Work Text:
Lucifers on my elbow, gilded
on my breast,
Tattooed with lightning, shall I
not conquer, not fight?
Irresolution
🧸
It's nothing in the beginning, and it stays nothing for a while after. A little alive maybe. The difference between what is possible and what is probable comes down to intent, after all.
Edith is too young to realize the depth of revenge and justice and loyalty, but she listens to her friend all day. For hours on end, a listing of dolls like chapters from How To Extort Your Vulnerable Parents: a Handbook. She listens that day, and the day after, and after, and they become bored eventually, of showcasing toys. Her friend pushes another girl in the mud during recess one time, then regularly. And so Edith bids her time.
For all her scheming, Edith's friend doesn't have an eye for blind spots. She leaves her most precious doll, blonde and pouty, in Edith's lap. She leaves it with all her trust, and kisses Edith on the cheek, and tells her to watch. The doll is cute, even when her owner isn't. There's a sense of waste underneath Edith's skin when she beheads the doll with her hands, an ugly, permanent break, some envy, some satisfaction. Some blood in her palm, where the edges dug in.
Her friend's laughter cuts short in the distance as the girl she'd been kicking gets up growling and tackles her down in a patch of wet grass.
Edith keeps the doll head, tied to her night light by the hair. Her friend becomes better.
🧸
The night shift turns out to be a very good and a very bad time, simultaneously. The summer smell wafting in through the double doors of the convenience store runs sweet and insignificant against the AC chill. There's round mirrors tucked high in all corners and at the end of aisles, edging voyeurism, and the ice cream fridge sweats on the outside in its old age. Between the light distortion and the low mechanical humming, Edith feels like she might just be ready for a seance, which, ridiculous.
She grins and presses her mouth in, and tries to curb the need to talk to herself. None of the four current customers would pay her any mind, but it's not exactly the place. She watches the two highschool kids debating over their choice of gummy bears, the glaring difference in loneliness in them, the tiredness that hangs over the shoulders of the taller one. He's spinning a pen halfway used in a nervous gesture even as he laughs.
The radio night show coming from the headphones around her neck is in its second hour after midnight and they've started taking calls.
There's someone at work I wish I could talk to. I don't know how to start. Help?
Someone else comes in just as the usually stressed Nurse reaches the register, softer around the edges for once, her left hand curled in itself gently in the pocket of her scrub top. Edith stops petting one tentacle of her octopus plushie to ring her up.
Ah, making friends as an adult is hard, right? See if they need help with something? If you could find a common goal?
Cereal, a grapefruit, sugar and a bottle of water. Beyond the Nurse's slight frame, the newcomer is looking around like she's trying to turn invisible and the kid clenches his pen when he notices a mirror, looks away like he can't stomach seeing himself. His friend grabs his elbow and he sways into that touch. Huh.
How would I know if they'd want my help?
Edith has the common sense to feel a little guilty about that question, it makes her freeze for a second, awkward, unbearable eye contact. The Nurse picks up for her, easy as anything.
"Have a good night," and she smiles, tiny but certain, for the first time since Edith's first seen her two and a half months ago. Right.
Edith wants to help, where she might be needed.
"Thank you, you too."
That's right, personal limits are important. You need to be careful or they might think you're arrogant.
The stuffed octopus goes back into its place, second zipper of Edith's backpack, sat carefully by her ankles. She isn't sure yet, and there's a possibly depressed teenager and three packs of gummy bears on the desk in front of her when she comes up. It doesn't help at all. He might never come back here again. Edith doesn't know what to take from him anyway.
It's so difficult. But I really like them.
The kid takes a while to search for change, until they have enough money between the two of them. He puts his pen down on the desk to free his hands and it's a sign. A breath, where neither pays attention, and the pen is in Edith's hoodie pocket. He'll come back.
You have to ask. Maybe they also want to talk to you and you have no idea.
🧸
Edith receives a stress ball some time too soon in middle school, as a gift from friends. It has a cat face on it and cat ears, and it's good. Easy comfort, though she understands the danger in it.
She refuses to use it when it matters, in public, spends exams bending her fingers painfully, as she thinks, and tries not to wet her papers with the water coming out of her hands. Then that becomes insufficient as well, and she's demanded to talk out loud, to her class, debates and presentations, and she thinks I don't want to be here anymore. Once is enough.
The thing is, Edith's good at this, because she wants to be good at it, really wants, stress ball in hand eventually, whole body tense and hurt.
She talks through her throat closing up, through a secondary line of thought, private beyond her speech, about how she hates every single person in the room, she talks through knowing she's doing this very well. When she stops, she digs her nail in one of the cat ears and thinks anywhere else .
Something wet and warm falls against her neck. She's taken to the medical office with a bleeding wound three centimeters long on the shell of her ear.
🧸
The bus is mostly empty around lunch. Edith's ears hurt vaguely from the press of her headphones, and her brain is sloshing around from reading all morning. The lack of uni work opens up an uncomfortable gap inside her chest, with the messed up hours she keeps now, and everything runs a little transparent under her fingers at 11:23 am. There's only one other person standing, worrying a black cat toy attached to a keychain. It has green grape eyes and it is impractically large. The keys sway with the movement of the bus, flashes of light she can't help but follow, slow and bright when they hit each other and the wrist of their owner.
Edith thinks she'd like not to see anyone else for a while. It's good, what she has with the convenience store, and there's satisfaction to be gained, removed and clean and yet. There are five people in her backpack right now.
Five people in her backpack now, and at night when her control becomes a little loose, and during her day naps at home when she's not alone but doesn't truly need to hide it, five people in her backpack all the time. The cat toy (furry?) girl is wearing a flowery dress with the sleeves tied in at her elbows. The left ribbon is coming undone. Edith could take it so easily, and then she'd have six people.
She's started thinking lately, that maybe she needs to have them more than they need her help.
It's not quite a sigh what comes out of her, closer to aggressively blowing air out of her nose, which only turns embarrassing because she can't even guess how loud that was with her music drowning everything else. No one looks her way though, and she wonders how much of it is social propriety. Then Cat Toy Girl moves her bag higher up her shoulder like she's cutting off all her nervousness. The ribbon holds on with impressive loyalty.
Edith has no reason to take this person. Edith should tell her, and probably help her tie it back on, and generally be a good human being. There's no reason. An excitingly slippery way to competent evil.
The streets change from narrow and winding to double, busy, then a roundabout. She's still thinking when Furry Girl gets off and the ribbon is right there, shiny green on the bus floor. Take it. Leave it. Run?
Run seems fair. Edith cringes at the feel of grimy dust the ribbon has gathered, jumps outside and manages not to touch anyone, then holds it out away from her body and half wobbles, half runs to where she can spot Furry Girl power walking. A crosswalk turned green already, more people, a kid on a bike and a lady that won't fucking move. The light is blinking by the time Edith's halfway across. Way ahead, Furry Girl turns her head to the side and something clicks. Three nights ago in the store, the same angle as she had walked in, then again, while she was looking at flower pots and Edith was ringing up her new person. There's a pen stuck in a Pikachu plushie in her backpack, to match him.
In the periphery, someone punts an oversized black pebble as they pass her, back towards the middle of the crosswalk. There's less people now, and it makes a soft sound. The light turns red.
Edith runs back, kicks it further by mistake and it's very obviously not a pebble. The cat plushie is filthy too, and the eyes aren't the same shade of green as the ribbon.
Six people, if the washing machine doesn't lessen the Connection.
🧸
As hard as she’s tried, Edith has never been able to be alone. She's always been made up of parts of other people. She's still mostly blank.
Being filled in is a fight as much as anything is. Someone hugs her too late and it comes untethered - how long - is it bad if I let go first - where do I put my face - what does my back feel like - and it's a lot. It's a lot the same way having ice down your back is a lot. Someone Else notices the freeze-up and asks later, side by side but not looking at Edith, asks… something obvious, in the end.
What about your Voodoo Thing?
Because she knows. She hasn't ever tried hugging Edith, but she dug in with short fingers and she knows.
What? What about it. Don't call it that.
Someone Else is very capable. She doesn't even allow Edith to stumble on her own, she thinks hard and comes to the conclusion that yes, plushies are good and inconspicuous, but no, a random plushie won't work. The conclusion is that a Connection is needed. Who takes voodoo seriously anyway.
Someone is very touchy about white hairs. She plucks them with absolutely no regret, somewhat viciously, and is rather inattentive.
Edith's first person, a turtle with a single hair tied to its dubious tail.
Someone Else reaches over during class, from a desk adjacent, takes Edith's hand and pokes the turtle's belly. A few desks over, Someone squeaks like a chicken and doubles over.
It's easier to hug after that. The turtle doesn't sit in the backpack. The backpack doesn't exist yet.
🧸
Of thirst for water
And of hunger for ashes
Flowers of Mildew
🧸
The issue with offering mystic handholding and casual touching is that even unseen, bordering tactile hallucinations, people become attached. Which would be the whole point, if Edith didn't have a highschool girl ugly sobbing against the microwave popcorn stand at midnight.
She's a monkey, just like all the other plushie monkeys the store has on display right by the register, and Edith's grateful it has some fur on the top of its head to pet gently. She's not the only monkey, because Edith doesn't plan for this and doesn't feel guilty about it. She stitched 'Teenage Love' chunkily on the back of the plushie.
Teenage Love is taking too long, Edith's first person from the store and she keeps coming back. It's becoming unhealthy. Some sort of romantic heartbreak that seemed easy enough to fix, but now stretches across months. Edith can see her in one of the mirrors, forehead leaning hard on a plastic price tag, curling in on herself. There's no feedback from the monkey, tucked under Edith's chin. Epik High is playing from her headphones.
Furry Girl - Furry Girl? - comes into the mirror's range and stands awkwardly a few steps apart from Teenage Love. Just stands there eyeing non-alcoholic beer and trying not to look but also not scurrying away. The register is next to the entrance, parallel to the aisles and yet Edith didn't see her come in. She suddenly feels like all the mirrors are closing in on her, weird grown-up cradling a monkey toy. Teenage Love is biting down on sounds painfully.
Edith breathes and lets it in, her hurt, slow breaking of bones, welcomes it into the Connection to dig inside it. The drag of her fingers over the monkey's head changes, softer, like real hair, and salty wet on the collar of her neon green shirt that says Open, and underneath When Nothing Else Is. She can't reason the sorrow (she's blank, she's blank, there's nothing to mourn) , but she can half it, can run her thumbs under the monkey's button eyes to soothe, from her fingertips, back through the Connection, closure. She looks at this girl she's holding, really looks for once, the bruises under her puffy eyes and her chubby fingers, and wishes her love .
Furry Girl reaches over tentatively, pinkie brushing over knuckles. It's enough to make Teenage Love crumble into her shoulder, for the longest minute there is, Edith can't look away.
Love love love ends, and the radio host sounds too alive for a night show.
"Sorry for that," halfway to composed, if a little scratchy. "But thank you."
Welcome! Ah, I really missed that song. We should add more Epik High to the playlist.
Edith barely has time to hide the plushie under the counter. Teenage Love comes up mostly dry, exhaustion bone deep, but she has one of those one meter roll of pink chewing gum that she wants to buy. It's difficult to ring her up, heart uncomfortably raw. She might come back, after all.
Edith hopes not, and then decides she could help one last time.
"Wait, there's a promotion."
Teenage Love looks confused, and it's fair, it sounds dumb, who has promotions for chewing gum? Nevertheless. Edith pulls out the stick of gum broken in half from where it sits half melted in the monkey's pink satin bow. She tries not to judge people's Connections, but this…
"We're giving out stuffed toys. Congratulations."
Tonight's topic is secrets, the darker the better. Or not? Are nice secrets harder to keep?
If Teenage Love sees Teenage Love stitched into the toy, she doesn't say anything. She leaves, and leaves Edith with more blank space than usual, her Voodoo Thing well and truly satisfied for once. Back down to five people.
She can't be sure, but Furry Girl seems to be stalling for time, moving from aisle to aisle, not getting anything.
The cat is in the backpack and there's still no reason why Edith should touch it. As soon as she considers it, she wants it . Abrupt, coming right from a place of power hunger first, then… something else, undecided. Furry Girl just looks warm.
What would you like to say, but can't?
Furry Girl looks like someone Edith might give a tangerine plushie with a single hair tied to the stem. With the necessary stitching of Voodoo Girl on it. Alternatively, Nosy Dumbass.
Furry Girl just looks like questionable magic. She's also poking at the grapefruit at barely past 1 am, after not running away from someone dripping hurt. Edith moves quickly and pulls out the stuffed cat, hits the whiskers softly before she can think about this and back down.
By the fruit section, Furry Girl sneezes. It's August.
Don't be shy, call in! What secrets do you have?
🧸
Spring rain runs so hot, it feels like steam should rise from the earth. Blue filter, between the sky and the open field, gray tinged with water. You're all alone, ankle deep in grass with your socks all wet. The air crackles, turns dense, makes your hair frizzy, makes it easier to breathe. Like you're swimming. Gentle current from the ground, you're nothing.
Could be anything.
You think it'd be good if your hand were held. You want it, and somewhere in the back of your head, you feel ashamed. The rest just feels good.
🧸
The night playlist becomes 10% Epik High, maybe. If she doesn't pay attention, Edith might think it's just Born Hater looped midnight to daybreak. There's a busy stretch after 2 am, a sudden demand for water and chocolate bars, happy people.
One of Edith's coworkers is off with a freak summer cold and her other coworker cannot dig himself from that particular pit. He's restocking one flavored yogurt a minute, dead faced and bordering intimidating. They're disgustingly sweet together.
Alright, next is, uh, mushroom soup? Thank you, Mrs. Ives, for calling in, a great idea.
Edith actually got her hair from the back of his shirt, shiny and disturbingly long and not at all incriminating. One of her coworkers is explicitly affectionate, the other is not. He just sulks, and likes back hugs. Truly, one of Edith's better works. She's only interfering now because she likes them, doggy shaped stress ball held between her hands with the intention of warmth , tiny touches against its face.
Furry Girl sticks out like a sore thumb among the rest of the customers, all various degrees of inebriated. She walked in five minutes ago and seems to be getting her groceries. She also seems to have a number of thoughts on pasta. Edith wants to tell her about the radio show.
So the recipe says half Champignon, half Pleurotus. Pleurotus? That sounds suspicious.
It does actually sound suspicious. Mushrooms are mushrooms, but Edith needs to focus. She stops her petting and pinches the doggy's stretchy cheek and wishes hard for sleep and good health . Through the Connection, the shivering subsidies. When Edith pulls back from it, her stomach settles all wrong.
There are nights when Furry Girl doesn't show up and the absence becomes additive, and by the end of her shifts, Edith hurts with restraint. Edith could make her come. Edith could do a lot of things, to a lot of people.
There's still no reason to keep her, except it feels like the edge of a vertical drop. Like anger, like drawing up a proper voodoo doll for a dumb donkey back in highschool and getting up in his face and flicking it in the head hard enough that he keeled over, like wishing her tomcat back to health at the right time, but knowing not to wish him back to life.
Like she's not a good person, and likes herself more for it.
Her ears must be red. Furry Girl has cute fingers, where she's touch-charming chocolate.
Not so many steps, but doesn't it sound like it takes a lot of time? You have to wait for everything to boil.
Once someone comes up to the register, it seems like everyone follows. Edith rings them up, tries not to look like she's consumingly considering doing Morally Illegal Things. Maybe it's just a friend she wants. Or this might be her villain origin story, love hungry for someone she's dubbed Furry Girl in her head. Or the lack of feedback from her Voodoo Thing supplies her with enough touch deprivation that she's become evil. The first thing she picks up from the next customer is a single orange.
The feeling from her stomach spreads and shapes into insistent heat. Her ears are entirely visible, and it makes it so much worse. Cheese, mint ice-cream, flour, cat treats ( hah, furry girl ), chocolate, chocolate, chocolate frogs, a set of coloring markers, another flower pot ( what is she doing with 10+ pots in less than two weeks, god) . Pretty hands setting down the biggest goddamn grapefruit Edith's ever seen. Everything lists slightly to the side. When was the last time she wanted something for herself out of her powers?
As far as cashier service goes, ace. Entertainment value too, when Edith ends up sounding like a choked up frog telling her the total cost. She can't stop looking at Furry Girl's hands, not until she's out the store.
Mushroom soup is so good though. You go without for a while, and the craving kinda catches up to you, no?
Her Voodoo Thing has no limitations. Edith just likes to watch it happen, and know how to adjust accordingly, but this has stepped out of her control already. Somehow, it feels wrong to bring the cat above the counter top in full light. Edith huddles by her backpack, hands steady, places the plushie in her open palm. She swipes her thumb over the whiskers again, then touches carefully one ear, thinks better of it. There's nothing much coming over through the Connection, a content sort of surprise.
The fur is very soft on the inner side of the front paw. Edith feels herself go impossibly redder. She doesn't want to let go anytime soon and worries about what must be bleeding all over her blank spaces.
Was that a trap? Are you thinking about mushroom soup now?
🧸
People shrink places. The more people, the more space you occupy, the less space is left. Revolving doors might scare you when you're alone.
There's space for more, but it's only you, and the other you, from the glass. You walk for longer than you remember, forget how to breathe quietly, and you crave for someone else. Except it's not anyone else, you know it down to your bones, the same way walking by a flowershop reminds you of the same person.
But there's glass in front of you, not flowers, gentle humming of nothing, and you think about skin first, flushed and hot, before guilt overwhelms you.
🧸
She really won't be able to give Sad Hours his Pikachu plushie back, what with the stitching of Sad Hours on its butt. He's been in the store for more than an hour, stuck in the ice-cream section. A good place to be.
The night show host is getting weirdly hit on via betting. The caller has been at it for weeks in fact, Edith can recognize his voice, but seems to finally had run out of subtlety.
I bet you don't have anything from Map of the Human Soul in your playlist. I bet you just found Epik High.
Oh, aggressive. Edith tickles the side of the cat's belly and relates.
That's alright, by the way. I love the passion. I love the attempt at musical superiority too, if anything.
Furry Girl doesn't see it coming and twists away from the touch, satisfyingly ticklish, and makes half a sound that sucks every last bit of focus Edith has. The next round of poking happens barely deliberately, on the other side of the cat's plushie, lighter, but Furry Girl's mouth turns down disappointed and nothing comes out.
She has a big mouth, objectively. It's doing a lot for Edith.
Their fingers had touched over cereal two nights ago and Edith's ears are never going back to usual coloring.
She'd be feeling guilty for doing half-assed work, if Sad Hours weren't looking so content with just slow head pats. He'd gone from wide-eyed terror, to untimely death acceptance, to fuzzy comfort. His eyes are closed, and he hasn't asked to be touched in a very long time. Edith wants to hold his hand, make it easier for him to come back, but he'll be here a while, there's time.
Edith really wants to tickle Furry Girl again.
I bet you checked after the show, for my number.
Edith tickles her again. Furry Girl blinks, waits, then whines loudly glaring at the butter.
I did.
Beyond the need for closeness, Edith wants to fall in love with whatever thought process just made Furry Girl porn moan in a semi empty night store. Certainty that settles home beneath her skin, she wants to love whatever flower pot ritual she's got going on. Edith wants to call her a furry to her face and then panic when she doesn't deny it.
It still definitely falls under Morally Illegal Things, but Edith wants to hold the cat's paw, so she does. Furry Girl closes her hand loosely around nothing, squeezes once, lessens the pressure slowly. Somewhere in the middle, the wrongness of it.
Edith's being filled in, good chunks of blank space. Some of them come unstuck with shame, and the rest are growing flowers. More space opens at the edges.
Sad Hours is watching Edith in that way strangers watch each other for support when something weird happens. His smile is lopsided, head tilted with how Edith runs a finger down the side of Pikachu's face. He'll be hard work.
As much as she tries not to, it's her own cowardice that hurts the most. Edith hasn't touched the cat plushie outside this store, not yet. Instead, she keeps it by her bedside, out of reach.
Oh. So. Is this working or should I call more often?
🧸
In the dark, your hand is closer.
My forearm gets cold hanging over the edge of my bed, then heats up overnight. I want to know the roots of your nails.
Let me tell you I love you in the dark with my cheek pressed to the side of your neck.
🧸
Guilt chases Edith out at night, eventually. She leaves her backpack home, cat plushie on her pillow.
It's an older cinema building, tacky red and so clean that the colors feel all wrong for the structure, and there's only one midnight showing. Minimal decisions, like what to reply to Ok, my shift's done but I'll ring you up anyway , what to put on top of the popcorn, what seat would be the best in an empty theater.
Thank you, caramel, smack middle. Vital functions only.
The place is older than Edith, so she trusts it implicitly, to keep quiet about her morals (lack of?) induced breakdown. The movie is heavily Godzilla inspired. Nothing like the sound in cinema shaking the liver inside her. It goes on for a while, loud and good. Edith turns jelly, feels for her popcorn, then contracts to the tip of her tongue when she finds a hand inside the tub, fully attached to an arm reaching over her shoulder from the seat behind.
Some pettiness stretches from the depths of horror and decides the best defense mechanism is to throw the popcorn into the air, and scream until someone calls the police. Except the hand fucking knows it would happen, grabs the bucket before anything spills and there's shushing sounds by Edith's ear.
"It's okay. The movie's almost done and you still have so much. Don't worry, okay?"
There's still a lot of the movie left too. Edith's about to turn around and tell them, but it catches up to her, that the biggest concern here is the popcorn running out. She's halfway to terrified laughter, the hand calm and lazy in the bucket as its owner finishes chewing the first grab. An elbow settles to stay on Edith's shoulder, lax and overextended. She needs to see. This person is performing very physical voodoo and Edith needs to see.
She doesn't make it to turning her head. As soon as she moves away from the backrest, there's hands on the side of her face keeping her still, and it's terrifying, she's so scared -
"The movie isn't over yet!" They sound very serious. And the touch is loose, but the intention is not, a thumb swiping underneath her eye, from the scar at the end of her eyebrow down to her cheek.
"Oh you got Pepsi? Ew." The person behind removes one hand to get Edith's drink, comes closer, way closer, warm air over her ear and soft hair against her neck, and sucking sounds as they drink from the straw. At the edge of her peripheral vision, fingers curled around the cup, very pretty in the dark. Edith's probably projecting out of fear. Over the smell of caramel and the aged blood of the cinema, something else smells green, like rain in an open field.
Not-Godzilla becomes convolutedly linked to the hero, and Edith sits still through her choice of soda being degraded with someone's hand in her bucket of popcorn and someone's other hand resting lightly over her collarbone, one finger on the side of her chin.
She sits very still even when she's let go, the last of her popcorn stolen, and sits still until the credits roll, reaching for the sound of breathing.
There's no one else in the theater when the screen goes dark. Her ears are ringing. No audible footsteps. She's being reeled in by a ghost - a ghost?? - and she's starting to understand why the people in her backpack always come back to the store.
Edith's hand goes to the headphones around her neck instinctively, the radio host's voice coming through tiny and cracky as she stumbles down the stairs.
One time in highschool I stapled my finger just to see what it's like.
Outside, the lobby is empty as well, not one source of lore, the lights soft and casting no shadows. Something moves by the concession stand, a girl bagging up the popcorn she hasn't sold, and she's wearing one of those caps, and underneath she smiles, wide, wide, wide -
Furry Girl, grinning from ear to ear and waving. Her mouth is still big.
Well, it hurt. A little intense, but not necessarily a bad kind of pain.
Edith stomps her foot like a five year old, sticks her tongue out as far as she can, and runs out. She thinks she hears thanks for the popcorn shouted after her, and witch cackling.
Ok but kids? Don't do that. Why are you even up so late?
🧸
From hunger and patience
Their stomachs knot tight
Against spines;
Morning
🧸
The fifth person Edith carries in her backpack is herself. Tangerine plushie with a single hair tied to the stem and broken earphones sewn into it. For a quick pick-up when she runs low on affection.
Furry Girl comes up to the register with only ice-cream and too many oranges held awkwardly to her chest, spills them on the counter.
Edith has taken to kissing the cat plushie on the forehead whenever she feels like it.
Today - uh - tonight! We're gonna be playing through the entire Epik High discography. No, we're not taking any calls. Yes, I'll call you in the morning.
Edith's hands are instantly wet. She takes the oranges from those pretty hands one by one, sets them carefully in a bag, neon green, that says Open , and underneath When Nothing Else Is . Furry Girl's fingers stretch out, don't seem to want to give up the oranges at times, drag over Edith's skin. On the last one, Furry Girl catches her wrist and doesn't let go.
Once there's no more fruit between them, they're holding hands over the counter. Or rather, Edith's hands are being held. She's not entirely sure how to touch back, still tries to do this right. Wants to talk, wants to hear her again, wants to say -
"Are you still embarrassed that you're not the only one with night secrets? Did you know your store is haunted too?"