Do You Think It’s Dark Where He Goes? [a {Ghost Story} Marco Bodt mix]
Full album art, tracklistings, and download links under the cut.
Shortly after being shown Shingeki no Kyojin by mad_teagirl I decided to check out the fandom and ended up falling completely in love with avoidingavoidance's fic Ghost Story. I just... I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT GHOST STORY, YOU GUYS. A LOT OF THEM. I was tempted right away to mix for Marco, and with encouragement this mix began to take shape.
And you should totally check out mad_teagirl's Ghost Story mix. They’re a matching pair! (We are even posting them at the exact same time because we are awesome like that.) Hers is based around Jean and it totally made me cry BECAUSE I'M REALLY COOL except not at all.
I hope you enjoy the mix! <3
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Do You Think It’s Dark Where He Goes?
a {Ghost Story} Marco Bodt mix
1. Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans
There was a fire in the yard
All of the trees were in light
They had no faces to show
I saw a sign in the sky
Seven swans, seven swans, seven swans
I heard a voice in my mind
He’s curled up in the bathtub, hands digging and pulling desperately at his hair, his dangerously thin body wracked with sobs. He’s crying, crying so hard, pulling and begging and whimpering, and she hovers mercilessly above him.
Melinoë.
She’s centered her form more. Instead of tendrils, she has a thin, wiry body, but her hair expands dark around them and devours all the light it can. She hangs down from the ceiling, her hands reaching down to him, her mismatched eyes wide and her grin fucking huge above them. Tar drips from her fingertips and into his hair.
He shrinks down into the bathtub, crying out, “Please stop, please-”
-Ghost Story, Chapter Ten-
2. Ben Folds Five - Evaporated
And the sun was shining bright
And I walked barefoot down the road
Started thing about my old man
It seems that all men
Want to get into a car and go anywhere?
Here I stand, sad and free
I can't cry and I can't see
What I've done
God, what have I done
“I, uh… I don’t think I’ve been entirely honest with you.”
It literally takes all of my being to not scream, ‘No fucking shit, genius!’ and various other obscenities. I bite my tongue instead, glancing at him.
“I haven’t seen my parents since I was sixteen.”
I relax into my seat, shivering a little, and Marco leans back over to his, having apparently done a satisfactory job cleaning me up. “Why’s that?”
“They think I’m dead.”
Huh. My eyebrows shoot up into my hair. “And why’s that?”
He pauses, chewing his lip. Picking his nails again, he mumbles, “Because that’s how they found me.”
I remember the police tape, the blood in the tub, the line in the church about the cars’ shadows, and my stomach drops straight down. Possibly through the floor of the truck. I light another cigarette and wait for him to continue.
It takes a while. He stares at his shaking, cold hands. I watch him carefully, sucking deeply on my cigarette.
Eventually he turns toward me in his seat and reaches his hands toward me. I spare a look down at his wrists, noticing then the wide, pale scars stretching over his veins.
Unable to respond, I settle for pulling off one of my gloves and reaching down to twine my fingers with his. He squeezes my hand. His fingers are cold.
“You don’t have to tell me anything else,” I manage, finding my voice somewhere. I chance a look at him, but his eyes are on our hands.
“Okay.”
-Ghost Story, Chapter Four-
3. Andrew Bird - The Naming Of Things [Live]
You remind me of you
The way you shot right through and how
You broke my window glass, fast
It happened so fast
I have to confess that I
That I was impressed that I
Despite all the mess and the broken glass
I was impressed
I turn to the priest, who’s breathing heavily and wringing his hands. Dude’s covered in freckles. They stand out dark on his pallid cheeks. He looks up at me and squints a little. I remember the broken glasses on the floor.
Extending my non-chocolatey left hand to the guy, I try my best to give him a soothing smile. Paying customer and all. “Jean Kirschtein,” I say. “Supernatural janitor.”
Despite himself, the priest laughs and accepts my awkward lefty shake. “Marco Bodt,” he replies. “Confused priest.”
-Ghost Story, Chapter One-
4. Final Fantasy - Peach, Plum, Pear
We speak in the store
I'm a sensitive bore
And you're markedly more
And I'm oozing surprise
But it's late in the day
And you're well on your way
What was golden went gray
And I'm suddenly shy
“I really am sorry,” I say after a while. I feel like a broken record. “I know shit got heavy really fast.”
He watches me cautiously, then nods and relaxes just a little.
“I pulled you out of something pretty bad. I think you know that, too.” I stop to take a drag off my cigarette. “I can’t really let you go back to the church.”
Marco sighs and slumps, wringing his hands again. “Where am I supposed to go?”
“You can stay here,” I say, flicking my cigarette over the ashtray. I point to my messy bed, just a foot or so behind him. “That’s you. I’ll sleep here.”
He’s already shaking his head, making a polite gesture. “I couldn’t inconvenience you,” he starts, but I just wave my cigarette around in a mildly dismissing gesture.
“You’d be inconveniencing me if you stayed anywhere else,” I say as I stuff my cigarette between my lips and pull out my phone. “If you’re nearby, I don’t have to go out of my way to keep an eye on you.”
He tilts his head again. I notice with no small amount of relief that the color is returning to his spotted cheeks. “I… am I in trouble?”
I exhale a good amount of smoke and lean further into the couch, crossing my arms. “Not with me.”
A pause. “Then why…?”
How should I put this? I lean over to ash my cigarette again and lick my lips. “You see them now.”
-Ghost Story, Chapter Two-
5. 65daysofstatic - The Big Afraid
[Instrumental]
I look at him again, for as long as I dare before I look back to the road. “Okay, what exactly is it with you and Jinae? Ever since I told you that’s where we’re going, you’ve been really weird.”
Marco slouches down in his seat, his knees bumping up against the dashboard. It seems like he might be a little long for this car.
“I was born there.”
“Okay…?”
He’s looking out the window again, so different from what I’d assumed was normal.
“I was born there, went to school there, and then I left for seminary. That’s pretty much it.”
“Oh, bullshit.” He looks at me, surprised, and I tap my thumb against the steering wheel. “If you don’t want to tell me, then just say that. Don’t lie right to me.”
He bites his lip and looks at the papers spread across his lap. “Sorry.”
I sigh, feeling guilty again. “No, I’m sorry, man. It’s obviously a sore spot, I shouldn’t be poking you in it.”
Marco chuckles a little and closes the folder, tucking it back into the backseat. “It’s been a long time, you’d think I’d be over it. I guess I just… didn’t really have a good time growing up.”
-Ghost Story, Chapter Three-
6. Calexico - Woven Birds [Stratus Remix]
The plaza in the village
Where mission bells used to ring
Is now crumbled to a pile of stench and ruin
Even the swallows have vanished
No longer returning every spring
All the blossoms are buried 'neath the waste
Out of the shadows grow hatred
Along the corridor crawls fear
Crushed by the promise of hope that never returned
The sound of wood splintering hits me like a punch in the ear; I startle, bolting to the other side of the shelf, and the tar smell is suddenly so strong that I feel light-headed. Marco is kneeling on the ground, cracked wood tossed to the side, and his hands are deep under the floorboards. I look around nervously for the librarian, but she’s conspicuously absent.
“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” I come cautiously to his side and kneel down, and that’s about the point that I notice that his nose is bleeding. Profusely. His eyes are heavily bloodshot, too.
‘Just a headache,’ I remember, and I look down at his hands.
If it’s dark under the floorboards of the library, it’s not because there’s no light. The blackness oozes up over his arms, sticking to his sleeves, and the smell is overwhelming. He leans in up to his elbows, tar leaking up and spreading over the dirty wood floor, and I’m really torn about whether or not I should stop him.
Steam comes off the tar. The ringing in my ears rises to what sounds like a guttural whine, and the itching in my brain returns. I wince, smacking the side of my head briefly before turning back to the priest. “Hey, Marco? Buddy?”
He stands slowly, and the tar seems hesitant to release him. In fact, I’d almost swear that the splotches of black around his biceps are shaped like fingers. He is eventually released, though, and stands to his full height, blood starting to drip from his chin now. One of his unfocused eyes floods red as a large hematoma spreads over the white, and I stand up quickly.
In his hands is a gobby, vaguely book-shaped package, and it stinks.
Marco unwraps the package slowly, and the wrapping falls to the ground with a wet, sickening ‘thpppp’ kind of sound. The book underneath is clean but for where his tarry hands hold it.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, looking from him to the book. This has to be it, and if it isn’t, I don’t really care. I place a gentle hand on his shoulder and turn him toward the back door, and he follows my guiding silently.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Three-
7. Owen Pallett - Honour the Dead or Else [Live]
Honour the dead or else
Honour the dead and save your applause
All the haunting is inside your head
He’s standing in a cone of light barely visible in the mist. I run past the street at first, confused until my brain catches up, before jogging back and turning up the street.
Just standing there, he stares at a house that looks identical to all the rest. I slow to a cautious creep as I approach him. There’s no telling what state of mind he’s in right now.
“Marco?” My voice cracks. I stand still at the edge of my own street light, a cautionary distance between us, and I just watch him. He sways slightly, then looks down at his black, sticky hands. I take a few steps toward him, the book sliding in my sweaty palm, and call his name again.
He lurches forward, out of the streetlight, and opens the shitty, creaking metal gate to the row house in front of us. I trail after him cautiously, wishing that I had a gun, a knife, anything. All I have is this stupid book.
The front door opens easily under his fingers. He slides into the big living room, leaving the door open, and I follow him quietly. Probably best to leave the door open. Marco makes a dismissing waving motion at the faded, dirty couch and starts up the stairs, his dirty fingers dragging along the railing as he goes. The stairs squeak, more under my feet than his, and it seems like he knows where all the creaky spots in the stairs are.
I want to ask him, but I’m not convinced that he’s there.
We stop at the top of the stairs and Marco sucks on his upper lip, leaning against the wall. He runs a hand through his hair before he turns and sits on the top step, burying his face in his knees.
The way he looks here reminds me of how he’d looked in my living room, quaking and tiny.
I kneel on the step in front of him, placing the book next to him on the top stair, and move to rest my shaking fingers on his arms.
“Hey, Marco?”
He sighs and looks up at me, but he’s not really looking at me. Not that I can see, anyway. It’s weird, him staring straight through me, but I shake his arms gently anyway. His right eye is bright, even in the darkness, the hematoma having spread to the corners of his eye.
I sigh and stand up again, raking a hand through my hair. At least I found him, but we’re currently stuck in Jinae with no real way to leave. Fucking hellspawn. I refuse to take the blame for this one.
Looking up at the top floor, I notice that a door on the side is open, but something is stretched across the doorway. Curious, I move around Marco and onto the landing.
The room is the bathroom, and the something stretched across is police tape. I frown at it before pulling lightly at it, and the old adhesive gives easily. The yellow plastic flutters slowly to the floor. I step into the bathroom.
It’s dark, of course; there aren’t any lights in this whole damn town, I’m pretty sure, not beyond the streetlights. A faint yellowish tinge from one comes through the frosted window. It discolors the tub, but I’m one hundred percent sure that the dark smears at the bottom of the bathtub are blood.
My stomach turns.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Four-
8. A Luxurious Red - The Darkest Side
And it's the darkest side of my heart that dies when you come to me
And it's the golden ticket I win when you kill my enemies
“Jean,” Marco says after a while, breaking the silence.
“Yeah?”
“… Thanks.”
I glance at him, then back to the road. The fog is all but gone now, just a few snaking tendrils creeping over the pavement. “For what?”
“Coming for me. You said I ran off, right?”
“Yeah,” I sigh, scratching the back of my head. The motion is ineffective with the gloves on. A sign alerts me to an upcoming rest stop, with food and gas and that means coffee and cigarettes. Sustenance. I switch lanes, slowing to something approximating the speed limit in anticipation.
He picks at his nails. “Did I take the book with me?”
“Nope. Left it in the car.”
-Ghost Story, Chapter Four-
9. Bill Ryder-Jones - A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart
A bad wind blows in my heart
And it bangs on the back door
The knife that comes up through the bottom of Armin’s jaw pierces his tongue and stops his advancing bite. It makes a sizzling sound, the white smoke curling away from the spurting blood, the meaty flesh between his jaws tightening and twitching. He stops, eyes wide, then flicks his gaze to the right, wide eyes surveying the force currently holding him at bay. Rumbling snorts escape him, and a soft whine, but he quickly jerks his chin and dislodges the knife from the person’s grip before turning to roar in the guy’s face.
Marco stares right into Armin’s bloody, dripping mouth with that furious, dark expression I still don’t understand.
There’s a lot happening here that I don’t quite understand. Erwin reaching under me and slinging Mikasa over his broad shoulder is one of them. Marco reaching up to Armin’s throat and wrapping his hands in the matting fur is another. Armin growls at the pressure, trying to rear up to his full height, but both his eyes and mine widen when it seems like he can’t. He struggles against the force of Marco’s hands holding him an accessible level.
His huge hands come to wrap around Marco, but he is undeterred, holding Armin’s snout close. Sharp jaws snap open and closed in Marco’s face, struggling sounds escaping, blood flecking over the priest’s face. Marco reacts quickly. He reaches up with one hand and rips out the knife, and as Armin leans forward and tilts his head to open his jaws around Marco, he rears back with the knife and looks to aim for the werewolf’s temple.
I can’t help it. “Marco!” I’m screaming, trying to scramble to my feet, and Levi’s grip on my arms isn’t enough to hold me back. “Marco, don’t!”
Marco pauses, turning to look at me, confusion spreading over his face. He’s lucid, as cold and aware as he has been this whole time. Knife held over his head, bracketed by black claws and shining teeth, I’m afraid of Marco for the first time.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Six-
10. The National - Sorrow
Sorrow found me when I was young
Sorrow waited, sorrow won
Sorrow they put me on the bill
It's in my honey, it's in my milk
Don't leave my hyper heart alone on the water
Cover me in rag and bone sympathy
'Cause I don't wanna get over you
“Hey, Marco.”
He looks at me, and I take a deep drag off my cigarette, not actually prepared for this conversation. I don’t know why I started it, but it’s open now, so I may as well just barrel through. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Not killing me,” I respond bluntly, and he pales just a little. He glances between me and the floor nervously.
“Um… yeah.”
“Out of curiosity,” I mumble around a lungful of smoke, “Why didn’t you?”
He shrugs morosely. “Didn’t want to.”
“You just didn’t feel like committing homicide?” I try to joke a little, but it doesn’t seem to help his mood.
Sighing and covering his face with his hands, Marco slouches and leans his head against the back of the couch. He stays like that for a while before lowering his hands and looking at me again. “I took one life already, okay? Kinda swore I’d never do it again.”
Oh. I swallow, trying not to avert my gaze, but that pair of sentences fills my chest until it feels like I’m going to explode. It hurts. It hurts even more knowing that I’d looked him in the face, bloody and delirious, and asked him to give me a botched lobotomy like I’d asked him to get me a glass of water.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. The ember of my cigarette burns too low and stings my fingers, so I dump it unceremoniously into the ashtray on the floor. Really gotta empty that.
“For what?”
“You know,” I sigh, looking back at him. I carefully cross my legs under me and scoot across the couch until my knees hit his thigh. I don’t know if he wants it, or even if I want it, but the air seems to be screaming for some kind of contact. To let Marco know that he’s not alone. To let me know that I’m not going insane.
He reaches out to me carefully, and I twine my fingers with his again, trying so damn hard not to notice that his fingers seem to have been molded to fit perfectly into the spaces between mine. Even the idea makes my head spin and my heart ache. I can’t do this, though. We can’t do this. And yet, here we are.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Seven-
11. Owen Pallett - Tryst With Mephistopheles
"Your light is spent! Your light is spent!" I cried
As I drove the iron spike into Owen's eyes
The sun sped cross the plains
Like that cinematic moment where
Humanity and nature collide
When you think, "Everything's gonna be all right"
Just before the hero gets a bullet in his side
The collector leans down to me again and laughs darkly. “Look how angry he gets. Look at him, all scared and alone. Do you think it’s dark where he goes?” I choke out a sob. Pixis laughs harder, using his grip to smash my face against the ground. I groan, eyes squeezing shut, pain flooding my brain and momentarily wiping it. Pixis slaps me across the back of the head again. “Let’s find out. Together.”
And then he’s gone, blinking across the balcony. Marco turns away from the pile of ash he’d just sprayed across the glass railing and comes face to face with Pixis. I watch his eyes widen, his humanity seeping back into them.
I’m already scrabbling to my hands and knees, grabbing at my knife, trying as hard as I can to get to my feet but I just can’t manage it. My breath wheezes out of me, shaky, my hands covered in ash and clotted with drops of tar.
Pixis reels back with his claws, his laughter already echoing shrilly around me. Marco stumbles backward, dropping the bat, trying to get away from the thing breathing hot into his face.
I’m panting, tripping to my feet, dragging my filthy knife across my forearm. Dead man’s blood. Let’s hope to god whatever’s riding Pixis is a spirit, or this won’t do anything.
My blood spurts across the metal. It clots with the ashes, making a paste out of the fine dust. I’m moving toward them. Not fast enough.
Marco stares. Pixis exhales. His claws, pulsing with some insane pressure, spread, then narrow into a single point.
Not fast enough. Blood runs down my arm. My feet slam against the tile.
The collector hauls forward. His hand sinks deep into Marco’s gut. The priest’s eyes widen further, shock and pain spreading across his face.
The pressure thickening the air around us bolts through Pixis’s arm. The shock explodes out of Marco’s back in a huge spray of blood. The force blows out the glass railing behind him and spreads a huge, spidery crack through the building’s windows. The sound is deafening.
Marco lets out a shaky breath. Blood trickles out of the corner of his mouth. His hands come to grasp at Pixis’s arm, buried deep in his guts, nails digging into dry, wrinkled flesh.
I’m on Pixis then. He pulls out of Marco’s stomach, huge black lines spidering out across his abdomen from the hole. There’s a hole. Marco stumbles backwards, eyes glazing over, off the balcony. He falls into the pool below us.
Blind with rage, I ram the blood-covered knife into Pixis’s face and head, over and over and over until his ooze is coating us both. I let him go, and he flops off the balcony, crashing down into the pool next to Marco’s lifeless body.
The room is quiet then. My feet crunch on the broken glass under my shoes. The very last of the sun’s light twinkles through the buildings, still struggling to make itself known.
My knife falls to the ground. I look over the edge of the balcony at the pool below me. Marco’s floating down there, next to Pixis’s disfigured corpse. Blackness spreads from the collector, seeping through the water like ink.
Emptiness climbs over me. My mind is nothing but white noise. I watch the ink spread over Marco’s corpse. I’ve never felt so helpless, so alone.
Is it dark where he goes?
-Ghost Story, Chapter Seven-
12. Ólafur Arnalds - Reclaim
Reunite
Arms reclaim
Fallen flames
My hands are shaking, my eyes squeezed shut, pressed closer to Marco than I’ve ever dared. He’s cool against me. I can feel his weak, fluttering heartbeat through his ribs. He hesitates for a second before his arms are wrapped around my waist crushingly tight.
He kisses me back, hard and desperate. I push my tongue between his lips. He gratefully deepens the kiss, tilting his head slightly, moving closer, closer, closer. He doesn’t taste sweet anymore. He tastes like blood and ash and smoke and I fucking choke myself on it, trying desperately to get closer. One of his hands drags up my back, his fingers fisting tight in the fabric between my shoulders, his other hand digging his nails into the small of my back.
It’s impossible.
I saw Marco die. I saw all of the contents of his abdominal cavity blow out of his back. I looked through his torso and saw the hole where his spine should have been, strong vertebrae shaping the curve of his back, just… gone.
You know what you can do without a good chunk of your spinal column?
Not a whole hell of a lot.
But here’s Marco, pushing against me, holding onto me like I’m the only thing keeping the world steady, and all I can do is cling to him with equal force. I knot my fingers in his short black hair, using my grip to pull our mouths together in a manner that must be uncomfortable. He obliges and kisses me harder.
Gasping breaths escape between our lips. Mine. I can’t breathe through my nose much. It must be fucked beyond repair at this point. It hurts badly, crushed against Marco’s cheek, but I can’t bring myself to care when his nails are raking down my back and he’s kissing me and he’s alive.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Eight-
13. Arcade Fire - My Body Is a Cage
I'm living in an age
Realizing I'm dancing
With the one I love
But my mind holds the key
You're still next to me
My mind holds the key
Set my spirit free, set my spirit free
Set my body free, set my body free
I turn to him again and watch him press his hand to his gut. The skin is bruising deep purple already. The thick black lines I’d noticed before he fell have swollen up as well, eight of them, jaggedly tearing through his skin from the edges of where the hole had been.
Marco presses his fingers into the empty center of the injury, where the bruise is tinted bright red with spots of blood that leak to the surface. His fingers slip in the liquid slightly. He wipes them off on his soaked jeans.
His gaze moves to mine, his eyes wide and frightened. “Jean,” he murmurs, the unspoken question thick in the air between us. I only shake my head, not looking away from him. For once.
“I don’t know, Marco,” I say, dropping his shirt over the journal we’re looking for. I move to pull my flannel off, but not before pulling my fairly-squished cigarettes out of the chest pocket. As he pulls the shirt on (which just barely fits him) I find an intact cigarette and light it with shaking fingers.
I really hope the smoke alarms are duds.
His cross hangs loose under his heart. There’s a long crack up the middle of the wood now. He runs his fingers slowly over it. As he bites his lip, I watch tears pool in his narrowed eyes, but he just wipes them away roughly with the heels of his hands.
He buttons the shirt over his dark, freckled chest, stopping to wipe the blood off a little so that it doesn’t soak through the thin material.
Turning away, I stuff my cigarette between my lips and set to wrapping the book in the torn fabric. When I lift it away from the table, my breath catches.
Under it, smeared across the table, is a sticky black handprint.
My heart skips a beat. I look over at Marco, who stares at it with equal nervousness, fingers coming up to press at his cracked cross through my somewhat singed shirt. He flicks his eyes back to me.
“Let’s go,” I mutter, reaching out to slide my fingers between his. He squeezes my hand and nods.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Eight-
14. George Ogilvie - Gods & Monsters
In the land of gods and monsters
I was an angel
“Jean…” His voice comes softly from behind me, his steps quiet.
I turn to him and bring him close in a gruff, one-armed hug, burying my face in his shoulder. He just lets me. “I thought you were dead,” I rasp after a few minutes of this, of breathing in his dirt and grime.
His hands come up to rest on my waist. My heart pounds in my chest. “I did too,” he mumbles.
I take a step back, separating us again, before I reach out and grab his wrist. He lets me drag him over to the bed and push him so he’s sitting on the edge. Slowly, shakily, I unbutton the shirt and tug it off his shoulders. His bruise is darker now, spreading farther, some parts going a little greenish. At least it hadn’t bled any more.
Marco slides his palm over the thick, raised black marks on his abdomen. The circle is darker now. I stare at it, at the place where Pixis had sunk his hand into Marco like it was nothing. There’s not even a pinprick from where he’d drilled hellish claws into him. Just empty, somewhat mottled skin. It’s too dark to even see his freckles.
This is impossible.
Marco’s fingers linger on the center of the circle, where I’d been staring, pressing into the skin there as if making sure it’s real.
I bite my lip, knees shaking, and he looks up at me. His eyes are so cold, so lost, so exhausted from his fear that I can’t help the tears that roll down my face. I clench my fists tight. Squeezing my eyes shut forces more tears down my face.
“Jean…”
I feel his hands wrap softly, gently around my fists, fingers moving easily between mine again like I’m not tensed at all. I move closer to him, standing between his legs.
“Jean,” he says again, so I open my eyes and look at him again. He’s looking at me like he had in Eren’s basement, both times, but the thing behind his eyes is no longer gentle and patient. It’s scared, unsure, anxious, and I want to rub at his mismatched eyes until he’s tender again. I want to erase this whole goddamn day, this whole unholy miracle. He moves to wrap his arms around my waist again, burying his face in my shirt. I let him.
My hands come up to play with his hair a little. My fingers catch on tangles again, trying to sort through them, and Marco shudders against me.
I can’t take this.
I reach down and tilt his chin up to me again. He looks at me with watery, bloodshot eyes.
When I kiss him this time, it’s not the violent, crushing desperation from the pool. It’s soft and tender, but needy, both of us shaking to get closer. His hands come up to my wrists, grabbing them, and he tilts his head toward me.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Eight-
15. Interpol - Hands Away
Will you put my hands away?
Will you be my man?
“Jean,” he murmurs against my lips, pulling away to nibble at my lower lip. “You never let me kiss you before…”
I would play dumb, but I know exactly what he’s talking about. Those times when his expression practically screamed ‘I want to hold you,’ those times when I ran away like the scared ass that I am.
I guess I should admit to it. Marco would know if I lied, anyway. Somehow he always knows. “’M scared,” I mumble against his lips, flattening myself against him. He presses a few more light kisses against my lips, and I catch one and deepen it, unable to get enough of the taste of him, even if it is tainted by darkness. I know Marco’s under there somewhere, and if I kiss him enough, I might find it.
“Of what?” he manages finally, running his hands through my hair. He finds a little shard of plate glass with a grimace, reaching over to put it on the nightstand.
“Everything. Fucking things up.”
“What changed?”
I sigh. “You died anyway.” He blinks up at me, his hands resting on my waist. I bite my lip, fighting against the tears that burn my tired eyes. “You died whether I let you in or not.”
-Ghost Story, Chapter Eight-
16. Radical Face - The Strangest Things
The ghost inside my head, it never sleeps
It just rearranges thoughts and leaves me numb for weeks
But I'm okay, yeah I feel fine
Because I know there's more than one way to lose my mind
New lines are forming, I notice, another greyish-pink swelling. I frown and lean down to look at it. It’s a triangle within the circle, the tip pointing downward. Fucking strange. Nervousness coils in my stomach once again.
He just slides his hand over my face, though, and I straighten back up to look at him. He pulls me against him, his body warm, and he kisses me so sweetly that it burns my lips.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Eight-
17. Glen Hansard - Say It To Me Now
I'm scratching at the surface now
And I'm trying hard to work it out
So much has gone misunderstood
This mystery only leads to doubt
And I didn't understand
When you reached out to take my hand
And if you have something to say
You'd better say it now
Cause this is what you've waited for
Your chance to even up the score
And as these shadows fall on me now
My hands are already moving for the envelope. I hold it out to him. He stares at me.
“What’s this?”
There’s a mile of space between us. I stare at the floor. “Take it.”
He does. I hear a rustle, then an uncomfortable sound that gets whipped up into a good coughing fit, muffled by his elbow. “Jean,” he manages after a while, “What is this?”
“Money.”
“Why?”
“Take it. Get on this train, take it to 30th St station. Get on an Amtrak. Go as far as you can. Anywhere. Wherever sounds nice.” I shove my hands in my pockets, not looking at him yet. He’s sputtering again, coughing. Tears well up in my eyes, and I don’t have the strength to force them away, so I just stare at his dirty chucks.
“Why?”
I have to. I have to. I feel like I’m breaking.
I steel myself and look up at him, my face an expression of laziness. “It’ll get you away from me. Out of my hair. So I can work, you know.” Marco, please. Please see through me. I’m dying. I can feel myself cracking. The feeling of despair creeps up into my throat from my aching heart.
He stares at me. He doesn’t try to fight his tears. They slide down his cheeks as he takes a step back, his fingers reaching up to tug at his hair. He stares at the opposite platform. Marco, Marco, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-
But you can’t be near me.
Please hate me.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Eight-
18. Vince Pope - What Am I Saying
[Instrumental]
“He fights so hard,” Marco says finally, his voice low and gravelly. “But one little crack,” he continues, looking down at his shaking palms. He’d dropped the envelope. I can see the twitching tremor moving through him from here. Marco clenches his fists slowly, experimentally. “One little crack in his resolve is all I needed,” he murmurs.
He looks back up over the tracks and exhales slowly. The air comes out as thick black smoke, hovering briefly before being tossed aside by the frigid breeze signaling the coming train.
My breath leaves me too, like a punch to the gut. My feet are frozen to the ground what feels like ten thousand miles down.
Marco turns to me and smiles. I’ve never seen so much cruelty crushed between someone’s teeth before, and it shines like blood on his lips.
“He hasn’t felt like this in a long time,” he continues. “And now he’s trapped in here with me.” The smile widens, and it twists Marco’s face. His right pupil is blowing out wide, over the hematoma, taking over impossibly. Black mire collects at the corner of his eye. It smells like burning. “I think you know what’ll happen to him. Right?”
The train roars by us, the cold air deafening in my ears. My arms hang numb at my sides. Marco’s mismatched eyes widen.
He lunges at me.
My feet are frozen.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Eight-
19. Bloc Party - Talons [Acoustic]
And in the dark it comes for me
Malevolent and without thought
Uprooting trees, destroying cars
Cold and relentless, with arms outstretched
No boat nor brick
Nor crucifix can hold it back
“At least he’s stronger than my last meat sack,” Marco’s voice calls. Loud, boisterous, taunting… not Marco. “The last one just stroked out and died while I was still inside him!” Closer now. I run faster. He’s after me, and I can feel his hatred pouring out of him like a hurricane down these tunnels. It’s so dark down here, the dim orange lights throughout the tunnel essentially useless.
His voice comes out suddenly from a blown-out hole in the wall, crumbling brick giving way to an ancient tile tunnel, flimsily sectioned off with yellow caution tape and millions of cobwebs. “Oh, it is dark in here,” he breathes, his voice tight like it’s being choked out of him. “Sweet little Reverend Marco, hiding his anger behind his faith in a false god.” I sprint faster, ignoring him desperately. He’s playing with me. I can’t let him, I can’t let him get to me, not here. It’s dark, so dark. I can see a light far ahead. I don’t know that I can make it. Moving across the wooden tracks is treacherous, unsteady, slowing me down.
Then Marco’s in front of me. I skid to a stop and fall on my ass, scrambling backwards. I squint up at him, trying to see his face, but it’s hidden in shadow. My breath heaves out of me. His posture is so foreign, shoulders tight, spine bent, hands hanging like claws at his side. He steps toward me, every muscle taut.
“You don’t sleep much anymore, do you?”
Don’t listen. Don’t listen. He’s fucking with me, and I know better, but I hang on Marco’s every word because it’s his voice, but it’s so fucking wrong. Someone help me, please god help me.
I manage to get my feet under me, putting my hand up defensively, but I can’t bring myself to reach for my knife. Not against him.
“How do you know you’re not going crazy, Jean?” Marco’s voice is sweet, but underneath it’s rotting. “How do you know any of this is real?”
“Stop,” I growl, shifting back carefully until there’s a few feet between us. Fear is boiling into anger. “Don’t fucking use his lips to spew your bullshit.”
Marco laughs, choked and grating, and phases closer to me. He’s in my face, standing over me, eyes horribly wide, black spreading further as his left eye pales sickly. The punch he levels into my gut is expected, but it fucking hurts regardless, and I cough out my foggy breath in his face. I can’t even bring my hands to really defend myself against him.
“How do you know we’re not one and the same?” He punches me again, in the side, and I’m pretty sure I feel a rib crack under the force of it. Fuck. Sharp pain freezes my brain for a second, my lungs empty and screaming for air. I bend over the impact, gasping, reaching lamely for his hands. “Maybe I’ve been this way the whole time.”
Don’t listen. Don’t listen. He leans down to me again, his fingers digging into my sides cruelly and pulling me close to him. I give a strangled sound as he grinds his nails into the dip where a whole rib is supposed to be, pushing around fragments and grating my muscles against the bony shards. His filthy lips travel over my bloody brow, tongue tasting the blood pouring out of the gaping slice there before he moves his stained lips down my face again.
“Don’t worry, baby,” he purrs against my cheek, in the same voice Marco fucked me with last night. I can feel the hellish grin twisting his sweet face against mine. “We’re all quite mad here.”
-Ghost Story, Chapter Nine-
20. Beirut - Guyamas Sonora
You had all the prayers of my loose heart
You had all the prayers of once had gone
I can see Marco kneeling on the hot earth, eyes cast to the ground, back slumped, and panic surges through me. I move faster toward him, screaming his name, my voice lost in the roaring winds, and the wall hits me before I have a chance to see it. The blade falls from my hand. I forget about it. I reach out and my hands find the boundary, and it feels sharp and hot under my fingers. It doesn’t give under my fingers, no matter how hard I push against it. Something comes out from the cloud in my mind, from so long ago.
-usually things that are being kept from their rightful owners-
I wonder if I’m dead.
The longer and harder I shove, the hotter the wall becomes, until the burning is too much and I yank my hands away.
Marco’s right there, right there, maddeningly close and unresponsive to my shouts. Melinoë uncurls herself from Marco’s side. Her form is hazy, like smoke, but I can make out her cruel, bloody smile as she wraps around the priest. Her slender, blackened fingers curl under his chin, pulling his gaze to her, lips twisting poisonous words into his ears. Her white fist pulls behind her, wrist yanked by some unseen force, and her body twists with it, but the darkness surrounding them is too strong. Whatever’s pulling on her, whatever goodness is left in her deathly thin form, it’s overpowered. Helpless.
Her lips move, strained by her malice, and tears pour down Marco’s cheeks as he gives a small nod.
I scream. My heart is pounding, hammering against my ribs, and I haul back and punch the boundary with all of the adrenaline-fueled fury I can muster. The boundary stabs back, its sharp walls cutting my knuckles to the bone. The pain knocks me onto my back.
My thoughts are whirling. I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes and scream, cursing the sky, shouting Marco’s name. My eyes are wet under my palms. I scream until my throat is raw, heels digging and kicking into the soft earth, until the last of my energy leaves me and my body sags.
Staring up at the fiery, swirling sky, I watch a flare of heat and lightning crash across the sky. The wind is howling and dirty. My mind is chaos.
I think about Marco. I think about the boundary separating us. I think about the black abyss opening under his knees.
I think about my love for him.
I think about possessing him, taking him from his church like a statue or a trinket. Foolish. I never owned Marco, I never had him wrapped around my finger. I was just holding on while I could, grasping at straws around him. Then I let him fall out of my grasp like water.
I know I’m going to die here. It’s inevitable. All of the molecules in the universe have flown out from the first big explosion and aligned for this infinitely microscopic moment, and in this hovering instant, the stardust allotted to my being is seeping through my hands like sand out of a broken hourglass.
I haul myself to my feet, understanding, and regain control.
When I approach the boundary this time, I press my hands to it again, and it is cold as ice. I lean my forehead against it. As I press my hands forward, my fingers sink into it and freeze.
It gives under my touch, the frozen air welcoming, and when I emerge on the other side my skin is pale from the cold.
Melinoë whips her head around to look at me, and she gives an enraged growl.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Nine-
21. Max Richter - Organum
[Instrumental]
The strange dreams flood my mind again, and as she appears an inch in front of me, the smell of burning tar washes over me. I close my eyes. Her black hand, claws sharp and wicked, lunges toward my heart, but she passes through me as if I were nothing. I open my eyes again, her shocked, dual-toned face twisting back into malice. I grab the greasy black hair at the base of her skull and yank, exposing her neck. My bloody fingers pull the gun back out of my pants.
It takes no effort to hit the safety and blow her blackened brains out through the top of her skull. I aimed for where I guess her brain stem is. Her eyes widen, cross, then roll back, and I toss her disgusting corpse to the ground.
It’ll hold her off for now.
Marco is still kneeling, and as I approach the rift under him, I look down and see the infinite spread of stars under his knees.
I stand at the ragged edge of the dark universe, ten feet and a million miles away from Marco.
Exhaling slowly, I step forward. The sky ripples like water under my feet as I take slow, sure steps toward the priest.
Melinoë is coughing, alive again, ripping holes in the boundary, and titans pour in through them, their skin cracking through the frozen boundary, spitting sparks and burning in the gusting wind that follows them in.
When they run at me, they fall into the universe, and I watch disinterestedly as their bodies twist and crumple into nothingness as they drop through space.
I finally come to a stop in front of Marco. He looks up at me, eyes glazed and unfocused. His hands rest limp in his lap, the right broken and bruised, but his eyes are back to normal. Almost. The right is still ringed with a thin band of blood.
I call his name. The sound echoes distant and spirals into the rift, but it is not lost on him. His eyes clear a little, focusing on me. I extend my hands to him.
He slides his fingers into mine, weak and shaking, and I pull him gently to me, wrapping him in my arms.
I can hear Melinoë and her wrath fading away as together we fall into the stars.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Nine-
22. Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People
The trouble with the storm inside us grew
But I had so much to give
In spite of all the terror and abuse
A heaving gasp comes from my side. I recognize it immediately. I’m on my knees then, scrambling toward Marco, and he arches his back and gives a strained whimper. Christa’s attempts to hush him go unnoticed, probably because he’s just now having to come to terms with the fact that his leg and hand are wrecked. She pushes his sweaty bangs off his face and murmurs quietly, but he just whines and digs his nails into the shining dirt under us.
“What’s happening?” I look up at her, frantic, my hands hovering uselessly by his side.
“Melinoë’s possession is harsh,” she replies, looking behind herself, then back to Marco. “He’s dying again.”
“Can’t we do something?”
She shakes her head and pulls the leather satchel out of the folds of her dress. She drags one finger through the dust beside him, drawing a circle. With a small prayer, she shakes out the contents of her satchel, wide eyes closely watching the way small animal bones and wooden trinkets fall onto the earth. Her fingers hover over a tiny skull, a mouse or a rat, but she moves to grasp a little star of frail, strapped-together bones instead. She pushes Marco’s hair aside again and rests it on his forehead, and the presence of the thing seems to calm him slightly. He’s still giving out pained whimpers, but at least he’s stopped gasping and arching.
I run my hands through my hair and exhale slowly. His eyes are shut tight. I feel so helpless.
Christa stands and moves away. I look around us.
We’re on some strange pale island, floating in a sea of stars. The blue planet above us sloughs off a deep fog onto the wavy dirt, but it rolls off into the universe. Over the edge below us, I can see a great fire, and the heat waves radiating upward battle with the chill from above for dominance of the air.
All the light in the world is coming from that sun, but even so, it struggles to illuminate a vast blackness stretching across space in the direction Christa went. No starlight penetrates that black hole. Looking into the wriggling darkness, I suddenly feel like I might pitch forward and fall forever into the jaws of the underworld.
She stands there, back to me, arms outstretched. The void shudders. Her long hair falls toward it. I feel like I’m falling, so I squeeze my eyes shut and fist my hands in Marco’s shirt, grounding myself.
I take a few deep breaths and stare upwards again. The planet groans, deep and pained. The things wrapped around its surface are squeezing it, gripping it tightly, as if trying to yank the planet out of its orbit and into the unknown below. The glacier drips into a small, circular pool in the middle of the island. It shimmers and small waves lap up onto the ground. I can’t see into it from this angle, but I’m too reluctant to leave Marco to even try.
There’s a shaking, and a loud thud, but I’m not brave enough to turn my head toward the writhing beast again. Let Christa commune with it. I’ll stay right here. I’ll stay at home. I look down at Marco and brush a stray tangle off of his pale brow, my fingers sliding in the sweat. I’d almost swear he leans into the touch.
He frowns, though. I know what he means. I have to be brave.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Ten-
23. Bon Iver - Perth
I'm tearing up, across your face
Move dust through the light
To find your name
It’s something faint
This is not a place
Not yet awake, I’m raised to make
Still alive for you, love
When I wake up again, I’m on this fucking bed, and the lingering smell of his hair on the pillow my face is half-buried in makes me want to scream. My head is pounding, though, and it hurts to even breathe at this point.
Marco’s ghost is still there, sitting next to the bed. I wonder how long he’ll stay my Marco before my mind warps him into a new torment.
Fuck it.
I reach for him, vision swimming with tears and residual drunkness, and he leans closer to me with a soft sound. He presses my hand to his cheek and squeezes his eyes shut. It looks like he hasn’t slept in days.
I’m whispering his name, I realize. Over and over. He’s not here, I know he’s not, but it feels good to just pretend.
“Marco,” I mumble, a little louder, and he opens his eyes. They’re bloodshot, watery. “Marco, I’m sorry.”
“For what?” the apparition whispers to me.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, and the words sliding past my dry lips remind me of how much this fucking hurts. I’ll take a phantom over silence, though. I say it again and again, until my voice is thick with tears and the pillow under my head is soaked.
“Jean,” the ghost mumbles, moving closer. He even has a cast on his right hand, and the barest hint of blood in his eye. It’s so cruel. “Jean, why are you apologizing?”
I’m blubbering. I scratch my nails through imaginary black strands, marveling at how clean and untangled they are. I’d forgotten this feeling. I apologize again, then bite down cruelly on my lip.
He watches me with tired, tear-filled eyes, and I let it out.
“I’m sorry, Marco,” I say, louder than the whisper I’d been rasping. “I’m sorry I love you.”
The ghost sucks a sharp breath in between his teeth, his eyes widening. He bites his lip, then squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face in my hand as his shoulders shake.
I’m apologizing again. Again and again. I can’t stop. Until the phantom surges forward and presses his lips against mine. This dream is too cruel. He feels so sweet against me, his lips soft and trembling, his cheeks wet with salty tears.
“Go to sleep, Jean,” the ghost whispers against my lips, his breath hitching, and I do.
-Ghost Story, Chapter Eleven-
24. The Lumineers - This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
I got plenty of time
You got light in your eyes
And you're standing here beside me
I let out a slow exhale. “I’m sorry, Marco, I-”
“I don’t care about that,” he says, waving a hand. “It’s been gone for ten years. Why did you burn it, though? What did you think it was?”
I close my eyes again and sniffle. “Bitchface said it was everything you knew about me. All the memories.” I conveniently leave out all the other shit she said. “I thought if I burned it, maybe you could just… have a normal life where you’d left off, and you wouldn’t have to remember any of this.”
“And you think I’d want that?”
“It’d be better.”
“Jean,” he says firmly, and I look up at him again. “I’m a grown man. I’m the only one who can make decisions about what’s good for me.”
I balk for a while, fidgeting nervously, growing more agitated as I fuck this up more and more. “Are you pissed?”
“About that?”
“... And anything else, I guess.”
He sinks in his seat a little, resting his hands in his lap as he stares up at the ceiling. He thinks for a long time, and I use the time to memorize him again, the angle of his jaw, the steady rise of his breath, the tapping of his good fingers.
“I sort of always knew that you don’t make the best decisions, so I guess I can’t blame you. Like I said, it’s been gone a long time, and it wasn’t even much to begin with from what I can tell.” He looks back at me again. “I am mad, though.”
I shrink and nod, like a scolded child.
“I’m mad because you thought you could remove yourself that easily, and without asking me. I’m mad because you drank yourself half to death on the floor like… Kurt Cobain or something. I’m mad because you prefaced the most important thing I’ll ever hear with ‘I’m sorry.’”
Staring at him, I wrack my brain for whatever he’s referencing, thinking too far back to before he’d been ripped from my side.
“Don’t ever tell me you love me anywhere near an apology. Definitely never apologize for loving me.” He’s still stern, but it’s cracking, and his voice is wavering a little. Tears are starting to fill his eyes. “I won’t accept that. The only time I want to hear those two together is when you’re trying to wheedle out of getting in trouble for doing something small and stupid. Ten years from now, fifty, a hundred. When you’re still making incredibly shitty life choices, but you’re too old to make bad choices about anything except spending too much money on pudding.”
I think I’m laughing, but it could also be gross sobbing, because my face and collar are drenched with tears. He smiles, and tears fall down his face, and I want nothing more than to be an old man begging his forgiveness over a hundred and twelve ounces of pudding.
“I am sorry, though…” I murmur, sniffing again.
“For what?” Before I can open my mouth, he points at me. “Choose your words carefully.”
Good call. I bite my lip for a second, running my hand slowly over his cast, pushing his robes up over the plaster. “For this. For dragging you into all of this. For letting you die. For trying to shove you away.” I look up at him again, nervous and fidgety still. “And I really am sorry for… for that. Bad shit happens to people I love, and I just. I don’t know. I’m sorry for bringing that on you.”
Marco sighs through his nose, reaching for my fingers. I lift my hand to him, leaning closer, and he twines our fingers together tight, warmth spreading from his fingers through my chest. “I’m the one that followed you. I’m the one that decided to stay. I’m the one that stared all this in the face and didn’t run away.”
“Why’s that?” I run my thumb over his knuckles.
“Because being near you is worth enduring anything the universe can throw at me.” He gives me a watery smile, chuckling. “And I have pretty convincing evidence for that.”
I give him half a smile, curling toward him as best I can on the pew. “I’m still sorry.”
“Next time you try to tell me you’re sorry for loving me, I’m going to crack you over the head with this cast. It’s solid. Don’t tempt me.”
I blink slowly, tears coming to my eyes again, and the smile I give him is genuine. It feels good. The emptiness in my chest is being replaced with that dumb feeling I get when he makes me laugh. I want to kiss him. “Don’t you think I’m brain damaged enough?”
“I guess so, if you can’t tell that I was by your side because I wanted to be there, not because anything was forcing me.”
I nod, still not knowing where to go from here. What to do. I’m lost again, but I’m lost with him, and as long as he’s here I think I can make it through anything.
“So what do you say?” I peer back up at him as he asks, his face a wide smile. “Should we give it a shot?”
Moving his leg gently out of my lap and to the pew, I scoot slowly closer to him. He watches me, gaze moving over me and back to my eyes, finally free of that stomach-clenching fear again and just… Marco. Just Marco. I nudge the tip of my nose against his, reveling in being near to him, looking for flecks of gold in his dark eyes. There are so many, and they shine like little stars. I kiss him softly, my eyes fluttering shut. “If you’ll have me,” I say quietly against his lips.
He hums quietly, leaning our foreheads together, his good hand coming to smooth up my back. “Say it again. Without the apology, okay?”
I lean back, bumping my nose against his, and I stare again stupidly into his beautiful doe eyes as I say, “I love you, Marco Bodt.”
He waits a beat, considering me, then sighs happily and gives me a little kiss.
“I love you, Jean Kirschtein.”
-Ghost Story, Chapter Eleven-
25. Sylvan Zuijderduin & Ralph Hendriks - Welcome Home
[Instrumental]
I wake up early, and I don’t wake up afraid and panicked. Instead, I stare up at this ceiling that I’m slowly getting used to. Streetlight filters through the window instead of the sun. It must still be early.
Marco shifts next to me with a small noise, rolling on his side to throw his arm over me.
Turning toward him, I shift my arm under his pillow and move against him. He’s warm, breathing slowly, so relaxed. Peaceful. Looking at him soothes me.
When I reach up with my free hand and run my knuckles over his cheek, he smiles a little and leans into it.
“’S it morning yet?” His voice is thick and sleepy.
“Not yet. Couple hours still, I think.”
“Good,” he replies, but one of his eyes cracks open to meet mine. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I reply. Instantly and honestly. “I’m good.”
His eye closes again, content with my response, and he draws the tips of his fingers over my hip. His good leg shifts between mine, happily tangling our limbs to bring us yet closer. My knee brushes his brace, a thick, complicated thing that had replaced his cast. I don’t miss the cast, even though I had liberally covered it with messages and happy doodles and maybe a few tiny penises. The doctors say even if he heals as best he can, he’s gonna have to use a cane. Possibly for the rest of his life.
I don’t care. If he let me, I’d carry him around for the rest of all of our lives.
I run my fingers through his hair, still a little tangled from sleep and from riding the brains out of him last night. The little hum he lets out, a contented purr, inspires me to wrap my arm around his warm shoulders from under his pillow. Closer, closer, always closer.
“You’re perfect,” I mumble quietly, not really with the intent of him hearing me, but of course he does. Always listening.
“Maybe a little broken,” he replies softly.
“No,” I say immediately. He opens his eyes again, blushing, and gives me a lopsided smile. I press forward and brush my lips against his. Like always, he kisses me back, and I don’t think it’s possible for me to be happier than I am right now. I pull back just a tiny bit, just enough to murmur against his lips, “I love you.”
He waits for a moment. When the apology doesn’t come, I feel him smile and he kisses me again, so sweetly and gently and perfectly. Perfect Marco. “I love you,” he whispers. He pulls his other hand out from under himself, and when he reaches up, I lift my head so he can push his arm under my neck.
He falls asleep, breathing slow and even, wrapped around me tight.
-Ghost Story, Epilogue-
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This Marco Bodt fanmix was created for you with love by suchaprince. The quotes coupled with each track are from Ghost Story written by avoidingavoidance, which served as the inspiration for this mix.