#multamusa

       “I’M----ALRIGHT, I guess.  just stepped out to clear my head.  things just get really loud sometimes.”  there’s a smile, eyes turned down for a moment, then over to blanche.  “it’s really nothing to worry about.  i just wanted to grab some fresh air.”  fingers tuck the strands that’ve escaped from their ponytail behind their ear like a schoolgirl or something like that.

       “----i mean, you’re welcome to join me out here if you like.  i’m not going to force you to or anything.  it’s really up to you.”

Continued from x

“Oh please. you know I don’t have any weaknesses.” She is teasing, despite the fact that she might actually believe it. Endora loves company, truly revels in it, but it is so much easier to pretend to be aloof when her emotions have not been in check. So much easier to keep things to herself, instead of having anyone ask what’s wrong, when its the same thing that’s always wrong. But still...it is only tea. 

  "Not caring has never stopped you before.”

she wasn’t saying it to sound smart. she was saying it to be honest, but fuck YOU, perfect shirley, if you can’t hear it. and this, theo thinks, is why she just slides this shit under the bed to healthily, safely compartmentalize it into the little boxes she keeps down there. she stores other people’s feelings down there with her own, and the feelings of the things she keeps, too. she feels how angry, sad, scared little kids feel and she buries them in the yard of shirley’s guest house. she has nightmares that she gets used to. sometimes she dreams if you dug up the dirt behind, ironically, a funeral home you’d find thousands of rotted, decaying toys, things owned once by kids who lost parents or kids afraid of their moms or dads, and sometimes she wakes up sweating and gasping to the sight of a long shadow standing over her bed she’s never seen before. sometimes they talk and theo can assess them neatly in her head before her eyes, is what she means, and when people speak everything seems illustrated. she barely has to even touch them anymore. it makes her throat feel dry. “you fucking bet,” she remarks nonchalantly, a little too razor-edged, too, “keeps me up at night.”

theo stops for a long, long minute. the bent-neck lady. she always thinks about how telling it is, a grownup nell still referring to this apparition, this specter, real ghost or whatever it is, as the bent-neck lady. not the strangled lady or the fucking asphyxiated lady. the bent-neck lady. she takes a long pull of her shitty-to-moderate beer and gazes down into the bottom of the bottle.

shirl gets it. she keeps staring, thinking, like she has a real answer to her sister’s words (she doesn’t) and she gulps the last of this shit, finishing the bottom of the drink against her better judgment because it tastes like shit.

“no. no i don’t think they would,” she gets up, grabs another beer from where it’s sitting in the pack, pops it open with the edge of the railing and watches it foam a second before drinking-- again-- methodical and constant, for the warm buzz starting in her cheeks when nellie’s name burns hot in her ears. she remembers arthur’s empty spot and crying in her car on the way home. she never cries, but the abysmal ache in her gut had been painful. she’d just wanted to see her sister. “dad’s to fucking blame. so is mom, leaving us the hell alone like that. and the house? the house pushed all of it.”

she doesn’t quite know what she believes. one foot’s in logic, and the other’s in-- well, her ability to brush skin and fucking feel it like she’s professor goddamn xavier.

“you have to draw a line, shirl.” it comes out less harsh, more concerned. she doctors the bite around her words to be sure it’s a nibble and not a snap, “fifty dollars is way too much for food. and you can’t enable his habit. by this point, he has to learn that he’s on his own until he’s genuinely serious. we’re only rushing his death along. and nell--”

another drink. this one’s long. painful. she swallows down the ache again. you said you would do this for me. another gulp. she looks way away, now, peers into the dark, starless fucking night she can’t see into. nothing. it’s relieving, to think there are things in the world she doesn’t know.

THE TEXTY TEXT MEME.

STATUS: EYUP

[SMS: SHIRL] fuckgjkj

[SMS: SHIRL] shirl help me out

[SMS: SHIRL] got alkll the wahy hoemme