#Bama Rags

[musicandotherdelights]

Daily Listening, Day #997 - September 23rd, 2022

Album: The Central Park Concert (Bama Rags, 2003)

Artist: Dave Matthews Band

Genre: Jam Band, Pop Rock

Track Listing: 

"Don't Drink The Water"

"So Much To Say"

"Too Much"

"Granny"

"Crush"

"When The World Ends"

"Dancing Nancies"

"Warehouse"

"Ants Marching"

"Rhyme And Reason"

"Two Step"

"Help Myself"

"Cortez The Killer"

"Jimi Thing"

"What Would You Say"

"Where Are You Going"

"All Along The Watchtower"

"Grey Street"

"What You Are"

"Stay (Wasting Time)"

Favorite Song: "Cortez The Killer"

[roosterbruiser]

𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐖𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄? — 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟒

—𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐓𝐖𝐎 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌 𝐏𝐎𝐏 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐈-𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒. 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐒𝐓 (𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐁𝐈𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐒𝐓) 𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐁𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍, 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐒𝐔𝐀𝐋 𝐒𝐔𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐒 𝐁𝐔𝐘 𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐏𝐔𝐌𝐏𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃. 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐉𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐒 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐅𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐀𝐖𝐅𝐔𝐋 𝐀𝐒 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑. —𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒: 𝟖.𝟒𝐊 —𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 —𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 —𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐁𝐎𝐀𝐑𝐃 —𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑

𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐖𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄? 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐁𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐅𝐈𝐄𝐋𝐃 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐉𝐀𝐊𝐄'𝐒 𝐃𝐎𝐑𝐌 𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌 𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟒

The tough leather football catapults off the laces of Jake’s right cleat and soars across the true-blue sky through the yellow guideposts staked at the opposing side’s endzone. It’s clean--doesn’t so much as skim the chipped paint before it bounces off the net gloriously.

Triple.  

And just like that, the game ends the way everyone already knew it would: with Jake Seresin’s jersey blown up on the jumbotron, with the home team’s score dwarfing the opposing team just barely, with the crowd roaring in abundant approval.

The loyal crowd packing the stadium, all dressed in a sea of morning yellow and teal, erupts like an undefeated crowd should. Everyone is on their feet, breaths no longer held and fingernails no longer bitten, with their hands in the crisp autumn air surrounding them. The bright stadium lights wash over the field--all the celebrating players, the exuberant turf, the moping opposing side glitter inside its glow and beneath the evening sky.

Thunderstruck by AC/DC is screaming through the speakers. At this point, you’re well-versed enough in your school’s football history to know that this song is synonymous with victory. It’s the only reason you put up with the trash.  

“Holy shit!” Bob calls out. He’s grinning, his lips a bit pink and wet and his eyes wide and watered with joy. “Bullseye, man! Bullseye, bullseye, bullseye!”

Bob rarely curses so liberally--you’ve noticed this over the past year between late night runs to the corner store and lazy afternoons in Jake and Brad’s dorm. He says things like good Lord and have mercy and now just hold on a darn second there. But during football games, his lips are looser and he isn’t as quick to flush. He can say shit and damn and sometimes fuck. It is partly because of the sticky, nippy atmosphere and partly because of the few cheap beers Javy always buys for him.

“I told you! I told you he never misses!” Javy returns excitedly. “Fuck outta here, ‘Bama!” 

Javy brings his pointer and his tongue to his mouth, glancing over at you to make sure you see--you do and you’re already covering your ears. He gives you a courteous warning before he whistles after he nearly made you jump out of your skin during kick-off a few weeks ago. 

He heard all about it from Jake when you let it slip casually in conversation. 

“You trying to maim her or something, you dick?” Jake had said with his brows furrowed, his cheeks still pink from running though the football game had ended hours ago. He took a long, languid drink from his water bottle and then drew it away and pointed at Javy with it. “How about some warning next time, big guy?”

“Let’s fucking go!” Javy calls out, his voice ragged from calling out referees and hollering Seresin and Bradshaw, the paint on his face crumbling as his mouth stretches into a grin. “Don’t Trip on your way out, bitches!”

He wraps an arm around your shoulder and pulls you into his side--he smells like face paint and sweat. Bob, all his excitement bubbling over, blows a yeasty breath out and wraps you up in his arms, too. Bob, somehow, always smells like he’s only just stepped out of the shower. 

Jake can hear everything from the field--everyone screaming, the noisemakers snapping, the hands clapping, the other players cajoling, Javy’s absurdly loud whistling--for only a moment. He only experiences the win for a few fleeting seconds, teammates punching his shoulder pads and slapping his ass through his tight game pants, until he turns his face to the bleachers.

It is easy for him to find you. Maybe if he told someone that, someone like Javy or Bradley or Bob, they would tell him that it’s because he’s the one who bought your tickets, picked your seats. That he simply memorized where you’re gonna sit, glances over during practice, always checks on you. 

But Jake knows better than that. 

He knows that it is so easy for him to find you because he looks for you in every room now--even if it’s the chem lab he knows you aren’t even enrolled in, even if it’s his family’s living room in Texas over the summer when you’re home in Virginia, even if it’s his dorm room at four in the morning and he’s just dropped you at your own hal, even if it’s the crowded dining hall he knows you wouldn’t ever step foot in on your own. 

He’s good at finding you--always has been. 

And now, a year to the day he first saw you at that shitty house party that only played a few good songs, he finds you wedged in between Bob and Javy. 

Jake’s chest is tight as he looks at you. You’re standing between two of his best friends, who have now become your friends, grinning like there is no other place in the world you would rather be than this close to the football field and drowning in beer breath. 

There you are, like you have been since November of last year, standing in the first row of bleachers. You’re clapping and laughing as Javy and Bob hold you and undoubtedly insult the opposing team. You’re wearing the sweatshirt Jake gave you, that soft yellow thing that’s been faded with time since it was first worn by Jake’s father all those years ago, and there are little butterfly clips in your hair--team colors, of course. 

It’s funny, Jake thinks. A year ago you didn’t own even one school team shirt. Not a hat, a keychain, a hand-me-down, not even one of those rubber bracelets you can get for free literally anywhere on campus.

“Didn’t have a reason to have school pride before. You know--before you. But doesn’t everyone have school pride now that we’re undefeated? I bet you’re the reason a lot of people buy sweatshirts, Trip,” you told him when he asked about it. It was December of last year and he was reclined on your bed, watching you brush your hair as you slipped into his father’s sweatshirt. “This is really nice, you know. Vintage.” 

“It was my dad’s,” Jake told you softly, trying to be sly about his lingering gaze. 

But still, you saw him when you turned suddenly to look at him with furrowed brows. The two of you had only known each other for a month and some change and already he deemed you important enough to will down his father’s sweatshirt. 

“Shouldn’t you be saving this for some gorgeous girlfriend in a little tank-top?” You asked, only half-joking. 

He caught your gaze in the mirror and shook his head. 

“Nah,” he answered. “It looks good on you.” 

But now, here you are, all these months later. In the same sweatshirt, the one you keep in pristine condition and wear almost every gameday. And now you have matching hair clips. 

Almost instantaneously, you know he’s looking at you. Even when he’s across an entire football field, even when he’s being crowded by the rest of the football team and the coaches, even when his eyes are nearly hidden behind his helmet--you know. It’s a feeling that you get, one that is almost indiscernible from other big feelings like exhilaration or delirium. 

And because you know he’s looking at you, you know that when he jams his finger in the sky and angles it--he’s pointing at you. You. That’s who the win was for. You. It’s always you. If someone were to be writing it down, they would know that every single win this season--and every single one during the latter half of last season--is dedicated to you. You own them, really. Technically. They’re gifted to you, thrusted into your lap, by Jake. 

Just like you do each time he points to you after a win, you hold your hands in a heart--a juvenile and crooked thing. But you hold it high and proud in the sky as confetti reigns down from the bleachers above. 

Jake’s beaming underneath his face mask, filled to the brim with unadulterated joy as you hold your hands up in a heart. It’s for him--it always is. 

He can’t remember when this all started--the hearts, at least. He thinks they must’ve started the way nicknames do; on a whim, randomly, fleetingly. It’s that sweet thing where you don’t know where something begins or how it will end, but you know everything in-between because it just is.  

But he does remember the first time you came to a game after you met. It was the next game, the one he promised he’d get you tickets to, and you sat in the front row like you said you would despite him offering to nab you some nosebleeders. 

His fingertips tingled with adrenaline the entirety of the game, only gaining more momentum the closer the team got to a fourth-quarter victory. Everyone could tell that Jake was on his A-game, which meant that he was unstoppable. 

He was the one who kicked the field goal that won the game--and with only ten seconds left on the clock. He remembers vividly the way the crowd went animalistic, the way everyone erupted in howls and cries and hollering. 

Before the game, he memorized the exact seat you were going to sit in. During practice, he watched it--imagined you there. Your exuberant smile, your unrelenting good mood, which he partly attributed to the company of yours truly and partly attributed to you losing the dead weight of Spit Sabler. 

And when he kicked the field goal, when he heard the crowd go wild, he turned towards where he knew you were sitting. It wasn’t even on purpose--it was just like a natural reaction. There you were, just like you said you would be. Grinning. Clapping. Laughing. 

He was so overwhelmed with joy, so overwhelmed with having met you and immediately adored you, that he pointed to you. 

You. 

His girl. 

He doesn’t remember what he was doing after wins before this--before he started looking for you. Maybe he was indulging in the celebration. Maybe he was letting Bradshaw tackle him to the turf. Maybe he was running to the sidelines. He can’t remember. He experiences this a lot when he thinks of life before you--it’s all blurry. Unimportant. 

“You fucker! You dumb fucker!” Bradley laughs in his ear as he jumps into Jake’s arms, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and knocking Jake’s helmet with his own. “Just take me already!” 

“You fucking goon, get off me!” Jake howls, stumbling backwards with Bradley’s entire weight on his torso. But he’s still grinning. “You’re giving the other team way too much ammunition right now!” 

“Ammunition-shammunition!” Bradley says gleefully, panting and laughing as he hugs Jake close to him. They both stink--almost indistinguishable from each other. “We won! We fucking won! Let ‘em talk!” 

“We always do,” Jake says, planting Bradley’s cleats back on the turf. “We’re literally 10-0!” 

Bradley slaps his hands on the sides of Jake’s helmet and pulls him close so that the hard plastic clashes roughly. Jake starts to whine, but Bradley is too amped to notice or mind. 

“I love you, man! I love you!” 

“Stop!” Jake insists. The grin is devouring his face. “Be normal!” 

“I can’t! Something’s happening to me! Something big and-and--!” Bradley’s already starting to gyrate, spreading his arms out and running in place on the tips of his toes. “Oh, God--it’s happening!”  

“Don’t!” Jake warns, shaking his head seriously. “Please--just this once, don’t do it--!” 

The team is already watching the two of them, amused. They know what’s coming. It’s the same thing at the end of every game that Jake wins for the team--which is almost every single one at this point. 

Bradshaw is notoriously an idiot--bonafide. But he might be the most beloved member of the team; he has an irresistible goofy charm about him that even the quarterback is susceptible to. That’s pretty much what happened with you, too. You fell in love with his big, cow-like eyes and unrelenting unwillingness to be embarrassed. 

“It’s taking me! Oh, Lord! It’s taking me!” Bradley cries. He’s really getting into it now, clutching his chest and marching in place on beat. “Help me, Jake! Help me!”

“Uh-oh,” Bob says with a fond smile tugging on his lips. He squeezes you and Javy. “Trouble! One o’clock!” 

You and Javy grin at the scene on the field. The other team dejectedly fielding sneers and boo’s as they sulk off the field as AC/DC shakes the ground beneath their cleats. Your football team watches on in amusement as Bradley howls and breaks out in dance while Jake desperately tries to get away. 

“The Bradshaw Boogie,” you sigh, beaming. “Who could've guessed?” 

“Me, you, Bob, that guy over there, that guy over here, even the lady down there,” Javy lists, shaking his head. “What an idiot.” 

“But he’s ours,” you sigh lovingly, leaning your head against Bob’s. Bradley tackles Jake to the ground and your chest grows warm, pulses with love. “Both of them.”

𖥔

“Doesn’t this all feel so…American?” Bob asks. He’s pushing the cart, squinting beneath the harsh fluorescents flickering above the lot of you. He’s in his costume already--a freakishly accurate Indiana Jones costume that has gotten more than a handful of compliments since arriving at the grocery store. “Going to a football game and then buying pumpkins at the local twenty-four hour superstore?” 

“Winning a football game,” Bradley corrects from his spot inside the cart, knees against his chest as he cradles a few bottles of the cheapest vodka in stock. His face is partially painted--which means he just looks partially rabid. He scratches the real dog collar around his throat and the metal name tag that he sharpied the Hell hound’s name on jangles melodically. “And we’re not just buying pumpkins.” 

“Yeah,” Javy echoes from ahead of everyone, skimming the aisles absently as he reads all the price tags. He’s the certified sales finder, which is always why he walks ahead of everyone. The bright read-and-white sweater of his Waldo costume, ironically, sticks out like a sore thumb in the dull, white-washed aisles. “We’re buying Bradshaw a leash, too. Finally.” 

“Ha-ha,” Bob says. “Funny. But I don’t think Cujo had a leash.” 

Javy pauses and glances over his shoulder at Bob and Bradley. Bob’s watching him, brows knit and lips quirked. Bradley hasn’t even noticed that the cart’s halted--he’s too busy chewing his fingernail. 

“No. We were supposed to get around to it last week,” Javy says. “He keeps wandering.”

Now Bradley looks up--suddenly realizing that Bob and Javy are looking at him.

“Oh. Kinky,” Bradley grins, waggling his brows. He adjusts himself in the cart, uncomfortably packed against the metal grates between bags of Doritos and robust pumpkins, but unwilling to get out. “I like it. Wanna take me for a walk, Goldie?” 

Bradley leans out of the cart to grin at Jake, like he always does when he puts the faux moves on you, but all he sees is an empty aisle. He was totally expecting a firm smack on the back of the head from Jake and a sweet laugh from you. Nothing but cereal boxes, though.

“Hey. Where’d they go?” Bradley asks, pouting. “I totally just said that for loverboy.” 

“Who?��� Javy returns, starting down the aisle again as he straightens his crooked glasses. “Sonny and Cher?”  

“They’re Daphne and Fred,” Bob says, shaking his head. 

“More like Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumbass,” Bradley says good-naturedly. He releases his fingernail from the wrath of his teeth and then sighs dejectedly. “Anyone got any clippers on ‘em? I have a hangnail.”

Two aisles over, you’re sorting through the various bags of candy sitting on the beige shelves. Nothing is striking your precise fancy and Jake can tell from the careful way he’s watching your brows crinkle. You take your Halloween candy seriously--really, you take everything about Halloween seriously--and he knows he’s already on thin ice taking you to a superstore to get pumpkins instead of a patch. 

“Who the fuck likes Dots?” You whisper to him, shaking your head disapprovingly. “Do you know someone who likes Dots? I don’t. I never have.” 

Jake shakes his head fondly. 

“Yeah, I do,” Jake says. 

“Nuh-uh,” you say dismissively, brows loosely knit.  

“I’ll give you one guess,” Jake says, tightening the orange ascot around his throat. 

Glancing at him through your lashes, your belly already in a puddle at your platform heels right beside your heart, you meet his gaze. He’s always already looking at you--just like he always is. It’s one of the first things you noticed about him after you two met for coffee on November 1st of last year, a mere twelve hours since you broke things off with Spit Sabler. Jake was the one who stood from the table he snagged for both of you, the one who was watching the door for thirty minutes before you arrived, the one who called your name across the cafe and waved you over.

“Hey,” he’d said when you crossed the cafe shyly and ended up at his feet. “You look great out of costume, too! I think you could still pass for a doctor.” 

“Jokes on you,” you’d told him, eyeing the ridiculously good-looking denim jacket he had shrugged over his The Innocence Mission t-shirt. “You don’t.” 

You cheek your grin and whip a bit of your stringy red wig over your shoulder. When he sees you struggling, two little strands of artificial hair stuck in your lipgloss, he reaches up and carefully peels them away from your lips. His fingers graze your cheek as he retracts--a ghost of a touch, the hint of a touch, the hint of a ghost of a touch. Enough for both of you to curl your toes identically in the safety and privacy of your own socks. 

Both of you pretend not to be warm from the interaction. 

You clear your throat.  

“Nobody likes Dots,” you insist. 

Jake shakes his head smugly. 

“Somebody you know and love likes Dots,” Jake insists. 

He doesn’t bother checking his grin--he can hardly muster when you’re looking up at him so prettily. Fuschia eyelids and candy-apple lips, all that sweet softness and playfulness sitting in the fat of your cheeks as you try not to smile.  

“You lie like a rug,” you challenge, crossing your arms indignantly. “I’m calling your bullshit.” 

“Error 404. Bullshit not found,” Jake says, holding his palms up in defense. “C���mon. One guess. You’ve got it.”

“You,” you say with a devious smile. 

He holds his chest in mock insult and you beam at him. 

“Ouch,” he says. “No. I underestimated your ability to be wack as Hell.”  

“Okay, Fresh Prince,” you bite back, open-mouth laughing now. “Then who is it? Hm? Who do I know and love that likes Dots?” 

“Scrappy Doo,” he says confidently. 

He watches your face contort--first confusion and then realization. 

“Bradshaw really does make it hard for himself, doesn’t he?” You say quietly. “But, like--now that you say that? I can see it. Unfortunately. I can see it.” 

“He went to the movie theater one time to--like, literally just to buy Dots. Brought, like, five boxes back to the dorm and ate them overnight.”

“Ew,” you say, nose wrinkled. “Did he get sick?” 

“No,” Jake says, rolling his eyes. “He has an industrial stomach.” 

“Shit,” you say, laughing. “Go figure.” 

“Unlike someone here, he’s also not picky,” Jake says, widening his eyes and nodding towards you. 

Sticking your tongue out at him, you roll your eyes. 

“It’s not so easy!” 

Jake glances down at the mounds of candy before you, scouring for a bag you would actually enjoy. He’s learned a lot about you--he feels like he’s learned everything about you--in the past year, so he knows how tricky this is going to be. You won’t eat coconut or dark chocolate--nor do you like non-sour gummies. You only tolerate Smarties and you can’t stomach M&M’s after last year’s milkshake incident. 

“Here,” Jake says, tugging a variety bag out from the bottom of the pile. He hands it to you and nods for you to follow him as he starts down the aisle again. “That one.”

“That’s ballsy,” you say to him, not moving from your spot. You squint as you read the labels of the candy in the variety pack. “You know this is a most sacred process for me.” 

He turns, now in the middle of the aisle, and watches you read it silently. He already knows--before you even do--that this is the one you’re going to choose. He knows little things about you like this--like your In-N-Out order, your favorite kind of pen to write with, your dislike of baseball caps. But he knows big things about you, too--like how old you were when your parents divorced, what your favorite color was in the second grade, who you consider to be your personal hero and why it’s Dolly Parton.

“You underestimate my fondness for you,” Jake says. Heat blooms all cross his chest and his ascot suddenly feels tight when you glance back at him in amusement. He laughs dryly. “Idiot.” 

“I stand corrected,” you tell him with a shrug and sigh, slinging the candy over your arm. “And you know how much I hate standing.” 

“Who hates standing?” Jake grins, shaking his head. You are slowly making your way over to him in that strangely authentic Daphne costume, the one you put together over the course of three months with him in tow. “Nobody hates standing.” 

When you come close to him, you can smell the aftershave on his face, the sandalwood on his pulse points. He grins down at you, unrealistically handsome even in this truly awful Fred wig--truly, it’s less Fred and more of a tow-headed Sonny Bono.

“Someone you know and love hates it,” you tease, pressing the bag of candy in his awaiting arms. “Right?” 

He looks down at you in between taking measured, deep breaths. He can’t believe how much he adores you. Well, he can because he does and he has been since the moment he first saw you. He felt like he already loved you when he saw you in the cafe the day after Halloween, when you walked across the checkered tiles with your glasses on and your backpack slung over one shoulder. 

“What--you didn’t bring your backpack? Do you not care about passing midterms?” You’d asked him seriously. But you were smiling softly as your lashes kissed the tops of your cheeks. “Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of doctor?” 

Sometimes he wonders when it happened--when something happened between the two of you that halted both of you in your tracks, something that stalled anything real and romantic happening at the party or the dorm room. He thinks about it when he zones out in class, when he’s trying not to fall asleep during film in the locker rooms. 

Maybe it was when some John puked all over your legs. When he told you to look up at the night sky while he wiped your legs down and free from marigold flowers and puke. 

Maybe it was when he didn’t walk you to the door of your dormitory. When he stayed in his truck and waited until you got into the building before he drove away. Maybe he should’ve stuck his hands in his pockets and walked all the way up to your room, should’ve met your roommate and seen what pictures you hung on the walls.

Maybe it was when he didn’t bring his backpack for coffee. When he had to sit on the same side of the little bistro table as you and read over your shoulder, when he had to borrow one of your pens to take notes on scrap paper you happened to have.

Maybe it was when you were the one to ask for his number first, scribbling it on the corner of your notebook with a smiley face. Smiley face. Not a heart.

Maybe it was on a Tuesday in April or maybe a Friday in September. Maybe it happened while the two of you were watching Apocalypse Now or Dazed and Confused. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever know--doesn’t even know if he wants to know. 

But Jake isn’t one to complain, though. 

Maybe you’re not what he wants you to be--his girlfriend, even though that feels too juvenile a word for what he really wants you to be--but you’re still the best person he knows. And, in a lot of ways, he considers himself very lucky to have landed you at all. Even as a friend. 

You have quickly--effortlessly--become one of Jake’s favorite people on God’s green earth. He thinks about you each morning when the sun touches his face for the first time, thinks about how warm your hands always are when you pinch his cheeks. He thinks about you each night as he flicks off his lamp, glancing at the framed photograph he has of you on his bedside table--one Javy took of you on a disposable camera, one where you’re decked out in team colors and holding a foam finger with Jake’s number on it.

Sometimes, though--like right now--he gets overwhelmed with everything. It’s like there’s a ball of light in his chest that’s starting to puncture his skin. Like there’s something bright and hot and big that wants out and wants out now. 

“Right,” Jake whispers now, pretending like he’s not choked up. He grips the plastic bag in his arms to keep himself from holding your cheeks. He’s watching your lips. “You are someone I know and love.” 

There is a hotness radiating from Jake, but you hardly notice. If you did, you’d be fanning yourself and un-pinning your wig. But your gaze is unwavering, even if you feel like Jake isn’t quite meeting your eyes right now. Either way, you still feel seen by him. Always.

“Prove it,” you whisper to him. 

It sounds like an invitation--maybe it is. 

Yes, it lingers there in the air between you, the one that smells like dead leaves and artificial apple and gardenia perfume from the lady a few aisles over. You and him both see it, clear as day, as if it’s some sort of bright red mist surrounding you. 

You have a supremely good eye for detail. You notice eyelashes on sidewalks and memorize license plates on speeding cars and have never once missed foreshadowing. That’s why Bradley has you proofread all his essays, why Javy has you watch football games with him, why Bob studies with you, why Jake loves to watch movies with you. 

So, you notice it whenever Jake’s eyebrows pinch. Whenever he looks confused, like he’s just about to sputter out a what? and step away from you. That’s when you realize, flushed as ever before, that your faces are a mere inch apart. 

“Buy my candy,” you say, straightening out and moving your face away from his. 

Jake’s heart is hammering in his chest.

Fuck.

He was going to do it. He was going to ask if he could kiss you--Hell, he was just going to hold the stupid wig in place and press his lips to yours before he lost the nerve. 

But it’s too late. You’re already smiling at him, expression unreadable to him even though he’s well-versed in you, nodding towards the register. 

“Goldie--!” 

“Hey!” Javy says when he sees the two of you. “Simon! Garfunkel! Let’s get a move on, huh? We’ve gotta get our drink on!” 

Both you and Jake turn to find your three friends standing at the end of the aisle. Javy with his hands on his hips and his lips pursed, Bob smiling almost apologetically like he knows he interrupted something, and Bradley struggling to his knees in the very-full cart to get your attention. 

“Hey, Goldie! I made a really good joke earlier and you weren’t there,” Bradley starts, grinning as he gestures wildly. “Okay, so Javy said--!”

“Down boy,” Bob says, nudging Bradley. 

You and Jake trudge towards the three of them, a strange aura of embarrassment and disappointment permeating the air around the two of you. It’s strange because the two of you, as close as you are, never seem very embarrassed about being so obliviously in love as you both are. 

“What?” Bradley asks, genuinely oblivious. He’s gesturing to you as you sheepishly make your way over to the cart. “She missed it! She’s my audience!” 

“Audience of one?” Javy asks, brow raised. “Lame.”

“Boo me all you want, but I’m loyal. A one-woman kinda guy,” Bradley defends. You’re smiling at him, rolling your eyes, when he pats his thighs while waggling his eyebrows. “Hey, pretty lady. Wanna take a seat?” 

Jake thumps the back of his head hard, even if he knows that Bradley’s adoration for you is purely platonic and flirtation if in complete jest. And Bradley keens at Jake, strangely accomplished.

“Nah,” you say softly. You hold your own hands and try not to breathe in too much of Jake’s cologne. “I’ll stand.”

𖥔

Technically it’s still Halloween when you and Jake stumble into his dorm room. The two of you have been in Bob’s dorm room for the better half of the evening, drinking away a couple bottles of vodka between the four of you while having a horror movie marathon. 

Things feel alright now--better than they did at the beginning of the night, in the direct aftermath of whatever the fuck happened at the store. With every drink the two of you had, you moved closer to the middle of the room from the prospective sides you’d initially settled in. By the time Jaws II was being discussed, you were laying your head in Jake’s lap and letting him stroke your wig. 

“Jinkies, I gotta get you back,” Jake had sighed, glancing at the clock and then you. He dropped his eye in a heavy wink, one that was not as sly as usual, and nodded towards the door. “Gotta celebrate our anniversary.” 

“Oh, right,” Bradley had interjected, leaning over the two of you with a pink-tinted grin. “What’s the first anniversary? Silver?” 

“Paper,” Bob corrected, slightly inebriated. 

“Do candy wrappers count?” Jake had whispered, thumb pressed against your cheek. 

“Yeah,” you yawned. “So does cash.”

Time is ticking by quickly and so are you as Jake shuts the door behind the both of you, a broken laugh falling from his vodka-flavored lips at something you said on the elevator. Something he can’t even remember now. 

“Jesus, it’s dark,” you say as you pull your lop-sided wig off your head and let it slink to the wooden floor. It will, undoubtedly, live there for the next couple weeks. You can already imagine Bradley eating shit after slipping on it. “You live like this?” 

The room is dark and empty besides the two of you, completely quiet besides the usual clanging and hollering outside his window from the drunk boys in the courtyard. And, of course, the laughter still dying on Jake’s tongue and the thumps of your heels. 

You have been in this room more times than you can count--so much so that several of the floors RA’s have approached you about blowing off floor meetings. So, despite being a bit drunk and despite being in the dark, you’re able to find the radio sitting on Jake’s dresser. It’s where it always is beside a pack of gum and his favorite bottle of cologne. 

“Like a hermit,” Jake says. “A Norman Bates type.”

“Spooky,” you whisper to him. “Really getting me in the mood over here.” 

“Yeah? Sitting in Bob’s room and watching creature features didn’t do that for you already?” 

“Nope,” you say, shaking your head despite the fact that he cannot see you. “You know I like more high brow stuff.” 

“Right,” Jake says distantly as he reaches blindly for the switch to the lava lamp. “Slashers.” 

“Uh huh,” you mutter. Then you clear your throat and drunkenly giggle as you sing. “Gimme, gimme, gimme some gore after midnight.” 

“You know how I can tell when you’re trashed, Goldie-girl?” Jake grins, still fumbling for the switch. “You start singing ABBA parodies.” 

“You like my parodies,” you whisper back. 

“Love ‘em,” he says and he really does mean it. 

The lamp suddenly illuminates the room. The both of you squint in tandem, on opposite sides of the small dorm room, stumbling in your steps in surprise. 

“Hi,” you whisper to him. 

Your makeup is smeared--bleary. His wig is gone and his ascot is untied. 

“Hey,” he returns. “What are you in the mood for? Pick your poison.” 

He nods to the CD’s you’re sorting through. 

“Julee Cruise,” you whisper back. “She’s been stuck in my head all day.”

“On the left,” he tells you. “Towards the bottom.” 

Nodding, you dig it out. Jake rubs his eyes, trying to sober up. It isn’t that he wants to even be sober--he feels good right now. But after what happened at the store, the way you have been inside of a hard shell all night between Jaws and The Blob, he wants to have a clear head. 

Fumbling only slightly, you manage to start the CD. And without looking back at Jake, you wander over to his twin bed and flop down on the brown plaid bedding, sighing in relief. 

“I’ve been awake for too long,” you whisper to him, blinking up at the ceiling. 

He’s still standing beside the lamp, watching every one of your moves with his heart in his throat. 

“How long?” He asks. 

You turn to him, biting a smile and blinking your bleary eyes. 

“My whole life,” you return. 

Now he’s biting a grin. 

“Wow,” he whispers. “You must be exhausted.”

“Yup,” you confirm. You point to your platform heels and crooked stockings. “Too exhausted to take my costume off.” 

A bubble pops inside of Jake, inside of you, in tandem. You blink at him. He blinks at you. There are only a few feet separating you and him, only a few paces across a shitty rug and old hardwood floors. 

He swallows hard. You notice it when his Adam’s apple bob. 

He considers what could happen next. He could press forward, tell you that he can help with that. And then maybe you would sit up and draw your knees to your chest and tell him he’s just like every other guy you’ve ever been friends with. Or he could stand right where he is now and just nod like he didn’t quite hear you, then sit on Bradley’s bed while you huddle up by yourself in his. Neither of which sound palatable to Jake right now--or ever. 

Your heart is racing as you watch him. Fuck. You keep word vomiting, keep accidentally inviting him, keep telling the truth too voraciously. 

When he moves, he doesn’t say anything. That’s what he’s decided on--he won’t say a word. He’ll just…walk towards you. And you watch him as he crosses the floor, his footing suddenly a bit more sober than it was when the two of you left Bob’s dorm after Bradley insisted on a second screening of Critters. 

Then he’s standing before you--you’re laying below him. Both of you watch each other, drink in every movement--there hardly are any. His palms are damp and your throat is dry. 

His movements are slow, but calculated. His fingers wrap around your right ankle and your leg feels weightless as he lifts it and places the bottom of your shoe on his pristine Fred Jones sweater. The color of your shoe, that sweet purple-pink, is a stark contrast from the muddy print the sole of your shoe will leave. 

Jake doesn't look away from your face as he reaches for the buckle. 

It’s a tiny thing, flimsy and delicate. But he’s dextrous. 

“Thanks,” you whisper preemptively--just to say something. 

Falling by Julee Cruise is playing. You can only hear the blood rushing through your ears--you’re sure Jake hears it, too.  

“Jesus,” Jake says and he’s still looking you right in the eyes. Your heart rate spikes--your back almost leaves the bed in a sudden arch at just the sound of it falling from his lips. All rasp, all football player, all Jake. “How’d you get these things on?” 

“With a little help from my friends,” you say back pathetically. You shift slightly and he re-secures his grip on your ankle like you are trying to climb away from him. “You know. Fingernails.” 

You hold your hands up to him weakly and he nods, still not smiling as he fingers the buckle. 

“Right,” he says. “Something I don’t have.” 

“Right,” you say. 

“But anything you can do, I can do better,” he says. 

His heart is hammering. 

But you smile--smile despite the apple vodka staining the back of your throat and the heat pooling in your belly and the thoughts of him muddling your ever-present attention. 

“Tell it to the heels, baby,” you whisper to him. 

And, like you’ve said a magic word, he gets the first heel unbuckled. 

With a raise of his eyebrows, as if to say ha!, he delicately removes the heel from your foot and sets it on the floor. He’s still holding your ankle, softly stroking the light pink nylon tights. Wishing it was your skin. Burning all the same. 

There’s a muddy shoe print on his chest now. He sees it--so do you. But neither of you say anything about it. You’re too nervous to accidentally invite him to something he doesn’t want to come to--he’s too nervous to say the wrong thing and make you retreat. 

Your socked foot rests against his chest even after he releases you, which is what he wants. Any part of you against any part of him. 

He makes quick work of the other buckle and you watch, sobering quickly beneath the warmth of his touch and the velvety music flooding the radio. 

“You’re a pro,” you whisper. Your voice is somewhere between a whisper and a jive. 

He doesn’t say anything. 

Here you are, below him in his bed. Here you are, your legs open and your ankles in the stronghold of his hands. Here you are, a year to the day since he first saw you. Here you are, listening to his dream pop in his dorm after hanging out with your friends that used to be his friends that you now share. 

Here you are. It astounds him, really. 

How lucky he is that you’re here. Now. 

Right now. 

There is an intensity to his gaze, one you see fleetingly, rarely in certain instances. If you were someone else and so was he, you would call those instances stolen glances or maybe pensive longing. 

But you’re you. 

He’s him. 

So you don’t know what to call it.  

“Are you okay?” You ask.

“No,” he answers. 

He clears his throats, ignores the ringing in his ears. 

Fuck. He didn’t mean to answer like that. 

You’re already scrambling to sit up, to probably interrogate him and press your knuckles to his forehead and check for a fever, but then he’s pressing his flat palm to your belly and pushing you back against the bed. 

It is not a hard touch--nor is it a violent one. It is a guidance, a suggestion. One that takes your breath from your lungs and smacks his face with it. One that renders you almost voiceless. 

“What’s wrong?” You whisper. 

“No, nothing, I--it’s nothing,” Jake tries, knowing how much of a liar he sounds like right now. 

“But you just said--!” 

“--Forget what I just said,” Jake tells you. He means it. He pushes down and feels all the skin of your belly, all the warmth and blood and flesh. You’re thrumming with life. “Really. I’m fine. It’s fine. I just…” 

He stops talking--knows he’s digging himself in a deeper hole. 

Swallowing hard, you think about the grocery store. Your quiet, accidental invitation. If it was really accidental at all. You still aren’t sure. You can't be sure right now when he’s looking down at you the way he is.

You have to ask. It’s overwhelming you--the thought that you did something wrong. 

“Did I…do something?” 

His response is immediate. Instantaneous like he’s rehearsed this before.

“What could you have done that would ever make me not okay?” He asks, a strangely kind bite to his tone. As if he were saying Don’t you know that I love you, you idiot? “I mean, really. You’re kinda the best.”

“I don’t know,” you whisper. Words are tugging on your lips. “Buy you a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD?” 

A dry laugh falls from his parted lips, but he doesn’t smile. He can’t. Not when his throat is so dry, not when you two are so close. So, so close. Close enough to smell that warm amber in your hair and against your throat. 

“Get serious,” Jake insists after a moment. 

Shifting beneath his palm, you stare up at him. 

“I am,” you try. 

“No, you’re not,” Jake says back, brows furrowed. 

You glance down at your costume. 

“I can’t be serious in pink tights.”

Jake doesn't have time to think--doesn’t have time to stop himself. He’s reaching up, up and under your dress, hooking his fingers in the band of your pink tights and tugging on them. They come loose much easier than the buckles, practically purr at Jake’s touch as he draws them down your legs, leaving a trail of gooseflesh on your skin. 

You’re gasping, nearly moaning before you choke on it, as he swiftly removes your tights. And then your legs are bare before him and your legs are still open and he’s standing and you’re sitting and your pink tights are in his fist. They’re still warm from your skin--still smell like you. 

Jake drops them on the floor, not peeling his gaze from yours. They’ll live on the floor for a few weeks, too. He knows it. So do you. 

Now you’re speechless, which doesn’t happen often. 

Jake’s heart is battering inside his ribcage like a bird attempting to flee. 

“What happened at the grocery store?” He asks. 

He has to ask. He needs to know.

“What?” You sputter out. Your heart races. Fuck. You were hoping to just forget it all. “What are you--what do you--?” 

“You know what I’m talking about,” Jake says. He flushes when he realizes that your legs are still open, when he realizes that you couldn’t close them if you wanted to since he’s standing so close to you. “C’mon. Don’t bullshit me.” 

“You tell me,” you demand. “I thought you were gonna…I don’t know…” 

You’re too flustered to continue, throwing your arm over your face under the guise of shielding your eyes from the light. Your face, your arm, your skin, your breath--it’s all so hot. You want to melt into the plaid bedding and become one with the dust bunnies. 

“Marigold,” Jake says and it sounds like he’s begging. “Don’t hide from me. C’mon. C’mon, we’re friends!” 

Friends. There’s that word. 

You want to roll over on your side, want to just apologize and go to your dorm and pine privately for him, but you can’t. You can’t because he’s leaning forward and tugging your arms away from your eyes. 

He’s suddenly infinitely closer to you. So close that you feel tipsy just breathing in his breath, all the alcoholic apples that have died there. 

The two of you stare at another. You’re searching his eyes, his nose, his lips, trying to get a read on him and what he’s thinking and what he’s doing. He’s leaning over you, slotted between your legs, his hips only a breath away from your core. He feels it when you squirm--he isn’t sure if you’re trying to get closer or farther, so he shifts backwards a few centimeters. 

“Did you want me to do something?” Jake asks. It’s a quiet demand. A plea. 

“What do you mean?” You ask even though you know. You’re stalling. “Where? At Bob’s?” 

“Don’t be a chickenshit,” Jake says, shaking his head. “Back there. At the store.”

You swallow, don’t know what to say. The light is suddenly too bright and the music is suddenly too loud. Your breaths are paralyzed in your lungs. 

“Did you want me to want you to do something back there? At the store?” 

He scoffs--it’s a mean, but soft sound. He needs to hear you say it. Yes, you wanted it. He didn’t overstep. He missed the chance, but he knows now. He won’t miss the chance again. If you just say it. Say you wanted it--wanted him. 

“You’re impossible,” he whispers.  

“I’m trying not to be,” you say back. “Sorry.” 

“We almost kissed,” he says and his lips are quivering. “Right? That’s what that was, right? You wanted me to kiss you.” 

When the words fall on your ears, in your already heightened state, you feel like they’re accusatory. You wanted him to kiss you. And it made him knit his brows and falter, stumble. 

You’re fucking everything up. 

You can’t afford to fuck everything up with the best friend you’ve ever had.

“No, I didn’t,” you whisper. Your voice is hoarse, thin.

“Yes, you did,” he whispers. His brows are totally furrowed. “You’re a bad lair.” 

He almost says that he couldn’t look away from your lips all night. He almost says that he wished you were closer to him. He almost says that he wants you to kiss him, too. He almost says that he’s wanted to kiss you for a year--an aching, throbbing year. 

But he doesn’t.

“Stop it,” you tell him quietly. Tears are welling in your eyes. You blink rapidly, try to ease yourself from the absolute comfort of his heat. “Why would I want that?” 

Now he says nothing. There it is--that crippling fear he always has, the one where he fucks it, the one where he’s rejected, the one where he fumbles the ball, the one where he misses the goal. Except it feels realized suddenly. Suddenly as you’re looking up at him in artificially warm light, your tights tugged off your naked legs by him, you look hurt. Your eyes are watery and your lips are twisted and you’re not drunk anymore. 

And he’s the one caging you in. Holding you against the bed. 

At once, he lays on his back. He’s no longer between your legs, no longer hovering you and looking into your eyes. He’s laying beside you. 

The both of you lay there, side-by-side, blinking up at the ceiling. You’re desperately blinking, trying to keep the tears from spilling over. And you’re curling your knees to your chest, holding yourself together with flimsy tape.

His chest is heaving. He doesn’t know what’s happening. He doesn’t know what to do. 

But he doesn’t have to because as he’s running his hands over his face, shaking his head and opening his trembling lips, your hand is on his forearm. 

You’ve never been one to hold a grudge. You even wave at Spit Sabler when you see him around campus. But even if you were someone who held a grudge--you know it would be fruitless when it comes to Jake. You’ve never been able to feel anything but love towards him. Pulsing, jovial love. Red-hot and American. 

“Hey,” you whisper. You’re watching him, lying on your side now, trying not to sound as desperate to keep him as you feel right now. “Jake. Look at me.” 

He does at once. 

Plaid bedding separates your mouth from his and your eyes aren't as watery anymore. It’s good. That’s good. Jake still can’t muster a word. He can’t believe what he just did. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

“We’re just drunk,” you say dismissively. And even you sound like you don’t believe that bullshit. “Saying dumb shit when you’re drunk is, like, a rite of passage. Right?” 

He nods meekly after a long, sober pause. 

“I’m…” he starts. His cheeks flood bright red. “I’m so sorry.” 

“Hey, don’t be,” you tell him. “Like--it’s…don’t worry about it. We can talk about it when we’re sober.” 

He nods. Grateful, kind of, for your grace. But also angry that he couldn’t make it work--angry that things didn’t end up the way he needs them to. 

He glances at the clock just as it strokes midnight. 

No longer Halloween. Time to take the costume off.

 Absently, carefully, you reach forward and press the pads of your fingers against the muddy heel print on his chest. He won’t be able to wear this sweater again, but you feel like this isn’t going to be something that he throws away. And if he did--you would climb into any dumpster on campus to retrieve it. Just to hold it. Just to keep it. 

“Wanna get coffee tomorrow?” You whisper. 

The hint of a smile tugs on his lips. He finally tears his eyes away from the clock and looks at you. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I think I know a place.” 

Your lungs deflate slightly--with relief, with grief. It all feels the same. 

“Don’t forget your backpack.”

Another laugh--a sad and pitiful thing. One he might regret later on. But it’s enough that his hot blood is beginning to cool, even this close to you, even with this much of your naked legs on display on his bed in his empty dorm. 

“Hey, Goldie?” Jake whispers. 

You worm your way closer to him, like you always do. And, like always, his arms are already open to receive you when you press yourself against his chest and inhale the mud and cologne there. 

“Yeah?” You whisper. 

“You’re my best friend,” he tells you suddenly and it’s true. “Like, you’re my favorite person. Forget Bradshaw.”

Tears well in your eyes again--watery and fat. And you laugh softly, knowing you’ll regret it later. It punctuates this conversation with a casual tone when in reality--this conversation is nothing of the sort. 

“Yeah,” you whisper. “You’re kinda my best friend, too. Asshole.”

The two of you sit in the music for a while, neither of you looking at each other. His heart is thumping unsteadily and you graciously pretend not to hear it despite your head resting on his chest. The alcohol is fading slowly and the both of you blink lazily. 

Because he can’t stop himself, because he needs something resembling a win tonight, he leans down and gently kisses the top of your head. One feather-light thing, hardly anything really. 

You feel it. You always do. You never miss a thing. 

“Do you wanna stay?” He asks. 

“You already took my shoes off,” you mutter. “I’m not going anywhere.”

𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄: OH MY GOD JUST FUCK ALREADY!!!!!!!

𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓

𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑

[f0point5]

this is literally so off topic and so unrelated to any of your usual asks but what are your thoughts on frats and sororities, especially as someone not from north america?

- sincerely, an ex-sorority girl

Bama rush infects my brain annually I will say that. Bama Morgan is my Roman Empire

I think they’re kind of cool I won’t lie. Absolutely not for me because I’m not a “joiner” and honestly after going to an all girls school almost my whole life and then ending up with almost all male friends as an adult I think the kind of friendship I need just doesn’t allow for that “sisterhood” vibe. And that’s not me devaluing those kind of friendships but just for me personally that level of emotional investment is difficult to maintain. I also just can’t be doing group activity all the time. So yeah I probably couldn’t ever be in one but they look fun.

But fraternities just scare me. The hazing, the pack mentality…it gives Lord of the Flies. And look, research says that girls in an all-female environment leads to net positive results, while males in an all-male environment does not, and I truly believe that. I think men in those hierarchical groups never means good things on the whole. That’s not to say that every frat guy is a bad person, not at all, but I think that brotherhood for men is not ultimately anywhere near as positive as sisterhood for women. And I’ll die on that hill.

But also for me men who need a “pack” around them just vehemently freak me out. I sort of hold men to the standard that they need to be able to function in their own emotional ecosystem (and here’s the daddy issues because that’s how my dad is) and I can’t really trust them in any other guise. So I could probably never date a “frat” type guy.

This is not me ragging on the Greek system at all, it seems like it’s so positive for so many people and they make lifelong friends and stuff. I think fundamentally I’m just too much of a loner to fully appreciate it (literally was never in a single club after age 10). But it does look so fascinating, and part of me does wish I had been the type of person who was able to “fit in” to that level.

[dooragnation]

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[mysterymirrors]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Vintage Mid-2000s Hollister Smocked Bodice Chiffron Dress - Purple Pattern - S.

[sanchitaroymitra]

Mayukh Mukherjee

(Indian Actor) 

             Mayukh Mukherjee is an Indian actor and academic who works in Bengali film industry and has made several on-screen appearances from his childhood (since 2002). He made his debut in the Bengali mega serial Neel Seemana, which was aired on Zee Bangla from from which drew public attention for the first time. Since then, he has appeared in numerous Bengali mega films and features films.Photo in an event in Birla Auditorium

            Mayukh had the kick start on his acting  journey as a child artist in the year 2002, when he was 6 yrs old in the TV show  Sabujer Deshe as an anchor  in ETV Bangla. Forwardly  moved his film career  with new projects of  Telefilms named as Simante Dariye in the series of Panch Dine Golpo as the character Bubun,  Light House in series of Sudhu Tomari Jonnyo as Popo in ETV Bangla. Side by been a vital part of Megafilms named Neel Simana in Zee Bangla as Gaurav, in Aaleya as Bhola in DD7. Also been in Jaya as Mayukh in ETV Bangla, in Samparka as Bubun, in ETV Bangla. 

             In the year 2005 He continued in Soap Operas like Four Plus as Nayan in Akash Bangla, in Debi as Tutu in ETV Bangla and many other famous daily TV shows. Since he due to the study stess he made his attempts in only Telefilms and Feature Films like Bagh Bandi Khela as Rajesh in ETV Bangla, Viswa O Arjun as Arjun in ETV Bangla In one serise of Sadhak Bama Khepa as Gadadhar in ETV Bangla. Being out of the line a bit he has acted in a Soap Oprea- Andar Mahal as Neel in Akash Bangla. Later on he carried on with a telefilm- Drishti Pradip in DD7 in the year 2008. 

             He also played roles in some famous feature films like Priyotama as a hostel student and in Ek Nodir Galpo as Kashim. His last work was in Aye Tobe Sahochori as a senior ragging student. After those he is keeping a gap from being in front of the cameras as due to his higher educational aims.

            Mayukh Loves to do photography, play multiple musical instruments, practice painting and other fine arts subjects, Sports Weapon shooting, Swimming and many other stuff. He is basically a person with multiple talents and a multiple disciplinary person. He is also in social and charitable activities.

-Sanchita Roy Mitra

me.sanchitaroymitra@gmail.com

[itunestopalbums]

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#MIGUEL CASEY NICOLE POLLYFAN FULL#

#MIGUEL CASEY NICOLE POLLYFAN PLUS#

This case presents a world of smoke and mirrors.”Ī world of smoke and mirrors that nevertheless resolves into a pretty damning scene: Police busted Prine, carrying a pizza box, as he approached the supposed 32-year-old mother’s apartment on Nov. “It is not just officers who pose,” he told the court. Prine’s lawyer is taking the “Internet as fantasyland” defense, claiming his client was simply role-playing. hristmas”ĭetective James Morton, who posted the ad, was using the capital letters as a simple code: In pedophile circles, PTHC stands for “pre-teen hardcore.” The ad was an invitation, and Prine took Morton up on his offer. “P.hamily fun serious replies only bama won yes T.erday and kansas state lost don’t forget to H. The flurry of emails began with this message posted to the “Casual Encounters” section of Craigslist: Jurors heard opening statements yesterday in the case of Alan Preston Prine, 60, arrested last November after exchanging more than 200 emails with an undercover officer posing as a 32-year-old housewife offering up her two pre-teen kids for sex. Each passage is prefaced by detailed introductory comments on the life and thought of each theologian and the significance of his/her work.A recent undercover sting in Mobile, Ala., provides a window into the secret world of coded language pedophiles use online.

#MIGUEL CASEY NICOLE POLLYFAN PLUS#

The volume includes substantial excerpts from notable women theologians and from black and liberation perspectives, plus a new section from deceased theologians such as Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Karl Rahner. KerrLanguange: enPublisher by: Abingdon PressFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 30Total Download: 875File Size: 43,8 MbDescription: Illuminates the history and development of Christian thought by offering selections from the writings of 55 great Christian theologians. Expanded rules for social interactions, Infamy, and dark rituals help players of all alignments, and in the included adventure, the Heretics must best a Pirate Prince of the Ragged Helix! Author by: Hugh T. I will keep this a little short since people thinking about buying this book have already heard about its size and prevalence of fey.Īuthor by: Kendall ButnerLanguange: enPublisher by:Format Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 62Total Download: 560File Size: 42,6 MbDescription: The Tome of Excess is a sinfully indulgent supplement for Black Crusade! Devoted to the Dark God Slaanesh and his followers, this comprehensive hardcover book introduces four new Heretic Archetypes, along with cruel weapons, rules for empowering minions, new Daemon Engines, and more.

#MIGUEL CASEY NICOLE POLLYFAN FULL#

However, I would have wanted maybe one entry for a dangerous water maiden, and an ample side bar or page dedicated to the various cultural variations that comprise the numerous myths surrounding women and water (and boo for not having “la llorona”, if you are going to go full on water maiden, be all inclusive!). In all fairness, it is an artefact of Pathfinder Pathfinder probably has more of the dangerous water maidens throughout its various bestiaries. Now I know a lot of people have mentioned this, but I have to echo that the “dangerous water maidens” are pretty prevalent. There is one other book that has Lovecraft monster and I hope to do a comparison on my blog, but so far I am loving the Kobold Press take on them.Now on to the things I didn’t like. This is a good addition to the Tome of Beasts, but actually makes me wish that Kobold press would put out a book of NPCs on its own!An honorable mention goes to the various Cthulhu creatures. Not only do we get pictures (unlike in the aforementioned monster manual) for every NPC, and the statistics can easily be used for a plethora of occasions.

[tfc2211]

(Weird-O-Matic Wax)

Also Can Be Played Here ▶ Halloween Spookshow-Vol-4

☠ Maniac radio spot ☠ The Bama Lamas - Hungry Teenage Wolfman ☠ Teresa Brewer - Punky Punkin ☠ Jack Starr - Halloween Party ☠ John Carpenter - “Halloween 1978”, Halloween OST ☠ Larry & The Blue Notes - Night of the Sadist ☠ Memphis Minnie - Haunted House (take 2) ☠ ”Trial of the Dead” spookshow promo ☠ Frankie Stein & His Ghouls - In a Groovy Grave ☠ The Nu-Trends - Spooksville ☠ American Quartet ft. Billy Murray - Skeleton Rag ☠ Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages - All Black and Hairy ☠ Les Baxter - The Grave/Stake Through the Eye, Black Sunday OST ☠ The Moontrekkers - Night of the Vampire ☠ Jack & Jim - Midnight Monsters’ Hop ☠ ”Kill Baby Kill” trailer ☠ Thurl Ravenscroft - Grim Grinning Ghosts ☠ Dickie Goodman - Dracula Drag ☠ Radio All-Star Novelty Orchestra- Mysterious Mose ☠ Jackie Morningstar - Rockin’ in the Graveyard ☠ Wade Dennis & Frank Daniels - The Headless Horseman ☠ John Zacherle - Dinner With Drac ☠ Joseph LoDuca, The Evil Dead OST - Introduction

[olafsings]

Music History Today: November 9, 2022

November 9, 1993: The Dave Matthews Band released their first album, Remember Two Things, on the Bama Rags label.

[brn1029]

On this date in music history…imagine, seeing or being at a concert back then and knowing how successful a band or singer would become…wow….

November 9th

2016 - David Bowie

David Bowie's retrospective show at the Victoria & Albert Museum had enjoyed so much foot traffic it was now officially the most successful touring exhibition in the cultural institution’s 164-year history. According to the V&A’s over half a million people had visited David Bowie Is in sites across the globe, including the 312,000 visitors who saw the exhibition in London back in 2013.

2015 - Andy White

Scottish session drummer Andy White died aged 82. He was affectionately christened "the fifth Beatle" as he was best known for replacing Ringo Starr on drums on the The Beatles' first single, ‘Love Me Do’. White was featured on the American 7" single release of the song, which also appeared on the band's debut British album, Please Please Me. He also played on ‘P.S. I Love You’, which was the B-side of ‘Love Me Do’. White also worked with Chuck Berry, Billy Fury, Herman's Hermits and Tom Jones.

2014 - Cheryl Fernandez-Versini

Cheryl Fernandez-Versini become the first British female solo artist to have five No.1 singles in the UK after her latest song, 'I Don't Care', entered the Official Charts in pole position. The 31-year-old overtook Spice Girl Geri Halliwell and Rita Ora, who both had four chart-toppers.

2008 - Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba, the South African singer who reached No.12 on the Billboard chart in 1967 with 'Pata Pata', suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 76. Among her many notable achievements was becoming the first African woman to win a Grammy, for Best Folk Recording in 1966 with Harry Belafonte for 'An Evening With Belafonte / Makeba'.

1993 - The Dave Matthews Band

The Dave Matthews Band released their first album, ‘Remember Two Things’ on the Bama Rags label.

1991 - Richard Marx

Richard Marx played in five cities in 1 day during a 'Rush-n Rush Out, Street Tour'. Marx appeared in Baltimore, New York City, Cleveland, Chicago and Burbank Airport. (Did he have a gig at the baggage carousel, or what?)

1990 - Willie Nelson

The internal revenue seized all of US country singers Willie Nelson's bank accounts and real estate holdings in connection with a $16million tax debt.

1985 - Jan Hammer

Jan Hammer went to No.1 on the US singles chart with the 'Miami Vice Theme', a No.5 hit in the UK.

1974 - Bachman Turner Overdrive

Bachman Turner Overdrive went to No.1 on the US singles chart with 'You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet'. Randy Bachman stuttered through the lyrics of the demo recording as a private joke about his brother Gary, who had a speech impediment. The record company liked that take better than the non-stammering version and released it.

1969 - Simon and Garfunkel

Simon and Garfunkel record what would become their signature tune, 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' with future member of Bread, Larry Knechtel on piano. Art wanted Paul to sing the song, but Paul insisted that Art's voice was better suited for it. It was a decision that Paul would later say he regretted. The song won five awards at the 13th Annual Grammy Awards in 1971, including Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

1968 - Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin played their first ever London show when they appeared at The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm on the same bill as John Lee Hooker, Deviants, John James and Tyres. Zeppelin singer Robert Plant married his girlfriend Maureen in London on this day and held the reception at the gig.

1967 - Rolling Stone Magazine

The first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine was published in San Francisco. It featured a photo of John Lennon on the cover, dressed in army fatigues while acting in his recent film, How I Won the War and the first issue had a free roach clip to hold a marijuana joint. The name of the magazine was compiled from three significant sources: the Muddy Waters song, the first rock ‘n’ roll record by Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones.

1966 - John Lennon

John Lennon met Yoko Ono for the first time when he visited her art exhibition 'Unfinished Paintings and Objects' at the Indica Gallery in London.

1961 - Brian Epstein

Brian Epstein saw The Beatles playing live for the first time during a lunchtime session at The Cavern Liverpool. Epstein went on to be the group's manager. That night they appeared at Litherland Town Hall in Liverpool

[corey-musick]

musical web - 7-27-2021

“Maple Leaf Rag” performed by Scott Joplin

Original listening log: "Maple Leaf Rag" is a very exciting piece of ragtime music. While Joplin's left hand maintains a steady meter, his right hand is playing a syncopated melody. He makes good use of dissonant chords, creating points of tension. It almost feels a little bit like being at a carnival or something, with the tense moments being similar to being pulled up a roller coaster before cascading down as the music resolves or begins to be more consonant. Another part that amde the song exciting was how freeform it was. There were certainly moments of repetition, but Joplin consistently introduced new melodies to the song, keeping listeners on their toes as he plays.

The very first listening log I completed for the class was for Scott Joplin’s classic “Maple Leaf Rag,” written in 1899. Going back and listening to it again after all I’ve learned in this class, I can see how Joplin took aspects of music before him (such as African musical syncopated rhythms and “dance music”) and used them in a brand-new way that would last for decades after he first composed the song. The way he uses rhythm and melody - setting a steady rhythm with his left hand while playing a syncopated melody with his right - can be found in a ton of popular music that followed (and some that came before) and set the standard for ragtime music of the early 20th century such as “Hello, Ma Baby.” Joplin helped to create a new type of music that felt, to many, uniquely American. 

“Cotton Eyed Joe” performed by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys

Original listening log: As someone who has been to my fair share of middle and high school dances, I am definitely familiar with Rednex's version of "Cotton Eye Joe." This was, however, my first time hearing Bob Wills' version and I had no idea the song had such a long history. The predominant instruments I hear are the fiddle and the piano. The former is referenced in the lyrics themselves ("Hewn my fiddle and rosin my bow / Gonna make music everywhere I go / Gonna play a tune they call Cotton Eyed Joe"). It's a bit paradoxical to say you are going to play a tune called "Cotton Eyed Joe" on your fiddle in the future whenever you are doing just that in the present, but I think it adds to the fun that permeates this song. Whenever Wills is singing, the instrumentation is pretty unintrusive. The lyrics are pretty simple with a ABBCDD form where the Bs are the same and the Ds are the same. Again, I feel that this song is meant to be a fun dance song. While the lyrics are almost a little tragic (the man wasn't able to get married because of this elusive Cotton Eyed Joe), they're really not meant to be taken to seriously. Instead, the simple form and energetic, jaunty piano and fiddle accompaniment just makes me want to dance!

Wills’ version of “Cotton Eyed Joe” combines American popular swing music with folk/country tunes. Like “Maple Leaf Rag,” “Cotton Eyed Joe” is also dancing music, and it even has the same steady beat underscoring a syncopated melody that Joplin’s “Rag” has. Another interesting connection is the rhyme scheme Wills uses, one that is ABBCDD where the Bs and Ds are repeating lyrics. It calls to mind the AAB rhyme scheme blues uses where the As are repeating lyrics. As the song has its roots in big-band swing/jazz, this makes sense, but it is not a connection I have made until this moment. Even the lyrical content kind of fits in with this comparison to the blues - the lyrics are kind of sad! The man was never able to get married because of Cotton Eyed Joe and he is lamenting that in the song, albeit over a jaunty dance tune. 

“Countin’ the Blues” performed by Ma Rainey

Original listening log:  I really enjoyed this piece. Having never listened to Ma Rainey, I would say this was a terrific introduction. This song is what I think of when I hear someone mention the blues. Ma Rainey's rich, sorrowful vocals really show how badly she has the blues. It almost sounds like she's groaning and struggling under the weight of her melancholy, trying to express her feelings and say what she needs to say. The lyrics themselves follow an AAB form characteristic of classic 12-bar blues. I am particularly interested in how she namedrops a couple of different blues songs in the second verse including "Beale Street Blues," "Bama Bound Blues," and "Stingaree." She is quite literally counting different blues songs by doing so. It reminds of how when some people get sad, they want to listen to sad music to help process or cope with their emotions. The instrumentation of the song perfectly communicates the melancholy tone of the song, with the cornet, clarinet, and trombone players seeming to (for lack of a better term) really take their time to play the music. Coupled with Ma Rainey's slow, steady, sad vocals, the entire song has a melancholic tone that is incredibly effective in communicating the message of the lyrics - the singer is sad from getting bad news ("mama's just now got bad news") and is expressing how she feelings.

Moving on to some actual blues, we come to the iconic Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. Much like how “Maple Leaf Rag” is classic ragtime, “Countin’ the Blues” is textbook blues music. It contains a call-and-response form when Ma Rainey sings and is “responded to” by the instrumentation, something that can be found in other blues music like Robert Johnson’s “Preachin’ Blues”. It also features an instrumental introduction, something characteristic of ragtime music. “Countin’ the Blues” and blues music in general is popular music that has its roots in African spirituals and, generally, the early African American experience. 

“He Got Better Things for You” performed by Bessie Johnson’s Memphis Sanctified Singers

Original listening log:  I loved this piece! Bessie Johnson's raspy, passionate delivery really communicates how she feels about the subject matter she is singing about. There is simple guitar accompaniment, but the focus really does remain on the vocals and, by extension, the lyrics. This is a great storytelling/moralizing song. I like how Johnson draws the listener in with sweet, clear vocals in the first three lines, saying how she wants to share a message with us, her "kind friends" whose souls she loves. I admit I was a little jarred when her gruff vocals began on "but half ain't never been told," but as the song went on, it made sense. She shares stories of Saint Mary and a man named Cornelius (if this is a Biblical reference, I'm Jewish and it totally went over my head), two people who listened to the word of the Christian God and now wait in heaven among the better things. Johnson wants to share her message so that all of the listeners can get to those better things.

Johnson’s “He Got Better Things for You” is the first and only explicitly religious piece of popular music I have included on this list, but the influence of Black religious music on later genres like jazz and the blues cannot be understated. The textbook points out that Johnson’s emotive, gravelly voice feels similar to the brash trumpets jazz musicians use in their songs, but I would say that is where a lot of the similarity ends. The guitar music and vocal melody are quite simple and easy to understand, which makes sense when one considers the genre. Its accessibility and sweet religious content feels similar to songs like “Simple Gifts,” spiritual hymns meant to be sung by a community of like-minded individuals. 

Henry Cowell’s “The Banshee” performed by Sonya Kumiko Lee

Original listening log:  "The Banshee" is a really neat piece of music. It begins very quiet and eerie as Cowell gently drags his hand across the piano strings, making it seem like something is coming and building up tension. He also occasionally plucks a few specific strings that sound like spooky windchimes or something. This and the quiet dragging of his across the strings helps connect the piece of the Irish folklore being of the banshee - the eerie, single notes give a magical feeling to the song while the quiet scraping builds tension like something (death, in this case) is coming. Whenever Cowell harshly scrapes the strings, it makes the listener jump and ultimately release a bit of the tension. Overall, while the song is purely instrumental, it is highly effective at invoking the spirit of the banshee.

Cowell’s song is a masterpiece in nonverbal storytelling, comparable to Bernard Herrmann’s “The Murder,” another song that, even without words, clearly tells the story it intends to tell. While “The Banshee” has its roots in classical music, it is bravely experimental, choosing instead to use the inside of the piano rather than the keys. Much like “Maple Leaf Rag” or “Cotton Eyed Joe,” “The Banshee” is a genre-defining song. It takes inspiration from classic forms, but it turns them into something entirely new and very exciting. 

This sense of innovation found in everything from “The Banshee” to “Maple Leaf Rag” is really creatively inspiring, and I think that draws the course together well. New genres and songs are created whenever the old way of doing things just won’t cut it. Ma Rainey and other blues singers drew from African spirituals and field hollers, but retooled it in a new way to express the pain and joys of living as a Black person in America. Henry Cowell took the piano, a mainstay of many different genres, and used it in an entirely new way to tell the story of a traditional piece of Irish folklore. 

Music has the power to communicate things in a way that simply speaking it will not do. By drawing influence from musical styles of the past, people are able to retain a connection to those that came before them, those who shaped their culture into what it is today. By turning that influence into something brand new, however, it puts the power in the hands of the living to influence their lives in the present-day. 

[chorusfm]

Dave Matthews Band Top the Charts

Dave Matthews Band have the number one album in the country this week: The set, which was released on June 8 via Bama Rags/RCA Records, earned 292,000 equivalent album units in the week ending June 14, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 285,000 were in traditional album sales — the biggest sales week for a rock album in over four years. --- Please consider supporting us so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/linked/dave-matthews-band-top-the-charts/

[archiveda]

Golden hues stared at the pitch black ceiling as she held her breath. The sounds of footsteps had finally faded. She counted to sixty five times. Nothing. Not a peep. Blood dripped from her hands and on to the cold, concrete floor beneath her. But she didn’t feel it. Her hands were numb from the pain and adrenaline which coursed through her tiny frame. 

Gathering up the courage, she finally pushed on the door.... It was unlocked. 

‘Bama had been careless this morning before he left. 

Slowly she peeked out. She was alone... The girl skittered across the floor and over to the window. She knew better than to try the door. Last time she had, an alarm had gone off and she had been caught within minutes. The consequences had damn near killed her... Instead she grabbed the nearest lamp and swung it against the glass, shattering it. 

With that she clambered out as fast as she could and ran, her bare feet scraping along the concrete. She didn’t know where she was going. Nor did she care... as long as she could get far, far away from that house of horrors. 

However, she couldn’t keep up the pace for long. Kveta was extremely malnourished-- her bones stuck out her body in crude ways. And so she found herself collapsing there on the street. Her heart raced in her chest. 

NO!! No, no, no, no, no!

She wasn’t nearly far enough. She couldn’t get all this way only to be dragged back again! 

Kveta crawled on to the porch of the nearest house and pounded her fist against the door. She was gasping for breath, dressed in rags, and her hands were soaked in fresh blood from her wrists. She curled into a tiny ball, heaving with sobs, but no tears would come. 

“Please,” she begged softly, as she continued to knock on the door. “’Elp...”

@primlfur

[mysterymirrors]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Abercrombie & Fitch Zoe Natural Rise Vintage A-Line Denim Mini Skirt - 24/00.

[unsettlingshortstories]

Nightcrawlers

Robert McCammon (1984)

1

“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement.

Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen.

“Well,” I said, “I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?”

“No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves.

Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm.

“You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too.

She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton.

Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head.

Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago.

Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!”

“Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon.

The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot.

2

The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car.

“Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat.

When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it.

“Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over.

“Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.”

“Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?”

“Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!”

I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked.

“No complaints.”

“Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?”

Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.”

“Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.”

“Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.”

Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper.

“Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap.

Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.”

“What’s that?”

“Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?”

“A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.”

“Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.”

I grunted. “Guess not.”

“No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.”

“Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.”

Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain.

All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break.

“Come on in and take a seat,” I said.

“Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.”

“Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.”

“We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.”

“That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool.

The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?”

“Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food.

“Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?”

“I guess not. Sorry.”

She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.”

I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.”

“Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—”

He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool.

I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner.

We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said.

The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner.

3

He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him.

Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.”

The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance.

“Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?”

The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?”

Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out.

“That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned.

“Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously.

“Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check.

The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?”

“More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong.

“That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?”

I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily.

“Been on the road a long time, huh?”

Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?”

“No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.”

He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.”

He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away.

But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer.

The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down.

I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise.

“One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.”

My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything.

“Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?”

He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.”

Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—”

“No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.”

Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?”

“Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said.

Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes.

Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.”

Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.”

“Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?”

Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.”

“How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?”

A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.”

“What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?”

Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.”

“Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!”

Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.”

“Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?”

“The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.”

“Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?”

Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face.

Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light.

“I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.”

“The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.”

“There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.”

Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet.

Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.”

Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.”

“Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—”

Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.”

“A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?”

“Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.”

I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter.

Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me.

“A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—”

Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me.

“Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered.

A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak.

The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy.

Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses.

“I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.”

“You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?”

Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.”

“Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?”

“The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.”

“You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—”

He stopped, staring at the gun he held.

It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat.

“I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door.

Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily.

“Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?”

Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving.

“He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!”

Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.”

I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise.

“What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!”

“No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.”

“Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—”

Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?”

I heard only the roar and crash of the storm.

“Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy.

“Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!”

Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead.

“It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!”

“Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped.

On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony.

Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me.

Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees.

Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare.

Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’”

As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out.

“Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.”

4

Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself.

A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter.

“What the hell—” Dennis said.

He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself.

The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere.

Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out.

There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear.

Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone.

You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head.

The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind.

Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped.

Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler.

When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best.

On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …”

The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him.

And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy.

There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face.

A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework.

We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him.

I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood.

But I had that pistol in my hand.

I heard Ray shout, “Look out!”

In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly …

I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished.

More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats.

Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again.

A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight.

I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover.

I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long.

Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me.

I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price.

There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade.

I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched.

Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet.

“End it,” he whispered. “End it …”

One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him.

The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time.

He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh.

It sounded almost like relief.

The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore.

I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last.

5

A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like.

Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say.

Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck.

The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two.

Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull.

I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it.

But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not.

I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men.

Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.”

I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said.

I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory.

A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite.

But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either.

Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden.

I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives.

The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop.

But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change.

And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.