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But for now here you go. Here's hoping it doesn't suck too much.", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Back on the wagon, Finally.

Will post the reason for the 'absence' in a journal. But for now here you go. Here's hoping it doesn't suck too much.", "writing": "Collared Chapter 30: Molly\nBy TerraMGP\n\n\tI-94 was a shit road. A pothole-laden arteries moving meth and kidnapped First Nation women up and down Michigan’s Southwestern corner. It was always familiar, and always hateful. \n\n\tJustin had grown numb to these feelings over the years. First with trips to Kzoo or Michigan Adventure. Then more recently with trips back home. He had even been getting to almost enjoy it, up until that last trip.\n\n\tHe was glad to finally turn off to his home exit. His paws were shaking on the wheel, and the Slurpee he’d nabbed for the trip was now basically mushy pulp floating on liquid. It didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered. Except the fact that mom was home.\n\n\tHe didn’t knock before barging in. Boots came off, sock feet stamped their way into the living room. He was only barely aware of his own heavy breathing as he rounded the corner and looked in on a sight he knew would be there, and yet felt terrified would not.\n\n\tMeredith Flannery was laid out on the couch. She donned simple pajama pants and one of her husband’s ratty old numetal shirts. Exhaustion was written all over the middle aged woman, from her matted fur and mussed hair to the way her tail hung limply over the side of the couch. Yet there was beauty to be seen, perhaps most of all due to the fuzzy bundle of downy brown fur curled up on her tummy in a soft pink onsie. \n\n\tIt was only the second time Justin had seen this little ball of fuzz. Even still he could feel his heart skip a beat.\n\n\t“Mom.” His voice cracked a bit as he walked into the living room. Meredith shifted a bit and looked away from the TV, leaving Yoshi to stand there while happy peppy music filled the room.\n\n\t“You didn’t say you were coming down today.” Her voice was both stern and teasing. “Try not to be too loud. You’ll wake her up.” The proud mother set her controller down under the small girl and began to stroke her sleeping child while looking up at her eldest. The otter boy stood over her and looked down. It was a surreal sight. Some small part of him was sure his legs would buckle and he’d fall over on top of them like the big, stupid oaf he was. He just stood there for ages taking in the sight while the rest of the world faded off.\n\n\t“The doc’s are sure she’s going to be ok?” He finally let the words slip past his lips. Right about the time he noticed his mother had picked up the controller and resumed her game.\n\n\tMeredith’s smile grew a bit. She gave the floor a sturdy thud with the tip of her rudder. “Molly wasn’t really the one in trouble, sweetie. It was ‘my’ blood pressure doing backflips.”\n\n\t“And you’re ok with dad being out at work?” The notes of worry cracked Justin’s voice just a bit. He tried to smile. It felt wrong. Instead he slipped down cross legged and leaned against the couch looking up at his mom. He could still remember it. The warm feeing his younger self got every time he got to sleep in his moms arms on that couch. The wonderful, groggy half-waking moments of ‘The Nanny’ or ‘Golden Girls’ playing on the TV while his mother’s stress from a day of nursing melted into the aether. It was enough to make him ever so slightly jealous of the precious little bundle now curled on his, on ‘their’ mother. But not hate. Just the sight of this little girl told him he could never hate her.\n\n\tHis mother snagged a few caramel rice crackers from the massive bag she had sitting on the coffee table. She offered the handful to Justin, who waved them off, then munched them all without so much as a second thought. “You act like I haven’t done this before. Sure I’m a bit older, but I also have a much better idea of what the hell I’m doing.”\n\n\t“You also had to have her early.” He noted firmly “And a C section at that, right?”\n\n\tMeredith shrugged to the quip and smirked “I’m not a teenager anymore. I had people around who knew what they were doing and knew they had to be extra careful managing the bleeding. Granted I can’t run a marathon or anything. But I was safe. It’s why I wanted your father to wait before calling you.”\n\n\t“What? You thought I wouldn’t want to see my mom in case-”\n\n\t“I wasn’t going to die, sweetie. I was in a hospital, with competent staff. Same hospital where I work. You really think the nurses would let them live it down if one of their own went out having a kid?” She reached down and tussed the mop of blonde headfur on her eldest child. Her other hand moving to stroke the blonde-ish fuzz at the top of her new daughter’s “I was more worried about you speeding down here and getting into a crash. Well, I was worried about that right up until they induced the contractions. Then it was hard to think about anything. Then the epidural hit…”\n\n\t“I’m being serious.” The sharp tone of the words didn’t detract from the clear comfort on Justin’s face as he leaned into his mother’s touch\n\n\t“So am I.” The matron shrugged and ran a finger along her new daughter’s ear. “I swear to god you and your father are two of the clutziest men I know. You also don’t feel pain the way most people normally do. I’m hoping little Molly here takes more after me in that respect. It’s why I get so nervous hearing you’re working in a garage. I just keep imagining that you’ll end up crushing your fingers or something. But me? All I have to do is eat right for a few days and make sure I take it easy until the incision heals.”\n\n\tIt was true. It didn’t stop Justin from stifling half a dozen nasty comments about his mom’s workaholic nature. He was too old to snark. Well, no he wasn’t. But she had a newborn on her and he wasn’t about to give her shit with what she’d been though. Instead he curled up against the couch and let himself stare blankly at the TV. \n\n\t“I’m really sorry, sweetheart.” A paw fell on his head and fingers curled though his thick mop of blonde headfur\n\n\t“Sorry?” Justin blinked\n\n\tMeredith shifted ever so slightly. Her hand slipped to her son’s cheek and lingered there for a few long moments. “I know I haven’t always been a great mother. I yelled a lot. I screamed. There were a lot of times when I just got so mad that you couldn’t be ‘normal’. Even before we had a diagnosis. Even then it kinda felt like it was Munchausen’s by proxy.”\n\n\t“But it wasn’t.” Justin corrected. “And the rest of that, I mean, Grandpa yelled at you. Grandpa ‘hit’ you. That’s all generational trauma, right?”\n\n\t“Where’d you learn that?” Meredith blinked. Only the baby on her chest stopped her from darting upright. \n\n\t“What, Generational trauma? I’ve read a few psych books in my time, mom. You think you were the only one who wanted me to be normal? I always hated how much hell I put you and dad through. I just couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t know why kids would pick on me. Or they’d pick on Collin.” The new name almost slipped out. Suddenly the sullen otter boy had that ‘car crash’ feeling in his gut and probably a few minutes shaved off the end of his life.\n\n\tMeredith’s tone turned a bit brighter and her hand moved down to his shoulder. “But something ‘was’ wrong. All those people who told us we should beat you or yell at you or send you off to some camp to ‘fix’ you. They were all wrong.”\n\n\t“They still treated you guys like dirt, mom. You especially.”\n\n\t“I was the one who charged in. Your father wanted to be reasonable. I wanted to go all… oh, who’s that woman. From all the stories you used to read. Boudicca?”\n\n\tJustin flattened his ears a bit and sighed “She would work, I guess. But she’s British. We’re Scotch-Irish. Scathach would probably fit better. Well… Maybe. I mean you were going up against idiots trying to push Orthodoxy. Roman-inspired Orthodoxy at that. Even if the SDA Church still thinks the pope is the anti-Christ. Or that an ‘anti-christ’ is canon.”\n\n\t“Whatever. The point is that I don’t care about what they had to say. Sure it hurt sometimes. So what? People around here have always been kind of shitty, Justin. People are shitty most places you go. I raised you to stand up for yourself and to stand up for others. I’m not going to apologize for that part. I just wanted you to have a better life than what you did.”\n\n\tHe finally shifted enough to look up at her. His bright ad innocent eyes somehow unchanged even after everything that happened to him. The view of the young man only his mother ever really saw. “I know you guys aren’t ‘old’. But you’re on the older end of things to have a newborn. Closer to forty than thirty. Plus your jobs are still really taxing. Are you sure you’re not going to need my help?”\n\n\t“You wanna help?” Meredith scoffed “Gramma sewed up a baby blanket for your sister. It’s in her crib. Go ahead and grab it for me. If I get up she’s going to start crying again.”\n\n\tShe didn’t need to ask twice. He was up in a split second and made his way down the hall. Reflex allowed him to grab the door frame for the door where the hall turned.\n\n\tThen he stopped.\n\n\tIn most ways it was familiar. The blue and white room with the green carpeting. The same way it had looked for so many years. Only a few months ago it had been a storage space. Now it all of the boxes and paperwork was cleared out into the basement. But before that? Justin slumped down against the door frame looking in on the room. ‘His’ room, once upon a time. \n\n\tHe could still feel it. The odd cool of dad’s old waterbed which had somehow been crammed into the too-small room. Floor littered with Lego making egress impossible until morning. Scores of books and comics and action figures shoved into the cubby hole shelves of the headboard. That feeling of his father coming in and turning on the James Taylor CD. Lilting music from a man he didn’t even know soothing his body. Played over and over again until every skip and every hiccup of the disc was seared beautifully into his mind. \n\n\tHow many nights had he fallen asleep to that music? How many times had he unconsciously reveled in the warm presence of his father in the doorway? He could feel those moments slipping though his fingers like the finest grains of sand.\n\n\tIt was different, but it wasn’t. A half dozen steps over hallowed ground was all it took to grab up the little quilt. A half dozen steps with no worries of Lego bricks or transformers or megazords. A half dozens steps into a room that smelled nothing like him. \n\n\tAnother link in his chain of memories shattered away.\n\n\tThe now somber young man wasn’t quite sure when he’d ended up back in the living room. The baby blanket was no longer in his paw. Instead was a can of coke. Regular coke. Without him around the parents had no need to get vanilla. The blanket was over Molly now, and her mother used that cover to help her nurse the little one. Meredith’s free paw held the controller out right at eye level, waving it lazily and waiting for him to take it.\n\n\t“You know, it’s not going to be that hard.” The otter matron sighed. “Sure we aren’t as young as we used to be, but we’re also not as broke as we used to be. Even if we don’t have the economy our parents did, it was never great for us. Now we’re established and we don’t have to worry about any massive payments outside of helping you out with school.”\n\n\t“That’s still a lot.” Justin’s tone flat and hateful.\n\n\t“Not really that much worse than me doing nursing school. Only now I’m an actual RN and not an intern, and your dad is established enough to make some decent money.”\n\n\t“I guess…” A heavy sip of the can’s contents punctuated the words. Justin shuddering and slamming the aluminum down hard on the floor.\n\n\tThe controller was set down on his shoulder, and Meredith instead tilted her eldest’s head towards her. She didn’t smile much. Truth be told she was a very mean, very angry woman much of the time. But that smile of hers was the most genuine, and the most loving, Justin could ever recall seeing. No matter how rare it was. “I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, sweetie. But the truth is that your dad and I learned a lot from raising you. We made mistakes. We weren’t perfect. I wish we did better, but we did the best we could. That said, we ‘will’ know how to correct at least some of those mistakes with Molly. So you don’t have to worry about us. You and Hui need to get though school and get your careers going. Then when I have some grandbabies I’ll know that you two can avoid passing on that ‘generational trauma’ you mentioned.”\n\n\t“Will we?” The young man’s defeat was clear “You guys aren’t bad parents you know. You’re amazing. Better than I deserve. I don’t know if I could ever live up to you.”\n\n\t“You can, and you will. Molly has a good big brother. She’s going to look up to you a lot, and so will your kids some day.”\n\n\t“Assuming I don’t fuck it up?” He scoffed\n\n\t“You will’ Meredith shrugged “We did. Everyone does. But you’ll do better. I have faith In you sweetheart.”\n\n\tHe didn’t say anything. What was there to say? All Justin could do was lean his head against his mother’s paw and begin the next level in her game. Somehow he’d make it up to them for all the hardships they endured because of him, and somehow he’d be the kind of man little Molly could look up to.\n\n\t“I know you guys are going to be good to her. Molly’s gonna have a good life. As fucked up as my life was, you guys are the reason for pretty much all the good in it.” The crack in his voice was a bit unexpected, but somehow not an unwelcomed feeling “It’s you two I worry about. After everything I put you though. Just… promise me if you need help you’ll call, ok?”\n\n\tMeredith shifted slowly in her seat. She pulled the little one free and slipped down besdie her son. Before Justin could protest, his mother had guided his arms up and gently guided the bundle of fuzz against him.\n\n\tHe gazed down nervously at the curled up water balloon of a person. Her limbs flopped and flooped this way and that without an ounce of control. Her tail hammered against his ribcage with all the force of a flicking finger. She was so fragile, and precious, and small. Molly. His is sister. His actual, real little sister. This unreal little stranger whom he couldn’t help but adore unconditionally.\n\n\tThe room once again filled with the sounds of Yoshi jumping about. The mother and her children all cuddled up on the nice sunny fall morning.\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "Collared Chapter 30: Molly
By TerraMGP

\tI-94 was a shit road. A pothole-laden arteries moving meth and kidnapped First Nation women up and down Michigan’s Southwestern corner. It was always familiar, and always hateful.

\tJustin had grown numb to these feelings over the years. First with trips to Kzoo or Michigan Adventure. Then more recently with trips back home. He had even been getting to almost enjoy it, up until that last trip.

\tHe was glad to finally turn off to his home exit. His paws were shaking on the wheel, and the Slurpee he’d nabbed for the trip was now basically mushy pulp floating on liquid. It didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered. Except the fact that mom was home.

\tHe didn’t knock before barging in. Boots came off, sock feet stamped their way into the living room. He was only barely aware of his own heavy breathing as he rounded the corner and looked in on a sight he knew would be there, and yet felt terrified would not.

\tMeredith Flannery was laid out on the couch. She donned simple pajama pants and one of her husband’s ratty old numetal shirts. Exhaustion was written all over the middle aged woman, from her matted fur and mussed hair to the way her tail hung limply over the side of the couch. Yet there was beauty to be seen, perhaps most of all due to the fuzzy bundle of downy brown fur curled up on her tummy in a soft pink onsie.

\tIt was only the second time Justin had seen this little ball of fuzz. Even still he could feel his heart skip a beat.

\t“Mom.” His voice cracked a bit as he walked into the living room. Meredith shifted a bit and looked away from the TV, leaving Yoshi to stand there while happy peppy music filled the room.

\t“You didn’t say you were coming down today.” Her voice was both stern and teasing. “Try not to be too loud. You’ll wake her up.” The proud mother set her controller down under the small girl and began to stroke her sleeping child while looking up at her eldest. The otter boy stood over her and looked down. It was a surreal sight. Some small part of him was sure his legs would buckle and he’d fall over on top of them like the big, stupid oaf he was. He just stood there for ages taking in the sight while the rest of the world faded off.

\t“The doc’s are sure she’s going to be ok?” He finally let the words slip past his lips. Right about the time he noticed his mother had picked up the controller and resumed her game.

\tMeredith’s smile grew a bit. She gave the floor a sturdy thud with the tip of her rudder. “Molly wasn’t really the one in trouble, sweetie. It was ‘my’ blood pressure doing backflips.”

\t“And you’re ok with dad being out at work?” The notes of worry cracked Justin’s voice just a bit. He tried to smile. It felt wrong. Instead he slipped down cross legged and leaned against the couch looking up at his mom. He could still remember it. The warm feeing his younger self got every time he got to sleep in his moms arms on that couch. The wonderful, groggy half-waking moments of ‘The Nanny’ or ‘Golden Girls’ playing on the TV while his mother’s stress from a day of nursing melted into the aether. It was enough to make him ever so slightly jealous of the precious little bundle now curled on his, on ‘their’ mother. But not hate. Just the sight of this little girl told him he could never hate her.

\tHis mother snagged a few caramel rice crackers from the massive bag she had sitting on the coffee table. She offered the handful to Justin, who waved them off, then munched them all without so much as a second thought. “You act like I haven’t done this before. Sure I’m a bit older, but I also have a much better idea of what the hell I’m doing.”

\t“You also had to have her early.” He noted firmly “And a C section at that, right?”

\tMeredith shrugged to the quip and smirked “I’m not a teenager anymore. I had people around who knew what they were doing and knew they had to be extra careful managing the bleeding. Granted I can’t run a marathon or anything. But I was safe. It’s why I wanted your father to wait before calling you.”

\t“What? You thought I wouldn’t want to see my mom in case-”

\t“I wasn’t going to die, sweetie. I was in a hospital, with competent staff. Same hospital where I work. You really think the nurses would let them live it down if one of their own went out having a kid?” She reached down and tussed the mop of blonde headfur on her eldest child. Her other hand moving to stroke the blonde-ish fuzz at the top of her new daughter’s “I was more worried about you speeding down here and getting into a crash. Well, I was worried about that right up until they induced the contractions. Then it was hard to think about anything. Then the epidural hit…”

\t“I’m being serious.” The sharp tone of the words didn’t detract from the clear comfort on Justin’s face as he leaned into his mother’s touch

\t“So am I.” The matron shrugged and ran a finger along her new daughter’s ear. “I swear to god you and your father are two of the clutziest men I know. You also don’t feel pain the way most people normally do. I’m hoping little Molly here takes more after me in that respect. It’s why I get so nervous hearing you’re working in a garage. I just keep imagining that you’ll end up crushing your fingers or something. But me? All I have to do is eat right for a few days and make sure I take it easy until the incision heals.”

\tIt was true. It didn’t stop Justin from stifling half a dozen nasty comments about his mom’s workaholic nature. He was too old to snark. Well, no he wasn’t. But she had a newborn on her and he wasn’t about to give her shit with what she’d been though. Instead he curled up against the couch and let himself stare blankly at the TV.

\t“I’m really sorry, sweetheart.” A paw fell on his head and fingers curled though his thick mop of blonde headfur

\t“Sorry?” Justin blinked

\tMeredith shifted ever so slightly. Her hand slipped to her son’s cheek and lingered there for a few long moments. “I know I haven’t always been a great mother. I yelled a lot. I screamed. There were a lot of times when I just got so mad that you couldn’t be ‘normal’. Even before we had a diagnosis. Even then it kinda felt like it was Munchausen’s by proxy.”

\t“But it wasn’t.” Justin corrected. “And the rest of that, I mean, Grandpa yelled at you. Grandpa ‘hit’ you. That’s all generational trauma, right?”

\t“Where’d you learn that?” Meredith blinked. Only the baby on her chest stopped her from darting upright.

\t“What, Generational trauma? I’ve read a few psych books in my time, mom. You think you were the only one who wanted me to be normal? I always hated how much hell I put you and dad through. I just couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t know why kids would pick on me. Or they’d pick on Collin.” The new name almost slipped out. Suddenly the sullen otter boy had that ‘car crash’ feeling in his gut and probably a few minutes shaved off the end of his life.

\tMeredith’s tone turned a bit brighter and her hand moved down to his shoulder. “But something ‘was’ wrong. All those people who told us we should beat you or yell at you or send you off to some camp to ‘fix’ you. They were all wrong.”

\t“They still treated you guys like dirt, mom. You especially.”

\t“I was the one who charged in. Your father wanted to be reasonable. I wanted to go all… oh, who’s that woman. From all the stories you used to read. Boudicca?”

\tJustin flattened his ears a bit and sighed “She would work, I guess. But she’s British. We’re Scotch-Irish. Scathach would probably fit better. Well… Maybe. I mean you were going up against idiots trying to push Orthodoxy. Roman-inspired Orthodoxy at that. Even if the SDA Church still thinks the pope is the anti-Christ. Or that an ‘anti-christ’ is canon.”

\t“Whatever. The point is that I don’t care about what they had to say. Sure it hurt sometimes. So what? People around here have always been kind of shitty, Justin. People are shitty most places you go. I raised you to stand up for yourself and to stand up for others. I’m not going to apologize for that part. I just wanted you to have a better life than what you did.”

\tHe finally shifted enough to look up at her. His bright ad innocent eyes somehow unchanged even after everything that happened to him. The view of the young man only his mother ever really saw. “I know you guys aren’t ‘old’. But you’re on the older end of things to have a newborn. Closer to forty than thirty. Plus your jobs are still really taxing. Are you sure you’re not going to need my help?”

\t“You wanna help?” Meredith scoffed “Gramma sewed up a baby blanket for your sister. It’s in her crib. Go ahead and grab it for me. If I get up she’s going to start crying again.”

\tShe didn’t need to ask twice. He was up in a split second and made his way down the hall. Reflex allowed him to grab the door frame for the door where the hall turned.

\tThen he stopped.

\tIn most ways it was familiar. The blue and white room with the green carpeting. The same way it had looked for so many years. Only a few months ago it had been a storage space. Now it all of the boxes and paperwork was cleared out into the basement. But before that? Justin slumped down against the door frame looking in on the room. ‘His’ room, once upon a time.

\tHe could still feel it. The odd cool of dad’s old waterbed which had somehow been crammed into the too-small room. Floor littered with Lego making egress impossible until morning. Scores of books and comics and action figures shoved into the cubby hole shelves of the headboard. That feeling of his father coming in and turning on the James Taylor CD. Lilting music from a man he didn’t even know soothing his body. Played over and over again until every skip and every hiccup of the disc was seared beautifully into his mind.

\tHow many nights had he fallen asleep to that music? How many times had he unconsciously reveled in the warm presence of his father in the doorway? He could feel those moments slipping though his fingers like the finest grains of sand.

\tIt was different, but it wasn’t. A half dozen steps over hallowed ground was all it took to grab up the little quilt. A half dozen steps with no worries of Lego bricks or transformers or megazords. A half dozens steps into a room that smelled nothing like him.

\tAnother link in his chain of memories shattered away.

\tThe now somber young man wasn’t quite sure when he’d ended up back in the living room. The baby blanket was no longer in his paw. Instead was a can of coke. Regular coke. Without him around the parents had no need to get vanilla. The blanket was over Molly now, and her mother used that cover to help her nurse the little one. Meredith’s free paw held the controller out right at eye level, waving it lazily and waiting for him to take it.

\t“You know, it’s not going to be that hard.” The otter matron sighed. “Sure we aren’t as young as we used to be, but we’re also not as broke as we used to be. Even if we don’t have the economy our parents did, it was never great for us. Now we’re established and we don’t have to worry about any massive payments outside of helping you out with school.”

\t“That’s still a lot.” Justin’s tone flat and hateful.

\t“Not really that much worse than me doing nursing school. Only now I’m an actual RN and not an intern, and your dad is established enough to make some decent money.”

\t“I guess…” A heavy sip of the can’s contents punctuated the words. Justin shuddering and slamming the aluminum down hard on the floor.

\tThe controller was set down on his shoulder, and Meredith instead tilted her eldest’s head towards her. She didn’t smile much. Truth be told she was a very mean, very angry woman much of the time. But that smile of hers was the most genuine, and the most loving, Justin could ever recall seeing. No matter how rare it was. “I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, sweetie. But the truth is that your dad and I learned a lot from raising you. We made mistakes. We weren’t perfect. I wish we did better, but we did the best we could. That said, we ‘will’ know how to correct at least some of those mistakes with Molly. So you don’t have to worry about us. You and Hui need to get though school and get your careers going. Then when I have some grandbabies I’ll know that you two can avoid passing on that ‘generational trauma’ you mentioned.”

\t“Will we?” The young man’s defeat was clear “You guys aren’t bad parents you know. You’re amazing. Better than I deserve. I don’t know if I could ever live up to you.”

\t“You can, and you will. Molly has a good big brother. She’s going to look up to you a lot, and so will your kids some day.”

\t“Assuming I don’t fuck it up?” He scoffed

\t“You will’ Meredith shrugged “We did. Everyone does. But you’ll do better. I have faith In you sweetheart.”

\tHe didn’t say anything. What was there to say? All Justin could do was lean his head against his mother’s paw and begin the next level in her game. Somehow he’d make it up to them for all the hardships they endured because of him, and somehow he’d be the kind of man little Molly could look up to.

\t“I know you guys are going to be good to her. Molly’s gonna have a good life. As fucked up as my life was, you guys are the reason for pretty much all the good in it.” The crack in his voice was a bit unexpected, but somehow not an unwelcomed feeling “It’s you two I worry about. After everything I put you though. Just… promise me if you need help you’ll call, ok?”

\tMeredith shifted slowly in her seat. She pulled the little one free and slipped down besdie her son. Before Justin could protest, his mother had guided his arms up and gently guided the bundle of fuzz against him.

\tHe gazed down nervously at the curled up water balloon of a person. Her limbs flopped and flooped this way and that without an ounce of control. Her tail hammered against his ribcage with all the force of a flicking finger. She was so fragile, and precious, and small. Molly. His is sister. His actual, real little sister. This unreal little stranger whom he couldn’t help but adore unconditionally.

\tThe room once again filled with the sounds of Yoshi jumping about. The mother and her children all cuddled up on the nice sunny fall morning.
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