#3th3l

Ethel doesn't know how to not come off fucking creepy or annoyed? Julien can kinda help. Julien forgot to use his crutches for like the tenth time this week? Ethel will bonk him with its cane. Ethel suggested he hits himself with a train (also suggests he purchases sulfuric acid. And rips his face off.) For a school admissions power demonstration. Julien does it.

Ethel is many things. Pieces of whatever they could throw together, an intricate cane and nonfunctional eyes. It is Julien's, and he is its. They are of each other. Ethel's teeth match his own, Ethel's body matching his nerves.

It is many pieces. It is so clearly many pieces, stuck together by cling film and love. He watches it smile at him in its grimacing approximation for the last time before the light dies from its last eye.

It is back up and running in a few weeks. He couldn't take it and makes it swear to check in between fixes. He was nineteen.

Now he sits, a comfortable thirty six. He never had pups. He never moved on. He can still feel Lucy in the air he breathes, in brief respite from the aches of every day. He swears he can feel his hand on his waist, or tangled in his hair. A knock.

Ethel.

Ethel is long dead.

Ethel is outside his door.

Ethel is a paradox.

Corpses aren't meant to breathe and they aren't meant to be at your door, but Ethel has performed miracles before.