It's Been Over A Month Since Your Manager Was Possessed By A Demon. Yet, Instead Of Fetching The Nearest

“stars as you know them” — ghostsoap

731 words

WARNING: non-descriptive mentions of blood, and a bullet wound! dying??

“I’m Your Man” - Mitski

“Soap, do you copy?”

The sky is beautiful tonight. Can’t remember the last time he’d bothered to just look up, just to admire. Just to enjoy.

He didn’t know much about the stars, but he could find the dipper if he stared long enough. Easy enough to find the one that actually looks like a spoon.

He tries.

It’s getting harder to focus.

“Johnny, report!”

The voice in his ear is loud, and somewhere in the back of his head Soap knows he should respond. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to— but his tongue feels so heavy in his mouth, clumsy. The words just don’t want to form, mouth opening and closing around sounds and syllables that don’t actually make it past his lips. He feels like a fish on land.

Maybe it’s getting harder to breathe.

Tastes like copper, for sure.

He can feel his heartbeat like a drum.

Thump, Thump, Thump. Against his chest, again and again.

If someone were to find him, would they be able to hear it just as loud?

The world is strangely quiet now, and he thinks; finally, a break. His eyelids threaten to close, and he so badly wants to sleep. He deserves to sleep, after all this time. It isn’t so selfish, is it?

“Johnny— Johnny, you have— … talk to me … — are you?”

I want to. He says, but doesn’t really say at all. I want to, can’t you see I’m trying my best?

He can’t lift his hand to check, but he feels the warm sticky texture of blood between his fingertips. Coating his palm where it weakly holds against the wound in his stomach.

He can’t remember how it happened, now. Like it was so long ago, just a distant irrelevant memory to hold onto. Too much work now for his brain, for his body.

His fingers feel numb.

He gurgles out a strange, sort of laugh, at the thought. They don’t quite feel like anything, then, do they?

“Sorry.” Is all he manages to get out, tongue stumbling over the singular word. He isn’t quite sure if it came out at all. “M’sorr—“ the clumsy word is cut short by a sharp gasp, and a shaky exhale. “Sorry.”

He’s met with silence, which only further convinces him that the words he’s hearing coming out of his mouth aren’t really at all.

“Don’t apologize, don’t— don’t do that, Johnny.” Comes the harsh response.

Soap feels his lips form some sort of smile.

“You’re gonna be …” Soap doesn’t hear the next part, thinks maybe he’s missed it. Ghost starts again, “Fine. You’re gonna be fine. We’re gonna find you, we are. We’re gonna find you, and get you help, and you’re gonna be fine.”

Sounds an awful lot like Ghost is trying to convince himself, rather than Soap.

He thinks he hears other voices, a back and forth conversation, it’s muted. Somewhere in the background. It takes him a moment to realize that they’re coming from Ghost’s end of the comm, not him. Not him. No one else is here but him.

He had never thought dying would feel so lonely. Always thought it would come to him fast, that he would be one of the lucky ones that didn’t see it coming before it struck.

Never thought it would be so slow.

“We have you now. We have you, Johnny. Now you’re gonna wait— you’re gonna keep your eyes open.”

Quietly, Soap thinks this might be the kindest voice Ghost has ever directed at him. Soothing. Thinks that maybe he can keep his eyes open after all, if that’s what’s wanted of him.

There are so many things he’s wanted to say.

Always thought he might have had a little more time to say them all, or maybe just some. Never thought he wouldn’t get the chance. What a silly thought to have, in their line of work. Soap should have known better than that.

“Gh—“ his voice cracks on a gasp once again.

“We’re so close, Johnny.”

I love you.

I love you, I love you.

You have to know that.

He should respond, he should. Sleep is creeping up on him, now. Too fast. The sky seems so full of stars now, there hadn’t been that many before.

He can’t find the dipper anymore.

Can’t remember if it was ever there at all.

“Johnny?”

He thinks it’s a nice way to go, hearing the sound of his name of Ghost’s tongue one last time.

The world finally falls quiet.

Further Notes on Writing Signed Language

So I had a good think about this, based off of what I have written lately. As I go further into my novel, do even more research into different types of sign, and start on the arc that is written solely from the POV of my deaf character, I’ve begun to realize some other differences between signed and spoken dialogue.

For one thing, punctuation doesn’t apply in the same way. There is punctuation in sign language, but as I’ve talked about before, it is mostly facial; therefore, you describe it as a part of the dialogue tags. So then, what do about the commas, colons and semi-colons? In this case, the n-dash is your friend! The aforementioned punctuation marks indicate changes in tone, alterations of pace and pauses. Therefore, they can be replaced with an  n-dash, like so

“You and I – I don’t think we can continue.”

And fingerspelled words would be written as single letters, hyphenated into a word:

”You and I - going to L-O-N-D-O-N.”

For another, the syntax of your translated signed dialogue is subtly different. One sign can ususally mean several different words and filler words are absent. If someone were to say “really big.” in sign, they might just make the sign for “big” and super over-exaggerate.

So, verbal dialogue version:

“It was really, really big!” Lottie jumped and down in excitement, her eyes shining. 

And the signed dialogue version:

“The dog was huge!” Lottie flung out her hands into the word, making it larger than it needed to be, bouncing on her heels.

Keeping in mind that large, big, huge, bountiful (and other connected synonyms) are all the same sign.

I don’t like to write signed language in the syntax that it would be signed in (Name, yours, what instead of “what is your name”). Not only is this confusing for non-signing readers, but it also reads as childish or overly-simplistic for readers who don’t understand sign, which reinforces the harmful stereotype of deaf people being stupid/infantilisation of deaf people. It is impossible to truly do signed language justice in writing, because it’s a language made for hands, bodies and faces.

This all comes together to mean that the sentence structure of dialogue in sign will be different. You would use less contractions (isn’t, you’re, might’ve etc), fewer modifiers and shorter chunks of dialogue with the description of the sign in between.

If it reads differently or feels strange, that’s okay: signed language is different to verbal language and so they won’t sound the same as one another in writing. They’re more like cousins or step-siblings than part of the same direct family group. You’re utilizing different descriptors and tools.

Hopefully, this also answers the repeated issue of differentiation, which has come up time and time again from various people. Best of luck to you all with your writing x

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writing resources masterpost

i am just CRANKING out the masterposts. linked to original posts whenever possible. enjoy!! 

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I love this video so much. I thought I was the only person who experienced these things. this made me feel normal for the first time in my life.

to any other neurodivergent people out there: you're not crazy, or deranged, or disgusting. you're not a bad person. your intrusive thoughts are not your desires. and you are not alone.

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Important question: is your character “I have bore a thousand storms and can bear a thousand more” stoic or “I have bore a thousand storms and my foundations are crumbling, my walls are trembling, my structure is unsound and one more might prove to be my fall” stoic?

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