Elliott Dunstan

1.10 – Cassandra – Sure

November 25th, 2020

Song: Derse Dreamers by Jeremy “Solatrus” Iamurri (Homestuck)

in which we hide from consequences ˑ tell me the truth ˑ cassandra should be leaving

Cassandra wakes up slowly, to the realization that somebody else is in the room with her. She thinks, perhaps, it might be Will – no, that’s not right. She hopes, but knows it isn’t, because some part of her is still dreaming of the twin she’s supposed to have. But Will doesn’t care enough to be holding a low but urgent phone conversation mentioning how injured she is.

“-look, you know, you know I wouldn’t be asking this of you if it wasn’t a problem. I can’t exactly take her to the hospital, Robin.”

She slowly levers herself upward from the sofa cushions. It’s interesting. She’s sold her ability to feel pain, but it means everything else is so much more present. It’s not painful to be sore; but it’s uncomfortable how stiff and sore her shoulders. It’s not painful, exactly, to be dizzy; it’s just disorienting and confusing.

The person on the phone glances over their shoulder, then gives them a small smile. They’re Black, with locs hanging down over their shoulders in shades of black and purple, and wearing a dark, pinstriped dress shirt that certainly wants to look like it’s made of silk, but is probably a cheaper material. Cassandra hates knowing things like that. It’s not like it matters.

“I… assume you’re Avery.”

Avery says a quick goodbye into the phone, then hangs up, eyes warm. “Yeah, that’s me. And you’re, uh, Will’s sister, right?”

“Twin sister. Not that most people guess that.” Cassandra’s beyond making self-deprecating jokes about being fat – that particular coping mechanism only lasted through her grade eight year – but it’s tempting as Avery raises their eyebrow.

“Nah, I can see it in the face. Also, the way you talk.”

Now it’s Cassandra’s turn to be surprised. “We don’t talk anything alike.”

“You’d be surprised.” Then Avery sits at the end of the couch, giving Cassandra a searching, careful look. “Aren’t you supposed to be a long, long way away from here by now?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I have a police scanner in my car. And I know enough about Willow to pay attention when a house in New Edinburgh goes up in flames.” Avery folds their hands over their lap. “You must know what it’ll look like when they can’t find your body.”

“Yes. I don’t care.”

“You should care enough to be long out of the city by now.”

“And look guilty?”

“Fleeing at all makes it look worse.”

“I don’t care about that, either.”

Avery frowns, uncertainty flashing in their eyes. Tell me the truth. For a moment, Cass thinks she’s imagining it, the suggestion glowing in the back of her skull, but then she starts to talk and she knows what’s just been done to her.

“I’m scared, and I’m lost, and I don’t have anybody but Willow left. And I didn’t do it on purpose. I swear. I think. I don’t -” Cassandra manages to force her mouth closed, and glares at Avery until they wilt slightly under her gaze.

“I’m sorry. I had to be sure, you know?”

“Sure of what?”

Avery snorts quietly, although not meanly, and sits up. “A friend of mine is coming over with some medical supplies tomorrow. Try to lie still today, alright? I don’t want that break getting worse.”

“I can hardly feel it.”

“I know. And I’m curious about that, too. But just because you can’t feel it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Then Avery leaves – and the question hangs, unanswered.

Sure of what?

Cassandra doesn’t know, and has no clue how to find out.

<-1.9 1.11 –>
1.9 – Willow – The Shadow You Cast

November 18th, 2020

Song: Bratja by Michiru Oshima (Fullmetal Alchemist)

jason, named for the argonauts ˑ the firstborn and second gone ˑ in which we give you more credit than you’ve ever deserved

I remember you.

a portrait written in hi-hat drum beats and tuned-down guitars –
drop-D chords through Logitech headphones, loosened ties and rumpled shirts
split-second personas writ large between the furrows of your eyebrows,
between the set of your jaw and the curve of your smirk
between the hidden stubs of Zaphod concerts and empty whiskey bottles.
we used to lie on your bed, staring at the posters on your ceiling –
Gantz, Elfen Lied, Trigun, Neon Genesis –
you’d tell me exactly how each one would piss off our parents, if you’d
ever watched it, or done more than buy posters with tits and ass.
(I don’t know if that was ever true – after all –
the names of characters fell so easily from your mouth
you actually cared to remember them
more than things like our concerts or events,
but it wasn’t your job to make up for our father’s failures.)

I remember you.

you took me for a drive before you were really allowed –
strapped me and Cassandra into the front seat together
warned us not to tell, before you hit the accelerator
and whipped our words back at us at ninety miles an hour
I have to wonder, if I’d looked at your face for long enough
if I would have seen the rot take hold
if I would have heard the poison starting to seep
if I would have witnessed your metamorphosis
at its beginning instead of the unquiet end.
– that’s assuming that I’m reminiscing, remembering,
a version of you that ever really existed.
something more than a mask, an invention, a frescoed hope
it depends on what you (or me, or anyone)
really think comes out for the worse.
either you were always a monster wearing a brother’s skin
or the light that I loved in you is snuffed out, dead and gone.

I remember you –

some version, some fairytale, some helpless hopeless photograph
I hold onto the negatives and hang them in the dark
I hate you, I hate you, I practice the unpracticed in my mouth
and I do, but it’s an unfinished and unclear statement.
I hate you, but – it hangs there, cut off at the root
a wound without closure, without stitching, without salve.
I remember you – the shape of your hands on my stomach,
on the backs of my legs and the ridge of my lips
and there’s no use this late in trying to spit you out.
my fingerprints, my hesitant kisses, live somewhere between
the set of your jaw and the curve of your smirk
lost within the deep furrow of your eyebrows.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you – poison in my throat,
a love that stings to touch, hurts too much to hold.
you’re just a photograph hanging empty in the dark
the light in you I loved is snuffed out, dead and gone.

<- 1.8 1.10 ->
Chaos Queer Cooking: Guyanese Metemgee and Duff

November 17th, 2020
I love stew, and most importantly, I love the versatility of it; stew is one of those recipes where it’s hard to mess it up, and easy to modify it to your standards. For this post, I’m going to talk about metemgee, which is a South American/Caribbean dish! More specifically, metemgee is Guyanese fish and root vegetable stew.

I first ran across the word metemgee in the Nalo Hopkinson book Midnight Robber. It’s not a big mention; a character serves it to the little girl in the lead role to warm her up and calm her down. But as somebody who’s part of the Caribbean diaspora and was never taught anything more about Caribbean food than jerk chicken and plantain chips, I was intrigued, and looked it up.

Here are some of the recipes I worked from! Jehan Can Cook – Metemgee.com – ThingsGuyana. If you’re looking to make “authentic” metemgee, definitely start with these – however, it’ll become obvious pretty quickly that the variations on it are endless.

The recipe I ended up working from is here: This is a great post, and my first shot at making this was good, but it was missing something. Second time around? Delicious.

So, what is metemgee exactly, how do you make it, and how do I make it?

Ingredients:

Metemgee is a stew of “provisions”, or root vegetables. So while the recipe above specifies certain things, there’s actually a whole range of vegetables you can use in it. Sweet potatoes, cassava, eddoe and plantain are more traditional; potato, carrot, turnip and rutabaga will also work, and even varieties of radish like daikon, watermelon radish, etc. For any stew, what you want to keep an eye on is amounts. Root vegetables need lots of liquid to cook in and they tend to soak it up, so it’s all the more important that you don’t overdo it. For about eight cups of liquid, you want roughly eight cups of cubed root veg, but err on the lower side. If that’s hard to picture, think of it this way; if you have four kinds of root veg, grab 2 medium ones of each, or 3 small ones.

Metemgee also uses fresh chili pepper. The normally-used pepper is wiri-wiri pepper, but trying to find it outside of the Caribbean can be very difficult. Wiri-wiri peppers are in the same Scoville range as habaneros and Scotch bonnet peppers, so either of those will do as a direct one-to-one substitute – so two habaneros or bonnets instead of two wiri-wiris. However, I usually have Thai birds-eye chilis, and I find that I usually add an extra one or two to the pot (3-4 total). If you have jalapenos or serranos on hand, you’ll definitely need to add a few extra; 4-5 serranos or 5-6 jalapenos should work. I haven’t tried this stew with canned, smoked or dried chilis – I don’t think it’ll work well with things like canned chipotle peppers, but in lieu of fresh peppers, Mexican chile powder or cayenne will work. Just be careful of amounts! 1/2 a teaspoon of powder is usually equivalent to one chili – much less than you’d think.

Green seasoning is another vital component of metemgee. If you’re planning to make a lot of Caribbean food, you can make a ton of this ahead of time and freeze it (I put it in ice-cube trays!). Here is a recipe for it, but in essence, green seasoning is a mix of fresh green herbs like cilantro, celery, basil, rosemary, thyme, etc. (whatever you like best and whatever’s in season), garlic and ginger, onion, and chili pepper. If you don’t have this or can’t make it, though, for metemgee I suggest blending some garlic, ginger, celery and whatever dried versions of the above you have together and adding two tablespoons of the mixture to your stew.

And finally, the fish/meat! Metemgee can have either saltfish or salt pork in it; however, if you’re somebody who doesn’t buy those two things, there are options. For my first crack at metemgee, I just substituted in basa fillets, but it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. What you want is something with a richer, salty/fishy flavour. So for this go-around, I substituted two things; a can of smoked mussels in sunflower oil, and a few strips of pollock imitation crab. I also added 2 teaspoons of dashi powder to the broth to complement them. This gave the stew a much richer flavour – so the trick is, if saltfish isn’t something you have, smoked or salted fish of another kind is important. While I haven’t cooked this with meat, I imagine the same holds true; instead of adding raw or plain-cooked meat, try to find something smoky, salty or dried. (Bacon, perhaps. Now I want to try that!)

INGREDIENTS:

1-2 tsp oil (canola, olive, sunflower, etc.)
1 medium onion, chopped (red or white; or one medium leek)
2 wiri wiri peppers, chopped and deseeded (habanero or Scotch bonnets; 3-4 bird’s eye; 4 serranos, 5 jalapenos)
10 sprigs thyme (4-5 tsp dried)
2 cloves of garlic (2-3 tsp minced)
1 tsp minced ginger
2 16-oz cans of coconut milk, or 4 cups
4 cups of water or broth
2 tsp of dashi powder (or, 2 tsp of fish sauce)
2 tbsp green seasoning
1/2 lb of saltfish (or; 1 tin drained smoked mussels, 2 basa fillets, 10 strips of pollock imitation crab, or a combination) OR 1/2 lb of salt pork (or; 1/2 lb bacon)
8 cups assorted root vegetables, cubed (potatoes, carrots, radish, daikon, cassava, eddoe, sweet potato, squash, plantain, turnip, etc.)
Optional: 2-3 fresh tomatoes, 4-5 okra
DUFF:
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp melted or soft butter
3/4 cup water

Process:

Like any stew, metemgee cooks its base flavours first, then adds its liquids, then its solids. So you can mess around with this to a certain degree, but remember that basic process.
1. Heat up a splash of oil in your stockpot, and add chopped wiri-wiri pepper. Let it fry up a little, until the oil turns red, about 30 seconds to a minute. (Do not inhale the fumes. Your sinuses will regret it.) Then add onion and thyme. Fry these for another 2-3 minutes until fragrant. If you aren’t using premade green seasoning, add ginger and garlic, and stir so they don’t burn.
2. Add coconut milk and either water or stock. Most people are using coconut milk from a can, so this is 2 full cans. Stir in green seasoning here if you’re using it, as well as dashi powder. (If you don’t have dashi powder, try using fish sauce.) Bring to a low boil over medium heat.
3. Add salt fish if using. Add your root vegetables, and if you’re using something softer like plantains, layer them on top. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, then at the 10 minute mark, add a drained tin of smoked mussels and/or imitation crab. Cook for another ten minutes.
4. OPTIONAL: Tomatoes and okra are less common ingredients, but if you have them and like them, go for it! However, you definitely want to cook these less than the root vegetables. Put them in at the same time as the mussels and crab, or even afterwards, so they only cook for 5-10 minutes.
5. Make your duff! In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and butter. Add water, knead to mix, and form into a ball. Leave it to sit for ten minutes.
6. After the duff has rested, separate into about 4 balls or logs. Put them on top of the metemgee, cover, and cook for at least 5 minutes. Don’t lift the lid! Otherwise they won’t cook properly.
7. Remove from heat and serve!
RESTRICTIONS CHECK:

Vegetarian: Yes! Just don’t add any of the fish ingredients, and add a little extra salt.
Vegan: Absolutely! Take out the fish, and don’t make the duff.
Dairy free: Coconut milk is completely non-dairy, and so just sub out the butter in the duff for some other type of shortening.
Nightshade: Take out the wiri-wiri pepper and don’t include either tomatoes or potatoes. Neither sweet potatoes or garlic are nightshades, and so you can use extra garlic and ginger to make up for the low spice.
FODMAP: Yes, actually! Go easy on the celery, and unfortunately the onion and garlic will need to be substituted (chives, leek, ginger and fennel are good for this). Everything else, however, seems fine.
Ghosts in Quicksilver – 2.18 – What Big Teeth You Have

November 16th, 2020

tw: hospitalization, implied suicidality, murder, stalking, delusions

“I’m tired of this.” I try to stride past her and through the other set of doors to the outside, but they won’t budge. “Seriously? How many times do I have to leave this fucking place?”

“You’re not in the Medium, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says. She sounds bored. “You’re just—well, dreaming is close enough.”

“Great. I’m here in my dreams, I’m here in the Medium, and you’re telling me it’s my own fault.”

“If that’s what you’re hearing, then I really can’t help you.” I’m not imagining it. She really is pissed off. “Would you sit the hell down and listen? I know that’s hard for you.”

I do as she says, gritting my teeth. I suppose it can’t be helped. She’s a younger version of me and I’ve always been a pain in the ass. She doesn’t have anything in her arms this time, just the black raincoat that she’s pulling around herself, and her hair a mess as always.

“…What do you mean, I can’t stop? Or are you going to answer in dream logic?”

She glares at me somewhat balefully. “Oh, please. You said it yourself, didn’t you? We don’t do psych-out fake-out bullshit. No, you’re just stuck in the past like a dumbass who can’t get over herself.”

I blink at her, sitting up against the wall. I’d be offended, but—“Alright, you were not this pissy last time. You’re… what, six?”

“Not a kid.”

“Okay, well, you look six. Which is older than I was, but I’m guessing the whole thematic thing is—whatever. What’s eating you?”

She just sighs, sitting down on the opposite side of the hospital gateway—then it clicks.

“Oh,” I exhale, ever so slightly disappointed in myself. “You keep hoping I won’t be back.”

She won’t look at me, so I imagine I’m on the right track, although it’s probably a little more complicated. In the haze of exiting the Medium, surrounded by gods and monsters, all of this seemed normal. But this dream feels too crisp, too sharp –

No, it’s not even that. It’s that Jaylie isn’t here. So I have to deal with the fact that this is just my head. I’m apparently like this on the inside, all on my own.

“Okay,” I say after a bit. “So I’m stuck in the past. I can accept that.”

“Really?” she snarks back.

“I mean, sure. That’s not a big surprise.”

“Just because you know you’re doing something doesn’t mean you’ve figured out how you’re doing it.”

“You are way too little to sound like a monk.”

“Stop it,” she grumbles, burying her face in her arms. “I’m not a kid, I’m just—stuck here! And it doesn’t feel like I’m stuck until you show up and rub it in that you got to—to grow up!”

I should be more surprised. I’m not, and I’m not sure why. But I get up and cross over to the other side, standing next to her and giving her leg a nudge with my boot.

“…You’re not me, huh?” I say in the quiet of the hospital-that-isn’t-a-hospital. And—funny thing—when the thought had processed inside my head, that had been fine. The moment I say it out loud, or what feels like out loud, something breaks. I’m not sure if it’s her or me. But something breaks.

I think it might be glass—and I think that might be good.

— —

My eyes snapped open, and it took me a minute to remember where I was. Which was silly—I’d been living here for a while now. I’d even made a little nest of pillows in lieu of a bed or couch, with a post-it note on the wall reminding me to go to Walmart and get a damn couch.

I wasn’t expecting to wake up alone. “Will?”

No answer. One of her hair ties (pink, of course) was still around my wrist, so last night hadn’t been a dream. We hadn’t done much. We’d talked, and kissed, and kissed some more. I’d lost my shirt somewhere along the way, and she’d had a small fit of giggles over my sports bra that was practically a tank top.

I checked my phone, just in case.

WILL: Hey so

WILL: I ended up alone w my thoughts last night + realized just how bad I fucked up

WILL: not with you! But, yknow. everything else

WILL: ive been doing really badly for a while and thought I was dealing with it ok bc I always think that lol

WILL: but by the time attempted murder enters the pic then this is. not on you to deal with

WILL: GOD SORRY this is so many messages and I sound like a sadsack I’M FINE im not dead

WILL: but I did get nathan to drive me to the general and im gonna see if theyll admit me for one of those 72 hr holds. thhhhink I need it

WILL: not the first time, wont be the last, n it means you only have one psycho lesbian to deal with it at a time

WILL: anyway I am safe and not fucking things up with crazybrain and last night was very lovely pls accept raincheck on date 2

…How did I even respond to that? My first instinct was to shove my phone under a pillow or in the sink and pretend I hadn’t seen it. But that wasn’t going to help. Second was to yell at her. Also bad. I was starting to think my instincts had it out for me. Then I checked the actual notifications, realized I had about ten more than actual messages—

Another one showed up as I was mulling it over.

WILL: okay I INSIST that you install the encrypted chatapp I use with cass bc I rewrote and deleted several of these bc they sounded dumb and realized you got notified for them anyway. I am fucking exposed I hate this

Okay. Fine. I wasn’t laughing, but I was smiling.

I checked my other texts, since I was bad about that anyway, and there was that one set of texts I hadn’t checked—

UNKNOWN NUMBER: its Jaylie, I am so sorry, I freaked out

UNKNOWN NUMBER: are you okay??? Is will okay? Nobody got hurt, right?

UNKNOWN NUMBER: I may have stolen this number from somebody’s head and I apologize for that

There was something surprising about Jaylie being actually sincere. Not that I didn’t think she was capable of it—just that she had maintained the snarky mean girl act so well. It was sad, too, though; it meant she was rattled enough that she couldn’t keep up her defenses.

The sadness grew and grew until I had to lean my head back against the wall, between the post-it note and the mark that Lila had left in the wallpaper, and swallow some of it down.

It wasn’t sadness for me, not exactly. It was just that—when I’d first started being dragged into this, or prodding it, however you wanted to position it, I’d seen all of these people with superpowers, magic of their owns, and been jealous. Jealous of their community, jealous of their knowledge. Cassandra had tried so hard to paint it that way, too—an organization, a group, something that I was on the Outside of and being invited into. Perhaps that was true to some extent.

I kept thinking about Gurjas. He’d died protecting a girl from the psych ward, somebody he knew shouldn’t have been there, who he knew needed different help. And he’d kept her safe from Kiera the only way he could think how. There weren’t elemental therapists, were there? Or if there were, I imagined there were only a few, scattered. If there was a special password, or map, or underground hideout, somebody would have mentioned it. Cassandra wouldn’t be living in an abandoned school. Will would have actual medication. Avery would have somebody to call to help them, instead of driving around with an illegal gun, trying to get rid of it.

I dragged my hands down my face. I’d spent so much time asking for information, asking for somebody to explain. None of them knew. Some were better at faking it than others, some had gotten more information from older people or other people or guesswork—but they were all just as lost. Cass’s whole anarcho-communist schtick wasn’t just idealism—it was trying to pull order from chaos. Nobody had known the Salts were dying until it was too late, because nobody was talking to each other. And the argument about what to do with Kiera was because there weren’t other options.

No, that was bullshit. There had to be other options. I’d been called a lost cause enough. And if nobody else knew what to do, that meant my way of muddling through wasn’t as stupid as I thought it was. Keeping myself safe was an option, sure, but I couldn’t sit back and let other people do it, because they didn’t know what to do.

And besides, there was that other little detail.

I got up, stepped casually over to the window like I just wanted some fresh air, opened it—and threw my hand out towards the darkness of the tree. Nothing. I pulled it back in—

Kiera’s face popped over the top edge of the window, upside down and smiling. “Nice try.”

“Christ!”

“How’d you know I was there?”

I exhaled, stepping back from the window. “Good guess. You seem to stalk me a lot.”

“What else am I going to do with my time?”

“Kill more people?”

“Psh. People keep obsessing over that detail.” She threw her legs through the window, making herself comfortable on the sill. Her shoulders were bared and white, and I realized with a slight flush that I’d accidentally stolen her coat. “Besides, you have no proof—”

“Right, right, some other chronically-unstable elemental with a sword is chopping people up.”

She closed her mouth in irritation. “…Accidents. I—”

“Bullshit. Nobody chops somebody’s head off accidentally.”

“You’d be surprised what—”

“Or takes bites out of them. That’s what happened to that other woman, wasn’t it? I didn’t think about it until now, but you’ve got those great big chompers. I wouldn’t have taken you for a cannibal, but—”

“I don’t eat people,” she growled—then looked a little dodgy.

“Liar.”

“Any more,” she added to the end with a sigh. “Okay, fine, if you have all the answers. What theory are you working on, oh great detective?”

She hadn’t left or attacked me yet, so I decided to take the invitation. I sat back down, leaning my hands on my knees and trying not to smirk. “So, Jaylie. Something about her pisses you the fuck off.”

“Wonderful. Fantastic detective-ing. Amazing conclusion.”

“And so you went after her, and didn’t realize she had protection.”

Kiera rolled her eyes. “Yes, she’s crazy and has extra people in her head. Moving on.”

“Obviously, somebody attacking her out of nowhere set her off. That’d upset anybody. So she destabilized—and tried to find a Salt, or anybody, who could help her. And…” My mouth went a little dry. “And you kept following, and every time you saw somebody help her, every time she got a little more stable, you got even angrier.”

She didn’t respond. I kept going.

“And I thought at first you got more pissed off, but it’s the other way around, isn’t it? You were angry first. That’s why you tore some of them to pieces. Somewhere along the way you got the idea that you could be stabilized, if you just kept trying. Then you only killed them when they couldn’t give you what you needed.” I think I’m broken. It hadn’t been Jaylie at all.

She was already pretty white, but I thought Kiera had gone just a little paler. Her hands were tense on the windowsill, and I figured that if I was going to die, I might as well finish my train of thought.

“I don’t know why you haven’t killed me. I’m clearly not up to the task. But now you know that the others will kill you. And this is where I get a little stuck, Kiera.”

“What, writer’s block on your fairy tale?” she sneered, trying to look casual.

I stood up, trying not to look too much like I was going on the defense. “Bullets aren’t made of iron. And either you didn’t know that, and you’ve been out of this world a long, long time. Or you knew that, and a bullet will kill you just as stone fucking dead as anything else.”

She crossed the room so fast I barely saw her—just felt her slam a hand into my chest until I was pinned against the wall. “Tread. Carefully.”

“What, did I hit a nerve?”

“No,” she lied. Horrendously. “You’re just fucking guessing at this point.”

“I mean, sort of. But I’m good at noticing patterns. And you haven’t killed a single person after we met.”

Kiera’s hand lingered on my sternum. “…Correct.”

I made the mistake of looking up at her. Our eyes met, and the same feeling I’d told Jo about hit me again. That I recognized her. That maybe she wasn’t so bad, or maybe I was, and that defending her was so, so easy.

“…Why are you actually following me?” I asked, my voice a hoarse whisper catching in my throat.

Kiera didn’t smile, didn’t do anything but keep looking at me for a while. “Because I can think when I do. It was always about finding the right person.” Her hand moved up my chest, towards my throat, brushing against bare skin.

“You think I’m Guthrun. And that’s why.”

“You didn’t think I based it on conjecture and dreams?” she chuckled. “Admit it. You felt something when you saw me for the first time. You recognized me. There’s a reason you saved my life.”

Because I’m a good person, I tried to insist. But she wasn’t wrong—and more than that, the whole idea was… tempting. It was stupid. I was supposed to be proud of who I was, but I didn’t know who I was. I had a letter for a last name and a vague skin color as a stand-in for a culture, a heritage, a past. I didn’t know who Guthrun had been, but she had been somebody.

“Jamal,” came the urgent whisper. It took me a second to realize Kiera couldn’t hear it. “Jamal, this is a bad idea.”

I didn’t respond, mostly not to give away to Kiera that Jo was there. And she was, just on the edge of my vision.

“You need to get out of here. She’s dangerous. She’s probably used this speech on other girls.”

I hadn’t thought of that. I—christ. Christ, that was possible, wasn’t it? I was so stupid. I was—

Come on. Give her a chance.

“Can I ask what happened with you and Will? I—she’s my friend, but I want to know.”

Kiera looked startled at that, but it did what I’d hoped; it broke the charismatic energy between the two of us, making space for me to breathe. “I suppose you’ve heard her end of the story,” she snorted.

“Sort of. She feels pretty bad about it.”

“She messed with my head—not that it turned out that bad in the end. But I don’t like how she did it. Besides, once she’d fixed me, she kicked me out. Said I had to find another place to stay.” Kiera actually looked sad at that, but I wasn’t foolish enough to take that at face value. So I let her keep talking. “She was talking about how elemental stuff worked. It works differently for humans, you know? And I figured out that my soulmate would get me under control the best. Make all the extra stuff stop. It’s not my fault she got so angry.”

I couldn’t imagine Will getting angry over that. But I could squint and start to see between the lines, Kiera’s obsession with me—the insistence that I could help her, that I was helping her—

–sometimes it causes an echo-

“Soulmates?” I asked nervously.

“Yeah. Everybody deserves love, everybody gets it. You just have to find them.” Kiera was smiling at me again, eyes glittering like shards of glass, not quite here, not quite elsewhere. “Your soulmate—the one person who’ll love you unconditionally, right? No matter what.”

You deserve to be loved.

Oh, god. Oh god, no wonder Will had thought it was harmless. The rest of it must have come from somewhere—it had to—Will just hadn’t known.

I felt sick. But Kiera was still watching, so I managed to wrench my lips into a returning smile.

“Jamal, Jaylie is going to be here in a minute.”

What? I couldn’t risk—

“Not—not Jaylie,” Jo corrected. “It’s Sunvay. And he says he’ll finish this, one way or another. I had to—Jamal, you know this isn’t safe.”

I had a decision to make. I had no time. And all I wanted to do was run away.

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1.8 – Cassandra – And Then There Were None

November 14th, 2020

Song: Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Trevor Yuile (Orphan Black)

survivor’s guilt ˑ never never call me brave ˑ nobody wants this

There were six.

      (how long before the whispers shattered the glass)

And then there were four.

      (how long before the deaths were etched in ink)

And then there were three.

      (how long before you left me alone, half of a whole)

And then there was me.

      (how long before the center cannot hold?)

There were six.

(dolls in a row)

And then there were four.

(bodies on the floor.)

And then there were three.

(holder of all their hopes)

And then there was me.

(alone, alone, alone)

There were six

(I had three brothers)

And then there were four

(they died and I did nothing)

And then there were three

(they never cared at all)

And then there was me.

—-

And then there were two, and there were none

And still no one is satisfied

-nobody wants to be the last left standing.

<- 1.7 1.9 ->

1.10 – Cassandra – Sure

1.9 – Willow – The Shadow You Cast

Chaos Queer Cooking: Guyanese Metemgee and Duff

Ghosts in Quicksilver – 2.18 – What Big Teeth You Have

1.8 – Cassandra – And Then There Were None