0.9

And so their stories started on the West Coast, each with a tome about their new lives.

What the two of them had to do was hard enough. Mastery of a skill and a good career all in one normal lifetime? Maintaining friendships? Seizing opportunity? Most people died without it.

But what Sheila lived through and warned Heathcliff about was the worst: being the mortal roommate. And roommates they would have…


The full moon rose over my new house. I had a month to furnish it but didn’t make many steps towards it. Apparently Barry re-did the walls before putting the house on the market. He thought that the dark interior of the house would be off-putting. Clearly he didn’t know me well enough but I’d save the hard work for painting my bedroom’s walls black again.

It was the first time in my life that I had been studious. The rules given to me were familiar though justified as poorly as I hoped they weren’t. Was there really no way to help people without breaking someone’s spirits? I didn’t believe it.

I couldn’t move out of Vega’s house when I was living with her. Of course we fought, and I asked why, and got half-answers and a lot of her storming off. It’s in the rules, you moron was a better start that I thought.

The whole section wasn’t long. I could only take on housemates as a lifelong project of sorts, always fighting for their prosperity and happiness. I’m sure I could pick the others well, but I already had one housemate–

“It’s horrible! I’ve tried everything but I’m just a man!” Pappy got down on the floor to cry on my shoulder. “What kind of wolf am I? What did you even do to me?”

“Nothing. You know I liked you as a wolf.” It was shocking to see him so normal on a full moon night, though. Well, normal for Spot. There were rumors of full moon lunacy but he was already a bit of a lunatic. I thought back to the jolt that Barry gave him though. What if I was in its path instead, for starters? And what sort of power was behind it anyways? There wasn’t any other way to find out…and yes, I did try with the rule book.

Instead, there was a mouse that pattered around our kitchen at night. I made peace with him. He could live in our kitchen as long as he didn’t eat my fruit. I left him out a little peanut butter in the corner each night. I mean, Pappy would lick it up first a lot, but my efforts seemed to be appreciated.

But unless I wanted to murder, there was no other way to summon Barry or his fellow servants. I put out a mousetrap and winced when it caught the little rodent.

They did not send out Barry. But I got Lola, dressed like she was going to gothic Woodstock and sharing his last name…

“…a cousin to his mum. There are a lot of us,” she said. “Oh, but I should leave those stories for another time. You obviously have an important question to ask me.”

“Yeah, did you take away my boyfriend’s lycanthropy?” I asked. “Or, you know, did Barry do it?”

“Of course he did, he was an abomination of nature after all. We advise against living with them.”

“Well that’s mean.”

“Page 214, Sheila. Page 214.”

I glared at her as I walked towards the door. I needed a walk in the moonlight after that night. “I thought you were all about being kind to others.”

“Most people don’t want to be a werewolf,” said Lola. “You should ask next time.”

But it meant I was stuck with Spot for the rest of his dwindling days. And that our relationship didn’t feel the same at all. I couldn’t convince him that I had nothing to do with it, but somehow he accepted staying in the house. I’d do anything. He could invite anyone over that he wanted to. He could break up with me or patch things up. I could do fun and new things in bed (the perks of being young again!) Or we could just open up the relationship and see where things went.

It wasn’t like I was planning to die with Pappy anymore. That was unrealistic.

He said that he had a romantic bucket list for before he died. I said that he could go for it. There wasn’t much that could offend me.

Okay, besides dumping me for Doreen Caliente! I was offended on his behalf of course.

Spot otherwise spent his days wandering around town and going on fishing trips. He always liked fishing and most of his friends did. I would need a special fish to turn into ambrosia, so it was a hidden perk. I think that was when I understood the real role of the immortal’s mortals. You helped the people who wanted to hone those useful skills anyways. Or at least in theory.

After all, there was a time where I loved to paint. I wanted a life beyond painting portraits of myself just because daemons were obsessed with their own faces. That was page 200, by the way. And it would be hard to find someone with that natural interest. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t.

So I got a job to distract myself. And I wanted to see if I had a life beyond painting. The local theatre needed musicians and stage hands. My guitar playing impressed nobody, so I was the latter until I improved. But I made friends. Rainflower, my boss, was the kindest and cuddliest guy I ever knew. He was a homeless busker who turned into a theatre owner with a massive inheritance.

And Helen could drum and lived in a haunted house and…I didn’t get the chance to ask her much at first. She left on maternity leave not that long after I started. We all sent her a card though. I said to “enjoy it while it lasts.”

Maybe watching my son die affected me more than I thought it did.

For two whole days, I told myself that I would never fall in love with a coworker. If I could keep that promise before in Twinbrook, I could do it there. Most of my co-workers were married with children. Rainflower had his family. Dahlia Goodfellow, a busking fairy, had her family too and a judgmental mother-in-law. Helen was in a situation I wasn’t gonna ask about.

And then there was the beautiful, single Bianca Crumplebottom. She was a witch and I didn’t need a spell to want to kiss her after work one night.

Now she didn’t want to live with me or even take it much further than workplace flirting. Somehow, I was relieved. I was bracing myself for my first rejection in Moonlight Falls. Instead, I never took it so well. I realized it was fun. It…told me about who I wanted in my life. At least while I was still young.

“Just remember to wait for true love!” said Bianca’s sister, Belinda. “You’ll be better off in the end, sister.”

“Fuck no, I’m gonna follow around tour buses,” said Bianca.

And for a bit, everything was doing fine. Bianca’s kiss inspired me to finally have a presentable bedroom. Pappy and I were using sleeping bags for months at that point. He didn’t mind, but my back still hurt like I was an elder. Maybe that was always going to be an issue. I did sleep pretty well as an Ironstar. Sometimes I didn’t even want to wake up.

Black paint was bought, and I settled down to a night of transforming my room into my little dark hole. I chose the master that looked out to the road, but I’d give it up if anyone asked. The extra room in it would be nice for a little bedroom recording studio though. I suddenly had dreams of recording a demo.

The house was usually quiet. So much for the seances that Cara bragged about. I expected a haunting of my own and a story to tell my immortal descendants. Or perhaps, a new spectral friend, since I used to be one of them. Even the usual pattering was only mice, or a possum at most.

This one was louder. It sounded like boots above me.

“Oh what the hell is this?” I asked, right as I loaded a roller full of paint. “Do we even have an attic?”

The ladder to it crashed down suddenly. A bit of light poured in from the attic. We weren’t alone, or I had to tell Spot to stop scaring me.

It was warm as I ascended. The voices grew louder. “What are we doing today?” “A test you imbecile…sorry, but you are the worst rookie I’ve ever taken on…conjuring the ghosts of the past will take a lot out of me, but your childhood stuffed toy will suffice…”

What could it be? My mind went through a bunch of nightmarish scenarios from daemons to worshippers of them. Or robbers. Or Barry lying to me about the ownership of the house.

“Ah, squatters!”


“Here’s to our immortal.” Barry clinked his bottle with Cara’s. There was a lot of revelry in his swamp that day. Felan was horrified when Mo decided to bring some beer back from the land of the living. It was a fitting reward after bringing back a man who died while buying some. So everyone was neglecting their work and letting souls escape into the aether. Barry’s grandmothers could outdrink him twice over and they were being kissy and gross in back of him. “Did she expect you to set her up?”

Cara exhaled slowly. “I had to be nice about it. It’s not like we can just give her a spouse.”

“But what better place to test it than Moonlight Falls? We already got one zombie immortal there.”

“And the Goths.”

“See? Perfect experiment, and this one’s actually useful unlike Olivia.” Barry smirked before he headed to the well. He put his palms over the water until the surface tension broke.

Moonlight Falls had many women. It even had Frida and the aforementioned Olivia Goth, who understood the value of a second life like Sheila did. But Barry was certain in his judgment. They were lovely, but there was someone even more perfect out there for her.

There was a future in her golden hands.


“Better than getting the worst bedroom on Little Celebrity, ain’t it?” I asked Matty. He didn’t speak to me when he first saw the house. “Come on, everyone wants a little piece of a big Bridgeport mansion.”

“You never talked about the taxes,” he muttered.

“What?”

“The taxes.”

“Why not paint instead of be my accountant? My uncle has ladies that do that for us,” I said. “Weren’t you an award-winning painter?”

“In middle school, sure, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean now.”

“And I’m expected to be a world-class sculptor because I kinda look like one. We all have things to learn here.”

I personally thought that Matty was underselling himself. He had to be bribed with money and solitude but soon disappeared into a hole. The hole being the art studio with the greatest view of the city skyline. I felt like Pilona cheated me out of something with the sculpting studio.

But unlike Matty, I had a lot of time ahead of me.

Kate and I walked to her friend’s house. I asked her a lot about Tom Wordy. I was aware of his music, he had one single that Grandma and I listened to on our road trip, and it was a cool mixture of rap and rock. That was gonna be in-style again, right? And two years before, he survived what should’ve been a fatal shot to the chest. But from Twinbrook? Apparently he was too young to know my parents and too old to know me. And he didn’t talk about it much to Kate.

As for Kate, a quick primer: she grew up overlooking vast unethical mines of rare earth metals. And it didn’t phase her one bit. I was definitely siphoning from it too with Uncle Pilona so I forgot that detail fast. I was still mad that she was more of a daemon than I was.

I didn’t forget to ask my other two friends about this dynasty. Buster and Victor enjoyed a simpler life. Victor said that his grandma didn’t want him to and he wouldn’t say no to her.

Besides, none of them had access to the bank accounts that Tom did.

Kate told me I could hang out in his studio/arcade/garage room. Basically keep myself entertained without breaking anything while she did the actual sweet talk. Somehow she knew Tom better than me, her real Twinbrook best friend.

Well, I had my hopes about that. She was a great woman, a certified fag hag brought down from the heavens by Pilona to drink and banter with.

I wondered if she liked my music too. It’d be a chaotic and fun lifestyle unlike sculpting though I wasn’t going to make instant magic in the recording booth. For one, my mind was on what was being said upstairs instead of in music.

Those two years of piano lessons wouldn’t be in vain.

Kate figured this would be an instant deal for Tom. He was a fascinating man for sure, flaunting all the bling he owned one hour, and floating in a world of baroque music and artistry the next. There was a moment in life where he could have been any kind of artist he wanted to be. He was a brilliant multi-instrumentalist, dabbled in watercolors, and went to museums in secrecy. It would ruin his tough-guy image if he was caught.

Like me, Tom also got an A in ceramics in high school. So basically he was the next Harwood Clay before I’d ever be.

But I was never meant to hear the conversation. And I respected that about their friendship. I would definitely tear apart many of them if I lived for hundreds of years, and that’d all be by accident. I had to prevent malicious intent. It just wasn’t my kind of thing to embrace.

Though what were they saying anyways? One has to wonder…

“…yeah, so, his great-grandpops was the sculptor to go to if you were a daemon. We totally had his pieces all over our house. But he’s also a total novice and, you know, he can’t intimidate you? I think you’re never gonna meet anyone like him again.”

“You must be crazy if you think I’m rooming with an Ironstar for the rest of my life.”

“But I turned out fine! There are so many Ironstars anyways…”

“…come on big guy, all you gotta do is sculpt with him. We’ll have our own li’l corner of the house where I’ll tell you how handsome you are.”

“And I get to bring Sugar around…”

“Yeah, like, I’d love to see Sugar more.”

Less listening, more music! I had no delusions about my talent, but it was fun. And it’d be even more fun for Tom to hear it. Maybe a few notes would almost be good enough to sample.

“Oh I know who this is,” Tom said, once we met. There was a disappointed sigh in the mix.

“Yeah, bask in my family’s glory all you want. I just wanna sculpt and show you my new mixtape.”

Tom listened to it. He told me to keep sculpting.

But he would have to sculpt too. There wasn’t much kicking and screaming, but he said that he was only being nice to me because his PR team wanted him to. I wouldn’t know the difference. I had it in my head that I would change Tom for the better. And what was there to improve besides a little attitude? He’d still make great music and had a killer bod.

I wasn’t going to cross that line but I had to say it. The guy was ripped.

And he ripped my sculpting to pieces simply by being there. I blame it on the Twinbrook water making the two of us talented and beautiful (if I had to be honest again). But I didn’t need another thing to be jealous of either.


“Khama was right, you two are the most boring daemons in the galaxy,” said Irisa. The two of them plus Screwtape were taking a light stroll through Midnight Hollow. It was a town of daemons and a place that the light of humanity never touched. “Perfect for dragging her out of revelry.”

“Don’t shove your arms into me, woman,” said Vega. “And I have a fun side.”

“Mother, you forbade us from patronizing the dance club at Twinbrook’s town limits,” said Screwtape. “And I am forever thankful for it.”

“See what I mean?” said Irisa.

Vega was out of the loop on what the daemonic world was up to. Being an immortal was actually the worst way for Heathcliff to connect with that side of his ancestry. His whole life was now about humanity as a daemonic ambassador and life coach. Was that she was supposed to be? It was all in the past though. She figured that her fleshy great-great-grandson wouldn’t last a week among her kind and his immortal life in Bridgeport was for the best.

What she missed was…everything. But Khama and Life’s fellow devotees spent ages in a debaucherous drowse, and it was catching up to them. One scandal from the salacious Order of Luxury destroyed that sect and turned every daemon into the same prude that Vega wanted to be. It also threatened their best ally: Khama.

Enter Vega, who always loathed them anyways.

She also loathed Khama and especially one of her former dancers, Amamela. But at least Mela was dead and Vega was out of options. She was persona non grata among people she thought liked her. At least she wanted those reforms as much as Khama did.

But why they wanted Holi to fund it was anyone’s guess. She was a party-happy mess after her daughter died…and before it too. The aspirational image for absolutely no one.

Regardless, she was meeting them in Midnight Hollow.

“You look so proud of yourself,” said Vega.

“It is like finding what I lost. I have not felt this way in over a century,” said Holi, looking towards the hazy golden sky and smiling. “But I assure you, it is just a coincidence.”


A/N: hope you enjoyed the novella…I mean prologue chapters. Due to many reasons that culminate in “meh, don’t have any chapters to release right now” and my new son Tater, I’m taking a little break. I probably will stay in your Reader feed with outtakes and pose releases though.

12 thoughts on “0.9”

    1. Aww thanks! As much as I enjoy all this, Tater’s worth the break. He’s a funny lil guy and part of the pack now. The shelter he came from is great and they really wanted to place him with a certified chihuahua freak. He’s presumed to be mostly chihuahua and probably part-terrier for the rest of it.

      Each chapter takes around 20 poses if I’m reading my packages right. Sounds like hard work but release enough of them on Tumblr and call it free advertising. 😉

  1. Sheila is really living her best life here! Too bad about the uh… squatters… doing a seance in the attic xD
    Love that Heathcliff redyed his hair. Still miss the bright turquoise, but what can you do.
    Double love Tater! I’m trying to adopt a puppy myself, and gosh it is hard. Grats on the adorable lil furball!

    1. I went through a lot of rejection before getting Tater too. Obviously the US and NZ have different rescue dog situations but one of the dogs I applied for had 24 other families to choose from! And at least one of them didn’t have little dogs that feared him like I do. Meanwhile they immediately asserted dominance over Tater so everything was right.

      So I don’t sound like a crazy chihuahua hoarder: I want to be able to move out of my parents’ place with two dogs without stealing theirs. It just means a short n’ wild period of three of them.

      I believe in you and your future doggo is what I’m trying to say. 😉

      Heathcliff has one other dye job to look forward to and it was my personal favorite. Funny enough the teal streaks WERE the hair he was born with! He had a great-grandmother with that hair color and that’s good enough for the game to pass down (but most of the other great-grandparents had normal black hair so I made an executive decision on his “real” color) He’ll live the best life that Sheila is once the men of Bridgeport come knockin’

      1. Thank you for the encouragement 😀 I’m just hoping for the best and preparing for the fur party! (And the chew party, and the poop party, and the noise party…)
        Man, Sims genetics is wild. I wonder if it’s the same in Sims 4? I know toddlers only have natural hair colours, so what happens when both parents have an unnatural colour? A baby having teal streaks in their hair is pretty cool, tbh. Maybe that’s why it looks so amazing on Heathcliff xD

        1. I’ve noticed that they use red hair in TS4 as a stand-in for where an unnatural color would be. But if you have unnatural add-ons for toddlers it’s a different story.

    1. Thanks! I’m making progress on the upcoming chapters, don’t worry. In between Tater’s potty breaks. 😛

    1. I’m working on chapters behind the scenes. Getting another dog really derails me every time.

  2. Lol that’s a way to call the workers of death. (Kills a mouse)

    SQUATTERS – SURPRISE lmaaooo

    Lord stripping Pappy of his lycanthropy… if it’s in the rules you don’t need to ask permission huh?

    Middle school award-winning painter (I absolutely snorted)

    Veeegggaaaa welcome baaccckkk

    Also belated CONGRATS on NEW PUPPY SON

    1. Every new dog curses my stories and I just keep getting ’em (actually I am legally being stopped thank GOD)

      Bahahaha I thought back to the time when I actually did get into a county-wide art show in fourth grade and thought it was destiny. I’ve perhaps graduated to whatever the sixth graders were doing (but there were some BEAUTIFUL pieces there, I really hope some of them went on to become artists or have it as a cool hobby)

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