Daybreak Chapter 18
MMSS masterpost
DD masterpost
On AO3
In this chapter: Valen and Tessie have a very not good time in the house of nobles.
Warnings: Misgendering/transphobia, politics, casual misogyny, institutionalized dehumanization
***
There was a gap of about a week between the legislative sessions of the house of commons and the house of nobles. Thank goodness, because Tessie and Valen would have burnt out without a break. Valen spent most of it lying around the manor being generally non-functional, having such severe brain fog that Lex and Ari had to keep track of his meal times and remind him to dress and bathe himself. Tessie spent it mostly alone, the few times they approached her resulting in her snapping at them as though they were bothering her in a loud, crowded room where she couldn’t concentrate. She engaged with the manor’s recreational facilities to run around at the speed of sound, as though she could run away from everyone causing them problems.
When the day of the new legislative session came, Tessie insisted on arriving in a limousine, rather than the van in which Ari had driven them to the house of commons parliament. They'd been using the van just because it was a convenient vehicle that was big enough to hold them all with their equipment, but according to her a limousine would show them worthy of respect to the other nobles. She seemed worried that even a limousine was pushing the limits of casualness they could show; many of those in the noble houses rejected gasoline powered vehicles entirely and insisted horse drawn coaches were still the only proper way to travel.
There were even more protesters and counterprotesters outside, now that it had reached the point of serious debate by those with actual power. A cacophony of shouting erupted as soon as Tessie stepped out of the limousine, and Valen briefly considered shutting the door and instructing the driver to drive back off rather than get out and face the mob himself.
Ari opened the door. Lex gently shooed him out. He stepped out and immediately averted his eyes, walking briskly to the parliamentary building while trying to pay no mind to the crowd. Lex and Ari stood on either side, pushing people back.
“Stand behind the fucking line, dumbass!”
“No touching!”
One of them reached out and laid a hand on Lex. Their skin burned when it touched the silver, and the hand withdrew immediately.
Tessie had already slipped into the main entrance, eager to get behind the door serving as a barrier to the laypeople coming any further. Valen practically sprinted in after her, then doubled over panting with panic. “Goodness.”
“You okay?” Lex came in and slipped an arm around him.
“Not here,” Tessie whispered tensely.
Lex withdrew her arm.
“I’m all right,” Valen breathed. “Just– Goodness.” Not a good start. “Let’s get to our stations, I suppose.”
The noble parliamentary was much grander than the common one, the room bigger and more echo-y, with more grandiose seating and a much bigger slope in the amphitheater. There was already tension hanging in the air as Tessie set up at the podium. Valen took his seat to her right, and Davorian Trowlaine came in and greeted them before taking his seat to her left.
Valen knew what his strategy had to be for this one, knowing the audience and their perception of him. He had to talk like a dispassionate scientist, and not someone who’d been dragged through hell and back and had compassion. If he didn’t pretend like he didn’t care at all, he’d lose credibility. They’d think him ruled by emotions and therefore his ideas without merit.
This was going to be one hell of a sell.
The nobles generally arrived already in poor mood; there seemed to be the general, unspoken consensus that the commoners should have struck down the bill instead of wasting the nobles’ time. Tessie was the first one to point out the very first snub as the nobles came in - who had been sent.
Each recognized noble house sent one representative. In theory, the patriarch–or, for bills deemed not important or a fairly uncomplicated matter in how the vote should go, someone less important that the patriarch designated in his place.
And they were getting a lot of B-listers. And even C- and D-listers. Or even representatives who never were sent to the legislation, deemed embarrassments to their families.
“Vance Gossamer Resmus, son of the illustrious Herod Obadiah Resumus and fifth in line for the Resumus estate.”
“Aaze Elitael Sylvan Craphon, son of Nesar Craphon, brother of the honorable Uriah Craphon.”
“Kane de Sang, son of the mighty Aldrich de Sang, for his debut in the parliament.”
“Abigail Jezebel Priscillus Adina, wife of the honorable Orka Nicholas Adina and representative of the Adina estate.”
“Isaiah L’arioch, as proxy for Nicholas Saul L’arioch, speaking for the L’ariocha family.”
Even just the role call was a message, a slap in the face: that their ideas weren’t even worth the time and attention of the actually important decision-makers in the family. That the issue was so obvious it could be handled by the least fit individuals in the nobility.
And oh lord did the role call drag on. Everyone had to be announced in a very specific way with their fanfare and titles, and the etiquette demanded that everyone rise and reseat themselves for each new entrance.
Valen had mentally prepared himself for the role call, but it hadn't been enough. It felt like hours they'd been standing here as everyone filed in. He checked his watch –yep, it was pushing two hours.
This caught the attention of the crier. “Are we boring you, Mrs. Kithrara? Should we speed up our ancestral birthright?”
And so Valen had to not only endure this, but pretend to enjoy it, lest he be chastised for not showing enough enthusiasm. By the time it was finished, he was already exhausted.
Tessie stood. “Thank you all for coming. This is Herod Marcus Tessandrax, beginning the fourth session of the 207th congregation of the Western Enclave Parliamentary Body. Today my associates, the honorable Valen Octavia Astra Kithrara, widow of the esteemed Priscus Victor Salem Kithrara and acting executor of the Kithrara estate on his behalf, and the honorable Davorian Quinn Adar Trowlaine will be presenting bill number 145,264 titled The Human Welfare and Dignity Act, for the scrutiny of the House of Nobles full body parliamentary.” There was no preliminary meeting or presentation at the House of Nobles. You were thrown to the wolves immediately. The audience seemed so much more threatening, now that it was made of hostile nobles rather than commoners.
“We will begin with a brief recap of the main points of the bill, which will take about one hour. We will then-”
“We will then nothing.” One of the nobles stood with the objection. “This is a childish waste of the session’s time. We will vote on closing the bill before the opening remarks.”
Oh, okay. So it was going to be like that. If the entire body were unanimous on rejecting the bill, the session could be closed and the bill discarded at any time during the proceedings.
Unfortunately for them, one Herod Marcus Tessandrax, one Valen Octavia Astra Kithrara, and one Davorian Quinn Adar Trowlaine were among the body. Every hand went up except for theirs, which meant it was not unanimous and therefore would continue.
The intention of that rule had always been to allow the body to bully the presenters into giving up. In the house of nobles, the conversation was more akin to wrestling rather than debate.
“The vote is closed,” Tessie announced. “The proceedings will continue. As I said-”
“I call another vote on closing the bill.”
“According to the rules delineating the voting procedures,” Tessie said hotly, “There must be at least ten minutes between votes for closings.” The intention of that rule had been to prevent a repeat of what happened at the ninth session of the 164th congregation, in which there had been consecutive calls for votes to close for four hours straight, with neither party yielding. Nobody else had cared about the topic that much, got fed up with the stalemate, and simultaneously freestyled a new bill to amend the process on the spot.
“Order, please,” said Davorian. “We are educated noblemen, not wild animals. Kindly take your seat, representative.”
The man slowly sat down, looking sour, and crossed his legs.
Tessie took a deep breath. “I will now read the opening remarks.” She’d timed them to last approximately nine and a half minutes.
She read her prepared notes. She didn’t focus on logistics like she did to calm the commoner’s concerns. Instead, her strategy was to appeal to dignity. She made some very compelling arguments about working together for a better world, the allure of having humans serving willingly rather than by force, how much more colorful one’s estate could be with human minds providing their fresh perspective, things along those lines. She wrapped it up with an argument stating that as superior life forms, vampires shouldn’t need to resort to violence and captivity, instead being able to parlay with humans using their manners and intellect. “Aren’t we evolved past the need for this?”
Cain Landon watched her present with a smug face, made more smug by the growing restless comments muttered here and there in response to her arguments. The same person called for a vote to close as soon as the clock hit ten minutes. More votes, but the bloc of three on the dais shot it down again.
“The representatives open the floor to comments from the body,” Tessie said. Cringing, like she was about to set off a bomb.
She might as well have.
“Thank you for the remarks, Mr. Tessandrax. Let me start by saying how foolish this is. I’m positive your father did not agree to you using the Tessandrax family name and reputation for this.”
“I’m frankly shocked and aghast that someone would dare bring legislation like this forward.”
“The parliament should be outraged at having its time wasted with nonsense like this.”
“The presenters mean to legislate around the natural order of things.”
“The nature of this bill calls into question the fitness of those proposing to set it forward.”
“Anyone who votes for this bill should be stripped of their titles and authority, let alone those who put their names on it!”
“This is grossly inappropriate and demonstrates the House of Commons’ lack of ability to make a judicial impact on the legislative process. One would have hoped they’d at least have the common sense to make the correct decision on something like this.”
When the team went to recess several hours in, Tessie was in tears. “I knew it was going to be bad, but I was really hoping something would occur to me to make it easier.”
Valen felt much the same. He desperately wanted Lex and Ari to hug him, but it would be inappropriate in public. Davorian came over, very much looking beat down, an expression that looked foreign on his usually professional and presentable face. “The temptation to give in and vote to close is getting stronger with each ten minutes.”
“You can’t,” Valen said, strained. “Mister Trowlaine, please stay with us a bit longer. We’ll think of something.”
Davorian wiped his brow. “All right. You two are performing admirably.” Davorian was obviously out of his depth and mostly just offering his name on the bill, but even he could see Tessie and Valen were struggling mightily to keep control of the proverbial wheel. And of course, every time the Landon family representative–Cain, of course–spoke, Tessie had to have an internal uphill battle to keep it together.
Valen was too out of his depth to help. Lex and Ari even moreso. Valen ran off to use the phone to call Edwin, who dryly said he had no way to help unless it was a matter of logistics.
But it wasn't. It was a matter of culture and attitude.
When they returned, it was to another multi-hour session of abuse until the session adjourned before sunrise. The catty nobles filed out looking smug. Davorian left with an empty notepad he’d said he would write his ideas down on several hours ago.
In the anterior lobby of the chamber, Tessie and Valen trudged out, locked eyes, and both burst into tears. They rested their heads on each other’s shoulders.
Lex wrapped her arms around them both. “You’re doing your best up there and I’m proud of you.”
Ari eyed a passing vampire with hostility, then turned towards them. “Fuck these guys,” she grunted. “They’re fucking impossible. I don’t know how you could possibly convince this crowd of anything.”
“They don’t care,” Valen wept. “I knew deep down they didn’t care, but it’s different actually having it thrown in your face all night.”
“They don't care about the bill, and they don't respect us.” Tessie withdrew, hiding her face in her hands. “My God. They don’t respect us at all. I thought since we were nobles they might listen at least a little. If we presented it the right way.”
“Is there any way we can compromise?” Lex suggested. “They’re not going to accept it if it’s too radical. But didn’t you plan for this? To start strong in preparation for when they whittle it away?”
Tessie sniffled, shaken. “Right. Yes, you’re right. We can make concessions. Amendments to the bill. Maybe they’ll be more amenable to a watered down version.” Or to a version they managed to bully us into.
All four of them knew it wasn’t true. But they had to try something.
Tessie was up most of the day furiously typing on her typewriter, and she showed up to Valen’s chambers the next evening looking worn and haggard, but with a stack of new papers in hand. What she came up with was:
“Humans that were captured more than one year ago are grandfathered in and don’t have to be released. That’s cutting out the bulk of the sacrifice we’re asking the nobles to make. They won’t have to personally give up their current thralls.”
Valen didn’t like it. “But Tessie, that’s going to exclude hundreds, maybe thousands of humans from being rescued! Surely some of them can still be saved… somehow.” Old captures would all be braindead, and it was a big question mark whether or not they could ever go back to their families. There weren't any documented cases of anyone “waking up”... but they couldn’t just discount the possibility.
Tessie bit her lip. “I… I know. And I don’t like it either. But we have to focus on saving as many people as possible, from the people who can be saved. That means compromise.”
Compromise hardly seemed a fair word for describing a meeting in the middle between Hold thousands of people captive and Hold nobody captive. And yet…
They opened night two by stating the text of the bill had been altered to fall into line with some ongoing complaints, and it still wasn’t enough. If anything, the nobles seemed to view it as a weakness that they were being listened to and were now trying extra hard to break Tessie and Valen. The dialogue was even more vicious, the insults more personal.
“They use clever talk about compromise to disguise the fact that this proposal still has unacceptably radical sections to it, that mean to upset thousands of years of tradition.”
“Under no circumstances will the Ravengloom family support this bill. No amount of amendments will change the fact that it’s a foolish endeavor, backed by fools, that means to make fools of all of us.”
“Even outside of the philosophical problems, the practical impact is unthinkable. If ethics are a topic of concern, the presenters should consider the ethics of asking predators to go hungry and forsake their natural right to hunt.”
“Frankly, this is a prime example of why women should not be allowed to sponsor legislation. Not only did Mrs. Kithrara propose this, but she could not even stand by it and have the courage of her convictions to the end.”
“These hypocrites mean to preach to us about abandoning our thralls, while presenting themselves with multiple thralls this very night.”
“This will not be the last compromise we are asked to make. Next they will be placing humans above vampires and requiring us to crawl to beg for a drop of blood. Never. We have our pride.”
“This man and this woman - and I use those terms loosely, mind you (if they can make up theirs) - must have some sort of blackmail material on the honorable Mister Trowlaine for him to be lending his respect and credibility to a sham such as this. I look forward to justice being served when this is over.”
Night two culminated in someone filibustering the entire thing by reading from the Enclave’s constitution, forcing them to sit there and listen to droll political talk for three hours straight, broken only by more calls to vote to close. The other nobles, of course, were allowed to excuse themselves at will, while the people presenting the bill were held hostage and forced to listen.
“...that all vampires may work together with their betters, from the weakest to the strongest, to continue our domination over the earth. Page 237, article 16 of the enclave constitution states that natural hierarchies serve to ensure order in society; and humans have their own place in that hierarchy, that serves for the betterment of the positions of vampires…”
Mercifully, the session ended when everyone else left and the monologuer saw no further need to hold them there. Valen ended night two with a horrible, aching realization dawning on him: It didn’t matter what was in the bill at all. They could edit it ad infinitum, tear it to shreds and gut every single thing in it that would actually help any humans, and it still wouldn’t pass. Because it wasn’t a matter of the merits of the ideas, but of who was in charge.
The bill would never pass because the other nobles didn’t respect him or Tessie, and that was all there was to it. No matter what they said, no matter what they wrote, no matter how reasonable their arguments or clever their wording. It wasn’t about reason or ethics or logic. It was about the very same thing motivating them to keep their humans in the first place:
The only thing they understood was domination.
Davorian cast his vote to close before leaving.
Tessie and Valen both had incredibly low spirits going into night three, already fighting back tears as the senate opened. Valen shook from anxiety and couldn’t speak for the first hour, which was embarrassing when Tessie had to answer for him. It turned out to be a good thing he hadn’t fed that evening, because he ended up back in the restrooms repeatedly to fend off waves of nausea. Tessie was faring better, being used to this sort of thing, but not by much.
The point Valen had realized the previous night came into full swing when Cain Landon called in character witnesses, as though this were a criminal court. Cain Landon first called himself as a character witness, citing his family’s interactions with the Tessandrax family and saying how he wouldn’t trust any legislation drafted by them due to their history. He then announced Tessie’s scores from several of her important exams in law school, elaborating upon how Tessie had missed marks on certain questions that apparently made her unqualified, and how it was a sham Tessie had even gotten a license to practice law, and there must be some bribery that happened to get her supposed qualifications. Of course, he also managed to dig up pictures of Tessie wearing a dress, which was supposed evidence of a perversion that made her unfit for the public eye.
Valen’s heart wrenched at that. Whenever those photos were taken, they’d probably been when Tessie was with trusted associates having a euphoric moment in private, and now it was being laid bare for everyone.
It also made Valen nervous for if any photos of himself being laid bare were going to come to light. Little did he know how hard Cain had searched for such photos, and how close he’d gotten to acquiring them.
Tessie called a recess and spent the whole thing crying in the men’s bathroom. Ari stood outside the door blocking anyone else from using it so she could have privacy, until one entitled vampire simply used persuasion on her to get her out of the way. Which she hated, but couldn’t do anything about, considering she was in a building with about 500 vampires and couldn’t start any violence for anything short of saving someone’s life.
Valen focused on comforting Tessie until his own character assassination was apparently next up: Cain Landon called in Eleanor Kithrara, matriarch of the Kithrara family, Priscus’s grandmother and Valen’s grandmother-in-law. Valen’s stomach sank when he saw the wicked look in her eye, knowing she was about to get revenge for Valen kicking her out of the manor house upon his arrival.
She berated Valen for his behavior, about how inappropriate it was for a lady to be parading around as though she were a man, about how he didn’t respect the Kithrara heritage. Elvira was also brought out as a witness, but to Valen’s surprise she only gave a few emotionally laden sentences about missing her son Sebastian before being escorted off, apparently not having done her job of emotional manipulation well enough.
They were acting like utter children, except ones whose opinions were somehow valued. Which was why they had nothing to say about Davorian Trowlaine, except to announce their surprise at his involvement in this, because there was nothing about him to insult in a petty way. He had no societal vulnerabilities to exploit, which was exactly why Valen and Tessie needed him.
Cain Landon was eating it up. He’d been sitting smugly back this whole time watching the trio be torn to shreds, but he needed some way to really seal in his domination. So nobody would try this again, and to make it clear he was the new blood baron.
Davorian had already given up. Tessie had weaknesses that could be exploited. But Valen? Valen was the weakest of them all and prime to be destroyed right here, right now in front of the parliament. This was Cain’s opportunity.
Yes. He was going to steal the Kithrara empire right out from under Valen, right here, right now, and kill this bill in one fair swoop. By honing in on the most vulnerable link in the chain.
Valen was clearly holding back tears down on the dais. Cain almost felt bad about doing it. But if Valen Kithrara was going to act like a man, didn't she deserve to be treated as one?
Cain stood. Valen’s eyes went to him. Cain licked his lips. “Valen Kithrara, I challenge you to a gentleman’s duel.”
***
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Coming to kiss you goodnight
A Fraction of Justice (Chapter #37)
Alexander recalls a dark time from his past.
Previous: Chapter #36
Next: Chapter #38
Word Count: 5,795 Read Time: Approx. 45 mins
CW: Angst, unaware fearplay
Btw, DM me if you wanna be added to the tag list!
___________________________________
A Fraction of Justice
Chapter #37: Festsitzen
[Alexander’s POV]
Softness enveloped my whole form as I came to. I was deeply comfortable, and warm. The air was still. No sound penetrated my ears that could clue me in to where I was.
Where I was….
Where I’d been…
My last memory, before slipping under, had been curling up against her neck just above her thrumming heart, surrounded by a canopy of wavy curls. Her every breath rocked me in a beautiful ebb and flow as my small body was carried by her natural rhythms. We’d spent a magical night watching my favorite stories on screen, eating, laughing, and, yes, I admit it, even crying… if only for a brief moment.
How she’d held me, tucked so snugly against her, her smell surrounding me…
My face felt very hot as I shot up and snapped open my eyes.
I was no longer adrift on her body. Instead, I found myself neatly tucked into my bed. As I looked down, I realized my suit jacket and tie were haphazardly laid at the far end, but my vest, dress shirt and slacks were still about my person.
Great. They’d need to be pressed now after being slept in.
Clearly Natalie had managed to take off my jacket and tie while I slumbered. Had she stopped there for fear of waking me? How far would she have gone if she could? Would she…? No, no. Surely not.
Why was it so hot in here?
Or, I realized with a fierce pang of humiliation, was the real reason I was put to bed fully dressed simply because the fastenings on my clothes were too miniscule for someone of her size to manage?
I shook my head, trying to banish these troubling thoughts, yet as I did so, something cascaded into my lap that was impossible to ignore: a strand of her hair, curled, contrastingly dark compared to my own golden strands, and smelling of her, settled along my thigh. It must’ve been an accidental passenger when I’d been laid down here last night.
Oh what was wrong with me?! Why did I have a sudden urge to coil it up like a wreath and keep it under my pillow?
No! No, I couldn’t let such ridiculous thoughts cloud my mind. Not now. I needed to be as sharp as ever. Resentful as I was of needing Charles’s help, I knew this path was the closest I’d ever been to getting a real case off the ground. I needed to make use of my very best powers of persuasion, not fill my every wandering gaze with thoughts of those soft, bright eyes, that smooth warm skin that dipped and sighed like the ocean, that electrical pulse of her fingers on my body… I couldn’t afford these distractions.
I threw myself over the side of the bed, and clutching the strand (at least two and a half times as long as I was tall) in a fist, I hurried over to the edge of the bedside table, and tossed the offending disturbance over the edge.
I had to plant my feet to keep my balance as the seemingly weightless strand floated gently down, down, down into the abyss of shadows between her bedside table and bed. That same three inch gap I’d conquered a few days ago now yawned before me as I barely managed to keep from falling into its jaws, headlong.
A tingling in the back of my skull reminded me I had been here, on a similar precipice, teetering on the cliff’s edge of a fall into the abyss. But back then, I hadn’t managed to keep my balance.
One… more… small… pull…
As I clung like a feral cat to the wire mesh of the pen holder, I’d almost managed to fish the vibrant yellow writing utensil up and out of its enclosure. Using my left hand to hoist it over my head (a rather impressive feat of strength, considering it was two whole inches longer than my 5.5” form), my right arm hooked over the black metal lip, and the toes of my shoes (that I desperately hoped wouldn’t scuff from this) barely gripping below, I just had to move the freshly sharpened pencil an eighth of an inch more to get it to clear. Sweat formed on my brow as I moved the trunk-like cylinder of cedar further behind me, and… there! The heavier end with its green metal collar encasing the perfectly unused eraser, made the wooden seesaw tip on the fulcrum of my arm, and freed my unimpressive Excalibur from its makeshift stone.
I hopped down, letting go of the mesh siding and painted wood all at once, giving my trembling muscles a moment to rest. I was keenly aware of how pathetic this all was, me having to climb up a pen holder and enact feats of laborious strength just to pull a simple pencil out of a cup. It was an act so commonplace to humans; it was wholly unremarkable to them.
Luckily for me, no human was around to witness my valiant struggle, which they, no doubt, would characterize as adorably laughable.
I knew I had to work quickly, it was only a matter of time before he would shuffle in, griping about a new pain in his knees or hips, supposedly refreshed from his lunch and jaunt in the garden, though such activities hardly ever improved his mood.
If he spotted my act of thievery I was done for.
He was in his seventies then, but, unfortunately for me, he was far from feeble. His reflexes were sharper and his grip stronger than it had any right to be. (It would be years later that the cane and oxygen tank would become strange extensions of his increasingly aging form).
The reality was this elder human, who was both my guardian and sovereign, never used the pencils that were stuffed alongside his countless, elegant pens. Still, there they remained, sentinels to purposelessness.
Perhaps to justify their existence, the only maid of the house (this was before the veritable swarm of hospice nurses) took it upon herself to occasionally sharpen the graphite tips, as though she had no other responsibilities to consider. Or perhaps, she just craved an excuse to rest her feet for a few precious moments every now and again. I could hardly blame her.
It was vital that I stole at least one of these razor-like points while they were as sharp as possible. It never took long for my sorry excuse of a writing utensil to wear down into a nub so dull that it failed to make a mark small enough for my pages.
I glanced up at the gilded hands of that old grandfather clock: I had maybe two minutes to spare before those doors would burst open and I’d be seen.
With the heel of my dress shoe, I struck at the graphite tip, right where it met with the reddish wood. The pencil barely rocked in response. I rolled my shoulders back and tried again. And again. Once more. Dammit all! I swept my damp hair from my eyes.
What a pathetic little picture I painted. I felt a burning in the back of my skull at the thought. I raised my foot again and struck down with all my might, jaw clenched, teeth bared.
CRACK!!!!
Timber! I sarcastically mused, as I picked up the rest of the pencil with both hands and pulled upwards, twisting it until I’d cracked the lead fully, freeing it from its wooden casing.
90 seconds left now.
I had to hurry.
I pocketed the lead piece and rushed to lift the pencil over my head. Shuffling to the pen holder, I rested its tattered end on the lip and pushed it forward, feeding it through the forest of other writing utensils.
I felt a lump rise in my throat, as I checked the clock again: 60 seconds.
Picking up the pace, I worked to lift it higher and higher above my head to get it to fall in the bottom of the cup. Almost there! I tossed it over my head with one final thrust of my tired arms.
And then… Thunk!
Resistance.
Instead of sliding to the bottom, it stuck!
My shoulders drooped as I quickly realized it was at too high an angle for me to reach the far end and readjust it enough to get it to clear.
How ridiculous was my predicament! How powerless I was to do anything about it!
I shook my head, snapping myself out of it. No time for self-pity. There would be no getting caught red-handed today; I was too smart for that.
I scanned the desk for something to climb up on.
Wasting no time, my eyes alighted on the best possible solution: the mug sitting just a few inches away. Its golden decoration around the rim and on the thin, ornamental handle with its organic curves gleamed in the afternoon sun. Standing beside it, I only outmatched it in length by about three-quarters of an inch, so climbing atop it would give me significantly more height to play with. All I’d need to do was rotate the handle toward where I was aiming to go, and then balance atop it.
Easy, sure! Why not?!
I shook my head and leaned my back into the mug’s handle, huffing and puffing to get it to rotate. I ground my heels into the desk top, and with a little more elbow grease, it yielded to my few ounces of muscle and dogged determination.
Climbing up was relatively easy, and at first, I straddled the handle with both legs to give me better balance, but leaning forward, it was immediately clear my reach was too short.
15 seconds.
The old man was irritatingly punctual in his daily routine.
I didn’t have time to climb down again and push the mug closer. Instead, lifting myself up, and gathering my feet beneath me, I slowly, shakily, stood with one foot squarely in the middle of the rounded surface of the handle, and the other balancing tenuously on the lip of the mug.
My heart thundered in my chest as I struggled to keep upright.
C’mon Alexander. You can do this.
With my left arm outstretched for balance, like some miniscule tightrope walker, I extended my right as far as I possibly could.
My fingertips just barely brushed the chill, grooved metal of the eraser casing. Just one strong hit would dislodge it (I hoped)!
I swung back, and lunged forward.
My heart leapt into my throat as I very nearly crashed face first to the floor of the desk.
5 seconds.
I gathered myself and tried again.
As the paddle of my hand made contact with the pencil, it yielded to me and raised up, rocking from my exerted force, and, to my delight, I watched it slide home; my act of thievery was successfully hidden!
But as soon as I began to crack a smile, revelling in my victory, the thunderous SLAM of the French doors made me jump, and as I whipped over my shoulder to face the lumbering figure, all irritated gruffness and stoicism, my foot that was teetering on the edge of the mug slipped.
Before I could gasp for breath, I was falling backwards, cracking my head on the ceramic floor that rushed up to greet me.
As footsteps thundered across the creaking wooden floorboards, my vision slowly stopped swimming and I took stock of my surroundings.
I’d fallen inside the mug, my body a twisted pretzel of limbs and wrinkled clothing, partially soaked from the drops of this morning’s tea still gathered in the bottom. My feet now upended in the air, were just barely below the lip of my ceramic cage. I quickly curled into myself in an attempt to make myself even smaller.
The footsteps grew louder as a voice high above mumbled to itself about how the ‘summers get more insufferable every year…’
My heart pounded in my ears. What was I supposed to do?
Like some sentinel in a watch tower, the human loomed high above me, and would, no doubt, spot me immediately at any sign of movement.
I’d be lucky to stay hidden at all, given that all he had to do was lean over the desk just slightly to see his empty drinking vessel was in fact filled with a frazzled 20 year old in a suit and tie.
If he found me, there’d be hell to pay.
I trembled as the footsteps stopped, right before the desk.
The world became darker as his inky shadow blotted out the filtered sunlight from the window beside us. I hardly dared to breathe.
If I tipped my chin, I could just see a portion of his face and head, the very peak of a mountain made of flesh and bone, a living, breathing Colossus who could end me with a pinch of his gnarled, age-worn fingers.
I watched as those fingers lifted a handkerchief to a damp forehead, cheek and back of the neck.
Perhaps now was my chance? I could jump out and scurry behind the stack of books and do my best to emerge with as much nonchalance as I could muster, as though I’d been waiting there for his return the whole time. I doubted I’d be able to shimmy down the lamp’s cable and return to my bookshelf unnoticed.
My heart skipped a beat as I studied his face, searching for my chance to slip away.
It never came.
No sooner was I coiling my muscles to spring, then that massive head turned toward me, grey-blue eyes scanning the surface of the desk like two blinding spotlights. I was sure I was done for. Biting the inside of my cheek I braced for those eyes to alight on me.
And yet, even as they rested squarely in my direction, they seemed to look past me, as if I didn’t even exist. Fancy that! Perhaps being this small did have some advantages.
Without moving, I didn’t even register to him, despite being literally under his nose. He had no idea I was there, and didn't seem to notice my absence from the desk as anything noteworthy. Did he just assume I was holed away in my nook of the bookshelf, out of the way unless called for? It stung that he didn’t even bother to check.
Little did I know this power of invisibility was about to turn into a horrible curse.
With a speed too terrifying to mention, the grey sky above grew black, as a hand, with fingers thicker than my limbs rushed towards me.
For a split second I braced for the crush of fingertips about my ribcage and the stomach-dropping wrench of being suddenly thrust into the air.
But instead, those fingers spread wider and wider, until they formed a cover over the mug itself.
Oh no.
The ground shook and tilted, as I felt the surface of the desk fall away.
I spread my arms and legs to brace myself at the bottom of the mug, only able to catch disorienting patches of light and dark through the gaps between fingers.
But the journey didn’t stop now that the mug was suspended midair, no, instead, my prison started swaying in circles like a some sort of off-kilter pendulum before suddenly crashing into something on one side. This happened with perfect rhythm, over and over and over, sloshing me about and making my insides churn. I slid from one side to another, tossed around like a pill in a bottle, as I struggled to brace against the force of the motion.
I quickly realized what was happening. I’d observed him doing this with many a hapless object while he waited impatiently for a request to be fulfilled, guest to arrive or phone to ring. He was habitually swinging the mug in a circle with his wrist and smacking it against his leg.
I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take.
That’s when I heard the dial of the desk phone as he unhooked the receiver, and pushed one button on the panel. The rotation of his wrist never ceased. I recognized the tone of the button press immediately. He was using the intercom to call the maid. I strained to hear the conversation high above, but I admit, the constant banging of my poor limbs and, at times, head, against the ceramic wall made it difficult to hear past the pounding of blood in my ears. I caught something about fetching a box from the broom closet, but beyond that I was clueless as to what he was planning to do next.
It seemed both an eon of being tossed on an ocean of one man’s mindless, unaware behavior and yet, in seemingly no time at all, I heard a mishmash of noises that told me the maid had brought whatever was requested, setting it down with a grunt and a heavy thud on the rug.
At least the sloshing about had finally stopped.
Would he put the mug down now?
I suddenly found myself swinging to a new cadence, and recognized a parabolic back and forth as he took steps across the rug, presumably toward the box.
No, of course. It could never be that easy.
I just needed to stay calm and keep my head on straight. Maybe there was still a world in which he’d set me down and I could slip away, unnoticed. From beyond my hard, unforgiving walls, I could hear the rip and tear of a sharp metal edge shredding through tape, as the old man muttered to himself all the while.
How strange it was, to be a witness to and victim of his every action; a person just as fully sentient as he, and yet completely unacknowledged there beneath his hand. I was beginning to sweat as the heat from his skin suffocated the small space I occupied.
I heard things shifting around as his free hand, just as massive as the one that covered me, sorted through the items, until a singular grunt told me he’d found what he was looking for.
I was carried again, heart in my throat, until I was being lowered… lowered… Good! Finally! A break!
But the mug kept lowering, much further than what I imagined the level of the desktop would be.
That’s when my world tipped, and as I scrambled to keep from tumbling out, the mug, now turned on its side, finally laid to rest. I pressed myself as far as I could into the back.
Light flooded in as the palm and fingers disappeared.
Stretching out before me was a vast plain of red, golden brown, white and ochre. My cage of shiny cerulean blue ceramic was resting on the fibers of the rug, facing ornate wooden legs of mahogany, upholstered in leather.
Massive black dress shoes retreated from where I cowered, crossing to the far side of the desk, where I could see, beside the tattered and dust covered box, there stood an equally aged looking bag, standing tall and thin, its many pockets and zippers faded from sun exposure and age. Though I couldn’t see them from my low vantage point, I knew what sprouted from the top of that reinforced fabric cylinder: golf clubs.
I had half a mind to charge out of my hiding place, waving my arms over my head and deal with his ire over risking a golf ball to the face. After all, the pocked, hard object measured past my knees, standing side by side.
But, I’d seen him do this plenty of times before.
His aim was horrendous.
I’d be fine.
Besides, I had no interest in taking the risk of being picked up or handled and him feeling the stolen lead in my pocket. That was surely a slippery slope to him discovering my work before it was ready.
Sure enough, his first, second and third attempts came nowhere near me. With each pass, the ball kept careening off in all directions or failing to even touch the lip of the mug. I noticed with mild curiosity that this ball was unlike the ones I’d seen him play with before, it had other markings on it, black and gold. Eventually when it came to rest for more than half a second in front of me, I recognized it as the sigil of the Hapsburg eagle. Perhaps this one was what he’d fetched from the box and was somehow special to him? I didn’t expect to ever find out. He was never much of an open book.
Throughout his many failures, he became increasingly enraged. And as a show of his growing anger, his footfalls shook the ground more and more with each shameful walk to grab the ball. I had no understanding as to why he insisted on doing this if it only made him angry.
With swiftness in his step he thundered back to the far edge, practically throwing the ball back on the ground. He squared up and, to my horror, swung the putter far, far back, much too far for the soft, exact hit needed to make the shot. I scrambled for the front of the mug, sucking air into my lungs to shout out, but I was too slow. The ball was already overtaking my field of vision as he hit it hard out of frustration. I wondered, horrified, if a ball at this speed could kill me.
In the split seconds I had remaining, I scrambled backward, cowering into the very back, protecting my face with my hands and bracing for impact.
TINK, TINK, TINK, TINK, TINK, TINK!
Instead of colliding with me, the ball had hit the thin lip of the mug with such force that it sent it flying upwards, only for it to come back down after hitting the top and crashing down again. It slammed between top and bottom at the very opening for a good while until friction brought it to a halt, and it rolled softly back onto the fibers of the rug.
My heart stuck in my throat.
The old man flew into a rage, curses in German flying between clenched teeth and a taught jaw. I’d never seen him get this worked up before. The head of his putter suddenly crashed to the floor in a terrifying thud, as shoes bigger than my entire body rushed forward.
Even as I was desperately attempting to crawl out for the second time, slipping on the curved ceramic floor, the toe of that shoe turned to a black whirlwind as it made contact with the mug and it flew into the air. For a moment, I too, was completely airborne, as my grip on the edge of the ceramic opening was wrenched free, but soon, gravity caught up with me and it.
Together, the drinking vessel and I cascaded down, luckily, colliding with the rug, which softened the landing. The mug hit the floor on its side and rolled, taking me right along with it, tumbling like salt in a shaker. I was almost certain I was going to be sick as I continued to try to shield my face from colliding directly with any of the rock solid walls around me.
That’s when I heard a sickening snap before everything came to a dizzying stop. I gasped for air like a fish out of water.
For a breathtaking moment, I wondered, in my shocked state, if that snap was some part of my poor body.
“Ach! Scheiße!”
I was suddenly lifted into the air again. I clenched my eyes shut. Please, no more!. I couldn’t take it.
But this time was different. As a hand reached toward the opening, it was no longer a fearsome claw snatching things up and away. Instead, it was curved, using a gentle touch, as if handling something delicate and breakable.
He rose to standing, and I could tell he was cradling the vessel against his chest because I could both hear and feel his heart beating against the ceramic wall. Never in the ten years thus far of living here had I ever been this physically close to him. Though I was much too exhausted to move, a mixture of feelings I couldn’t quite explain exploded through my prefrontal cortex.
In the world far above me, I could hear him suck air through his teeth, a noise of disappointment and gentle concern. If I closed my eyes, I could almost convince myself that his gentle cradling of the vessel and his vocal fretting were aimed at me, his loyal, ever suffering companion, and not a hunk of fired clay. He walked over to the far side of the desk, I assumed by that box and his golf clubs, as his jerking movements seemed to indicate he was returning the putter to its slot. In a voice both gravelly and deep with age, yet wholly genuine in tone, he muttered to no one but himself, “Es tut mir leid, Mutter…” I could hear the clink of ceramic on ceramic. Ah, so the handle must've snapped off when he’d kicked it.
I’d never heard him speak so softly before, with such a genuine expression of regret. In fact, I could not recall a single time I’d heard him apologize for anything at all. I almost felt badly for him, despite this being entirely his own doing.
I didn’t get much time to pity him, though, because in his examination of the damage he’d done, he nonchalantly tipped the mug at a steep angle and I had to claw at the slick walls to keep from falling.
Please, please don’t drop me!
My mind and body screamed this silent prayer. Why couldn’t he just put the damned thing back on the desk?
The sharp, piercing ring of the phone made me jump, and I slipped a little further. I bit my tongue and trembled, struggling to keep from falling any more.
Meanwhile, completely ignorant of my desperate struggle inside the vessel he was examining so thoroughly, he shifted his weight. In order to pick up the receiver, which was to his right, he transferred the mug to his left hand.
No, no, no, no, no!
Things seemed to move in slow motion, as the mug ever so slowly tipped downward, revealing the box directly below me, the cardboard ragged and stained. It contained countless family knickknacks, framed photos of faces I’d never seen before, books, crystal glasses carefully packed, and other inherited items. I even noted the small clear box missing one notably familiar golf ball.
I clung to the slippery, smooth walls, but what was there to grab on to? And, on top of that, I was just so exhausted. I spent the breadth of a single heartbeat peering over the edge from where I sat, scrambling to avoid the inky depths far far below me. Try as I might, I was powerless to stop it.
As he turned over his shoulder and picked up the phone to answer, I lost my grip.
Down, down, down, I tumbled directly into the box below. I screamed as I fell, arms and legs flailing uselessly against the rushing air.
And all of it went unnoticed.
Why?
Because life in that big, tall world I could never belong to always carried on, unbothered, by the happenings of the lower creatures beneath their feet. My fall went unnoticed because even though I was less than a foot away, my small body never registered in the edges of his peripheral vision, as he looked out the window to his right. He carried right along as I braced for an excruciating landing, “My 2 o’clock is here? He’s early. I have a mug I need you to fix, it… fell… Yes, go ahead and bring him in…”
I shut my eyes and hit the ground.
My ribs exploded with pain as I collided with something sharp on my left side, I crashed into strange and hard item after item, falling further and further down to the bottom of the box. It felt like slowly being sucked to the bottom of an ocean filled with sharp rocks all along the way. I finally landed at the bottom, my whole body aching. The opening, which I could only see with one eye at just the right angle between ceramic figurines wrapped in plastic, and family letters, jewelry boxes, and doilies, wristwatches and photographs, was so far away, I felt I might never make it there.
“... Oh, but take this box with you when you go.”
NO! No, no, no, no!!!
Through my tiny window to the world, I could see he was standing over the box, looking down, straight down, precisely where I lay hidden! I had to get his attention!
I cupped my hands over my mouth, “Hey!!!! I’m here! I’m in here!”
With the receiver cradled to his ear, he held something in his hands I couldn’t see. He bent over, coming closer. Yes! Good!
I gripped the lip of a book cover to pull myself up, “I-It’s me! Alexander! I-I fell!” I bent one leg beneath me and pushed up, reaching for the handle of an ornate spoon to get up higher. That’s when my right leg stuck. I pulled again. Nothing. Panicking, I looked behind me.
I’d partially fallen into a crocheted blanket, its open weave stitch clinging on to my leg up to my thigh. Though it had been easy to slip in, the opposing force of trying to pry myself free made the fibers hold fast. This couldn’t be happening.
“Hey! I-I’m stuck! Please, I–” I shouted with a trembling voice, but was quickly cut short.
“--If our guest wants whiskey and we don’t have any, what do you think you should do? What exactly am I paying you for?”
He couldn’t hear me. My stomach dropped.
Then came a horrid ripping sound, sharp and spine-chilling. I realized the object in his hand must’ve been a roll of packing tape. He was unfurling the roll. I could hear the dull thud as he patted the piece in place on one side of the box far to my right.
“HEY!! NO!! I’M IN HERE!!! HEYYYY!!” I waved my arms and screamed, kicking and clawing against the fabric that held me fast. He was staring down, the lenses of his eyes dull and unfocused as he failed to even register my presence in the shadows beneath the clutter.
“---You know I don’t touch the stuff, just use your best judgement. I can’t do everything around here, Cynthia…”
That’s when the world began to grow dark, as the flaps of the lid were folded in, one by one. I was in absolute panic now, thrashing as hard as I could, struggling to even see the stitches of the blanket that trapped me in the ever-encroaching dark.
The two short sides had been folded inwards, and now the first long side crashed down, casting the half of the box between our two differently sized bodies in shadow. I finally pried my leg free and I scrambled to the top, falling and tumbling on all sorts of hard and sharp objects along the way.
I was over halfway there when the final flap encroached on what little light I had left. I screamed and screamed, begging for his attention until my throat was raw.
I could hardly see as I got within four inches to the top. But it wasn’t enough. The flap fell into place, and my only light was a strip shining through the two rough cardboard edges. I heard that sickening squelching sound of the tape pulling away from its roll.
Shouting, tears rolling down my cheek, I reached up to shove my hand through the miniscule opening, but as soon as I thrust my arm upwards, a shadow, like a shark hunting in shallow waters, approached with rapid speed. A giant hand was smoothing the tape into place and it was coming toward me, fast.
I scrambled to outrun it, to get myself seen before being sealed in this tomb of so many other forgotten things.
“PLEASE DON’T! WHY CAN’T YOU HEAR ME?!”
I scrambled along the top, outpacing the shadow. I paused for a moment, craning my neck up. I pounded my fists on the cardboard as hard as I could, though I could barely reach, and through the opening, I could actually see his grey blue eye staring back at me. “I’M HERE! I’M RIGHT-”
The shadow blotted out all light, as the packing tape sealed up my window to the world.
“-here…”
I shook my head, and the memory dissipated like smoke in the breeze. How it made my spine shiver to relive those moments of entrapment in a pitch black little tomb of utter solitude. I hated being trapped in the dark with a vitriol that could not be overstated.
Once the maid had taken the box away, (I remember my attempts to grab her attention were useless, as I could hear her music blasting from the headphones she almost always wore) and I’d been placed on some high shelf in the broom closet, I made my escape by slashing through the tape with a wine opener I’d had the fortune to prick myself on while fumbling around in the dark. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the maid to open the closet to fetch some cleaning tool, and convince her I was not, in fact, a rat but a member of the household and that was that.
All in a day’s work for me, I mused bitterly.
Just then, the pleasant ping of the cell phone, left specifically for easy communication between rooms, caught my attention.
But things are different now… They’re… better now.
I stepped away from the table’s edge, and crossed to the screen, where it was propped up in its stand. Pressing my palm to the glass, the pixels jumped to life before my eyes and I saw the message on display:
From: Dumb Clumsy Human
(She’d given herself that contact name, not I. Though, I was proud of her for her self awareness)
Good morning! Whenever you’re up and going, for Gondor’s sake, light the beacon to call for aid! (Aka, text me and I’ll come get you for breakfast)
My body rushed with warmth from head to toe, and my throat felt tight. I couldn’t help the smile that creeped up of its own accord.
Yes, things are so, so much better now.
___________________________________________
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Artist Unknown
Part 52 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here! Yes! YES! The tiger is out!
London, Ontario. Crossroads of the world. Harry stood on the corner of the intersection that made up the entirety of the city’s downtown core and searched for the storefront that supposedly held the entrance to the Wilkins gallery, though it was not easy. A layer of fog had draped itself over the city, thick as the mists on the Atlantic, leaving only the windows visible from a distance. They flickered like jack-o-lanterns as shadows passed over them, and the further he moved blindly through this city that was not his, the more foolish he began to feel. It had been four months of fruitless searching, four months of empty barn houses, tiny fights, and failed police calls. Now he had dragged himself and his bike – quite literally – to a backwater repository of Toronto’s finest rejects, and for what? A newspaper advertisement and a hunch. If it was a testament to anything, it was a testament to how desperate he was, and as he prowled the corner in search of the gallery building something animal inside of him shifted and clawed as if trying to find its way out. It was this raw instinct that carried him forward, past any true logic and reason, twisting him moreso into a thing with a purpose than a person with a goal.
Harry Avery had never known love, yet he could not turn back, for he did not have the choice to any more than love itself was a choice.
The bike had been stashed in the horse paddock at the Brunswick Hotel several blocks away for a handsome fee, and now he was in search of a jeweler’s, seasick with unease. The storefront he was looking for was supposedly near a bank and a department store, both of which Harry had already found. Keeping an eye out for streetcars, he crossed the gravel road with hands in his pockets, and reached a corner where a newsie was shouting something about a doctor murdered by some Montreal mafia. Before Harry could stop and ask him for directions he was nearly knocked off his feet by a figure racing zig-zag through the fog.
It appeared to be a youth in a suit and hat, though Harry couldn’t quite make out his features, for he didn’t stop and turn to look at Harry until he was several yards ahead. When he did, he seemed to pause and lock on to Harry for a moment – only to teeter and collapse, much to Harry’s shock and dismay. That was when a stout police officer pushed Harry out of the way and dove towards the unconscious youth.
Harry slowed his pace as he walked by the unbecoming scene, and sensing his presence, the officer stooped over the boy said,
“Nothing to see here. Just another degenerate for the wagon.”
As the officer turned towards the curb with the limp youth in tow, his flashlight revealed that there were indeed a number of degenerates in the wagon, and Harry could tell from the whooping and hollering nearby that there were still more wandering about on the streets. He kept moving, and it wasn’t long before one accosted him.
“Got any pennies?” Asked a voice that reeked of gin.
A grubby hand reached out to Harry before he could even see the toothless face attached to it.
“No, sir, I don’t have any.” Harry was speaking as quickly as he was race-walking away from the man.
He had barely finished the sentence when another man approached him with his hat out. He slouched over his pockets protectively and ducked into the nearest shop front. When he saw where he was, he was met with a pleasant surprise.
The smell of old wood filled his nose as the building’s floorboards creaked below him, and as he turned around he was greeted with an elegant display of small, red, rectangular boxes, each of which held gold rings set with sparkling diamonds. There was a wreath in the window above them, a Christmas display no doubt, and a long line of people snaked past it, packed like sardines into the tiny storefront in fear of coming rain. Harry could tell by their dress alone that they were high society, and they weren’t so much shopping as they were waiting for something to happen.
This was the jewelry store he had been looking for, and above it, so far as Harry could tell, was the Wilkins gallery space. As he followed the line of people to a staircase at the far side of the room, it became clear that these were not shoppers in the traditional sense – they were patrons of the arts, who were being detoured through the jewelry store as part of what could only be some clandestine business arrangement between mister Wilkins and the store’s owner. It was certainly making for good marketing on the jeweler’s behalf, for the women in their fine fur coats tittered and gossiped over the jewels as their bored chaperones stood their place in line. Harry could only wonder how long they had all been standing there, for the line was barely moving. He headed towards the back of the queue while his skin itched to get inside.
The sound of a man clearing his throat from behind the counter snapped him back to reality.
“Excuse me! You there.” Said the tinny voice of the bespectacled man at the counter. “Can I help you, sir?”
Harry lumbered over to the warm glow of the oil lamp by the counter, and at the sight of the polished jeweler he suddenly felt foolish for even being there. There was no way he would fit in among these people, not with his scarred face or his ragged getup.
“I’m here for the exhibition.” Harry explained, growing ever sheepish as the jeweler’s hawkish eyes looked him up and down.
Weakly he pulled out the newspaper clipping from his pocket, only for the man to wave it away.
“Labourers enter through the other door.” The jeweler ordered, and pointed him to the doorway.
“Labourers?”
Harry glanced from the jeweler to the doorway and back again.
“Quickly now, would you!?” The jeweler snapped. “We have an image to maintain, you know.”
The look of disgust in the jeweler’s face alone was enough to send Harry running with his tail between his legs. Just as suddenly as he had entered the store he found himself back on the street corner in search of this fabled other door. He soon found it some six feet away, propped up with a cinderblock.
Through the doorway was a short hallway with a punishing set of narrow wooden stairs. A team of men, each of them tall, not unlike Harry, scarred, not unlike Harry, and bedraggled, not unlike Harry, were taking turns hauling goods from a wooden trailer into the waiting stairway above. One man was struggling with a large, stone pot, and without a second thought Harry jumped in to help him pick it up as rain began to spit down. He seemed to fit in with these so-called labourers a little too well.
At the cost of the well-being of his lower back he found his way in, and he grunted and heaved his burden up the stairs, taking care not to lose his grip on the pot that weighed about as much as he did. When they finally reached the top, Harry and the mover made the mistake of setting it down and resting for several seconds, earning them the ire of a black-tuxedoed servant who was ushering the rest of the men along.
“Don’t just stand there, you animals! Bring it in! We’re about to open!” The footman barked at them.
Harry resisted the urge to argue as the footman marched about the hallway like some little tin monarch. Treatment like this was something Harry kept on running into ever since the Tiny Town fire, and the injustice of it was starting to nip at his fraying psyche. He bit his tongue and hoisted the pot upwards again as the servant kept careful watch of him all the while. Without time to so much as remove his rain-soaked jacket – something that Harry would later be grateful he had not done – the two of them were moving again. Seeing that Harry was eager to make it into the gallery, the man he was lifting it with, an older fellow of about fifty, didn’t pull his share of the weight nearly as well as Harry wished he would. He persevered nonetheless, lugging the pot down yet another long hallway. This one led to a back doorway that seemed to be a hidden entrance into the gallery proper.
Turning inside of it, Harry passed what appeared to be a storage room which was now in the process of being emptied out and converted into a coat check. He passed that doorway, and found himself in a much larger open space where the artwork was being placed. He had no idea that what he was actually moving through was not a gallery, but a dance hall that had been rented out for the occasion, a hidden place that would be the stuff of local legends in a hundred years’ time.
It wasn’t the gallery that Harry was truly focused on, or the pot in his hands, which was now swiftly turning his arms into rubber. It was the narrow possibility that he might find the whereabouts of Joe Piccoli, and he kept his eyes peeled for the paintings he had seen in the newspaper to no avail. The space seemed to host everything but Joe’s art, and it felt more like Billy Hill’s old living room than anything else, filled with masks and plates and exotic artefacts from faraway places that Harry couldn’t name. It reminded him of the display of maiolica at the art gallery, albeit on a much larger scale, and the more time he spent there, the more uncomfortable he became with the place.
He thought back to the question Joe had asked him during their trip to the art gallery:
“Do you giants only like my art because it’s really small?”
It was more than just the art that people liked, Harry had since learned. There were people out there who liked Joe himself for no other reason than because he was really small. As he studied the passing art pieces, he sat with the uncomfortable realization that he too had been one of them. There was a point in his life where he would have loved to gaze in fascination upon Joe’s tiny paintings with little care for Joe himself. Only now, when it was becoming far too late to change anything, did he see the error of his ways.
The pot jerked, bringing Harry back to his senses. To his horror he realized that the other mover was not only faltering, but they were both about to run into a well-dressed man in a white suit standing in the center of the room.
“Easy! Easy!” Said Harry, though the other mover didn’t seem to hear him.
“Where is he!?” The wailing of the man in the white suit was drowning Harry's protests out.
Harry, who was heading towards the man in white whether he wanted to be not, noted that he was inspecting a gilded cage on a stand.
“Easy now!” Harry said again, and pulled backwards on the pot for good measure in the hopes of slowing the mover down.
The mover started pulling the pot away from Harry in turn.
“This is a disaster!” The man in white continued. “The last thing we need is a loose tiny running about! He’s going to frighten away the guests, I just know it!”
At the sound of the words loose tiny Harry’s grip weakened, causing the pot to fall towards the mover and narrowly miss his feet. He yelped in fear and went hopping backwards into the man in white as the pot toppled onto the floor with a thud, and while it luckily didn’t crack, it did roll halfway across the room.
Harry stood there cluelessly as the man in white shoved the mover away from him and then suddenly pulled him in again by his collar, spitting venom like a snake.
“What on Earth do you think you’re doing you ugly, brainless, good-for-nothing idiot!? Pick this thing up, will you!?” The man in white barked. “Don’t you know I have bigger problems to attend to than babysitting you trained monkeys!?”
Bigger things like catching an escaped Joe Piccoli, it seemed. As the mover blubbered his sincerest apologies, the man in white jabbed a finger to a spot over Harry’s shoulder, near one of the beams that held up the ceiling.
“Put it over there.” The man in white growled.
He let go of the mover, and that was the end of it. The men obeyed the orders to the letter, though the mover side-eyed him all the while.
“Of all the people you had to piss off, it had t’be the richest man in London. Well done.” The mover grumbled. “Thanks for nearly breaking my feet, by the way.”
“I’m sorry.”
Harry set the pot down gingerly, taking care not to mash either of their toes this time.
“Who was that?” Asked Harry.
Being the richest man in London, Ontario, to Harry, was a little bit like being the prettiest pig in the pig pen. The mover’s face went blank in exasperation at the question.
“Walter Wilkins. Haven’t you heard of him!? He’s writing our paycheques, you know!”
The disgruntled mover limped off, giving Harry a moment to brainstorm.
So that was mister Wilkins: a short, angry little man with too much money for his own good. Supposedly this was the man who had bought Joe from the snatcher, and Harry had in all likelihood just blew any chance he may have had to speak to him one-on-one. Harry kept his eyes locked on Walter and watched as he crawled on his hands and knees about the gilded cage towards the table beside it, in search of Joe no doubt. Harry’s blood ran hot in his determination to find Joe before he did, but he knew that however he managed it, he would have to do so discreetly, out of sight of Walter or the servants or any other villains lurking in the gallery.
He had just finished that thought when something dark met the corner of his eye, and as he turned and saw what, or rather, who it was, terror froze him in place.
It was an old man in a long cloak and sleek top hat, with a sharp, birdlike nose and wispy white hair. A man whom Harry had learned to fear and obey implicitly. He was headed straight for him and he looked like he was about to kill.
“Father!? Wh… what are you doing here?” Harry did everything he could to make the panic in his voice sound more like good-natured curiosity.
“Buying art.” Said his father as he looked down his nose at him. “What else would I be doing?”
“Uh…” Dumbly Harry looked from Richard to where Walter was crawling about beneath the table and then back again.
“Now that you’re here, everything is starting to make sense. Do you care to help us find that foul-mouthed tiny of yours?” Richard continued.
The blood drained from Harry’s face.
“Excuse me. Whose tiny?” Walter looked up from the feet of the table as if activated by Richard’s words.
“His tiny.” Richard responded before Harry could so much as open his mouth. “I’ve seen the little bugger before. Herman here is the one who trained him.”
“Oh, really?” Walter pranced over with the cage in his hand to where Harry was standing, and all Harry could do was brace himself for the worst.
He had to think of a lie to sell them. Something that wouldn’t let them catch on that he was looking for Joe.
“I… well… you see…” He stuttered.
“No need to explain yourself, I know exactly what to do about this.” Said Walter.
After the fiasco with the pot, Harry was fully expecting that Walter would call security or the police, or at the very least cause another scene. As Harry drew back with his hands at the ready, he wasn’t expecting Walter to thrust something into them with a smile on his face.
It was the gilded cage.
“Take him back to mister Lessard’s then when you find him, will you?” Walter asked cheerily, as though he had suddenly become Harry’s best friend. “Why, I’ll tip you handsomely if you do. I’ve a feeling the little bastard is out to ruin my show, so if you could be so kind as to take him off my hands...”
As Harry looked down at the cage it took a moment for the words to register. Walter must be mistaking him for a snatcher, and if so, he had just made Harry’s life a thousand times easier. Now all he had to do was find Joe and convince him to get into the cage. If he could manage that, the both of them could walk right out of the building Scot free.
Harry nodded at Walter, too afraid to say anything that might upset their delicate arrangement.
“Wonderful.” Walter clasped his hands together and grinned. “Tell mister Lessard I’ll be in touch.”
His father gave the cage a quizzical look.
“That pastime of yours is certainly… interesting.” Richard said of the cage. “If you’ll excuse me.”
His father turned down the rows of artwork, in all likelihood hoping to get first dibs on whatever early bird specials Walter had offered him. Harry could only hope that the direction Richard was headed led far away from Joe.
Dutifully Harry clutched the cage and scanned the gallery space as Walter turned his attention to the contingent of tuxedoed footmen, all of whom were frantically rushing about and trying to make the gallery presentable. The faster they moved, the faster Harry’s heart pounded. He would only have so much time to look before the guests started pouring in, and once there were a hundred feet on the ground he would have no chance of finding Joe at all.
He started his search around the wooden table that had so fascinated Walter. It bore a guestbook and ink well, and Harry soon noted that the quill had been upended from it and the feathers on the end mangled. Leaning closer, he spied a set of tiny shoeprints soaking into the tablecloth, seemingly leading to nowhere.
Harry had learned to think like a borrower, and he followed the table cloth to the tassel, then to the curtain that hung next to that and concealed a work of some great import. He was about to peer behind it when a pair of striking black eyes caught him off guard from the corner of his eye, and his gaze snapped to them.
Hanging a foot away from the curtain was the portrait he had seen in the newspaper, part of a series that grew increasingly abstract, Harry noted. Each canvas was barely the size of a post card, and they surrounded the curtained work as though someone had built a shrine to the artist who had made them. There were other paintings still, a sad circus elephant, a painting of a man – with features uncomfortably close to Harry’s – wading through a swamp, all of which repelled him in some way.
They felt like Joe’s paintings, and yet they also felt alien to him. The colours were tired and faded, and there was something inexplicably listless about the brush work and the detailing. Harry was stricken by just how few of them there were, and whoever had hung the paintings seemed well aware of that, for a slew of landscape paintings clearly not made by the same artist surrounded them and padded the contents of the wall out.
The artist behind the landscapes had a name, but the miniature painter did not. Harry’s skin prickled as he noted that the placard for each miniature piece read, Artist Unknown.
He turned his attention back to the curtain and was just about to open it.
“Have you found him yet?”
Harry flinched as Walter clutched his shoulder in a manner that could only be described as desperately genial. Walter, Harry could see, was smiling from ear to ear, though the beads of sweat dotting his forehead were betraying him.
“I—no, I—”
“Could you perhaps look over there, then?” Walter asked politely, pointing Harry to some nebulous corner of the room. “We’re about to open you see, and as they say, the show must go on.”
“Right.” Said Harry.
Walter’s voice was thin with tension, and his head bobbed about as he nodded profusely at Harry in a way that felt more puppet than man.
“Good, good, jolly good.” Walter warbled.
Harry had no choice but to bumble about with cage in hand as Walter took his place before the table and patted down his pristine suit. There wasn’t a hair out of place on the man, Harry noted, though whatever shoe polish he had put in his hair was beginning to run.
It was only when the doors opened and the army of impatient guests spilled in that Harry spotted a flutter of movement from behind the curtain next to Walter, and as the giants surrounded the table he hoped against his better judgement that it was only the wind.
One of the servants rolled a silver cart of hors d’oeuvres through the crowd, and with wine glass in hand, Walter commenced his opening speech with Harry as a captive listener.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I must thank you all for joining me here today, to celebrate the birth of a new era of cultural enlightenment for our humble, but no less extraordinary, city…”
More and more patrons filtered into the gallery, to the point that Harry, cage still in hand, could hardly see where Walter stood. He tried to push his way through the crowd nonetheless.
“As we all know, London is sadly well known for its ah, high concentration of the less fortunate…” Walter continued.
Sensing that the cart of hors d’oeuvres was the crowd’s weak spot, Harry very politely shuffled towards it and joined the waiting line, squeezing through any odd break in the crowd that brought him closer to the curtain.
“I wanted to ensure that we remain mindful of that upon this gallery’s opening. It is, after all, the duty of men of our standing to take to the betterment of the world and the lives of those in it. Without our steady hand to guide them with kindness and compassion, the less fortunate are apt to fall to ruin, and take us along with them.” Said Walter, as a ripple of dignified laughter ran through the crowd.
Harry’s head bobbed above the curious onlookers as he kept careful watch of the curtain. His heart skipped a beat as it moved again.
“What’s that?” A woman behind him whispered.
“I can think of no better example of this than the Tiny Town Tragedy.” Said Walter, his eyes gleaming with sadness that had no doubt been carefully rehearsed. “There are few souls more unfortunate in this world than the miniatures, and as that tragedy taught us, they cannot be trusted to govern themselves. We have seen, first-hand, the horrors that befell the ones who tried.”
Walter reached out and pulled the tassel beside the curtain, and as it opened the whole room gasped. Harry, who was fourth in line for hors d’oeuvres, could not yet see what they were gasping at.
“And so, as people of wealth, let us not lose sight of what happens when the natural order is disrupted. Let us instead inspire the lesser among us to be their most useful, their most productive, their most respectable selves. It is my hope that in showcasing this collection we will keep them in our thoughts and – ”
A wave of shocked whispers rippled through the crowd, and finally Harry caught a glimpse of what scandalized them so.
“TINY!” One lady shrieked in terror.
“Get it out! Get it out!” A gentleman barked.
“– and ensure that our… society remains… a civilized place to…” The words tumbled out of Walter’s mouth as the crowd fell into disarray, and his head turned slowly in wide-eyed horror to look at what was really behind the curtain.
Sitting atop the picture frame was Joe Piccoli, presently giving the crowd the finger. His entire forearm was covered in ink, and in his hand was a tuft of slick, black feathers. The canvas within the frame had been vandalized with the face of each figure blacked out completely and the clothing painted over with exaggerated genitalia.
As the onlookers screeched in terror and fled to the corners of the room, Harry watched Walter Wilkins turn white as his suit.
"Excuse me." He said.
Calmly, Walter handed his glass of wine off to a waiting footman. Then his hand shot towards Joe, who leapt from the wall down to the floor, prompting more shrieks from all the well-to-do gallery patrons who huddled into a circle and left Joe Piccoli alone in the room’s empty center.
Alone with the exception of Harry, of course. Clutching the cage, Harry gently pushed the silver cart aside and stayed put as he studied the ring of frightened faces that gawked at the both of them. His father’s was among them, scowling at him, and as Harry stepped towards Joe, who sat between him and Walter, he felt like a part of some twisted circus act.
“Well don’t just stand there!” Walter said to Harry. “Grab him and be done with it!”
The room fell silent as Harry and Joe trembled in unison. Harry looked down at him, utterly lost as to what to do.
There Joe stood, in the ring of gawking giants, looking up at Harry and standing rigid as a boy whose father was about to beat him about the ears. The cage rattled in Harry’s fearful hand with utter disgust, not only with Walter, but with himself as well.
He couldn’t shake the thought of how easy it would be to grab him up and take him. He could keep up the act and put Joe in that cage at that very moment and run right out of the building with him, no hassle, no fuss. He could let Joe out and beg for forgiveness later if he had to. That was the easy way, the path of least resistance. Wasn’t Harry used to taking the path of least resistance?
Even if he was, by now he had seen the snatcher’s den and the jars and the cages. He felt the weight of the metal in his hand as he held it over Joe like some untouchable god. How naïve he had been to think he could ever convince Joe to get into such a monstrous invention after what had happened between them! Joe’s little black eyes sparkled as he looked up at him with a terror Harry himself had put there. This was a bridge that Harry could not cross, for it was one he had burnt long ago. He already knew where it would lead them.
“Go on…” Walter prompted him. “Just pick him up already!”
The crowd gasped as Harry threw the cage aside, and his throat tightened in revulsion as he said the only thing he could think to say to Walter in response:
“Fuck you, mister Wilkins.”
A chorus of scandalized chatter rose from the crowd.
Walter froze in bewilderment.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said fuck you, mister Wilkins!" Harry repeated, louder and more forcefully this time, as the frightened guests looked on in shock. With nothing more to lose he nodded to where Richard stood and added, “and fuck you too, father.”
Walter glanced back at Richard and did a double take. By now the entire gallery had collapsed into a state of barely controlled chaos and more and more guests shuffled hurriedly out of the room.
Harry stooped down towards Joe, sensing the perfect moment.
“Run.” He said, though Joe still quivered in place. “Go. Now!”
Before he could convince Joe any further, Walter cleared his throat.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, mister… Avery, is it? Is this really your son, Richard?” He said, glancing coldly at Richard once again. "Whoever you may be, Herman, I suggest you get out!"
“I’ve never met that man in my life, and I want no part in this.” Harry heard Richard reply, and it neither surprised him nor mattered to him anymore. “Good day, Walter.”
Harry watched in silence as his father walked straight out of the gallery. He could only hope — incorrectly — that Richard had also just walked out of his life forever.
"If you could be so kind as to join him..." Walter said, turning his attention back to Harry.
“Oh, I’ll leave, mister Wilkins,” said Harry, “and Joe can come with me if he likes to, but I’m not putting him behind bars. I tried that once and it didn’t do either of us any good. Why can’t I just let him go free?”
Harry’s eyes darted nervously between Joe and Walter. Why wasn’t Joe running? Walter, meanwhile, was smiling at his shoes with his hands on his hips. When he looked up at Harry his eyes were hair-raisingly empty.
“I see what this is. Some activist demonstration, is it? Have you come here to embarrass me in front of my buyers? Stay put, then. I'm sure the police will be here soon.” Walter snarled.
Harry stepped right over where Joe stood and placed himself between the miniature and Walter as white hot rage coursed like venom through his blood.
“After what you did to mister Piccoli you’re the one who ought to be locked up.” Said Harry.
He jabbed a finger at Walter as the final drop of human decency evaporated from him.
Walter’s eyes shifted from left to right, taking stock of his art exhibition that was now in shambles. He had the look of a cornered animal, one that Harry was poised to kill. Walter’s eyes, Harry noted, were fixed on Joe Piccoli as he said what came next.
“We’ll see who gets locked up, then, you filthy, tiny-loving degenerate.” Walter’s voice was eggshell thin. “If you won’t cage him for me, then I will take him away myself!”
Harry knew what was coming next, though he barely had time to brace himself as Walter lunged for him. His instincts kicked in and he dodged Walter’s first strike, then narrowly missed landing his own. Walter only flinched for a second, but it was a precious one, for when Walter struck out at him a second time Harry timed it perfectly. He seized Walter’s right hook with one hand and hammered him in the ear with the other, then shoved him back towards the wall.
Harry’s capacity for violence had hung over him like a sword on a thread since the great war, and his encounter with Lessard had sent it roaring back to the forefront of his psyche. He was a big man, built more like a piece of farm equipment than a person, and his hands fit perfectly around Walter’s starched collar. As Walter struggled against him, red-faced and sweaty, Harry wasn’t thinking about him in that second, or his father, or the frightened patrons of the gallery. He wasn't even thinking about Joe. Harry wasn’t thinking at all, for instead he had become a dreadful thing with a dreadful purpose: the terrifying and exhilarating duty to kill. Whether Walter lived or died was secondary to him, as were the terrified people fleeing the gallery, or his father talking to the officer on the street corner.
Harry Avery had never known love, but war had taught him that its purest expression was murder.
He slammed Walter against the wall once, twice, three times, until the canvas behind the curtain shook off and fell to the floor. Walter, half his size, howled like a hyena during the valuable seconds in which Harry gave him any opportunity to breathe.
Harry was contemplating all the ways he might rearrange Walter’s face when a little voice from behind him stopped him cold.
“Doc, that’s enough! Let him go! He's not worth it. Let's just go home.”
It was Joe Piccoli, who still had not run when he should have. Harry’s humanity came rushing back to him at the sound of his master’s voice, and he tossed Walter aside like a rag doll.
"Please?" Joe continued as Harry turned and scooped him up in his hands. "Let's just go home."
There was a snapping sound from behind them as Walter thrashed about, one that filled him with dread. He couldn’t tell if it was a bone, let alone what bone of Walter’s it was. Not the neck, he hoped. Perhaps he had done it — perhaps he had killed in the name of love. In front of Joe, no less! Cage or no cage, surely Joe thought him a monster after this dreadful display—
“MY ART!” Walter howled. “The ugly brute destroyed MY ART!”
The sound had been the tiny canvas, snapped to pieces under Walter’s own weight. Relieved, Harry paused, clutching Joe as though he were the last thing he had left to hold onto. In one vital miscalculation he turned to face Walter a final time.
“Joe’s art.” Harry corrected him.
For a split second Harry stood triumphantly in the now empty gallery, his purpose served and his good deed done. There was nothing left to do in his mind besides walk out and return to business as usual. That was, after all, what society had allowed him to do up until this point, and what Harry was unaware of was this: the world was one big club, and Harry was no longer in it.
The second he turned back around he was hit not once, not twice, but three times over the head with a baton and then wrestled to the floor. His vision blurred in and out and the voices surrounding him grew distorted. The most he could make out was Walter shrilly asking,
“Did you see the way he lunged at me, officer!?”
The dark-circled eyes of the stout officer he had encountered earlier came into view. By the time he was coherent enough to realize what was happening he was already in handcuffs and being marched through the doorway – with no sign of Joe Piccoli once again. His fingers curled and his eyes darted as frustration burned inside of him.
“Wait—wait!” He protested, though the officer didn’t wait.
He dug in his heels as the officer dragged him down the stairs, across the street, and tossed him into the paddy wagon on the corner — one final degenerate to be added to the collection. Nothing more, and nothing less.
-
Harry woke to the cold sensation of a prison cell floor against his missing ear as an unfamiliar voice echoed through the stone building.
“…the man at the gallery, Richard, identified himself as his father.” Said the officer – a different one than the man who had arrested him. “Richard told me Herman here showed up at the gallery to harass him and recommended we lock him up in an asylum.”
“Really?” Asked another officer who was clearly half-listening. “Geez.”
“According to Richard he’s one of those, uh… y’know. Those guys who came back from the war and were never the same after. Shell shock, I think they call it? Some new medical thing.”
Harry was relieved to find that his hands were free. He sat up and rubbed his throbbing temples.
“Shell shock? Sheesh, does everything have to have some fancy label these days?” The second officer scoffed. “I went to war, you went to war, we all did. Just call it what it is: cowardice! Cowardice is not a medical condition.”
“Yeah, well, that’s just what Richard’s telling me, okay?” The first officer shrugged.
Harry lugged himself to his feet and staggered towards the bars as the first officer continued.
“So far he’s wanted on charges of assault, public obscenity, swearing in the presence of a lady, suspected tiny snatching… but if he’s as much of an imbecile as his father says he is then it might be easier to throw him in the loony bin. Could send him as early as tomorrow morning, even, depending on when the doctor gets here.”
Harry’s fingers curled around the bars. With each listed charge more memories came flooding back to him. Where had Joe gone? Where had they taken his coat?
“Hey!” When Harry called out into the blue stone corridor he only half expected a response. “Officers! Excuse me, officers? Where is Joe Piccoli?”
“Is that him?” Asked the second officer.
“Yup… hold on.”
There was a slithering sound as the first officer, who was out of Harry’s view, got out of his chair and drew closer.
“Good morning Herman.” The man cheerily greeted him, though Harry still could not see him in the dimly-lit hallway.
“Where is Joe Piccoli?” Harry repeated.
“Who is Joe Piccoli? He a friend of yours?” The officer asked in turn.
Harry’s aching head slumped against the bars.
“Never mind.” He said. “Is the tiny okay?”
“The one at the gallery? We were hoping to ask you the same question. We have quite a few questions for you as a matter of fact, Herman.” Said the stern officer.
Some small amount of relief came over him. If the officers had no idea where Joe had gone there was still a chance that he was out there somewhere in one piece.
“If I answer your questions will you let me go?” He naïvely asked.
“Not if we can help it.” The officer replied with barely restrained sadistic glee. “We’ll get to it when the doctor arrives. In the meantime, if you want anything, just ask!”
With that the officer returned to his place down the corridor and sat back down next to his buddy, quieter this time. Harry, meanwhile, wracked his battered brain for a solution only to find that there was none.
He backed away from the bars, sat down on the bench, and stared up at the ceiling.
Maybe it didn’t matter what happened to him, he figured. Maybe his freedom was the price he had to pay in exchange for Joe’s, and as he sat there in the sadness of the cell he decided there was no place he would rather be. It was the least he could do after all the horrors the two had faced, and all the ones Harry had failed to respond appropriately to. It was only right that Harry got a turn in the cage considering all the dreadful things the world was constantly itching to do to Joe.
He had realized far too late that the two of them were on the same side. As he sat there, he lamented all the time and goodwill he had wasted trying to appeal to people like Walter and his father. For what reason, he wondered.
Safety. Safety was the reason, a very conditional type of safety that could easily be revoked. It was granted on the condition that Harry drifted through life with his head down and his mouth shut and admitted to everyone, himself included, that although he was a degenerate, he was a good degenerate, one that did what it was told, and jumped when they bid it to jump, and honoured its father and its mother and the likes of Walter Wilkins, richest man in London, Ontario.
Harry Avery had never known love. He had exchanged his capacity to love for safety. What Harry had not been counting on was love’s capacity to find him, whether he wanted it to or not, and turn him into something untamed. Though he was now caged, he had never felt a freedom like this before, and he would see the inside of a thousand jail cells if it meant he would be able to keep it for just a moment longer.
This was love, in its purest and most desperate form. Love he had buried and rediscovered far too late, and could now do nothing with. It was love he had squandered, fragile as a pearl clutched in the teeth of a swine, and he held onto it all the same, for whether he died in the cell, in the asylum, or somewhere in the crossroads of the world, he would die holding onto one fundamental truth:
Harry loved Joe Piccoli.
Next part coming eventually!
"I probably won't upload much TAOLAW content here" *immediately draws Danny Smalls*
I can't help it. I found a cartoon about a tiny detective today and was immediately reminded. So finally I purged this image from my brain. For those who don't know, this is Danny Smalls - a former Hollywood show tiny who now rescues other tinies who get snatched up by giants to be sold to entertainment. He himself was taken as a child, and went from the circus to Broadway to this new fangled thing called "motion pictures." None of it was willing, and the mystery of who he is seems to be the only one he can't solve.
For those who DO know him, pictured above is a very different Danny than the one we meet in the story. This is middle-aged Danny, who actually came first if you can believe it before I aged him down for a little TAOLAW cameo (it's a surprise tool that will hurt your feelings later). Sometime in the future we'll be catching up with this version of Danny, one much older and much less idealistic...
Maybe by then he'll have a better understanding of where he came from?
Zip Tie by Lukas Ross.
Spooky shadow creature can’t find its favorite stick
He found it (sort of)?
Desperate Daybreak Chapter 14
MMSS masterpost
DD masterpost
On AO3
In this chapter: Getting up close and personal with our favorite simp, and old friends show up
Warnings: casual misogyny, put-on-a-pedestalification, parental invalidation/transphobia/manipulation
***
Snacks. Snacks. Snacks. He would have to bring snacks next time. He hadn’t even thought of it.
The humans were furious that there weren’t any snacks. They informed him in no uncertain terms that after getting blood drawn, it was mandatory to eat a cookie or drink a juice box. How could he forget? They needed nutrients to replenish what they’d lost.
Julia had to pull him aside and explain their anger was exaggerated. They weren’t really angry at him, but they did want snacks and the only acceptable way to ask for it was joking for fear of looking whiny. Valen appreciated the matter-of-fact explanation immensely. It was one of the first times someone had actually just politely explained to him the subtext of the situation, instead of just getting angry at him for being oblivious, or throwing their hands up and being done with him.
Ari offered the beef jerky she had in her car. It was expired but unopened. The humans declined. Valen resolved to make sure the next time someone was sent out, there were plenty of snacks.
They walked out with a few gallons of human blood that day. It was just a drop in the bucket, but it was a drop nonetheless.
***
Edwin had always thought of himself as a dog. Ever since he’d been born, he existed to serve his betters. He had one function, and that was to be loyal to the death.
Why? It was difficult to say. He could never quite figure it out. Maybe it'd been a too-formulative offhand comment from his mother. Maybe his father had never loved him quite enough. But it was his biology.
He’d never married because he’d never found a woman worthy of his devotion. Women were weak, lacking vision and direction. Too soft. That was why Valen Kithrara was a man. He was strong. Stronger than anyone wanted to give him credit for.
The upper class thought they were strong. But everything was handed to them. Valen Kithrara fought tooth and nail for every single thing that he had, and he did it with grace and style. He didn’t give a damn what anyone thought, and if the gossip was true, he’d endured literal torture and come out stronger on the other side.
No nobleman could hold a candle to Valen Kithrara, even if they pretended they were better than him. Better than him because they married women and had children and chased prey, as though those were not the lowest base instinct every animal had. Valen Kithrara saw the galaxies beyond the horizons and wanted to seize them, to make something out of nothing. Valen Kithrara was larger than life and refused to live by what other people thought of him.
Edwin needed to be dominated by someone that powerful. The greatest service another person could do for him would be to be someone worthy of his loyalty, his devotion. To give him someone to walk to the ends of the earth for. He'd been looking for it for his entire life, and he'd finally found it when Priscus's eccentric but beautiful wife had turned back up as a man on a mission. An impossible mission that would be a worthy challenge, a challenge he would do for someone worthy.
Edwin had performed halfheartedly until now. Now, he would gladly run himself ragged to be of service.
It was just frustrating when other people wouldn't do the same.
“Callidora. We are the only staff trustworthy to be around Master Kithrara. We need to keep the house in order. I have a meeting with the farmer's union in an hour to discuss shipments of pig’s blood, and the sitting room is a disaster.”
Callidora continued to pick cat hair off the furniture. “Valen doesn't care about that much.”
“Master Kithrara doesn't have to care because he depends on us to keep such trivial matters out of mind, so he can focus on more important things.”
Callidora looked at him sharply. “Master Kithrara is gone.”
“Master Kithrara is Valen.”
“Valen is Mistress Kithrara, when formality is appropriate.”
“He does not prefer to be called Mistress.”
“But-” Callidora floundered, infuriating woman that she was. It was obvious why, of course. Just as Edwin needed to be dominated by a certain type of man, for Callidora, she longed for a woman to fill that role. And Valen happened to be close enough to either that one seeking his affection could plausibly convince themselves either way, regardless of what Valen himself wished.
Full to the brim with deviancy, this household was. Well unfortunately for Callidora, Edwin was right and she was wrong. “But nothing. Go tidy up the sitting room. There’s only two of us and I am already handling all the landscaping on top of logistics and scheduling for Valen and Tessie. You need to keep up with the housekeeping, or guests will get a bad impression when they come over.”
Looking dejected, Callidora curtsied. “Yes, sir.”
Edwin turned and marched away, wiping sweat from his brow. He’d been so busy doing the jobs of ten staff members he hadn’t even had time to screen potential new employees to fill the gaps left by the old staff, the ones with questionable loyalties. But Valen was depending on him.
He rounded the corner and found Valen, doing the usual–holding beakers up to the light and looking thoughtful. Edwin bowed. “Master Kithrara.”
Valen startled. “Oh! Hello.”
“Hello. I wanted to inform you I have a meeting with the farmer’s union soon to arrange for shipments of pig blood for your projects.”
Valen’s eyebrows furrowed together. “Oh, I’m sorry. I should have made sure you were up to date. The latest version of the formula doesn’t call for pig’s blood.”
Damn. Damn. Damn. He’d wasted so much precious time and momentum gathering that all up. He swallowed the panic and bowed. “Apologies, Master Kithrara.”
“That’s all right. Here.” Valen handed him a list full of chemical names. “This is the list of the latest ingredients.”
Edwin had no idea what any of them were. He could barely read Valen’s handwriting. He dared not express any hesitancy about being able to acquire them. He bowed. “I will acquire them right away, Master Kithrara. I’ll arrange a meeting with someone from the chemical plant.”
Valen grimaced. “You’d have more luck contacting the biomedical department at the university. Most of these compounds are highly specialized.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He needed to do better. Work harder. “Yes, Master Kithrara.”
Valen made eye contact. A rare treat. Edwin’s heart fluttered in his chest. Heat rushed to his cheeks–and other places. Come on, not again. It was humiliating enough how many times this had already happened. Of course, he enjoyed Valen forcing this level of vulnerability immensely, but he was terrified that each instance would be the one that prompted Valen to send him away. For a man like Edwin, to enjoy things was dangerous.
Luckily, Valen seemed not to notice. Instead, his face softened into a smile. “You look tired. Are you resting well?”
Valen was asking if he was well. This was far beyond his wildest dreams. He suppressed the urge to pant and whine. “Enough to perform my duties, Master Kithrara.”
“How much of the work are you picking up from the missing staff?”
All of it. “As much as I can, Master Kithrara. Callidora is picking up as much as she can from the remaining.”
“We haven’t hired more staff yet?”
“No, Master Kithrara. We need to screen them thoroughly for security, to avoid another attempt on your life.”
Valen thought very hard. “Maybe we can hire some of Julia’s friends. Or the people from the import shop. They’d be sympathetic to my views and much less likely to do something like that, yes?”
Oh no. Shit. Edwin bowed. “You’re not wrong about that, Master Kithrara. I would never want to question your judgement. But I do have concerns about that… demographic.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“They… do not recognize traditional values. Which is a benefit for their trustworthiness to your cause. But a downside for… preparing the house for company that scrutinizes such things.”
“Well, who cares what they think, hm?” There must have been something on Edwin’s face, because Valen slowly trailed off and back in, “Oh, I suppose we do. Since we’re trying to win others over.” He looked agonized about it. “Ah… I suppose you’re not wrong. But you’ll be able to train them, yes?”
“...if they’ll take instructions from me.” He wasn’t hopeful. He’d never actually shopped at those stores Valen frequented, but he’d passed by. The people in them always had dyed hair and lots of piercings and were always laughing too loud. And they always gave him strange looks. Could he whip them into respectable members of society? He would tell them to do something, and they’d probably just laugh at him rather than scramble to obey like a respectable servant.
“We’ll think about it, then. For now, give me your opinion on this, hm?” He held the beaker out.
Oh no, Valen wanted him to taste test his concoction. Edwin's brain short-circuited as he tried to decide how to react. Should he pretend to enjoy it? No, it would be obvious Edwin was lying if everyone else said it was terrible. But the risks of giving his honest opinion….?
No, Valen wasn't so fragile that he'd let the opinion of someone like Edwin destroy his spirit. Edwin took the beaker and sipped it delicately.
It was… not good. But not as bad as he'd been expecting. Tolerable. “Master Kithrara, it tastes of chemicals. Although my opinion may be biased, since I am used to drinking the fresh products the estate produces.”
Valen sighed. “So is the rest of the country, I fear.” He put the beaker down. “Tessie and I both think this is as good as it's going to get. I've been working tirelessly and haven't made any improvements yet. The final version doesn't even call for the mushrooms I'd spent so much time and effort and… suffering to get. Where would I be if I hadn't gone over there?”
Of course. Valen was an exotic creature with needs Edwin had no way to fulfill. He lost himself in alternative timelines and things like that, rather than concerning himself with the petty matters of everyday life. That was Edwin's job.
Valen needed more support than what he already had. They needed to get more trustworthy people in here, to protect and support him.
Edwin excused himself from the conversation politely, citing other business. He then called the director of the vampire hunters.
His secretary answered, as usual. “You've reached the department of nocturnal security, this is Jenny speaking, how can I help you?”
“Jennifer. This is Edwin Redman, from the Kithrara estate.”
“Oh.” Her voice instantly became meek and scared, like it always did when he talked to her. Not necessarily inappropriate for a prey animal. “What is it?”
“I need to know who else is around that Valen trusts, besides the two humans already here with him.”
***
Valen was sitting there with Lex and Ari as the humans ate lunch, trying to work up the nerve to say something.
We love you.
He still couldn’t focus. His mind felt fuzzy at the edges when he thought about it. He wasn't even sure how that could work, the three of them, and he got lost in the trenches trying to figure it out.
Lex caught him staring and smiled brightly at him. She was so sunshiny that for a second, he was afraid she would burn him. She giggled when he made eye contact, and he immediately looked away, cheeks reddening.
“It’s cute you’re so shy about it,” Lex said playfully.
Valen’s blush deepened even further. He hid his face in his hands.
Tessie came in, saving him from the humiliation of being alone with the two people he loved. She groaned and sat down, then let her head thunk onto the table.
“Wh’sup,” Ari said, mouth full.
Tessie folder her arms under her head and turned, looking at Ari morosely. “I just got off the phone with my father.”
“Ah,” Ari said. “That’ll do it.”
“It didn’t go well, I take it?” Valen ventured.
Tessie groaned and put her face back into the table. “You could say that. Just the usual–that I’m embarrassing the family, making a fool of myself, throwing away what he gave me, etc.” She held up one finger. “Although. He did say it was good that I was finally taking my own initiative on my own independent project. Just that he didn’t approve of the subject matter.”
Valen reached over and patted her head. Her hair was quite fluffy. “Well, we approve.”
She brought her head up and put her hands to her temple. Her eyes were red, threatening tears. “Yeah. I guess that’s what matters.”
Valen sighed. “I should… call my own parents, I suppose. It’s been…” When was the last time he spoke with them? “...too long.”
Well now that he’d had the thought, the task was going to loom in his mind threateningly until he did it. Might as well do it now.
He excused himself from the table and went to the office, closing the door. Half of him wanted to bring Lex and Ari with him. But no, the privacy was more valuable. He’d go to them for comfort afterwards.
He pecked in the numbers on the rotary phone, waiting for the damn thing to slide back after each one, then put the phone to his ear.
“Hello?” It was his mother’s voice.
“Hello, Mother. It’s Valen.”
“Valen! Finally! I haven’t heard from you in ages! I’ve been expecting a call since we got the news about Priscus.” Right. Not about Valen disappearing, but about his husband. “We were very worried. How are you holding up with everything, dear? We saw the headlines and were very worried, of course. But last we talked, you got upset and said to stop calling you. But we were very worried.”
Valen could barely remember the last time they talked. He didn’t remember telling her to stop calling. He had tried to talk with her about her tone, the way she talked to him and about his work and his husband. Apparently she’d just interpreted that to mean Valen was cutting off contact with her. Easier to play the victim that way, the doting, worried mother with an errant child, rather than put in work to have a genuine relationship. “I’m sorry for worrying you, mother.”
“I know you’re a big girl now, so I shouldn’t be pestering you, but I’m just so worried about where your line of work is going. It’s dangerous out there.”
“I know, Mother.”
“An assassination attempt! I suppose if you try to act like a man, they’ll treat you like a man.”
“...Yes, Mother.”
“But I support you, even through the craziness, all right? I’ll always love you. You’ll always be my little girl. You can come to me for help at any time, for anything.”
Right. This was why Valen never called her. He suddenly remembered. It was the same veneer of support and helpfulness that would tear under any actual usage, the same he’d been offered when he’d been stumbling around in human territory and offered help by strangers thinking him human. His mother had a very specific idea about the kind of help he needed, and what she was able to provide, and if he came to her with any real problems she couldn’t solve and brush away by pretending to be a superhero figure to him, she’d just have a meltdown and get upset with him for putting her in that situation.
He couldn't share his real feelings with her. He couldn't worry to her about Ari's near death experience, or share the elation at finding love. He couldn't show her those. He just had to sand himself down until the interaction was over.
Right. That was why he’d waited to call her. “Is Father there?”
“Yes! One moment.” There were some ambient sounds on the other end of the line, then his father’s voice:
“Valen?”
“Hello, Father.”
“Good to hear from you.”
“You as well, Father.”
More ambient sounds as the phone was passed back to his mother, apparently, because her voice came next. “We’re just so very worried about you.”
Valen was still processing the fact that his father apparently hadn’t anything else to say beyond that, completely spacing out to whatever else his mother was saying. He gave her the occasional meaningless Mm-hmm and Woah and Yes, of course and I will and I love you too, bye.
The whole conversation was wooden and uncomfortable. He hung up feeling even less settled than he had before.
He trudged back to the table with Lex and Ari. Tessie was still a sad sack bent over the table. Valen now felt how she looked. Her conversation had probably gone similarly.
Valen joined her and mimicked her pose.
“Parents,” Ari said gruffly.
“Yes,” Valen echoed.
Valen tried to suppress his tears. “Are we really going to be able to do this? We’re going to destroy ourselves, emotionally, socially, maybe even physically, and it might not even work.” He'd already almost lost Ari, and they hadn't even introduced the bill yet. Some of them might end up dead by the end of this. He didn't know how he would even begin to deal with that loss, if it happened. He'd only just found real love, and he was terrified of losing it.
Lex sighed. “You’re only feeling like that right now because you just talked to your family.”
“Yes,” Tessie said. “But our families are the attitude we’re up against. Society-wide. It’s lonely.”
Lex patted her hand. “Well, we’re here. And so is Edwin! Hey, Edwin!”
At this prompt, Valen sat up to see Edwin in the doorway, stiff and formal as always, hands clasped behind him.
“Hello, Edwin,” Valen said tiredly. “What is it?”
“Master Kithrara,” he said with a bow. “As you’re aware, we’ve been having issues with staffing. I’ve brought on some additional help as security. They should help secure your safety, as well as help screen potential staff members for the household. With your permission, I’d like to bring them in now for your approval.”
Valen patted his face, trying to shake off the pre-cry he’d been having. “All right, bring them in. Thank you.”
Edwin stepped to the side, gesturing, and a lanky human man with dreadlocks posed on the doorway, one leg popped. “Heyyyyy!”
“Jerome?” Lex said, gobsmacked.
Bailey came in next, bowling Jerome over and playfully tossing him into the room. “And the B-crew!”
“Edwin,” Valen said, astonished. “You brought them here for me?”
Edwin bowed. “Is it to your preference?”
Jerome and Bailey sat down, chattering excitedly and already taking food off Lex and Ari’s plates. With the table so full, it was hard to feel alone anymore. “Yes, Edwin,” Valen said. He got up and put his arms around Edwin, hugging him. “Yes, it is so much to my preference. Thank you. You’re amazing.”
Edwin went bright red and pulled away from Valen just slightly.
***
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Had to force myself to do hand studies so I made a guy to torment >:]
(click for better quality)
immortal caretaker never stays in one place too long. they have to leave after a few years to keep people from noticing that they don't age.
but when caretaker stumbles into whumpee, freshly escaped from years of captivity with whumper, they can't bring themself to leave. they risk everything to save whumpee, and it all comes to an end when whumper shows back up.
Weird collectible found.
