KIN (this will probably change)
By Dee_The_Slut (Deanne Charles)
Summary: Poppzy Z Brite crossover with one of my originals (Burning Honey). English (kinda) band Intentional are roadtripping/touring in the U.S, stopping at every dysfunctional small town that they pass, but something is drawing Natty to Missing Mile and, yet again, she wants nothing to do with it. Natty has always had a strong psychic ability, an astral link to fate which leads her to people who need her help, but she can't save them all, she can't even save herself. There's something different about Ghost, the delicate angel that she meets. It's as though they are family, but every family has a crisis…or two.
Disclaimer: I think everybody knows that all of the wonderful things about this story (Ghost, Steve, Missing Mile and it's inhabitants) are born of the wonderfully fevered organ that is the brain of Poppy Z Brite. I do own the other lot though so please don't take them from me (I'm rather attached to Natalie, Eepha and the band). Oh, I don't own any of the music or T.V shows referred to either.
Rating is pg-13 for now but may (is likely to go up pretty soon)
Natty rested her head against the window, wanting to cool her burning, feverish forehead on the cool, clear glass, but the window was grubby and warm and only served to make her head hurt more. She watched the landscape whiz by indifferently, fields of bland, yellow, straw-like plant slipping past, filthy and neglected looking through the smudgy window. She wound the glass down slowly, a breath of dry dusty wind spraying up her nostrils, filling her sinuses with the grainy, abrasive sand of small towns and infinite boredom. The boys were singing loudly around her, spilling vodka and profanity in the van, wrestling in the heap of empty wrappers, half eaten beigals and pop cans, crushing each other against the wreckage of last night's alcohol fuelled revelry.
She didn't know where they were going, didn't really care, she only knew that the next town that they stopped at would offer as little as the last one they stopped at; semiliterate, culturally retarded hicks, teens with more social deformities than money, a general lack of obvious excitement and debauchery. Whenever they left one of these towns, she always took the emptiness and dire want of the voiceless souls that she had met and temporarily loved, cursing them for it after. She smiled, laughing silently to herself as she remembered what she had actually liked about small towns; you could always be sure to find a liquor store with an acne ridden clerk willing to sell alcohol to anybody who showed any kind of interest in them, even if they were too young to actually sell booze to or fuck without fear of conviction. She felt like a whore flirting retarded social rejects for booze but she felt like a whore most of the time and anyway, if you have morals, you're not drunk enough.
Natty definitely wasn't drunk enough, wasn't well enough to really get drunk or get angry about the amount of vodka that the boys were sloshing around the van, around their equipment, over her resting figure. She was too full of dread and nausea to peek into the back of the packed van, to watch the three boys who were now entwined in a heady mixture of sex, vodka and rotting food. She barely had enough willpower to unwind stray, searching fingers from her own as Daniel tried to pull her into the carnal tangle. She waved him away with a slight flick of the wrist and closed her eyes and ears against the van and the long, endlessly yellow fields against the straight, rolling asphalt road that led them towards the cause of the swirling in her head and the wrenching of her stomach. She felt the road sign before she saw it, saw the strobolic images flashing painfully behind her eyes; pain, hurt, suffering, blood.
"Missing mile! We have to stop there!" Just hearing Ben mention the name twisted Natty's innards in a painful knot of horror and sorrow, flaring bright white behind her closed eyelids, shaking her muscles violently in an agitated spasm of nausea and Psi.
"Stop the van!" Ben looked at her with a confused expression but obeyed, he always obeyed and that was half of his appeal, but Natty couldn't think about that, barely had time to haul herself out of the van and onto the heated tarmac before throwing a thick, chunky gush of vomit into the dry sand beside the road. The thick, after-hurl saliva dripped like sour syrup from her thick lips, mixing into a dark paste with the dirty yellow sand, pieces of salted beef and bagel and a hint of mustard adding texture and aroma to the mixture, the nausic marriage of her to this place, this town that she did not want to go to stop at but couldn't avoid. She knew that the twisting in her stomach would never leave her unless she went to Missing Mile SO.C.
She heard the soft thud of boots landing calmly on the road, the steady, measured movements that were unmistakably Andy, the soft, stroking hand on her tense shoulder. The bright white flash made her blink as she hurled another jet of putrid semi-liquid out of her system and onto the dirt, her skin heating uncontrollably as she retched again, Andy's camera snapping as she did.
"It's beautiful. Can I put it on the website?" Natty watched with an apathetic interest as the dust sucked in her gastric juices, sating itself with whatever salvation her garbage filled vomit could bring, swallowing her like an eager lover. She shrugged.
"Sure. Whatever!" Andy softly curled his finger in the tight, grainy knots of hair at the top of her neck as she leaned forward, resting her forehead on a dry patch of puke-free sand, groaning to herself and hooking his little finger with her own. He couldn't hear her thoughts, but he'd seen this many times before, the nausea, the headaches, the denial of even the most hedonistic of pleasures.
He didn't know much about Psi or Fate or The Powers That Be (as Natty and just about all Angel fans called it), but he could see by the plastic gloss of her eyes and the absent twitching of her body that some kind of message was getting through to her finely tuned radar. She hadn't been set a "mission" since they'd hit the road and he could tell by the look of horror and pleading on her face that she was not yet ready to get back into the occupation of soul saving. Natty wasn't ready to save anybody's soul, she wasn't even sure if she still had one or if she ever did. How the hell was she supposed to help? Her intestines twisted and knotted, her stomach ripped, her kidneys pumped foul poisons back into her blood; her organs were ganging up against her, forcing her towards the next lost soul. She hoped that this person, whoever they were, was worth it.
"I'm sure he will be!" Natty hadn't meant to transmit the thought to Andros, but was glad that he was there with her, that they were all there to see her through this and keep her from throwing herself in front of the next sixteen wheeler that she saw. She just smiled dryly, lifting her head from the ground and wiping tiny sediments of rock and possibly bone from her forehead, slightly rubbing the small dents and imprints in her soft flesh made by the little stones. "What makes you think that it's a he?" Andy pulled her to her feet, a tight smile lightening his features and reddening his glossy lips.
"It always is!"
Ghost settled his head on Steve's muscular thigh, the long legs loosening beneath his own relaxed neck, the flesh melting into him like warm syrup and summer kisses, liquid sun and rose musk. The sun dripped gold over them both and Ghost could taste the sunny beads flow onto his lips, over his tongue, slipping down his throat, tracing a path of luscious light through his passages and filling his empty stomach with saccharine warmth. A faint, white sea of dandelion spores floated airily on a soft breeze, bobbing on the whispering wind as though dangling form delicate, invisible strings twisted around the nimble finger of wood sprites and the specters of trees. The wispy, delicate stars of the dandelions danced easily and gracefully to the lazy beating of the sun, eagerly whispering the wishes of the children that had held them in clammy, hope filled palms and breathed on them with chocolate heavy breath. Most adults thought that it was just an old myth. They no longer believed that a wish breathed on a dandelion would float on the wind like a airborne message and meet someone, something, that could fulfill it.
Ghost still believed. He knew the truth about wishes and the natural magic of childhood; his grandmother had told him. He remembered the day; he was sitting on the dry cracked porch of her house, the heavy smell of herbs and lotions thickening the otherwise dry and lifeless air with rich, natural perfume. He had caught the dandelion star in his hand, eyeing it with awe, believing that he had caught a caught a tiny piece of Heaven, believing the golden haired, chubby faced child that he could see within it's fragile spores to be an angel, one of God's elite, Gabriel or Michael. That face had been smiling. They hadn't all been since.
His Grandmother had come to sit beside him as he listened to words of his hopeful angel, as he allowed tears to drip from his quivering eyes. She had smelled like the earth and nature and confident history, and Ghost never felt scared when she was near, was never afraid to walk bare footed through the woods or sing to the clouds and the wind and the bark of the trees. She had told him to be careful with the wish, that what he held in his hand was the hope of all children and the last remnant of man's natural magic that most would ever experience. He had let it fly on the wind with a new confidence in the power of people and a wish of his own gently hugging that of the other child. He had wanted someone, someone that would always be a part of his soul, someone who would make him part of theirs.
Steve shifted beneath him. Ghost could hear the voices of the new children, the new magicians, could hear their laughs, their sobs, their frightened whispers as he held his hand in the air, allowing them to flutter around hid up stretched fingers, brushing his padded tips like the silken locks of dirty haired children. He caught one gently in his palm, careful not to crush the downy tuft of the fragile wish that it carried deep within its wispy branches. I wish the pain would go away. That's what the voice told him, the voice of the little girl with the thin wrists and the shaky breath, the girl with the old floral dress and they dying lungs. He said his own wish out loud, the original wish of his childhood. It wasn't his wish anymore, that had been fulfilled, but somehow silently breathing the words made everything okay, reminded him of the magic and his Grandmother and that having your wishes come tru was a good thing although grieving for the child and loss of childhood that the voice expressed. The magic wasn't his, it wasn't his powewre, he wasn't a child anymore. His magic was something that could be classed as neither a blessing or a curse, it was just something that he had lived with for a long time. Steve didn't understand it, couldn't understand. Nobody could understand.A single tear crawled from Ghost's eye as he released the wish back onto the wind, smiling because he too hoped that the girl's wish would come true, crying because he knew that it would. Perhaps he wanted his to come true too. Maybe he was being greedy and really did want another person in his life with whom he could share his soul, another person who could reach the cracks that Steve couldn't. He'd never give up Steve's friendship but maybe he needed two soul mates, not just one. But the magic wasn't his anymore, he was no longer a child. He shivered and Steve instinctively wrapped him up with his strong arms despite the obvious heat. Neither of them knew that the Ghost's wish was already being fulfilled or that it had something to do with the noisy van now approaching their town.
By Dee_The_Slut (Deanne Charles)
Summary: Poppzy Z Brite crossover with one of my originals (Burning Honey). English (kinda) band Intentional are roadtripping/touring in the U.S, stopping at every dysfunctional small town that they pass, but something is drawing Natty to Missing Mile and, yet again, she wants nothing to do with it. Natty has always had a strong psychic ability, an astral link to fate which leads her to people who need her help, but she can't save them all, she can't even save herself. There's something different about Ghost, the delicate angel that she meets. It's as though they are family, but every family has a crisis…or two.
Disclaimer: I think everybody knows that all of the wonderful things about this story (Ghost, Steve, Missing Mile and it's inhabitants) are born of the wonderfully fevered organ that is the brain of Poppy Z Brite. I do own the other lot though so please don't take them from me (I'm rather attached to Natalie, Eepha and the band). Oh, I don't own any of the music or T.V shows referred to either.
Rating is pg-13 for now but may (is likely to go up pretty soon)
Natty rested her head against the window, wanting to cool her burning, feverish forehead on the cool, clear glass, but the window was grubby and warm and only served to make her head hurt more. She watched the landscape whiz by indifferently, fields of bland, yellow, straw-like plant slipping past, filthy and neglected looking through the smudgy window. She wound the glass down slowly, a breath of dry dusty wind spraying up her nostrils, filling her sinuses with the grainy, abrasive sand of small towns and infinite boredom. The boys were singing loudly around her, spilling vodka and profanity in the van, wrestling in the heap of empty wrappers, half eaten beigals and pop cans, crushing each other against the wreckage of last night's alcohol fuelled revelry.
She didn't know where they were going, didn't really care, she only knew that the next town that they stopped at would offer as little as the last one they stopped at; semiliterate, culturally retarded hicks, teens with more social deformities than money, a general lack of obvious excitement and debauchery. Whenever they left one of these towns, she always took the emptiness and dire want of the voiceless souls that she had met and temporarily loved, cursing them for it after. She smiled, laughing silently to herself as she remembered what she had actually liked about small towns; you could always be sure to find a liquor store with an acne ridden clerk willing to sell alcohol to anybody who showed any kind of interest in them, even if they were too young to actually sell booze to or fuck without fear of conviction. She felt like a whore flirting retarded social rejects for booze but she felt like a whore most of the time and anyway, if you have morals, you're not drunk enough.
Natty definitely wasn't drunk enough, wasn't well enough to really get drunk or get angry about the amount of vodka that the boys were sloshing around the van, around their equipment, over her resting figure. She was too full of dread and nausea to peek into the back of the packed van, to watch the three boys who were now entwined in a heady mixture of sex, vodka and rotting food. She barely had enough willpower to unwind stray, searching fingers from her own as Daniel tried to pull her into the carnal tangle. She waved him away with a slight flick of the wrist and closed her eyes and ears against the van and the long, endlessly yellow fields against the straight, rolling asphalt road that led them towards the cause of the swirling in her head and the wrenching of her stomach. She felt the road sign before she saw it, saw the strobolic images flashing painfully behind her eyes; pain, hurt, suffering, blood.
"Missing mile! We have to stop there!" Just hearing Ben mention the name twisted Natty's innards in a painful knot of horror and sorrow, flaring bright white behind her closed eyelids, shaking her muscles violently in an agitated spasm of nausea and Psi.
"Stop the van!" Ben looked at her with a confused expression but obeyed, he always obeyed and that was half of his appeal, but Natty couldn't think about that, barely had time to haul herself out of the van and onto the heated tarmac before throwing a thick, chunky gush of vomit into the dry sand beside the road. The thick, after-hurl saliva dripped like sour syrup from her thick lips, mixing into a dark paste with the dirty yellow sand, pieces of salted beef and bagel and a hint of mustard adding texture and aroma to the mixture, the nausic marriage of her to this place, this town that she did not want to go to stop at but couldn't avoid. She knew that the twisting in her stomach would never leave her unless she went to Missing Mile SO.C.
She heard the soft thud of boots landing calmly on the road, the steady, measured movements that were unmistakably Andy, the soft, stroking hand on her tense shoulder. The bright white flash made her blink as she hurled another jet of putrid semi-liquid out of her system and onto the dirt, her skin heating uncontrollably as she retched again, Andy's camera snapping as she did.
"It's beautiful. Can I put it on the website?" Natty watched with an apathetic interest as the dust sucked in her gastric juices, sating itself with whatever salvation her garbage filled vomit could bring, swallowing her like an eager lover. She shrugged.
"Sure. Whatever!" Andy softly curled his finger in the tight, grainy knots of hair at the top of her neck as she leaned forward, resting her forehead on a dry patch of puke-free sand, groaning to herself and hooking his little finger with her own. He couldn't hear her thoughts, but he'd seen this many times before, the nausea, the headaches, the denial of even the most hedonistic of pleasures.
He didn't know much about Psi or Fate or The Powers That Be (as Natty and just about all Angel fans called it), but he could see by the plastic gloss of her eyes and the absent twitching of her body that some kind of message was getting through to her finely tuned radar. She hadn't been set a "mission" since they'd hit the road and he could tell by the look of horror and pleading on her face that she was not yet ready to get back into the occupation of soul saving. Natty wasn't ready to save anybody's soul, she wasn't even sure if she still had one or if she ever did. How the hell was she supposed to help? Her intestines twisted and knotted, her stomach ripped, her kidneys pumped foul poisons back into her blood; her organs were ganging up against her, forcing her towards the next lost soul. She hoped that this person, whoever they were, was worth it.
"I'm sure he will be!" Natty hadn't meant to transmit the thought to Andros, but was glad that he was there with her, that they were all there to see her through this and keep her from throwing herself in front of the next sixteen wheeler that she saw. She just smiled dryly, lifting her head from the ground and wiping tiny sediments of rock and possibly bone from her forehead, slightly rubbing the small dents and imprints in her soft flesh made by the little stones. "What makes you think that it's a he?" Andy pulled her to her feet, a tight smile lightening his features and reddening his glossy lips.
"It always is!"
Ghost settled his head on Steve's muscular thigh, the long legs loosening beneath his own relaxed neck, the flesh melting into him like warm syrup and summer kisses, liquid sun and rose musk. The sun dripped gold over them both and Ghost could taste the sunny beads flow onto his lips, over his tongue, slipping down his throat, tracing a path of luscious light through his passages and filling his empty stomach with saccharine warmth. A faint, white sea of dandelion spores floated airily on a soft breeze, bobbing on the whispering wind as though dangling form delicate, invisible strings twisted around the nimble finger of wood sprites and the specters of trees. The wispy, delicate stars of the dandelions danced easily and gracefully to the lazy beating of the sun, eagerly whispering the wishes of the children that had held them in clammy, hope filled palms and breathed on them with chocolate heavy breath. Most adults thought that it was just an old myth. They no longer believed that a wish breathed on a dandelion would float on the wind like a airborne message and meet someone, something, that could fulfill it.
Ghost still believed. He knew the truth about wishes and the natural magic of childhood; his grandmother had told him. He remembered the day; he was sitting on the dry cracked porch of her house, the heavy smell of herbs and lotions thickening the otherwise dry and lifeless air with rich, natural perfume. He had caught the dandelion star in his hand, eyeing it with awe, believing that he had caught a caught a tiny piece of Heaven, believing the golden haired, chubby faced child that he could see within it's fragile spores to be an angel, one of God's elite, Gabriel or Michael. That face had been smiling. They hadn't all been since.
His Grandmother had come to sit beside him as he listened to words of his hopeful angel, as he allowed tears to drip from his quivering eyes. She had smelled like the earth and nature and confident history, and Ghost never felt scared when she was near, was never afraid to walk bare footed through the woods or sing to the clouds and the wind and the bark of the trees. She had told him to be careful with the wish, that what he held in his hand was the hope of all children and the last remnant of man's natural magic that most would ever experience. He had let it fly on the wind with a new confidence in the power of people and a wish of his own gently hugging that of the other child. He had wanted someone, someone that would always be a part of his soul, someone who would make him part of theirs.
Steve shifted beneath him. Ghost could hear the voices of the new children, the new magicians, could hear their laughs, their sobs, their frightened whispers as he held his hand in the air, allowing them to flutter around hid up stretched fingers, brushing his padded tips like the silken locks of dirty haired children. He caught one gently in his palm, careful not to crush the downy tuft of the fragile wish that it carried deep within its wispy branches. I wish the pain would go away. That's what the voice told him, the voice of the little girl with the thin wrists and the shaky breath, the girl with the old floral dress and they dying lungs. He said his own wish out loud, the original wish of his childhood. It wasn't his wish anymore, that had been fulfilled, but somehow silently breathing the words made everything okay, reminded him of the magic and his Grandmother and that having your wishes come tru was a good thing although grieving for the child and loss of childhood that the voice expressed. The magic wasn't his, it wasn't his powewre, he wasn't a child anymore. His magic was something that could be classed as neither a blessing or a curse, it was just something that he had lived with for a long time. Steve didn't understand it, couldn't understand. Nobody could understand.A single tear crawled from Ghost's eye as he released the wish back onto the wind, smiling because he too hoped that the girl's wish would come true, crying because he knew that it would. Perhaps he wanted his to come true too. Maybe he was being greedy and really did want another person in his life with whom he could share his soul, another person who could reach the cracks that Steve couldn't. He'd never give up Steve's friendship but maybe he needed two soul mates, not just one. But the magic wasn't his anymore, he was no longer a child. He shivered and Steve instinctively wrapped him up with his strong arms despite the obvious heat. Neither of them knew that the Ghost's wish was already being fulfilled or that it had something to do with the noisy van now approaching their town.
