HOW ELSE A WOUND,

@PHATICGOD is a closed, mutuals only multi-muse writing blog associated with A REAL SMALL TOWN. Do not interact if you're not part of this private group.

NAVIGATION

Mutt isn’t particularly pretty.

It’d been a long ago pang of realization the first time he’d broken his nose, one of many crooked streaks coloring his face now— a memory attesting itself in a portrait of bruised sympathy in his expression when he says, “You look like shit, man.” Tactless, he remembers someone saying, a word permanently dog eared in his mind’s vocabulary—  so he remedies the torn edged concern with fringes of a hushed pity in his voice. It’s soft, meandering after a furtive glance behind the counter and a stray palm loosely gesturing over his own face as if it’d uncover the crust and stains of understanding. “Fucked up… I mean, bad- umm.. s’gotta hurt, that.”

It's getting darker outside of the store.

Pausing absentminded sweeping behind the counter, Mutt looks to the dried, dust hued rain drops so many rains ago speckling the display window becoming visible as the day darkens. The glass taking on a murky translucency, reflecting the flickering neon signs from across the shop, words bright in their emptiness superimposed over the sun bleached promises of outdated promotional posters. The biggest of the posters is of a smiling woman, posed and holding something forward, but the hand inflicting the commercial gesture has been covered up with a pamphlet— 'MIRACLE CURE GUARANTEED...'. Her smile is turned incoherent. He frowns to himself.

Aimlessly in thought, peripherally listening to the looming hum of the beer fridges in the corner. He could look at the time, but doesn't, already sensing through a hazy keenness that this was the beginning of a long, empty hour, where everything was aimless or hungry, or both; the seams of the day outside coloring the time in the deepening, pinkening darkness of sunset. Two cars pass by and cut across the window's stale reflections, as a hooker belligerently staggers her way to the One Stop across the road.

He looks away, as the broom slackens in his hold. Mutt feels emptily relieved somehow– as he always does, when he finds himself in a silence that he didn't seek first. For a long time until now, it'd meant waiting for something, and often something he didn't know he was already in the mercy of. Like at home, like in halfway houses, like slumping in the back of a cop car... Then the warped, tinny melody of the shop chimes in a customer, announcing the present and reassigns his meagre duty. Mutt looks up– a passing, polite glance and a sidelong, lopsided smile greeting the stranger.

He resumes sweeping, unhurried, though glimpses of her movement fringes his attention. Pausing, Mutt looks at her this time, suddenly aware of how clean cut she looked, out of place of the usual congregations here– how she held the air of passive severity of someone with purpose. The power to impose, though he doesn't know where, and on who. Maybe somewhere defined between the lines of 'court' and 'mandated'. Something cold twists his gut, like some vestigial animal organ bristling. Quietly embarrassed of something he can't name, the hold on the broom tightens, and he resumes sweeping into the cracked dust pan.

TWs: animal death (brief)

Nothing that a sense of dutiful maudlin urging a uniform of the hour won't do, it seems. David isn't so sympathetic, and had said nothing at first– contemplatively incensed when he'd stared at the pleadingly pressed and sweaty hands of the beat who'd told him with all the giddy solemness of assumed obligation, 'There's this kid...swear he got somethin' to him and...'.

'Might be nothin', no harm in that– talk, be done with it.' handwaved the lieutenant.

- && To ask someone for company was not something Nea Richards normally did but nothing about this encounter was normal. There was just something about the other that intrigued her. It had ben such a long time since they had met someone that caused them to stick around. People bored Nea mainly because of their predictable nature. Even the ones people deem unpredictable didn’t surprise her all that much. When you are a demon.. nothing really does. You have seen the rise and fall of empires and you have seen the deaths of entire families. People not even batting an eye when tragedy struck unless they themselves were in the line of fire. 

It was pathetic and it was predictable. 

Her gaze never once moved away from the man standing behind the counter, just eagerly awaiting his response to their question. So when she finally got it, a pleased grin formed on red painted lips. “Great. I don’t really have anything to do” they shrugged and then opened one of the packages of candy. The question caused her to arch a brow but she didn’t look away from the candy she poured on the counter. “I don’t. Why? You gonna take me there?”

-

There’s a time, perhaps somewhere halfway along scraping some approximation of living, you figure some things out, and most of it had to do with ways to be around other people. Lots of ways to be around them– distant or near, a brotherly stranger or the neighbor you begrudge. All kinds of way of being around people, and it culminates in a living with, regardless, and that’s what Mutt has learned. No discipline needed to know it, but it still felt strict sometimes, mostly it’s remembering– to look at someones, and see flashcard faces of lonely mnemonics. Sometimes he thinks about where his face could be in between. 

Mutt eyes Nea with a steadiness, not pressingly certain and kindly gauging. There’s something to her hinting for consolation, but he knows the kindness in not asking, that there’s a gladness regardless, when they smile. People like the both of them don’t want to be asked, and living with meant more like being warmed in the threshold. He’s smiling now too, “If you want, I usually walk there. Bit of a walk– but uhh..s’not too far, it’s really nice this time ‘cause it isn’t hot out...” his gaze turns downward for a moment, picturing the lake and the moon skimming its surface.

- && People had a tendency to bore Joseph after a while. When he’s heard the same thing over and over again and seen the same facial expressions, you just get rather tired truth be told. Throughout the years of his existence Joseph have become rather good at keeping things to himself instead of disclosing everything. He didn’t want to be some open book laying on display, he didn’t want to be perceived only to be thrown to the side when people grow tired of his presence. It is much better to hide everything behind layers of smiles, charming words and chaotic actions. It is better to just pretend than to be truly seen. What would they see? Would anybody actually like being around him if they understood just how broken he was? “Good thing indeed, my dear Vito” he then finished his cup and sighed softly. Would Vito still stick around if he saw the truth that was hiding in plain sight? Why did he even care about what the other thought? Maybe it was the years of loneliness and boredom that came out of hiding whenever he looked into those eyes. He had long missed having a friend.. that’s what he is right? A friend? “Your company is pretty good actually. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a blessing or a curse. But then again if it were either of those it would put a little too much pressure on you” he winked. “Oh my life is.. ordinary and somewhat boring at times but I like it”

-

His eyes trace the gold enamel trim around the cup’s mismatched saucer,  and thinks in a glimpse of a thought about how it holds the shape of itself, despite the red cup. The mundane coinciding of disparity. Touched from the edge of the afternoon’s oblique light, a point on the saucer shimmers, and blankly reflects on the cup’s dull, ceramic face to imply the principle of difference they abide by. Reminded of his hands, they settle in folded palm to palm on his lap, as if to reaffirm their faithful symmetry. 

Now Vito’s reminded of a time when he didn’t have hands. Not quite living then, but not dead either, since death is the inborn precondition to living. He looks at him, and reflexively expands the narrowed intuition of this body he’s come to habitually define than necessarily inhabit, and angular views of the shop surrounds the locus - Joseph - in unfurling fractalized petals of mirrors only Vito could bodily see. A topographical peering at, lifting the veil. 

“Admittedly, not every one is often keen – either curse or blessing. If you can imagine.” he settles in his seat, “And I believe pressure is what you call hospitality here.”

He sees him through the diaphanous squinting of the green-blue glass bead curtains to the back room door, by the furtive glimpse of the permanently sideway glancing eyes of a porcelain rabbit nosing the air, and amidst the ghostly assembly of the bodiless jacket rows. Flickers of these reflections conjoin, the seams only outlining their difference: they are only similar in the material plane they inhabit. They could not look any more different, and he smiles in this knowing. Well, after all...  

- && Life was unfair, life was unpredictable and even someone who had been somewhat lucky knew that. He had lost, he had gained and he had mourned but also celebrated. But this was something he never thought he would ever have to experience. How do you cope with the fact that one of your students goes missing? That someone may have hurt a person that you saw in passing every single day? 

His gaze moved towards the detective and he tried to read him the best he could but at the end of the day he wasn’t the best when it came to that. Orion had a tendency to be rather naive in the way he viewed the world and the way he carried himself in it. He wanted to understand what was going on and he wanted to understand the man he was talking to. But he was an enigma, a big question mark that confused and perplexed him. So he just sat there and looked at him. 

“He used to have a lot of friends but then all of the sudden he just stopped hanging out with them. He even one time stood up in the middle of glass and screamed. At the time I didn’t understand what was happening and truth be told.. I still don’t. I don’t know what happened that caused this shift in personality. But whatever it was.. it clearly was bad enough for him to scream in the middle of English class”

-

From outside the classroom, echoes of an everyday unaware commotion flitters past in the hallway. The patter of footsteps rolling after the other, marking the motions by the screech drag of shoes and groan and slam of door and locker hinges. It’s only another day – the principal made sure of it, she’d ransomed him to uphold it with an aggrieved politeness bargained with the laconically assuring and bureaucratic hospitality due of ‘Yes ma’am’. David hadn’t been resentful of her, or sensibly inclined into sympathy– it’d been a tight-lipped understanding. He knows there’s no other way of consoling that, and still it remains unconsoled. It’s an insinuation of intrusion.

It’s a question of vigilance. From his slanted seat through a sidelong observation of the classroom, past the chemistry chart, the disbelieving motivational posters and flutter of flyers, he looks at the framed, wide styrofoam board in the back. Cardboard cutout letters asks off-center, ‘WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN THE FUTURE?’, surrounded by a haphazard halo of portraits gradating from hopefully eager, indifferently uncertain to awkwardly reluctant expressions, their answers on colorful squares of paper pinned underneath each picture. Gregory’s portrait remains inched near the question mark, staring ahead in a repose of retroactive silence. He knows this well, too. 

He withdraws his gaze when the teacher speaks, and meets Orion’s peering– watching David from a discerning insistence that eventually dulls into a look of quietly concentrated confusion. David says nothing of it, beyond the pause and flash of his own pointed stare of curt acknowledgement before he draws a pen from his breast pocket and cradles his notebook open as he begins jotting. There’s a doubt in authority, and his presence here is not at all protective. 

A child who goes missing is an interminable question. ‘Disturbed behavior’  headlines a section of his notes, as he details the incident underneath. His mind ticks to the memory of Gregory’s parents, and their home. Ordinary. Adequate. Pitiable enough, but not beyond suspicion. There’d been a sense of repentant guilt too, a shortfall in attentiveness (”If only I’d just....”). He’s familiar. Sometimes the harm is where you’re from: ‘check DFPS records’ is listed alongside. He pauses, grimacing at the thought and a new emerging task, “Mind givin’ me the names of his friends? Particularly those close to him.” he pauses again, reclining in his chair and resting his hand.

- && The word human always felt so foreign on her tongue. It sometimes even made it feel like it was burning. Sometimes Nea couldn’t help but to wonder what being a human being would feel like. Having tendencies to understand is one thing but to actually be was something else entirely. At the end of the day they would never know because they were not a human being and they never would be and that was a little bit tragic when all they wanted was a normal life. Just studying the other, she arched a brow but let the reaction to her words slide. Some things are better left unsaid.

Grabbing some of the candy, Nea then looked at him again and felt how a tender smile replaced the worry and confusion. “When is your shift over?” gaze moving towards the clock hanging on the wall. “I could keep you company if you’d like? I don’t really have anything else planned”

-

There’s a harmony of disenchantment dimly electrifying the dry, frigid air of the convenience store. Something that grazes his bare arms, and shines in the dipteran eye of the convex mirror hanging up in the corner where the beer fridge stood in the back, humming away diligently. For a moment, Mutt eyes the mirror, just to be proven nothing beyond the shape of distortion he already knows, just for the sake of looking. Just to know what he already knows - that it was only them here. The question of humanity lingered away, but that’s not why he’d looked. As far as he knows, things are alright. 

He turns his attention to Nea again, gauging the basket muddled with the off brand milkburys and generic, clear plastic assortment of gummies sealed stapled to a piece of cardboard with generic, apt labels more prescriptive than appetizing– ‘GUMMY BEARS. 10 OZ’, ‘GUMMY WORMS. 10 OZ.’ . After they’d decided, his sight follows after to the yellowed face of the clock, and his smile lopsides with consideration.

eli grasps the leash with a trained swiftness– it’s not the first, nor anywhere close to the last time he’ll be chasing after the beast. with a few calming pats on the head, magnus has evidently found himself satisfied, plopping down on the ground with an old man’s huff. still, he can’t seem to help but dig his nose into the stranger’s shoes, tail wagging with controlled eagerness.

the stranger– he looks familiar, but eli can’t quite place him. eyes narrow a bit more than they should, by social guidelines. “Well…” the rolodex is coming up empty, but he still offers a “That sort of question begs the answer: Depends on who’s asking.”

-

He’s reminded of the far off reverberation of nerves, or an essential vein in him thrumming, echoing all inside and tuning his skin to a sense of apprehensive resentment. A struck chord of realization that he was being spoken to, and that he’d been the one to speak at all– when he could’ve escaped through the furtive grace of someone who didn’t seem to mind, now that he’s being asked who. To justify himself somehow. 

Well, he’s minded nonetheless, and in any case– Virgil’s bandaged and band aid ringed hands join in their shared burden of plastic grocery bags, and if he couldn’t conceal his resentment, it should be clear (at least, to him) that it was directed at himself. Cloaking in a temporary look of downturn consideration– as if recollecting, and a sincere, friendly regard of the dog before his eyes flickers up again. Dark sheens skimming past the narrowed edge of blues. “Virgil,” he offers at first, then, “Mateo, my brother, twin– think you’d remember him,” -instead of me, unsaid. He isn’t trying to barter affability with nostalgia he doesn’t have, but memory is the only place he knows Eli from. His lips smile around the powdery sugar of mawkish familiarity that’s about to be spoken, thinning at the corners with a medicinal diligence not unlike from the taste of ‘berry’ cough syrup,

it’s the hours, now, that he’s counting down. a waiting game with the suitcases already packed. he knows it’s almost time– he’s been checking his watch endlessly, since the day began, and before then it was the calendar, before then it was the paperwork he’d been given. looking back on it, eli has realized very recently how much of his life has been spent waiting for something. sometimes, anything.

he has a practiced posture when he approaches, but as soon as he sees a familiar face it relaxes– never quite slumping. the shift is subtle. he feels his mouth pull into a smile, unintentional, but welcome nonetheless.

“It’s good to see you too.” his palms come together, brushing against each other– hands cold. you know what they say about that. his lips press and purse– he can’t quite spit out what he’s trying to say, because it feels like a lie.

“I’m leaving tomorrow.” a pause, “I wanted to say goodbye.”

-

Existing in the interval of living comes with a temporal instinct for certain moments and the meaning of their memory. He knows this is one of them – like the anticipatorily tactile occasion of turning the page of a calendar, the pen’s pause before dating the new year. For a moment, he glances through the shop’s display window, seeing the yellowing leaves of a cedar elm tree speckling its branches of green when the bell outside rings into silence after the door heavily clicks shut again.

This one’s another turning, he thinks, the muslin cloth between his hands dampens the reflection of Eli’s hands. Vito’s own touch is considerate, the straightening brush of the cloth’s folded edge in between his fingers a thoughtful echo of an anxiousness – consulting the thread that’s being pulled. His smile remains, now drawn into an expression of eased assurance, somewhat expectant though not accusing. 

open starter || eli @arst-starters

he’s fast, but not quite fast enough to catch the leash slipping through his fingers. the dog darts faster than his three legs can keep up, bumbling on concrete. it’s cute, but there’s something about the grey hairs in his muzzle that suggest perhaps one should stop him. when he finally does come to a stop, eli is on his tail (haha).

“He’s friendly–!” is the first thing to come out of his mouth, along with a laugh that says please don’t react poorly, “Maybe too friendly…”

-

Virgil’s drifting along the sidewalk, taking the long, striding pace of someone with somewhere to be. Somewhere important, maybe– someone else with a keener eye might say he has the marching gait of someone in a panic, terrorized to the beat of a metaphysical drum. The ripple of sound strumming his nerves that keeps him stiltedly aware, with a far off look to his face that stutters into a flickering moment of terror as he stops when he hears a voice– a voice addressing him. 

eli's follows david’s eyes, locking briefly with the corpse before flickering away with an internal shiver. he hasn’t gotten used to this-- he doesn’t know when he will, considering just how many deadened eyes he’s seen in his time. there’s always something about the look of death that’s forced him to train his hands still and his memory loose. gloved fingers splay and meet back together as he breaks the stare. the words “poor guy” pop into his head, floating there before something else takes its place.

this poor guy could be anyone, he supposes-- could have been up to any number of activities that eli still couldn’t stomach after all these years. he heard of some poor soul who pushed his grandmother down a flight of stairs to collect insurance money. a life unfortunately cut short by his own victim taking revenge after so many years. a brother survived by a loving family who overdosed his own baby. that’s the thing about all this, really-- nobody’s just a poor guy in the end. everybody’s got something to hide, whether a police report brings it to light or not. ashes to ashes, dust to dust, dirt to dirt.

david’s voice brings him back.

“One.” he says, finally dragging his eyes away from the scene, “Cindy Claire, next door. Jenkins seems to have been reserved, but she had nothing unpleasant to say about him beyond your typical neighborly disputes. I would call her far from suspicious.”

his hand comes up to scratch at the back of his neck, fingernails scraping away against skin so worn that one could nearly see the old marks. “My plan is to speak with her grandson when he comes home.”

For a moment, David traces the wisp of some brief commiseration on Eli, and he glances at the corpse once more in the slight motion of perfunctory routine of someone affirming something he already knows. Cataloguing the bullet hole and the still mouthing slit in the throat, the way the frayed wound looks like jagged red teeth. Muted of a viscid scream. It's nothing he hasn't already seen before— behind his eyes, a mnemonic trigger flickers through eidetic flashes of wounds in a cemeterial recollection of every victim killed and maimed in every way possible and unimaginable.

He's not sentimental, and he's not so easily given to the maudlin tendencies of most detectives after awhile of being on the job. It's almost an instinctive virtue, and he understands it's easy to sympathize with pain. Violence objectifies pain and brings it into dimensional corporeality– you become reflexively familiar with the near quarter decapitated victim because you too remember your own throat. It's a tremor of visceral recognition that echoes unconsciously throughout the crime scene, something David observes in Eli's hand on his neck and the forensic photographer who's cleared her throat twice with every take, or the uniform at the trailer's threshold holding his voice still as he writes his incident report.

His own throat is dry. What he recognizes instead is where a dull knife has been.

David makes a mental note to direct to the CSI's slowly shuffling into the trailer to look for it as he nods when Eli denotes the candidates to be subjected on the beaten path of dutiful legwork. Something that momentarily pinches David's brow into a frown, dreading the ankle jerks that couldn't even be tasked to count the blessed tenet of the 5 W's. Even the one studiously writing his incident report is a bleak fucking miracle of happenstance. It's a blessing counted, even if blighted– he should be so thankful to the lieutenant.

closed: @phaticgod​ location: the oasis truck stop

One thing she didn’t expect being this far south was just how cold the nights get. The lake effect and below freezing temperatures were no stranger to her skin, however she wasn’t expecting the dewy humid cold that came with this part of Texas. The cold desert night continues to nip at her skin as she walks across the parking lot, moon shining on the too clear sky for the kind of night that felt heavy. She told herself she’d try one more place then go home, she’d be useless if she was tired, and the day hadn’t provided any new sources anyway, what was taking a break? 

She takes note of the car parked off in the dark, the shadow immediately putting her on edge as she takes note of a person leaned into one of the windows, and the man in the drivers seat talking to them in a hushed whisper. Micah doesn’t hear the ding of the old bell, or her footsteps padding across the peeling linoleum. She’s too focused on the man outside, alarm bells going off in her head as she keeps a watch on the car the best she can from the dusty windows. 

And the car is still there when she leaves. The hair stands up on the back of her neck, not liking the off putting nature of it all. Missing persons signs flash before her eyes and before she knows it she’s walking towards the car, pastry and coffee in hand to ask just what the fuck this guy was doing with this woman so early in the morning. “What’s going on over her—” She stops herself when she finally catches David’s face in the dim truck stop light, smile spreading across her face and relief washing over her. Thank God she found David Sharpe. 

-

It’s an hour of need for anyone still awake. There’s a lingering sense of hunger hooking through the humid air’s teeming skin, a sensory echo reverberating through the atmosphere. An unknown bait is spliced into however many flanks that makes up the marbled faces of many appetites, and from this gash, unseen streams of blood wafts through the shallow pond of 3 AM consciousness. It’s a claustrophobic kinship: a chain link of stimuli wiring through the veins of mutual strangers pulsing a tense, frenetic energy. 

The surroundings of the truck stop are tinged with the same starvation too, reeking with the wafting odor of wet garbage and piss, the stench still burning anew from an evening downpour much earlier — invoking a miasma of empty excess hanging in the air that contradicts the state of desolation fogging the compound. Dingy lights from the pale windows of the gas station and coffee shop near the cratered parking lot where David’s pickup truck distances itself to makes for stingy safe havens, but only for anyone that could only afford as much. Barely, if you were here– found yourself here, because no one chooses to be here. The cynically winking sign of the Lucky Motel nearby only promises so much too, as it flashes a blurry red and green on the damp ground.

“Y’know... I di’nt think I was only just gonna be asked about other girls.”

“Like I said, I’m not here for nothin’ like that—“ “Nothin’ like what? I won’t tell nobody..”

Sleeve half rolled up, he feels the brush of hunger on his forearm resting on the half rolled window’s ledge. It’s not an ache, not his at least– but hers, the woman leaning at the driver’s side window. She peers at him coyly with the stark face of need, dark eyed, bright lipped - the lipstick smearing the borders - her mouth narrowed forward in its smile as if to hone in on exacting this need. Under the jaundicing half light of a lamp post, his face is harshened, wraith-like– lupine-like, and contrasts her face, a youthfulness heaving the gaunt of the need slurring her words and mottling thin arms she hides by folding and unfolding after nervously tucking away loose strands of hair. Under the dim light limning the frizziness of her bleached thinned hair, a dismal aureole hung about her head. 

What’s going on over her—

“Listen...—” he’s interrupted, and the flash of reluctant recognition steadies his words from stumbling over the abruptness. David looks away from – her name escapes him, but he can imagine flashes of headlines that look a lot like ‘Detective sergeant arrested for soliciting prostitute’ – and glances at Darla again. “Listen, Darla– you got a place to stay at right now?” he fishes his wallet out, slipping a contacts card and three 20 dollar bills to fold around it and hand to her. 

“No sir, usually it’s the motel but–” she never finishes her sentence, counting the bills with a rehearsed but not ungrateful modesty, glancing at what’s-her-goddamn-name then back at him again, a look of puzzled luck on her face that bitters into a reluctant smile when she holds up the card. “Y’know I’m not supposed to. I cain’t...” 

“Keep it. Just in case.” Not quite appeased at his insistence, she rolls the money and puts it into her sequined and balding pouch bag anyway, making a show of scrutinizing his name on the card before putting it away. Darla looks at the two of them again, and turns to him again, smiling, a poised look of knowing that she’d sensed a tenseness and another opportunity. 

“You got change?”

A sigh squeezes through his lungs, “Sure.” He scrounges through the cup holder and palms away whatever loose change that remained, and watched her stagger-sway away to the gas station’s convenience store, but not before throwing a wizened look of suspicion at her. Once Darla’s further away enough, he looks at her finally—

“You.” No. “Micah.” Round eyed, just as honed, but not with the same kind of effort- persistent.