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mor-beck-more-problems · 5 years ago

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Monster House || Morgan, Cassie, & Blanche

Three gals, one creepy old house, and TOO MANY ghosts.

Contains: ghostly body horror

@harlowhaunted @deathsdoorman

Morgan brought her car up to the curb in front of the Bachman house. She had gone up the drive many times before, but under the cover of eternal night, it seemed more foreboding, more dangerous, and Morgan had a flash of fear that the earth might swallow her car if she left it alone, an offering to be devoured. It was probably her fear talking, the night pressing on longer than thirty minutes in front of her happy light could help. Or it could be the four-ish deaths she’d recently uncovered thanks to her sleuthing with Rio and Winston. Agnes’ father had been impaled on farming equipment, her sister strangled in clothesline, and one of her nieces drowned in a pail. Accidents, all of them. The exact cause of death for Agnes’ mother, Hannah, was unknown, because she was found so many days later, when a neighbor was alerted by the buzzing growth of decomposition. And that didn’t count the little disasters that had come before then. Something about the curse, which only knew how to take and torture, seemed to have embedded itself into the walls, and Morgan felt a twist of guilt at agreeing to bring Blanche along. Seeing this through with Cassie was one thing. Unavoidable, even if her refusal to let Morgan pay her back somehow made her neck itch with discomfort. But Blanche? She was a kid. A reckless, overworked kid in way over her head in so many ways. She didn’t need another. But here they were. Marching headlong into a completely literal danger zone.

The Bachman house was the oldest of its kind on the street, steadfast against the press of time that peeled its fingers over the paint and shingles and bowed its fist on the front step. The earth, still in its winter sleep, seemed to have made an uneasy truce with the place, growing in brown prickly brambles around the perimeter, but stopping short of the place itself. The strange clarity of this border made the house seem ensconced in its own picturesque dome of grim. Morgan walked as far as the weeds and sat down, clutching her bag to her chest. She had Cassie’s special brew, a tin of Morton’s, the iron rod she’d been gifted by Deirdre, and a shiny new transmutation circle on a cuff around her wrist. It was more than she’d ever had coming here on her own, but knowing what she knew now, it didn’t seem like enough.

Pulling the car up across the street and leaning across to look out from the passenger side window Cassie sized up the building looming just ahead of her. Reaching behind her to the back-seat Cassie pulled through and slung her bag across her chest and stepped out of the car. One of these things is not like the others. Amongst its newer and less neglected siblings the house stuck out with its dilapidated yard and forlorn looking façade against the fresh coats of paint, well-manicured lawns and front porches of its neighbours. Never judge a book by its cover, but she felt it was safe to say that saying didn’t count under the circumstances. She didn’t even have to step inside to get an uneasy vibe from the place.

She raised her palm up in a small wave as she spotted Morgan where Morgan was sat, bag clenched to her chest. “There’s uh….a lot of character going on here,” she offered in tentative greeting as she approached and stopped just outside the threshold. “You sure about this?” She was sure she already knew the answer, but she had to ask all the same. Okay, two out of three so far were here. The third party was the worry. Blanche was young, but determined, persistent even, but if every other interaction so far was to go on, she was going to do this kind of anyway. She may as well get the full experience with some backup.

Regan was going to kill her. Remmy was going to kill her. Blanche was probably going to want to punch herself in the face after this. But it was fine. She pulled up in her yellow jeep, parking on the side of the road, already spotting where Morgan and Cassie were. She hopped out, grabbing her backpack that had… Well. She hadn’t known what to bring. She had a lot of salt, acid mace, regular mace, the chalk pens, and that book that Cassie told her to get with her. Just in case. She made Granny stay at home because she didn’t want Granny getting into a fistfight with a cranky ‘caught in between’ ghost. She still didn’t know what that meant.

“Hey guys,” Blanche said, approaching the two. She looked at the house and grimaced. “Spooky house,” she said. The sort of house that had this been three months ago, she would have had to be dragged into kicking and screaming. It was like something broke in her - the denial and the living in secret wasn’t something she wanted to do anymore. It was exhausting. But, well, this didn’t seem to be very restful. Still, Morgan was nice, and she liked her, so she couldn’t just leave her alone. She shifted the backpack on her back, looking between the two. “So what’s the plan?”

Morgan fixed her attention on Cassie and Blnache’s shoes. They were nice shoes, black and sensible, and ready for ass-kicking in a pretty on TV sort of way. Morgan wished she’d gotten the memo and put on something besides her busted sneakers, but that wasn’t why she was looking. It was just easier to see three pairs of shoes on a rickety stoop than two good, nice people with hope and salt in their bags, and her. She could turn them away, she thought. Sorry, game over, thanks but no thanks, I’ll just take my blind ass in there alone bye! But she needed this. She needed the universe to stop blowing holes in her like so much swiss cheese. She needed coming to White Crest to amount to something more than hurt and confusion. “Spooky Central!” She said brightly. “Come for the ambiance, stay for the impending doom.” She forced herself up to her feet, iron and salt at the ready. “Um, we stick together, because splitting up is for horror movies, and that’s not us. We don’t know who all might actually be in there, but both Agnes’ parents, her sister, and one niece all died in there back when. I don’t know if Agnes can turn up if she died in Texas, ghost travel isn’t my thing, but it is yours! Hopefully whoever Constance is shows up, and--” She held herself a little straighter. She was fine. This was fine. Plans were supposed to be simple and straightforward, right? “At the end of the day, we just need to get the dirt on why my family’s been cosmically screwed for at least four generations! The older they are, the more likely they’ll know.”

The last of their party arrived hefting a backpack which looked like she was packing for doomsday, but she came prepared, she would give her that. Had Cassie really been that young when she started out? Too young for this. This was probably how everybody that had ever clued her in had felt now she was in their shoes. It was a weirdly jarring feeling. Cassie looked over at Morgan and flashed her a brief look of doubt. Yeah no, this is a bad idea, a thought she quickly shook off. Okay, so she had two people she had to watch out for. No big deal. It was just to talk anyway. No exorcisms needed necessarily. This was doable. “Yeah, no splitting up,” she agreed with a small shake of her head. “That never works out and if there’s anybody in there we’ll know soon enough. We’ll get them talking,” she shrugged. Getting them to do the opposite was usually the problem. Plus, if they split up, she just knew she would turn around at some point and Blanche would manage to find the broken floorboard or portal to a hell dimension. Call it a Sixth sense. “How about we take things room by room,” she offered up, looking back towards the house. “Go from there,” she finished as the dry grass reeds parted to her left as something skittered through.

Impending doom was right. Blanche looked at the house, doubtfully. Maybe she should have brought Granny with her. Granny was always better at calming down ghosts - but those ghosts were usually, like, freshly dead. “I’m all for not splitting up,” Blanche said. “I know, surprising, but like - I do have some sense of self-preservation you know,” She shot them a grin, as goodhearted as she could make it. She was a little anxious, but as Morgan pointed the way to go, she was the one that strode right ahead, grimacing at whatever slithered through the grass. Nope. Nope. Nope. They were supposed to deal with the inside of the house, not whatever animal was in the grass. Gripping onto one of her backpack straps tightly, she tensed the second she pushed the door open. She definitely knew that feeling. She held the door open for the other two, walking a little deeper into the house, looking around the entryway curiously. “Room by room, yeah? This the best place to start for our friends?”

The Bachman house welcomed them with a damp sigh. As they crossed the threshold one by one, the doorframes edged away from their frames, making room for their new guests. The walls, flaking like fine old gentlemen, stood as straight as they had the day they rose. Stairs rose in neat lines, and pine and oak furniture, stubborn against the wear of time, glowered alongside their moth and maggot familiars.

“Hello, old house,” Morgan sang tentatively. In visits past, she had said so as a peace offering toward the presumed beings loitering around. Knowing what she knew now, however, of White Crest, of the many ways her ancestors had perished, it became a plea for mercy. Agnes, from what she had gathered, had liked to be the center of entertainment. Her sister, Martha, had been more of the ‘boss the servants around’ type. And their mother, Hannah, had been ill after a tragic, brutal fall before her eventual death, like Morgan’s own mother had been. Because of course she had. Because some torments were just so good they bore repeating.

“Parlor first,” Morgan said, “Maybe they’ll be partying where the party’s at, right?” She stepped ahead of the others, iron rod raised in front of her. “Either of you see anything?” To Morgan’s ordinary eyes, the place was much as it had always been, except for a door in the corner that she didn’t remember being there before. Morgan went still. “Blanche--? Cassie?” She called.

“Emphasis on some'' Cassie half-joked at Blanche and followed after the two of them. “But good to hear,” Cassie was the last one to step across the threshold and closed the door over behind her just as that familiar pins and needles sensation spread. She could feel it spike as she stepped further inside the front room and trail down her arms and crept up to the tip of her neck. She did her best to shake it off and pressed on. Taking a cursory glance around she caught sight of a few weak fleeting figures that seemed like they were doing their best to keep out of her eyeline. Weird. Cassie looked away from the others for a second and took a few steps towards the door on her right to peek inside following after one of the figures, but thought better of it. “Okay, parlour sounds good,” she started, “let me try and get hold of few of these—" she moved to turn around and found herself facing a wall. The hell did that come from? Shaking off the confusion she looked around for any sign of Blanche or Morgan, but found herself alone in a now empty hallway. “Guys?” She called out again and let out a frustrated sigh and ventured through the first door she could find and stepped inside. A dark-haired figure flitted across the room, but she couldn’t quite make them out in the gloom, “Morgan?”

“Cassie? I don’t think these guys want to-” Blanche started, absentmindedly following after Morgan to the Parlor as a figure darted just out of her eyeline. Must be one skittish ghost. “Guys?” Blanche did not find Morgan, even though she just saw her go through the door. Instead, she found a moth-eaten dusty bed. Blanche stared at it, silently a moment, before turning around. “Cassie?” Nope. There was a window. Blanche stared at it for a long moment. Her entire body was on edge because they were all clearly note alone in the house, but now she was just tense. When the hell did she get to the second floor of the building? Blanche backed away from the the window, turning away as she patted her pockets for her cell phone, intending on calling Cassie straight away. No service. “Are you kidding me?” she hissed, before she heard something move. She looked up, and moved straight through the open doorway and into the Hallway - nope. Not the hallway. “.... Cassie! Morgan!” Blanche yelled at the top of her lungs. It was a big ass house, but someone had to hear her. Maybe, though, she realized after, with a grimace, she should be careful. There were others in the house after all.

They left me, Morgan thought. The plan didn’t mean anything and they left me. Was that the real plan, to disappear? Morgan stayed rooted in place, the rod trembling in her hands. The Bachman House breathed around her, raising dust around the old floorboards. Its cold breath pinched her, cruel and needling. The walls laughed, as the playground children had laughed, and the third dates she tried to tell about magic, her old cohort. And under them was a strange sound, a tisk of disapproval, or of keeping time. Tat, tat, tat, tat… Morgan wobbled on her feet and inched through the new door, clearly she wasn’t going to find anyone in here—and found herself on a stairwell, suffocated in dark. “No—” She dashed back the way she’d come and crashed into a wall. Trapped. “No, no, you do not get to do this. Cassie! Blanche!” She stumbled up blindly, each stair scraping on her ankles like so many teeth. She had to get to them—didn’t she?

The room was empty save for a debris-covered fireplace and some moth-eaten curtains. Cassie breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped inside and caught sight of Morgan’s sneakers in the dim light. Okay, now they just needed to find Blanche. She was crouched in the corner of the room with her back to the door. “Hey, you find something?” She asked taking a step closer, “thought we said we weren’t splitting up where’s—"she cut herself off and felt the pin prickles erupt along her arms again as she got closer and clocked the tattered denim jacket and dishevelled dark hair. No, not Morgan. Definitely not Morgan. A pair of terrified dark eyes flickered up at her. “Hey,” she ventured tentatively like she was approaching a startled animal, “you help me I’ll help you have you seen-”

The girl rose up suddenly, hands clinging to the wall and shrank away from her as though she were contagious, “stay away,” her voice cracking from disuse. “Get away from me!” She shrieked and streaked past her, making contact with her right arm sending the feeling of her skin being plunged into ice water and darted past her at speed through the wall. Taking their advice Cassie got out and called out again, “Blanche? Morgan?” She yelled. “The hell are you?” She asked quietly as she weighed up her options. “Stay where you are! I’ll come to you,” she tried, hoping one of them was close enough to hear that. For a split second she could have swore she heard someone call out and followed blindly in the direction it came from.

“Cassie! Morgan!” Blanche was bellowing Cassie and Morgan’s names over and over again. It was a big house, but it wasn’t that big. They had to find each other eventually. Flashes of people danced around the corners of her eyes, but everytime she turned to look, nothing was there. She did not like that. She didn’t like that one bit. She was hardly used to seeing ghosts when they were normal, she didn’t like them when they were screwing with her. And this whole maze of rooms thing? Not cool. Blanche was going through rooms as fast as humanly possible, none of them ever where she meant to go and none of them being right. It wasn’t until she ended up in a closet that she finally stopped and took a fucking breath.

It was a large closet. Blanche turned on the flashlight on her phone, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Blanche screamed backing up against the wall as she stared at the human skeletons. Her stomach twisted, she for a moment, she was certain she was going to hurl. Except the jacket. The stupid fucking jacket. Blanche latched onto the first thing she saw that would ground her fear, and it was a jacket. Faded and moth eaten and dusty… It was hung around the shoulders of the bones, but that wasn’t what she was concerned with. DIE was on the breast pocket. She knew that fraternity on campus, but this was just a cruel joke. She was rooted to the spot now, staring at this stupid jacket around a dead person’s bones. Eerily, she was calm now - or numb. Her head sort of felt fuzzy, almost like she was in a dream. What a dream, what a nightmare. She went to leave… And then turned back around, unsure what possessed her to carefully take the jacket with her. Two people had died in this house alone and scared, someone had to miss them. And Adam could track down any DIE alumni and figure out who had gone missing. What their names were. Who were they? She wanted to know. Blanche’s stomach churned as she clutched the moth eaten jacket to her, before stumbling back into the hallway eyes burning with tears. Wait. Hallway. The hallway! No more room swapping hell! “Cassie! Morgan!” Blanche yelled again, turning a corner and catching sight of the stairs. She bolted to them immediately. “Hey! Can anyone hear me?!”

Morgan was sure she’d been walking the same stairs for hours now. She had stopped for breath, she had raced on almost all fours in desperation, and it was still just this. Just her and the dark, alone.

Tat, tat, tat, tat….

Morgan tripped on the latest step and slammed onto her knees. “What the hell?” Her voice trembled hoarsely in her throat.

“Come out already, pumpkin.”

It was a soft voice, steady and sure. Morgan couldn’t place the sound, but there was something in the cadence that chilled her with familiarity. What was happening? Why couldn’t she get out? Morgan staggered back up to her feet and began to climb again. Any second now, it had to be. She couldn’t be more than a few steps from the top. She continued, on and on, over and over. Had there been a landing she’d missed? A door just to her right or something. Of course there was. Only you could get lost on a fucking staircase. Morgan stopped, and fished out her flashlight for what--the third time? Or the first? Had she tried it before or dismissed the obvious idea because getting something right would just be too novel an experience?

The light came on. Morgan was staring in front of another door.

Earth and fucking stars, she had been in front of it the whole time. Morgan threw her weight against it and stumbled into a hallway. She looked behind her--there was no door. No enclosed stairs. She was coming up the main staircase that had watched them when they first entered. Someone was calling her name. Or was that in her head? Stupid, lonely-- no. Blanche was there, running towards her.

“What the hell is wrong with you!” Morgan snapped. “What were you--” she couldn’t breathe. She was trembling from the shoulders down. Shit. How did she breathe again? She couldn’t forget how to breathe. It was in there somewhere, right? In. Hold. Out. Slowly, counting the time. One, two, three, three-- wait. Morgan looked up at Blanche from her haggard crouch in the middle of the hall. “You were supposed to be right behind me,” she said. “And what is that you’re holding?”

She could hear them yelling but every time she thought she was getting close it faded and died and she was left with silence. Cassie lost count of how many doors she went through that seemed to lead her on in what felt like an unending loop. “Here! I’m here!” She called back to no answer and sat down to catch her breath on one of the chairs left sprawled in the basement that sent out a thick plume of dust before she registered, she wasn’t alone down there. Several pairs of eyes turned to look at her and instantly rushed her. A chorus of frantic voices fought amongst themselves to be heard over the din and figures pushed and shoved to jostle for position in front of her. “One at a time,” she yelled. “One at a damn time,” to no avail. If her patience had been low before it was non-existent now. Reaching into her bag she opened up the salt container and launched it into the air sending anyone stupid enough to have stuck around to see it in her hands evaporated into the air. On the move again she tried to make contact again, but none of the occupants inside lingered long enough to be of any use or offer any help. They were all just kids, terrified kids too far gone to be of any use. Pressing on she wound her way through the house until she finally pushed against the one door that emptied her out into the hallway. Her eyes took a moment to adjust and clocked the two figures huddled close together and felt a flicker of relief at the sight of both Morgan and Blanche just ahead of her. She attempted to dust herself off on approach and caught her breath. “I’ve been looking everywhere,” she stopped to get a breath, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you guys,” she managed in relief and clocked the tattered fabric in Blanche’s hands. “You find something?”

“Morgan!! Morgan!” Blanche exclaimed in relief, before Morgan’s name caught in her throat as she lashed out at her. Blanche looked at her, eyes wide, shaking her head. “I was right behind you! I was right behind you! I got spit out in the bedroom! I don’t know what happened. And then I started running through the house and nothing was right and -” Blanche was shaking and talking way faster than she meant. She didn’t realize how terrified she had been until she looked down at the jacket and saw her knuckles white with how hard she was gripping the jacket. She took in a shaky breath, jumping as Cassie hurried up to them. She let out a sigh of relief, nodding. “There’s - I don’t know where, but - I mean, two people, two skeletons…” Blanche wasn’t great at explaining, but she shifted the jacket in her hands and showed the D.I.E. logo on it. “This is a frat at my school. I thought… if I talked to my friend, they could… figure out who they were,” Blanche said, suddenly feeling very foolish. This wasn’t why they were here at all. They were here for Morgan. Blanche’s face felt hot, and her eyes burned slightly, and she looked down, clutching the jacket back to her. After a moment, she got it together. “What the hell just happened?”

Morgan was still struggling to breathe. She gave up on maintaining her crouch and stood, pressed against the wall as she forced oxygen through her teeth. “Yeah, while we’re at it, we can pick up trophies from every other dumbass who died lost in a two story house!” She snapped. Stars, this was wrong. This was wrong, wrong, wrong, but Morgan couldn’t figure out in which direction, should she be doing this alone? Was that better? Or was the stupider thing to push Cassie and Blanche away? The thoughts in her head were soured like milk left in the sun, ugly blobs rising to the surface, smelling strange, and wrong. She clenched her fists. “We’re lost,” she said, trying to line up the facts for herself as much as the others. “We might die here. You need to get out. I, meanwhile, am going to--”

Her eyes didn’t even look away. They were on the end of the hall, she could’ve sworn they were on it the whole time, when it stretched impossibly far away from them and the door, or had there been a door? There must have been, her eyes never left it-- The door opened with a cruel thump as it hit the wall on its hinges.

Morgan looked to the others and back to the hall again. “We are so screwed,” she whispered.

“Hey!” Cassie frowned at Morgan, “let’s not start turning on each other. I get it, but this is the last thing anybody needs. Keep it together.” She swiped more of the dust away from her arms as she crossed to stand close by and folded her arms over. Her eyes flickered to Blanche as she mentioned finding remains and softened. Shit. What was seeing something like that going to do to her? For a first rodeo this was like throwing her in the deep end and attaching a concrete cylinder block for good measure. She registered the letter jacket in Blanche’s hands with the letters D.I.E on it, yeah, that’s not an omen at all “Soon as this is over and we’re out of here we’ll find somebody to give that to,” she reassured. She shook it off and sighed “I couldn’t get a straight answer from anybody. It’s all just a bunch of college kids and high schoolers. Something’s got them too scared out of their minds to make any sense.” Something was causing this, messing with their heads, with what they saw. This was beyond your standard poltergeist activity; past any hallucinations they could pull. “We’re not lost and we’re going to die,” Cassie urged at Morgan again, “come on, enough,” she pressed and padded over towards Morgan to pull her along with them when the hallway gave itself The Haunted Mansion Ride treatment and elongated out. She stopped still and watched. “We’re all getting out. Whatever this is, it’s trying to mess with your head, so don’t fold on me and make it easy for them.”

Shame and guilt twisted through Blanche like a poison. She didn’t understand why the feeling was so strong, but it was enough to make her want to get sick. She cringed away from Morgan’s harsh words, clutching the jacket to her chest. What was wrong with her? Her emotions were in overdrive, and she felt like she was going to have a panic attack. Her mouth dry, she forced herself to fucking breathe. Morgan was already freaking out, Cassie and her didn’t need to deal with her useless problems because she made a bad decision. She always made bad decisions. No. Shake it off. Stop it, Blanche told herself, focusing on Cassie. “I can’t get a good look at anyone, they won’t - I mean, I think they kept running away from me. And I kept running away from them trying to find you - I mean. Sorry.” Blanche stuck with Cassie and Morgan, and reached out. “I don’t think we should go that way - hey, I don’t think we should go that way!” Blanche reaching to tug lightly on Cassie’s arm. “We’re being herded! I think we’re being herded. Let’s go back the way we - oh.” Blanche had turned to point back the way they came, but it had changed again. No more stairs. They were being herded. Blanche swallowed hard, and pushed forward anyway. She was afraid and overwhelmed and all she wanted to do was cry. She noticed the whispering then, just as they all plowed through the door. The low whispering that in her head - “Cassie. Cassie can you hear them? Morgan?”

Cassie’s grip pressed something back into Morgan and at last she remembered how to breathe. In. Hold Out. Five. Three. Five. In. Hold. Out. And they were all here, together, in arm’s reach. Morgan wiped her hands on her pants and took hold of each of them. She stared intently at her fingers, the fabric it pinched on their sleeves. “Sorry,” she mumbled. There was still so much gunk in her head, and that voice from before, that voice. Morgan barely had time to notice the stairs vanish before their eyes. No way out. No way around.

Morgan tightened her grip on each of them. “I can hear something,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “What’s, um, what’s yours saying, Blanche?” She could only just work up the nerve to meet the girl’s eyes for a second. There was no comfort in her to give, and only the smallest piece of resolve, She was just afraid, but she wanted to tell her the truth. “Does it sound like anyone to you?” She asked.

Her eyes darted around them, waiting for another way out, but nothing came. This was the only way forward. Keeping her grip on them, Morgan led the way into the room.

There were no windows to be seen, and yet the room was full of the stale non-light of winter days and lingering hurricanes. There was a bed against the wall, a rocking chair, an empty shelf. In the middle of the room a hunched over woman, her skeleton bent in ways that should have broken her skin or sent her to the floor: feet bent the wrong way on the floor, limbs zig zagging in sharp, terrible angles, back swollen and curved like a snake in distress, She was swaying, unnaturally steady in her balance.

“We’re not going to get any answers from them,” Cassie answered. “They’re too far gone,” she answered Blanche honestly. As Blanche tugged on her arm the house sealed the stairs off from them, they had no choice but to follow. The three of them fell into step and moved towards the room ahead as Morgan took the lead. Follow the yellow brick road it was. No way to get separated now at least. The only way was forward as the voices picked up again as they moved. A hushed whispery rustling of words sent a shiver up the nape of her neck. “I hear them,” Cassie answered quietly, her voice far away as she listened and tried to tune into the words but couldn’t make it out. As she concentrated Cassie could almost hear partial words as though she was hearing snapshots of a hushed conversation as it ebbed in and out of audio. The fact that Morgan could hear it wasn’t a welcome sign. “I can’t make much out.” As they entered the room Cassie felt her skin prickle and flare in the seconds before she caught the figure inside. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, at first. She could make out the twisted limbs bent at unnatural angles. It was a woman, or it had been in life, but whatever was left in death had been warped and mangled into something that only just looked human. There was something about them, something important, but she felt her mind blanking the longer she looked. There was something. She could feel it. She was forgetting something, but she couldn’t remember what it was. Just the vague feeling as she rapped her fingers against the side of her leg absently in rhythm. “What do you want?” Cassie asked them, her voice steady as the figure seemed to make a move towards them.

Blanche shook her head. “I can’t - I can’t figure out what they’re saying they’re not -” It was like they were purposefully out of reach. Purposefully trying to mess with her head. Was that really a thing? Being too far gone? Blanche didn’t get a chance to think much of it, only glance between Morgan and Cassie as they entered the room they were herded too, before she froze. She clutched the jacket closer to her, like it was a blanket of comfort, except, it didn’t help. Cassie spoke to the thing in a somehow impossibly steady voice.

“Agnes,” the figure cooed. “Martha. You’ve been disobeying me, haven’t you?”

Blanche was fixated on the thing’s feet. Bent the wrong way as it stumbled towards them it made her a little sick. Who was Martha and who was Agnes? And who was she? Was she human once? Was this Morgan’s family? Blanche went into overdrive for a second - would this be what happened to Morgan if the curse wasn’t broken?

“I think we should leave!” Blanche hissed, tugging at Morgan’s arm. “I think we should -”

“Did I grant you permission to leave?! Wretched child,” the woman looked straight at her. The room seemed to lurch and Blanche was thrown off balance, letting go of Morgan with a squeak. “After showing up without notice? You’re making me angry. How dare you make me angry.”

Her heart sank. She made it angry? “What do you want?” Blanche repeated Cassie’s question, her own voice wavering. The room span and Blanche, after a moment Blanche realized it wasn’t her anxiety and she stepped forward unable to get a good look at the thing now. “What the fuck? What’s happening? What’s happen- urck!” Blanche snapped her eyes shut and sank to her knees, but that was somehow worse.

“I wouldn’t have to punish you if you hadn’t disobeyed me -”

Blanche tried to get a grip, and start reaching behind her to start rifling through her bag. Salt. She needed salt. No - she couldn’t focus. “No! Make it stop. Make it stop!”

Morgan jolted off balance, crashing to her knees. The woman (she was still a woman, wasn’t she?) was beginning to scream. “Don’t talk to me that way! I am your mother!”

“Oh,” Morgan wheezed, forcing her eyes upward. “You have GOT to be fucking kidding me.”

The floor seemed to tilt, but Morgan shut her eyes against the sensation. She had skipped over being ‘done’, like a deep scratch on a record, and now she was skimming past that in a burning haze. “You are fucking kidding me!” She screamed. She swung her iron rod blindly. She staggered to her feet, wheezing and shaking and livid. “Was it you? Did you wake up one morning and decide one punishment wasn’t enough? Because your daughter wasn’t the way you wanted? It was you, wasn’t it, Hannah? Answer me!”

The floor leveled out, the walls went still, and yet there was no silence in the Bachman house. The quiet tapping sound like teeth crept into the air. Tat, tat, tat, tat. Morgan opened her eyes. The ghost of Hannah Bachman hovered inches from her face. Her ghost hair dangled in front of her in ropes, hiding whatever there was to see of her face save for one wide, lashless eye. “It is you,” she said. “My precious girl.”

“No--” Morgan swung but Hannah only vanished. Her voice, reedy and bitter went on, marked only by the tapping in between.

“Another precious girl. You never change. You did this to yourselves.”

“Fuck you,” Morgan whispered, digging into her bag for the tin. She hurled it at the nearest wall and it burst open, white grains of salt hissing and rolling over the floor.

Hannah laughed. “How many times did I tell you not to mix with others. Your family is all that matters. I would have done worse than Constance Cunningham if I could. At least she learned her lesson.”

“You want worse?” Morgan backed to the nearest wall and slammed her cuff on it. The wood snapped, veiny cracks sweeping through as if they had been clawed in one swipe, they jutted outwards, exploding into sawdust and splinters and earth, showing the way out on the other side, if they could just get to it. But the tapping, the tapping was still in her ears, and the house, whole parts that Morgan hadn’t even consciously touched, were trembling along to its rhythm. Morgan looked to Cassie, abashed. “Oh, shit.”

Hannah paid Cassie no mind as she advanced on the other two. “Apage!” Stop she demanded and tried to step forward but the tapping grew louder and louder drowning everything out and she felt the ground come up to meet her. Every thought, every sound with it as the thing in the room rounded on the others. The more she fought against it the more the room around her seemed to twist and warp and forced her back down. The sound increased until it thrummed like a pulse inside her head. She fought again as the others fell to their knees as the room span and contorted, but was pulled back to the floor as Morgan managed to scramble to her feet and confront her.

“Make it stop!”

Something in her stirred and she pulled herself up with effort and stood, barely. She could make it stop. Make it all stop. Had to. Taking a step forward brought a wave of nausea, but she pushed through, trudging through what felt like quicksand, but kept going. No chalk. No circle. No salt. There wasn’t time. Stripping off her watch she gripped it in one hand and started to chant. Slowly and quietly at first, closing her eyes over as she focused on the words and intent and forged on as she felt the familiar tugging sensation spread out from her chest as she poured all her energy into forming the circle above. After a few moments she opened her eyes again in time to see the shape above start to take form and kept her eyes on it as she worked, aware that ahead of her Morgan and Blanche were trapped with it, but she needed time. She needed her distracted. Apologies would have to come later.

Out of the corner of her eye she turned her attention to Hannah then; too rapt in toying with the others to notice the opening forming above her on the ceiling. The gleeful look on its face made her stomach twist. That bought her some time as she gritted her teeth and concentrated as the circle above bloomed out and the dust began to fall downwards and swirl. Gaining mass in thicker dark plumes that branched out like vines as they found their target and clung to Hannah’s form. Spreading slowly upwards from their ankles began to snare her in place, creeping upwards.

She was going to be sick. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Blanche thanked every possible being there was that she didn’t come here alone. She was useless. What good was being able to see and hear this shit without being able to do anything about it? She buried her head in the jacket, trying so stop the wave of nausea, fear, and confusion that hit her like a truck. Still a little sick to her stomach, she looked up just as Morgan’s hand slammed against the far wall - Just as the opening in the above Hannah Backman appeared - it was the first time she had seen a real exorcism.

Danger! Get out! Get out! An unfamiliar voice hissed in her ear and Blanche whipped her head around to look.

“Do you hear - “ Blanche asked.

Get out!

Blanche felt the rumbling underneath her knees and sprang upward. Danger. Get out. They needed to get out right now. She dove for Cassie first, her legs feeling like JELL-O as she yanked hard. She went for Morgan next. “We have to go, we have to go right now! Something else is wrong!”

As if to prove her point, loud cracking through the wooden structure and the ground began to shake. Oh this was bad. “We gotta go,” Blanche pulled a little more, the damn jacket still clutched in her arms as they went barrelling out of the house. One goal, and that meant out. They needed to get out and get out now. She had hopes that whatever Cassie and Morgan did would shake the house back to normal before it collapsed on top of them.

She shot out of the room, trusting the others to follow. They didn’t want to die either. She was shaking too bad to be able to hang onto them. Was she shaking too bad or was the house shaking too bad? PRobably both. The long hallway was there, but replaced with more doors, no doubt for more maze confusion - nobody had time for that. Debris was already falling, smashing furniture and used to be wall fixtures. Blanche saw the stairs and immediately threw herself down them as fast as she could. If they could just get to the ground level…

Danger! Look out!

Something hard hit the back of her just as she got towards the end, and she shrieked in pain as she was knocked off her feet, her left side hitting the ground at the bottom of the staircase hard. The shaking was getting worse, the crashing of the house collapsing after them was deafening. Blanche didn’t realize until she was already back on her feet that pain was searing in through her left shoulder and she couldn’t move it - fuck. Tears bubbled and spilled, but she saw it. “Front door -” Blanche said. “Front door. Front door!” She dove for it before it could disappear. “No! Let us out!”

Morgan didn’t need to be convinced to leave. She held onto Blanche for dear life as they sprinted out, the Bachman house screaming at them from all sides as they went. Beams roared as they buckled overhead, floors shrieked as they snapped. Morgan pushed herself to keep pace, but the house was faster. Her foot plunged through black, dusty air. She cried out, holding onto her friends harder and collapsed, her leg crashing into the ruins. Above, the second floor was bottoming out, and for a moment Morgan wondered if she should just let it. Just let it all break and stop running. What was next after Constance anyway? What use was any--

No.

Morgan staggered up, blood dripping from her leg,and charged the rest of the way out, tears streaming down through the dust on her face. When she could see the world outside, she let herself go splat into the grass, her things splattering around her. She pressed her cuff into the ground and fixed herself on the house and all the hurt it had done with bitter certainty. She opened herself and pushed.

The collapse of the Bachman House was not a natural thing. The ground that had held it for two hundred years became a hungry, jagged mouth. It swallowed the basement and the neglected foundation, it guzzled up the steps and the wood pillars and the beams, the windows, the roof, and the brick chimney, melding it all into dust and ash. The sound was something like fury, something like an unquenchable hunger, demanding more.

Morgan watched, dead-eyed. All that remained was the debris from the upper floors she hadn’t had the strength to reach. And now that she was finished, and sick from draining herself, she realized she hurt...everywhere.

The tendrils snaked their way around Hannah. By the time Cassie had the sense to pay attention it was too late. Kicking and screaming she tried to lash out, but the more she fought the tighter the binds gripped and encircled her until she was shielded from view entirely. Without an ounce of sympathy Cassie kept her gaze set on whatever was left of her and finished the incantation, watching as she lost form altogether, dissipating in front of her and was pulled upwards through the opening in a pillar of smoke rising up towards the opening. She watched in horrified fascination as Hannah was swallowed up and the opening sealed itself up, disappearing in the time it took to blink. There was no time to stop or take a breath. The whole house felt like it was shaking, but her limbs struggled to respond as any energy she had left ebbed away.

“I—what?” Cassie found her voice as she heard the others frantically pulling at her. In the moments that followed Cassie was only vaguely aware of Blanche hustling her out of the way, throwing off her balance as the room came into focus again and she registered the crumbling surroundings and clocked Blanche dragging her alongside Morgan as they scrambled to find a way out. As her head cleared, she took in the situation and dodged the falling debris as they ran for the front door. The whole house was coming down around them with an unnatural fury and she searched around for a way out as the house continued to twist and contort as it crumbled. The woodwork started to give way and she heard Blanche cry out somewhere ahead of her. “Blanche!” she yelled as the house started to fold in on itself as they cleared the stairs and fled. She heard Morgan yelp in pain and fumbled to get to them to no avail. All she could do was try to keep up. Glass smashed and sprayed out behind her and rained down and she shielded her face and neck as she sprinted for the exit. Scrambling to stay close to them Cassie barrelled out not long after them as the house seemed to crumple in on itself and howl with rage. The outside air hit her and collapsed down on the grass. As Morgan dug her cuff into the ground Cassie watched in horror as the ground itself seemed to open its mouth and swallow the remnants of the house whole until all that was left was a crater in the ground. Looking to Blanche and Morgan she finally caught her breath and slumped back on the grass.

Blanche stumbled out of the house, the fresh air a gift to her dusty face as she collapsed into the grass. It was pitch black - of course it was, but Blanche shut her eyes tightly, breathing hard, before she watched in horrified curiosity as the house seemed to melt way into the ground. Blanche dropped back down into the grass, looking at the ever present moon above her, trying to process what the fuck just happened. Morgan was hurt. Cassie was too. The adrenaline and shock was wearing off on her arm and it was really starting to hurt. Tears bubbled over and she sucked in a deep, deep breath. She couldn’t - she wouldn’t - lose it now. Not when she had been stupid and asked to come. What would have happened if she hadn’t been here? Blanche didn’t want to know. “I can’t… move my arm…” Blanche’s voice cracked faintly.

#wr blanche #wr chatzy #wr blanche chatzy #wr cassie #wr cassie chatzy #wr group chatzy #wickeds writing #wickedswriting

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freedomartspress · 5 years ago

Text

Three Poems — Tongo Eisen Martin

Kick Drum Only

All street life to a certain extent starts fair

Sometimes with a spiritual memory even

Predawn soul-clap/ your father dying even

Maybe I’ve pushed the city too far

My sensitivities to landfill districting and minstrel whistles/

White supremacist graffiti on westbound rail guards

-all overcome and reauthored

The garbage is growing voices

Condensed Marxism

modal gangsterism for a warrior-depressive

Underpass in my pocket

because I am a deity

or decent bid on the Panther name

revolutionary violence that chose its own protagonists

or muted stage of genius

A merciful Marxism

Disquieted home life

Or metaphor for relaxing next to a person

Who is relaxing next to a gun

I stare at my father for a few seconds

Then return to my upbringing

Return to the souls of Ohio Black folks

Revolution is damn near pagan at this point

You know what the clown wants? The respect of the ant.

Wants a pen cap full of bullets

Wants to see their ancestors in broad daylight

I am not tired of these rooms; just tired of the world that give them a relativity

My only change of clothes prosecuted

The government has finally learned how to write poems

shoot-outs that briefly align…

that make up a parable

white bodies are paid well, I posit

do white men actually even have leaders?

all white people are white men

white men will only ever be metaphors

all I do is practice, Lord

A rat pictures a river

Can almost taste the racial divide

Can almost roll a family member’s head into a city hall legislative chamber

Knows who in this good book will fly

I have decided not to talk out of anger ever again, Lord

Met my wife at the same time I met new audience members for our pain

We passed each other cigarettes and watched cops win

A city gone uniquely linear

Harlem of the West due a true universe

“I will always remember you in fancy clothes,” my wife said

so here I sit… twisting in silk ideation

My rifle made of tar

My targets made of an honest language

This San Francisco poetry is how God knows that it is me whining

Writing among the lesser-respected wolves

Lesser-observed militarization

Dixie-less prison bookkeeping/I mean the California gray-coats are coming

lynch mob gossip and bourgeois debt collection

I mean, it’s tempting to change professions mid-poem

in a Chicago briefing, a white sergeant saying, “blank slate for all of us after this Black organizer is dead.”

standard academics toasting two-buck wine at the tank parade

bay of nothing, Lord

nuclear cobblestones, gunline athleticism

and the last of the inherited asthma

children given white dolls to play with and fear

facial expressions borrowed from rich people’s shoe strings

I can hear hate

And teach hate

And call tools by people names

And name people dead to themselves

no one getting naturalized except federal agents soon

carving the equator into throats soon

I’m sorry to make you relive all of this, Lord

pre-dawn monarchy

friends putting up politician posters then snorting the remainder of the paste

minstrel scripts shoveled into the walls by their elders

my children sharpening quarters on the city’s edge

For these audiences

I project myself into a ghost like state

For these gangsters, I do the same

every now and then, we take a nervous look east

Sleep becomes Christ

Sleep starts growing a racial identity

do you ever spiral, Lord?

has the gang-age betrayed us?

be patient with my poems, Lord

So much pain

there is a point to crime…

There has to be if race traitors come with it

Lord, is that my revolver in your hand?

Better presidents than these have yawned at cages

Have called us holy slaves

Filled the school libraries with cop documentaries

Baby, I don’t have money for food

I have no present moment at all

I Do Not Know the Spelling of Money

I go to the railroad tracks

And follow them to the station of my enemies

A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies at my mugshot negative

All over the united states, there are

Toddlers in the rock

I see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket

And why blood agreements mean a lot

And why I get shot back at

I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway

White skin tattooed on my right forearm

Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed

into a rat-infested manhood

My new existence as living graffiti

In the kitchen with

a lot of gun cylinders to hack up

House of God in part

No cops in part

My body brings down the Christmas

The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets

Pray over the 28th hour’s next beauty mark

Extrajudicial confederate statue restoration

the waist band before the next protest poster

By the way,

Time is not an illusion, your honor

I will return in a few whirlwinds

I will save your desk for last

You are witty, your honor

You’re moving money again, your honor

It is only raining one thing: non-white cops

And prison guard shadows

Reminding me of

Spoiled milk floating on an oil spill

A neighborhood making a lot of fuss over its demise

A new lake for a Black Panther Party

Malcom X’s ballroom jacket slung over my son’s shoulders

Pharmacy doors mid-slide

The figment of village

a noon noose to a new white preacher

Wiretaps in the discount kitchen tile

-All in an abstract painting of a president

Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?

The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars

A cold-blooded study in leg irons

Leg irons in tornado shelters

Leg irons inside your body

Proof that some white people have actually fondled nooses

That sundown couples

made their vows of love over

opaque peach plastic

and bolt action audiences

Man, the Medgar Evers-second is definitely my favorite law of science

Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists

My arm changes imperialisms

Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies

Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums

Artless bleeding and

the challenge of watching civilians think

“terrible rituals they have around the corner. They let their elders beg for public mercy…beg for settler polity”

“I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads into arrows myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crests.”

Modern fans of war

What with their t-shirt poems

And t-shirt guilt

And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus,

I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life

The Chicago Prairie Fire

First, I must apologize to the souls of the house

I am wearing the cheek bones of the mask only

Pill bottle, my name is yours

Name tagged on the side of a factory of wrists

Teeth of the mask now

Back of the head of the mask now

New phase of anti-anthropomorphism fending for real faces

Stuck with one of those cultures that believes I chose this family

I am not creative

Just the silliest of the revolutionaries

My blood drying on

my only jacket

just as God got playful

the police state’s psychic middlemen

Evangelizing for the creation of an un-masses

An un-Medgar

Blood of a lamb less racialized

or awesome prison sentence

Good God

Elder-abuse hired for the low

dog eat genius

Right angle made between a point

On a Louisiana plantation

And 5-year old’s rubber ball

3 feet high and falling

like a deportee plane

to complete my interpretation

(of garden variety genocide)

I am small talk

about loving your enemies

A little more realistically

About paper tigers

And also gold…

I need my left hand back

I broke my neck on the piano keys

Found paradise in a fistfight

Maybe I should check into the Cuba line

Watching the universe’s last metronomes

some call Black Jacobins

Just wait…

These religions will start resigning in a decade or two

Some colorfully

Some transactional-ly

In a cotton gothic society

Class betrayal gone glassless/ I mean ironically/ my window started fogging over too

Wondering which Haiti will get me through this winter

Which poem houses souls

Which socialist breakthroughs

Breakthroughs like ten steps back

Then finally stillness

Stillness

Then stillness among families

a John Brown biography takes a bow

I’m up next to introduce Prosser to Monk

I remember childhood

Remember the word “Childhood” being a beginning

Scribbling on an amazing grace

I rented this body from some circumference of slavery

Remember being kicked out of the Midwest

Strange fruit theater

Lithium and circuses

Likeminded stomachs

The ruling class blessing their blank checks with levy foam…

with opioid tea

Sentient dollar bills yelling to each other pocket to pocket

Cello stands in the precinct for accompanying counterrevolutionaries

My mother raised me with a simple pain

A poet loses his mind, you know, like the room has weather

Or first-girlfriend gravity

Police-knock gravity

Mind-game gravity

Or revolution languishing behind

The sugar in my good friend’s mind

“The difference between me and you

Is that the madness

Wants me forever”

A pair of apartments

Defining both my family

And political composure

Books behind my back

Bail money paved into the streets

Playing:

Euphoria

Cliché

Bracing for the medicine’s recoil

Sharing a dirty deli sandwich with my friends

Black Jacobins

Underground topography

Or grandmother’s hands

Psychology of the mask now

Teeth of the mask again

—

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker and educator who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book of poems, Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award.

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cloudbattrolls · 6 years ago

Text

Our Bones Are Oracles

Zelist Varjal || Present Night || Derevnya

You look up from the papers on your desk, bleary-eyed, feeling like the sand in the corners of your oculars is never really wiped away. It’s there every time you brush through them, a reminder of not only your fatigue, but the group’s fatigue. Pencils and pens lie scattered across its surface haphazardly, a strange sight to you, but you only have yourself to blame for the lapse.

Samane has to be dead. Weeks have gone by and while dim, he’s not the flaky type; you could set a clock by that boy’s dedication to routine.

You wish you could feel more upset about it, but mostly you wish he was here to help you deal with this before your thinkpan explodes.

“Darling, honeyblood, sweetbiscuit. You have got to give me something to go on before my followers upend themselves into a fervor.”

The cult follows a violet who deserves it far more than some cheeky olive, but they spend most of their time with their nose in the lore books, obsessed with what they think are secret messages hidden in the pages. Marisa cultivates that interest, gets trolls to bring them as many files as they need, and keeps them neatly tucked away in their library away from the rest of the cult.

Which is why she’s standing in front of you, posture prim as a blueblood’s. It looks a bit ridiculous on a girl who meddles a bit too intimately with corpses and ties down screaming trolls for eldritch rituals.

“They’re out of Derevnya. We don’t know where; we don’t have the resources to track them anymore.”

As you know damn well, you bite back. Marisa’s here to posture; it’s what she does best, though you wonder why she didn’t bring Glaceo as support. Maybe the cerulean’s actually off doing her real job for once.

A tad hypocritical of you, perhaps, but unlike her you have the best of reasons for being here.

“I’m sure we’ll find the horrorspawn, dearest, but no - it’s the harvesting I’m here about. Your little proclamation has ground our progress to a shuddering halt, and we need all the weapons we can get if she’s waking up again. Which reminds me; how is that problem coming along?”

She flutters her lashes at you, and if you had more energy you might feel the urge to punch her in her smug face. You’re going to have to settle with refuting her.

“We’ve put her back to sleep for now.” You reply. “There were traces of other horrorterror activity, but whatever it was, we can’t tell if it did anything to the Siren.”

“Mmm, it’d be so much more expedient if we had the gun, didn’t we? You’re so generous, and it’s terribly admirable, but we really could use it for this little issue...”

“Perfected that metal yet?” You reply, a touch more acerbic than you mean to be, but can anyone blame you? You’re not in the mood for this.

Now is an even worse time than she usually chooses.

She only smiles more in her infuriating way and runs a finger across the top of your desk, picking up more dust than you’d like.

You eye the oliveblood, the both of you well aware it wasn’t generosity that prompted you to give the gun to Sochet sweeps back. Even then the pair of you had argued over how to deal with the Siren trying to use the Gunsmith’s descendant to free herself; Marisa had wanted to cull the girl.

Instead Sochet left carrying her ancestor’s weapon, with no knowledge of its legacy or her own. A compromise that left the pair of you staring each other down, a fistfight narrowly prevented by the leader’s stern words.

“No, lemondrop, but the harvest...”

“Have to say I’d be impressed if you did.” You bowl over her, picking your way through words delicately as a surgeonhiliator stitching a wound. “No one’s solved it in all the sweeps we’ve had the Gunsmith’s records...I don’t want to expect too much of you, I overstepped.”

Her eyes narrow slightly before she resumes smiling widely, enough of a victory to warm your tired pumper a bit.

“Are you going to keep us out even if she is asleep? I have to say, I never took you for an obstructionist, my dear Zelist.”

Oh, she’s definitely annoyed, and you sit up straighter, leaning forward.

“If we harvest from her now, we could wake her up again after she’s had disturbances from two horrorterrors, and she could try to manipulate us through the flesh we eat. She can also thrall anything of her own power against us; we should go put down the Lumier girl before she comes tearing people open, she’d be thrilled to have a stab at it anyway.”

You end the last sentence on a note pointed enough to cut through steel, and Marisa has the grace to look faintly embarrassed. She knows full well she can’t talk her way out of that one; you were present for every part of that little lupine disaster.

Unfortunately, she recovers as quickly as ever.

“What do you suggest we do then, darling? We barely have any other horrorterror weapons in our stores or cages, and the other cults aren’t about to share even if they had anything of the grade we needed. It’s the most I can do to keep them from attacking us, never mind giving us aid. If I can’t find the right formula for that bullet metal, we’ll have no way of killing her either, and it’s a teensy bit difficult when you only allocate me a handful of staff after we lost the rest of them in the glub.”

Her voice veers close to a snarl for just one word, but it’s enough. Marisa only ever lets even the smallest edge of aggression show if she’s exhausted all her other options; she’s desperate enough that it can’t matter anymore.

Good.

You can’t smile, not with what you’re about to do, what you’ve had to do, so you merely raise your eyebrows, fingers laced together as they prop up your chin.

“Luckily for all of us, I have a weapon for you.”

“Don’t tell me you got the gun back; I simply won’t believe it.”

“Better than that.”

“Do stop winding me up, goldbug.”

Marisa might whine, but she thrives on drama, and you’re going to give it to her in a way she can’t refuse.

Slowly, casually, you get up out of your seat and beckon for her to follow you down the stairs to where the cages are for the weapons the cult makes with the knowledge-flesh of the Siren.

For the first time, one of the cages holds a creature that none of you made; a horrorterror in the shape of a boy, one your trolls finally tracked to where it got stuck in a tree just outside of Derevnya. That suggests an odd weakness in it - maybe whatever contributes to the dead flesh - but it doesn’t matter.

Marisa’s eyes widen and her ears flick as her shock quickly turns to an eager and greedy grin as she claps her hands in delight.

“Honeyblood! You are my favorite troll tonight, you know that? I thought we’d never find a subduable host. Why, I could kiss you.”

Perish the fucking thought, though it’s shame Marisa’s Marisa, because it’s not like she’s not cute otherwise. Any pupahood pitch feelings for her died off sweeps ago - it would’ve been inappropriate anyway - so you wrinkle your nose and her attention swiftly turns back to the creature.

“What a marvelous specimen. You have to show me the full report, and I want to interview the team that found it. What does its transformed state look like?”

“Funny thing; it barely transformed at all when we found it, it just seemed relieved to get down, and bizarrely enough, terrified of us. Our working theory is that it acts like a troll for fun, or when it’s low on energy.”

“We understand them so little, even after all these sweeps...” She murmurs, more to herself than you.

You roll your eyes. The last thing you need is Marisa waxing lyrical about eldritch monsters when you have more than enough to do, and nobody to split the work with.

“Understand its weapon level and get me a report.”

You go back up the stairs without waiting for a response. You’ve got a call to make.

Sochet owes you a favor.

#cloud writes #what lies beneath us #it covers the lull in plot and is where Sayamh's been #Sayamh Firahj #Marisa Coultr #Zelist Varjal #and Dexter is mentioned but not present

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everyonesomething · 7 years ago

Text

Session 21b

Grim: "I like that, you're good folks."

Malkas: "My girl said she was goin' and what was I gonna do without her, you know?"

Grim: "You are just hook line 'n sinker for her, huh"

Malkas grins a little lopsided. His jaw is sore. "Yep."

In this session, Grim and Mal bond and the group blows off steam.

The set-up: The day after the cyclops encounter, at a nondescript truck stop.

The Game: After dinner, Mal and Grim are loitering outside in the parking lot. Mal sees a halfling struggling to change a tire and goes to help him, getting paid with a bag of Luhix—a popular recreational drug—for his troubles.

Looking to unwind, he and Grim go to a nearby bar to chat and swap stories.

Malkas: "Don't kidnappings, decapitations, all that happen literally everywhere? There was a beach in Waterdeep too and a kid from down my block got eaten by a real big mother Displacer beast."

Grim: "Sure. Ain't everywhere that floats its economy off it, though."

Malkas: "Except Waterdeep probably does. Didn't you ever hear about that crime boss beholder?"

"Ruled the city for three hundred years and didn't even have thumbs."

Grim: "Shit, don't talk to me about the Waterdeep families. There's damn few jobs I wont touch, Malkas, but even I got more sense than working that city."

Malkas: "It was a very interesting place to grow up in."

Malkas finishes his beer in one slug.

Malkas: "When I was a kid, I remember, before the houses around us got so built up, there were these two big guys, a dwarf and a half-orc maybe, digging a big hole in an open field."

"And I was, maybe seven? And I wander over there..."

Grim lights up a cigarette while she listens

Malkas: "Tell me they're playing a real fun game of Hole-Digging."

"And give me, like, a shovel."

Grim snorts softly

Malkas: "And they just... let me dig for a while. And then when it was starting to get dark, they take back the shovel, give me a handful of candy and a pack of smokes and send me on my way. And "Don't tell anybody."

Grim: "Real trusting kid."

They drink some more, talk some more, add a little spice to their evening with the Luhix, and decide to do some bar-hopping to burn off a little steam. They've both been feeling too tightly-wound between the monster fights and being cooped up in a car that a change of pace would do them some good.

Malkas: "Alright, usually when I was high, I'd go find somebody who would call me Horns or Imp and get into a fistfight."

Grim grins, wide and crooked

Grim: "You're speakin' my language, Malkas."

Malkas: "I don't know if we're gonna find anyone racist around here."

Grim: "In a shitstain truck stop asshole've the midwest, are you kiddin' me? Practically grow 'em for export, towns like these."

"Hell, all we gotta do is get off've the roadway here, head on out where the money from nonhumans don't spend."

Malkas: "Arright, well I'll be buzzing for another hour, so let's boogie."

Grim elbows him and heads off along one of the smaller roads

Grim: "You're a whole lot more fun than you act, I'll tell you."

Malkas: "Whaaat? How do I act?"

Grim: "Oh shit like you ain't playin' up the butter don't melt in your mouth, never done a crime good kid for Edith day in an' out."

Mal confesses to Grim that he's always been under pressure to be the good kid, his two older brothers were a handful for his parents. He did his best, but he wasn't perfect, and it's still something that puts a strain on him—worse now that he's head over heels for Edith and doesn't want to ruin their relationship.

At another bar, Grim asks Mal how things are going with Edith and apologizes for accidentally causing tension between them. It's water under the bridge for him, he's a lot more concerned now about going to her parents' place.

Malkas: "We, we're .I-it's gonna, uh... Her parents are kind of awful and I hate 'em a lot."

"And I sure as [infernal] don't wanna GO and stay at their house but but but"

"She wants me there with her."

"So I'm going."

Malkas reaches over his head to scratch his left ear with his right hand.

Grim: "Sure they sound like fuckin' grade-A fuckin' assholes, but what the hell d'you say to that, kid's clearly got a blind spot size've a boulder over them."

Malkas: "Yeah yeah yeah I know but its her parents so.... What'm'I gonna do? I made you guys come see my dumb family."

Grim leans back in her seat, rocking one leg restlessly while they talk

Grim shrugs and toys with her empty glass, spinning it around and around in one hand

Grim: "Shit, I don't know what the hell kind've advice you think you're gonna get from me, I don't know jack about none've this."

Malkas drums his fingers on the table. Incessantly. "Oh no, I don't want advice, there's no angle here, I just mean we're doing great aside from the impending parents disapproval, you know?"

Malkas: "Because their grandkids might come out looking like demons. Devils."

"It's just a thing! That's happening. I need another hit do you want another hit?"

Grim: "Fuck 'em, who needs 'em? Ain't like Runekill's got trouble standin' on her own two feet. Hell d'you need with a lotta near strangers getting up your ass about whatever the hell- fuck yeah let's do it"

Malkas: "Yes good."

Honestly confronting your fears and concerns with a close friend can be helpful!

They decide the bar isn't doing it for them and head back out into the night to find a more physical activity. Since rockwall climbing hasn't been invented yet, they just climb the side of a building to loiter on a rooftop.

Malkas balances on the thin wall around the roof.

Grim dumps her pack and hat on the top of the roof once she gets up there and turns to survey the town while she lights up

Grim: "Y'ever think about how fuckin' easy it would be to just take a bunch've people out?"

"Fucked up."

Malkas: "Hahaah this place sucks."

"What, like, shoot people from a rooftop?"

Grim: "Sure, or whatever. Blow 'em up. Lure in a monster, drive into some big ass building. Don't take fuckin' nothin' to mess up a whole lotta people good. Kinda crazy it don't happen all the time, y'know?"

Grim huffs out smoke

Grim: "Set a fire."

Malkas: "Maybe it does out in the wilderness."

Grim: "Yeah, but there ain't so many people all together in one place."

Malkas: "Mn."

Grim sights down her rifle and scans the darkened streets for a few moments, then snorts and sets it aside

Grim: "Fucked up shit, man."

Malkas rocks on his heels, his tail swinging around to set his balance on the wall.

Grim sits on the edge of the building and draws her knees up, leaning over precariously

Grim: "How long 'til we all bite it out here, you reckon?"

Malkas: "We're not gonna die out here."

Grim: "The hell we ain't, we all got a timer. Someone's kickin' it sooner or later."

Malkas: "I I just - I just think tha-that weeee're... Gonna be fine. We got somebody to heal us. And Syd, Syd's obviously got a through line to Bahamut."

"And I don't see us ALL dyin' until we're up against something too big."

"Like Tam."

Grim nods

Grim keeps nodding

Malkas paces up and down the thin wall.

Grim: "Man, I want somethin' to fuck me up good though, y'know that feeling? Like I want to get laid out, it ain't enough 'til somethin' takes me the fuck down."

Malkas: "Or maybe tomorrow, a red dragon's gonna fly down outta nowhere and toss the car into the ocean."

Grim: "S'a convertible, red dragon'd just eat us."

Malkas: "Alright alright okay okay okay okay GRIM."

"Grim."

Malkas turns and faces her, "Grom."

Grim: "I know about red dragons, man, I know some shit - about dragons."

Malkas: "The only thing I know how to do anything. Is by pretending that whatever dumb shit I'm doing is not ever gonna kill me."

"It's the only way I could keep breaking into old dungeons filled with spike traps and swinging axes and the only way I keep fucking with mummies."

"So... Yeah, we're all gonna die horribly! Probably. But, you know. Pretend we're not. And then we won't maybe."

Malkas hops off the wall.

Malkas: "What about dragons?"

Grim: "Dragons'll eat a car, ain't the point. Ain't the- point is that's your shit, Mal, that's all you an' prob'ly Edith and hell, most normal folks, but that ain't my shit. That ain't how I get goin', alright."

"Somethin's got a mark on me an' somethin's gonna take me out someday, an' I ain't goin' without a fight; So I gotta go hard, I gotta want it, that's how the fuck I keep on goin', I gotta find that shit that's gonna wreck me for good."

"If I ain't lookin' for it, I ain't doin' all I can do, an' that ain't me."

"Fuck man, I wanna see my death comin' an' look it right in the eye an' get at least a good shot off first."

Deep, philosophical conversation about the nature of life and humanity with a close friend can be helpful!

After a lull in conversation, Grim talks Mal into having a spar with her on the rooftop. It starts clean and friendly, even though they both nearly fall over the side at different times. They devolve into taking pot-shots at each other before Mal pulls out his trump card.

Helia (GM): The rooftop goes black.

Grim freezes

Malkas punches Grim and then the darkness evaporates.

Grim stumbles and grabs for her rifle instinctively

Malkas snickers.

Grim casts around wildly and levels it at Mal before she realises what's up and curls her lip

Grim: "Fuckin' asshole, magic's cheatin'."

Malkas: "It's not really magic, it's just the gifts that my ancestors gave me."

Grim: "Magic gifts. Asshole."

Malkas holds up his hands, "Alright, alright."

Grim sets her rifle down and spits blood again, then wipes her chin

Grim: "Goddamn magical creature shit, ain't no less magic just 'cause it's in your blood."

Malkas: "Alright, I'm sorry. You want a free swing?"

Grim: "Nah, I'm good. Ain't out to kill your paper tissue ass."

They call the match at that and split a post-workout drink before deciding to go back to the diner. Grim verifies with Mal that they're friends in time for them to both slip and fall off the building on descent.

When they get back to town, they join the rest of the gang—Edith more than a little alarmed at their roughened state.

Edith Runekill springs to her feet and rushes over to Grim and Mal, looking horrified.

Edith Runekill: "Oh no!! What happened to you two? Are you okay????"

Pepper steadies the table as Edith rams into it, it's already mostly supported by soggy napkins shoved under the legs.

Malkas: "Heyyy Edi-bell! What? We're good, we're great. Great great great. Keen even."

Pepper squints at Mal.

Malkas: "How's it goin', Pep."

Edith Runekill cocks her head to the side. "You... don't really look it. Did you two get in a fight?"

Grim raises her tray of pie out of Edith's general radius

Grim: "Goddamn Runekill, back up off my ass there will you?"

Pepper: "Oh, it's going. You're awful bright eyed and bushy tailed for looking like you got run over by a truck."

Malkas: "No, nonono, just... General roughhousing. No big deal!"

Edith Runekill: "Should we get Capridi? Or... or Millicent?"

Grim: "Yeah, nah, nah, we ain't been into much, weren't much but a li'l scrappin'."

Edith Runekill dabs at Mal's face with a clean napkin.

Edith Runekill: "You two... are speaking kinda oddly. Did. Um. Did you drink a lot?"

Sweet, sweet Edith.

Grim and Mal reassure her that they just had a sparring lesson, no serious damage done. She accepts his explanation, but sends a message Pepper asking her if she thinks they're acting weird. Pepper's not getting in the middle of this one and just tells Edith to let them ride out the evening and worry about it in the morning. Edith is on board with this suggestion, until Mal and Grim let slip that they both fell off a building.

Edith isn't going to just worry about this in the morning and questions if the roof of a building was the best place for a sparring lesson. Edith points out that someone could have been injured or killed for no reason—everyone is already risking their lives on the journey, there's no need to go looking for more trouble. Grim gets defensive at the lecture, it's not news to her that any one of them might die on the trip.

Grim: "Shit, Runekill, we ain't all the same person out here, I ain't about that shit and I ain't interested in playin' at it. Yeah man, prob'ly gonna die, prob'ly a couple of us before this thing's through, turns out it's one hell of a lot easier stickin' the whole lifestyle out when you want that."

Edith Runekill: "I don't want some historian to sit down in the year 2100 and read about how Szass Tam conquered the world because the people trying to stop 'im got drunk and fell off a roof."

Grim: "And guess what, that ain't gonna happen, cause here's some news: we ain't goddamn dead."

Malkas sits up a little straighter.

Edith Runekill: "And I'm terribly glad of that!! But it's just... [infernal] fuck, [common] the odds're stacked against us enough without just taking... completely unnecessary risks..."

"I made peace with the fact that I'm probably gonna die out here but that doesn't mean I wanna and I won't try not to."

Grim: "Who the fuck are you to tell me what's necessary, Runekill?"

Malkas: "Hey, okay, come on."

Pepper: "C'mon, man," she throws her spoon on the table.

Grim glowers over at Edith, lips pursed around her cigarette

Malkas: "Edi, let's get some fresh air, okay?"

Edith Runekill: "I mean. I'm just having kind of a hard time seeing how knocking one another off a dang roof is 'necessary'. I know I'm just a naive country girl but I'm having a bit of trouble figuring that one out..."

Malkas looks pleadingly at Edith.

Malkas looks a little less deranged with his pupils less dilated,

Grim: "Girl, I spend day in day out dead on the inside an' livin' on the out. You fuckin' tell me I ain't entitled to feel like a real person once in a while, like a livin' thing. You don't see it cause you ain't gotta, you got your warm feelings about doin' right an' keepin' lore, an' your li'l devil boy on your arm. You ain't ever had to take a punch to keep goin' another day. Don't you come at me like your world's my world, it ain't."

Pepper taps the table like "annnnd there it is".

Sydney Gaydos is sliding in at the worst time! "Oh! There you all are!"

Malkas slams his hand down on the table.

Helia (GM): Everyone falls asleep.

Edith Runekill , who has had a traumatic, near-death experience every day for the entire adventure, doesn't need to hear THAT from Grim.

Sydney Gaydos does in fact have the worst timing.

Edith Runekill falls face-first on Pepper's fries.

Malkas is shaking a little, looking beyond furious.

Pepper doesn't sleep but doesn't really react.

Grim is Out like a light

Mal gently wakes Edith and leads her outside, nudging Sydney and the waitress awake as he passes. Sydney joins Pepper and the sleeping Grim at the table as Mal and Edith sit on a bench outside. He tells Edith he got upset and cast Sleep on the diner by accident, angry over how Grim was talking to her. He also tells her what he and Grim were up to with the Luhix and apologizes for worrying her and taking on extra risks.

Malkas: "Anyway, uh... Grim gets a little more aggressive apparently."

Edith Runekill: "Just... just say you'll be careful, okay? I... I'm afraid enough of losing you without it just being some stupid mishap."

Malkas: "I will. Sorry. We were just feeling a little pent up, I guess."

"But yeah. I'll, uh, be more careful."

Edith Runekill: "I mean. We all do in stressful situations. And frankly we all get kinda blasted. Just... maybe not on a roof...?"

Malkas: "I suggested tree."

Malkas: "Also, we were very, very high."

Edith Runekill: "On... cannabis?"

Malkas: "... Remember when you found me in that deli at 7am?"

Edith Runekill: "When you drank all those espressos? At least I was pretty sure that's what happened."

"When I was trying to reconstruct the chain of events that led you there."

Malkas: "... No, uh, I helped a guy change his tire and he gave Grim and me some Luhix."

"And usually, for me alone, leads to tree climbing, bagels, maybe one streetfight against some asshole calling me "devil boy."

Malkas shoots a look at the diner.

Malkas: "Turns out, Grim's ... uh, she's a pretty bad influence on me?"

Edith Runekill: "...Luhix? Really?"

"Um."

Malkas: "It's not that rare in Waterdeep."

Edith Runekill: "No kiddin.'"

"Uh... yeah. Maybe Grim is kinda a bad influence on you...?"

Malkas: "Mom used to rub it on Lem's gums when he was teething."

Edith Runekill: "Well, in medicinal quantities, I assume...?"

Mal gets one last thing off his chest with Edith: he asks her if she's just dating him to make her parents upset. She denies this, of course. She loves Mal with all her heart. Aw, these two.

Inside the diner, Pepper fills Sydney in on what she missed. Neither one of them are too impressed with how the evening ended up, but they're content to let it go for now, there's more important issues at hand.

Grim tenses with a sharp intake of breath, as if startled, and then freezes for a second, totally disoriented by waking up slumped on the table

Pepper: "[Elvish] for the love of--" she recoils as Grim comes back.

Sydney Gaydos: "... hello Grim!"

Grim looks up in the direction of Syd's voice, half buried under her own hair and looking a little like a cornered animal for a moment

Grim: "Th'fuck?"

Pepper: "You were asleep forrrr," she consults the clock over the lunch counter. "I dunno, a few minutes?"

Grim glances around warily and then runs her fingers across her mouth, wiping away a little of the blood from her split lip

Grim: "What the fuck just happened?"

Pepper slides a glass of water over in Grim's direction.

Grim eyeballs the water and then Pepper with fairly open hostility

Sydney Gaydos: "Now now let's all be civil here..."

Pepper: "You were asleep," she repeats herself as if it's the first time she said it. "In a magic kind of way. After you lost your head at Edith."

Grim sits up and rakes her hair out of her face, gaze twitching from Pepper to Syd and back

Grim: "Who th'hell's been castin' goddamn magic on me?"

Pepper: "Well first off, you should know it was an accident. Probably even hit some poor asshole just trying to use the toilet."

Sydney Gaydos slowly begins to tense up. "Right, an accident."

Grim growls, gaze fixed on Pepper now

Grim: "Who"

"Cast"

"Goddamn"

"Magic"

"on me"

Malkas throws a pebble at the window.

Malkas: "Well. Remember me as I was."

Grim flinches and looks up, then spots Mal and scowls

Grim confronts Mal who apologizes up-front for the Sleep spell and then gestures for her to follow him outside for a private conversation. He tells her the evening was fun, but Grim crossed a line talking to Edith the way she did. Grim considers his words, and they both make up.

Malkas: "I get the idea we have to ... hold it together a lot."

"Probably have been the only ones holding it together for longer than most people should have been at our ages."

Grim exhales smoke slowly, watching Mal, and gives a nod and a half shrug

Malkas: "And so... letting loose, as we did tonight, while fun..."

"Man we agree on some terrible ideas."

"I'm sure there's some deep reason for that, but I'm not really interested in that."

Grim: "You don't gotta justify it, Mal."

Malkas: "And I am sorry about the spell. You went off at Edith and that Devil Boy crack... I dunno, I was about to go over the table at you."

"Came out a little differently."

Grim has to think about that

Grim: "Don't even recall what I said there. More temper than anything, I guess."

Malkas: "Oh, you know, it was your basic "YOU DON'T KNOW ME" thing."

"Yeah. Temper. Me too."

Grim scratches the side of her head, thinking

Grim: ".....y'said y'were lookin' for someone to fight. Who'd call you devil boy."

"......I'm a hell of a shit stirrer when i want to be."

Malkas snorts a laugh, "Oh... I DID, didn't I?"

Grim: "Been spoilin' for a fight all night. Still am, kinda."

Malkas stands up and refolds his sleeves.

Malkas: "Okay. Take two?"

Grim: "For real?"

Malkas nods. "Yeah. Let's get this out of our systems. Because I'm still a little pissed about the Devil Boy thing."

Grim studies him for a moment, then nods

Friendship restored.

Back inside the diner, Edith beats herself up over what happened—the stress of trying to hold herself and the group together boiled over for her tonight, too. Pepper and Syd reassure her that it wasn't her fault and Mal and Grim will work the situation out between them. She's still unsure as the two re-enter the diner even bloodier than before, but accepts that they've made up in their own way.

Grim apologizes to Edith for what she said. With some of the stress and tension resolved, the group settles back in the diner booth for a late-night post-fight meal.

Edith Runekill looks from Grim, to Mal, to Grim, to Mal again.

Malkas takes a sip of water.

Grim leans over and spits blood into an empty cup

Edith Runekill in a very small voice: "oh auril i have a type"

Pepper: "[Elvish] Plaguewrought girls are weird," mostly to herself.

Edith Runekill: [Elvish] "We kinda are."

Pepper: "ANYway." She points to Grim. "This place makes a pretty amazing plate of hashbrowns, if you're not going to bed for awhile. I was probably gonna get a plate, myself."

Malkas: "Sounds good. Blow my mind, diner."

Grim looks up at Pepper and studies her kind of warily for a second. Then nods slowly, perplexed.

Grim: "Sure."

Pepper goes up to the counter to order because the servers sure-as-shit are avoiding the table at this point.

Grim goes back to cleaning the worst of the blood off her face. And knuckles.

Pepper wanders back. "It shouldn't take too long, but I think I gotta pick the plates up from the counter when they're done."

Grim gives Pepper another odd look but says nothing

Edith Runekill: "I guess... we look like a pretty rowdy bunch, huh?"

Pepper piles up some of the empty plates from the table to make room.

Pepper: "Oh yeah, you're a killer-diller."

Edith Runekill: "A real rough and tumble crowd."

Grim: "Reckon we are a pretty rowdy bunch."

Edith Runekill: "Often with literal tumbling."

Grim looks down and dips her napkin in some water to clean off her hands

Malkas: "I'm gonna ... wash up."

Grim is starting to feel kind of like absolute garbage in both the physical and moral sense

Malkas smooches Edith on the cheek, leaving a slightly blood kiss mark.

Edith Runekill smiles, not noticing that she has blood on her face, gross

Sydney Gaydos: "... Ah Edith, you have a little... let Gaydos get it." She tugs a piece of her jacket sleeve onto a finger to gently wipe the blood off of her cheek.

Edith Runekill: "Oh! Thanks, Sydney. Didn't... didn't see that."

Pepper glances over at the counter when she hears a bell dinging. She takes a stack of the dirty dishes with her and comes back with plates of food. "Told'ja it wouldn't take long, they really wanna get rid of us."

Malkas returns, cleaner but bruised.

Grim moves down the booth to make room for them, only leaving a light smudge of blood in her wake

Pepper slides a plate to Mal and sits down to eat.

Malkas searches for a fork.

Grim slides him the one she tried to stab his tail with earlier

Pepper surveys the table. It's a crime scene. "Everyone's got enough cash on 'em to leave a good tip after this mess right?"

Malkas: "Yeah."

Grim grunts

Edith Runekill: "Yeah. Don't worry about it."

Grim remembers the property damage they committed earlier and feels kind of shitty about it

Grim adds it to the laundry list at this point

Sydney Gaydos is 100% just going to leave some of those gemstones they got from the cyclops killing.

Pepper dumps what's left of her food onto Grim's plate because she's really been eating non-stop for hours, she's hit her limit.

Grim pauses when this happens and gives Pepper another of those odd looks

Grim: "....thanks."

Pepper grins. "Welcome."

Grim glances along the table at the others briefly, as if looking for some sign that they might be in on whatever this is

Grim looks back at Pepper, then slowly goes back to her food

I think these kids'll be alright.

#previously on #summary #neverwinter 1933

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we-dream-instead-of-drown · 7 years ago

Text

Rider Challenge #2: Your Reason

Prologue

Generations of this family wove back to the time when “Your ancestors made a home here”, as my father would proudly boast. Whenever someone would get married, a new house was built across the field or up the road, branching out like a physical manifestation of a family tree.

Childhood had been an easy mess, chasing and tagging from one house to another with piles of cousins and second cousins and kids assumed to be related somehow. As a child, I was always up. Perched on a fencepost just high enough to escape being tagged, hiding up one of the few scraggly trees the island had to offer, or sitting meditatively on the rooftop trying to chatter with my namesakes.

My father had always called me his “little bluejay” when I snuggled on his lap to get warm. He told me how I was born still holding my breath, turning all blue. My mother, forehead still sweaty, had scoffed at the idea of naming their child Blue. So the compromise was Jay, a nod to the raucous blue birds. Even now, whenever I get cold my lips and fingertips turn a faint blue.

When festival season came around my father would perch me on his shoulders so I could watch the swarm of people, those familiar and strange crowds. From that same vantage point I watched the races. From my gentle, childhood gaze, it had all been great fun. Like watching cousin Sam and uncle Jack get in a fistfight over who was better at catching bugs.. It was violent and exciting, but at the end of the day everyone went home to wipe blood off their noses.

The first year I was too big to sit on my father's shoulders was the first year I saw a body carried off the beach. Something churned along my spine, and from then on I watched the races only because I felt a sense of duty to the island. I watched because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.

Last year, I had another reason to watch. Beth was riding.

Beth and I had been born weeks apart, and spent every moment together since. When we were teens we found this abandoned fishing shack, twisted and collapsing in a hollow near the beach. The wood was felted from the abusive weather and torn fishing nets mouldered in heaps. We had scavenged the dump to find a table that was missing a leg and two mismatched chairs. We nailed scrap wood over the worst holes, keeping most of the weather out.

It was here that we sat around the table with one driftwood leg, smoking cheap cigarettes, and cautiously talked about our future. In our family, you didn’t talk about leaving the island. With all the effort our ancestors put into getting here, how could we even think about leaving? It had already been decided where our houses were going to be built when we settled down. To speak of a future that wasn’t on this island was taboo.

Despite this, we both whispered about how we weren’t meant for this island. And no one but ourselves would help us leave.

Beth hadn’t told me she was entering the races. We spent less time in the fishing hut, but she claimed that her family needed her around to watch her younger siblings and help sew stuffed horses for tourists.

I didn’t know until the day before the races For the first time in a while, we met at the shack.

“I’m riding in the races.’ She said, nervously, rapping her knuckles on the table to knock ash off the end of her cigarette.

I choked on the smoke in surprise, and wheezed out a “What?” when I managed to stop coughing.

“If I win, the money will get us one step closer to getting off Thisby.” She said, leaning forward intensly.

“But why wouldn’t you tell me?” Standing, I flung the remain of my cigarette down and kicked it out.

“I didn’t want to jinx it.” Beth put her own cigarette out.

“I would have ridden with you.” I whispered.

She rose to stand face to face with me. “I know.”

I knew the island had been listening, and maybe that’s why it was me who first recognized the body that was tangled in the rocks and surf. Beth, my best friend since before either of us could hold our heads upright. Aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings and parents all slid and clambered onto the beach. We thrashed our way through the shallows and pulled her to shore, rolling her over to free the water from her lungs.

Once she was carried to a warm house and fed soup by what seemed a dozen grandparents, she confessed to the pain in her ankle. The stirrup hadn’t come free soon enough after her cappal lunged for the sea. Wincing, I turned away when the doctor came to set her broken ankle, full of wrong angles and distended by swelling.

Once Beth stopped limping, none of us mentioned the races again. We didn’t go to watch them, and only went to the festival to convince tourists that we sold memories that were too precious not to take home with them.

It was the first of November, and we both sat in the silent darkness of the shack. We often sat in pleasant silence, listening to the distant waves. But tonight it was dangerous out here, so close the November night, so close to the sea. Tonight our silence was heavy.

“You’re going to race, aren’t you.” Beth said, the same moment I drew a breath to tell her.

“Yes.” I said instead.

We didn’t say another word, because the island was listening.

#tsrf2017 #thescorpioracesfestival #@thescorpioracesfestival #mine #966 words

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crowleplays · 8 years ago

Note

make a post about your trolls and why (or why not) we should fistfight them

Okay I got too many to do all of em (like legitimately 200+ here bud) but I’ll pick like...10 of my mains

Gwylgi Ekogau - You shouldn’t fight Gwylgi. The dude’s been through the ringer already and knows how to throw the fuck down after getting kicked in the teeth by life too many times. He’s a werewolf. Even if you hate limebloods it’s just not worth it because his ancestor will hunt you down even if you win. That and the man is just a punk dude raising dogs just pet his weird puppies instead.

Massar Ekogau - Listen, it’s really stupid to fight Massar, but you should still do it. It’ll amuse him for the rest of the night. You’ll fucking die but you’d be making a very sad old man entertained. Or just don’t fight him and have a weird little chat and cup of tea. Maybe ask him about being a werewolf and his magic studies. Seriously why the fuck do you keep wanting to punch dogs?

Paraka Tancho - Don’t fight Paraka. Do not punch this child. She can’t die for starters and she’s able to create sentient balls of fire to light your ass up. Even if you were able to win, you have the rest of the Amityville Anklebiters to deal with because she’s the unofficial leader of the child gang. Just give her some candy and back away slowly.

Peraux Muscar - Absolutely fight Peraux. She wants you to fight her. She’s filled with rage and is chomping at the bit to beat the snot out of someone. She’s still just a brownblood and very short, so you have a fair shot at winning, but watch your shins. If you play fair you might actually start a friendship here.

Gineyo Teslar - Even with many many odds against you, I’m begging you to fight Gineyo. He deserves to get punched in the mouth. You will get electrocuted and probably maimed before you die, but you should still fight Gineyo. He’s an asshole. Please fight this dinosaur.

Blatte Dorhin - I know what you’re thinking. He’s a scientist nerd beanpole you could knock over with a feather. Don’t fight Blatte. He’s carrying like 12 types of poisons and deadly viruses and he’s a wererat. He lives with two seadwellers that will try to murder you for even attempting it. Don’t be stupid.

Khonsu Judeah - Khonsu’s just trying to find himself, don’t fight him. He did a lot of shitty things in his past but nothing you do will be worse than what he’s already dealing with on a nightly basis. He won’t fight back even if you inflict mortal wounds because he can’t die. Don’t fight Khonsu. Give him a hug.

Satare Corsac - It’s up to you whether or not you wanna fight Satare. I mean, he’s an asshole and probably deserves it to a degree, so it’s not unwarranted. He can’t die unless you completely burn his body and cut off his head though, and that’s a lot of hassle to go through. He can hold his own in a fight and carries a lot of weapons with him. He’s also a pretty chill and funny dude. You’re better off going drinking with Satare.

Decary Pertio - Please fight Decary. I mean sure her life’s been kinda shitty but also she probably could benefit from throwing down in the middle of a Denny’s parking lot at 3 AM. You’ll get set on fire but you might also make this girl feel alive again and help her find her sense of self. Also she’ll look cool for the girls crushing on her. Fight Decary for her own good.

Tursio Feresa - Why the fuck would you fight Tursio? I mean, unless you’re a debt collector from his past or someone he screwed over as a tween, there’s like no reason. If you fight Tursio you’re an asshole and also probably dead. This dude will happily talk shit out and probably share some imported fancy candy with you. Don’t fight Tursio.

#Anonymous #Bird Speaks Words

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ffdfsvdsvsdv · 5 years ago

Text

Three Poems — Tongo

Kick Drum Only

All street life to a certain extent starts fair

Sometimes with a spiritual memory even

Predawn soul-clap/ your father dying even

Maybe I’ve pushed the city too far

My sensitivities to landfill districting and minstrel whistles/

White supremacist graffiti on westbound rail guards

-all overcome and reauthored

The garbage is growing voices

Condensed Marxism

modal gangsterism for a warrior-depressive

Underpass in my pocket

because I am a deity

or decent bid on the Panther name

revolutionary violence that chose its own protagonists

or muted stage of genius

A merciful Marxism

Disquieted home life

Or metaphor for relaxing next to a person

Who is relaxing next to a gun

I stare at my father for a few seconds

Then return to my upbringing

Return to the souls of Ohio Black folks

Revolution is damn near pagan at this point

You know what the clown wants? The respect of the ant.

Wants a pen cap full of bullets

Wants to see their ancestors in broad daylight

I am not tired of these rooms; just tired of the world that give them a relativity

My only change of clothes prosecuted

The government has finally learned how to write poems

shoot-outs that briefly align…

that make up a parable

white bodies are paid well, I posit

do white men actually even have leaders?

all white people are white men

white men will only ever be metaphors

all I do is practice, Lord

A rat pictures a river

Can almost taste the racial divide

Can almost roll a family member’s head into a city hall legislative chamber

Knows who in this good book will fly

I have decided not to talk out of anger ever again, Lord

Met my wife at the same time I met new audience members for our pain

We passed each other cigarettes and watched cops win

A city gone uniquely linear

Harlem of the West due a true universe

“I will always remember you in fancy clothes,” my wife said

so here I sit… twisting in silk ideation

My rifle made of tar

My targets made of an honest language

This San Francisco poetry is how God knows that it is me whining

Writing among the lesser-respected wolves

Lesser-observed militarization

Dixie-less prison bookkeeping/I mean the California gray-coats are coming

lynch mob gossip and bourgeois debt collection

I mean, it’s tempting to change professions mid-poem

in a Chicago briefing, a white sergeant saying, “blank slate for all of us after this Black organizer is dead.”

standard academics toasting two-buck wine at the tank parade

bay of nothing, Lord

nuclear cobblestones, gunline athleticism

and the last of the inherited asthma

children given white dolls to play with and fear

facial expressions borrowed from rich people’s shoe strings

I can hear hate

And teach hate

And call tools by people names

And name people dead to themselves

no one getting naturalized except federal agents soon

carving the equator into throats soon

I’m sorry to make you relive all of this, Lord

pre-dawn monarchy

friends putting up politician posters then snorting the remainder of the paste

minstrel scripts shoveled into the walls by their elders

my children sharpening quarters on the city’s edge

For these audiences

I project myself into a ghost like state

For these gangsters, I do the same

every now and then, we take a nervous look east

Sleep becomes Christ

Sleep starts growing a racial identity

do you ever spiral, Lord?

has the gang-age betrayed us?

be patient with my poems, Lord

So much pain

there is a point to crime…

There has to be if race traitors come with it

Lord, is that my revolver in your hand?

Better presidents than these have yawned at cages

Have called us holy slaves

Filled the school libraries with cop documentaries

Baby, I don’t have money for food

I have no present moment at all

I Do Not Know the Spelling of Money

I go to the railroad tracks

And follow them to the station of my enemies

A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies at my mugshot negative

All over the united states, there are

Toddlers in the rock

I see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket

And why blood agreements mean a lot

And why I get shot back at

I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway

White skin tattooed on my right forearm

Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed

into a rat-infested manhood

My new existence as living graffiti

In the kitchen with

a lot of gun cylinders to hack up

House of God in part

No cops in part

My body brings down the Christmas

The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets

Pray over the 28th hour’s next beauty mark

Extrajudicial confederate statue restoration

the waist band before the next protest poster

By the way,

Time is not an illusion, your honor

I will return in a few whirlwinds

I will save your desk for last

You are witty, your honor

You’re moving money again, your honor

It is only raining one thing: non-white cops

And prison guard shadows

Reminding me of

Spoiled milk floating on an oil spill

A neighborhood making a lot of fuss over its demise

A new lake for a Black Panther Party

Malcom X’s ballroom jacket slung over my son’s shoulders

Pharmacy doors mid-slide

The figment of village

a noon noose to a new white preacher

Wiretaps in the discount kitchen tile

-All in an abstract painting of a president

Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?

The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars

A cold-blooded study in leg irons

Leg irons in tornado shelters

Leg irons inside your body

Proof that some white people have actually fondled nooses

That sundown couples

made their vows of love over

opaque peach plastic

and bolt action audiences

Man, the Medgar Evers-second is definitely my favorite law of science

Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists

My arm changes imperialisms

Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies

Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums

Artless bleeding and

the challenge of watching civilians think

“terrible rituals they have around the corner. They let their elders beg for public mercy…beg for settler polity”

“I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads into arrows myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crests.”

Modern fans of war

What with their t-shirt poems

And t-shirt guilt

And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus,

I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life

The Chicago Prairie Fire

First, I must apologize to the souls of the house

I am wearing the cheek bones of the mask only

Pill bottle, my name is yours

Name tagged on the side of a factory of wrists

Teeth of the mask now

Back of the head of the mask now

New phase of anti-anthropomorphism fending for real faces

Stuck with one of those cultures that believes I chose this family

I am not creative

Just the silliest of the revolutionaries

My blood drying on

my only jacket

just as God got playful

the police state’s psychic middlemen

Evangelizing for the creation of an un-masses

An un-Medgar

Blood of a lamb less racialized

or awesome prison sentence

Good God

Elder-abuse hired for the low

dog eat genius

Right angle made between a point

On a Louisiana plantation

And 5-year old’s rubber ball

3 feet high and falling

like a deportee plane

to complete my interpretation

(of garden variety genocide)

I am small talk

about loving your enemies

A little more realistically

About paper tigers

And also gold…

I need my left hand back

I broke my neck on the piano keys

Found paradise in a fistfight

Maybe I should check into the Cuba line

Watching the universe’s last metronomes

some call Black Jacobins

Just wait…

These religions will start resigning in a decade or two

Some colorfully

Some transactional-ly

In a cotton gothic society

Class betrayal gone glassless/ I mean ironically/ my window started fogging over too

Wondering which Haiti will get me through this winter

Which poem houses souls

Which socialist breakthroughs

Breakthroughs like ten steps back

Then finally stillness

Stillness

Then stillness among families

a John Brown biography takes a bow

I’m up next to introduce Prosser to Monk

I remember childhood

Remember the word “Childhood” being a beginning

Scribbling on an amazing grace

I rented this body from some circumference of slavery

Remember being kicked out of the Midwest

Strange fruit theater

Lithium and circuses

Likeminded stomachs

The ruling class blessing their blank checks with levy foam…

with opioid tea

Sentient dollar bills yelling to each other pocket to pocket

Cello stands in the precinct for accompanying counterrevolutionaries

My mother raised me with a simple pain

A poet loses his mind, you know, like the room has weather

Or first-girlfriend gravity

Police-knock gravity

Mind-game gravity

Or revolution languishing behind

The sugar in my good friend’s mind

“The difference between me and you

Is that the madness

Wants me forever”

A pair of apartments

Defining both my family

And political composure

Books behind my back

Bail money paved into the streets

Playing:

Euphoria

Cliché

Bracing for the medicine’s recoil

Sharing a dirty deli sandwich with my friends

Black Jacobins

Underground topography

Or grandmother’s hands

Psychology of the mask now

Teeth of the mask again

—

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bnfbc · 8 years ago

Photo

2016 - A Year in Review

This was a special year, as Jachles and Christina welcomed Natalie Jachles into the world on November 8th. Jachles now faces a difficult decision - make Natalie listen to boring non-fiction books as bedtime stories or pull a controversial move and choose “Goodnight Moon” as his next book. The annual year in review meeting was a success, with homemade biscuits (in honor of “Pappy Pass the Biscuits”) and homemade bagels (in honor of Seeds), and a great recap of the year in book club. Without further ado, let’s get to the lists!

Does Natalie Jachles have “The Bunton Strain?”

2016 Books by GPA:

The Path to Power - 3.93

The Triumph of Seeds - 3.67

The Invention of Nature - 3.40

Ghettoside - 3.27

1861 - 3.07

The Signal and the Noise - 3.00

Babyhood - 2.80

How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm - 2.70

The Great Starvation Experiment - 2.67

Superintelligence - 2.67

Barbarian Days - 1.92

Andy’s Top Three:

The Path to Power

The Triumph of Seeds

The Invention of Nature

Gabe’s Top Two:

The Path to Power

The Invention of Nature

Jachles’s Top Three:

The Path to Power

The Invention of Nature

1861

Paul’s Top Three:

The Path to Power

The Invention of Nature

The Signal and the Noise

Tommy’s Top Three:

The Path to Power

The Triumph of Seeds

The Invention of Nature

Non Book Club Books We Enjoyed in 2016:

Andy: NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman

Gabe: One Perfect Day by Rebecca Mead

Jachles: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth

Paul: Einstein by Jürgen Neffe

Tommy: A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan

Articles We Enjoyed in 2016:

Andy:

The Elusive Runner’s High Has Prehistoric Roots by Matt Wilkinson

Gabe:

The Mind of Donald Trump by Dan McAdams

Jachles:

After the Process: Meet Sam Hinkie 2.0 by Chris Ballard

Paul:

Justin Bieber Would Like to Reintroduce Himself by Caity Weaver

Two Hands, One Trophy: a Kawhi Leonard Escapade by Shea Serrano

Woman Says Catfish Fell From Sky, Striking Her Near Art Museum by William Bender

Tommy:

The Last Days of the Polymath by Edward Carr

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence by Tim Urban

The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction by Tim Urban

Top Five Chapters in The Path to Power

5. Rayburn

Smack in the middle of this book is a mini-biography of Sam Rayburn, a man who would come to greatly influence LBJ’s path to power. The story of Rayburn’s own rise to power sets him up as a perfect foil to the man he would come to mentor. Rayburn is deeply principled, patient, loyal, and honest - all qualities that our man LBJ would come to see as being roadblocks to a swift ascent. Despite their obvious differences, Rayburn’s desperate desire for a son and LBJ’s gift as a “professional son” set the stage for a lifelong bond between the two men.

Sam Rayburn’s blocky figure -- pounding along the Capitol corridors with strides that one observer likened to the pumping of a piston -- seemed broader now, even more massive, the face beneath the bald skull even more grim and hard. The impression of physical strength was not misleading. Once, two big Congressmen -- one was a 230-pound six-footer, Thomas Blanton of Texas, the name of the other has been lost in time -- got into a fistfight. Stepping between them, Rayburn pushed them apart. Then, bunching each man’s lapels in one hand, he held them apart, his arms rigid. Standing between two men almost a head taller who were thrashing furiously in his grip, he held them, each with one hand, until they had quieted down, as effortlessly as if they had been two crying babies.

4. White Stars and Black Stars

LBJ’s first taste of politics may have been low stakes - San Marcos Teachers College student council - but his rise to power involved all the juicy elements of his bigger campaigns to come. In this chapter we finally see LBJ as the ruthless, scheming, and incredibly driven sycophant that would eventually use those same qualities to become the most powerful person in the world. Caro leaves no rock unturned to tell the story of Johnson’s campus politicking, and sections of this chapter read like a zany historical precursor to the movie Election, with LBJ playing the role of Reese Witherspoon’s character, but even less likeable.

The son of the man whom “you always knew where he stood” let no one know where he stood. Men like Kyle and Puls, into whose ambitions he was scheming to plunge a knife, thought he was their friend until the knife was in up to the hilt. These tactics had, of course, been employed within the confines of campus politics, so small-scale and insignificant compared to the politics of the outside world. Within those confines, nonetheless, had emerged a certain pattern to the tactics -- the politicking -- of Lyndon Johnson. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the pattern was its lack of any discernible limits. Pragmatism had shaded into morality of the ballot box, a morality in which nothing matters but victory and any maneuver that leads to victory is justified -- into a morality that is amorality.

3. The Bunton Strain

You know you’re in for a treat when the first chapter of a biography is 33 pages and it doesn’t even get to the birth of the subject’s parents, let alone the subject himself. In this first chapter, Caro goes deep on LBJ’s ancestors’ physical characteristics (milky white skin, dark eyes) as well as their personality traits (stubborn, idealistic), then paints a vivid picture of the economical and geographical trap that is the Texas Hill Country, and concludes with the quixotic tale of grandpa Sam’s failed cattle-driving empire. All of this may seem superfluous, but each of these narratives sets the stage for themes that will run through LBJ’s life.

So strong were its outward marks that pictures of generations of Bunton men might, except for different hair styles and clothing, almost be pictures of the same man -- a tall man, always over six feet, with heavily waved coal-black hair and dramatic features: large nose, very large ears, heavy black eyebrows and, underneath the eyebrows, the most striking of all the Bunton physical characteristics, the “Bunton eye.” The Bunton skin was milky white -- “magnolia white,” the Hill Country called it -- and out of that whiteness shone eyes so dark a brown that they seemed black, so bright that they glittered, so piercing that they often seemed to be glaring. “When my mother and father came back from seeing the baby and said he had the Bunton eye, I knew exactly what they meant,” says Lyndon’s cousin Ava. “Because Grandmother Bunton had the Bunton eye. If you talked to her, you never had to wonder if the answer was yes or no. Those eyes told you. Those eyes talked. They spit fire.”

2. The Sad Irons

Right in the middle of the section about LBJ’s first term on Capitol Hill, Caro abruptly takes us back to the Texas Hill Country, for a 15-page description of the hardships of farm life before electricity. In classic Caro fashion, the descriptions are vivid, the quotes are used to perfection, and there’s just the right amount of hyperbole to take it over the top. A perfect emotional set-up for one of LBJ’s first legislative successes - electrifying the Hill Country.

Even the concept of the toilet was difficult for them to accept completely; when Errol Snodgrass, newly arrived in Mount Gaynor, began not only to build an outhouse but to dig a pit underneath it, a neighbor said to him: “What do you want that pit for?” And when he explained, Bernice Snodgrass recalls, the reaction of the neighborhood was, “ ‘They’re so highfalutin that they have to have a toilet.’ They thought an outhouse with a pit under it -- they thought that was what people meant when they spoke about a toilet!”

1. “Pass the Biscuits, Pappy”

Without a doubt the dramatic climax of this first book is the gripping saga of Johnson’s first senate race - the 1941 campaign that he lost to W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel. Caro takes us on a rollercoaster ride, first by introducing us to the colorful cast of characters in the race, then taking us to the campaign trail, where LBJ used all of his influences to run the most expensive and elaborate congressional campaign in American history. Caro’s descriptions are so vivid that you feel like you are right there at the campaign stops, eating barbecue food, drinking beer, and listening to the best bluegrass musicians money can buy.

Reading this during the 2016 presidential campaign provided a unique and saddening lens to see just how little progress has been made in American campaign ethics in the past 75 years. From the massive amount of questionable campaign dollars, to the ruthless slandering of the opposition, to the attempt to buy the votes of marginalized groups en masse, all the sketchy strategies LBJ was employing in his first campaign have only grown more prevalent with time. It’s almost too easy to draw comparisons between the central figures in the two campaigns - Pappy is Trump (“O’Daniel’s candidacy was not taken seriously by politicians or by the press, which noted his total lack of political experience; reporters treated it as a joke. The principal reason he was running, he said, was to throw them - the ‘professional politicians’ - out of Austin”) - Gerald Mann is Bernie Sanders (“To a man of such deep convictions, there was something almost immoral about the Johnson campaign, with its theatrics, its use of money, the unadorned appeal to selfishness”) - “Cyclone” Davis is Ben Carson (“lived under a Dallas viaduct and announced that he didn’t have to campaign because ‘Providence will place me in the Senate’”) and LBJ is Hillary (“Implicit in Johnson’s delivery of speeches, and in his manner of greeting voters, was the feeling that with the mighty President behind him, he couldn’t lose.”) But just like in 2016, the 1941 campaign ended with a surprise result which sent the establishment candidate packing and sent a racist and incompetent carnival huckster to Washington D.C.

And, indeed, doubts about Pappy’s sincerity were occasionally raised in print by commentators who noted that the first of his fervent paeans to Texas had been composed when he had hardly arrived in that state, having previously lived in Kansas, and that even now he was occasionally prone to minor errors about Texas history -- such as confusing the Battle of San Jacinto with the Alamo. Those closest to him knew that his country-boy image was a pose; he was actually a business-college graduate and a businessman who dealt not just in Hillbilly Flour but in Fort Worth real estate; by 1937, while he was telling his listeners that he was a “common citizen,” poor like them, his net worth had passed half a million dollars. Intimates also had some doubts about the depth of his religious feeling; although he was constantly urging his listeners to go to church, he seldom went himself. But O’Daniel’s listeners, mesmerized by that friendly voice, had no doubts. They bought whatever he was selling.

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