My family waited 20 years to open a 100 year old time capsule
u/IamHowardMoxley
A father gives. I gave my family a house in 1999, and we wasted no time in digging up our new backyard garden with help from our seven year old son. He was the one that found the lump of red clay with a message stamped deeply into the surface: ATTENTION! TIME SENSITIVE! INTERNED THE FIFTH OF JULY NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN OF THE YEAR OF OUR LORD. NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL A MINIMUM 100 YEARS PASSAGE!
My wife and I thought it was fun to imagine what our life would be like in 20 years; in its own way, the capsule really did help me focus on the future as my family grew.
We kept the capsule was safely boxed up in the attic. My wife, son and eventually our daughter liked talking about the time capsule every July 5th, and where we think we would be and what we would be doing at the 20 year mark. It was a object of warmth. It reminded me of what I gave as a father when those 20 years passed as quickly as these words.
In a family ceremony 20 years in the making, we cracked open the clay shell in the living room with cell phone cameras rolling about a month ago. We saw that the clay protected a near-mint condition plain copper box. I pulled it from its cast of clay and held the box to my chest for a bit as my family gleefully chanted for me to open it. I readied myself for some newspaper clippings, photos, maybe a few stamps. But upon opening, my son recoiled and let out the creepiest little diabolical laugh I have ever heard, a laugh I never heard from him before. He laughed for seconds straight before falling to a gasping and coughing fit. At the same time, my daughter said in a very concerned voice “guys…I can see me, us- outside my body…” My wife immediately jumped up from her seat and asked if I smelled leaking gas, or something else noxious. I had not idea what came over my family, as I saw, felt and smelt nothing different.
I looked inside the tin box to find a yellowed piece of notecard below a layer of what looked like crumbling rock salt. The inside had a faint artificial, noxious chemical fume. I shook the crystals away to retrieve the card and read the fountain-pen written note:
“Dear Person or Persona: If air touched us prior to one hundred years passage, study us, and weep- for we are and shall ever be outside your limits of comprehension, as these gems stay sealed from your kind’s perception forever. However, if the instructions stamped upon this hull were heeded and a minimum of 100 years have passed- you, or those surrounding you, may have noticed a change, or a shift of perception, along with the presence of destabilized Crystalline within the capsule, remnants of inert state. These are signs that we have germinated and now found two new suitable hosts. When we find them, we will assume these forms and identities as we see fit. We seek no quarrel with you. Respect us mutually in that regard.”
My 27 year old son’s coughing fit started up again as he looked in the hallway mirror and ran a finger through his shoulder-length hair. My son mumbled something about not liking long hair and stated “I’m going to go cut off all my hair” in slower, deeper accented tone we never heard before before going to the bathroom. My 15 year old daughter, an award-winning gymnast, acted like a newborn giraffe on four ice skates when she tried to stand, laughing like she was high or drunk, and saying things like “These legs! These arms! I ride like a 3 horse team!” as she walked off on legs that became more fluid and confident with each step.
When my wife asked me what the note in the tin said, my daughter ripped it from my hand, wadded it and ate it entirely, smiling the entire time.
“Respect us mutually” she said in a strange, sing-song tone.
My children stayed in their rooms all night and disappeared without taking a single thing with them the next morning.
Two weeks later, my wife and I were diagnosed with separate kinds of cancers that were just now metastasizing. I guess that’s why they didn’t pick us.
My wife is already mentally gone from this world, and I’m soon to follow. Sometimes I sit in the dirt, in the spot where my son found that cursed thing years ago, thinking. I was so obsessed with where I would be in 20 years that I didn’t appreciate the days that passed between as I should have. A father is supposed to give. What did I give my children?
There is not much time left for me, and I don’t want to waste it wondering where my “children” are or what those things were inside the box anymore. No, not anymore.
A father gives, and all I have left to give to you is my story.
My neighbor has been mowing his lawn for 12 hours straight
u/nslewis • Jul 14, 2019
Part 1:
It started at 4:43am. The noise jolted me awake. It sounded like there was a giant truck revving its engine right there in our bedroom. Exhaust fumes wafted in through the open window. It was a bad way to start the day.
“What is that?” moaned my wife. We’d both slept poorly, because our daughter had crawled into our bed at 1am and kept kicking us in the face until we were both half-hanging off the bed while she snored away.
“Start of the apocalypse,” I groaned. “Go back to sleep.”
“No way can I sleep through that racket,” said Vanessa. She rolled out of bed and shut the window. That helped a little, but it still sounded like war out there. She pulled the curtains back and looked through the window. “It’s the fucking neighbor. Mowing his lawn. Before the sun is up. We need to have a heart-to-heart with him. Let him know that’s not okay.”
Keagan, our daughter, woke up crying.
“Guess that’s that,” I muttered, getting out of bed myself. “I’ll go talk to him after some coffee.”
“Bring me some too,” said Vanessa.
“Papa, bring me some Smarties,” said Keagan.
“No. No Smarties for breakfast. Banana. Or toast. But not Smarties.”
“Fine,” huffed Keagan. “Toast. Cut into shapes.”
I sighed. This was really the last thing I wanted to be doing at 4:45 on a Saturday morning. Making coffee and cutting toast into animal shapes instead of drooling in my sleep and dreaming of a gentler world.
I went into the kitchen and started the coffee and toast, and then looked out the living room window. Sure enough, there was Mr. Limsky, mowing his damn lawn, in his damn bathrobe no less. That was another thing that I had no desire to do: get into it with him about this, or really talk to him about anything ever beyond a friendly wave and a “Howdy, neighbor.”
By the time I was awake enough to form a coherent thought, it was almost 6:00, and I had consumed four cups of coffee. Mr. Limsky was still at it, which was strange, because his yard isn’t very big at all. It shouldn’t take more than a 40 minute mow job. But here it was, an hour and fifteen minutes later, and he was still at it.
I got semi-dressed and stumbled outside. I walked across my own yard, which, I noted, needed mowing itself. Maybe I’ll tell him that if he mows my lawn and promises to never start so early again, I’ll let it go. But I knew that I wouldn’t do that. I was a coward.
As I got closer, I observed with some confusion that his lawn was already mowed. He was going over it a second time now. I walked up to our property line, denoted by the contrast between mowed and unmowed grass, and started waving my hands in the air, waiting for Mr. Limsky to notice me.
He never did. He just stared straight ahead and kept pushing the mower.
“HEY!” I shouted. But it was no good. I could barely hear myself, and so I knew that he wouldn’t be able to hear me from across the lawn, right behind the lawnmower.
Goddammit.
I walked across his yard until I was right behind him. “HEY!” Nothing. I tapped on his shoulder. Nothing. He just kept pushing the lawnmower onward over the already mowed lawn. I didn’t know what to do.
I’ll catch him after he finishes, I guess. He’s in the Zone.
I shrugged and was getting ready to turn back to my house when I saw a trickle of what was presumably urine run down his bare leg.
Jesus.
I went back to my house and opened the door. Vanessa was reading a book to Keagan. She stopped when I came in and looked up. “Well?”
“I, uh… he couldn’t hear me. I’ll go over there once he stops. He’s got to stop some time, right? And, uh… well, I’m a little worried about him honestly. I saw him, you know, wet himself.”
“Mr. Limsky peed his pants?!” asked Keagan. She started laughing.
“Well, that sometimes happens, kiddo,” I said. “You used to do that. We do that a lot when we’re kids and then we don’t do it for a while and then when we get older we sometimes do it again.”
That gave her something to think about anyway.
“Huh,” said Vanessa.
“There’s more,” I said. “He’s already done with the lawn. He’s just going over it a second time.”
“Maybe he missed a few spots?”
“Nope. It’s perfect. Not a blade of grass higher than any other blade of grass.”
“Hmm,” said Vanessa. “That is strange. Do you think he’s okay? Should we call somebody?”
I shrugged. “Who are we going to call? The police? Tell them that our retired neighbor is mowing his lawn twice while pis… while peeing himself? What will they say to that?”
*
By 8:00, I was done cooking the bacon and Mr. Limsky was still at it, mowing his lawn for what must have been the fifth time. I tried not to think about it, but it was hard.
“After breakfast, we should go somewhere,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day. No sense staying cooped up all day.”
“Why does Mr. Limsky keep mowing his lawn?” asked Keagan.
“I don’t know, kiddo,” I muttered. “I don’t know. You want to go to the playground or something?”
“Yay!”
“I’m going to stay here and try to go back to sleep if that’s okay,” said Vanessa.
“Of course,” I said. I felt like going back to sleep myself, even after all that coffee, but the desire to get far away from the sound of the lawnmower outweighed my tiredness.
We ate, then Keagan and I headed to the playground.
At 9:00, I got a text from Vanessa: “Can’t sleep. He’s still mowing.”
9:30: “I’m really starting to get worried. This isn’t normal.”
10:00: “I went over there and tried to talk to him, but it’s like he’s in a trance. Please come home.”
I sighed, but complied. I rounded up the kid and drove home. I felt a deep sense of unease, that grew more intense the closer I got to home.
You’re afraid of an old man mowing the lawn? I chided myself. It didn’t work, because my instinctive answer was: Yes.
I turned onto my street and prayed that Mr. Limsky would be done mowing the lawn by now. He’d tell us it was just a practical joke and we’d all have a good laugh over it. But soon enough, I saw that wasn’t going to happen. As I pulled into my driveway, I saw that he was still out there. I thought I saw a streak of brown running down his leg, but it was hard to tell for sure because he was going around under the shade of his ancient apple tree.
I walked inside and Vanessa was at the kitchen table with bags under her eyes and a glass of wine in front of her. “Please make it stop,” she said.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said, suddenly feeling very tired and in need of a drink myself.
“Call the police,” she said.
“Why don’t you?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said. “It’s just that I do everything else around here so I thought maybe you could help this one time.”
I held my tongue. I did plenty around there, but I knew that now wasn’t the time to point that out. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll call the police. How has he not run out of gas by now, anyway?”
“I’ve been watching him,” said Vanessa. “He’s got a can of gas in his driveway. Sometimes he grabs it when he passes by and gasses up while still pushing the mower. It’s crazy. Please call the police.”
“Alright, alright,” I said. I looked up the number and proceeded to have one of the most awkward phone conversations of my life. It was ten minutes with the receptionist, and then another ten minutes with an officer. Finally, they agreed to come over and check it out.
*
Fifteen minutes later, I watched out the window as the cop car pulled into Mr. Limsky’s driveway. A single cop got out and walked over to Mr. Limsky.
The cop was waving his hands and shouting, but it was no good. Then the cop grabbed Mr. Limsky’s shoulder and spun him around forcefully. This caused Mr. Limsky to finally let go of the throttle, and for the first time all day, the lawnmower stopped moving. It was still running though, because he had taped its safety shut-off down.
I held my breath as I waited to see what would happen next.
Mr. Limsky opened his mouth, and something emerged from it. It looked like a long, thin tentacle. The tentacle wrapped itself around the cop’s neck, and lifted him up into the air. Then a second tentacle emerged from Mr. Limsky’s mouth, and made its way down the cop’s throat.
I slammed the curtains shut and noticed that I too, like Mr. Limsky earlier, had wet myself.
“What’s going on out there?” asked Vanessa from the kitchen. “Did the police arrive?”
I didn’t have a good answer, so I didn’t say anything.
“Honey?” said Vanessa, walking over. “Are you okay?”
From outside, we heard the whine of a new machine join in with the lawnmower. Vanessa opened the curtain, and I turned slowly to look out.
The cop was out there going around the old apple tree with a weed whacker while Mr. Limsky was back pushing the lawnmower around again.
*
It’s 5pm. Besides Mr. Limsky, there are now four cops in his yard doing various tasks. One is still at it with the weed whacker. Another has been going at the shrubs with a pair of clippers for hours now. But the one who concerns me the most is the one who is going around spraying the ground from a bottle full of neon blue liquid that Mr. Limsky at one point puked out of his mouth.
I personally am petitioning the family to pack up the car and start driving to Florida where Vanessa’s mother lives. I have no idea what is going on, but it doesn’t look good.
“I Found a Letter From My Stalker” Written by MinisterOfOwls
ESTIMATED READING TIME — 12 MINUTES I found this note, nailed onto a tree on my front lawn. I really don’t know how to describe it. I’ll just let you read it yourself.
[Note start]
I saw you today. It was your birthday. You didn’t see me, you hardly ever do these days.
Your skin looked so nice and healthy, and your eyes, they were the most beautiful I’d ever seen them.
You’ve grown so much. I remember how you different used to look when you were younger.
I remember the day I first met you.
It was four years ago. I was sitting on my desk, head down, listening to the teacher rattling off names for attendance. The teacher called out a name I didn’t recognize, and a stranger’s voice answered behind me. Was there a new student?
The teacher didn’t pause for a second, just continued calling out name after name. I turned my head to where the voice had come from.
I saw you, a pale thing, so thin, your eyes so red, at a seat that should have been empty.
I saw the fireflies flying around you, flickering. Dozens of them, never straying far from you.
I saw them going through you, and coming out through your skin, like you were a mist to them. Can you believe I thought you were a ghost?
No one else seemed to acknowledge the new stranger sitting at the back of the class. Class after class, hour after hour passed as I waited for something to happen. For someone to notice you, for you to leave, for you to let out a ghoulish scream and claw at me like in the horror story I was certain I was in. But nothing happened.
Teachers came and went. My classmates laughed and slept, and you just sat there.
The bell rung for recess. The other kids ran to their mundanities for the day, leaving me and you together in the empty classroom. You stood up and pulled a chair from the desk next to you, making it face your desk. You turned your head to me and spoke
“Well, you’re slow today. Come on. Ask me your questions.”
I don’t know why I didn’t run away screaming at that moment. Probably would have turned out better for me in the long run, but let’s not speculate.
I guess, at that point in my life , I was pretty bloody lonely. I figured there was only a 50-50 chance you’d eat me and the other 50 was that someone wanted to talk with me. Kid priorities don’t make sense to me either these days.
So I went along with the flow. I walked over to your desk, sat down on the chair you pulled for me, and asked my question. What were you?
You told me you didn’t know.
You said that once you were a child, just like me, with parents and friends. You used to go to the same schools as me.
Then, one day, one ordinary day, when you were ten, you just woke up and you were like this, covered in fireflies and no one could remember you the moment they concentrated on anything else. No one, not even your parents.
You told me of how I’d notice you, every day. How I’d think of you until recess every day.
How I’d come to you every day. How we would talk, every day. How we would meet for the first time, every day, for the last three years.
About how I’d forget the instant I walked out of the room.
How everyone would forget you. How the fireflies would make them. How for the last three years, you’d been alone.
Your story was very hard to believe. So I didn’t. I asked what reality prank show I was on. You looked, well, unimpressed, and asked me to continue telling my story.
I was caught off guard by the non sequitur. You said last time I was here, I was telling you a story, a horror story about a haunted house.
As you detailed the story, goosebumps prickled my skin. It was a story I’d been making up in my head. A story I hadn’t told anyone yet.
At that moment, a million reactions were open to me, all simultaneously adequate and inadequate . But the only thing that seemed proper was to finish the story for you. So I did.
Halfway through, you interrupted me to ask if my mother had recovered from her sickness yet. I had to shake my head, a bit ashamed at the fact that I shared this private matter to a stranger. The story ended a few minutes before recess.
My next class was in another room.
You told me to go. Your steadiness took me back. You seemed so… accepting of your fate. Like you’d already gotten used to the idea of being forgotten forever.
I was a kid back then. I wasn’t a particularly smart kid, and I was probably on the onset of a crush. So you can excuse what I did next as an example of my childhood stupidity.
I grabbed my scissors, pressed it against my arm’s skin, and dug in. As it drew blood, I pushed it forwards, till the cut forms the shape I wanted.
Letter by letter, I carved your name onto my arm.
Just so you up know, I don’t regret that. Don’t get me wrong, kid power might have made me do it, but it sure as hell didn’t make the pain go away. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life.
But even then as a kid, I thought what was happening to you was unfair.
I remember how your eyes looked when you saw that. The confusion. How strange it was for you, that anyone would want to remember. I remember that look so clearly.
When I woke up the next day and saw your name on my arm, I remembered you. I didn’t forget.
That day, for the first time, we had a conversation that wasn’t so one-sided.
You said no one had ever done anything like that before and suggested I might have a mental illness . I won’t deny it, that drew a little blood. As we talked, a creeping thought came into my head: Did you prefer it when I didn’t remember?
That night, I was sitting up on my bed, staring at your name on my arm, wondering if I should cover it up so I couldn’t see it and give you back your privacy, when I heard a crash.
I looked up to see my bedroom window shattered and a dirty rock on my floor. I looked out of the cracked window, to see a dark figure on my lawn.
You were outside yelling, about how we should hang out.
It took me a while to get used to how bad you were at talking to people. Years without practice, made you a quite a bit rusty.
That was all right. We had a lot of time.
For the next two years, we spent the most of our free time together. Most of the time, we talked. You’d tell me an aspect of your life and how you lived.
You still stayed in your old house. Your parents never noticed the food gone missing, never noticed the extra room, and you’d stolen the extra keys.
One night, I confided in you, that I was beginning to think you were a part of my imagination, Fight Club style. After all, what could you do to me that I couldn’t do to myself?
You spent the next month or so trying to leave bite marks on my ear or neck, to prove a point. I still have some on my ear, so I guess you did.
Looking back, I could see the warning signs even then. Your skin seemed to get worse and worse, paler and paler, and you’d rub your eyes raw.
It was in winter we had our wakeup call.
The morning began like any other. I woke up, brushed my teeth, and started searching for clothes to wear. It was a winter morning, and my room was dark, so I didn’t see your name on my arm.
The cold sent shivers through my body, and pulled out a long sleeve jacket. A small bell rang in my head. Don’t you usually roll your sleeves up? Yeah, and why did I? That was annoying.
I finished tidying up and headed to school. On the school bus, I felt oddly content, like something I’d been worrying about had just… disappeared.
I walked up the school stairs, down the hall, through my class door, and sat down on my desk. The same feeling of a burden forgotten hounded my mind. What was I forgetting?
When recess came, I started came, I just sat at my desk, while my class mates ran out. It felt like a ritual , but I didn’t know what for. I was contemplating just walking out to join them, when I heard it.
It was something small in the wind, like a whisper, but it came over and over, incessant. It sounded like my name. I knew this was strange, that this was worth my attention, but I felt oddly calm. Everything would be alright, everything would be fine, just ignore it.
I sat there on my desk, my mind a war zone between two conflicting, contradictory, voices, when I felt a force tugging on my sleeve. The moment I noticed this, my jacket sleeve tore open. I saw your name on my arm, and then your hand that had ripped my jacket open.
You’d been yelling at me for over 20 minutes.
I think that was the moment we realized how on edge our friendship really was. One accident away from complete erasure.
We spent the most of the next year in the town library together, trying to find out what the fireflies were.
It wasn’t really a problem for me. Because of my mother’s treatment, my family couldn’t afford to go on any trips, and our house didn’t have heating anymore, so I was happy to spend my time with you.
Trying to find information was a puzzle in and of itself. After all, how would I read about people I couldn’t remember and how would you find out who was special when no one could even remember enough about them to record them?
We found out old family trees and records. Individually, we’d write down the name of everyone in the book on two lists and then we would compare. The names I hadn’t remembered to write down, but you had, would become the focus. They were the names who were under the curse of the fireflies.
We compiled a list of “suspicious” books. Books we though could help us, because they were written by or were about the people we were searching for.
I’d read the books, with the list of names side by side, reading it again for every page of the book. You’d sure the internet on the library computers , for articles about the people.
Our search would lead us to the first glimpse we got of what was really happening to you.
It was late at night when you found the picture. I was a bit drowsy at that time, and almost about to nod off when I heard a sharp intake of breath. I turned to see you standing up, pointing at the screen.
I didn’t see anything. Well, anything noteworthy. On the screen was a picture of a clearing somewhere in the woods
You held up your piece of paper where you’d marked out two names.
Susie Applebee-Reagan, 13
Terry Applebee-Reagan, 12
Siblings
For a moment, I saw the paper and the screen side by side.
Side by side.
And then I saw them.
Two figures, emerging from the woods, towards the camera. They were almost humanoid, but all five limbs stretched to nightmarish proportions. Blank white skin, pure albino, that looked more like tree bark than anything on a mammal. A cloud of fireflies surrounded the duo.
The shorter one looked emaciated. I could see the rib cages around which their… their eyes! God, their eyes! So small, so red.
The longer one with their white hair, didn’t look alive anymore. They were just skin wrapped around skeletons. Their empty eye sockets had fireflies swarming out of them. Both reaching for the camera man.
I looked at the article surrounding the picture. It was a blog post by hiker, twenty years after the two kids had been written about last. The picture was a mystery to the camera man as well. He’d been wanting to go to the woods pictured for a while now, but he never actually remembered going there. The picture had just appeared in his camera one day, out the blue.
For a moment, I looked at your face. Your thin pale face, with those red veined eyes. Would that be you when my scar faded? Just a walking horror I’d glimpse, then forget?
We worked through our reading list at a much faster pace starting from that moment.
Maybe we should’ve gone slower. At least every book, every website we’d left untouched promised hope. The books we finished and tossed aside promised nothing but the clearing in the woods as your future.
And we tossed aside a lot of books.
I believe I tore through three fourths of my reading list before I stumbled across the journal. Oh God, that horrible, horrible journal.
The journal used to belong to a mental patient, named Joey, who claimed to be a serial killer. He was locked up in an asylum when the police discovered his supposed victims never existed. He was ‘diagnosed’ with a need for attention, and shoved away.
They should have electrocuted him. They should have fried him until his flesh melted and his hair burned.
In the journal, he talked about how he carried out his killings. He knew things, bizarre and disturbing things no one else knew. He knew of strange creatures that lived in the woods. Of them, his favorite were the fireflies.
I’m not going to tell you how he summoned these things. I trust you, I trust you more than anyone, but a thing like this belongs to the ground more than it ever will to the human mind. It’s sufficient enough to know that, these things were not fireflies.
Joey would start his ritual by taking a kid. Any kid, anyone he’d liked. He could take them at any time, the dead of night in their own homes, or in broad daylight on their front yards.
It didn’t matter if he was seen. He’d take them to his house and drag them to a room. Usually, an Amber Alert came up around now. He didn’t care. Like I said, it wouldn’t matter soon.
He’d drag them to a special room in his house. Here the fireflies would come and latch onto them. Now, nobody was searching for the kids. Not the police, not the parents. Nobody.
From then on, he could do whatever he wanted to the kid. He’d get bored of them after a day or two, after the child had broken. And then the kid would go too. Hacksaw, kitchen knife, anything would work.
He detailed a large pit of bodies he kept in the woods, swarming with the bugs.
I guess he got bored of that too one day, so one day he went right to the police station and turned himself in. Not of guilt, no, no, no. He just wanted someone to know about the stuff he was doing. Sick bastard.
Oh, don’t get the wrong idea. He never stopped killing kids. The asylum doors didn’t stop him from doing what he liked. It just made him improvise.
He made a new way. He modified the flies, so they could survive without a host, just in a dormant state. When a child (he specified the age) would approach the swarm, it would latch on and begin its effect. Over the years, the child would warp horribly into the things we saw in the woods.
I wish I could hate him in peace. I wish I could say the world owed him nothing. But that wouldn’t be true. He detailed a way out. On the final page, was an exact explanation on how to get rid of the fireflies.
You must have seen something in my face, at that moment you asked if had I found anything.
I said no and closed the book.
A few minutes later, you shut down the computer. You picked up the last book and went through it yourself. When you reached the end cover, you tossed it aside.
I asked what we should do now.
You said it was alright. I could go home. We’d talk about it in the morning.
I stood up and walked past the shelves of books. I headed for the library entrance, but stopped right outside the door and waited. I waited until I heard the sniffling sounds.
I sneaked back to our table, where you were quietly sobbing.
You had your head in your hands. I sat back down, as you raised your eyes to me.
You said you wished you’d never met me. How happy you were when you had nothing to lose. How I ruined your life.
You’d never really gotten better at talking to people. That was the worst love confession I’d ever heard.
I remember how we kissed that night. I remember your hands gripping my hair. I remember that kiss.
I wish it could’ve been just a kiss.
I’m sorry I ruined that moment. When my arms were around you, I was close enough to steal a firefly without you noticing.
I remember holding the fireflies in my hand. I remember how it struggled, until it didn’t. Until it was a part of me.
The fireflies shifted. They came over me, and left you.
I remember the familiar look in your eyes. The confusion. I never wanted to see that confusion in your eyes again. You deserved to be loved and you deserved to know that.
I wasn’t really living anyway.
You reached for me. I pulled away, as the last lights of recognition faded from your eyes. And then you were just staring at a stranger, walking away into a crowd of strangers.
That was a year ago.
You’ve gotten so much better since then. You have so many friends now. So many people at your birthday party. You also look so much healthier. I haven’t been as fortunate.
My skin’s gotten a lot paler, and my eyes hurt all the time now. I couldn’t go to school like you did all those years. I haven’t wasted my time though. I found Joey’s pit.
The bodies, there were so many bodies. There’s a grave for those children now.
Without me, my mom could afford her surgery. She looked so happy. Just yesterday, I saw her playing with my baby brother.
I saw you crying yesterday. You were with your friends, laughing. For a brief moment, your eyes met mine, and then, they were so wet.
I think I’m going away. For good I think. You’re not going to be happy if I stick around.
I’m so happy I met you, even if you don’t remember me.
[Note end]
Sometimes I go through depressive episodes. I feel so lonely, even with my friends. I don’t know what’s going through my head during these times, and sometimes I’d end up in a bath tub, a knife in my hands and my wrists bleeding.
Up till now, I thought I was cutting my wrists. I wasn’t. The cuts… they’re letters.
I am very nervous to post this, but I posted the first chapter of my fic today.
I haven’t written since I was 14, so I’m SUPER nervous to post this, especially since I haven’t gotten it beta read yet, but im really pushing myself to get content out more regularly.
Its the first chapter of the first part of a trilogy called “Tenderness”. Part one is called “Consultation”. It is a slow-burn EdNny fic.
The premise is Johnny decided to let Edgar go and figured he’d never see him again.
Yet, a nagging voice pulls his thought to The One He Let Go.
He loses time and finds himself in an unfamiliar club with a familiar face.
I am very nervous to post this, but I posted the first chapter of my fic today.
I haven’t written since I was 14, so I’m SUPER nervous to post this, especially since I haven’t gotten it beta read yet, but im really pushing myself to get content out more regularly.
Its the first chapter of the first part of a trilogy called “Tenderness”. Part one is called “Consultation”. It is a slow-burn EdNny fic.
The premise is Johnny decided to let Edgar go and figured he’d never see him again.
Yet, a nagging voice pulls his thought to The One He Let Go.
He loses time and finds himself in an unfamiliar club with a familiar face.
The snow is finally melting, and Saeyoung holds your hand just a little too tight. You are solid: steady and certain as you tug him along behind you, rushing into the crowd like you don’t know how easy it would be to disappear.
A whole season, this time—the longest the universe has ever let him keep you. You pause before stepping off the curb and fix him with a dizzying grin.
“Are you ready?” He hears echoes of the versions of you he’s already known in the way you ask him this: like you’ve said these words before; like you might remember the answer.
Heisn’t ready. He sees all the times he’s met and then lost you swirling in the slush at your feet and finds it hard to meet your eyes. Will tomorrow be the day he wakes up alone in the bed, sheets tucked in like you were never there in the first place?
It is impossible that one day you can be muscle and bone and the next only smoke in the air, but Saeyoung knows by now that possibleandimpossible mean nothing at all when you love someone who’s always leaving.
