HIATUS

the magics sorta gone, i can barely string a sentence together anymore and i can’t really be fucked. Been feelin this on-off shit with writing for a while now, but now i’m mostly off so there’s no point in pretending i’ll do all this shit next weekend or i’ll start writing my novel the weekend after, cos chances are i’ll just stare at a blank screen for the spare five hours i have per day and honestly i don’t feel like i’m achieving much by typing out some total shit and then promptly erasing it. 

i mean writing’s not meant to be easy, i get that, but it used to be easy, idk what changed, but it ain’t anymore. i tried takin a break, tried new music, tried all the shit that used to get me goin but i just 

so maybe i’ll be back in like two weeks again, maybe i won’t, but i think it’s just fairer to say i won’t to save people busting balls doing any replies (lbr -- i probably owe u at this point). i used to live and breath writing, idk why i don’t anymore, but i suppose you gotta give up that stuff to do the shit you hate and unfortunately that’s just sorta how life goes

if you wanna i’ll dish out my discord (i’m barely ever responsive on disco, so if u actually wanna talk snapchat or somethin) just shoot me a dm

@aspernamentum​ | Cont. from X

He must forgive her, she’s nowhere near as focused as she usually is. Right about now, she’d probably be trying to find her way out, not wishing for this man to succumb to her influence– but it’s the corpses. The water’s degrading the flesh, making it softer…more pliable, easy to tear. Iona’s keenly aware that she couldn’t stay long but…well, it’s not very often that she manages to sniff out a body this fresh.

She hasn’t even been looking at Jimmy as he speaks, Iona walking nose forward towards the target, his blood sloshing in the Jacuzzi grimly. “I regret to inform you that I cannot leave just yet.” Her hand reaches out to take hold of a limp, bloodied arm, raising the hand to her lips–

There’s the harsh c r u n c h of bone snapping, followed by the continuous crunch of it in her jaws. “Please forgive me– I haven’t had anything this fresh in some time.” She explains, her own hand pressing to her lips politely, trying not to speak with her mouth full and all. “I certainly would not wish to stand between a man and his quest for self-preservation…and while I appreciate what you leave behind, I do feel…” Her head bobs mechanically, the movement punctuated by her biting off another finger. “Sad with every death.”

Jimmy had a pretty strong stomach for gruesome shit. He knew how to detach from the reality of any given situation, sometimes he’d even find himself reveling in the pain he inflicted should the target deserve it, but this, this was something entirely new. He watched with perverse curiosity, stayed silent as the woman spoke, as she fondled the corpse. She took his target by his hand, then, without a care in the fucking world, she bit into the fresh corpse. Jimmy wretched, the shock of what she did caused him to back into a table, he nearly fell on his ass. 

Anything this fresh echoes around his skull for a few moments, his grip on his pistol had caused his knuckles to turn white. She had done this before. He had a rule, he wouldn’t kill women, in a moment of disgust and confusion he decided he would make an exception. He’d seen movies, she was clearly a vampire or a zombie or some shit, or best case scenario she was just a severely fucked up individual -- in which case, Jimmy figured he’d be doing her a favor. He raised his gun, he shot her three times. Twice in the body, once in the head. 

“Mm, surely that’s natural. Fight or flight kicks in and you win the fight, your body probably floods with endorphins.” Celia understands it. She won’t be honest about either times though, not with anyone. Somedays, she’s not even honest with herself about it. With her second husband, standing over his body, muscles aching with the effort of strangling him, all she could think was, thank god it’s over. For weeks, even months, he had put her through hell just because he could and there was something so empowering about ending his life, how weak and helpless he looked lying on the floor. With her daughter, it was different. For one, she didn’t kill her daughter or have any desire for her to be dead but maybe she did want it to be over. Motherhood wasn’t for her, single motherhood especially. For twenty second she’s felt relief, followed suddenly by guilt, horror and despair. She’s been punishing herself for those twenty seconds of thought ever since. What sort of mother would think… 

“Hey, I’m not… proud of that.” Well, maybe, somewhere deep down. It’s on that ever growing list of things she can’t say out loud. “Was the second time easier than the first? Mentally.” 

“I’m pretty sure I was in shock, I was hysterical.” Brad had been there. Jimmy wasn’t stupid, he didn’t go alone. It wasn’t just Jimmy’s problem to deal with. He had had backup, and Jimmy wondered if he would’ve even made it out of there alive without someone to pick him back up again. That horror he had felt, this wasn’t some dumb cop-show on TV. This was real. A mother was dead, her mother would get a phone call. He couldn’t just run away, not again. 

“No, no, you’re right, there ain’t no pride in what I did, but the way I see it, you didn’t do anything. Teenagers are dumb, your brain’s still growing and shit. All I’m sayin’ is a damn adult can deal with that shit better than a teenager.” He didn’t want to believe she had the capacity for harm in her. He felt like she was a good person, maybe it was the cocaine, maybe it was the alcohol or the sunlight, but he felt like she was inherently good. 

It doesn’t shock her. Maybe she wishes it did. She would like to be the the sort of person who is still shocked by such things. That’s horrible, she wants to say, you’re an awful person. But she knew that’s what his past looked like; bloody and horrifying. “So you didn’t really feel anything?” She asks, like it’s a therapy session. Instead, she’s just curious, how did it feel?

“I was fifteen,” this she does sound shocked about, like she’s just remembered. “I didn’t… I mean, I didn’t stab anyone. This girl at school, she told everyone I got a nose job over the summer, which was true but… who needed to know, right? I made her life so miserable over the next few months, she tried to kill herself during the christmas break.” Cee taps the cigarette off the side of the chair. “She didn’t manage it, guess it doesn’t really count then.” 

He slurped down some more of his drink, eyeing up the cigarette she’d stolen before grabbing another one of his own, his eye’s shot back to her when she asked him how he felt. Nobody had ever asked him that before, not about anybody he’d killed at least. “Christ.” He murmured, not because it was a difficult question, but because of the depth. He had omitted some details, to say the least. “No, no. I felt something. I ain’t gon’na tell you I enjoyed it, I didn’t... But there was this relief, this moment of silence... Then I...” He trailed off, eye’s vacant for a second. Elizabeth’s fridge was this gaudy off-yellow colour, covered in smiley-face magnets and letters, random notes stuck to it, he remembered the sheer horror he felt when he looked at the fridge. Some things didn’t need to be said out loud, some things were better left unsaid. 

     ‘And once you think you’re out…they pull you back in!’ it took absolutely all of Louis’ willpower to not throw that quote at Jimmy. Disciplined, what comes from his lips is still not nice n’ plain, yet still holds a decent amount of seriousness all the same, “yea, I’ve heard somethin’ similar to that before, back when Don Scozzari found his passion in building.” 

       Louis was about fourteen then when it was something Sal played with - ‘going legitimate.’ Their public image was so good, and Louis also supposes that his old man found what was to be loved in being deemed a good man. “But that money, man.” Louis then emphasizes with a small head shake, letting air suck through his pearly whites. Money, it was the root of all evil: the foundation to a good living, his father never went legitimate. The grit that came from his formative years in Brownsville was just in his veins, Louis guesses. 

     “When I hear about this kid, it’s probably when a “missing report” pops up on TV. With his mama crying about how beautiful he was, reflectin’ on those church days. His girlfriend talkin’ bout the good times they had, like she wasn’t listening in on his phone calls to his side piece. Yadda, yadda, yadda. He probably ain’t even made: just doin’ the stuff his elders don’t wanna and he thinks he’s out here, thinking he’s hot shit for that.” 

     He was right. The money, the blow, the women, it all used to mean something. To him, it all felt like a young mans game -- Jimmy may have looked young, sure, but he didn’t feel young. He found himself mirroring Louis’s head-shake, as if he was disappointed in himself. “You know how it is. One second you’re turnin’ a five hundred dollar profit, the next it’s five million -- like a dog with a bone an’ nowhere to bury it.” He tended to listen to his gut when it came to situations like this, he wanted to trust Louis, he seemed like a nice enough guy, but he also knew that trusting someone in their line of work was risky. If he was going to end up at the bottom of the Hudson, it was going to be on his own terms, not Louis’s. 

     “I know, I know, it’s probably nothin’. It was amateur, the guys drove ‘round the block three times like I wouldn’t fucking notice,” Jimmy scoffed, leaning back in his seat. “Could’a been any number of people, thing is, I got a long-standing feud with the Armenians, Russians too, I don’t need to be dealin’ with the mob too.” Mazzeo had been respected. Ruthless, sure, an asshole, sure, but he was respected. His replacement, Abel, not so much. After Jimmy put Abel down he hadn’t heard from the Italians again, he figured that was the end of it, and as he’d just noted, he had more pressing issues to deal with. “So I still got a few people to uh, grace with my presence,” don’t let it be said Jimmy wasn’t aware of his own reputation. “But listen, you ever hear anything, I’ll be at the Snow White -- drinks on the house, of course,” kissing ass was his least favorite part of the job. He was being serious when he said he didn’t want to start anything. “It’s just off seventh avenue, used to be called Mezzrow before I bought it.” 

meme // accepting.

     “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Molly wasn’t good at this sort of thing. She found it difficult to console people, to say the right thing. She was used to anger, to explosive fits of unquenchable rage that she simply had to ride out. It wasn’t that she was a victim, just that the people in her orbit weren’t the sort to allow feelings of emptiness to last long. They would fill that void with something, something that would set their insides on fire. She dipped her coke-nail into the baggy, she put the small pile to her nose and sniffed.