the lights go on, the lights go off.

HAPPY PRIDE! 🌈

I am done endurin'. I'm going to kill him.

"take my head off if you're gonna do it- i saw what fire does, i don't wanna go out that way"

"look after claudia"..."don't give up on her. tell her she's beautiful. tell her that every morning"

and louis and claudia's trauma around fire is specifically rooted in antiblack violence, the race riot in nola where claudia almost burned to death and louis saw his own business and countless black homes go up in flames- a lynching is an antiblack hate crime by itself, but the specific methods chosen at louis and claudia's lynching are meant to prey on their specific trauma as black southerners oppressed under the jim crow regime and survivors of the 1917 race riot. it was designed to make them suffer in every way possible before their murders.