The bathroom is a sickly green color and the lights sound off with that too-harsh buzzing noise. Maybe he's the only one who can hear it. If he's lucky, he gets left in the pitch dark, cold water up to his shoulders.
-
She doesn't take prisoners, only her children. This is just your inheritance.
-
If he's luckier than lucky, he's got someone to split the bones of his knees and his shins every time they try to fuse together. He's got someone to shatter his kneecaps and ankles and push them apart all over again.
-
Konstantin is gone for twenty days at sea and comes to the only door he knows will do this for him.
-
He promised himself he would be different. He wouldn't eat meat anymore. He would train himself not to crave it, not to desire something warm and damp in his mouth, coppery with give, followed by the shrieks of something alive at the other end because at the end of the day he would refuse to become this kind of monster, beating inside him like another living thing in a too-small skin. It struggles to push outwards. It leaves palm-shaped bruises on his legs and on his ribs like beatings. Yet here he is now with a cold fish dumped into his palms, half-alive and gasping. Fish don't scream, not that you can hear, but Konstantin can feel a pulse under his palms rapping like an unwelcome guest at a door. Ash is standing at the side of the tub like some kind of spectator, like he doesn't know what Konstantin will do next when the both of them very well know that the fish won't die of asphyxiation.
He is uncomfortable with eyes on him so he slides down as much as the give of the restraints will let him. Slips to the bottom of the tub where the water is still clear as he looks up. The fish still thrashes in his palms, but stronger, and Konstantin wishes he could give it that chance to escape, let it rely on that instinctive hope that if it wiggles around enough it will find some purchase and swim far, far away.
Ash is looking down the way a child might at some fish who is collecting flakes from the top of the tank. The remaining air in Konstantin's lungs escapes and forms a get of soft bubbles.
Fine.
He pushes blunt nails into the scales of the fish and brings it up to his lips and teeth, tearing into it and letting the blood muck up the water again starting from his eyes.
Nothing to see here.
The water is pink when Ash returns, but the fish is gone--bones and all and Konstantin's lips are stained red and there are scales sticking to the sides of the tub.
-
Ash opens his mouth wide one night and counts his teeth.
All seventy-four of them.
-
"I could pull them out."
"They'll go away."
-
They don't and Ash is getting out a soft roll of tools while Konstantin cradles his too-full jaw and sobs.
-
There are uneven, sharp teeth in a haphazard pile on the soap dish mounted on the wall beside the tub. They are falling over each other. There was a root attached to each at one point but now they are just bone.
(Maybe Ash doesn't think he sees him in the early hours of the morning sucking the nerve and gristle out of each one, but he does. The sound is soothing to the terrible ache in his mouth.)
-
He stays in the tub for three weeks.
Ash breaks the fusing bones in his legs over and over again until he doesn't scream anymore, he just anticipates it. The snap of bone, the slow magic regenerating bone and tissue slowly into shape again. Into what should be a correct shape, but humane and monster fight. They squabble in his blood, argue over what is the "proper" shape and where the human pulls the piscine pushes forward, stretches and painfully fuses shin to ankle and heel to arch. But Ash is good. He'll do this for him. He'll break each bone over and over again (Konstantin is fully convinced that this will stop eventually).
Ash is good. Ash is very good. He cuts the too-thick scales off his thighs and shins and he severs the new tendons trying to form between his legs. One evening, Ash is looking at them in the moon light that's pouring through the small window. They are half through a book and Konstantin is lounging in newly drawn water that is only slightly pink because his skin has reformed over the severed, raw muscles again--formed bright and rosy, looking freshly scrubbed with soft little scales, all iridescent and green-blue-pink. Konstantin follows his eyes, follows them to the long, thick strips of muscle with their thick layer of insulating gristle and fat and Konstantin sees them draped over the edge of the tub, as if maybe he'd reconsider them. Reconsider this. He swallows when he meets cool eyes and looks at the strips of unnecessary and stubborn muscle trying to fuse his legs together.
He choke and shrugs because Ash's everything practically screams for it. He can hear it all. Your tense shoulders and fingers never lie, the twitch of muscle like you want to reach out and grab it like a starving man. It's like having a thousand dollar cut of fucking sashimi laid out in front of you but you can't touch it. Can't eat it. Can't even lean in to smell how fresh it is off the fucking fish because that's weird
But they've done a lot of weird things over these past few weeks.
And Konstantin has forgotten about school, but he doesn't want to go back to sea. He just wants this to be over (the secret in his heart of hearts is this: it isn't going to be over. He is too much his father's son.) And so he breaks this silence, this contentious moment: ]
Eat it.
[ Nothing's stopping you. ]
I don't need it, [ he says, toned hushed, too loud even in a whisper against the bathroom walls. ] You can eat it.
Edited 2016-03-31 05:28 (UTC)
cw: also gross, nothing in this thread will be worksafe. THERE I'M DONE.
[ There are few among those still living - and Ash can hear the gurgling of the dead, the multitudes of dead under the ground - who he cares for enough to wonder where they've gone.
-
Kon's not picked up the phone in a while. Rumor has it, he's gone to sea.
-
He doesn't realize the importance of this until Kon shows up at his doorstep, at his father's old doorstep, his shadow darkening the oak doorway like an omen. Ash has as much education as he has mothers - of which, he has none - but he knows what he sees. He trusts what he sees. And what he witnesses in front of him is this: that there is meat, and skin, and whole new flesh wrapped around Kon's knees and ankles, webs between his toes and fingers, a sheen to his skin like freshly cut pearls.
Konstantin knocks on Ash's door. He brought the sea with him.
-
I can cut it open, he offers, blunt as a hammer to the back of the head. You can't walk like this.
-
He cleans up around the house, despite confining Kon to the bathroom. He wipes down the dining table, for a distant later, and throws out the little expired cans of things in the one standing fridge still working. He drains the sinks, locks up the upstairs bedrooms, checks the piping and plumbing all over the house. At night, when the wind blows as hard as it can muster against the glass panes of the windows, the floorboards creak and cough up dust. Ash cleans that too, in the morning. He cleans the best he could, which is not by much, but it's effort - very little could clean up the dirt that the John house is soaked in, anyway.
Ash carries Kon to the basement bathroom, where they used to keep him with his mother. It's the safest place in the whole house. The bathroom is dark, with one dirty window high up along the wall, and the mirror has spider-like cracks running all over it. But the water runs clean in this bathroom, and the pipes can still handle heating, and there's enough room for a thrashing. D-rings hang above the showerhead; they've rusted over the years, but he has no doubts that they will hold.
This is good, he thinks.
This is good, he hopes.
-
Kon is drowning. Ash knows it's not what the seizing is called, that there's probably a five-syllable word for it that he doesn't know to spell or say, but that's how it looks to him. Kon is drowning, and Ash turns the faucet on as far as it can go, the water splashing all over the tile. There are long gashes along Kon's neck, small ones at the spaces of his ribs, and Ash pours water where the shower spray can't reach. He fills a bucket, tips it over Kon's head until it empties, then he fills it up again.
He pours all night, until every inch of the room is soaked, and the exposed cement floor beyond the door has gone damp from the water.
-
Are you hungry?
-
There are some apples still hanging from the trees outside. Some pears. A few berries here and there, and Ash picks them all, because the John estate, despite the ruin and decay it's suffered in the past few years, still survives like a pestilent weed. He brings them to Kon in a plastic bowl, leaves them by the tub when he thinks Kon is sleeping in the water.
When he comes back, he cleans up the mess where the fruits used to be.
-
Kon isn't eating. It's not the fruit his body is craving, Ash discerns, and so he goes to the river and fishes out something bloody, something still writhing, and drags them all with him in a bucket down to the basement. Here, he croaks, his voice unused and rough, I got you something. Fish eat fish, don't they? He sits at the edge of the tub and raises a large trout, fat and heavy, glistening at the gills. It struggles in his grasp, his coarse hands not built for holding it; when the trout attempts and near-succeeds in freeing itself from his hold he cuts along its fin by accident.
Sorry, he offers. Do you want me to go? Take them with me? You're throwing up fruit, you're not eating. You have to eat something.
In the end, a little frustrated, he leaves the room. Kon's a big boy. He'll eat or he won't, and Ash in his simple needs and desires will figure out what to do after that. He goes back upstairs where he's laid out the biggest, fattest fish he caught, the only one he kept for himself and guts it up on the dinner table. His reward for himself for not eating something with legs.
(It doesn't taste as good as he expects it to. Not salty enough. Not nearly bony enough. Not fat enough to spill sweetly in his mouth.)
-
How many teeth is that? In your mouth.
You can count them, if you want.
So he counts — seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four. Seventy-four teeth. Ash counts them all. Each tooth is smooth to the touch, like polished ivory, or the shiny fingers of a nail salon worker. Seventy-four small teeth, each one as sharp as a razor - his fingers are bled raw at the end.
They have to go, you know.
-
The ghost of his mother's hysteria echoes around him as he digs through the boxes of leftover sentiments left behind in the tool shed. His first shackles. His father's bone saw, the teeth worn down by his mother's shin bones. The tongue clamp, for when he's hungry and there isn't anything to eat. He finds his old teeth in one of the boxes taped up like a hazard. Written on the tape, in precise handwriting, is his father's name for him - John V. Ash finds the leather wrap he's looking for, and picks up the box.
(The slides it under his cot, along with his childhood shackles. Even monsters can feel melancholy, too.)
-
The first tooth is easy. Ash cradles Kon's jaw with callused fingers and pinches the tooth with small long-nose pliers, then wrenching it out with a twist. There's a wet, sucking crunch then the tooth pulls out; Ash drops it in a shell-shaped soap dish, where it leaves a pink trail on the ceramic. The next few handful aren't as easy. Hold still, he says, as he kneels with one knee over Kon, his other knee set squarely against Kon's sternum. He's leaning his weight on his knees, keeping him still - the back teeth won't come away with a simple twist. They resist him, the pliers, the brute strength of his arms. Ash considers asking if he can break Kon's jaw, to get on with it.
He doesn't break his jaw. But he would have. He could have. In a dark, rotting place in Ash's mind, his father coos; Good boy. My good little boy.
(In the stillness of four in the morning Ash creeps into the bathroom and sucks Kon's teeth clean. It's a perfect kind of sweetness on the tongue.)
(His mother would be shaking her head at him, right about now.)
-
Don't be like him. No matter what happens. Don't be like your father.
-
Eight days in and Ash brings in the knives, the scissors, the pinball hammer. Kon almost drowns him by accident; he still can't tell when he's asleep or awake, probably never will. But he brings the tools in, lays them out on a greying towel on top of the tile counter, and makes a promise.
This will hurt.
They start with his fingers. Ash stretches his fingers out, as wide as they would go, until they could see through the webbing. The flesh has receded, pulled back almost to an inch from the wrist, giving Kon's hands the illusion of having four or five knuckles a finger. Pinching the webbing between two fingers, the sinewy skin feels like a hardened gel, just soft enough to give but dried out to keep its shape.
Ash cuts between Kon's fingers with the smallest pair of scissors he can find, the webbing curling back like ribbons pulled taut, flicking tiny drops of blood across his face. It almost doesn't bother him. The drops dry out, these little flecks of red leaving behind a fragrant smell on him. Ash keeps cutting, until the fingers are done, and when the hands are taken care of Ash takes one wrist and raises it above their heads, clipping at the webbing stretched out between Kon's shoulder blades to his elbows. He cuts it all off, and hangs them over a towel rack to wash and dry.
(If Ash collects the blood in a pan left on the floor - if he takes it upstairs to boil with his soft meats and bone marrow for dinner - Kon doesn't have to know.)
-
On the tenth day, when Kon's back has healed over and his metacarpals are fusing back into the shape of a human hand, Ash starts to clip his fins. They're brittle, not soft like freshwater fish, and they crunch with every snip he makes. Kon flinches with every snip he makes, as he cuts closer and closer to the scaled roots. Later, they take a boning knife and carve out the soft bones the fins are attached to - so much blood spills out, Ash marvels, so much blood.
On the eleventh day he cracks open Robinson Crusoe, and reads imperfectly. Ash doesn't correct him even once.
-
How long do you think your intestines are?, Ash asks while peeling off scales, one at a time. Fish only have a couple feet, I read.
Do I look like fish?
You smell like one right now, as he digs the blade under a large one and pushes it out from under the skin. It comes off with a small pop. Let's keep this one. Kon splashes him while they're draining the water, and it's the first time since— it's the first time Ash almost laughs.
-
They start on the legs, and it's as bloody as Ash expected.
It takes days. Long nights, sleepless nights, that Ash sometimes sleeps on the tile with a knife in hand and snores for a few hours before getting back to it again. He washes his mouth with pink water when he gets thirsty; catches a rat or two when he gets hungry; he doesn't change his clothes for a number of days because the smell in the bathroom is gagging and he's constantly sopping wet, soaked cold that his body reacts by lowering his temperature as close as it can to his ghoulish nature. He sits on the brink, all throughout; he keeps a tight rein of it.
I'm a good boy. Who's a good boy? I am, father.
He uses the hammer sooner than expected. Ash peels the thin membrane covering Kon's legs, pock-marked from where they've been picking off scales, and it exposes baby-like skin underneath it. Pretty, Ash murmurs, wiping the muck off the skin, before picking up the hammer and swinging it down on Kon's feet.
Kon's screams echo through the basement - piercing, shrill, a human voice overlapped by a higher pitch that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Ash knows, from experience, that no one will hear any of this from the outside. So he swings again. He swings hard, crushing the bone, and with a pick he cuts through the muscle, pushing the bones into place by sheer force. For hours and hours on end, Ash forces Kon to endure - he doesn't ask him to cover his eyes, either. Blood splashes in small gouts onto Ash's face, staining his eyes, his hair and teeth; he carves out muscle and fat and bone, only stopping when the water has gone still, dangerously still.
And then they rest, waiting for Kon's flesh to heal - and if they heal the wrong way, or if Ash cuts up the wrong muscle, they start over again.
I need to take out your knee.
No, you don't.
Ash takes out his knee, anyway. He'd clipped a muscle too close, has to let it grow back again. It sets them back one day; one long, quiet, peaceful day.
-
The problem with Kon's legs is, the bones are trying to fuse into an extension of his spine. Vertebral bones are taking shape where his shin bones should be, and for each on, Ash chips them in half with a pick, seeking out the smooth uneven seam where one bone used to be two. Every bone is no more than five inches long; some are as small as a thumbnail, and just as fragile. Have you ever seen a fish cut in half at the fin? Imagine a man with one leg, and that leg chopped from the foot, neatly by the vertical half.
Ash works on it all day. All night. Falls asleep by the tub, the decorative shapes of the tub's legs imprinting on his lower back. By the time they make it to the tops of Kon's thighs, Ash hands the knives over to him. This part, I don't know too well.
Your turn.
-
It takes a little under two weeks before Kon has the beginnings of human legs - two misshapen limbs colored like a fading rainbow - healing under the water, and in two weeks they've accumulated bucketfuls of flesh and bone. It's like being in a butcher shop; the air has stopped stinking of mildew and faint iron, has begun smelling like the sweetness of a freshly chopped lamb, but saltier, tangier. If he licks his lips, Ash could taste the blood in the air - thick, cloying to human nose, but intensely heady and enticing to someone like him.
The splashing of the water, the soft gurgle of the open faucet's stream - it barely masks the pinched groan of Ash's belly at the sight. Like a shy young child he pets the flesh, watching it quiver; the fat of the thigh, he recognizes. He'd made the cut, after all. Fat drops of blood drip onto the tile, staining the nail beds of his bare feet - a waste, such a waste, when he could suck it up off his fingers and be as satisfied as he'll ever be.
He's not allowed to eat this. They'd agreed, that first time they met, a long time ago.
You don't eat people you like.
-
Ash lingers. Pulls his hand back. He's been a good, good boy.
-
You can eat it.
In the back of his mind, Ash sees his sickly brother, his sweet and naive little brother, sliced open from the belly up by Father. They're in the backyard, covered by the apple trees, the dark empty sky exposing the new moon in all its harsh loveliness - and spilling into the earth, his brother's blood and guts. Blood, black as nothing else in the moonlight. As dark as Father's eyes in that moment. You can eat it.
Be a good boy and don't be a waste like he is.
-
Ash blinks. Twice. The ceramic under his hands creak, threatening to break, and nails scratch against the polished surface in an ear-splitting pitch for a heartbeat. He bends his head, nuzzles against Kon's shoulder, thanking him quietly. Thank you.
(Father's whip. Mother's shackles. The bone saw. Say thank you.) ]
Thank you, [ he says again, and he means it this time, pulling one long strip off the makeshift rack and tearing through it with his teeth. Practically inhales it. He eats messily, blood painting all over his cheeks, getting into his nose, dripping down his neck in fresh red as his teeth push out and lengthen - the taste of flesh, human flesh - no matter how partial - forever indelible to the memory of a ghoul.
The hunger recognizes. The body adapts accordingly. Ash turns his back to Kon before picking up the bones and sucking them dry. ]
Edited (true story this tag made me wanna eat a burger) 2016-03-31 09:10 (UTC)
[ Kon almost drowns him by accident. That is how it will be remembered. An accident. A misstep. A slippery set of tiles or Kon losing purchase in the confines of the bath.
But is it really an accident when it's all you want in the struggle, with fingers sneaking their way around a throat in a bid that looks more confused and desperate instead of predatory. The amount of times Ash has gotten close enough that Kon could shove his head into the water and eat up the fight from his bones.
He'll tell him one day.
I wanted to kill you.
-
Ash is catching rats about as lean as he is.
He's breaking his bones. He's covered in his blood. He gives him the knife when he gets to the half-fused apex of his thighs and tells him that he'll need to take it from there. And Kon is looking at him through wet eyes, breathing slowed and rough before he turns the blade down and gets to work with slightly trembling hands.
-
There is so much blood. The tub is more blood than water at one point and Kon can barely breathe, throwing the knife onto the tile of the floor and shaking his head as he grabs for the sides of it with his hands. He's reaching out, grabbing Ash by his shirt with a bright red palm and yanking him close, like he might take him with him.
Refill, he half gasps. It's more blood, more gut, more garbage than water, and the slits against his ribs are stifled.
-
Ash falls asleep with the knife in his fingers at the base of the tub and Kon is singing soft waves into the bath of clean water, a soft, wavering set of notes, lips pressed against the echoing porcelain as he hears Ash trying to get comfortable on the floor.
He climbs up the side of the bath, shedding a little water on the tile and looks down, reaches down but can't touch the sharp jut of Ash's shoulder. He's tossing, shifting, uncomfortable, and Kon sings softly, the gentlest notes and trills he can manage before the shifting stops and the knife in Ash's fingers clatters out of a white-knuckled grip.
That's better.
-
You don't eat people you like.
But we make exceptions.
-
Ash's breath is warm on his shoulder when he gives him permission, a soft puff of relief, enough to make his hand come up out of the water, one of his fully reformed ones with fingertips fused back properly and the webbing from elbow to scapula receded to a thin line of a scar. I won't drown you, he says to himself, moreso than to Ash as he rests a hand on the back of his head, wet against the raze of closely-shorn hair. There's a thank you from him, soft with the touch of the tip of Ash's nose to his bare skin. He turns a little dipping his head halfway to brush the tip of his nose against his temples. He broke his knees in, pulled out his teeth, stripped the excess from his body and bore it all without a movement towards temptation. Kon couldn't get out of here, not like this. He can barely function without the water level touching just under his sternum--he'll asphyxiate, a fish out of water.
But shit.
Shit.
No one else would do this for him. No one has the stomach to. For all this blood, for ignoring everything he says when the knife comes down. That he isn't ready. That maybe they should stop. But he already warned Ash to ignore it. Don't let me turn away from this. This is what I want. At the end of the day, this is what I really want. So he watches Ash as he pulls one of the longer pieces of what might have been a tail off the rack, clutch it in his fingers desperately before going at it.
That's me.
That's me.
Ash turns away, like he's being polite, but there's nothing polite about this sort of exchange, this unspoken agreement they made, realizing he liked his teeth so much. You have teeth like me. You have eyes like me. We're not the same, but god if we aren't similar. But. politeness. Kon knows that's not possible in a time and place like this, and he just lowers himself on his hands the entire way down into the water, fingers bracing against the sides of the tub and legs breaking the surface of the water to brace the soles of his feet against the porcelain just above the surface. It's cold and his skin aches and the freshly put-together bone shudders at the exposure, but he can't right now
The now barely-there sounds of chewing exist on a level where he can ignore them.
You're welcome. You're always welcome.
When Ash is through with what meat is left hanging off the rack, still fresh at least, he surfaces, hair wet and clinging to the sides of his face. He motions for him to come close to the tub with his hand, close enough to lean down, close enough for Kon to run fingers over his bloodied cheek and clean his face up just a bit. Blood on his nose. On his mouth. On his chin. Ash is a messy eater, he's always know this. ] Whatever you take off me is yours, got it? [ he tells him, albeit, shakily as he washes his hands in the water and pulls back. ] Do whatever you want with it.
[ It's unspoken, but it's there: Just don't let me see you eat it. I can't watch you do it twice.
-
You take care of me.
I take care of you.
-
He holds his breath a beat. ]
Still hungry?
Edited 2016-04-02 12:09 (UTC)
i think i can trace my recent raw fish obsession to this thread...
[ At one point, there's two whole buckets of bloodwater drawn out from the tub. Viscera had clogged the piping; Ash doesn't have time to rip up the tile, so he digs his fingers into the drain, breaks them to fit the bend, fishing out
bits of bone
parts of a fin
small, sharp babyteeth.
(It's a good thing he heals quickly.)
-
Still hungry?
-
They first met— a long time ago. Ash thinks it's been a long time since, a distant mental landmark that's as fuzzy and warm as his memories of his father's hands are cold and demeaning. There are pieces that he recalls far clearly than others - Kon's shoulders stretching a worn blue tee, his bones peeking out from under the collar; the displaced scent of seasalt clinging to his knuckles; wide doe-like eyes that, for a long second, had freaked Ash out, so wide were they it felt like he could swim in them.
This bloody, broken, bruising body in his bath tub is likely the only friend Ash has ever had in his entire life. He ]
[ there's nothing like the threat of violence to really spur someone into taking drastic action.
(this time, "drastic action" is grabbing someone at random from the crowd and laying a hell of a kiss on them.)
(last time, it was shoving someone out a sixteenth story window. times change.)
throwing someone off your trail by schmoozing the first viable stranger takes a hell of a lot of confidence, really good acting, and an eye that can pick out the stranger who won't shove you off the moment you lock lips with them. in the handful of second that it takes for him to size up and seize his intended accomplice, he's done his best to make himself look as appealing as possible, and this is how you do it: throw off the heavy hood, rest the chunky headphones and their cord wrapped once-twice around a slender throat, run fingers through hair to give it a tousle for that just-recently-banged-in-a-back-alley-chic. smile. always remember to smile.
smile, and lie until people believe that you're honest. give 'em a wink. give 'em a plea: ] Help a guy out.
[ make sure that you don't give them a chance to think with the wrong head, either. hook your fingers into the belt loops on their pants, fit your free hand against the tender nape of their neck before you lay it on them, and once you've got them locked, don't hold back. nothing kills the faux-mood more than obvious faux-kissing. use tongue, use teeth; give them a little sigh. this works, it works, it's always worked. ]
[ Ash talks to the dead. He thanks them, every day, for giving him something to eat, because his mother may have been a proper ghoul but she was one who understood manners too. Sometimes, when a body's freshly died, Ash can actually talk to them - he sees the outlines of their ghosts reflected on the metal beds. Some of them get mad. Some of them make small "oh"s, as if resigned to their fates.
The fact of it is: yes, sometimes the noises of the living can wake the dead. Luckily, nothing's on the table today. Pun wholly intended. ]
[ There's a pause as he slips off his bike and leans it up against the dumpster. Between the dead pan in Ash's voice and the barest view of the room behind him beyond the hall, Kon wonders if he ought to take this into consideration.
Mental note: just take it for what it is. ]
I'll take them into consideration next time, [ it's as sincere as he can make it sound really, moving inside. Maybe there's a hint still-present dubiousness. ] What happens if I do?
[ There's a toothpick sticking out from between Ash's lips, the visible end already frayed from being gnawed on. On the doctor's little table, where stacks of paperwork are piled high, are two little bottles; one for aspirin, one for toothpicks. Ash's loopy scrawl is visible on the toothpick one, the A of his name stretching wide across the greying plastic surface.
Little bits of home, for a homeless man. Ash puts away the cleaning rag, a fading teal color, on a metal rack lingering awkwardly in the hall, and takes out a brand new, orange microfiber, all-cleaning branded... piece of shit, far as he's concerned. It's a rag. It cost the morgue four dollars more than the older, cheaper ones. ]
That's how you get monsters on the news. Everyone's just woken up, and then someone brings a gun out. Pffff, [ he makes finger-guns, while approximating the sound and gesture of a flamethrower being switched on. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
CW: GROSS.
-
The bathroom is a sickly green color and the lights sound off with that too-harsh buzzing noise. Maybe he's the only one who can hear it. If he's lucky, he gets left in the pitch dark, cold water up to his shoulders.
-
She doesn't take prisoners, only her children. This is just your inheritance.
-
If he's luckier than lucky, he's got someone to split the bones of his knees and his shins every time they try to fuse together. He's got someone to shatter his kneecaps and ankles and push them apart all over again.
-
Konstantin is gone for twenty days at sea and comes to the only door he knows will do this for him.
-
He promised himself he would be different. He wouldn't eat meat anymore. He would train himself not to crave it, not to desire something warm and damp in his mouth, coppery with give, followed by the shrieks of something alive at the other end because at the end of the day he would refuse to become this kind of monster, beating inside him like another living thing in a too-small skin. It struggles to push outwards. It leaves palm-shaped bruises on his legs and on his ribs like beatings. Yet here he is now with a cold fish dumped into his palms, half-alive and gasping. Fish don't scream, not that you can hear, but Konstantin can feel a pulse under his palms rapping like an unwelcome guest at a door. Ash is standing at the side of the tub like some kind of spectator, like he doesn't know what Konstantin will do next when the both of them very well know that the fish won't die of asphyxiation.
He is uncomfortable with eyes on him so he slides down as much as the give of the restraints will let him. Slips to the bottom of the tub where the water is still clear as he looks up. The fish still thrashes in his palms, but stronger, and Konstantin wishes he could give it that chance to escape, let it rely on that instinctive hope that if it wiggles around enough it will find some purchase and swim far, far away.
Ash is looking down the way a child might at some fish who is collecting flakes from the top of the tank. The remaining air in Konstantin's lungs escapes and forms a get of soft bubbles.
Fine.
He pushes blunt nails into the scales of the fish and brings it up to his lips and teeth, tearing into it and letting the blood muck up the water again starting from his eyes.
Nothing to see here.
The water is pink when Ash returns, but the fish is gone--bones and all and Konstantin's lips are stained red and there are scales sticking to the sides of the tub.
-
Ash opens his mouth wide one night and counts his teeth.
All seventy-four of them.
-
"I could pull them out."
"They'll go away."
-
They don't and Ash is getting out a soft roll of tools while Konstantin cradles his too-full jaw and sobs.
-
There are uneven, sharp teeth in a haphazard pile on the soap dish mounted on the wall beside the tub. They are falling over each other. There was a root attached to each at one point but now they are just bone.
(Maybe Ash doesn't think he sees him in the early hours of the morning sucking the nerve and gristle out of each one, but he does. The sound is soothing to the terrible ache in his mouth.)
-
He stays in the tub for three weeks.
Ash breaks the fusing bones in his legs over and over again until he doesn't scream anymore, he just anticipates it. The snap of bone, the slow magic regenerating bone and tissue slowly into shape again. Into what should be a correct shape, but humane and monster fight. They squabble in his blood, argue over what is the "proper" shape and where the human pulls the piscine pushes forward, stretches and painfully fuses shin to ankle and heel to arch. But Ash is good. He'll do this for him. He'll break each bone over and over again (Konstantin is fully convinced that this will stop eventually).
Ash is good. Ash is very good. He cuts the too-thick scales off his thighs and shins and he severs the new tendons trying to form between his legs. One evening, Ash is looking at them in the moon light that's pouring through the small window. They are half through a book and Konstantin is lounging in newly drawn water that is only slightly pink because his skin has reformed over the severed, raw muscles again--formed bright and rosy, looking freshly scrubbed with soft little scales, all iridescent and green-blue-pink. Konstantin follows his eyes, follows them to the long, thick strips of muscle with their thick layer of insulating gristle and fat and Konstantin sees them draped over the edge of the tub, as if maybe he'd reconsider them. Reconsider this. He swallows when he meets cool eyes and looks at the strips of unnecessary and stubborn muscle trying to fuse his legs together.
He choke and shrugs because Ash's everything practically screams for it. He can hear it all. Your tense shoulders and fingers never lie, the twitch of muscle like you want to reach out and grab it like a starving man. It's like having a thousand dollar cut of fucking sashimi laid out in front of you but you can't touch it. Can't eat it. Can't even lean in to smell how fresh it is off the fucking fish because that's weird
But they've done a lot of weird things over these past few weeks.
And Konstantin has forgotten about school, but he doesn't want to go back to sea. He just wants this to be over (the secret in his heart of hearts is this: it isn't going to be over. He is too much his father's son.) And so he breaks this silence, this contentious moment: ]
Eat it.
[ Nothing's stopping you. ]
I don't need it, [ he says, toned hushed, too loud even in a whisper against the bathroom walls. ] You can eat it.
cw: also gross, nothing in this thread will be worksafe. THERE I'M DONE.
-
Kon's not picked up the phone in a while. Rumor has it, he's gone to sea.
-
He doesn't realize the importance of this until Kon shows up at his doorstep, at his father's old doorstep, his shadow darkening the oak doorway like an omen. Ash has as much education as he has mothers - of which, he has none - but he knows what he sees. He trusts what he sees. And what he witnesses in front of him is this: that there is meat, and skin, and whole new flesh wrapped around Kon's knees and ankles, webs between his toes and fingers, a sheen to his skin like freshly cut pearls.
Konstantin knocks on Ash's door. He brought the sea with him.
-
I can cut it open, he offers, blunt as a hammer to the back of the head. You can't walk like this.
-
He cleans up around the house, despite confining Kon to the bathroom. He wipes down the dining table, for a distant later, and throws out the little expired cans of things in the one standing fridge still working. He drains the sinks, locks up the upstairs bedrooms, checks the piping and plumbing all over the house. At night, when the wind blows as hard as it can muster against the glass panes of the windows, the floorboards creak and cough up dust. Ash cleans that too, in the morning. He cleans the best he could, which is not by much, but it's effort - very little could clean up the dirt that the John house is soaked in, anyway.
Ash carries Kon to the basement bathroom, where they used to keep him with his mother. It's the safest place in the whole house. The bathroom is dark, with one dirty window high up along the wall, and the mirror has spider-like cracks running all over it. But the water runs clean in this bathroom, and the pipes can still handle heating, and there's enough room for a thrashing. D-rings hang above the showerhead; they've rusted over the years, but he has no doubts that they will hold.
This is good, he thinks.
This is good, he hopes.
-
Kon is drowning. Ash knows it's not what the seizing is called, that there's probably a five-syllable word for it that he doesn't know to spell or say, but that's how it looks to him. Kon is drowning, and Ash turns the faucet on as far as it can go, the water splashing all over the tile. There are long gashes along Kon's neck, small ones at the spaces of his ribs, and Ash pours water where the shower spray can't reach. He fills a bucket, tips it over Kon's head until it empties, then he fills it up again.
He pours all night, until every inch of the room is soaked, and the exposed cement floor beyond the door has gone damp from the water.
-
Are you hungry?
-
There are some apples still hanging from the trees outside. Some pears. A few berries here and there, and Ash picks them all, because the John estate, despite the ruin and decay it's suffered in the past few years, still survives like a pestilent weed. He brings them to Kon in a plastic bowl, leaves them by the tub when he thinks Kon is sleeping in the water.
When he comes back, he cleans up the mess where the fruits used to be.
-
Kon isn't eating. It's not the fruit his body is craving, Ash discerns, and so he goes to the river and fishes out something bloody, something still writhing, and drags them all with him in a bucket down to the basement. Here, he croaks, his voice unused and rough, I got you something. Fish eat fish, don't they? He sits at the edge of the tub and raises a large trout, fat and heavy, glistening at the gills. It struggles in his grasp, his coarse hands not built for holding it; when the trout attempts and near-succeeds in freeing itself from his hold he cuts along its fin by accident.
Sorry, he offers. Do you want me to go? Take them with me? You're throwing up fruit, you're not eating. You have to eat something.
In the end, a little frustrated, he leaves the room. Kon's a big boy. He'll eat or he won't, and Ash in his simple needs and desires will figure out what to do after that. He goes back upstairs where he's laid out the biggest, fattest fish he caught, the only one he kept for himself and guts it up on the dinner table. His reward for himself for not eating something with legs.
(It doesn't taste as good as he expects it to. Not salty enough. Not nearly bony enough. Not fat enough to spill sweetly in his mouth.)
-
How many teeth is that? In your mouth.
You can count them, if you want.
So he counts — seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four. Seventy-four teeth. Ash counts them all. Each tooth is smooth to the touch, like polished ivory, or the shiny fingers of a nail salon worker. Seventy-four small teeth, each one as sharp as a razor - his fingers are bled raw at the end.
They have to go, you know.
-
The ghost of his mother's hysteria echoes around him as he digs through the boxes of leftover sentiments left behind in the tool shed. His first shackles. His father's bone saw, the teeth worn down by his mother's shin bones. The tongue clamp, for when he's hungry and there isn't anything to eat. He finds his old teeth in one of the boxes taped up like a hazard. Written on the tape, in precise handwriting, is his father's name for him - John V. Ash finds the leather wrap he's looking for, and picks up the box.
(The slides it under his cot, along with his childhood shackles. Even monsters can feel melancholy, too.)
-
The first tooth is easy. Ash cradles Kon's jaw with callused fingers and pinches the tooth with small long-nose pliers, then wrenching it out with a twist. There's a wet, sucking crunch then the tooth pulls out; Ash drops it in a shell-shaped soap dish, where it leaves a pink trail on the ceramic. The next few handful aren't as easy. Hold still, he says, as he kneels with one knee over Kon, his other knee set squarely against Kon's sternum. He's leaning his weight on his knees, keeping him still - the back teeth won't come away with a simple twist. They resist him, the pliers, the brute strength of his arms. Ash considers asking if he can break Kon's jaw, to get on with it.
He doesn't break his jaw. But he would have. He could have. In a dark, rotting place in Ash's mind, his father coos; Good boy. My good little boy.
(In the stillness of four in the morning Ash creeps into the bathroom and sucks Kon's teeth clean. It's a perfect kind of sweetness on the tongue.)
(His mother would be shaking her head at him, right about now.)
-
Don't be like him. No matter what happens. Don't be like your father.
-
Eight days in and Ash brings in the knives, the scissors, the pinball hammer. Kon almost drowns him by accident; he still can't tell when he's asleep or awake, probably never will. But he brings the tools in, lays them out on a greying towel on top of the tile counter, and makes a promise.
This will hurt.
They start with his fingers. Ash stretches his fingers out, as wide as they would go, until they could see through the webbing. The flesh has receded, pulled back almost to an inch from the wrist, giving Kon's hands the illusion of having four or five knuckles a finger. Pinching the webbing between two fingers, the sinewy skin feels like a hardened gel, just soft enough to give but dried out to keep its shape.
Ash cuts between Kon's fingers with the smallest pair of scissors he can find, the webbing curling back like ribbons pulled taut, flicking tiny drops of blood across his face. It almost doesn't bother him. The drops dry out, these little flecks of red leaving behind a fragrant smell on him. Ash keeps cutting, until the fingers are done, and when the hands are taken care of Ash takes one wrist and raises it above their heads, clipping at the webbing stretched out between Kon's shoulder blades to his elbows. He cuts it all off, and hangs them over a towel rack to wash and dry.
(If Ash collects the blood in a pan left on the floor - if he takes it upstairs to boil with his soft meats and bone marrow for dinner - Kon doesn't have to know.)
-
On the tenth day, when Kon's back has healed over and his metacarpals are fusing back into the shape of a human hand, Ash starts to clip his fins. They're brittle, not soft like freshwater fish, and they crunch with every snip he makes. Kon flinches with every snip he makes, as he cuts closer and closer to the scaled roots. Later, they take a boning knife and carve out the soft bones the fins are attached to - so much blood spills out, Ash marvels, so much blood.
On the eleventh day he cracks open Robinson Crusoe, and reads imperfectly. Ash doesn't correct him even once.
-
How long do you think your intestines are?, Ash asks while peeling off scales, one at a time. Fish only have a couple feet, I read.
Do I look like fish?
You smell like one right now, as he digs the blade under a large one and pushes it out from under the skin. It comes off with a small pop. Let's keep this one. Kon splashes him while they're draining the water, and it's the first time since— it's the first time Ash almost laughs.
-
They start on the legs, and it's as bloody as Ash expected.
It takes days. Long nights, sleepless nights, that Ash sometimes sleeps on the tile with a knife in hand and snores for a few hours before getting back to it again. He washes his mouth with pink water when he gets thirsty; catches a rat or two when he gets hungry; he doesn't change his clothes for a number of days because the smell in the bathroom is gagging and he's constantly sopping wet, soaked cold that his body reacts by lowering his temperature as close as it can to his ghoulish nature. He sits on the brink, all throughout; he keeps a tight rein of it.
I'm a good boy. Who's a good boy? I am, father.
He uses the hammer sooner than expected. Ash peels the thin membrane covering Kon's legs, pock-marked from where they've been picking off scales, and it exposes baby-like skin underneath it. Pretty, Ash murmurs, wiping the muck off the skin, before picking up the hammer and swinging it down on Kon's feet.
Kon's screams echo through the basement - piercing, shrill, a human voice overlapped by a higher pitch that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Ash knows, from experience, that no one will hear any of this from the outside. So he swings again. He swings hard, crushing the bone, and with a pick he cuts through the muscle, pushing the bones into place by sheer force. For hours and hours on end, Ash forces Kon to endure - he doesn't ask him to cover his eyes, either. Blood splashes in small gouts onto Ash's face, staining his eyes, his hair and teeth; he carves out muscle and fat and bone, only stopping when the water has gone still, dangerously still.
And then they rest, waiting for Kon's flesh to heal - and if they heal the wrong way, or if Ash cuts up the wrong muscle, they start over again.
I need to take out your knee.
No, you don't.
Ash takes out his knee, anyway. He'd clipped a muscle too close, has to let it grow back again. It sets them back one day; one long, quiet, peaceful day.
-
The problem with Kon's legs is, the bones are trying to fuse into an extension of his spine. Vertebral bones are taking shape where his shin bones should be, and for each on, Ash chips them in half with a pick, seeking out the smooth uneven seam where one bone used to be two. Every bone is no more than five inches long; some are as small as a thumbnail, and just as fragile. Have you ever seen a fish cut in half at the fin? Imagine a man with one leg, and that leg chopped from the foot, neatly by the vertical half.
Ash works on it all day. All night. Falls asleep by the tub, the decorative shapes of the tub's legs imprinting on his lower back. By the time they make it to the tops of Kon's thighs, Ash hands the knives over to him. This part, I don't know too well.
Your turn.
-
It takes a little under two weeks before Kon has the beginnings of human legs - two misshapen limbs colored like a fading rainbow - healing under the water, and in two weeks they've accumulated bucketfuls of flesh and bone. It's like being in a butcher shop; the air has stopped stinking of mildew and faint iron, has begun smelling like the sweetness of a freshly chopped lamb, but saltier, tangier. If he licks his lips, Ash could taste the blood in the air - thick, cloying to human nose, but intensely heady and enticing to someone like him.
The splashing of the water, the soft gurgle of the open faucet's stream - it barely masks the pinched groan of Ash's belly at the sight. Like a shy young child he pets the flesh, watching it quiver; the fat of the thigh, he recognizes. He'd made the cut, after all. Fat drops of blood drip onto the tile, staining the nail beds of his bare feet - a waste, such a waste, when he could suck it up off his fingers and be as satisfied as he'll ever be.
He's not allowed to eat this. They'd agreed, that first time they met, a long time ago.
You don't eat people you like.
-
Ash lingers. Pulls his hand back. He's been a good, good boy.
-
You can eat it.
In the back of his mind, Ash sees his sickly brother, his sweet and naive little brother, sliced open from the belly up by Father. They're in the backyard, covered by the apple trees, the dark empty sky exposing the new moon in all its harsh loveliness - and spilling into the earth, his brother's blood and guts. Blood, black as nothing else in the moonlight. As dark as Father's eyes in that moment. You can eat it.
Be a good boy and don't be a waste like he is.
-
Ash blinks. Twice. The ceramic under his hands creak, threatening to break, and nails scratch against the polished surface in an ear-splitting pitch for a heartbeat. He bends his head, nuzzles against Kon's shoulder, thanking him quietly. Thank you.
(Father's whip. Mother's shackles. The bone saw. Say thank you.) ]
Thank you, [ he says again, and he means it this time, pulling one long strip off the makeshift rack and tearing through it with his teeth. Practically inhales it. He eats messily, blood painting all over his cheeks, getting into his nose, dripping down his neck in fresh red as his teeth push out and lengthen - the taste of flesh, human flesh - no matter how partial - forever indelible to the memory of a ghoul.
The hunger recognizes. The body adapts accordingly. Ash turns his back to Kon before picking up the bones and sucking them dry. ]
FINALLY DONE also i feel u edit comments
But is it really an accident when it's all you want in the struggle, with fingers sneaking their way around a throat in a bid that looks more confused and desperate instead of predatory. The amount of times Ash has gotten close enough that Kon could shove his head into the water and eat up the fight from his bones.
He'll tell him one day.
I wanted to kill you.
-
Ash is catching rats about as lean as he is.
He's breaking his bones. He's covered in his blood. He gives him the knife when he gets to the half-fused apex of his thighs and tells him that he'll need to take it from there. And Kon is looking at him through wet eyes, breathing slowed and rough before he turns the blade down and gets to work with slightly trembling hands.
-
There is so much blood. The tub is more blood than water at one point and Kon can barely breathe, throwing the knife onto the tile of the floor and shaking his head as he grabs for the sides of it with his hands. He's reaching out, grabbing Ash by his shirt with a bright red palm and yanking him close, like he might take him with him.
Refill, he half gasps. It's more blood, more gut, more garbage than water, and the slits against his ribs are stifled.
-
Ash falls asleep with the knife in his fingers at the base of the tub and Kon is singing soft waves into the bath of clean water, a soft, wavering set of notes, lips pressed against the echoing porcelain as he hears Ash trying to get comfortable on the floor.
He climbs up the side of the bath, shedding a little water on the tile and looks down, reaches down but can't touch the sharp jut of Ash's shoulder. He's tossing, shifting, uncomfortable, and Kon sings softly, the gentlest notes and trills he can manage before the shifting stops and the knife in Ash's fingers clatters out of a white-knuckled grip.
That's better.
-
You don't eat people you like.
But we make exceptions.
-
Ash's breath is warm on his shoulder when he gives him permission, a soft puff of relief, enough to make his hand come up out of the water, one of his fully reformed ones with fingertips fused back properly and the webbing from elbow to scapula receded to a thin line of a scar. I won't drown you, he says to himself, moreso than to Ash as he rests a hand on the back of his head, wet against the raze of closely-shorn hair. There's a thank you from him, soft with the touch of the tip of Ash's nose to his bare skin. He turns a little dipping his head halfway to brush the tip of his nose against his temples. He broke his knees in, pulled out his teeth, stripped the excess from his body and bore it all without a movement towards temptation. Kon couldn't get out of here, not like this. He can barely function without the water level touching just under his sternum--he'll asphyxiate, a fish out of water.
But shit.
Shit.
No one else would do this for him. No one has the stomach to. For all this blood, for ignoring everything he says when the knife comes down. That he isn't ready. That maybe they should stop. But he already warned Ash to ignore it. Don't let me turn away from this. This is what I want. At the end of the day, this is what I really want. So he watches Ash as he pulls one of the longer pieces of what might have been a tail off the rack, clutch it in his fingers desperately before going at it.
That's me.
That's me.
Ash turns away, like he's being polite, but there's nothing polite about this sort of exchange, this unspoken agreement they made, realizing he liked his teeth so much. You have teeth like me. You have eyes like me. We're not the same, but god if we aren't similar. But. politeness. Kon knows that's not possible in a time and place like this, and he just lowers himself on his hands the entire way down into the water, fingers bracing against the sides of the tub and legs breaking the surface of the water to brace the soles of his feet against the porcelain just above the surface. It's cold and his skin aches and the freshly put-together bone shudders at the exposure, but he can't right now
The now barely-there sounds of chewing exist on a level where he can ignore them.
You're welcome. You're always welcome.
When Ash is through with what meat is left hanging off the rack, still fresh at least, he surfaces, hair wet and clinging to the sides of his face. He motions for him to come close to the tub with his hand, close enough to lean down, close enough for Kon to run fingers over his bloodied cheek and clean his face up just a bit. Blood on his nose. On his mouth. On his chin. Ash is a messy eater, he's always know this. ] Whatever you take off me is yours, got it? [ he tells him, albeit, shakily as he washes his hands in the water and pulls back. ] Do whatever you want with it.
[ It's unspoken, but it's there: Just don't let me see you eat it. I can't watch you do it twice.
-
You take care of me.
I take care of you.
-
He holds his breath a beat. ]
Still hungry?
i think i can trace my recent raw fish obsession to this thread...
bits of bone
parts of a fin
small, sharp babyteeth.
(It's a good thing he heals quickly.)
-
Still hungry?
-
They first met— a long time ago. Ash thinks it's been a long time since, a distant mental landmark that's as fuzzy and warm as his memories of his father's hands are cold and demeaning. There are pieces that he recalls far clearly than others - Kon's shoulders stretching a worn blue tee, his bones peeking out from under the collar; the displaced scent of seasalt clinging to his knuckles; wide doe-like eyes that, for a long second, had freaked Ash out, so wide were they it felt like he could swim in them.
This bloody, broken, bruising body in his bath tub is likely the only friend Ash has ever had in his entire life. He ]
hi............... it me...
(this time, "drastic action" is grabbing someone at random from the crowd and laying a hell of a kiss on them.)
(last time, it was shoving someone out a sixteenth story window. times change.)
throwing someone off your trail by schmoozing the first viable stranger takes a hell of a lot of confidence, really good acting, and an eye that can pick out the stranger who won't shove you off the moment you lock lips with them. in the handful of second that it takes for him to size up and seize his intended accomplice, he's done his best to make himself look as appealing as possible, and this is how you do it: throw off the heavy hood, rest the chunky headphones and their cord wrapped once-twice around a slender throat, run fingers through hair to give it a tousle for that just-recently-banged-in-a-back-alley-chic. smile. always remember to smile.
smile, and lie until people believe that you're honest. give 'em a wink. give 'em a plea: ] Help a guy out.
[ make sure that you don't give them a chance to think with the wrong head, either. hook your fingers into the belt loops on their pants, fit your free hand against the tender nape of their neck before you lay it on them, and once you've got them locked, don't hold back. nothing kills the faux-mood more than obvious faux-kissing. use tongue, use teeth; give them a little sigh. this works, it works, it's always worked. ]
no subject
You are.
[ Ash talks to the dead. He thanks them, every day, for giving him something to eat, because his mother may have been a proper ghoul but she was one who understood manners too. Sometimes, when a body's freshly died, Ash can actually talk to them - he sees the outlines of their ghosts reflected on the metal beds. Some of them get mad. Some of them make small "oh"s, as if resigned to their fates.
The fact of it is: yes, sometimes the noises of the living can wake the dead. Luckily, nothing's on the table today. Pun wholly intended. ]
You don't wanna wake the dead.
OH NO I LOVE THIS
Mental note: just take it for what it is. ]
I'll take them into consideration next time, [ it's as sincere as he can make it sound really, moving inside. Maybe there's a hint still-present dubiousness. ] What happens if I do?
no subject
[ There's a toothpick sticking out from between Ash's lips, the visible end already frayed from being gnawed on. On the doctor's little table, where stacks of paperwork are piled high, are two little bottles; one for aspirin, one for toothpicks. Ash's loopy scrawl is visible on the toothpick one, the A of his name stretching wide across the greying plastic surface.
Little bits of home, for a homeless man. Ash puts away the cleaning rag, a fading teal color, on a metal rack lingering awkwardly in the hall, and takes out a brand new, orange microfiber, all-cleaning branded... piece of shit, far as he's concerned. It's a rag. It cost the morgue four dollars more than the older, cheaper ones. ]
That's how you get monsters on the news. Everyone's just woken up, and then someone brings a gun out. Pffff, [ he makes finger-guns, while approximating the sound and gesture of a flamethrower being switched on. ]
txt.
Dude.
What the HECK.
(Before you ask, she made it across.)
oh no
she was complaining about a headache. i helped.
u done goofed
rood!!! is me
[ it's your fault you broke her sense of safety! ]
no subject
And I, unfortunately, am not that bendy. I can't reach out from under the bed AND have an arm around her.
no subject
[ your faith in kon is overreaching, ash. it really is. ]
is she coming back?
no subject
She might text? I don't know. I think we freaked her out pretty good.
[ typical. but he can't stay mad. annoyed, yes. angry, no. ]
Wanna watch a movie?