#lsdente

Exhausted.

Nothing nearby, nothing online, how many weeks left until the final deadline?

Four?

Three?

Ghosted, ghosted, ghosted, automatic reply saying you aren't qualified even if you are.

Ghosted.

Can you start tomorrow?

A one week trial by fire?

No it isn't paid.

Ghosted.

Ghosted.

heavily unedited and mostly dialogue because I've been unable to write lately and just wanted a rough *hey this happens* finally on paper.

“Adrian?” Cassidy pops her head out from behind the stairwell door, “You busy?”

Adrian steps more fully in front of the door separating the stairwell from the back room, an eyebrow raising at the question. “I’m not letting you through,” he says in reply “you know that.”

“I know I know I know—I don’t care about the spooky murder closet right now. I had a question, so are you busy?”

“Yes.”

Cassidy rolls her eyes, “What, guarding an empty room? It’s an easy question—promise.” She starts to grin as he breathes out a sigh, knowing she’s won. “How old is Vee?”

“Excuse me?”

“I doubt he’d tell me if I asked, but he made you so you probably know—so how old is he?”

Adrian laughs, a quiet sound that echoes up the stairwell. “Angelface didn’t make me, Cassidy.”

Everyone has a different definition, What is kindness? To whom?

It should cost nothing. It could cost so much. It costs everything.

I am kind to myself at the cost of familial relationships, I am kind to family at the cost of my own well-being, I am kind to 'friends' at the cost of my identity.

Kindness is not free. It has the highest markup I have ever seen.

To be kind to some people is to commit violence against myself.

To be kind to myself is seen as an act of violence against others.

“So. You’re hosting my murderer now?”

Rissa flinches. It hasn’t gotten easier. It will get easier. It’s barely been three weeks. It will get easier. It has to. She’s sitting on the floor in the corner of an empty room. Stripped of everything, furniture, pictures, clothes, curtains, blank and empty and bare. Knees drawn up to her chest. Today had been good, better at least than most lately, she was just going to check the room and go to bed, it was nearing five in the morning, it was—

—There would be no sleep for Rissa today.

Christa Morgan leans against what used to be her bedroom wall, arms crossed, half-covering the gaping hole where her heart should be. She’s spattered in Aksel’s blood, there’s a knife held loosely in one hand, resting against her shoulder. This is an image that doesn’t exist. Rissa knows that. But—

“I guess it isn’t the first time,” the imagined ghost whispers “although I’m glad we’ve taken a step down from drooling over the men who ruined my life to just befriending them.”

She wouldn’t say that.

Christa never blamed her.

Rissa did all that well enough herself.

“It’s over now.” She says quietly, and the thing that isn't Christa laughs.

“Over? No, no, I don’t think so. You can burn all my things, paint over my existence, but you can’t rip the memories out, Riss.”

“I could.” She wouldn’t ever. Even considering it feels like a betrayal. Who are you when you’ve forgotten everything? Who do you become with the foundation wiped away? Rissa would have burnt the whole house down if it hadn’t been so goddamn expensive. Would have torn the walls apart and shredded her fingers raw on carpet nails trying to rid herself of it all.

It would be nice to live a lie.

Take all the rotten shit out and start over.

Would she be wary of the blank spaces?

Would she wonder where those years went?

“Nothing you do makes up for this, you know.” Nothing makes up for befriending the Walters. Nothing makes up for not believing Christa when her mother was killed. Nothing makes up for all the blood. Nothing brings her back. “You left my ashes down there with his fucking gore for days.”

She couldn’t be near it.

Couldn’t drink.

Couldn’t work.

Couldn’t sleep.

Couldn’t face it.

“You never blamed me.”

Another laugh, cold and wrong, something Rissa had heard before but never in her direction. At Jonathan. At Nikki. At idiots who came knocking. “I only blamed you,” Christa says, she never said, would never say “but I knew you were too fragile to hear it. You were my best friend, and you let me down every time it mattered. But I was always there when you needed me. I would have burned down the world for you.”

“I never asked you to!” Rissa is snapping at empty air. “I told you over and over to just leave, to live, and you never listened.” Still her fault that Christa stayed. Kept fighting until Jonathan found them again. Forever her fault. Never strong willed enough to stand up to the person trying to goddamn hard to save her.

“Riss,” soft. Barely a whisper. The vision now bloodless and whole. Sixteen. Younger than she had looked in over a decade. Still bitter with loss. Still newly running on spite and rage. “I promised you I would never leave you to this alone.”

There is no hand on Rissa’s face.

There is no feeling there.

I was tagged by both @deanwax and @sliceoflifeshepard

These are my recent seven, as I'm working on some of the past chapters of SitD again.

Jesse’s fingers trace the unmarked skin of his forearm. No sign left of the bite. He almost wishes there were. The memory doesn’t quite feel real. Had it really even hurt? Had he just been surprised? Did it have to hurt? Could it be gentler? Wouldn’t that be better? Wouldn’t it be easier? And what would it be like…to die that way. To die held. To die needed.

“So…No coffin?”

Why did he say that?

Why on Earth did he say that?

Daniel looks as though he is wondering the same thing, mouth open to respond though all that comes out is an exasperated laugh. “I’m sorry, am I not living up to your Dracula fantasies well enough?”

“I—no—first of all, that isn’t—” Jesse is tripping over himself in a way he isn’t familiar with, “—you complained in your note about how fucking bright your apartment is—wouldn’t a coffin sort of, fix the whole need for blackout curtains?”

“Check back when I wake up early and burn the living shit out of myself, see if your suggestion still makes sense.” Daniel rolls his eyes, slipping a helmet from where it hangs off the handlebars of a motorcycle. Because of course there is a motorcycle.

Jesse’s stomach drops a couple feet.

Not quite to the ground but enough, enough that he stops.

“You’re bringing me back on…that?”

The quirk of an eyebrow, amusement in the smile that statement earns him. “I didn’t let you fall while you were unconscious did I? Don’t tell me this is the thing that scares you, Jess.”

oh gods i've been experiencing every flavor of vampire media i can get my grubby little hands on since I was like, eleven. bear with me, it's been a long day and i am sleepy.

So a lot of it is reading and watching movies and finding podcasts and music and folk tales and modern opera (looking at you night library of sternendach) and vampire adjacent horror media like cannibalism and infection and reanimation and body snatchers and necromancy and the not yet dead or the not quite alive.

Technically. Technically. After a childhood reading of Bunnicula and the absolute 8 year old terror of Batman vs Dracula, my first foray into...you know. Book Form Person Vampirism would be Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Shattered Mirror. (Along with In the Forest of Night and Demon in My View). I got a lot of early things from the mythos I saw her doing there (ignoring that two of my original antagonists are straight rip offs of Nikolas and Kristopher).

Admittedly (and obviously) my main inspirations for a lot of the how of my vampirism come from 1987 cult classic The Lost Boys because I saw that movie at age 11, rediscovered it at 14, and then proceeded to watch nothing else for four straight months. I love the necessity of the first kill, I love the constant weakening of the body and the uptick in bloodlust while in the half-vampire state, I love the stupid decorated wine bottle full of blood.

But I am constantly seeking out new vampire media. It is almost the only thing I buy if I'm going to a brick and mortar bookstore. I buy them without vetting them, I watch shitty B and C movies just to see if they did anything halfways interesting with (usually no, but i've been surprised before), I dig up any video game I can find even if I hate half the characters (Crimson Spires), and I constantly screw around with my own mythos to see what works and what doesn't.

My vampires aren't even the same across all my projects. Safe in the Dark is very much more typical sort of Lost Boys/Near Dark/Grounded Mostly In Reality Aside From the Whole Teleporting Thing vampirism. And then you have Damask, 2005/Vee the Vampire where I am fucking about with religious horror and some low magic aspects and alchemy and just, adding way more supernatural fuckery.

I love vampire media, I love creating vampire stories, I love finding new vampire stories to experience. There is no monster I love more, there is no horror I gravitate towards faster.

A Favorite Book: The Lights of Prague by Nicole Jarvis

A Favorite Movie: It's the Lost Boys, I can't not say it's the Lost Boys, I will have my card carrying Lost Boys Whore Status Revoked. I owe the late Joel Schumacher many things.

A Favorite Song: Shake It Out by Florence + The Machine has been synonymous with regretful self-despising vampirism for me since 2011 and i'm not about to give up its spot to anyone. (But shoutout to Good In Red by The Midnight as well)

A Favorite Podcast: That Vampire Show by @tandonshows (because wow if I was not Kat Wright as a teenager I am a goddamn liar)