wip dump
here lies all the wips that i started a long time ago, but have died (?) because i either a) forgot what i was going to do with them or b) gave up.
tell me which ones you'd like to see resurrected, and i will try to start them up again!
ALL THAT IS GOLD IS RUSTED (changmin/yoona, jessica)
march 11 2013, great gatsby!au (?)
The fact of the matter is, no one knows much about the Shims other than their summers. Their vacation home - an indulgent shade of gold, minus the sheen. The patio they eat their dinners on, wine glasses generously red. Her ivory arm threaded through his in the frequent parties they seem to disappear in, his patent leather shoes and formidably forgettable steps. Their names - Changmin and Yoona - hushed (his more than hers) in the pale orange of outdoor parties, and their smoke - cigarette and car - plumes clouding, another August spent and done.
A phone call comes at five in the morning, when the sun shimmers through gossamer window treatments. Undeniably his call, she assumes, and looks up anyway. He is dressed - pressed pants, dress shirt, nice tie (that she didn’t give him for their anniversary) - like the call is expected and premeditated. His lips narrow, top meshing into the bottom, hiding secrets there. Two yeses, one hum of agreement. Phone goes back in the dock, coat goes on, car keys jingling.
She knows he sees her out of the corner of his vision, awake and watching him. Who is he fooling anymore? The door closes anyway, halfway between a slam and a regular bolt, offensive nonetheless. Who is he fooling anymore? She lays back down just as the car starts, and she listens to it back out of the driveway before closing her eyes again.
Reaches up to the ceiling with her arms. They feel limp, tired. (dead, death) Strange, she thinks, how arms look this way in our eyes, a vanishing point in the ceiling, all diagonal lines. Strange, so attached to her, like ingrown things that have been unattended to for much too long. Ingrown things, like the vines snaking through the wall beside their house, needing to be cut down.
But it’s only five o’clock. She turns to her side and doesn’t fall back asleep.
He has his first drink of the day at eight, one part ice and two parts gin. It sticks to his throat like all things in the city do - syrupy sweet and tangy with its promises of glitz and glamor. Jessica leans into him - breath like nighttime, alcohol, and nicotine - head settling into the crook of his arm, hair like caramel. The morning burns her white, the ceiling-to-floor glass windows casting long shadows across the room they have for the day, seven hours like he promised.
Her lips are red like a scarlet letter, over sweetened like honey in tea. “I’m so hungover,” she smiles into his kiss when he pulls her close. Kisses her anyway and tastes a hint of bile amidst all the sugar. Unknots his own tie when her fingers don’t move up his chest, unusually keeping to themselves.
“I have to take Yoona to a dinner party at nine,” he says, sipping his gin once more. Jessica raises a hand, shielding her face from the sun with a shadow, dark places in the dips of her nose, eyes, and cheeks suddenly apparent. Seven hours. She folds herself into him, lips on his. Far from ideal, far from anything, but close to love she’d like to imagine. A sliver of his day, the highlight of hers, and he knows it.
Lipstick stains over his glass by two. All over, manicured hand drinking in another hangover - seven hours, like he promised.
THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE (jaeseop/jiyeon)
may 2013, people try sometimes but don't succeed
They live right next to each other. Seventh floor, lost souls, dusty floors with a tendency of a silverfish problem.
They live, just like this.
He is mildly aware when he gets a new neighbor. One, two, three, months pass before it strikes him that the apartment to his left is occupied again - the only signs of life the slight hum of Beethoven vibrating through the window. Knocks the rhythm back against the wall, half-drunk, half-alive.
It instantly stops.
Her neighbors smoke their cigarettes. She is not sure which way the wind blows the smoke, which neighbor of hers does the smoking, but it ends up coming through her window nonetheless. But life is not bad here, she reckons, bank account full every time she needs to pay rent, bookshelves infested with a flimsy film of neglect. She minds her own business, her neighbors mind their own - smoking their lives away (and hers, second-handedly) while she traps the insects she can’t bear to kill in half-cleaned jam jars.
Traps time there, too. Clear - analog clock ticking from down the hallway, seconds flying by - reminders that the small, insignificant things are powerless against the machine.
They take the same elevator down every now and then - when she doesn’t take the stairs and when he manages to meet her there. Which floor? Ground. They watch the floor numbers light up as they pass each one.
He follows her to the convenience store one day. Stands in the express line two people behind her - too far to be premeditated, too close to be an accident - a pack of cigarettes in his hands. She cuts close to the ten-item mark with instant noodles and cartons of soymilk. He watches, eyes flickering elsewhere. He watches, misses, missing the part where she pays for a jar of overpriced imported peanut butter - the bad kind.
They end up extremely unsatisfied with their purchases.
DROWN WITH ME (kevin/eli)
october 2012, wow look at this ancient stuff
Eli has long fingers.
Eli has long fingers that are laced with strings, his strings, dancing up and down and over to move him. Kevin thinks he is blonde because there is sometimes that slight glint of gold in the corner of his eye, but he’s not entirely sure.
The audience gives a deafening roar. They bow and exit.
He is silent. They are both silent. They sit in the last train car, bump, bump, bumping along as the night fades into dawn. Grey dapples the horizon, flecks of periwinkle following.
The wheels screech. They lurch forward. Eli catches him before he goes flying against the empty seats.
His touch burns.
“Good show, eh?” the owner asks. Spidery fingers reach out for Eli’s palm, Eli loosens a hand from gripping Kevin to accept the coins.
Eli doesn’t feel Kevin trembling against him as the old man walks away. That is him. Palms shaking. That is the devil.
Kevin continues to smile.
Kevin got his first smile at seven years old. “It’ll look lovely,” a nameless voice told him. He remembers he couldn’t see anything. It was black. Black and cold.
He doesn’t catch the shine of silver through the dark, but he smells the blood and feels the fear as the frigid plunges into the side of his mouth.
It cuts deeper and deeper and Kevin remembers to scream.
He doesn’t like their new trailer home. He doesn’t like the corner Eli has placed him in, back propped uncomfortably against the crevice between the walls, knees knocking into each other.
Tobacco peppers the air, bitter and drifting, nicotine hanging over them. He watches Eli flush the cigarette butt down the toilet.
Eli does have blonde hair.
He bought him when they were seventeen and eighteen, respectively. It was at a carnival, Kevin thinks when he tries to remember. Maybe a zoo. He scrutinizes over the fact a little longer. He has time to think it over.
“How much?” Eli asked. Kevin couldn’t see his face. The shopkeeper held up a few fingers he assumed. He wasn’t worth much anymore, so aged and smile so stretched.
Kevin tries to remember. Eli carried him away, warm arms and burning skin. Dead weight. That’s what he was.
(still is.)
He hasn’t done it for a while. The muscles feel glued, heavy. Only Eli can move them, his brain tells his body. You can’t.
But Kevin really wants to try. He works on his mouth, willing the upper lip to rise. Something floods through him, reminds him of his first smile. He tries again. The sensation seizes him again, tickling his spine.
What’s that word called? His lip moves, just a small twitch. It burns.
Pain.
They perform again. Remember how to do this, Kevin continually reminds himself when Eli lifts his arm.
There are no strings attached to his face. Dead eyes stare into the crowd.
IT'S A SMOKE AND MIRRORS GAME (seungah/kiseop)
january 2013
They say the river took him quickly, ferrying his body down the murky waterways until he hit solid ground - bloated with skin a tinge of toothpaste green. No note, no witness, no friends, no nothing, nothing attached or keeping him tethered to his life.
The sun blurs, watery sighs echoing through the air. Coffin, black like he wanted it. (he didn’t leave a note) A deep hole dug into impossibly green grass (mutated, he jokes), the burial his parents believed in, brown spot blemishing the rustling cemetery.
Dirt slaps against the closed top like grainy raindrops. The smell of fresh wood (if his coffin is new, that is) mixed with damp soil. Slaps, slaps, slaps, drowning him and his toothpaste green skin under layers of earth.
Blinks once. Twice. Eyes open.
He wakes up.
The engine sputters, dangerously wheezing along the road. It catches its breath at every lurch forward, exhales at every brake. His mother pushes the terminally ill vehicle forward, foot relentless on the gas pedal, eyes trained to the front. She doesn’t see anything else, just the streets ahead, rusty stoplights blinking, letting them pass. He trains his wandering eyes to his shoes, black converse that his aunt recently bought him.
“How was it?” Eyes focused to some indecipherable speck in the distance. Whole body tense beside him, white knuckles and stiff fingers clutching the wheel. She doesn’t want to be here, he realizes. (the fact is nothing new) She doesn’t want to be here.
Shifts his feet. Cross, uncross. Adjusts the screen on the window, sliver of sun burning silver over the grey.
“Fine.” His eyes flit back to his shoes. (they look nice) Wiggles his toes.
He doesn’t want to be here either.
He doesn’t remember when exactly it happened, how it started, how it continued, but he remembers (vaguely) how it ends (sort of). The bathtub, he thinks, white porcelain tub with the little claws caught in the cracks between tiles. Bathroom, outdated and old, needing a breath of life. Like him, he recalls laughing aloud, a dry, empty sound. Like him.
It was a messier day than usual. Clumsy. The red dripped over the rim, seeping into the cracks in the grout. He’ll clean it up. Angles the blade again, distorted reflection of his hollow face willing him to do it, plunge the silver against his skin once more.
Door opens, splintery wooden sound. Fragile things, he remembers through the haze. Did he lock it? Someone screams, yells, angry or disappointed or both, rips the blade out of his shaking fingers.
What are you doing? Echoes of movement, tub running, blood running down the drain. Loud, intruding sounds, beating against his ears once, twice, three times.
Fragile things. Imagines his head cracking on the porcelain (or would the porcelain crack first?). Breaking. Already broken. Furious voices rising. Angry at him, and he’s angry at him too.
More pulsing, drowning the world out.
(the world already drowned him out, anyway.)
“Hey.” He feels a hint of her breath against his face, her voice penetrating through the music blasting through his earphones. She sits down beside him, jeans rubbing against the leather seat rather loudly, deafening roars in the sparse waiting room. His eyes readjust to her face, or rather, just her eyes, these large almond-shaped eyes that watch him unnervingly. The Tuesday girl, he remembers belatedly. And this is a Tuesday appointment.
“I’m Seungah,” she says, talking a little too loud for such a quiet space. (someone filing papers behind the counter looks up. the wallpaper, on the other hand, fading into an almost nonexistence, does not seem to mind) “Oh Seungah, but you can just call me Seungah, since we’re both here, you know?” Her fingers unwind the bag strap from her right shoulder, some kind of complicated knot that he wonders how she undoes. She leans forward, facing him, too close for comfort. (he doesn’t realize this until he feels the arm rest digging into his back)
He opens his mouth then closes it. She doesn’t seem to notice, rambling on. “Wow, this waiting room is quiet. And it’s so empty. Why did they make it so big? There aren’t that many of us here at a time, you know. It’s like, they think we’re going to go nuts just waiting for our turn. Which I think is nuts. Don’t you think so?” She holds his glance again until he looks back down at his shoes, toes wiggling uncomfortably.
“They should consider a downgrade,” he gulps. Waits for her to interrupt (she doesn’t). “So the extra space can be used for the rooms. Like, just in case we get unruly.”
A smile breaks out on her face, large and infectious, eyes disappearing into half-moons. “That’s so true,” she deadpans back, index finger pointing at him. (he stares at it uneasily) Breaks out into laughter after the façade, genuine and throaty, like what he actually said was worthy of it. (which it might have been, but he’s not so sure) A loose fist covers her mouth as she keeps laughing. “You’re really funny,” she manages to say between breaths.
“You’re really funny - ” she starts, pausing midsentence. Her smile fades (and the hints of his along with it). “Oh crap.” Covers her face with her fingers. “I am so sorry. I forgot to ask you your name, didn’t I? I do that a lot, it seems. Oh fuck.” She laughs dryly. Shifts her position so she faces him cross-legged, jeans rubbing against the leather seat (again) rather loudly. Inhales deeply, exhales with an amiable grin on her lips. “Then - what’s your name?”
“Lee Kiseop?” the receptionist calls from the front desk, interrupting, hand over the receiver of the phone. “The doctor’s ready for you.”
The leather seat groans from the release of his weight. “I better go.” She nods, shooing him away with her hand gestures.
“Hey.” He turns back slowly (reluctantly) to face her. Large almond-shaped eyes stare into his dark ones unnervingly. “It was nice to meet you, Lee Kiseop.”
“Yeah,” he says back, voice cracking. Turns himself back forward before she can smile again, walking down the hallway to the doctor’s office.
Yeah, smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Forces them back down.
The pills sit on the kitchen counter. Dim yellow light fades out their multicolored splendor, glass of water on their far right. His mother, he assumes, fingering the tablets. Wonders what’s in this crop, what the side effects will turn out to be.
Stares at them. They stare right back. The light to his parent’s room is still on. Closes his eyes, brain tired. Body tired, person tired, tired of making decisions, tired of thinking.
She cares about you. Thinks about the eyes trained forward, foot relentless on the gas pedal. Stiff fingers on the steering wheel, small talk that she won’t start.
The pills go in the toilet. Pink, blue, white, bobbing in the bowl. Pours the glass of water down on top of that, fingers pull the flusher. There, he thinks. Now the plumbing system is medicated.
That’s what she cares about.
IN THE HOLLOWS OF OUR YOUTH (krystal/daniel)
february 2013, what a disjointed mess
Not many people ride the bus anymore. The vehicle smells like just that - bus, old, worn seats. Holes in the fake leather that still burns in early fall, white stuffing peeking out between dents. She takes her seat in the middle, far enough away from the entrance, close enough to the rooftop emergency exit.
People disappear. Change. Sometimes she walks down the hall to her third period class and passes people she used to see on the bus with her every morning, related to her for that sole method of transportation. She wonders if they have forgotten her, if she is just another face in the sea of the faceless. If they moved, if they carpool, if they drive themselves now.
Will she forget too? The bus lurches along the road, potholes from the rain of months past sending the wheels grating against the pavement. Throws her forward at a red light. The four way intersection suffocates with mid-morning traffic, too tense to count the seconds for green to appear.
Will that matter? Forty-seven and the bus rumbles to life again.
Funny, she thinks. Really funny, she realizes when she can name everyone in her calculus class. Can they name her?
But life is funny like that. The bell rings, everyone shooting out of their seats. She sits near the door but somehow finds herself one of the last ones leaving the room.
She eats dinner alone, a four person table with enough food for one.
She wonders if she should be sad about this.
The Chaes live two houses down, a little one story with a brown roof and cream stucco. It used to be blue, she remembers, staring a little too long as she walks to the bus stop. Pale blue. She liked it better that way.
They used to have dinner together once a week, mothers gossiping while cooking, fathers discussing jobs, and children running around. Daniel and her. (and sometimes jessica when she was in the mood)
“Korean families should stick together,” Mr. Chae liked to say at each gathering. Her mother and father would nod.
Yes, they should.
She sees Daniel pull out of the garage. Eyes unfeeling and face sharp and angular, no longer boyish, no longer remembering her.
She thinks about waving sometimes. (they were friends once) Would he wave back? Maybe not, she concludes when he almost runs her over one day.
They sit next to each other in calculus in the second seat rotation. How awkward, she can hear him whispering to his friends across the room as the teacher writes notes on the whiteboard. His eyes disappear into crescents as he continues to whisper throughout the period, a sign of boyish familiarity but not for her.
He used to ride the bus, like her.
He used to ride the bus, with her, three fifteen sunshine making dark spots in their vision as they headed home.
“Mrs. Chae told me you sit next to Daniel in calculus now,” her mother starts as she washes grapes. Her father clears the table, empty dishes and utensils, a habit she remembers from her childhood. Some sort of OCD she’s learned from her mother’s defeated sighs and what-can-you-do looks. They leave it alone.
“She told me he’s not doing well in the class,” she continues, wringing a wet cloth to wipe the dinner table. “And asked me to ask you to tutor him? If that’s alright with you.”
She shuts off the faucet. Drains the water from the grapes. Thinks about the red tail lights stopping just in time, the indifferent glance through the rearview mirror. (it might not be alright)
She decides she doesn’t have an answer to that.
She leaves the house earlier that morning, puddles soaking her vans and dampening her socks. He does not back out of the garage when she passes.
The bus doesn’t come until ten minutes later. He stops at the stop sign in front of the bus stop, briefly glancing at her before driving off.
The teacher hands back their tests at the end of the period. She receives a ninety in inconspicuous green ink. (she catches his hastily averted eyes)
He receives a sixty-eight in the same green, but the numbers somehow seem more noticeable. (he catches hers)
FAR SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN (myungzy)
december 2012, more ancient stuff and myungsoo as a werewolf (original draft of swallow)
The house is still. He does not break the silence, does not stir in the dark. Merely settles for the solitude, solid shadow resting on the bed. It’s a comforting feeling - somehow and somewhat - to be left on his own for these moments, these nights, so few in between.
A leather bounded book sits on the chair beside him. Suzy’s, he assumes. It smells like her - scent of maples and sunshine and outside, a scent he does not often call his own. She reads its pages to him by day, slow chants of legends that “cleanse the soul” as she so claims (She fails to understand it is not his soul that needs the cleansing). The empty space reeks with the cold, as if chills are tangible.
Steel binds bite into the flesh of his wrists. They are so frigid they burn, and he has told her so. (“At least they’re not silver.”) They keep him down, keep his soul close to hell. A stark reminder of this is who you are and this is what you’ve become.
Breaks the silence with a slight exhale. The night is black, faint smell of water coming in through the open shutters. Storms come to mind, symphonies against the thatched roofs. He closes his eyes and tries to sleep like the rest of the village.
A lonely howl comes from the other side of the mountain. Omicron’s bow points to the heavens.
And the atrocious thing, the whole damned abomination, bares its teeth. Body pressed close to the ground, silvery shimmer catching in the moonlight. Tension ripples through its hind legs, tension ripples through the air to cut him into pieces.
Not fast enough. The thing flies, his legs skitter, bones knocking against one another. The thing flies and the ghostly teeth, snapping and sharp, close over him, skeleton and all.
Her fingers are like icicles. He’s seen them before, up in the caves on the northeast hills, eerily off-white and blue daggers stabbing down onto the air. She puts her hand over his through the steel bindings. (This is what they feel like.) It sends a shiver down his spine, trickling down slowly. The sensation is painful within itself.
Suzy looks down to her lap, where she’s placed the leather book, paper pages coating the room with the scent of earth. Strands of dark hair obscure her face, eyes cast down so he can only see the lids. She reads and her lips smile, flooding his ears with tales of the long dead and long gone.
What’s the point? And he aims the arrow, one eye open and the other narrowed, two feet saddled onto a stallion. He counts the little slivers of the golden morning that cover his legs. Spirit pacing back and forth. The giant roars, club in hand, and swings -
He lets the arrow fly. The spirit settles back into the space between his lungs and heart, making each breath a wheeze.
Suzy comes from a long line of helpers, as the people of the village call them. Exorcists, herbalists, apothecaries. The house is filled with their memorabilia, pantries and baskets of dried plants, strange sticks and trinkets littering the shelves and (eventually) the floor. A rabbit foot dangles on her belt for good luck, feather necklace laces around her right ankle. For luck, she tells him when he stares, and luck is important.
Luck, though where have her parents gone? Smile on her lips, complacent and kind, offering him a cold hand. Fingers flushed red, from the autumn or something else (he wouldn’t know), placed carefully like a kind of welcome mat.
Bronze band on her thumb. For luck. (“And we’re going to need a lot of it for you.”)
There are other patients. In other rooms with other lives who want to be cured badly, so badly, that they claw onto Suzy’s outstretched fingers. (has he ever done so?) He assumes that they leave (dead or alive, he’s not quite sure), the putrid stench of desperation trailing out the door with them. They leave and he stays, still in the night, eyes burning in the morning.
He wonders if she holds their hands like his, whispering legends of Omicron, giant-slayer, into their ears to cleanse their rotten souls.
IT'S FUTURE RUST AND IT'S FUTURE DUST (?? myungzy?)
march 2013
The boy drank in cosmos - golden, glittering, opulent - and spit their bones into his hands, ultimately left for a second death. He drank until his chin dribbled with wax and salt, the excess clearing spots in his neighbor’s lawn. But she never minded. She, like some kind of medieval princess, doomed for a pillaging. She stayed even when his eyes turned gold like the cosmos that burned the green away, reflecting a distant black hole. When her parents called her in for dinner. She stayed, stayed hoping he could give her a cosmo to drink too.
to-write list:
nikka's changyoon
jadey's star trek au
elle and shida's bday fics
sojin/simon
other surprises!
tell me which ones you'd like to see resurrected, and i will try to start them up again!
ALL THAT IS GOLD IS RUSTED (changmin/yoona, jessica)
march 11 2013, great gatsby!au (?)
The fact of the matter is, no one knows much about the Shims other than their summers. Their vacation home - an indulgent shade of gold, minus the sheen. The patio they eat their dinners on, wine glasses generously red. Her ivory arm threaded through his in the frequent parties they seem to disappear in, his patent leather shoes and formidably forgettable steps. Their names - Changmin and Yoona - hushed (his more than hers) in the pale orange of outdoor parties, and their smoke - cigarette and car - plumes clouding, another August spent and done.
A phone call comes at five in the morning, when the sun shimmers through gossamer window treatments. Undeniably his call, she assumes, and looks up anyway. He is dressed - pressed pants, dress shirt, nice tie (that she didn’t give him for their anniversary) - like the call is expected and premeditated. His lips narrow, top meshing into the bottom, hiding secrets there. Two yeses, one hum of agreement. Phone goes back in the dock, coat goes on, car keys jingling.
She knows he sees her out of the corner of his vision, awake and watching him. Who is he fooling anymore? The door closes anyway, halfway between a slam and a regular bolt, offensive nonetheless. Who is he fooling anymore? She lays back down just as the car starts, and she listens to it back out of the driveway before closing her eyes again.
Reaches up to the ceiling with her arms. They feel limp, tired. (dead, death) Strange, she thinks, how arms look this way in our eyes, a vanishing point in the ceiling, all diagonal lines. Strange, so attached to her, like ingrown things that have been unattended to for much too long. Ingrown things, like the vines snaking through the wall beside their house, needing to be cut down.
But it’s only five o’clock. She turns to her side and doesn’t fall back asleep.
He has his first drink of the day at eight, one part ice and two parts gin. It sticks to his throat like all things in the city do - syrupy sweet and tangy with its promises of glitz and glamor. Jessica leans into him - breath like nighttime, alcohol, and nicotine - head settling into the crook of his arm, hair like caramel. The morning burns her white, the ceiling-to-floor glass windows casting long shadows across the room they have for the day, seven hours like he promised.
Her lips are red like a scarlet letter, over sweetened like honey in tea. “I’m so hungover,” she smiles into his kiss when he pulls her close. Kisses her anyway and tastes a hint of bile amidst all the sugar. Unknots his own tie when her fingers don’t move up his chest, unusually keeping to themselves.
“I have to take Yoona to a dinner party at nine,” he says, sipping his gin once more. Jessica raises a hand, shielding her face from the sun with a shadow, dark places in the dips of her nose, eyes, and cheeks suddenly apparent. Seven hours. She folds herself into him, lips on his. Far from ideal, far from anything, but close to love she’d like to imagine. A sliver of his day, the highlight of hers, and he knows it.
Lipstick stains over his glass by two. All over, manicured hand drinking in another hangover - seven hours, like he promised.
THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE (jaeseop/jiyeon)
may 2013, people try sometimes but don't succeed
They live right next to each other. Seventh floor, lost souls, dusty floors with a tendency of a silverfish problem.
They live, just like this.
He is mildly aware when he gets a new neighbor. One, two, three, months pass before it strikes him that the apartment to his left is occupied again - the only signs of life the slight hum of Beethoven vibrating through the window. Knocks the rhythm back against the wall, half-drunk, half-alive.
It instantly stops.
Her neighbors smoke their cigarettes. She is not sure which way the wind blows the smoke, which neighbor of hers does the smoking, but it ends up coming through her window nonetheless. But life is not bad here, she reckons, bank account full every time she needs to pay rent, bookshelves infested with a flimsy film of neglect. She minds her own business, her neighbors mind their own - smoking their lives away (and hers, second-handedly) while she traps the insects she can’t bear to kill in half-cleaned jam jars.
Traps time there, too. Clear - analog clock ticking from down the hallway, seconds flying by - reminders that the small, insignificant things are powerless against the machine.
They take the same elevator down every now and then - when she doesn’t take the stairs and when he manages to meet her there. Which floor? Ground. They watch the floor numbers light up as they pass each one.
He follows her to the convenience store one day. Stands in the express line two people behind her - too far to be premeditated, too close to be an accident - a pack of cigarettes in his hands. She cuts close to the ten-item mark with instant noodles and cartons of soymilk. He watches, eyes flickering elsewhere. He watches, misses, missing the part where she pays for a jar of overpriced imported peanut butter - the bad kind.
They end up extremely unsatisfied with their purchases.
DROWN WITH ME (kevin/eli)
october 2012, wow look at this ancient stuff
Eli has long fingers.
Eli has long fingers that are laced with strings, his strings, dancing up and down and over to move him. Kevin thinks he is blonde because there is sometimes that slight glint of gold in the corner of his eye, but he’s not entirely sure.
The audience gives a deafening roar. They bow and exit.
He is silent. They are both silent. They sit in the last train car, bump, bump, bumping along as the night fades into dawn. Grey dapples the horizon, flecks of periwinkle following.
The wheels screech. They lurch forward. Eli catches him before he goes flying against the empty seats.
His touch burns.
“Good show, eh?” the owner asks. Spidery fingers reach out for Eli’s palm, Eli loosens a hand from gripping Kevin to accept the coins.
Eli doesn’t feel Kevin trembling against him as the old man walks away. That is him. Palms shaking. That is the devil.
Kevin continues to smile.
Kevin got his first smile at seven years old. “It’ll look lovely,” a nameless voice told him. He remembers he couldn’t see anything. It was black. Black and cold.
He doesn’t catch the shine of silver through the dark, but he smells the blood and feels the fear as the frigid plunges into the side of his mouth.
It cuts deeper and deeper and Kevin remembers to scream.
He doesn’t like their new trailer home. He doesn’t like the corner Eli has placed him in, back propped uncomfortably against the crevice between the walls, knees knocking into each other.
Tobacco peppers the air, bitter and drifting, nicotine hanging over them. He watches Eli flush the cigarette butt down the toilet.
Eli does have blonde hair.
He bought him when they were seventeen and eighteen, respectively. It was at a carnival, Kevin thinks when he tries to remember. Maybe a zoo. He scrutinizes over the fact a little longer. He has time to think it over.
“How much?” Eli asked. Kevin couldn’t see his face. The shopkeeper held up a few fingers he assumed. He wasn’t worth much anymore, so aged and smile so stretched.
Kevin tries to remember. Eli carried him away, warm arms and burning skin. Dead weight. That’s what he was.
(still is.)
He hasn’t done it for a while. The muscles feel glued, heavy. Only Eli can move them, his brain tells his body. You can’t.
But Kevin really wants to try. He works on his mouth, willing the upper lip to rise. Something floods through him, reminds him of his first smile. He tries again. The sensation seizes him again, tickling his spine.
What’s that word called? His lip moves, just a small twitch. It burns.
Pain.
They perform again. Remember how to do this, Kevin continually reminds himself when Eli lifts his arm.
There are no strings attached to his face. Dead eyes stare into the crowd.
IT'S A SMOKE AND MIRRORS GAME (seungah/kiseop)
january 2013
They say the river took him quickly, ferrying his body down the murky waterways until he hit solid ground - bloated with skin a tinge of toothpaste green. No note, no witness, no friends, no nothing, nothing attached or keeping him tethered to his life.
The sun blurs, watery sighs echoing through the air. Coffin, black like he wanted it. (he didn’t leave a note) A deep hole dug into impossibly green grass (mutated, he jokes), the burial his parents believed in, brown spot blemishing the rustling cemetery.
Dirt slaps against the closed top like grainy raindrops. The smell of fresh wood (if his coffin is new, that is) mixed with damp soil. Slaps, slaps, slaps, drowning him and his toothpaste green skin under layers of earth.
Blinks once. Twice. Eyes open.
He wakes up.
The engine sputters, dangerously wheezing along the road. It catches its breath at every lurch forward, exhales at every brake. His mother pushes the terminally ill vehicle forward, foot relentless on the gas pedal, eyes trained to the front. She doesn’t see anything else, just the streets ahead, rusty stoplights blinking, letting them pass. He trains his wandering eyes to his shoes, black converse that his aunt recently bought him.
“How was it?” Eyes focused to some indecipherable speck in the distance. Whole body tense beside him, white knuckles and stiff fingers clutching the wheel. She doesn’t want to be here, he realizes. (the fact is nothing new) She doesn’t want to be here.
Shifts his feet. Cross, uncross. Adjusts the screen on the window, sliver of sun burning silver over the grey.
“Fine.” His eyes flit back to his shoes. (they look nice) Wiggles his toes.
He doesn’t want to be here either.
He doesn’t remember when exactly it happened, how it started, how it continued, but he remembers (vaguely) how it ends (sort of). The bathtub, he thinks, white porcelain tub with the little claws caught in the cracks between tiles. Bathroom, outdated and old, needing a breath of life. Like him, he recalls laughing aloud, a dry, empty sound. Like him.
It was a messier day than usual. Clumsy. The red dripped over the rim, seeping into the cracks in the grout. He’ll clean it up. Angles the blade again, distorted reflection of his hollow face willing him to do it, plunge the silver against his skin once more.
Door opens, splintery wooden sound. Fragile things, he remembers through the haze. Did he lock it? Someone screams, yells, angry or disappointed or both, rips the blade out of his shaking fingers.
What are you doing? Echoes of movement, tub running, blood running down the drain. Loud, intruding sounds, beating against his ears once, twice, three times.
Fragile things. Imagines his head cracking on the porcelain (or would the porcelain crack first?). Breaking. Already broken. Furious voices rising. Angry at him, and he’s angry at him too.
More pulsing, drowning the world out.
(the world already drowned him out, anyway.)
“Hey.” He feels a hint of her breath against his face, her voice penetrating through the music blasting through his earphones. She sits down beside him, jeans rubbing against the leather seat rather loudly, deafening roars in the sparse waiting room. His eyes readjust to her face, or rather, just her eyes, these large almond-shaped eyes that watch him unnervingly. The Tuesday girl, he remembers belatedly. And this is a Tuesday appointment.
“I’m Seungah,” she says, talking a little too loud for such a quiet space. (someone filing papers behind the counter looks up. the wallpaper, on the other hand, fading into an almost nonexistence, does not seem to mind) “Oh Seungah, but you can just call me Seungah, since we’re both here, you know?” Her fingers unwind the bag strap from her right shoulder, some kind of complicated knot that he wonders how she undoes. She leans forward, facing him, too close for comfort. (he doesn’t realize this until he feels the arm rest digging into his back)
He opens his mouth then closes it. She doesn’t seem to notice, rambling on. “Wow, this waiting room is quiet. And it’s so empty. Why did they make it so big? There aren’t that many of us here at a time, you know. It’s like, they think we’re going to go nuts just waiting for our turn. Which I think is nuts. Don’t you think so?” She holds his glance again until he looks back down at his shoes, toes wiggling uncomfortably.
“They should consider a downgrade,” he gulps. Waits for her to interrupt (she doesn’t). “So the extra space can be used for the rooms. Like, just in case we get unruly.”
A smile breaks out on her face, large and infectious, eyes disappearing into half-moons. “That’s so true,” she deadpans back, index finger pointing at him. (he stares at it uneasily) Breaks out into laughter after the façade, genuine and throaty, like what he actually said was worthy of it. (which it might have been, but he’s not so sure) A loose fist covers her mouth as she keeps laughing. “You’re really funny,” she manages to say between breaths.
“You’re really funny - ” she starts, pausing midsentence. Her smile fades (and the hints of his along with it). “Oh crap.” Covers her face with her fingers. “I am so sorry. I forgot to ask you your name, didn’t I? I do that a lot, it seems. Oh fuck.” She laughs dryly. Shifts her position so she faces him cross-legged, jeans rubbing against the leather seat (again) rather loudly. Inhales deeply, exhales with an amiable grin on her lips. “Then - what’s your name?”
“Lee Kiseop?” the receptionist calls from the front desk, interrupting, hand over the receiver of the phone. “The doctor’s ready for you.”
The leather seat groans from the release of his weight. “I better go.” She nods, shooing him away with her hand gestures.
“Hey.” He turns back slowly (reluctantly) to face her. Large almond-shaped eyes stare into his dark ones unnervingly. “It was nice to meet you, Lee Kiseop.”
“Yeah,” he says back, voice cracking. Turns himself back forward before she can smile again, walking down the hallway to the doctor’s office.
Yeah, smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Forces them back down.
The pills sit on the kitchen counter. Dim yellow light fades out their multicolored splendor, glass of water on their far right. His mother, he assumes, fingering the tablets. Wonders what’s in this crop, what the side effects will turn out to be.
Stares at them. They stare right back. The light to his parent’s room is still on. Closes his eyes, brain tired. Body tired, person tired, tired of making decisions, tired of thinking.
She cares about you. Thinks about the eyes trained forward, foot relentless on the gas pedal. Stiff fingers on the steering wheel, small talk that she won’t start.
The pills go in the toilet. Pink, blue, white, bobbing in the bowl. Pours the glass of water down on top of that, fingers pull the flusher. There, he thinks. Now the plumbing system is medicated.
That’s what she cares about.
IN THE HOLLOWS OF OUR YOUTH (krystal/daniel)
february 2013, what a disjointed mess
Not many people ride the bus anymore. The vehicle smells like just that - bus, old, worn seats. Holes in the fake leather that still burns in early fall, white stuffing peeking out between dents. She takes her seat in the middle, far enough away from the entrance, close enough to the rooftop emergency exit.
People disappear. Change. Sometimes she walks down the hall to her third period class and passes people she used to see on the bus with her every morning, related to her for that sole method of transportation. She wonders if they have forgotten her, if she is just another face in the sea of the faceless. If they moved, if they carpool, if they drive themselves now.
Will she forget too? The bus lurches along the road, potholes from the rain of months past sending the wheels grating against the pavement. Throws her forward at a red light. The four way intersection suffocates with mid-morning traffic, too tense to count the seconds for green to appear.
Will that matter? Forty-seven and the bus rumbles to life again.
Funny, she thinks. Really funny, she realizes when she can name everyone in her calculus class. Can they name her?
But life is funny like that. The bell rings, everyone shooting out of their seats. She sits near the door but somehow finds herself one of the last ones leaving the room.
She eats dinner alone, a four person table with enough food for one.
She wonders if she should be sad about this.
The Chaes live two houses down, a little one story with a brown roof and cream stucco. It used to be blue, she remembers, staring a little too long as she walks to the bus stop. Pale blue. She liked it better that way.
They used to have dinner together once a week, mothers gossiping while cooking, fathers discussing jobs, and children running around. Daniel and her. (and sometimes jessica when she was in the mood)
“Korean families should stick together,” Mr. Chae liked to say at each gathering. Her mother and father would nod.
Yes, they should.
She sees Daniel pull out of the garage. Eyes unfeeling and face sharp and angular, no longer boyish, no longer remembering her.
She thinks about waving sometimes. (they were friends once) Would he wave back? Maybe not, she concludes when he almost runs her over one day.
They sit next to each other in calculus in the second seat rotation. How awkward, she can hear him whispering to his friends across the room as the teacher writes notes on the whiteboard. His eyes disappear into crescents as he continues to whisper throughout the period, a sign of boyish familiarity but not for her.
He used to ride the bus, like her.
He used to ride the bus, with her, three fifteen sunshine making dark spots in their vision as they headed home.
“Mrs. Chae told me you sit next to Daniel in calculus now,” her mother starts as she washes grapes. Her father clears the table, empty dishes and utensils, a habit she remembers from her childhood. Some sort of OCD she’s learned from her mother’s defeated sighs and what-can-you-do looks. They leave it alone.
“She told me he’s not doing well in the class,” she continues, wringing a wet cloth to wipe the dinner table. “And asked me to ask you to tutor him? If that’s alright with you.”
She shuts off the faucet. Drains the water from the grapes. Thinks about the red tail lights stopping just in time, the indifferent glance through the rearview mirror. (it might not be alright)
She decides she doesn’t have an answer to that.
She leaves the house earlier that morning, puddles soaking her vans and dampening her socks. He does not back out of the garage when she passes.
The bus doesn’t come until ten minutes later. He stops at the stop sign in front of the bus stop, briefly glancing at her before driving off.
The teacher hands back their tests at the end of the period. She receives a ninety in inconspicuous green ink. (she catches his hastily averted eyes)
He receives a sixty-eight in the same green, but the numbers somehow seem more noticeable. (he catches hers)
FAR SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN (myungzy)
december 2012, more ancient stuff and myungsoo as a werewolf (original draft of swallow)
The house is still. He does not break the silence, does not stir in the dark. Merely settles for the solitude, solid shadow resting on the bed. It’s a comforting feeling - somehow and somewhat - to be left on his own for these moments, these nights, so few in between.
A leather bounded book sits on the chair beside him. Suzy’s, he assumes. It smells like her - scent of maples and sunshine and outside, a scent he does not often call his own. She reads its pages to him by day, slow chants of legends that “cleanse the soul” as she so claims (She fails to understand it is not his soul that needs the cleansing). The empty space reeks with the cold, as if chills are tangible.
Steel binds bite into the flesh of his wrists. They are so frigid they burn, and he has told her so. (“At least they’re not silver.”) They keep him down, keep his soul close to hell. A stark reminder of this is who you are and this is what you’ve become.
Breaks the silence with a slight exhale. The night is black, faint smell of water coming in through the open shutters. Storms come to mind, symphonies against the thatched roofs. He closes his eyes and tries to sleep like the rest of the village.
A lonely howl comes from the other side of the mountain. Omicron’s bow points to the heavens.
And the atrocious thing, the whole damned abomination, bares its teeth. Body pressed close to the ground, silvery shimmer catching in the moonlight. Tension ripples through its hind legs, tension ripples through the air to cut him into pieces.
Not fast enough. The thing flies, his legs skitter, bones knocking against one another. The thing flies and the ghostly teeth, snapping and sharp, close over him, skeleton and all.
Her fingers are like icicles. He’s seen them before, up in the caves on the northeast hills, eerily off-white and blue daggers stabbing down onto the air. She puts her hand over his through the steel bindings. (This is what they feel like.) It sends a shiver down his spine, trickling down slowly. The sensation is painful within itself.
Suzy looks down to her lap, where she’s placed the leather book, paper pages coating the room with the scent of earth. Strands of dark hair obscure her face, eyes cast down so he can only see the lids. She reads and her lips smile, flooding his ears with tales of the long dead and long gone.
What’s the point? And he aims the arrow, one eye open and the other narrowed, two feet saddled onto a stallion. He counts the little slivers of the golden morning that cover his legs. Spirit pacing back and forth. The giant roars, club in hand, and swings -
He lets the arrow fly. The spirit settles back into the space between his lungs and heart, making each breath a wheeze.
Suzy comes from a long line of helpers, as the people of the village call them. Exorcists, herbalists, apothecaries. The house is filled with their memorabilia, pantries and baskets of dried plants, strange sticks and trinkets littering the shelves and (eventually) the floor. A rabbit foot dangles on her belt for good luck, feather necklace laces around her right ankle. For luck, she tells him when he stares, and luck is important.
Luck, though where have her parents gone? Smile on her lips, complacent and kind, offering him a cold hand. Fingers flushed red, from the autumn or something else (he wouldn’t know), placed carefully like a kind of welcome mat.
Bronze band on her thumb. For luck. (“And we’re going to need a lot of it for you.”)
There are other patients. In other rooms with other lives who want to be cured badly, so badly, that they claw onto Suzy’s outstretched fingers. (has he ever done so?) He assumes that they leave (dead or alive, he’s not quite sure), the putrid stench of desperation trailing out the door with them. They leave and he stays, still in the night, eyes burning in the morning.
He wonders if she holds their hands like his, whispering legends of Omicron, giant-slayer, into their ears to cleanse their rotten souls.
IT'S FUTURE RUST AND IT'S FUTURE DUST (?? myungzy?)
march 2013
The boy drank in cosmos - golden, glittering, opulent - and spit their bones into his hands, ultimately left for a second death. He drank until his chin dribbled with wax and salt, the excess clearing spots in his neighbor’s lawn. But she never minded. She, like some kind of medieval princess, doomed for a pillaging. She stayed even when his eyes turned gold like the cosmos that burned the green away, reflecting a distant black hole. When her parents called her in for dinner. She stayed, stayed hoping he could give her a cosmo to drink too.
to-write list:
nikka's changyoon
jadey's star trek au
elle and shida's bday fics
sojin/simon
other surprises!