Reasons

I'm writing this down here because I can't hold it all in. When and if I do I feel physically ill, and that does nothing to help my kids.

He was...insane? out of his mind? hallucinating? this morning. He thought there was writing on his hand and that I was trying to do some procedure on him when I checked his blood sugar.

20 minutes of NON-reality. It is so disturbing.

I took the baby to the sitter, singing Jingle Bells to his Hey! the whole way, videoed Wednesday as he portrayed a candle, and worked an ornament decorating station at Winston's party.

The Jeep was back when I got home, driven flush into the fence. I still have no idea where it was, where he was. It's gotten to the point that I don't even want to know.

He seems slightly more aware of what's happening now. He had takeout Chinese in his lap when I got here, and he's back asleep.

It is so strange to be out in the world, doing these amazing things with the boys and then come home and not know if reality is real for him yet.

I was and am quick to remind him of the promise. I didn't find any large stashes of beer in the Jeep when I backed it away from the fence.

Writing this down eases my tummy just enough that I can keep down my lunch; stock back up on a teeny bit of hope.

Promise

He was sober for three days before he started again; tried to hide it from me. I'm not stupid.

He made me promise that it ends today and forever. We shook and held hands, which for us is a damn lot of touching.

He went out tonight. It was supposed to be the bar down the street, but he came home an hour after the bars closed in a lime green taxi cab. He doesn't know, right now, where he left his Jeep.

I woke with a start about 2:20 and got up soon after. I've never been so glad for the zenish chore of writing apple butter, apple butter, apple butter over and over again. The smell of the hot glue gun and the warm press of the burning stuff under the ribbons soothes my shaky fingers.

So the treats are all finished and in the van. I am exhausted, but at least I'm calm. Letting go of the control his actions have over me is so hard.

I have to be up again in an hour and a half. Wednesday's lunch is all but made, there's coffee in the pot, and a promise to be upheld from now on.

We'll see.

Grace

My husband has fallen off the wagon again. I don't know how hard the fall will be this time; last time it almost killed him...us.

But the boys and I are on track. Our wagon bumps along, with rocks and valleys, but moving forward none the less.

This morning I made oatmeal and turkey bacon; an old standby from the baby years before school started for anyone. It makes me think of my Robin.

I lit a candle while it cooked, saying to myself, "Yes, I will light my candle."

Immediately I started singing Nirvana in my head, "Light my candle in a daze cuz I've found God...".

I set it on the table before the food was even ready, a welcome for us, for Him.

The baby, known as Minnow in the blogging world, walked in and saw the candle, excitement in his eyes.

"Gase! Gase!", he said. I didn't understand and told him so. He pointed to the candle, "Gase!". Finally, feeling frustrated with me he said, "Ah memn."

Amen.

Grace.

The candle meant we needed to say Grace. And we did, Johnny Appleseed, with raisin, bacon, and gibberish seeds thrown into the air for extra emphasis.

We just need to say Grace.

We finished and I blew out the candle, breathing in the bitter smoke deeply. Please, Lord, let it linger.

Tea and Sympathy for the Devil

Today is the day.

There’s something I’ve kept hidden about myself for centuries now. Revealing this secret could change the entire direction of my immortal life. Not even my Alice knows, so well have I kept this tidbit to myself.

Y’all know I fought during the Civil War, and spent my younger years in the grand state of Texas. My drawl, in some circles, is even more famous than my gift for manipulating peoples emotions.

I am, quite possibly, the most fierce vampire in the Cullen family.

But here’s the truth: I’m actually British. I’ve been droppin'’ my g’s for so many centuries that it’s taken me a decade to find them all again in my inner voice. Also, if we’re laying everything out for inspection, I’ve always found the letter R rather distasteful, and it’s been so lovely to lighten it, even if no one else can hear me.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute with you, dear reader; let that voice that creates your internal monologue change from it’s Matthew McConanakedbongos with a little John Wayne on the side, to something of a more Hugh-ish variety.

Think Hugh Grant, narrating “Love Actually” and Hugh Laurie during an off-color interview for “House”, and, if you feel in the mood, you can add more than a touch of Hugh Hefner’s vintage swagger.

So what does this mean?, you ask, Why is this even important to the story, Jasper?

Well, it means my entire life has been a lie.

Yes, I was attacked and ravaged by newborn vampires, and regularly bitten by a raven-haired broad named Maria.

Do you honestly think, however, that I would just eat someone whole like a savage? Would I, a proper British gentlemen, tear open a neck filled with scarlet blood so deep it turned aubergine in the moonlight and gulp it down?

Of course not.

There’s a reason why my Alice has a certain affinity for teacups, and the very first one she “found” was the one I used for my Civil War Teatime.

Tilting a neck just so, it formed the perfect spout; a human My Little Teapot.

My Alice thinks she collects those dainty vessels with coordinating saucers because her mind works the way the ancients read tea leaves, stirring the rehydrated plants pieces until they say the right things.

The reality is that the cups are my only connection to my true identity. I may not remember where I came from exactly, but I do know that Maria was the only one smart enough to read my gifts for what they were worth.

She appreciated a proper tea, and made sure that every morsel I consumed coached me in the nuances of a Southern Texas accent to the point that my Britishisms were undetectable. I helped her create an army, she helped me hide behind a new identity.

So tonight, on this the five-hundredth anniversary of Mary Alice Brandon branding me hers, culling my senses to fit into the mold of a Cullen, I am revealing to her my true heritage.

I’ve prepared for the two of us a true English tea, with blood sausages I found at a butcher shop in Port Angeles, and the red drip, drip, droppings of a perfect doe that I’ve been saving, hidden in a tree near our treaty line with the wolves, for the last hundred years.

It’s a good thing I can live forever, because the planning of this one evening has taken me longer than a natural human lifespan.

It only takes one “Darlin'’”, though, for that girl to drop her drawers, but I’m much more interested in divesting her of her knickers tonight. I’ve been a Southern gentlemen my whole married life, but she’s no idea the things I can do with this semi-royal semi I’m growing for this evenings affairs.

I’ve blasted the rest of the house with enough lust to keep then occupied the rest of the night, and when my beloved comes upstairs I’m in a suit, my boots tossed in the back of my closet.

She gives me the arched eyebrow of a true demi-demon, and I match her in mirror image.

“Hello, my fair lady. How are you this evenin'’?”

She’s so hard to surprise, that Mary Alice, but I’ve kept this from her flawlessly.

“All right, Mister, I know you’ve got something to tell me so just spill your damn beans already.”

After centuries together in the same house, Alice has perfected a feminine version of the slang I mastered in Texas.

I decide to tell her like a balloon deflates on a too hot day. So slowly, with every syllable wrought in my most precise dialects, I tell her my deep, dark secret.

“My Darlin'’ Clementine, I’m not the Southern man you think I am, I may have fought in the War of Northern Aggression, but I hail, originally…”

I clear my throat and work my jaw back and forth to give her fair warning.

“…From somewhere near London. I’ve no relatives remaining to ask precisely my conceptual whereabouts, but the manner in which I’m speaking at this very moment is the voice with which I first uttered the English language.”


She just stands there, switching the arch in her eyebrows from left to right, and adding a pissy hip-cock to her overall demeanor.

“I… don’t believe you. You sound ridiculous. Is this because you found my copy of Vanity Fair with that Twilight boy on the cover? I’m all for role playing, honey, but this is taking it too far.”

I laugh, feeling like the wide mouthed frog must have felt upon encountering his foe the dreadful alligator. Ali the Alligator has the sharpest little teeth.

“I planned for this, actually, my dear girl, and wrote you a letter to better explain my confession.”

I hand her the tri-folded paper and she snatches it from me in a huff, flipping it open and reading the entire thing before most humans have time to blink.

“Really, Jasper, you expect to think that because you now spell favourite, colour, candour, and splendour differently that I don’t know who you really are?”

“I’ve been holding all this back from you, but you are the most important thing to me. You do know me, with the exception of this one tiny detail.”

“Yes, there seem to be a lot of extra u’s in this situation.”

She sits down on our bed, closing her eyes to process everything she’s heard and read. Finally she speaks to me cautiously.

“So you’re the one who’s been rearranging my teacups then, yes?”

“Yes, I love those bloody cups.”

She throws her hands up in the air in frustration and I nearly defenestrate myself with my uproarious laughter.

“Well, Darlin'”, she says with a sigh, “between the two of us, no one in this house is going to believe you talk like that Robert Pattinson bloke, so you might as well stick with your panty droppin'’ drawl. In fact, I’ll take mine off twice if you’ll just shut up right now.”

Stuffing my authentic voice back inside my head, I switch to the one she’s more comfortable with. And I do mean comfortable.

“All right little lady, I reckon I’ll do whatever you please.”

She starts to untie the waist of her wrap-around skirt and then stops abruptly, like she does when she’s seeing a vision.

“Darlin’, this is no time to be dealin'’ out the tea leaves in that mind of yours.”

“No, no it’s not that, it’s just… We’re not going to have to start listening to The Beatles all the time are we? I don’t think I can stomach the British shtick with a side of yellow submarine too.”

“Don’t worry, Miss, I’ve been a Stones fan for the last three hundred years.”

With that the skirt was on the floor.

“So, 007, how do you like my new knickers?” She shimmied her bum in a most scintillating way.

“I thought you said you weren’t keen on the role playing tonight?”

“Well, I may have changed my mind…”


Happiest birthday to my favourite Scottish girl! I hope you enjoyed your bad, silly, British humour. I've wanted to write you this Jasper for so long! I love you, Mz. M, and I hope your Boy and your Bub are so so good to you today.

Jenny says there's a Fiona in her apple and her dogs need a reservoir.

Don't Go To Sleep To Dream - A birthday wish for Yellowglue






I killed Jacob Black for my favorite girl.

I can’t tell you when it happened, because that nosy minion of Jasper’s would figure it all out in a second. But I can tell you why, and how.

I did it for them; Bella and Nessie.

I’d always wanted Nessie to end up with Seth Clearwater. He was the brave one who risked his life for Bella and me the day we destroyed Victoria, and he was the only one of the “imprinters” that I cared to have stamp my daughter’s heart.

Jacob Black had been out of the question the moment his lips had touched Bella’s outside our cursed tent. I had heard his thoughts. He was a goner. He was excommunicated from every good thought I could muster from that moment on, and I only tolerated him for Bella’s sake.

Carlisle should’ve done away with him when he went out to the reservation to put him back together, but he has too much guilt. He was there after Jacob’s run in with a newborn, with his hospital strength pain killers and his inhuman strength in everything else, and he still saved that bastard.

Guilt and I have been lovers ever since I left Bella, and inadvertently left her in Jacob’s care. Nothing will ever weigh more than that. Except maybe Jacob’s heart in my hands.

Seth knows part of the truth. But even without knowing the details, he intuits how to love Nessie the right way; with gallant restraint and overwhelming happiness.

They were both so young when they came into this world of monsters and mysteries, and yet they accepted it fully, making it an integral part of who they are, without forgetting their humanity. Theirs would be a wedding of brave, young souls, deserving of each other in a destined, across the universe kind of way.

I had tried to convince Bella that Seth should’ve been the one to keep Nessie safe when the Volturri came, but she wouldn’t listen.

“He’s too young, Edward. He doesn’t even know his own strength yet!”

“And Jacob does?” It was a moot point. Bella’s mind was muted to anything negative regarding Jacob Black.

She is still blind to his manipulation. We, the three of us, are a twisted, incestuous Cain and Abel reborn, walking the crevice between life and death.

Except my name isn’t Cain, and I am now, and always, unable to give up my residence near Bella’s figurative fire. I am the only one who’ll be clinging to her skirts, so that I can pull them up slowly and do things to her Jacob would only dream of.

Damn, I loved the 90s. The nineteen kind, before a damned, beloved teenaged human tied my soul to hers forever. Now my soul lived in Nessie, and I’d be damned all over again if I’d give her away to that Black heathen.


Jacob really was like an elderly family pet who needed to be put down. His incontinent affection and over zealous, lapping, tongue heavy words were disgusting. Mostly, though, I needed Bella to give up hope of ever having that childhood romance she’d once wanted with him, or suruptiously transmitting that desire to our offspring.

They had gone for a walk, Jacob and Nessie, and Jasper and I were following them like eighteenth century religious nuts because I’d never trusted Jacob’s intentions with anyone in my family. His trail left a stench that was so easy to find, it was a wonder Laurent had ever been surprised by his dog-like appearance.

It was then the plan came to me. After years of aimless plotting I knew exactly what I had to do.

“Jasper, do you ever wonder what it’s like to sleep?”

“No, not really.” We walked in silence for a few feet before he said anything else.

“But it would be nice to take a small break from all this feeling for a while.” We chuckled. Jasper and his feelings were like a human with permanent PMS sometimes.

“I’ve watched Bella for years, and now even Nessie still sleeps occasionally. I just… wonder what it’s like to have your mind stop for a few hours.”

The plan was so new, so fresh, that every word that came out of my mouth was exciting. I restrained myself from laughing like a maniac.

We talked it over then, as we kept our less than respectful distance from my daughter and her puppy.

Sleep was a relaxed state, with a slowed heartbeat, and a swirly dreamy mind, we concluded. A sleepy Bella could hardly even lift her limbs, I’d told him, and her words slurred as if she were drunk.

“She was so…stilled.” I purposefully left out her nightmares and her sleep talk, fusing both my girls into the image of the perfect, slumbering being Jasper needed to conjure for my plan to work.

“Try it on me, Jasper. It probably won’t even work, but think of the gift we could give to Alice with this! She could rest, actually rest, her mind for a few moments.”

That was all it took to convince him; he’d do anything for my sister.

We stopped under the shelter of a group of trees, knowing that Jake wouldn’t take Nessie too far for fear of our entire family coming after him.

I perched on a tree root, leaning my head against the trunk behind me. Just one sudden movement would topple the whole thing over.

Timber.

It was like resting on an eggshell.

Jasper lay down in the leafy undergrowth, prostrate and parallel to the darkening sky.

As his breathing grew deeper, mine grew slower. When his arms fell limp at his sides, I let myself slither down to the ground next to him.

The voices I’d heard in my head all day swirled in a merry-go-round of verbal colors and various pitches; a vocal roller-coaster in my mind.

And then it all stopped.

We couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds, but I knew that if it worked on a vampire as strong as Jasper, that it would’ve knocked Jacob and Nessie both out.

They were but a hundred feet from us, and even when I sat up, I still felt an eery calm throughout my body.

“Alice is looking for you.” I told Jasper. It was true, although not urgent, but he didn’t need to know that. He was hazy enough from his own magic spell that he’d believe almost anything I’d said containing the word “Alice”.

“Don’t tell her about the sleeping yet though, J, let it be a surprise. I’m gonna go catch up with the kids and then I’ll be there.”

That’s how Bella and Esme referred to Jacob and Nessie: The Kids. Even Rosalie slipped and said it occasionally, as if we’d birthed Jake the same way we’d brought Nessie into the world.
It was disgusting, the way that boy had jutted his way into our daily lives, infecting even those he offended most with his shellacked-on smile and lack of appropriate clothing.

When I’d carried him far enough away to leave her undisturbed, I whispered, “Nessie’s in trouble” into Jake’s sleeping ear.

It took a moment, but, without fail, his body began to tremor as he unconsciously prepared to shift into his most dangerous form to protect my daughter.

Just as a wolf’s pelt began to silently trail up his arms, I swiftly nicked an old scar over his heart, one that Carlisle had sewn. He always used an even number of stitches, wanting, eternally, to leave peace in his wake.
Before Jacob’s face could become fully disfigured, I cut my own wrist, pressing more than enough of my venomous blood into his marred scare to stop his heartbeat.

He looked, for all the world, as if he’d fallen asleep, half wolf and half man-boy. It was well known in both the Cullen and Quileute circles that all shape shifters would eventually stop changing, and with as many times as Nessie had bitten Jacob when she was young, there was no telling how long he had left.

“She’s no good for you because you’re not good enough for her.” I told his dead eyes.

It must have been a song that had struck some demonic chord in my mind and led me to that point in time. As I walked back to where my daughter slept I hummed “Stuck in the Middle With You” just inside my mouth, never letting the sound escape my lips.

I carried a still groggy Nessie back to the house and explained to the family that Jake had decided to stay out a little longer. We all knew that Jacob was planning to ask Nessie to marry him soon. She was too young by any culture’s standard, but even Bella had gotten all wrapped up in the promise of a promise ring from Jacob Black.

He had good reason to stay out in the woods and think. I’d been thinking of this night for years.


Seth was at the house, as he was most nights of the week when he could get away from the hounds that hound him in his head. Esme cooks anything in the world for that boy, and he’s got an affinity for eggs rivaled only by Bella’s when she was pregnant.

I feel indebted to him in a way. The death of his own father is what brought Bella back to me. I owe him a place in this family.

I owed Jacob nothing. It was his lie that almost killed me.

The plan had always been that as soon as I figured out how to get Jacob out of the way, Seth would step in to fill his shoes.

I slide off my cuff, the one that bore the Cullen Crest, and had I been human, would’ve left behind a permanent tan line from its decades of wear.

As Seth devoured the rare steak, with sunshine eggs, and Hollandaise that Esme had made for him, I placed my cuff on his lap under the table.

It was our signal. It meant Jake was gone, or at least not in line for Nessie’s affection anymore.

When he reached for his napkin and found my crest instead I felt his pulse pound in his ears. I nodded, minisculey and was even more appreciative that my mind had come up with my plan when it had.

Seth, the wolf with the lion’s mane, was leaving in four days for college. I’d paid for him to attend four years of school at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. It was close enough to Bella’s hometown to seem nostalgic, and far enough away to discourage visitors. He’d be back in four years, groomed and ready for my Nessie, and she and Bella would’ve had time to mourn and forget that dog-boy they both thought they loved.

With Seth moving so far away, even the hive mind of his tribe of wolfies couldn’t reach the truth. An extended disconnect from them would only serve to make it harder for them to read him when he came back more Cullen than he was ever Clearwater.

We had a huge celebration for Seth the next day. Everyone just assumed that Jake had gone to his Dad’s for the weekend, but when he never showed for his pack brother’s special evening, Bella began to worry.

As Nessie followed behind Seth’s old car on her bicycle, giving him a final send off, I created a diversion to sooth Bella’s memory.

I watched my daughter of fourteen, trailing her future husband in a frilly dress Alice had made and her favorite Ray Bans. She wore them with the same awkward enthusiasm they’d given me back in my last round of high school when I’d finally made Bella mine.

She was Seth’s now.

A bicycle built for two people made from three species might need a few training wheels, but they could make it. Besides, there was no dead weight left to carry around.

By the time Bella finished cleaning up after the party, even with her vampire speed, I was finished with my “shiny object” to distract her from Jacobian thoughts.

Directly beneath my bedroom window, in a kind of deranged counterpoint to my teenage stalkage of my wife, I’d set up a giant, champagne colored tent. Surrounding the whole area were hundreds of those tiny fake candles that take a small battery and click on. Smoky the Bear was real, and I’d hate to have to kill off another of Bella’s childhood, furry friends in the same week.

“You did all of this for me?” She asked, still catching that human amazement in her eyes.

“I’d do anything for my favorite girl.”

Or to her, I thought, because this time there was no cold, no Victoria, and no Jacob Heater Pants Black to stop me from taking her exactly how I’d always wanted to.

Her long skirt called to me, and I pulled her through the tent-flap, ready to recreate our history, just the two of us.

~~~~~
Happy Belated Birthday, Miss Yellowglue. Who would’ve ever thought it would be so difficult to kill Jacob Black? Your ending just came to me this morning in my half-sleep while I watched the baby dream. I love you with all my little heart, even the black parts. You’re a cherished and honored part of my life.

A Tryst to Trifle a Truffle

The bubbles comes up to my chin and lap at the bases of the half dozen candles surrounding me.

There’s no music tonight. I just want the soothing ripple and splash of the water as I wiggle my toes. The constant drip of the faucet behind me is my metronome.

It’s nice, this silent time deep in my tub. There’s no one to reprimand me if, while lost in my imagination, the edges of my book accidentally dip into the water, and curl like the tide laps at the sand.

It’s a good book tonight, and my water is so hot. There are 100 pages in this bath before it turns cold. I lay the old book across my eyes and close them, breathing in the musty smell of it’s old pages with the soapy scent that floats like steam.

There’s only one thing missing, and I feel my way up to the tiny ledge on the side of the tub to find my final treasure.

The dark chocolate truffle melts under my fingerprints, and I feel them sink in, a millimeter deep. It’s enough to coats my fingers and I paint the swell of my breasts with it then bite into the center.

My toe bumps a candle as I sink deep into my moan.

Mmmmm….

The hot water covers my face and I move the truffle through my mouth without breath, trapping the indulgent sweetness on my tongue, in my lungs until I rush back to the surface and swallow gulps of humid heat.


When I open my eyes, they land on the robe you gave me. It’s all smooth silk, and swirly purples, but my favorite thing about it in the gash I cut, up the right side, when you gave it to me.

“It smells like Hershey, Pennsylvania in here!” You’d said, pretending to choke on my chocolate fumes.

I’d invited you into my inner most sanctuary and regretted it immediately.

First of all, there’s no such thing as too much chocolate. Second, the brashness of your voice had scared my fragile flames lining the tub.

I got out, because there was no reason to stay now that my bubble had been burst. I reached for my favorite robe, one of old, faded terry-cloth, with a belt shredded on the ends like the softest tassle.

“You’re wearing that?” If my oldest robe had offended you, just hanging on the door, then you had no idea how offended I was.

Am.

You bought me this new one that I tie around my hips now. Every time I wear it I worry my fingers in the gash, shredding and fraying the threads a little more.

I’m softening it as I soften my skin, rubbing lotion into my legs. My face. My hands.

I know what feels good against my skin; it’s mine after all. I’ve lived in it for as long as I’ve been alive in this form.

Sometimes I lurk from inside this body, peeking around my curves, but tonight is different.

It’s been a year, and it’s my birthday. I traded you in for having my whole heart.

So even though I’m only crawling into my bed, thick with blankets and sheets and covers, to read the rest of my damp book with pruney fingers, I still pick up my favorite hummingbird broach, and pin it to my chest.

I’m almost to my bed, humming myself Happy Birthday, when the most joyous thought erupts in my brain.

There’s cake down stairs.

~~~~~~~~~~

Happy Birthday, Mz. Mal. Your words and love and helped me so much since I’ve known you, and I cannot repay you for your kindness. Ever. This is my small gift to you… Thank you, love.

A Surprise for a Sarah....

Aleighy made these for the story I wrote for Miss YellowGlue's birthday. We love you, YG, with as much of our Mommy-hearts as we have!

Happy Birthday :)