your local demon hunter.

me, being SO self conscious that I look like spam lmaooo how do I counter-spam?

A thread tracker for chrome users!

Currently in development. Coming soon :)

anybody out there (not possessed by that... goblin guy) know how to do this??

It was never a problem to have company over, she had way more room than she knew what to do with. Hell, with the cycle of people coming in and out of her house, most of which were invited over by Evan, she hardly ever had the couch to herself.

Morgan's place was quaint. Mismatched, secondhand furniture with tennis balls on the feet, pushed up against fading striped wallpaper. Bookshelves with the beginnings of media collections, paintings from art fairs hung up in odd arrangements, and polaroid pictures in little plastic frames, dozens of them. Thank you's and see you soon's and wish you were here's.

The main couch was a blue plaid with creaking springs and wooden paneling, which sat perpendicular to a matching chair and a completely different loveseat. Everything but the big light was clicked on, and the ongoing shoot-out threw blinks of color across the parallel wall.

anybody out there (not possessed by that... goblin guy) know how to do this??

anybody out there (not possessed by that... goblin guy) know how to do this??

It was never a problem to have company over, she had way more room than she knew what to do with. Hell, with the cycle of people coming in and out of her house, most of which were invited over by Evan, she hardly ever had the couch to herself.

Morgan's place was quaint. Mismatched, secondhand furniture with tennis balls on the feet, pushed up against fading striped wallpaper. Bookshelves with the beginnings of media collections, paintings from art fairs hung up in odd arrangements, and polaroid pictures in little plastic frames, dozens of them. Thank you's and see you soon's and wish you were here's.

The main couch was a blue plaid with creaking springs and wooden paneling, which sat perpendicular to a matching chair and a completely different loveseat. Everything but the big light was clicked on, and the ongoing shoot-out threw blinks of color across the parallel wall.

Following on going medical struggles and a decline in my mental health, I have made the very hard decision to retire from the RP side of Tumblr. This is not connected to anyone and no one has made me feel uncomfortable. I'm just not currently capable of continuing to participate. I say "retire" because I do not expect to be able to return within the next year.

I realize that some of my characters have relationships with other ocs so feel free to just pretend that never happened or make up a reason they aren't around anymore.

I'll probably still occassionally be on Tumblr and I will miss y'all a lot.

You are welcome to message me or ask questions, but please do not ask me to change my mind as this was already a really hard choice to make.

Lots of love,

Kat/Paper/FloralRamblings.

An angel, torn from the heavens and seething with rage. Rage that consumed them like a stormy ocean of blood and violence; filling their throat until they were suffocating, shoving its way into their veins until they felt that it might burn them from the inside. Wrath that had been corrupted along side their divine nature; anger rotten and spoiled like old meat left too long in the sun, festering until it comes back to life with something dark and wicked.

This demonic entity -demonic, was that what it was now? Fallen. Forever broken- was searching. He did not know for what he searched, only that he must find something to destroy before the rage killed him.

Now it found it's prey. It smelled it before it saw them. Then watched from the distance, learning everything about it. Everything. It saw through them as if they were nothing more than glass waiting to be broken. Shattered across the ground and ground under foot. It saw how their sinew bound the muscle to the bone. How the power coursed through their veins and where it flowed from. It heard each emotion and thought that seeped out of their ears and dripped off their tongue.

Then he moves. It is behind them before the world has time to readjust the air around him. A blade, already dripping in blood, is pressed against their throat.

The blade worries back and forth at the groove of her throat, a junction between life and death. The scar of Saint Campion.

Her eyes blink, dart back and forth, not yet moving. Not grabbing at the hand. Just watching like a lamb to the slaughter.

"That's gonna be a no from me," she replied, nonchalantly, as if her bad eye wasn't shot like a martyr, watching every slight non-human movement that the thing in front of her made.

Its response seemed to surprise her, brows worrying into fine wrinkles around her infinitely dark eyes.

"What's your problem with me then?" She replied, almost plainly, the words floating like smoke, like it was just another day at the office.

Eyes that could see every synapse in her body. The moving of her skin over her hands. The not-blood thrumming through her veins.

"What end?"

She didn't think she was very useful, unless you were trying to get to someone she knew, but there had to be an easier way than that.

She didn't drink. She wouldn't judge.

They bring one hand to their chest as they speak, pressing against the bones beneath as if the action could calm the storming of their heart. Silence the damned muscle so that they could listen to this strange person's voice.

She spoke plainly, with no flavor to her voice but the grit of addiction and that amiable acceptance of death itself. Like the reaper could come tomorrow and it would fall cleanly into her agenda.

She walked with a quick gait, shoulders hunched in and shifting every now and again underneath her jacket like she couldn't get comfortable in her own skin.

It's eyes follow her, ignoring everything surrounding them. She was its only focus. Every step, every movement and shift. It filed it away like it could become her if it wanted. Perhaps it could. Perhaps it would. Humanity. Did it want that now? Having lost everything that made it holy, could it become the holy creation?

If this was humanity, it was a sorry sight. Then again, was there anything more heaven-sent than discomfort on one's own skin and the bitter acceptance of that fact?

The knowledge that a body could hold so much more than flesh?

She picked out a booth on the left wall, not too far from the public eye, but far enough to be out of the way. Far enough to be her own little piece of the world.

She brushed of the seats and table with a napkin, taking a seat, the overhead lights casting her face in partial shadow, her fingers drumming on the table gently, like this was a completely normal occurrence, like there was a spot carved out on her agenda for lunch with a Fallen Angel.

x<x>x

The bar itself made up the far wall, positioned in the middle between the bathroom door and the double doors to the back. There was a three child family seated in a middle row booth, another one with a baby that would squirm and cry while it's mother attempted to spoonfeed it, and a group of men with an uncomfortable looking teenager with them sat at the bar, calling the waitress by name, laughing with her.

All social, all sharing the same space, yet all separate; a nation of different states. Not one mingling with the other.

The dead come alive at night. Or at least, that's what popular belief was. It's not true. The veil just grows thinner in the moonlight. They're always around. Always. Hiding in corners and weeping over the loss of their own lives. They're selfish as a rule. Selfish and unaware of the other dead. A rule can be broken, but it rarely is. 

Kai knew they were there. He could hear them. All the time. Whispering. Screaming. Crying. He'd learned to block out the content onslaught, but sometimes it overwhelmed him. Especially if there were a lot of them.

He didn't want to go to the memorial. He definitely didn't want to go to the graveyard after the service. He didn't have a choice. Which was how he found himself hiding, on his knees behind the caretaker's shed, hands pressed over his ears as he sobbed. It was too much.

He needed it to stop.

...

Evan was here every Sunday morning, fifteen minutes after church. Sometimes he had roses, sometimes he had tulips, sometimes he had nothing but words - thoughts and apologies, prayers that fell from a numb tongue.

There was barely enough left of the man to bury by the time they found him.

He hadn't meant to do it. Morgan promised him that it wasn't his fault, that no matter how many times he apologized it would change anything, wouldn't pry the wolf from behind his eyes - but he could try.

After a thousand apologies, some casual conversation, he was done. He set the flowers - a mother's day bouquet (I WONDER IF HE HAD A MOTHER) gently on the ground and walked away.

He didn't want to talk to anyone. He was sociable enough usually - a friendly, substandard white guy - but now wasn't the time.

Just his luck, huh.

"No, that was my bad; sorry little dude." Catching himself, he dusted his pants off, trying his best to be composed. He offered them a warm, awkwardly hesitant smile. "Are you alright?"

Kai moves to the other side of the gravestone as if Evan might lash out or attempt to catch him. His cheeks were painting with sparkling trails of tears, his eyes red and puffy.

Didn't just sting, but shot through his neurons like a poison, agitating that Thing that made its home in the grooves of his brain.

'YOU AREN'T WELCOME ANYWHERE-'

Evan moved to speak, threads pulling under the skin of his throat, but he said nothing.

Evan wasn't gifted - cursed - in the way that Morgan was. Maybe in an isolated situation - a haunted apartment, a chase through the forest - he could see a spirit clearly, but more often than not that Thing-In-His-Brain filtered out most of the dead noise that would've otherwise overwhelmed him.

He pushes his scrawny frame against Evan, face pale.

"Bud, I don't-" He only teetered a little when the kid pushed up to him, bracing his feet for balance.

Morgan would be able to see it. Morgan would be able to help, be able to pull open the gates of Hell with her bare hands and get rid of this thing, but he couldn't. There was a kid, scared shitless, clinging to him, and Evan couldn't even see what he was scared of.

But that didn't matter. Evan wrapped an arm around the kid, like he was a little brother and not just a stranger. He couldn't fight the thing, but he could be here. He could help.

"Well, she probably doesn't like being dead either-" it sounded like he was trying to be encouraging, but he wasn't sure it landed that way, so he just pulled him closer with his free arm until the kid could grab onto him a little easier.

He locked pinkies with the kid, his hand dwarfing the others, warm smile on his face.

"Now what d'you say we go find your parents, huh?" He didn't want the kid wandering around out here on his own, spirits or otherwise. It wasn't safe.

"Well, where's he at? I'm sure he's looking for you," he fibbed, enthusiastically. Adults were phony, it was the nature of the beast.

קקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקקק×

You were lost.

God only knows how you ended up in this desert- the only signs of civilization for miles the occasional grocery bag that tumble-weeded across the hot sands. The sun beat down like the scornful gaze of a mother, sweat tracing down your body as the heat built.

Every other step sent you sinking into the red sands, one shoe already lost to the dunes and the other doing little to protect your sensitive skin from the oppressive ground.

It was just.... sand. Sand and dying grass that grew up in brambles and snagged on anything that brushed against it. Granules of sand rubbed together like shards of glass up against his skin.

The Thing (whoever- whatever it was) crept along the corners of the peripheral before disappearing again, like a vulture, shadows and smoke and mirrors. Never close enough to hear, only see, only wonder.

The Thing had its head tilted at an uncomfortable angle, veered around some sort of tall plant it was hidden behind. A cactus or a rock, it didn't really matter to blurring vision. Infinitely pale, it crept across the sands, letting - because it wouldn't be heard if it didn't want to be - its footfalls sizzle in the sand as it approached, still not close enough to be seen, but close enough to be felt, like there was a pocket around it where the universe became heavier.

Counter to its previous observation, this was not an animal. Just a boy.

"N... no..."

A rattlesnake dipped across the sands, looking at the Thing, who tilted its head in response, before the snake left.

ק×

Upon further inspection, they were definitely in a cave. Still warm, but at least protected from the sun with a light breeze. There were tapestries, rugs, and torn up carpets thrown about the place, almost... homey in nature. Like a nest.

Spiders on its wrists, its hands moved, big theatrical movements as it signed something that could've been ASL or charades or gang signs or some weird combination of the three.

It paused, doing one more sign, before its hands dropped back down to its knees. If there was a face underneath the porcelain, it would look proud as a child painting on the walls.

It scurried off, digging through a pile of hoarded junk in the corner, before returning with a legal pad, stained with what one could only hope was water, and a marker with an identifying features worn off.

It looked at him. Blinked. Scribbled on the page like it could come to life. Tore it off and handed it to him, wrinkling it in its grip.

It moves to sign again, before shaking its hands out, trying to regulate the emotions, before grabbing the pad, scribbling out another message.

'YES.'

'MY HOME. HOME HOME.'

On the cave wall parallel to him, it spread the map out. A crumpled map of a nearby desert town from two years ago. The corners were thrown up with the tape.

It stood back, as if checking that it was level, before going back at the wall with the purple chalk. Tracing one of the minor highways far off the edge of the map, sprawling out far past the town. It pulled away from the line, 20 klicks west, drawing a little house in the middle of the cave wall.

'TOO HOT. NOT SAFE.'

Then:

'LATER.' A little drawing of a sunset. 'COOLER. I'LL TAKE YOU.'

Frankly, he was lucky that it was out there to find him when it did. Usually, it wasn't out during daylight hours.

"Uh... Okay."

He really wants to protest, to make a break for it and run as far and as fast as he can towards home, but he's not so sure that that'd be a good idea. Maybe he'll listen to this... creature.

Nonetheless, it seemed to puzzle over this (for his satisfaction, of course) before holding up two fingers.

One day in here, and (it assumed) one day out in the sands.

The idea of people coming seemed to make it antsy though, the Thing getting significantly more fidgety. One person, it enjoyed. Two people, it could tolerate, but more than that? People with guns and spotlights and loud noises and bad smell? Perish the thought.

Another page, another note.

He blinks even more, tilting his head at the note quizzically.

It seemed to take slight amusement from his statement, the hand gesture taking the place of laughter as it wiggled.

Another note.

'ANYTHING. MISSY. FREAK. DEMON. ANGEL FACE. DUSTY. MATCHSTICKS. BUDDY.'

"Okay, Dusty, nice to meet you. I'm Peter."

It took his name to memory, fingers tapping it out on its palm, dot dash dash dot.

Dusty paused, drawing a little doodle of a man, before pointing to the back of the cave, where it was curtained off.

Dusty took off, not very quickly, but still took off, disappearing behind the curtain with Peter in tow.

-

The back half of the cave was much cooler, shielded from the daylight. Less of a hang out spot like the front of the cave, more of a home. A shoddily crafted bed - barely big enough for one - was pushed up against the far wall, a handmade string instrument set carefully at the foot of it. There was a collection of blankets on the floor at the foot of the bed, presumably where Dusty itself slept.

It couldn't remember when he got here. It felt like forever.

Dusty's free hand shot forward, other still on the man's face, trying to keep Peter from touching the man, to minimize any damage he might suffice, before it pulled them back. He was trying to help. Not hurt. It knew this, but that knee-jerk reaction still lingered.

He had a pulse. And not a faint, fluttering one. A real one, a live and in the room one to match the words leaving his mouth as he squinted up through the gaps between Dusty's fingers.

The man pried Missy's - Dusty's - hand off of his face, his expression knotted up in confusion as he glanced at Peter, back at it.

"Who is that?"

Dusty, unfazed, seemed to completely ignore the statement, instead signing, hands flying.

"Something like that."

Tim shuffles in place, his back popping, before he responded.

"A few years now? It's hard to keep track." And then: "She won't keep you here that long, don't worry."

"There's a highway about three miles that way." He pointed in a non specific direction. "She can walk you there tonight and you can hitchhike your way home."

That's what had happened with everyone else that it... she... had rescued.

-

Nothing about Dusty read as feminine. Its pale mask was framed by dark, matted lengths of hair, the bottoms slightly smoother in an abandoned attempt to untangle it. There was a sliver of skin, the dark tan of a throat, but the rest was covered in the garbs of a post-apocalypse; scraps of different outfits held together by visible strings, like she was made of leaf litter, made out of nothing but the soil.

He almost said it like a joke, like this... woman he had been living with, miles from civilization, for God only knows how long was any joking matter.

'Likes it' was a bit of an understatement, given the strong, sometimes violent effort she put into making sure he never saw her without it. Hell, she slept with the damn thing on.

"Not as far as I know. It took a while to get her to... even write, really."

The first few days were all non-descript gestures and shaky chalk illustrations from her and confused frustration from him, shouting and flailing hands.

Peter pauses for a moment, then shrugs.

He blinked. "...yeah. Yeah. Just... us." Don't kill the energy, dammit.

"She'd take you out now, but it's..." He made a face that finished the statement. It was too damn hot while the sun was up to be anywhere but here. Tim intimately remembered the first time he tried to leave - the sun and the sand and the stretching of the sky; the stabbing pain in his bad leg; the bitter, twisting fruit of the strangling tree...

"It's not safe." He settled on.

At least, radiation seemed more understandable than there just being some unauthorized fucking... thing out here, bigger than the sky, bitter and twisting like a living thing...

"You hungry? Or... thirsty?" He hesitated to offer the second thing, knowing how Dusty felt about wasting water in non-emergencies, but it didn't seem like she was paying very much attention. Tim silently hoped that it was catching up on the sleep it had skipped put on dragging Peter back.

The man groped around the side of the bed in the dark, hand wrapping around some sort of walking stick that he used to push himself to a standing position. Dusty, very much not asleep but at least feigning it, monitored him like a hawk, waiting for a a grunt, a popping of joints, anything that would require its intervention, but nothing came, so she folded herself back into a ball and continued to observe.

"No trouble at all. Rather have you in here than out there." At least he hadn't started swinging when he woke. That would be... unpleasant. Dusty was untrusting on a good day, and he found most bad days were buried in his memory so deep that they weren't a problem.