Hope you enjoy and have a deliciously happy Halloween!
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Sooo, I NEVER want to ever hear anyone say shit like a woman was asking to be harassed or assaulted because of what she wears or how she looks. I also NEVER want to hear about how women need to ridiculously adjust their actions to make themselves safe or avoid danger.
Tonight, I spent hours cleaning out my pantry. At 8:30, I went to throw the massive amounts of trash living in the same place for 22 years inevitably builds up. There was a creepy guy standing outside by the dumpsters. Just standing there. Not smoking. Not seeming to be waiting for someone. Just standing in the shadows next to the place I had to go.
So, trying to not blow the situation out of proportion despite the creepy vibes, I just grab the two over-stuffed bags of trash over my shoulders and give him as wide a berth as possible.
“Big bags for such a little girl.”
Not exactly a pickup line, but still giving me even more creepy vibes. “Yep.” I quickly throw my bags into the dumpsters and turn around, painfully aware that I have six more bags of trash waiting for me in front of my apartment door. I slip my keys between my knuckles and rush for the door.
I see my neighbors wave at me as they get out of their car. I wave back before heading to my apartment, where I stare at the bags of trash I still need to bring down to the dumpsters.
I hear a knock on my door. I see my neighbor there with her partner and she asks me to do her a favor and let her son take my trash down to the dumpsters. Then she tells me that the reason she’d waved was because the creepy man had started to follow behind me.
It was 8:30 in my apartment parking lot. I was in my dad’s old boxers, an old puffy ski jacket, a scrunchy, and not a bit of makeup, not even lipgloss. I’m covered in three-months of leg hair and twenty-two years’ worth of dust, carrying literal trash. And I needed my neighbors, their son, and keys tucked like makeshift brass knuckles to feel safe in my own home.
What’s worse is that now I have to wonder what the guy was doing there. Has he noticed me taking out the trash everyday for a week? Will he be there tomorrow?
No one asks for this. No one wants this. That’s the exact point the women in your life are trying to make: these creeps are not waiting to be asked. They are not asking. That’s precisely what makes them creeps. And it doesn’t really matter what we wear or do, we have to live in a world where, some days, it collectively takes neighbors, their sons, and weaponized keys to throw your trash.
- The passion in Kyle’s eyes, the fire of it in his gaze, gives Juli a thrill even as he stands frozen in front of her. Sliding her hand past his shoulder, her wrist touches his skin. Flesh to flesh, she looks at the contrast between them. The way hers, a swirl of colors like an oil slick, looks against his. The feel of her skin, thicker but smoother, against his more delicate flesh, covered in hair—some thick and coarse, others barely there like fine down—and bumps and scars. While he likes to trace the color patterns of her skin, painting her with his fingers, learning the art of her, she likes to read his past in every mark on his body.
- Betsy loves Halloween. When you grow up feeling ordinary, there’s something thrilling about being able to put on a costume and become magical. This day gives everyone the space to forget who they are and become whoever and whatever they want to be. And she knows that Dona never really got that as a child. Betsy remembers being horrified when she heard that Dona’s family never celebrate the holiday. She supposes that, as extraterrestrials, when you live your life as something extraordinary, dressing up as ghosts and witches and devils must seem lame, at best, and—considering all the little green men costumes she’d seen as a child—offensive, at worst.
- Danielle bit her lip. Hmmm. “What if,” she mused as she looked about his room, looking for some kind of inspiration.
Her eyes lit up as she noticed his screensaver had switched to a brightly colored image of some comic heroine. The buff and busty beauty stood tits-out and confident, ready to take on the world.
“If I had superpowers,” she asked idly, not entirely sure where she was going with this, “what ones would you give me?”
He gave a snort as he pushed up his glasses, giving her a strange, assessing look over his lenses. “Really?” he asked, looking her up and down.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “C’mon,” she encouraged, holding her breath, just hoping that he’d play along, “role play with me.”
- But, since the election, the Burle-Q girls had been performing as The Risen, sexy Rosen-supporting zombies who shimmy and shamble aimlessly over the stage losing limbs and clothes throughout the dance. A real crowd pleaser.
Stripped of my usual conservative suit or Stepford sweater set, I hardly look like myself. With ample cleavage showing and my long legs exposed by the torn “We Shall Rise” dress, the woman I’d been earlier that day—the prim and proper campaign aide—all but disappeared. With the dark wig and heavy makeup, I couldn’t recognize myself at all.
I adjust my props—a detachable zombie arm and breast—and rush out of the dressing room to the stage wings.
Elin hands out mic packs and says in a hushed whisper, “Good luck, girls, knock ‘em dead.”
- I climb over your vulnerable, exposed body, locking my feet around your ankles and knees. My hands press against your shoulders and grip your face. I lean over you, letting you stare into all six of my eyes and feel my breath puff hot on your cheeks between my fangs. “Do you have any idea what I could do to you right now?” What, at a time in my life, I would have, without question or hesitation. Without regret and with sincere pleasure.
- It would have a tail, she decided, and fins—scaly and razor-sharp. Its slick, slimy body would flick quick and impatient around the well’s rounded walls, waiting. But for what? she wondered. Was it trapped in the crumbling stone or just hiding, safe in the cool shelter of shadows, out of the grey-skied humidity that held her hostage in this heavy anticipation she begged would break?
- “So what are you going to do?” he asked, nodding to her as she shuffled the deck. “Do I pick a card, any card?”
With a flick of her hands, she shuffled the rest of the cards. “We’re going to play a game.” She flipped the top card in the deck and flashed the eight of hearts. “Basic high card, low card,” she said. “Beat my card,” she said, flipping the next to reveal the jack of spades, “and I’ll take something off.”
He swallowed hard as his gaze shifted south. He liked those rules. “And if I don’t?” he asked.
“Then you do,” she answered simply.
That was a magic trick?
Looking at her, sitting cross-legged across from him, her soft thighs parted and her posture welcoming.
Yeah, maybe it was a kind of magic.
- “Tell me.” Her voice, hoarse and hushed, whispered into the sightless, scopeless space Eli no longer recognized as his room. Without his glasses, the witching hour had warped his pitch-black bedroom, distorting the familiar shapes and scales into strange shades of themselves.
“Say it.” Her tone tightened as he felt Her lean in closer. Her hot breath felt wet as it fluttered against his shivering skin. He bit his lip to seal the words back, blood touching his tongue sharp and metallic like a sacrifice.
He wouldn’t say it. Couldn’t.
Lord knew, he shouldn’t.
“I can make you,” She murmured with a biting sweetness that sunk sharp as the nails that scratched and scored his scalp. “You know I can.”
Utterly unwillingly, he loved Her.
- Mac found San undeniably beautiful, from head to toe. But there were places on her body—along her upper arms and shoulders, snaking up her thighs and hips, even over the bridges of her feet—that felt off limits to him, where red scars scoured her skin in intricate patterns like delicately woven barbed wire. Most of the time, he didn’t think about them. But, the moment he touched them or looked at them too long, his thoughts felt caught.
And it wasn’t as if they made her less attractive. On the contrary. Everything about them, from the sight and feel of them—even just knowing they existed, so often hidden beneath her clothes—almost seemed to call to him.
Which scared him.“Do they hurt?”
She shrugged, causing her shoulder to touch his fingers. He felt the connection like an icy shock. “Power like that lingers.” She said it so nonchalantly.
He shook his head. “So you just live with the pain?”
Her scoff held centuries. “Doesn’t everyone?”
- The Iron Bull felt more than saw Dorian step closer. He peered up at the man who stood tall near the bed. The perspective from below was weird and made him feel more than a little uneasy. “It’s a simple question, Bull.” The mage smiled sadly as he touched the Bull’s beard roughened cheek, lifting his face up gently and straightening his spine until they looked at each other eye-to-eye. He gave him a pointed look. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about me touching you.” Dorian let his hand slide down over the Bull’s chest, brushing over his nipples. “My hands on your body.” His voice lowered as his fingers dipped low to stroke his thigh. “The taste of you on my tongue.”
- No one had told her, while Tiana was busy building her fairytale—with her fancy restaurant, her handsome prince, and her dreams and hard work—that anything included a lot of things. Not all of which were what you’d wished for.Or discover my dark Disney fanfic "A Life Lived" that imagines what happens to Belle after her storybook tale ends.
So here she was. Rich. Successful. In a dress not even her talented seamstress mother could have dreamed of. Skulking around the cemetery during the witching hour.
Where anything can happen.
- She wasn’t a princess. Didn’t want to be a princess.
Maybe everyone was right, maybe she was odd. But she didn’t want this. Didn’t want any of it. Didn’t want to be kept in this castle while people twisted up her hair and dressed her up like a doll.
And still, all that would still be tolerable, would have been worth getting through, if she’d still had her Beast. If she’d still had the one who'd marveled at the world like he were meeting it for the first time. Whose curiosity had sparked her own. Who made life feel new again. There was so very little she wouldn’t put up with for that.
But, somewhere in the loss of the spell, while her Beast became a man, he’d changed.