Shifter: The First Time I Was Me

This is a new story about a SHAPESHIFTER

The lore is mostly pulled from the show Supernatural with influences from Norse mythology. I claim no higher or better knowledge on shifters; I just liked this particular brand of lore. And if you ever want to discuss lore, PM me because I know nobody who likes it D:

Warnings: cursing

Shifter

The First Time I was me

I lived another two years stealing and thieving and living like a bloody king before Dan’s partner found me. He cornered me in Vegas, in a huge suite I had paid for out of some foreign businessman’s pocket. He leveled the gun at my head and shouted in my face: “You said you wouldn’t fucking kill anyone!”

I gave him a sharp smile, “I lied.”

His finger fumbled on the trigger and I knew—I knew from how unprepared Dan had been that his friend, Peter, would be unprepared too. I knew that was just a bullet, not a silver bullet that could kill me, loaded in the gun. I knew he was only going to make me moan and groan until I tore his throat out. I guess, then, knowing what I knew it was silly to stand there, but there was something liberating about being shot at six times.

The silence after the gun’s roar was deafening. I had sunk to my knees at some point, my hands clawing at the carpet as blood flowed from my head, stomach, and chest. I looked up to see Peter walking closer, slightly unsteady for a seasoned hunter. “I suppose you don’t run into many shape shifters,” I said around a mouthful of blood. But then I ate my words as he slid a long, silver knife from his boot.

“You could say that,” he agreed but continued in a deeper, revenge laced voice; “but I knew a guy who does. This is pure silver bitch.”

And I also knew he had that knife—I had gotten stronger in two years and it was easy to know everything he knew when we were within ten feet of each other. He was also so scatter-brained from the idea of this—of killing me—that waltzing in his head and sifting around hadn’t been hard. I knew it would come to this from the minute he rolled into town. I just hadn’t bothered to put a stop to it, decided to play it like a game.

The survivor in me grimaced as the point of the blade tapped just below my shoulder blade and is withdrawn to allow for a heavier, stronger downward stroke. Yet the other part of me, the scrap that’s humane rather than human (because there’s no human in a monster) thought this is justice and the taste of blood, my blood, had never been sweeter. “Die shifter!” he states before sending the blade down and through.

And in that space between dying and death, I remember Bridget and she’s standing at the edge of my subconscious with auburn hair and bright eyes and she’s proud; she’s proud he avenged her, too.

–part 1– –part 2– –part 3– -part 4– –part 5– –part 6- -part 7-

I shifted. I wasn’t me. I was someone else. I met a hunter. I killed a man. I went home. I was me.

Shifter: The First Time I Went Home

This is a new story about a SHAPESHIFTER

The lore is mostly pulled from the show Supernatural with influences from Norse mythology. I claim no higher or better knowledge on shifters; I just liked this particular brand of lore. And if you ever want to discuss lore, PM me because I know nobody who likes it D:

Warnings: cursing

Shifter

The First Time I killed a man

The taller hunter came back.

I killed him.

The First Time I went home

The gravity of killing a man with my hands never came. I had dreams about it, still do, and the twisted smile on his lips would haunt me for eternity. He had jauntily walked into my apartment and just prompted: “give me a reason not to kill you.”

And it was instinct that drove me forward to rip into his eager flesh like it was pining for me. It wrapped around my fists like my own did when I shifted; the bones cracked in my adamantine grip like mine did when I shifted. I punched his teeth from his mouth after opening up his chest. I pushed his eyes back into his head after ruining his mouth. He wanted a reason for him not to kill me and the reason I gave him was “you’re dead.”

I stayed up for the next three nights. I had dumped him in the river on the second. I stayed up the night after, huddled in the corner, and crying like a kid. Bridget was screaming that I was a monster and the survivor in me was screaming for me to just get the fuck over it. I kill people, it’s part of the system; I kill people and that’s who I am.

On the fourth night, I left town. I didn’t pack anything, I just drained my accounts and hightailed it back to the east. I changed skins often, trying not to sap any one particularly dry. I slept in the backseat of my car a lot and I ate at places that looked like the rats ate better than the customers. I took showers with a water bottle because it was only out of old habits that I thought I needed one. Technically I was clean after every time I shifted; I always felt dirty.

Nonetheless, I didn’t know where I was going until I got there. I was standing outside my old home in a female librarian skin clothed in an outfit I just picked up at the local department store. Nothing fit quite right, but I thought I looked respectable. Of course, it wasn’t respectable I needed, it was Bridget I had to look like and I was forgetting her more and more as the days went on. She wasn’t quiet—no—but her voice had lost a lot of its tonalities and I could only recall that her hair might have been red.

It was hard to look on the house with its old paint and tilted shutters and to know I had once known it. Now it was something I knew in a round-about way, through hearsay and stray memories that bubble through like gas in tar. It hurt to know that I didn’t know enough to prove that I had once been Bridget. But I once was, right? Or had she just been a skin I walked around in too long and I killed her off, too—I just took her place up like a changeling.

I pandered around a bit until the night was so thick the world had suffocated. I broke into my own house like I used to when I stayed out too late. I looked at my sleeping parents and little brother, never daring further than the doorway. I looked at my old room and only saw a room. I looked at our dog, Sparky, and only saw a dog—a nice dog but just a dog. I began crying when I found the photo albums and it was just faces of people staring back at me, even the one with the auburn hair and the name ‘Bridget’ scrawled under her school photo was nothing more than another face.

In the end, I absconded with a few photos, stuffing them in my pockets, and took some food and cash for the travel ahead. On a whim, I wrote my parents a note that Bridget was okay and just eloped—then I realized that was silly because why would some creep break into the house to leave a note like that? So I threw it out and left with some pop tarts and photos.

When I made it to the state border, I killed a person and borrowed her skin. I took her ID and cards; I dumped her in the Metedeconk. I secured the photos from home to the visor with some bobby pins the lady—Hyacinth—had been wearing. When the glare got too sharp while I was driving the next day, I was facing a picture of Bridget over the unending highway. I smiled at her conspiratorially. She was another kill, just like Hyacinth, just like Dan, just like John, and just like Ryan.

After that day, it was only me in my head—who ever me was at this point, anyway.

–part 1– –part 2– –part 3– -part 4– –part 5– -part 6– –part 7–

Shifter: The First Time I was a Man

This is a new story about a SHAPESHIFTER

The lore is mostly pulled from the show Supernatural with influences from Norse mythology. I claim no higher or better knowledge on shifters; I just liked this particular brand of lore. And if you ever want to discuss lore, PM me because I know nobody who likes it D:

Warnings: cursing

Shifter

The First Time I was a man

I nearly vomited, shuddering and falling back against the guard rail. The thoughts were still colliding like comets behind me eyes, bursting with supernova brightness in my brain. His emotions were so strong, surging up and into me with a ravenous hunger. It was so much easier, a few moments ago, when I borrowed his thoughts like tools to use against him. Like his stinking up my head now, I had been in his and dragging him to his knees.

He was probably still in the gas station bathroom—gripping his head because I can feel it pounding in mine, as his, I don’t even know. He was probably still in that stupid bathroom where he tried to feel me up before I shut him down. The opportunity just landed in my lap and I went with it, crashing into his head until I was buried waist deep. Then I left him, on the floor, his nose bleeding a little, and locked myself up in the bathroom next door. The transforming into him hurt like hell. The skin was harder to pull off this time and my bones had to break so much more. At one point I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t because, God, I was half in and half out of him. It was weird, fucking weird and it fucking hurt. It was also a whole hell of a lot worse due to Ryan’s wretched whimpering that filtered through the wall between us.

When I finished shifting, I wasted no time sliding into his car and taking it out to the highway. The distance felt good, real good, but that ended shortly. I had just pulled over, a few seconds ago, because Ryan had to have finally gone into a full-blown panic. I could hardly place any of my thoughts among his and I was lucky enough to get the car off the road. A huge part of me wanted to kill him—to go back there and rip his fucking brain out so it’d stop screaming in mine. I couldn’t, though; I just needed to get to the airport, jump a new skin, and leave.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to steady everything out. I pushed Ryan away and to the edges until he was just a numb panic finely threaded through my thoughts. With substantially more peace of mind, I keyed the airport into the GPS and discovered the terminal wasn’t too far away. Nevertheless, a huge part of me feared the cops would catch me, that Ryan had already reported his car stolen, but I looked at my face in the rear view mirror and was surprised at the ease with which I smiled. “No, I’m Ryan Hertega, what do you mean I reported the car stolen? That’s silly.” And I touched his wallet, his phone, and everything else in his pockets, sans twenty bucks, on the seat next to me. “I’m sorry for the trouble officer,” I said to myself, biting back a laugh as some of Ryan’s hysteria washed over me too strongly. “But I’m pretty sure I’m driving my car.”

From then on, the drive became easier and easier as distance was put between us. I definitely would make a habit of grabbing people I didn’t know because, even if distance makes the heart grow fonder, it makes the thoughts go a lot quieter, too. It, of course, didn’t stop me from seeing into Ryan’s thoughts, residual lumps I unconsciously harvested from among his neurons. He was a bit of a creep, which made my skin crawl, and he got ahead in the world by kicking ass and exploiting interns. Luckily, the skeletons in his closet were long since denitrified and the only bits of rotting flesh on the bones stank of dubious consent. He was a mean man with an insatiable lust and, despite the wretched character, his disposition was making it easier, too. As I became Ryan and me; as we joined into a formless, shapeless lump of pride and greed and need; I could breathe without my breath hitching: I was finally a little more okay with the shape-shifter thing.

The voice, the voice that said I was Bridget and screamed for me to call mom; it was getting dimmer and dimmer. Sure, my old thoughts were there and my old life sat like a shadow cast on Ryan’s memories, but something else was being borne. It was malicious and malignant; it was the monster in me that knew how to shed its skin. It wasn’t a voice or a thought but rather a lifestyle that was slowly sinking in.

By the time I made it to the airport, Ryan’s easy confidence was contagious and I easily skated into the terminal. At the late hour of eleven, it was pretty vacant, but a few business travelers were buzzing around between the food, luggage-carousel, and waiting areas. I saw one man, crossing the polished floor to the men’s restroom- he immediately had my attention. He was dressed smartly in a well-fitted suit and looked a little harried but amiable. A slow smile crossed my face as I followed him, the man being chivalrous enough to hold the door to the men’s restroom open for me.

Overall, the third time I shifted was a lot easier. I took my time, first of all: I let the man go about his business and sidled up to him by the sinks. I asked him about the weather, calling on Ryan’s interpersonal skills. In a friendly gesture, I had touched his shoulder, which sent a jolt through my body I had hardly expected. It was good, though—what I needed. Something in me warmed to a hundred degrees and spread like wildfire.

Before he left –before John left—I threw a question after him, my voice friendly to a fault: “When is your flight?”

He dutifully checked his watch, shifting his blazer out of the way with a twist of his arm. “In another twenty minutes.” I smiled, showcasing a toothy smile.

“Mine leaves in an hour, you lucky devil.”

He responded with a chuckle, leaving the bathroom in a flare of black suit. I wondered, briefly, if letting him get away was for the best. If I had locked him up, I could have taken his flight; it would have expedited things. Then again, glancing around the acoustically-inclined bathroom, I quickly realized what a heinous mistake that would have been. I would not have made it far and how could I prove I was the real John Tamus? I didn’t have his ID, which I was beginning to realize was the all important clincher.

I had Ryan’s ID, though, and his credit cards. If I just; if I got on the plane as Ryan and left as John Tamus, then this could work. With my new course of action set, I left the men’s washroom, intent on the ticket window. The emotions that rose like floodwaters in me—a cacophony of crashing ‘wrong’ and ‘monster’ and ‘fucked up’ and ‘we can’t live like this’—were only a minor part in the tsunami of vicious glee.

I was becoming what I was meant to become; a creature without a name and without a home. So far I had not broken any moral codes (except for the Ryan-panicking thing, which was only a grey area at most), thus I considered myself safely humane, not really a monster. But, it was clear, I was no longer human; I was inexorably caught in the slow process of shedding my humanity.

–part 1– –part 2– –part 3– –part 4- –part 5– –part 6- –part 7–

Shifter: The First Time I was someone else

This is a new story about a SHAPESHIFTER

The lore is mostly pulled from the show Supernatural with influences from Norse mythology. I claim no higher or better knowledge on shifters; I just liked this particular brand of lore. And if you ever want to discuss lore, PM me because I know nobody who likes it D:

Warnings: cursing

Shifter

The First Time I was someone else

I didn’t make much progress. Dusk rolled around on the heels of fleeting, golden air. I had sat in the park all day, by a tree, and tried sorting through everything. All I managed was that I was not a monster; monsters kill and I would never kill anyone. I also managed to get a better handle on my thoughts, but that was a hard point to sell. If I kept my eyes closed too long, I’d slip into Kailtin’s heart and see things I never intentioned to see. Somehow, I knew if I took a stranger’s skin, it should be easier to separate. I wouldn’t have all the connections that bind me to Kaitlin. It’d be a harder, more painful transformation, but to be able to master my own thoughts will be worth it. I was sick and tired of craving Cheetos every fucking hour.

I had also come to another conclusion, which came last and just as the Sun was a thin wafer above the horizon. I would find someone who had money; probably some suit who was traveling. I planned to head to the nearest airport, truss the poor bloke up, and leave with his skin and luggage on his flight. Then I’d drain a bit of his bank account and slew my skin. And if I got that far, then I’d pick a new one, skip town, and start over somewhere else.

My breath was ragged again, harsh in my ears. I could feel panic slip-sliding along my insides like vomit. It was acidic, burning, and noxious; it was of my own design and disease. I swallowed hard, drilling into my head again that this was my life now and no amount of wallowing under a fucking tree in a fucking park could change it.

The plan, though, sounded insane—ludicrous even— because where could I fucking slew my skin without someone noticing? I would need to hide from cameras and I had no experience with that. If I planned on borrowing a guy, which I really was considering because they’d be less trouble, I couldn’t use the treasured bathroom-stall method. Unless I went into the airport a guy, which I decided was my best bet.

After a bit more pandering, I ducked into a coffee shop near campus and bought a latte. The crowd was heavy even if it was evening. I watched as customers came and went over the edge of my cup, keeping a stronger eye on one of the baristas. His name was Daniel Caprisi. I met him before and he was nice albeit a bit dim. He was also once an interest of my friend so that he could recognize me and would talk to me if prompted—a worthy consideration in a crowded location. I considered maybe borrowing his skin, but then just the right guy walked in. He was a young professional who obviously just got freed from some office and needed a caffeine buzz to cap his day off. I could also see his car parked outside, a nice blue Honda, and I sure as hell would bet he had a GPS.

“A Venti Mocha.” The guy ordered, swiping a hand through medium length, tawny locks. When his blue eyes swept the room, I made sure to meet his and offer a smile. Suddenly I was very glad it was Kaitlin I was wearing because she offered the nice mix of charm and coy that I could use to my advantage. A bit of me roiled at that thought, the little voice that was the old me screaming ‘I shouldn’t do this’, but what choice did I have? Lose a few morals for a few hours and then have the rest of my life to live virtuous. It’s a conclusion I had come to, although a bit unconsciously. It was a conclusion I swallowed bitterly as I followed the young professional out the door.

I suppose luck was on my side because he saw me walking after him. He didn’t look annoyed, a bit perplexed perhaps, but he smiled regardless as I got closer. “Hello,” he offered, hand hovering over the driver door.

“I know this is going to sound weird,” I started out and then nearly bit my tongue because saying something sounded weird generally meant it was. Maybe a few years ago a guy would buy this crap, but with the stranger danger anthem of popular media, I doubt he’ll buy my spiel. Even as his brows knitted together, face turning guarded, I continued sweetly and nervously. “I was just hoping to get a lift. I—god it’s silly really—I got a ticket and they took my car to the impound.” He nodded his head curtly, hand easing off the door handle but his body didn’t move away from the car. Well, it was a start. “You see, I go to the college so none of my other friends have a car and the bus doesn’t run that way. I know I could get a cab, but I can’t afford that and the impound fee.”

A smile cracked his features, and I mentally sighed in relief. There was dirt on the edges of his personality, I could feel it, and that meant he wouldn’t have all the moral drama Kaitlin was currently shoveling onto my buzzing brain. He could make the meantime bearable. “So you just sat in the coffee shop, cruising people for a ride?”

Okay, that did make me sound like a freak but he didn’t look put off, merely intrigued. I smiled, calling upon the flirtatious gods: “No, I just saw you and you looked nice,” his eyes prompted me on with a smiling lilt, “real nice and I thought—hey why not.”

He nodded, approving, and then twitched his head towards his car. “Get in, I’ll give you a ride—my name’s Ryan by the way.”

I beamed as I crossed the distance, slipping my hand into his. He shook it firmly and his fingers brushed my wrist in the ghost of a touch. “Name’s Kaitlin,” I returned and took up my place in the passenger seat.

–part 1– –part 2– -part 3- -part 4– –part 5– –part 6- –part 7–

Shifter: The First Time I wasn’t me

This is a new story about a SHAPESHIFTER

The lore is mostly pulled from the show Supernatural with influences from Norse mythology. I claim no higher or better knowledge on shifters; I just liked this particular brand of lore. And if you ever want to discuss lore, PM me because I know nobody who likes it D:

Warnings: cursing

—–

Shifter

The First Time I wasn’t me

Being a shifter is a lot like being a schizophrenic, except the real you is the voice in your head. It was touch-and-go, standing in Kaitlin’s skin and trying to understand the part of me screaming “your name is Bridget!”

“No, I’m Kaitlin,” I taunted the mirror, goading the other part of me into frenzy. My lungs were pulling too strongly for air, panic was settling just under each rib, and my skin was itching anew. I wanted to just rip out of the skin—again and again and again. I gripped the sink’s edge, letting the alien dark locks fall over my face. No Kaitlin’s face—I was wearing Kaitlin’s face just like I was wearing her skin.

My spit turned dry and gritty in my mouth—a mouth smaller than my old one. It was uncomfortable and new and familiar all at once. I met green eyes in the mirror: at some point mine had been brown right? I used to have auburn hair. I used to be two inches taller. I used to have a chip in my left, lower canine. Now I was Kaitlin, though, and she was leering at me unsteadily in the mirror. She was watching me like one watches a skittish animal, about to run in case I reared up again and burst through my skin.

I didn’t. I settled deeply into Kaitlin’s persona, shifting through memories and thoughts and tiny flashes of what she was seeing. Even miles apart, I could see the psychology text book in front of her, open but unread. She was worrying about her mother again and if she really went to Hell like the priest had said.

Soon her thoughts stopped blaring siren loud in my skull. I could gather my own in small bunches and my voice didn’t sound quite so irrational. It was as if I finally found some middle ground that was still heaving but less tumultuous. I found footing in my head on the heels of the conclusion that I am a shape shifter and this is what I do. I shed my skin to wear someone else’s face. Okay, yep, totally normal.

I gingerly outlined the ridge of my cheekbone, or new cheekbone or Kaitlin’s cheekbone. I experimentally pressed my fingers to my palms, feeling the different strength in the flex. Kaitlin was more fine boned than I was and the whole body had a different, more airy feel to it. Her mind also ran on a different language—not language as in Spanish or English, but just how she thought. I was mastering it slowly, sinking into the regular rhythm of disordered tension that constituted her pattern.

Then, snapping my eyes open, I felt my voice—my old voice—tell me I couldn’t stay like this. I wondered why, it was comfortable now; I was used to this new feeling of two in one. It berated me, though, sending grains into Kaitlin’s thoughts until mine settled within hers. A headache flared for both of us and I wobbled unsteadily. “I’m still in college,” I said out loud.

Then, the weight of the situation bore down on me. I was still in college. This meant that I had an ID—a picture ID—that got me in everywhere. Right now I wasn’t Bridget Jones, I was Kaitlin Fuller. There was no way in Hell I could function on campus in a new skin. I needed my old one, which looked revolting as it decayed in heaving sighs on the floor.

Instead of pulling my skin back on like an old shirt I decided that shifting might be the better method. I tried to remember myself and my thoughts—I tried to connect like I had done with Kaitlin. But there was no one there. It was like hearing dial tone when the other line is disconnected. It was disorienting, horrifying, because the voice that was me was screaming ‘I’m gone, gone gone!’

Stumbling, I made it to my desk and pulled out an old photo album my mom made me take to school. It was silly, a trifle, but it made her so god damned happy to know I’d have memories from home right by my Calculus textbook. I quickly flipped through the pages, seeing familiar faces but in the sense that they were familiar to Kaitlin. It took me a full five minutes of pushing Kaitlin’s thoughts out of my head to finally recognize the people as my family and not Bridget’s mom and dad. I also found myself in a few pictures—I looked alien, unreal. I didn’t look myself because, under my skin, I didn’t look like much of anything.

I wasn’t anything. Bridget Jones was no more.

I pulled out every photo that held the old me in it. A picture of me at my fourteenth birthday party; a picture of me with our new dog, Hermes; a picture of me holding a trophy I won in second grade: I lined every picture around me and tried so hard to connect to that image. I imagined pulling it on like a coat, sliding into the finer threads of myself until I was knotted tightly. But it failed, it failed so miserably I was crying because ‘I’m Kaitlin’ kept hitting every attempt, solidly, at each turn. The little voice that was the old me was still screaming ‘I can’t keep this shit up, I need to get out of here. Because I can’t live here because I don’t exist—only real people live here and not me.’

I was nothing more than the echoes of Kaitlin. It was frightening and too real. I had no idea where to go, I had no idea who to tell, if I should tell anyone, but I knew I couldn’t stay. It was the only clear thought among the muddle in my head: I couldn’t stay. There would always be another me—another Kaitlin—and we couldn’t exist in the same country. Maybe not even in the same world—regardless I had to go. To where? I didn’t know. The best plan I could come up with was to leave.

And I did. I cleaned up the mess first, which was not as revolting as one would think; or maybe just knowing it had to be done made my stomach tougher. Then I packed up Bridget’s bags with Bridget’s clothes and left Bridget’s dorm. I stumbled outside into the large town, the life buzzing and making me disoriented. So much of me—the monster in me because I was a monster—wanted a new skin. One I didn’t know well so my thoughts could be more centered, more controlled. “But I won’t shift until tonight,” I had promised myself as I limped my way through crowded streets. I wouldn’t change again until tonight and, by then, I should have a better handle on what to do.

–part 1– -part 2- –part 3– -part 4– –part 5– –part 6- –part 7–

Shifter: The First Time I Shifted

This is a new story about a SHAPESHIFTER

The lore is mostly pulled from the show Supernatural with influences from Norse mythology. I claim no higher or better knowledge on shifters; I just liked this particular brand of lore. And if you ever want to discuss lore, PM me because I know nobody else who likes it D:

Warnings: cursing

—–

Shifter

The First Time I shifted

Being a shape shifter isn’t nearly as pretty as they make it in Hollywood. When the shift happens, the shifter doesn’t simply walk into the new form. Sometimes, I know, they show that it hurts. God, I think the closest they’ve come is some were wolf transformations who, in fact, hardly change at all. No, shifters have a very ugly and messy shift because we can’t be birds or cats; we just change human forms—kind of like Mystique from X-men, but not.

I say not because she’s blue. I’m not blue. To be honest, I don’t really know what I am anymore, but I remember what I used to be. Yea—that’s another thing, shifters aren’t born blue or deformed or whatever Hollywood says. We also don’t have parents that tell us “you’re a shifter sweet heart and this is how you change.” No, you just live your whole life feeling uncomfortable in your skin until you realize you can peel it off.

When I first noticed, I was twelve. I hit puberty and I changed; it was like everyone else. I had a textbook growth spurt, got boobs, and had a healthy layer of fat that no amount of running could make go away. I was also uncomfortable in my skin, but it wasn’t the same ‘oh I just hate how my nose is.’ Actually, thinking more on it, I liked the way I looked. I just kind of knew it would change. When I had told my mom this she explained it away as puberty.

So I went through middle school with an air of invisibility: I liked it that way and my friends batted for the same team. It’s when I hit high school that things changed again, just slight shifts. Like I caught myself picking up people’s mannerisms like it was my job; I nearly lost my best friend because she thought I was constantly imitating her; I wasn’t intentionally but I still joked “everything you can do, I can do better”. I could pick up and throw away accents like scraps of paper. I felt the fine tremor of thoughts that meant mood swings, emotional changes, and they were strong, nearly earthquakes when I was impersonating the person with the hormone shifts. Sometimes I could catch glimpses just inside their head.

It was puberty, though, as my mom had said; it was puberty that made me read people’s minds and adopt their habits. Yea, I didn’t believe it too much either. But I believed it enough to be thoroughly surprised when the ‘itching’ began. It was kind of like the chicken pox on steroids. I had this uncomfortable itch everywhere and no matter how much lotion I slathered on, it never went away. It would come in waves, last a week, last a month, and then leave me be.

Second semester of college, though, I had a bit of a fit. I’d been having needlessly itchy skin forever and, fucking screw it, I was going to give into the temptation to scratch. Sounds harmless right? I thought it did too and it was, at first. Because at first I just scratched my skin red and raw—lucky as hell my roommate was out because I was doing a fine impersonation of a mad man with my scratching. Then, though, I thought of my roommate, like really thought of her. It was as if just the thought coated me and I could feel her image, her thoughts, just nestle up against mine. Suddenly the skin I was scratching gave and a glob of me caught under my fingernails.

It wasn’t a huge bit, about the size of a quarter, but it was enough to make me let out a wretched squawk. Pain was searing through the cut and my mind was playing tug-of-war with thinking of my roommate in that creepy voyeuristic sense and wondering if I should go to the hospital. I had breathed noisily through my nose, wanting the panic and nausea to go away. The itching continued and it went bone deep. I felt it splinter into my bones, delve into my marrow and suddenly my eyes were rolling back in my head. I thought of things, of people I saw, and I was searching fervently until I decided to just settle on someone I knew best.

It happened to be my best friend from home, Kaitlin. She was nice and had an otherworldly obsession with cheetos. In middle school we were a lot closer, but we saw each other the odd weekend in high school. I remember strongly the length of her hair and the buzzing quality of her thoughts; I remember how she always was a little sad around the edges because her mom was dead. When I finally pulled myself from the reverie, most of my skin had been torn off, a wet mess on the floor, and my back ached with angry, hot licks of blistering fire. I still drove forward because, caught in frenzy, I couldn’t stop. Eventually I slew my skin and my hair, my bones stopped crackling under my skin and, when I met my eyes in the mirror, I saw Kaitlin staring back at me.

In fact, for a moment, I wondered if I had been Kaitlin all my life.

-part 1- –part 2– –part 3– -part 4– –part 5– –part 6- –part 7–

Enter Sandman

There is a wind that keeps sweeping the valley, revealing layer upon layer of bone-white sand. Nothing lasts long in the desert. All that remains is the hard pan miles beneath the sand and the browned roots of what once had held purchase here. This all blows about in a bluster so that the sky is the same color as the earth: they have merged into seamless misery.

A traveler marks a path quickly lost in the desert. Their steps are unsure as the ground threatens to blow away at the last moment. Left are no traces of their progress. It is only by their blind faith in the lodestone lodged in their heart, in the inevitable magnet of their sheer will that they continue onward. The wind does not deter them. The apocolypse does not stir them. Their purpose is separate and true.

Eventually, the winds die. A quiet falls on the valley that causes the traveler to pick their head up. Everything is yellowed with age. The sky looks like an old bruise. Their path is lost behind them, trackless miles they have covered in search of something. Before them is a path created by banks of sand only a few inches high. A road sign is at the end, the words eroded, but the directions–two distinct, separate directions–are clear.

A figure stands beneath it in a sandblasted cloak. The figure looked to be part of the landscape at first look, but they are separate. The traveler approaches, feet imprinting softly on the path and leaving the first artifact of the traveler’s existence in years. The figure looks up, a human, familiar face staring out from beneath the hood. His eyes are gold. His mouth is thin. And his whole expression is hungry.

For a moment, the traveler vaciliates, then they ask–voice cracking from disuse. “Where do the signs point?”
The man glances over his shoulder at the eroded signs. He then looks one direction, to the east. It is to the east that the sky lightens into a familiar blue. There might even be a hint of green on the horizon that makes the traveler ache in a way they had forgotten. Longing seems foreign as it courses through them.

The man then glances to the west. There the sky darkens to the deep blue of night and towers of glass glint on the curve of the earth. This is familiar as well. It looks like the past, but the past is long gone. The buildings reflect the old world on their sides. The ache of longing doubles. It’s a world the traveler knows to navigate unlike the virgin paradise in the east.

Both are illusions, that much is clear.

“That’s where they go,” the man finally says, his voice just as dry and cracked. Then his mouth spreads into a grin, his lips cracking and filling with blood. “Now you must choose.”

The traveler approaches the sign and the figure allows them this. He steps aside so that the footloose individual can run their fingers in the grooves left by the old letters. ‘Heaven’ lays to the east and ‘Hell’ lays to the west. Glancing west again, the glass buildings are on fire. Looking east, the traveler can see the green thin to a bright white.

“I’ve made my choice,” the traveler tells the figure. Then the traveler continues on straight, ignoring the paths, and the unforgiving wasteland rises to a tempest again. The winds. The sands. The endless wastes.

‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…’

They are both illusions and the lodestone keeps pulling them home.

—–

A/N: Okay, so as a note this is not about atheism. It’s a dream I had and the reason that the traveler keeps walking is because THEIR WOrK IS Not DONE. How that translates out of my subconscious, I don’t know, but that’s what dream-logic told me. The traveler had a purpose even it didn’t know, still doesn’t, and when given the option to finally give up–this not being the first, but rather one of many temptations–the traveler chooses to not stop. to continue. Take the meaning as you will 🙂

I also should just have a little category for my dream works. Bet you didn’t know most of this stuff I write is from dreams I have. ahahahaha.

Slide to Unlock Part 11

Masterpost of Parts

<<Part 10

Part 11

There’s calm before every storm. Pretty cliché but it’s true nonetheless. Diane is tangled around me one Saturday morning and I’m watching her sleep in lieu of getting up. I think she woke up awhile ago, but she’s been humoring me the past five minutes. I’m leaning in to kiss her cheek when a loud banging starts at the door.

“Mmm, it must be the new kitty tree for Boris,” Diane hums sleepily, stretching like a cat and revealing a swathe of smooth skin where her night shirt rides up. “I’ll go get it.”

“I’ll get it,” I promise and make a move to get out of bed, but she stops me.

“No,” she tells me, her eyes more awake than they had been moments ago and her mouth a serious line. “The new papers are still in the works and I still have to redo your dye job. It looks like you poured bleach on your head,” she mutters while tugging a strand of my hair.

“But I did pour bleach on my head,” I pout. A few weeks ago, we started to get moving on my new identity. I dyed my hair. We found a guy who forged papers. Soon we were going to start me with responding to my new name—Phillip Havermeyer—and I was not looking forward to it. After twenty-five years, I’m pretty damned partial to John Forrester.

Diane wraps her light, pink bathrobe around her. “Now stay here,” she commands. “I’ll come back with coffee and we can snuggle.”

I make a show of looking put off—guys don’t like snuggling, it’s not manly—but I’m secretly a sucker for it. Diane knows it and uses it far too often to her advantage.

Overall, after my mental breakdown a month ago, I have fallen into living Diane like a duck to water. Sure, I’m itchy as hell to leave the house—which is why I might have done a hack job of dying my hair, in desperation to leave—but I know I can’t. I spend a lot of the time doing some repair work around the house. Diane’s even taken to bringing old computers that her friends had been throwing out so I can work on them. I’ve also been helping to repaint the master bedroom, so that, as Diane puts it, it becomes more ‘ours’.

Sometimes the prospect of staying here scares me. I mean, I am an escaped government experiment, and, although we’re taking every precaution, that sword still hangs heavy overhead. I would much rather be far, far away. Luckily, Diane seems agreeable to moving to Canada, which I plan to bring up again once my papers come in, and then we’ll start over in British Columbia. John and Diane might actually be a thing and it sends a warm thrill through me.

This thrill is quickly chased by cold dread as I hear the telltale pop of a silenced gun.

In minutes, I’m down the stairs. I turn the corner to the front door and my previous cold dread doubles. Framed in the gold dusted morning light is a man I have never seen before, but hate immediately. His mousy brown hair is tamped to his head by a military issue beret. He has a thin mustache that curls up at either end, following the lines of his crazed smile. He’s broad set, much like me, and the grey-and-black camouflage does little to mask the dozens of weapons stowed away on his person. He has one meaty arm hooked around Diane’s neck, nearly lifting her off her feet, and the silenced handgun is pressed to her temple.

There are tendrils of smoke rising from the barrel and, as I step closer, I can see the bullet hole in the ceiling above.

“It didn’t have to happen this way,” the man says with a rough accent that I can’t place. It might be Russian twisted by a southern twang, but I can’t tell. Not like that’s top priority. Right now top priority is Diane. “I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. You’re making this tough on me, John.”

“Who are you,” I demand, assessing my nearby surroundings for a weapon. In the rush downstairs, I only pulled on my shoes and jeans. I’m still shirtless and only have my lab-made power as an available weapon. The lamp on the side table beside me looks promising. I let the power course through me and I lift one hand so the bastard can see the electricity jumping from finger to finger. “I asked you a question.”

“I’m Dr. Merkan,” he says and tightens his hold around Diane’s neck so that she wheezes. My heart threatens to give at the sound. “Most just call me The Commander. I’m the –how do you say it—head of security of Weapon X.”

I swallow thickly, hearing the name “Weapon X” like someone stabbing into old wounds.

“I’ve come to take you home, John.”

Without warning, the Commander blows Diane’s brains out. I see it in slow motion, his finger twitch on the trigger, Diane’s eyes widen as she feels it, and then everything being blown all over the door and the small window beside it. The Commander drops her lifeless body to the floor and it plops with wet, fleshy sound.

“That’s what you looked like John, when they gave you to me and Killbrew. You’re our child and it’s time you came home. No more distractions.”

“no,” I say, my heart ramping and my chest tightening. Seeing a comrade fall had always been disorienting, but seeing Diane crumple is debilitating. “No,” I say louder and begin backing away. “no, I won’t go with you. You murderer.” I spit the last word out like bile from my mouth.

The Commander only smiles. “I’ll cut you a deal,” he says graciously and waves his hand over Diane’s body. “I’ll take her and save her, make her like you. What do you say? Come with me and you get your bitch back.”

I feel the electricity bubbling inside me like hot water in a pot. It’s frothing at the edges and everything in me is singing with the intensity of it. I look at the Commander, dead in the eye, and say lowly, “Over. My. Dead. Body.”

Without Diane in the way, I have no qualms of letting off a pulse of electricity so strong that it blows out the windows in the front of the house, including the bay window in the living room. The Commander is thrown through the door and he hardly issues a grunt as he lands on the front lawn. I step through the hole in the wall, preparing another shock to fry him where he kneels. Then I look up at the veritable army staring me down from behind him. There’s a tank poised dead ahead, flanked by at least twenty men on either side. I can see the dark shape of a sniper on a rooftop two houses away.

The Commander rises to one knee, laughing, and spits blood from his mouth. He looks at me, but it’s only with one eye. The other, a glass eye, had been blown out by my attack and has rolled into the daffodils.

“No is not an answer, kiddo,” The Commander says, sugary sweet. “Kill him, boys.

Part 12>>

Slide to Unlock: Part 9

Slide to Unlock

—-

Recap: After a false start, John and his gracious host begin to get along. Little more is learned about the organization after him, but something about Diane sets him at ease, establishing a sense of normalcy in his crazy life. When she pokes fun at his powers, he plans to show this lovely lady just what his powers are.

Author notes at the end!

<< previous part 8

—

Take this as a lesson, if you want to impress a girl, don’t fry her car.

Showing my ability to Diane had started off good, with me popping the locks and sending the windshield wipers into motion on her little blue Capris. Then I thought I’d start the car from by the door, which I was leaning on jauntily, in order to impress her. Turns out that it’s much harder to start a car from the door than from the console inside, or even the hood, and I may or may not have fried her battery.

Yea, that won me like zero brownie points.

But Diane handled it well, she ruffled my hair when I offered to fix it and she sent me back to the house. “Okay Remote Control, go inside,” she had scolded softly. Like a dog with his tail between his legs, I slunk back into the house and crashed in a jumble of limbs in the chair I had so recently vacated.

When she rejoins me, it’s after calling the local mechanic, Fred or Frank, to come by and fix the battery. “I can pay for the new battery,” I tell her as soon as she enters the room. She arches an eyebrow and takes up her seat on the couch, leaning back with a small smile playing on her lips.

“Uh-huh, with what money?” she prods. For a minute I’m about to retort but I realize she’s right. I don’t have a cent to my name unless, maybe, I turn myself over to those crazy guys after me and they return a reward.

Which, by the way, is never happening.

Diane gets up, patting my knee as she saunters to the kitchen. “No crazy-experiment powers in the house, okay?” she says lightly and her smile strikes me deep.

“Of course,” I choke out after a moment, but she’s already in the kitchen. Instinctually, I follow her and that’s the sort of pattern we fall into over the next few days. I follow Diane around and she continues to lead me on.

~*~*~

I get itchy after a few days. It might be five, it might be four: I end up sleeping a lot for those days and eating whenever I’m awake. Diane is gone for most of the day. Taking advantage of this, I spend some time on the computer trying to find out anything I can about my own life. All I find is my obituary and that my funeral passed almost four months ago.

Well, there goes my hope of crashing my own funeral.

It’s just so odd, though, that I was declared dead. Obviously, I’m not. I was left in the arms of the army when I was grievously injured, so it’s not just a commander making a premature call because I could be a POW or whatnot. No, the army had me. And they still did–in that lab–but yet I’m dead. For some reason, the military killed me off.

I guess if you decide to play God, it’d be best to start with as clean of a slate as possible.

Diane comes home one evening. I’m sitting on the red couch with her laptop perched on my stomach as I scroll through reddit’s conspiracy tag. She walkes up behind me and pecks a soft kiss on my hairline, arms on either side of my head on the armrest. “You’re looking much better,” she tells me.

I grunt in return, eyes searching fruitlessly for any mention of a secret facility in Nevada or Utah or whereever I had been. Diane ignores my intense attention and opts for reaching lower to rub my shoulders, which are cable-taut under her fingers. She tries to work the knots out, but everything coils tighter as reddit crashes. “You aren’t going to find answers on the internet,” Diane murmurs, much like my mother when she had tried to explain to five year old me that the ice cream man could not be called to come back. I also wasn’t allowed to chase him. Just like now, Diane’s trying to convince me to stop chasing ghosts. “You just need to relax…rebuild…”

For a moment, I let that fantasy sink in. It plays across my mind’s eye like it has a thousand times before; as it’s played across every time I’ve slept. The illimitable future I could have had before the experiments: I finish my duty to the Air Force, work for the FAA or maybe a tech firm like Stark Industries, and start a family. Maybe share this future with Diane, grow old with her. Maybe just keep living under this roof that has hidden me so far andcould hide me for so much longer. It’s a future, though, that has gradually been eroded by my own choking laughter as I wake up from these dreams into the cold reality where men are out to kill me, unafraid of murdering innocent people who stand in their way.

There is no rebuilding.

“I can’t rebuild!” I say coldly and pull myself away from her, sitting up rigidly on the couch. I place the laptop next to me, out of harm’s away, as I lean forward onto my knees. For some reason, I always think more clearly when I’m staring at my feet. I can feel the twinge in my skull where the bullet blew it away. “They’re still after me. I’ve been here too long, I have to go!” I cry in dismay, anger and desperation leaking thickly into my voice. There’s a lump the size of Texas lodged in my throat.

Diane tries shushing me, to come around and sit next to me, but I shake violently–starting to feel the buzzing I had pushed away the past four days racing back to the surface. The lights begin to dim and flicker. Diane starts to back away. “John, you’re scaring me,” she says, making her way to the door.

I laugh, cold and hollow, as I try to pull the buzzing back in. But I feel so much safer with it as a blanket around me. I feel so much better knowing I can send twenty men flying with a single thought. I feel so much stronger when I remember all the damage I can do.

Then I catch the look in Diane’s eyes and the lights go back to normal. The buzzing slinks back to the abyss I had dropped it into previously. Nothing–including my own peace of mind–is worth hurting Diane.

“I’m scared,” I confess–remembering the shot waitress in the Blue Ridge and the chorus of gunfire as I ran–“I can’t let them hurt you, too. Or anyone else.”

Diane quickly crosses the distance to me, taking a seat at my side. Her arms wrap around my shoulder and my head falls into the curve of her neck. I can smell her perfume. I can smell, faintly, the sweat of her working all day. Above all, I can smell the shampoo she uses. I try to shift closer in the embrace, wrapping my arms around her, and I don’t know when I let my life become this way.

“Stay here,” she tells me and her voice is that of an enchantress. “They’ll find you in the city with all the cameras. They won’t find you here. Can’t find you here.”

“But they will,” I remind her and push away. The room is so much smaller as I stand up. The ceiling forces my shoulders to slouch and the doorway makes me almost hit my head. The hallway is hardly any better than the living room, but at least there I have room to turn around, to pace. The spell of possible asylum dissipates.

But it sits in Diane’s imploring look–this hope of relief and promise of security–so I tell her I’ll think about it.

I end up thinking about it for months.

part 10 >>

Author Notes:

This story had gone on an unplanned hiatus and now I’m starting to bring it back. I apologize about that and, if it happens again (which hopefully it won’t–we’re about to hit the climax!) I’ll let ya’ll know. The next part should be posted next week (I do try to keep a weekly posting schedule with this fyi).

So yea! I hope you like this part, I think it shows a little more John. The last two parts have been him a little more crazed and disjointed–but who wouldn’t be running for their life in the woods?

Slide to Unlock: Part 8

Slide to Unlock

—-

Recap: John wakes up in a foreign room, trying to make sense of where he is and who he is. The mysterious converse-donning lady offers him breakfast, which he can’t refuse.

notes at the end

<< Previous: Part 7

—-

When I finally amble down the stairs, I easily find the kitchen by the smells emanating from the room. Whoever this lady is, she sure can cook. The house is filled with the smell of eggs and potatoes—I can also hear the hiss-crack of bacon cooking in the pan. When I walk in, I want to hug her because, despite what people say, food is the way to a man’s heart and this woman has won me over.

The kitchen is rustic with mint green walls and pale cabinetry. There is a breakfast bar that divides the main cooking area from the open dining room. It’s homey although I note that it doesn’t look very lived in. I slide onto one of the stools, silently, and watch the woman as she continues cooking.

She has on a rich green t-shirt with dark wash blue jeans and, yes, her red converses. Her light blond hair is pulled back by a bright red hair band at the nape of her neck, a few curls escaping forward. She seems oblivious to my presence—moving ever so slightly to shift the bacon in the pan from time to time. It feels domestic, extremely surreal given my circumstances, and I briefly wonder in a bout of madness that if I didn’t shatter the illusion, maybe I could stay here: in some modern version of Little House on the Prairie.

Finally, the silence drags out too long, so I break it. “So what’s your name?”

The woman startles and some hot grease splashes onto the counter. She curses, reaching for the paper towels.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” I apologize. I consider getting up to help but decide it’s better that I didn’t. She’d probably feel safer if I kept my distance.

“I’m Diane,” she supplies after a moment and then tosses me a tired smile. “And no need to apologize—I just hadn’t heard you. You’re really quiet for such a big guy.”

I give her a feral smile. “You calling me fat?” I challenge.

She laughs softly. “Oh please,” and she returns to her cooking. I get the distinct feeling I’m not a stranger—or rather, that she’s not treating me like a stranger. So either she’s a looney or the Labs caught up with me and she’s just a decoy.

The buzzing I so arduously quieted before starts again. I can hear the silverware rattling in the drawer in the breakfast bar and the fluorescent light above begins wavering. I can feel every appliance in the room like an extension of myself and it consumes me. When Diane turns back towards me, I still have the feral grin but I’m pretty sure I’m glowing again.

“oh…my…god….” She breathes out once she finally turns around. She begins to edge away but she can feel the energy in the air and its planting her feet to the ground. “who are you?!” she whispers and it’s louder than if she had yelled. It has absolute fear in it, which makes me pause. The fluorescent light stops flickering and the silverware quits rattling.

“Are you with them?” I ask, rising from my seat. Sure I don’t think she is now, but she could be a great actress. God knows I could be a great actor if I wanted to and I failed drama in High School. I begin to step around the breakfast bar, only a few feet from her. “Answer my question: are you with them?” I demand.

“Who are them?” the woman practically sobs, beginning to step backwards. I lunge to stop her, grabbing the front of her shirt and holding her just inches from the boiling grease of the bacon. She looks backwards at the averted accident. She’s rigid under my touch but relaxing millimeter by millimeter. “I’m just a nurse,” she admonishes, voice small but not as scared as before.
After a moment’s pause, she looks back at me, her brown eyes burning with courage I hadn’t thought possible outside of battle hardened soldiers. “Now you answer me: who are you?”

I swallow thickly releasing her shirt and stepping back. I run a hand through my hair, which is still too short for my liking.
Do you apologize in this sort of situation or just head for the hills?

“Er…” I begin, turning bright red. “I am John Forrester of the Delta Task Force.” Her brow wrinkles and she continues to look at me with skepticism. I sigh. “It’s an inter-military task force. Or really, separate; we do a lot of undercover and recon. I was in a special division of Delta that got very important people out of very bad situations.”

Diane wrinkles her nose this time, but at least her brow has smoothed out.

“You’d be surprised how stupid important people can be,” I divulge and a smile starts to crack across her features.

“You know,” she says softly, “when I saw that uniform; I thought it was my Jack on the side of the road, coming home. But you’re not him. He’d never have qualified for Delta.”

I nod, amazed that she’s avoiding the elephant in the room with such grace. “What does he do?” I ask.

“He was in the infantry for the army,” Diane states with emphasis on the past tense. It hits me hard and deep. I know what it’s like to lose a soldier; but losing someone that close to her must have hurt worse.

She pulls the bacon off the stove and for a moment I think I’m home free. Then she turns around and asks. “So care to explain why you were glowing?”

She squarely smacks the elephant crowding the kitchen.

After gathering my wits about me, I smile, “I’m part glow worm!”

Her expression doesn’t change—it’s serious and slightly disconcerting.

“Part fire fly?”

She refuses to take it.

“Secretly a phoenix?”

Damn this woman’s face is immobile.

Well, suppose the truth won’t hurt: “I’m an escaped government experiment.”

She nods and begins pulling the bacon out to blot it. “That’s what you said yesterday, too.” Then she hands me a plate full of food and pushes me towards the table, which I only now notices has two glasses of orange juice on it. “Now eat,” she commands.

Bewildered, I do.

~*~*~

As it turns out, there’s something I just fail to understand that Diane states is “a damned shame” that I don’t: southern hospitality. Sure we are in Virginia, which is definitely not the Deep South, but Diane’s mother raised her to help anyone in need. She also admits that the similarity to her Jack might have made her overlook many of her misgivings.

After breakfast, Diane forces me to get cleaned up. I go through half a bottle of shampoo before I deem myself clean enough; I had weeks’ worth of dirt caked on and enough BO to gas a small country. Diane even hands me a razor, so that I’m shaved and somewhat groomed when I reappear downstairs in the uniform from before that Diane was nice enough to clean for me while I showered.

She’s waiting on her red couch that’s a few shades darker than her shoes, which, upon a double take, I realize she’s not wearing. I sit across from her in a tan arm chair, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. Diane places the book she had been reading down and pulls her legs up beside her like a cat, tucking her toes beneath herself. “How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Better,” I admit, not removing my hands from my face. With some thinking in the shower, I’ve calmed down from my hyped up paranoid mode and fell into “resigned to horrible fate mode”. “How are you?” I ask.

She smiles—I can feel it like a shift in the air and the whole room feels brighter because of it: “Good. I’m good.”
I steep in the silence for awhile, letting it wash over me. I can feel her eyes watch me for any movements or, more than likely, any more inhuman glowing. I’m waiting to hear the wail of the police siren—maybe she changed her mind on helping me and was prepared to turn me out when the next opportunity presented itself. With my head in my hands, the fleshy part of my palms pressing into my eyes, I slowly sunk into despair. “They’re going to kill me,” I confess.

Diane shifts a little, probably sitting up. “They said you’re an experiment, right?” I pull my hands away, but not far enough to see anything more than the pink flecked flesh of my palms.”They wouldn’t kill you if they thought you were useful.”

“Then what will they do to me?” I ask, my voice eerily calm for the mania I feel building inside of me. I think back to that man being dragged by the orderlies and his crazy smile as they hauled him off. It’s all just a game—it had seemed to have said–and maybe that’s all this is. Some fucked up game that I don’t even know the rules to, let alone how to win.

“Well what I think you have to figure out first is what did they do to you?” Diane poses. It sinks in and keeps some of creeping desolation at bay. “If you know what they did to you maybe…”

“Maybe I could get a step ahead,” I finish, finally looking up and seeing Diane leaning forward on the couch with her small mouth twisted in concern. Her eyes well with pity as I feel something in me awaken; this time it’s not the buzz, but rather the spirit of competition. Because this game I know how to play. This game of information I know how to win.

I smile, big and goofy, which breaks some of the tension. However, Diane’s face closes off again. “So what can you do other than possess my stove?”

My grin only widens. “Oh, sweetheart, you would not believe what I can do.”

Next part 9 >>

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Notes: I edited part 7 so that it’s shorter. As I worked on this one, I decided the breakfast scene fit better in this part in the last, so sorry for the repeat!