#nearlyalmosthuman

Jean-Paul lit his third cigarette of the day and scowled thinking about the bullshit O’Leary pulled him into this time.

“John, we’re sending you because if the mark winds up beating the shit out of you, who cares, right? By the way, he’s known for beating the shit out of people. Oh, John? We’re trying to make nice with the alien fucks in Maroa, so they’re sending a dumb little baby fucker who’s probably going to get himself killed. Of course you don’t mind, right, John?”

Fuckers.

Someone told him once that smoking was a dirty habit and smoking inside even dirtier, but hey, fuck that noise, if they didn’t want him to smoke inside his own damn car, it wouldn’t have built in ash trays. Anyway, who gave a shit? He drove a 1960s Oldsmobile still clinging to life by sheer willpower (which wasn’t actually his, legally speaking, but the stolen face and ID said it was his and that’s what matters), so it’s not like he was driving a Rolls-Royce over here. Pity. Mauro’s drove like a dream and he’s still pissed as fuck that he had to sell the thing to pay off the debts that asshole left behind for him. Anyway, so what if people thought he had dirty habits, huh? Jean-Paul knew he wasn’t anything but a nasty little dog deep down.

Whatever, maybe this wouldn’t go as bad as it could go They said he was good at his job -good, because if he wasn’t, Jean-Paul wouldn’t lift a single finger if things went south- and while he knew you could rarely trust the integrity of criminals, it’s not like it was in their best interests to lie here. Of course, they also said he was a lovestruck little idiot who might get his ass in trouble because of that, so he was either going to have to deal with a liability or he was going to have to listen to some fucker pine over some human. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

Fucking vampires. He couldn’t wait to get the job done so he could crawl back to his shitty little apartment over the laundromat where the only bullshit he had to deal with was was keeping his accounting creative.

Jean-Paul parked the car, shifted back to his customary form instead of that of the unfortunate owner of the car he stole, checked his reflection to make sure he got everything right but of course he had. He always did. Alright, showtime. Time to pick up this criminal “Romeo” and get the show on the road. This mobster wasn’t going to rob himself.

In later years, Jean-Paul would be a delicate, dainty thing with flowing white hair, perfectly manicured nails, and a wardrobe bursting with pink silk, but right now? He’s laugh if you suggested that’s how he ended up. Jean-Paul was scrawny and mean, red hair sliced back to keep it out of his face, brown suit ill-fitting on his frame in case he needed to transform into someone larger. Hid the knives better that way too.

He took another drag of his cigarette to prepare him for this complete nonsense and strolled on out like he owned the place.

okay so

midday in mid september right before fall when it's starting to cool down but it's not cold yet, air still but a breeze is about to start, you're in a field with a small hill and there's no one around except maybe a few birds sitting in the trees around the edge, you look up at the sky and there's no airplanes or anything, just you and sky and some white clouds big against everything that almost look like someone painted them on but they didn't

like lightning in a cartoon, sharp and sharp and sharp, but dial in back, replace danger with fun but not electric neon purple sort of fun, lick it and you taste the ghost of it an hour later when you thought it had all gone

like you're fourteen again and it's a friday night and you're at the rollerskating rink because it's like 2000-whatever again and you're at the arcade because of course there's an arcade, it'd be a pretty shit roller rink if it didn't have an arcade, and you're taking little steps because you still have your skates on because the guy at the counter fucked off and you can hear someone play DDR but you can't because you're wearing skates, so you put in some coins for skeeball and start tossing and you're by that dome game, the one where you have to stop the light, and the neon's casting strange colors on you and you win yourself some tickets, so you go to the prize area and you get a ring pop and lick it and dip it into your pop rocks and you feel it fizzle fizzle fizzle on your tongue and then they dim the lights because they're doing a couples dance and they cast little white lights that flicker around like fishes on the ball, disco ball or some shit, and you sit there tasting sweetness all by yourself

chemical but good, fake but it knows it, it's not pretending to be anything otherwise, there's no berry in nature that matches that color, not even blueberries, and that's okay, artificial can be good, it' not always bad

you're on the road in a place you don't know and it's 4 AM and your only choices for anything to eat are fenny's and the gas station and you go with the gas station because you are b r o k e and there's no one else there but the cashier and your buddy with the car and you, so you go to get one of the premade sandwiches that come in boxes because they don't even have the hot dogs rolling at 4 AM but you stop by the drinks first even though you aren't even getting one because they keep the napkins over there and you aren't going to make a mess in someone else's car and then you just watch the slushie machine do its thing for awhile, cycling endlessly, and you decide fuck it, you haven't had a slushie since you were a kid, which was two years ago, and you taste it and it's good as fuck

like neon but not the harsh neon and not like bright red neon letters on the side of a building in vegas or whatever, the cool neon, the kind that makes everything seem darker in a bright way, kind of calm, real nice, close your eyes and go to sleep sort of neon lights, not lookatmelookatmelookatme neon lights

like you go to the pools that only exist in 80s architecture magazines and there's tile all around, white, even on the ceiling, and you dip your hands, cupped, and draw it to your mouth and it is clean and it is pure and it is the clearest water you have ever seen, the sweetest water you have ever tasted, and the lights sparkle off of it, no waves, just the ripples you leave behind, and it was wrong of you to dip your hands into the water, this water was not meant to be sullied by humans, it was not meant to exist outside of pictures

11:00 PM, night's still young, you have plenty of time and plenty of clubs, this night is a tribute to dionysus but no wine shall pass your lips, darkpurplered, this is not a tribute to the god of the harvest, this is a paen to dionysus twiceborn of divine ecstasy and madness and you are the altar, so you go out and you have one scotch, one bourbon, one beer but now it's time to get real weird with it, now's the time for shots, candysweet and candysour, and then you throw back a fishbowl drink with umbrella and little candy fish, and then you're in the bathroom with water on your face and you look into the mirror and you see yourself looking back at you and you taste candy on your lips

like how you want hairspray to taste because you're not supposed to drink it, obviously, but there's always going to come a day where you styling your hair, putting the bobby pins in because a bun won't hold itself, you're doing this properlike, and you spritz everything to hold it in place and you get it all up in your mouth and it tastes like licking a cottonball, which is not how blue tastes

like sugarglass you can see through, transparent but not all the way, and it tastes cool but not cold, not like the color white, and faintest tinge of stainless steel but only at the edges, only if you're looking for that taste on purpose because you know it's there

the girls all wore this spray when i was a kid because it was cheap and it was cute and i mostly remember the pink flavors, gummy bear and cotton candy, and it's like that but you colorshift it a little to the left so it's a complimentary color just as fluffy and sweet, except there aren't many scents of things that are blue except maybe blueberries, which really smell of fuckall most of the time, so it's called something like ocean water or something like that but water never smells like that, so i don't know what ocean water candles and perfumes and shit smell like

late night nice dream and you wake it all away but remember it in bits and bobs, the ghost of a dream and the ghost of a flavor in your mouth, not real but almost

perceptions of the ocean but not the ocean itself

kind of like when you brush your teeth and then take a drink of water and it's cold as fuck but instead of brushing your teeth, you drank pure syrup instead

@sclera69 😳

@xxonegoodarmxx And ruin the sport of it?

@blackbirdos anyways,

@sclera69 something like that

Yes! I quite enjoy them! I think phones with games on them are so much nicer than phones without games on them, especially because you can carry them around if you'd like to talk to someone and you can simply turn the ringer off if you wouldn't like to to talk to someone.

The internet is wild and mysterious! I think that sometimes there needs to be less of a market for things on the internet. :-)

In life, people will always sling cruel barbs at you even if you are confident in your abilities and presentation. They'll try to tear you down. Cut you. Mock you. You must simply hold your head up high and prove to the world that you're better -the best, nothing but the best- and everyone else will one day crumble into dust while you gaily march onward. You can also throw drinks on them if you have a drink you're not terribly invested in consuming but I suppose you can't do that over the internet, can you?

Excellent! I would allow you to watch me. Thank you. At least someone has faith in me. =)