normal about fate vs free will (lying)

chapter one of installment ii of my descent into madness, ft. some abominably timed culture clash, two surreal dreams with menacing syringe symbolism, cnc institutionalization, and the first entry of my very own brand new "addiction culture utopian speculative fiction" microgenre which after five minutes of googling I don't thiiink already exists. up next: a wild book character sighting, more menacing surreal dreams, and arguments about interior decorating. blease mind the tags.

at the request of @quadrilioquy, a deleted scene from the currently in-progress sequel to naïvety, though it basically holds up on its own. I'll be cannibalizing a fair amount of this for a different scene that hits similar beats in the finished fic, so if you have any interest in reading that whenever it's ready to be born then some stuff might feel familiar. **content warnings: drug addiction/withdrawal, allusion to past medical/psychiatric abuse, ptsd symptoms.**

~

In Gurathin's defense for all of the following, the active hallucinations only stopped two days ago. 

He’s halfway through changing into a new outfit behind an information kiosk when he gets a feed alert from Dr. Mensah. Ayda. Mensah. Whatever. He carefully bypasses the intended message display so he can read it without it registering as having been opened.

Just double checking: are you coming back, or did you forget to fill out the forms when you left?

hi everyone. I scrapped and restarted this three separate times but my number of ego deaths is surely up in the dozens. makeup removal as metaphor for sex. suicide intervention as metaphor for proposal. 7.3k of my middle aged m/f ship that's enjoyed by five or maybe even six people worldwide and actively disliked by numbers as high as like maybe one or two more than that.

or, a quick one shot of torturing that sad brunette man some more, which then tortures that sad blonde construct and that sad brunette woman some more

web!georgie chapter two now up, clocking in at about 5.5k! ft. spider gags (no not like that), withdrawal (involuntary), and hurt/comfort (evil).

mosquitos have always flocked to jonathan.

he has a particular memory from when he was about eleven of sitting outside in the sun and feeling a little prick on the back of his hand. he put it down to the tickle of sweat and ignored it, before, out of the corner of his eye, seeing the blasted thing rise up from his skin and begin making its way towards the friend sitting beside him. he clapped his hands around it in a flash before it could have the chance to sink its strange needley mouth into anyone else, feeling the tiny crunch between the meat of his palms.

he had opened his hands again, and, upon seeing the creature’s mangled and dismembered corpse all over him, briefly regretted how quick he was to action. his immediate instinct was to wipe his hands off on the long grass on which he was sitting, but something gave him pause before he could. there was a small, bright smear of red across the palm of his hand, mixed in with the dead insect’s body parts. fresh blood. his blood.

for a second, it felt like an injustice. that had been in his body less than ten seconds ago, why couldn’t he have it back? he had the mad idea to lick it off of his palms, but stayed his tongue before he could so thoroughly make a fool of himself in front of his friend. he wiped his palms on the grass, washed his hands of it, and that was that. still, he was glad he had dealt with the issue before the bloodsucker could make its mark on anyone else.

jonathan is now no longer eleven, and he stands in the count’s room, staring at the monster’s wretched youthful body.

hey guys, if anyone wants five hundred words of that lame ass tudor vampire on his knees while failing to be a person, it's hot off the press

oh, these little rejections

3k, connverse, hurt/comfort, post canon

or: what if I visited you on your college tour and I had trauma and there was only one bed and we were both stevonnie 😳😳😳

read on ao3

the best policy - the magnus archives - 20,094 words

relationships: martin blackwood/jonathan sims; basira hussain & melanie king & alice "daisy" tonner & jonathan sims

tags: truth spells, alternate universe - canon divergence, pining, angst with a happy ending

more tags and full content warnings can be found on ao3

summary:

this was written as part of the 2021 rusty quill big bang, with accompanying art pieces by @teamellow/@koalakat0 and @miskapestek!

link in reblog!

Annabelle has never been cruel.

It may have been her, in a way, job since her teens to sow and harvest distress in as large quantities as possible, but there hasn’t been anything she can do about that, so she can’t find it in herself to feel any particular way about it. If it had been at all up to her, she doesn’t think she would have chosen that as her profession. Maybe teaching instead. And, when the occasional single choice is offered up, she prefers to take the kinder path where possible.

Mikaele likes to eat dinner before sundown. He always means to make it for himself, but inevitably the second he opens the door to the kitchen, Annabelle will step out with a full tray. Today is different, however. He’s watching the peacocks from a window in the dining room when he hears the telltale approaching sounds of jangling porcelain.

He turns to see her prodding open the door with her foot. “Oh, you’re early today.”

She smiles and sets the tray down on the oak table. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Well, it’s much appreciated, as usual.” He sits down at his usual seat and raises an eyebrow as she takes one as well. “You’re dining with me?”

“I put a bit more time into this meal, I’d like to share it properly.”

“reaching out with hands that cut you” - 1.1k - cw unhappy ending; spiral typical emotional manipulation; implied/referenced suicide - basically, I relistened to mag 187 and thought “what if I made a distortion!sasha au but just more sad than I have any right to?”

Jon plays the tapes he’d found hidden in Sasha’s desk.

One has a quick, light argument about the word “calliope.”

One is a full statement from Sasha, the real Sasha, about Michael, the one he’d had to have S--not Sasha re-record.

The third is from when Prentiss got in. It’s nauseating hearing his own screams played back, but he manages to make it to the end of the tape. “I see you,” he hears, in her voice. “Show yourself!” She starts to scream, and there’s a sound of a door opening. The patter of her shoes on the floor, running full tilt for it. The door swinging shut. Another voice, but not Sasha’s, coming towards the recorder, repeating her final words in a hiss.

There’s never been a door in that part of Artefact Storage.

Jon’s mind flies into such a panic, he doesn’t even fully think through that he took the exact same route out of Artefact Storage as Sasha did all those months ago until he catches a glimpse of her, out of the corner of his eye, as he pelts down the hallways. He tries to double back, to find her, to rescue her, but she’s gone again. Of course she’s gone again.

Hand slick with lotion and sweat, Jon tries the handle on the yellow door. It doesn’t budge. Michael yanks on it, trying to force it, and his face freezes as he starts to scream. With a creak of old hinges, Michael’s gone, and there’s a woman standing there who speaks with the voice from the recordings.

In another world, this is where Jon might get wary. The throat of delusion incarnate wouldn’t just send a friend to save him. Michael just told him all about how he wasn’t Michael Shelley, this person can’t just be the face they wear. In another world, Jon accepts the escape route but never trusts the friendly face. In this world, he does.

He uses what help the Eye gives him to try and Know whether this is really Sasha, and her face falls. “Of course you don’t recognize me. You forgot me.”

After all this time believing that that thing was Sasha, how can he look into her eyes and tell her that this is where his belief stops?