Talking writing
I am finishing up the 80s monster hunter novel for na/o and then moving on to the something new. It's not going as fast as I would like but it's going. I'm up to one of the biggest battles (but I do dislike writing battles...I'm not much on reading them either). I was hoping to do a cozy fantasy/mystery but it just wasn't gelling. I had the three main characters in my head for months.
Yesterday one of them said 'we have the cinema in its infancy.' So...gaslight/mystery? Might look less Dungeons & Dragons and Legends and Lattes. Now I know who dies and why and I wasn't sure where the brothel fit in but they said 'we have pictures and these new moving picture thingies of the dead dude' (because naturally porn came soon after the invention of the film)
They finally told me their names (for now as I'm infamous for changing it)
Xarian - Half fox person, sort of bard magic ex-adventurer turned pub owner
Amata Venerini - human, magical (not sure what yet) Xarian's former partner, still BFF, turned detective (has a below knee amputation so I need to figure out healing magic limits in this world)
Elio - brothel boy with the blackmail photos
As if to make up for the disappointment over the art and the story, today I got a comment on my wipbigbang telling me they found it and read it (what's up of it because I'm tried of big bangs = no reads because people get overwhelmed by length so I'm on an every other day posting schedule) in one go at at 2:30 AM they're on AO3 telling me not only how much they loved it but they also loved my original characters (Angel's nieces and nephews) It lifted my mood.
Last week I forgot to share my six word story and in fact I wrote two of them so here they are.
Title: The Shadows Breathe, the Shadows Purr
Summary: Angel has planned out his first time being with Husk and for once, things go exactly as he hopes.
Rating: teen
Author Note - Written for Spikesgirl58’s six word prompt challenge. The six words were Lawyer, Earsplitting, Steam, Surround, Disobey, & Partake. Also written for the lyrical titles prompt of Soundtrack using the song Burn by The Cure from The Crow soundtrack (Brandon Lee version) also written for the Whumptober prompt # 4 Hallucinations - you’re alive in my head. Also written for brumeier in comment_fic for the prompt Prodigal Son, Malcolm Bright, Odd Man Out (1947)
Malcolm tried to surround himself the good, such as his lawyer telling him all charges would be dropped. They had found evidence of his kidnapping in Capshaw’s car, blood filled syringes in the home to back up his story of her causing an embolism, his skin on the ropes used to bind him in the hotel and in the Woodsman’s cabin. The claim he’d been held by three serial killers in succession was insane but true.
He'd saved the Woodsman’s intended victim and he stopped his father after The Surgeon killed The Woodsman. If he lied to himself enough, he could even believe torturing the man for Jeannie’s location was all his father’s idea and not him putting him up to it. No one, not even Gil, knew he’d been freed and could have run off at any moment, could have stopped his father another way. Maybe he would have been in time to save Jeannie without him.
You nearly lost your mind trying to stop The Woodsman when you were with the F.B.I. You lost faith in yourself. Malcolm shook his head, trying to free it from the cobwebs that clung too tightly inside his mind. Maybe your father would still be alive if you had turned him in.
And maybe he wouldn’t have to live with the words ‘you were never a good son,’ something else he had told no one. No, he had to get back on point, a case brought to him by Blaze and Edrisa. They had insisted the whole team be brought into this cold case that the Killabustas not only thought was solvable but also the killer was still active in the city. The department officially didn’t agree. They also didn’t think it was prudent to bring Malcolm back as a consultant yet, if ever. At this rate, he might as well become a full time Killabusta. Edrisa, at any rate would be thrilled. Her friendship and bright view of him remained undimmed, no pun intended.
Dani was another story. Yes she was somewhere out in Trinity Church Cemetery with him and the others but he couldn’t forget the look on her face that day in the woods or her deeply held belief he was much better off with his father dead. Certainly the general populace was in spite of Martin’s claims he was well and wouldn’t kill again. Malcolm knew self-delusion when he heard it. He was the master, after all. Even tonight as she arrived with a cardboard tray of coffee cups, curls of steam rising into the night air, everything about her demeanor said the strain on their relationship might be too much for either of them to handle. He wanted to partake in the easy camaraderie the rest of the team shared but he was forever the man on the outside, always the odd man out.
Blaze had been the first to notice the pattern, being a fireman he would. The killer set fires and if he could he took a souvenir, usually pre-arson but after he killed his victim. The souvenir ended up here in the cemetery, sometimes draped over the headstones, sometimes buried near them. Malcolm had to admit he was stumped by the psychology on this one, other than maybe it was a symbolic burial of the killer’s choosing.
Shadows pressed in on him. They didn’t risk flashlights and alert the man who, if his pattern held, would be here sometime tonight or in the next few days. His graveyard gifts were always left in the full moon nights. The silvery light highlighted Alfred Tennyson Dickens name on the headstone next to him.
“Was your father as difficult to live with as mine?” he whispered. All things considered, he’d rather have had Charles as a father. The worst he would have experienced was serious debt.
He’d passed the Astor graves earlier. His family had been great friends with them, one of 400 back in the day. Maybe he should have spent his time crouched there. A lot of them had been absolute bastards too. None of them killed their own father. Maybe. Who knew with the very wealthy and very ambitious.
Malcolm jumped, swearing he heard something, almost a purr but he couldn’t see far enough into the shadows to say for sure. He wasn’t sure where his friends were, everyone dressed to blend into the dark. Something whitish moved in the gloom and Malcolm crept closer. No, that couldn’t be. It couldn’t be what he thought it was.
An earsplitting ‘My boy!’ shattered the night and Malcolm reeled back against a cedar. He clamped his hands over his ears. There was no way he was hearing what he thought he was.
“You’re dead,” he said.
“Am I?” Martin walked out from behind a mausoleum. “This would be the right place for it after all.”
“This is all in my head.” Of course his hallucinations weren’t new. He’d had them off and on for years but this felt different, felt more real.
“I’m your father. You’d think you’d be more happy to see me.” Martin ghosted closer to him. His patented self-satisfied smile flipped into a scowl. “But you never were a good son. I deserved better.”
Malcolm seethed. Hallucination or not, this hit close to the bone.
“And are you so sure I’m dead. Did you see me after they transported me from the woods? I went to the hospital. Wouldn’t it be just like Gilly to lie to you about my death? Your mother would go along with it. You know she would just to keep me from you and Ainsley.” Martin reached for him and Malcolm slithered around the tree he’d been pressed against. “Come with me, Malcolm. Let’s go to Canada just like I planned. Don’t disobey your father or do you want to believe their lies about my death.
There was a certain logic to that. There had been no funeral. He wasn’t even sure if his mother had collected his father’s ashes. Ainsley hadn’t said she had either. He knew he hadn’t. Had Gil lied? Had Mother? Dani definitely would have, JT too. They’d all think it was the best for him. Death was the only way he’d be free of his father but was this freedom.
Malcolm looked away, trying to calm his breathing. When he looked back to his father, Martin was gone. The shadows breathed in his ear but he was too afraid to look, terrified Martin was behind him now.
“Bright! Move!” Gil’s voice shattered the illusion.
Malcolm rolled forward just as a shovel swung, catching him on the shoulder instead of the head. The breathing shadow wasn’t his father or a shadow. It had to be their killer.
“Police!” JT’s voice boomed. “Drop the shovel or we’ll drop you.”
The killer threw the shovel down but also directly at Malcolm who barely dodged it. His shoulder shot fire through him, probably dislocated.
JT and Gil had their killer down and were handcuffing him by the time Dani came bolting through the cemetery. She stopped and looked down at Malcolm.
“Are you hurt, Bright?”
“A little,” he admitted.
“Kid, why were you just standing there?” Gil demanded to know.
He couldn’t tell them the truth so he just shook his head.
“Malcolm,” Gil said more gently. “Are you okay?”
“No…I’m not well,” he admitted, maybe for the first time in his life being entirely honest. It sucked the air out of the cemetery, all of them freezing except for the killer thrashing in his cuffs and cursing.
Gil strode over and squatted down. “I’ve been hoping you’d finally see that. Let us help you.”
Malcolm nodded and Gil and Dani helped him up. He said nothing as they deposited him in Gil’s car. Maybe it was time to stop hiding in his work and deal with his trauma. He couldn’t afford another hallucination that almost cost him his life. He owed it to himself and those people who loved him, few though they be. It wasn’t going to be pretty but finally, he was ready.
Title: Everybody Hurts
Summary: When Fizzarolli awakens in the hospital after the fateful party that costs him so much, all he wants is his friend there to comfort him. Instead all he has is a world of painful changes he must navigate alone.
Rating: teen
Author Note - Spikesgirl58’s six word prompt challenge. The six words were Lawyer, Earsplitting, Steam, Surround, Disobey, & Partake; Also written for Lyrical Titles for the prompt 90's song using Everybody Hurts by R.E.M., and the whumptober prompt 21: Body Horror, let the bedsheet soak up my tears (apparat feat. Soap & Skin, Goodbye)
Fizzarolli swam back to conscious wishing he hadn’t. Fire wreathed his head and even knowing he was safe in a hospital bed, his brain wanted to believe he was still actively burning alive. He blinked against the bright hospital lights, everything a blur. After the earsplitting explosion at the circus, few sounds reached his ears. Why was he here? How had he lived? Shouldn’t his arms and legs hurt more like his head and his tail did? He only felt an odd numbness from them. Imps didn’t usually get taken to a hospital. In the other brief moments of consciousness before this, no one had explained anything. Why was he here?
Why wasn’t Blitzo here?
# # #
When he floated into being fully awake a fifth time, health care workers were in his room that stank of antiseptics and cooked flesh. He’d rather surround himself with his friends. Where was Blitzo and Cash? Couldn’t someone stop the pain? He tried to say something, to sit up. His bladder felt full and crampy. Hands pressed against him, gently pressing him down.
“Shhh, little one,” she said. “You can’t get up. Can you see me? Can you hear me?”
He barely grasped what she had said. Were his ears stuffed with cotton? He tried to shake his head but the movement made the pain soar until that was all he was aware of. A groan like a frog’s croak echoed out of him.
“I know, little one. It hurts. I’m Allegra. I’ll be taking care of you.”
He tried to point to his lower belly but his arms didn’t move. He tried to say the word pee but he wasn’t sure words formed.
“Try to lay still. I’ll give you something for the pain. Your eyes were scorched by the flames and you breathed some in so your voice is going to take time to heal.”
Aware she was still talking, Fizzarolli couldn’t make out a word of it. Tears welled up in his eyes and she carefully dabbed them away. She did something under the covers that pinched like nothing he ever expected to feel in his dick but the pressure in his bladder disappeared. She made more soothing sounds but it didn’t help. The pain enveloped him so fully all he could do was moan and cry. He wanted to die just to make it end. Why couldn’t he die?
Where were the people he loved? Why was he alone in so much agony?
# # #
“I think you can see a little better now,” Allegra said.
Fizzarolli thought he caught her meaning, her words still sounding as if they came from miles off, but pain and fear whittled away at anything she might be saying. Now his arms and legs ached but nothing like his head. “H-h-hurt,” he croaked out.
She held up a whiteboard in her hot pink hands. She wrote “Your eardrums were hurt in the explosion. We don’t know how bad your hearing will be. I’m Allegra if you didn’t understand me yesterday.” Resting the board against her full chest, the succubus-nurse signed at him before writing. “That was my name. I’ll teach you when you’re stronger. Can you read this or are your eyes still blurry?”
“Can…read,” he said.
“Good,” she wrote. “You have a lot of healing to do, Fizzarolli.”
“How? Money?” He didn’t have money to pay for all this. What would happen when he was better? How badly was he hurt? No one had told him and he was asleep more than he was awake so he hadn’t been able to check himself over.
“Shhhh,” she said and then wiped the board so she could start again. “Don’t you worry. A lawyer has drawn up a trust the hospital will draw from and before you ask, I don’t know who your benefactor is.”
“Hurts.”
“I know. You’ve had all the painkillers you can handle.”
“Blitzo?”
A frown touching her pretty face, Allegra shook her head, her dark hair falling into her eyes. She had no idea who he meant.
Where was Blitzo? Had he died in the fire? Fizzarolli shuddered at the thought. Worse was the thought, had Blitzo set the fire? Why was he so terrified he had? His memories were a mess. That couldn’t be true, could it?
# # #
Allegra brought in a tray of food. A curl of steam rose from the soup. She crumbled crackers into it. “Ready for your first food since the accident? The doctor said your throat should be able to handle it.”
“Yes,” he said, even though he had no enthusiasm for it. His head, arms and legs still ached terribly. Was it too much to ask that the soup was nothing more than a bowl of morphine? Maybe she could tell him today where his friends were so he had something else to concentrate on other than his pain.
He wanted to feed himself but his arms couldn’t move. He didn’t even have the energy to lift his sheets to free his hands. Fizzarolli slurped from the spoons full she offered him. He wanted to partake in the whole bowl because his tummy was rumbly but he couldn’t get it down past his injured throat.
“Okay, that was a good try. Here, let’s have a little of this to cool that throat down.” Allegra said something he didn’t get but when she offered him a spoonful of ice cream, he understood. Fizzarolli ate most of it.
“Want…to...see.”
“Your face?” she wrote and when he nodded, she continued, “Not today. We’ll change the dressings tomorrow. If you’re awake, we’ll see about it.”
“Blitzo?”
She shook her head.
He shut his eyes. Why was he so alone?
# # #
Allegra began to unwind the dressings off Fizzarolli’s head. He trembled, afraid of what would appear in the mirror. A red spot - like the clown nose he had worn so often - was the first thing he saw. He sucked in a deep breath that made his scorched throat ache and his ribs hurt. His face was raw and blistered, burnt black in places. His tattoo was nothing but a blister oozing down his face. His gaze tracked further upward and his heart shattered. His big, beautiful horns were gone. Ragged shards, cauterized by the intense flames, were all that was left of them. A deep primal cry echoed out of him, tearing his throat further.
“I’m so sorry, little one,” Allegra said loudly enough it registered with his burst eardrums but only barely. “There was no way to warn you enough about how bad it is.”
Whatever she said past ‘sorry,’ he couldn’t tell. Fizzarolli sobbed, tears flooding his face. Allegra let him cry as she painted his face with medicine and started to rebandage him. She held him briefly but he squirmed away. He was going to go kill Blitzo because it had to be his fault. He’d started the fire. That’s why he wasn’t here. He had tried to kill Fizzarolli. He gave a mighty swing of his body and nearly fell off the bed.
“No, Fizzarolli. You have to stay still. You can’t leave bed. Don’t disobey me, little one. It’s for your own good,” she said but he heard only muted sounds.
The blanket fell away in his struggles and he saw what he hadn’t been able to before with the amount of drugs they had given him for pain and his fire-damaged corneas. His legs were gone. His bandaged tail protruded past two stumps, well bandaged, somewhere close to the middle of his thighs. Screaming, Fizzarolli reached for them but couldn’t. Only then he caught his reflection. His arms weren’t there either. He shrieked, thrashing on the bed. His tail whipped like a snake.
“No! I feel them! My arms and legs hurt so much! How can they be gone? I can feel my ankle throbbing. My feet itch! It’s a nightmare. I’m dreaming,” he wailed. “This is a nightmare. Wake up, Fizz, wake up!”
Ordering himself to do so had no effect. Two other nurses raced in and held him onto the bed so his thrashing wouldn’t hurt him further. Allegra wrote ‘I’m sorry but it’s not a dream. You lost all four limbs in the explosion.’
“No,” he whimpered. “No”
Allegra’s pink eyes teared up. “Sorry.”
“Should have let me die.”
Fizzarolli tried to throw himself off the bed, not that he knew what he’d do once he was one the floor like some grotesque burned worm. The other nurses held him down. Something burned through his IV and darkness took him.
# # #
Allegra signed to him. Fizzarolli watched because what else could he do? Weeks had gone by since the accident. Allegra still tried to teach him sign language in case his hearing never returned to normal. He’d given up on his voice being what it was. He’d currently given up on suicide because he had no idea how he’d manage it without arms and legs. Allegra had brought him the one thing he’d asked for, a jester’s hat to hide his broken horns.
“You said I’m doing good,” he translated her sign. “What good is it? I can’t sign back.”
“You can talk,” she said out loud and signed along.
“I’m not eating dinner when it comes,” he blurted out, a plan suddenly forming in his mind.
“Why? You picked one you’d like,” she replied. “Is Autumn being mean when she feeds you?”
“That’s the problem. She feeds me. I’m useless.” He slapped the bed with his tail.
“You have no limbs. That’s not the same thing,” she countered.
“I’m a clown and acrobat. I can’t be either now.”
“Oh yes, the end all be all of your existence was clowning.” Allegra rolled her eyes.
“What would you know?” He glared at her.
“I know I’m a succubus who chose to be a health care worker. I didn’t let past expectations direct my life. I know your situation is different. You’re being forced to live a different life than the one you wanted.”
“Then why aren’t you out there fucking humans and stealing their souls or whatever?” He slapped the bed again, turning his face. She moved into his field of view so she could sign.
“It would be better than listening to your sour self,” she agreed. “I did that. I was successful at it but there was this one sweet young man that I hooked on me. Only…I felt something for him, which is a huge no-no in the succubus biz so I left, came back here for a while and he killed himself when I left him. I felt too guilty to go back to earth so I did something different.”
That was the most signing he’d ever tried to read. Someone had killed himself over her? It made her sad. Who would care if he died? Almost no one from the circus had come to see him. He took that as further evidence that Blitzo had purposely left him to die in the fire he’d set. Much of that day was gone from Fizzarolli’s memory. The doctor blamed the trauma. One thing he remembered clearly was Blitzo coming for him and him reaching out with his flaming arm. Blitzo had run like a coward or maybe not a coward but rather someone who wanted Fizz to die there.
“Sorry that he died,” he said because it looked like she wanted to hear it. “But what can I do? The circus isn’t going to feed and house an imp who can’t perform. It’s all I know.”
She raised one well-sculpted eyebrow. “So your big plan is to stop eating and starve yourself to death?”
“Well, I can’t take a knife to myself,” he replied bitterly.
“I want to say mean things to you right now. That’s the way of hell.” Allegra stood up. “But you’re barely more than a child - yes, yes, I know you’re a teen, a young man, but you have no idea how young you really are.” She sat on the edge of his bed, talking and signing together. “I can’t imagine the pain and misery you’re going through. I know that everything feels bleak and hopeless. I can’t promise things will get better. All I can promise is if you end now then all you’ll ever be ends too. You contain so much more story left to tell, Fizzarolli. Eat your dinner for me please and I have something that might help.”
He screwed his eyes shut when what he wanted to do was stomp away, something he’d never do again. “You can’t help.”
“You don’t know. There is someone who has an experimental procedure he wants to try.”
Fizzarolli cracked open an eyelid. “Is that why I’m still here? They’re taking care of me?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know who is paying for it all but I know he has something that will help you with the loss of your limbs, a replacement.”
“A what?”
“That’s the theory at any rate, cybernetic limbs. Would you be willing to be a test subject?”
He didn’t know how he could say no.
# # #
“Let’s give this a try.”
Fizzarolli eyed Allegra evilly. Having his stumps redefined for the fitting of the cybernetic limbs had been a fresh agony, the surgeons removing more of his bones, evening things out. Having the ports for his limbs attached to his nerves had been so awful, he’d been in a medically induced coma for a few days. Finally, he had the new limbs but his brain wasn’t sure what to do with them. Whoever he had to thank for them hadn’t made an appearance yet. In the meantime he’d been working with some health care workers just learning to lift his legs and arms and make minor movements with his fingers. In the interim, more of his hearing had returned but Allegra still signed to him.
“I’m not ready.”
“Pfft, you’re ready or do you want to remain in that bed like a cat in the loaf position with sunlight streaming on you?”
“Meow,” he replied.
Allegra laughed and flipped the bedding back. His legs and arms were thing, black and apparently could extend and retract. That would be more advanced training. For now, all he wanted to do was to learn to walk again. Allegra thought this was the day. He disagreed.
“Ready?”
He stuck his forked tongue out at her. She took his hands and tugged gently. Fizzarolli let her pull him to the edge of the bed and he got his feet under him.
Hey, he was standing. Allegra let him go and he flopped back on the bed like a landed fish. She stood him up four more times before he got the hang of it. She held his hands, stepping back as far as their arms’ lengths would allow.
“Come on. Take a step toward me.”
“I can’t,” he protested. “I’ll fall.”
“Not your first fall in life. I’ll pick you up, Fizzy.”
He shook his head, fear paralyzing him. He couldn’t lift his foot.
“I thought you wanted to find this Blitzo guy and make him pay. You can’t do that if you don’t walk.” She smirked.
“Oh, fuck you,” he said without any heat.
“Are you going to try? You are standin,g which is already better than yesterday. We can try tomorrow if you want.”
“I can’t…no, I can,” he said, shuffling one foot forward like he was skating. She tightened her grip so he didn’t topple. He shuffled another foot. He wouldn’t call it walking but he was a foot’s length closer. Fizzarolli did it one more time and some of the fear ebbed away. He didn’t lift a foot off the ground, too afraid to fall but he shuffled until he was close as he could be to her without slipping inside her pink skin.
“Look at you walking. Someone is getting extra hot fudge on his ice cream tonight.”
“And a peanut butter shell?” he asked hopefully.
“We’ll see.” She turned them around so her back was to the bed and she put space between them. “You do it one more time and you get that shell.”
Grinning, Fizzarolli shuffle-skated his socked feet toward her. It hurt where the limbs joined his body. He was still afraid of being on the ground any second but the limbs had given him some independence. That - he realized - had been what frightened him the most, the loss of independence. He might never become the clown he wanted to be but Allegra was right. His story wasn’t over. The next chapter was just beginning. He had a new goal: put his cybernetic foot up Blitzo’s ass for unleashing this sort of hell on him and never coming to see him. He wanted to think it was an accident but when his friend hadn’t come, what else could he think? The fire had been deliberate.
And so would everything he did to Blitzo when he finally saw him again. Having a goal fired him up. He wanted to shuffle back to Allegra a third time - this time extorting extra pickles on his burger from her. He would recover. He would always be scarred. His horns were destroyed. His limbs were metal and wires but what made him Fizzarolli was still alive inside him. He’d be back on top. Just watch him.
Author’s note:
Fizzarolli’s bleak view is not meant to convey people with disabilities cannot have a good life and are trapped in misery. It is something he needs to work through (as we know he does). Also it is meant to show some of what my patients went through after trauma (most often limb loss in the case of my patients) and my own pain after a career ending injury forced me to pivot before I was barely 30. The mourning is real. So is the scattered thinking post-trauma (especially with pain killers) which is why Fizz doesn’t have the full extent as to what happened until a few days later.
End Note:
I purposely didn’t say who gave Fizz his limbs because as of writing this, we don’t know for sure (other than the fan theory is Asmodeus gave them to him. In my head I have a few possibilities:
Mammon who is the one I think least likely as there is a five year gap between Fizz working for him and the explosion. Even if Fizz had auditioned before the birthday party, Mammon is more the type to move on to his number two pick than spend a fortune on Fizz.
Asmodeus who is up there high on my list of candidates, not because he knows Fizz but let’s say (as I have in the story) the limbs are experimental. He’s looking for a good candidate to test them on and someone suffering an explosive quadruple amputation would be a good one.
Paimon/Stolas is somewhere in the middle because we know Stolas is a friend of Blitzo and Blitzo is Fizz’s friend. Paimon has already proven the type of parent who buys his kids’ affection and obedience. What we don’t know is how long Blitzo was with Stolas as kids. It could have been just that one time.
Cash himself because it was his circus and he liked Fizz better than he liked his own son. He was concerned with Fizz’s wellbeing so he put up the money (though definitely think Asmodeus made the limbs and maybe Fizz was a first time trial of those limbs like proposed here)
Any theories you have that I didn’t think? I’d love to hear them (or which scenario you think is likely)
Yesterday one of them said 'we have the cinema in its infancy.' So...gaslight/mystery? Might look less Dungeons & Dragons and Legends and Lattes. Now I know who dies and why and I wasn't sure where the brothel fit in but they said 'we have pictures and these new moving picture thingies of the dead dude' (because naturally porn came soon after the invention of the film)
They finally told me their names (for now as I'm infamous for changing it)
Xarian - Half fox person, sort of bard magic ex-adventurer turned pub owner
Amata Venerini - human, magical (not sure what yet) Xarian's former partner, still BFF, turned detective (has a below knee amputation so I need to figure out healing magic limits in this world)
Elio - brothel boy with the blackmail photos
As if to make up for the disappointment over the art and the story, today I got a comment on my wipbigbang telling me they found it and read it (what's up of it because I'm tried of big bangs = no reads because people get overwhelmed by length so I'm on an every other day posting schedule) in one go at at 2:30 AM they're on AO3 telling me not only how much they loved it but they also loved my original characters (Angel's nieces and nephews) It lifted my mood.
Last week I forgot to share my six word story and in fact I wrote two of them so here they are.
Title: The Shadows Breathe, the Shadows Purr
Summary: Angel has planned out his first time being with Husk and for once, things go exactly as he hopes.
Rating: teen
Author Note - Written for Spikesgirl58’s six word prompt challenge. The six words were Lawyer, Earsplitting, Steam, Surround, Disobey, & Partake. Also written for the lyrical titles prompt of Soundtrack using the song Burn by The Cure from The Crow soundtrack (Brandon Lee version) also written for the Whumptober prompt # 4 Hallucinations - you’re alive in my head. Also written for brumeier in comment_fic for the prompt Prodigal Son, Malcolm Bright, Odd Man Out (1947)
Malcolm tried to surround himself the good, such as his lawyer telling him all charges would be dropped. They had found evidence of his kidnapping in Capshaw’s car, blood filled syringes in the home to back up his story of her causing an embolism, his skin on the ropes used to bind him in the hotel and in the Woodsman’s cabin. The claim he’d been held by three serial killers in succession was insane but true.
He'd saved the Woodsman’s intended victim and he stopped his father after The Surgeon killed The Woodsman. If he lied to himself enough, he could even believe torturing the man for Jeannie’s location was all his father’s idea and not him putting him up to it. No one, not even Gil, knew he’d been freed and could have run off at any moment, could have stopped his father another way. Maybe he would have been in time to save Jeannie without him.
You nearly lost your mind trying to stop The Woodsman when you were with the F.B.I. You lost faith in yourself. Malcolm shook his head, trying to free it from the cobwebs that clung too tightly inside his mind. Maybe your father would still be alive if you had turned him in.
And maybe he wouldn’t have to live with the words ‘you were never a good son,’ something else he had told no one. No, he had to get back on point, a case brought to him by Blaze and Edrisa. They had insisted the whole team be brought into this cold case that the Killabustas not only thought was solvable but also the killer was still active in the city. The department officially didn’t agree. They also didn’t think it was prudent to bring Malcolm back as a consultant yet, if ever. At this rate, he might as well become a full time Killabusta. Edrisa, at any rate would be thrilled. Her friendship and bright view of him remained undimmed, no pun intended.
Dani was another story. Yes she was somewhere out in Trinity Church Cemetery with him and the others but he couldn’t forget the look on her face that day in the woods or her deeply held belief he was much better off with his father dead. Certainly the general populace was in spite of Martin’s claims he was well and wouldn’t kill again. Malcolm knew self-delusion when he heard it. He was the master, after all. Even tonight as she arrived with a cardboard tray of coffee cups, curls of steam rising into the night air, everything about her demeanor said the strain on their relationship might be too much for either of them to handle. He wanted to partake in the easy camaraderie the rest of the team shared but he was forever the man on the outside, always the odd man out.
Blaze had been the first to notice the pattern, being a fireman he would. The killer set fires and if he could he took a souvenir, usually pre-arson but after he killed his victim. The souvenir ended up here in the cemetery, sometimes draped over the headstones, sometimes buried near them. Malcolm had to admit he was stumped by the psychology on this one, other than maybe it was a symbolic burial of the killer’s choosing.
Shadows pressed in on him. They didn’t risk flashlights and alert the man who, if his pattern held, would be here sometime tonight or in the next few days. His graveyard gifts were always left in the full moon nights. The silvery light highlighted Alfred Tennyson Dickens name on the headstone next to him.
“Was your father as difficult to live with as mine?” he whispered. All things considered, he’d rather have had Charles as a father. The worst he would have experienced was serious debt.
He’d passed the Astor graves earlier. His family had been great friends with them, one of 400 back in the day. Maybe he should have spent his time crouched there. A lot of them had been absolute bastards too. None of them killed their own father. Maybe. Who knew with the very wealthy and very ambitious.
Malcolm jumped, swearing he heard something, almost a purr but he couldn’t see far enough into the shadows to say for sure. He wasn’t sure where his friends were, everyone dressed to blend into the dark. Something whitish moved in the gloom and Malcolm crept closer. No, that couldn’t be. It couldn’t be what he thought it was.
An earsplitting ‘My boy!’ shattered the night and Malcolm reeled back against a cedar. He clamped his hands over his ears. There was no way he was hearing what he thought he was.
“You’re dead,” he said.
“Am I?” Martin walked out from behind a mausoleum. “This would be the right place for it after all.”
“This is all in my head.” Of course his hallucinations weren’t new. He’d had them off and on for years but this felt different, felt more real.
“I’m your father. You’d think you’d be more happy to see me.” Martin ghosted closer to him. His patented self-satisfied smile flipped into a scowl. “But you never were a good son. I deserved better.”
Malcolm seethed. Hallucination or not, this hit close to the bone.
“And are you so sure I’m dead. Did you see me after they transported me from the woods? I went to the hospital. Wouldn’t it be just like Gilly to lie to you about my death? Your mother would go along with it. You know she would just to keep me from you and Ainsley.” Martin reached for him and Malcolm slithered around the tree he’d been pressed against. “Come with me, Malcolm. Let’s go to Canada just like I planned. Don’t disobey your father or do you want to believe their lies about my death.
There was a certain logic to that. There had been no funeral. He wasn’t even sure if his mother had collected his father’s ashes. Ainsley hadn’t said she had either. He knew he hadn’t. Had Gil lied? Had Mother? Dani definitely would have, JT too. They’d all think it was the best for him. Death was the only way he’d be free of his father but was this freedom.
Malcolm looked away, trying to calm his breathing. When he looked back to his father, Martin was gone. The shadows breathed in his ear but he was too afraid to look, terrified Martin was behind him now.
“Bright! Move!” Gil’s voice shattered the illusion.
Malcolm rolled forward just as a shovel swung, catching him on the shoulder instead of the head. The breathing shadow wasn’t his father or a shadow. It had to be their killer.
“Police!” JT’s voice boomed. “Drop the shovel or we’ll drop you.”
The killer threw the shovel down but also directly at Malcolm who barely dodged it. His shoulder shot fire through him, probably dislocated.
JT and Gil had their killer down and were handcuffing him by the time Dani came bolting through the cemetery. She stopped and looked down at Malcolm.
“Are you hurt, Bright?”
“A little,” he admitted.
“Kid, why were you just standing there?” Gil demanded to know.
He couldn’t tell them the truth so he just shook his head.
“Malcolm,” Gil said more gently. “Are you okay?”
“No…I’m not well,” he admitted, maybe for the first time in his life being entirely honest. It sucked the air out of the cemetery, all of them freezing except for the killer thrashing in his cuffs and cursing.
Gil strode over and squatted down. “I’ve been hoping you’d finally see that. Let us help you.”
Malcolm nodded and Gil and Dani helped him up. He said nothing as they deposited him in Gil’s car. Maybe it was time to stop hiding in his work and deal with his trauma. He couldn’t afford another hallucination that almost cost him his life. He owed it to himself and those people who loved him, few though they be. It wasn’t going to be pretty but finally, he was ready.
Title: Everybody Hurts
Summary: When Fizzarolli awakens in the hospital after the fateful party that costs him so much, all he wants is his friend there to comfort him. Instead all he has is a world of painful changes he must navigate alone.
Rating: teen
Author Note - Spikesgirl58’s six word prompt challenge. The six words were Lawyer, Earsplitting, Steam, Surround, Disobey, & Partake; Also written for Lyrical Titles for the prompt 90's song using Everybody Hurts by R.E.M., and the whumptober prompt 21: Body Horror, let the bedsheet soak up my tears (apparat feat. Soap & Skin, Goodbye)
Fizzarolli swam back to conscious wishing he hadn’t. Fire wreathed his head and even knowing he was safe in a hospital bed, his brain wanted to believe he was still actively burning alive. He blinked against the bright hospital lights, everything a blur. After the earsplitting explosion at the circus, few sounds reached his ears. Why was he here? How had he lived? Shouldn’t his arms and legs hurt more like his head and his tail did? He only felt an odd numbness from them. Imps didn’t usually get taken to a hospital. In the other brief moments of consciousness before this, no one had explained anything. Why was he here?
Why wasn’t Blitzo here?
# # #
When he floated into being fully awake a fifth time, health care workers were in his room that stank of antiseptics and cooked flesh. He’d rather surround himself with his friends. Where was Blitzo and Cash? Couldn’t someone stop the pain? He tried to say something, to sit up. His bladder felt full and crampy. Hands pressed against him, gently pressing him down.
“Shhh, little one,” she said. “You can’t get up. Can you see me? Can you hear me?”
He barely grasped what she had said. Were his ears stuffed with cotton? He tried to shake his head but the movement made the pain soar until that was all he was aware of. A groan like a frog’s croak echoed out of him.
“I know, little one. It hurts. I’m Allegra. I’ll be taking care of you.”
He tried to point to his lower belly but his arms didn’t move. He tried to say the word pee but he wasn’t sure words formed.
“Try to lay still. I’ll give you something for the pain. Your eyes were scorched by the flames and you breathed some in so your voice is going to take time to heal.”
Aware she was still talking, Fizzarolli couldn’t make out a word of it. Tears welled up in his eyes and she carefully dabbed them away. She did something under the covers that pinched like nothing he ever expected to feel in his dick but the pressure in his bladder disappeared. She made more soothing sounds but it didn’t help. The pain enveloped him so fully all he could do was moan and cry. He wanted to die just to make it end. Why couldn’t he die?
Where were the people he loved? Why was he alone in so much agony?
# # #
“I think you can see a little better now,” Allegra said.
Fizzarolli thought he caught her meaning, her words still sounding as if they came from miles off, but pain and fear whittled away at anything she might be saying. Now his arms and legs ached but nothing like his head. “H-h-hurt,” he croaked out.
She held up a whiteboard in her hot pink hands. She wrote “Your eardrums were hurt in the explosion. We don’t know how bad your hearing will be. I’m Allegra if you didn’t understand me yesterday.” Resting the board against her full chest, the succubus-nurse signed at him before writing. “That was my name. I’ll teach you when you’re stronger. Can you read this or are your eyes still blurry?”
“Can…read,” he said.
“Good,” she wrote. “You have a lot of healing to do, Fizzarolli.”
“How? Money?” He didn’t have money to pay for all this. What would happen when he was better? How badly was he hurt? No one had told him and he was asleep more than he was awake so he hadn’t been able to check himself over.
“Shhhh,” she said and then wiped the board so she could start again. “Don’t you worry. A lawyer has drawn up a trust the hospital will draw from and before you ask, I don’t know who your benefactor is.”
“Hurts.”
“I know. You’ve had all the painkillers you can handle.”
“Blitzo?”
A frown touching her pretty face, Allegra shook her head, her dark hair falling into her eyes. She had no idea who he meant.
Where was Blitzo? Had he died in the fire? Fizzarolli shuddered at the thought. Worse was the thought, had Blitzo set the fire? Why was he so terrified he had? His memories were a mess. That couldn’t be true, could it?
# # #
Allegra brought in a tray of food. A curl of steam rose from the soup. She crumbled crackers into it. “Ready for your first food since the accident? The doctor said your throat should be able to handle it.”
“Yes,” he said, even though he had no enthusiasm for it. His head, arms and legs still ached terribly. Was it too much to ask that the soup was nothing more than a bowl of morphine? Maybe she could tell him today where his friends were so he had something else to concentrate on other than his pain.
He wanted to feed himself but his arms couldn’t move. He didn’t even have the energy to lift his sheets to free his hands. Fizzarolli slurped from the spoons full she offered him. He wanted to partake in the whole bowl because his tummy was rumbly but he couldn’t get it down past his injured throat.
“Okay, that was a good try. Here, let’s have a little of this to cool that throat down.” Allegra said something he didn’t get but when she offered him a spoonful of ice cream, he understood. Fizzarolli ate most of it.
“Want…to...see.”
“Your face?” she wrote and when he nodded, she continued, “Not today. We’ll change the dressings tomorrow. If you’re awake, we’ll see about it.”
“Blitzo?”
She shook her head.
He shut his eyes. Why was he so alone?
# # #
Allegra began to unwind the dressings off Fizzarolli’s head. He trembled, afraid of what would appear in the mirror. A red spot - like the clown nose he had worn so often - was the first thing he saw. He sucked in a deep breath that made his scorched throat ache and his ribs hurt. His face was raw and blistered, burnt black in places. His tattoo was nothing but a blister oozing down his face. His gaze tracked further upward and his heart shattered. His big, beautiful horns were gone. Ragged shards, cauterized by the intense flames, were all that was left of them. A deep primal cry echoed out of him, tearing his throat further.
“I’m so sorry, little one,” Allegra said loudly enough it registered with his burst eardrums but only barely. “There was no way to warn you enough about how bad it is.”
Whatever she said past ‘sorry,’ he couldn’t tell. Fizzarolli sobbed, tears flooding his face. Allegra let him cry as she painted his face with medicine and started to rebandage him. She held him briefly but he squirmed away. He was going to go kill Blitzo because it had to be his fault. He’d started the fire. That’s why he wasn’t here. He had tried to kill Fizzarolli. He gave a mighty swing of his body and nearly fell off the bed.
“No, Fizzarolli. You have to stay still. You can’t leave bed. Don’t disobey me, little one. It’s for your own good,” she said but he heard only muted sounds.
The blanket fell away in his struggles and he saw what he hadn’t been able to before with the amount of drugs they had given him for pain and his fire-damaged corneas. His legs were gone. His bandaged tail protruded past two stumps, well bandaged, somewhere close to the middle of his thighs. Screaming, Fizzarolli reached for them but couldn’t. Only then he caught his reflection. His arms weren’t there either. He shrieked, thrashing on the bed. His tail whipped like a snake.
“No! I feel them! My arms and legs hurt so much! How can they be gone? I can feel my ankle throbbing. My feet itch! It’s a nightmare. I’m dreaming,” he wailed. “This is a nightmare. Wake up, Fizz, wake up!”
Ordering himself to do so had no effect. Two other nurses raced in and held him onto the bed so his thrashing wouldn’t hurt him further. Allegra wrote ‘I’m sorry but it’s not a dream. You lost all four limbs in the explosion.’
“No,” he whimpered. “No”
Allegra’s pink eyes teared up. “Sorry.”
“Should have let me die.”
Fizzarolli tried to throw himself off the bed, not that he knew what he’d do once he was one the floor like some grotesque burned worm. The other nurses held him down. Something burned through his IV and darkness took him.
# # #
Allegra signed to him. Fizzarolli watched because what else could he do? Weeks had gone by since the accident. Allegra still tried to teach him sign language in case his hearing never returned to normal. He’d given up on his voice being what it was. He’d currently given up on suicide because he had no idea how he’d manage it without arms and legs. Allegra had brought him the one thing he’d asked for, a jester’s hat to hide his broken horns.
“You said I’m doing good,” he translated her sign. “What good is it? I can’t sign back.”
“You can talk,” she said out loud and signed along.
“I’m not eating dinner when it comes,” he blurted out, a plan suddenly forming in his mind.
“Why? You picked one you’d like,” she replied. “Is Autumn being mean when she feeds you?”
“That’s the problem. She feeds me. I’m useless.” He slapped the bed with his tail.
“You have no limbs. That’s not the same thing,” she countered.
“I’m a clown and acrobat. I can’t be either now.”
“Oh yes, the end all be all of your existence was clowning.” Allegra rolled her eyes.
“What would you know?” He glared at her.
“I know I’m a succubus who chose to be a health care worker. I didn’t let past expectations direct my life. I know your situation is different. You’re being forced to live a different life than the one you wanted.”
“Then why aren’t you out there fucking humans and stealing their souls or whatever?” He slapped the bed again, turning his face. She moved into his field of view so she could sign.
“It would be better than listening to your sour self,” she agreed. “I did that. I was successful at it but there was this one sweet young man that I hooked on me. Only…I felt something for him, which is a huge no-no in the succubus biz so I left, came back here for a while and he killed himself when I left him. I felt too guilty to go back to earth so I did something different.”
That was the most signing he’d ever tried to read. Someone had killed himself over her? It made her sad. Who would care if he died? Almost no one from the circus had come to see him. He took that as further evidence that Blitzo had purposely left him to die in the fire he’d set. Much of that day was gone from Fizzarolli’s memory. The doctor blamed the trauma. One thing he remembered clearly was Blitzo coming for him and him reaching out with his flaming arm. Blitzo had run like a coward or maybe not a coward but rather someone who wanted Fizz to die there.
“Sorry that he died,” he said because it looked like she wanted to hear it. “But what can I do? The circus isn’t going to feed and house an imp who can’t perform. It’s all I know.”
She raised one well-sculpted eyebrow. “So your big plan is to stop eating and starve yourself to death?”
“Well, I can’t take a knife to myself,” he replied bitterly.
“I want to say mean things to you right now. That’s the way of hell.” Allegra stood up. “But you’re barely more than a child - yes, yes, I know you’re a teen, a young man, but you have no idea how young you really are.” She sat on the edge of his bed, talking and signing together. “I can’t imagine the pain and misery you’re going through. I know that everything feels bleak and hopeless. I can’t promise things will get better. All I can promise is if you end now then all you’ll ever be ends too. You contain so much more story left to tell, Fizzarolli. Eat your dinner for me please and I have something that might help.”
He screwed his eyes shut when what he wanted to do was stomp away, something he’d never do again. “You can’t help.”
“You don’t know. There is someone who has an experimental procedure he wants to try.”
Fizzarolli cracked open an eyelid. “Is that why I’m still here? They’re taking care of me?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know who is paying for it all but I know he has something that will help you with the loss of your limbs, a replacement.”
“A what?”
“That’s the theory at any rate, cybernetic limbs. Would you be willing to be a test subject?”
He didn’t know how he could say no.
# # #
“Let’s give this a try.”
Fizzarolli eyed Allegra evilly. Having his stumps redefined for the fitting of the cybernetic limbs had been a fresh agony, the surgeons removing more of his bones, evening things out. Having the ports for his limbs attached to his nerves had been so awful, he’d been in a medically induced coma for a few days. Finally, he had the new limbs but his brain wasn’t sure what to do with them. Whoever he had to thank for them hadn’t made an appearance yet. In the meantime he’d been working with some health care workers just learning to lift his legs and arms and make minor movements with his fingers. In the interim, more of his hearing had returned but Allegra still signed to him.
“I’m not ready.”
“Pfft, you’re ready or do you want to remain in that bed like a cat in the loaf position with sunlight streaming on you?”
“Meow,” he replied.
Allegra laughed and flipped the bedding back. His legs and arms were thing, black and apparently could extend and retract. That would be more advanced training. For now, all he wanted to do was to learn to walk again. Allegra thought this was the day. He disagreed.
“Ready?”
He stuck his forked tongue out at her. She took his hands and tugged gently. Fizzarolli let her pull him to the edge of the bed and he got his feet under him.
Hey, he was standing. Allegra let him go and he flopped back on the bed like a landed fish. She stood him up four more times before he got the hang of it. She held his hands, stepping back as far as their arms’ lengths would allow.
“Come on. Take a step toward me.”
“I can’t,” he protested. “I’ll fall.”
“Not your first fall in life. I’ll pick you up, Fizzy.”
He shook his head, fear paralyzing him. He couldn’t lift his foot.
“I thought you wanted to find this Blitzo guy and make him pay. You can’t do that if you don’t walk.” She smirked.
“Oh, fuck you,” he said without any heat.
“Are you going to try? You are standin,g which is already better than yesterday. We can try tomorrow if you want.”
“I can’t…no, I can,” he said, shuffling one foot forward like he was skating. She tightened her grip so he didn’t topple. He shuffled another foot. He wouldn’t call it walking but he was a foot’s length closer. Fizzarolli did it one more time and some of the fear ebbed away. He didn’t lift a foot off the ground, too afraid to fall but he shuffled until he was close as he could be to her without slipping inside her pink skin.
“Look at you walking. Someone is getting extra hot fudge on his ice cream tonight.”
“And a peanut butter shell?” he asked hopefully.
“We’ll see.” She turned them around so her back was to the bed and she put space between them. “You do it one more time and you get that shell.”
Grinning, Fizzarolli shuffle-skated his socked feet toward her. It hurt where the limbs joined his body. He was still afraid of being on the ground any second but the limbs had given him some independence. That - he realized - had been what frightened him the most, the loss of independence. He might never become the clown he wanted to be but Allegra was right. His story wasn’t over. The next chapter was just beginning. He had a new goal: put his cybernetic foot up Blitzo’s ass for unleashing this sort of hell on him and never coming to see him. He wanted to think it was an accident but when his friend hadn’t come, what else could he think? The fire had been deliberate.
And so would everything he did to Blitzo when he finally saw him again. Having a goal fired him up. He wanted to shuffle back to Allegra a third time - this time extorting extra pickles on his burger from her. He would recover. He would always be scarred. His horns were destroyed. His limbs were metal and wires but what made him Fizzarolli was still alive inside him. He’d be back on top. Just watch him.
Author’s note:
Fizzarolli’s bleak view is not meant to convey people with disabilities cannot have a good life and are trapped in misery. It is something he needs to work through (as we know he does). Also it is meant to show some of what my patients went through after trauma (most often limb loss in the case of my patients) and my own pain after a career ending injury forced me to pivot before I was barely 30. The mourning is real. So is the scattered thinking post-trauma (especially with pain killers) which is why Fizz doesn’t have the full extent as to what happened until a few days later.
End Note:
I purposely didn’t say who gave Fizz his limbs because as of writing this, we don’t know for sure (other than the fan theory is Asmodeus gave them to him. In my head I have a few possibilities:
Mammon who is the one I think least likely as there is a five year gap between Fizz working for him and the explosion. Even if Fizz had auditioned before the birthday party, Mammon is more the type to move on to his number two pick than spend a fortune on Fizz.
Asmodeus who is up there high on my list of candidates, not because he knows Fizz but let’s say (as I have in the story) the limbs are experimental. He’s looking for a good candidate to test them on and someone suffering an explosive quadruple amputation would be a good one.
Paimon/Stolas is somewhere in the middle because we know Stolas is a friend of Blitzo and Blitzo is Fizz’s friend. Paimon has already proven the type of parent who buys his kids’ affection and obedience. What we don’t know is how long Blitzo was with Stolas as kids. It could have been just that one time.
Cash himself because it was his circus and he liked Fizz better than he liked his own son. He was concerned with Fizz’s wellbeing so he put up the money (though definitely think Asmodeus made the limbs and maybe Fizz was a first time trial of those limbs like proposed here)
Any theories you have that I didn’t think? I’d love to hear them (or which scenario you think is likely)