Writing From the Inside

Title: The Pencil Box
Author: N.J. Nidiffer
Genre/Rating: Gen/PG
Word Count: 13,909
Fandom: Dark Shadows
Verse: Gina Lee (# 9)
Summary: There’s nothing Willie’s more afraid of than the dark, yet that’s where he must go in order to get through his chores so he can earn the money to buy Polly Logan a present. He’s been invited to her birthday party, you see, and come hell or high water, Willie is determined to be there.
A/N: This story was actually written after Polly, because Nik wanted to figure out how and where Willie acquired the gift wrapped in that old, blue paper.

***

Willie lay in the candleglow of his bedroom, listening to the world breathing spring around him.

He could hear the rustle and click of a field mouse sorting through the cinders at the far edge of the hearth, searching for an edible crumb or two that might be lost amongst the clinkers. Two floors below, the mantle clock gonged, though he couldn’t make out the individual brassy peals to judge the hour. Somewhere closer by, a door closed. Barnabas wandering around. And here in his own bed, soft and warm and quiet, was the muted thump of Willie’s heart, resonating through the sounding board of his chest and into his waiting ear.

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Title: Concussion
Author: Sylvia Bond
Genre/Rating: Gen/PG
Word Count: 12,922
Fandom: Dark Shadows
Verse: Gina Lee (#
Summary: Willie’s concussion becomes very apparent when he snaps at the kids and can’t remember what Barnabas has told him to do. Even Gina Lee can’t make him slow down; it’s up to Barnabas, who brings out an old-fashioned remedy that actually works better than the prescription the doctor gave him.
A/N: Willie should get some rest, that’s all I have to say about it.

***

“Chocolate,” said Danny.

It was a proposal made with dignity, as only a small child could do it, his dark eyes wide and on Willie as he climbed back into Tom Pederson’s pristine Suburban.

“What, kiddo?” Willie asked, tucking the two bottles of pills and the tube of ointment in his jacket pockets along with, presumably, the receipt. Gina had never seen a man for keeping receipts as Willie was.

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Title: The Long Way Down

Author:  N.J. Nidiffer

Genre/Rating: Gen/PG

Word Count:  16,300

Fandom: Dark Shadows

Verse: Gina Lee (# 7)

Summary: Even when Willie is doing his best to be obedient, everything goes wrong when he falls off a ladder for real collapses in the grocery store. It gets even worse when Gina Lee is the one to discover him and call for an ambulance. Barnabas is non too pleased, Gina Lee is sure Barnabas is being cruel and stingy about the whole thing, and Willie just wants his headache to go away.

A/N: Part of the problem is that Nik and I felt what Polly and Danny and Gina Lee felt in that we couldn’t get enough of the boy, and we ended up torturing him beyond all reason.

***

There was an ominous screech of wood on wood.

A world that shifted precariously on its axis.

A moment of freefall.

And then nothing.

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Title: Winter’s Gift
Author:  Sylvia Bond

Genre/Rating: Gen/PG

Word Count:  22,823

Fandom: Dark Shadows

Verse: Gina Lee (# 6)

Summary:  It’s Christmas time, and Gina is determined to keep her friendship with Willie, even if he’s doing his best to avoid her. But then, her house burns down, and Willie is sure that Barnabas is responsible. He’s no longer on his very best behavior and rebels, not knowing that Gina did not die in the fire. Gina, for her part, comes up to the Old House and stirs up the pot a little when she realizes that Barnabas was not responsible for her having wood to warm her through the winter.

A/N: Gina turned into our little wolverine in this story, and she can’t stand that Barnabas Collins, which made it even more fun.

***

Gina watched him go, hands falling to her sides, empty. But she could hardly make him stay, now could she. Not with him so eager to go, so desperate to go. And as he walked away, watching the stiffness with which he held himself and the slight limp which once again seemed to plague him, a thought that was not new to her rose up in her mind.

Someone had hurt him, and recently too, someone had laid into him where it would not show. Like Ezra used to do to her, blows to the body where no one would see them, someplace where it would take her down and keep her obedient, but that would not attract attention. Once in a while, like when he was drunk . . . okay, more than a few times, Ez had hit her where it would show, in the face, giving her black eyes, and once a horrid blow to the side of her neck, and she’d taken to wearing turtlenecks. Like Willie was wearing now.

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Title: Trial by Fire

Author:  N.J. Nidiffer

Genre/Rating: Gen/PG

Word Count:  7,243

Fandom: Dark Shadows

Verse: Gina Lee (# 5)

Summary: Willie has struck a bargain with Barnabas in which Barnabas will let Gina Lee and her babies live only if Willie behaves himself 100% for the rest of his life. Since Willie wasn’t born into bonded servitude, he has a hard time struggling under the yoke or staying away from Gina Lee.

A/N: There’s a friendship growing between Willie and Gina Lee that’s so strong, neither Nik nor I were able to resist writing about it.

***

The water in the basin steamed like a soup pot coming to a boil. Not because the water was so very hot, but because the room was so dreadfully cold.

Willie put the kettle back on the hearthstones where the faint circle of heat radiating from the coals would keep it simmering. He dropped a clean washcloth into the basin, added a sprinkling of shredded soap, and only then paused to peel off his sweater in jerky, shivery movements, like a locust shedding the last of its brittle summer skin.

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Title: Giving Thanks

Author: Sylvia Bond

Genre/Rating: Gen/PG

Word Count:  18,182

Fandom: Dark Shadows

Verse: Gina Lee (# 4)

Summary: It is Thanksgiving time, and Gina Lee, who has extra pies in her kitchen, brings one to Willie at the Old House. Entertaining guests is not within servant’s rights, so Barnabas pitches a fit and then punishes Willie. Only trouble is, now Willie needs to return the pie pan, which he does, and then it gets worse from there.

A/N: I had to call my brother in law to find out what they used to call Thanksgiving back in Barnabas’ day, and of course he knew, because he’s totally cool like that. As for Barnabas, he never could appreciate a nice Pilgrim hat.

***

Gina stared at the pies on her kitchen counter as they cooled fast in the chill of the coming dusk. It was raining, but she didn’t want to light a fire without the kids in to enjoy it. They were ensconced at the neighbors, two houses down, who, shortly after Ezra’s untimely demise, had knocked on her door and announced their intention to be friends. It was hard to resist the couple, who with two little boys of their own, plied her with company, and food, and charity that was given in such a way as it never seemed like charity and by the time she’d realized it, it had always been too late.

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Title: Gina Lee

Author: N.J. Nidiffer

Genre/Rating: Gen/PG

Word Count: 7,455

Fandom: Dark Shadows

Verse: Gina Lee (# 3)

Summary: Willie once helped out Gina Lee, now she wants to invite him home to lunch to repay him. But even that simple act is fraught with problems.

A/N: By this time, the Gina Lee verse was up and running, taking on a life of its own. When she wrote this installment, Nik admitted to me that she was leaving threads and breadcrumbs strewn about on the hopes that I would pick one of them up and make a story about it. Of course I did, because I was as much in love with these characters as she was.

***

He didn’t really jump six feet in the air when he felt a tug on the back of his jacket. He only felt like he did. Willie dropped his armload of caulking supplies into the bed of the truck and spun around on his heels, searching for the unexpected hand that had touched him. There was no one there.

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Title: Tree

Author: Sylvia Bond

Genre/Rating: Gen/PG

Word Count: 11,210

Fandom: Dark Shadows

Verse: Gina Lee (# 2)

Summary: Willie’s doing his best at the Old House, but he accidentally cuts down the tree that Josette planted many, many years ago. Barnabas, of course, punishes him, and then demands that he get rid of the wood. Willie, for some reason, decides that it would be a good idea to give the wood to the widow, Gina Lee Logan, as well as Sam Evans, to keep them warm through the winter.

A/N: It was Nik who said she wanted a development of a snippet of a scene from another story, where Willie references the time Barn locked him in the cellar, in the dark. She wanted to know why Barn would do that. Well, cutting down that damned tree is why, of course!

***

Willie sat in front of the kitchen fireplace, his chair pulled up close and his bare feet toasting on the flagstones laid along the hearth. The sun was just going down and a damp fog was setting in, and he’d been working outside in the weather for three days. Chilled to the very core of his muscles, the tree he’d just finished chopping and splitting and stacking gave off a bright, hot light. Moreso than the ordinary kindling he ordered from the local lumberyard. And the wood had been so hard, he’d had to sharpen the axe every hour or so on an old whetstone he’d found in the basement. He was worn through.

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Title: Deep Water

Author: N.J. Nidiffer

Genre/Rating: Gen/PG

Word Count: 3,354

Fandom: Dark Shadows

Verse: Gina Lee (# 1)

Summary: Willie picks up a local village woman and her kids after their car breaks down in a storm. And, of course, seeing as this is a story about Willie, bad things happen after that.

A/N: My friend Nik wrote this story, and I thought it was a very good story, so much so that I was inspired to write a sequel of sorts, called Tree, where more bad things happen.

 ***

Willie spotted them on the coastal highway, trudging through the slush on the side of the road nearly two miles outside of town. He drove past, and for a moment his foot tightened on the gas. He had somewhere else he had to be.

But. . . .

Ah, hell.

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This is a sad followup to the other post by a similar name, in which I talk about two great fanfic writers that I know who have completely internalized the art of the simile. Sadly, one of them has just passed away. Her name was Nik. She had a heart attack on the 2nd of December, and went into a coma. Diagnosis was never good, she was brain dead from lack of oxygen, but they kept her on life support until they pulled the plug on the 9th. She breathed on her own for a bit, they moved her into hospice, and then on the 13th, she finally passed away.

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