Scrap writing

[bubblewrapped]

Oct 2018 - Adulting Scrap
Their apartment is too small to be properly cozy. Too small for two people, let alone two people, two cats and a revolving door of displaced unliving beings. And, yeah, maybe the cats have more furniture than the humans do, but this place is theirs and it feels warm and lived in and distinctly like a home. It has for a while.

And not just any home. Lucas knows that in twenty years all the little details of this place will wander in and out of his mind - the tiny, cramped living room. The window that won’t shut all the way. The drafty one inch gap between the front door and the floor. The smell of the radiator. The way the plumbing knocks like hammers on steel when you flush the toilet or run the sink. The downstairs neighbor slamming a broom handle into her ceiling if they get too loud after 10PM. The eerie, distorted whispers of the unliving.

He’ll think of this place - of all those things - and smile. Because this place is theirs. Perfect for them at a time when everything is as far from perfect as is humanly possible. He’ll tell Sebastien all this (because of course Sebastien will still be there), and Bash will laugh and maybe snort, if Lucas manages to say it with the right look on his face. He’ll call Lucas gross and Lucas will love him just as much as he does now - as much as he did when they wrote countless notes back and forth to pass the time in class. As much as he did when he’d first laid eyes on Bash, a couple of newly minted teenagers on their first day of high school.


May - I wish I had finished this but I'm probably not gonna
Cars get left unlocked in this part of town. Not because the locals feel safe, but because they’d rather their windows not be broken in pursuit of stray cell phone chargers and fistfuls of quarters. The old houses, all rentals, creep right up against the narrow sidewalk, looming claustrophobic. Street lights buzz from the effort of splitting the darkness, their eerie orange glow sliding across the rain slicked street.

It’s late. Or early, maybe. Too much of one or the other for anything to be stirring. Ordinarily. Here, it’s different. The tenants here are mostly college students, as like to be up studying (or partying) as actually sleeping. Even at 3am on a Wednesday, the block isn't dead. Just resting. Quiet, but still breathing. It sees the hooded figures doing strange things in alleyways, but it’s too tired - too preoccupied with its other problems - to react. Things can transpire, not unnoticed but certainly ignored. The perfect spot for a dark deal, done in silence. The worst place to start the sort of scene that’s probably about to get started.

This is bad.

The tall young man crouched by the fifteen-year-old Honda Accord knows this and is trying to distract himself from the promise of mayhem to come. He stares at the print out taped to the inside of the car’s passenger window: “Please stop breaking my windows. I can't afford it.”

That's the sort of sign he’d write. This is probably the sort of place he’d live, if circumstances had been different. A normal STEM-field grad student putting pleading signs in his shitty car, not an agent of magical law enforcement hiding behind someone else's reliable but rusted out mid-size coup in the middle of the night.

And the Accord’s owner has no clue that any of this is happening. This is a muggle neighborhood, and muggles are kept in the dark. Agent Kowalski hates that. Hates that so many people are ignorant of what’s going on right under their noses. That fucking statute - that outdated wall - keeps everyone in the dark. On both sides. About everything. His co-workers have no clue what a manual transmission is, let alone how to drive a car with one. Agent Kowalski probably couldn’t drive stick without destroying the transmission, but at least he gets the gist of it.

He hardly notices he’s distracted himself until, somewhere, Agent Mayweather taps her wand against the pavement. Click click click. A signal. It snaps him back to reality. There they are.

Kowalski lifts his head and sees it.

Movement from between buildings. Figures in robes. And then there's a chime, a tinny electric song fills the air. The tense silence obliterated by a John Williams composition reproduced from centimeters-wide speakers.

Agent Kowalski slams his hand over his pocket, too late. White static shunts every useful thought from his head while the theme from Star Wars echoes down the street. Everything else - every breath, every city sound, every creeping thing - stops in that moment. No room for fear or anger or disappointment. No room, even, for panic. Nothing left to do but act.

Music still tingling away, Agent Kowalski moves. White knuckle grip on his wand, he directs a wordless spell at himself. Faint light dusts the edges of his robes before fading into the fabric, and he is changed.

Agent Mayweather, her eyes wide, mouths a string of curses that Kowalski only catches half of. He dips his head midway through, eyes closed. After a beat, he stands and accepts the call.

“Hey Babe.”

Lucas Kowalski steps into one of the patches of orange light. The long black robes, the suit and tie, the auror's uniform? They're gone. Replaced with dingy gray scrubs and an old hoodie. His willow wood wand, not a wand, but an unlit cigarette he stuffs into the corner of his mouth and struggles to talk around. A medical student and not a wizard. As though he weren't an agent of magical law enforcement at all. As though circumstances had been different.

“No, now's not a bad time at all. I'm almost home.” He says, voice taking on the sort of tired softness that can't be faked. Warm and relaxed, somehow, despite everything. He shuffles forward, slouching and exhausted. And he knows, immediately, there are eyes on him - not just the eyes of aurors.


May - RP With Yourself Is Just Writing
When he walks, Lucas Kowalski looks like an Ent that recently discovered a passion for The Cure. Somehow. That’s, just, exactly what he looks like. And Nia laughs at her aha moment as he crosses her path in the atrium. “Pagliacci,” she says at him. He ducks his head, so she knows he’s heard her. And she notches up the volume a peg when she goes on: “Hey, Adrian Brody, I need a favor.”

Kowalski stops, shoulders visibly rising and falling in a heavy sigh before he turns. He squints one eye shut as he regards the tiny head girl warily. “Alright, fine.” He says with put on impatience. “I’ll give you my Ferdie Fact three if you vote Paul down ballot.”

“Oh, Scarecrow,” Nia shuts her journal, an even, affectionate smile on her face as she stares up at him. “When I graduate, I think I’ll miss you least of all.”

He nods, clicks his tongue and shifts. His fingers flex. Every movement is awkward, a little like clockwork. “Well, this has been an excellent use of our time. Don’t forget there’s a Charms study session next--”

“Listen, String Beanis, I noticed a distinct lack of ‘would you rather fart popcorn’ jokes in the anonymous entry last night.” Nia reclines back on the couch, so she can rest her chin in her hand.

“I was busy.”

“Sure.” She waves off his protest. “That’s great, honey. I totally buy that, but look, I need some help putting something nice together. How are you at freezing charms?”

“I’m offended you even asked.” Lucas replies, whip-quick, his delivery deadpan. But there’s still a twitch in his expression - a faint twinkle of curiosity, and Nia knows she has him. Lucas Kowalski does his damnedest to seem unpleasant, detached and weird, but Nia can smell that bleeding heart from a mile away. Hardly a word was spoken ill of him on the anonymous entry last night, and still he hurts. Visibly.

A guffaw erupts from her, anyway. Because Kowalski can’t know she secretly thinks well of him. “Oh, damn. Who’s this cocky lad and what’d you do with my sad clown?”

Lucas exhales heavily, pushing his curls out of his face. He wheezes a bit when he sucks air back in. “Do you want my help or not?”

“Yes, I do.” Nia leans forward, smile wide and toothy. Before she can say more, a muffled but still loud rattle of glass bottles interrupts her.

Nisha Lewis drops a heavy cardboard box on the low table that separates the three of them. This tiny girl, possibly the worst thing the sophomore class has to offer, a dangerously obnoxious amalgam of fearlessness and cheese monkeys lol humor, is going to be Nia’s saving grace.

“Got ‘em,” Nisha says of the box she’s brought, and then turns to Lucas. “Oh, hey buddy, how’s the search for the One Ring going?”

“I’m not a Nazgul.” He snaps.

This is clearly part of a larger, ongoing conversation that Nia has not been privy to. So she ignores them. Because it sounds dumb. “Hey Fun Size Snickers, thanks for the donation.”

“I feel bad.” She admits, though the look on her face is less apologetic and more just-ate-something-gross.

Nia gives her a playful shove, her response chipper, “I know you do.” She pauses, lifting one of the flaps of the box. She steals a half-glance, grinning, at the tiny quidditch player as she says, “Just like your brother.”

Lucas peers into the box himself, cautious, like there might be a bomb inside. “You make those? Or your brother?”

“Yeh, of course he did. I’m not, like, a mad scientist.” Debatable. “I was gonna use ‘em for, like, a prom court thing? But, like,” Nisha hesitates for a bit too long, hands waving about as she fails utterly to think of what she wants to say. “Fuck.”

“You root out all the bad ones?” Both Nia and Lucas ask her in unison. And then they look at each other, unnerved.

Nisha stares, she very clearly wants to be huffy about this, but it’s hard not to snicker and shake her head. “Um, I donno. Like, they’re all unlabled? So, like? I donno. Buuuuuut,” she ticks a finger forward. “I deffo chugged the last half of ‘The Sweet Release of Death’ so that’n’s not in there, anymore, at least?”

“You chugged…” Lucas mumbles, baffled.

Nia looks up at Lucas. Impossibly skinny, ridiculously tall Lucas. She wonders if they should make him taste test each bottle. But, they need him. And time is of the essence.


February - "PretentiousGarbage.doc"
He was all imperfections. A bunch of too long parts on a body ill-prepared to take up as much space as it did. Ungainly. He shrank for fear of touching - invading. Twisted up, all knots and sharp angles. Not just his limbs but the stuff in his head, too.

Everything.

The way he spoke. The way he thought. The way he moved. All quiet caution. More stillness than motion. Slow and measured, yes, but too slow and too measured to be anything other than awkward.

Like a child checking for monsters under his bed. Or a man handling some old, crumbling thing, unsure of what to do with it and worried it will break.

And, oh, how he worried. Oh, how he feared he would break.

December - A Winter Break Scrap
The roads are empty and the Beach Boys play softly on the radio. A few beats ahead of Brian Wilson chiming in, Ernie Kowalski turns to his wife and asks, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?”

Alice Kowalski keeps her eyes mostly on the road. Just tilts her head slightly to the side when she asks for clarification, speaking over the lyrics: “And we wouldn’t have to wait so long?”

“For what? Death?” Lucas interjects from the back seat. “You’re, like, fifty. What’s left?”

While his dad laughs, Lucas’ mom is turning almost full around in the driver’s seat to scoff at him. And Lucas holds his phone up just in time to snap a shot of it.

“You little crud,” Mrs. Kowalski says, lips curled into a smirk that Lucas would recognize as remarkably similar to his own if he weren’t too busy texting the picture he’d just taken to his boyfriend with the caption ‘Happy Holidays. Going to die.’

“Distracted driving,” Lucas tells her without looking up from the tiny glowing screen.

Lucas’ mother clucks. “You’re going to get back problems the way you’re glued to that thing.”

November - Good Morning Where Was I Going With This
Danny has one black whisker. It’s hard to make out against her thick gray fur. But Lucas knows it’s there because she’s sitting on his sternum, her face, wide-eyed and precious, an inch or two away from his own. And when he finally opens his eyes, it’s impossible to miss her or that one black whisker.

“Danny,” he greets her, voice a hoarse but affectionate whisper and head still full of sleep.

She chirps at him, more like a bark than a meow and he smiles and holds his hand up. Danny presses her face into his palm. Just holds it there. Her nose is cold and wet. A purr rumbles through her like an idling motor.

Lucas lays in bed a bit longer, feeling heavy. His hand starts to slip away from his familiar’s face as sleep rises to take him, again. But, remembering what he wants to do today, he decides it’s almost definitely time to get up.

And with effort, he gets there. Up and out of bed he goes. Or, he does after a bit of struggle with the sheets, his long, thin limbs still caught at awkward and spidery, and not quite to elegant, yet. He climbs out of bed, and after a moment spent yawning, stretching, and folding his arms up awkwardly to scratch his shoulder blades, he sits down at his desk and cracks his journal open. The neutral, bleary-eyed expression on Lucas’ face gives way to a small smile. He scribbles something back, responding to a conversation that had gone long the night before - the same conversation that always goes long. The one he can’t quite remember all the bits and bobs of, at this point. His favorite conversation.

Once that’s taken care of, Lucas shoves his fingers into his hair, tugs and gets them stuck there, the tangles resisting forward movement.

October - An unfinished anxiety attack
It’s sunny. It’s safe. He hopes Pippa is okay.

Lucas never looks casual or comfortable in his skin. Always shrinking. Every step a hesitation, like a cat sneaking around an unfamiliar house. So, it’s not necessarily strange to see him stalking about - off he goes, leaving the Coppertale campground and wandering into the nearby meadow, where the wild flowers had long gone to seed and begun to die.

He stands there in the open field, tall grasses dead and dry but wet with dew. He feels lightheaded.

The forest had moved them here, to this spot, after they’d pulled Jeffy from that log. The log they’d found because they had solved a puzzle box in the infirmary. Just three of them. Because they'd been separated from Sebastien and Wyatt in the collapsed classroom. Lucas’ skin prickles. He shakes his head.

It’s sunny. It’s safe. You're gonna do just fine, Dr. Banner.

If he keeps walking, it’ll just be more field. He knows it, but there’s still a creeping worry that wandering too far from paths might take him elsewhere. The bad kind of elsewhere. To some familiar place made strange and dark and ruined. Somewhere full of angry, broken things.

Lucas’ breath comes short and sharp. Coughing, he fumbles in his pockets for his inhaler and turns to stare out at the treeline. Skimming the forest like he would all the dark corners of a horror movie scene. Seeking telltale signs of the jump scare before it happens.

The man is out there, somewhere. Sometimes, Lucas thinks he sees him. On the edge of the wood. Just off the path. Watching during Grotto parties. In the corners of his vision when he’s alone. At night, when he wakes up suddenly, sometimes the miner’s there in the cabin, too.

It’s in his head. Lucas knows it's in his head. But it still feels real. Dangerous. He sits in the grass because his knees don’t want to hold him up anymore. He clicks a dose of medication into his mouth. Holds his breath for ten seconds. Stares at the trees. There’s nothing out there, but that doesn't stop every movement of every branch from prompting a shudder. The medicine does what it’s supposed to do, but the knots in Lucas’ chest don't unravel like they should.

It’s sunny. It’s safe. It’s in his head.

He lays back when he exhales, damp grass cold on his neck. It smells like Autumn, crisp and dead. Lucas tries to think of other real things he notices while his heart races. A stick jabbing him in his side. The sound of freshmen chattering. The fact that he can’t fucking stop coughing.

It’s sunny. It’s--