Seeing As It Is The Season, (it’s Really Not I Just Love The Raven Boys) I Thought I Would Share My

Every time I see someone call Neil an unreliable narrator I think about how cool it could be to have AFTG from like fully unreliable Neil. Like Neil in canon is mildly unreliable in the same way all 3rd person close narrations are: he has a point of view and priorities but he's not actually that unreliable. He's telling us the truth and he's telling us the story and he's telling us basically everything (I love these books but those early chapters of TFC were some exposition heavy chapters). But like Neil as a real actual unreliable who actually lies to us? Imagine spending like the first book and a half not knowing he's not Neil Josten? Imagine us believing his story and buying into it as much as Andrew and only learning the real story of Nathaniel as and went pieces are forced out of him. Imagine the post-Columbia scene and being so mad at Andrew because Neil is just a private little guy who's a fan of Kevin, only for Neil to then go "welp actually my dad was low level mafia guy who worked for the Moriyamas actually" and we find that out at the same time as Andrew. Neil who is so deep into his cover he doesn't even tell us unless someone has dragged it out of him.

(And no, this is not a "this is how it should have been written" this is a "imagine it and I kinda want to write the fanfic")

An fanfic where Neil starded working for the Hatfords after his mom died but he is already dating Andrew and join the foxes anyway

so, andrew and neil meet in juvie when neil was like 14

he stayed there for 3 or 4months while his mother worked some things out

and there he bonded with andrew, told him some trues (he was 14 he was not thar good at keeping secrets yet) , they make a deal, a lot of drama etc etc

and then he has to break out from the place and andrew is like

" i'm going with you"

"no, you're not"

"yes, i am"

andrew can be fucking stubborn so yeah he goes with neil

(he already knows about aaron is a way to put more distance between them)

mary is pissed off, but andrew knows to much and she was not about to kill him

and she sees the way that andrew protect neil so in the end andrew stays with them

is not like someone will put real effort in looking for a foster kid

so she shows andrew how to use a knife (I think she didn't stop teaching neil, is a too valuable habilit)

and also a gun, and i have a headcanon that Andrew is just awful with it, and neil loves to make fun of him

anyway, they protect each other, kill some people, fall in love, learns russian, spar together, normal teenager stuffs

mary does not know, andrew doesn't like her but he doesn't kill her because he knows she is the only reason neil is still alive

they started dating after a year since they meet, so neil was 15 and andrew 16

idk neils/nathaniels age makes me confuse

also, andrew convinces neil to play exy without she knowing

(btw i forgot to mention neil was stefan when thet meet and alex when seattle happens)

and well like a just said Seattle happens

and after that neil can't just keep running, he won't be responsible for Andrew death as well

sooo, yep he calls stuart

Stuart tells them all the moriyamas bullshit, etc etc

they go to the FBI, neils is officially neil abraam josten, Andrew becames andrew minyard etc

after that andrew goes to live with aaron and Neil goes to england, it was safer that way for both of them

STUART KILLS NATHAN/LOLA YEAHH

continuing, they keep dating, long distance and all, andrew goes to england every month at least and do little jobs for neil's family

neil only do some translation works and he is pretty good at making deals (the irony) so he deals with a lot of other mobs family's and is like a lot people think he should become head of the family but that's a long history

anyway, all the canon shit with Andrew happens the same way, Tilda, Nicky, he turning down the ravens and he join the foxes

but he has some Hatford people watching over him so he doesn't beat all those man alone and doesn't take his meds (just needs to see a therapist for a couple of years)

even with all the Mafia shit neil still plays exy and he is better than he is in canon since he have been practicing with andrew for a few years (and also he spars with andrew so hr is a wayyyy better fighter and he also uses the knifes cause of andrew insistence and again all the mafia shit)

anyway, the Hatfords know about them but Andrew's family/the foxes (same thing, no?) doesn't

they come with a plan to take down the moriyamas and i have that in my head but don't know how to explain

but neils deals with a lot of mafia family's right? so like if the moriyamas kill him the Hatfords and idk the chinese as well will take revenge, and the moriyamas would loose since they are dealing with a war in japan and kengo is in hospital, nathan is dead etc etc

so, too much trouble to kill neil, so neil makes a peace offer with ichirou that while he is in the eau he won't kill him or the other foxes

so like, if rikos touches them he will be carving his own grave, and thats the whole point, cause Kevin's hand proven that riko's doesn't have any self control so the fucking plan is making riko angry

and we all know how good neil is at this, andrew is not happy

so yeah, neil needs to join some exy team and of course he will join the foxes because his bf right

NOW EVERYONE FINDING OUT ABOUT NEIL

because like, they are together for years, and not as much hurt as they are in canon, they didn't feel the need to tell anyone but they also doesn't care to hide and yes they hold hand in public and things like this

now neil only come on the same day the upperclassmen return cause there was no need for him to come early

so, like a hour before the reunion in the lounge andrew is like hey everybody in the car now or you're walking

and everyone is like ???? especially when andrew makes kevin go in the backseat

and he goes to the airport and nobody understands nothing, until neil comes

and he just completely ignores everyone im the backseat (yes even Kevin) and looks at andrew >that way< and andrew is a man in love, so he leans and gives neil a quick kiss and neil smiles at him and with a fucking soft voice says "hey baby"

andrew did not blush

anyway they started driving and andrew has his hand on neils leg and aaron, nicky and kevin are just fucking shook, they have no reaction at all, no words nothing because WTF

so when neils turns and says "hey guys, i'm neil" and is meet with three shocked faces staring at him he is trying so hard not to laugh and just goes "are you all okay"

nicky's is the first to recover and well... nicky... "ANDREW, WTF, YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND, WHY DIDN'T U TOLD US, WHAT ABOUT REENE, WHAT"

andrew ignores him and turns on the radio, neil lights a cigarette and they start talking in russian

aaron doesn't say a word

anyway, neils fly was a little late so they're the last ones at the stadium

so when they enter the lounge and andrew is waking with some scary dude (because yeah neil can be pretty and scary) and when they sit in the sofa with thights to shoulders touching everyone is like what the fucking hell

aaron and nicky find some other place to sit, neil does some remark and they start talking in russian and yeah they don't know if they should ignore or no

until dan breaks the spell by asking since when andrew speaking russian and andrew just look at her completely bored until neil answers her

after that wymack (which as always is so fucking done) asks if they have some more languages to show off or if they could start

they both deadpan "yes there is" but are ignored

anyway during the reunion some try to ask questions but wymack stops them and neil and andrew just glare at the person and that's enough to make they shut up

until Aaron makes some shitty remark about both of them in german and neil goes to protective mood and roast aaron in the same language

nicky has to stop aaron from punching Neil (and andrew won the bet he made with Stuart about someone trying to punch neil before neil punches someone

and again wymack is so done

and then they break the news about the ravens coming south

which andrew and neil already know because Hatfords

andrew is still pissed off at kevin

and then neils says (on purpose) something about the moriyamas and everyone is staring at him like????

and the he just smile a little >that smile< and says "you really don't remember me kevin"

he wasn't wearing contacts or anything like that so Kevin's recognizes him

it's caos

but i'm to tired to keep writing sorry

Lance during testing in Bahrain today ✨

cant stop thinking about spn x danny phantom crossover

Danny seeing cas's true form inspired by this post

I know it’s not what you usually write, but could you do hc’s for Nicky / Aaron / Neil learning the actual timeline for Andrew and Roland’s “relationship” and then completely cutting Roland out of their lives? Bonus points if Neil like, kills or calls up Ichirou to kill him :) thanks :) I need closure :)

Don’t we all, babe? Here’s a lil something for your trouble

“How old were you when you lost your virginity,” Andrew read off the block. All the Upperclassmen, save Renee leaned forward in anticipation. Amidst the flood of articles published upon Andrew’s admittance to Easthaven, the media had muddled much of the story in regards to the entire Pre-Thanksgiving Fiasco. While Neil had taken the time to clear things up with the Upperclassmen, he’d left out a lot of the details, namely Andrew’s history of trauma. 

“It’s none of y’alls fucking buisness-” Aaron started. 

“Seven.” It was as though someone had sucked all the air out of the room. “He was dating my foster mother. She knew what he was doing. So long as she got her check, she didn’t care.”

Folding his hands in his lap in an attempt to sate his urge to reach out, Neil let his eyes go out of focus. Every single fiber of his being ached to touch Andrew. For eight months, Andrew had stood by his side, quelling his every urge to run despite the looming threat of his father. Even after Nathan’s death, Neil had bolted awake in the middle of nights, iching to cut and run. Every single time, Andrew had hooked a hand behind his neck, drawn him close, muttered quiet reassurances until he’d smoothed over all of Neil’s ragged edges. Admitting this could not be easy for Andrew. Why he’d even done it, Neil didn’t know but he wished that he could offer Andrew with at least a fraction of the support he’d provided him in the last year. By nothing short of a miracle, he was granted the opportunity to. 

Andrew’s arm dropped from off the couch back, settling across Neil’s shoulders. Immediately, Neil felt himself relax. 

“How old were you when you chose to have sex for the first time?” Nicky asked, hesitantly. That wasn’t a distinction anyone should ever have to draw and it cut Neil deeper than any of his father’s knives. 

“Seventeen,” Andrew answered. The Foxes collectively exhaled. In South Carolina, the age of consent was sixteen. It probably wasn’t a good call to grant hormonally charged teens the legal ability to consent to sex but what were they going to do? Have sex with an adult? 

“Who was it?” Nicky asked. Aaron groaned, clapping his hands over his ears. 

“Roland,” Andrew admitted. The second the name left his lips, Nicky’s smile faltered. Aaron’s hands dropped away, his brows knitting together as they always did when he was sorting through something. 

“No way,” Nicky laughed but it was false cheer. Concern welled in Neil’s chest. “Andrew, when you were seventeen, Roland was…”

“Twenty-three,” Aaron said. His voice was empty, devoid of all the fury painting his features. “He was twenty-three years old and you were a child.”

“I’m more than capable of making my own-” Andrew started.

“No you fucking weren’t!” Aaron roared. “He was your boss. Not only was he older than you, he was in a place of power.” Once more, a pregnant silence fell over the Foxes. None of the Upperclassmen nor Kevin deigned to intervene. 

“Aaron-” Andrew began.

“No,” he snapped. “I don’t- I can’t,” Aaron said as he rocketed out of his seat. Storming through, he knocked into the table and sent the jenga tower toppling. 

“How about we call it a night?” Matt asked. He didn’t wait for an answer before he began clearing away the blocks. Renee moved next, clearing up the glasses and coaxing Dan and Allison to help her with the dishes. Nicky stood, his movements mechanical as he made his way from the room. Kevin followed him out in silence. It wasn’t until everyone had left the room that Andrew moved. Unfurling from where he’d curled up on the couch, he drew his arm back from around Neil and stood. 

“Andrew,” Neil called quietly. There was something poisonous in the gaze he turned on Neil but it did nothing to deter him. “He wasn’t just older or your boss. He didn’t respect you.” Andrew’s lips curled in a snarl. “You had to handcuff him just to keep his hands off you.” Neil’s voice broke near the end but he didn’t care. It seemed to break something in Andrew too.His apathetic facade fell back into place but there were cracks in it now. From the slump of his shoulders to the muscle ticking in his jaw, Neil could see how their words had affected him. Andrew didn’t believe in regret for it was the result of shame and guilt. Surely, he felt neither of those things now. There was no shame in sating his desires. All teens had them. There was no guilt in it either. He wasn’t the one that had done anything wrong. 

Fishing his cigarettes out of his pocket, Andrew slipped one out of the carton and lit it up. He headed out the door with Neil at his heels. They parted ways at the door to their room, Andrew headed for the stairwell in search of some time to clear his head and Neil headed for their bed to give him the space he undoubtedly needed. 

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“How was y’alls weekend?” Bee asked, chipper as ever. “I heard you forwent the usual Columbia outing in favor of going to one of Dan’s game night.” Aaron’s heart stumbled. A wave of anger washed over him, thinly veiling the anguish beneath. Seven. Andrew had been hurting since he was seven. Not only that, but he’d allowed the unthinkable.

“How can you stand him?” Aaron asked, his body trembled as he struggled to contain his anger. 

“How can you stand her?” Andrew countered. As always, he looked entirely uninterested in the proceedings. He was slumped down in his chair, absently stirring his hot chocolate. 

“Tilda didn’t rape me.” Bee sat a little straighter. Immediately, her gaze flicked towards Andrew. Aaron watched as Andrew set his cup back onto the desk. 

“I trust Neil.” 

“Like you trusted Roland?” Aaron’s voice came out sounding cold, empty, and nothing like himself. Fury lit up Andrew’s face. “He was twenty-three, Andrew. An adult! You were seventeen. What the fuck were you thinking?” A heavy silence settled over them. Bee always gave the boys a few minutes to cool down or pick up the conversation without her own intervention. Just as she opened her mouth, Andrew spoke.

“It was the first time I’d felt in control of things,” he said finally. “Everyone was always taking what they wanted from me. My… arrangement with Roland was purely transactional. I got him off and I got to feel like I was in control.” Andrew picked his mug back up from the desk. Aaron watched as he drained it in one go. “In retrospect, I see that I wasn’t. My sense of control was an illusion that Roland allowed me to maintain so that he could get what he wanted.” 

“That’s a very interesting insight, Andrew,” Bee remarked. She made several notes on her clipboard as Aaron digested his brother’s words. That was all they had time for. The two of them allowed Bee to walk them to the door of the clinic and drove back to the court in silence. 

Despite it being the middle of practice, Nicky was standing in the parking lot. 

“Hey,” he said, plastering a smile to his face at the twins’ approach. 

“What are you doing?” Aaron asked. He watched as a shiver ran down his cousin’s spine at the chilly tone. 

“I left the flash drive with all my old photos of Erik at the house a while ago. I’ve gotta go grab it so I can make him a video for our 7th anniversary! Kevin’s letting me borrow his car too. How was Bee?” Neither of the twins answered. “Alright, good talk!” Nicky called after them.

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Good talk indeed. It seemed that neither of the twins suspected a thing. Cutting the engine on, Nicky peeled out of the lot. A month after Riko’s death, the Ravens had sent his old car to Kevin. They’d said that, as his brother and closest family member, Kevin should be the one to inherit all his belongings. Of course, their intentions weren’t as pure as the media portrayed them to be. Every single one of Riko’s belongings served as a reminder of Kevin’s time in the Nest. 

The Foxes had held a bonfire on the beach in which they’d burnt all of it. Neil had attended as well. From what Nicky had managed to wring from him, his mother had died on a beach and Neil had been forced to burn her body. 

“It won’t be easy,” Neil had admitted, “but I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” The smile that had stretched across his had been so undeniably fox-like that Nicky had done a double take. 

It was nice seeing Neil smile. It was even nicer to see the way Andrew relaxed around him. The two of them had been forged in the hellfires of their upbringings into the most wicked blades in the Fox arsenal. But that didn’t mean they were invincible. Even the sharpest of knives could be scratched and chipped and, eventually, broken. 

Ever since Andrew first arrived in Columbia, Nicky had sworn he’d protect his cousins to the best of his abilities. He’d never once managed it. In fact, more often than not, Andrew was the one protecting him. It was time he paid him back for it. 

Nicky pulled into the parking lot of the ramshackle apartments at the edge of Columbia in record time. Atop his car, lounged a familiar figure. 

“Nicky?” Roland called as he sat up. His eyes were red and he reeked of weed. “What are you doing all the way out here without Andrew?” Nicky could feel his blood boiling beneath his skin. 

“When did you start sleeping with him?” Nicky asked, struggling to keep his voice steady. Roland’s brows knitted together as he thought.

“Started maybe… four years ago? It ended as soon as your little runner joined the line, though. Shame,” Roland said, sliding off the trunk of his car, “Andrew was the best I’d ever had.” 

“Do you know how old he was?” Nicky demanded. There was no hiding the way it trembled now. 

“He was seventeen.” The answer was immediate and it knocked the air out of Nicky’s lungs. “He was legal,” Roland said with a shrug. The old one two, he heard Matt say in his head. It suddenly struck Nicky that Roland was older than he was. 

“He was a child,” Nicky roared. “My child!” Before he even realized, Nicky had closed the space between them. His hand came up, curled in a fist. The jarring pain of his own knuckles connecting with the side of Roland’s jaw knocked him back into his body. 

“What the fuck, Nicky-” Roland started but, as he looked up from where he’d fallen, terror washed over his face. 

“Don’t you ever speak to me or my boys again,” Nicky snarled. The drive back passed in a blur. Making his way up the stairs mechanically, Nicky headed back to his own room. When he opened the door, he found Andrew settled on the couch with Neil in his lap and a controller in his hands. Aaron was stretched out on the other couch, watching the screen. 

“Can’t wait to lose a fourth time, can you, Minyard?” Matt taunted. 

“Fuck off, Boyd,” Andrew snapped. Aaron laughed, warm and bright, and the sound filled the room. Nicky watched as Andrew’s gaze flicked over to his brother, the ghost of a smile flickering across his mouth. My boys, Nicky thought with a smile. 

“Come on, Nicky,” Matt called. “I need someone who’ll put up a real challenge.” 

“Get ready to have that fine ass of yours handed to you,” Nicky shot back. 

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“You’ve missed quite a few birthdays,” Neil said, offhandedly. 

“That’s a helluva birthday present, Abram,” the man on the other end of the line remarked. 

“It is,” Neil agreed. The man huffed an exaggerated sigh. 

“Fine. You’ll have Roland’s head by the end of the week.” 

“Thanks, Uncle Stuart,” Neil said. He could feel the cruel smile curling his lips but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was one of the monsters after all.

Imagine Ketterdam centuries in the future, where all six crows have become saints, and their shenanigans have too many references sin history books to be written off as fairytales.

Kaz Brekker, the Saint of thieves who takes pity on the lost souls and evokes power into the hearts of crooks.

Inej Ghafa the Saint of the abused, holding a protective hand over those who share her story and causing slavers great misfortune.

Jesper Fahey, the Saint of treasure whose name those whisper at gambling tables for good luck and is said to guard all zowa.

Wylan Hendriks, a Saint of runaways who watches over the shaken souls and bruised children who slip out of their bedroom windows to start new lives.

Nina Zenik, the Saint of lovers who couples leave offerings to in hopes that their love will be eternal, no matter what.

Matthias Helvar, the Saint of soldiers who younglings going to war pray to for mercy, and known to protect Grisha when called upon.

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to share this little Kendrail one shot that I wrote!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24714121

Tw: Self Harm mentioned

Danny moves in with the Wayne's. They know nothing about his vigilante life or lab incident. They know he's had bad parents, and that it was a bad home life, but nothing else.

And everything's going great! It's amazing! Everything is so nice there!

They're bonding, Danny's feeling safe (finally he doesn't have to deal with constant threats on his alter-ego) and it's amazing!

You choose whether he knows about the Wayne's past time or not.

But they slowly start realizing that... Danny wears long-sleeved shirt 24/7. In summer, he complains about the heat but when someone suggests he take of his shirt, he replies, a bit snappy; "hell no."

When they go swimming he wears those full-torso swim suits.He refuses to do anything that would mean uncovering his torso and arms.

So, the Wayne's think he is doing sh. And they ovbiously worry.

Did Danny not feel safe around them? Was there an issue he needed help with but didn't tell them? What was wrong that he felt like self harming?

They begin to tell Danny how loved he is a lot more( everyone in their own ways) and they offer therapists and offer open communication without judgement.

And Danny just... doesn't get it? Like, it's great, his family is showing him they care, but, why are they offering him therapists and websites he can talk to people for help? Granted, he probably needed them, but they don't know about his side-job.

In all honesty, he doesn't like showing his arms and torso because of his scars and stuff from the lab accident and fights with ghosts. But he doesn't realize that his family thinks he self harm's.

Make your own ending to the idea!

Maybe he tells his family! Maybe he gets summoned! Who knows!

can i interest u in a box of friend??

CHILDREN OF THE O.D.D. alastor

In his seven years of absence, Alastor calls on you and collects you.

tags: radio, literary references, developing relationship, temporary amnesia, mental torture, alastor love you but can’t resist causing a little emotional damage, wendigo, dark magic, hurt/comfort

It was not your intention to make any sort of detour after work. Always the string of home pulled you back in like a faithful dog returning to the outstretched hand. You trudge, like a ghost shackled by unfinished business, to the space underneath your shower head. To watch ebony red and wood brown slip into the drain; the filth of blood under fingernails and the sleeves of dirt upon your arms ebbing away.

This detour is unexpected and odd. Breaking a cycle that you had never strayed from, it is undernerving to you. Still –You put your fingers over your lips and frown. You are looking for something; that is as much as you are able to deduct. 

The homemade yard-sale sign is crumbled and ruined. A slab of cardboard folding in on itself because of the rain from yesterday. In streaks, the markers bleed like branching veins across the surface. You actually took a wrong turn because one of the arrows was so wet that you could not decipher if you were meant to walk right or forward. The skies still remain a blanket of nebulous gray and black, thick with potential rain.

Really, you should head home and ignore this detour, you judge just as you step into the backyard sale. Logic tries as it might, you are grappled by this ardor. Entering the mouth, you realize you are here, looking for something. Something that has leashed you subconsciously.

Yard-sales hold a wild assortment of things: dusty books, a splintering wooden bow with arrows included, outgrown clothes, etcetera. An evil secret here or there? You chuckle at the ridiculous thought. 

Rummaging around in dirt was your past-time, rummaging around in strangers’ belongings felt unusual. Mindful of your unclean hands, you simply float around the tables and piles of things. When someone lingers behind you, you move quickly because you are browsing while others are hunting. Truly, you do not yet know what you are planning to sink your teeth into. Your little routine continues, floating around and bouncing out of the way when it looks like someone is interested in the pile you stand in front of. Deeper and deeper, you wander into the labyrinth of unwanted things. 

Perhaps you could pick up something for Alastor. That harrowing need to find something was starting to dim inside you. 

Just as you start browsing for him, that feeling returns tenfold. The peach pit of your stomach feels like a mixture of drain cleaner and bleach. It burns you. Whatever that something is, it is upset to be ignored and hooks itself into your abdomen pulling. 

“Turn left then straight.”

You jump at the sudden voice. And a shudder runs down your spine because they were close enough that their breath tickled your neck. In the labyrinth’s heart, you glance around for the individual that was talking to you. Hm? No one is looking at you. Everyone is nose down in their own business, browsing tables. 

Tentatively, you rest an ice cold hand on the spot where you definitely felt someone’s breath. Odd. You take a step to the right. 

“Left then straight.” You stumble in your walk as if you were a newborn in heels. 

What? You shake your ankle as you restabilize yourself. It felt as if someone had snatched onto your ankle when you moved. Another shudder joins your first. This time you decide to heed that voice. If your subconscious pulled you into the yard-sale, it can definitely direct you. Different from your previous lazy tumble, you move with purpose to that ‘left then straight’ direction. 

But as you take that left turn, you feel an uneasy cocoon itself over your previous headstrong annoyance. You slow your pace. Those previous sensations had been very odd. Someone’s breath on your neck. Someone’s hands around your ankle. You shudder one last time and move straight, searching.

A slumbering nest of snakes starts to squirm in your stomach. The real snake though – the ouroboros ring on your ring finger – is scorching instead of slittering. Like red hot iron to a horse flank. Knowing it is impossible to take it off, you rub cold fingers over it. Worrying hands joined at your chest, you look left and right for the item that has ensnared you. Long ago, the ouroboros ring had ensnared you in the same way, pulling and tugging at your intestines and bones like a magnet grabbing at its opposite pole.  Remembering that, you grow even more uneasy. 

What are you looking for?

You realize it as soon as your eyes fall on it.

The spiritual itch is finally scratched. The last piece is thumbed into the puzzle. The starved man has finally been given food. Before your mind catches up, you have already reached the plastic folding table and are touching your something. Heat from the ouroboros ring ebbs softly.

The woodwork is beautiful like a stained catholic mural. The single diamond eye of brown bakelite and wood blinks at you, surprised to be touched. Gilded brass is tickled by your experimenting hands as you turn its knobs. Wires spread over the speakers like a spider-made ribcage start to beat flustered at your presence. When you run your fingers over the ridges and arches, it leans into your touch. Though it is an entirely inanimate piece, it has so much character. An authentic radio, probably dated 1910 or 1920s. Worrying a bit about its fragility, you do not dare to pick it up no matter how it pleads and flirts with you to do just that. It is certainly a bewitching beauty. So, this is your something; this is what you were looking for. 

But – a delicate frown moves your lips. You have no use for a radio like this in your home. Heavens know you have enough radios at home. Can this really be what your heart wants? When you move your hands off the woodwork, it feels as if your ring grows a circle of spikes that sink into your skin and collide at your fingerbone. You yelp and quickly put your hands back on the yard-sale item. Your heart does want this … apparently …

“Okay,” you whisper as if that will appease your heart, your subconscious, and your ring – all three holy spirits of your body. “Okay.” Gingerly, you lift up the hulking mass and start back towards the entrance. Well, Alastor can simply deal with another radio. And you are slightly elevated to bring it back home. Elevated enough that when you reach home –

You kick off your shoes by the entrance and sing out, “Alastor, I’m home.”

Radio cradled to your chest, you listen intentionally to the suspicious silence. You wonder how he will greet you this time. Sometimes, there are bumps of furniture or he simply slips in front of you. You can never truly predict Alastor’s moods. He is something volatile; he can either be as sweet as a dream or dangerous as a nightmare. For a few moments, you wait for the other shoe to drop. And when he arrives in your sight, you wear your best smile to greet him. 

“Hi honey,” you say and kneel down. You balance the heavy radio on one of your knees. Reaching out one dirty hand, your faithful cat Alastor nuzzles into the skin, ignoring the dirt and blood. You scratch behind his ears as his purring starts up.

You named him after King Alastor from the game Painkiller: Battle out of Hell. When he was just a kitten, you wrestled with two names Alastor or Asura from another video game. Why did the name of a final boss win over a hero’s name? You had no idea but your heart guided your decision and four years later, it fits your mischievous bengal cat perfectly.

“I know, I know,” you medicate when he starts meowing for food. “I’m twenty minutes late coming home and that means two hours to you. But look Alastor! Another radio! This one is too heavy for you to knock down so it’s perfect.” Your enthusiasm is met by louder caterwauling.

Wilting at Alastor’s lackluster reaction, you gently set the radio on the long dining room table. It was lined with six chairs that no one besides yourself used. On the wooden surface is a Christmas rug-runner and stacks upon stacks of mail asking you to open a new credit card. A few unwashed plates stand in a stack of six, grease of meals shining luminous off them. May’s sun pours in to brighten all of the radios that you have collected on your table. 

Your new radio nestles itself snuggly into your little home. Though you were not able to bargain the price you exactly wanted, you were glad to have it at all. The condition is remarkable for something coming from a yard-sale. Annoyed at your admiration, your bengal cat lays himself over your socks and bites your toes.

“Alastor,” you scold, scooping up your noisy cat. “Be nice to your parents. Where are your manners?”  

With a boop on the nose and a kiss on the cheek, you bring Alastor into the kitchen so you can serve him Purina kitten chow and ruffle his fur when he nuzzles into you. Then you will wash away all your filth and sleep. 

It has been seven days since you bought the radio. 

For something you were so enraptured over, you had no urge to try working with it. The owner remarked that it only works for AM radio broadcasting. After a century, those channels never changed and were opertable during power outages. Their frequency could be picked up anytime, connecting themselves to the skin of your radio like a lovely little kiss. Since no natural disasters were happening, the most entertainment you could get from AM radio was the morning’s traffic. Enthusiasm washed out of you after a week of showers, you found yourself kicking yourself for giving in so easily to temptation. 

“And my more-having would be as a sauce to make me hunger more,” you mutter Macbeth as you lace up your boots. 

Today, your boss has scheduled you and your groundskeeping company to plant a dozen trees outside of a mail office. You enjoyed the small business as a landscaper; being the leader of a whole team had some perks too. 

Louisiana was always pleasantly warm. Never did you have to gripe over blizzards causing traffic nor bringing an extra coat to weather the weather. Most days you manage to just walk to and from the sight your boss assigned. Life was good and life was simple. 

You finished with the final knot on your Timberlands. Hesitantly, you cast a look towards your new radio, standing out among the rest because of its antiquity. Hearing a bit of the weather might be the perfect test to see if the radio worked, if all vacuum tubes and components were clean. Stomping through the kitchen into the adjacent dining room, you quickly turn the gilded knob and wait.

A mimicking hiss of a vexed Alastor and a sizzle of eggs poured into a pan is the first sound your new radio blesses you with. Resolutely, you flicker with the knob. The sound of a million pieces of hail falling on your roof. The singing of a mixed bowl of frequencies. The caterwauling of – oh! You finally found a coherent station.

“With highs reaching ninety, we can expect a beautiful Thursday ahead of us. Now, we do have some cumulonimbus clouds making their way down from the north-east.  That thunderstorm from Mississippi should be reaching us in –” Satisfied, you click off the radio and head out the door. 

“NO! NOOO!” When you are pulled up by the waist, you only scream louder. “NOOOOO!” You scream like a deer with its leg snapped and broken in the jaws of a bear trap, desperate and tormented. 

“(Name)! (Name), stop this! (Name), calm down,” your mother pleads. 

The woman who baked you under her pie crust skin for nine months is devastated to see you so upset. Her own flesh and blood, curled tightly in her arms, wailing like a hunted deer. You cry loudly as if you have broken a bone or been stabbed. “I know, baby. I know,” she tries to console and move your crying face into her neck. A piercing yell in her ear causes her to wilt and shudder. 

“(Name) please.” Your mother has already passed the point of angrily yelling back at you. The crescent shape of her acrylic nails still present on your tiny wrist. Given up that fight, she tries desperately to figure out why you refuse to leave the pawn shop. 

Gore cakes your tiny, wailing face. A scream so loud had one of the vessels in your vocal folds erupting open; a vocal cord hemorrhage which will cost your mother a month of bills for vocal therapy for her four year old child. Red oil glides out and down to vinyl floors. Around the mouthful of blood, you still scream no no no as your mother tries to walk you out.

There are no words to explain what you are experiencing. Even if you were not so young, you doubt that you could relate to anyone what you felt. As the distance between you and entrance grew smaller, a stabbing pain in your gut emerged. A simple tummy-ache. Then it grew. Tummy-ache evolving into a fever; fever blossoming into a stab wound; stab wound maturing into a pain that felt like some invisible hands were trying to tear your soul from your body. When you toed your foot on the entrance, everything exploded in one culmination of white pain and you lost yourself to the possession of something otherworldly. 

Defiant, your limbs move in a hurricaning, thrashing windmill. You squirm like a fly blindly trying to escape out a window as bang bangs of a person’s shoe follow its erratic track. A strong kick into your mother’s pancreas has her stumbling. Relenting, she drops your mercurial body. 

Your mother falls to her own knees with you. She considers telephoning your father, telephoning her own parents, telephoning a medical professional. Anyone who can come and save her: a scared, new mother who has never seen her child act out this.

Hundreds of eyes are staring at the volatile display. Guests who want to enter and buyers who want to leave, all stare at her hunched form as you caterwaul. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I just don’t know what’s wrong,” your mother mutters helplessly. By now she is starting to suspect that you might be seriously injured in a place she cannot see. Something beyond the blood in your mouth. “God please.”

Finally, someone heavensent steps off the background and taps your mother on the shoulder. Her desperation causes her to turn at a neck-breaking speed. 

She never remembers the face or gender of this person when recalling the story. She recalls only a shudder of terror. Spindly and crawling terror, pianoing itself in a rapid flight up her body like a bumblebee. A symphony of fear, she recalls. Gently, the person takes one of the hands she had put around you protectively. In it, a ring is dropped.

An ouroboros ring – the image of a snake eating its own tail. 

Fumbling with disbelief, your mother glances around to see that the person is gone. She sets her sight back on you, worried you might have disappeared along with the person. There you are – all forty inches of you, shivering, water and blood falling down your face in rivulets. She glances helplessly at the ring and then –

When she drops it into your hand, the pain goes away. Yet, stricken by such an endeavor, your eyes roll back in your head. Past the billowing tears and red veins, up and up. Like a puppet cut from strings, you promptly pass out. Squeezed tightly in a rigor mortis grip, the ouroboros ring stays with you. And when you feel that thousand feet plummet into oblivion course through you, your body in the waking world springs up, face stained with warm tears.

That memory again. 

How many times have you dreamed about it?

How many more times will it be in your dreams?

Chilled fingers run across your damp face, drying it. The head of the iron snake kisses a stroke from eyelid to eyelid. You suppose the ring will always remain with you, in dreams and in reality. Tired eyes glance at your bedside alarm clock: 1:11. Trust your intuition and listen to your heart. You climb out of bed, mindful of Alastor even with limited vision.

Often, your body moves disconnected from the kingdom of your mind. Without even being aware of it, you will pull yourself back from danger (a falling tool at the job site, a misplaced nail, etcetera) and chalk it up as extreme good luck. Leaving words unsaid, you laugh at all the random occasions of self-saving, pointing your thanks towards God.  

You are not slow though. After a while, anyone would start to suspect it. You know it is something else other than luck. Something that has shadowed you since birth.  

Pulled towards it like a magnet, you sit on the dining table chair. Everything in your house is shrouded in nebulous dark. Silver light shines down from the moon, past a window’s filter, onto the radio. An evangelical interruption? Like slippery fish-oil, silver glides over the rich brown of a ribcage and heart and skin. The scene looks disrupted like fragments of reflection in a dirty mirror. Sleeping moonlight brushes over your fingers, nuzzling into your ring.

Timidly, you extend a hand and flick on the dial. A short buzzing hum greets you. “Hello?” You turn the knob some more, searching. Your face is still damp from previous tears. “Hello?” And though there should be more than a dozen A.M. frequencies that your radio can tune into, all that you hear is everlasting static.

None of your strawberries tasted like fruit this morning. Where they should be rich with juice flowing in your mouth when you bite, they are dry. It is the entire quart of strawberries that you bought had been replaced with foam copies, a facsimile of themselves.

Everything that has been feeling imitation of itself. Yesterday, you swore there was someone standing behind you while digging a tunnel for a septic tank and distribution box. Yet at each wild turn, no figure was hovering off you. This morning, you woke up dreaming that dream again. You carefully spit your strawberry into a napkin. Ugh, what was happening to you?

When you discard them into the trash-can, Alastor stirs and gives you a look before returning to his food. You nudge him with your foot and move across the kitchen. Leaning down into the fridge, you search for the carton of milk. In the recess of your mind, you halfheartedly listen to your radio.

Your new family member plays something vintage this morning. You had no idea A.M. frequencies did old radio series like this anymore – you had only heard about The War of the Worlds radio drama due to a parody and its natural popularity. In today’s modern age, you thought podcasts were the only echo of radio dramas, a cheap imitation. You luckily caught this radio drama at the very beginning, perhaps only two or three minutes in.

The radio drama was about a husband and wife. Aboard With the Lockharts was the name. The wife, Kathleen Lockhart, had finally persuaded her husband that they would take a cruise to Europe, after some womanly envy, and her husband conceded to come. It is the end of the first episode:

“There we are, dear.”

“You’re the nicest husband a woman ever managed!”

“Well, I-uh I guess every husband would be nice if he had a wife like you. Now, let me study that circular a bit and see what we’re going to get. And, uh, turn on the radio, dear.” A flow of music follows.

The cheapest you can get a gallon of milk in New Orleans is at Aldi’s for only three dollars. You had heard almond-milk was statistically better for your health. As a groundskeeper, you knew maintaining that was entirely important for your job but double the price for a quart rather than a gallon. Well, you knew your –

“Tour Europe with us! Seven glorious countries! Why, you have just started to go aboard with the Lockharts … We thank you for tuning in listeners. The day is May 10th, 1931. The weather forecaster is sunny with –” 

As Alastor stops hissing, angered at how rapidly you run from kitchen to dining room, you hold the knob in your hand tense. Challenging, the eyeball of your radio stares back at you. 1931? 1931, ha. You sigh at your panic. It was probably prerecorded. Even if the day and month were the same, there is no reason to get so out of sorts. Ugh, what was happening to you?

As you towel off yourself, the radio program you had turned on plays. You were so ashamed that you had gotten worked up over nothing. After listening to a few more radio dramas, it turned out that they were cut and played from previous tapes. Of course the dates and times would remain. 

Though why when you used your car, (Name), did you not find that station? Did any other A.M. frequencies play returns of old 1920s and 1930s radio drama, hm?  Not a single one.

You scrub your towel harder into skin, ignoring yourself. There was no intelligent reason to be worked up over a station that played love stories. Love was the least malice part of life after all. Not that you would ever know, you mourned. You got ghosted more than you would like to admit. 

The program on the radio almost seems to mock you:

“Because I love you myself I suppose.”

“You do, Jeanie?” The woman murmurs a yes. “How long has this been going on?”

“Ever since I helped you with that tire.”

“You know maybe that was why I was kind of relieved when Roberta told me we were all washed up.”

“Frank!”

“It’s true. I’ve been kind of dreading marching down that aisle with Roberta for some time now. You know, someone else seemed to fit better into that picture.”

“Who?”

“A hitchhiking blonde I picked up once. She was bound for New York. Funny if she ended up in London on our honeyman.”

“Oh Frank.”

“Oh (Name) darling.”

The towel falls to the ground, heavy with the weight of water it has absorbed off your skin. Nude, you stand with a breath locked and keyed away in your lung. Alastor sleeps soundly on your comforter, ignorant to your distress. You push a hand to your chest, steel band cold on your skin. Yes. It is beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. 

“Go to bed, (Name),” you instruct yourself. 

When all the lights in your house are flicked off, you make sure to put the radio into the kitchen. Your bedroom is right adjacent to the dining room. At least with some distance between you and it, without true separation, you might get some sleep. 

You stare at your ring as you pet up and down Alastor’s spine. Some distance but never fully separated. 

You rush into your home as if someone is chasing you, snapping and swiping at your ankles. “Shit, double shit,” you curse, throwing your closed umbrella down to the ground. Loudly, the door is banged shut to the point where the tiny window on it rattles. Water has soaked you down to the bone marrow. 

“Fucking shit,” you gripe as you take off boots filled with miniature ponds. If only the rain was not coupled with sparks of lightning, you would have been able to use your umbrella. 

Ugh, what a goddamn mess. You strip off the soaked bomber jacket. That depth of rain was so bad for the fabric. Defeated, you hang the Clavin Klein jacket on the nearby hook and go to venture deeper into your home when you pause. 

You had forgotten you left the radio on your kitchen table. The presence of it startles for a quick moment. Surely, the need to strip off the wet clothes you are in wins over. Truthfully, besides a few odd glitches of words, it has been harmless. Falling back into your typical dismissal cope, you move to go into the dining room. 

The power in your house goes out. 

“Double fucking shit.”

A power outage would have been a minor inconvenience if you were not blind. The entirety of your house is cloaked in a nebulous black, not even a flicker of the microwave clock. You pause in your footfall, still as a tree. Hands clenched by your side, you rationalize it all. Lightning must have caused a fallen wire. One of your hand pats around to find a wall. Get to your hung jacket then you can use your phone to navigate in a much clearer fashion. 

You just hoped Alastor would not be causing a fit in the deep sea darkness. “Alastor, honey?” Thankfully, your hand falls on the circular kitchen table. “Alastor?” Slowly, you round the table and start to finger the walls. Just ten or so steps forward and you will be standing right by the entrance. 

Though, Alastor being this quiet was unnerving. You move towards the door – Huh?

The table rattles unsteady as you are pushed into it. “Ugh, what the –.” The breath is punched out. The scream that comes out of you is inhuman and animalistic, full of fear. Groaning muscles wilt as you are thrown into one of your kitchen chairs, seated forcefully. 

You barely recover your mind, barely recover yourself to worry about your safety, when something chills you to the bone.

Up, the scream of an injured cat pierces the formless black innards of this haunted house. It almost sounds fake like a horror movie sound recording. Then the clattering rain of a handful of objects hitting the ground pierces your ears next. Those coupling sounds … the horrible thought that someone has thrown Alastor into something. The horrid, bone-chilling thought that someone is hurting him.

“Alastor!” You jump off the chair, guided by instinct. Swiftly, you are back down in the chair. “Alastor!”

A mimicking hiss of a vexed Alastor stabs the air … except it is not your cat. You know because it sounds like the sizzle of eggs in a pan too. Your bottom lip trembles wildly. Luminous white from a flash of lightning splats onto the kitchen then shrinks away in seconds. You refuse to look at it though. Calm down. AM frequency works during power outages, this radio is unlike your others, you rationalize, but you never turned the knob for it to reach any sort of frequency. 

“...Alastor,” you try again, voice trembling. Oh you stupid cat, just come when called. You sit mournful and yearning that Alastor will come to prove he is safe at the very least. 

Not stuck with silence for long, the radio sings out. The words and instruments broken up by flaking static like kintsugi pottery, a second melody backdropping the noise: Hey, hobo man; hey, Dapper Dan; you've both got your style but brother – then an anguished scream breaks the voice of Donald Craig and the musical number. You shrink into the chair, face aghast and jaw slack. No. No. NO!

You stay silent the entire broadcast, horrified. 

A woman’s voice: “– he gives me the glad news that I have a growth in the back of my eye and he wants to cut it out. Only it’s too close to the brain, and he says if it isn’t cut out, this growth might cut off my sight, and leave me up on the high wiRE –” 

A plea: “GOD HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME! GOOOOD!”

The wail of a pipe organ piano follows this demonic symphony. Rustic and deep, it billows out. Echoes of the sound flicker and decay across your walls; the reverbs are rich and dark like shadows; the start of Bach’s Toccata. 

A man’s voice: “lying on the floor, two feet away, with a broken neck. With a broken neck, and his left hand – Well, he put the golden ring on his little finger of his left hand – the way his arms were spread out –” 

The chugging grind of a car that would not start – stubborn coughs and wheezes – assaults your ears. You cradle your head tighter, praying that hardwood will morph into quicksand. 

A cry: “MERCY PLEASE! MERCY! AAAAA!”

Three separate voices overlapping all at once: “Help me! Help me! We belong dead!” — “Oh well, I am just not appreciated around here. Dirt under the feet. That’s all I am.” — “Please, kill me! KillmeKillmeKillme! I just want to die! I can’t — anymore —“ Then the shriek of a deer who has its foot caught in a bear trap. It is your voice as a child, crying out. A masculine voice in a fatherly rhetoric shouts over your infant wails, “You should have never been born, Alastor!” Then, as if lightning had torn down the broadcasting tower, all the cacophony on the radio fell silent, lingering on that horrible name.

The Earth holds its breath in anticipatory silence. 

A merry tone starts up – the melody of a saxophone, clarinet, and trumpet all hugging into one another. It moves amatory in humid air. Jazz. Your favorite genre despite the fact you were born in the year 1998. Swing and blue notes fill your heart like honey on the tongue, familiar and comforting. From the warmth of continuing jazz, a woman’s voice pops out like a flower bud emerging on a spring morning.

“666 A.M.” No that is wrong – the station was 833.3 A.M. (how do you know that?) “-- the Voice of the South; radiophone broadcasting station of the New Ear, New Oreleans, Louisiana, announcing the one who needs no introduction, our one and our only Alastor Melsar.”

Somewhere far away, deep below, a hostaged crowd rises, pulled by the hooks in their napes to start a thundering, happy applause. Someone’s lips are even voodoo-ed to move into an adoring wolf whistle. 

“Hello, hello, is this thing on?”

Your stomach falls to your feet like a rock dropped from a bridge. It explodes, breaking every ice-layered bone in your body. Jazz withers away but the familiarity stays. Because you know that voice, intimately beyond what New Orleans knew about it beyond the ribcage of a radio. You had been ribcage to ribcage, heart to heart with that odious man before. Only you had forgotten. Until now.

You remove your hands from your ears, listening in rapture. 

“Now, I know the broadcast you want to hear comes from Center Theater studio, but today we are coming at you straight from Hell’s very own Pride Ring. But I will bring back our favorite broadcast, for my dear listener. (Name). My love, this one's for you.”

i. Papa nou ki nan syèl la, [Our heavenly Father,]

Alastor hates his father.

This is as established as the hues of flora or as the physics of energy. It is a sentence that will never change under any variables or phenomena. If emotions could become fact, this is one instant of such a time. It is a sentence that you sympathize with as you hated your father too. Oddly enough, you two meet on Father’s Day. Both of you illegally drunk in the height of prohibition, escaping to an abandoned bayou. A shared sentiment connecting your wayward souls: there was no better day of the year to get wasted besides Father’s Day. 

“Oedipus was such an unlucky bastard.”

“How so?”

“He gets to kill his father and doesn’t even know it. The man who left him stranded on a hill to be eaten by wolves. And how does Oedipus repay this? His revenge is killing him in a duel like he is another thug, a nameless person.” You gulp down a sizable sip of your bathroom-made gin. “Just no satisfaction in it.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t you suppose it’s better than not getting to commit patricide? Poor Hamlet. His father harks him about vengeance. And he cannot even get that annoying parasite off his shoulder as Claudius had already killed the King.” Alastor takes a much more measured sip from his whiskey. 

“A dead father is better than a ghost father … I suppose.”

You give a mischievous smile to the stranger sitting with you.  He is quite handsome, bronze brown skin flawless without a drop of sweat. If this were any other day, you would try flirting a bit but today is June sixteen so …

“How’d you kill yours?”

“A shotgun. Then I cut him up and ate him.”

“Serve him to your mother?”

“Oh, I would never taint her darling palette with such horrid meat.”

You start laughing as the stranger asks you the same question, you in jest and him in sincerity, “How’d you kill yours?”

Smiling, you reveal, “I drowned him in this very bayou.”

“This very one?”

“This very one.”

The stranger smiles at that. His smiles are nice. Wide winks of yellowing teeth that seem to engulf his entire face. There is something charming about smiles that show all your vulnerable enamels. 

“I suppose that we drink from the same bottle.”

“We do … I suppose,” he copies your earlier pattern of speech. 

You smile back as you two clink your glasses together. It sucks that after today you two will never see each other again. You have never felt so kindred to another person. New Orleans is so vast. Both a blessing and a curse, certain that your paths will only cross this once.

ii. Nou mande pou yo toujou respekte non ou. [We ask that they always respect your name.]

Names are so significant. It is the equivalent of slicing off a cut of your soul and sharing it. It is the word used to beckon one in a call. And, reconnecting, Alastor and you give your names to each other easily, smitten in a butcher shop. 

iii. Vin tabli gouvènman ou, [Come and establish your government,]

The company Alastor kept was odd. Men who wore sunglasses at night and women who laughed like rusty doors. Human beings that seemed more like monsters with human skin pulled over them like an ill-fitting nightgown. Demons and witches, a cruel part of you speculated.

You had underestimated the vileness of them. They were beyond witches and demons.

You cannot even settle into the place you are sitting. Instead, you collapse into it like a body thrown off a ledge. Vocal cords pinch and tighten under your skin. Awful wheezes plume out of your throat. Amidst this destructive hyperventilation, tears pour down the curvature of your face in steady beads. Your trembling hands gather them up as you curl into the brick wall outside of The Dog House. Ugh, what is happening to you?

The door to the jazz club’s back-alley opens tentatively as you wallow. It is only a sliver of space, not even enough to poke a head through much less an arm or leg. From the slit eye of a shy door, your boyfriend says, “Should I come back at a later time?”

The care of his question only makes you sob harder. Respecting previously set boundaries, the timid door does not fling open and Alastor does not move an inch to step outside – though, the doorknob does wilt and ache under the mounting strength of his grip. He relaxes when the sound of your voice (strained and trembling but no less beautiful) asks, “Do you think I’m silly?”

“Why, dear, you are the unfunniest person I have ever been acquainted with,” Alastor smiles. “Unhumorous and beautiful, like always.” A hazel eye peaks out through the space. It is a talent how much emotion he can translate into each facet of his body. A simple upward crinkle of his eyes, a tiny gleam, and you know his aim is to make you laugh.

Instead, you are compelled with the urge to smack him on the shoulder. 

Taking that angered energy, you grip the bottom half of the door (you still stay seated on infectious, wet pavement). As you push it open, Alastor slinks out into the back-alley. One hand, one foot, a shoulder and chest, until he finally joins you. He sits shoulder to shoulder with you in your hiding spot behind The Dog House. 

“Now, can I ask what made you so out of sorts, dear?”

“You would find it silly. This is all so silly.” You harshly scrub your tearful face, wishing it would restore itself to the dry skin you were accustomed to. “I’m sorry.”

“Now, (Name), we just established that you are unfunny.” With him so close, you do whack him. Nursing his shoulder with a laugh, Alastor continues, “So whatever needs to come off your chest, be out with it. Climb off it.” He looks upon you patiently.

“Mimzy.” His face makes no change in expression, imploring you to continue. “And Harlord. And Lawrence and Evelyn. Oh, Alastor, all of your friends are just so cruel.” Shameful of your confession, you hide back into your knees. The geyser of tears that you had capped with your thumb is starting to billow and leak. “I just cannot see how someone like you can keep such horrid company.”

It was almost like someone had prematurely told them every single insecurity you had. 

The left side of your abdomen still aches from where Mimzy took her nails and dug into you. Lawrence had hooked a finger under your necklace and pulled a bright, suicidal mark on your nape. After repeated use, those insectual insults crawled under your skin, a horde of ticks. Weak defense laughs eventually stopped coming from you altogether when you realized this was not a hazing mechanism. Hate bled from every millisecond of their actions – such a quick switch, all because Alastor left to use the washroom. 

“Oh, dear, what happened?” Alastor wraps an arm around your shoulder, pulling you in close.

“I don’t know. Perhaps, I did something to offend them. What they said was so true, so spot on. They just –”

“No, you’re perfect. Hey. Look at me. You are perfect.”

“Alastor, maybe, I don’t belong here. I just cannot fit in with them and I–”

“Dear,” here he takes both your hands and squeezes them tight. “I have felt that sentiment of yours my entire life. I have been so ostracized for so long before I met you. Never knowing someone who could relate to what I have been subjected to. If they cannot see how perfect you are, then that is sincerely their loss.” 

“But Alastor, they’re your friends. I want them to like me!”

“Dear, we need no one but each other.”

iv. pou yo fè volonte ou sou latè, tankou yo fè li nan syèl la. [to do your will on earth, as it is done in heaven.]

Your nighttime routine is a bit strange. To be truthful, your entire life was wandering a little bit out of the quotidian fences on the roaring 20s. 

The most startling difference was your romantic courting compared to the entire United States. You and Alastor had lived together before marriage. His house was empty – mother and father dead – and you wanted out of that odious prison called home. 

Yet, by now, the two of you had established a nighttime routine like one which a married couple would have. 

Before Alastor stepped into the shower, you checked the expanse and plain of his skin for any ticks that might have made their home there. After, you brewed Alastor coffee instead of tea as a nighttime drink as the shower ran. Then, you freshened yourself and Alastor penned down his next broadcast before you two joined in the dining room, stomach already full of dinner. 

He takes the photograph of Papa Gede out of his study after locking away his papers. On the dining table, his golden eyes cut through you. You always felt nude under that gaze. Parallel to what a dog must experience before being hit. Gazes locked, you hear the repetitive motions of Alastor as he collects all he needs for the ritual. 

Papa Gede’s, the corpse of the first man who ever died, painted form stares at you. Alastor was very keen on this man who represented the powers of fertility and death. A psychopomp believed to wait at crossroads to take souls into the afterlife. You had no idea what Alastor spoke in Creole to him when you two did this before bed. All you knew is those gleaming, almost alive eyes unnerved you to the point where you wanted to turn tail and flee, doe-like.

“Dearest.”

You shudder, disrupted like a still lake attacked by a falling rock, and finally tear your eyes away. The comfort of his arm across your back is warm. You lean into him as he quotes Hamlet to you, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“Sorry.” You place a kiss on his cheek. “Sorry. I know, I overthink too much.”

This is the part you hate the most.

“I quite adore your mind.”

“Thank you, Al.”

He kisses you on the lips. “No, thank you.” And before you can comprehend, like a child getting his tooth pulled on two instead of the promised count of three, Alastor has already run the blade over your palm. 

Alastor goes back in for a deeper kiss as you wince and wilt. Pressing himself hard against you as an outlet to your pain. And then, after a good enough amount of your blood has fallen into the vial, Alastor, in his native tongue, starts to pray that when Papa Gede sees you at the crossroads, he will send you back into the living world. 

v. Pen nou bezwen an, ban nou li jòdi a. [The bread we need, give us today.]

The geography of hearts are all the same.

When Alastor brings home a dead deer, you can tell what his gullitoning Shibazi cleaver is striking down on. Yet — when it all cleaned up — fur and hooves off the table. You can almost pretend you have any species on the table. 

As mammals, we all have four chambered hearts.

Silver light from an oil lamp folds itself over Alastor and where the silver is not, shadows snuggle into Alastor. He is an autopsy photo, too gruesome yet necessary to examine. From his hands, the slick pulse of meat being cut talks to him. Unforgiving, his hands move like headstrong lightning, slicing and dicing.

He opens the whole heart like a scroll or a book. 

You had been apprehensive about consuming deer hearts. The heart was the zenith of evangelical symbolism in literature. Were you or Alastor worthy to consume such a part of the body? It was if you were dissecting an angel and feasting on their piety. 

The geography of hearts are all the same.  

As mammals we all have four chambered hearts. 

He opens the whole human heart like a scroll or a book. 

vi. Padonnen tou sa nou fè ki mal, [Forgive all that we have done wrong,]

Alastor was not an active participant in his own religion. When he did, it was often out of your sight and always out of the public’s eyes. He kept religious scriptures and paintings locked in a safe then additionally locked in a study room. A scandal such as performing in the Haitian religion would pinch out the fire that was rising up his radio broadcasting fame like a hot-air balloon. 

Today, you are positively giddy and positively ready to puke when Alastor invites you to join him to celebrate St. John’s Eve. A holiday in June he rarely went to.

Ditching your shared car, Alastor makes you walk hand in hand with him to the celebration after pink twilight skies drift into charcoal black hues. You have no idea how he can navigate so clearly in such darkness. Trusting him, you follow over moss and soil. Both of your white attire was probably stained from the journey. None of that mattered. You could not stop yourself from smiling. 

The night is wondrous. You will never understand such a beautiful celebration could be so abhorred. Reaching impressive heights, the humongous bonfire casts warm hues of amber over the white attire of all who attain. Your body spins and leaps with positive energy – everyone is so friendly – no one wears glasses at night and they all laugh like humans, humans! You and Alastor dance, painted in the bonfire’s warmth and laughing in addition to all the other people. At one point in the night, Alastor says to you, “They say bathing in the gorge is supposed to preserve the health of your body and the good condition of your skin. Not that you need anything to add to your beauty. However, I would be grateful if you —”

“Yes! Yes, I’ll join you.” You have been that way all night, eager and absent of your usual anxiety. You strive to enjoy this – enjoy the world he lives in spiritually due to the stinging rejection of his friends. Something to keep you two close and tethered together.

He takes your hand and brings you waist deep in the water. All the while, you cling to him, arms around his neck, smiling and kissing his cheek repeatedly. He preens under the attention. 

“So, is it like a baptism of sorts?”

“I’ll dip you under the water briefly, yes.”

“Ok,” you are still giggling, not even having a sip of anything. “Ok. Can I go first?”

Adoring Alastor brings his hands up to the sides of your face, running his thumb over your cheek. What a shame that you will not be smiling so wide soon. The flame of you has to be extinguished same as the roaring bonfire on the shore. He pecks you on the lips. “If you want to go first, I have no gripe over that, dear.”

Don’t worry, Alastor thinks as he dips you down into the murky, nebulous water, he will relight you. 

You hold your breath as you go under. The water chills the back of your ears, sliding itself through your hair, then covers over your eyes. Alastor’s hands rest in a triangle of your upper back, steadying you so you do not fall back. One involuntary shiver moves you then you fall still. You take your breath and cup it in your chest like a pearl. 

Weightlessness is a rare sensation. There is something tranquil about being enshrouded in water and able to feel like you are slipping away somewhere. Like the ribbon pulling on your heart at all times has eased and unraveled itself so instead of a bundle it has become a slippery eel. 

You are so grateful that Alastor is sharing this with you. You felt bad for not making a connection with his friends. You hoped nothing ever breaks your connection with Alastor.

After half a minute or so, you lean a bit up to signal to Alastor that you want up. Oddly, there is no pressure on your back from Alastor pushing you up. You lean yourself up a bit more, then with the speed of a cobra striking, a pressure pushes you down. Fingers on your throat. The pearl in your chest slips out. With a muted, submerged shout, you push your hands up hoping to break the water surface, feel dry air. Nothing, all your panicked hands slide through is water.

AlastorAlastorAlastor – the pearl grows spikes like a urchin and pierces you, a debilitating pain in the chest as water floods through. You hack up what you swallow and yet swallow some more. Previous cold water feels as intensely hot as the bonfire you were dancing in front of before. 

Everything is dark.

Everything is burning.

Everything – you gasp as Alastor pulls you out. You cough like you are trying to expel a hairball or demon out of you. Your body shakes and pounds with each forceful push. And in the midst of that, Alastor holds you by your waist and worrying over you, your hands around his neck, you start to sob.

“A-Ah, Alastor.” Your smile is gone.

vii. menm jan nou padonnen moun ki fè nou mal. [as we forgive those who hurt us.]

“Promise me you will not leave me.”

“I promise.”

“No, be serious.”

“I am being serious, haha. I promise. Hey. Hey? … Hey, I promise to never leave you, Alastor Melsar. No need for tears, love.”

viii. Pa kite nou nan pozisyon pou nou tonbe nan tantasyon, [Do not leave us in a position to fall into temptation]

Injuring Alastor is no easy task. He takes impeccable care to never be on the receiving end of any harm, but this amorous injury is different.

In the back of a drunk mind, Alastor senses the trail of warm blood running down his lats to his spine. Three evanescent droplets riding down and down. Sweat is outshone by the iron beads. He focuses his mind gently on where you scratched him, the injury it caused, and the blood curling around the brown curvature of his abdomen muscles. How he wishes you two drew each other’s blood more beyond this and rituals to Papa Gede — at a later time, he will ask you if you want to engage in anything more with blood.

“Oh fuck, Alastor. Oh fuck!”

Yes, at a later time would be more appropriate. He cannot properly engage in conversation which he is grunting so heavily.

Gently, Alastor rubs a thumb into your skin, studying the harsh bone of your pelvis. You tremble when his palm goes down and pushes up your left leg. Knobby knee touching your breast, you shriek at how more palpable you are to his efforts.

Alastor does not particularly like sex. He shared no interest in it like his acquaintances and rather seemed repulsed by it. He performed and acted on this sweaty stage because it made you happy. Yet, now that you have drawn his blood —

The speed at which his head pounds into your spongy inside gradually starts to pick up. You two are clashing your hips into one another like vengeful knights crossing claymores. Instead of the racket of piercing metal sparks, the noise of wet skin slapping and patting against one another billows up and up in volume. He fucks you hard, an executioner stealing the last drops of your life away. 

“De-Dearest,” he pants, hoping to grab your attention.

All you do is dig your nails into his shoulder blade deeper, anchoring yourself feebly to a ship caught up in a storm. Alastor has never been so rough before. His force punches the words out of you, mouth hanging open in involuntary cries. 

He pushes your knee down harsher into the globe of your breast. Your nails dig in deeper. Cut more skin, please, Alastor wants to beg but his own voice is withering from him now too.

“Fu-Fuck! Fuck!” You shred another part of his skin like a cat slicing up curtains into decorative ribbons. He feels it. The waterline of blood bubbling before it spills over like tears of a face.

“Oh Hell, (Name),” Alastor moans.

He often had problems coming to his release. Now, he worries that he will come before you are satisfied. Your previous cut has trailed down, colliding at the spot where the two of you are joined together. His worries are meaningless. At the sound of his voice, trembling and wanton, the violin strings of your consciousness are slit down the middle. Mind plucked out of your body, you cannot control your voice and groan a loud “Mmmmmpfh!” as you throw your head back and orgasm. 

Your warmth squeezes around him and he loses that hold on your leg. Collapsing down, he moans and keeps thrusting in. Greedily, you roll your hips up. Slick, wet suctioning noises lose their space between one another fast like counting lightning that is rapidly approaching.

Into raw bloody flesh, your nails burrow. Alastor comes with a grunt of your name. 

ix. men, delivre nou anba Satan. [but deliver us from Satan.]

It is an inconvenience of an illness that has befell the Meslar house. Really, you should be resting your body and he should be resting his voice. You stumble in your chores, body humming with a furnace warmth that rivals New Orleans summer heat. Alastor stumbles in his broadcasting, throat expelling out body-jerking coughs like plumes of brimstone smoke. He jokes that it would be more fortunate if you two swapped illness before curling into himself, hacking. You nod your agreement before curling into yourself, brain sitting in your head like a popsicle on a summer’s sidewalk.

Eventually, you two have to concede that you cannot keep on like this. Your shared stubbornness to push through a lingering illness will do you no good. Alastor calls out of work, you dismiss yourself from your household duties. Finally, you two rest.

Alastor loves having windows open. He pulls the woven horsehair screens away from their pins. Let spiders and flies enter your humble abode, meet their two caring hosts. Refreshing air snakes a tranquil pattern through the kitchen and dining room. Sunlight warms wood of a dining table and back of chairs. In the forty second breaks Alastor gets before his throat punches him, he nestles close to an open window and breathes in rich Earth. 

You are resting in the open living room, passed out on the uncomfortable sofa. He had taken care to wait on you as you had taken care to read Hemingway aloud for him. Yet, soon syllables started to slur into a rainbow of ums, mhms, mmms, until you fell into a cavernous sleep. 

Content, Alastor drinks his coffee (absent of the sedative, amobarbital, and the awful taste of tea) and gazes out on nature. Drugging you is not so gentlemanly of him. However, who can truly blame him, watching his beloved drag themselves to get the one last load of laundry folded or scrub a stove that would be fine with a day of neglect. 

“Such a stubborn donkey, that one,” Alastor chuckles, taking a gracious sip. 

His sleeves are rolled up and cool air breezes over the mark drawn on his inner forearm. Cornmeal and wood ash grounded up into a pallid gray. The symbol sticks to his skin fairly well. The symbol is an open diamond with a long line running through it, elbow crevice to wrist, with a tapered end like that of a ½ beat note. The voodoo symbol of good health. You have one drawn on your comatose arm too, sleeves rolled up. 

He did not see the need to call upon Damballah for healing properties. A simple incantation and a longer than natural sleep should get you back to your natural self. Alastor always promised himself that he would care for you. He would keep you away from dangers always, even a mischievous viral infection swimming in your body. 

Maybe he should tell you, maybe open up just a bit about his – 

No. He had labored a fine scheme to make you afraid of what his religion and his friends had to offer and that fear would be a coin to cash in later. If everything else around you was horrific, he would be a certain tunnel to run towards – leap into his open arms so he may protect you from Death, the Devil, and beyond.

All you need, all you would see, all of it: him, him, him.

x. Paske, se pou ou tout otorite, tout pouvwa ak tout louwanj, depi tout tan ak pou tout tan. [For to you be all authority, all prayer, and all praise, forever and ever]

“Honey, I just don’t think he is right for you.”

“That Al, he is a bit eccentric. A little birdie tells me that Edward thinks you’re butter upon bacon! And Ed’s quite cute!”

“Is there a leak in your attic, (Name)? Alastor, really?”

He’s absolutely perfect for you. His eccentricities had bewitched you. And if there was a leak in your attic, you hoped it showered over you forever. In your rose-tinted eyes, no one could hold a candle to your Alastor. He was it for you, until death and perhaps even beyond. You know this to be a universal truth – if emotions could become fact, this is one instant of such a time – especially true as he proposes to you.

“Yes, of – of course, I will,” you tumble over your words. A showman until the end, the long, heartfelt speech that Alastor had voiced in that honey intonation had you quite speechless. He knew exactly where to praise and where to kill your insecurities. “O-of course.”

He has to pinch the center of your hand, thumb on bone and index on palm, so he can slide the ring on your shaking hand. You truly are a mess in his presence, so in love. 

It takes a few moments to find your voice. Alastor kisses you in front of the crowded restaurant, people clapping. You two sit back, still having untouched desert waiting for you. As the waiter shakes the hand of the most famous radioman in New Orleans, you sit wide-eyed, glancing between tiramisu and champagne, waiting to fall out of this daydream. 

“An ouroboros,” you murmur after the waiter leaves. Giddy smile on his face, Alastor raises an eyebrow at you. “It is an ouroboros.”

“Yes, I figured a literary master like you would love the symbolism. Does it please you? I was apprehensive of choosing something that did not have a diamond.”

“The self-eating snake.” Smitten, you rotate around your left hand to greet all the angles of the creature with enraptured eyes. “The eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. Transmigration of souls.”

“The eternal cycle of our love.”

You flush and smile. “You’re being too charming tonight, Alastor.” 

xi. Amèn. [Amen]

“Alastor,” you whisper into the dark after he finishes saying your wedding vows. The name is much heavier on your tongue. It no longer belongs solely to your sweet bengal cat. The name you sing out to grab a cat’s attention or scold him for swatting something off the counter – “Alastor.” – the name is now shared with your dead husband. 

Bone-deep shivers run through you. Dead husband. Your dead husband who is broadcasting out to you, voice rich and recognizable. The most chesired prayer you had ever heard in your past life, bleeding off into radio-waves. “Alastor.”

“Yes, dearest?” His intonation holds the patience of an enraptured man. He is smitten and at the ready to lend you his ear in a much more tangible Van Gogh way than in the literary sense. “Would you care to share your vows too? I always did love hearing French-creole roll off your fumbling tongue.”

“No, I –” 

You feel dreadfully faint. All of it rushing back to you; it is a miracle that you have not faint or turned into a vegetable. You stare at the brown husk of a radio where you should be looking at the brown skin of your late husband’s face. A miracle is too angelic. A curse. This is a curse.

Something boils unpleasantly in your gut. This house. It was Alastor’s. Even after being born in a different square of New Orleans, you found your way back to the house. 

Found your way to the ring. Found your way back to the radio.

“Why?” It is the only word that you can manage to form.

“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality” 

“Death is a supple suitor, that wins at last.”

“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death”

“Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.” 

“A wounded deer leaps the highest.”

You two cannot keep quoting Emily Dickinson at each other. Burying your head in your hands, you sigh deeply with the strife and age of an entire already lived life. You miss the flash of lightning that illuminates your kitchen, the shadow of a wendigo stamped on the floor where the kitchen table’s circular imprint should be. 

As the light leaps back out the window and you raise your head, Alastor hums at you lovingly. “Now dear, you know I hate to see you so despondent. It breaks my heart … well it would if I still had a beating one.” 

Laughter follows and you startle in your chair. It sounds so intimately real that you almost thought the crowd of a comedy show was dropped and placed in your kitchen. Your shield falls as the noises wither away. 

“Why now?”

“Dear, this interrogation is so harsh. I thought you would be overjoyed to be reunited. You said yourself that you never wanted to live without me. Aren’t you even going to say it?”

“Alastor. I love you.” Those words come as easy as the last puzzle piece. “Why now,” you press stubbornly. 

The dark space around the radio almost echoes with the deep sigh Alastor gives you. There is the sound of some tinkering, a few knocks of wood and clanks of metal. “Why now, dear?” The noises grow in volume and rich jubilation breathes itself through Alastor’s voice. “Why now indeed! Well, dear, I have just happened to secure your place in Hell! Right alongside me! Please, please, hold the applause.”

There is no applause besides the one he is controlling and manipulating to move to his whims. 

Why would he think that was pleasing news? Vexed, you straighten up your posture and go to ask, “Alastor, why —“ and then your words get caught in a spiderweb. “Alastor!” 

Uncaring of your blindness from the power outage, you jump up and rush towards your bedroom, in search of Alastor. 

You make it about halfway into the dining room when the bengal cat is suddenly deposited in your arms. Alastor is shaking up a storm. Protectively, you wrap your arms around him, wary of whatever nebulous thing held him in their clutches. Your empty glare falls off your face as you are suddenly roller-coastered back into the kitchen. 

“That was quite rude of you.”

“You’ve been quite rude this entire month.” 

“Well, I simply cannot pop out of nowhere. I do still have my affliction for showmanship. Something that was a trait loved by my dear spouse.”

“Showmanship, he says,” you grumble, petting Alastor gently. His tremors are still so extreme. “Ouroboros. Transmigration of a soul.”

“Well if I tether you to me, there is this little political game called Extermination that would have been a threat to you. If you were to die of natural causes, you would have gone to Heaven. Keeping you human was the best choice until I came to collect you.”

“You’re collecting me to bring me to Hell?”

“Quite correct. Yes, I am.”

“And if I don’t want to be collected?”

“HAHAHA, and do you not want that? Truly?”

“No … if anything … I’m more pissed you didn’t arrive sooner.”

A flash throws itself into the open space of a kitchen. This time you are able to see it. Up the wall, between the space where you keep an ancient television set and the place on the wall where a rotary phone rests is a shadow. Ignoring its definition, the shadow is built from no imposing object or body sitting in your kitchen. Instead of a physical presence, the stamp of long antlers and a sharp angular body are its own body. Gone as soon as the lightning flash flees. 

You miss it barely but you saw the shadow of a hand reaching out to you. The something you had been searching for, finally here to call and collect you. Come home, dear, it calls out in gravel static. And you answer.