#chris doyle

[edwardkoenning]

Chris Day with a trick I never understood. Raleigh Ultra Shock test, or a Life's A Beach ad. #BMX

[sinceileftyoublog]

Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly Interview: Knowledge and Dignity

Photo by GUMO

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When I log on Zoom to interview creative and life partners Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly, I expect to see them together. Instead, Ferragutti's at their home in Amsterdam, and Rosaly's camera is set up somewhere outside, but he's not there at all. (The Zoom active speaker view keeps on highlighting him because birds are chirping.) As I introduce myself to Ferragutti, Rosaly eventually shows up, and they explain to me that he's at a house in the forest they share with friends. The contrast between the two locations--personal and internal, earthbound and communal--fittingly mirrors the dichotomy of what I'm there to ask them about, the stunning MESTIZX (International Anthem/Nonesuch). Ferragutti and Rosaly's new album represents the first time either artist publicly confronted aspects of their Latin heritage. It's also their first record at all. Even Rosaly, the prolific experimental music drummer who has played with everyone from indie rock lore like Thurston Moore and Ryley Walker to jazz stalwarts such as Dave Rempis and Matana Roberts, has never made anything that sounds quite like MESTIZX, and only ¡Todos de Pie!, his project exploring the music of Puerto Rico through improvisation, came close to touching the record's layered themes. Nonetheless, Ferragutti and Rosaly have managed to dive deep into complexities while finding a collaborative artistic voice.

The word "mestizx" is a non-gendered word of "mestizo" or "mestiza", the Spanish colonial term for mixed race, an identity the duo owns and turns upside down with MESTIZX. Ferragutti was born in Bolivia and is of Bolivian and Brazilian heritage, countries colonized by Spain and Portugal, respectively. The majority of the modern Bolivian population identifies as "mestizo," a mix of Indigenous and European heritage, of the colonizer and the colonized. It's this in-betweenness that Ferragutti wished to dissect on MESTIZX, a feeling beyond simply growing up with the music of the Bolivian and Brazilian diaspora. Rosaly, meanwhile, is of Puerto Rican heritage but wasn't allowed to speak Spanish outside of his home during childhood, as his parents wished to assimilate him as much as possible to the English-speaking United States. Before he became the dynamic, noisy drummer he was today, he fell in love with percussion and first connected with his roots when watching another drummer of Puerto Rican heritage perform, the late, great Tito Puente. The sounds on MESTIZX touch on all of these musical traditions and more, intensely reflective.

Photo by GUMO

Yet, Ferragutti and Rosaly's approach is also immaculately researched and respectful. Both artists went to school for music; though the songs on MESTIZX are anything but traditional, they reflect Ferragutti and Rosaly's deliberately academic exploration of music-making. They took the time to understand the ritualistic and cosmological context of each included instrument and rhythm before connecting it with modern-day ideas of decolonization and protest via Ferragutti's lyrics. That is, whether it's the impossibly wide array of percussion instruments from all over the world or Ferragutti's synthesizers effected to sound like pan flutes, everything on MESTIZX is included for a reason. "I didn't go thinking on this record, 'I want to use African instruments.'" Rosaly said. "When we were first starting to play around with instruments in the living room and hanging out, the mbira was around, and I came up with this little harmonic sequence, and things started landing on top of that instrument. I had to ask myself, 'I love the sound, of course, but am I using it for reasons that are dignified for the instrument and its lineage without appropriating?" Rosaly studied the way in which the African diaspora was embedded in Puerto Rico. "That musical and spiritual ideology traveled," he said. "Suddenly, the mbira had a place for me."

As much as MESTIZX sounds on paper like an ethnomusicologist's favorite new album--just take a look at the album's immersive liner notes--Ferragutti and Rosaly emphasized to me that the actual qualities of the songs are exemplary of the two's past musical influences and contemporary artistic community. Rosaly's history in the Chicago post-rock and jazz scene shines through, making a song like the album's title track, full of wiry guitars, an orchestra of synthesizers, and Ferragutti's captivating vocals, earn its pitched-to-me would-be-ridiculous descriptor of "Elza Soares fronting Hail To The Thief-era Radiohead." Moreover, on each song, the two solicited contributions from a who's who of contemporary experimental musicians, from bassist Matt Lux and cornetist Ben LaMar Gay to guitarist Bill MacKay and multi-instrumentalist Rob Frye. It's a testament to the collective's creativity how natural, often groovy, and cohesive the songs sound, despite each's long list of players, many of whom play multiple instruments per tune. On lead single "DESTEJER", Ferragutti differentiates between being intertwined with her roots and being suffocated by them, singing, translated from Spanish, "The present conjures the past that informs the future / I dodge the trap / I am not raw material." Her words form a push-pull with the clattering percussion, courtesy of Rosaly and Mikel Patrick Avery's tambourine and caxixi, and the woodwinds that alternate between flutters and smooth expressions, demonstrating the tension within.

Ultimately, the next step for Ferragutti and Rosaly is where the songs on MESTIZX go from here. Right now, they're exploring them in a live setting, on tour in Europe with Lux, Gay, multi-instrumentalist Ben Boye, and pianist Marta Warelis. Before embarking on tour, the two rehearsed simplified versions of the songs themselves, but just like the record, the songs will become fully fleshed only when the duo invites their friends on stage to help them along the way, participating in the modern-day ritual of playing music, a full circle return to the rituals Ferraguti and Rosaly studied to prepare to make the album. "The medium of the record is one thing, and songs need to be certain lengths for them to stay buoyant," Rosaly said. "Having a whole family of magical people we can tour with in different contexts, the music is going to open up in very unforeseen ways."

Below, read my conversation with Ferragutti and Rosaly, edited for length and clarity. We talk about MESTIZX, the album's art and videos, roots, colonialism, and Chicago post-rock.

Since I Left You: Reading about the ideas and story behind MESTIZX, it's clear the issues of identity it deals with are things the two of you have been grappling with for a long time. Why was right now the time you decided to sit down and make this album?

Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti: In my case, it's been something I've been dealing with my whole life. I've felt a super loud presence of my roots and realized not everybody where I come from had that. It was almost a burden, a curse. [laughs] But also totally not and really beautiful. It had a big influence in a good way and sometimes in not such a nice way, to the point I had to do something with it. I didn't know exactly what ["it"] was, so I let it go, but the moment I really faced ["it"] through music, I allowed for a lot of healing in terms of my relationship to my roots, the painful parts of my roots, and the beautiful parts of my roots. I also [have] a lot of connection with people, rhythms, and the pain of what it is to come from places so deeply colonized.

I just read an article that somebody wrote in Germany [about MESTIZX], and they called it a bit of a self-help record. [laughs] I don't know, I think it's more than that for me. It's not just about me. It's about something we share as a collective intelligence, where we're at in this moment, in the South American diaspora.

Frank Rosaly: [Self-help] sounds like a bit of a simplification of the context of the record. I started thinking about this stuff around 2006. I had a pretty disconnected relationship with Puerto Rico, by design. My parents kept me as integrated as possible to my benefit. I don't necessarily identify as being Puerto Rican outright. When Ibelisse and I met and began our partnership, being in partnership with a Latina really opened a dialog that was never really so open in my life. That's when things really shifted into high gear in dealing with some of the themes you hear about on this record.

SILY: What about during the process of writing or recording or playing with others? Did your relationship to your roots change?

FR: For me, it deepened things. Since Ibelisse is the guardian of the lyrics, and I'm oversimplifying things here, but I'm creating content from the musical side of things--we're both doing that of course--the rhythms that come from certain regions and all of my research, studies, and interest in that material had a place. Before that, playing with Ryley Walker, it didn't make sense to throw some bomba in there. All of a sudden, this incredible amount of something from within became dislodged and able to move through me and the music, that I hadn't given a lot of space for. I've only been in one project that I created myself, ¡Todos de Pie!, that began to talk about this and research this a bit. This project really set it all free, and it became a waterfall.

IGF: For me, I think it was a really beautiful and intense process, to confront my own biases. I studied classical piano, have done a lot of punk music, and realized in my education, by default, even growing up in South America, I wasn't in contact with the music of the territory, with the real roots. The process of this music was so deep that I started talking with a lot of people and doing a lot of research about how much by design you are already given this very Western idea of listening to, making, and belonging to music. I felt so sad that in my country, we never had enough power to appreciate what we already had there. It's stunning, the most beautiful drum music I've ever heard. It sounds self-helpy, but it's not: It was a big healing process of reconnecting with deeper layers of instruments that belong to a territory. Pan flute, I just see it in the main squares, people playing it in the street, but it's actually a very powerful instrument when put in its right context for its right ritual and purpose. For me, it was a really big journey to go really deep and really dare to listen to things I couldn't listen to before. Even if I don't use the pan flutes, to have a reverence for where my ancestors come from and have a space to listen. The magic embedded in those rituals is out of this world. It's like they're people from the stars. I can't explain the whole thing--it's like a whole book--but I was so stunned by the cosmologies of the people from those territories. This record brought me there, and I'm very, very thankful for that.

SILY: Your average music listener might not think about the fact that an instrument, rhythm, or sound can have its own proper sociohistorical context independent of the sheer quality of how it sounds. Were you hoping to further educate listeners with this record?

FR: I wouldn't go as far as to say "educate." At the end of "BARRO", there's panderetas being played, and it's not some sort of reference or a shoutout, as in, "Here's a little Puerto Rican tidbit." It really has a place in the song because of what the song is talking about and what we're trying to invoke. I found it imperative; there's an urgency for that to happen. When we started making the record, we weren't trying to make a Latin-feeling record--we both tend to make pretty noisy, experimental stuff--but because of the content of the record and what's really happening inside of the music, it informed us to make a different decision as to how the music can be carried by song, flow from song to song, to make a record and an entire story. I've never thought this deeply about all the connective tissue and the meaning of everything on this record. Nothing is put in place, like, "A shaker would be nice!" A shaker is there because it really needs to be there, not just on a musical level, but because of the message.

IGF: I feel like I am a bit more educated; I'm going to start by educating myself. I can communicate to other people. I don't feel like I'm allowed to play a pan flute or anything like that. I know much more now than what I knew before, but that knowledge and dignity I felt making the record is embedded in the music by default, by the way I talk about things, choose this word or that sound. It has to do with a repercussion of understanding the dignity of those instruments in the territories they are made and played: agricultural reasons, cosmological reasons. That knowledge is so inspiring, it helped me decide how to make this record. The record is a reflection of what I learned.

SILY: What determined what language each song was in?

IGF: I think it had to do with the sound. We built "MESTIZX" like a singer-songwriter [song,] and it just came out in Spanish, naturally. Some songs started from the lyrics towards the instrument, others from the drums towards words. At a certain point--and with the help of Frank--I was listening so openly, the song would tell you what language it needed to be sung in. “SABER DO MAR”, the second song of side B, is often translated in the reviews as "Know the Sea", but it's actually "The Knowledge of the Sea". I was thinking that all of these people came from the Africas to Brazil and informed so much music and brought their instruments, gods, and belief systems. I was really inspired by the language carried in that diaspora between Africa and Brazil, which is the colonizer language, which is Portuguese. The sea brought all of these languages to Brazil, and to Bolivia. The last two [songs] in English...I think it has something to do with this "mestizx" thing. I communicate nowadays in English rather than in Spanish or Portuguese. I didn't grow up with it, but I use it so much it's embedded in how I think, how I feel, how I communicate with my love, Frankie. We just communicate in English. Frankie doesn't understand Spanish or Portuguese, so English is our bridge. English is a powerful medium for this record, in terms of all of the voices that live within us.

Photo by Saskia Ludden

SILY: Frank, in terms of music where you come from, how would you say Chicago post-rock informed this record?

FR: I would argue that the fabric of how I think about playing is woven almost strictly from my experiences in Chicago and the music that brought me there in the first place, which dislodged me from a weird path of institutional jazz learning and going to school. I heard Sam Prekop's first solo record with Chad Taylor and Joshua Abrams, then I heard Isotope 217, then Tortoise. I was in Arizona at the time, then I moved to L.A. for a while. I was really in a bubble before that. Suddenly, everything changed because of that sound. It's not any particular artist. They've all influenced me in so many ways. Not necessarily, "I'm going to play like Dan Bitney now because I love that sound," but the principal of how Dan Bitney fits in Tortoise, and how John Herndon sounds in Isotope, and the melodies that Rob Mazurek makes. [Mazurek] plays a lot of intervals in 4ths, which I fell in love with when I was in college composing, but then I was exposed to it in a new context which made me crazy. You hear 4ths everywhere in this record, which is because of Charles Ives by way of Rob Mazurek by way of Gastr del Sol and the free jazz and improvisational lineage from Chicago, from the Art Ensemble of Chicago to what's happening even now. It's all in there.

SILY: From a broad perspective, there seems to be a contrast in textures and moods in every song. Was that a goal, to have tactile instrumentation going on at the same time as something broad and expansive?

IGF: From my point of view, I don't know if it was a strategy as much as my listening inside the moment, which is of course a strategy. [laughs] For me, playing with synthesizers is a really nice way to speculate folkloric instruments. I would tune the synthesizer in different ways to make it have the same tuning as a pan flute. The electricity of the synthesizer had to be there because it's a medium that makes a lot of sense to tie the ancestral with the futuristic, to break through space and time. I was also thinking about whether I should sing or use words because [that way is] less post-rocky--I'm also super inspired by post-rock [laughs]--there was something bigger happening in terms of the palette of the sounds. My voice became a kind of instrument, so to say.

FR: I would argue another part of how I think about things has so much to do with that old version of myself when I was in school, learning about classical percussion and the percussion family. It's such an incredibly huge family of instruments that span across the world. They're all a part of my life, because I've studied them and they mean something to me. If I [use] a pandeiro from Brazil, it's not necessarily just because Ibelisse is speaking in Portuguese, or because it has anything to do with Brazil, but because it's the right sound.

SILY: Did you have specific people in mind you wanted to play on certain songs on the record?

FR: The first person we were thinking about was Matt Lux, because of his sound. I had worked with him on another project where he was the producer. The way he thinks about sound and very gently produces--he just says a few things and lets it sink in--he has a way of being very subtle about helping artists like Ibelisse and I move deeper into the music. We just wanted him around and then said, "Dude, you gotta bring your bass and play a little bit." He had always joked about being in retirement. Luckily, that's not the case. The last time I was in Chicago, I was supposed to do a recording session with Rob Frye and Ben LaMar Gay, and I got really ill. I really love their sound, [so I asked them]. Bill MacKay, I love that guy so much, he's been such a huge inspiration as a human being, let alone a musician, so we wanted to see whether he could arrive and play a few notes.

IGF: We also had some songs with guitar and thought his sound was really unbelievable. Avreeayl Ra is really amazing. Mikel Patrick Avery. There are so many.

SILY: Bill got to play requinto on "SABER DO MAR". I don't think I've heard him play that instrument on record since his album with Ryley Walker years ago.

FR: It's a beautiful sound. He really understood the depth of the music. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese really well.

IGF: We were at Into the Great Wide Open with Ryley, and Bill was there, and he started talking to me in Spanish and Portuguese!

FR: I would be remiss not to mention Chris Doyle, who lives in Amsterdam. He used to be in Antibalas and was in the scene in New York City, roommates with Jaimie Branch for a long time. We are dear friends and play in a few different projects together. He swooped in at the last minute and added some layers that only he could manage, because he's such an incredible musician and really subtle thinker. I would argue he's a producer in the way he added the tiniest touches of beauty that opened things up a little bit more, gave them more air, even though he was adding layers. Mikel Patrick Avery was visiting Amsterdam, and I just asked him to do a couple overdubs because of his feel and sound. He'll just take a toy tambourine and do something smooth as butter, even though that sounds corny.

IGF: There was a community aspect. [Avery] came to visit when we were at International Anthem, and we said, "Don't you want to play some congas or something?" [laughs] It worked out super well. The community aspect is similar to [that] where I come from.

FR: These are all people we're deeply in love with. We wanted that to be embedded in the music, that it's really coming from a place of love and sharing ideas together from a loving place.

SILY: Can you tell me about the history of the voice memo included on "BLESS THEE MUNDANE"?

IGF: Viktor [Le Givens]. [laughs]

RF: I didn't know him very well when I lived in Chicago, but there was a series that I ran at the Skylark in Pilsen for about 8 years with Nick Mazzarella and Anton Hatwich. It originally started with me and Jaimie Branch, but then she moved away. Viktor would come to some shows occasionally. I think he was going to Columbia at the time. He's been this character that orbits my consciousness often. Suddenly, I hear that Ibelisse is this festival in The Hague, and she sees this magical guy doing this thing with Angel Bat Dawid. I was like, "I know this guy!" I started following him on Instagram. This work he does is incredible. It's this beautiful archive of The Great Migration. It's stunning, the way he talks and thinks and presents. I kind of have a little bit of a man crush on him. I started sending him messages about his posts and watching his live feeds religiously for a while. We started exchanging voice messages, and I was telling him while Ibelisse and I were in the midst of making a record, we were busy with really small minor details, really mundane stuff, and he sent this message. It was like, "Uhh...right. Only Viktor could [take] something I was really struggling with and give it life and context." It was super inspiring for me, so I asked him if it was okay to use the voice memo for that conversation.

SILY: How involved were you in the visual identity of the record?

FR: The record cover, I kind of designed it.

IGF: [laughs]

FR: I didn't take the photo or anything like that, but I used Pages to design the [linework.] That came together pretty quickly based on something I drew up.

IGF: We were in Bolivia when we did [the album photos.] We wanted to have a couple amazing friends, photographers and visual artists--and I really wanted to have South American artists--involved in the images. A friend of mine took the pictures, and we went to a very beautiful mountain where I grew up, and to the market, these very crazy places in Bolivia. We did make a mood-board to guide our friend of how it could be, more or less. Not in all of the pictures, but in the cover picture, he really captured something we were longing for. It's full of the world around you, the territories that were talking to us so loudly. For the [video] for "DESTEJER", I asked someone in Bolivia who I didn't know but who I had been following for a while, [Espectador Domesticado]. The concept behind the concept, in Cochabamba, the lake, was, "How does the new generation perceive this music?" We talk all the time about ancestors and the past, but I also want to think about the future. These are ancestors of the future, 23 years old. So we did develop a little bit together, but I gave [the director] a lot of freedom to interpret the territory the way he wanted. We did help him with edits, but I left as much space as possible for his voice.

FR: For "TURBULÊNCIA", we were thinking, "We need to put out another single. Should we make a video? Should we?" Ibelisse and I are part of a collective called Molk Factory, and one of our collective members who is a wonderful video artist who works with projection and light, we asked her whether she wanted to make a video with us real quick. We added some ideas between all of us and came up with the idea of using very open space with movers and dancers. We wanted to deal with the dissonance of what the song is talking about. We wanted to tear apart or unweave, if I can use that word--

IGF: Destejer. [laughs]

FR: Destejer. We very quickly put the task at hand. "Let's mix this video." We filmed it in about 10-12 hours with the help of Marc Riordan, who used to live in Chicago. Incredible drummer, incredible pianist, and now he's really busy with a film living in L.A. He was visiting to play some shows with me and was the main camera operator, which is such a blessing because he's really good at thinking about cameras and how all of that works, because I have no idea. Within a 24-hour period of actual time, that video was formed. It was playful, immediate. We didn't think about too hard. It just came out. We were really happy with it.

IGF: The tricky part is it had digital post-production. When does digital [manipulation] become a response to what we were saying, not just a trick, but serve something more than a trick or a gimmick? It was a bit of a conversation with [director] Noralie [van den Eijnde], because it's called "TURBULÊNCIA", or "turbulence," with things out of control sometimes. How do we listen, and how do we use our hands to carve a new knowing together? Who is giving me the voice, and is that why the hands are moving my face? Is that the ancestors? This counterpoint between who is moving who: Is something moving the body, or is the body open enough to be losing its shape?

SILY: It's the colonizer versus the colonized, external forces affecting our perspective of things versus something more internal.

IGF: I think you're right. At some point, it's taking ownership of these two forces--the duality--and what do you do with it after just being the victim of it. "DESTEJER" was the opposite. We perform, we read the music, and there was this amazing rhythm happening, but we're just looking at the water really quietly. We were totally ADHD and wanting things to happen, but the filmmaker was like, "No! Everything is already happening in the forest, in the lake, in the water." We just had to listen and be there. Both videos are totally different, but in a way, they're totally similar in the essence of making yourself available and take ownership of the things that live within you while dealing with them and their contradictions.

Tour dates:

5/30: de Doelen, Rotterdam, NL

5/31: Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, NL

6/1: C.A.L.L. F.E.S.T.I.V.A.L., Amsterdam, NL*

6/3: Kampnagel, Hamburg, DE

6/4: 90mil, Berlin, DE

6/6: Stadtgarten, Köln, DE

6/7: Church of Sound, London, UK

6/8: Pabfest, Île de Batz, FR

*Members of the MESTIZX band perform

[isabelleadjani]

THE HEART KILLERS (2024) dir. Jojo Tichakorn Phukhaotong

[waybackbands]

UØ HIGH Homecoming 2008 a night to remember! Royal Oak Music Theatre, Michigan October 31st, 2008 1-7 ©Riaz K 8-12 ©Sam Doyle 13-18 ©Tony Katai

[burnyouwithacigarettelighter]

DINE & DASH ───

chris o’doyle 𖦹

ೃ⁀➷ “Deep in my enemy I find the lover.” — ‘The Cid’, Pierre Corneille

pairing. chris o’doyle x waitress!reader

summary. you meet chris o’doyle 3 times. the 1st, he’s got a gun pointed at you. the 2nd, you learn his name. the 3rd, you’ve got a gun pointed at him.

warnings. swearing, guns, mention of death, robbery, shooting

word count. 4k

a/n. i recognize this fic doesn’t actually have any romance in it, so considering the reception i might make a part 2😄 (perhaps with an emotional love confession and fluffy smut :o)

i.

Now, here’s the thing about living in Boston, circa 1978, working at a diner: you’ve gotta buy a gun.

Especially because the shitty diner you work at is downtown. Downtown is utterly fucked at night, where all the doped up creeps, gangsters & prostitutes come out to play.

It’s by an off-chance (off-chance being that your boss was a day drinker who couldn’t handle the diner at night without throwing up) that you work the night shift. 

So, the gun. You don’t know how to use one, buy one, hell, you don’t even know what you’re looking for; you just know you need to buy a fucking gun, because you cannot take any more attempted robberies at the diner. 

(There have been several, at this point, and the only way you’ve avoided having the diner robbed blind is by pretending to be one of those rough-‘round-the-edges folk who could kill someone with a broom if properly motivated. 

Think, the kind of person, who, if faced with a gun in a robbery, would laugh at the colour of your gun and smash your head in with a napkin dispenser.)

One night, you’re coming back to the cashier after refilling all the coffee pots, and a man you’ve never seen before is sitting at the front counter. 

“Sorry ‘bout the wait,” you say, retying your alabaster apron, smoothing down the wrinkles. 

The man - who looked exactly like those rough-‘round-the-edges folk - shakes his head. “No fault to you, girl.” He says, Irish accent curling around his words like a snake. 

“So, what’re you havin’?” You say, lighting a cigarette, reveling in the nicotine-filled rush it sends right up to your brain. 

The man inhales his own cigarette, staring at you intently for a moment. His gaze makes you squirm, running all over your body. It's nothing out of the ordinary for you, to be eye-fucked by a shady creep in the late night, but his attention is laser-focussed, like he could see through you.

“Mmm,” the man broke his silence, and his gaze drifted elsewhere, “d’you got red ale?” 

Your eyebrows lift at the request, but you complied, grabbing a pint and filling it to the brim with the man’s choice of drink. When you hand it to him, he looks as surprised as you do: “What kind of Boston diner sells red ale?”

“You ask, darlin’, you receive.” The pet name is a conscious decision on your part; there’s something about the man that sets alarm bells off in your head, but you can’t place any context, so you try to appease him.

The man looks at you, then the beer, and then shrugs. “Fuck it,” he murmurs under his breath, and downs the whole thing in one. 

You put out your cigarette, resisting the urge to roll your eyes; now, you’d have to fumble around, wait to see if he’d pay & leave or order something else. 

However, he does neither, pulling out a shiny Colt Python from his leather jacket pocket, pointing it at you and cocking off the safety. 

Your heart jumps in your throat, constricting your breathing, and your hands immediately come up. Everything happens so fast, and you can’t really process anything but your fear. 

You consider doing your act, your confident, no-nonsense, rough skank farse, but something tells you he won’t believe it, just shoot you point blank. Those eyes of his, crystalline blue with little to no emotion tinting them, sends shivers down your spine.

“C’mere,” he gestures to you, “‘round the counter.” He’s chewing on the end of his wet cigarette, not having had the chance to pull it out and inhale.

You do as he asks, taking gentle, tentative steps in front of him. You walk carefully, so as not to startle him; make him shoot you.  

“Where’s yer boss?” The man says, running a calloused hand through his brown hair, gun still trained on you. 

You gulped, focussing on breathing properly. “He’s - he does- he doesn’t work the night shift.” You make out in a painful stutter.

The man raised a brow at this, finally pulling out his cigarette and leaving it on the ashtray. “Well,” he looked as if he was weighing his options, “you lot keep a safe in here?”

You nodded vehemently, your throat still clenched in fear. 

“Go on then. Show me.” He waved the gun haphazardly, and you made quick work of the situation: grabbing the store keys from underneath the desk, and skittering to your boss’s office. 

You pushed open the loud, creaky door then you immediately dropped to your knees and unlocked the safe. Inside was a jaw-dropping amount of cash, an amount your boss had conveniently failed to mention was being kept in the store — as well as a cute little Smith & Wesson .38. 

Before either of you could tell what the other was doing, you’d gone in for the kill: he grabbed the cash, you grabbed the pistol. 

Sure, your boss was an absent-minded fuck who always did you dirty by giving you the night-shift, but he was your boss, and a good one at that; he paid you on time, usually never said no to your vacation requests, and was generally well-mannered and kind. To top it off, you knew he had a real large family to feed. 

“Sweetheart, I jus’ want the cash. Yer boss owes us a great deal of debt, alright?” The man said, his own hands in the air now. He had slipped his gun back into the holster that hung by his belt, and he knew just as well as you did that the slightest movement toward that area would have you shooting bullets like a fucking madman. 

Never underestimate someone who was jumpy and holding a gun: they were trigger happy. 

You inhaled and exhaled shakily, your fingers hesitantly brushing past the safety lever. “All of it?” you said helplessly, trying to erase the mental image of how your boss would look later, absolutely crushed that the store, his prized possession, had been robbed. Under your “watchful” eye. 

The stranger considered this, his mustache curling as his face contorted around the idea. “…Most of it,” he settled on, cornflower blue eyes peering past the gun and instead landing on you. 

“Why,” he continued, shifting the weight between his feet, “you wanna dip your toes in the water, doll?”

You recoiled, both at the pet name and the connotation you also wanted to rob your boss, but you knew that if he knew you were just going to give your cut back to your boss, the stranger would come back and rob the store all over again. 

Instead, you nodded curtly. You figured you could finally buy a gun with a portion of the money, so if this stranger ever came knocking ‘round your place, you could satiate his suspicion by pointing a piece at him. 

The man let out a sigh of relief at the compromise reached. “Guns down,” he said, and you dropped your hand to the floor. He didn’t reach for his Colt Python, so you visibly relaxed as well. 

After a few moments of mumbling under his breath and thumbing through the bills, he shoved two thirds of the cash into his leather jacket pockets, then tossed the rest into your trembling hands. 

“Spend it wisely, darlin’. Don’t go buying all the pretty dresses money can afford - you’ll get caught.” With that, the stranger stuffed his pockets with his hands and exited promptly. 

You gulped, beads of sweat trailing down your back and making you squirm — there was no way that just fucking happened, right?

Right? You thought. Jesus fucking christ, you really had to get a better job. A better place to live now, too; the stranger knew your face and your name — seriously, screw the diner waitress name tags meant to make you look approachable — so if you were, at any point in time, considered a loose end, they’d be coming for you next. 

It’s only then, you realize, he never paid for the ale. 

ii. 

The second time you see the stranger is not even two weeks after the diner-robbery incident. 

Following the robbery, your boss gave you time off so he could sort the mess out — as well as his debts, after you told him what the robber told you — and you found yourself with the small bit of cash you portioned off from the safe to buy a gun. 

You followed word of mouth on where exactly to purchase a gun for days, keenly listening in on loose-lipped men who came in too late at night or too early in the morning to even consider the possibility that the sweet waitress who kept butting in to give them a refill could be listening. 

Finally, you entered a bar in anticipation: one of the loose-lipped men mentioned a man who dealt out small revolvers that you thought would do just perfectly for space in your purse, right in that very bar. 

Time was dripping drearily toward midnight, and the wad of cash wedged within the waistband of your flare jeans burned guiltily against you as you searched for the man selling — it wasn’t your money, after all. 

You shook yourself mentally, however, reminding yourself to consider it hush money, or trauma money, for the ordeal you experienced. Then, you spotted the seller who’d been described: average height, lanky, wild brown hair. He was speaking animatedly at the bar counter, silver rings on his fingers gleaming in the dull bar light. 

You slid onto the black, faux leather stool beside him, quietly informing the idle bartender you wanted a rum & coke, before leaning into the ear of the seller. 

“Smith & Wesson, model 36.” you whispered huskily, then promptly preoccupying yourself with smiling at the barkeep and thanking him for the drink. You were a little nervous, getting involved in Boston’s underground crime world, even if it were just for a simple gun purchase. 

The man stopped his storytelling to down his drink — red ale, you noted, brows furrowing at the unexpected nostalgia of last time — and speak to you without turning completely. 

“Straight to business, are we?” He said silkily, and you froze, parsing through your memories to correctly match this voice with that voice— “Name’s Chris O’Doyle, and yes, thank you for “asking”, I can provide you wit’ a beautiful little S&W model 36.”

When you didn’t respond eagerly, in stark contrast to your previous behavior, the stranger from the robbery — Chris O’Doyle, you now knew — turned to face you completely.

“…Well, this is jus’ grand, isn’t it, doll?” Chris said, sarcasm dripping from his tongue.

“Fuck’s sake,” you blurted out, pinching your nose bridge. “I didn’t— why the fuck are you here?”

Chris raised a tentative brow, “I’ve got my fingers in all kinds of pies, darlin’. Can’t expect a smart Irish man not to, eh?”

“Jesus christ,” you murmured under your breath. You thought you wouldn’t have to see this man ever-fucking again, but as fate turned out, you just did. 

You steeled your nerves: you’d buy the gun. It was just as well to buy it from him, so he could see you weren’t to be messed with. That, and so he wouldn’t go sniffing around for the money you gave back to your boss. 

“I need a —“ You began, but were irritatingly cut off by Chris.

“—Smith & Wesson, model 36. I know, darlin’, I heard ya the first time. Now, let’s get out of here, I can’t just hand the thing over in here,” he said, before pressing himself flush against you and whispering in your ear. “Plus, it’s best you leave: some of the shitstains in here are gettin’ ideas, seein’ a pretty lady like you, all alone.”

Suddenly, Chris got up, and snaked an arm around your waist. “Darlin’!” He exclaimed, sounding drunk out of his mind, “I don’t- don’t wan’ go feckin’ home!” 

“Play along, unless you wanna use that new gun of yer’s on one of the creeps in here later,” He continued sneakily under his breath. 

Begrudgingly, you did as asked, and supported him up, trying to look like a tired wife dragging her dumbass husband back home. “I told you to quit fucking drinking!” you shouted, smacking him upside the head and dragging him by the arm. 

“Christ, woman! Can’t a man jus’ have a wee drink?” 

“Shut the fuck up, you damn headache!” You screeched back at him. 

Okay, you admit: it was kind of fun to shout insulting names at the man who’d been haunting your dreams since that night.

You hadn’t been having the… best sleep, as of late. Always heaving, waking up at ungodly hours after the dream ended with the cold tip of Chris’s gun pressed neatly at your temple, always unable to get back to sleep for fear the dream would continue and you’d be shot dead in it. 

When you and Chris had successfully averted all public eye, exiting the bar and stumbling to a street a couple blocks away where a car was parked, he let up the drunken husband act. 

“Smart of you, y’know,” he informed you absently, leaning into the open window of his car. He continued by rummaging through the vehicle, trying to find the trunk key in his storage compartment.

“Smart of me to what?” you echoed back, looking up and down the street in case someone was walking past or driving by to witness your incredibly shady and conspicuous arms deal. 

“To buy a gun,” said Chris, a certain lilt to his tone that made you know he thought it was the obvious answer. 

“Yeah, well, you made sure of that.” you said with an eye roll. If you sounded comfortable, it’s because you were, at least a little bit. 

In the small timeframe you’d known and spoken to Chris O’Doyle, you figured out three things about him: he was a penchant for the theatrical, if not a little bit of a procrastinator, was plenty lofty, and probably treated customers and friends like pure gold. You knew that if you were buying, he would be on his best behavior, and do all in his power to keep that happening, be it moving the sun, moon and stars — or kill someone. 

“Now, what’s that supposed to mean?” Chris questioned, brow raised as he slipped out of his car window with the key in his hand. 

You thinned your eyes. “Hm, I don’t know, maybe the fact you threatened me with a gun and robbed me blind has me worried for my safety?

He rounded the vehicle, unlocking the trunk and pulling the heavy metal lid up. “I didn’t rob you blind, sweetheart. I robbed your boss blind. And, the gun’s standard business practice. Protect the messenger, threaten the target, all that.”

You sighed exasperatedly, but ignored him, instead opting to pull the wedge of cash out of your pants. You handed the entire wad to him, then opened up your other hand to receive the revolver.

 “You can count, right? Otherwise, your boss’s been robbed blind for a while.” Chris mocked, a sly grin spreading on his lips while his hand hovered above the trunk full of guns for the weapon of your choice. 

Once he found the gun, you snatched the piece out of his hand impatiently, discreetly tucking it away where your bills had been. “I don’t want any more dirty money on me. Enough to buy this damn gun is all I need.” 

“And a few cigarette packs it seems,” he shot back, clearly noticing the cash you handed him was short of the amount he originally gave you. 

“S’not any of your business what I buy.” You said tersely, then quickly walked off and left him without so much as a goodbye. 

After a second thought: “Now stay the fuck out of my life!” you shouted down the street, turning and not looking back.  

iii. 

The thing about living in Boston, circa 1978, working at a diner is that you’ve gotta buy a gun.

Now, you had gone ahead and bought a gun, but it was only ever supposed to be a precaution. Something you brought to work, or when you went out late at night. 

And, of course you never had to use it: you did have normal, functioning common sense, so you never found yourself in situations where your gun became more than just something taking up space in your purse. 

But with Chris O’Doyle, you found, you threw your common sense — as well as your precaution — straight to the wind. 

It’s late at night, quite similar to all the other times you’d encountered the man, like a certain time of night had him summoned like a fucking demon, and he appears. Right in the middle of the diner, sitting in that same spot he’d pulled out his pistol and robbed you. 

After a while, the incident stopped bothering you - as well as the fact you now owned a fucking gun - but you never did get Chris’s face out of your head, those piercing blue eyes. Said eyes were now staring at you straight, before trailing off, like the fucking criminal was embarrassed. 

You don’t know what exactly was running through your head, but, again, Chris O’Doyle and you equaled common sense and precautions funeral, and you immediately dragged yourself to the breakroom, where you kept your stuff during a shift — including your purse — and you came back out with your shiny, unused Smith & Wesson model 36 gleaming in your hands. 

“Fucking—“ Chris cursed, when he saw you come out with the gun, which was trained on him shakily. “Put the damn gun down! Jesus, d’you even know how to use that thing?”

You bit your lip, deciding not to answer his very valid, very biting question, for you did not know how to use a gun properly. “Just - what the fuck are you doing here, Chris?”

Deep in your mind, a more unbothered part of you wondered why you kept saying that when Chris appeared, like the mustached man was some creep ex who was stalking you. 

“I’m just fucking peckish, girl. This is a diner, is it not?” He exclaimed, like what you were doing was manic and unexpected. 

You stared at him incredulously, reluctantly putting down the hand that held the gun. You’d told him to, paraphrasing, “completely and totally fuck off”. What part of that did he not get?

“The part you don’t get, darlin’, is that I don’t care.” Chris shook his head, and you were so distraught you didn’t register you’d actually said what you were thinking out loud. 

“God forbid you do!” You said, an infuriated laugh coiling around your words. “Order, then please grant me the blessing of never seeing you, ever again. Like I already fucking asked.”

Chris puffed up his cheeks, then blew the air out of them. “Red ale.” he said simply, looking like that was it, before continuing and making you freeze midway between quickly running to the kitchen to grab and fill the glass. 

“And, eh…” he scanned through the plastic menu the diner offered, “a slice of Boston cream pie.”

You smiled at him tensely, hoping he knew it was fake as hell and meant to make him uncomfortable. “Coming right up,” you ground out through gritted teeth. 

You thus disappeared into the diner kitchen - though not without first expertly hiding your pistol back in your purse - busying yourself with warming up the slice of pie in the ancient microwave your boss believed to be a holy grail heirloom as it was from his mother. It was loud, took too long, and always made the food too hot — but now, you were reveling in its flaws.

Loud means you didn’t have to hear Chris and whatever the hell he was doing, too long meant you could stall (and, pray he’d get bored and leave), and too hot meant that, later, you could privately make fun of him for burning his tongue, then have to blow on it and look like a little kid. 

When it finished, you haphazardly threw it onto a plate, and filled Chris’s ale just half-way. If he wanted service here, fine, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to get good service. 

Then, you handed it to him with a loud clatter on the counter, startling him out of his chain-smoking stupor. He made a face at your antics, but put out his cigarette and picked up the fork on the plate to begin eating anyway. 

Finally, with having served Chris his stupid pie and stupid red ale, you could count down to the second until you never had to see him again, and you could finally erase him from your mind, forget how his gun felt trained on you, icy blue eyes digging into your spine. 

However, much like you, it seemed an entirely different group of people with a grudge against Chris O’Doyle also threw common sense and precaution out the window when they saw him. 

One moment you were pulling a cigarette out of the sleek, metal case sitting in the pocket of your apron, the next, Chris was jumping over the counter and shouting at you to duck. 

You did as told almost immediately - his tone of voice had grown serious, cold, something you’d only heard briefly the night he robbed the diner. 

Bullets tore through the diner, completely shattering and destroying the glass windows. The shots ricocheted against the walls, making the whole diner shake and feel like it was going to collapse. After a few more minutes of rapid gunfire eating at the building, something flew in from the same direction of the bullets. 

“Good fucking riddance, Chris O’Doyle!” A voice called from outside, Several vehicles could be heard driving away as quick as they came, not even bothering to check if Chris was dead or alive. 

You guessed that they — whoever “they” were — were a confident bunch, but unfortunately for them, Chris was still alive following that clownish display of gunfire. 

Hidden beneath the diner counter, you laid against Chris’s bandy chest, his arms holding him close to you, like he was a kid and you were his prized balloon. One of his hands petted at the crown of your head, almost soothingly, while the other hand fumbled with his signature Colt Python. 

Then, an ear shattering boom exploded from the “something” that was thrown into the building. You supposed it also set fire to quite a few things, for the water sprinklers set off and soaked the entire building. 

For a long moment, it was just you and Chris, laying on the floor beneath the diner counter, sprinkler water soaking you both. Your hands were clenched impeccably tight on his leather jacket sleeve, and his hand had, like on autopilot, begun carding through your locks comfortingly. It seemed to comfort him more than you however, his breathing sounding stilted, and, with your pressed right up against his chest, you knew the situation had shocked him. 

“That happen to you often?” you said, disregarding all questions that were clambering around your head for this softer, more considerate one. 

Sure, the man maddened you to no end, and you still had dreams of him shooting you in the diner or jumping you in the street, but you were human, and he was too. Chris seemed like the kind of man who was inured to all sorts of sick and twisted things, so this event having shocked him surely had to be a large one. 

And so, you knew it was empathy that needed to be used here; you recognized the struggle of a human vulnerable. 

“More than I’d like,” Chris whispered back, his eyes shutting closed, surely replaying the entire situation behind his eyelids. 

You could digest this all later, and he could talk about it later - if he wanted - but for now, it was just you and him in the diner, your voice gentle, his touch shaky. 

[hotcelebritymenilike]

Just a bunch of hot out queer celebrities I had waiting to be posted: Andrew Keenan Bolger, Billy Eichner, Chris Salvatore, Dam Amboyer, Jake Borelli, Matteo Lane, Mike Doyle, Murray Barlett, Robert Grant, Jake Shears, Steven Grand, and Vincent Rodriguez III

[crowleythesexydemon]

Books 👍

[letterboxd-loggd]

Groundhog Day (1993) Harold Ramis

November 20th 2024

[elk96]

A Battle Of Ideals 1

Part One.

Pairing: Chris O' Doyle( Free Fire) x female OC

Warnings: graphic description of blood, wounds, some violence, swearing cause that's all they did in that movie, enemies to lovers kinda?, h/c, English is not my first language.

Word Count: 2287

After the gunfight ends, a woman comes out of the shadows, to take care of him even though they seem to belong in completely different worlds. Her goal turns out to be in high contrast with her actions.

This is a sappy, completely self indulgent story guys, you have been warned. Chris suffers, a woman is there to take care of him. They also hate each other some times, especially in the start. That's it

You’re being ridiculously loud right now, Chris thought, his breathing echoing amongst the dead. The building was empty now, but he somehow preferred the panic, the gunshots -even the fear. He was not afraid now. He knew that death was approaching-and but for his fucking leg maybe he could try to go to a hospital, ask for help.

He moved his head to rest it on Ord’s body-it wasn’t bad, having a more comfortable deathbed. He never liked the guy anyway.

“Goddamnit Stevo”, he groaned, trying to remain conscious a little while longer. Suffering like a wounded animal he was, covered in dirt and blood.

“God has damned all of us, a long time ago. I thought you knew”, said a voice-a female voice-, and Chris put his best effort to lift his head up.

“Who the fuck are you, eh”?, he rasped out. God he was hit everywhere, he might as well end up drowning in his own blood.

“Glad to see you’re still breathing”, the voice spoke again, and a woman showed up from the furthest corner, dressed in brown jeans and a bloody button-up.

“Who are you”?, Chris asked again, his voice mimicking pathetically a whine. She certainly wasn't with the police.

“That doesn’t matter now though, does it”?, the woman said and a gun appeared along with her. Chris reached instinctively for his own weapon, despite his being way too weak to even aim.

“Don’t worry, I’m here to help. The cops will arrive any minute now, we have to go”.

“Fuck off”.

“I will. With you. Put the gun down, before I cut your hand off”.

The woman knelt beside him, softly taking the weapon from him, and put it in her own pocket.

“My car’s outside. I’ll bring it in in two minute’s time. Don’t die, Irishman”.

“Fuck off and leave me alone, will ya”?

“Save your strength”, the stranger said and then she left him alone again, fighting to breathe because his chest felt heavy, and the blood was sipping through his veins on the floor.

He wanted it to end, to stop the suffering ‘cause it was all futile anyway, but she had taken his gun.

I only wanted a fucking beer and a nice dinner!, he complained silently, face scrunched in despair, but the sound of car tracks made him jolt upright. His loud groan covered the sound of the engine.

“The cops are on their way, we have to hurry”, the woman said and knelt behind him this time, pulling him upright despite his sounds of pain.

“Help me or I’ll empty your own gun on you, you bastard. Get up”! The woman poked him on the shoulder and the pain helped him stand, somehow.

Only half-conscious, almost too far gone to hear anything but his own heartbeat, he was thrown in the backseat of a black car.

“Frank. We left Frank here”, he murmured suddenly as the vehicle began to move. “I’d promised I’d take him home”.

“You’re not going home Chris, so….there’s very little you can do”.

“Who the fuck do you work for”?

“At the moment, your own good. And my name is Amara. Stay awake Chris. It’s for the best, I promise”.

“Fuck you and your promises”, he murmured under his breath, but he didn’t faint anyway. The dull, intense ache ran through his body keeping him grounded to reality.

After a short drive, the woman pulled over, and sat with him on the backseat.

“We’re getting close to the end of your hour and a half, Chris”, Amara murmured, opening a first-aid kit.

“Really now? A nurse? Can’t I go to hospital”?

“Dead or captive you won’t be of any use for us”.

“Who is ‘us’”?

“Take a deep breath”, Amara warned him and a moment later she removed the jacket off of his shoulders, ripping his shirt apart.

“Damn it”, she whispered on seeing the bullet wounds. She quickly pressed cotton soaked in rubbing alcohol on his shoulder, his arm, his ribs. Amara then cleaned the wounds with water, and covered them tightly in bandages. Chris tried to avoid her harsh treatment, but the woman pinned him against the backseat with her weight.

“Lay back. Lay back, now”, she said coldly, and after Chris obliged proceeding to take off his boots, his trousers following.

“Fucking hell”, Chris hissed, as the hard material scraped his wound.

“This is what happens when you go buy guns, pal”, Amara said, repeating the exact same process, not a tiny bit more gentle. The car’s seat was slippery from his sweat, but Chriss was proud enough not to make a sound. Or try to, at least. It’s not easy when you’ve been shot in three places.

Amara threw a heavy blanket on him, to keep him somehow warm, and Chris layed down during their pleasant ride. The road was bumpy, full of sudden turns and dips, and he then, more than ever, wished he could’ve stayed with Frank, and Stevo. Dead, calm, and still.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t bring painkillers with me, I’ll give you as soon as we get home”, Amara said in a haste, after a loud yelp escaped him.

Chris was fighting to keep breathing-should be the easiest of all his fights, and yet, there he was, begging her to open the window, craving some fresh air after all the dust.

“Don’t worry, everything will ease in a while”, Amara whispered as soon as they reached their destination. Wrapping Chris with the blanket, she helped him out of the car, and into a small house, but Chris collapsed on the first step of the yard’s starecase.

“Wait a minute…I need to-...catch my breath”, he uttered, making her heart clench on her chest.

“We have to get inside before the neighbors see us. It’s just four steps”.

“Wait a minute…wait”, he insisted but Amara pulled him up, ignorant to his loud groans.

Chris was too far gone to notice anything of his surroundings, but the bright light of a lamp made his eyes burn, so he didn’t make any effort to open them. He was splayed on a chair. He heard water running on a sink, and moments later, a hand came to hold his jaw high.

Amara held the cup for him as he drunk clumsily, spilling half of the water on himself.

“It’s okay, don’t worry”, Amara whispered, bringing a bottle to his lips. “Drink”, she said softly. “It’s whiskey. Irish”.

Chris half-opened his eyes, finding comfort in the burning tickle of the alcohol. He drank as much as he could bear, and the weight on his head lifted up immediately.

“You’re okay, eh Chris”?, Amara asked, holding his face between her hands. She pushed some stray hair behind his ear, looking at him in the eyes. “You’re gonna lay in bed real soon-just don’t go find Frank”.

“You bitch…”, Chris muttered but his whole body froze as Amara appeared with new bandages, needles, thread and pliers.

“You didn’t think I’d leave them inside of you, did you”?

Not today, please not today, Chris wanted to beg her but he kept his lips tightly pressed together as Amara freed his shoulder from the bandage.

She cleaned her hands with the alcohol, and put on gloves before picking up the surgical pliers.

“You’re lucky”, she said examining the wound. “It’s shallow. It will hurt like hell nonetheless”, she muttered and pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket, which she tied around his head.

“Just tell me if you can’t breathe, hm”?, she mocked him, shoving the handkerchief onto his mouth.

She picked up those damn pliers again, and with clenched teeth, began to pick on his wound, trying to get the bullet out. Her left hand instinctively grabbed his right as he fought to get her off of him. Amara found the bullet quickly and dropped in on the glass with a relieved sight and pushed the gag down.

“Wait….ahh….wait”, Chris begged, his face wet with unwanted tears, but Amara pushed the thread on the needle.

“Better finish quickly”, she said, gagged him and stitched his wound with practiced ease.

Chris growled, moaned, clenched and unclenched all of his muscles during the next two hours of Amara tending to him. The wound on his ribs was particularly bad, leaving him almost unconscious after a loud moan which not even the gag managed to suppress.

“It’s okay, we’re done, that’s it”, Amara assured him with a broken voice, almost apologetic for all the pain she had caused him. His head hung back, chest falling and rising slowly. Every breath Chris took came out as a groan, louder each time as he completely lost control of himself.

Amara tilted his head forward, for him to drink some more water, wrapped him in a clean blanket, and carried him to the bedroom which luckily was close.

Chris had passed out and so no snarky comment came out of him when they entered the bedroom, which Amara had turned into essentially a hospital room.

She let him fall on the soft mattress before transferring some blood to him. The piercing of the needle against her skin made her wince, but she had the blood type, compatible with all others, and the whole job was arranged only a few hours before terrorists and gun dealers met. She had to shed her own blood for him if she wanted the plan to succeed, the killings to stop.

Just as the precious red liquid started running through the tubule Chris flattered his eyes half-open, drawing in a shaky breath.

Amara didn’t take her eyes off the needle and the tubule once, hyper-focused on the blood transfer. Chris let out a whine instead of a groan once she removed the needle from his skin.

“Shut up, what are you, a fucking dog”?, Amara said harshly, clinging to the effort of believing her own false pretence.

“You still have…my gun in your pocket…”, Chris struggled, “so stop wasting…your fucking blood…and-and kill me”.

“The only thing I’m gonna use this gun for, pal, is wake you up”, she answered poking on his bad leg. Chris yelped, with a moan that faded into a long whine but Amara bit her lip.

Struggling to keep her own emotions under control, she wiped gently on the tear running down his left cheek. Her eyes suddenly narrowed in worry, and she put a thermometer into his mouth, only to find him burning with fever.

“Damn it Chris, Vern was right”, she muttered, and rushed to bring him an aspirin. “It’s not gonna do anything for the pain, but it will help with the fever. I hope”.

“I want a smoke”, Chris said, mouth almost completely closed.

“Yeah, and then go fuck yourself, no”?

Chris made an effort to open his eyes in her direction, but she only sat beside him on the bed, brushing her fingers over his batted face.

“Sleep. Sleep, you need it”.

Chris shook his head forcefully.

“Sleep, you’ll be fine”.

His eyes danced around the room, taking on the last thing he’d see of the world.

“I cleaned your wounds. The fever will subside. Sleep now, and if you’re early, you might see the sun rise in the morning”.

He’s not going to die, she thought to herself, taking in the pieces left of him. The night was almost as still as him, only the distant sounds of a lost kitten, or the chipping of the nightbirds echoing in the world.

The world. Her world, the place she’d come to call home, a small, empty apartment in the middle of nowhere. So far away from New York, or her family, or anything she’d ever known as a kid, really. She couldn’t remember what day it was, but she did have the vague feeling that Zoey’s birthday was close.

32, she smiled. A mature, successful woman-had she lived past 24. They wanted M16s, and not A40s, these are not good enough to kill people, they need the best. She missed her sister more than even her old self, the one that would never poke a man in his wound. Or swear on him for groaning in pain.-You’re being sentimental! Cut it off, now! He is a terrorist. Not a fucking kid.

It was Chris’s soft growls that pulled her out of her thoughts. She snapped her eyes on him, only to find him shaking uncontrollably, still asleep. His muscles tensed and relaxed, and the spasms tied his limbs together, made him ache to the bone.

Tired though she was, she knelt beside him, one hand on his temple and the other resting heavily on his abdomen, trying to steady him.

“Hey Chris”, she whispered so as to figure if he was awake, but she got no answer. “Relax Chrissy, relax. It’s just the fever rising, nothing more”.

Her hand started brushing on his hair, then under his wet eyes, then down her own cheeks because she couldn’t take it anymore. Chris was not groaning, he was crying, desperately and softly, sobbing beneath her touch unbeknownst to him.

There was nothing she could do but wait-or so she told herself, so she sat back on her chair, eyes on the moon outside the window. When his whines and moans became unbearable, she covered her ears, praying for the night to end.

She was doing the right thing, she knew it. They had to be stopped, in order for the killings to stop, in order for people to live happily and-

The muscle of the gun pressed against her thigh as Chris’s sobs continued to echo in the room.

“A terrorist. Nothing more”, she whispered to herself and finally closed her eyes.

@look-at-the-soul , hope you like it!!

If you read, please interact, it would be like the best thing ever, comments, or corrections in my grammar, or anything else!

[nerdygaymormon]

Living on the Inside of the Edge

Chris Kimball wrote a book for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who find they are living on the edges of the church. It may be circumstances like getting divorced or having a child come out as queer that pushes someone to the edge. It may be being a single person in a church focused on families. It could be a feminist perspective that sees the problems with patriarchy in the church. Maybe it’s learning about some history of the church or a myriad of other reasons that someone finds they are on the margins.

I think this book works especially well for people who’ve been pushed into a different phase of faith. I find most church leaders who are in Stage 3 of Fowler’s stages of faith don’t speak about faith in a way that resonates with me.

Chris Kimball is a straight, cis, married, middle-aged man who once served as bishop and is grandson of an LDS prophet. He decided to include voices with different life experiences. He included a married woman, a Black man, a woman who is single, a gay man (me), and so on. 

I’ve read the book and found it speaks to me. 

If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, many of the ideas I present in my chapter of the book will sound familiar.

The book is now available on Amazon for purchase. Btw, I get no remuneration, the only financial benefit I will receive is a copy of the printed book. 

Below are snippets from each of the chapters written by the contributors.

[detournementsmineurs]

“Miss Scarlet & The Duke (Saison 1)” série créée par Rachael New (2020) avec Kate Phillips, Stuart Martin, Kevin Doyle, Andrew Gower, Ansu Kabia, Cathy Belton, Nick Dunning, Simon Ludders, Helen Norton, Oliver Chris et la participation d'Ellise Chappell, septembre 2024.

[gameofthunder66]

Chris Peterson (Chris Elliott) getting beat up in Get A Life

Get a Life (1990-1992) tv sitcom

-(started) rewatchin’ Season 1- 8/10/2024- on DVD

I decided to rewatch this Tv Sitcom next because I loved it, and thought it was so funny, many years ago! Don’t know if I will feel the same about it this time around, but I shall see.

77% Rotten Tomatoes

[verypsbfan019]

The Baker Street Boys 🕵‍♂️👨‍⚕️

Have you ever imagined the Pet Shop Boys as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson? No? Well, I did 🤣💚💜

[annoyingcat413]

Stuff in my books that would probably send a lot of book collectors into a coma

Mysterious white substances (I promise I do not know what it is)

Spines turning green and very faded name

Work of my cat (I left it on my desk one night)

Completely faded title (my favorite book of the land of stories series)

Folded cover

Well that’s what dusters are for right? To take all the damage!

Oh god what the hell happened. I do not remember. this is a book from 2017 I think? (Oh my god it’s been 8 years)

From the same book

There’s also a lot of mysterious stains in the inside of my books

Anyways the more damaged a book is is the way you can tell that I have read it a lot of times

[nerds-yearbook]

On Febuary 2, 1993, weatherman Phil Connors found himself trapped in a time loop and reliving Groundhog Day over and over. ("Groundhog Day", film)

[crispylive]

The Three Stooges play rough with Monsignor Ratliffe!