#Las Cruces Back Pain

[nevadancitizen]

-> CH. 1: THE PETRICHOR OF DUST-STORMS

synopsis: you and logan take on both the weather of the divide and three unsuspecting ghosts.

word count: 1.6k

ships: Keegan Russ/Reader, Ghosts team & Reader

notes: if anyone would like for me to start a taglist, feel free to ask ♪ (also there is a teaser/prologue, so read that before reading this! otherwise you'll probably be confused lol)

WHY DOES EVIL WEAR A FACE SO FAMILIAR? MASTERLIST

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that humans, at their cores, are little more than untamed beasts – some more wild than others. 

When you and Logan were separated, each put in isolation so that the torturers could begin their work on you, you both were reduced to primal instincts. Higher motor functions were a waste. Both you and Logan’s amygdalas were cranked into overdrive, overpowering any other brain function and making you both aggressive animals – ones that bite and snarl and bleed.

Rorke was the one to make you both kneel, to push on the backs of you and Logan’s necks and threaten you both with collars. The Federation broke you both, and Rorke built you back up in his very own image. That image is neither clean nor godly, but it’s his image nonetheless.

He molded you both into beasts of anger – anger towards the Ghosts. You want to take from them what they took from you, from Logan: a chance at a normal life. In this life, you want them to suffer. You want all of them to die in fear and in pain. You want to have your revenge. Against Elias – against Keegan. You want to call it your own, to make your anger god’s anger. You want to watch through the iron sights of your pistol as they cower like dumb animals.

You want to be the one to deliver the killing blow. The chance to kill Elias was taken from you, and you won’t miss such an opportunity with Keegan. 

The man is always on your mind, like how Elias plagued Rorke, how Hesh plagues Logan. And your obsessive thoughts have borne a speculation – the gaping wound cut into the earth must be hiding him. This was only further confirmed by information the Federation was able to acquire and decode. Three of the Ghosts are heading out for Death Valley.

When the Federation invaded Texas, they worked their way up Route 45 until they reached Dallas. They took Fort Worth, a city just barely to the west of Dallas, and marched along US-20 until it merged with US-10 and onward. They followed the highways, taking Las Cruces, New Mexico, Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona, and finally ending when they secured Los Angeles, California (but only with reinforcements from Tijuana, because LA didn’t go down without a fight). 

But Death Valley, that blight upon California, remains relatively untouched. Every now and again, it becomes a demon’s home and is renamed to “The Divide.” Terrible storms, containing both sand and lightning but no rain, rip entire companies apart. But those companies are ordinary soldiers – the Ghosts are not ordinary soldiers. Neither are the Ghost hunters. 

And so, with the recent acquisition of Bakersfield, California, it only makes sense that the Ghosts would be on the frontline near Death Valley. 

The tops of Dante’s View Peak provide some refuge from the heat trapped in the lower parts of the dried-up basin. It’s the middle of September, so the temperatures up here are in the mid-eighties. You’re just glad you’re not in the actual valley – it’s over a hundred down there. 

From up here, you can easily see over Badwater, and all the way out over to its adjacent basin. Heat haze obscures your vision, but with your binoculars, you can easily see as three figures move by the east shore of the basin, some distance away from Badwater Road. They’re dressed lightly, with loose-fitting but all-covering clothing. Keffiyehs cover their heads and most of their faces. Their packs look heavy, adorned with military-type gear and automatic rifles slung across their chests. A few yards away is a doorless Jeep, supposedly their way of coming into the valley.

You take your binoculars away from your face. “Looks like… four klicks out.”

Logan grunts, gesturing for the binoculars. You hand them over, and he brings them up to his eyes. He adjusts the focus wheel and finds the men through the lenses. 

SEE, Logan signs. THREE?

“Yeah,” you say. “I didn’t see anyone else. And I doubt the valley could hide another man from me.”

Logan shifts how he’s kneeling as he takes the binoculars away from his face, crushing locoweed beneath his boot. You find yourself faintly wondering if watering them with blood would throw off their blooming season, given how little water they’re used to. You find yourself not really caring. 

Instead, you take off your pack and lay it on the ground. Once you’ve double-checked everything, you start to assemble the Lynx sniper rifle you’ve been carrying for the entirety of this assignment. Once you affix the suppressor, you prop up the bipod close to the edge of the lookout. 

You lay on your stomach and set the recoil pad against your inner shoulder, trying to ignore the rocks digging into your front. When you look through the scope, all you see is the pseudo-barren sands of the valley. You feel Logan pull on the material of your shirt, prompting you to aim a little more left. 

You see the men’s feet first, then you move so you can see their entire bodies. They’re talking, gesturing at the water in the basin – possibly arguing whether the water is worth the risk of drinking. You wouldn’t be surprised, given the weather. 

You click your radio on. “This is Resol-Dos. We’ve found the suspected trio. Requesting permission to engage.”

“Nice of you to finally fuckin’ check in, kid,” Rorke’s voice comes through the radio and into your earpiece. “Permission granted.”

“Firing. Standby,” you say, your voice flat. You put your finger back in the pistol grip and breathe in, then out. 

You squeeze the trigger, and the bullet rips through the leftmost man’s throat, spraying his companions with blood. He clutches at his neck as he’s thrown backwards. The other two men react immediately, grabbing their guns and looking for the source of the crack of gunfire.

You don’t give them the time to find you. Another bullet is fired, and digs into the man in the middle, finding a home in his chest. You fire another round, and he collapses. 

The last man standing fires aimlessly, hoping to hit something. He’s panicking (righteously so), and he’s swiveling his head around as he tries to find the glint of your scope. You fire, and he stumbles back, clutching his gut as he continues firing. You silence him with a bullet to the chest.

You pull away from the scope after a second and click your radio on. “Suspected trio has just been taken down. Requesting permission to confirm kills.”

Rorke’s voice comes through the radio and into your earpiece again. “Yeah, go ahead.”

You sit up and start disassembling the rifle. “Check your guns. We’re going down to check the bodies.”

Logan pulls the clip out of his Bizon and confirms that there’s no issues as you pack up. The only evidence both of you leave behind are crushed flowers and five spent bullet casings. 

It’s an hour-long hike down to the Badwater bodies. They haven’t moved, which… is to be expected. All three of them are laying in a mass puddle of blood. 

“Go check the Jeep,” you tell Logan. “I’m gonna check the bodies.”

You kneel by the leftmost man. His blood is clotted, but still stains his keffiyeh from when the wound was fresh. You pull the fabric down. You grab his chin and move his face side-to-side. You don’t recognize him. 

You stand and check the other bodies. You don’t recognize any of them. 

“Logan,” you call. “Come check these.”

Logan grunts and moves over, his eyes flitting over the dead men’s faces. He shakes his head.

“Fucking seriously?” You mumble under your breath. You click your radio on. “Bodies are not Ghosts. Repeat, no Ghosts have been eliminated.”

“The info was bad?!” Rorke shouts, peaking the audio. “Christ! Someone’s gonna get their ass handed to ‘em. Take pictures and get back to base.”

“Understood.” You click your radio off. “Lo, find the car keys. Rorke says to take pictures.”

Logan kneels and begins rifling through the men’s pockets and packs as you pull out a compact camera. You line up the shot and take a few pictures – one of the corpses, one of each of the men’s faces, and one of their packs and their gear. 

After a minute, Logan holds up a ring of car keys, jingling them. You hum in response, pocketing your camera before heading for the Jeep. He hops in the driver’s seat while you get in the passenger’s side, setting your pack at your feet. 

You set your foot on the edge of the Jeep where the door would normally be and check behind you. Logan starts the car and puts it in drive as you continue looking.

He taps your arm, then draws two fingers across your skin, silently asking what’s wrong. You sigh. “Just checking we’re not being followed. It’s a wide-open valley, after all. And those gunshots would’ve been heard by anyone around.”

Logan takes a deep breath and rests his hand on the steering wheel again. He manages to creak out, “Storm.”

“Yeah. I can smell it, too,” you say. You adjust yourself so that you’re sitting in your seat properly, facing ahead. “Make tracks. We have a mole to find.”

Something’s on the horizon. It’s not just the ozone of the storm you can smell – something’s going to happen. Something big… something bigger and more terrible than the storms of The Divide.

[lonelyh-soul]

Suavidad deslizante

Sometimiento al sistema

Una farsa, una auditoría constante

Pasillo haca ninguna parte

Avance? No, retroceso

Back to pain

Humo en nubes-sin-sentido

Mamá inservible, relación infinita y vacía

Odio, dicen por ahí que quien odia su trabajo se odia a si mismo

Odio a la persona que me vomita el espejo, alineada, perdida y, espero, no encontrada

Pisoteada como un prado lleno de gente, alimentada con un manto verde de hierba

Monstruo con tantos tentáculos, imposible abarcar. Ponte el cinturón. No cruces la línea

Hilos desarmados convertidos en libertad

Una libertad falsa y cínica

Volvemos a casa, really? ¿volvemos a casa? Familia de 3

¿Quién mató a mi prole? Mi adolescencia, probablemente

Hielos derretidos por mi garganta

Apliques que enmarcan 4 ojos felinos, inocentes

Tatuajes invisibles, agujeros que rememoran pozos impuestos

Papel en mi cuerpo

..................................

Sueños de oro inexistentes

Piel sobrante líquida

Sisifo doliente

[scentedchildnacho]

I guess this maybe happened to the women on main street Las Cruces because even if the cops beat her up she couldn't change her behaviour or strategize differently

I am a prisoner of the present moment and I can't feel better till people stop abusing the animals

The British use to be very in my face but now that their online they help...they help now with law and stuff and feeling bright and philosophical

Yea the homeless are like rain man Dustin Hoffman oh my God lady that's your daughter...so you could have car tels instead of their doll house seclusions

The homeless do all have a child actress syndrome it's that they all are pretty good at something wouldn't it be better if you enjoyed it's art form in a sanitary way

The elk were a little smelly like they didn't get a donkey preserve audobon elephant bath also?

Then I had to be sent to the meals that kept telling me to stand up to wash myself and so home made bombs

I was white and they kept sitting me around on the pony tail of nerves in my low back that a virus mostly dormant could keep getting aggravated and if I'm called a psycho now my ass feels kicked to brain damage yea yea you really really reefer kick ass

Hey jobs you wanted striking blitz looks and now you can have any blitz you want if you ever again kick your kid out for me to carry it's idiot school unmet work load burden to carry

Don't ever ever ever kick your kid out on me don't ever don't ever don't ever kick your kid out or blitz blitz yea the homeless can terrorize yes

Uhm my mother is severely physically handicapped and did like work pension and has a domestically abusive spouse these other mothers there isn't anything wrong with her and her kid is down harassing people at a job

Yes not guilty by plea of insanity raped by gang police over ten times yes I can I can terrorize yes

Yes fucker bitch there are donkeys if your car doesn't meet emissions regulations let it burn

That elk is like a camel...

Yea yea broke the back of the poor to be a reg clerk yea yea broke the back of the poor caused excruciating climate and pollution pain yea fucker bitch

Hey yea yea freeze em or stab em with a virus shove something on a seizure disorders face run run like the conquered if you conquer yea yea gross gross fucker bitch

Yea yea trap people in small spaces violate the constitution do all ya can to refuse freedom of movement and kill yea yea fucker bitch

No I don't care all ya been here you are not allowed educable you have the dumbest machine ever the transaction when it's Alan turing you are nothing but worse then Adolph Hitler cause you have called me such and you are nothing never educable nothing but a cervical cancer shove it that down there up her

When you earn respect you may have it otherwise nothing but how much money do you need off the coffee fucker bitch

[swsportandspine-blog]

Southwest Sport & Spine is a privately-owned outpatient physical therapy clinic El Paso in business since 2000.

[paulmoond]

Physical Therapy: A Solution to the Rise of Opioid Addiction

[celestialskies2001]

Every choice you make has its own concequences.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. —  Psalm 73:26

Cruță-mă și nu mă lasă în acest labirint! De mult timp mi-am pierdut inima Care mă orientează spre iubire.

cand iti zic sa ma lasi in pace dc ma lasi in pace

Dincolo De Ganduri April 27, 2018 · "DA, COPILE, AI VOIE! Să rîzi tare, chiar dacă e 6 dimineața și restul Universului doarme. Să mergi desculț prin casă, prin pat, pe iarbă, în nisip, în vizită la prieteni, pînă-ți faci tălpile negre. Le spălăm! Să nu mănînci tot din farfurie, tu știi mai bine cînd ți s-a umplut stomacul. Să-mi spui ce vrei, cînd vrei, chiar dacă o să mă supere sau o să mă enerveze. Vreau să știu, nu să nu știu. Să stai în brațe. Nu ești prea mare, niciodată n-o să fii prea mare pentru brațele mele. Să ceri o poveste. Povești nu-s niciodată destule, nici pentru mine. Să mai ceri 5 minute. De dat în leagăn, de alergat cainele, de lenevit pe canapea. O să le primești negreșit, fac eu rost de ele de undeva. Curînd o să te grăbești la școală, la job, la întîlnire, la bancă, n-o să mai ai timp de nimic în tihnă. Să fii sincer. Nu trebuie (încă) să faci nimic din ce nu-ți place, să spui nimic din ce nu vrei, să primești lucruri pe care nu le vrei. Prea curînd o șă ți se umple viața de reguli, norme, de trebuie. Atunci va trebui să înveți diplomația. Acum fii tu. Să nu păstrezi ordinea. Nici eu nu o păstrez și sînt adult responsabil și nici n-am jucării cîte ai tu. Uneori o să le strîngem împreună, alteori o să le las așa, oricum o iei de la capăt dimineața. O casă ordonată mi se pare tristă, mă bucur c-ai venit tu la noi s-o colorezi. Să mergi pe iarbă în parc cînd aleea ți se pare plictisitoare. Da, e o metaforă asta, vreau să spun că nu doar calea pe care ți-o arată adulții e cea bună, uneori e bine să cauți singur, eu o să merg cu tine de mînă pe unde vrei. Pentru că te iubesc cu totul, cu încăpățînare, curiozitate, nas murdar, vînătăi peste tot, sinceritate abruptă, toate lucrurile astea grozave pe care le-am avut și eu cîndva, dar le-am pierdut sau le-am uitat pentru că uite, m-a obligat viața să mă fac mare, au dat regulile peste mine, am devenit plictisit și plictisitor. Dar tu ai voie, copile, măcar tu să ai voie!"

I have loved you even in your worst and most digusting moments. And if i would be alive now, i would still love you.

„Cruce sfântă culcă-mă, Cruce sfântă scoală-mă, Înger sfânt păzește-mă, Doamne miluiește-mă!”

You can keep on lying to yourself, but the reality stays the same.

- Diane, BoJack Horseman I hope that everybody finds the happiness they’ve been looking for.

Nu-mi amăgi sufletul... Va putrezi într-o zi. Dont decieve my soul no more..It will rot one day

Să iubești două femei, adică pe mine și soacră-ta, pup

Somewhere someone is looking for exactly what YOU have to offer.. I promise. ♡ - Savage

și Dumnezeu a zis "sa fie lumina", asa ai apărut tu. 😇

i cant see my soul, not anymore

“de astăzi nu mai suntem nici prieteni, nici dușmani, nu ne mai declarăm război, dar nici nu ne împăcăm. de astăzi suntem 2 oameni pe care i-au despărțit vremurile și întâmplările. 2 străini.”

uneori chiar nu mai are rost să te chinui să salvezi ceea ce e pierdut de multă vreme.

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” - Pablo Neruda, Love: Ten Poems

The trouble is, you think you have time.

“I think the hardest thing I’ve learned...is that you can love someone, care for them, support them, motivate them, just go above and beyond for them. But that doesn’t mean they’ll reciprocate the same energy. You can’t make them. And that’s what hurts.” "I walked away to save myself." "It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late." _Emil Cioran

"They say the part that hurts the most is the goodbye, but for me, it's the nights leading to that. It's when she starts giving you a sad smile when you say your I love you, the moment when she starts looking at you... differently. For me, it's when you both realized something has changed and the doubt's starting to creep in - yes, I'm pretty sure it can't get any worse than the nights when you fall asleep wishing things could go back to the way they used to be when you wake up." -Jun Mark Patilan

"Time...it will not wait...no matter how hard you hold on...it escapes you" "We die only once, and for such a long time." "I think love is one of the very few things worth living for."

"the most painful goodbye.” "There are a lot of things I wanted to do: I wanted to become a teacher, and an astronaut, and a baker... I wanted to go to a bunch of different donut shops and ask for one of everything! And I wanted to tell the ice-cream man to give me one of everything, too! I wish I could have five lives! Then I could have been born in five different towns, and eaten five lifetime's worth of food, and had five different careers, and...fallen in love with the same person, five times."

"This creature softened my heart of stone, she died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity" "I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking"

"something inside you is broken and it can never be fixed."

[eyeofnewtblog]

Things that happen at home:

Okay, so this is more of a New Mexico/beach thing, but...All sunburns are created equal.

IF YOU HAVE SUNBURN THIS IS WHAT YOU DO AND HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED!

One (1) egg

Milk (buttermilk is best, then 2%, then whatever the fuck you have on hand)

3 (three) coffee mugs and one (1) fork (chop sticks work very well in a pinch but it takes longer to get the right amount of bubbles)

NO SOAP! Rinse only, do not use soap! Also I’ve never used a brush for this, just the first two fingers of my right hand, so literally just smear shit on the same way you would a face mask.

Step one! You have just encountered someone with a nasty sunburn that you can tell is going to be super painful in the next few days. Establish trust. Put on the salesman voice. Lure them into a quiet spot where the patient/victim won’t willingly move around a lot.

Step two! Break out your supplies.

Step three! Crack the egg. Separate the egg white from the yolk into two of your three mugs. Do you have the white in one mug, the yolk in another? Good. Pour your buttermilk (or substitute) into the third mug...(you don’t need a lot of milk, maybe like an inch or two centimeters? Eyeball it! But not a lot.)

Step four! Where is the fork? There it is! Beat the egg white until it’s got lots of bubbles in it. (Maybe a minute?) You want beat it hard and fast, you want to see bubbles floating through out it and a decent ‘bubble bath’ look going on on top, but it’s not super important that this stage is perfect.

Step five! Smear the egg white all over the sunburn. Let dry. (Seriously, let it completely dry, no hair dryer; give the skin time to absorb the nutrients) When the egg white is cracking and peeling, wash off with a damp warm rag. Or shower, depending on burn placement and severity.

Step six! EGG YOLK. Poke it to break and then just scoop and smear over the burn. Let dry until cracking and peeling. Rinse or wipe off exactly the way you did in step five(5).

Step seven! Milk is way more watery than egg, so you actually might need to apply two coats...I’ve felt it’s appropriate to use two separate coats of 2% milk, but never buttermilk, and I’ve also never had to use this treatment on a person with a severe dairy allergy. Plenty of lactose intolerant frat boys, but you’re smearing milk on skin, not ingesting it, so different organs that process nutrients differently. Dunno. That’s why I said you can probably use a milk substitute (quite frankly I don’t know a lot about skin either so if you have allergies I’m sorry, I just know that this works for everyone I’ve ever used it on)

So the main goal is to let the skin absorb as much of whatever it wants from the egg and milk you’re putting on it.

Testimonials; dated a frat boy in college...raft the rio is a big thing in las cruces nm, six dudes get drunk before noon, take their shifts off and wade around in a river until sunset, I show up to check on them. Long story short, four bois consented to treatment, and then made a point to slap the other two on the back as hard as possible for the next two weeks because “manly men” stuff.

[pinnithin-writes]

Good Jokes

Chapter 23: The End

When the white light cleared, Tommy was in a starfield and his hands were empty. The burn wound on his shoulder was already healing over, the pain ebbing and melting away as scar tissue scrawled pale starbursts over his skin. His heart pounded as he cast his eyes around, meeting only streaks of multicolored light, galaxies and nebulas passing by like landmarks on a road trip.

His breath left him all in a rush as he realized where he was. His father had come to pick him up.

The man in the suit materialized as soon as the thought crossed his mind, clean and pressed as always, hair neat and black as cast iron. His shadowed eyes swirled like the stars around them as he regarded his son. They stood, facing one another in the void, standing on nothing. Tommy waited for his father to speak first.

“Happy Birthday, Tommy,” the man in the suit said with a smile.

Tommy stared at him, robbed of words. Birthday? Today was his birthday? Slowly, he raised his hands to clutch at his hair, drawing in a thin, shaky breath so he wouldn’t fall apart completely. The dissonance of something so routine happening in the midst of this disaster made him want to scream.

Birthdays had always been mundane to him, another insignificant turn of the wheel. But after what he’d just survived, he wondered if it was something worth celebrating. He was indescribably tired.

Thirty seven. Thirty seven revolutions around the sun. It was the worst day of his life.

He didn’t know how to respond to his father, who had plucked him out of Xen for a chat after turning his back on him hours before. There was definitely not a ‘thank you’ on his lips, and his mind was clouded with all the ways he could accuse his father of abandoning him, none of them coherent or respectful. He eyed the other man wearily and finally settled on asking, “the others?”

“Alive and well, I assure you,” his father answered. “I must congratulate you on your success in dealing with this… little issue.”

Tommy’s brow furrowed as he computed. “Success?”

“I certainly would not have been able to remedy the situation without the help of you and your associates.”

He laced his fingers behind his head and tilted his chin to the star-streaked void above him so he no longer had to look at his father. “You couldn’t have just taken care of this on your own?”

His father chuckled grimly. “Hardly. At least, not in a manner as quick and efficient as this one.”

Efficient? “Do you know how many people died?”

“I can say with confidence, Thomas, that far more would have died if the four of you had done nothing at all.”

Tommy dropped his arms from behind his head and instead pressed his fingertips against his eyelids, inhaling heavily through his nose. He didn’t answer, fighting for control of his facial expression while his father examined him. This man couldn’t possibly grasp the scope of what Tommy had just lived through, what the week’s events had done to him. He didn’t have that kind of perspective, being a god and all that; all that mattered was that his plan had worked.

Success. They had succeeded. Mission complete, crisis averted. He felt awful.

His father broke the silence evenly. “I took the liberty of upholding our little family tradition,” he went on. “The entire venue has been rented out, as usual, and I will be personally extending invitations to your new... hm. Friends.”

Tommy paused from kneading his eyeballs in consternation to give his father a puzzled look. “The scientists?” he asked. He could think of no one else.

The man in the suit eyed him with amusement. “Yes, the scientists,” he affirmed. “The experiments known as Bubby and Harold Coomer, as well as your ‘Mister Freeman.’”

“He’s not my-“

“I am well aware of the nature of your relationship,” his father spoke over him, “and I will be having a little chat with him before we convene at the entertainment center.” His eyes glittered not so much in threat as in curiosity.

This didn’t feel to Tommy like the appropriate course of action to take at all. He still recalled clearly on day two of this disaster, when Gordon had told him he planned on sleeping for five days after this was over. Sleep for five days and get a Big Mac. After everything the man had just survived, that was the bare fucking minimum of what he deserved, and Tommy had half a mind to drive Gordon to a McDonald’s himself.

“You can… probably just send him home, I think,” he intoned quietly. That was all Gordon wanted, this entire time. Everything he fought for, everything he endured. Home. Home. He just wanted to go home. Tommy’s stupid birthday could go on without him.

“I’m afraid Mister Freeman does not have a home to go to. Black Mesa, including his living quarters inside, was completely destroyed.” He lifted his brows in a way that didn’t quite line up with the tone he was attempting to convey. “He might as well have a little fun before he goes house hunting, hm?”

Tommy’s shoulders sagged in defeat. Some reward for saving the world. “Can you at least – I don’t know – do something about the hand?”

His father threaded his fingers together behind his back. “I can do something about the hand,” he said conclusively.

The galactic landscape passed on in silence. Tommy kept his gaze on the void beneath him, refusing to meet eyes with the man who was so clean and spotless while his son looked like a dead thing Sunkist had dragged in from the back porch. Exhaustion made his bones heavy and his posture downcast.

After a thoughtful pause, Tommy’s father went on. “I suppose you need some time to yourself. I trust you’ll be able to find your way... home, from here, yes?”

Distractedly, Tommy splayed his fingers, feeling the power that had abandoned him on Xen sizzling beneath the surface of his skin. His pulse ticked down to a more manageable pace and he nodded silently. His father was right once again.

“I shall take my leave, then,” he concluded. His visage began to fade as he leapt from the dimension. “I’m proud of you, son.”

Tommy raised his eyes just in time to watch his father disappear.

He didn’t have the energy to cry once he was gone, though he could feel from the prickle behind his eyes that he probably needed to. Proud. He was proud of him. What was that pride worth, at the death of so many innocent people? Tommy felt cold deep in his chest, and it wasn’t just from floating in the vacuum of space.

He missed Gordon already.

---

The Chuck E. Cheese location in Las Cruces, New Mexico, was a place Tommy Coolatta knew quite well. He expected the venue to bring warm familiarity with it after the past week’s events, but he wasn’t fully prepared for the heavy thump of nostalgia in his chest as he opened the door. The rows of tables, the multicolored lights, the arcade games, all called back to happier days he’d spent with his father here. Once he’d outgrown what was essentially a children’s casino, the two of them had kept up the birthday tradition as a little joke within the family. Besides, one was never really too old for a round or two of skee ball.

The venue was empty, save for the disinterested staff. Tommy ordered a cheese pizza, found himself a seat at one of the tables, and waited.

It was strange, being here. The music and the flickering lights would have made the experience feel otherworldly if Tommy hadn’t literally just been in another world. He felt remote and detached, like the past week’s events were his reality and the entertainment center he sat in was merely a fever dream. Tommy closed his eyes and took in the smell of pepperoni and grease and whatever cleaning product the staff used to wipe down the tables. Underneath it all the iron scent of blood still lingered on his skin. He desperately needed a shower.

Bubby and Coomer arrived after a while via portal, dropped unceremoniously from the ceiling in front of a staff that was perplexed but not paid enough to care. The older gentlemen looked just as haggard and warweary as Tommy felt, joining him at the table as soon as their eyes lit on him.

They helped themselves to the pizza he was working on. They didn’t talk. There was nothing to say.

Weirdest birthday ever.

Bubby eventually made an offhand comment that he had never been to a Chuck E. Cheese before. His tone of voice was neutral, but the pinch of his eyes betrayed his curiosity as he flicked his gaze between the arcade games.

“Never?” Tommy asked at length.

Bubby nodded. “I’ve never left the facility,” he admitted.

Dr. Coomer exchanged a surprised look with Tommy as music thumped in the background. After some thought, the scientist wiped his hands on his napkin and gave Bubby a hearty pat on the shoulder. “Chuck E. Cheese is an excellent example of what the outside world has to offer, Dr. Bubby,” he told him, smiling tiredly.

Tommy snorted into the slice of pizza he was eating. The remark was almost enough to lift his mood away from the pit of anxiety in his stomach. Maybe he really could call these gentlemen his friends. Or, at least, he might learn to do so in time.

Bubby and Coomer excused themselves to try their hand at the arcade games. Tommy remained seated, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, too antsy to partake. He checked his phone, only to find it waterlogged and dead. He tossed it onto the table in disgust. Who would he call, anyway? The one person he wanted to talk to wasn’t in his address book.

His father was taking too long. Why was he taking so long? What was there to discuss with a man who just put his life on the line to seal an alien rift? Tommy watched the remainder of the pizza grow cold on the table before him. He ached in every way there was to ache.

Just as he was beginning to debate leaving his seat for a couple nervous rounds of air hockey, space split open across the room and a portal appeared. Tommy froze, watching the air shimmer and warp as someone stepped out of it.

And there was Gordon Freeman, alive and exhausted, blinking in disorientation as he touched down onto solid earth.

Tommy ran to him, chair clattering to the floor in his haste.

Gordon’s eyes barely flickered in recognition before Tommy collided bodily with him, arms flung around his neck. The HEV suit dug hard and unyielding into his chest, a discomfort ignored in favor of the other man’s arms returning his embrace, warm and solid. A shaky exhale sounded in his ear and he felt tears spring unbidden to his eyes. He made it. This wonderful, insane survivor. He made it, and he was hugging Tommy so hard he thought his spine might snap.

The other man’s voice was broken up with relieved laughter. “You didn’t tell me it was your birthday, man.”

Tommy wasn’t letting go of him just yet, staccatoing his response into Gordon’s neck. “Sorry, I was - I forgot.” The sound he made was a sob disguised as a laugh, or perhaps vice versa.

“It’s okay,” Gordon chuckled, and it sounded like he was fighting for control over his voice, too. “We were a little busy.”

Tommy’s shoulders shook with mirth, awash with joy and wonder as he clung to him. The lights and the music around them didn’t matter, nor did the stars or the hungry void beyond. They could figure out their new reality one fragile step at a time. As long as they could stand together, feeding each other with laughter, they could find their way.

---

The party didn’t end up being too bad, even if the timing was a little weird. For all the exasperation Tommy held with his father at present, it still meant a lot that a man who played time like it was a pickup basketball game still tracked how many times Tommy had orbited the sun. The Science Team played a couple arcade games, ate their first real meal in days, and took turns splashing their faces and cleaning the blood from under their fingernails in the bathroom sink. It was an interim recovery, a pit stop on the way to rejoining life.

By the time it was over, everyone felt a little more human. Human enough, at least, to step outside the liminal space they found themselves in and return to Earth. Far flung explorers, lost inside themselves. Off in search of home, whether that home was found or they built it with their own two hands.

Tommy stepped out to the parking lot, the asphalt washed white and stark in the floodlights. The cool night smelled like juniper and sagebrush. He waved goodbye to Bubby and Coomer, who decided to make their own way from here after bidding him final birthday wishes. His father had vanished a while ago to deal with some cosmic follow-up to the Xen issue. Thankfully, Tommy got a pass on that.

That left Gordon, who he found leaning against the side of the restaurant, staring vacantly out at the parking lot with his eyes half open. The jingle of a staff member’s key ring startled him out of his reverie, and he slid a look first to the manager locking up, then to Tommy’s quiet approach. He was smaller without the HEV suit on. Softer. It had been a group effort to prise the armor plating off of him and carry it to the dumpster out back, leaving him in just the black utility coveralls worn underneath.

Where once there was a shield was just a man. Gordon smiled wearily at Tommy as he leaned his shoulder against the faux sandstone next to him.

“Is someone coming to pick you up?” Tommy asked.

Gordon sighed, turning to stare back at the vacant parking lot. “No,” he said, his voice small. “I’m still kinda… I was just trying to - y’know - I was gonna figure something out,” he shrugged. “I guess.”

Tommy tilted his head to the side, studying him. “It looked to me like you were falling asleep,” he observed.

A short, humorless exhale escaped him. “I was doing a little bit of that too, yeah,” he admitted.

His glasses were still smudged to hell and splintered with cracks. Carefully, Tommy reached out to remove the frames from Gordon’s face, sliding them off as gently as he could. There was a cut across the bridge of his nose. He did his best not to jostle it.

Gordon cleared his throat, returning his gaze from the parking lot to watch him pass a hand over one lens and then the other. “Do you have a ride coming?” he asked.

In the process of literally bending physics to fix the man’s glasses, Tommy tried not to smirk. “I’m - I can teleport, Mr. Freeman,” he reminded him.

Gordon chuckled softly. “Right. How could I forget?”

“But if you need to go somewhere, I can take you,” he added.

The lenses were repaired, for the tenth time over. Tommy inspected them for a second before sliding them delicately back onto Gordon’s face, somewhat hesitant to remove his hands as he withdrew. The first time he did this, Gordon was telling him all about what he wanted to do once they made it out of Black Mesa. Even then, it had seemed like an impossible dream, stacked as the odds were against them.

Now that they had done it, that it was real, Tommy felt like they had been handed some a measureless gift. He wasn’t quite sure yet what to do with it, and he guessed Gordon didn’t have much of a clue, either.

They held one another’s gaze. Gordon’s eyes were as full and clear as a starfield in the wilderness, dark and vast and deep. The lights in the parking lot hummed in the silence. Tommy had never felt quite so lost before, yet never quite so certain of where he needed to be.

“Thank you,” Gordon said finally, his words holding enough weight to indicate that he wasn’t just grateful for the glasses repair or the offer of travel.

No response seemed an adequate enough reply, so Tommy just smiled at him. For all the nightmares he endured in the past week, he didn’t regret a second of it if he got to see Gordon looking at him like this in the close desert night. He’d completely fallen for him, as hard and as fast as a meteor burning through the atmosphere.

He felt the threat of tears returning in the tightness of his throat, so he dropped his gaze and cracked a joke. “So… did you still want to get a Big Mac, or-”

“Oh my god,” Gordon cut him off, grabbing Tommy by the lapels and pulling him in.

This kiss was so different from their first one, it may as well have happened in another lifetime. The loss and pain and almosts were replaced with a fierce, blooming hope, a warmth and possibility passing between them in the breaths they took. Tommy raised his hands to tangle in Gordon’s hair, slow and reverent. This was magic, this was sunlight. They may have just lived through hell, but as Tommy kissed Gordon, he knew that he had found heaven right here, in the person he loved.

When they broke apart, it was soft and gentle, and it wasn’t goodbye.

They stood there, foreheads touching, under the soft full moon. Gordon unknotted his hands from Tommy’s lab coat in favor of winding them around his waist. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled.

“This is gonna sound - like, this is probably a stupid question, after everything, but like,” Gordon stammered out, breathless and rosy. “D’you wanna get dinner sometime?” he asked. “Y’know, like, somewhere nice?”

Tommy drew away to look at him, a slow grin unfurling on his face. “Was Chuck E. Cheese not fancy enough for you, Mr. Freeman?”

Gordon threw his head back to laugh, clear and sweet, and it was the loveliest sound in the world.

Chapter 22 <--- 

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Pisanosaurus mertii

By José Carlos Cortés 

Etymology: Pisano’s Reptile

First Described By: Casamiquela, 1967

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Silesauridae?

Status: Extinct

Time and Place: 231.4 million years ago, in the Carnian of the Late Triassic 

Pisanosaurus is known from the Cancha de Bochas Member of the Ischigualasto Formation in San Juan Argentina. 

Physical Description: If a Silesaurid - as is currently thought - Pisanosaurus would have been a small, slender, and quadrupedal animal, only about 1 meter in length. It had an open hip socket, like dinosaurs, which may point to a very interesting phylogenetic position (see the Other section below). It had very elongated bones in its hands, and its upper hips were weirdly wide as well. Beyond that, we don’t know much about with Pisanosaurus may have looked like. It seems logical to suppose it would have had a small head with a little beak in the front of the mouth - as both Silesaurids and early Ornithischians (the other hypothesis for the type of creature Pisanosaurus was) have such structures for snipping off plant material. Given its small size, Pisanosaurus - like all other early members of the group of reptiles that would later include birds (Avemetatarsalia) - would have been covered with fluff all over its body. If Pisanosaurus was an early Ornithischian and not a Silesaurid, it would have been bipedal, with short forelimbs not used in locomotion.

Diet: Either way, Pisanosaurus would have been an herbivore, eating low-lying vegetation in its densely forested home.

Behavior: As a small, lithe herbivore, Pisanosaurus would have been very skittish - running at the slightest sign of danger, making sure to avoid the many large predators it shared a home with. It probably wouldn’t have been very social - given it wasn’t very abundant! - but it may have foraged in large groups of mixed herbivores, sticking together to rely on each other in the event of danger. This reliance would have allowed bulkier herbivores to notice and react to danger quicker (since the small lithe ones like Pisanosaurus would have already been running away) - and the smaller ones would have had large, bulky roadblocks to stop the approach of predators. As an early dinosaur, it most likely partook in some sort of care of its young, though of course, we do not know what. 

(As an Ornithischian) by Michael B. H., CC BY-SA 3.0 

Ecosystem: The Ischigualasto Environment is one of the more famous ecosystems of the Late Triassic - due to it being a hotbed of early dinosaur discoveries, including some of the earliest potential members of the group. In fact, it is such an important environment that today the rock formation is considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was an extensive series of rivers channeling through a large floodplain, erring towards the wetter side of the scale - mud was the name of the game, and there was a wide variety of plant material present, including a dense conifer forest, ferns, and horsetails. It did experience seasonal rainfall, with possible times of extremely heavy precipitation. Occasionally, everything would be buried in volcanic ash - leading to the beautiful preservation of the environment.

Pisanosaurus wasn’t the only Silesaurid here - there was also Ignotosaurus, the slender and small Silesaurid. There were also famous early dinosaurs such as Eoraptor - the small, bipedal early Saurischian(?), Herrerasaurus and Sanjuansaurus, the large taxonomically-confusing predators, and Chromogisaurus, one of the earliest known “prosauropods.” Of course, this being the Triassic, dinosaurs were only a small part of the ecosystem. The Ischigualasto - like most places of the time period - was absolutely lousy with other archosauriformes! Non-Dinosaurian Archosauriformes were extensively diverse at this time, making up a large chunk of the “large charismatic land animal” roles. There was Aetosauroides, an Aetosaur (sort of like a cross between an ankylosaur, an ant-eater, and a crocodile), Proterochampsa and Pseudochampsa - crocodilian-like creatures that were actually equally closely related to crocodiles and dinosaurs - both frequented the rivers of the environment. Saurosuchus, a large and bulky stem-croc, would have been a huge pain in the rear for herbivores like Pisanosaurus. Sillosuchus was a weird stem-croc, bipedal and strangely dinosaur like - with even, potentially, a beak - but utterly scaly, and bulky in stature! There was also Venaticosuchus, an Ornithosuchid (one of the most basal groups of stem-crocs), and Trialestes - a fast moving stem-croc, and one of the earliest Crocodylomorphs (the group of crocodilians and their closest relatives). 

(Without Feathers) by Nobu Tamura, CC BY-SA 4.0 

It being the Triassic, this wasn’t an environment free of non-reptiles! Temnospondyls - large carnivorous amphibians - were crawling about; as were a variety of Synapsids. Small, carnivorous dog-shaped cynodonts like Chiniquodon would have directly competed with the local dinosaurs; they even grew to be quite large and fast, like in Diegocanis and Ecteninion. They also came in large, bulky herbivorous forms, like Exaeretodon. Dicynodonts were present too, with their strange pig-like appearance: Ischigualastia was a common synapsid on the floodplains of Pisanosaurus’ home. In short, Pisanosaurus was surrounded with a cast of characters showcasing some - but certainly not all - of the weirdness that the Triassic  had to offer.

Other: What Is Pisanosaurus? Back in the day, Pisanosaurus was a famous creature for being one of the earliest “Ornithischian” dinosaurs - one of two major groups of dinosaurs, famous for including such later iconic members as Stegosaurus and Triceratops. In fact, for the longest time, Pisanosaurus was… the only Ornithischian known from the Triassic. This is odd, to say the least - there are dozens of Triassic dinosaurs known, they’re just all from the other group, the Saurischians (containing such iconic later forms as Apatosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and… all birds). So, for the longest time, Pisanosaurus stood as a focal point of dinosaur research - an important piece of the puzzle of the origin of this elusive, but important group. 

By Nix 

Except it isn’t an Ornithischian. Lately, studies have shown time and time again that Pisanosaurus actually more closely resembles the Silesaurids - a group of almost dinosaurs that were quadrupedal, active herbivores living around the world at the time of the Triassic, before going extinct at the end-Triassic extinction. This would make its appearance much different than what a “basal Ornithischian” would suggest - and, of course, the fact that Pisanosaurus is known from only a single fragmented skeleton does not make solving this problem much easier. Weirdly enough, there are some hypotheses which suggest that Silesaurids are… the earliest Ornithischians, (as per Pisanosaurus having an open hip-socket), representing a weird side-branch of the group from the Triassic. As this hypothesis gains traction, it may become increasingly true that Pisanosaurus was a Silesaurid - it was just also an early Ornithischian. Only time will tell in the solving of this mystery - for now, we must wait for more evidence.

~ By Meig Dickson

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[brightbeautifulthings]

MAYHEM BY ESTELLE LAURE BLOG TOUR & CHAPTER EXCERPT

The Lost Boys meets Wilder Girls in this supernatural feminist YA novel.

Available July 14th, 2020

It's 1987 and unfortunately it's not all Madonna and cherry lip balm. Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy's constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem's own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren't like everyone else.

But when May's stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem's questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good.

But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost.

From the acclaimed author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back, Estelle Laure offers a riveting and complex story with magical elements about a family of women contending with what appears to be an irreversible destiny, taking control and saying when enough is enough.

About the Author:

Estelle Laure, the author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back believes in love, magic, and the power of facing hard truths. She has a BA in Theatre Arts and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and she lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her family. Her work is translated widely around the world. 

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Read on for a special chapter excerpt of Mayhem!

three Santa Maria

“Trouble,” Roxy says. She arches a brow at the kids by the van through the bug-spattered windshield, the ghost of a half-smile rippling across her face.

“You would know,” I shoot.

“So would you,” she snaps.

Maybe we’re a little on edge. We’ve been in the car so long the pattern on the vinyl seats is tattooed on the back of my thighs.

The kids my mother is talking about, the ones sitting on the white picket fence, look like they slithered up the hill out of the ocean, covered in seaweed, like the carnival music we heard coming from the boardwalk as we were driving into town plays in the air around them at all times. Two crows are on the posts beside them like they’re standing guard, and they caw at each other loudly as we come to a stop. I love every- thing about this place immediately and I think, ridiculously, that I am no longer alone.

The older girl, white but tan, curvaceous, and lean, has her arms around the boy and is lovely with her smudged eye makeup and her ripped clothes. The younger one pops some- thing made of bright colors into her mouth and watches us come up the drive. She is in a military-style jacket with a ton of buttons, her frizzy blond hair reaching in all directions, freckles slapped across her cheeks. And the boy? Thin, brown, hungry-looking. Not hungry in his stomach. Hungry with his eyes. He has a green bandana tied across his forehead and holes in the knees of his jeans. There’s an A in a circle drawn in marker across the front of his T-shirt.

Anarchy.

“Look!” Roxy points to the gas gauge. It’s just above the E. “You owe me five bucks, Cookie. I told you to trust we would make it, and see what happened? You should listen to your mama every once in a while.”

“Yeah, well, can I borrow the five bucks to pay you for the bet? I’m fresh out of cash at the moment.”

“Very funny.”

Roxy cranes out the window and wipes the sweat off her upper lip, careful not to smudge her red lipstick. She’s been having real bad aches the last two days, even aside from her bruises, and her appetite’s been worse than ever. The only thing she ever wants is sugar. After having been in the car for so long, you’d think we’d be falling all over each other to get out, but we’re still sitting in the car. In here we’re still us.

She sighs for the thousandth time and clutches at her belly. “I don’t know about this, May.”

California can’t be that different from West Texas.

I watch TV. I know how to say gag me with a spoon and grody to the max.

I fling open the door.

Roxy gathers her cigarettes and lighter, and drops them in- side her purse with a snap.

“Goddammit, Elle,” she mutters to herself, eyes flickering toward the kids again. Roxy looks at me over the rims of her sunglasses before shoving them back on her nose. “Mayhem, I’m counting on you to keep your head together here. Those kids are not the usual—”

“I know! You told me they’re foster kids.” 

“No, not that,” she says, but doesn’t clarify. “Okay, I guess.”

“I mean it. No more of that wild-child business.”

“I will keep my head together!” I’m so tired of her saying this. I never had any friends, never a boyfriend—all I have is what Grandmother calls my nasty mouth and the hair Lyle always said was ugly and whorish. And once or twice I might’ve got drunk on the roof, but it’s not like I ever did anything. Besides, no kid my age has ever liked me even once. I’m not the wild child in the family.

“Well, all right then.” Roxy messes with her hair in the rear- view mirror, then sprays herself with a cloud of Chanel No. 5 and runs her fingers over her gold necklace. It’s of a bird, not unlike the ones making a fuss by the house. She’s had it as long as I can remember, and over time it’s been worn smooth by her worrying fingers. It’s like she uses it to calm herself when she’s upset about something, and she’s been upset the whole way here, practically. Usually, she’d be good and buzzed by this time of day, but since she’s had to drive some, she’s only nipped from the tiny bottle of wine in her purse a few times and only taken a couple pills since we left Taylor. The with- drawal has turned her into a bit of a she-demon.

I try to look through her eyes, to see what she sees. Roxy hasn’t been back here since I was three years old, and in that time, her mother has died, her father has died, and like she said when she got the card with the picture enclosed that her twin sister, Elle, sent last Christmas, Everybody got old. After that, she spent a lot of time staring in the mirror, pinching at her neck skin. When I was younger, she passed long nights telling me about Santa Maria and the Brayburn Farm, about how it was good and evil in equal measure, about how it had desires that had to be satisfied.

Brayburns, she would say. In my town, we were the legends. 

These were the mumbled stories of my childhood, and they made everything about this place loom large. Now that we’re here, I realize I expected the house to have a gaping maw filled with spitty, frothy teeth, as much as I figured there would be fairies flitting around with wands granting wishes. I don’t want to take her vision away from her, but this place looks pretty normal to me, if run-down compared to our new house in Taylor, where there’s no dust anywhere, ever, and Lyle prac- tically keeps the cans of soup in alphabetical order. Maybe what’s not so normal is that this place was built by Brayburns, and here Brayburns matter. I know because the whole road is named after us and because flowers and ribbons and baskets of fruit sat at the entrance, gifts from the people in town, Roxy said. They leave offerings. She said it like it’s normal to be treated like some kind of low-rent goddess.

Other than the van and the kids, there are trees here, rose- bushes, an old black Mercedes, and some bikes leaning against the porch that’s attached to the house. It’s splashed with fresh white paint that doesn’t quite cover up its wrinkles and scars. It’s three stories, so it cuts the sunset when I look up, and plants drape down to touch the dirt.

The front door swings open and a woman in bare feet races past the rosebushes toward us. It is those feet and the reckless way they pound against the earth that tells me this is my aunt Elle before her face does. My stomach gallops and there are bumps all over my arms, and I am more awake than I’ve been since.

I thought Roxy might do a lot of things when she saw her twin sister. Like she might get super quiet or chain-smoke, or maybe even get biting like she can when she’s feeling wrong about something. The last thing I would have ever imagined was them running toward each other and colliding in the driveway, Roxy wrapping her legs around Elle’s waist, and them twirling like that. 

This seems like something I shouldn’t be seeing, some- thing wounded and private that fills up my throat. I flip my- self around in my seat and start picking through the things we brought and chide myself yet again for the miserable packing job I did. Since I was basically out of my mind trying to get out of the house, I took a whole package of toothbrushes, an armful of books, my River Phoenix poster, plus I emptied out my underwear drawer, but totally forgot to pack any shoes, so all I have are some flip-flops I bought at the truck stop outside of Las Cruces after that man came to the window, slurring, You got nice legs. Tap, tap tap. You got such nice legs.

My flip-flops are covered in Cheeto dust from a bag that got upended. I slip them on anyway, watching Roxy take her sunglasses off and prop them on her head.

“Son of a bitch!” my aunt says, her voice tinny as she catches sight of Roxy’s eye. “Oh my God, that’s really bad, Rox. You made it sound like nothing. That’s not nothing.”

“Ellie,” Roxy says, trying to put laughter in her voice. “I’m here now. We’re here now.”

There’s a pause.

“You look the same,” Elle says. “Except the hair. You went full Marilyn Monroe.”

“What about you?” Roxy says, fussing at her platinum waves with her palm. “You go full granola warrior? When’s the last time you ate a burger?”

“You know I don’t do that. It’s no good for us. Definitely no good for the poor cows.”

“It’s fine for me.” Roxy lifts Elle’s arm and puckers her nose. “What’s going on with your armpits? May not eat meat but you got animals under there, looks like.”

“Shaving is subjugation.”

“Shaving is a mercy for all mankind.” 

They erupt into laughter and hug each other again.

“Well, where is she, my little baby niece?” Elle swings the car door open. “Oh, Mayhem.” She scoops me out with two strong arms. Right then I realize just how truly tired I am. She seems to know, squeezes extra hard for a second before letting me go. She smells like the sandalwood soap Roxy buys sometimes. “My baby girl,” Elle says, “you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to see you. How much I’ve missed you.”

Roxy circles her ear with a finger where Elle can’t see her.

Crazy, she mouths. I almost giggle.

[kitsparrow]

Spent the weekend driving to San Diego, fast packing my apartment, and driving back to Las Cruces.

I am SO tired and in SO much pain and I haven't eaten since around 4 yesterday, but I can't decide if I want to just back to sleep (probably won't get back to sleep, also, it's almost 10:30 and I need to start unpacking the car and figure out where I'm going to put it all), have a long epsom salt soak in Mom's ginormous tub (similar protestations), or eat something (I am too tired and too sore to cook anything, but I don't think we have anything that doesn't need some prep).

I haven't talked to anyone about this yet. I haven't been able to really process it yet. I'm not ready to yet.

And my unemployment still hasn't come through and I basically can't do anything else while I'm trying to reach someone on the phone, but I'm afraid to just keep waiting. I'm so fucking tired.

[drjackal]

On Tuesday May 21st 2019 11:25 pm I got a call from my step mom telling me that my brother was dead. My mom and I just lost it. I never in my life thought my brother would pass away. He was healthy and working towards goals to better his life.

His name was Chris Sanchez and was 36. He worked for the VA hospital and lived in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He enjoyed things like anime, making music and playing sports with his friends. He had a good attitude towards life. He was always making jokes and laughing.

Unfortunately we grew up in different states because of our parents divorce. Him in New Mexico and me in Iowa. So we only got to see each other twice a year for 2 weeks and later in life when he was able to get time off work but it wasn’t often. This recent visit he came for my birthday and it was awesome! My kids (8 and 9) loved getting a visit from their Uncle Chris.

I still don’t know which night but Chris ended up drinking too much alcohol that night, he either went to bed or passed out too drunk and aspirated on his own vomit. I’m so grateful that he passed in his sleep and wasn’t in any pain.

My mom and I have been doing all the paper work to arrange for Chris’s funeral but, us living in different states makes everything that much harder. My mom, me and my kids will have to fly down to New Mexico not only for the funeral but to go though his apartment. My mom is going to rent a truck for Chris’s belongs and drive back to Iowa while we fly back on a plane. So on top of the funeral costs we have the added cost of a flight and truck rental for several days. I will have to take days off from work, 2 at least, to go fly down. Feel free to donate to my paypal if you would like to help with the cost. It would be greatly appreciated from my mom and I.

Or if you could just reblog and get this out there that would be helpful too.

https://paypal.me/SarahRobbins21?locale.x=en_US

[paultylor99]

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