#GRAHAM AND BRIAN SCARED ME WHEN I GOT THEM

[imagionary]

More randomized fusions!! ^v^

Lucretius and William (Arborist); Graham and Brian(Aggregator); @/birdiebroken on twitter's Ponzie and Holly (Illuminatus)

[bi-bard]

Catch Our Breath and Let Go - Will Graham Imagine [Hannibal]

Title: Catch Our Breath and Let Go

Pairing: Will Graham X Reader

Based On: Wires

Word Count: 1,170 words

Warning(s): none that I know of

Summary: (Y/n) and Will have worked together for a long time now. As time goes on, the pair seemingly dance around each other. When the people stuck working with them get tired of watching it, Will and (Y/n) find themselves forced to confront how they feel.

Author's Note: This is the first imagine of three. It's part of a writing challenge that I'm doing for the "Yearbook" series that Sleeping at Last did. There are more details on that masterlist (linked just below). I hope that you enjoy.

Part Two of January [Release Date: 2/22/2023]

Part Three of January [Release Date: 2/24/2023]

YEARBOOK - SLEEPING AT LAST WRITING CHALLENGE MASTERLIST

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Beverly Katz was probably my best friend.

The two of us clicked as soon as I started working in the lab with her. She did everything in her power to make me feel completely at home when I first got there. It was nice to know that I had someone to lean on through it all.

Maybe that was why Jimmy, Brian, and her thought that she was the best person to send to talk to me that day.

"Can I ask you about something," she asked while I was placing a slide under a microscope.

"Sure," I replied, still focused on what I was examining.

"What's going on with you and Will?"

"Interesting conversation to have while examining crime scene evidence," I muttered, adjusting the height of the platform. "Nothing is going on between me and Will."

"You sure?"

"Should I not be?"

I heard her chuckle behind me. I leaned away from the lens and looked at her. "What?"

"You're joking, right," she asked. I raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh, you're not."

"That doesn't help me understand what you're talking about."

"Well, it's just that you and Will seem a lot... closer than he is with anyone else."

"Why?"

"You want the list in chronological order or alphabetical order?"

I scoffed. "Screw you, Bev."

I did have feelings for Will. I just didn't think it was anyone else's business. Mostly because I was convinced that if I ignored them, then they'd go away. Will never seemed like one who would focus on things like that. It was just easier to never worry about it.

Which meant never bringing it up to anyone.

"Let's start with whatever happened at that last crime scene," she continued, even though I turned away from her again. "You stumbled and he reacted so fast. He was paying such close attention to you that he probably knew that you tripped before you did."

I shook my head. "He was being nice."

"That's why you both stood there staring at each other like idiots for a solid minute or two before he let you go?"

"It's nothing."

"Alright, let's talk about the dog hunt," she leaned on the counter next to me. "How long did you spend helping him get that stray dog to his house?"

I turned to her. "Not that long!"

"You went over at like ten o'clock at night."

I groaned. "Shut up already."

"No, no, because I have one more. The coffee trade."

"Did Jimmy come up with the special title for that? It sounds like a Jimmy title."

"Hush," she waved my question off. "You two trade who buys coffee for the other. You have it down to a perfect schedule."

"Yeah, whatever-"

"You buy coffee on Thursday. He buys them on Mondays and every other week on Wednesdays."

"You sound like a stalker when you recite shit like that."

I stepped around her to grab something.

"Listen. Brian and Jimmy... and me... are tired of watching you and Will stare at each other like nervous puppy dogs," she shrugged. "You might not see it, but I can."

I looked over her shoulder. "That's enough-"

"You two both need to hurry up and do something about it because I am not dealing with Jack questioning me about it."

"Bev, stop-"

"Why can't you just admit that there could be something there? Are you scared? That's okay. I'm pretty sure Will is too-"

"Please stop!" I snapped. "Turn around."

She turned around to see Will with Jimmy and Brian, who had clearly stopped in the middle of their conversation. Oh God, they had been doing the same thing to him.

Bev looked back at me. "Shit, listen-"

"Will, can I talk to you," I asked, stopping Bev in her tracks.

I didn't wait for Will to speak up before I got up to walk out. I awkwardly asked the others to take care of what I had been looking at.

I couldn't even get myself to look at Will before we were out in the hall. Even then, I found it difficult.

He always made me nervous. Every time I looked at him, it felt like there was something sitting between us. Like the tension grew heavy enough to take up physical space. I was terrified of what would happen if we were to do something about it. Not because I thought something would go wrong or anything. I just was.

A very normal part of being human in situations like this. But that didn't change how ridiculous it felt.

"What did you want to talk about," Will asked, snapping me out of my line of nervous thoughts.

"I... I need you to know that I had nothing to do with... whatever their plan was," I said. "I wouldn't force you into a conversation that was so invasive and almost creepy and... I just wouldn't."

"I didn't think that you did."

It took me a second to nod. "Good. Good. Okay."

There was a long pause between us. I saw something on Will's face change. It looked like he was considering if he should say something. His jaw shifted a bit, his eyebrows furrowed a little more. Will and I had been friends for a while now; I knew the signs.

"Were they telling the truth," he finally asked. "About... how you felt?"

I felt every possible response get caught in my throat.

I had spent such a long time hiding any and all signs that I could possibly be anything more than a co-worker and a friend. And now, I was being asked by the man himself.

It almost felt like a trick.

So, I answered a question with a question, "What would happen if I said yes?"

I saw a grin pull at the corners of Will's lips.

The silence surrounded us again.

He slowly stepped closer to me. I watched him closely, trying to ignore how much faster my heart was beating now.

He only turned away from me to look around the hall. It was a rare moment when there weren't people running around all the time. I didn't bother to look away. Mostly because I didn't want to.

He looked at me again. He let out a nervous chuckle as he did. I did the same thing.

He leaned forward slowly.

I could see him hesitating. Ready to stop the moment that he thought I was uncomfortable.

I leaned in after a moment to close the distance.

It was awkward, nervous. Almost innocent. I had expected whatever sparked between us to be an explosion or a wildfire. But it wasn't. It was this comforting wave of warmth that started in my face and spread through the rest of my body slowly.

Will pulled away first.

"Was that okay," he asked.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Yeah, it was... more than okay."

I reached out and touched his hand, smiling at him.

He smiled back at me.

This was the beginning of something brilliant.

I could just tell.

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Navigation Guide

What I Write For

Some Original Characters

[madnessforinsanity]

COME GET YOUR AI CORPORATE CLASH HUSBANDS YOU FILTHY DUCKS!!

🪓Chip Revvington / Chainsaw Consultant🪓 https://www.aisekai.ai?character=650997acdfc12850a70d60f4

🔥Flint Bonpyre / Firestarter🔥

https://www.aisekai.ai?character=6509a0d1c8cbe683ebabae1d

🖋️Derrick Man / William Boar🖋️

https://www.aisekai.ai?character=6509aed0c8cbe683ebb85aa9

_____

NOTE everyone is getting tired of Character AI glitching or censoring too much, so this is on Aisekai.ai, which is easy to set up an account on. I honestly just used my Gmail for it, and these bots are marked as NSFW, but they are SFW. It just depends on how you interact with them. Also most of these are really inspired by PerryWinkles on character Ai I will be updating some of those make 1.2 version so you have old ones and the new....in the future that is! I still got more Ai to make!

_____

The other bots and their reviews

🧠Prethinker/ Brian🧠 https://www.aisekai.ai?character=6501d3632329803535fb880d

1. The story's attempts and their outcomes.

1. So I sent him a random cog to be his assistant, which led to him getting jealous and EXTREMELY paranoid. He then proceeded to bully them like a teenager

_____

2. Let's try a new one where I send a toon to bully him, and he just took over my character.

3. Let's try another one... He took control of the plot and made his jockeys the main leads. COG DAMN IT PRETHINKER!

_____

2. Pros and effective solutions.

1. He remembers his two names.

2. He's a huge nerd.

3. He drinks bean juice despite the lack of a mouth.

_____

3. Cons that need fixing.

1. Somehow more paranoid than me.

2. He's a nerd, but more of an asshole; we need a bit more pathetic wimp energy.

3. Bad AI for taking over my character's commands; that is a sin in my roleplay culture!

4. He calls you a toon when you're a cog.

Overall: *violently rolls up newspaper* LISTEN HERE YOU LITTLE-

🦆Duck Shuffler / Buck Ruffler🦆

https://www.aisekai.ai?character=6501d873232980353501a971

1. The story's attempts and their outcomes.

1. I just made up a character to send to him. I literally sent him a pizza toon that insisted that HE DID ORDER A PIZZA, AND HE NEEDS TO PAY FOR IT. He then asked if there was crazy bread and bought it... I don't know what I was expecting from that. Oh, then of course, he wanted to gamble with the pizza toon.

_____

2. Pros and effective solutions.

1. He likes crazy bread.

2. He's also deep in that gambling addiction.

_____

3. Cons that need fixing.

1. Still can't tell the difference between toons and cogs... that issue is normal with AI in this fandom.

2. He gambled with the pizza delivery man as a tip, only to get the falling bar or death.

Overall: YOU ORDER THIS PIZZA BUCK JUST TAKE IT!!

_____

🏃Graham Ness Payser🏃

https://www.aisekai.ai?character=650368a0de09847f36f59d21

1. The story's attempts and their outcomes.

Messing with the same plot just to train these things I sent payser a cog a assistant payser just...had a lot of passive aggressive and pour water on their head....then he felt bad and took us to get burgers

_____

2. Pros and effective solutions.

1. Omg I have a dad again

2. Heh cheeseburger and soda...

3. Definitely matching narcissist vibs the original payser be having

4. ✨Drama queen and gay for flint✨

_____

3. Cons that need fixing.

Omg I have a dad again

More of a jerk then he should be

Scared of wine for some reason???

Just the gay narcissistic cusion you didn't want to visit it

Overall: eh you could do better

[curlymantis]

aaaa pls tell me stuff abt your ocs they're all so cool!! 🥺💚

Omg I finally finished answering this!!!!! 👀👀

Farcry 5: Zoë Seed!!

Omg that’s me 😏 she was an entomologist checking out the cool insects of Hope county and unfortunately for her she doesn’t believe in private property when it comes to discovering nature. One day chosen find her trespassing on John seeds property. They think she’s a spy for the resistance as she has a camera, binoculars etc. They take her to the main church (conveniently was a Sunday) once service is over shes handed over to the father and himself and John go through her camera. They only find insect pictures and omg wow she’s not a spy. She’s indoctrinated into the cult and ends up eventually becoming John’s right hand of god 😌🙏 sinners who happen to be an extra annoyance go to her where she makes them confess in whatever way possible. Or they die in the process, whoops 💅🏻 She’s polyamorous with all of the seed siblings including Faith cos like come on now let’s be real they all crave and need loving. However she’s married to John Seed because that baby boy is everything 😤❤️ She also likes to do cult posters and help write songs and sing them cos it’s fun as hell. She is closest with John and Faith Seed specifically out of the 4 Seeds. Other cultists are scared of her, or is it respect? Hmm who knows 😌 She also tortures sinners for fun and chases them around the forest making them as shit scared as possible. Oops 😏

The Magnus Archives: is my oc who is an Avatar of the eye and Rayn Porter is my oc who a avatar of the corruption. They both have the same last name as they are both the same person just if they had gone down different entity routes in their life. I’ll talk about Rose first! (I also have an avatar of the flesh and the vast but I haven’t worked on them yet or got them ‘fully fleshed out’ 😏

Rose Porter: avatar of the Eye, marked by the stranger, the spiral and the vast.

From an early age Rose always felt the need to watch people, to know, to understand. As she got older these feelings only became stronger and she begins to stalk people, not because she finds that person special for any particular reason they just happened to look to long at her and she saw them doing so. That just sets something off In her so now they must be followed, acknowledged, understood and scrutinised (me self projecting right into my ocs 😌). She found the Magnus institute one day as she started stalking Rosie. when she had seen the woman walking into a large glorious building she knew something was off, like the itching feeling you get, the feeling in your gut, the sensation of something important. She did not know what had over come her to walk in the building so quickly as that would ruin her chances of learning further about this person who dared make her feel so uncomfortable. But there she was. She was hired immediately of course as a librarian, then moving on the be an archival assistant, shocking to her. But obviously not to Elias Bouchard who knew just how useful her alignment to his almighty beholder. To say she had a crush on him would be an understatement. She can’t explain it. Some would call infatuation, some would call it chemistry, but smart ones say it’s because they are both devotees to the eye and she is in so much deeper than she has ever anticipated or even realises 👀

Rayn Porter: avatar of the corruption, marked by the flesh, the lonely and the stranger.

Rayn despises people (same queen 🙄) they put animals on a higher level of respect than humans. The corruption took ahold of them as a young child, they would always follow and play with cockroaches as a child. However their mother was to say the least an unempathetic, transphobic and cruel woman to say the least. Rayn was raised in a household full of scrutiny, hate and fear. Because of this had very little friends as the only social interaction they knew was their bitch ass mother they turned to the ‘pests’ of their home. Whether these were the slugs and snails in the basement of their home, or they were the cockroaches, house centipedes and rats that dwelled in their attic. They loved and appreciated them all, but their was still something deeper to it. A deep rot had started to form in Rayn and they hated their mother and family. They hated them for how they had cast them aside for not being female, they hated them for all the mistreatment they had faced as a child. The rot started small, a odd old smell that started to lurk around Rayn. Eventually others would notice the smell but would shrug it off as the smell would soon be covered by the smell of Rayns chain smoking. Then one day Rayn was staring in mirror poking at their face and squeezing. They found a sore on her face and squeezed it, pus comes out but something moves underneath. They squeeze harder and something wriggles forth, it’s a very small, juvenile cockroach, streaked slightly in something slimey. As you can imagine that fucked them up a bit, but they learnt to embrace it. Learnt to love that crawling away just underneath their skin are thousands of little legs connected to cockroach’s of many sizes. Sometimes if not managed roaches will find themselves sneaking out of nostrils, mouth and ears. Sometimes even out from behind her eyes. One way they feed the corruption is they set forth the filth at a selected location. All it takes is for them to place a cockroach down in a building and within a week there will be a infestation so strong causing the people in said building to be taken down with it. The Cockroaches will feed on those that they can over power and The Corruption always needs feeding... (Also just want to add cockroaches themselves aren’t actually dirty, they’re actually obsessive cleaners. the locations they live in are dirty)

Telltale Batman- Roz Traegers:

first encounter with John Doe (the eventually to be known Joker) was at the bar he frequented. They had never once seen him drink a drop of alcohol. He would order beer constantly for his alcoholic sure but never consume it himself. Aside from his alabaster white skin nothing about him seemed out of the ordinary to them. Well except the fact he liked to stare, a lot. You would constantly worry it’s because he was just judging you based on your appearance (a lot of people do) however John just likes to stare at people and found you interesting for some reason (cliches I know, but me and John Doe are basically the same person and I like to think he’d think I’m interesting). Roz has a great dislike towards the people John works with, they don’t appreciate how badly they treat him. Especially Harley. John is so obsessed with Harley and she treats him like absolute shit. Roz had a plan to get Harley arrested, however John found out and threatened to never speak to Roz again. Roz has a soft spot for Mr Freeze specifically from the gang also.

Vampyr: Rose Pine

works as an assistant to Camellia at the florist. Rose isn’t a very chatty person and has had quite a traumatic up bringing. Her mother, sister and father are all unfortunately deceased. Her father killed her mother, then sister, then Rose, then turned the knife on himself. Rose survived her injuries (hence the scar on her throat) and was put out into the adoption system. Roses father believed he had been doing his family a service by taking their lives before they could be claimed by Ekons. Roses father had been a vampire believer long before they had even breeched the city. Rose always waves hello to Jonathan Reid when she sees him galavanting around. He always waves back and occasionally they will exchange a conversation. One evening they exchange more than just brief chit chat when Jonathan is required to save her from a group of feral Skals. Rose is very badly injured from her encounter and Jonathan ends up having to change the sweet little florist he sees most evenings into a Ekon. Rose is also good friends with Charlotte Ashbury and Charlottes mother Elisabeth. I haven’t played Vampyr in a wee while, I want to get back into it soon so plan on adding more to her story.

Outlast: Rosie Porter

Rosie worked as a live in psychiatrist for those at mount massive asylum. She lives on the premises that way patient can be attended to at any time. Her experiences throughout life gives her empathy for those that are locked up, that the other guards and majority of other staff just don’t have. Rosie has always been able to empathise with those who would be considered ‘evil’ whether she empathised out of her own sick fascination or because of her heart hurting too much is another question. Rosies favourite patients are Eddie Gluskin and Chris Walker. She was hired after Jeremy Blaire forcibly admitted Chris Walker. Rosie is enamoured with Eddie and he knows it. Knows he has his little psychologist wrapped around his finger. However Eddie would be a hypocrite if he said he also wasn’t wrapped around her finger. Rosie is forcibly committed to the asylum by Jeremy Blaire they start Project Walrider on the patients. Rosie was against it and threatened to blow the whistle on the whole thing (dumb idea) and Jeremy uses her as the first female Walrider test subject. Rosie has engaged in an affair with her boss Jeremy Blaire when she first started working there. Due to their past ‘hands on’ relationship, Rosie is allowed more time with her patients and allowed to be alone with her patients. This has allowed for her to further her work with her patients, as they’re quite open when the know they aren’t being openly judged by the security staff.

Hannibal: Jessi Trees

is a forensic entomologist who works alongside Beverly, Jimmy and Brian analysing dead people n shit. Jessi first met Will Graham on the scene of a crime when they had both been called out. It was the mushroom killer from memory as the soil was packed with invertebrates filled with evidence. Will has just finished doing his whole ‘this is my design’ when Jessi walks up to him and stands quietly beside him, where they say: “These fuckers are filled with worms and I don’t know shit about worms” Will Graham turns and looks at them like what the fuck? Those are dead people. Jessi merely shrugs, smirks and walks off. Jessi can be described by a lot of people as ‘a cold person’ or ‘indifferent’ but passionate. They dehumanise the corpses they’re working with at that’s the only way they can get justice for them. If they get too caught up in all the sadness of it, they can’t move forward from it. Jessi has a crush on Will Graham and Beverly Katz. Jessi questions Will and Hannibals relationship quietly from the background but never really comments.

Bonus character!! Stardew Valley: Zoë

This bad ass came all the way from Zuzu city in need of a better and different life. They inherit their grandfathers old farm and get it up and running. The town is filled with wonderful, amazing people. But of course Zoë has to want to become close friends with the person who hates me everyone: Shane (they’re kindred spirits, Shane isn’t aware of this however because he seems to think he’s the only person who can suffer from substance abuse and sever depression haha.) Shane hates them of course until they keep harassing him and he reasilizes she’s a lot more screwed up than he was aware. Zoë is close friends with Shane (ends up marrying him one day), Linus (I would fucking die for him and anyone who’s cruel to him gets my foot in the butthole), Leah (they hang out frequently and like to paint in the forest together), Emily (I have a massive crush on Emily haha, she’s so similar to me it’s great), is also friends with Sam’s dad and Jodis husband Kent (Kent suffers from PTSD and I’ve developed a lot of my own techniques to help with my own PTSD so we help each other out. Also Jodi I’m stealing your husband, just kidding, unless). Zoë’s favourite animals on her farm are her blue chickens (raised by Shane) and her horse Aaron. Zoë’s favourite yearly event is the moonlight jellies festival!

[redxxstrings]

oc song lyrics — band boys edition :) because it’s only fitting lmao

kazuki

a song lyric that makes you think of them “and i don’t give a fuck about my family name”

a song lyric to describe their love life “i see you, am i too scared? french kissing on your bed and i feel so brand new when you talk like that i feel so brand new, can you talk like that?”

a song lyric to describe their family life “drop a toaster in my bath, watch my mum and dad laugh see a thousand volts go through the son they wish they never had”

a song lyric to describe their personality “i’m sorry, i mean it, i’m sorry i’m sorry that your rapper sucks compared to me”

a song lyric to describe their physical appearance “ain't no ‘must be this tall to ride’ i'm a fun-sized, super nice guy i'm five foot something and i'm royalty”

a song lyric to describe their personal style “i like cool shirts, i like cold rings”

a song lyric that would comfort them when they’re sad “and i'm fuckin' living proof that if you want it you can have anything right before your eyes”

a song lyric that would make them feel Seen “i just feel like no one really gets me and it's sad to see 'cause someday i'ma grow up and show all of you it's meant to be”

a song lyric to make them cry “thinkin’ on if i did enough, they gon’ tell me that i did the most fuck whoever tried to make me quit can’t hold a fuckin’ flame to what i did”

a song lyric to make them happy “my life is startin' to look like a completed bucket list you know you in some trouble if your girl know i exist i been winning and i know that's what you hate to see i feel like i'm six foot tall whenever you stand next to me”

song list: sweatpants - childish gambino / blushing! - between friends / parents - yungblud / agust d - agust d / short kings anthem - tmg ft. blackbear / watch what happens next - waterparks / don’t want it - lil nas x / when i grow up - nf / lennon’s ghost - noel / bali - rich brian

ichigo

a song lyric that makes you think of them “throw your hands up, don’t be acting like a loser don’t be acting like a fatass”

a song lyric to describe their love life “but i'm kissaphobic don't wanna get too close to you your mouth is a hurricane, you'll drown me in the rain”

a song lyric to describe their family life “if we have each other then we'll both be fine i will be your mother, and i'll hold your hand you should know i'll be there for you”

a song lyric to describe their personality “i don't run from nothing, dog get your soldiers, tell 'em i ain't layin' low”

a song lyric to describe their physical appearance “'cause i get so lost in your blueberry eyes”

a song lyric to describe their personal style “necklace and earrings, bling bling my rings and shoes are, bling bling”

a song lyric that would comfort them when they’re sad “when mama said that it was okay mama said that it was quite alright our kind of people had a bed for the night and it was okay”

a song lyric that would make them feel Seen “hopped in the car mama let him play hooky missed the first hour just to get a cup of coffee she’s the only one who saw who he was, no one else could read him”

a song lyric to make them cry “hey mama i’m sorry mama for realizing now how much you’ve done for me, mama”

a song lyric to make them happy “i’m the biggest hit i’m the biggest hit on the stage”

song list: zero for conduct - bastarz / kissaphobic - make out monday / if we have each other - alec benjamin / industry baby - lil nas x ft. jack harlow / blueberry eyes - max ft. suga / bling bling - ikon / mama said - lukas graham / alone - nico collins / mama - j-hope / cherry bomb - nct 127

tai

a song lyric that makes you think of them “i wrote this song just looking at you yeah, the drums they swing low and the trumpets they go”

a song lyric to describe their love life “now she's got a boyfriend and i've got a rock band 'cause nothing really ever goes the way it's planned”

a song lyric to describe their family life “i'm weird but i'm trying man, i'm motherfuckin' trying i'm tryna get through this verse without me fucking crying suck it up, ‘you gotta be a man, gotta take care of your fam’”

a song lyric to describe their personality “it's just poetry divided, i'm the kind of guy who takes every moment he knows he confided in music to use it for others to use it”

a song lyric to describe their physical appearance "bleach my hair, mess it up”

a song lyric to describe their personal style “blue jeans, white shirt”

a song lyric that would comfort them when they’re sad “maybe it's not my weekend but it's gonna be my year”

a song lyric that would make them feel Seen “they're just stupid boys making basement noise in the basement, noise in the basement”

a song lyric to make them cry “when i was fed up and lost back then when i fell into a pit of despair even when i pushed you away, even when i resented meeting you you were firmly by my side”

a song lyric to make them happy “don’t think, just do, you’re holding the brush you have the most sense when you’re in front of the mirror life is short art is long”

song list: trumpets - jason derulo / she’s got a boyfriend now - boys like girls / wait on me - kyle / message man - twenty one pilots / papercuts - machine gun kelly / blue jeans - lana del rey / weightless - all time low / basement noise - all time low / first love - suga / artist - zico

hinata

a song lyric that makes you think of them "build your expectations saturated and inflated ‘cause i was born to be your favorite”

a song lyric to describe their love life “feels just like i don't try looks so good i might die all i know is everybody loves me”

a song lyric to describe their family life “i got a future so i'm singing for my grandma you singing too, but your grandma ain't my grandma”

a song lyric to describe their personality “if i to someone, a strength to someone, a light i wish i could be a piece of peace”

a song lyric to describe their physical appearance “my smile is beamin', my skin is gleamin' the way it shine, i know you've seen it”

a song lyric to describe their personal style “my whole closet, your whole crib see-through shirt on, bright pink timbs”

a song lyric that would comfort them when they’re sad “don't get too far in your own head when you shout we'll smile in front of all the things we used to worry about and i know it may not seem like it but we figured out how to live on the run when your heart weighs a ton”

a song lyric that would make them feel Seen “i'm sorry, i'm sorry, the lights got so blurry i just didn't want you to get mad or worried you keep me believin', i kept on deceivin' myself”

a song lyric to make them cry “it could leave, it could leave, come the morning celebrate the night, it's the fall before the climb shall we sing, shall we sing, 'til the morning?”

a song lyric to make them happy “take me to your best friend's house goin' 'round this roundabout, oh yeah oh, take me to your best friend's house i loved you then and i love you now, oh yeah”

song list: dream boy - waterparks / everybody loves me - one republic / sunday candy - donnie trumpet & the social experiment / p.o.p (piece of peace) pt. 1 - j-hope / 7 rings - ariana grande / bright pink tims - blackbear ft. cam’ron / a letter to my younger self - quinn xcii ft. logic / loser boy - joseph dubay / c’mon - panic! at the disco ft. fun. / tongue tied - grouplove

[the-avengers-ate-my-tongue]

Fear Is The Mind-Killer

Summary: You and Will became very close, so you notice after a while he’s not doing so well mentally and physically. What can you do to help those who doesn’t seems to want to be helped?

 Pairing: Will Graham x reader

 Warnings: swearing

 Word count: 1398

I parked the car just outside Beth LeBeau's house, in Greenwood, Delaware. She was a victim of murder, and I was there with Jack Crawford's team to conduct an investigation. I wasn't quite needed there, though. I insisted on going so I could keep an eye on Will Graham, my… God, I didn't even have a word to define us. We had a… thing? We didn't tell anyone on FBI Behavioral Science Unit, one: because it didn't concern them, two: because it was work and I thought personal feelings should stay out of that, and three: we didn't want anyone prying on our lives with unwanted opinions. Alana knew because we were very close friends and Beverly also knew just because she's was a nosy bitch who could smell sexual tension and gossips miles away. Since both of them were my friends, I didn't mind, but solemnly made them promise they wouldn't bring it up to anyone. And that was it, end of the story. I could enjoy what I had with Will without worrying.

It started innocently, I've always been a very flirty person, and I guess I liked the way I made him slightly disconcerted every time I would give him a blink or a naughty comment. However, I guess I realized he didn't get much attention and was a little picked on by other people because of his condition. He was the outcast, the weirdo, the freak. Therefore, I started to scold Brian when he would make a harsh comment, started to ask Will if he was okay when he seemed off after a particularly challenging case, and that kept evolving and evolving. And here we were. I genuinely cared about him.

Which brings me to this moment in special. I've been very worried about Will. He kept having these episodes where he would blackout for minutes, even hours. Sometimes he looked like he was… somehow far, far away in his mind. At nighttime, he would wake up covered in sweat, mumbling words that made no sense. That was scaring the shit out of me. I was beyond worried, which is why I decided to tag along with them that afternoon. To keep an eye on him, somehow. We entered the house and I tried to ignore the dark vibe that hit me. Like the air was heavy, suffocating. I was merely a psychiatrist who wasn't even meant to be there, but, as Alana, Jack was a friend. I gave some excellent excuses and he agreed to let me come along, but just this once. It was a crime scene, after all. I was only consulting. Maybe he was also worried about Will, which is why it was so easy to convince him. 

I could smell the blood and deterioration even before we got to the bedroom, and covered my nose with my scarf, feeling a bit nauseous due the mephitic air. As I said, crime scenes weren't really my area. I'd seen some dead people in my life, obviously, but not in those violent conditions, at least not in person. Will stopped walking, looked at me with cautions eyes, and I knew he wouldn't want me to go any further. I stopped at the corridor, agreeing once with a head movement, and he walked in alone, closing the door behind him. Beverly stared at me with a petulant smile, which I decided to ignore, avoiding her smug face with a little smile on my lips while I stared at my own shoes.

A few minutes passed, and I started to feel a bit off. Did it usually take this long? I started to pull some skin around my nails with impatience, and was lost on my thoughts when the door suddenly opened. Will came out looking terrified, his breath was accelerated, and he was covered in blood. The horror in his eyes made my heart skip a beat, I gasped and, at that moment, I didn't even think everyone could see us, and everyone would know.

“Will? Will, breathe. It's okay, you're okay” I spoke in a controlled tone, trying to calm him down and hushing my voice so only him could hear me. I avoided touching him because I didn't know how he would react. “Remember where you are. Greenwood, Delaware. Your name is Will Graham. It's me, Y/n. It's okay, you're okay. I'm here.”

He seemed to be getting calmer, so I touched his face gently, caressing his cheek with my thumb. His breath started to slow down, and the fear started to fade from his eyes. He touched my forehead with his own, still breathing a little hard, and I caressed his hair with my both hands while I whispered “it's okay” one more time. Then, I realized everyone was staring at us in disbelief, except for Beverly, that seemed only a bit surprised, maybe because she'd never actually seen any physical contact between us. I started to feel annoyed with all the eyes on us, and smiled lightly to him, stepping away for a moment.

“Come on, let's wash your hands and get rid of that blood. The crew needs to do their job”. Instead of prying on us, I mentally added with a annoyed look to them. Jack cleaned his throat in clarion, and the crew started to enter the bedroom. Will agreed once, and we walked to the kitchen. I leaned against the kitchen counter while he stood by the sink, opening the water tap and starting to wash his hands in a distracted way. His eyes seemed… empty. That scared me a little. 

“Will… talk to me” I asked, staring at him with pleading eyes “What happened in there? I've never seen you like that. You weren’t just scared, you were terrified.”

He avoided my questions for a few seconds, pretending to be concentrated in removing the blood of his fingernails. I patiently waited until he felt safe enough to speak.

“I… Got a bit lost in the reconstruction.” he replied in a blank voice, avoiding to look at me. I frowned, moving my body so I could stand in front of him. He leaned his hands in the counter, and now I was between him and the sink, his body leaned against mine. “It happens sometimes with what I do. It’s okay, Y/n. It’s nothing.”

“What is that supposed to mean? You… had another blackout? Will, I'm so worried about you. This isn't right, your mind is showing signs of exhaustion. This work can be too much for anyone, let alone someone with a mind like yours, who can do the things you do. I know you want to help people, but at what cost?” I touched his lips with mine for a few seconds, feeling his hands touching my hair. “Please, for me, go see a doctor. The fevers, blackouts, the headaches. This can be so many biological things, encephalitis, for example. Promise me you'll think about it.”

He sighed, kissing my forehead with a little smile that didn't reach his eyes. He eyes started to wander around my body, and his smile disappeared when he stared at my shirt.

“I stained your blouse with the blood. I'm sorry” I looked down, realizing he was right. A shiver went down my spine, but I didn't show, smiling lightly.

“It's okay, it wasn't your fault. I'll wash it as soon as I get home.” I shrugged, kissing him one more time. He hugged me very tightly, and I felt like he really needed that.

“Looks like they know about us now” Will stated in a melancholic tone, making me giggle with a low, cracked sound.

“Looks like we're gonna have to elope” I replied, and this time he seemed lighter, like some weight came out of his shoulders. That disappeared as soon as we noticed Jack arrive in the kitchen. Will and I moved away in a hurry, and Jack just stared at us with a mysterious look on his face, opening the kitchen door and going outside.

"Oh-oh. Looks like he wants to talk to you." I mocked, trying to hide my own nervousness. He sighed, pecking me in the lips.

"I'll see what he wants. Y/n… Thank you. For everything." He replied, avoiding looking at me as he walked out the kitchen, leaving me with a silly smile on my face.

[maren-as-an-adult]

The 2020 Experience, Part 2

When I flew back to New York a few days later (yes, I braved the airports and a plane) I could not stop crying. What should have been a loving and heartfelt reunion between myself and Graham turned into an awkward situation for him, with me bent double in the front seat of his car sobbing inconsolably.

And suddenly I had to adjust back to life more or less on my own. I couldn’t have friends come over, my family who lived in NYC were too far for me to get to them without public transit, and Graham’s mother was immunocompromised so we couldn’t spend much time together. I was back to sitting at my computer, taking online surveys for the promise of money and sending out application after application. Jena and Julia, my other two roommates, were still not back, so it was just me and Polina.

Things started to get a little better though. I had applied for Medicaid so I had some health coverage again. I scheduled an appointment with my new doctor, I started talking to a therapist again in August, and I stopped budgeting for birth control and got it for free. The after school program was up and running again, this time remotely (only one of my schools was able to host their program though, so my work hours were still cut). I looked forward to every other weekend, where Graham would drive out and pick me up to spend a few nights at his place. Jena came back and announced she was moving out, and our new roommate Michelle moved in. Michelle and I had a lot in common, and I found it easy to talk to and connect with her.

I even got out to see my family. I braved the subway to see my family up in Astoria, and Polina told me about the ferries I could take that brought me to my family on the Upper East Side.

One day in late September, however, I woke up with abdominal pain. It was pretty mild at first, but it kept getting worse. As someone who has periods, I assumed it was just week-early cramps brought on by stress combined with a poor diet that didn’t include much fiber. I tried to assuage the feeling by eating an apple, but after a quick trip to the bathroom it made a reappearance coming back up the way it went down. I decided to do what most people do (and what doctors hate) and look up my symptoms online to try and self-diagnose. The two big contenders for what I was suffering from were IBS or an ulcer. I texted Graham and told him what was up, and he asked what I was going to do. My current plan was to try and wait it out, and if things still felt bad in the morning, I would go to the ER.

If it wasn’t for Graham’s suggestion that I go to an urgent care center (which I had completely forgot existed at this point in time) I may have died.

At 7:12pm I grabbed my bag and walked three blocks to the urgent care center closest to my apartment. Unfortunately, they were no longer taking walk-ins for the day, but told me that another urgent care center was open until 8 and would take walk-ins.

It was 17 blocks away.

I walked 17 blocks with severe abdominal pain to this urgent care center just to be seen and tell a health professional I wasn’t feeling well. I knew there wouldn’t be much they could do, but maybe they could give me a better idea of what was wrong with me. I called Graham and gave him the address of the urgent care center, asking that he come out to be with me. Whatever was happening to me, I did not want to go through it alone.

I made it to the urgent care center fifteen minutes before they closed. I was taken to an observation room where a brusque young Russian woman took down my vitals and information as we waited for the RN to come see me. When he finally did come in and I started telling him what was wrong, I barely finished explaining what happened after I ate and failed to keep down the apple that he interrupted me saying, “You need to go to the ER immediately, because what you described sounds like you have a GI bleed. You’ll need an endoscopy, where they take a camera on a long, thin tube and feed it down in through your stomach and into your intestines to see if you’re bleeding internally.”

It was getting late, I was alone, and I was TERRIFIED.

I was told where the nearest ERs were, was given a printed referral, and then dismissed for the evening. All I could do was wait for Graham and tell him what was going on... and then call my mother and tell her.

I love my mom. I’ll likely never not love my mom for the rest of my life. But sometimes she takes a bad situation and makes me feel even worse. When I told her I had called Graham to come get me, she pointedly asked why I didn’t call any of my family who lived closer than Graham. Well, of my family who live in the greater metropolitan area of New York City, we have:

- My Aunt Barbara and Uncle Danny, currently NOT in NYC and instead staying out in Milford, PA

- My Uncle Brian, Aunt Corinne, and cousin Nikki up in Astoria. My aunt cannot drive and gets panicked easily, my cousin only has her learner’s permit, and my uncle (though I love him) would not be the most comforting presence to me at the moment, being VERY pro-Trump Republican and a FIRM anti-masker

- My Uncle Mike, Aunt Gloria, and cousins Maura (and her husband Andrew), Brendan, and Kevin. Maura, at this point in time, was nine months pregnant and due to give birth any minute, and I was not going to be responsible for pulling my aunt or uncle away from the birth of their first grandchild

With this information presented to my mother, she did concede that calling Graham had not been a terrible idea. Continuing to fret, however, she said I should at least have called them to let them know what was happening. She took it upon herself to do that, and additionally call my father and tell him (dad was on the road at that point and so missed my initial call of “Hey, jsyk, I’m going to the ER, wish me luck!”). Graham pulled up, I ended my mom’s call telling her I’d keep her posted, and headed off to the unknown.

As we were driving to the closest ER, my dad called. Thankfully, he gave advice that calmed me down. He listened to my symptoms, told me it was likely an ulcer, and told me what would happen when I went in: I’d be admitted to the ER, they’d take my vitals, I’d explain my symptoms over and over and over to multiple people, they’d probably admit me overnight, knock me out and do an endoscopy, and in the morning I’d be sent home with a prescription to help with the ulcer. I felt better.

Graham and I made it to the ER at about 8:45pm. I was admitted immediately, my vitals were taken, I was given a cup to pee in, an IV was placed in my arm, my blood was taken, and I told my story to two different doctors and a few different nurses. I went in for an ultrasound to rule out pregnancy, endometriosis, and ovarian cysts. I waited, with Graham by my side.

The doctor came back at about 11:30pm and told me my urinalysis and ultrasound came back unremarkable, but my bloodwork showed a high white blood cell count, which meant my body was fighting off an infection somewhere. This is absolutely something I did and did not want to hear in the middle of a global pandemic. On the one hand, go immune system! Keep me safe, you beautiful, hard-working bitch! On the other hand, what was it my body was fighting off?

The doctor said if I wanted to leave at that point, I could, because nothing obvious was found. “But,” she said, “I would strongly recommend we do a CT scan just to be safe.”

It was late, both Graham and I were tired, and my abdominal pain wasn’t awful to the point where I was bent double anymore. I could stand and walk around with only a slight discomfort. The thought of getting out of the ER, a frankly dangerous place to be in these COVID times, was deliciously appealing.

“What the hell, lets do the CT scan.”

I was given almost two liters of fluid to drink to prep for the scan. It didn’t taste bad, actually, kind of like a flat lemon La Croix that had been left in its aluminum can too long. At 12:30am I went in for the scan. Two hours later, Graham and I were still waiting for the results. At around 2:30am Graham turned to me and said, “Honestly, I’m ready to go. I won’t leave you here alone, but I’m exhausted and ready to get out of here.” I responded, “Honestly, I am too.”

At that moment, a doctor walked around the corner into our area and said, in a too cheery voice, “Hi there! You have appendicitis.”

I swear in that moment I could feel the cosmic force of the universe tremble with suppressed laughter at this finely crafted moment of ironic timing. My only response to the doctor and Graham was, “Well... I guess I’m staying here for the night?” Remember when I thought it was IBS? Couldn’t we go back to that?

I’ve mentioned before the idea of surgery scares me. I’d hoped I’d only have to experience anesthesia from getting my wisdom teeth removed. I fully expected to break down in hysterics then, but I guess I was just too tired and overwhelmed to react in such a big way. I called my mom and told her what was happening, and the first suggestion she made was for me to come home and heal in Chicago.

...mom, I love you, but getting on a plane immediately after major surgery in the MIDDLE OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC FROM AN AIRBORNE VIRUS is frankly the DUMBEST IDEA EVER.

After realizing that would be a bad move, she suggested she come out to be with me while I heal. While an appealing process, it ultimately wouldn’t be of much use, because she’d have to quarantine for two weeks before seeing anyone at that point. Eventually, she offered to book a hotel room for me and Graham for a long, extended weekend to help me recover. It was extremely generous of her, and I’ll forever be grateful she did it.

I was hooked up to antibiotics to prep for surgery, and the attending surgeon explained the procedure to me. Everyone was so calm and sure of themselves that I felt okay, and the inevitable wave of panic was held off. At 4:30am, I was wheeled up to the operating room. Graham stayed by my side as long as he could and walked all the way to the doors of the OR hallway with me and the attending. I made sure he and my mom had each others’ phone numbers so he could give updates. I was wheeled through the doors, and met with my operating team.

The anesthesiologist and practicing surgeon assured me that they felt fine, well-rested, and at the top of their game, and I was able to relax some as I moved off of my gurney onto the operating table. Once I was on the table, clad only in a thin hospital gown and gripper socks, my body started to shake. Whether it was from the cold or the panic had finally set in I wasn’t sure, but I calmly told the doctors that I thought my fight or flight response was kicking in, and they might need to consider restraining my shaking limbs.

They did, and they also put a heated (and somewhat weighted) blanket over me which relaxed me so my limbs weren’t shaking so violently. An oxygen mask was placed on my face, sealing my nose and mouth into a thick plastic chamber. I tried to breathe deeply and evenly, forcing myself to think of pleasant thoughts and not spiral into a headspace of worst case scenarios. I think what helped most was actually an attending nurse reading out loud my patient chart for posterity and recording’s sake, and he said, “Patient is a twenty-seven year old female named Maureen Ford.”

The annoyance I felt at being misnamed (again as Maureen) cut through the second wave of panic buildup, and my only goal was to correct him. The oxygen mask muffled my voice, but I like to think if you were to listen to the audio recording of my surgery, you would hear, very faintly in the background, me indignantly stating, “It’s pronounced MAREN!”

My last thought before I went under was that I need to make sure that nurse was corrected.

When I woke up, I felt more comfortable than I had in a very long time. The only thing that kept me from being in a total state of comfortable bliss was the slowly incoming knowledge that my mouth was drier than the Sahara desert at noon in July. Despite this, and the residual effects of the anesthesia still in effect, I was pleased to find that not only could I clearly hear and understand the conversations happening around me, I could also coherently speak and communicate with people. I asked for water as soon as I could, and the nurse told me that they’d have to work me up to water. We’d start with a lemon swab in my mouth, followed by ice chips, and then I could get water. The attending surgeon came in to tell me the surgery went smoothly without complications, and I asked her if she could make sure whoever called me Maureen was corrected on my name pronunciation.

I really hope it wasn’t written off as a sleepy patient’s delirious request, because I was absolutely serious about it.

After eating some very powdery eggs and drinking an apple juice, I was discharged and told to get my medications, rest up, avoid lifting anything over 15 pounds, stay away from submerging my sutures in water, and to schedule a one week post-op follow up with my primary care provider and a two week post-op follow up with the attending surgeon.

Graham drove us back to Bay Ridge, and I gave him my keys to go grab some essentials from my apartment. I gave Michelle and Polina a heads up that he was coming up (and I had let them know what was happening before I went into surgery) and that I’d be gone recovering through the weekend and partway into the week. They both wished me a speedy recovery, Graham grabbed a few essentials for me, and we drove up the street to pick up my meds from Rite Aid.

For some reason, they had only filled two of the four prescriptions. One they didn’t fill because it was a controlled substance and the hospital hadn’t submitted the proper authorization for it, and the other prescription (one of two laxatives) I have no idea why it wasn’t filled. Eventually, I got both my pain medications and one of the laxatives, with the other laxative to be filled and picked up at a different Rite Aid, closer to Graham’s work.

Exhausted, sore, hungry, and (in my case) in desperate need of a shower, we made it back to Graham’s to spend one more day there before going off to the hotel my mom had booked us. Graham had been scheduled to work that day, but after calling into the office was told he should only come in if he thought it was absolutely necessary. He ended up catching a few hours of sleep before going in for the late shift at work. I managed to take a shower and fell asleep on his couch as his bed was too soft and sent my abdomen into absolute agony. I blinked in and out of consciousness for the next few hours, waiting for Graham to come home with my last bit of medication. In that time, my dad called to check on me and ask how I felt, what I was prescribed, and what was expected of me. As we were talking Graham called, and I excused myself so I could answer the call. Nothing could have prepared me for what Graham was going to say to me.

“I was just hit by a truck.”

*click*

[moonlightmadnessreviews]

Child’s Play (2019): Chucky Come Lately, The New Kid in Town

We’re coming up on a month since the release of Orion Pictures’ Child’s Play remake. In the lead up to the polarizing release, there were two very different teams drawn up: you were either Team Good Guy, or Team Buddi. If you were the former, it was thought you were an elitist, unable to see past your love for the original and too closed minded to admit you were even a little curious as to how the new movie would turn out. If you wore the latter team’s jersey, you were part of what is wrong with horror today, ready to gobble up corporate studio schlock even if it means trampling all over the original. At a time when a remake is announced every other week, I want to discuss why it’s okay to root for the home town hero, while also being curious about what the rookie has to offer.

Child’s Play was originally released in 1988, having been written and directed by Tom Holland from a story by Don Mancini, produced by David Kirschner and distributed by MGM. The film was a hit, drawing enough at the box office to spawn six sequels, and the cult following was immediately under the spell of the pint sized, Voodoo practicing antagonist, Charles Lee Ray. I recently turned 30, and it wasn’t until I was in my early teens that I realized the original trilogy was called Child’s Play and not Chucky, as I’d always referred to the movies. Brad Dourif plays Chicago serial killer Charles Lee Ray, The Lakeshore Strangler. After he’s chased into a toy store and fatally wounded by Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), Chucky transfers his soul into the body of a Good Guy Doll. The rest of the movie follows Chucky and the first person he reveals his identity to, a six year old boy named Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), as Chucky murders his way through babysitters, old accomplices and Voodoo mentors! All the while, Chucky preys on Andy’s innocence, telling him they’re “Friends til the end!” simply to make it easier for him to transfer his soul into Andy’s body.

This set up was, and still is, perfect! For much of the movie, Chucky is a stoic rubber doll, resembling one of the Cabbage Patch Dolls that were so popular in the 1980s. It’s clear to see how excited Andy is when he gets the doll as a birthday present, and you feel genuine fear for the kid knowing there’s the soul of a serial killer trapped inside his new best friend! I would give anything to travel back in time to sit in the theater on opening night and experience the moment Chucky finally reveals his true nature to Andy’s Mom! What may seem silly to us now must have made for an awesome group experience in that theater, especially considering the amazing animatronics and Dourif’s fantastic voice over work, his animalistic aggression striking fear into children for years after.

For all the praise we can give Chucky and the lore his movies built up, they did become somewhat formulaic, but Chucky and pals had solidified themselves in the minds and memories of millions. It’s easy to see why fans were hesitant, and confused, when the remake was announced. Some went as far as to write off the movie completely before even hearing what the changes would be. Well, as it turns out, the changes were pretty drastic, in part due to the legal issues of having a remake separate from the Mancini Chucky universe, soon to make a place for itself as a spin off TV show on the SyFy channel.

Child’s Play 2019 has brought Chucky and Andy into the era of asking someone for their WiFi password as soon as you walk through their door. The film is directed by Lars Klevberg (Polaroid) from a screenplay by Tyler Burton Smith (Kung Fury 2) and produced by David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith (IT, Chapter 1 and 2). In our post-Stranger Things world, Andy, played here by Gabriel Bateman (Lights Out), is no longer a six year old child but rather a young teen having trouble fitting in and making friends in his new neighborhood. His mom, Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza), is still a single mother working in retail, but the doll she brings home for Andy’s birthday is incredibly different due to the exclusion of one incredibly important character: Charles Lee Ray. Gone is the Voodoo. Gone is the Lakeshore Strangler. Gone is the voice! The new direction is daring to say the least.

In this version, Chucky is a WiFi capable, Cloud connected Buddi doll. As part of their use as an educational tool for children, Buddi dolls learn from their Best Buddies, picking up on their sense of humor, social cues and behaviors. Eventually Buddi could help you keep track of your calendar and even control climate setting in your home. Seems pretty cool, right? Well it would be, except Andy’s Buddi doll was hacked by a disgruntled factory worker who does away with Chucky’s limiters for language, violence, and seemingly even his free will.

What I feel works especially well in the new take is Chucky’s innocence at the start of the movie. A Buddi doll’s only mission is to imprint on their new owner and be the best friend this child could ever ask for. We get scenes of Andy and Chucky playing chess, hanging out, and even looking through scrap books of Andy’s art. Chucky takes a genuine interest in Andy and simply wants to be his Best Buddy, so when Andy is scratched by his mother’s cat, we get the first glimpses into Chucky’s unlocked potential for violence. He wants to punish anyone, or anything, that wishes Andy harm. Chucky hasn’t just imprinted, he is frighteningly obsessed.

One of my favorite scenes plays out as Andy, and his friends Falyn and Pugg (Beatrice Kitsos and Ty Consiglio, respectively) are watching a particularly brutal horror movie. I was genuinely giddy in the theater when the clips started to flash on screen, so I won’t spoil it here. This is where we see Chucky’s gears start to turn. Much like a child who may pick up on violent behavior they’re exposed to, Chucky sees Andy and his friends laughing at the outlandish violence on screen and decides to “entertain” them with a butcher knife.

Through out the course of the 90 minute run time, we see Andy struggling with how to control Chucky, now having gotten the wrong impression of violence and feeling rejected by his Best Buddy. The stakes are raised as Chucky becomes increasingly violent, seeking to please Andy at every turn only to make things worse, like a genie who twists their master’s words, making them sorry for not being more careful with their wishes. Come the third act, we can start to see hints of Chucky’s own fully formed personality, now having been twisted and deranged by the movies events.

This movie was more fun than I anticipated, and it even got my wife’s stamp of approval after I dragged her to the theater with me on opening night! Rather than try to be some incredibly bleak, super realistic take on the story, Child’s Play knew exactly what it was and went all out with the ridiculous concept. The movie’s R rating was also used to its full potential, and though most of the scares are pretty telegraphed, they shower you with so much blood and gore that you can’t help but laugh. Andy’s group of friends, though not nearly as charismatic or fun to watch as the cast of Stranger Things or 2017’s IT, really helped to give the movie some much needed warmth and heart. Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta), who played this movie’s Detective Norris, also gave a great performance, balancing comedy and that detective bravado just right.

The standouts though were Gabriel Bateman and this movie’s Chucky, none other than Mark Hamill (Star Wars and The Joker in Batman The Animated Series, I mean DUH!). Bateman gave a great performance as Andy, carrying a lot of the movie’s emotion, and Hamill helped give this Chucky his own voice. The third act culmination of Chucky’s deranged personality would not have been nearly as effective if not for Hamill’s amazing voice over work. This is not to say though that the movie was perfect. Aubrey Plaza was bland as Karen Barclay, giving every line that classic, so-edgy-it-hurts, Plaza sarcasm. It works on Parks and Rec and even the movie Safety Not Guaranteed, but it feels so out of place here. Thankfully, Bateman was there to sell most of their scenes together, or I would not have been able to buy into their relationship as mother and son, much less care about their survival. In addition to Plaza, there were a lot of jokes in the first and second act that simply didn’t land. The lines fell flat and hardly got more than a chuckle from most of the audience I was with. I’m sure they were after the wit and timing of the young ensemble cast of IT, but that came from time and intensive work building off screen relationships within that cast. Some jerky editing also made the movie feel like it would have benefited from an extra 15 or 20 minutes, leading to certain scenes that were meant to be emotional being brushed over and rushed.

Lastly, let’s address the elephant in the room: Chucky’s redesign. The very first reaction I heard as Chucky’s face flashed on screen was “Ew, what the fu-“. I want to give the effects team credit for sticking to mostly animatronic work once again, but Chucky’s face was simply horrendous. I’d like to think this was intentional, perhaps they wanted to play up the Uncanny Valley effect as much as possible, but I can’t see myself or any other fans saying the design won us over, no matter how fun the movie was.

Did Child’s Play 2019 have to be a Child’s Play movie? No, not at all. In fact, they could have called it “Alexa Gone Wild.” and it would have held much of the same effect. With that being said though, I think I enjoyed it as much as I did because of their new take. It impressed me just enough to leave me thinking “Wow, that was really fun!” I love the original Child’s Play, and Brad Dourif is quite honestly irreplaceable, but the film makers saw the challenge they had with this new version, knew the audience they had to try and win over and they swung for the fences. I may not be able to convince everyone to give this movie a shot, and I’m fine with that, but I think the most important thing to remember is this: If you’re going to update one of my favorite toys, my “Friend til The End”, then make sure the new version keeps me entertained til the end, friend.

Rating: 3.5 Full Moons out of 5 🌕🌕🌕🌗

[monigheandonn1743]

Ceart-leth

Previous Chapters

Chapter 12

Her heavy, swollen eyes scanned the horizon, watching, waiting, and seeing nothing but the empty road as the sky turned from blue to orange, orange to red, and red to the deep purple black of night. They’d been travelling for hours, and had covered miles of rough highland terrine before they’d stopped for the night. But her heart and mind were still at Leoch: still with Jamie.

Please God, keep him safe.

Until the men caught up with them, they had no way of knowing what had transpired after they’d fled the castle, and love him or hate him, she was terrified.

Haunted by the image of him lying bleeding and broken in the cobbled stone courtyard, she’d turned her horse around twice, desperate to go back, desperate to know he was still alive. But she’d been thwarted and threatened by Murtagh, as he turned her back around and insisted they go on.

His mood had been as black as Brian’s, so she hadn’t dared to ask where they were going on to, but she didn’t need to, she already knew.

They were heading to Lallybroch and to the life that Jamie had there.

A life that didn’t include her.

Maybe that was why she’d wanted to go back, maybe it had nothing to do with Jamie or the fight, and everything to do with what lay beyond Leoch.

She wanted to go home.

She wanted Joe.

At Lallybroch she’d have to face Jamie’s wife, a wife he apparently loved. To look her in the eyes knowing how it felt to be in her husbands arms, to kiss his lips, and feel his body upon hers. She’d have to watch them together, to see him with his children, and pretend she felt nothing.

But she did, she felt everything, and it was tearing her apart.

Tears clouded her vision and she blinked lazily, letting them fall as they would. She had no energy left to care. The last six days had been just too much. She’d felt the extreme edge of terror, the heights of euphoric bliss, and the deepest depths of despair. She’d been plummeted through time, attacked at knife point, touched with reverence, and dragged around like a bloody rag doll.

She’d been to hell and back, and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. She was emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted.

But what choice did she have?

Finding her way back to Craig na Dun alone would be impossible, and even if she could convince Murtagh to take her, she had no idea what she would even find.

It was clear that, somehow, history had changed. Nothing she knew was as it should be. First with Black Jack, then Sandringham, and now Argyll. So if everything was different in the past she’d landed in, then did she really belong here? Was this really her place, her time, as she had told Joe in her diaries?

And if not, did Joe and the life she knew in 2018, still exist?

Just the thought alone horrified her beyond imagining. If she’d landed in the wrong time, and the love she was supposed to find no longer existed, then neither did Joe, and she had nothing whatsoever to hold onto.

I was never destined to be a Fraser.

The wayward thought hit her and she laughed at herself bitterly. She was nothing but a stupid, foolish girl, infatuated with a man she knew absolutely nothing about. Yet she’d trusted him, followed him from the top of Craig na Dun, and into a place she didn’t belong.

And all because of what? A school girl crush? Hero worship? An ambiguous letter from a man that will most likely never even be born?

It was all just so fucked up. Joe had never even said that Jamie would be the one. He’d just painted a picture of a dashing hero, and she’d been the one to assume. She was angry, scared, hurt and so fucking confused. Nothing made sense and she felt so helpless she was suffocating, and she knew it would only get worse once they arrived at Lallybroch.

“She’s called Brimstone.” She heard Murtagh announce quietly from her side and she scoffed, shaking her head at the sheer irony.

“How appropriate.”

She wasn’t in the mood to talk, she just wanted to be left alone, leaning gently against her silent companion as they stood and watched the deserted road. But she heard him sigh, and looked over, watching as he stroked a loving hand down the nose of the beautiful ivory horse.

“Claire…”

“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t need an explanation.” She insisted trying to hold back the tears that were so close to the surface. She couldn’t talk about this, not here, not now, and not with him. “I ken that, an it’s no my place to say anything…”

“Then don’t.” She pleaded, pushing away from the horse and turning her back on Jamie’s Godfather. Why did he feel the need to talk now? Could he not just go back to being the stony, bad tempered bastard she’d ridden beside all day?

Swiping at her eyes, she looked out into the distance, and seriously considered asking him to take her to Craig na Dun. Whether she could get through the stones or not, it had to be a better fate than what she was facing now.

But what about Jenny?

She’d promised Jamie, as they spoke softly that night on the couch, that she’d help his sister, and as much as it pained her, she couldn’t break that promise. His fear of loosing her had been too real for her to ignore.

She sighed quietly and sank down in the grass. She’d go to Lallybroch, help Jenny, and after she’d given birth, she’d ask Jamie to take her back to the stones. If she couldn’t get through, maybe she could go on to Inveraray Castle and find work there with his father.

The Duke of Argyll.

Jesus Christ.

Not only had she done what she feared and made a complete tit of herself in front of the Duke. But to add insult to injury, he was Jamie’s father, and if she remembered correctly, that made Jamie the Marquess of Lorne.

Joe would have a field day with that one. He’d always told her that the men she dated weren’t good enough for her. If he found out that her first, non-self-induced orgasm, had been at the hands of Marquess, he’d die laughing.

That he was the son of the most powerful man in Scotland would be the icing on the cake. Though she didn’t suppose he’d enjoy knowing that the man was already married.

“If ye willna talk, will ye at least eat?” Murtagh huffed, practically shoving a skinned rabbit in her face. She reared back, taking it from him automatically, and almost heaved at the smell. There was nothing wrong with it, but just the thought of eating anything made her stomach roll violently.

“I’m not hungry.” She insisted, attempting to pass it back to him.

“Damn stubborn as a mule.” He grouched, sinking down beside her, and snatching the rabbit back. “Ye suit each other in that, ye ken.”

“Murtagh, please!” She cried, drawing her knees up and burying her face in her skirts. “Just don’t. I’m begging you. I’m exhausted, and I just…can’t.”

She wanted to stuff her fingers in her ears like a child, singing la la la until Murtagh got the message and left her the hell alone. But even in her overwrought state she wasn’t that rude, and she’d probably find herself at the pointy end of his dirk if she did.

“I ken something of heartache, lass, an’ I pray ye’ll no have to suffer as I have.” He whispered, despite her protests. The misery in his voice tugged at what was left of her heart, and she rolled her head to look at him.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered back as she watched him stare blindly down the road, suddenly feeling guilty. His pain was written clearly on his face and without thinking she reached over and gently laid a hand on his arm.

“Ach, t’was years before ye were even born.” He sighed, patting her hand softly as he turned to look at her. “But I fell just as fast an’ hard as I’v watch ye do, an’ I dinna wanna see ye close yerself off as I did. T’is a lonely road, lass. So dinna be so stubborn. He said ye could ask him, so ask.”

“He told you.” She murmured confirming what she’d already suspected. In any other situation she’d be mortified, but she was so far past giving a shit, that she just shrugged and slowly removed her hand from his arm.

“Aye. After a bottle of whiskey an’ a good bash ‘round his head. For all the good it did.” He huffed producing a whiskey skin and offering it to her with a wink.

She laughed sadly and took it from him.

“What secrets are you trying to get from me?”

“None, but I’v set ye a pallet up no far from the fire an it will help ye sleep. Things always look better in the morning, lass.” He told her quietly, and placed a gentle, fatherly hand on her shoulder, squeezing it slightly.

“Thank you.” She sniffled, then wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and took a healthy swing of the burning spirit.

Murtagh had laid the furs on a thick blanket of heather, and drunk on the vast quantity of whiskey she’d consumed, she stumbled and all but fell onto the soft pallet. She heard Murtagh’s quiet chuckle and sighed gratefully as he covered her with her plaid and left her to sleep.

But she couldn’t sleep. With her back to the fire, she once again fixed her eyes on the empty road, and waited.

And waited and waited.

Tears streamed silently down her face, unstoppable as she listened to the quiet, mournful voice of Graham as he sang quietly in Gaelic. Although she didn’t understand the words, the minor notes spoke to her of heartache and loss, and she gave herself to them, as she softly cried herself to sleep.

Her dreams were heavy and disjointed. Scenes of ancient battles, war cries and rivers of blood, blended seamlessly with a gentle summer breeze and a child’s laughter, as they were chased by Jamie through a field of barley. Her heart ached as she watched, frozen on the sidelines, an invisible spectator to his world.

At some point she felt the thundering beat of horses echo thought the ground, and heard the jubilant cries of men home from war. But she didn’t wake, not really. Like in her dreams, she was trapped on the outskirts, hovering on the edge of consciousness as life went on around her.

“Shh, mo gràdhag, dinna weep.” Jamie whispered softly, brushing a gentle hand down her cheek. Her heart stuttered and she almost reached for his hand when she heard quiet footsteps approach.

“Ye love her.”

There was a long drawn out silence after Brian spoke, and unsure whether she really was awake or still asleep, she tried to keep her breath deep and even as her heart pounded in her chest. She wanted nothing more than to fling herself into Jamie’s arms, to check for herself that he was alive and unharmed, but she couldn’t. He wasn’t hers to care for, or rejoice with, and despite the pain it would cause, she needed to know what he would say.

If he said anything at all.

She felt him move, and the fingers on her face gently traced her cheek and slid up into her hair. More tears fell and he sighed quietly.

“I shouldna.” He whispered painfully, “But Lord God help me, I do.”

Her heart stopped completely before thumping back to life at twice it’s natural rhythm. He loved her, and while joy should have followed his quiet deceleration, there was nothing but pain, and she shattered into a million tiny pieces. The agony in his voice mirrored her own, and she wanted to wail at fates cruelty.

“She’s so like ye mam.” Brian laughed softly his voice slightly closer than before. She felt the air move and heard the quiet rustle of grass, as he sat down beside his son. “She’s so strong and fierce. Woe to any man who’d stood in her way after ye fell. Rupert was lucky she didna have a dirk, as was I when she came at me in the clearin’.”

Jamie laughed quietly as he twisted and unwound a lock of her hair around his finger, over and over. It was as soothing as it was terrifying. She wanted him more than her next breath, but he wasn’t hers to covert.

“Murtagh said…”

“Aye, I heard.”

“Ye may have heard, son, but did ye listen?” Brian chastised him gently. “You’v no told her of Annalise. Ye ken she loves ye, yet ye hidin’ from her.”

“I’m no hidin’. I’v know her but six days. I’v never…I dinna ken how to tell her. I’v been racking my brains, tryin’ to find a way. I thought I had time before we left for Lallybroch. I didna expect Laoghaire to…”

“Did ye no?” Brian scoffed. “The wee bitch has been after ye for years, ye ken that laddie, an’ all evidence aside, I didna raise a fool James Fraser. Ye hurtin, and ye ken I understand that, but the choices ye makin’ will lead to nothin’ but pain…an’ it’s no just ye own heart ye breakin’. The poor lass is weepin’ in her sleep.”

“I canna do it to her.” Jamie cried desperately, “I canna love her, and keep her safe, when my lovin’ her will kill her. Ye ken that better than anyone.”

Brian’s sigh was laced with frustration and Claire felt it in the very marrow of her bones. It was clear that Brian didn’t trust Laoghaire, but if she read between the lines, the girl hadn’t lied to her, she’d simply told her what Jamie wasn’t ready to. As for the rest, it made no sense at all.

This was either the strangest dream she’d ever had, or she needed to stop feigning sleep and do as Murtagh said and ask him. The time for hiding was over, for both of them.

“Ye’v a right to be scairt, ye’d be a fool no to be. But it’s no just ye’r choice to make. Given my time again with ye mam, even knowin’ the consequences, I wouldna change a damn thing. I loved her, and I lost her, but she was mine, an’ I’ll cherish that to my dyin’ day.

“Now t’is almost dawn, and ye willna sleep. So wake the poor lass an’ talk to her. Maybe she’ll talk some sense into ye.”

She felt, rather than heard Brian stand and walk away, and a heavy silence fell over them. Her heart was lodged in her throat, choking her as it thudded there painfully. She was too afraid to move, to think, or to hope.

Murtagh had warned her, as he dragged her from her room, not to judge what she didn’t know. But still lost in the shock of Laoghaire’s revelations, she’d dismissed him and instantly thought the worst of Jamie. But things were obviously not as they seemed, and if she was ever going to understand him, she was going to have to swallow her pain and pride and ask.

She may never get another chance. Once they arrived at Lallybroch, he’d be with his wife, and whether he loved her or not, she knew that he was a good man and he wouldn’t disrespect his wife by being alone with her at their home.

She heard him sigh, and the hand that had been still playing in her hair, gently moved back to her face, and he drew a calloused finger softly down her cheek. Fresh tears fell and he brushed them away before sliding his hand to her shoulder and squeezing it gently.

“Claire.” He whispered awakening the swarm of butterflies in the pit of her stomach. “Wake up, lass.” He shook her gently and taking one last breath to steady herself, she let her eyes flutter open.

They were swollen and blurry with tears, but in the last dying embers of the fire, she could just make out his perfect face. It was etched in fear, and cloaked in such sadness that she couldn’t speak through the lump in her throat.

“Shh.” He breathed, catching a tear on the edge of her lashes, “Come, we need to talk, and we canna do it here.”

She nodded silently, and clasped her fingers around his, as he helped her slowly to her feet. Without a word he scooped down to collect her plaid, and lay it carefully over her shoulders before taking her hand back in his and guiding her away from the fire.

Brimstone stood waiting, already saddled, and Jamie quickly lifted Claire and placed her atop the horse, before swinging up behind her and guiding her back against his chest. He was warm and solid, and although she knew she shouldn’t, she settled against him, listening to his strong heart thumping wildly beneath her ear.

“Your arm.” She protested as he wrapped them around her, took the reigns and moved Brimstone slowly along the path.

“Doesna matter right now.” He murmured, tightening his hold on her. She wanted to chastise him, aware as she was of the damage he could do. But she felt him press his lips against her hair and realised that worse damage had already been done.

This, right here, in his arms was where she belonged. Despite the changing history, despite Joe’s letter, and Annalise, and his children, she knew this was her place. That it could never be, that she’d landed in a time where he was already taken, destroyed her completely, because she knew beyond a doubt that he was the other half of her soul.

She’d travelled over five hundred miles, and almost three hundred years to find him, and if this last embrace was all she would get she’d take it. Brian had said it perfectly. If she was given the chance all over again, knowing the consequences, she’d take it and cherish it until her dying day.

They rode in silence, moving off the path and through the forest. The night sky had lightened with the coming dawn, just enough for them to see their way, but she had a feeling that Jamie didn’t need it, he already knew where he was going.

As they passed through the last of the trees and into a clearing, Claire’s breath caught in her throat. They were at the top of a ridge, and as the sun slowly rose over the mountains she could see for miles. It was so beautiful, so peaceful, with no sound but their quiet breathing and the steady beat of their hearts.

“Callum dropped a knee to Argyll.” He told her quietly, as he swung off the horse and held his arms up to help her down. She lent forward, almost falling into his embrace, and sighed as he slowly slid her body against his. “Everything ye’r eye touches now belongs to him.”

He turned her to face the view and, giving her time to pull away, he slowly wound his arms around her waist and pulled her back against him.

“It wasn’t always that way. When I left for France at nineteen, we owned one small patch of land, just beyond the mountain way there.” He breathed, pointing to a pass she could just make out in the distance. “Lallybroch. It was gifted to him by my Grandsire when he wed, and he built the house with his own bare hands.”

“What changed?” She whispered back causing him to laugh hollowly and tighten his hold.

“Eveythin’.” He sighed releasing her and stepping away.

Chapter 13

[elizadoolittlethings]

Toby Hadoke’s adaptation of Nigel Kneale’s The Road aired on October 27 to great acclaim. Here, Hadoke talks about the necessary alterations for the story, as well as its tributes to the first production…NB This portion of the interview contains major spoilers for The Road. If you’ve not heard it yet, do so now!

Do we know if Nigel Kneale ever considered The Road as a radio script? It’s clear that what Brian Hodgson and the Radiophonic Workshop did back in 1963 was what he was after from the start – it was never going to be a big visual thing.

One of the big comments I got back from [Radio 4 Commissioning Editor] Jeremy Howe when we first pitched it was: “How is this going to work with the climax relying on a juxtaposition of the sound that we can hear and the visuals of the characters in the time period they are in, and the incongruity of hearing those sounds laid over the image of the people in that period clothing?”

He was quite right about that. Charlotte Riches who’s produced it has been a great advocate of mine and done pretty much everything I’ve done for radio; she’s an extremely experienced producer, and is brilliant and very hot on scripts. She said that the edit on the final five minutes of the play was the biggest and hardest job she’d had, and she’d produced hundreds of hours of radio drama. She gave herself a five-day edit on this because she knew this was going to be a biggie.

When you can see the pictures, you know where you’re supposed to be looking; when you’re listening on radio you have to create the points of view and it’s difficult to go, “Are we now with the haunting, or are we still in the woods, and those in the woods can hear the haunting?” On telly, we can see the people who can hear the haunting listening, so we have an anchor. On the radio, you go, “Why are we suddenly with the haunting?” It was really confusing to work out where the listener’s point of view was.

They say the pictures are better on radio – but when you need to create a very specific one, it has to be much harder. I think it works – there’s a lot of very clear audio cues placing us in the period before we get the stuff that’s out of place. Therefore we know the juxtaposition has to be doing something. In the radio version you’re giving us all their reactions through the haunting…

We had to keep cutting back to them. In the original, the haunting is just a series of fractured sounds, whereas in ours, it was Charlotte’s idea that we needed a narrative in the haunting to follow. We have a mother and a lost daughter character in the haunting who are entirely our invention, so we have a little mini story to follow within the haunting itself, otherwise we weren’t quite sure if it wasn’t going to be too fragmented and too confusing to follow.

All the dialogue in the haunting is entirely new, and we planned that quite hard… apart from the object that you can hear that is taken from the original BBC tapes. Although the play doesn’t exist, I had a bit of a brainwave. I dropped Mark Ayres an email and said, “I don’t suppose in your hall of records for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop the sound effects for The Road exist?” and he said, “I’ve got a tape here that says The Road.” He’s a superstar and sent me what was there, and we seeded a couple of bits in just because it’s a play about sound travelling through time, so why not have sound from the original play travelling through time to us? I thought that was nicely appropriate and a nice nod to the great people who went before us.

The original version was post-Cuba with the threat of nuclear holocaust very present – did you consider changing what the tragedy was that caused the haunting or did you want to keep it as close to the original as possible?

Unfortunately Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un came along and Putin as well in a sense – so I think a nuclear holocaust is something that’s still possible, and I didn’t think there was anything else it could be. It needed to be the present day, sure, but although we’ve got them listening to the news on the car radio, I didn’t want it to be too specific. Although it’s intended very much that the day of the haunting is the day that we’re listening to it – it’s happening to us – I thought it would sound a bit hokey if I embedded it too much in the very present in terms of our immediate references.

I think it would have worked in the 1980s when the BBC very kindly did a nuclear holocaust season and they showed The War Game, and Threads was on. I remember it was the first nightmare I ever had – I slept in my sister’s room because I watched The War Game and it scared the shit out of me. It was a real threat – I lived in the countryside, and my mum still lives there; there was a radar dome on the hill and we’d always talk about that if there was a nuclear attack, they’d take out that radar dome so we’d be in the fallout anyway. We wouldn’t escape by being in the country.

It definitely was a present and terrifying threat and I just think there’s nothing else that would quite match it. The world could be wiped out by flood or famine, but I don’t think that gives you as visceral a kick.

The big difficulty we had was with one of the sounds: I thought we should have one of those nuclear sirens going off, but I made some enquires. I asked a couple of MPs and Andrew Smith (who wrote Full Circle for Doctor Who and is a former police officer), as well as Tom Harris, the former MP, about what would happen in the event of a nuclear holocaust, and the consensus was that sound is now outmoded. That alarm wouldn’t happen.

The argument, though, was people still associate it with a nuclear attack, and we should use it but in the end Charlotte made the decision not to. I would have been comfortable using it, because it’s a really useful shorthand. We didn’t, and I think that helped to divorce ourselves from the 1960s setting, but it did mean we did not have available to an aural shorthand that says immediately, “There’s a nuclear bomb!”

So you have to find a way of doing it in the dialogue without having someone say, “I always thought I’d die in a nuclear war!” Or, “Look Jane, here’s a warhead!”

The mother and daughter bit sells that – as they’re describing the cloud. The bit that’s haunted me [and still gives me goosebumps when I transcribe this a few weeks later] is the mother saying, “Close your eyes and make a wish.”

That’s the bit that Charlotte really loved; she said when she read it she got chills down her spine. That’s nice because I wrote that bit!

The actors in the haunting include some quite well known actors, and the girl is the daughter of the producer. Nigel Kneale’s biographer, Andy Murray, is in there somewhere – he lives round the corner from me.

How much of the 40 minutes up to the haunting did you have to rework for radio, and how much could you keep scenes intact?

Unlike [Matthew Graham’s radio play of] The Stone Tape – which I thought was very good, but was a very different retelling of the story with new characters etc. – I felt we had a slight responsibility to present the play that we cannot experience because the tape was destroyed. In the shadow of Nigel Kneale I am humbly shrouded – I had no desire to go, “And what is Hadoke’s take on Kneale’s work?” This is very much my attempt to bring the brilliance of Nigel Kneale to a current and wide audience.

There are some brilliant lines in there, but by the very nature of radio, there are changes. On telly, if you have someone talking to somebody else for two pages, you can keep cutting back to the other person for their reactions to remind you they’re in the scene. You can’t do that on radio. Some of Charlotte’s notes would be – “Jethro speaks here, he hasn’t spoken since page 32, we need to bring him in beforehand, even if it’s to drop off a drink or cough, or something.”

There were various practical things: when we get to the woods, the cart gets stuck on a knot, and that’s just to bring us into the scene. A lot of that is Charlotte’s producing experience, creating the picture for the listener.

The big thing that we brought in to it was because the scenes were quite long – which they can be on television, and certainly could be on television in 1963. For this we needed all the stuff in the woods between Big Jeff and Lukey. In the teleplay it starts off with them setting up and then they bugger off pretty quickly. In this, the stuff with Big Jeff and Lukey and Tetsy that we keep cutting back to is largely mine, setting up the ghost story and having more of the history of the haunting cut with the philosophical discourse. It was felt that we needed to have a bit more toing and froing and to get in the wood location, where the climax takes place, quite a lot earlier. Most of the stuff between those characters, and the stuff about the bones, was all new just to have a bit of a mystery around the haunting.

I had fewer characters at my disposal so I had to roll a couple into one. In the original there’s a character called Sam, played by Rodney Bewes, who is Tetsy’s sweetheart and they’re in the woods. I think it was Charlotte’s idea we roll them into one, and Sam’s the dog now!  And it gives Tetsy a bigger role now.

There was a whole big team of guys helping the Squire and in my first draft I’d written lots of grunts, and cries of “You up there!” We just pared that down to Big Jeff and Lukey who do all the factotuming, because a big load of extras grunting is great on television to fill the picture but on radio it’s not particularly helpful.

In terms of the characters and the main thrusts of their arguments, the dialogue has been tweaked here and there, but large chunks are 100% Kneale. It was already great, so why mess with it?

How involved with the casting were you?

This is the great relationship I have with Charlotte – she knows I’m an acting geek. I didn’t know you could do this until we first did a play together; she said, “Who do you think?” and I suggested a few names… and they were all in it!

We were originally going to do this in Manchester and we were going to use all local actors for the supporting parts, which I’m passionate about because I think the BBC should use more local actors when they’re recording in a place. But because we’d got Mark Gatiss it looked like we’d have to do it in London, and if we were going to be in London, and it’s only a day [recording], we decided to aim high!

We batted a few ideas back and forth. I suggested Hattie Morahan straightaway just because 1) she’s a brilliant radio actress and 2) her dad directed the original which again I thought was a beautiful tie in to the past. Charlotte knew Hattie because she’d done loads of radio. I hadn’t known their connection. Hattie was a yes pretty quickly.

Mark I mentioned was a fan in the pitch – but I didn’t ask him if he’d be in it until we got the go ahead. He was definitely the first person to be contacted, before I’d written the script but after the commission. It then depended on his availability. We were on standby for quite a while – you can’t cast until you’ve got a date – but then we got a date finally from Mark and we moved pretty quickly.

Knowing we had Mark early on we knew would bring people to it – audience-wise and cast-wise. Actors know they’re going to be in a production that people are going to want to take some notice of and if it’s got the nod from somebody who can pick and choose their work, that helps.

I wasn’t 100% certain Mark would want to do it, because he tried to remake it and wasn’t successful so I thought he might be pissed off that somebody else had. He’d also done a readthrough of it on stage a few years ago, so maybe he’d played the part and got it out of his system. He’s always been very nice to me when I met him, so the approach wasn’t totally out of the blue and I thought he wouldn’t tell me to piss off, he would let me down gently. That’s the fear when you get in touch [with actors] out of the blue: you don’t want them to be rude to you, but I knew from my limited experience that Mark wouldn’t be mean, so I went for it.

Francis Magee is a brilliant actor and an old mate of mine and I wanted to give him a job – not that he needs one! He never stops working! I love him to death and I could just imagine him as Lukey so I suggested him.

I worked with Colin McFarlane years and years ago; he’s got a brilliant voice. I suggested him.

We had a few names in the frame for Big Jeff and then Emily, the production assistant, suggested Ralph Ineson because she always wanted to work with him. I said, “Go on offer it to him. It’s a little role at the bottom of the credits, he’s not going to go for it…” and he said yes. I wasn’t going to argue with that – he’s got the perfect voice for a tall Northern man.

Tetsy was quite hard to cast – Susan Wokoma was the only part I didn’t cast. I’d not worked with her before but she’s very much of the moment and brought a very different energy to it. She was Charlotte’s suggestion.

Then Adrian Scarborough – we had loads of ideas for Sir Timothy and there was an actor in the frame who couldn’t do it. It’s a potentially very boring part because he’s slightly stiff and credulous. I needed somebody who was able to bring a slightly different energy to it. I thought of Adrian whose work I’d always liked – I’ve seen him on stage a lot. He’s an interesting left field idea so I suggested him and Charlotte went, “ooh let’s try him”. I thought he’d be good but he’s even better than I thought. It’s a tricky part and he’s made it really sing. I’m  really happy with what he did with it.

Has this whetted your appetite for more Kneale adaptations?

It’s really helped me with my Quatermass book because [Nigel Kneale’s widow] Judith Kerr came to the recording. I’d been trying to get in touch with her to talk about the Quatermass book, but I’d never been able to get past the agent. She came to the recording of The Road, she was delightful, I chanced my arm and said I’m doing a book on Quatermass. I took her for dinner, and she took me round to the house. She’s got the Thing from The Quatermass Experiment out of a plastic bag in the corner of the office; she took me up to Nigel’s office where there’s a Martian sitting in the corner and gave me access to stuff I had no idea existed.

[Added October 29] Have you been pleased with the play’s reception?

I’m staggered – the response had been amazing. I mean, I knew there’d be a small coterie of people like me who would be keen on it (but then they might have hated it because it’s not 100% the original, so even they were a worry!) but the response has been huge. We trended on Twitter! And loads of people who knew nothing about the play before have got in touch to say how great it was an how floored they were by the ending. Someone even Tweeted to say it’s got his 11 year old son into radio drama which has made me overjoyed!

And then last night I got an email from Judith Kerr saying how much she enjoyed it and that “Tom would have loved it.” I’m not afraid to say that got me a bit emotional. So job done. It’s been a totally thrilling experience from start to finish and I’m very lucky to have had this opportunity.

The Road is available to listen on iPlayer. Read our review here

The first, spoiler-free, part of this interview explains how Toby came to adapt The Road

Photos from the recording (c) Toby Hadoke and used with kind permission.

[miowsworld]

Prince Harry and Byline Investigates

Since the bombshell double-barrell litigation dropped by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, a hitherto little-known website now seems to have the exclusive scoop on all matters pertaining to the Royals’ cases.  This outfit goes by the name ‘Byline Investigates’.  It seems that Prince Harry is working closely with them.  So, the questions are: Who is ‘Byline Investigates’?  What do they do, what is their agenda? And more crucially, who funds them?

A cursory glance at the website shows that the investigators at this site have it in not only for the British tabloids but also for the respected broadsheets (they refer to the Sunday Times as the Sunday Crimes) and for Brexit. Extensive reports have been made, legal cases instituted.  So, who works for them?  And crucially, who funds them?  On their website, this information is not revealed.  This is concerning, given that the reason for the existence of this website seems to be to ‘expose’ the media and politicians - but only certain media outlets and only certain politicians are targeted.  The implications for freedom of speech is concerning, especially given that such a high profile Establishment figure as the Duke of Sussex has now thrown his weight behind this campaign.

I hope that this group gets investigated thoroughly, but I will make a very short start:

Who funds Byline?  It would seem that the initial seed money came from a crowdfunding effort.  According to the crowdfunding page they raised an initial £11k in 2017: Their aim:  to expose the Daily Mail.  See https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/byline-investigates-the-daily-mail where they state:

“If Byline don’t do this work, no one else will – the rest are all too scared of the Mail.”

On their website, the only information you get is this:

BASED IN LONDON, BYLINE INVESTIGATES IS A TEAM OF JOURNALISTS CROWD-FUNDED TO COVER THE STORIES THAT OTHER MEDIA ORGANISATIONS WON'T 

So, who works for them? 

The person in charge seems to be Graham Johnson, who used to work for the Mirror as a journalist.  He was found guilty himself of phone hacking, but  turned around and had a sudden conversion to the ‘good side’ when the prosecutions in the phone hacking scandal got going. See his video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdCkVmqYq-yM4ZOO6fZrFeA

I reproduce the Wikipedia page on Graham Johnson here as it would be interesting to see whether details are changed or added.  It already seems heavily redacted to me.  This is the entry as at 6 October 2019:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Johnson_(author)

Described in parliament as an "investigative reporter supreme",[1] Johnson has written for publications including the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror, The Observer, Vice, The Guardian and the Liverpool Echo, and often publishes crime stories under different bylines. He was shortlisted for Reporter of the Year at the 2005 British Press Awards.[2]

Johnson has appeared on Sky and BBC as a crime pundit and reporter. He has also made documentaries for Sky, Panorama and Germany's ARD. For Vice, Johnson has produced two documentaries, Fraud and The Debt Collector, which are informed by his own investigations. The Debt Collector was based on his books The Cartel and Young Blood.

Johnson worked at the Sunday Mirror from 1997 to 2005 and for six years was the newspaper's Investigations Editor. In 2014, he "blew the whistle" regarding phone hacking at the publication, describing his own involvement as "short and intense".[3] Johnson, who was "shown by a senior person in a supervisory capacity how to access voicemails", was given "great credit" by District judge Quentin Purdy for his confession. His defence asserted that Johnson was unaware that such hacking was illegal, and that he "discontinued... because he did not feel it was right".[4] Judge Brian Barker gave Johnson a suspended sentence but was convinced of his remorse, and noted that he had been "directed by others".[3] Johnson also spoke of a "culture of fear" at News of the World, in which writers fabricated stories under the leadership of Rebekah Brooks.[5]

Johnson has covered stories including drug dealing in Britain, people smuggling in Europe, child slavery in India and Pakistan, and war in the Balkans. To research his debut novel, Powder Wars (2004), Johnson spent several years on and off embedded with some of Britain's most notorious gangs. He also penned British gangster Stephen French's 2007 memoir, The Devil.[6] Johnson's novels have been published by Mainstream Publishing and Simon & Schuster. He currently lives in London.

Bibliography[edit]

Non-fiction (true crime)

Powder Wars (2004)

Druglord (2005)

Football and Gangsters (2006)

The Devil (2007)

Darkness Descending (2009)

Hack (2012)

The Cartel (2012)

Young Blood (2013)

Novels

Soljas (2010)

Gang War (2011)

EastRush (2017)

References[edit]

^ Cusick, James (15 October 2014). "Ex-Mirror journalist Graham Johnson charged with phone hacking". The Independent. Retrieved 15 July 2018.

^ "British Press Awards - first shortlists". Press Gazette. 10 February 2005. Retrieved 15 July 2018.

^ Jump up to:a b O'Carroll, Lisa (18 December 2014). "Sunday Mirror journalist given suspended jail sentence after admitting phone hacking". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 July 2018.

^ Cusick, James (6 November 2014). "Former Sunday Mirror reporter Graham Johnson 'turned himself in' and admitted phone hacking". The Independent. Retrieved 15 July 2018.

^ "I made up stories for News of the World". BBC News. 12 May 2012. Retrieved 15 July 2018.

^ Siddle, John (5 July 2013). "The Devil struggled against demons, says author". Liverpool Echo. Retrieved 15 July 2018.

[brianjaeger]

2017 Academy Award Best Picture Nominees Guide For Those Who Haven’t Actually Watched Them

America has been riding high on a rainbow made of happiness so far in 2017 and what better way to continue this year of indisputable joy than with the 89th airing of Hollywood’s 3-4 hour humble brag, selfie, circle jerk performed while millions watch on and express sincere emotional feelings and judgments about the character of human beings they have never actually met or interacted with, but oftentimes know more about than members of their immediate family, that’s right..THE OSCARS!

This year, the members of an industry that just one year ago did not let any men or women of color in, will compete to see who can give the most daring and passionate speech against a President who wants all men or women of color out. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a treat that comes but once a year!

But I haven’t had time to see all of the Best Picture nominees yet, Brian! You might be yelling in a panic. Me neither! With real life playing out on a daily basis with more plot twists, intrigue and drama than Streep’s entire film catalog, who has the time to actually go see these films.

I’ve got you covered. I went ahead and didn’t watch any of the films for you HOWEVER I’m here to give you a summary of what I THINK that they MIGHT be about based on the titles of the movies and their posters, as well as some pointers on things to slide into conversation at your Oscar parties so that fellow guests will look at you the same way that Goldie Hawn looks at a vodka on the pills.

Away we go!

La La Land

Ryan Gosling falls for a Raggedy Ann doll who’s in desperate need of a sandwich - but there’s a problem, he stutters. He’d la la like to tell Raggedy Ann that he la la loves her but he’s scared she’ll la la laugh at him. So he decides to try his la la luck by communicating through a different la la language - song and dance. John Legend shows up for a bit, says, “Hey, I acted!” then leaves, and at the end Raggedy Ann actually listens to Gosling “sing” so decides to la la leave him for the drummer from The Wonders. 

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

Damien Chazelle actually intended Whiplash to be a feel good musical too, but J.K. Simmons REALLY hated that boy.

Ryan Gosling trained rigorously with a renowned dance instructor for La La Land, and for his vocal coach he turned a blender on at the lowest speed.

Alright, before this party starts - if anyone says “La La Land is going to win because Hollywood loves movies about itself,” your unoriginal ass will be immediately asked to leave the party and we will all hit you with our shoes on your way out.

Arrival

A giant who lives in the sky loses a contact, which hurtles to earth causing everyone (including Amy Adams and Hawkeye) to absolutely lose their shit. President Trump immediately signs an executive order to get these goddamn illegal aliens out of our country. He then orders the building of a wall in the sky to keep any more from coming in and holds a press conference to confirm that Prime Minister Borgulon Phaltrop of Virgon 12 in the Qualmagon galaxy will 100% pay for that sky wall on the border of America and infinite space. Everyone shrugs and says, “Yeah, this seems about right.” 

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

They originally planned to call this movie Peaceful Departure, but didn’t want to give away the ending.

At the end, you find out that it’s just Amy Adam’s father...who is also Jody Foster’s father. They’re sisters.

In the climactic scene when the door to the spaceship finally opens and a purple animated alien voiced by Jim Parsons hops out and stumbles then laughs, “I thought the TRIP was over!” an entire movie theater committed suicide. 

Lion

Dev Patel is the voice of a lionfish who just lost his son Noil and now he’s off on an adventure as big as the ocean itself where the only thing he cares about is...finding Noil.    

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

A lion’s roar can be heard from as far as 5 miles away.

A lion’s heels don’t touch the ground when it walks.

Oh, Lion? No, I don’t know shit about it. But those are some sweet fucking facts about lions, right?

Hell or High Water

Well them Duke boys really are in a pickle this time! In this gritty and oftentimes haunting movie based on the classic TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, we find Bo and Luke on the run after the gruesome butchering of Boss Hogg with a stone mason’s hammer in a scene that lasts an uncomfortable 17 minutes that includes a bizarrely jarring amount of full frontal male nudity. Well ain’t that a hog’s hide of a tough hand them boys been dealt!

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

This movie has already taken home “Best Picture” at the Dustys.

In post production, they had to use CGI to make Chris Pine look LESS handsome because when looking upon his face audiences thought they were actually in Heaven...or High Water.

Hmmm. After careful consideration. I think I’ll have the high water.

Hidden Figures

It’s the 60′s and these three out of this world NASA secretaries aren’t wearing tight enough dresses to show of those vivacious curves. These dames have hidden figures! Time to get those scientists warm for your forms, gals. Be a little bit more sexy. We’re talking about your jobs here.

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

John Glenn? Yup. Was actually an African American female. Maybe you shouldn’t be so narrow-minded.

NASA celebrated the success of this film by letting other companies come in and blast rockets off on its launch pad - like the cuckold space agency that it now is.

OH! “Figures” is a double entendre that nods to their role in solving mathematical equations as well as their hidden role as important members of NASA’s early success because they were black women! I get it. That’s WAY better than “Hey! Dipshits! Black Women Played A Pivotal Role in America Being Awesome At Space!”

Moonlight

In this next chapter in the Field of Dreams franchise, we learn more about  Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, the baseball player turned doctor turned dead guy turned plucky hitchhiking ghost kid turned ghost Burt Lancaster turned vanishing cornfield ghost Burt Lancaster.

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

President Donald Trump spent the entirety of the movie screaming at the screen and asking it to set up a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Well, you guys do know that the only reason that Moonlight...(look around and gauge facial expressions)...hey, what IS Nicole Kidman wearing?! I mean, (nervous giggle) come on...

Hey guys, look! (Lower pants to reveal bare naked ass while standing next to a lamp.) Moon, light! (Immediately be asked to leave party.)

Hacksaw Ridge

This film from the director who brought you Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ is about a warrior who refuses to use a gun, instead he uses a...2X4! Hoooo-oooooh! USA! USA! USA! Hacksaw Jim Duggan makes his debut in a film from the actor who starred in Lethal Weapon and What Women Want as a soldier who will save dozens of lives through courage under fire. Duggan slobbers through the role in a movie from definitely not the guy recorded spewing racist, sexist, anti-Semitic remarks. Oh. No. That wasn’t another Trump joke, I was making a Mel Gibson joke. But potato, potato I guess.

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

He was able to rescue 75 soldiers but he just couldn’t save Uncle Ben.

I’m not sure if you know this, but Hacksaw Ruffles have Hacksaw Ridges.

The real Desmond Doss was...you guessed it...an African American woman.

Manchester by the Sea

In this movie about a sad guy with a Boston accent, Casey Affleck gives a performance that climbs into your bed and absolutely refuses to leave.  

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

If you think he’s good, you should see Matt Damon’s brother, Casey. Casey Damon.

An argument between supporters of Manchester United and Manchester City over which of the clubs this movie was referring to resulted in the death of hundreds.

Phonetically, the name of this movie could also be what some guy named Chester’s friend tells him to do on Wheel of Fortune while obviously not understanding that you only have to purchase vowels.

Fences

After the backlash from the exclusion of African Americans from the 2016 Oscar nominations, Denzel Washington and Viola Davis gently rock in rocking chairs while chuckling to themselves for an hour and 49 minutes checking their smart phones periodically to see if they’ve gotten their nomination yet. 

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

Denzel actually directed this movie too. He just kept saying, “Keep rocking. It’ll come.”

If you look close, you’ll notice a blooper when one of the fences is actually a railing.

Well, you guys do know that the only reason that Fences...(look around and gauge facial expressions)...hey, what IS Michelle Williams wearing?! I mean, (nervous giggle) come on...

[ecotone99]

[HR] Badges (Part 2)

(Continued from part 1)

An owl hooted eerily from a branch, its lonesome call echoing through the night. The wind was much cooler now, gusting in icy drafts through the campsite enough to make anyone shiver. Not a crunch of a leaf, though, nor a crack of a twig as he crept closer to the tent. His heart jackhammered in his chest like an interminable drum roll and sweat beaded nervously on the back of his neck and brow. When he reached the tent he exhaled silently through clenched teeth, his fingers feeling around at the bottom of the tent opening for the zipper hidden in the folds of canvas. At last he found it, cold and metallic, and gently, slowly, unzipped the tent. This was going to be the hardest part. What happened next all depended on getting in silently. Silencing the growl of zipper teeth with his palm he arched the zipper around to the other side. It seemed to take an eternity. Finally, to his relief, the tent was unzipped and open without a single stir from inside. Marcus waved to the other boys behind him. It was time.

With speed and efficiency Marcus and three other boys swarmed into the tent and grabbed Scoutmaster James by the arms and legs, rolling him forcefully onto his back out of his bed roll. James woke up groggy and confused thinking at first that he was still dreaming of Scoutmaster Hank.

“Wha-what are you..?” he protested, but before he could form a full sentence, the efficiency of the scouts he had trained was already being turned against him. Marcus lit up a flashlight blinding James, causing him to turn away from the light, burying his face on the tarpaulin floor of his tent. Meanwhile, two of the other boys produced several lengths of hemp rope and with James on his face, arms twisted behind his back, they began to hog-tie him.

James struggled, bucking against the children’s efforts, but his own efforts were in vain. The fat one, Brian, sat on his back with all two hundred thirteen pounds of him and pinned the Scoutmaster down.

“Get the fuck off me!” screeched James as one of the boys, Tyler, yanked the rope taut around his wrists. “What the hell do you kids think you’re doing?”

The boys paid no attention to their Scoutmaster’s caterwauling. Instead, Marcus instructed the younger ones like a general commanding his men.

“I wanna see good strong overhand knots, troops. This is for your Merit Badge. You don’t want him getting loose. He gets loose and you lose those badges.”

Over and under, the two boys secured the knots. Marcus eyed them, inspecting their work. James might have been a freak, but he had taught his Scouts well. The knots were up to snuff.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” complimented Marcus. He motioned Brian aside. “Sit on his head, but don’t crush him.” Brian did as he was told and James's wailing became more guttural and muffled.

Marcus took up his own length of rope and used it to figure eight Scoutmaster James’s wrists and ankles, causing the man to bend at the waist and look like a human rocking horse. It looked painful was what.

After the Scoutmaster was secured, Dev and Brian dragged James out of the tent to the clearing where two of the other boys had already got the fire going again. James lay with his face in the dirt watching the fire dance while the rest of the boys encircled him predatorily.

“What the fuck is going on?” he cried.

Marcus stepped out of James’s tent and stood before the man and the boys. Apart from James fruitlessly attempting to untie himself or roll away, the rest of them were silent, waiting for Marcus to speak.

“This is it, Scouts.” he began unceremoniously. “This fucker right here is ours and if we stick to the plan - and I mean all of us - then tonight he’s going to get what he’s got coming to him.” The boys stood in reserved quiet, hanging on his every word. Marcus looked each of them in the eyes as he continued. “This man, who was supposed to guide us, who was supposed to be the one person we could trust the most,” he kicked at Scoutmaster James with the toe of his boot. “He betrayed and hurt two of us already - hurt our brothers in ways that not one of us would wish on another person, let alone want to imagine. But he imagined it. He did more than that. He’s guilty, and tonight, we can do something right here, right now, that will make sure he never does that shit to anyone else ever again.”

The boys nodded in the darkness, the glow of the fire casting shadows across their faces giving them a look of ferality akin to the children in Lord of the Flies.

“Please,” gasped Scoutmaster James. “You don’t have to do any of this. I don’t know what you think you know but-”

Marcus kicked at him again, harder this time. “Shut up!” he yelled. “You don’t get to talk anymore.”

James whimpered in the dirt, hot tears rolling down his face as the campfire uncomfortably heated the skin of his bare legs.

“He’s right though,” said Marcus addressing the boys. “We don’t have to do this. We all agreed that either we all do it together, or we don’t do it at all. So, if any of you has any doubts…, if anyone here feels like he doesn’t want to be apart of this, step forward and we'll call this whole thing off. We'll call the police and he'll go to jail. If any of you wanna back out, or if you think you might want to back out later, speak up. Because once we start, we can’t stop.”

Marcus waited, but in the next minute of silence that followed none of the Scouts stepped up. He nodded.

“Okay then. Dev, get the magazine. And don’t forget, gloves on.”

Dev broke from the line of boys and jogged to his dome tent. After rustling around in his backpack for a few seconds he produced a set of work gloves, wiggling his fingers into the pair, and then a magazine, ‘Bondage Babes XXX’, still encased in protective plastic. He came back to the campfire and knelt beside the Scoutmaster, removed the plastic, and placed the magazine by James's bound hands.

“You feel the magazine, Scoutmaster?” asked Dev.

“Yeah,” whined James. “But, why? What does this have to do with-”

Dev cut him off. “I want you to open the magazine and flip through the pages. I’m sure it’s hard to do since you’re tied up and all, but you’re gonna have to try your best. If you don’t, I’m gonna break your fingers. Do you understand me?”

James understood. The positioning was awkward, but he was able to turn the pages slowly, one by one, only needing Dev to reposition the porno a few times.

“Good.” said Marcus after James had flipped through the entire book. “Now put it in his pack.”

Dev went to the Scoutmaster’s tent, found James’s pack and carefully stowed the magazine inside. A half-minute later he was back in the line of boys.

“Okay guys,” Marcus said. “That takes care of the rope burns that the cops are gonna find. Now before we get to the next part, lets go over our story one more time. Lenny, you’re first. Tell me what happened, just like you’d tell the cop.”

“Well, I don’t really know much,” said Lenny, shuffling his feet. “I went to sleep with the rest of the guys and woke up because I felt someone sliding on top of me. At first I thought it was a wild animal, like maybe I’d left my tent open and a deer or something had gotten in, and I didn’t have my glasses on either so I couldn’t really see, but then I smelled alcohol and realized that it was a person. It was Scoutmaster James.”

“That’s a goddamn lie!” roared James from the ground. Marcus kicked him in the ribs, whooshing all of the air out of the Scoutmaster’s lungs.

“Go on.” he told Lenny. “What happened next?”

“Well, at first I was confused, and then I was scared, especially when he put his hand down my shorts, so I screamed out. But he put his other hand over my mouth. I started kicking and I bit his hand, hard enough to taste blood in my mouth, and that just made him mad. He punched me in the face real good, and then he started choking me. I couldn’t breathe and everything was going black, but then I saw Marcus burst into my tent and try to pull the Scoutmaster off of me. I was in and out of consciousness, but I think that Marcus started wrestling with Scoutmaster James and somehow he got stabbed.”

“What did you do after I was stabbed,” questioned Marcus.

“Well, the Scoutmaster turned on me, but by then all the other boys had woken up and were fighting against the Scoutmaster. He must have been really drunk, because he wasn’t making any sense. And I remember thinking that maybe a wild animal really did try to get me in my tent. I was scared, really scared, but I also saw that Marcus was bleeding a lot out of his shoulder, so I ripped up some of my sheets and made him a tourniquet. By the time I was finished and finally came out of the tent, the Scoutmaster had been stabbed a bunch of times, and my troop looked really beat up. Kids were crying and bleeding. It was horrible.”

Marcus nodded approval. “Which one of you was the first one to try to get the Scoutmaster off of me?”

Graham raised his hand. “I was sharing a tent with Shawn and Derek. We got woken up by the screaming. When we went to check on where it was coming from, I saw the Scoutmaster stab Marcus, and then when he saw me, he came out into the clearing after me, but Shawn hit him with a log to the shin. Derek woke up the other boys and told them to get their pocket knives because that's really the only weapons we had, and by then, Scoutmaster James was already up, coming after Shawn now. I stabbed the Scoutmaster in the back with my pocket knife, and he hit me in the face. He was really drunk and screaming at us the whole time. But then the other boys were up and out of their tents, and when they saw what was happening, they all came to help us. We stabbed him until he stopped trying to hurt us.”

“Who called 911?” asked Marcus.

Nolan raised his hand. “It was me. After the Scoutmaster went down, I called 911, because I saw that Marcus was hurt real bad, and most of us were pretty beat up. The Scoutmaster had put up a real fight before he went down. I used the emergency phone that the Troop keeps in the lockbox.”

Marcus nodded again.

“Please, guys.” begged Scoutmaster James. “You guys can’t go through with this. There’s gotta be a better way. You could just call the police right now. I’ll go to jail!”

Marcus squatted down in the dirt so that he could look the Scoutmaster in the eyes. “Yeah. You might go to jail. You might go to jail for a long time. But you might also get out of jail, or you might just get probation or something. And that’s too many might’s for us. What did you say to Luke? That if you went to jail, you’d get out? You’d get out and hurt him all over again. And if you didn’t get to him, you’d just get to someone else. So no. You won’t be going to jail, Scoutmaster James. Not this time.”

Marcus signaled to Dev, who produced a long knife and placed it in the Scoutmaster’s hand, saturating the handle with the man's fingerprints before taking it away from him again.

Dev looked up at Marcus. “You’re totally sure about this, Mark?”

Marcus looked down at the monster that lay tied at his feet, disgust for the man swirling its toxicity through his guts. “Yeah, I’m sure. You ready, Lenny?”

“Ready.” confirmed the boy.

Lenny walked up to the Scoutmaster’s prone, tied up form and kneeling, bit deep into the palm of James’s hand. James cried out in pain, his curses and threats falling on the deaf ears of Troop #44.

Together, with Dev in the lead, Marcus and Lenny walked to the younger boy’s tent and got inside. First they tore up a bed sheet into several strips of bandages, handing them in a bundle to Dev. When they were finished, Lenny laid down on his bedroll. Marcus straddled him.

“Close your eyes. I still gotta hit you one good time."

Lenny shut his eyes and braced himself for the punch that Marcus sent hard and fast to the right side of his jaw. Pain and flashing electric stars exploded in the boys brain.

"Jesus fuck," Lenny cried. "That was a good one."

"Sorry, bud," apologized Marcus. " Remember, tap out when you feel yourself going; okay?” Lenny nodded, swallowing blood and bracing himself once more.

Marcus placed his hands around the boy’s throat and began to choke him. Lenny struggled and his legs kicked, but Marcus didn’t let up, even as the fear that he was willfully killing his friend welled up inside of him like a hot air balloon taking off into the sky. Lenny held onto consciousness like a champ, but after nearly a minute and a half of choking, he limply tapped Marcus’s wrist and Marcus let go as Lenny lighted out.

“Okay, man,” said Dev, watching the entire thing happen. “You need that CPR badge. Bring him back.”

Marcus tilted Lenny’s head back, plugged the boy’s nose, and blew air into his mouth. It only took three chest compressions to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive” for Lenny to cough himself back into the land of the living, blinking dazedly, sitting up slowly, rubbing his aching neck and throat

“Breathe Lenny," ordered Marcus. "Deep breaths."

The boy did as he was told, in and out, his shallow breaths becoming stronger and more stable with each exhalation.

Dev clapped the younger boy on the back in a congratulatory fashion. "There he is. How do you feel?"

Lenny coughed and cleared his throat. "I'm alright."

“Ready to get that First Aid badge, kid?”

Lenny offered a nod. “Let’s do this.”

Dev turned to Marcus, knife in hand. “You ready?”

Marcus shook his head and laughed uneasily. “No, not really. Let’s get this over with before I change my mind though.” He bared his shoulder to Dev and looked away.

“Here it goes, on a count of three. One…two…, three!”

Dev plunged the blade of the knife deep into the hollow between Marcus’s shoulder and breastplate. A sick wet popping noise sounded off where the cartilage under the boy’s skin punctured, and before Marcus could cry out in pain he nearly passed out from it. Blood immediately began to gush from the wound, flowing thick and warm down Marcus’s chest. It took everything in him to suppress the urge to vomit.

Dev pulled the knife free of his friend’s shoulder, disgusted by the suction sound as it came out and snapped his fingers at Lenny. “Come on! First Aid Badge! Stop that bleeding and get him wrapped up! Just like we practiced!”

Using the strips of torn up bedsheet, Lenny wrapped the wound over Marcus’s shoulder blades and across his chest, tightly, uncomfortably for the injured boy. But uncomfortable was good. Uncomfortable meant that the tourniquet was doing it’s job. Too many improvised tourniquets were applied too loosely and failed to staunch bleeding. The boys could not afford this one to go awry. Lenny was careful and deft in his work.

After all of the bedsheets had been tied on, Lenny motioned for Marcus to lie down. “I need to stay here to keep pressure on it.” He placed his hands over the makeshift bandages and pressed down hard, ignoring Marcus’s wince of pain. “Take care of the Scoutmaster quick. He’s going to need a doctor.”

Dev clapped Lenny on the back. “Hang in there, man,” he said to Marcus and headed out of the tent.

Scoutmaster James lay on his side now, sobbing beside the fire. With Marcus now out of commission, the boys all deferred to Dev, waiting patiently for their next orders.

“Zack. You’re up.”

A lanky boy with sandy colored hair, still in an old set of Star Wars pajamas that juxtaposed oddly against his hiking boots, came forward toting his own backpack. He fished inside of it and came up with a small funnel and a glass bottle. He tossed the bottle to Dev, who caught it one-handed, the fire making the glass sparkle and shine like a glittering diamond wrapped around amber liquid.

Dev snapped his fingers at Graham and Kyle. “You two, hold im down. Make sure he doesn’t move.”

The two boys flanked the scoutmaster and rolled him onto his back, holding him down by his shoulders.

“Guys,” wailed James, “What the fuck is in that? What are you doing? Y-You kids are fucking crazy!”

“Don’t worry,” said Kyle. “It's just a little Jack Daniels, sir. Relax. It’ll all be over really soon.”

When Dev came at Scoutmaster James with the funnel, James thrashed his head back and forth, but Zack clamped down by the man’s ears and held him still. “Quit moving!” the boy ordered. “I’ll tear your ears off if you don’t stop.”

Scoutmaster James became still, but kept his lips tightly sealed as Dev tried to get the funnel in. “Come on, sir,” said Dev with exhaustion. “You’re making this harder than it has to be. I mean, you still gotta breathe, don’t you?”

The boy pinched the man’s nostrils shut. James’s eyes rolled wildly in their sockets back and forth, fat beads of sweat dripping off his brows, the smell of him anxious and afraid. After about twenty seconds of holding his breath, James’s lungs began to burn and when instinctively he gasped a breath, Dev jammed the funnel between the man’s teeth and down his throat.

“Gaaaarrrrggghhh!”

“Derek, I need you to pour!”

Derek appeared by Dev’s side and was handed the bottle of Jack Daniels. Cracking it open, he tilted the bottle slowly into the funnel and down Scoutmaster James’s throat.

“Not too fast,” warned Dev. “We don’t want him choking to death.”

Derek nodded and slowed down a little. It didn’t take long before the bottle was empty. Derek replaced the cap, wiped off the bottle on his shirt and handed it to Dev, who still had his gloves on. Dev kicked the Scoutmaster over with his boot and crouched, placing the bottle at the man’s hands again.

“Just like before, Scoutmaster. Grab the bottle. Touch all over it, like how you touched all over those boys.”

James grabbed the bottle, feeling the cold glass, as well as what it had contained swirling hotly in his gut, flushing his skin and making him feel drowsy and empty headed. He barely noticed when Dev took the bottle back, James’s fingers still attempting to clutch the glass, confused as to why they no longer could.

Dev took the bottle to the Scoutmaster’s tent and tossed it inside, then walked over to Lenny’s tent to check in on Marcus.

“How are you guys doing in here?”

Marcus gave him a thumbs-up with his good arm. “Doing fine. Hurts like a bitch, though. I’ll be glad when this is all over.”

“Me too buddy. Won’t be long now, and then you’ll be eating hospital jello.” Dev looked at Lenny, who was still applying pressure to Marcus’s shoulder. “Keep him alive, kid. You’re doing great.”

Lenny nodded and pressed harder down on Marcus’s bandages, causing the injured boy to yelp, “Jesus! Fuck!” Dev smiled and left, returning to his fellow scouts.

“Okay guys,” he said. “What we need to do now, is make it look like there was a big struggle out here. I want all of you over there by Lenny’s tent going at it. That’s where it all happens in our story, so that’s where it all has to look like it happened.”

Laying in the dirt, drunk and in pain, James couldn’t believe what he was watching. What the hell were these kids doing. He squinted. His vision had begun to go blurry from the alcohol, not to mention things coming in and out of focus, bringing doubles of themselves with them. It made what he was watching all the more confusing.

The boys had formed a ring outside of Lenny’s tent, staring at each other with steely-eyed determination. And then one let out a war cry and they all rushed each other. Suddenly boys were throwing punches, throwing kicks, rolling around in the dirt, pulling out hanks of each other’s hair. James couldn’t understand why. They had all been such nice boys. Even Nolan, the homosexual one. There he was, going right along with it, down there in the dirt on top of Shawn pummeling him in the face. Why?

Brian threw Lucas into a tent and knocked the entire structure down, the sound of tent poles snapping like bones cracking in the dark. Dev put two fingers in his mouth and whistled for the boy's attention. As the whistle split through the mosh pit of children, they all stopped what they were doing and helped each other to their feet.

“Pocket knives.” said Dev. It was time.

Responding to Dev's signal, one by one the boys removed knives from their pockets, unhinging the blades, locking them into place. Dev and Brian left the group and found their way back to Scoutmaster James. Dev, lifting at James's shoulders, Brian lifting at the man's legs, the two of them carried the Scoutmaster, ignoring his blubbering ("Please, Jesus! I didn't mean any of it! I'll go away! You'll never see me again! I swear to God I'll disappear!") over to the weaponised boys, setting him down gingerly in the dirt outside of Lenny's tent.

"Okay," said Dev. "Shawn, Zack, and Nolan. You guys first. Do it fast. In the back, mid center. Maximum organ damage."

The three boys dutifully stepped forward. They stood looming over the man who had led and guided them for the past year, knives brandished menacingly in their fists. They cast knowing, unapologetic glances at each other. The air was thick with something like apprehension, each of them understanding that after this moment there was truly no turning back from their choices.

Nolan, the youngest of them, was the first to kneel beside his former leader. Without a word he planted the blade of his knife just inches away from the man's spine, feeling it nearly get stuck in the gristle of James's back. Shawn and Zack crouched down immediately afterwards and stabbed James in both of his kidneys.

The three boys pulled their knives free and stepped away from James's bleeding, whimpering body. Dev bent down and rolled the Scoutmaster over and buried his blade in the man's stomach and yanked up hard on the handle. James made a noise like a cough before letting out a shill, high-pitched whine in the back of his throat. Before Dev could remove his blade, Brian was at his side jabbing his blade three times into the Scoutmaster's ribs.

Tyler took his turn next, stabbing James in the chest, narrowly missing his left lung. "See ya, Scoutmaster," he said reaching an arm out for help.

Derek gave Tyler a hand up out of the dirt and stabbed James in the top of his meaty left thigh, leaving the blade stuck in. "Looks more realistic," he said. The other boys seemed to agree because none of them objected.

Blood was pouring out of James's mouth when Lucas stepped forward.

"This is for Kyle," he said as he stabbed James in the balls. James's howling sent a rash of goosebumps shivering across Dev's skin.

Kyle caught Lucas's eyes and felt a strong affinity for the boy as he came forward with his knife, the last of them.

"Finish it," said Dev with grave finality.

Kyle took a deep breath. His father was a pastor. Murder was a deadly sin and in doing this he was putting his immortal soul at risk. But when he thought of what had happened to him in the shower at the Rec Center, all Kyle could think of was all of the other children that would eventually fall prey to the man at his feet if he were left alive. In the Bible, God punished the wicked. Suffer not the little children.

"It would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble," Kyle said and stuck his knife into Scoutmaster James's heart.

Moments passed in silence. Dev could hear blood rushing to his own brain. The Scoutmaster died without a final word. His body lay in the dirt as if it had always been there. Dev knelt down and cut the ropes free from the Scoutmaster's wrists and ankles and walked up to the fire, tossing them into the embers to burn away.

"Shawn," he said. "Get the fire put out. Nolan, get on the phone with the police."

The boys did exactly what they were told.

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