#and on that note good night good morning good afternoon lewis is still a race winner in 2024 ‼️

[roscoehamiltons]

[bobbyonboard]

Bright [Roger Taylor x Reader]

Summary: Roger comes back from his go-kart race in Budapest, and his eyes aren’t as young as they used to be. Cue his prescription sunglasses.

Warnings: swearing, unprotected sex, just smut.

Word Count: Only 2k this time!!!!!!

Author’s Note: I’m very nervous to post this, honestly. It’s just shameless sunglasses kink. Please be kind LOL

Budapest, 1986

You woke up to a gentle breeze blowing across your skin, the air smelling like sunshine and summertime. The voice of Huey Lewis floated in from the radio in the other room, and your eyes opened a little more as you turned your head, looking at the open french doors that lead out to the balcony of your hotel room, the curtains fluttering in the wind.

A quick glance at the clock allowed you to breathe a sigh of relief, seeing as you’d only napped for an hour. It was enough that you felt rested, but not too much that you didn’t even know what year it was anymore. You didn’t have to be anywhere until later that evening, so you allowed yourself to stretch out in the luxurious king-sized bed, singing the lyrics to “Stuck With You” under your breath.

Just as you were about to sit up to head out to the balcony for a quick view of Budapest, you heard the door to the hotel suite open, and a lazy smile spread across your lips.

Roger.

You knew he was trying to be quiet, remembering how you told him you might try and nap after your shower. You could tell in the way his shoes were toed off gently, versus kicked into the corner of the room.

Rolling onto your stomach under the covers, you looked over your shoulder at the doorway, waiting for your husband to enter the master bedroom, the warm breeze rolling across your bare back.

Roger walked in slowly, leaning against the doorframe with a smirk, his sunglasses still perched on his nose. God, he looked good. It truly wasn’t fair.

“How is it that after being married for five years, you still manage to get me hard just by laying in bed doing nothing?,” he purred, licking his lips slowly as he pushed his sunglasses up into his hair, making his way over to the bed.

You rolled your eyes slightly, scooting over so he could lay down next to you and turning so you were on one elbow, your free hand stroking his cheek once he was within reach.

“Doesn’t take much, my love. Usually just being naked does it,” you teased, leaning up for a soft kiss, humming against his lips before pulling back to lazily brush your fingers through his hair. “How was the race?,” you asked with a grin, noting his slightly pink cheeks from being in the sun the last few hours.

“Really great, yeah. The crew filmed a bit, I signed a few things. Got to drive relatively fast,” he smirked, tilting his head back so his lips could catch your fingertips, peppering them with kisses. “Missed you, though.”

You hummed softly, moving to lay your head on his chest with a soft sigh, closing your eyes and snuggling up against him as he wrapped his arms around you.

“I missed you, too. Glad I got a shower and a nap in, though. Gives me plenty of time to get ready for tonight,” you grinned, tilting your head so your chin was resting on Roger’s chest.

In a few hours, you had to be at the venue for Queen’s concert, heading over early with Roger for sound check. It was a little bittersweet, the tour was almost at its end, but that meant you’d have your husband all to yourself soon.

“Mm, yes. Plenty of time,” Roger smirked, leaning down slowly to capture your lips in a passionate kiss.

“Ouch!”

You pulled back with a frown, rubbing your eye where Roger’s nose had just prodded it harshly.

“Stupid bloody eyesight,” Roger was muttering, leaning down for another kiss and you backed up slightly, still pouting.

“Go put on your glasses, I’m not going to have you fumbling around my body and hoping to touch the right places. You’re getting older, you should use them more,” you teased, grinning when Roger just stuck his middle finger up.

“You can shove right off with that ‘getting older’ bullshit. Besides, I don’t know where they are, they’re probably packed somewhere in the bottom of some suitcase and it’ll take ages to find them,” he groaned, hands sliding under the covers to tug you up his body by your hips, fingertips digging into your warm skin. “Why would I do that when you’re right here?”.

You’d just started to forget about the annoying interruption, a soft moan leaving your throat as Roger’s lips found your neck. Your hips rocked forward, your naked body rubbing against Roger’s clothed one, your nipples hardening against his--

“Ouch!”

“Fuck!”

“Rog!”

You scrambled out of his lap, holding your chin, and you looked over to see Roger’s hand on his nose. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he hissed, pulling his hand away and warily looking down, only slightly appeased that he wasn’t bleeding.

“Glasses. Now,” you said pointedly, you just held up a finger when it looked like he was going to try and make up some excuse.

Roger just let out a long, dramatic groan, pushing himself off the bed quickly and wandering over to his suitcase.

Twenty minutes later, with both of your suitcases unpacked, clothes and toiletries littered across the floor, you put your hands on your hips, not caring that you were just naked in the middle of the bedroom.

“I cannot, cannot believe you left them at home. Rog, you’ve been driving!,” you chided, looking over at your husband who was steadily running his fingers through his blonde locks, hair sticking in every direction.

“I wear my sunglasses when I drive, they’re prescription!,” he whined, and suddenly, you felt as if you were in some Saturday morning cartoon and a light bulb switched on above your head.

“They are, aren’t they?,” you hummed, walking over to him slowly, biting lightly at your bottom lip. You’d never admitted it out loud, but you certainly loved to look at Roger in those sunglasses. The way they just made him look so effortless sexy.

Roger’s brows furrowed slightly, tentatively wrapping his arms around you, looking as if he was afraid you were going to yell again. His hands slid up your naked back, sliding around to the front of your body, fingertips barely brushing the undersides of your breasts.

“Put these on, baby,” you murmured, gently tugging his sunglasses down from his hair so they rested comfortably on his nose, watching with a smirk as he blinked a few times, his eyes adjusting. “That’s better, isn’t it?,” you purred, leaning in for a slow, sensual kiss.

Roger just groaned against your lips, everything a bit smoother, easier. One of his hands moved up to your hair, fingers tangling in your locks and tugging slightly, using his hips to push you back towards the bed until your knees hit the edge of the mattress and you flopped back with a squeal.

“You like it when I wear these, baby?,” he smirked, and he was so fucking cocky that if you weren’t such a needy mess already, you would have given him some shit for it.

You just nodded, whimpering slightly as you spread your legs in an open invitation for your husband. Your hand traveled down between your thighs, teasingly rubbing at your clit to give Roger a bit of a show, a soft moan escaping your lips.

Roger cursed under his breath, stripping out of his clothes in record time, his eyes never once leaving yours. “Move up here for me, lovely,” he hummed as he leaned down, helping you up so your head was resting on one of the elegant, fluffy pillows, a small smile on your lips.

“Still so good to me,” you murmured, reaching up to cup his cheek gently, your thumb brushing lightly over his lips.

“Just treating you like you deserve to be treated,” Roger smiled in return, tilting his head to press a kiss to your palm.

You were about to respond with something just as equally sappy when you suddenly gasped, feeling one of Roger’s fingers slide inside of your already dripping wet cunt. “Fuck, Rog,” you moaned, clenching around the digit inside of you.

Roger just smirked down at you, and somehow the sunglasses made him look impossibly more smug. He curled his finger slightly, grinning brightly when you whined, wrapping your legs around his hips.

“Don’t tease me,” you panted, a soft mewl traveling past your lips as you felt him slide in another finger. “Please. Been wanting you all day.”

You could tell that if this was any other day, Roger would have really dragged this out, made you beg and plead for his cock a thousand times. But it had been a busy few days, and the city was beautiful and warm and it made you both constantly horny, but unable to really get the time to yourself.

“Anything for you, Mrs. Taylor,” Roger purred, leaning down for a slow, loving kiss, and suddenly you felt like it was your wedding night five years ago, drunk on tequila and love, fumbling around naked in bed.

You whined when you felt his fingers leave you, your soaked entrance clenching around nothing.

“Shhh, I’ve got you, sweet girl,” Roger hummed, moving up to his knees, putting your legs up over his shoulders. He peppered kisses all down your knee and calf, lining himself up at your entrance.

He knew that he’d never get tired of the look on your face when entered you. Your eyes rolled back slightly, mouth ajar, a long moan being pulled from your throat as he pressed himself as far as he could get inside of you.

“Fuck, Rog,” you moaned, reaching up to tangle your fingers in his hair, reveling in the fullness that you’d been craving all afternoon. You looked up into his eyes and saw the reflection of your expression in his sunglasses, heavy lidded eyes and mouth hanging open.

“That’s right, that’s my good girl,” Roger panted softly, beginning to snap his hips against yours. With your legs on his shoulders, it allowed him to go deeper, and he could practically feel the head of his cock bumping your sweet spot.

His hands moved to the backs of your thighs, practically bending you in half as he truly started to fuck into you, his sunglasses sliding down slightly on his nose and you let out a wanton moan.

“Jesus,” he gasped, throwing his head back to try and push the glasses back up his face, and you didn’t think you’d seen anything more attractive in your entire life.

“Yeah, Rog. Fuck me, baby. Missed your cock,” you whimpered, reaching your hand down to start rubbing at your clit, crying out when a particularly deep thrust made your toes curl.

Your husband didn’t need to be told twice, getting balanced before he began to thrust his hips harder and faster, a thin layer of sweat covering his body.

Your free hand went to pinch and twist at your nipple, rubbing harshly at your clit as he slid in and out of you easily, your wetness drenching his cock.

“M’gonna come,” you whimpered, watching yourself play with your tits, biting at your bottom lip in the reflection of his sunglasses.

“Come for me, baby,” Roger groaned, his voice cracking slightly and you could tell his own release was close.

With a few more thrusts, you felt your orgasm wash over you, crying out Roger’s name as you pulsed around his dick, legs trembling as they rested on his shoulders.

Roger swore loudly, thrusting twice more before he came inside of you, his release painting your walls. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he gasped, slowly letting your legs drop down to the bed as he remained inside of you, peppering kisses all over your face as you both came down from your highs.

You giggled softly, nuzzling your noses together before you slid his sunglasses back up into his hair.

“Will you wear these more often?,” you asked shyly, biting lightly at your bottom lip.

Roger’s grin just grew, leaning down to peck your lips.

“Whenever you want, love.”

[parisian-nicole]

Adore: A GarVez Fic (Pt. 9/?)

Part 8: https://parisian-nicole.tumblr.com/post/185982220182/adore-a-garvez-fic-pt-8

"Oh my God, Luke, get up!" Penelope yelped out in a frustrated tone and the man that had just been wrapped snuggly around her leaped up and over to the bedside table. He grasped his gun which he had placed there the night before, and then placed himself back up against her in a protective manner while he raised his gun towards the door. Both sat quiet, wide-eyed, and panted slightly as they watched, waited, and expected some intruder to come through the opened bedroom door. "Luke," She called gently to him after a few seconds. "There's no one there," She announced and with a relieved sigh he calmed himself and lowered the gun. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to scare you like that."

"No, it's ok, but are you, all right?" He then turned to her in concern and she simply nodded her head. "Sorry, if I scared you by grabbing my gun like that. I guess it's something I picked up since I became an agent. And I am a very sound sleeper…"

"Yeah, I know that is why I yelled like that. You were wrapped so tightly around me and I really have to go to the bathroom. I pushed and pulled but you would not let go and wouldn't wake up, so I yelled."

"I'm, sorry," He then moved over more to his side of the bed and allowed her an escape, and she threw the bedding off and hopped from the bed.

"It's okay," She said as she leaned over and gave him a quick sweet kiss on his lips that brought a smile to both of their faces. "You made me feel very safe and cherished … And I didn't want to ruin that by peeing on you," She added around a giggle as she then rushed to the bathroom, closed the door behind her, and left Alvez to chuckle after her.

"Thanks, I appreciate that," He called after her as he put his gun back in the holster and then grasped his watch from the bedside table. He noted the time and that it was nearly noon. He then placed the watch back upon the table and leaned back more comfortably against the pillows with his right arm bent behind his head. A big grin was plastered across his face as he recalled the night they had shared. This was how Garcia found him as she reemerged from the bathroom with her toothbrush in her mouth. She faltered in her brushing as she let her eyes drink him in. She was still in awe over how incredibly beautiful this man was naked and even more so over the fact that he thought the same of her. "Good morning beautiful," Alvez greeted with a smile as he unabashedly raked his eyes over her frame, which was now covered in a short satin spaghetti strapped gown, which she kept on a hook on the back of her bathroom door. She was sure there wasn't a part of her body that he had not already seen and kissed during the night, but she still was apprehensive about allowing him to see her fully naked in the light of the day. She smiled at him around the toothbrush in her mouth as she disappeared back into the bathroom, where he heard her spit, and then rinse.

"It's nearly noon," She corrected him as she reappeared back at the bathroom door.

"All right, then good afternoon, beautiful," Alvez corrected and garnered a wide gorgeous smile from her. "Now, get naked and come back to bed," He commanded and she arched a brow at his words. She was surprised that he still wanted to hang in bed with her and as if he had read her mind, he spoke out again. "I want to spend the entire day in bed with you. We have nowhere to be, right?"

"What makes you think I don't have plans for the day?" Garcia asked with a playful smile that told Alvez that she probably really didn't and that she was just teasing him.

"Oh, I know you have plans," He replied as he tossed back the covers and exposed his exquisitely chiseled body but also his massive erection. He then stood from the bed and stalked to where she stood. "You'll be spending the day in bed with me, while I ravage you. Now, arms up," He instructed as he leaned down and grasped the bottom of the slip gown and tugged it upwards. She didn't argue or hesitate at all as she obediently lifted her arms and allowed him to free her of the garment. He then enveloped her naked body against his, lifted her up until she comfortably wrapped her legs around his waist. He buried his face into her neck where he kissed and nibbled at the flesh there before deeply breathing in her scent. "Dios mio eres tan hermosa, y sexy," He moaned into her ear before nibbling on its lobe. Garcia knew enough Spanish to fully understand this compliment, one Alvez had spoken to her throughout the night. She sighed contently as her eyes rolled closed, she held onto him more snugly and placed a kiss on his cheek. He turned them and walked back to the bed and toppled down upon it. He made sure he didn't put all of his weight onto her as they landed. The head of his engorged cock was already at her entrance, ready to enter the place he had designated his heaven on Earth, but just as he was about to surge forward a knock at the front door echoed throughout the apartment.

"Penelope, we know you are in there, open up!" Prentiss called out through the door as the two lovers lay frozen on the bed.

"If we're really quiet she'll probably go away," Alvez offered and then leaned down and kissed Garcia's left nipple. The jolt of pleasure it sent through her made her comply and she lay beneath him in silence.

"We saw your car in your space, Garcia, so we know you're here," Tara Lewis chimed in.

"Yep, so you're not getting out of participating in the race today," A.J. added. "Besides, it's for a good cause remember?"

"And you were the one who made us all sign up with you, so, c'mon, open up," Prentiss spoke out again and banged at the door. Garcia disentangled herself from Alvez, who frowned down at her.

"I have to answer, they're right," She replied to his unasked question as she pushed at his chest. He rolled off of her begrudgingly as she stood and grabbed the robe thrown on the chair in a corner of her bedroom and pulled it on. "I totally forgot the MS charity marathon was today, sorry," She cast him an apologetic glance to which he threw back a wink and a reassuring smile. "You can just hang around here until I get back … I … I mean, if you want to," She added as she tied the sash of the robe.

"Thanks," He replied and she smiled sweetly. Internally she was happy that he was considering it. She then rushed from the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

"I'm coming," Garcia called out as she moved to the front door. She unlocked the door and threw it open, and her three friends and co-workers all hurried inside and she closed the door behind them. "I'm sorry guys, I overslept. I guess it's been an exhausting week and it just caught up with me," She stated.

"I bet," Prentiss said. "It wouldn't have anything to do with your new hot Latin lover would it?" She teased as A.J. laughed and both Tara and Garcia's eyes doubled in size.

"Wait, what new Latin lover?" Tara questioned as she looked to each of them for an answer.

"Well, I hope she means me," Alvez's voice filled the room as he entered fully dressed but with his buttonless dress shirt, wide open which put his muscular upper body on full display. And the new visitors eyed him appreciatively as he moved to the open kitchen area and began to fix himself a cup of coffee. Garcia stood with her back to him as she began to turn a deep shade of red across her neck and chest. "Can I fix you, ladies, a cup?" He offered.

"Uh, no thank you, we really need to get going. We want to get there a little early, you know, to warm up," A.J. replied. She knew Garcia well enough to know that she was embarrassed even though there was no reason to be, and she knew that deflecting would help.

"Right," Garcia spoke out taking A.J.'s queue with great appreciation. "Just give me 10 minutes to get ready."

"If there's still an opening I'd like to sign up too," Alvez spoke out. "I have my wheels up bag and my gym bag down in my car, and I know I have something I can wear in one of them."

"Sure, last-minute sign-ups are welcome," Prentiss stated with a smile.

"Great, I'll just run down to my truck and grab my bags," He said as he moved to where Garcia still stood with her back to him. "Get the shower started and I will be right back," He spoke directly to her as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, kissed her temple, and then moved to the front door. He was slightly amused at the situation and at how flustered Garcia seemed, but also glad that their new relationship was now public and official, as far as he was concerned. Once he had exited the door Garcia quickly made her way to her bedroom and closed the door behind her before her friends could start to interrogate her.

"You can run but you can't hide forever missy," Tara called out after her. "And I want details, damnit!" She added as both Prentiss and A.J. giggled at her.

Sometime later

"Well, I'd say Luke's last minute sign up sure boosted the donations," A.J. offered as she, Prentiss, Tara, and Garcia stood near the finish line they had all crossed, while they watched Alvez who stood at the refreshment table surrounded by a group of young women who openly ogled and flirted with him.

"Yeah, he's definitely attracted the attention of all the women here," Garcia grumbled out as she watched irritably the spectacle the women were making with Alvez, who for his part busied himself with the drinks he was getting for him and Garcia. He didn't seem to be paying the other women any real attention. 'Good Boy' Garcia thought as he graciously thanked the women and hurriedly moved back to where she and his other co-workers stood.

"True, but I think he only has eyes for you," Prentiss added just as Alvez walked up, leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on her lips, and then pulled back and handed her the drink he had made her. He then casually tossed his right arm across her shoulder. His action hadn't gone unnoticed by his admirers who watched enviously before they walked off. Garcia could not hide the wide grin that was now on her face. She knew that she would have to deal with other women flirting as Luke Alvez was a walking Adonis, and she wasn't sure how she would deal with it. Now, seeing how he seemed to proudly show that he was with her and she was his woman, she worried a little less. She reached up her right hand and interlocked her fingers with his and sipped at her drink as they all walked over to where they were about to hold a small ceremony after the race.

"Thanks for joining us today," Garcia spoke softly to him. "It really helped to boost the donations. There were a lot of ladies here who signed onto your number, you know."

"You're welcome, but I only signed up so I could spend the day with you," He said as he leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

"Is that why you hung back and ran the entire race behind me?" She inquired knowing that he could have easily finished the race well before she had.

"Honestly, no, I just loved how your ass bounced when you ran," He replied with a chuckle and her mouth fell open slightly as she smiled up at him. "And I may or may not have taken a video," He added.

"Oh, he did," Tara tossed in as she walked to their right. "I saw him," She stated as they all laughed a bit as Garcia and Alvez wrestled a bit as she playfully tried to get his phone from his pocket.

*The above manip was done by me. Not meant to infringe, but to entertain*

More to come...

[allbestnet]

100 Best First Lines of Novels

Call me Ishmael. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)

A screaming comes across the sky. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (trans. Gregory Rabassa) (1967)

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett) (1877)

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 1984 by George Orwell (1949)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859)

I am an invisible man. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)

The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (1933)

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1885)

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. The Trial by Franz Kafka (trans. Breon Mitchell) (1925)

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver) (1979)

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (1938)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916)

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1759–1767)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1830)

One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1966)

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. City of Glass by Paul Auster (1985)

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)

124 was spiteful. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (trans. Edith Grossman) (1605)

Mother died today. The Stranger by Albert Camus (trans. Stuart Gilbert) (1942)

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. Waiting by Ha Jin (1999)

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)

I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (trans. Michael R. Katz) (1864)

Where now? Who now? When now? The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett (trans. Patrick Bowles) (1953)

Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. “Stop!” cried the groaning old man at last, “Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.” The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein (1925)

In a sense, I am Jacob Horner. The End of the Road by John Barth (1958)

It was like so, but wasn't. Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers (1995)

—Money . . . in a voice that rustled. J R by William Gaddis (1975)

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

All this happened, more or less. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)

They shoot the white girl first. Paradise by Toni Morrison (1998)

For a long time, I went to bed early. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (trans. Lydia Davis) (1913)

The moment one learns English, complications set in. Chromos by Felipe Alfau (1990)

Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. The Debut by Anita Brookner (1981)

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962)

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1911)

Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation. Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish (1974)

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis (1952)

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952)

It was the day my grandmother exploded. The Crow Road by Iain M. Banks (1992)

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)

Elmer Gantry was drunk. Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis (1927)

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. Tracks by Louise Erdrich (1988)

It was a pleasure to burn. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien (1939)

I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson (1988)

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1872)

It was love at first sight. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino (1971)

I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham (1944)

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (2001)

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton (1904)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

You better not never tell nobody but God. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)

“To be born again,” sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, “first you have to die.” The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988)

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace (1987)

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. Herzog by Saul Bellow (1964)

Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor (1960)

Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. The Tin Drum by GŸnter Grass (trans. Ralph Manheim) (1959)

When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin (1971)

Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World. The Origin of the Brunists by Robert Coover (1966)

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (1902)

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (1929)

“Take my camel, dear,” said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. The Towers of Trebizon by Rose Macaulay (1956)

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (1900)

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley (1953)

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban (1980)

Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis (1994)

Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. Crash by J. G. Ballard (1973)

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)

“When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,” Papa would say, “she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.” Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (1983)

In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (1960)

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley (1978)

It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner (1948)

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (1934)

Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. Middle Passage by Charles Johnson (1990)

I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)

The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)

I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. Second Skin by John Hawkes (1964)

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini (1921)

Psychics can see the color of time it's blue. Blown Away by Ronald Sukenick (1986)

In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)

Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen. Double or Nothing by Raymond Federman (1971)

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (1988)

He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)

High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. Changing Places by David Lodge (1975)

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)

[upwardboundwriting]

100 (Best) First Lines of Novels

1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. —Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

12. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell)

14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler (1979; trans. William Weaver)

15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

17. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

19. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. —Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759–1767)

20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. —Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. —James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. —Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)

26. 124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman)

28. Mother died today. —Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)

29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

31. I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz)

32. Where now? Who now? When now? —Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles)

33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." —Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)

35. It was like so, but wasn't. —Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (1995)

36. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled. —William Gaddis, J R (1975)

37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. —Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

38. All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

39. They shoot the white girl first. —Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

40. For a long time, I went to bed early. —Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (1913; trans. Lydia Davis)

41. The moment one learns English, complications set in. —Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)

42. Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. —Anita Brookner, The Debut (1981)

43. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; —Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

44. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. —Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

45. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. —Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation.  —Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974)

48. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. —Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

49. It was the day my grandmother exploded. —Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)

50. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. —Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)

51. Elmer Gantry was drunk. —Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (1927)

52. We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. —Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)

53. It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

54. A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. —Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)

55. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. —Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)

59. It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

61. I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. —W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)

62. Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. —Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

63. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. —G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

64. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

65. You better not never tell nobody but God. —Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

66. "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

67. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. —Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

68. Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. —David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)

69. If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. —Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964)

70. Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. —Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away (1960)

71. Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. —Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959; trans. Ralph Manheim)

72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. —Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)

74. She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. —Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902)

75. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. —Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

77. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.  —Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.  —L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

80. Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. —William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)

81. Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. —J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)

82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

83. "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." —Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)

86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948)

89. I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. —Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

90. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. —Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)

91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. —John Hawkes, Second Skin (1964)

92. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. —Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)

94. In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. —Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

96. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. —Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (1988)

99. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. —Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. —Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

[josephqunnies]

so (human) simon is a supernatural fanatic or whatever ??? he's super into lore ok and so he's always tryna guess what ppl around him could potentially be and rlly it just gets on jace's (his roommate) nerves he has no time for simon's bullshit ok bc while he enjoys humoring him he is Not fond of the way simon glares suspiciously @ ppl. it's just rude, simon. anyway simon suspects his new neighbor, raphael, of being a vamp. he almost shits himself upon learning he was right and THEY FALL IN LOVE

If Jace was being honest he brought this onto himself. He’d humor Simon with ‘stories’ of world with demons and angels, werewolves, fairies, vampires and warlocks and the hunters that kept the mundane world safe.

It was fun humor Simon at the time when they were fourteen and just started high school. But he hadn’t expected six years later Simon would still be obsessed, and he wasn’t using that term lightly.

“I think Luke would be a werewolf, the Alpha wolf” Simon leaned over the counter as Jace cooked breakfast in their tiny kitchen.

Jace groans and flips his eggs “it’s 8am Simon”

“I know but-”

“Drink your coffee and got to class Lewis” Jace rolls his eyes. He should have kept his mouth shut. He just wanted a friend that wasn’t Clary or Alec or Izzy and now he can’t seem to loose this one, not even if he wanted to.

-

“Hey beta wolf” Simon greeted Maia when entered the apartment and saw her on the couch sitting besides Jace.

“Beta what?” Maia asked turned to Jace for her instead of asking Simon to send him on a rant.

Jace shrugged “who knows, yesterday at the Huntersmoon he told me Russell will betray the pack”

“Does he do that to everyone?” Maia asked with a fond smile.

“Yes he does” Jace shook his head and turned his head to see why Simon was still standing by the door with his head poked out into the hallway. “Simon what are you doing?”

“Vampire”

“What”

“I mean new neighbor” Simon said and shut the door “and he’s so hot”

Maia chuckled and leaned over Jace to look at Simon “what does he look like”

“He’s so tall and handsome as hell” Simon sang which caused Maia to laugh out loud" okay he’s not tall, he’s actually short and it’s cute and he’s pale I bet he’s a vampire"

“Simon” Jace said in an exasperated tone “our new neighbor isn’t a vampire”

“How would you know” Simon snorted.

“Because those are stories, just stories, people are beginning to think you’re weird” Jace replied.

“Hey that’s not fair” Maia butted in.

“Thank you” Simon responded with a proud smirk.

“It’s Simon people always thought he’s weird”

“Wow I’m hurt Maia”

“That’s what you get for calling me a beta wolf, clearly I’m Alpha material”

-

Simon was suspicious of everyone thank you very much. He just took interest in the people that sparked it. Like The Lightwoods and their mysterious tattoos and Clary and Jocelyn with the same kinds, he took an interest in Dot, the woman never seemed to age and recently in Alec’s boyfriend, Simon swore he saw Magnus’ fingers sparked blue before.

And of course Simon took a special interest in the weird habits of his nocturnal neighbor, Raphael.

Simon wasn’t stalking, he was observing, thank you very much Jace. He noted that Raphael never left his apartment during the day, Simon knows this because their bedroom are right next to each other, he asked -begged- the landlord for a floor plan of the building, and during the day it was as if Raphael wasn’t there either. No noise came through the thin walls. Simon noticed that as soon as the sun went down -which was early during the day winter- Raphael was up and out, not returning until dawn.

-

“There’s something strange about him Maia” Simon paced back and forth in the apartment.

“He probably works in the night Simon” Maia rolled her eyes and flipped her textbook close.

“What kind of job requires you to be out all night huh?”

“Hotel management Simon”

“Yeah a hotel for the undead” Simon scoffed and collapsed on the couch. He’ll figure it out.

-

When Simon came stumbling home at 4am after pulling an all nighter at the library the last person he wanted to see but expected to find awake at this time of night was Raphael.

“Good morning” Raphael says to a half asleep Simon as takes a sip from a thermos.

“Morning” Simon mumbled with a yawn.

Raphael chuckled lightly as they entered the elevator together.

The elevator ride up to their floor was silent save for Simon nervously tapping his feet against the floor.

Simon waited until Raphael disappeared into his room before he started to look for his keys.

Simon mentally cursed himself after awhile when he realized that he’d left in on the coffee table in his rush to leave for class.

After knocking twice Simon sighed and gave up. Jace was most likely at Maia’s place. Simon knock his head against the door with a loud groan.

“Um excuse me” Raphael’s door open and his head poked out “your disturbing me” he teased a distressed Simon.

“Sorry, I got locked out” Simon turned to look at Simon with a pout.

Raphael nodded and turned and walked into his apartment leaving the door open “coming?”

Raphael heard the scrabble as Simon bent down to grab his discarded bag and hoodie “coming”

“Thanks” Simon smiled when he got into the warmth of Raphael’s apartment and out of the chilly hallway. “I’m Simon by the way”

“Raphael and you’re welcome” Raphael said and gestured towards the couch “it’s quite comfortable”

“It will do” Simon smiled and sat on the couch.

“Feel free to use anything you need, our apartments should be the same” Raphael said and walked towards his bedroom “goodnight”

-It was after twelve in the afternoon when Simon woke up and went to the fridge. He yelped at the sight of bottles of red liquid. Simon’s heart raced and picked up one of the bottle and uncapped it. The stench of blood filled his nose.

“Holy shit” he whispered to himself and hurriedly put the bottle back.

He then turned to look around the apartment. All outside light was shut out by thick black curtains. Simon noted the lack of food beside the bottled blood in the refrigerator.“Oh god this can’t be happening, this is some crazy prank” Simon whispered to himself when a gush of wind past him.

“What’s wrong Simon?” Raphael’s smooth voice came from behind him.

“N-nothing” Simon stuttered and took a step back.

“Okay then sit down Simon” Raphael said and sat on the couch across from where Simon slept.

“It’s dark in here” Simon avoided Raphael’s gaze as he spoke “there’s blood in the fridge”

Raphael nodded “there is and you know why”

“You’re kidding? Vampires aren’t real”

“Really?” Raphael tilted his head to the side to stare at Simon before dropping his fangs “seems real to me”

“Are you going to kill me? I’m skinny and I didn’t shower, probably wouldn’t taste well” Simon gulped nervously.

Raphael laughed and shock his head “God no, why would I kill you? You’re too pretty”

“I- what?”

“Besides it’s against the laws to kill mundanes, I don’t need your shadowhunter friends to come after me”

[the-girl-in-the-band-tshirt]

Rum and Cupcakes (Chapter 4)

Here’s the next chapter in the story of cupcake baker Emma trying very hard not to like the new bookstore owner Killian. Beware: pure cuteness ahead. Enjoy, @a-city-dove !

Chapter 1 2 3 

Ao3

Emma was exhausted when she got home after helping Killian until nearly 1:30 am, but rather than sleep like she definitely should have, she stayed up and finished David Copperfield. She ended up getting only two hours of sleep before her alarm blared from her phone when her natural body clock didn’t wake her. Emma groaned and pulled a pillow over her ears, but she was glad she set the alarm on as backup; she definitely would have been late for work that morning without it. She started to make some coffee before running back upstairs to shower. After rushing around to get dressed, she poured the coffee into a very large thermos and grabbed her jacket and keys. She still had plenty of time to get to work, but she wanted to stop by Killian’s first to give him his book back. And to see him. Emma barely had her car in park before she was running to knock on Killian’s door. He answered,

“Swan! It’s rather early.” At least he didn’t look shocked to see her this time.

“I know, but I wanted to get here before I started work. I finished the book.” She held it out for him to take back. She had removed his sticky notes the night before, putting them on her refrigerator at home.

“Keep it. I own a bookstore, not a library.” He put his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Then let me at least pay for it.” He shook his head no.

“Think of it as a gift, love.” She tightened her grip on the book and couldn’t quite hide her smile.

“Thank you, Killian.” He walked to a box and pulled out a book, a sticky note already fixed to the cover. He handed it to her.

“Here. Your next read. Also a gift.” She looked at the book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. “Really?”

“Alas, my copies of Peter Pan still haven’t been unboxed yet. Give it a chance.”

“Got a thing for fairytales?” He smirked.

“Read the sticky note.” She did:

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality”

“Escapist fiction,” he stated like it was obvious. She nodded.

“I’ll give it a try.”

“Good." He took his bottom lip between his teeth. “As much as I value your company, and I really do, Swan, you should probably start making some cupcakes.” He pointed at a clock hanging above the door of his shop.

“Crap. You’re right. I have to go.” She headed for the door with Killian following closely at her heels.

“You forgot your rather large coffee cup.” He handed her the thermos.

“Thanks.” She took it, tucking her new book under her arm. “I’ll see you around.”

“See you, Swan.” Emma flashed Killian a smile as she raced across the street to start baking. She skipped breakfast to talk to him, so she decided to combine work and eating. She made a chocolate covered bacon cupcake and a cranberry orange flavored one. She figured she’d get bacon and orange juice. For her last morning flavor, she made a vanilla cake with cinnamon icing and crushed frosted flakes for topping. Cereal, orange juice, and bacon- seemed like a decent breakfast to Emma. She made a few extra cupcakes in each batch, which were set aside for her to nibble on as she dealt with customers and read her new book. Emma took a pen and the sticky notes she kept by the register and quickly scrawled on it before boxing one of each of the cupcakes and running the box to Killian on her lunch break. She slipped in the door and left it on the desk when she didn’t see him. She made her way back to her shop to prepare some cupcakes for the afternoon.

Killian came in from grabbing some lunch with Robin to find a box on his table. He read the note on top before smiling at the contents and eating them, despite the fact that he had literally just finished lunch:

It's a good thing you didn’t want your book back. I may or may not have marked up some quotes that spoke to me. Like this one, which made me think of you, “These books were a way of escaping from the unhappiness of my life.” Escapist fiction. Sorry I made us both miss breakfast. Hope these make up for it. -Emma Swan

Back at Swan’s Cupcakes, the coffee and cupcakes weren’t exactly working on Emma. She decided to remedy her grogginess with some mocha cupcakes for the afternoon crowd. Emma made a chocolate cupcake with a coffee icing, topped with a dark chocolate covered espresso bean. The mocha cupcakes were joined by cinnamon roll cupcakes and chocolate covered strawberry cupcakes. She tasted her afternoon creations, feeling pretty good about herself as she set them out. Emma made a mental note to call Ruby later and tell her how well she’s doing now. And Emma did promise to tell Ruby all about the person who moved into her old shop; Ruby was going to laugh when Emma told her it was Killian. Emma turned her attention back to Alice and her Wonderland adventures to pass the time as she waited for the end of the work day. She was more than ready to collapse the second she got home. Emma even made herself some chicken nuggets at work so she wouldn’t have to stay up later to eat dinner. Her last customer left as she was finishing her dinner, so she paused her eating to quickly clean up. When the shop was sufficiently cleared, she sat at her stool again with her open book. Emma was so engrossed in Wonderland, she didn’t register the sound of the door and she jumped when she looked up for a second and saw Killian standing there. Her chicken nugget fell into the puddle of ketchup on her plate, splattering the red substance onto the table around the plate. The book in Emma’s other hand dropped to the floor as her hand moved to rest on her chest.

“What the hell?!”

“Apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Emma’s eyes were still three times their normal size as she tried to calm down.

“Well you did.” He looked down.

“Sorry.” She picked up the book, looking up at him from the floor.

“It’s okay. I just, wow. You sure know how to sneak up on people.” He just shrugged in response. “Anyway, what’s up? I assume you’re here for a reason.”

“Ah, yeah. I wanted to thank you for the breakfast.” He put air quotes around the word “breakfast.”

“I felt bad I made us both miss it.” Emma took the ketchup-covered nugget and popped it into her mouth.

“What if we could still talk, but neither of us would have to miss the most important meal of the day?” She paused her chewing.

“What do you mean?”

“Would you care to join me for breakfast tomorrow morning?” Her eyes widened once again.

“Oh, Killian. I don’t know.”

“I understand.” He nodded.

“Killian, it’s not like that! I’m just really used to my routine.” He sent her a sympathetic smile.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to explain yourself. If you don't want to meet me, you can say so. I can take it.” She felt guilty when she saw the sadness in his eyes. She hated being rejected the way she just did to him. She’d feel awful if he felt half as miserable as she did when he rejected her. He started walking away when she called after him,

“Wait!” He spun around to face her. “Okay.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. Tomorrow.” His smile could’ve lit an entire city.

“Meet me at Belle’s coffee shop?”

“A place with coffee. Smart.” He nodded.

“Judging by the size of your coffee cup this morning, I figured you'd need it." She threw her ketchup-stained paper plate in the trash and smiled at him.

“Belle’s. Tomorrow. 6:00 on the dot.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” He walked away without another word. Thank goodness her plans for the rest of the night included nothing but sleep. She would need it to get up even earlier than usual to meet Killian. Despite the time, she found herself looking forward to it. He had proved himself interesting to her, and she was eager to learn more about her new business partner and maybe-friend. Emma grabbed her keys and books as she made her way to her bug, smiling and listening to her new Halsey CD on the way home.

Emma groaned when her alarm pulled her out of her dreams. She was used to waking up early for work, but this was ridiculous. Whining to her duckling, Emma sat up and ran a hand through her hair. She was very happy Killian suggested a coffee shop because he was right, she needed it. Plus, she had been to Belle’s before; she has a pretty decent breakfast selection, as well as strong coffee. Emma dragged her feet on the carpet as she made her way to her bathroom. The shower was refreshing, but did a poor job waking her up. As much as Emma wanted to read some of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with the extra twelve minutes she had before she had to leave after she got dressed, reading would only make her eyes burn with exhaustion, so she decided to just leave early and start the coffee as soon as possible. Emma was completely dazed as she drove, but she made it and walked in to find that Killian was also early. He stood up and waved her over when she entered the shop. Emma smiled as she took the seat across from Killian. Neither said anything for a moment, then Killian broke the silence,

“I would’ve ordered for you, but I didn’t know how you like your coffee.”

“It’s fine. I’ve got it. I can order for us both. What do you want?” Before he could protest, she was already on her feet.

“Coffee, black. And pancakes.” Emma nodded and walked to the counter.

“Hey, Belle.” Emma smiled.

“Hi, Emma! I haven’t seen you in a while. How are things going?” Belle was way too perky at 5:50 in the morning.

“Pretty well actually, thanks. Uh, I need a large coffee with lots of sugar and milk, a bowl of Fruit Loops, a large black coffee, and pancakes.” Belle stared for a moment.

“You’re here with Killian?”

“Yeah. Why?” Emma looked back at Killian, who had his head resting on his arms. He looked like he could fall asleep at the table.

“No reason. It’s just nice to see you both making friends.” Emma was too tired to press the matter any further, so she just asked how much everything was before paying Belle and heading back to the table with two coffees. Turns out he was asleep.

“Killian?” She shook him lightly. She repeated his name twice more before he stirred.

“Oh, Swan. I’m so sorry, I just-”

“It’s okay.” Emma chuckled. “This is an ungodly hour for anyone to be up.” He nodded in agreement and took a sip of his coffee.

“Oh, what do I owe you?” He took out a black wallet with a light blue anchor on the front. She shook her head.

“It’s on me.”

“No. I’m the one who asked you here. I should be paying for us both.” He fiddled with a couple bills in his wallet.

“Consider it a gift.” He stared at her, eyes heavy still with sleep.

“Thank you, Swan.” He was going to say something else when Belle came over with their food, interrupting his words. He forgot what he was going to say when he saw Emma attack the bowl of cereal in front of her. “That is hardly breakfast, Swan.”

“Eat your pancakes, Jones.” He chuckled now as she shoveled the sugary morsels into her mouth. She finished her entire bowl, even drinking the milk, before he could finish just one of his pancakes.

“That stuff is all sugar.” He shook his head at her.

“Apparently it’s not too early for you to judge me.” She crossed her arms and sat back. “I happen to love Fruit Loops.”

“Just because they have ‘fruit’ in the name does not mean they count as fruit.” His eyes have lightened considerably since she woke him up minutes ago. He took a bite of his pancake and she rolled her eyes. She took a sip of her coffee as he moved one of his pancakes onto another plate. Killian pushed the plate in front of Emma. “Eat something of substance.” She gave him a curious glance, but she would never say no to more food.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, Swan. I just want to keep you around so you can bake more cupcakes for me.” She laughed, covering her mouth to keep pancake from sputtering across the table at him. They both stopped eating and he kept his gaze on her. “I can hear you thinking.”

“Sorry. It’s just-”

“Just what?”

“Nothing.” She stabbed her pancake with her fork.

“Tell me, Swan.” He still hadn’t resumed eating.

“I was just thinking that maybe you aren’t so bad after all.”

“Well I’m certainly glad to hear that.” He picked up his fork and knife, but gazed at her once more before cutting another piece of pancake. She definitely needed to change the subject.

“So have you run into your copy of Peter Pan yet?” He finished chewing before he responded.

“Alas, I have not. The little bugger is hiding from me.”

“I’m starting to think you don’t want me to read it because you’re wrong and Hook is the bad guy. And you know it.” She smirked.

“I could give you a list of reasons Pan is the true villain, but then I’d be spoiling the book. It would be bad form.”

“Mhm. Sure.”

“It’s true! I’d be more than happy to discuss Pan with you after you’ve finished the book.” He wiped syrup from his scruff with his napkin.

“I did see the movie, you know,” she said in a mocking tone, knowing this would hit a nerve.

“The book is always better, Swan. And the movie’s portrayal of Captain Hook is a disgrace.” One of these days her eyes were going to roll right out of her head in front of Killian. “It’s true!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll find out myself whenever you find that book.”

“Indeed. But how are you enjoying your trip to Wonderland?” He finished off his last pancake and put his utensils and napkin neatly on his empty plate.

“I actually really like it. I’m not a big reader; how did you manage to pick two books I really love?”

“One of my many talents.” He sipped his coffee. Killian Jones was still a puzzle to Emma.

“Fair enough. Hey, I should actually be getting to work. But I had a really good time this morning.” He stood up and put his leather jacket on.

“I’ll walk you to your car.” She knew it wasn’t an issue worth fighting over. He told her about his first time reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the suggestion of a teacher in primary school. Emma learned that Killian has always been a big reader, and it was actually Peter Pan that sparked his interest. He went to “university” to study English and Irish literature, and he used to work in a bookstore, and that experience made him want to open his own. They talked for an extra ten minutes after reaching her bug, and she was starting to freeze just a bit. Her nose was running and undoubtedly pink. Her beanie saved her ears, but the cold was biting at her cheeks, and she watched his own features redden in color. His ears reached an alarming shade of red when she realized they should both get warmed up and get to work. She opened her car door when she heard him speak once more. “Are you sure I don’t owe you anything for the breakfast?” It took her all of three seconds to reply.

“You can pay tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I don’t recall asking.”

“That’s because it’s my turn.” She saw a smile creep onto his face. “Would you like to have breakfast with me again tomorrow?”

“I’d love to, Swan.”

“Same place, same time?” He nodded. She reached into her pocket and grabbed her phone. “Oh, put your number in.” He added himself to her contacts and she said she’d send him a text so he could save her number. They said their goodbyes, knowing they’d see each other just minutes later at their respective jobs. When she looked out her windows every so often, she caught him looking back. They smiled at each other whenever their eyes met, and she waved if she didn’t have loads of customers. After work, she waved from outside his window as she made her way to her car. He smiled and waved back, mouthing a “see you at breakfast” before turning back to his books. She sent him a text as she finished dinner:

E: Hey, it’s Emma. Remind me tomorrow morning to bring you a beanie.

He replied immediately:

K: Hello, Swan. And why is that?

She couldn’t let the opportunity to tease him pass her by:

E: Your ears were firetruck red today. I was scared they’d fall off.

Her phone vibrated seconds later:

K: My ears are fine, and they thank you for the concern.

He was such a dork. She told him so:

E: You’re a dork. I’m going to go to bed so I can get up early tomorrow. Maybe you should do the same, wouldn’t want to fall asleep on the table, would you?

She knew he was blushing, even though she couldn’t see him. She waited for his reply:

K: Absolutely right, Swan. That would be bad form. Off to bed I go. Goodnight, love.

She smiled, sending him a text before putting her phone on the table next to her.

E: Goodnight, Killian.

She smiled as she slept that night, and only groaned for three minutes after her alarm went off the next morning.

[gyrlversion]

New film attempts to answer what caused lighthouse keepers to vanish

His heart racing and his mind filling with fear, Joseph Moore hurried towards the Eilean Mor lighthouse, desperately yelling out the names of his fellow lighthouse keepers he’d expected to greet him.

But the only reply came from the gulls and petrels shrieking in the skies above the tiny, lonely island in the Outer Hebrides.

It was late afternoon on December 26, 1900. After celebrating Boxing Day on the Isle of Lewis, some 20 miles away, assistant keeper Moore had boarded the steamer Hesperus, a supply vessel that was taking him to Eilean Mor for his next six-week stint of duty.

The three missing men – (from left to right) Thomas Marshall, Donald MacArthur and James Ducat – pose outside Flannan Lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides one week before they vanished in mysterious circumstances in 1900

Married with two young children, 28-year-old Moore had been delighted that his last period of shore leave had coincided with Christmas.

But the fortuitous timing went beyond that — it probably saved his life. A chilling new film, The Vanishing, starring Gerard Butler, is based on the true story of how the three men Moore had waved goodbye to on Eilean Mor only two weeks before disappeared without a trace.

They had no boat, and no bodies were ever found, leading some to suggest that supernatural forces had been at work in the Flannan Isles, the group of seven islands to which Eilean Mor, barely 500ft across, belongs.

The Flannans were much feared by sailors — and with good cause. Numerous ships had foundered on their unforgiving coastlines, which are often hidden by dense fog. In the aftermath, the bodies and bones of victims had littered the shores.

Scottish film star Gerard Butler plays missing lighthouse keeper James Ducat in new thriller The Vanishing

For centuries the only signs of human habitation were the ruins of a chapel devoted to St Flann, an Irish monk who lived there during the 7th century. In death, he was said to regard Eilean Mor as his own — a sinister, watchful presence that terrified shepherds who ferried their sheep over to graze there, but who never stayed the night.

When a lighthouse was built in December 1899, to guide ships through one of the wildest reaches of the North Atlantic, locals warned that the intrusion would unleash St Flann’s wrath.

So did these misgivings come true almost exactly a year later, when the lighthouse keepers went missing?

This maritime mystery is as intriguing as that of the Marie Celeste, and to this day goes unanswered. The first sign that something was amiss came when the SS Archtor, a cargo ship en route from Philadelphia, passed Eilean Mor at around midnight on December 15. The Captain noticed that the lighthouse was dark.

He reported this upon docking in Leith, near Edinburgh, three days later. But for some reason the information did not reach the Northern Lighthouse Board.

And so when Joseph Moore left Lewis to join his fellow keepers, he was expecting a hearty welcome and more Yuletide celebrations.

But, as the Hesperus approached Eilean Mor, he felt the first inklings of fear. The winter afternoon was dark but no light beamed forth. Something was up.

Even when the Captain sounded the steamer’s horn and sent up a distress flare to attract attention, there was no response from anyone in the lighthouse. There seemed little choice but to send Moore to investigate. He clambered onto the landing stage and raced up the long wooden staircase that zig-zagged up the cliff face.

He saw the gate to the lighthouse enclosure was closed, as was the door to the tower. Then he looked up and saw three giant black birds perched above. They seemed to be monitoring his every move.

The remote Eilean Mor lighthouse on the Flannan Isles in the Outer Hebrides. Legend has it that when it was built in December 1899, to guide ships through one of the wildest reaches of the North Atlantic, locals warned that the intrusion would unleash St Flann’s wrath

Moore made his way into the silent lighthouse, heading first to the kitchen, which was normally the cosy hub of lighthouse life. Yet the room had a deathly chill about it. The clock had stopped and the ashes in the grate were cold. A poem about the incident, written in 1912 by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, describes an untouched meal on the table — there was cold meat, pickles and potatoes. A kitchen chair lay on its side, and the only sign of life was the keepers’ canary, half-starving on its perch.

It is not known if this was accurate, but what Moore saw clearly terrified him. Tearing back down to the landing stage, he pleaded with the crew from the Hesperus to help him search the tiny island. They found nothing.

Reluctantly, Moore agreed to stay to tend the light. It’s not difficult to imagine how scary the nights that followed were for him, alone in the light room, listening to the wind howling all around as the revolving lamp cast shadows. The Northern Lighthouse Board’s superintendent, Robert Muirhead, arrived three days later to investigate and described Moore as being in a state of ‘nervousness’.

He may have heard voices on the wind, calling out the names of the three missing men — a claim later made by others.

While keeper Thomas Marshall was single, the other two — James Ducat and Donald MacArthur — were married, with six children between them. The task of breaking the news to their widows had fallen to Muirhead, who knew their families well.

Actors Gerard Butler, Peter Mullan and Connor Swindells star as the three men who mysteriously vanished from the Eilean Mor lighthouse in the Flannan Isles in 1900

He had last seen the keepers on December 7, when he travelled out for a routine check on his employees. ‘I have the melancholy recollection that I was the last person to shake hands with them and bid them adieu,’ he wrote.

The last record left by the men was on the morning of December 15, chalked on the slate where they noted down weather conditions and their daily activities, which included trimming the lighthouse lamp, filling its oil fountains and cleaning the giant lenses.

Nothing amiss was mentioned, but the fact that the lighthouse had not been operational that evening strongly implied that this was the day they disappeared.

As to the cause, Muirhead noted that the landing platform on the western side of the island had suffered severe storm damage, with twisted iron railings and a block of stone, estimated to weigh a ton, displaced onto the path. He concluded that the men must have gone to repair the damage and been swept away by a wave.

The problem with this theory is that, while the boots, capes and oilskins belonging to Ducat and Marshall were missing, Donald MacArthur’s were still inside. It seems unlikely that, in the freezing weather, he would have left the lighthouse wearing only shirt-sleeves and rope-soled sandals.

It was possible, of course, that Ducat and Marshall had run into trouble at the landing stage and that, on hearing their cries for help, MacArthur had rushed down to their assistance before being washed away himself.

But if he had left the lighthouse in a panic, why had he wasted precious time on closing both the entrance door and the gate to the yard? And why were none of their bodies ever washed up?

None of it made sense and, over the coming years, speculation mounted about the keepers’ fate. Among the more fanciful explanations was a claim by locals that the keepers had been changed into those three giant birds Moore had seen upon landing.

Others said they had been kidnapped by a foreign power after seeing something they shouldn’t have — perhaps a secret warship? Or did one of them murder the other two — MacArthur was said to have a volatile temper —and throw himself off the cliffs in an act of remorse?

Or was American author Vincent Hayes Gaddis — who specialised in sensational stories of the paranormal —correct in suggesting that in the days before the trio vanished they had been tormented by a tempest so violent that it must have been caused by a supernatural dark force?

In a book written in 1965, Gaddis quoted entries supposedly written in the lighthouse log by Thomas Marshall. ‘Never seen such a storm,’ he is recorded as writing on December 12. ‘Ducat quiet. MacArthur crying.’ He added the next day: ‘Storm continued through night. Grey daylight. Me, Ducat and MacArthur prayed.’

It has since been suggested that Gaddis might have fabricated these entries. But we simply don’t know, as the original logbook went missing after the incident.

That in itself might be regarded as suspicious. Was this document of official record really mislaid, or was it deliberately destroyed?

If the distressing entries quoted by Gaddis were authentic, it certainly wouldn’t have helped the authorities to recruit other keepers to Eilean Mor, replacing not just the three men who disappeared but also Moore. He lasted just three more months before demanding a transfer from the post.

The island is now home to an automated lighthouse that continues to illuminate a safe passage for seafarers. But, to this day, it has failed to shine a light on the fate of its keepers, whose existence was simply erased on that fateful day over a century ago.

The Vanishing is now out in UK cinemas.

The post New film attempts to answer what caused lighthouse keepers to vanish appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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