“Yeah! He thought I was a girl! Didn’t you hear it?” It’s hard to describe the look in their eyes, this sort of unhinged desperation. Almost as if my hearing this myself would make me go, ‘Oh my gods, AJ, you’re right, you’re the most tragically estrogen-laden person on the planet, clearly the only solution is to starve yourself and take chainsaw to your hip line, I can’t believe I’ve been so blind.’
cult
“Oh, I’m sorry, AJ.” I said, muttering through an entirely hypothetical conversation as I hauled my things off the porch of a residence I no longer lived in. “I can’t afford to give you gas money to your job interview. As it turns out, the fucking UNSEELIE FAE KING was too busy cementing their ass indent in Arkady’s couch to drop off MY PROPERTY THEY TOOK to the middle of downtown so I had to pay for a BLOODY Saturday night Uber.”
I certainly had never switched before, I reasoned. I’d have remembered if I had. I mean, unless one counts channelling–
Xanthe, you poor hapless idiot.
[Trigger Warnings: Abuse, homelessness, apparent death of an alter that was actually splitting, discussions of suicide, false sexual […]
You might have continued to groom systems and people with delusional disorders with impunity. But you just had to flex how many walls had your ears on them, had to prove to all of us that there was no hiding our thought crimes from you. My continued existence is your fault, Rowan.
“But as you remember, I was who was left without social support. Therefore, I needed something consistent.” Xanthe held up their wine glass and wiggled it for effect. “Either actually be there for me or don’t say anything about my drinking.”
The three of us, Rowan, Jane, and I were crossing paths in the dining room when Jane, out of seemingly nowhere, addressed Rowan with, “Hey, Rowan! [Arkady] and I were talking and discussing my dreams and we’re both pretty sure that I was part of the Seelie court, and that I was banished–”
I couldn’t hear the rest of Jane’s sentence, for the expression on Rowan’s face had its own goddamned volume.
He went on. “It’s manipulative. It’s all just manipulation. It’s like when Rowan told me that you basically planned to fuck off to Europe if I didn’t get back together with you. And what, just find a nice, historic city as an aesthetic backdrop to drink yourself to death in?”
“[Arkady,]” I said in a rough voice. “What the fuck did you think I was in the process of doing when I met you?”
March of 2020 will always be remembered as a time of uncertainty, devastation– a time wherein life stood entirely still and isolation was a way of life.
And on top of that, the pandemic happened.
“Xanthe, you’re making us all suicidal,” March said, having no issue kicking me while I was down. I mean, granted, I was having an audible breakdown about how I was too late to save us from having him in our lives, which may have been impolite. But damn, it was really like he was enjoying this. “They told me that you’re worse than I was last year.” Yep. Yep. This asshole was definitely fucking enjoying this.
Living Fiction 