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rainbowfic2015-08-06 05:20 am
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2015-08-06 05:20 am
Chromophilia, Milk Bottle 18
Name: starphotographs
Story: Corwin and Friends
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Milk Bottle, Summer Carnival), Miniature Collection Saturation, Glitter (http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/when-i-rise)
Characters: Spenser, some cameos
Colors: Chromophilia, Milk Bottle 18 (Daredevil)
Word Count: 2,300ish
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Scenes from an average day during Spenser’s hitman phase.
Note: I’ve been working on this concurrently with other stuff. Also, I swear that poem was indeed the poem of the day during some of that time and informed some segments. (I also swear I Googled all those -philias to the best of my ability! If I somehow find out I fucked up, I’ll do them over. :P)
25-Hour Days
Ablutophilia
I waited for the public pool to open, and I snuck in. Not to go swimming, but to use the showers. Last week's sweat, last night's dry blood and burning-flesh smell, all filling up my head at once, making it impossible to concentrate on anything.
The water pounding on my skin has a similar effect, but in that case, it's more than welcome.
I need this break from myself more than I've ever needed anything.
I need a way to keep the days from running together.
Tachophilia
Driving is one of my favorite things about being alive. I don't even need to be going anywhere.
All I need is enough open road to floor the gas. To never have to put on the breaks.
Or, enough timid drivers and negligent cops. Same difference. I'm going just as fast either way, and my heart is up in my throat, like gravity reversed itself. Like my body is anticipating some great drop. Buddy, I wish.
They honk; I wave.
Such a goddamn beautiful day!
Cainophilia
Just driving is always enough, until it isn't. Because I always remember that I race around like this, every single fucking day. Which makes it feel like I'm going to keep doing it, for the rest of my life. No escape from monotony. A breakneck roadtrip into the abyss.
Fuck, I need something good to do.
Or even something shitty. Just something new.
I don't need to be entertained.
I need to know that life still has something to offer me.
Bibliophilia
I end up in the library, not entirely sure if this is one I got kicked out of while I was living out of my car and didn't have another place to check my work e-mail.
Oh well. They probably don't even remember me.
Here in the library, life has too much to offer. It was complete information overload before I even cracked my first book. Which took a while. I had a low-key nervous breakdown over picking something.
Eventually, I made a choice and sat down, but by then, I was almost too wound-up to read.
I read anyway.
Xeroxophilia
I took some copies from the book. Not because I wanted to read them later, though I guess I probably would, eventually.
No, I did it so I could smell the ozone wafting out of the machine. Feel that sting in my nose, that shiver up my spine. Those thunderheads rolling in and clouding my brain.
Eventually, it disperses. Either that, or I sucked it all up. I sniff one last time, wanting to get a chemically whiff of the ink, before it dries out and dies.
If you ask me, that was a pretty good use of a quarter.
Sciophilia
It was too hot to be outside. I also didn't have any excuse to be inside. And my car was claustrophobic and smelled. I couldn't bear even the thought of it. It made me want to vomit.
Plus, the air conditioning doesn't even work, so it's kind of a moot point.
I went to the park and sat under a tree, thinking, I'm in pretty bad shape, if I'm waiting for the sun to go down when it isn't even noon.
Philophilia
"Hey, ya big doof! I haven't seen you around in a while!"
It was Mischa. We hadn't been involved since we were kids, but sometimes, we ran into each other, and when that happened, it was wonderful.
She took me out for lunch, like she always did when we met up.
When it was time to say goodbye, I couldn't. I had to leave it to her.
Sometimes, I wished she still loved me.
Probably just because I wish I knew if anyone liked me at all.
Also, I hadn't been eating, and she finally fed me, so there's that.
Prosophilia
Whenever I miss something about the past, I remind myself that what I really love is the future. I love possibilities. I love not knowing what's going to happen.
As much as I like Mischa, our story is already written. That's the boring part. The past is always the boring part, no matter what you left back there. Who the hell needs it? If I can't build or fix or change something, it's worthless to me.
By those standards, the past is the most worthless thing of all.
At least, that's what I tell myself.
Geliophilia
Most of the time, I can think myself out of any given shitty feeling. And usually, when I do, I end up thinking of something funny, so the emotional release every nerve in my body had been building towards comes out as hysterical laughter.
Hysterical laughter, when, just a few seconds ago, I'd been ready to start smashing windows or throw myself on the ground crying.
It was weird enough when it happened in private, but in public...
...Actually, I don't give a shit.
I laughed myself out, right there on the park bench.
Soon enough, I was feeling great.
Cenophilia
Finally, I felt like I could face down my car. It was still tiny and hot, and it still stank, but I’d gotten the fuck over myself.
And I ended up driving out to the middle of bumfuck nowhere for no other reason but that I freaking felt like it, and no one could stop me.
I sat on the hood of my car. The dry, packed earth sprawled out in all directions, the horizon naked and flat, a sharp line.
Everything was so still. I felt like I could step outside myself and breathe.
Mechanophilia
Too much stillness calms me down, but it always winds me right back up again.
I needed to see something. Do something. Remind myself I was really there.
So I got out my on-the-go toolbox and started working on my car.
Nothing in particular is wrong. it's just the sort of rattly old mess that needs a good tightening up now and then.
I tightened everything. Hard.
Started the car, let its newly smooth and quiet vibrations sink in.
My hands were black and gritty and real.
Satisfied with my effectiveness and corporeality, I finally let myself exhale.
Brontophilia
I was about to turn around and head back to civilization when I heard it:
The first stirrings of thunder.
I screeched to a stop, and sat back down on the hood. I could almost feel it coming closer. Smell that copy-machine smell.
Before I knew it, I was drenched. I didn't care. I had to keep watching; keep listening.
Had to brace myself, in case the lightning finds me.
Literally any one of these seconds could be my last second on Earth.
Before the force that pulled me together finally rips me apart.
Hagiophilia
I stayed still, just watching the storm, for what felt like a while.
Then a bolt hit the ground, bright enough to blind me, loud enough to put a ring in my ears.
Not even a mile away.
I had to get going, while I could still place it. Something was waiting for me.
There was a hole in the dirt.
I dug all around it, until I could grasp something hard. Something solid and gritty.
Glass.
I'd take it home, and I'd stare at it whenever I was feeling like shit.
This is what the world has to offer.
Textophilia
I floored the pedal on the way back to town, just trying to see how fast I could go. Windows rolled all the way down, me trying to soak in the last of that ozone smell.
The wind was whipping through my shirt, making it rub and slap against the frayed nerves on my back.
I wanted to go even faster; feel the misfires light me up from the inside, fill me with a warm sodium glow.
Thousands of tiny bolts, carving out a bolt-shaped trench in my back. Reminding me that I'm just another crooked cylinder of lightning glass.
Zelophilia
Some guy I knew back when I was cagefighting texted me, trying to invite me to a party. I decided I needed to go to a party. The sun was getting low in the sky. I couldn't be alone in the dark.
So I went to the fucking party.
The guy who invited me was wearing a shirt advertising some kind of meat restaurant. It featured an anthropomorphic steak eating a regular steak.
I thought it was hilarious, and kept asking to buy it off him.
He thought I was insane, and kept telling me, hell no.
Isolophilia
Just as I'd decided I needed to go to that party, I made up my needed to leave.
Too much was happening at once. I was starting to get disoriented.
Usually, I was okay with having a lot of shit going on, and actually thrived on chaos, so this was weird. I didn't know if I should be worried or not.
Then again, I wasn't even together enough to worry. Or do much of anything, besides sitting with my head on the steering wheel, knuckles white, breathing hard, trying not to scatter apart.
Lygophilia
I didn't know what to do.
For some reason, I ended up locking myself in a convenience store bathroom. Sitting right down on that filthy floor, flicking off the light.
Here, I could pretend I didn't exist.
And that really did seem like the problem, existing and all.
Not doing anything made me restless. Doing too much made me feel out of control. Being around people overwhelmed me. I was terrified of being alone. Small spaces and huge expanses both seemed calming, but just as much like minefields of existential dread.
I could feel my head ripping itself in half.
Koniophilia
You won't feel like this forever. You can’t.
Some day, you'll be down in the cold dirt, and you'll dissolve until there isn't a you to feel anything at all.
It'll end. Everything ends. That's the only constant.
Matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but you sure as shit can be. Please, by god, remember this. That you can be destroyed.
The lightning will come.
The lightning will come.
It can unmake you.
When the time comes, let yourself be unmade.
You're so fucking sick of this shit.
Just let yourself be unmade.
Hypsophilia
I kept trying to find a place that felt okay, and somehow ended up at the top of a parking garage.
For a few minutes, it was perfect. I could see everything that was going on for miles around. The whole world laid out so I could find where I was and get my bearings.
Then I kept imagining my feet acting on their own and walking off the edge.
Fuck, is nowhere safe?
Well, no. I always made damn sure of that.
So I drove back down the coil, before I could throw myself over the wall.
Ranophilia
In the end, the only thing I could think to do was call Tyler and ask him if I could hang out for a while.
Really, I didn't need to ask. Tyler always wants to hang out.
When I got there, he showed me his new frog.
Frogs always looked so serene and optimistic. I wished I could be like that.
I held the little critter in my cupped palms and studied his face intently.
Teach me your ways, oh wise one!
Dipsophilia
I wasn't in the mood to drink, but I figured having beer with Tyler was a normal thing, would make me feel normal, so I took him up on the offer.
For a while, things seemed alright. We watched some stupid movie, laughed a lot. Normal things. But then, the movie was over, and the beer wore off, and Tyler wanted me the hell out of his house so he could get a good night's sleep.
If I'm not having one, why the fuck should you, jerk?
And just like that, I was back where I started.
Eleutherophilia
On the way home, I remembered that, in my abandon, in my excitement at spending an hour with someone who wanted to be around me, even as I am now…
...I used a fucking fork while I was at the cafe with Mischa.
And now my spit was just lying around where anyone could find it.
Find it, and know everything I've done, and track me down, and lock me up. Shut me in a room, and leave me to pace the floor and punch the walls until I've worn myself down to ragged, bloody Nothing.
Dikephilia
Go ahead. Do what you have to.
I'm over it.
Let everyone know what I did. Hang me high; break me on the wheel. Burn me at the stake. Strap me in the chair. Tie me to a tree so the vultures can pick me apart like Prometheus. Give me to a surgeon so he can carve me open and practice. Use my eviscerated corpse as a crash-test dummy.
I'm not picky anymore.
Just don't make it easy on me.
That's all I ask.
Algophilia
Getting home didn't change a fucking thing.
Which could be because I literally live under a bridge, but fuck, I know myself, and I know I could feel like this anywhere, doing anything.
I can't get away.
By now, I've been awake so long, I got it in my head that I could probably melt my arm. And I got the soldering gun and tried my best, but it didn't work.
Either because it's impossible, or because I just couldn't stand it long enough.
I think to myself, next time.
Siderophilia
What can you say? I was exhausted.
I was lying flat on my back in the dirt, staring at the sky.
Soon, the sun would be up, and I'd have to do it all again.
But for now, all I could see were stars, shining with the energy that held me together.
They reminded me I was so small that, basically, I already didn't exist. That the world would hold me in place.
That I couldn't really lose control.
And that made everything alright.
From down here, the universe looks huge. Full of potential.
Such a goddamn beautiful day!
starphotographsStory: Corwin and Friends
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Milk Bottle, Summer Carnival), Miniature Collection Saturation, Glitter (http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/when-i-rise)
Characters: Spenser, some cameos
Colors: Chromophilia, Milk Bottle 18 (Daredevil)
Word Count: 2,300ish
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Scenes from an average day during Spenser’s hitman phase.
Note: I’ve been working on this concurrently with other stuff. Also, I swear that poem was indeed the poem of the day during some of that time and informed some segments. (I also swear I Googled all those -philias to the best of my ability! If I somehow find out I fucked up, I’ll do them over. :P)
I waited for the public pool to open, and I snuck in. Not to go swimming, but to use the showers. Last week's sweat, last night's dry blood and burning-flesh smell, all filling up my head at once, making it impossible to concentrate on anything.
The water pounding on my skin has a similar effect, but in that case, it's more than welcome.
I need this break from myself more than I've ever needed anything.
I need a way to keep the days from running together.
Driving is one of my favorite things about being alive. I don't even need to be going anywhere.
All I need is enough open road to floor the gas. To never have to put on the breaks.
Or, enough timid drivers and negligent cops. Same difference. I'm going just as fast either way, and my heart is up in my throat, like gravity reversed itself. Like my body is anticipating some great drop. Buddy, I wish.
They honk; I wave.
Such a goddamn beautiful day!
Just driving is always enough, until it isn't. Because I always remember that I race around like this, every single fucking day. Which makes it feel like I'm going to keep doing it, for the rest of my life. No escape from monotony. A breakneck roadtrip into the abyss.
Fuck, I need something good to do.
Or even something shitty. Just something new.
I don't need to be entertained.
I need to know that life still has something to offer me.
I end up in the library, not entirely sure if this is one I got kicked out of while I was living out of my car and didn't have another place to check my work e-mail.
Oh well. They probably don't even remember me.
Here in the library, life has too much to offer. It was complete information overload before I even cracked my first book. Which took a while. I had a low-key nervous breakdown over picking something.
Eventually, I made a choice and sat down, but by then, I was almost too wound-up to read.
I read anyway.
I took some copies from the book. Not because I wanted to read them later, though I guess I probably would, eventually.
No, I did it so I could smell the ozone wafting out of the machine. Feel that sting in my nose, that shiver up my spine. Those thunderheads rolling in and clouding my brain.
Eventually, it disperses. Either that, or I sucked it all up. I sniff one last time, wanting to get a chemically whiff of the ink, before it dries out and dies.
If you ask me, that was a pretty good use of a quarter.
It was too hot to be outside. I also didn't have any excuse to be inside. And my car was claustrophobic and smelled. I couldn't bear even the thought of it. It made me want to vomit.
Plus, the air conditioning doesn't even work, so it's kind of a moot point.
I went to the park and sat under a tree, thinking, I'm in pretty bad shape, if I'm waiting for the sun to go down when it isn't even noon.
"Hey, ya big doof! I haven't seen you around in a while!"
It was Mischa. We hadn't been involved since we were kids, but sometimes, we ran into each other, and when that happened, it was wonderful.
She took me out for lunch, like she always did when we met up.
When it was time to say goodbye, I couldn't. I had to leave it to her.
Sometimes, I wished she still loved me.
Probably just because I wish I knew if anyone liked me at all.
Also, I hadn't been eating, and she finally fed me, so there's that.
Whenever I miss something about the past, I remind myself that what I really love is the future. I love possibilities. I love not knowing what's going to happen.
As much as I like Mischa, our story is already written. That's the boring part. The past is always the boring part, no matter what you left back there. Who the hell needs it? If I can't build or fix or change something, it's worthless to me.
By those standards, the past is the most worthless thing of all.
At least, that's what I tell myself.
Most of the time, I can think myself out of any given shitty feeling. And usually, when I do, I end up thinking of something funny, so the emotional release every nerve in my body had been building towards comes out as hysterical laughter.
Hysterical laughter, when, just a few seconds ago, I'd been ready to start smashing windows or throw myself on the ground crying.
It was weird enough when it happened in private, but in public...
...Actually, I don't give a shit.
I laughed myself out, right there on the park bench.
Soon enough, I was feeling great.
Finally, I felt like I could face down my car. It was still tiny and hot, and it still stank, but I’d gotten the fuck over myself.
And I ended up driving out to the middle of bumfuck nowhere for no other reason but that I freaking felt like it, and no one could stop me.
I sat on the hood of my car. The dry, packed earth sprawled out in all directions, the horizon naked and flat, a sharp line.
Everything was so still. I felt like I could step outside myself and breathe.
Too much stillness calms me down, but it always winds me right back up again.
I needed to see something. Do something. Remind myself I was really there.
So I got out my on-the-go toolbox and started working on my car.
Nothing in particular is wrong. it's just the sort of rattly old mess that needs a good tightening up now and then.
I tightened everything. Hard.
Started the car, let its newly smooth and quiet vibrations sink in.
My hands were black and gritty and real.
Satisfied with my effectiveness and corporeality, I finally let myself exhale.
I was about to turn around and head back to civilization when I heard it:
The first stirrings of thunder.
I screeched to a stop, and sat back down on the hood. I could almost feel it coming closer. Smell that copy-machine smell.
Before I knew it, I was drenched. I didn't care. I had to keep watching; keep listening.
Had to brace myself, in case the lightning finds me.
Literally any one of these seconds could be my last second on Earth.
Before the force that pulled me together finally rips me apart.
I stayed still, just watching the storm, for what felt like a while.
Then a bolt hit the ground, bright enough to blind me, loud enough to put a ring in my ears.
Not even a mile away.
I had to get going, while I could still place it. Something was waiting for me.
There was a hole in the dirt.
I dug all around it, until I could grasp something hard. Something solid and gritty.
Glass.
I'd take it home, and I'd stare at it whenever I was feeling like shit.
This is what the world has to offer.
I floored the pedal on the way back to town, just trying to see how fast I could go. Windows rolled all the way down, me trying to soak in the last of that ozone smell.
The wind was whipping through my shirt, making it rub and slap against the frayed nerves on my back.
I wanted to go even faster; feel the misfires light me up from the inside, fill me with a warm sodium glow.
Thousands of tiny bolts, carving out a bolt-shaped trench in my back. Reminding me that I'm just another crooked cylinder of lightning glass.
Some guy I knew back when I was cagefighting texted me, trying to invite me to a party. I decided I needed to go to a party. The sun was getting low in the sky. I couldn't be alone in the dark.
So I went to the fucking party.
The guy who invited me was wearing a shirt advertising some kind of meat restaurant. It featured an anthropomorphic steak eating a regular steak.
I thought it was hilarious, and kept asking to buy it off him.
He thought I was insane, and kept telling me, hell no.
Just as I'd decided I needed to go to that party, I made up my needed to leave.
Too much was happening at once. I was starting to get disoriented.
Usually, I was okay with having a lot of shit going on, and actually thrived on chaos, so this was weird. I didn't know if I should be worried or not.
Then again, I wasn't even together enough to worry. Or do much of anything, besides sitting with my head on the steering wheel, knuckles white, breathing hard, trying not to scatter apart.
I didn't know what to do.
For some reason, I ended up locking myself in a convenience store bathroom. Sitting right down on that filthy floor, flicking off the light.
Here, I could pretend I didn't exist.
And that really did seem like the problem, existing and all.
Not doing anything made me restless. Doing too much made me feel out of control. Being around people overwhelmed me. I was terrified of being alone. Small spaces and huge expanses both seemed calming, but just as much like minefields of existential dread.
I could feel my head ripping itself in half.
You won't feel like this forever. You can’t.
Some day, you'll be down in the cold dirt, and you'll dissolve until there isn't a you to feel anything at all.
It'll end. Everything ends. That's the only constant.
Matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but you sure as shit can be. Please, by god, remember this. That you can be destroyed.
The lightning will come.
The lightning will come.
It can unmake you.
When the time comes, let yourself be unmade.
You're so fucking sick of this shit.
Just let yourself be unmade.
I kept trying to find a place that felt okay, and somehow ended up at the top of a parking garage.
For a few minutes, it was perfect. I could see everything that was going on for miles around. The whole world laid out so I could find where I was and get my bearings.
Then I kept imagining my feet acting on their own and walking off the edge.
Fuck, is nowhere safe?
Well, no. I always made damn sure of that.
So I drove back down the coil, before I could throw myself over the wall.
In the end, the only thing I could think to do was call Tyler and ask him if I could hang out for a while.
Really, I didn't need to ask. Tyler always wants to hang out.
When I got there, he showed me his new frog.
Frogs always looked so serene and optimistic. I wished I could be like that.
I held the little critter in my cupped palms and studied his face intently.
Teach me your ways, oh wise one!
I wasn't in the mood to drink, but I figured having beer with Tyler was a normal thing, would make me feel normal, so I took him up on the offer.
For a while, things seemed alright. We watched some stupid movie, laughed a lot. Normal things. But then, the movie was over, and the beer wore off, and Tyler wanted me the hell out of his house so he could get a good night's sleep.
If I'm not having one, why the fuck should you, jerk?
And just like that, I was back where I started.
On the way home, I remembered that, in my abandon, in my excitement at spending an hour with someone who wanted to be around me, even as I am now…
...I used a fucking fork while I was at the cafe with Mischa.
And now my spit was just lying around where anyone could find it.
Find it, and know everything I've done, and track me down, and lock me up. Shut me in a room, and leave me to pace the floor and punch the walls until I've worn myself down to ragged, bloody Nothing.
Go ahead. Do what you have to.
I'm over it.
Let everyone know what I did. Hang me high; break me on the wheel. Burn me at the stake. Strap me in the chair. Tie me to a tree so the vultures can pick me apart like Prometheus. Give me to a surgeon so he can carve me open and practice. Use my eviscerated corpse as a crash-test dummy.
I'm not picky anymore.
Just don't make it easy on me.
That's all I ask.
Getting home didn't change a fucking thing.
Which could be because I literally live under a bridge, but fuck, I know myself, and I know I could feel like this anywhere, doing anything.
I can't get away.
By now, I've been awake so long, I got it in my head that I could probably melt my arm. And I got the soldering gun and tried my best, but it didn't work.
Either because it's impossible, or because I just couldn't stand it long enough.
I think to myself, next time.
What can you say? I was exhausted.
I was lying flat on my back in the dirt, staring at the sky.
Soon, the sun would be up, and I'd have to do it all again.
But for now, all I could see were stars, shining with the energy that held me together.
They reminded me I was so small that, basically, I already didn't exist. That the world would hold me in place.
That I couldn't really lose control.
And that made everything alright.
From down here, the universe looks huge. Full of potential.
Such a goddamn beautiful day!
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no subject
Wait, yes I did.
...
Lightning X Spenser = OTP
:X
Also, yay frogs.
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no subject