Chapter II.V

When I came into work and walked into the circular hub for my and my coworkers offices, I saw what had begun to become a familiar sight. Captain Esau had made it a habit to station herself right next to my door, so as to meet me first thing when I came in. It wasn't every day. It wasn't even most days. But it was a common, unremarkable occurrence.
Except that this day, she looked hard.
Despite her military haircut and her toned, fit figure, Esau was typically amiable. Seeing her with a furrowed brow, crossed arms, and raised chin was disconcerting in its own way.
"Captain Esau," I greeted.
"Ms. Wilson. May I join you in your office?"
"Of course."
Esau, ever-mannered and polite, opened the door and let me step in first, following me in afterwards. We both sat. I put my hands together over my desk, and she scooted the chair in and left her hands at her sides. Without any further introduction, she pulled off a cross-body bag she was wearing, placed it in her lap, rummaged through it, and pulled out a file to pass over to me.
I took the file, opened it, and skimmed its contents. It was a response for Founder, the albatross, who felt like they'd been a fly stuck in the clockwork for years. Enough sightings had finally been compiled to track it to a certain area, and with that information there had been an investigative team organized. This was the description of their intended operations, over how much of a time span, and consuming how much of the budget.
"What am I looking for?"
"An absence." Esau put her hand out to take the file back, and I closed it and returned it. "The Castaways aren't anywhere in this response plan."
"That's unfortunate."
"And you signed off on it."
I made effort not to change my expression, though very little effort was actually needed. I had no response, so gave no response, and hoped she would pick up the conversational slack herself.
With several ounces of frustration at my passivity: "I am here to make the case that Founder can not be handled by Wilson's Wildlife Solutions' pool of volunteers and respondents. Founder is a cognitohazard — or worse — and your people are not trained against insidious influences like the Castaways are. We have resistances to these things —"
"You can use 'meme' and 'memetic', I'm familiar."
"Thank you. We have memetic resistance that your employees do not. If they do find the Founder, the possibility that they will lose it due to mental tampering is too high, and the longer Founder goes free, the worse it establishes itself in the town's history."
"Mmm," I responded.
Esau pursed her lips. "I don't like being at odds with you, Ms. Wilson."
"We aren't at odds," I said without total conviction.
"Can you make sure this doesn't happen again?"
"I trust Robin's decisions."
Esau raised eyebrows.
"However," I continued, "in light of your concerns, I will ask him why he made the decision he did and adjudicate from there. To be transparent, I do think you're more equipped for the job. But it's not my decision to make."
"You sign off on it."
"I have a lot of responsibilities. I don't have time to read over everything that comes past my desk. Meetings like this cover areas I can't more closely watch, so I'd say the system is working well as-is."
Esau sighed, but seemed to loosen somewhat. "Alright, thank you for your time. Please talk to Robin sooner rather than later about this."
"I'll make time in my schedule as soon as I can."
Esau seemed on the verge of satisfaction, and must have concluded she was going to get no more out of me, because she put her bag back over her shoulder, stood up, and extended her hand. I shook it.
"Good day, Esau."
"Good day."
And with a slight bit of hesitation, and a second longer of held eye contact, Esau turned and walked out my office door, back into the right arm of the Shelter. "Hmm," I hummed to myself, watching her through the window in my door get further and further away before turning towards an exit.
I wasn't looking forward to talking to Robin, but, it was a strange decision on his part. It would be a mistake not to discover the issue.
I pulled out my planner, and penned it in for something later this week. I certainly wouldn't have the time to do it that very moment. Not with the first big fundraiser since Tim's passing coming up on Sunday.

For the fundraiser, Anders had suggested a park nearby. Hogan Butte Nature Park, in the Boring Lava Field, an expanse of ancient volcanic activity just northwest of Boring. The park itself was only a twelve minute drive, but it was a small, flat, grassy clearing with gorgeous views of some of Oregon's signature mountains. From a small stone platform located semi-centrally in the park, you could see Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. Rainier, and, of course, the biggest, baddest volcano of them all, Mt. Saint Helens.
Due to its being Autumn, there was always a chance that the fundraiser would either get cancelled or pushed back due to rain, but by some stroke of luck the first day we had staked out with the park worked. It was, if not overly sunny, not so cloudy to be overcast, and you could get by comfortably with a jacket. What might have been less comfortable was the crowd.
The turnout was better than I could have hoped for: almost too much for the small park to handle. Everywhere that there could be picnic blankets and foldout chairs, there were, and the only places kept clear of them were the tables, set out with enough snacks and lunch options for everyone twice over, and the stage, which had to be made that morning because the park didn't have one. It was just a raised wooden platform that actually consisted of six or so big pieces that could be collapsed and fit into the back of two pickup trucks. Earlier versions of the idea had wobbled to an uncomfortable degree and made a great deal of noise as you walked across them, but the formula had been perfected over a decade of trial and error.
And that was where I stood, with a hot tea I'd made from one of those coffee-stations someone had set up. Until the speech actually began, the stage was just another place you could stand around and talk, and seeing as so much of the rest of the place was filled up with various claims of territory, it was one of the freer areas if you didn't want to be shoved to the outskirts.
My eyes scanned over the crowd. As an introvert, I never knew I could consider so many people as having "familiar faces", but I recognized practically every person I saw. With a community as small as Boring's, it amused me to think that anyone still in-town would be witness to a noticeably diminished populace.
So sue me if that didn't make me feel a little bit of pride.
Then, my eyes came across someone I'd been waiting to see. The thick mustaches, the brown eyes, and the rowdy black hair gave away Alex as he tried to politely decline several invitations to conversation from people he was passing by. One — I recognized her as Hagi — actually succeeded in catching him for a moment, but as they were talking about some unknown topic, his eyes crawled over her shoulder and noticed me looking at him. I waved, he waved back, and then he somehow pulled away from the chatterbox, making his way up the couple steps onto the stage, and then meeting me in the middle of it.
We hugged, slowly and carefully so I wouldn't spill my drink all across his back, and then released.
"Sorry, I'm late."
"You're not late."
"Sure, but, later than I would've liked. I wish animals would simply cease to exist for a second when we have big events."
I smiled. "Be careful what you wish for. We live in a very strange town."
He smiled back, and breathed out his nose with amusement. "Good to see you, is what I should have led with."
"Good to see you too."
"Very busy these days."
I sighed. "Yes. Yes I am. I swear I'll figure out my schedule eventually. Sorry we've missed so many coffee dates."
"It's alright. With someone like you, you know what you're signing on to. If that's not rude."
"It's not."
"Good," he smiled wider, but only for a moment, to show teeth and good faith. "You nervous?"
"Not particularly."
"Not even a little bit?"
"A little bit," I conceded, "but not very."
He seemed to pause for a second, smile gone, studying my eyes. Then, he looked over to the tables, and back to me. "In that case, want to go find a place to sit and drink tea? Conversation optional?"
A smile pushed my cheeks up into my eyes. Alex just understood some things that other people didn't. "I'd love to."
He got himself a cup, and I refilled my own, and after that we tactfully avoided any lengthy small talk with any excited fundraiser-goers. We eventually made it to the very back of all the picnic blankets and fold-out chairs, all the way to the low treeline, where we found a small concrete shoulder to the path circling the park that we could sit on.
With as close as you could get to seclusion under the circumstances, we sipped at tea and let the rumble of the crowd become white noise, blending in with the wind and rustling leaves. We crowd-gazed together.
Hogan Butte isn't within Clackamas County borders, and thus isn't actually part of Nexus-17. Plenty of people in the area hadn't heard of Wilson's Wildlife Solutions, as a result. I could spy some locals who were curiously perusing the event, wondering what the hubbub was about, some visibly disappointed that the scenic spot wasn't less occupied.
It was a wonder the Supervisors didn't send some representatives to oppress the atmosphere into complying. Except that they had, of course. In the form of the Castaways who I sometimes saw smiling and laughing and chatting like the rest of them.
I sipped my tea, and averted my eyes.
"You're giving a speech, right?" Alex broke the silence after many minutes.
"Of course. I'm going to update all of our lovely donors on what their money has been going to, and why we need and appreciate their patronage."
"That's all?"
I gave him a look, though I'm not sure what it was of, before saying: "Yeah."
He raised eyebrows, but dropped it. For a moment, anyways.
"Any more to say?"
I thought for a second. "No."
"Alright," he responded.
"I've already done my big Tim appreciation speech. My job is executive director, now."
"Alright," he repeated, pointedly ignoring that I had elaborated when I said I wouldn't. I appreciated his discerning nature.
Someone started clearing the stage of people, and I took note. That meant the speech was soon to start. Having had ample time to gather their share of refreshments and snacks, people began to congregate back onto their picnic blankets and foldout chairs, progressively more of them sitting instead of standing, waiting for the main event. Or, the precursor to the main event, which in some people's minds was going to be the live music. (I'd spotted the small-time Portland rock band among the crowds before. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, we'd used some of their music to treat the unusual ailments of some of our more aural animals.)
I pulled Alex in for a side-hug, rubbed my hair into his, and then stood. "Alright, I have to go backstage, so to speak. Be here?"
He nodded. "Good luck."
I weaved my way through the crowd, towards the left side of the stage, where my brothers were waiting, dressed up in green and brown suits to fit the occasion.
"Hey," I said, "how long can we expect?"
"As soon as I'm ready," said Robin.
I almost asked how soon is that, but didn't feel like adding any pressure to him. So instead, I turned to Anders: "You feel prepared?"
"Plenty prepared," Anders said, tugging at some notecards in his shirt pocket, "I have all the sticking points right here."
"Great."
"You?"
I took a deep breath. "I'm not a nervous type. That said, haven't been on a stage in front of a crowd since high school."
He reached over to pat me on the shoulder: "You'll do great."
"Yeah," Robin unexpectedly chimed in, "you will."
I raised eyebrows, but forced them back down. "Thanks," was all I said.
He shrugged in return. "Wish me luck," he said, and strode up onto the stage.
Anders and I made eye contact, and he raised his eyebrows and smiled in response. I smiled back, and we turned towards the stage, where Robin's stride towards the microphone in the center was accompanied by uproarious applause. Robin, Anders and I were known on a level I still hadn't gotten used to.
Robin grinned at the crowd, but soon was in a position where Anders and I were mostly looking at him from an oblique angle, catching more of his back than his front. Much like when he walks into meetings with the Supervisors, as soon as he was on stage in front of people his slouch magically disappeared, his eyes were more alert, and his arms were more spread, more welcoming. Knowing him, I was unsure whether to perceive it as him putting on a face, or entering his element.
"Hello hello! Good afternoon!" He allowed a low, rumbly response from the audience, and chuckled. "Thank you all for making time in your busy schedules to be here! And speaking of busy schedules, I know a lot of people are scheduled to be back to the snacks and conversation as soon as possible, so I'll be sure to be brief."
There was a small chuckle, which I participated in.
"We're here, today, to usher in a new era of Wilson's Wildlife Solutions." He paused for dramatic effect. "It is no secret that the Shelter has seen its fair share of trials. I would like to remind everyone with any doubt in their hearts that we have pulled through each of them. I, and my siblings, would like to bring you through the timeline, as we see it, of Wilson's Wildlife. A brief summary, I assure you. So, first, we are here to address the past."
Robin began to pace, and pulled the mic along with him. He did exactly what he said he was going to do: address the past. To his credit, he attempted to blaze through it, keeping true to his promise of making it brief, but I began to tune it out. My moment wasn't for a little bit, and I had heard enough of this stuff already.
It had already occurred to me that Holly could have been in the crowd. My mysterious pen-pal, who I had seen twice and met once. She was at Tim's funeral, after all, so despite her avoidance of the Supervisors, she had some confidence to escape or remain unnoticed. Her height would have been a dead giveaway, though.
The Supervisors. To call Holly my friend would be an overstep at this stage in our relationship. She was an acquaintance that deeply interested me. But did I trust her? I think I might have. There was something about her that lowered my guard. I knew the Supervisors had enemies, but her? What threat did she pose?
I tried to get my questions in order. Who is she? What is her relationship to Tim? Why is she working around the Supervisors?
Applause brought me back to reality. I joined in, watching as Robin and Anders exchanged places, passing each other on the stage, Robin handing the mic off to his brother. Robin descended the stairs, and walked the short distance to where I was standing, back and to the right of the stage, out of the focus of the audience but clearly visible.
"Good job," I complimented him.
He flashed a smile back, but his slouch returned, his eyebrows lowered. He went back to being the Robin that I knew. The acorn-headed, short-brown-haired Özdemir.
"Thanks," he returned, slightly late.
Now it was my turn to flash a smile.
I focused back in, on Anders' speech he was giving. "I'm here to address the present," he had started. "Right now, Wilson's Wildlife Solutions is undergoing a budgetary restructuring, headed by the executive director —"
"Did I do him justice?"
I turned around completely to address Robin.
"What?"
"Dad. Did I sound like Dad up there?"
I was not prepared for this line of questioning. I struggled with my thoughts, trying to land on something that would emotionally satisfy Robin in such a way as to end the conversation immediately, so that our low discussion wouldn't distract any audience that noticed it.
I took too long.
"I helped him write a lot of his speeches, y'know."
"I'm sure you did," I turned slightly back towards the stage, trying to give him a cue.
He looked at me for a moment before continuing at a low volume. "I did. Not a lot of people know that. It was a little… uh, ritual we had, I guess. I was on the debate team at school for a hot minute, so, it's different but, I had my way with words, so. Dad would give his speeches to the family, first, and we'd give pointers, and I always had the most to say, so I guess we just started. Y'know. Writin'."
"Mhmm," I returned my gaze squarely to Anders, though I was having trouble focusing in on what he was saying.
"So I… I was wonderin' if you could tell."
"Tell what?"
Another pause, though his expression was outside my field of vision.
"That it was the same. Similar. That it was like Dad's."
"You wrote it well, Robin. It was a solid speech."
There was a pause. And then it was a silence. A little bit of tension let itself out of my joints. There, I thought, trying to bring my ears away from Robin and back towards Anders. After a brief moment of everything sounding like gibberish, my brain finally caught up to where he was, and started hearing it again.
"— and the current epic hunt for Founder still on, our team is working harder than ever before, bringing in little injured critters and the ones who are getting real out of control. Speaking of little injured critters, the wildlife rehabilitators have done wonders this year. Working with our expanded research department, we have decreased the average time spent between capture and release by over 20%! That's —"
"— not what I was asking."
Robin nearly whispered it, I was unsure if I was even meant to hear it. That was a perfect excuse to forego a response, however, so my eyes stayed firmly on Anders, my stance betraying not a hint of my interrupted focus. I was finding it so difficult to focus, for so many reasons. Trying to follow the signs, I searched myself for any nerves or anxiety I had been neglecting, but found nothing.
That is, until I heard him sniffle.
Without thinking, I turned my head towards him. If I had thought a second longer, I would have decided against it. Let him have his private moment — as private as it could have been in front of the crowd — and sort it out. But now that I had turned, I was obligated.
"Are you alright?" I said, voice even lower than before, attempting to put on a comforting tone I was never very good at.
It was Robin's turn to avoid eye contact. He was trying very hard, I could tell, to not give in, to keep his composure, but he was failing. His cheeks were red, and his eyes were watery, and he sniffled again, his Adam's apple high in his throat. Anders' speech in the background again, the audience's attention drawn to him, Robin had yet to pull the eyes of the crowd, and I knew he would if he started really crying.
So I made the mistake of pursuing it. "Hey, wanna take a walk, maybe? Don't have to stand here, if you don't want to."
"I don't?" His voice cracked.
"Of course not."
He finally met my gaze, and I was startled into silence. Not that I had anything to say, but I was instantly discouraged from coming up with something.
He was scowling. His eyes red, his nose running, his cheeks and brow pinched his eyes and his lower lip quivered both with a combination of emotions I wasn't able to parse at a moment's notice. The minute details of this expression shifted with flinches and spasms, but its character remained the same. If I wasn't so trained in standing stock still and straight, I might have shrunk.
"I'm not needed?" He asked, his voice so much quieter than I was expecting. "Am I not expected, here?"
I tried and failed to start a sentence, but he turned around, his back now to the audience, perhaps a preemptive measure against being noticed.
"I want you here. Of course I want you here."
"I quit."
The turn of mood was so sudden, the statement so simple and succinct, it didn't register for a second, and then I felt whiplash. "Quit?"
"I don't need to… I don't need to be here, so." His nose twitched. His eyebrows twitched. "I'm done."
He took a single step, and I surprised myself. All of a sudden, I had a hand on his shoulder, feeling the silky surface of his suit jacket. He turned to look at me, expecting something of me, and I froze. The expression had loosened, if only slightly, maybe only having been diluted by surprise, something we shared, my fingers finding folds on his dark green polyester, unsure what they were trying to do.
I hesitated. I hesitated too long, because his expression was returning. I tried to find words, I tried to find reason for my actions. But staring into his lowering brow, his raising lips, I could only come up with: "Don't quit."
He shrugged me off, and my hand hesitated in the space between us.
"Fuck you," he muttered.
A wet shiver went from my head to my feet. "What?"
His cheeks were wet before he turned away, hands shoved into his pockets, walking down the path towards the parking lot. My eyes followed him. My eyes followed him all the way to the asphalt, and he never looked back.
Applause. I turned around suddenly, eyes passing over the audience, and then made the connection: looked to my left to see Anders approaching, expecting to hand the mic off to me. But he noticed, immediately. He noticed Robin was gone. He looked at me, inquisitive. He asked a question without asking.
But he was looking into a big empty space. Right now, I was sorting information. I had rolled out a drawer on a filing cabinet labelled Robin Wilson, subtitled baby half-brother, and I was making a new addition. I was editing information. I paged through what I had, pen in hand, and my fingers lingered on something unresolved. I took a breath. Anders was still looking at me.
I never asked him why he excluded the Castaways, I thought, remembering Esau's request. An edit was made, an amendment to our relationship, and then I closed the drawer without a second thought. The sound of it echoed throughout the archives. A fluorescent light flickered, and my vision centered back on the face of a young Tim — a young Tim named Anders.
To give him a cue, I jerked my head to the parking lot, and with that motion something tink-ed. A stray paperclip, somewhere. Somewhere in the halls of files. Somewhere in the big empty space.
He handed me the mic, gave me a quick smile to wish me luck, and diligently walked in Robin's direction. I ascended the steps, and took the stage. There was applause. The transition hadn't been slow enough to be awkward, by some miracle. I was here in time, and I was ready. I cleared my throat, and started my speech:
"Hi, I'm Faeowynn Wilson, and I'm here to address the future."

« Old Connections | Stories I Tell Myself | A Welcome Distraction »


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Explicit depiction of sexual acts.
Features non-consensual sexual acts.
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In many ways, Izzy was like a cat. She was agile and graceful, with an almost liquid physiology. Sometimes she could be moody (but then, lots of Ashton's friends were 'moody'). She had a tendency to cling to you like a leash, even if she acted aloof. Her and Ashton were starting an indie pop project together. This metaphor didn't work.
It was the kind of thing that came to mind when Ashton saw Izzy stretching after practice. Focusing on her motions was preferable to focusing on Ashton's feelings, they'd found a while back.
Izzy settled to standing and sighed. "We really need to adjust our schedules, mate. I'm not exactly the pinnacle of stamina."
"Sorry, dude."
"It's fine, really." Izzy hummed. "Really, this is my fault for my inability to find a good gym in the BackDoor. Or, perhaps there's a way to exercise without collapsing into a ball of tentacles."
"Hey, least this warms you up."
Izzy smiled, setting down her bass and collapsing into her favorite pile of boxes. "When I was a child, it was so much easier, don't you know. Mother would have me standing at attention, two hours a day, strumming the guitar until I could make Orpheus weep." She paused. "In hindsight, I'm not sure that story's so healthy."
Ashton shrugged. "Still, dude, I can work. Though, gonna be gone in like a week or two."
"Really?"
"Yeah." Ashton broke eye contact, getting to work collapsing their keyboard. "Yellowface's gonna be doing a tour. Kinda… ramshackle. Start with some money, end when all we've got's enough to get home. Dunno how long it's gonna go."
Izzy grinned, lopsided. "Why didn't you tell us? We'd have loved to tour with your band!"
"Well, uh," Ashton scratched at the back of their head. "Mean, would love y'all, 'sjust… got lives and shit. Real jobs. Not, uh… criminal stuff."
"You kidding, mate?" Izzy scoffed. "Well, that's silver lining to the lay-offs, isn't it?"
Yeesh. "Shit, sorry to hear."
"Don't be, Saint Sebastian's was overcrowded and full of narcissists like me, ha. A blessing in disguise, when you really think about it." Izzy shrugged. "Still going to lose my healthcare in about six months. Might as well take the drubbing while I can pay for it… I mean, if you'll have us."
"Sure, sure." Brad was not going to like having to rework the tour, but he'd be furious if he caught Ashton snubbing his cousin (and potentially his adoptive daughter, too). "Uh… yeah. I'll get the deets. Not gonna be too fancy, warning."
Izzy smiled. "All that rough and tumble business is probably good for me."
"Cool. Uh… so, when we do stay in motels, you and V cool with random rooming?"
"I… suppose so?" Izzy blinked, and titled her head. "Why do you ask?"
"Mean… motel price shifts, the like, yeah. Wanted to know if you wanted a couple's room, yeah?"
Izzy was staring at Ashton like they'd grown a second head. Did something… oh. Oh. Well, leave it to Ashton to turn beautiful serendipity into shit. "God, I'm sorry, I-"
"Why did you think we were still dating?" Izzy shuffled in place. "We separated a while ago, Ash. Did… she not tell you about our break-up?"
This time, Ashton blinked and tilted their head.
"God, come to think of it I don't know if I told anyone, either." It was rare and honestly off-putting to see Izzy snicker like that. "I mean, what else do you do? Really, it's not particularly flattering. Not on my end, and probably not Veronica's end, either."
Ashton pursed their lips. "Er… do you-"
"We just rushed into it! The reptilian vestige of my brain just thought 'wow, I've got this rough 6-foot rocker girl with a mile-wide submissive streak under my thumb' and I didn't even stop to step back and uncomplicate things, you know? No clue what Veronica saw in past me." Izzy shrugged. "I mean I'm glad we ended friendly, that's more than I can say for my only other girlfriend. But… yeah."
"… —" Nope, the gears in Ashton's head were still ticking. Aaaaaand… "… I'm sorry, dude?"
"No, it's quite alright. It's been a year or two, time flies."
… what?
Ashton furrowed their brow. "You… a year ago?"
"It's been a fair while, now that you mention it. I'm… fairly certain it was election year? That would be… six months to a year? Hard to believe I've coming up on Hydrocide's time with the new band, no? But… did you seriously never notice, Ash?"
Ashton's mind flashed back to a month ago, when Izzy came over wearing a flannel button-up made for someone a foot taller. A week ago, when Ashton spotted a sucker-shaped mark on Veronica's neck. A truckload of times in the past few months where Veronica had allowed Izzy to put a finger, arm, hand, tentacle on her shoulder, knee, arm, wherever.
With all that input, Ashton's brain, ostensibly an instance of one of the most magnificent computers ever designed by nature, outputted the following: "… but you're fucking?"
"That? What's that…" Izzy blinked. "You really didn't know?"
"[Did Ashton mean to say 'know' or 'no'?]? I…"
"I really thought we were a bit obnoxious about it. Well, I suppose I'm glad we weren't, but… honestly, blessing in disguise. The last thing the music rags need to hear is how friendly House of Spades has gotten with itself."
"Shit, sor-House of Spades?"
Izzy sighed, rolling her shoulders back. She was the very picture of 'at ease', which contrasted really hard with the anything and everything and nothing and what the fuck did she mean HoS had 'gotten friendly'?!
"Bit of a perfect storm, really." That was a rhetorical question, damn it! "Honestly, it's probably the intimacy of having a band around your age, you know? Playing into the night, writing songs together, fussing about our debut album… actually, have you listened to Self-Titled yet? TTTB gave it a 7.2, and while I think BackDoor Examiner and the Metropolitan gave it better scores, I'm not sure how much I trust them as mob fronts."
Sorry, Ashton was still stuck on the revelation that this entire time, Veronica had been fucking her bandmates and Ashton hadn't noticed.
But who cared, right? Veronica was an adult, and so were her bandmates. And… and why would Ashton care that Veronica was doing it, huh? Apparently, so were the others. Good for them. Good! Ashton could be happy for Veronica, and maybe they could ignore the gnawing cold in their stomach the boiled up whenever that stupid fucking bundle of feelings that should have died ages ago reared its ugly head.
"Ash? Are you quite alright?"
"Yeah, yeah." Ashton shook their head. "Uh… yeah, heh. So… put you down as anyone?"

Packing for the tour with Dontae and Brad, Ashton had decided to play a very stupid game. See, paying attention was an incredibly important skill, one Ashton clearly needed to brush up on. Makes sense? Good. So, packing the vehicles for the tour, Ashton mentally tallied every little thing they should have noticed months ago.
Veronica and Jack were the first to arrive, in V's truck. As always, Jack was the first to get out, and Veronica slung an arm around him as soon as she stepped out1. "Hey! Me and Jack did our packing2, but we're happy to help if you'll have us."
"Good to know, kids, good to know." Dontae stretched. "Don't mind the mob van, here. Bradley travels in style."
"People have fuckin' died in this van, Dontae." Brad, meanwhile, was lugging something indistinct and not-at-all instrument shaped into the back. "It's not as funny if it's true."
Sara arrived next, precariously balancing a whole host of bags on her motorbike. It was almost… well, no, it was actually impressive a chick that small could carry that much. "Yo, like, can I leave my bike with y'all? Save the planet, ride a guitarist, all that." She hadn't bothered to set too much down before she came up behind Jack for a lingering hug3. "You're comfy as ever4. Sorry I couldn't come to practice last week, like, work's kicking my ass."
Veronica snorted5. "Don't sweat it, Mips. We're gonna be opening for a noise band, yeah? And work comes first."
"Aren't, uh, half of us out of work?" Jack awkwardly returned Sara's hug6. "I mean… otherwise we couldn't do this. Or… it'd be online, I guess."
"Thank g-d for piracy, or I couldn't make a living." Veronica went to help Sara with her bags, casually taking some of the ones she'd slung around her shoulder7. "I mean work's a sp—a ghost, sorry."
"It's cool, babe8, it's cool. Damn, it'd be cool to have, like, a hobby I didn't have to monetize." All her bags removed, Sara stood up on her toes to pull Veronica into another lingering hug9 before sauntering over to help pack. "Road trip? Hella. Always wondered what magic's like outside of NYC. We're gonna do that, right?"
Brad rolled his eyes. "I ain't taking you through a fuckin' Thoroughfare if I can help it. That shit gets you killed."
"Damn, Brad, way to be a shitty uncle."
"You don't get to call me an uncle, Mips, not this far North10. And I'll tell you when you can get your fuckin' magic on, alright?"
Izzy was the last to arrive, on foot. "Couldn't… couldn't we meet further from your house, cuz? The 'no taxi' rule-" Even with just her bass and a suitcase, she looked winded, nearly tottering over when Sara pulled her into yet another lingering hug11. "… good to see you again, too."
"You know, uh, back when I was… not Jack, I'd do war marches with things in my stomach. Not sure how you do without it." Jack and Izzy traded a curt nod as the former moved to take her suitcase. "You'll be with Nicky, right?"
"I'm not sure I wanted to hear that, and yes, I should be." Izzy pat Sara on the back12 and-

"You feeling alright, Ash?"

Ashton very nearly jumped out of their skin, turning to face the Veronica in their peripheral. She looked… confused. Like there was a bug in Ashton's hair. There very well might have been.
"Oh, fine, fine." Ashton swallowed.
"Really? Looked like you were spacing out there, for a sec." Veronica furrowed her brow. "Are you getting nervous, Ash? Honestly, whole business sounds like it's a recipe for stress.
"Dude, it's cool, heh. I'm… I'm fine."
Veronica… nodded. "Sure, sure. Uh… you can call me whenever you want, if you're feeling nerved out. I'm happy to help you through it, you know?"
Ashton just nodded back.

NOTICE
Black Glass on Rye will be hosting Yellowface from 4:00 to 5:00 PM in the courtyard for Experimental Saturdays, with an opening performance by House of Spades. Entry fee is $5.

For all his talk, Brad hadn't installed soundproofing in the back of the car. That meant Sara's revelry was clearly audible from the passenger's seat. And… okay, sure, she had every right to revel given how well her band's show went. Maybe Ash should be reveling, too. Maybe they shouldn't be a stupid stick in the mud too anxious to look-
"Ash, you're spiraling again."
Ash blinked back to awake.
Dontae sighed, eyes still on the road. "Look, you did really well. You… played what you were supposed to. Hit the right notes. It's fine to be self-critical, that's what drives you to improve, but… I worry about you, man."
"No, it's… it's fine, heh."
"You know," Dontae briefly spared a glance back. "Whenever you lie, you always chuckle. Like someone else might do when they suddenly need an excuse to leave a party. You've noticed that, right?"
Not really, come to think of it. "I mean-"
"This is about House of Spades, isn't it?" Dontae pinched the bridge of his nose. "Don't think I don't notice this, alright? Every time I see you around this Veronica girl it's like you've crawled back into your shell. Believe me, I'm not about to dump on anxiety, that's a dick move. But two and a half years of pining's got you nowhere."
"I… I never said I'd pined."
"You didn't have to, Ash. Asexuality didn't make me blind."
Almost on reflex, Ashton brought their legs up to their chest. "I don't know, dude. She's… she makes me feel weird. Stunted." Ashton gulped. "Don't know."
"No offense, Ash, but you have a full-time job, your own apartment, and a hell of a lot more followers on Bandcamp. I mean, they're opening for us, and it's their album that just dropped." Dontae sighed. "Look, if you like her, you like her. That's not on me. But it hurts to see you keep dancing around your feelings for someone who isn't even in your league." He paused. "In the good sense, I mean. Good for you specifically."
"Mm."
"No, I will not be letting you get away with noncommitment. Either you promise to tell her how you feel, or I'm teleporting you into the back and getting Brad to tell the other two exactly why you've been so cagey. You understand?"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it." Ashton chuckled. "I'll-"
The lights dimmed, and Ashton was suddenly sitting in the back of the van, next to an incredibly perplexed Jack and across from a reasonably nonplussed Sara. "— damn, I was getting to the good part!"
Ashton yelped, then groaned. "I wasn't lying, I just thought it was funny!"
Dontae hadn't gotten their message, apparently, because both Sara and Jack's phones pinged several seconds later. Jack was the first to get to his phone, reading it silently before shooting a look of confusion back to Ashton.
As for Sara, she just laughed. "Yo, you got a crush on V?"
Ashton clammed up, curling into a ball as much as their seat allowed.
"Oh, nah dude, I ain't judging." Sara's giggle seemed to indicate otherwise, at least to Ashton. "She's kinda cute in like, a roundabout swamp witch way. Also, weren't you two, like, college friends? That's really cute, yo! It's like… some guilty pleasure dime novel shit."
Jack coughed. "I, uh, probably wouldn't have made that comparison."
"Damn, can't even have lesbian pulp? I got too much work to be reading, anyways. Gig economyyyyyyy." Sara took a swig of her flask, leaving a smidge of green lipstick on the tip. "Thanks for letting us come on, btdubs. Money's tight so it's nice to guarantee gigs."
Ashton uncurled just the slightest bit. "thanks"
"Don't sweat it, man! Least we can do is help your score with V."
Ashton felt their soul physically leave their body.
"Are we, uh, doing that?" That was probably Jack. How was he so painfully close. "I had assumed you'd, well, been doing that already. No offence intended, but she's not exactly… indiscrete, for a human."
"Yeah, like, retrospect I'm surprised y'all weren't fucking already. Just seems natural, y'know?" Sara hummed. "I just assumed that, like, if Brad introduces two people they fuck. That's why they call it King of Hearts, yeah?
"It's not. More like how I'm… actually, uh, I'd rather not get into why he calls it that."
Okay, okay, okay, okay this was salvageable. They weren't judging Ashton, and they seemed enthusiastic about helping them… fuck their college bff, apparently. But… yeah. Ashton could uncurl the tiniest bit and hear them out, right?
Ashton swallowed, setting their feet back onto the floor of the van. "You'll… help?"
"Of course, yeah!" Sara raised her flask in apparent solidarity. "I mean, like, I dunno if I got good advice. Mostly, my body count's either work-related or a consequence of ~mental illness~. And I mean, like… me and V are weird?" Sara took a drink from her flask. "Workout buddies, and also I caught her crying one time and chose a terrible way to console her. Guess it worked out, though!"
Right, that method. Maybe a drunkard wasn't the best source of advice. Ashton turned to look at Jack, who sported either a similar look of concern or the same look he always sported.
Jack swallowed. "Fifty-seven years of experience. Also, uh, Nicky keeps mentioning something called an 'oviposition kink'. I'm not sure what it means."
Ashton was fucking doomed.

The good news was that Brad had been able to secure them a motel, as well as a few gigs in the area. Looks like this wasn't gonna be as much of a bust as Ashton thought.
At least, the tour wouldn't be.
Ashton swallowed. "You, uh, you're joking. Right?"
Dontae rolled his eyes.
"Look, I'm good. Fine. I play well, gonna play well." Ashton unconsciously tapped at the key with their thumb. "It's not affecting my ability to play."
"If I thought this was affecting your ability to play, Ash, I'd have just told her. I'm doing this for you."
"This is ridiculous, dude."
Dontae did that thing where you hum dismissively. "What's ridiculous is seeing you dance around your feelings for three years. I don't give a damn if you're married or nemeses by the end of this, the two of you are going to work this out however the hell you work this out."
Ashton sighed. "Right. Right."
Taking hold of their pack, Ashton made their way out the lobby and into the night air, down the row of rooms to the one on the far end. Their thoughts drifted back to that one Steven King novel for entirely unrelated reasons. "Green Carpet"? "The Dead Walk"? He was a mediocre writer anyways, but then so were most writers. None could have been as bad as whatever cosmic writer engineered this, though.
The fact that they hadn't fumbled the key into the lock was simultaneously surprising and disappointing.
Veronica was already inside the room, apparently pacing around the room before she'd noticed the door opening. "Shit, sorry for the mess. I've been thinking a lot? A lot of thinking, you know?"
Ashton's eyes fell drifted over to the bed. Singular.
"Do they hate me?" Veronica had apparently resumed pacing from the sound of it. Ashton's eyes were still stuck on the singular bed. "Maybe they're trying to get rid of me. Bet they got tired of my fucking antics." The bed Dontae expected Ashton to share with Veronica. "Drum machine doesn't complain, you know? Isn't some lecherous creep that uses its bandmates for sex." A single bed. Only one. "No offense but fuck, I just need to know, you know? That they're not tired of me."
This is normally where Ashton would assure Veronica that she's fine, they didn't exclude her because they hated her, but that would require them to divulge the exact reason why Dontae roomed Veronica and Ashton together.
"Oh g-d, they're tired of me. They're gonna-"
"No, dude, it's fine. It's…" Ashton brain must have skipped a pulse. "… one bed."
Veronica may or may not have blinked; Ashton wasn't looking and wouldn't be for the rest of the night, but it sounded like the appropriate response to what they just said. "… one… bed?"
"One bed."
"… one bed."
Ashton pursed their lips. "… gonna sleep on the floor, that's okay."
Why did Dontae think this would work?

05-11-2013
See YELLOWFACE live, with opening performances from HOUSE OF SPADES and OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE YOUTH. $5 cover, $2 wells, 21 and up

Someone patted Ashton on the back. "That went well. I liked the part where you killed the lights." Izzy.
Ashton grumbled through their drink, some cider that was barely sweet enough to make up for the alcohol.
Izzy made some kind of… some kind of noise Ashton was too spaced out to parse, taking a seat besides them. "Are you quite alright? You seem a bit… distant. Oh, and no offense, but did something happen with Veronica? Seems quite sullen, that one."
"No. Nothing happened."
"Hrm. Well, if-"
"I'm fucked." Ashton choked down another sip. "Can't get over a college crush. Barely go outside. Barely order my projects like…" The countertop was quite comfortable, actually. Perfect for resting their head. "'member that… bandage dude?"
Izzy hummed. "Halloween of 2011? Hope it likes my song. What, did it reach out to you again?"
"I think…" Ashton groaned. "Think they offered me… guhhhhh." Unsticking themselves from the bar, they turned to look at Izzy, then anywhere else. "Don't… don't fuckin' tell this to anyone. Right?"
"If that's what you want, I won't say a word. Is this about what it offered you?"
"Don't even know." Ashton took another swig from their glass. "Told them to screw off. Think they were…" Ashton's will to talk, and perhaps the top-left corner of the world, momentarily sloughed off into a haze. "… it's fuzzy. Try to block it out but I can't."
Izzy hummed once more, placing a hand on Ashton's shoulder. "You alright, mate?
"Think they wanted me to steal her from you."
Izzy blinked. "… steal who from me?"
"Veronica." Ashton downed the rest of their glass. "Acted like it. Told me it's some… some long term thing. My desire. Thought, you know, long term desire's music… thing. A majig. Like I—shit" Sheer force of will kept Ashton from dropping the glass they'd accidentally slammed into the counter. "Fuck. Sorry, dude."
"Eh, it was empty." Izzy shrugged. "You haven't told me much about it. Though, I suppose you haven't told me much about Veronica."
"What's even to talk about?" Ashton took another swig from their glass, except they didn't because it was empty and they were spiraling. "Met her in college, she was crashing with Brad, I… I had a crush on her, I drop out, don't see her for two years then, like… dude. It's fucked. Fucked, fucked, fucked. Every since that… that bandaged fucker, gotten worse!" They groaned. "Uh… guess 'm also working on some… music program. Teach kids music." A pause. "Still have to learn to code."
"Oh, interesting." Izzy tilted her head. "So you think it was trying to… exacerbate your feelings?"
"Didn't try. It just exascabated."
"Right, right." Humming, Izzy took a sip of her own drink. "That sounds like two problems we can solve together, no?"
"You are the third person to—"
"Jack and Sara told me all about that. However," Izzy's grin was distressingly toothy. "Neither of them were Veronica's girlfriend. Better yet? Neither were her closet key." An entirely inappropriate joviality accompanied her shrug. "I'd say I've got a leg up on them."
Ashton blinked. "… I'm not drunk enough for this."
"Come on, give it a shot!" The bartender quickly made her way back to Ashton, who passed her another two dollars. "Listen, I've been in the same boat as you. I was that young butch with stars in her eyes, once, all kinds of dreams clouded by that one fascinating bird. And true, Veronica's not Alex, but getting over that worry's a big step on the path to your dreams."
"What?" Ashton squinted back at Izzy, barely noticing their glass fill back up. "Dude. You're only a year older than me."
Izzy shrugged. "Point is, you're playing reverse Pinkerton with a bird I know inside-out. You can either kill the crush or stand it steady. But if you ignore it, it'll only eat into everything else. And the more time you ignore it, more you'll want to ignore Veronica, and that will make everything so much harder than it needs to be."
Hrm.
On one hand, it was theoretically preferable for Ashton to resolve their crush, and Izzy was too terrible a liar for this to be some elaborate prank. On the other hand, they weren't drunk enough for this.
Nodding, Ashton took their drink and choked it down in a single take. "Yeah, sounds cool."

"Huh, we're not the only room with one bed. Sara kept making a joke of that point."
Veronica mercifully hadn't noticed them come in; too busy doing something on her electric drums, eyes closed, ears covered by headphones, far too in the groove. Ashton knew better than to break through her flow, or at least that's how they justified not trying to.
Izzy hummed. "Should probably be practicing, too. Ah, well."
Something buzzed, causing Veronica to stop with a grimace. She was reaching for her pocket when she opened her eyes to see Izzy and Ashton, and yeah, Ashton would have had the same kind of startled shock. "Shit, hey, it's, uh…"
Not that it kept Ashton from stumbling when Izzy patted their back. "Hope I didn't interrupt a one-woman jam. So, I just talked with Ash, and they've been working on a digital music program for some time.13 They were hoping they could come to you for some help."
Veronica blinked. "… Sara's the coder. I, uh… I mean most of what I know, I learned from her. I'm g-good at learning, you know?"
"Right, right." Izzy nodded. "But you've got experience building drum machines, no? And the like, of course."
The force of Izzy's pivot seemed to have breezed off of her and onto Veronica, who now looked weirdly crestfallen. "Uh… yeah, you know, I guess I do. But, uh… you know, this is a program, and I have songs to practice. And by the way, how've I been doing? Been practicing a lot, you know?"
"Oh it's fine, darling. You're doing fine. I just think Ash has a lot to learn from someone like you, you know? Practical application, machine-oriented, you know how it goes." Izzy clapped her hands, a move that felt oddly practiced. "Well, sorry to leave you two, but I promised I'd help shop for the others. Hope you have a good rest of the day!" No, she didn't just wink.
The motel door slammed shut like a rock against a tomb. Ashton was pretty sure they were giving Veronica the same look she just gave them.
Veronica was the first to break the silence. "… how do you feel about stolen Python PDFs?"
***
Alright, on one hand, Ashton was making surprising progress with code, if only because that meant any progress. On the other hand, they didn't feel any closer to confessing their feelings.
Ashton shook their head.
"One of the big problems with learning from Mips is that she's not there to teach, you know?" Veronica, at the very least, seemed completely oblivious to any intentions. "Well, at least when it comes to commenting. I don't have the time to watch her videos, and what little I hear they're, uh, a little distracting."
"Didn't know she taught." Ashton clicked their tongue. "What's up with 'em?"
"That's… fuck, that's a trolley and a half. You know, I don't know if she likes it when I spill?" Veronica hummed. "You should ask her yourself. I think she trusts… you know what, let's get back to the program. So, when it comes to lists…"
Ashton's phone vibrated. Christ, of all times for Brad's impromptu jam—

Izzy: You're still with Veronica, right?

Oh, now she came to Ashton's aid. Just as Ashton was actually getting the hang of Python, their life story had to be forcibly dragged back to the romantic comedy mold.
Ashton rolled their eyes. "Learning how to Python"
"Oh, wonderful! Unless you meant the programming language?"
"Yeah" Beat. "Language, I mean"
Setting down their phone, Ashton pawed through their mental process for a good point to catch in Veronica's speech. Some metaphor about mountains, except that just as they'd caught back up, Ashton's phone buzzed again. "Should've known. Last I checked she's only about five inches."
Mm. Ashton didn't need to know that.
Regardless, Izzy continued. "So, one thing that really gets her going is the lighting. As in, 'sunbeams on the couch' lighting. You are on the couch, no?"
"Bed"
"Excellent, dear!"
"Not as romantic as you think. Two laptops together, hunched over. Maybe passing a USB"
Ashton looked back up and oh they shouldn't have expected that to be the end of things. "If that's not romantic, I'm not sure what is. Regardless, you're close, and that's progress. So what's the lean?"
Ashton blinked. "Lean?"
"The lean of you. The angle. Do you look inviting? Is she making herself inviting? Positioning is everything, darling, and knowing you you'll want something that you can fall into without much talk. If you can conquer the lean, you can conquer Veronica."
"Oh my god, I'm surrounded by idiots."
Veronica paused, and so did Ashton. They… hadn't meant to say that out loud.
"Uh…" Veronica scratched at the back of her head. "You okay, Ash? Looks like I lost you."
Shit. Ashton shook their head. "Uh, sorry dude. Izzy keeps texting me."
Odd. Veronica almost seemed to pale at that. "Oh. Oh, uh… shit, I, sorry to bother. What's she texting you about? If you d-don't mind me asking?"
"Nothing. Uh… asking about you. I guess."
The room went silent.
Reality probably should have dawned on Ashton. They'd just confessed to texting about Veronica behind her back; that had to be suspicious even without their blindingly obvious crush on her. And yet something about the room felt rigid, like a cracked cube kept in place by the position of its pieces. Molasses. Some other metaphor, anything to take the reality of the situation off of Ashton's mind for—
"Look, I get it."
Ashton froze.
"I know I've been a dead weight."
… what?
Veronica gesticulated like what she'd just said was anything close to a logical leap. "I mean, fuck, of course I've been dragging them down, I'm the drummer! Drummer sets the tempo, I've been setting it… weird, you know, and fuck, I'm sorry I brought them down, but I've been trying to go clean. Be a… be a better bandmate for those three. Not just some fucking parasite that mooches weed and, and everything else."
Ashton furrowed their brow. "You okay, dude?"
"Look, don't do this to me. Fuck, you deserve them so much more than I do, but—" Buzzing from Ashton's phone cut Veronica off. "I can't lose them, okay?! They're the fucking world to me, I lose them I'm nothing! Just tell me what I'm doing wrong, I'll change!"
"Dude, I…" Gears turning. "… dude. They're not gonna replace you."
"But why wouldn't they? I, I dragged them down to 7.2. Jack and Izzy, they're 9s at least, and fuck, Sara's a killer vocalist."
"That's not how bands work." Ashton sighed. "Look, you can drum, I can't."
"So she wants me to teach you, and, and…" Veronica bit at her finger for stability, only to release a few seconds later. "Look, I don't want to be paranoid, okay? But they're all rooming without me, we've barely jammed since this started, and… fuck, dude, she wants me to teach you drums. They want me gone, Ash."
The universe hated Ashton, that had to be it.
"… they're throwing me away. Oh g-d, they're just throwing me away." A peculiar stillness washed over Veronica. "Done so fucking much for them, but I guess they just hate me now. Fine, whatever. I hate me too. They're not special. But pawn me off to you like you're nothing, well."
Veronica sat up, sliding off the bed to standing, and began pacing the room. "Un-fucking-believable. They're conning you, don't even have the courtesy to tell you what they're doing. Fucking cowards, maybe I'm not good enough but you, you deserve to be in the know."
Okay, this had to stop. "Uh, dude? You're fine, they—"
"Fucking christ, how was I this blind? Izzy told me she was a narcissist. How didn't I—"
"Dude, you're fine. They like you, and—" so do I. "They just—"
"They're trying to freeze me out, Ash! They set me up with you and told you to learn drums from me but they didn't even—"
"Dontae set us up!"
Once more, the room went silent.
"Dontae picked the room!" Practically on autopilot, Ashton hopped off the bed. "Dontae picked the room, not Izzy, not Sara, not Jack. He barely even listens to House of Spades. Thought you were actually a Ween cover band for years!"
Somehow, Ashton had started pacing. "And they don't hate you either!" They were gesticulating now, a million unconscious pleas for shit they didn't have the energy to think about. "Jack stuck with you when I didn't! Sara calls you for hardware shit! And Izzy set this up because you're the best drummer she knows, and, and all of this is my fault for thinking I could half-ass an "I love you" two and a half years in the making!"
And that's when the world came to a halt.
That wasn't supposed to… Ashton just liked her. Right? Love was some big… complicated bullshit, or else what you said to a just friends friend. Not… not right now. Too strong for right now. Fire, not nausea.
So they didn't object when Veronica straightened her posture, coughed into her fist, and said "Yeah, I'm really sorry for that, Ash. I gotta be better about outbursting.". And if that opened yet another impossible ache in Ashton's heart, so be it.
***
The motel had TV. It was presently the most… "engageable" thing in the room.
For the past hour or so, the pattern had been relatively simple: Ashton flipped to the next channel, looking for anything in the programming to take their mind off the past afternoon. Then, either they or Veronica (but mostly Ashton) objected to the nature of the content, and Ashton flipped to the next channel. Platonic ideal of an idiot box.
This was stupid. But pondering why it was stupid was worse.
Neither of them had said anything after… the thing. That was just fine. Swell, even. The two of them could forget this ever happened, and to top it off Ashton could cringe themself into a cloud of dust and be blown away by the wind.
Ashton closed their eyes.
…

"… you want something to eat?"

Ashton blinked back to earth. "Barely got money to order in."
Veronica shook her head. "No, I mean like… like we barely got a kitchen, but I got some ramen after the show, plus a couple hardboileds from that one bodega. There's not much, but… I guess there's actual protein. Better than college fair."
"Dude. You cooked actual food in college."
"When I had you over, yeah."
Ashton shrugged. "Fair. Uh, yeah. Sounds good."
Veronica nodded, heading for the mini-fridge and microwave that passed for a kitchenette in the motel. This was normally where Ashton distracted themself with a critically introspective internal monologue, but instant ramen was too fast for anything coherent.
"Right, decent for what it is. I swiped a few packs of red pepper back in Staten, for a kick." Veronica made her way back to Ashton, cup ramen and plastic fork in hand. It smelled… like cup ramen, Ashton supposed. "Might want to go to the couch, don't want you sleeping in ramen water, yeah?"
Ashton nodded, slipping off the bed and onto the couch. "'scool. I'll… wait. Where's yours?"
Veronica shrugged. "Not hungry."
"Mm. You should eat."
"Later, alright? I'm just…" Veronica sighed. "I'm not hungry."
It breaks my heart to see you do this again, but Ashton's heart had been broken since they'd abandoned their degree. They'd live through this.
Ashton looked down into their cup. It was hard to make cup ramen look good; certainly, Veronica hadn't. But that was cup ramen, and it was better than not eating.
… the food was alright. A little spicy, maybe. But pretty good, for cup ramen at least. Warm. But a kind of equalizing warmth. Insulated Ashton from everything else. A perfect complement to the "dead inside" feeling you got after instant ramen.
Perfect to cap off today's shitshow.
"… yo, Ash." Veronica was sitting so damn close. "You got a bit of red pepper, just above… just above your lip."
"Yeah?" Ashton shrugged. Too much cup ramen to care. "What are you gonna do about it?"
A pause. Both of them blinked.
By the grace of some cosmic deity, Ashton didn't have the time to apologize for their crudeness before one of them fell into a desperate kiss with the other. Wasn't enough time to process which, barely enough brain power to keep from exploding. Not a problem; Ashton had, what, five and a half years of pining to make up for?
Kissing Veronica was almost everything Ashton could have predicted. Her mouth was quick to open, tasted like spearmint gum, made such wonderful sounds even muffled against Ashton's mouth as their hands got to exploring Veronica. She melted so easily into Ashton's touch, that wonderful wiry frame pliant under their fingers. Even the whines as they pulled back, those desperate pleas in Veronica's eyes, were exactly as Ashton could have imagined in their daydreams. Only that Ashton would actually be here, kneeling over Veronica on some ratty sofa like the best and worst kind of mumblecore trash, had they written off years ago as unthinkable fantasy.
Ashton Miyamoto had all the time in the world, and not a single second to waste.
They descended once more onto Veronica, to kiss and bite and wring out every little sound they could. Gentle touch became desperate clinging, frenzied pleas that the dream never end, that the cosmic nightmares above and below grant them this one impossible boon, this selfish assurance that Ashton was here, with Veronica, that this was all real!
That magic was real, that squids could walk, that music could create life, how easy it was to believe! That Veronica could gasp for "more"? Ashton might never have believed it to be so, had they not just heard it.
And Ashton would give Veronica more. More kisses, more bites, that ever-lengthening trail of attention snaking down from her lips, down her chin, down her neck. Their free hand under her shirt, to squeeze and claw and caress her chest. A knee to grind thoughtlessly against her crotch. Ashton would give all this to Veronica and more, give her every little thing she asked of, and let it matter not what Ashton received in return.
Not to say they objected when Veronica kissed back, or when she pulled back from Ashton to strip off her top, or when she returned the favor between her legs and pressed her own knee—

Ashton's mind short-circuited,

but not in the good way.
No, it was that creeping, ugly, sickening
miasma of self-loathsome panic

that permeated everything around Ashton,

come to drag them
from one more good thing.

So back into the shell with you, Ashton.
Yours was a valiant effort.
But if you thought you could ever fill the pit in your stomach, well

"Ash?!"

***
Ashton Miyamoto blinked themselves back into the land of the living.
Standing over them with a look of… panic(?) was Veronica. She was shaking, muttering under her breath, on the verge of pacing a trench into the carpet, doing pretty much everything Ashton should have been doing, had the weight in their stomach not kept them firm on the couch.
"Oh g-d, oh g-d, oh g-d." Veronica broke eye contact, actually started pacing the room. "I'm sorry, Ash I'm so sorry, I should've asked before I, I, shouldn't have just assumed you'd be okay with that, fuck, fuck, why did—"
"It's fine."
Veronica stopped. Might have blinked or clutched herself or looked back to Ashton. They wouldn't know; they weren't looking back.
"You didn't do anything wrong." Ashton swallowed. "I… I thought I wanted it, too."
That was the last thing either of them said to each other for the rest of the night,

and the next day

after that.

It was Ashton's turn to drive.
They'd lucked out on their next stop. Basement show for lodging. Helped that only six of them needed sleep, and—
Ashton should have objected when Veronica said she could sleep in the van. They didn't, but they should have.
But, at least Veronica wouldn't have to see Ashton again.
***
House of Spades was doing their usual shoplifting. Brad was pacing the van and arguing over the phone in what was probably a pidgin. Dontae was unaccounted for, which was to be expected.
For their part, Ashton was smoking a reasonable distance from the fueling station. What else was there to do? They'd torpedoed whatever they had with Veronica, and by extension probably Brad and HoS. That left Dontae, who was probably convincing someone armadillos were real to keep his skills sharp. And, you know, Ashton could go at it alone. They'd done it this long.
Well, they had the rest of the tour to figure that out. For now, Ashton had the rest of a cigarette to wait for HoS to get out of the station, and—
"Excuse me, Ash."
Jack. HoS was probably back, and—
… there was something off about Jack as Ashton turned to face them. More than what was usually off. It, it should have been self evident, surely, but whatever it was, Ashton couldn't place it.
Ashton swallowed. "Hey, Jack."
"Hi." Jack nodded, stiffer than usual. "Just checking in, seeing how… seeing how things are going. How are things going?"
"Uh… fine. I guess." Ashton took a drag of their cigarette, exhaling to the side but not once taking their eyes off Jack. "Something up, dude? Seem like something's eating you."
"I'm perfectly fine. So, how did it go with you and Veronica." It didn't feel like a question.
Eye contact with Jack was already hard; keeping it after that was an impossibility. "Uh… fine. Alright. Should see what the others are like, heh." Ashton pursed their lips. "See if I do better with others."
There was a pause, pregnant with some invisible malice, before Jack next spoke. "She hasn't talked about what happened with you, but she doesn't need to. It was very bad, and it's affecting her self-worth. Moreover," and Jack took a step forward. "I'm trying really, really hard to not immediately assume the worst about someone like you. So I want you to tell me what happened between you and Veronica, and I want you to keep in mind that for the first two-thirds of my life, I worked as what you might call an 'inquisitor'. So," Jack leaned forward, reaching out to snuff Ashton's cigarette between his fingers. "What did you do to Veronica, Ashton?"
Ice settled over Ashton, and even out, they found themselves attempting to take a drag from their cigarette. "… dude. Dude, I'm sorry."
Jack tilted his head again, now at an angle impossible for a human. "What. Happened. Between you. And Veronica?"
"I, I'm sorry." Ashton pressed back against the wall. "We, w-we were… I chickened out."
A pause.
Jack blinked, and righted his head. "You… chickened out?"
"Fuck, I…" Ashton growled in frustration. "We were together, she made me food, it gave me some… you ever eat cup ramen?"
Jack furrowed his brow. "I don't eat. Is this some kind of edible?"
"Don't fuckin' get you, dude, and no, I… sorry, sorry, I just—" Ashton accidentally flung their cigarette over the road. Too much gesticulating. "Shit, sorry. I just… cup ramen's bad, makes you feel like you're gonna die, mixed weird and I'm kissing her. We… get into it, she puts knee between my legs, and I thought I'd like it but I just… I freaked out."
There was another pause, before Jack relaxed, going back to the twitchy dude Ashton only just realized he hadn't previously been. "Oh, that's… sorry, uh, you had me worried."
"Dude. You had me worried."
"Yeah, uh, sorry Ash." Jack scratched at the back of his head. "I was worried. Nicky's… she's my friend, and whatever happened it's got her in a depressive. But… my god, it's frustrating."
"Yeah, I—"
"You love her." Jack straightened up. Ashton wasn't sure if they'd ever seen him smiling; less so if they ever wanted to see him smile again, if he smiled like that. "Wasn't about just, just fucking her. You love her and… and sorry, I'm still a little angry, but it's so obvious to everyone except you and Nicky." At least his laugh sounded genuine. "God, you know, it's just so stupid."
It was Ashton's turn to furrow their brow. "Should I be—"
"Just tell her!" Jack threw his arms out, before allowing them to fall bonelessly back to his sides. "You know, uh, up front? Bet it would make her feel better. Or you. I mean, no offense but you… probably need it just as much as Nicky."
"… but how?"
Jack shrugged. "I'm, uh, maybe the wrong person to ask? Love's a human thing. But… well, obviously there's some way to tell her? Like… I don't know, er, do what you're passion about."
What they were passionate about…

Saved kokoroach.flac

Izzy wouldn't be happy Ashton leaked a Butch/er demo apropos of nothing. All for a good cause, and… well, Ashton supposed Izzy would have more than enough opportunity for revenge.

Me: If I haven't told V by the time you get this, I'm eating three cup ramens in a row. Keep me to that.

Typing out that message had taken longer than mixing the demo. Ashton wasn't sure if the apprehension was the typical Veronica kind or if it was specifically ramen-related. Not that it mattered; forcing lose-lose onto inaction was the point.
Ashton just hoped it was enough.
Closing out their macbook, Ashton opened their phone. KokoRoach pulled up well-enough, without any sort of warnings or notifications. Not that they'd be able to test it; not even Brad liked to be woken up at 3:17 AM, and testing it outside was a surefire way to attract Jailors. It had to work on the first try.
Now or never. Slowly, steadily, Ashton made their way out of the house, careful not to wake anyone up.
Suburbia, if you could call it that, took on an entirely different air after nightfall. Cold. Calm. Off-putting in a way too abstract not to ignore. You almost wanted to scream, to see if it actually took; but that was how you got cited for noise complaints. Ashton sometimes wondered if it wasn't deliberately engineered to trigger ego deaths.
They weren't sure if the sight of Jack sitting atop the van, clearly awake, made that better or worse.
Ashton yawned. "Can't sleep?"
"I'm, uh… yeah." Jack shrugged. "You could say that."
"Fair." Pursing their lips, Ashton looked both ways down the street before crossing over. "… yo. Thanks for what you said."
It was too dark to make out much of Jack's expression, but knowing him he probably furrowed his brow and broke eye contact. "Yeah, no problem, it's… I don't know. You know, I'm, I'm better at the physical stuff. That's, uh, mostly what I've been doing with myself."
"Dude, half of what Izzy tells me is true you got ridiculous game. Props on not being evil."
Jack paused. "… yeah."
Another pause. Jack seemed to be shuddering; not to worry, Ashton refused to push the issue.
"… Nicky's still awake, last I checked. You know how it… is, with her."
"'swhat it is. Should…" Ashton swallowed. "… it's stupid. Still a lil' nervous. Think you could—"
Jack slid off the van, to the sound of a conspicuous yelp from inside the van. "I'll leave, yeah. Um… this is going to be the last I help you with this. Because either she doesn't like you, or, well, you have bigger problems. Ones I can't solve." One last pause. "But I think she likes you back."
With what might have been a smile, Jack disappeared into the night.
It was just in time for Veronica to stumble out from the back of the van with a knife. "I'm not afraid to—" She stopped. "… yo, Ash. Uh… what's up?"
This was it. Better make it count.
"Hey, V." Ashton's heart pounded in their chest; but their brain knew it'd be doing a lot worse than pounding after three cup ramens, and so they forced their feet onward. "So, got a demo. Wanted… wanted you to hear it." Their lips were chapped. "Tell me what you think."
"Everything alright, Ash?" Maybe Veronica blinked; it was hard to tell in the dark. "You should probably be asleep. Don't feel you gotta work on this in the middle of the night, yeah?"
"'sfine, V." Ashton swallowed. "Couldn't sleep, heh… no. That's a lie, sorry. Didn't want to."
Veronica shifted in place, like she wanted to do something but wasn't sure what.
"… demo's anart. Should probably do this in the van. Less you're not awake for it?" Ashton drummed their fingers over their pocket. "'sokay if you don't."
Suburbia went silent; the seconds passed like a kidney stone.
Finally, Veronica shrugged. "Yeah, let's hear it."
Ashton nodded, carefully climbing into the cluttered van. Veronica had made herself what might have been blanket fort among the equipment, a smallish alcove with a comforter and pillow; but the floor of the van made resisting the urge to sleep easy. Wriggling their phone out of their jeans, Ashton pulled up KokoRoach.
No time like the present.
Ashton pressed play.
Gentle drones and acoustic strums accompanied a soft and pinkish glow from Ashton's phone. It wasn't enough to see Veronica's expression, not from here, but perhaps it was was brought Veronica closer.
And then the lyrics started.
Ashton wasn't used to singing soft shit: Yellowface was a noise band first and foremost, and what little Ashton branched out had to contend with their smoking habit. But it must have been enough for the anart, because falling from the phone were the tiny pink pixels they'd meant to summon.
Veronica got closer, crawling into the van. From here the light of the phone reached their face, illuminating a look of confusion stuck between Ashton's phone and the pixels.
The song continued, and the pixels flitted about. Some of them circled Veronica; others bounced lazily around to KokoRoach's tempo. All throughout, Ashton's phone painted the van in a tender glow, and any embarrassment on their part was subsumed into the music.
A minute into the song, Veronica extended a careful finger towards the pixels. She barely twitched when they accepted, enthusiastically flittering onto her hand to bounce and float and fly around her. It should have been weird: if anyone was to be illuminated in soft pink, encircled by pixels, with the faintest upturn of the corner of her mouth, the woman who'd cultivated the look of a starving raccoon should have been the last to make it work.
What did "weird" matter, though? Veronica made it work. Veronica made it beautiful.
But eventually, the demo had to end.
Ashton swallowed. "Liked it? 'scalled, uh, KokoRoach." Ashton winced. "KokoRoach." Another wince. "red." They groaned.
"KokoRoach?"
"Yeah, thanks." Ashton licked their lips. "Were always better at wordfucks."
It was a bit dark without the light, so Ashton wasn't sure if the flicker of movement was Veronica mirroring Ashton's own lick. "Thanks, yeah."
Ashton swallowed. "… didn't used to do that. Izzy wants a normal first for Butch/er, so the album version's not like that. But… you know, there's feelings you can't express in words."
"That strong, huh?" Veronica's silhouette shifted in place.
"Yeah. I… you know me. Never been good with talking. Never been good with people." Ashton… well, it wasn't quite a chuckle. "You're so important to me, dude, but I can't even come clean. Afraid I'll ruin everything. Don't even have some tragic backstory to justify clamming up, just—" Their breath caught on something. "… I just fuckin' love you, V."
Veronica's silhouette blurred, slightly. "You… love me?"
"Guess I didn't make it obvious. You know… I was so stupid about it. Should've fallen in love in college. Or when we met back up at Brad's shack, or… or now. No. Some time between then and now. Don't even know."
Veronica went silent, so dreadfully, dreadfully silent, like Ashton had unintentionally unleashed an insult of the gravest caliber. Her gradually blurrier silhouette shifted itself around for an unthinkably infinite minute, before she responded. "… I'm not much to love, Ash. Why… why me?"
Did it count as 'laughing until you cried' if the tears came almost immediately after? "Does it have to be a mystery? You were there when I was too afraid to be, stuck with me when I, when I was fuckin' nothing, just…" They sniffled. "Man, I don't even know! There's so fuckin' much to love but I just think about you, V, and that's enough to make the moment a lil' better. Can't that be enough?"
"Ash, you weren't nothing." The silhouette Ashton prayed was Veronica leaned in. "You're fucking wonderful, you've always been. Kind, talented… your shit was tighter than mine, that's for sure. And…" The silhouette swallowed. "… and why didn't you tell me sooner, Ash? Fuck, I thought I'd lost you."
"I'm an idiot, V." Ashton smiled through their next sniffle. "An idiot that loves you. That alright?"
The silhouette paused; in an act of unimaginable cruelty, the darkness rendered its expression opaque. Time crawled to its definitive standstill, an eternity to surpass every other mental metaphor. Deep in Ashton's stomach, that ever-present knot of ice tightened.
And then Veronica leaned forward, planting a quick kiss upon Ashton's lips, and their stomach uncurled for what felt like the first time in forever.
Veronica pulled back, chuckled like Ashton had told a dumb joke. "Love's a crock of shit. Feels like I gotta keep suffering through it." And yet Ashton could hear the smile in her voice.
So Ashton laughed, and answered with a kiss of their own. "Guess it is. Wanna suffer together?"

i was a teenage shoggoth (Ween cover)

TAPE 2

Staining Boss's Silk Sheets

Footnotes
1. (1)
2. (2?)
3. (maybe a 3?)
4. (4)
5. (despite the fact that nothing… okay, probably a 5)
6. (… don't overthink it, still a 5)
7. (… might be a 6)
8. (the universe was playing with Ashton, and they'd been too dumb to notice)
9. (8)
10. (did that count? Are they at 10 now?)
11. (x+1)
12. (tallying goggles sucked, Ashton had decided)
13. A generous way to put "stalled off because they don't know how to code."


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The following article is a part of the And Every Time We Meet Again storyline. Whilst you can read it on its own, it's highly recommended you read the previous installments to get this article in its fullest.

28th of April, 1985
The Wanderers' Library, Wing Z, Thaumaturgy Section 24, Shelf 853

Within the Wanderers' Library, there was a corridor. A forgotten corridor filled with dust, mostly, but a corridor of importance to the library nonetheless. At least in the past it had been.
Within that corridor, on both sides of it, there were shelves. Shelves filled with ancient knowledge, forgotten by most long ago. Knowledge stored in every possible format; from physical, digital, to even metaphorical. Many would probably miss most of it, but it was there nonetheless — waiting for someone to study it again.
And within these shelves, there was a man. A man exactly 196 centimeters tall, slightly underweight, though not too much, with black, messy hair and grey-blue eyes, tired from adjusting to the everpresent darkness. From the way he looked and touched the shelves, it was clear he's been here before. How many times he couldn't say. Ten? Fifty? Maybe three hundred, even? He had no idea.
Similarly, he had no idea how long he'd been there for — or who he was, for that matter. Ever since that portal closed behind them, he couldn't say anything for sure. Hell, he wasn't even sure if there was even any portal to begin with.
As he touched the first book from the right, swiping away the dust that had covered it for so long now, he looked at its title. Runes and Symbols: Applied Thaumaturgy for Beginners. He silently chuckled. Has been a while since he needed one of those. A couple of years, probably. He tried to recall the exact day he had mastered the craft; the day he had learned to convert matter through various forms with ease. Though he could barely remember since those days were so far gone.
And as he opened the first page of the manuscript, he remembered he was a sorcerer.
He's been one for most of his life, really. It wasn't anything new, neither to himself nor to the people he knew. It was a part of who he was, for better or for worse, and for quite some time now too — he was almost certain it was ever since he turned 14 in the autumn of 1971. October 10, 1971, to be exact — the day he accidentally lit his entire home on fire. But that was irrelevant now. It was one of the countless demons of the past he tried to forget about.
As he leafed through the entire book, the nostalgia almost got to him. He'd spent the better parts of his youth in this Library, moments he'll never get back. He never forgave himself for having to find a new home here, but he didn't need to — the bookkeepers and the Black Queen were kind enough to never ask what happened, and he was quite thankful.
He put the book down. It was best to not touch those old wounds.
As his eyes wandered away from the tome stored on his right, he felt his jacket get forcibly thrown off of him. He kneeled down, trying to pick up what was taken away from him, only to see something he didn't remember putting there.
A loose photograph.
And as he picked it up from the stone-cold floor of the library, identifying the faces it depicted, he remembered he was a friend.
Not a very good one, though. No, not for a while now. Ever since they caught a glimpse of Nowak back in February of 1984 he'd been… different. Obsessed, even.
He wasn't happy about it.
These faces had meant something at some point to him. Magdaleine Cornwell, Jessie Rivera, James Micheals, and MacCarthy Junior. Each of them… was someone important to him, weren't they? When had he lost this joy? When did he become this uncaring and arrogant husk of a person? Where did he sacrifice the bonds he's created with all of them for… yes, for what exactly? For his devotion to work? For science? Or for a shadow of the past to which he clung like an idiot, trying to use revenge as a substitute for help with his long-time trauma and helplessness?
He didn't want to answer that question, because the answer he'd find would hurt a part of him he didn't want hurt.
Putting the jacket back on, he continued walking down the shelves, trying to find… trying to find what, exactly? He… he wasn't sure anymore, honestly.
And as he looked into the darkness surrounding the shelves, he noticed a flashing light in the distance, how far away, he couldn't tell But… flashing light. Light. Light…
He remembered that a long time ago, he was someone else's life's light.
Not… not anymore though. Not for a while now. It was hard for him to think about it, ever since she disappeared into death's cold grip. He never talked about her to anyone — not even those he considered his closest friends. The pain of having to bear the consequences of so many mistakes was too much to share with anyone, even if he knew he could trust them.
It was hard to explain with words; it made sense in his head, or at least he thought it did, but… it was complicated. Too complicated to give them any room in this already too complex machinery to begin with. As a result, he just left them sitting in a limbo of… not really acceptance, no, but a state of "this happened and it's now a fact, learn to deal with it." But there was no real way to deal with it, not when what happened was so shattering to the rules he'd set in stone for his reality as to just accept them with a simple "no."
Natalie, he thought, trying to stop the stream of tears going down his cheeks, staining the stone-cold floor of the room he stood in. He tried to make his stupidly complex mind stop, trying to just accept it or say "no," trying to say otherwise, trying to kill this stupid non-acceptance limbo that had haunted his soul for years now. He failed.
And so he cried.
He cried like the five-year-old boy he hadn't been for over twenty-two, breaking down in tears he so desperately tried to stop. He fell down the well of agony as the legs that made him stand up failed to support his body, giving him into the infinite rabbithole of sorrow.
It was hard. Too hard to explain with words.
But eventually, the sorrow stopped coming. He wasn't good, no, he was definitely far away from that state, but he was definitely… better, yes. He was better. At least better than he was before.
He thought he was ready to get back up; he probably was wrong, but that was beside the point — all that mattered now was that he could lift himself up from this miserable state of being.
The only way to get out of this place was to push forward, into the light that flickered once and never again in the darkness that surrounded this library filled with life and light so long ago.
Though his eyes were familiar with the lack of light most of the Library offered to its visitors, he still couldn't see everything he was marching like a blind man into.
And as he attempted to understand what was before him, he remembered he was a researcher.
He worked for a Foundation. A Foundation that he thought was always right, as the only true moral compass for the rest of reality, but it was a Foundation he wasn't now sure he trusted. He wasn't like them. He wasn't an immoral, grim asshole that always—
And then he realized he was exactly like the rest of them. Every single one of them, they identical to him, and he identical to them. When did he lose himself? When did he turn from the life-loving alchemist to an obsessed scientist, forgetting everything he was taught during his youth?
And for how long would it have to go on?
As the burning realization hit him, he remembered who the man beneath all these layers he'd built up really was.
He remembered he was Daniel Asheworth.
Daniel Robert Alliston-Asheworth, born 1957 in New York, USA. A Level 3 Researcher for the SCP Foundation and ex-alchemist, now self-declared as a free thaumaturgist. A servant to nothing and no one, and a free man to his past and himself.
And as he realized he was finally free, a beacon of blinding light entered his vision. From that light emerged someone he'd known for quite some time now alongside someone he barely knew. Jessie Rivera and Jeremy Cornwell, both members of the exploration team that had led them to where they were now. They looked… almost concerned, he thought, though visibly relieved.
Both of them looked like they've been here for a while now — their eyes were swollen from the everpresent darkness and their stances slightly lowered from visible exhaustion. Cornwell's wound from 5795's action was still visible on his arm, which bared a simple bandage created from what looked like Rivera's shirt.
"We've literally been looking for you for hours. You can't just split from the group like that, goddamnit." Rivera asked, trying to sound as harsh as she could, though failing to do so as she walked towards. "Where the hell have you been?" She tapped his chest angrily, showing her disapproval.
"I… I don't think I know," Asheworth answered as memories came back to him, making him remember.

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And Every Time We Meet Again

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The 7th-grade classroom is dark, blinds down, hot-humid air making the surface of your polished desk slightly wet against your forearms. You've just sat down, eyes still adjusting to the dark of the classroom after arriving late. Dark figures, once students, are hunched down and over at their desks, trying to become invisible, as a dirty yellow logo rotates on the corner of the projector screen. There are hundreds of little weak spots on the projector canvas, forming a blizzard over the documentary playing, as a little bead of sweat trickles down the back of your neck. The door swishes partially closed, leaving a narrow pocket of light shining through onto the floor, and you begin to watch the video.
What you may not know is that the Greazeburger Company found its humble origins as early as 1867. A small-time farmer named Seamus Grease had lost most of that spring's carrot crop to environmental factors of the time, including but not limited to, soil erosion, torrential rains, and the endless tides of the accursed bones from the now-lost beings that dared to dream blasphemies before the first noble pillar of humanity arose from forgotten dunes.
You sneeze, sending a spray of spit onto your desk, a dry pain inside of your nose. Someone else laughs, it's too quiet, and the narrator's grating voice is the only thing breaking the uncanny silence.
Our hero was forced to move from his home, having next to nothing left after the disastrous aftermath that his carrots had engineered with their ironclad hivemind's appalling schemes. Always pausing to lick up every little drop of spittle that graced the poor man's lips, never giving him a moment's peace, starving him of the very moisture that was legendary for the act of touching him.
Body's hot, legs are cold, the wet heat causes another drop of sweat to roll down behind your ear. Some insect buzzes in the room, and quickly stops, like it had interrupted a holy moment with its presence.
Poor fucker had to meddle with the government, making himself eligible for the Homestead Act, yeah baby, and packed his bags for the journey on which the unborn denizens of his town would come to be thankful for. That's right, thankful, outright thankful, filled to the top, turning over and spilling out onto the table of the human psyche with that gratitude that none of y'all millennials and z'ers even show familiarity with. Grow the fuck up and get a goddamned job, you filthy sacks of carbon-based meat, or whatever “healthy” vegan substitutes you make your broken bodies whole again with.
You feel sluggish, slow. Your hair is warm, damp, and matted against your scalp. A little pinprick of pain in your neck, elbows throb against the uncomfortably cold desk.
With nothing but the singular boot on his feet, he bounded off across the lands, dragging his strips of snacking dirt behind him. It only took a day for him to make his way to the sunny, empty, rolling fields of Wyoming. With his new home in Idaho, or whatever the state's called these days, he unpacked his farm, those mutinous carrots following his every step, a parasitic shadow to his deeds. He'd have to deal with them later, as this was a man with a mission. His crops, which he had been fortunate enough to bring along, wouldn't sell. Stupid shit such as “flies” and “mold” had tainted his bountiful harvest, and almost ruined his reputation in one fell swoop. He'd have to be one step ahead, one chess piece moving twice on its turn, always thinking, never behind to catch up.
Snack time. There's a crusty apple, some chips crumbled to smithereens, and a thermos with some blackslosh. Like soup, it's almost refreshing feeling the little bits of chewed food floating in the froth brushing against the roof of your mouth. Close to cereal, but with too much milk. At least the slightly sweet taste keeps the thirst away.
Seamus melted it all down, boiled his food over the course of literal days, risking it all on a few bundles of ruined artichoke and bread swollen with insect eggs. The sweat was caked on his skin in layers by the time it was done, but the sticky, viscous drink would make him a fortune in the culinary world. The Greazeburger Meal had been invented.
A dribble of spit falls from your mouth, landing on your shirtsleeve and staining it with the color of your last meal.
Now, the only problem was how he was going to spread the light of his influential discovery to the now-undeveloped world. Would the surface of the land smile in pleasant anticipation of the plentiful blessings to come, or would it come to disdain the holiness that it had been privileged to witness the birth of?
You move to wipe off the dangling saliva, pushing the trail into the shirt, making a long, wet line across the fabric.
Seamus was a fucking saint. He was the very pinnacle of creation, and just thinking of a land made it part of his kingdom. No half-assed crowd of entitled meat sacks who need a dictionary to learn what RESPECT means can throw around buzzwords like “Eco-friendly”, “Free-range”, and “Cannibalism” while expecting the generations who sacrificed so much for them to bend over backwards to care for their delusions of “Global Warming”, “Genetically Muddled Organisms”, and “Quality Food”. One of the most hurtful things someone can be called in America is a “cannibal”, and I'll have all you literal diaper-shitting toddlers in school know that Seamus started from pond scum, and he clawed his way to the top, doing nothing but pulling himself up by his bootstraps every single step he took.
The man on the TV is crying. You look to your left, and the teacher, whose skin is unusually shiny, is weeping uncontrollably. The class is either stunned into silence, or is somehow refusing to acknowledge the scene unfolding in their midst.
He just kept pushing, surviving off of dirt, until he caught an incurable disease from a tainted patch of his beloved snacking sod, and he was faced with the possible destruction of his glorious dynasty's golden foundation. Fortunately, there was a light from the heavens that shone down upon his crippled form! He was given the blessings of knowledge; the secret whispers of a process known as binary fission. One mitosis later, with his dying breaths, our pioneer named his newly-birthed clone brother Ebenezer Greaze, with the missing “s” symbolizing Seamus, the loving father who had passed so soon from Ebenezer's great and wondrous journey of the adventure we call life. With his royal line secured, Seamus happily turned into stone in the year 1868.
The teacher's skin is slick with slime, a black nest of flies probing a mess of oily hair with crystalline wings and ink-encrusted shells as they sob. Their bony hands are clasped together in front of their grease-obscured face, resembling reverent prayer.
Ebenezer was left alone. So, so alone, as they were left to grapple with the hulking corporate goldmine that Seamus had left behind. They jumped on the economic void with incredible mental fortitude, becoming a lone stronghold in a world plagued by the lost, who blindly pit themselves against Greazeburger. At our core, we represent the moral pinnacle of enormous capitalistic opportunity that spreads wealth to all through its expanse, and every step of the way, fools like you refuse to eat from our swollen cornucopia. Ebenzer persisted, selling crops, mud, barbed wire, and sometimes still-living animals all melted down into a sublime drink: The Greaze Family Sauce. He sold it, left, right, up, down, in, out, around, about, mixed in with, and within the lands that they alone had made their kingdom. However, after the demand steadily began to increase, Ebenezer accepted that, like their fraternal progenitor before them, they would need help if this Proto-Greazeburger's light was going to continue shining. In the most unexpected event of the century, they reached out to what they remembered as an old friend from Seamus' life.
The classroom is now packed. More students, crammed into spaces and shapes that you didn't even know were possible with flesh, now sit patiently, absorbing the continual stream of information from the projector screen.
Braxten Bloburch, that cowardly ignorance vessel, that weak clown, that disgusting bundle of electric rot slithered up to Ebenezer's doorstep, knocking repeatedly through the cold nights, whispering blasphemies into an innocent mind. The carrots were one with him, moving as one, a second skin to the symbiotic relationship that deserved to be peeled and preserved immortal in the brine of his own filth. He had almost convinced Ebenezer to give way into his inane and meaningless path of ruin, before a light from the heavens shone anew. A lightning bolt, cast straight from the majesty of the clouds above, struck Ebenezer's home one night, causing the surrounding lands to erupt in divine flame. The carrots were incinerated, along with every aspect of their miserable existence, and the offensive Braxton was transformed into a jelly of the new-fangled wires he had used in his so-called “telegramphs” and “sellaphones”. The forces of fate had shown Greazeburger their favor once more, cementing Ebenezer as a being of the divine with its own holy fire. As the surrounding lands were burned clean to a sandy plain, Ebenezer was freed from their physical form, and set forth the empire that would transform into Greazeburger Incorporated, giving a happy resolution to our tense and captivating tale.
The door swings open, a brilliant light illuminating the distorted shapes of oily flesh within the classroom. Muffled commands are shouted through hazmat suits and two-way radios; the almighty projector is muted as the credits roll across the yellowed screen. As the world fades from view, you can feel yourself melting around the warm desk, and you pour to the tiled floor. The invaders, bright white rubber shining in the once-dark room, arrow-pierced circular logo on their bulky helmets, move in as the world surrounding you fades into an uneasy yellow. Words flash on the heavy cloth screen; the only clear detail in a room that is slowly phasing into muddled shapes.
A Greasy Story, brought to you by Greazeburger Incorporated. If our products require feedback or flippant, unabashed praise, please be sure to contact our newly-formed Earth Division Manager: Martin Greaze. Remember, you can't spell “Greaze” without “EZ”!


What's my name?
I've almost forgotten…
That sickening number,
That god awful number.
Just use my name.
Say my name…
What's my name?
I'm not an experiment,
Or something dangerous to be locked up
And kept away.
I'm me!
I'm…
What's in a name?
Letters that make a sound?
The clawing of our personalities?
The holding of our bodies
In a place we were never meant to be?
Then what's in a number?
It's been too long.
Memories are hazy,
And yet I still know.
I have to, I need to!
Somewhere.
Somewhere.
What's my name?
I gave it to myself,
I think.
I could give myself another,
But it wouldn't be right.
It wouldn't be mine.
But who are we,
If not our name?
Who are we,
Left as a few pixels,
Maybe letters or numbers,
On a screen?
Who are we?
When locked away,
Held against our will,
Known as anything but human.
To be sealed away and never seen.
Yet to be heard and yet to live.
Taken as children
From our family.
Kept to the shadows,
Never to know ourselves or our world.
Never remembered beyond a face,
And never our name.
Who are we?
Beyond a number on a sheet of paper,
The “unique” abilities given to us
To change the world.
To change the future.
To help those around us.
Say my name.
Not the designation they gave me.
Not any type they may reference.
Not any of the things they call me.
I remember now.
So say my name.

Say my name!